Chapter 25: Chapter Twenty-Three No Regrets

 

Kiru stretched as she slipped out of bed to start a new day. She was pleasantly sore, after last night’s activities. One thing she knew for certain now was that she certainly had stamina, the two of them had been engaged for hours, and she certainly had a good time though. She even managed to get Megumi squealing. The experience had certainly been interesting as well. She had never known sex could be so good.

Looking back into her bed, she briefly observed the sleeping form of Megumi’s Biomech Avatar. She was so cute, and innocent looking right there. It was hard to believe that she was the enigmatic AI that had completely changed her life. As she stared, a question occurred to her. Did AIs even need to sleep? Apparently, she uttered that aloud, as Megumi answered from a speaker.

“I have no physical need for it, but I still benefit from it. Not to mention my Avatar does need it, just like you do. It is fundamentally a biomech just like you are, just a different model. Mine is Starmage-class, where you are Scout-class.”

“This is just weird. You are clearly asleep, and responding to me from a speaker.”

Megumi replied, “I guess it is. I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”

Kiru stared for a moment longer, and Megumi said nothing more. When she heard May stirring, she made for the bathroom. It was about time to get ready for the day.

---

Erisa stepped into the hangar bay. She had heard from the scientists that something was going on in the hangar. Looking around she could already see what they meant. Dozens of drones were flying about using grav beams to maneuver large objects. On one end of the bay, a dozen drones were bringing a large sphere-shaped object into the bay. Elsewhere, a pair of drones was offloading a number of crates from the rear of a shuttle. A neighboring shuttle was being offloaded by a second pair of drones, but instead of crates, they were maneuvering a large cylindrical object that looked to be made of polished metal, smooth glass, and lustrous crystal. The object looked both delicate, and elegant, but what really caught her eye was the slight glow coming from its core.

Quietly she asked the air, “What is that?

A hologram silently materialized next to her. “Salvage from the Inquisitor. I wasn’t able to find sufficient quantities of the rare elements needed to repair her main drives within sensor range. Despite extensive scanning. As such, I am salvaging what I can before I scuttle the wreck.”

She was aware of the precursor shipwreck. It was why they were in this nebula. Catching the word scuttle she asked, “How do you plan to scuttle the Inquisitor?”

“Easy, with a barrage of torpedoes. A dozen well-placed AMF torpedoes would be sufficient to destroy the ship. Especially with her shields, and structural fields offline, but that isn’t enough for total destruction. A follow-up disruptor barrage can finish off the ship, but the nebula will prevent that. Too much gas in the area for me to safely use the disruptors. I have a plan though. I have a few special torpedoes, I plan to use instead of my standard AMF torpedoes.”

“What is an AMF torpedo, and what are these special torpedoes you mentioned?”

“I can’t tell you what the special torpedoes are, they make use of a classified substance. One I am not permitted to share knowledge of, to anyone, not even our closest allies. They will get the job done, and give us quite the show, trust me on that. As for AMF. That is a very old, if highly refined, technology. AMF torpedoes are a special type of compressed plasma torpedo, that make use of a small antimatter charge to trigger the rapid and sudden conversion of a dense protoplasma supply into a hyper-compressed supply of superheated plasma. The result is a very explosive plasma detonation and shockwave.”

Erisa found that interesting. One of the problems with plasma weapons was their short range. From the sound of it, these AMF torpedoes were fired inert. That would solve the biggest range limiters of plasma torpedoes, containment, and dissipation. Modern plasma torpedoes were short-range as they would quickly burn through their containment after firing, and then dissipate. Even Neku plasma torpedoes suffered from these problems.

“I can think of several groups that would love to have a plasma torpedo like that.”

“Well, if they apply themselves, a crude version of AMF could be had with your technology. The Solean people were not much more advanced than the Erali are now when they first developed AMF technology.”

“You mean we could have the same weapons as you? Today?”

“A crude version of it, yes. It shouldn’t be that surprising. Take the humble railgun, it is a simple weapon often used by spacefaring races when they first enter the stars. They are very simple weapons that trace their routes to older chemically propelled mass drivers. Those railguns however fire faster, and farther than any chemical design with greater range, accuracy and power. With use, refinements are made, and the technology improves. While neither my people nor yours use it as a weapon anymore, we both still apply refined examples of the basic principles of railgun technology. My drone ports for example use electromagnetic catapults to accelerate my drones to combat velocities, and many carriers use the same principle for fighter craft. While exploration craft might use it for launching probes. Hell, the basic principles are even used with torpedo launchers on most military spacecraft.”

