Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]
- Thread starter Faith
- Start date
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Why do I get the feeling they're asking you to make things whole?
- Location
- Queensland
It's not like Typhon from WH41K 2 is it? It would be pretty interesting if it was something like a hidden craft world.
Well you gotta get the mass for your ring world some where. May as well start small to get the practice in.
asdx
Superior Sword Fairy
- Location
- Texas.
Giant ships?
- Location
- Arizona
huh. The comments being made, and the complete lack of animal life, almost makes me think of a certain horror series. But, nah! I mean, why submit an artificial self-replicating robot to something that only affects biologicals?
Though, the idea of Faith building on a moon, and then the moon wakes up, kind of appeals to me. In a "well, WTF do I do now?" and "That moon is stealing my Base!" kind of way(s).
Though, the idea of Faith building on a moon, and then the moon wakes up, kind of appeals to me. In a "well, WTF do I do now?" and "That moon is stealing my Base!" kind of way(s).
She's gonna go Dyson to get a place to make the ships... Too bad you don't see many proper ring worlds anymore.
So classy. They are worth it even if you need to stablise them.
- Location
- North of England
- Pronouns
- She/They
Totally serious and unironic suggestion: why not give the hub world a planet-sized moustache?
26 - Asteroids
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
Oh, hey, another chapter.
Dancing into the FTLverse, because Commander!Faith wasn't OP enough without FTL Travel, energy shields, and cloaking. Absolutely not.
26 - Asteroids
The bright blue vortex gave way in seconds to the inky black of space, spotted with stars. My sensors immediately swept the local area, finding a grand total of... nothing.
Well, nothing man-made. I was, apparently, currently drifting around space in the general vicinity of an asteroid belt - and drifting was, unfortunately, the right word. The closest asteroid to me was about three hundred metres away from me, and I had no way of getting to it. The Osiris apparently lacked any kind of thrusters for use in space. I guess it was supposed to rely on the Astraeus craft for interplanetary transport, but it still seemed a rather glaring weakness. Something else to add to my list of things to look at.
Luckily for me, my nanobots were not restrained in the same way, and a stream of them were launched at the nearest asteroid. Whilst they went off to build a Metal Extractor - an order I was becoming accustomed to giving - I was propelled rather unevenly backwards. Admittedly, at a rate of approximately 0.3 metres per second. Something I wouldn't have noticed at all, due to the scale of my own body and the absence of anything nearby to use as a scale. Had automated subroutines not kicked in and notified me of it, it could have gone unnoticed for a while. Zero-gravity physics. For every action, an action equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
That was something I could use. I rotated my torso, facing my back towards the asteroid, and fired again, a stream of nanobots flying from my left arm and again pushing me back. My momentum equalised and then reversed, basic physics pushing me back towards my target.
Thanks, Newton.
Whilst I was flailing around in space, the first set of Nanobots happily set up the Metal Extractor, and then moved off to create a Generator and a Radar. The Holy Trifecta established, an Air Factory quickly joined them.
The usual limits of what a factory could build didn't really apply when in zero-gravity - anything with Fabricators could build a starfighter and it would launch fine. For that reason, the Air Factory was preferable to the Orbital Launcher on account of taking up less room, and having a less hazardous launching mechanism. Not like the air units would be hindered by the lack of air, since they used the same engines as the space units.
Once that construction finished, and as I drifted slowly closer towards the urbanised rock, I had a couple of Air Fabricators fly over to join me. A little bit of clever manoeuvring later, and I was 'standing' on the surface of the asteroid. Or perhaps hanging. It was difficult to define verticality without some handy gravity to compare to, but I wasn't going to complain.
Aw, hell. I was going to complain a lot.
Sitting on my little rock in the middle of nowhere - literally nowhere, not even a bloody star nearby - I set my priorities straight.
First, find out where the hell I was. I didn't want to be blind-sided by a Star Destroyer, after all.
