--- 32 - Gate-to-Point ---
Squeaky was torn. For one thing, the unfinished Star-Flower was ready to go, and in time for the new Advanced Void Gate systems to be ready as well. However, that was only because Left-and-Right had been given extra support to get the project done quickly, and that meant she didn't have the resources for the other ships to get fixed for a bit longer.
"This thing works, and I mean actually works not just small scale tests, right?" she outright asked the two headed technically-two-Vipers pair. "Because the boss is looking for an extraction, and I don't want to lose our only working cargo ship because something went wrong with that."
"The system is ready." "We are just going to use the full checklist for all of the early operations," they said one after another, and Squeaky honestly had stopped paying attention to which head said what. "Orbital, begin the sequence."
Squeaky was not the type to ignore technical details just because she wasn't building stuff, mostly because knowing what went into something was rather critical to knowing what you needed to keep in stock. The new Gate-to-Point system in particular was going to be something of a mess.
"Activating main power system," Orbital declared. The very stripe covered Lava Viper was the subject of some humor. Flamescale chose two names in sequence for the spacer, apparently unaware that the term for someone from orbit in the 319 conlang was often used as a word for being clumsy. So while there clearly had been a distinction for Flamescale, the rest of them heard a change that was mostly the tone of the word. Then again, Squeaky didn't have much room to talk there. "Sending power to outer array."
The key to a Gate-to-Point system was to have a number of rather hard to make large curved pieces of Void Material held in place to contain the standard core. These were used as the core equivalent for the gate side, and were also the main expense of the system. Even with Flamescale's eldritch expertise with making Void Materials they were only barely able to create them so far, and doing so was extremely hard on expensive equipment. Squeaky wasn't sure if anyone else was even just close to this development.
"Outer array stable, synchronizing with inner core," Orbital continued as the strange not-sound increased. Nothing seemed to be able to shield that well, but given they didn't want these gates open unless needed that was not a priority. "Preparing for core transition."
Squeaky would call the trick 'simple sounding' if she didn't know how expensive just making the key parts was. The inner core would be effectively fired to the target instance, with better accuracy if targeted within that instance but they were planning on mostly using deep space where that wouldn't matter, and then used to make the far end of the gateway close to itself while the near end was made by the array of harder to make pieces.
"Firing core," Orbital said, and a pop sound indicated that at least part of that worked. "Contact confirmed, correct instance confirmed, power connection confirmed. Opening gate now." The tear in reality appeared, and then resized to be able to fit the cargo ship.
"Unfinished Star-Flower, you are good to enter gate," Squeaky ordered. "Once you are on the far side establish FTL targeting, and prepare for FTL transit." They weren't opening the gate on top of Flamescale and Sixteen's location, but they were doing so close enough to only be a few hours at most outside the target system with the ship's FTL drive. Such a short FTL transit was usually a waste of an ignition crystal, but given they had a much better FTL method using these gates they could afford it for this deception. "Remember, we do not have the accuracy to target the same spot again. Just get away from the system a good distance and give us a targeting signal."
"It says a lot that an entire crate of ignition crystals is cheaper than one of these systems," Orbital complained once the docking clamps unlocked. "I mean in general, let alone for us. We can just raid any space ships we need to take out for them." Flamescale was quite happy with that option for missions, and as a result they actually had a good supply of spare parts for a variety of systems. Just not enough of the specific things they needed to fix the ships they had.
"Crystal production has uncomfortable similarity to Void Material production," Left-and-Right said together for emphasis, then return to a normal trade off. "The lack of recognition from Flamescale has odd implications." "Possibly exists that standard FTL unavailable to her, or mechanics of creation unknown."
"Pretty sure Flamescale doesn't want to even touch what she could be doing in her instance," Squeaky pointed out as the engines of the Star-Flower went past the edge of the Gate. "Wait a moment, they want to verify arrival in the right area before we close the gate." The docking area held still for a moment while she waited for her comm cybernetic to receive an all clear. "We're good, they are starting up FTL navigation."
