Age of Space

After wolfing down some nutrient packs, Ronin and Simons finished the lower hull of the cargo ship. Having worked long hours yesterday, it had not taken much to finish the last few welds. The metal ingots he’d ordered yesterday had also arrived, but right now, there was something more important at the front of his mind.

Ronin, currently busy looking at a holographic screen, made a short grunt in discontent. The central screen was displaying Argus’s position, and off to the side, was an ever-increasing list of words. The list contained every word recorded by the nanobots since their injection into Argus's neck.

Strange, it's been two days, but not a single mention of Specter. Nothing. What could make a hardened criminal like Argus so cautious?

“By the way, why did you buy such an expensive license? I get that it's good to practice on a bigger ship, but 1 million credits? Are you sure the higher ups are ok with this?” Simons asked, looking at the new metal ingots with anticipation.

“Hmm?”

Ronin glanced up from the holographic display, scrunched his eyebrows and thought about the question for a moment. “It’s not about the ship itself per se, but all the parts that come with it. With that one license, we’ve got a new engine we can legally make, we can make new landing gear, a new air lock, it goes on. When we start designing ships of our own, all of these licenses will be our building blocks, so the more licenses we have, the better ships we can design.”

As for what the higher ups thought about this? Well, they didn’t exist to begin with. But if Ronin was going to explain how actually he was the owner, he would also have to explain how he suddenly came upon enough credits to buy a state-of-the-art factory, and if the secret went out and the CLM found out?

“The higher ups are totally fine with it,” Ronin lied.

“Really?”

“Yup, absolutely!”

He’d never admit to being the real boss behind the scenes. Not if he could help it. Especially not to Simons who, not long ago, underwent liposuction for the job.

Simons looked over the newly arrived metal ingots. “What do you think we should start with next? Should we just complete the whole hull, or make some other modules first?”

Ronin thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

“Let’s do as much as we can before completing the hull, the more access we give the assembler during construction, the better. If we build the hull now, how are the assembler arms supposed to enter? We’d just be creating more work for ourselves. But you should focus on the exams for the rest of the day. There probably won’t be any more work on the ship before tomorrow morning.”

The alien artifact was getting restless, Ronin could feel it.

As a disappointed Simons began changing out of his work clothes, getting ready to head back home, Ronin headed towards the VR-chamber. But as he began undressing, getting ready to jump into the nutrient fluid, Simons words stopped him:

“It may be a bit rude for me to be asking this, but your back… no, it’s all over your body, all those scars. What happened to you?”

Ronin glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder, but after a short moment, his usually carefree attitude was replaced with signs of exhaustion. His shoulders lowered slightly, and his eyes lost a bit of their spark. “…Life man, life.”

“Some injuries I got from parkour, but most of these are from fights I didn’t start.”

“Oh,” Simons said, staring at the floor while shuffling his feet in discomfort.

Ronin continued, “I don’t know much about others, but me? After mom and dad passed, I had to fight for everything. Be it keeping a part-time job while walking around on a broken leg, protecting my food as I was walking home, or fighting off some bastard, just out and about and looking for trouble.”

"I-I didn't know it was that bad," Simons stammered.

"People have different lives. To me it's normal."

Ronin ended the conversation there, quickly entering the VR-chamber. It was one thing to talk about the injuries he'd gotten before acquiring the Potentia Panorama, but if Simons began asking about the other more recent scars, such as the white patches left behind after getting shot by laser fire? Yeah, things could get complicated real fast.

“…”

As he sank into the chamber, it didn't take long for his entire body to be submerged.

[Initializing integration… 3…2…1]

The nutrient fluid around him changed into the familiar pre-interstellar era stone floor and he walked over to the red velvet chair.

[Welcome Inevitability.]

He selected the game “Glory in the Arena” and entered.

The familiar arena rose up as the hot sun bathed his body. He crouched down and scooped up a handful of sand from the arena floor. As the bloodstained sand fell through his fingers, teeth and nails became visible.

Ronin thought about the time his apartment was blown up. After he’d blacked out, the voice in the dark had talked about the ladder of ascension, the fields of strife.

