Wanderers 1 - 3

Good evening everyone! I hope your saturday is going well. It is saturday right? Anyway, enjoy!




Chapter 03

“Captain. Wolf!”

I opened my eyes then shut them as my left side was assaulted by pain. I looked up and saw Laura kneeling next to me. I sat up as best I could dealing with the pain.

“Agh. Where are we?” I asked glancing over to the viewing screen. A blue image was all that showed. The rest of the bridge was black with the emergency lights blinking.

“I don’t know. We should be in C35 but I can’t bring up the sensors.”

“Alright. Let’s get the others up,” I said while standing up gingerly. We walked around the bridge rousing the others. There were groans of pain but soon everyone was up and looking around.

“Zima, any ideas what’s going on?” I asked after we were all awake and at our stations. Zima was out science officer. She had been damn hard to recruit at that.

She accessed her console, I assumed she was looking over the data that the ship was feeding her. After maybe two or three minutes she finally responded. “We’re still in wrap.”

“How is that possible?” Laura asked moving over next to her to look over the readings. Everyone else moved over to their own stations to check their systems. I sat down and worked to look over the overview of the ship. I ground my teeth when I saw how much damage this incident had caused. I would be out nearly ten million credits to get this fixed. I didn’t want to take a month fabricating the parts in the maintenance bay.

I turned to stare out the window. The blue energy trails were still rippling by us. I leaned back and noticed the time registered. I jerked around to look to Laura. “What time was the patch supposed to happen?!”

“Three in the afternoon,” she replied then noticed the time as well. It was three twenty. “What the hell?”

“Has this ever happened before?” I asked to everyone in the room.

I got a general negative from everyone in the room. “There are so many safety features built into the dive pods that this should be impossible. When the servers closed for the patch, we should have been ejected from the game.”

“That was my thought as well. What are the chances of the server closing when a ship is using the wrap gate?” I asked.

“Most gate travel is nearly instanatous. This has to be a freak accident,” Zima said tapping her finger on the console.

“Then likely we’ll drop out when the servers restart,” I said then paused for a second to consider what we should do.

“I’m going to take this time to repair the engines. I don’t know where we’re going to drop out but I want us to be moving when we do,” Ryuk said as he walked towards the bridge exit. I wasn’t sure, but I felt he was trying to distract himself.

“Ryuk has the right idea. Let’s get the Sovereign’s system back up,” I said sitting back in the captain’s chair. Everyone turned and got to work as well. Tapping a few buttons, half a dozen screens appeared in front of me. Laura copied me and pulled up her own screens.

The Sovereign was equipped with many systems for self-repair. The problem, I groaned when I saw it, was that one of the three drone bays had been turned to space scrap. What made it worse was that it was the main bay, the other two being auxiliary. Ryuk was already using eighty percent of the drone force to repair the engines.

“This is going to be rough,” I murmured making a check list of the sections that needed to be repaired first.

“Its not all bad news. We only lost fifty members of the crew. Considering the beating we took that’s close to a miracle,” Laura said tossing a small smile over to me.

“A silver lining.”

“It does look like they were all knocked out like us. I have the medical staff that are up going around administrating aid. If the NPCs were affected, then it wasn’t the patch itself that knocked us out.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Zima tuned in from her station. “There are a lot of factors that I can’t be sure of, but I think it might have been Bob. Until now, the Gates have never really been attacked. However, we detonated a large-scale weapon almost right next to it. I think the gate was super-charged by the energy wave just before we passed through it.”

“That’s as good a theory as any right now,” I replied.

Twenty minutes went by as everyone worked to get everything back in functioning order. Ryuk managed to get one of the three main engines back online. The other two would need more parts then were available on board. Laura and I had organized everything in the ship’s inventory to be safe.

“Sir. Energy readings from the wrap weakening,” Isabelle said from the helm. “I suspect we’re about to drop out of transition.”

“Thank you.” I tapped the comms button. “Everyone, brace for wrap drop out.”

The blue energy around us vanished as we appeared in regular space. Everything was fine for all of ten seconds.

“Weapons fire! Raising shields!” Shintani shouted.

The main screen came up showing several hundred ships that were barely registering on the screen. Some laser fire bounced off the shields.

“What class ship are those?” I asked Shintani. As the tactical officer he knew even the fighters of most the races. I thought I was well versed but I didn’t recognize these models at all.

“I don’t know sir. I’ve studied every ship available on the market to learn all the strengths and weaknesses possible. Their weapons aren’t even draining power from the shields.”

“Where are we?” I asked. “And send a message to those idiots to stop firing on us before we decimate their entire fleet.”

“Yes sir,” Alice said with a chuckle.

“Sovereign! Run star analysis.” I ordered the ship’s AI.

“Processing…”

“Um, Sir. There are two different forces. One told us to shove it, not so politely. While the other thinks we’re working with the ones that told us to shove it,” Alice said rubbing the back of her head.

“One warning shot. Then full spread if they don’t back off,” I said.