Second, find out where the hell I was. Like, seriously. An asteroid belt in the space between stars? What the actual hell? Is that even possible? Why are there rocks here? How did they avoid getting pulled into the gravity of SOMETHING? So many questions!
Either way, I would need scout ships. Something fast.
Fireflies. Maybe upscale the engines a little. And the power core, to match.
Actually, I'd need them to have better sensors, too. Space was too big to rely on their relatively useless sensors for scouting.
Basically, I'd need a whole new ship.
I ordered my Air Fabricators to build me an Airfield slightly further 'around' the asteroid. I got the feeling I'd be needing the larger ship chassis.
---
The Rider scout freighter was based on the same Bright Foundation freighter as the Pioneer, and was scaled up in the same way, but this one wasn't built for inhabitants. Where the Pioneer had two levels with bunks, a kitchen, a living room, a gym, a bridge, and an engineering room, the Rider was much simpler.
What had been the bridge on the Pioneer was dedicated entirely to computer systems. The entire lower floor was Generators, and the upper floor contained a massive host of sensors. All of the sensors included in the Radar, upscaled and maximized for range over definition. A small area on the lower level contained a Fabricator, just in case I needed to do any field maintenance or anything of the sort. Even with that added, though, this thing was a dedicated recon ship. It couldn't do much else.
I neglected to add the missile pods I'd added to the Pioneer, but allowed it to have the side mounted Kestrel autocannons and another mounted under the nose, in what would otherwise have been the main entrance ramp/airlock
The simple AI I assigned to the ship was merely a hodgepodge of other units - it was basically programmed to act like a Firefly, unless ordered to engage, in which case it would act like a Hornet, flying in a circuit and making strafing runs, or ordered to protect a target, in which case it would act like a Kestrel and hover over the designated VIP whilst blasting away.
Simple, but honestly they weren't designed for combat and, like the Pioneers, didn't really need the firepower.
Now, when I made a combat version, then things would be different.
The last thing I chose to overhaul was the engines.
I was glad I had started from the Bright Foundation design rather than the Pioneer because it reminded me just how efficient the engines were compared to my own. You could have powered six of the Bright Foundations for one of mine - although one of mine was easily equal to five in terms of thrust.
I screwed around with the two different engine designs until I reached a design that combined the best of both worlds - almost as powerful as my engines, and vastly more efficient. Which meant I could have more.
I replaced the stock four engines, and the belly mounted anti-gravity drives, before looking for places to attach more. I managed to squeeze two more engines on the back, making three on each side. I added small wing-like protrusions to the side of the ship, housing two more each and making a total of ten engines.
Compared to the Pioneer's four? The slight loss in thrust individually was worth it given the number.
Thus prepared, I had the factory queue up a dozen of the things, pre-emptively assigning them basic orders - point in a direction and go fast.
Not like I needed any precise information. At this point, any information would be useful. I had nothing.
---
Luckily, I didn't have to wait long. Well, I did, but since I'd been wasting away the time designing new ships, I couldn't really complain.
It'd been almost two days when I got the ping. The asteroid I'd started on - and several others nearby - were now covered in various facilities, mainly Energy and Metal Storage. I wasn't using the econ, and I didn't want it to go to waste.
Anyway, the ping I'd received was from Rider 06, heading in the general direction of the nearest star. The basic onboard AI had detected a large number of unnaturally shaped objects on distant scans, and further analysis had revealed the objects were emitting above-ambient levels of heat and other radiation.
A fleet, of some kind. Unfortunately, me sacrificing sensor definition had come back to bite me in the ass now - I had no idea what I was looking at besides number.
It would take another day of slowboating to get within more detailed sensor range, and suddenly I was glad I'd improved the engines - it would've taken three times that with the Pioneer, had I even detected them in the first place.
I ordered my other ships to continue their scout missions, just in case I found anything particularly interesting in another direction. Rider 06, on the other hand, was making a beeline for the fleet.
