43. Test Drive and Sudden Appearance

“Thanks for helping out with the ship, Meica. I don’t know what I’ll do without you. I was afraid I might have accidentally broken the Fierca,” Abyssal said to Meica.

“Nyo problem. Told you Meica is engineer! Can fix a lot of things,” Meica replied with a proud look, her ears pointed up high.

“Yeah, you really help me out. I can’t imagine what Kuon will do to me if she finds out about it," Abyssal said as she held her robotic arms together and shook in place. "Keep this a secret from her will ya?”

“No problem!” Meica responded with a nod and moved her index finger and her thumb over her lips.

The two were now within the cockpit of the newly upgraded Fierca Class. On the seat was Meica sitting comfortably on the chair and on her lap was Abyssal’s personal drone, Kaon. It has been two weeks since they arrived at the quadrant and made a hideout within the large asteroid Y2. Abyssal was currently doing a test flight of the newly upgraded Fierca while Kuon and Abby finished off the conversion.

In the end, Abyssal couldn't really get the Fierca class to fly. She may have the power of a supercomputer and the most advanced form of shipbuilding technology at her disposal, but she was no expert in shipbuilding. Adding or removing components was simple enough, but when it came to modifying her hull completely, she was at an utter loss.

Modifying her directional thrusters and adding the spaced armour caused lots of problems in the steering of the ship. Her addition of too many components and her placement of them caused problems with the power routing system as well.

That’s not to mention about the messed-up camera system when she changed her hull— she literally could not see anything. Every time she tried to fix the problems, more problems started appearing elsewhere. Eventually, it all came tumbling down and Abyssal had no choice but to call in for external help. It just so happens that Meica was free and Abyssal didn’t want to hear Kuon nagging at her.

Overall, it was a total failure on her part. Her only successful modification was the infusion of the zenatonium into her new radar, which now gave her a whopping one million kilometre of detection and an absolute detection radius of 50 000 kilometres. Ships will have a harder time now getting past Abyssal undetected.

“How’s the ship, nyaa? Everything okay?” Meica asked as Abyssal steered the ship. They were currently within the asteroid field near the Little Foot quadrant, testing out the new ship. Abyssal tested the performance of the ship by doing sharp movements, testing the weapons systems by shooting random rocks and doing some testing on the new camera system. Everything felt pristine and smooth, it was like playing around with a brand new car.

“Yep! It feels so smooth now. I can manoeuvre better!” Abyssal replied as she made an orbit around an asteroid at high speeds. She then pushed her thrusters to the max and flew further away.

“With this, all that’s left to do is to wait for the Shark Class to finish completion and we can start finding some other port to sell the things that we mined from the Asteroid.”

“Yep, can’t wait to show Abyssal, Nyaa. Meica redesigned shark ship that stupid Maid drone gave. Much better than before!” Meica said.

Abyssal let off a sheepish laugh as she heard this. She recalled the little fight Meica and Kuon had regarding the modifications. Putting aside their differences, the two somehow, someway, managed to cooperate and finished the design. What ended up was a design that supposedly transcended all shark class ships. The bad blood between the two somewhat turned into respect for each other as they looked at the completed product. Abyssal could even recall the exact words that Kuon and Meica said when they finished the design.

...

"Outstanding. I seemed to have underestimated you, little nekomi," the maid said as she looked at the blueprints with a proud look.

"Of course, nyaa. Stupid maid drone too snobby to realise how bad her design is. Leave the designs to someone who actually knows what they are doing," Meica replied with an arrogant tone.

That was what the two said before devolving into another fight.

...

“I’ll take your word for it,” Abyssal gave a short laugh as she kept moving further away, excited about the prospects of a new ship. Maybe with the advanced stealth capabilities of the new one, she would actually be able to explore space in relative peace and slowly build up her power in the galaxy.

In the intervals of talking and piloting the ship, Abyssal made sure to keep an eye on what was happening in the Maxwell. From the cameras, she could see Kuon and Abby converting the ship, the process was about almost done by now. The hull no longer looked like the whale-shaped Maxwell. Instead, it was looking more like a shark with thrusters for fins. The cloud of blue and grey nanites swirling around the ship while sparks and parts flew around and attached itself to the main hull. Abyssal felt giddy and amazed at seeing the process, it was like watching a super-advanced sci-fi scene.

‘I’m surprised I could actually control this from this far away. I could still see what’s happening in the Maxwell. I wonder how far I can go before I lose connection?’ Abyssal thought to herself as she steered even further away from her temporary hideout. She wanted to find her answer today. She assumed it had something to do with the range of her communicator.

There was one other thing that surprised Abyssal, however. It was the fact that she was feeling the latency at the Maxwell instead of on the Fierca. Just a few weeks back it was the other way around. Where exactly was her core and what was going on? She pretty much stripped both ships clean for the upgrades and she found no such thing. The mystery deepened as Abyssal had no clue what was going on. Either she didn’t have a core or, she or Abby, were unconsciously moving the core around between the two ships. It frustrated Abyssal slightly that she could not find an answer to the question.

Letting out a sigh, she moved further away from the hideout, at a steady speed of 300 KM/s. One day she will find the true reason, but for now, her goal was to test out the upgraded Fierca and how far away she could move from the other ship. She was almost two million kilometres away from the hideout right now.

‘I wonder what would happen if I go too far. Will I just lose control of the nanites? I hope it won’t cause too many problems in the conversion if that were to happen.’ Abyssal thought to herself as she hummed in a state of calmness.  She hummed a joyful tune as she piloted the ship in a relaxed state. The past two weeks had been a rather quiet and peaceful one, after all. She would love for it to continue. No more crazy bad luck and no random ship popping up to take shots at her.