A main cannon on each side of the ship turned towards the forces and fired. A beam almost as large as the opposing forces’ ships made its way through the enemy force. Needless to say, they stopped firing at us.

The AI delivered a report on the area. We were in a dense cluster of systems. There weren’t any wrap gates to be seen. Just from the initial report, we found twenty planets that were habitable. Even in the currently explored sections in our original space, there were only ten found so far. And most of them were controlled and guarded by some of the largest Companies in the game.

“Is this part of the patch?” Laura asked as she looked over the same report.

“I find that hard to believe, and even if it was, I doubt the devs would put in such a way for someone to reach it,” Isabelle said.

“That’s true.”

“Let’s find an uninhabited planet to set down on. With Ferilite if possible,” I said.

The sub light engine hummed to life thanks to the repairs done. The two forces surrounding us didn’t dare to impede our movement. I watched as they each sent a ship following us, but when we activated the Faster than light engine, we easily left them in the dust.

The section of space we were in had several planets to choose from. The main sensor array, however, had been damaged in the battle, meaning we’d have to enter each system before we could get a more detailed analysis of the various planets. I just hoped there weren’t any more surprises waiting.

An hour later, we dropped out of FTL on the edge of the first solar system. We scanned the two class M planets and some of the smaller ones but couldn’t find any Ferilite in the system. Without the mineral, greater repairs would be impossible. With a deep sigh, I ordered helm to jump to the next system.

Fourteen jumps later… That’s how long it took for us to find a suitable system to land in. The Class M planet only had one moon, and the only other celestial object in the system was a gas giant nearly on the edge of the gravity well. I was glad at this moment that I’d made sure the Sovereign was capable of terrestrial landing.

“Where was the last humanoid life reported?” I asked standing up to take in the view of the planet.

Four systems ago, and only a small concentration, likely a colony,” Laura replied looking at her readout.

“Find a suitable spot that can support the Sovereign. I’d hate to land on a stretch of mica and find the ship a kilometer underground,” I said moving back to my chair.

“Remember Alphabutts2?” Laura said with a laugh.

“I would hate for that to happen. Stuck three kilometers underground, with magma surrounding him and his ship split in half. The fact he managed to get out of that mess still amazes me today.”

“Poor naming choice though,” Laura said with a shake of her head.

“Haha. You got that right.” I was glad all my crew had decent names. I was pretty sure my name was the gamiest one of all of us. We had to spend almost on hour doing surface scans. With the size of the Sovereign, finding a place to set down was a difficult task. We needed to be able to easily access the Ferilite after all.

“I think I have a spot for us,” Isabella said from Helm. I pulled her reads over to my screen and examined them. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her but given the situation we couldn’t afford any mishaps. After scrutinizing it for nearly five minutes, I felt it would do.

“Take us in.”

We switched the shields to atmospheric otherwise the gases would burn through our energy supply. They were weaker but we’d survive anything someone tried to throw at us long enough to either pull out of the atmosphere or plunge in faster. Isabella and Daisy did a wonderful job bringing the ship down through the atmosphere. I was worried about the right arm that was struck during the battle, but the buffering shield reduced the damage it was receiving from the wind shear and reentry heat.

A chain of mountains rose in front of us, with a large plain at the bottom. We were close to the southern part of the planet. It was this area’s summer so that’s the optimal location for us to operate in. We didn’t know how long we’d be stuck in this section of the game. Every system we’d stopped at didn’t have a gate after all.

A large expanse of land that was a dense stone expanded in front of us as we moved closer. It would be perfect for setting up our base. Given the resources available on the ship it would take us a few days just to be able to mine the Ferilite to even begin repairs. It was one headache after another. Isabella maneuvered the ship and extended the landing gear. Massive building sized extensions that could support the ship’s weight.

With a shudder, she successfully landed the ship. Almost a second later, the right half of the ship tilted forward to rest on the ground. That part of the landing system had been damaged as well. Still, I would have to give Isabella a raise when we got back.

I stood then turned to the crew. “Good job! I know the last day has been trying. Those of us that need to log should do so. I’m good for a while, so I’ll watch the ship,” I said. Everyone nodded then left for their cabins. I grinned to Laura who stayed with me. “Don’t trust me?”

“Not with my baby,” she replied patting the arm of her chair.

“Your baby. I think you mean ours,” I said walking over and grabbing her hand to pull her out of her chair. I spun her around before pulling her into my embrace. She gave me an impish smile.

“Seriously, is this how the Captain of a ship is supposed to behave. I think you’re breaking at least five rules,” Laura said laying her head on my chest.

“Frankly, I don’t give a damn after the day we’ve been through,” I said cupping her face in my hand. We stood like that for a few minutes, just enjoying each other’s company.

“Captain! We have a problem!” Shintani shouted. I saw him and the others gathered at the entrance of the bridge.

“What is it? What’s wrong!?” I asked glancing at the monitors worried we were under attack.

“We can’t log off,” he replied in a deadpan voice.