17. Abyssal’s New Communications Device!

'Well, that was easier than I thought it would be,' Abyssal thought to herself as she stared at the unlocked mysterious-looking crate. A crate that was several times larger than her personal drone, Kaon.

She thought that it would be much harder to open given how sinister it looks, assuming that the crate would have complicated locks and compartments. Abyssal was even prepared for the crate to be some sort of trap and prepared numerous cautionary measures.

Alas, none of that mattered as the crate was just an ordinary crate painted in mysterious black and red colour. Unlocking it was simply a matter of pushing two different buttons at the same time. There were no traps, no poisonous gas or anything.

'That's kinda boring… I wonder why the red fighter even dropped this crate?' Abyssal thought to herself, feeling rather disappointed at the lack of anything special happening.

"Ah well. I wonder what's inside?" Abyssal muttered as she opened the lid to the crate.

During the opening of the crate, a creaking noise came out and the air made a swooshing sound as the pressure inside the crate normalized with the air outside. Dust particles came out of what's inside before settling all around the ship. Abyssal then hovered over the top of the crate to take a look at what's inside.

'Hmm? What's this?' Abyssal asked herself, confused by what she saw.

Within the crate was a component that looked to be made of some high-grade steel. It was rectangular in shape and had some sort of control panel on it. On the control panel was an assortment of buttons, sliders, switches and many small displays. One of the displays was a large monitor screen that was slightly bigger than Kaon's length and height. At the sides of the component were two large antennas sticking out of the metallic body.

'Is this some sort of futuristic gaming console?' Abyssal thought to herself. She could not for the love of her life tell what the machine's purpose was. All she knew was that whatever this machine was, it looked like serious business.

There was no need for her to think too much though, she has an easy way to know what this was anyways. Putting her robotic arm on top of the console, Abyssal ordered her nanomachines to assimilate the component. Various clouds of black and blue extruded out of the drone before making their way to the component.

It was then that Abyssal was assailed by a familiar feeling. The nice feeling of her imaginary stomach being filled up, the feeling of consuming something.

'Mmmmm… This one tastes like high-quality Norwegian salmon,' Abyssal thought to herself as the information about the component filled her brain. Knowledge of what the object is, how to operate it and the blueprints to create replicas of it.

"Assimilation is successful. Components below added to the lists of systems.

-Silver Light Systems Universal Communications Facility: Model NH177013. Energy Required = 3MJ/s-Silver Light Systems Universal Voice Modulator-Silver Light Systems Universal Transceiver."

'Oh?' Abyssal rubbed her imaginary eyes and re-read what she just assimilated.

Her eyes did not lie.

'Ooooooooohhhhhh!!! Communication device obtained!!' Abyssal yelled out internally. She flailed around with her personal drone, dancing around in place as she shouted out in excitement.

How could she not be excited? This was one of two things she desperately needed. A way to communicate with other ships! One may ask why the Crimson Red Fighter would drop such a valuable component but Abyssal couldn't care about that matter right now. She was simply too elated to care.

Kuon, who saw the commotion, came over to see what was happening. She was rather curious about why her master was dancing around without a care in the world.

"Kuon! Help. Me. Out. Here." Abyssal called out to Kuon when she noticed that Kuon was just staring at her weirdly.

"This. Is. A. Communication. Device. Help. Me. Install. It." Abyssal clarified further.

Kuon jerked up upon hearing this news. She energetically gave a few nods and a respectful bow. Afterwards, she immediately went over to the crate in order to assist Abyssal.

And so, the two drones went to work on installing the communication device on the S.A.S. Abyssal.

….…...

It took them a while to set it up and secure it to the hull of the ship. There were some complications on where to put the device but they ended up deciding that the best place to put it would be the cockpit. They cleared a few things here and there and made space for the device before securely melding it to the hull. Abyssal and Kuon then started to plug the power cables into the machine. Now all that's left to do was to simply turn on the machine.

*Pachik

Abyssal flipped the switch and the communications device started to boot up. The booting up sequence was very much like Kuon's awakening, minus the modem noises. Instead, the display on the control panel lit up and showed a loading circle. The logo of the company 'Silver Light Systems' was shown below the circle. Once booted up, the device played some sort of catchy tune. It was very familiar to a tune that Abyssal always heard on earth when booting up her PC.

'What is this? W**dows?' Abyssal couldn’t help but compare the tune with the famous operating system.

Even though the system booted up successfully, the display screen turned into another loading screen. On the screen were just the words ‘Initializing’ with a progress bar at the bottom. The progress bar slowly filled up and the percentage number in the middle of the bar went from 0% to 7%. It stayed at 7% for a short while before jumping to 22%, then jumped to 34% after a minute, and then ticked up to 35% after a few more seconds.

