49. Small Respite Despite in Dire Straits
“Abby! Charge up warp drives for emergency warp, just do the fastest calculations, anywhere will do!” Abyssal quickly ordered Abby as she stared at the gigantic ship above her.
[Warp drives cooling down. Unable to warp within the next 2 hours] Abby replied.
A look of horror entered Abyssal’s face as she heard that, her face contorted and she held her breath. It was a sentiment shared by the other two people boarding the S.A.S. Abyssal: Meica and Kuon who probably had the same look on their faces as the view of the ship above them— a ship which dwarves Abyssal. It was like comparing a rock to a mountain.
“Hello? Any response down there? Your communicator broken or something? It’s quite embarrassing talking to no one, ya know,” the voice of a young child spoke it, it was haughty and also childish at the same time. The voice of the person controlling the carrier, Abigail E. Eternity spoke.
“Hey, Kuon. What’s the proper way to show a white flag?” Abyssal asked.
“Are we actually surrendering, Master?” Kuon asked back.
“What do you want me to do!? Did you see that? No way I can fight that!”
“That’s true, I guess.”
“Nyaa?! Abyssal can’t you assimilate that!” Meica yelled as she pointed towards the carrier.
“No way! I don’t have enough power, nanites or CPU to assimilate a thing of that size in such a short manner of time! We’ll be destroyed long before then!” She said before letting out a sigh.
“Guess, I’ll respond and wave the white flag,” Abyssal muttered to herself as she reached over to her communicator.
[Both transmitters not functional. Unable to send a response. Repairs in 2 hours] Abby responded as she did so.
“...”
“Crap! What should I do, what should I do…” Abyssal bit her imaginary fingers. Not before long, she activated her thrusters in an attempt to exit the area.
“Nyaa?! Are we moving!?”“Wait, where are you going, I thought we were surrendering?”
“Our transmitter is busted! We’ll just escape somehow!”
“We aren’t going to escape a carrier, Master!”
“Won’t know until we try, right!?”
“And you stop right there,” E said through the coms when suddenly, Abyssal could feel herself unable to move anymore.
Looking upwards, she could see herself suspended within a white beam of light and was being pulled towards the carrier slowly but surely. It was a tractor beam pulling Abyssal from one of the large radars dishes below the carrier.
“I’mma assume your communicator is busted or something during the past battle. My gosh, you are quite battered up, huh? I’ll get some of my repair drones and see you down there. In the meantime, as much as I like talking, I got a battle to finish up, so taa taa,” ‘E’ said before ending the communications.
“Hnrgghhhh!” Abyssal grunted as she pushed her thrusters to the max to get out of the tractor beam. However, it was a wasted effort as she noticed that she was not budging at all. She tried for minutes before finally giving up and just slouching over the seat with a defeated look. As defeated as a drone can look that is.
Abyssal let out a tired sigh before looking over to the carrier. She was inching closer and closer to it and not for long, she would soon be inside it. It was a pretty slow tractor beam as far as she was concerned. She estimated there to be about thirty to forty minutes before she would be inside. Various thoughts came into Abyssal’s mind about what would happen after she was inside. Would she get dissected in the name of science? Would she be erased and deleted after a terrible interrogation? Or would she be sent to a prison?
‘I wonder if there is a prison for Living Cores like me…’
She let out another sigh before looking over to her crew. “I’m sorry guys. I tried my best, I really did. Guess we are captives now.”
“Don’t worry too much about it, Master. It was… inevitable that we end up in a situation like this. What with Ms. secret over here and your special way of piloting things,” Kuon said with her signature viper tongue.
“Nyaa?!” Meica flinched at Kuon’s response.
“Oi! What do you mean my special way of piloting things!”
“Let us hope that our captor is a goodwill person,” Kuon said to Abyssal, ignoring her remark.
‘What a rude maid.’
Abyssal lied down on the floor before rolling over with her oval-shaped drone. “Astral said ‘E’ was a friend of hers. I don’t have much hope already.”
“She seemed pretty friendly over the receiver. Maybe she’s not a bad person,” Meica said to the two.
“Who knows. Based on my experience in this place for the past year, I’m having doubts if a nice person even exists,” Abyssal said as she kept rolling on the floor.
After a good minute of rolling, Abyssal got bored of it. “You know, since we are stuck here anyways, we might as well continue our previous conversation. How did you end up in this sector anyway, Meica? Something tells me those smugglers didn’t just pick you up at some random port.”
Meica heard this and let out a pensive look. She then sat on the chair before looking upwards as if to recall the events that took place before she met Abyssal. “I think Abyssal knows now. Meica is from Dawning Star.”
“Yeah, I can guess given your relationship with Nipon steel,” Abyssal replied.
“Wait, you two,” Kuon said, grabbing the attention of Meica and Kuon. “Judging by the context of what you are speaking, I assume that Master already knows about your secret?”
“Un. Meica told her before we got attacked by Astral and Jinko,” Meica nodded. “Or was it after, nyaa? In the middle,” she added.
