Hey, I have a new Avatar! Yay! *confetti*
Also, my side project, A Light In The Dark, just updated, so if you like Worm you should go and check that out. It's only just starting and the update rate is 'once in a blue moon', and I'm basically using it to experiment with more styles of writing, so it's probably terrible, but you know, whatever.
30 - Scouting
Genisys' fighter was quickly approached by two Federation bombers, and I quickly hailed them, explaining the situation.
"What do you mean, you captured his ship?"
"Exactly what I said. His ship is under my command. Look, I'm going to do a barrel roll."
As I'd said, Genisys's fighter pulled off a barrel roll - an actual one, not an aileron roll, for I am not an ill-informed plebian, - and drifted to a stop approximately a hundred meters from the Federation craft.
"Right. Well, if you could go ahead and fly the damn thing into our station's hangar, then, we'd appreciate that."
"Certainly."
My Rider followed behind Genisys' fighter, the Fed bombers alongside, as the fighter spun around and backed into the station's hangar. As soon as it entered, dozens of ion weapons mounted on the ceiling of the hangar opened fire, washing the ship in ionic stunner blasts. The ship's flawed systems overloaded and failed, the lights flickering and speakers emitting ear-piercing screeches. The cameras were pretty much the only thing not effected, giving me a view of the ship's interior. The four pirates staggered around the individual rooms in which they were now locked, grasping at their heads. After about ten seconds, the ion fire stopped.
Probably not the nicest way the Federation could have disabled them, but it was effective, I guess.
It was followed up with a squad of Federation soldiers teleporting on board, spreading through the ship, armoured up and rifles raised. They smashed doors aside as they reached them, quickly finding and restraining the four dazed crew members, brutally incapacitating them with stun batons and heavy shoulder-checks. To the point that it was probably a little excessive.
But then, they were pirates...
"Alright, then, bounty hunter," the Federation station commander said over the comms. "We've got confirmation that all four are here. Dock with that station, bay sixteen, and we'll give you your bounty pay."
Ah. Since I lacked any sort of human or humanoid body, and the ship lacked an interior, that would be an... awkward situation. I quickly spoke to head off that idea.
"Actually, I think I can go without, but thank you for your gracious offer."
I cut off the communications and launched the Rider away from the military station, towards a large ring-shaped habitat covered in docking bays and flashing advertisements. The main attraction of this system, if you could call it that. A large orbital habitat, shipyard, and store, all in one. From the looks of things, most of the visible ships were the same clean, slightly curved designs I mentally associated with FTL-verse humanity - the sort of ships that Federation, Rebel, and Pirate forces used. They all looked like relatively old models, but then I wasn't an aerospace engineer so maybe I was wrong.
There were a couple of odd ones out - a twisted heap of metal, looking more like the remains of a construction site crumpled up into a ball. Engi ship - much larger than the kind flown in game. Assuming, of course, that it was in fact a ship, and not the station's dedicated dumping ground for scrap metal.
The second odd ship was a sharp, angular, almost knife-like silver vessel with glowing blue lines. It was sleek, and covered in strange ornamentations. If I didn't know better, I almost could have attributed it to the Forerunners. Instead, I merely wondered why there was a Lanius craft in human space. They were, in game, only found in the Abandoned Sectors.
Of course, it would be foolish to assume that this world ran on the same rules as the world presented in game - of course, of the billions, no, likely trillions of sentient beings, at least some of each race had to have thrown aside their 'hats' and done something different.
And in a way, both of those ships made sense. The Engi were, at least according to the game, all master mechanics. A crew of Engi looking for jobs would have no trouble at a mining base slash shipyard. And the Lanius - well, they were kind of strange, but they had their whole metal-bending thing going on, or something, so they were probably of some use as well. Or, they may just have been passing through, stopping for supplies. Hard to know, and I didn't really care.
I wasn't here to make friends, after all.