One major downside of the Sanctum engines was that they didn't follow the Tim Taylor rule of more power making it better. There was a limit to the maximum output, and they'd been cruising at it for two days street. The lack of an overcharge function was... something to fix with the second generation Riders, perhaps. I added a note to the file.
Whilst Rider 06 finished its twenty hour journey... well, those starship designs weren't going to finish themselves.
Dancing into the FTLverse, because Commander!Faith wasn't OP enough without FTL Travel, energy shields, and cloaking. Absolutely not.
26 - Asteroids
The bright blue vortex gave way in seconds to the inky black of space, spotted with stars. My sensors immediately swept the local area, finding a grand total of... nothing.
Well, nothing man-made. I was, apparently, currently drifting around space in the general vicinity of an asteroid belt - and drifting was, unfortunately, the right word. The closest asteroid to me was about three hundred metres away from me, and I had no way of getting to it. The Osiris apparently lacked any kind of thrusters for use in space. I guess it was supposed to rely on the Astraeus craft for interplanetary transport, but it still seemed a rather glaring weakness. Something else to add to my list of things to look at.
Luckily for me, my nanobots were not restrained in the same way, and a stream of them were launched at the nearest asteroid. Whilst they went off to build a Metal Extractor - an order I was becoming accustomed to giving - I was propelled rather unevenly backwards. Admittedly, at a rate of approximately 0.3 metres per second. Something I wouldn't have noticed at all, due to the scale of my own body and the absence of anything nearby to use as a scale. Had automated subroutines not kicked in and notified me of it, it could have gone unnoticed for a while. Zero-gravity physics. For every action, an action equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.
That was something I could use. I rotated my torso, facing my back towards the asteroid, and fired again, a stream of nanobots flying from my left arm and again pushing me back. My momentum equalised and then reversed, basic physics pushing me back towards my target.
Thanks, Newton.
Whilst I was flailing around in space, the first set of Nanobots happily set up the Metal Extractor, and then moved off to create a Generator and a Radar. The Holy Trifecta established, an Air Factory quickly joined them.
The usual limits of what a factory could build didn't really apply when in zero-gravity - anything with Fabricators could build a starfighter and it would launch fine. For that reason, the Air Factory was preferable to the Orbital Launcher on account of taking up less room, and having a less hazardous launching mechanism. Not like the air units would be hindered by the lack of air, since they used the same engines as the space units.
Once that construction finished, and as I drifted slowly closer towards the urbanised rock, I had a couple of Air Fabricators fly over to join me. A little bit of clever manoeuvring later, and I was 'standing' on the surface of the asteroid. Or perhaps hanging. It was difficult to define verticality without some handy gravity to compare to, but I wasn't going to complain.
Aw, hell. I was going to complain a lot.
Sitting on my little rock in the middle of nowhere - literally nowhere, not even a bloody star nearby - I set my priorities straight.
First, find out where the hell I was. I didn't want to be blind-sided by a Star Destroyer, after all.
Second, find out where the hell I was. Like, seriously. An asteroid belt in the space between stars? What the actual hell? Is that even possible? Why are there rocks here? How did they avoid getting pulled into the gravity of SOMETHING? So many questions!
Either way, I would need scout ships. Something fast.
Fireflies. Maybe upscale the engines a little. And the power core, to match.
Actually, I'd need them to have better sensors, too. Space was too big to rely on their relatively useless sensors for scouting.
Basically, I'd need a whole new ship.
I ordered my Air Fabricators to build me an Airfield slightly further 'around' the asteroid. I got the feeling I'd be needing the larger ship chassis.
---
The Rider scout freighter was based on the same Bright Foundation freighter as the Pioneer, and was scaled up in the same way, but this one wasn't built for inhabitants. Where the Pioneer had two levels with bunks, a kitchen, a living room, a gym, a bridge, and an engineering room, the Rider was much simpler.
