Chapter Eighteen A Mission Gone Well (Patreon)

Armak watched the precursor ship go to warp. He was glad to see it depart. The drones made him uncomfortable. As for Erisa, she was okay, but she certainly had a mouth. He had the impression she didn’t like Megumi all that much, but the ship AI seemed stable enough to him. He did however check records on past encounters with precursor AIs and for her age she seemed quite stable. The girl did mention her vivisecting members of the Erali science team, but he spoke to the victims. They actually agreed to it. Megumi had apparently approached them when they found a medical lab and offered to show them how it works. Two of them ended up volunteering for the experience, and apparently one of them had the early onset of cancer. Something the computer had promptly proceeded to cure for the elderly scientist.

Erisa seemed to think they had been tricked into getting on those tables though. However, it wasn’t for Armak to judge. He was just glad that headache wasn’t his to deal with. An unstable Solean AI was not a prospect he wanted to deal with. Solean ships were extremely powerful, it took fleets just to take one down, and all recorded instances were cruisers. Ships half the size of the one that just left. However, Erisa could very well be wrong and just be biased against the ship, since apparently, her friend signed an iffy contract with the ship. He hoped to the gods that she was. An unstable Solean AI with that much firepower was a nightmare.

Megumi felt that the brief detour had gone well. She had gotten the information she wanted and was pouring over it now. Erisa tried to make it seem as if she was unstable but failed. She was quite stable and did not appreciate the implication. Still, the girl had done well enough but clearly needed to learn a few lessons. Now she just had to figure out how to get her into the classroom, in the meantime, she knew the perfect reward.

At that moment, she noticed that the Ludole ship was leaving the system. On a different course from her own. They would likely take the safest route they could to the nearest friendly port. With their battle damage, they were in need of a refit, but they should be able to make it. Megumi had every confidence in her repair work.

Materializing her hologram, she turned to Erisa. She gave her a look, “Constantly mouthing off, and trying to make me look bad. I probably shouldn’t have trusted you with that job, but it went well in the end.” she pointed to a drone entering the room, and holding an object, “Clearly you need this, maybe it will help with whatever is causing your irritable disposition.”

Erisa stared at the object with a look of distrust, “What is it?”

“It’s a simple little tool used to directly stimulate the nerves. It can inflict intense pleasure or pain depending on the settings. I suggest you be careful with the settings”

Erisa stared at the strange blue and silver rod, the drone had handed her. The ship had promised to pay her, but she had never really believed it. This wasn’t the kind of thing she had expected to get from it. The ship had told her to be careful with it, but didn’t even give her a manual.

On the one end of the rod was a small disk with strange markings. Above the disk was a small screen with a strange symbol on it. She turned the dial a few times, and watched as the symbol on the screen changed. The color darkening from a light pink to a crimson red. It stopped changing at that point. Erisa had the feeling that this device would be easy to figure out if she could read Solean. Then she noticed a small button to the left of the screen. She pressed it and the tip started to glow blue. Curious she touched the glowing tip. That was a mistake.

She had no idea how to describe the experience, like lightning intense pain shot up her arm. It was the worst pain she had ever felt, and thankfully she blacked out.

Megumi watched Erisa make her mistake. The Ai had not expected her to do that so quickly. Megumi had expected her distrust of anything she gave her to make her leave it alone for a while. Evidently, her curiosity was stronger than anticipated. She sent a drone to transport the girl to her quarters. Then she refocused her processing power elsewhere.

Kiru had recently completed her first run through the obstacle course, and it was time for her special lessons. The young woman had quite a bit to learn about. Her hud was going to be crucial, at the moment it was off, but Megumi was about to unlock that. That was going to be the start of her first special lesson. No single lesson was going to teach her everything she needed to know about her new systems. Then there was the other set of lessons she needed. Lessons she couldn’t fully plan without a test. She needed to gauge Kiru’s knowledge of spy work, and interrogation. There were two tools she would need to master, for the second item of interrogation and that set of tools were going to be pleasure and pain. Although pleasure also helped with the first part. The first was something she did not think Kiru knew much about.

Kiru settled into a seat, as directed. Her classmates filed out of the training room. Apparently going to the mess for a meal, and then a quick rest. Her food was being brought to her, and she was certainly hungry. Although she didn’t feel too tired.

Megumi settled her hologram in a nearby chair and began to speak. “This first lesson should not take too long. I’m going to introduce you to your hud.”

“Hud? What is that?”

“Also known as a heads-up display. It is a visual overlay, projected by your implants that only you can see. It is controlled by thought, and it tells you everything you will need to know.”

Suddenly her vision was overlaid. In the lower-left corner, she spotted a small blank circle. The upper left had what looked like a realistic representation of herself with colored bars above that. Next to each bar was a set of numbers, and the top one had extra text splitting the bar in two. Reading; ‘Shield Status: Off.’ She was actually a little surprised she understood the text since it was not written in Neku Common, but a language she didn’t understand. In the upper right corner, she had a stylized weapon graphic with red text over it. The text was in the same language, and simply said; ‘system restricted.’ Kiru made a note to ask about that text.