"Closing gate," Orbital stated then. The tear vanished moments later. "Starting recall sequence for the core." Another pop then showed that they didn't lose the core, a problem that Squeaky had with earlier versions due to that major expense. "Core recovery confirmed, powering down system."
"How many of these do we have ready?" Squeaky asked now that she knew for sure it worked. "Because I'd like one for every docking bay we have, which hopefully is a number that will be going up."
"Current plan is to build four for ourselves." "Then we have an order of six for Sledge," Left-and-Right specified. "That is an R&D task right now." "We are not ready for proper production yet." "However, those six are the only ones that are not going to be kept internal to our operations." "Flamescale does not want the design to spread because of us."
"You think I want that? The time travel problems that are showing up just because of cleared or not so cleared ancient networks is already causing complications in my plans," Squeaky pointed out. The uneasy truth was that instances connected by those could vary just as much as ones found by Void Entities. Spike had been recovered from an expedition by 319 that got distracted by finding another instance where the Founders were around, and thus was a bit too distracted to properly secure the Void Lab they were showing off to someone effectively from the past.
The age of the 319 as a group wasn't the most extreme example even. Some instances didn't have Girant, which led to a version of Local Space that had a different start and more complicated contact with the Macrophylla when a bunch of smaller powers found the plant civilization. Others didn't have the Leafs, and were still basically controlled by an unmatched Girant Trade Empire that never met anyone larger than themselves. A few that Squeaky wanted to exploit were seemingly dead, or at least without any nearby intelligent life to complain about new infrastructure.
"I cannot tell what you do and do not want to sell for a profit," Left-and-Right responded as they began to sink off the dock. "The system should be fine now." "And I must oversee the production of more."
"So, am I going to be stuck with this job?" Orbital asked her. "Because I know we're going to be doing more orbital missions now, and I don't want to be put on FTL operations."
"I've got a proper dock crew being recruited, we just need trusted people right now for the test models," Squeaky said with a glare. "You are someone Flamescale knows the word-name of, and that matters given how many of us there are. You might end up training people, and I want the full list of what can go wrong with this thing before we start on that so I know how easy it is to break one of these by doing it wrong."
"Ah, right, you missed that conversation," Orbital said with a wince. "Flamescale is making operation of these part of our orders." Which was a rather blunt way for a boss to say they didn't trust things to be followed without direct programming. Not uncommon, but usually a sign that something was quite important to management.
"Good, that's even better," Squeaky said with the harshest face she could. She was after all part of that management this time. "Because I know exactly how expensive each of those will be to make, and I could refit multiple space craft for less fabricator time and raw materials."
---
Luckily Squeaky did not have to wait for the unfinished Star-Flower to get back to speak with Sixteen, just for them to make it plausibly deniable that the ship was used to extract everyone. "Have fun on your trip?" she questioned him as he reformed in her office.
"You bought the Star-Flower?" Sixteen asked instead of answering. The body did not seem to be his Lava Viper one, but instead his Void Entity body. A slight sense of other from the banded red goo snake was the main hint when he wasn't using his new abilities from Void Entity powers that he didn't share with Flamescale.
"I bought three Star-Flowers," she smugly responded, although the huff she got in reply wasn't reassuring. "Is there a problem with them?"
"You got half the Star-Flower class from somewhere?" Sixteen sounded somewhere between impressed and exasperated, a bad sign for Squeaky's question because she had in fact found one-off ships being sold as oddball creations.
"There is a class? I just got the same ship in three different instances," she complained. "One of them, one, is a makeshift pirate hunter I wanted to ask about disarming before I did it."
"Let me put it this way, your extraction wasn't as quiet as we wanted because they showed up in what looked like a Gruae warship," Sixteen explained bluntly. "They bought six 'cargo ships', took them to their own personal docks, and bolted a bunch of Girant military surplus naval guns onto spots that just happened to be ready to accept them."
"Are you saying my cheap deal was finding instances where the long legs didn't get their surprise fleet?" Squeaky darkly questioned. "Because I found three instances where this cheap cargo ship was ready to buy." It wasn't a total disaster of an option, but not ideal. "Any ideas on how to reduce that impression, or did I just get you your warships early?"