What had been the bridge on the Pioneer was dedicated entirely to computer systems. The entire lower floor was Generators, and the upper floor contained a massive host of sensors. All of the sensors included in the Radar, upscaled and maximized for range over definition. A small area on the lower level contained a Fabricator, just in case I needed to do any field maintenance or anything of the sort. Even with that added, though, this thing was a dedicated recon ship. It couldn't do much else.
I neglected to add the missile pods I'd added to the Pioneer, but allowed it to have the side mounted Kestrel autocannons and another mounted under the nose, in what would otherwise have been the main entrance ramp/airlock
The simple AI I assigned to the ship was merely a hodgepodge of other units - it was basically programmed to act like a Firefly, unless ordered to engage, in which case it would act like a Hornet, flying in a circuit and making strafing runs, or ordered to protect a target, in which case it would act like a Kestrel and hover over the designated VIP whilst blasting away.
Simple, but honestly they weren't designed for combat and, like the Pioneers, didn't really need the firepower.
Now, when I made a combat version, then things would be different.
The last thing I chose to overhaul was the engines.
I was glad I had started from the Bright Foundation design rather than the Pioneer because it reminded me just how efficient the engines were compared to my own. You could have powered six of the Bright Foundations for one of mine - although one of mine was easily equal to five in terms of thrust.
I screwed around with the two different engine designs until I reached a design that combined the best of both worlds - almost as powerful as my engines, and vastly more efficient. Which meant I could have more.
I replaced the stock four engines, and the belly mounted anti-gravity drives, before looking for places to attach more. I managed to squeeze two more engines on the back, making three on each side. I added small wing-like protrusions to the side of the ship, housing two more each and making a total of ten engines.
Compared to the Pioneer's four? The slight loss in thrust individually was worth it given the number.
Thus prepared, I had the factory queue up a dozen of the things, pre-emptively assigning them basic orders - point in a direction and go fast.
Not like I needed any precise information. At this point, any information would be useful. I had nothing.
---
Luckily, I didn't have to wait long. Well, I did, but since I'd been wasting away the time designing new ships, I couldn't really complain.
It'd been almost two days when I got the ping. The asteroid I'd started on - and several others nearby - were now covered in various facilities, mainly Energy and Metal Storage. I wasn't using the econ, and I didn't want it to go to waste.
Anyway, the ping I'd received was from Rider 06, heading in the general direction of the nearest star. The basic onboard AI had detected a large number of unnaturally shaped objects on distant scans, and further analysis had revealed the objects were emitting above-ambient levels of heat and other radiation.
A fleet, of some kind. Unfortunately, me sacrificing sensor definition had come back to bite me in the ass now - I had no idea what I was looking at besides number.
It would take another day of slowboating to get within more detailed sensor range, and suddenly I was glad I'd improved the engines - it would've taken three times that with the Pioneer, had I even detected them in the first place.
I ordered my other ships to continue their scout missions, just in case I found anything particularly interesting in another direction. Rider 06, on the other hand, was making a beeline for the fleet.
One major downside of the Sanctum engines was that they didn't follow the Tim Taylor rule of more power making it better. There was a limit to the maximum output, and they'd been cruising at it for two days street. The lack of an overcharge function was... something to fix with the second generation Riders, perhaps. I added a note to the file.
Whilst Rider 06 finished its twenty hour journey... well, those starship designs weren't going to finish themselves.
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Hmmm, it probably would have been a better idea to make those deployable or at least capable of building a gate. If nothing else the fact that they had to slowboat there means that any other ships you send will also have to slowboat there unless your raider manages to NOM an enemy or two to get the FTL engines.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Or, just going out on a limb and guessing wildly without reference to any supporting evidence in the post, perhaps it might be FTL?
- Location
- Space, the final frontier.
Hmm. Read it as 'a FTL verse' e.g. a verse with faster than light travel.
Instead of FTL the game.