That voice might be right, he thought as he looked at the nails and teeth. In a sense, this really is the fields of strife…

He queued up for a match.

Ylestri Ivannos floated through the illustrious hallway as she made her way back towards her room. Ahead, servants bowed their heads as she approached.

“Young mistress,” the first said as she passed.

“Young mistress,” another one echoed.

It was all the same. She really only had 3 people she could speak to frankly. Her father, her mother and her uncle. Anyone else either treated her as someone to scheme against, or as some sort of holy creature. Being only 47 years old, she still had 15 more years before she could be given any sort of real responsibility. It didn’t stop anyone else from treating her like a god though. Reaching her room, she immediately headed for her VR-capsule and entered her favorite game, “Glory in the Arena.”

[Welcome Sleeping Empress]

To start off, she entered spectator mode looking to see if there were any interesting matches going on. She spotted a name: Thousand Palms-3. Weren’t those guys supposed to be in the diamond league? Why was he currently in the silver league, and his rank was dropping? What was going on?

She’d fought Thousand palms-1 before and had struggled quite a bit before beating him. Could this Thousand Palms-3 be a fake?

Curious, she entered the match, watching the battle from one of the seats in the colosseum. There were quite a few others here as well, commenting back and forth as they watched the fight. Upon seeing the two combatants, she couldn’t help but blurt out: “What!? There’s two of them!?”

The two combatants were practically mirror images of each other. Every move, gesture and cadence were the same.

“They’ve been going at it for almost an hour now,” a man next to her commented. “In the beginning, Inevitability kept losing, but the Thousand Palms guy kept requesting rematches, insulted that someone would try to beat him with his own style.”

“And this... Inevitability, how long did it take him to start winning?” She asked, fascinated.

“After about 7 matches, this... COUGH! battle of pride I guess? began turning in Inevitability’s favor, but I don’t think Thousand Palms-3 would agree, he keeps requesting rematch after rematch despite losing each and every one,” the man laughed.

Another rematch was about to begin. She watched in wonder how this man called Inevitability, mirrored the famous Koshijutsu style, striking pressure points one by one in the same manner all the other Thousand Palms did. As the battle raged, the opponent became more and more crippled, eventually leading to another win for Inevitability.

Interesting… he might be special... special like her... Interesting indeed.

She sent him a friend request, which was automatically blocked right after.

“I would have expected as much,” She murmured, having also used the automatic block function herself as she climbed the ladder. But she was a challenger now, and that meant having certain privileges when it came to this sort of thing. Using her status, she forced the friend request.

[You have been forcibly befriended by challenger Sleeping Empress]

“Huh?” Ronin, baffled, looked at the new name in his friends list.

“Was something like that even possible?” He said to himself as he returned to the lobby. He’d been issued another rematch by the pressure point guy, but this... forceful befriending was so distracting, he’d failed to respond before the timer ran out.

Staring at the new name in his friends list, he waited, then, waited some more. There were no messages, no requests for battle, nothing. Shaking his head, he queued up for another match. There were still a few hours to go before his brain gassed out.

“…”

The next few days were spent on filling out the framework of the cargo ship's lower hull. Aerogel intermixed with polarized nanofilms were first glued into the hull as a matter of extra protection. Wires were connected to the films in order to generate electromagnetic fields which would protect the ship from radiation during interplanetary trips. After finishing with the aerogel, more, thin metallic plates with grooves fitted in were then laid over, allowing for new cables to be easily laid down. These cables, when connected up to the central power system, would power anything from thrusters to the gravitic shock absorbers in the inertial dampener system.

Getting the electronics right was crucial and hours upon hours were spent on double-, and sometimes triple checking their work. Both Ronin and Simons learned much, and by the time the exams were but a night away, they'd finished installing most of the lower hull’s internals. They’d done so well they'd even begun printing the components that would later be used to build the ship's sleeping quarters.

“…”

Waking up early, Ronin checked his implant. It was time. The exams were about to begin. He walked up to the now more modest looking Heromaker suit, put it on, then ordered a security detail. With a bounty of 3 million credits, he'd eventually bitten the proverbial bullet and begun investing more in security. It kind of defeated the purpose of having military grade turrets at the factory if he flew around using everyday normal commuter shuttles.