"If you can get different identification for them, and just arm them a bit, then we might pass it off as being Gruae surplus when we need to," Sixteen sighed in response. "In our original instance at least the Gruae had bought another set a few years after the shock wore off, and the oldest ones had issues with their build due to the secrecy. We can't keep them all with the name of the first one if you use more than one in an instance, at least if we want to hide being from another instance."
"If I had the resources to deal with them properly they wouldn't look anything like when I bought them," Squeaky argued and motioned for him to follow her. "Come on, I want to hear what you think of the pirate hunter. We can outfit more like it more easily that I can keep proper Girant naval guns fed. We have enough people who need those rounds already to take up what we get right now." That statement was directed at how Sixteen had the Entity power to grow giant like ThunderFang, with the associated ammo requirements.
He then followed her travel through the lava-like fluid. It was a new way to move compared to her creation or first remake, one that was Squeaky's favorite part that almost made up for not having legs anymore. In an instant they were both on the still under work space craft. The structure of the ship covered in many places with the goo to ease movement, although that would be removed afterwards to hide the substance.
"Most of the stuff is loaded in the bays, although I haven't touched base with Khga on if there were any more discoveries yet," Squeaky pointed out, and led him on a short tour made easier by being able to move between rooms without opening doors.
"I would think we would be able to rather easily check everywhere," Sixteen pointed out, with a glance to a maintenance Viper literally flowing down a narrow 'path' that probably wasn't intended to be checked without support robotics. "This looks like it will at least work for hostile orbital extractions. I'm not sure it works as an armed transport, so I might be telling you to rip out most of this and replace it in spots that they didn't know they could put them."
"Or these are from an instance where they were built wrong," Squeaky suggested unhappily as it occured to her that there might be bigger reasons for these being cheap. "Honestly, Sixteen, are you happy with the mess you got us all into?" she questioned, not for the first time since he opened Flamescale's Void Rift.
"Alive is better than dead," he said once again, and this time Squeaky could not take it.
"Would we be dead? Sure The-Fleshless-One was aiming for our facility, but you are the one who took his offer. You don't know that some of us wouldn't have gotten out otherwise," she hissed at him.
"I knew the Macrophylla strike was inbound," Sixteen blandly answered, and that surprised her. "I didn't fall for the temptation of getting a form like this one because I thought it would work for that, I decided to summon a Void Entity and hope that they could be reasoned with."
"Reasoned with over a Void Lab?" Squeaky questioned less harshly, but still with annoyance. That was a death sentence, even if they had not known back then that Void Entities took those seriously. "Why not just call for help? Escalate to management?"
"Because I still don't know what kind of fast talking The-Fleshless-One did to keep us from being burned down from orbit as soon as the attack was announced," he quietly said. "We were a black site, the kind of place where they didn't even question why a nuke leveled us after it happened, and I know that for sure because as soon as I became a Void Entity myself I got Yellow-Glow to tell me where it was so I could check."
"'Alive is better than dead'," Squeaky then quoted thoughtfully instead of reacting to that last detail. "You weren't in that storage room to guard it, were you?"
Sixteen did not answer that. Instead he led her into one of the ship's smuggling bay corners. Little surface facing cargo areas with odd connection points and an outer covering that honestly was too well supported when opening for something you clearly did not want to show customs inspectors.
"So, who exactly is inspecting these ships for you?" Sixteen asked a bit tiredly, clearly not interested in returning to the prior topic. "Because this is a Girant general mounting point concealed behind an armored shutter. Two actually, one of those oddball ones that can even use those terrible Girant laser batteries."
"I think I'd rather stand in the spot and fire crystal missiles at another ship than use those," Squeaky said, although she couldn't keep some relief out of the statement. "So, armed merchant ships. Can we modify some plasma cannon to fit these? I can get plasma gas stocks more easily than Girant ammo."