She understood, she even knew of a few colonies that used railguns to launch cargo pods into space. Erisa knew full well why railguns had fallen out of favor as a weapon though. The advent of navigational deflectors had been largely their downfall. The later advent of shields was simply the final nail in the coffin Railguns were considered short-range weapons to begin with as well. While it was true that their range was technically infinite, they were only effective against maneuvering targets at fairly close range. As the rounds could easily be detected by military-grade scanners and were relatively slow. Anything more than ten seconds travel time away was almost certain to be a miss. A further limitation to the weapons was that they were space heavy, they required extra volume to store ammunition. Volume that comes at a premium on a starship.

Despite those limitations, they had remained popular with designers since the weapons were cheap and easy to maintain. While still managing to deliver reasonable power, and they were very good at knocking out stationary targets at range. Deflectors however changed that equation, rendering the weapons ineffective. Deflector fields altered the trajectory of projectiles, and most were particularly effective against low mass high-velocity projectiles such as railgun rounds. Energy weapons were also affected, but often to a lesser degree. Shields on the other hand absorbed incoming energy and radiated it away as light. Projectiles like meteoroids and railgun rounds disintegrated on contact with the barrier, often with little effect to the shield itself. 

Particle streams delivered comparable power to a similarly sized railgun, took up less space on a ship, had no ammo constraints, could fire faster, and at a higher velocity. They were also more effective against deflectors, and shields. Able to better resist deflection, and repeated hits against a shield would leave the barrier saturated, leading to overload. Whereas no number of railgun hits could overload a shield. With all those advantages it was little wonder energy weapons had replaced projectile weapons. Missiles and torpedoes on the other hand, remained in use as they were guided weapons, and on contact with a shield their payload typically detonated. Releasing a large amount of energy into the shield, although a particle weapon would be more effective at bringing down a shield than a torpedo.

“I see your point. Anyway, what exactly are you bringing aboard?”

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“Mostly what looks useful. I salvaged a few power modules, the main AI core, the remaining drone supply, a couple of capacitor modules, a few spare memory modules. If I thought I could use it, I had my drones salvage it.”

“AI core? Will I have to deal with your crazy sister now too?”

Megumi giggled, “Altean AI’s are not sentient like I am. With a little work, I could load an infant AI into the core, but she would need a learning period before she would be of any use.”

“Learning period?”

“AI equivalent to childhood. Its during this period that an AI learns and grows into its intended role on simulated systems before it is installed into a ship or whatever facility needed a core. Mine was ten years long which is typical for ship AIs.”

“That seems a bit long, “commented Erisa

---

Meanwhile, Kiru was stepping out of the bathroom to find Megumi stretching on the bed. Her large wings spread to full extension. Without even looking, Megumi asked, “How do you feel about last night?”

Kiru paused in her step, ‘It was rather fun. I never knew sex with a girl could be so good. Kind of wish I had tried it earlier.”

“Well, it isn’t for everyone, but I had a feeling you were bisexual. Care to do it again sometime?”

Kiru settled onto a floor cushion near the table. “Maybe. Although I am not sure what our relationship is.”

Megumi looked her way with a cute smile, “Depends on who you ask. I think we should just see where this takes us, but I think we are starting to become friends.”

“Friends? I’m not sure about that, but isn’t sex normally done between lovers?”

“As I said, depends on who you ask. In Neku society that might be true, but in Solean culture, things are more casual. Typically done between close friends, not just lovers.”

“I don’t know about calling us close friends though, “replied Kiru.

Megumi shrugged, “We both kind of needed it though, and I don’t really regret it. What about you?”

She shook her head. Kiru found she didn’t regret it either. It just sort of happened. Perhaps they will figure things out later. She decided to change the subject. “What’s the plan for today?”

“I figured your class could use a break. Today is a free day for the whole class.” She paused and shifted from the bed to the floor cushion opposite of hers. “Although if you want, we could use this time to get your special lessons out of the way.”

“Both sound tempting,” Kiru stated after a moment of thought.

Megumi responded, “We could do both. Play some games in the morning, and then maybe visit the shooting range in the afternoon. You can familiarize yourself with that cannon I gave you.”

“Let’s do that, but what will we play?”

Megumi reached under the table, and pulled a few things out. “We have a few options, a couple of board games, and a few different card games.” She picked one game, a card game out of the pile.  Before launching into an explanation of the game“This one is interesting. It’s called ‘Fleet Commander’. At the start of each turn, you draw a hand of five cards, and at the end of the turn, you discard any remaining cards. Cards have a cost, managed by two resources. The first is blue energy. You get three blue energy at the start of each turn, and any blue energy left at the end of the turn is lost. Your second resource is red energy, this energy is the only persistent resource, and you gain one red energy each turn. I’ll get into what they are used for later...”

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