In short order, the security detail arrived, and he was swiftly driven to the academy. After arriving, he, along with the other students, was led down under one of the academy’s study halls. Walking down the stairs in the brightly lit white corridor, the smell of nanitic sterility tainted the air, evidenced by the faint scent of ozone.

There would be no cheating today. Nanitic disinfectants killed anything small and mechanical. Every little spying gadget that reached out, would soon discover that its electromagnetic touch was a two-way bridge to far more than the expected cheat sheet.

Fortunately, my implant is well protected behind my eye, Ronin thought as he felt the hairs along his arms rise from the electrical field silently crackling through the corridor.

As the procession of students came to halt, the man leading the group, Principal Armstrong, opened a special access door and the white of the hallway was replaced by an expansive dark room, denoted by numerous circular depressions, lit up in neon blue.

The principal turned towards the students. “Each of you, walk into your respective exam pits.”

As the group of nervous students began moving into the room, Ronin, following closely behind, opened up the interface on his Uninet-2000. Instead of the Concordia Network, the only thing available was a version of the academy's local net. With a nudge of his head, he established a connection, and a virtual path lit up along the floor, showing him his respective exam pit.

Entering the 2-meters deep pit, he noticed all surrounding sound disappearing and a flat, slightly robotic voice began asking questions. “What are the key practical differences between quantum teleportation and spatial folding when traveling faster than light?”

Ronin thought about it for a moment… This question was actually rather easy! “Quantum teleportation has severe restrictions on having a stable environment. It has to be done at specific space stations, placed along clean Lagrange points, of which, there are few. Our own solar system only has one such place. Further, in order to teleport, your own station needs to link up to the station at the place you want to travel to. This makes it impossible to use quantum teleportation if you want to travel to a new undeveloped system. Space folding drives has none of those issues and can be used almost anywhere. They are, however, slower, their fuel is more expensive, and they spend more of it. Simply put, quantum jumps are cheap but restrictive, whereas space folding is expensive but free.”

A blue text box appeared along the wall of the pit, typing down every word he'd just said. He pressed the “Finalize” button and the flat voice began asking a new question.

This went on for hours and Ronin was asked about anything from FTL theory to which programming language to use when processing raw sensory data. Fortunately, despite the exam being long and tedious, most questions proved easy to answer, and after solving a final equation on orbital dynamics, he was quickly given his exam results:

Candidate: Ronin Maximus

MAT 1002: mathematics of orbital dynamics: A

PHYD 1032: introduction to sub-light propulsion: A

PHYD 1045: introduction to FTL engines: A

SPD 101: introduction to spaceship construction: A

INF: 1003: Introduction to spacecraft programming languages: B

MAT: 233: Partial differential equations: A

PHYS: 220: Introduction to materials science: B

SPD 102: Spaceship construction, addon course: A

Having done twice as many courses as everyone else, he was one of the last out of the pit.

[Got an A in every course!] Simons’ text pinged him as he exited the building.

[See, told you we should prioritize ship building! Got sort of the same result myself,] Ronin texted back, before immediately receiving a voice call. Simons’ animated hologram immediately popped up in front of his face. [DID YOU GET THE MYTHICAL S-GRADE!?].

Ronin, rolling his eyes, groaned back, [No I didn’t, and for the love of The Void, would you calm down?]

[Anastasia got an S in introduction to spaceship construction!] Simons continued, most definitely not calmed down.

[Hmm, figured] Ronin nodded back. [She keeps scoring points in every class, if anyone was going to get an S-grade, it would be her.]

[We need to get that grade Ronin! What if Anastasia gets it next semester as well, and we don't? We'd be left in the dust!]

[Yeah yeah sure, anyways, let’s talk later back at the factory,] Ronin finished before ending the call.

As for the S-grade? He didn’t particularly care either way. Although an S-grade was impressive, what he wanted, was first and foremost to design spaceships. Answering questions in class and hoarding in extra points was not really all that important in the grand scheme of things. What he needed from the academy was knowledge, and on that note, he'd just passed the exams and there were now 8 new courses available!