I pull up a map of the station on my new magical com unit… huh. Easier to get there going outside; it’s just on the neighboring spoke, not very far away at all, but if I stay inside the station, I have to go all the way to the core and back. So I head to the nearest “public” airlock, and head out. As a bonus, I get a nice view of the wreck; it’s sleek, at least. The spec attached to the mail said it masses three hundred fifty thousand tons. It has a dark red hull, and the only interruptions I can see are the thrusters, the weapons blister (it only has the one turret gun at present), regularly-spaced airlocks, and towards the rear, bay doors for the cargo holds… and of course, the (currently folded) docking canopy. She’s fifteen hundred feet long, five hundred feet tall at the tallest, and eight hundred feet wide at the widest. She tapers to a point in case she ever needs to enter an atmosphere, but she’s not intended to do so, ever: The ship has no landing gear, and is heavy enough that no landing would be possible anyway - crashes only in normal gravity. Loading and unloading of cargo is expected to be done via shuttles, not directly (although it does have loading docks for transferring cargo in space, such as from stations or other large ships).
I go to one of her airlocks and tap in the agreed code… and find gravity points towards the center of the ship at this one, so I’m climbing down into the airlock after it cycles. I walk the length of the ship… there’s a ton of huge windows and skylights between the support struts, but they’re all fake: High pixel density projected screens (the actual units are tiny little things mounted on the support struts that are zapping colored lasers into the surroundings with a contour map to make the image) tied into the ship’s sensors… which means they can be anywhere, and they put them EVERYWHERE. It gives a nice illusion of ‘airiness’ and ‘openness’ to the ship, like I’m walking through a tunnel with a view of the outside on either side of me. The halls are big enough to serve as residential streets back home, including sidewalks… they’re even marked that way, now that I think about it… I suppose it’s expected for moving things around in a place this big.
I head straight to the bridge, as there’s something I need to do. The walk there is quite relaxing, and the bridge is very spacious. No joke, there’s workstations for fifteen people in here: A captain’s chair, with two concentric half circles below and around it for the other fourteen, and each seat has a holographic control setup (including the captain’s chair). I know from the plans sent previously that it has other major control areas set up very similarly: Two for engineering (one for each generator mount, only one of which is in use), five for gunnery (one for each arc, plus the turret… but only the turret is armed), and one science; piloting is handled from here… although this is the largest nexus. Crew controls for fifty, all told… and it has the same projected screens found elsewhere in the ship outside of the individual stations; when I glance around the room, I’m also glancing around the ship from her perspective: They even did the floor up that way here. It’s a good thing I don’t have acrophobia (fear of heights) or agoraphobia (fear of open spaces): While I’m enclosed here with a solid floor, walls, and ceiling reasonably nearby, the illusion is such that it really doesn’t look like it.
I hop into the captain’s chair… comfy, well padded, the material is smooth without being slippery… oh, and heated, that’s nice… there’s even a massager, huh… and pull up the controls. My first act? Changing the door code. My second? Updsting all the command codes, passwords, and other securitytokens... and yes, in that order. If I do end up returning it, that’s easy to undo, but it’s absolutely the first thing that needs to happen. New place? Change the locks. Especially if it was a repo. That done, I go on a tour.
The quarters are nice… the crew cabins are forty individual apartments (complete with kitchen, bedroom, living room, office, and bathroom - including a tub with jets) with a luxury finish at about seven hundred fifty square feet each, and the same fake windows and skylights found elsewhere (I check a couple: The fake windows in each crew cabin have the same set of views). The nine officer accommodations are double that at fifteen hundred square feet each using essentially the same design. The captain’s cabin… wow. A solid three thousand square feet, a thousand of which is a second story with a balcony overlooking the living room. The bathtub? It's a small swimming pool… the jets on this one are even set up to do fake laps, and it’s deep enough that doing so is quite feasible. The ceiling is another fake skylight… it’s really easy to keep a “weather eye” on the outside on this ship.
I mean, the luxury is all fake: Those granite countertops in the kitchen are just steel with a thin but durable textured coating. Those silk sheets on that king-sized bed are a synthetic fiber, and the mahogany flooring is again just a thin coat over deck plating (make that HEATED deck plating), but it’s still quite nice.
I continue my tour, visiting the “ready room” (captain’s office, right off the bridge), briefing room (a meeting room, good for about ten people to sit around a table and talk about what they’re going to do - intended for the ship’s officers, I imagine), each control center (four seats in each of the five gunnery control centers - one for each possible gun, I guess, and yes, theoretically I could get twenty guns mounted on this frame - five in each of the engineering control centers and the science station). I also visit and inspect the power core (yes, it is what I asked for), the spot for the second core (yes, it's empty), the mess hall (which I imagine serves mostly as a clubhouse and meeting room - seating for fifty, and it's set up more like a bar than anything else), the cargo bays, and of course: The docking canopy.
