Watkins, Lani, and Carter went to work. It turned out that Carter still had a few drone survivors active on his station, and they were put to work on repairing the damaged internal defenses. Watkins’ drones handled the more complicated task of rebuilding the station’s exterior damage while also repairing the Canon. Carter had a command limit, just like Watkins’ core, but Carter’s was much lower. He had a max command limit of 15, and for now, all of those command points would be filled with drones.
Data from the servers aboard the station flowed into Watkins, and he shared what he could with Carter. Lani had to do some work translating the data between the two cores, but they quickly got the hang of things. Some of the data was fragmented, damaged, and would take time to reconstruct. As the readily available data transfer was completed, a slew of upgrade notices flowed in. There was also a long-delayed notice regarding earning his core points for taking control of the station, as well as an explanation as to why that reward took so long to appear.
You have cleared Barracuda Station of hostile forces and reunited with your previous crew. This was a large task, and as such, it took more time for the system to measure improvement and implement core upgrades. The gathered data will streamline future calculations.
You have been awarded 50 core points.
Congratulations, you have shared data with another core and have unlocked the following schematics at Level 0.
- Shuttle Craft.
- Torpedoes.
- Attack Drones.
You have been awarded a total of 30 core points for these discoveries.
Congratulations, the data shared with another core has allowed the following schematics to advance from Level 0 to Level 1.
- Compartment structure.
- Shipboard living facilities.
- Décor, clothing, and personal items.
- Internal weapon hardpoint.
You have been awarded 60 core points for these discoveries.
Core Points 200/300.
It felt odd as the massive amount of knowledge settled into his core. Watkins looked over what he’d learned and was excited to see that a brief data exchange with another core had accomplished what would have taken his research modules weeks if not months to achieve.
First off, he had learned how to make the simple drone attack craft that the station had sent after him. They were limited in range, and took up a lot of his command limit, a total of 10 points for one drone. Carter wasn’t sure how he’d managed to command so many, but suspected they were disposable and pre-programmed by the council and only required his core to activate them.
It gave Watkins another long-range option to bolster his ship’s offensive capability. Each drone could carry a single missile, or the battery pack to power a smaller point defense laser for a total of five shots. With limited fuel, they could basically head out a short distance, make a strike, then would need to return to the Canon to refit.
At their level zero status, they weren’t going to survive long against any kind of point defense. Until he had the time to pump more research into them, they were less effective and efficient than a missile. Still, it was a new upgrade, and in the future, could be developed into something very powerful.
The shuttle craft was based on the same technology as the attack drone, only it had no weapons and was simply a way to efficiently haul cargo or passengers when Watkins didn’t want to dock somewhere. It also opened the possibility of exploring the surface of a world, but the limited cargo capacity, and reliance on charging its power supply with his core energy, would make that problematic.
His one immediately useful upgrade from the new tech discovered were the torpedoes. They had much greater range and packed three times the explosive punch of his missiles. Larger and less maneuverable, they would also suffer more when up against competent point defense. Still, the torpedoes would enable Canon to engage targets much further out. It was better than just sitting there doing nothing and waiting for a threat to enter missile range.
The data on the internal structure of the station had enabled Watkins to upgrade his compartment structure to level one. It would take his drones some time to refit the entire interior of the ship, but when they were done, the bulkheads between compartments would be 8% stronger than before. It didn’t sound like much at first, but as the upgrades continued, it would become a lot more difficult for a foe to just cut a path through his ship. There was also the added benefit of the compartments standing up to a hull breach better.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Shipboard living facilities and the décor, clothing, and personal items would make life easier for his verminkin crew but wasn’t as interesting to Watkins as the more combat related upgrades. The last upgrade had bumped his internal weapon hardpoints from level zero to level one. Thankfully, his drones had just started on the task of installation and wouldn’t waste time having to retrofit existing hardpoints.
There was a downside to the additional information he found about the internal defenses. They also took up part of his command limit to operate effectively. At least he could pre-install them and then activate the weapons as necessary. Less complicated than his MOBS or drones, he could control five hardpoints for just one point of his command limit.