‘Even thousands of years in the future, progress bars are still not accurate, huh?’ Abyssal thought to herself as she stared at the communication device with a deadpan face.

Still, this was an exciting moment for Abyssal. Her imaginary heart pumped with excitement as she saw the progress bar slowly progressing to 100%. If one looked closely, they could see that Kuon was jumping with joy as well for every tick of progress on the bar. The two Living Cores were like children seeing a new toy for the first time.

“System Initialized. Communications Device successfully added to the list of systems and parameters,” Abby’s voice came out once the progress bar hit 100%.

“Yay!” Abyssal raised her arms as if praising the sun; Kuon followed after her.

‘I wonder what this baby can do. Let’s try it out immediately!’ Abyssal thought to herself as she made her way to the control panel.

Though her movement was stopped when Abby sent out another message. “One unread video message stored in the system.”

‘Huh? A message?’

“Affirmative. The message was pre-recorded about 80 hours ago.”

‘Fue? That’s around the time where I got trashed by the red fighter. Hmm, could the message be from the pilot?'

“Awaiting personality Abyssal’s advice on the matter,” Abby said to Abyssal.

‘It has to be from the pilot huh… Let’s play it. I don’t see what’s the problem with that.’ Abyssal gave the order to Abby.

“Playing video message now,” Abby replied.

As soon as Abby finished her words, the large monitor of the communications device turned on. On the screen was a woman with long flaming red hair sitting in what looked like a dark room with glowing red lines. She was wearing a sort of stylised space clothing slash jumpsuit with red glowing lines on it. Her inner clothing stuck to her skin and revealed two rather well-endowed treasures on her chest.  Abyssal and Kuon could not identify her face as it was shrouded by darkness.

‘Heeeh… so the pilot is a woman, huh... ‘

“If you received this message, then my assumptions were right. You either don’t have a communications system or your system is not functional. There is only one reason I can think of why you would install this obsolete communications device, after all,” the woman said to the camera. Her voice was cold and fitting of a woman in her mid-twenties. It was a voice that conveyed experience and confidence.

‘Obsolete…?’

“I’ll be blunt with you, the pilot or captain in the black and blue ship,” she did a short pause.

“You are weak,” she said in a mocking tone.

‘Guhak!’ Abyssal flinched at her statement.

“Consider our battle a warning message to you. Space is not a kind place for a weakling nor a fool. I’m not sure if you are some kid with a stupid dream or some person who thinks they can make it big in space but you are just going to get yourself and whoever else in that ship killed. Just go back to whatever system you came from and don’t bother coming out into space again,” she said with a cold voice.

‘Aren’t you being a bit too mean here! I mean I have a dream but it’s not like that I wished to be out here you know! Well… I guess I kinda did, but that’s different!’ Abyssal argued back to the pilot. There was no way for her to hear Abyssal’s complaints though.

It was then that the face on the image looked away from the camera. “But… I guess you did well for a pilot with obsolete tech. You even managed to catch me by surprise. I’ll commend you on that.”

‘Ehehe, did I really? You were pretty good yourself too.'  Abyssal said with a flush on her cheeks and a sheepish smile, her hands scratching her face. Metaphorically.

'Also, stop calling me obsolete!’

“For this communication device… you can take it. I don’t really need it. I’m not giving it to you because I want to help you or anything, it just happens to be useless to me. Use it to call a distress signal or something. This is Astral signing off,” said the woman as she brought her hand to the screen. The message ended as soon as she did so.

‘What are you? Some sort of tsundere? Thanks for the communications device, I guess… Also Astral huh… that’s a good name,’ Abyssal thought to herself as she committed the name of the pilot to memory.

‘Astral… I’m sure that one of these days, we will meet again. I promise I’ll *pay you back when that happens. Mark my words!’

Latest Relevant Systems Report of the S.A.S. Abyssal:

Living Core Summary:Name: S.A.S. Abyssal.Consciousness: ActiveCurrent Setting: Emotion > LogicComputational usage at 0.8% (Power Insufficient)Assimilation/Control of Ship: 100%Nanomachine Usage: 487m³ nanomachines in total (16.63% of Nanomachines used, 83.37% in reserves, 25m³ nanomachines destroyed.)

New Systems Added:-Silver Light Systems Universal Communications Facility: Model NH177013. Energy Usage = 3MJ/s-Silver Light Systems Universal Voice Modulator-Silver Light Systems Universal Transceiver

Current Energy Usage: 17 / 15 MJ/SLancetech Omni Camera(350° view), low energy mode = 6 MJ/sLancetech All-purpose drone x2 = 8MJ/sSilver Light Systems Universal Communications Facility =3MJ/sLiving Core = ???????? Energy usage