We were on our final approach to the drop-off location. From this close, the space station looked quite big. The design of the station was actually not that alien—the protrusions kinda reminded me of natural-looking big stones.
What I wanted to do was use my strongest lidar to get a better picture, but that would probably be taken as a hostile action, so I refrained and kept our sensors mostly passive.
I had woken up one of the drones that had the capability of moving in space by using liquid nitrogen as mass, expelled in certain directions to move the opposite way.
It was actually a bit nervous about going outside the ship, as it was already in the front airlock that was already close to vacuum, so when we opened the front airlock, there wouldn't be a lot of decompression when the air rushed out.
“Lola, are you gathering as much data as you can?”
“Of course.”
“Anything to report?”
“I have been able to get a better estimate of all the fuel values, but they also sell water here and even food in large quantities. The food is nothing special, basically just rations, but it would keep a ship's crew alive.”
“Another thing I’ve learned, thanks to the docking information given out, is that there is artificial gravity on the station. It seems to be 0.4G. The air mixture is compatible enough with humans, but long exposure could be detrimental because atmospheric pressure is lower than humans are typically used to.”
Perhaps it will then be useful to use some sort of mask to mitigate those issues, although that would not be needed for me. Then again, a mask that you can use as an excuse to wear would be nice. It could filter out smells, or perhaps things more dangerous. Once again, my respiratory system should be able to handle quite a lot, but extra protection is always prudent.
“Remi, I have also found out that this space station is classified only for small- and medium-sized creatures. Anything larger is not permitted to enter. I think most stations would have something like this.”
“Yeah, most likely these are like homes for the species that run them, so they design them for their comfort, but also most likely so that in the trade and cargo area they could service a bigger variety of species.”
“I concur.”
“You wanted to say ‘master’ after that, didn’t you?”
She didn’t answer back, but I was so certain I almost heard it.
Then the docking program indicated we had reached the correct position, so I opened up the front airlock. We need to do this quickly—don’t want to give cosmic radiation a lot of time messing up the inside of my airlock.
So it was a bit unfortunate when the drone that was supposed to have started moving to deliver the gold into the open airlock of the space station refused to move. I thought that perhaps something was wrong with its movement system, but turns out it was a bit scared.
“Now don’t be afraid. I actually think you’ll like it—go on, try.”
It hesitantly started to move, and when it was outside of the ship, it did so quicker, holding the half kilo of gold underneath it.
About halfway to the station, the connection to it calmed down. It deposited the gold, then started heading back—this time, I could feel enjoyment coming from it.
“Nicely done,” I said to it when it was finally back inside the airlock and the doors were closing.
It took about 3 minutes, and I was starting to get nervous, but finally I saw the balance of my account jump to 5,000 mana credits—and thankfully, for simplicity’s sake, even this program displayed the mana credits more prominently than the company’s ones.
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I could understand why they wanted to use their own credits—they were probably a part of something bigger, perhaps even connected to a nation, and those would always have their own currency as well.
Next, we received the location of the refueling spot.
The drone inside the airlock remained active, but I also activated the few kilos of nanomachines I had there that would scrub everything clean of whatever contamination happened while the airlock was open—and of course, also to clean the drone.
The refueling location wasn’t far away, so we were there in about 20 minutes. We could have gotten there faster, but there seemed to be a speed limit given by the station on how fast you can move near it, and it would help save some nitrogen if we didn’t have to burn more of it to move faster only to slow down once again.
Refueling itself was quite fast. It was nice to see all the tanks filled up. They were using hoses that could move like snakes, and watching them through the cameras as they detached and then moved back to their housing was quite interesting. I saw the balance of the account drop by a bit more than the quoted price, as they were able to fit a bit more hydrogen into my tanks.
After that, we got a green light and the pathway that would allow us to get far enough away from the station to be able to activate our main engines, and then we could go wherever we wanted to.
It took about an hour and 40 minutes. By this time the drone was back in its hibernation housing, but we were finally far enough away, so I activated the main engine and pushed it to 10G acceleration, which would take us a close to two hours to reach the correct speed to enter FTL.
In the meantime, I tried to collect mana, but it was really hard to do because of the acceleration, so instead I just decided to endure it until we could jump into FTL. The protocols were quite set up—before the jump we would drop down to 2.5 acceleration, and then right after the transition we would cut it down to 2.33.
