41. Modernizing The Original S.A.S. Abyssal

"Here ya go, Kapitan. Back to your original seat," Abyssal said as she placed down the lockbox, which contained Kapitan's remains, on the seat of the Fierca's cockpit.

"You are going to stay here until the conversion of the Maxwell, or the shark, is complete. Oh right! I hope you don't mind Meica using the captain's quarters in the meantime. She doesn't have any place to sleep during the whole thing."

"..."

"Alright then, take care! I got a ship to upgrade!" Abyssal gave a salute before leaving the pile of bones. Her destination was the reactor of the Fierca Class.

She walked through the small cargo bay filled with a multitude of resources and metals and opened the bulkhead to the engine room. Once inside, she could see what was once her only heart, the old antique Lancetech reactor, within a big round transparent cylinder glass. Next to it was the smaller, more functional reactor that she constructed from scrounging resources from the Maxwell— a copy of the Maxwell’s backup reactor.

Thanks to this new reactor, the Fierca was operational again with little to no setbacks. The performance of the Fierca when it had a barely running reactor versus an actual functioning reactor was like the difference between day and night. Its performance during mining and the engagement against the Dawning Star fighter was proof that it could still do well even despite the antiquity of it.

Kapitan’s journal said that this ship was an excellent stealth fighter and was probably the most manoeuvrable ship at that time. Though its manoeuvrability didn’t quite hold on, the ship’s capability for stealth was still amazing as it was still able to sneak up on the more advanced Tsubame class.

Abyssal walked towards her old heart and put her robotic arms on the thin glass of the antique reactor. ‘I wonder if I should upgrade this ship as well?’ Abyssal thought to herself.

There were a lot of things that can be upgraded with the Fierca. Things like a better radar system, better thrusters, better weapons systems, better directional propulsions and better armour. Much of these systems can just be copied over from the blueprints she gained from the Tsubame class, she could even upgrade the hull into the more stealthy hulls and add the radar obstructor from the Tsubame to make the Fierca even better at staying hidden.

A modernization so to say.

There was only one problem— the fact that there wasn’t much space on the Fierca to put for the new components. Not unless Abyssal removed the antique components of the Fierca class. This proved to be quite a conundrum for Abyssal as the antique components, according to the two old crew members of the Maxwell, was said to be able to fetch a high price among collectors.

Sure Abyssal could deconstruct the antique blueprints and just reconstruct them again when the time comes, but she wasn’t sure if she would get a good amount if the antiques didn’t come in a whole set. Then again, it was doubtful if Abyssal would actually sell the Fierca anyways. She would need to find a collector after all. Besides, this was her first self. She made a promise to Kapitan that she will bring the namesake of this ship for the galaxy to know.

‘Yeah, upgrading this ship is a better choice. Having two good ships is always better than one,’ Abyssal thought to herself.

She then closed her ‘eyes’ and began to visualize the newly upgraded Fierca class. Though she did that, it’s not like Kuon’s visualization where an entire 3D model of the Fierca class transformed in her mind. Instead, it was just her imagining what to put on the ship and what she thought the ship would look like after the upgrade. She visualized a buffed swallow dodging attacks and shooting lasers and missiles at large ships. A ship that when detected can just blitz out of engagement range.

‘Hmm, yeah, a stealth fighter that can go in and out of combat range… yeah! I like that!’ Abyssal thought to herself.

Once done fantasizing, she clapped her two robotic arms together and proceeded to deconstruct her old heart, the broken nuclear reactor within the engine room. Clouds of nanites came out of her personal drone and started to eat the old nuclear reactor. She waved goodbye to it for a service well done.

“Oh right! The reactor was the only place that we didn’t check yet. Wonder if my core is inside it? Kinda doubt it though,” Abyssal muttered as she observed the reactor slowly being deconstructed by the nanites— the old reactor being torn apart piece by piece and converted to raw resources. The spent uranium rods that she had no use for, she constructed a lead box to store them in. Maybe one day, she might be able to use it for something.