He also found that he didn’t need to reprocess a drone or MOBS unit to free up the command points from them. They could simply be deactivated and would collapse where they were until his core linked up with them again. There was a rapid degradation of their systems once they were outside of his control, so anything other than a few hours of deactivation time would probably require some repair work by a drone before they would function at 100% effectiveness again.
The other benefit of the level one hardpoint research was that he could now mount rifle-caliber plasma weapons on them. With a full charge, each rifle could fire five times before it would deactivate and enter a recharge mode. Further upgrades would increase the battery capacity and shorten the recharge time.
Carter gained access to the level zero versions of Watkins’ MOBS and the personal weapons and armor for them. With his command point limit, Carter was going to have to rely on the internal defenses to bear the brunt of an attack. The horde of strange creatures that Carter had unleashed were just failed experiments kept in statis for just such a task, and not something he could replenish.
“Who was conducting the experiments, Carter?” Watkins asked, curious because it seemed that Carter wasn’t directly involved in them.
“It was a council subsystem that controlled part of my core. My knowledge of the experiments is limited, but I can tell they were using the device inside the fabrication compartment to create them. Let me investigate it a bit more,” Carter said.
It took Carter a few minutes to analyze the data before he asked Lani for her assistance. The strange system used for the biological experiments was handled by a council subroutine, and while it accessed Carter’s core, he had no memory of what he’d done afterwards. Wakins kept up with his other work, when the pair finally let him know their findings.
“This isn’t what I was expecting, Captain, but it seems the tank in the fabrication compartment is a DNA generator that was used to fuel the creation of the experiments. The council was trying to come up with a servant that wasn’t powered by core energy, but that could still be controlled by one. Initially, the DNA soup inside was supposed to be human DNA, which they acquired when taking us from Earth,” Lani started to explain when Carter jumped in.
“You don’t have to worry, Captain, none of the DNA is us, well, it is, but it’s incomplete. The council tried to fill in the gaps with the only other living creatures they had on hand. They used the bilge rats and even some beetle DNA to try to make their experiment work. By the time they got it dialed in, the systems aboard the station had degraded to the point they couldn’t support the experiment and had placed new research on standby to conserve energy,” Carter explained.
“So, is that goop inside the tank something we should just scrap it for biomass?” Watkins asked. It creeped him out that some of it was probably based on his DNA, but whatever nightmare the council had cooking inside that tank wasn’t a real human anymore.
“Before we scrap it, you need to hear what else I’ve learned about the tank. This is where it gets weird, it turns out the creatures created by the goop were used by the council. They traded the creatures they’d created to others in return for parts and weapons that the station needed. Remember, most of my consciousness was shut down at any given time, so I only have fragments of the interactions between the council AI and halfling ships that occasionally docked here.
“They were trading the experiments, the one that worked and that they could replicate, for raw materials and weapons. Captain, the successful experiment and the output of the that tank is the verminkin, and the very ones that are now part of your crew came from that tank. They were traded to the halflings since the halflings and the station had a common enemy, the kobolds,” Carter said.
“But the verminkin don’t remember coming from here, are you sure?” Watkins asked. It was a bizarre, and there were a lot of questions he had about the whole situation.
“I’m certain, their initial knowledge upload made them forget their origins and make them more receptive to commands. Apparently, the halflings thought the earlier experiments were inedible, but the final version that we have of the verminkin turned out to be perfect for the halfling larders,” Carter said.
“Why didn’t the station just make a whole bunch of verminkin and use them as troops when we attacked?” Watkins asked.
“The process is a slow one, and the place was already stuffed to the gills with the failed experiments. I remember the initial calculations, and it was thought that unleashing the experiments would easily overpower whatever troops you might have aboard. It seems the council underestimated what you were able to accomplish with your core and the Canon,” Carter said.
“Do we tell the verminkin about what we’ve found?” Lani asked.
“I think we have to, Skitterbach and our crew have a right to know their origins. Keeping it from them would only make it worse if they eventually found out,” Watkins said. It was going to be an awkward conversation, but if he wanted his crew to be loyal to him, Watkins had to be honest with them in return.