Drich
Von Neumann Writing Machine
Arafell
Verified Cephalon
- Location
- Oregon
Zoltan shields and hyperdrive should be useful.
Also, if you can go full Beast on the rebel fleet, they have the most advanced 'regular' tech.
. . . You know, now that I think about it this would be an interesting encounter in FTL, though you'd likely just give them a ton of metal to upgrade with.
Also, if you can go full Beast on the rebel fleet, they have the most advanced 'regular' tech.
. . . You know, now that I think about it this would be an interesting encounter in FTL, though you'd likely just give them a ton of metal to upgrade with.
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Presumably interstellar, given she has all the Sanctum-verse's tech, which includes FTL comms with interstellar range as part of their portal network.
27 - Beacon
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
Yes, interstellar range on communications, thanks to Sanctumverse.
I meant to post this chapter yesterday, but I got distracted doing other things, unfortunately. It's a little shorter than the last couple have been, too, but oh well. Enjoy, I guess.
27 - Beacon
Whoever it was that Rider 06 was sneaking up on, unfortunately, chose not to hang around. My ship was still seven hours out when the entire fleet disappeared, each ship suddenly vanishing from the sensor readout one at a time.
If I had to guess, it was some kind of FTL technology. Something I wanted for myself, seeing as I effectively lacked it. Sanctum's FTL Gates weren't exactly easy to place, after all, and they had to be placed to be used. In that way, they were the same as the Progenitor ones, but with a better range. Admittedly, that itself was nothing to scoff at, but without the ship-based FTL to get to the places I wanted the rings to be at, it was a rather moot point.
Anyway, whatever kind of FTL Drive they were using - assuming they were using one - was definitely something I wanted. Unfortunately, that meant waiting, at minimum, another six hours.
Ugh, sublight slowboating is slow.
Luckily, I had another project to finish off before I would need to invent more stuff to keep me occupied.
Namely, the Cavalier.
---
Rider 06 pinged me again when it reached detailed sensor range of the fleet's location, and I quickly dropped the Cavalier's half-completed blueprints, switching focus to the scout ship.
The only man-made object in this region was... some kind of beacon, if the constant transmissions were anything to go by.
Luckily, the encrypted transmissions proved relatively easy for my various hacking routines to decrypt, allowing me access to the wealth of information within. Or rather, not, since all it was was some sort of locational data. A waypoint of some kind. A location beacon?
As the Rider drew closer, more and more things began appearing in sensors - things so small they had escaped notice at longer range. Little cubes of foil, plastic and fabric. It took me a moment to realise they were probably cubes of junk that had been crushed up and thrown out the airlock. Javik would approve.
As insightful as that was, the junk cubes weren't that useful. It was the beacon I was after, and I had my Rider spray it down with nanobots.
Once I had its design saved, I took a quick look at the schematics. It was basically a communications buoy, relaying messages using some kind of quantum entanglement for FTL communications. It also contained a large computer core where navigation and communications data were stored. It was the navigation data that I quickly skimmed through that really helped, though.
Local beacons were marked for several lightyears around, and two of the beacons in range of the map were designated as 'Jump Points'.
From that alone, I had a pretty good idea of the setting I was in - the starchart looked a lot like the map from the space rogue-like FTL: Faster Than Light. The 'Jump Points' certainly didn't discourage that line of thinking, either, since they were the key parts of getting between sectors in FTL.
Assuming I was right, then, this would actually be... rather useful.
More engine technology, although that had no guarantee of being better or worse than anything I already had. Their materials science was likely nothing compared to mine, and their power systems were likely far behind. On the other hand, they did have several neat tricks - off the top of my head, the obvious: FTL jump drives, energy shields (and the improved Zoltan variants), mind control and cloaking.
A few other things, as well - medical nanobots, and presumably a great deal of biomedical tech to go with them, and a few exotic weapons such as Ion weapons and the Anti-Bio Beam - and if that worked as advertised it would probably prove invaluable against those pesky alien space locusts like the Zerg or the Flood, should I run into them at any point. Knowing ROB, I likely would.