‘Oh right! Gotta make sure this whole room is lead protected. Not sure how the radiation will affect Meica.’

…...

A good half an hour passed when the reactor finally finished deconstructing. And as expected, Abyssal’s core was nowhere to be found, deepening the mystery about the whereabouts of her core even further.

‘Guess, it’s not here, huh. I wonder where the hell it is… Heck, do I even have a core?’ Abyssal thought to herself. She then remembered about the latency she got when she was steering the Fierca. ‘Perhaps I really did move it to the Maxwell? Ah well, if it’s really in the Maxwell, then we’ll find it sooner or later. We are retrofitting the whole thing after all. No stone will be left unturned. In the meantime...’

After pushing the thoughts of her core’s whereabouts to the back of her mind yet again, she concentrated on using the newfound resources to add a few specific parts to the Fierca. First off, the radar obstructor. For a ship that’s supposed to be stealthy, it makes sense for it to be hard to detect on radar. She wondered for a while, why the Fierca didn’t have one in the first place. Perhaps, it was not needed back then, but times have changed. It was a no brainer. She saw first-hand just how good it can be for a ship to not be detected by radar. How could she not add them to the Fierca?

She brought up in her mind the blueprints for the radar obstructor before placing it right next to the radar system of the Fierca Class. She had no idea where the best place to place the object was, so she just placed it someplace where she could easily remember the location of it.

Now that she’s done with that, she moved on to the second thing, upgrading her weapons systems. Now that she gained some missile launchers, it would be a sin to not use them within the Fierca. She saw how effective it was to shoot projectiles laced with nanomachines to immobilize an enemy. A missile launcher would make that task of getting nanomachines onto an enemy ship much easier. However, to add the missile system, she would need to modify the hull of the ship to fit the component. Abyssal got started almost immediately and ordered her cloud of nanomachines to so.

‘Oh right! Since I’m changing the hull a bit, I might as well change the directional thrusters together. If I’m not mistaken, the directional thrusters of the Tsubame class had a higher speed cap than the ones on the Fierca. May as well change it. Hey Abby, mind doing me some calculations on how to place it on the Fierca?’

[Affirmative]

‘Good. And, oh right! Need to add the chaff deployer as well. That would help with the missiles and oh! Might as well expand the hull with some spaced armour as well to take additional damage. Does spaced armour even work in space?’ Abyssal thought to herself.

She let her creativity take control of her and started adding more of her designs onto the Fierca. Anything she could think of, she added to the ship. Guns on the rear of the ship? Added. Changing the hulls to make the ship look cooler? Done. She spared no expenses in modifying the ship. She wanted it to be truly useful.

She did leave some space for a bigger hull upgrade in the future. Who knows? One of these days, this small fighter corvette might actually become a large battleship one day. She’s going to need to expand the hull though.

All in all, the whole modernization process took about thirteen hours to complete. Once she was done, she could feel a sense of accomplishment filled herself. She dubbed the newly retrofitted ship the S.A.S. Abyssal Fierca Mk.2.

S.A.S. Abyssal Fierca MK.2 Specifications: Ship Dimensions: L:67m  H:29.2m, Spaced Armor with Stealth Hulls V2 Acceleration and deceleration limit: 35 km/s² Speed Limit: 415 km/s Rate of turn: 20°/s Power Produce: 300 MJ/s

Lancetech(obsolete) Twin Mass Drivers Mk.1 Specifications: Rate of fire: 6 shots per second x 2 Energy Used Per Second : 600 MJ/s x 2 Energy Used Per Shot : 100 MJ Ammunition remaining : 134

Lancetech 350° Omni-directional cameras (Full-Powered Mode): Energy Usage: 55MJ/s

Summary of Components:

-Nipon Steel Standard Thrusters. (Usage: 180 MJ/s)-Nipon Steel Standard Directional Propulsion System (Usage: 180 MJ/s)-Lancetech Standard Life Support (5 MJ/s)-Lancetech Standard Tractor beam-Lancetech Comercial Use Space-time Folder (Repaired, No Warp Fuel) -Silver Light Systems Universal Communications Facility: Model NH177013 (Usage 3MJ/s_-Silver Light Systems Universal Transceiver-Nipon Steel Standard Radar Obstructor (Fighter Specifications) (Usage: 36MJ/s)-Nipon Steel Standard Chaff deployer (Fighter Specifications)-Nipon Steel Standard Missile Tube (Fighter Specifications)-Lancetech Corporation Short Range Compact Radar (Fighter Specifications, Usage:36 MJ/s))Energy Storage Capacity: 49 880 MJ-Lancetech Energy Storage Facility Mk.1-Abyss Fire Energy Storage Tank MK.2

“Hmm, a little bit tight on power, but this will have to do for now. I’ll see what I can do when I get more blueprints in the future. Maybe I can even ask Kuon if she has any good components I can add to the ship as well.”

“Other than that, the only thing I’m missing is shields, huh? Would be nice if I could get some. Wonder where I could get it though? Haven’t seen a ship with shields yet,” Abyssal muttered to herself as she looked around, trying to see if there was anything else she could do to upgrade the ship further.

She did.

At the corner of her eyesight was the number of raw resources available to her. One of the said resources was the so-called special resources for Living cores known as Zenatonium. Right now, she currently has 1762g of it— just enough to improve one of her components. Zenatonium infused components as explained by Kuon, were components that were much more efficient and effective at the cost of using more power to utilize. She wanted to save up for the creation of her avatar, but seeing as collecting 60kg of Zenatonium was nothing short of a miracle for the current Abyssal, she decided that it was better to use it for something else.

By assimilating the component from the Tsubame, she had also, automatically, gained the knowledge on how to infuse her components with Zenatonium. The Tsubame class which Abyssal obtained most of her Zenatonium from, used most of its Zenatonium to improve its radar obstructor— which would explain why Abyssal’s normal radar system wasn’t able to detect it, despite the fighter being in relatively close proximity to Abyssal during that fight.

Now, Abyssal could follow the same steps as the Dawn Star Living core and spec fully into stealth, but Abyssal saw first-hand that it didn’t really help against targets if they have already spotted her. There were other components which she can infuse which would give her more of an advantage in that situation, so she had a hard time to decide whether or not to infuse those instead. She gave it a bit of thinking and eventually decided to just go with her original plan and improve her radar system.

“The way I see it, nothing beats being able to see an enemy no matter where they are. Yup, I’ll go with this then. Abby, what’s the spec if we upgrade our Lancetech radar?” Abyssal asked.

[The following will be gained by infusing Lancetech Corporation Short Range Compact Radar (Fighter Specifications) with Zenatonium.

Extra Detection Range (From .5 million kilometres to 1 million kilometresAbsolute Detection Range (Absolute detection of any objects within 50 000 Kilometres)Increase in Power Usage (From 36 MJ/s to 72 MJ/s]

“About a two times increase, huh. Eh, why not. Let’s go for it, Abby.”

[Affirmative.]

As soon as Abby said that, she could see clouds of nanites ejecting from her body carrying a glowing purple substance. In her screen, the number of Zenatonium she had, decreased as the nanites enveloped the radar she looted from the Freedom United fighter. It took a while, but once the job was finished, the radar glowed eerie blue and purple. Abyssal could sense within herself the extended range of the radar. A million kilometres in detection radius. She didn’t know how good this was, but it was a good start. It would take her quite a while to travel that distance, after all.

“.. I think that’s about it. Alright, time to give this baby a test drive!”

…...

Unfortunately for Abyssal, it would further take her many more hours of fine-tuning before she could finally launch the ship properly into space— having to re-adjust her components and parts. Her components and ship designs didn’t work as brilliantly as she first expected. She learnt that day that remodelling and upgrading a ship was not as easy as she thought— even with advanced nanotech and a super-advanced computer at her side.

“Can’t be helped. I’m new to all of this alright! I’m not perfect!” Abyssal yelled out to no one in particular.