22. Freedom United. Lancetech again. Also Zenatonium.

"Oh! I can see it! I can see it!" Abyssal yelled out in excitement as she saw a small silhouette of a ship within the omni-directional cameras.

Kuon, who was surprised by Abyssal’s sudden yell immediately stopped whatever it was that she was doing and went over to Abyssal's location.

"Have we arrived at the distress signal already?" Kuon asked as she approached the excited Abyssal, the two now within the cockpit of the S.A.S. Abyssal.

"Yep! Looks like a small fighter jet. Well, half of it at least. It's smaller than me as well. I think we can tractor beam the thing into the cargo bay," Abyssal replied to Kuon, describing what she was seeing.

"I see. I must admit, I am a bit disappointed. I was expecting more."

"Don't be such a downer, Kuon. We'll be approaching it soon. Get the cargo bay ready. Jettison the useless stuff for now. We can pick it up again once we sort this out. Oh right, get the captain's quarters ready in case the pilot is still alive.”

"I will get to it," Kuon replied before moving to the cargo bay to make space for the small jet.

Abyssal approached the small broken jet before slowing down to match the speed of the craft. Once near enough, Abyssal took another look at the object. It had a weird brown and silver colour scheme to it and an equally weird logo on one of its wings. It was a symbol of two pairs of bird wings crossed with each other. On the bottom of the symbol was the word ‘Freedom United’.

Ignoring the strange logo, Abyssal went to look at the cockpit of the fighter. Unlike Abyssal whose cockpit was covered by the hull and contained within the ship, this jet fighter had its cockpit only half covered, the outer half of the cockpit was a black tinted glass of sorts. Abyssal couldn’t see what was beyond this black tinted glass, but she could assume that the pilot was within. The jet fighter itself had seen better days. It was basically just a cockpit with half a fuselage floating around.

‘There probably won’t be much loot, huh. I just hope that this jet still has its reactor or something.’ Abyssal thought to herself.

“Master, preparations are ready. Please proceed with beaming up the craft,” Kuon said to Abyssal moments after.

“Roger that,” Abyssal replied.

Abyssal then activated her tractor beam and pulled the small broken jet craft. The small fighter slowly made its way towards Abyssal. Once close enough, Abyssal opened one of two airlocks within herself. This airlock was different from the other one that she used before to travel out into space. This one was a larger airlock for larger objects that was pulled by the tractor beam. Once the craft was secured into the airlock, the temporary compartment pressurised to match the insides of Abyssal.

‘Ah right, I almost forgot. Abby, please turn on life support before bringing it into the cargo bay,’ Abyssal said to Abby as she remembered that her ship was not suited for life at the moment.

“Life support activated. Bringing craft into the cargo bay,” Abby replied.

As soon as Abby said that, a small rectangular hole appeared from the bottom of the cargo bay. A few seconds later, a platform with the broken jet appeared and rose to fill up said rectangular hole. The jet craft was now in front of Abyssal and Kuon in its full glory: half of a jet craft that is about 13m in length and 6m in height.

“Interesting. A Freedom United jet fighter,” Kuon muttered as she saw the logo on the craft.

“Hmm? You know of this Freedom United, Kuon?” Abyssal asked.

“Yes. Remember when I told you about that one battle I participated back when I was a ship in New England? One of the fleets that we were fighting was from a space nation known as Freedom United. It is a conglomerate of countries, tied together in the name of democracy and capitalism. Their symbol is a pair of wings that represent liberty,” Kuon said as she pointed at the logo of the craft.

“The nation's ships have an industrial look to them which is representative of their industrial might. In terms of weaponry, there is no other nation that can match the sheer power of their guns or their fighter and bomber capabilities. Their hull designs are nothing to scoff at, as well. I remember having a hard time penetrating the armour of pirates who were using looted Freedom United hulls. Or at least, that was how it was decades ago before I went into hibernation.”

‘Heeehh, so they are like the United States… or could they actually be…?’ Abyssal thought to herself, finding an interesting comparison with a certain nation from when she was 'A'.

“I see. Tell me more about them later. For now, we loot this jet!” Abyssal said to Kuon excitedly, pushing the matter aside.

“...understood, Master. I suggest we start with the cockpit to confirm if the pilot is alive or not,” Kuon replied.

And so the two ship girls went to work. They started by using their nanomachines to deconstruct the cockpit.

….…...

“Not going to lie, the pilot is a pretty handsome man,” Abyssal said to Kuon as they viewed the inside of the cockpit.

"Indeed. I could imagine a few that would be enamoured by his charming looks. He must be very popular with the ladies," Kuon replied.

Within the seat of the cockpit was a man, a human, who looked no more than thirty. He had short bright golden blonde hair and shining white teeth. He had a good looking face, chiselled jaw with a romanesque nose. His eyes were bright blue and had a hypnotic look in them. One may feel lost looking at said eyes. He also had a fit and trim build that one could see through his spacesuit.

The man was also dead.

“Cause of death due to asphyxiation. Estimated time of death: 7 days ago. Decomposition of the body halted due to lack of oxygen,” Abby said to Abyssal.

‘Right, I kinda knew this would happen….You can turn off life support now. Don’t think we have any use for it.’

“Life supports disabled.”