The canopy is split between both sides of the ship; I guess it's so we can balance it? It has a set of four entries… one for each ship, when it's holding Tiny spaceships… each of which is… well, basically an airport gate: A long tube which can bend and shuffle around a bit, which has a very interesting attachment on the end, which seals around an airlock. It also has station-style umbilical cords. Everything is currently folded up against the ship, but I do run the controls to spread one out so I can take a look… ah, that's why it's called a canopy: When it spreads, it has branch-like arms and a thin fabric-like coating that grabs hold of the ship. Huh.
I mean, it works, but it won't cover the docked ship entirely, which means making this ship invisible won't make the carried ships invisible.
Which is a pity, because otherwise this ship really is awesome.
Grr! I slam my hand on a wall… which shudders and whines.
“Shh… calm down girl, I didn't mean it… you're fine…” I spend a bit patting and rubbing the same wall until it calms down and starts purring… and then I realize: This is wonderful.
Because this isn't just a ship: It's a living creature. Oh, it doesn't have much volition; it can't steer itself or anything… but it's more than just a collection of nuts and bolts. It's a living creature. Which also means….
I grin, and cast a Fleeting Spell Superior Invisibility directly on the wall… and the entire ship vanishes from sight. A quick True Seeing spell (with Fleeting Spell, of course) on myself and I can see her again… but I just made the entire ship vanish… and I haven't put Stephanie in yet, so… haha.
I cast several other spells on her as well, all with Fleeting Spell in case I later want to be rid of them, and even making use of Body to Body so I can give her Personal spells, basically duplicating Euler's buff list, but with the addition of the earlier Superior Invisibility (and downgrading One Step Beyond to merely Mind Blank). Why? It's because Shapechange will let her turn into a humanoid if she wants… a normal sized humanoid… and all stored gear should merge. She'll be quite the smuggling rig.
And even with all that, the ship is still not as warped…
“Blessed,” corrects my pink partner Patricia.
Right, Blessed, as Stephanie is, so when she accepts the body… it won't be warped any more than any other frame she's used. That's the theory, anyway.
Yes, I've decided to keep this one.
I pull up a map of the station on my new magical com unit… huh. Easier to get there going outside; it’s just on the neighboring spoke, not very far away at all, but if I stay inside the station, I have to go all the way to the core and back. So I head to the nearest “public” airlock, and head out. As a bonus, I get a nice view of the wreck; it’s sleek, at least. The spec attached to the mail said it masses three hundred fifty thousand tons. It has a dark red hull, and the only interruptions I can see are the thrusters, the weapons blister (it only has the one turret gun at present), regularly-spaced airlocks, and towards the rear, bay doors for the cargo holds… and of course, the (currently folded) docking canopy. She’s fifteen hundred feet long, five hundred feet tall at the tallest, and eight hundred feet wide at the widest. She tapers to a point in case she ever needs to enter an atmosphere, but she’s not intended to do so, ever: The ship has no landing gear, and is heavy enough that no landing would be possible anyway - crashes only in normal gravity. Loading and unloading of cargo is expected to be done via shuttles, not directly (although it does have loading docks for transferring cargo in space, such as from stations or other large ships).
I go to one of her airlocks and tap in the agreed code… and find gravity points towards the center of the ship at this one, so I’m climbing down into the airlock after it cycles. I walk the length of the ship… there’s a ton of huge windows and skylights between the support struts, but they’re all fake: High pixel density projected screens (the actual units are tiny little things mounted on the support struts that are zapping colored lasers into the surroundings with a contour map to make the image) tied into the ship’s sensors… which means they can be anywhere, and they put them EVERYWHERE. It gives a nice illusion of ‘airiness’ and ‘openness’ to the ship, like I’m walking through a tunnel with a view of the outside on either side of me. The halls are big enough to serve as residential streets back home, including sidewalks… they’re even marked that way, now that I think about it… I suppose it’s expected for moving things around in a place this big.
I head straight to the bridge, as there’s something I need to do. The walk there is quite relaxing, and the bridge is very spacious. No joke, there’s workstations for fifteen people in here: A captain’s chair, with two concentric half circles below and around it for the other fourteen, and each seat has a holographic control setup (including the captain’s chair). I know from the plans sent previously that it has other major control areas set up very similarly: Two for engineering (one for each generator mount, only one of which is in use), five for gunnery (one for each arc, plus the turret… but only the turret is armed), and one science; piloting is handled from here… although this is the largest nexus. Crew controls for fifty, all told… and it has the same projected screens found elsewhere in the ship outside of the individual stations; when I glance around the room, I’m also glancing around the ship from her perspective: They even did the floor up that way here. It’s a good thing I don’t have acrophobia (fear of heights) or agoraphobia (fear of open spaces): While I’m enclosed here with a solid floor, walls, and ceiling reasonably nearby, the illusion is such that it really doesn’t look like it.