My sensors reached out, locating and connecting to the station's various systems, including their internet equivalent. I was able to rip a map of the galaxy, as well as more detailed maps of the local areas, from the network without much hassle, but beyond there, things got... complicated.
The main resource in FTL was scrap, because for galaxy spanning civilisations, a fixed currency was almost worthless. Even looking at earth - Canada and the United States couldn't agree on how much 'one dollar' was worth, and they were neighbours. Far easier to simply trade goods for goods. Which meant that I couldn't just hack the systems and buy a bunch of stuff through digital transactions. I needed to trade for it in person - a problem I'd already run into once today. Or steal the blueprints - but that too was difficult, because it wasn't like these guys were nice enough to have a readily accessible database full of blueprints for all their interesting technology.
No, if I wanted their toys, I needed to physically scan the things with nanobots. And I got the feeling that building a robot to go wandering around the stores spraying products with nanobots would not go down well. Which really only left me with one choice, at least for now. Doing the same thing I'd done to Genisys, effectively. Flying around, looking for targets, omnomnoming their cool stuff, and flying away, possibly taking them to prison as well depending on who they were.
But first, seeing as how I was looking over a feast for mynocks, I decided to take a look around. Taking samples, almost. Like a vampire searching for their next meal.
A giant, mechanical, deathbot space vampire.
Yes.
The station didn't appear to have any kind of docking rules - people seemed to be just flying around until they found an empty bay and then docking. No one had hailed me yet to inform me otherwise, so I just kept cruising, circling the station, keeping my myriad sensors scanning.
Whilst I could probably find several technologies, such as the medical nanomachines (which Genisys had been lacking) on almost any of the ships, I chose to check out the more exotic ships first. They were... more likely to have interesting stuff, and if I remembered right, there was an Engi-exclusive augment for medical nanobots spreading through the entire ship - of course, that may have just been a gameplay mechanic, but it was still worth a shot.
I passed over the twisted hunk of junk, a fine dusting of nanobots slipping from the Fabricator and landing lightly on the ship's hull before moving inside.
The Lanius ship was further around, so I moved on to that whilst the assimilation of the Engi ship begun. Soon, it too was crawling with nanobots, detailed blueprints updating by the femtosecond as the tiny robots mapped the vessels.
Compared to Genisys' rather modest and weak ship, both of these ships were seriously advanced. I looked through them one at a time.
The Engi ship was armed, to my pleasure, with two Ion weapons. Direct-fire EMPs, effectively. A non-lethal option with better range than the Fabricator assimilation method. They would be nice to have. I made copies of their blueprints. Their ship was also home to a medical room, and the dedicated systems within were quickly infiltrated, their designs saved.
There were also a couple of drones in one of the ship's cargo bays, revealed to me by the ship's newly-compromised cameras. Seconds later, I was admiring the new drone blueprints as I saved them to my database. There were a few other systems - the hacking system being the main one of note, but as I was currently proving, I hardly needed it. I took it anyway. As well as everything else. Not like my database was even close to 1% full, after all.
In contrast to the lightly armed Engi ship, the Lanius ship was clearly built for battle. It had two laser cannons and a flak cannon, as well as a rocket launcher - all of which I stole, despite the relatively unimpressive technology. Could be useful later, you never know.
It was also packing a highly sophisticated sensor array - far more advanced than that of the Engi ship, good enough that I considered it worth adding to my arsenal. Another thing to add to the Rider's auto-upgrade queue. Unfortunately, there wasn't much else of value.
Asides from a clone bay, all of the remaining items on my wishlist were more... exotic. I wasn't likely to find them at some shitty mining colony.
No, I'd be better served hunting down and assimilating other ships for the things I wanted. Luckily, according to the maps I'd stolen - I mean, acquired, - there were both Zoltan and Slug areas nearby. Zoltan would be good for shields, possibly medical and power generation tech - although I doubted they could break thermodynamics like my existing stuff did. The Slugs, meanwhile, would likely have such fun toys as mind control and beam weapons.
The real question was, which one did I want to go to first?
Kidding. Both of them.