“Master… what do we do with the body?” Kuon asked as she looked away from the man.

“Make him a coffin or something, I guess. Send him back out there,” Abyssal said before looking away from the man as well. “Rest in peace,” she whispered softly.

“Noted, I will construct the coffin right now,” Kuon said as she grabbed the man out from his seat before moving him elsewhere.

‘Alright. Now that the pilot is gone, guess I’ll help myself to his stuff,’ Abyssal thought as she moved to further inspect the cockpit of the craft.

She entered the seat and looked at the various buttons and displays on the control panel. It was definitely much more futuristic-looking than her own control panel. Looking at the bottom of the cockpit, she could see various pedals as well.

‘This looks pretty high tech,’ Abyssal thought to herself.

Seeing nothing else of value in the cockpit, she then put her hand on the dashboard, injecting a few hundred million nanites in order to assimilate the spacecraft. The small cloud of blue and black entered the spacecraft and deep into its systems. A jet this high tech must have something for her, right? It may just be half a fighter jet, but she hoped that the jet’s reactor or something important would be located in the front of it.

‘Please be something good, please be something good!’ Abyssal prayed as her nanomachines spread throughout the craft.

Her prayers were answered when she felt the very familiar feeling of consuming something. The imaginary feeling of her stomach being filled up. It was then that she felt a sense of taste and a blast of information hit her consciousness. Abyssal just stayed there savouring the rare moments when she gets to eat something.

‘Mmmmm. It tastes like milk chocolate. That’s like my favourite back on earth. This better be a good component! ’ Abyssal thought to herself.

“Assimilation is successful. Components below added to the list of systems.

-Lancetec—”

“Bleargh!” Abyssal felt the feeling of wanting to vomit the moment she saw the company's name.

‘Abby! Cancel assimilation! Toss this jet out right now!’ Abyssal yelled out internally.

Abby, however, ignored her and continued to announce the parts that were assimilated.

“Assimilation is successful. Components below added to the list of systems.

-Lancetech Corporation Short Range Compact Radar. Energy Required= 36 MJ/s-Lancetech Corporation Personal Inertia Dampener.-6g of Zenatonium found.”

”Urghhhh…. Thirty-six megawatts of power just to use this damn radar? Dammit, this is practically worthless to me. The inertia dampener as well… these shitty Lancetech products use so much power, I just don’t understand,“ Abyssal complained as she examined the list of things she assimilated.

“Hmm?” Abyssal was a little bit surprised when she saw that she just obtained six grams of Zenatonium.

“Ah right, there is a little bit of Zenatonium in any electrical components... But six grams of Zenatonium, huh. Hey Abby, how much Zenatonium can we get if we scrap the Personal Inertia Dampener?” Abyssal asked.

“Scuttling Lancetech Corporation Personal Inertia Dampener will result in one gram of Zenatonium.”

“Please scrap it,” Abyssal said as she let out a sigh.

“Wait… hey Abby, how much Zenatonium do we actually have right now? I remember we did scrap those components from Kuon’s cruiser for resources. We should still have those in the bay.”

“Personal Inertia Dampener scrapped. Total Zenatonium aboard the S.A.S. Abyssal is 37g.”

“Oh, so we have quite an amount of Zenatonium on board already. Hey, how much do we need before we could form an Avatar?” Abyssal asked excitedly.

“Zenatonium required for construction of enough Type-two Nanomachines is 60kg.”

“Haaaaaa...” Abyssal didn’t reply, only letting out a loud sigh.

The journey to obtaining a sexy avatar was still far away.

* * * * *

“Master, I have finished constructing the coffin. The human has been successfully ejected back into space,” Kuon said to Abyssal after sending the human away.

“Oh! Good job,” Abyssal replied.

“I see that the deconstruction of the fighter jet is near completion. Did we obtain anything good from it?” Kuon asked as she saw that most of the jet was gone, stripped down to pure resources.

Each different resource and element was sorted neatly on the floor next to the craft. Kuon was pleasantly surprised that her sloven master was capable of arranging the resources in such a neat way.

“We got a shitty radar, I guess. That’s about it… I was really hoping for a new reactor,” Abyssal replied with a tired voice as she looked at the component that was recently installed to the S.A.S. Abyssal.

“I see…  is this the radar in question?“

“Yep. It uses a lot of power so I don’t think I will be using it much. Just thought I would install it and see how it works,” Abyssal said as she observed a big display panel. On the panel was a three-dimensional compass.

“I’m trying to see if we can figure out our location in the galaxy with this thing,” Abyssal continued.

“I see,” Kuon replied as she went over to the display as well, curious about how the new component would work.

“It can detect things from a range of about five hundred thousand kilometres. I plan to set a timer or something. Maybe activating the radar every minute for about ten second?” Abyssal proposed.

“Yes, that would work. Perhaps, an interval of thirty seconds would be more practical,” Kuon responded.

“Alright then, I’ll set it to turn on ever thirty sec—”

Before Abyssal could finish her words, a red blip suddenly appeared on the compass. It was very near to Abyssal. As a matter of fact, according to the map, it was directly above Abyssal.

‘Huh?’ Abyssal let out a confused voice as she used her omni-directional cameras to look at what was above.

What she saw was a freighter ship that was about four or five times her size.