Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Chapter 253 252 - A Curated Introduction to Alien Spaceships

Eidecht begins explaining some of the more conventional controls fixed around the pilots' seats, going into light detail on where to look first if they start playing up and even going through the process needed to initiate lightspeed jumps, but Emily's attention remains stuck on picking apart the universe's message.

I still don't know exactly what they want of me, other than 'save the universe from its inevitable destruction', whatever that means, but at least now I know who The One Who Watches was talking about; it did seem like a wild chance of fate that Ulea's first fifth circle dungeon would form just in time for me to clear it when I needed it, though I guess you could say it formed just in time for Gaius to attempt a breakthrough before the end of his lifespan. Being their latest champion is slightly concerning though. I wonder if that means dual awakened are more common than I thought? And what protections were in place before? I guess The Clock itself could count to some extent, but the message implies it will still work, so it has to be something else. Draw unwanted attention… Wait, if time is relative, and it rewinds by a fixed quantity, what happens when I travel between stars at light speed? How large an effect does each rewind have? Does it rewind the entire universe, or just a localised area of space?

"Eidecht," Emily says, as they're leaving the bridge to head towards the workshops to see where they'll be doing most of their on-ship work. "How do you tell the time while travelling between star systems?"

"The ship's main processing unit has a relative clock linked to all internal terminals for us to check what we're experiencing whenever we want," the metallic lizardkin explains. "But our day keeping mostly goes off of the universal calendar, which is calculated from the Origin Cluster: an incredibly mana and qi dense cluster of stars at the centre of the known universe."

"Who's in control of that?" Ivor signs, with Pod vocalising for him as his Universal Translator gathers more data on Ulean sign language.

"The Federation and Alliance split control of the main stars and their heliospheres, while The Guild holds mining rights for all bodies within the Cluster's interstellar space. Splitting the Origin Cluster was the main reason for the First Universal War."

"Is qi the energy martial artists cultivate?" Emily asks, noticing a pack of hound-like beings, led by one of those she saw leaving the ship to greet them, slip into the corridor and follow behind them at a distance.

"Yeah, exactly." Eidecht nods, coming to a split in the path and turning down an unlabelled hallway without breaking stride. "Mana with mages, qi with martial artists, and neutral energy with mechanics. As I'm sure you know from your own development on a mana-based planet, you can cultivate any of those using the other base energy types, it's just far less efficient. We have energy capture devices built into all ships of our fleet to keep the internal atmospheres conducive to development, but only this ship has a proper separation array to control the exact composition in each room. How much of each we get obviously depends on where we are, though."

"Where do martial artists gather their qi, and what for specifically? I already know about mages and mechanics, and I can make guesses, but this is our first time encountering any."

"They cultivate their bodies themselves. Obviously, we all do the same to some extent, but martial artists focus on raw strength and vitality. They do their best to enhance their very lifeforce. Makes the brutes incredibly annoying to kill, but they're also far less intelligent than us, so it has its downsides. Their energy centres are called Dantians, and they're here." Eidecht taps her sternum in the centre of her sleek armour. "If you're ever fighting a martial artist, go for the head or Dantian, though I'd lean towards the latter. Some of them, like our Vice-Captain, retain the ability to regenerate even if their brains are destroyed, but, like a mage, they'll destabilise the moment their energy centre is removed."

"You sound like you speak from a lot of experience. Are you commonly a fighter?"

"Yes. While I'm the crew's head engineer, I'm also a member of the gunner's branch, and will happily deploy for combat. Can't hope to make it past fifth stage if you're not willing to fight for it."

They arrive in a long, winding corridor lined with blast doors and come to a halt in front of the first. There's a keypad beside it, with the glowing words: 'Engineer branch #1', on a small screen above.

"This is the first room dedicated to our work," Eidecht explains as she opens the door with a spark of machina. "We mostly do armour in here."