I hop into the captain’s chair… comfy, well padded, the material is smooth without being slippery… oh, and heated, that’s nice… there’s even a massager, huh… and pull up the controls. My first act? Changing the door code. My second? Updsting all the command codes, passwords, and other securitytokens... and yes, in that order. If I do end up returning it, that’s easy to undo, but it’s absolutely the first thing that needs to happen. New place? Change the locks. Especially if it was a repo. That done, I go on a tour.
The quarters are nice… the crew cabins are forty individual apartments (complete with kitchen, bedroom, living room, office, and bathroom - including a tub with jets) with a luxury finish at about seven hundred fifty square feet each, and the same fake windows and skylights found elsewhere (I check a couple: The fake windows in each crew cabin have the same set of views). The nine officer accommodations are double that at fifteen hundred square feet each using essentially the same design. The captain’s cabin… wow. A solid three thousand square feet, a thousand of which is a second story with a balcony overlooking the living room. The bathtub? It's a small swimming pool… the jets on this one are even set up to do fake laps, and it’s deep enough that doing so is quite feasible. The ceiling is another fake skylight… it’s really easy to keep a “weather eye” on the outside on this ship.
I mean, the luxury is all fake: Those granite countertops in the kitchen are just steel with a thin but durable textured coating. Those silk sheets on that king-sized bed are a synthetic fiber, and the mahogany flooring is again just a thin coat over deck plating (make that HEATED deck plating), but it’s still quite nice.
I continue my tour, visiting the “ready room” (captain’s office, right off the bridge), briefing room (a meeting room, good for about ten people to sit around a table and talk about what they’re going to do - intended for the ship’s officers, I imagine), each control center (four seats in each of the five gunnery control centers - one for each possible gun, I guess, and yes, theoretically I could get twenty guns mounted on this frame - five in each of the engineering control centers and the science station). I also visit and inspect the power core (yes, it is what I asked for), the spot for the second core (yes, it's empty), the mess hall (which I imagine serves mostly as a clubhouse and meeting room - seating for fifty, and it's set up more like a bar than anything else), the cargo bays, and of course: The docking canopy.
The canopy is split between both sides of the ship; I guess it's so we can balance it? It has a set of four entries… one for each ship, when it's holding Tiny spaceships… each of which is… well, basically an airport gate: A long tube which can bend and shuffle around a bit, which has a very interesting attachment on the end, which seals around an airlock. It also has station-style umbilical cords. Everything is currently folded up against the ship, but I do run the controls to spread one out so I can take a look… ah, that's why it's called a canopy: When it spreads, it has branch-like arms and a thin fabric-like coating that grabs hold of the ship. Huh.
I mean, it works, but it won't cover the docked ship entirely, which means making this ship invisible won't make the carried ships invisible.
Which is a pity, because otherwise this ship really is awesome.
Grr! I slam my hand on a wall… which shudders and whines.
“Shh… calm down girl, I didn't mean it… you're fine…” I spend a bit patting and rubbing the same wall until it calms down and starts purring… and then I realize: This is wonderful.
Because this isn't just a ship: It's a living creature. Oh, it doesn't have much volition; it can't steer itself or anything… but it's more than just a collection of nuts and bolts. It's a living creature. Which also means….
I grin, and cast a Fleeting Spell Superior Invisibility directly on the wall… and the entire ship vanishes from sight. A quick True Seeing spell (with Fleeting Spell, of course) on myself and I can see her again… but I just made the entire ship vanish… and I haven't put Stephanie in yet, so… haha.
I cast several other spells on her as well, all with Fleeting Spell in case I later want to be rid of them, and even making use of Body to Body so I can give her Personal spells, basically duplicating Euler's buff list, but with the addition of the earlier Superior Invisibility (and downgrading One Step Beyond to merely Mind Blank). Why? It's because Shapechange will let her turn into a humanoid if she wants… a normal sized humanoid… and all stored gear should merge. She'll be quite the smuggling rig.
And even with all that, the ship is still not as warped…
“Blessed,” corrects my pink partner Patricia.
Right, Blessed, as Stephanie is, so when she accepts the body… it won't be warped any more than any other frame she's used. That's the theory, anyway.
Yes, I've decided to keep this one.