Lola had already calculated everything, which should put the end of this jump at about the same distance we were from this station. It took her a while to calculate a correct heading and how long we needed to stay in FTL, but it would have taken a lot longer without the quantum chips. It was a good thing I was able to figure that one out and get them online.
It was nice to be only in 2.3G. While I could endure 10G acceleration for most likely weeks, it was still not the nicest of things. My mind, however, was on the artificial gravity.
I wondered how that worked and if it was possible to implement it here. Even if I couldn’t get to have normal direction of gravity and its strength, just neutralising the constant 2.3G during FTL would allow me to do so much more, as we could run all the machinery in the workshop.
“Lola, a new task. Try to figure out what was generating that artificial gravity. Also, let’s go over all the data we gathered from the Earth escape and see if we could improve our evasive manoeuvres against projectiles.”
“Acknowledged.”
This time the jump was getting annoying. We had been travelling in FTL for close to 9 days now. This would be the longest jump, but I could do so few things, and my hands were reaching to start building stuff. Designing things was nice and all, but I need to start making stuff to actually see if the things I designed could work.
Also, watching the entertainment I brought with me wouldn’t be much use, because I could remember it well enough—so just thinking about the movie was good enough to remember enough of it. Music helped, but I usually liked to listen to it when I was working. It helped me get to the correct zone.
When we finally got close to exiting the FTL, I got a bit more excited. It meant a change to the routine, and even if trouble came—well, actually no, I would prefer something not to go so terribly wrong.
Dropping out of FTL, we found ourselves once again almost 10 million kilometres away from the station. Because everything went so well the last time, the protocols would be the same. This time there were fewer ships around, and the station looked almost identical, but there were some differences—though nothing that would be noteworthy.
We were running quite low on hydrogen, so this time I would need to be paying more.
When we reached the one million kilometre mark, we were contacted once again. The alien looked the same and was as professional as the last one. This time, the communications were just so they could verify me visually, and then everything else was done by computers.
We were out of here quite fast, relatively speaking. Everything still took hours and hours—space was big, and you needed to be as safe as possible while manoeuvring.
We were quite close to once again entering FTL when another ship dropped out of FTL in the designated dropout zone—except this one was about 13 million kilometres away from the station.
It had most likely been there for almost a minute or so, as our passive sensors finally caught their active ones. It seemed to be just another cargo transport, and even if it was hostile, it wouldn't matter as we were too far away from it and about to enter FTL.
It was funny how flying in space had become so ordinary so fast.
With the jump done, this time we had almost an 8-day journey, but soon we would be moving out of this current into another one called the Haver Sideway. This was the current that was going to take us extremely close to the trade centre named Haver Prime.
This trade centre was important enough to get a whole current named after itself. The current itself split off the main current with about half the speed—in terms of light-years moved in 24 hours.
It was an interesting current because it curved back into the main current while also having an exit to a weaker current that headed further towards the edge of the galaxy, and also a similar current that was coming in a bit later on.
From what Lola understands, gravity plays a large role in how the currents move and how fast they are.
The most likely reason for these types of currents around Haver Prime’s solar system is that it’s an incredibly massive—with five stars: two of them are binary and one of them singular—all orbiting each other close enough to be called a solar system.
Around it, there are more solar systems with quite a lot of mass, so that’s why—at least on the quantum net—they think the currents move the way they do.
There was also a warning: going from one current to another would be quite the ordeal. My ship should be able to survive, but I guess we will see.
A bit under a day later, and I could feel the turbulence lessen. We were getting to the edge of the main current. The autopilot was turned off, and I was currently flying.
It took about 20 more minutes before I felt a bump and everything started to get rougher, as we were approaching the point where I needed to turn quite sharply to the left.
The ship was now extremely bumpy, and finally, we reached the correct location, so I pulled the controls in the right direction, and we turned quite sharply.
The entire ship shook, and I was even getting a few structure stress warnings that were getting near yellow, near the midsection of the wings.
What followed was nearly 30 minutes of me barely being able to control the ship and keep it on the correct heading, when finally, things started to smooth out.
It took another almost 20 minutes before I felt confident enough to turn back on the autopilot, but when it was done, I breathed out heavily.
“Well done. Just one more refuel stop, and then next stop would be the Trade Centre.”
“Right you are, Lola. Honestly, can’t wait to stretch my legs, and hopefully there would be food there that I could eat. Just drinking smoothies is getting old.”