But first, though, I had to make sure I was right. I didn't want to get blind-sided by the USG Ishimura whilst waiting for the Kestrel to show up. I copied the contents of the beacon's storage device into my own data banks, directing the rest of my Riders more accurately towards nearby beacons. It would likely take days, at least, for any of them to get anywhere, but it was a start.
Rider 06, on the other hand, was going to stay where it was for a couple of reasons. First, someone had used the beacon, and recently. Which meant that other people were likely to do so as well. Probably. And when they did, I'd be waiting.
Second, I wanted to build a Gate.
It would stand out, no doubt, compared to the relatively tiny beacon, being about twenty times as big and of clearly different design.
On the other hand, it was also instantaneous teleportation.
Unfortunately, not only would it be obvious but it would be slow as hell to build, too - the Rider's sole Fabricator was put in to give it the option of serving as a building or repairing unit, but it was by no means dedicated to the task. Five Orbital Fabricators working in tandem had managed to build one in about a minute - the Rider, alone, would take almost twenty minutes.
Maybe I should have invested more heavily in the Fabricators. Note to self, build a construction freighter for this kind of shit.
---
The gate was only half done when I detected another ping from the Rider's sensors. A single object, small. Maybe twelve meters long in total.
It was well within sensor range, only a few dozen kilometres out from the beacon.
Their ship was shaped like a capital Y, with two sweeping wing-like protrusions on the rear and a narrow nose. I re-evaluated my estimate on it's length - it was about eight metres long, in the body, with the wings and engine mounts making up another six or so metres. It looked like it had once been orange, but the current owner had decided to throw a couple of purple paint cans over the top and call it a day.
At least, I hoped it was purple paint. It could have been alien blood, I suppose. Or cranberry juice. Anything, really.
Rider 06 ignored it, instead continuing the construction of the Gate. The fighter drifted closer to my ship, as if trying to get a closer look, before halting its advance.
There was a short pause before the ship began to hail on the broad-spectrum, filling space with its words.
I tapped into Rider 06's communications array and listened.
"Aha! You have stumbled into my diabolical and cunning trap! Now, you shall come to understand why people fear the name of the Dread Pirate, Genisys! Haha!"
Oh, good. Pirates.
I meant to post this chapter yesterday, but I got distracted doing other things, unfortunately. It's a little shorter than the last couple have been, too, but oh well. Enjoy, I guess.
27 - Beacon
Whoever it was that Rider 06 was sneaking up on, unfortunately, chose not to hang around. My ship was still seven hours out when the entire fleet disappeared, each ship suddenly vanishing from the sensor readout one at a time.
If I had to guess, it was some kind of FTL technology. Something I wanted for myself, seeing as I effectively lacked it. Sanctum's FTL Gates weren't exactly easy to place, after all, and they had to be placed to be used. In that way, they were the same as the Progenitor ones, but with a better range. Admittedly, that itself was nothing to scoff at, but without the ship-based FTL to get to the places I wanted the rings to be at, it was a rather moot point.
Anyway, whatever kind of FTL Drive they were using - assuming they were using one - was definitely something I wanted. Unfortunately, that meant waiting, at minimum, another six hours.
Ugh, sublight slowboating is slow.
Luckily, I had another project to finish off before I would need to invent more stuff to keep me occupied.
Namely, the Cavalier.
---
Rider 06 pinged me again when it reached detailed sensor range of the fleet's location, and I quickly dropped the Cavalier's half-completed blueprints, switching focus to the scout ship.
The only man-made object in this region was... some kind of beacon, if the constant transmissions were anything to go by.
Luckily, the encrypted transmissions proved relatively easy for my various hacking routines to decrypt, allowing me access to the wealth of information within. Or rather, not, since all it was was some sort of locational data. A waypoint of some kind. A location beacon?