“Um, Abyssal,” Meica called out to Abyssal all of a sudden. She fidgeted in place uncomfortably as she held Abyssal’s personal drone.

“Hmm? Yeah, anything, Meica?” Abyssal replied, turning her drone around to look at her.

“Meica… wants to tell you something, nyaa," she said as she moved her eyes between Abyssal and the wall.

"Hmm? What is it?"

"I… have been keeping big secret from Abyssal," Meica said as she fidgeted around.

'Yeah, I've kinda noticed,' Abyssal thought to herself as she made no visible reaction towards the Nekomi.

"The truth is that... I know Abyssal is a Living Core…" Meica said softly.

"Oh… yeah, I kinda figured you would know," Abyssal replied.

"Is it? Nyahaha, Meica not a good liar,” Meica let out a small laugh. “But not only that, nyaa."

"Hmm?"

"Meica is actually—" said Meica before getting cut off by Abby.

[Incoming transmission from an open channel. Voice only, identity unknown.]

"Hey, you! The ship in black and blue… What the hell are you doing here?!” A familiar voice rang out of the communicator.

'Wha-what?! Is that… Astral?' Abyssal asked herself in her mind.

“I thought I told you to get out of this sector!" The familiar voice said with an angry tone.

‘Ehhh… why does she sound so angry!? Is she gonna shoot me again?!’

"Abby! Any enemies on the radar? Are we detected?" Abyssal asked in shock, prioritising this sudden news over Meica's reveal. Meica who was holding the drone in the cockpit went tense and kept quiet at the moment, as well.

[No signs of hostile entities on the radar. Unable to detect or trace back communications.]

Just as Abby said that another voice communication went through.

"I know you can hear me, why aren’t you answering, oi? I gave you the communicator, right?” Astral asked exasperatedly before letting out a sigh. She paused for a moment before speaking again.

“Look, kid. I don’t know if you are aware but this place is going to get a whole lot dangerous. I suggest you get out of here as soon as possible. Unless… you are one of those ships looking for the relic? Right...” Astral said.

A moment of awkward silence occurred.

‘Wh-what should I do? Do I… greet her back? And what does she mean that this place is going to become dangerous? What is this about a relic? Is she going to attack me like last time?’ Abyssal asked various questions to herself.

“Hey, Abyssal. You know this person?” Meica asked, her head tilted upon hearing the voice that came out of the communicator.

‘Oh right… Meica doesn’t know who Astral is, huh…’

“I guess you could say that. We fought a while back. I got trashed and she kinda helped me out a bit. Her name was Astral. Or at least that’s what she called herself,” Abyssal replied, recalling the events that happened months ago.

“Ohhh. So this Astral a good person? Friend?”

“...I wouldn’t say she’s a friend, exactly. But she’s definitely not a person I want to be fighting with. Not at this moment at least...” Abyssal replied before turning the ship around. She then pushed her thrusters to maximum output, her destination was the Asteroid hideout where the shark class is nearing completion.

“Nyaa?! Where is Abyssal going?” Meica asked, confused about the sudden manoeuvres.

“Away! Didn’t you hear what she just said? I’m not going to stick around until someone shoots at us!”

However, before Abyssal could go too far, a small red laser beam came from in front of her and grazed her lower body. The searing red hot plasma cut through her hull like butter and Abyssal re-experienced the all too familiar sensation of having someone drew a line on one’s back with a blowtorch.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” Abyssal yelled out. Her drone shook uncontrollably within Meica’s arms.

[Light damage on bottom hull. Initiating emergency repairs. Entering combat state, performing evasive manoeuvres.]  Abby announced as the ship did sharp left and right turns— just in time to avoid more incoming laser beams.

“Hold on, hold on, hold on! Why is she attacking me! I’m leaving the place aren’t I?!” Abyssal yelled out as she kept avoiding numerous laser beams. In front of her were more barrages of red lasers coming right at her.

She noticed that unlike the first shot, the rest of these beams were much smaller in size. She deduced that these shots would probably not destroy her if it hit, though it will definitely hurt. One thing is that, unlike the last time she fought Astral, these laser beams were coming at her as if they were being shot from a machine gun. There were too many to avoid!

She weaved through the barrage the best she could but ended up taking a few hits to her hull. Luckily they only hit the spaced armour, so it didn’t do that much damage to Abyssal.

[Enemy ship spotted. Estimated distance 15000 kilometres. Expected movement speed 900 km/s] Abby sends out another notification to Abyssal. Suddenly, within Abyssal’s view was the sight of the all too iconic Crimson Red Fighter flying straight towards Abyssal. A sleek jet black and red crimson colour ship with a phoenix shaped design and twelve red fins on its body, shooting out blue flames. One of the fins shot out red particles instead of blue though.

Astral was on a direct collision course towards Abyssal and at the speed the both of them were going, they would collide within ten seconds.

‘Huh?! How did she get so near without being detected?! I thought we had an absolute detection range of 50 000 kilometres! Abby!’

[Unable to compute answer due to lack of information.]

“Anyone ever told you that you are useless!” Abyssal yelled out of her imaginary lungs. The sudden scream shocked Meica who was in the background holding on to the chair in the cockpit for her dear life.

It didn’t take long for Abyssal to resign to her fate and took control of the ship. If Astral’s looking for a fight then she’ll give her one. Not that she expects to win though.