"We can probably get some in some instance out there," Sixteen seemed to complain. "I have been trying to get that information you wanted on instances that will actually work to buy what we need, but from the looks of things Void Entities only just started trying to get their own ships and arm them. Yellow-Glow has some guides for that, but they are mostly about how to sabotage buyers for longer missions."
"Hm, on that topic, there is some other information I want from the Void Entity networks," Squeaky considered thoughtfully. "I want to know where exactly they buy stuff from Locals usually. If there are any common places they buy and sell, specific instances they go to for that."
"You do know that Flamescale will let you just become one yourself, right?" Sixteen grumbled and turned to inspect the connectors.
"Yeah, but I want to see how far I can push things without that," Squeaky had to admit, even if he quickly turned to say something obvious. "And I know she likes us pushing boundaries, but it isn't the same when doing it is an order, or even just a suggestion. I'm not opposed to turning myself into an eldritch monster, but I want to get a better name first at least."
"I'm not sure I can even describe the worst parts of it," Sixteen said slowly. "Even knowing that it isn't better than any human Entity, I can see thinking it is just a game."
---
"I have not personally inspected every connector," Khga told the both of them a short time later when they brought him to inspect the mountings directly. "I think I need to though, because I don't get back pain from crawling into tight places anymore despite having a lot more back. Or is it 'flowing' into spaces now?"
"It is in fact 'flowing' now," Squeaky said a bit grumpy with the joke. "I take it you didn't know about these?"
"A bunch of proper warship mounts hidden in smuggling bays? No I did not know about these," Khga more bluntly said and moved over to look at the things. "Standard general mounts from the looks of things, which to be honest were made to accommodate anything. We didn't usually get our hands on 319 light and medium mounts, but I know we were trained in how to fit the connections into these." He pointed to one set of what Squeaky had assumed were coolant pipe connectors. "This is a redundant pipe that can be repurposed for plasma gas, and I do know this one has the tanks for that to use with those bay weapons."
"The Gruae planned for 319 weapon systems?" Sixteen asked with a bit of insult that Squeaky could understand. The 319 used weapons for money, and sold some older style small arms, but ship weapons were one thing you could not buy from the 319. They were planning on secondhand at best, or scrap they could fix if it came down to it.
"The Girant planned for using captured 319 ship weapons, and Macrophylla, Remigrant or any other major group that actually built ship weapons," Khga clarified with a chuckle. "If there is one thing my former species understood, it was being able to use what you have. I'm certain a Slink designed it for use in rebellion after they lost access to proper Girant stockpiles, but what weapons didn't they have a hand in?"
"What I'm hearing is that we could probably stick any ship weapons we've got into these," Squeaky said happily for once. "Which means I can just use some stuff we have in the Boss' stockpiles instead of scrapping them." She looked over at Sixteen for a reaction to that detail.
"Yellow-Glow has a bad habit of getting you to decide to grab random stuff to check out what it can do, and Sledge is worse about suggesting grabbing big stuff," Sixteen tiredly said, which was a good enough reaction. "Flamescale makes it sound like The-Fleshless-One only cares about data, but in practice everything is data to him. He wants to know all sorts of small things that don't seem to matter, and then next time you ask him for mission advice he tells you al of these small tricks to get things done." Squeaky had a feeling this was an explanation for the scented filter disaster that started everything in their latest life.
"You risk asking The-Fleshless-One for help on missions?" Khga questioned nervously, and Squeaky sighed at that sort of reaction. It was too easy to forget that most of the Lava Vipers were not in fact used to the true nature of Void Entities. That they were surprisingly still people despite being godly eldritch horrors from beyond reality.
---
[Author's Note]
Here we have a bit more technical developments from Flamescale's R&D staff, along with a bit more explanation of the world.
... a part of me is wondering if I should comment more on things. I don't want to spoil stuff or start giving out "Word of God" statements that I might contradict, but I do have more stuff I'm thinking about than I expect will ever make it into the story.
Not to mention some uncertainty with my plans for the next arc that I almost want to talk about, but that would be a very big set of spoilers due to the nature of that topic.