As the Rider drew closer, more and more things began appearing in sensors - things so small they had escaped notice at longer range. Little cubes of foil, plastic and fabric. It took me a moment to realise they were probably cubes of junk that had been crushed up and thrown out the airlock. Javik would approve.
As insightful as that was, the junk cubes weren't that useful. It was the beacon I was after, and I had my Rider spray it down with nanobots.
Once I had its design saved, I took a quick look at the schematics. It was basically a communications buoy, relaying messages using some kind of quantum entanglement for FTL communications. It also contained a large computer core where navigation and communications data were stored. It was the navigation data that I quickly skimmed through that really helped, though.
Local beacons were marked for several lightyears around, and two of the beacons in range of the map were designated as 'Jump Points'.
From that alone, I had a pretty good idea of the setting I was in - the starchart looked a lot like the map from the space rogue-like FTL: Faster Than Light. The 'Jump Points' certainly didn't discourage that line of thinking, either, since they were the key parts of getting between sectors in FTL.
Assuming I was right, then, this would actually be... rather useful.
More engine technology, although that had no guarantee of being better or worse than anything I already had. Their materials science was likely nothing compared to mine, and their power systems were likely far behind. On the other hand, they did have several neat tricks - off the top of my head, the obvious: FTL jump drives, energy shields (and the improved Zoltan variants), mind control and cloaking.
A few other things, as well - medical nanobots, and presumably a great deal of biomedical tech to go with them, and a few exotic weapons such as Ion weapons and the Anti-Bio Beam - and if that worked as advertised it would probably prove invaluable against those pesky alien space locusts like the Zerg or the Flood, should I run into them at any point. Knowing ROB, I likely would.
But first, though, I had to make sure I was right. I didn't want to get blind-sided by the USG Ishimura whilst waiting for the Kestrel to show up. I copied the contents of the beacon's storage device into my own data banks, directing the rest of my Riders more accurately towards nearby beacons. It would likely take days, at least, for any of them to get anywhere, but it was a start.
Rider 06, on the other hand, was going to stay where it was for a couple of reasons. First, someone had used the beacon, and recently. Which meant that other people were likely to do so as well. Probably. And when they did, I'd be waiting.
Second, I wanted to build a Gate.
It would stand out, no doubt, compared to the relatively tiny beacon, being about twenty times as big and of clearly different design.
On the other hand, it was also instantaneous teleportation.
Unfortunately, not only would it be obvious but it would be slow as hell to build, too - the Rider's sole Fabricator was put in to give it the option of serving as a building or repairing unit, but it was by no means dedicated to the task. Five Orbital Fabricators working in tandem had managed to build one in about a minute - the Rider, alone, would take almost twenty minutes.
Maybe I should have invested more heavily in the Fabricators. Note to self, build a construction freighter for this kind of shit.
---
The gate was only half done when I detected another ping from the Rider's sensors. A single object, small. Maybe twelve meters long in total.
It was well within sensor range, only a few dozen kilometres out from the beacon.
Their ship was shaped like a capital Y, with two sweeping wing-like protrusions on the rear and a narrow nose. I re-evaluated my estimate on it's length - it was about eight metres long, in the body, with the wings and engine mounts making up another six or so metres. It looked like it had once been orange, but the current owner had decided to throw a couple of purple paint cans over the top and call it a day.
At least, I hoped it was purple paint. It could have been alien blood, I suppose. Or cranberry juice. Anything, really.
Rider 06 ignored it, instead continuing the construction of the Gate. The fighter drifted closer to my ship, as if trying to get a closer look, before halting its advance.
There was a short pause before the ship began to hail on the broad-spectrum, filling space with its words.
I tapped into Rider 06's communications array and listened.
"Aha! You have stumbled into my diabolical and cunning trap! Now, you shall come to understand why people fear the name of the Dread Pirate, Genisys! Haha!"
Oh, good. Pirates.
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