Megumi started explaining before she could ask, “I went ahead and activated your hud for you. It responds to thought-based inputs, so you can will it away when you need to. Let’s start with the colored bars in the upper left corner, those are at a glance gauges designed to give you rough estimates of important data. The numbers beside them are more accurate. The first bar is normally blue, but it should be grey at the moment, and the numbers beside it should read 0/0 joules. Breaking that grey bar in two you should be seeing some text telling you that your shields are currently off.”

She nodded, “Yeah, I see that. How do I turn them on, though?”

“Easy, with intent. Focus on your shields, and will them on. It shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

Kiru focused for a moment, and focused on the shields. She felt something, and then the text vanished, and the bar emptied. A moment later a blue line filled up over the course of about five seconds. The numbers next to it read 20,000/20,000 Terajoules. Not that she really understood the units, but she figured they were some measure of shield energy. A blue barrier also appeared around her representation.

“Congrats on raising your shield for the first time. I’m sure you noticed the amount of shield capacity displayed next to the bar has also changed. As well as the measuring units, which can be changed. I’ll cover that later when we cover system settings. You can go ahead, and drop your shields. We won’t need them for a while.

“Now immediately below your shield bar, is a red bar. This is your reserve energy capacity. Auxiliary systems like your personal cloak draw energy from your reserve capacitors. You can also use this energy to augment your shields or your defense cannon. The text beside it gives you more detailed info on how much you have, and how quickly your reserves recharge. Right now your reserves are full, and not charging. By design, your Subspace Energy Well has ramped down its output since your capacitors are full.”

She nodded, that was something she understood. As a former ship captain, she had plenty of experience with managing reserve energy. That actually didn’t need much explanation for her. “I understand that. What is the blank circle in the bottom left for?”

“That little gadget is commonly called a mini-map. It displays your local surroundings, and anything picked up by your sensors, but the function is currently disabled. Hence the lack of information.”

“Sensors?”

“I believe I mentioned those before. You now have a couple of spatial sensor nodes, but they have a limited range. I am sure you will find them useful. Anyway, as for the last item. That is your weapon display, it can monitor any weapon linked to your systems. Currently, it is only monitoring your integrated plasma cannon. It tells you everything you might want to know at a glance such as the current setting and the amount of available weapon energy. Meaning you will always know how many shots you can fire before the weapon needs to recharge, and don’t worry about overheating. The weapon was designed with limiters to prevent that. Not that you can currently use it, since I have restricted access. I’ll unlock it later.”

That surprised Kiru a bit, but then again, she had a feeling that the ship could disable her easily. With how Megumi clearly had access to her systems, she had little doubt the computer could remotely shut her down. Something that actually scared her a little, but there was nothing she could do about that. Removing the technology in her body wasn’t exactly an option. She rather depended on it now.

“Something I have been wondering is about the text. I have never seen this language, but for some reason I understand it. Is that your doing?”

Megumi gave her a look, as a waiter drone arrived with a small table, and a plate of food. “Actually, it’s the small computer linked to your brain doing the translating. I loaded both Modern and Ancient Solean into its memory banks. Along with linguistic data for both Neku, and Erali languages. You can change the language in the settings menu. I think we can cover that now.”

She was interested in this settings menu. Kiru looked over her food and noted it was another set of simple dishes. She reached over to take a bite and then signaled to go on.

“The menu can be opened easily enough with just a thought. Go ahead and do that.”

She took another bite and then focused on opening this settings menu. Her hud vanished, and quite a bit of text filled her vision. “As you can see you have quite the number of things that can be adjusted on this menu. For example, you could open the Energy Allocation tab, and adjust the default energy distribution. Although most of the time, you would likely want it on default. I won’t go over it, since that one is fairly self-explanatory.

“The system tab displays your primary system settings. That tab is where you can adjust display elements, alter elements of your hud to fit your own preferences. If you want to change the display language, simply go to the System tab, focus on display language, and set it to your preferred option. You can set that directly, or let the system tell you your language options. Then pick from those

“Now I am sure, the tab you would most be interested in. Is the reproductive systems tab. Go ahead, and look at that one. Right now the default settings are engaged. I doubt you will much need to change those, unless you were looking to have a child.”

She opened it, as she was curious. The tab had a few settings, and she found the birth control options easily enough. Kiru looked through them, but quickly agreed she wasn’t going to change them. Although it was interesting to see that she could adjust the birth control to be gender-specific, thereby ensuring that her child was of a specific gender. Not that she was currently looking to get pregnant. Then she noticed an odd option.

“Biomech self-replication program settings?”

“I gave you the option to reproduce in the same fashion as biomechs can. Biomechs use available genes either their own or theirs and a partner’s to produce a base template. This base template is then configured according to a class. Scout, Knight, Mage, and so on. Once a template and class has been decided, an embryo is created. It will take three months to gestate, and then you will have a child to care for. A young daughter that will take only five years to mature. You still have the traditional reproductive options though, with none of the accelerated growth of a biomech, nor will the child have your implants. Unless you specify otherwise. That is also in the settings.”

That was interesting, but she wasn’t sure she would wish this on a child. At least not now. She barely knew what she could do, but it was already obvious that she was stronger and more resilient than she had any right to be. She decided to change the subject though. This one was starting to get a little uncomfortable, but it was nice to know she had the option. She didn’t want to think about the fact that it was previously taken from her.

“One thing I am curious about is that cloak...”