Dozens of heads turn to face them as the door slides open, but even more remain fixed on the work before them. Emily can feel that the space is distorted as they step over the threshold, though she can immediately tell the runework being used to do so is different from hers, lacking the delicate touch of space she's used to. There are workbenches and complex machines she doesn't recognise scattered around the room, with mechanics from first to third stage working away at familiar-looking armoured bodysuits, with tens of unawakened helpers running materials and half-finished pieces between them.

Not all of the mechanics are fully humanoid, with several of those with less dexterous limbs using mounted mechanical arms to do their work for them.

The air in the workshop is dense with energy, but Emily can sense a slight difference from mana: it feels cooler on her skin and lighter in essence, despite the high density, lacking any discernible elemental alignment.

"Wow," Pod marvels, scanning the tools firing lasers and spraying out alien materials with eyes practically glowing with interest as he drinks in the neutral energy in the air.

"Yeah, it's pretty great," Eidecht nods, with no noticeable change in tone or expression despite her obvious pride, before shouting out and calling everyone's gaze towards them. "I know none of you will have checked your Terminals, so pay attention now. These are the newest members of our crew, Emily and her followers. They'll likely be joining support branches in some capacity, so you'll be seeing them around a lot from now on."

Everyone looking at them nods, and a few call out brief greetings before they turn back to their work quickly.

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"I've never seen so many intelligent, non-humanoid species before," Emily says, nodding towards the odd-looking hounds trailing them, as Eidecht leads them to the next workshop, this one dedicated to weaponry and prosthetics. "Are they common in the greater universe?"

"They aren't uncommon, but humanoids still make up the vast majority of intelligent life. Our crew just so happens to have a disproportionate number of them, since we're more welcoming of those that don't meet the Federation and Alliance's moral and beauty standards."

As they move to the third workshop in the hallway, set up to handle work on ship maintenance, one of their pursuers finally approaches them.

"Hello," the hound says through a mixture of grunts, growls, and twitches of her tail and ears, the translator picking a feminine tone as she rises up on her hind legs to stand a head taller than Emily, exposing the skin-tight armour covering her belly, marked with the crew's emblem. "Welcome to the crew. We came to greet our newest furred companion."

The hound nods towards Silica, but Emily's gaze remains locked on the scales now visible, curling up the underside of her throat in place of fur. Silica yips a greeting, but she steps away from the hulking creature and presses herself to the side of her mother's leg.

"Thank you for the warm welcome…" Emily responds, trailing off.

"Rotlith, fifth phase martial artist and interim leader of the chimaeric hounds on this ship since our pack leader went on ahead," the hound fills in for her, tilting her head in confusion at Silica.

"Right, well, as you may have noticed, Silica returns your greeting, but she's not yet developed enough to learn complex communication herself. She's only five, and elementals are very long-lived, with a rate of development that follows."

"Ah…" Rotlith whines, the slow swaying of her tail halting for a moment before it returns a beat faster. "We could try teaching her our language if you like. She may still be too young, but it can't hurt to try."

The lack of a reaction from Mensacus implies her excitement at the prospect is genuine, and remembering the hound voiced her desire to have Silica as a friend, not a slave, pushes Emily to agree. She raises a mildly amused brow at the idea of someone stronger than any on Ulea being so excited to teach her daughter to speak.

"Sure, why not?" Emily says after a few beats of silence. "Find us again once we're settled in properly, and I'd be grateful for the help."

The hound nods and drops back onto all fours, turning back to the rest of her pack and leaving with a skip in her step as Eidecht continues their tour.

Eidecht shows Emily yet another mechanics workshop, this one bereft of people but full of plenty of high-tech tools and half-finished projects, set aside for the use of fifth stage mechanics alone, which the two of them will be sharing thanks to Wilder being mostly uninterested in creation himself. The next workshop is populated by mages enchanting mechanical devices being passed on from the mechanics, with some of them working on purely magical creations using a shocking number of neutral runes. Emily immediately recognises most of them as pure arcanists and lingers in the doorway for a moment longer than needed to gather more data on their complex runework, as Eidecht explains her branch's reluctant, cooperative relationship with the enchanter's branch.

The final workshop they pop their heads into is smaller than the rest, but holds a mix of mages and a few mechanics, with a setup of cauldrons and heating elements intimately familiar to Emily.

"And finally, this is the lab for our alchemy branch," Eidecht explains. "They work on enhancing our chemical weapons and combat stims, and work closely with our unfortunately limited healing branch. God knows it's hard to find many of them with loose enough morals to join us permanently."

"Looks like we've found a home for Ivor," Emily mutters, glancing back at her magical apprentice and seeing his eyes wide with awe as he breathes in the odour of blood and plants filling the air of the mana-charged space.

"He's an alchemist? Ah, that does explain your working relationship." Eidecht nods. "I'll send word to our head alchemist, Vrathorn, and let him know he has a new recruit to welcome when he's next awake. His workflow and sleeping patterns are a little all over the place, but he's an effective worker. We're hoping he'll reach fifth circle soon, though, since most of his creations aren't wholly effective on those of us already past his strength."

They leave the workshop hallway and continue through the rest of the ship, passing tens of storage rooms and weapon holds Eidecht doesn't show them the insides of, and briefly scanning past the large, open mess hall that Emily knows she'll likely never visit again if the fabricated nutrient blocks on the trays of several lower level members of the crew are anything to go by. A message rings through the halls of the ship, informing everyone of a lightspeed jump being initiated, as their guide takes them into the reactor bank to admire the complex and incredibly deadly machines pumping out power to fuel their operations. The floor beneath them quivers a few moments later before settling as they begin cruising at a speed faster than Emily ever has experienced before. Near the reactor bank, they come across a colossal cuboid construct of firing signals that she immediately identifies as the ship's main processing core, if not from the construct itself then from the ludicrous number of mounted weapons fixed around it to ward off unwanted intruders.

After adding a spark of Emily's signature to the core, to gain her ship's credentials, and spending a while in the less-visited underbelly of the vessel, they move on and linger in a busy hallway filled with training rooms. The rooms are reminiscent of those in The Dome, but they have advanced holographic tech, that steals all of Emily's focus, in place of magical illusions. There are only a few faint enchantments to add physical feedback and help change the feeling of the environment, but they feel distinctly disconnected from the technical setup, not quite wound in as neatly as they could be.

They finish their tour at the crew's quarters. Eidecht leads them to a cluster of unoccupied rooms next to those of the other strongest members of the crew, and assigns Pod and Ivor to share one while Silica and Mensacus insist on sticking with their mother.

"How long will it take us to reach our next destination?" Emily asks as she looks around the empty space, a little larger than her old room in The Dome, only occupied by a single large bed pressed against one of the walls, a set of screens opposite it currently showing a ticking twenty-four-hour clock, and a doorway to a connected bathroom.

"As long as we don't run into any problems, a month and a half. Xlanax is a trade hub hidden in the border between Federation and Guild space, and your home planet was already quite close to the edge of Federation territory," Eidecht explains before bidding them farewell and leaving them to get settled, letting Emily know she's free of obligations for the duration of this first trip.

Emily shuts the door behind the lizardkin and collapses onto her new bed, propping herself up with the outrageously comfortable pillows and letting Silica curl up with her head in her lap as Mensacus drops down at the foot of the bed to watch them. She scans the room for any cameras or listening devices before disabling the few she finds, glad to have the ship's permission to do so as she feels an odd resistance to her energy flow in the metal making up every surface of the space.

She pulls out her tea-making kit from her belt, along with a small table to set beside her bed to hold it, and sets to work brewing a calming draught before vaporising a small handful of salvianross and infusing the drink with it. She drains her cup before sitting cross-legged and falling into a deep trance, letting her mind wander through the recent flood of new information and ever so slowly draining a few drops of the tightly-wound sea of energy comprising her deep emotional vault, working towards setting old memories free along with the hurt they bear.