Seeing this, Kuon turned to look at Abyssal before giving a bow. “I see. Pardon my transgressions of not telling you earlier, Master. We could have avoided this whole mess in the first place. I was waiting for the right time to tell you.”
“Nah, it’s alright.”
“Understood. Now cat, about your story earlier? I am curious as well, as to how you got yourself here being from a very known company.”
“Nekomi, not cat!” Meica yelled out before puffing her cheeks. She then let out a sigh.
“Remember Meica’s story back when we first met? I wasn’t lying about being an engineer and having lots of brothers. As you can see, Meica is a pretty good engineer! Graduated with a certificate at very young age!” Meica brought her chest with pride.
“Alright, noted. What else?” Kuon asked, not interested in her boasting.
“Well… Mother and brother all very overbearing, nyaa. Everyone wanted me to become next heir of company. Meica is not interested in company and country politics, nyaa. Meica just like ships, wants to be an engineer, but mother kept sending me to boring flowers and talking classes.”
“I see…”
“So one day I had enough. Went on a secret little trip to Freedom United to get away from family,” Meica said before pausing.
“...”
“...”
Both Kuon and Abyssal stayed silent during the pause. They waited with bated breath for the continuation of the story to come, wondering what happened after that.
There was none.
"Nyaa..?" Meica let out a confused voice at their actions.
“Huh? Wait what that’s it?”
“Un, that’s it.”
“No no no! That doesn’t answer anything. How did you get from wanting to get away from your mother to getting on that smuggler’s ship?!”
“Oh that? Meica was at the port waiting for the ship to Freedom United to come. Then suddenly, my brother and his bodyguards came to search for me. I panicked and snuck into smuggler’s ship.
“You snuck in?” Kuon asked.
“Un. Then got found while in Lawless Zone and was thrown in cage. After that, met Abyssal and Stupid Maid.”
“...”
“...”
Both Abyssal and Kuon went silent at her story.
“Despite being a smart person, you aren’t exactly the brightest of the bunch aren’t you?” Said Kuon in a demeaning tone.
“Nyahaha,” Meica laughed as she scratched the back of her head. “Meica told everything now, no more secrets! Meica lucky to meet both of you nyaa. Always wanted to have Living Core as friends!” She said excitedly.
“That was… kinda disappointing. You really are just a kid who ran away from home… Just a big kid and a big home,” Abyssal said before looking towards Kuon. “She said no more secret.”
In response, Kuon just looked towards Nekomi before letting out a sigh. She then looked at the floor defiantly and muttered out a single word. “Alright.”
With a smile, Abyssal said to Meica: “Alright then. Welcome to the crew for real.”
* * * * *
“We are speeding up towards the carrier,” Abyssal said as she stared at what was above. E must have been done with whatever it was that she was doing as she had activated her thrusters and started moving. Along with the thrusters, the tractor beam started gaining more power and Abyssal was now practically flying towards the carrier.
As she gained momentum towards the carrier, a big rotating entrance opened and what revealed was the very familiar green translucent barrier and a large bay of sorts behind it. The beam then slowly brought Abyssal into the bay, passing by the barrier and attempting to land Abyssal softly on one of the numerous pads available. The bay itself was humongous, much larger than the bay in Ashen port, perhaps even bigger than Ashen port itself— a few kilometres in length at the minimum. It was like a huge parking lot, except for ships instead of cars.
Know that Abyssal's Shark class was not a small ship either. She was about 200 meters in length and even she felt she was tiny compared to this huge hangar.
As she was being moved, Abyssal could see hundreds of fighter planes parked very close to each other in the bay. It bears a very close resemblance to the Freedom United fighter plane that she assimilated quite a while back. The bay was full of them, all of the ships bore a symbol that consisted of a pair of wings— symbolising liberty. All around Abyssal were tons of drones moving about, attending to the fighters— some of the drones circled Abyssal as if awaiting orders.
“How strange…” Abyssal muttered out.
“What’s wrong?” Kuon asked.
“There’s nobody here…”
“Not even a greeting party?”
“Nope, no one,” Abyssal said before transferring what she was seeing onto the monitor in the bridge.
True to her words, all around Abyssal were only drones. Not a single sign of a living human being in a bay this large. Not in the pathways above the bay, not near the large elevator in the middle of the bay, not even near what looks like to be a living quarters, not anywhere. The bay was one hundred per cent self-sufficient and maintained by robotic drones.
A few moments passed and Abyssal was finally released from the tractor beam. She was placed neatly and gently onto the pad below. And that was it. Nothing else happened and Abyssal seemed to be left alone in the area. Though there were about a few hundred drones still circling Abyssal. They were probably watching over her, no doubt to destroy her should she even do anything suspicious. She could see that some of the drones had small calibre weapons. Looking above, Abyssal could also see that the tractor beam was still pointed at her.
“I don’t like the look of this,” said Abyssal as she viewed the place further.
‘Why isn’t there anybody coming? I expected something like a swat team to breach me or something,” Abyssal thought to herself.
It was then that her communicator activated and the familiar voice of E came out. “You alright down there? I’ve landed you as gently as possible. Sorry for not being down there to greet you. Just hold on a bit will ya? I need to warp out of this place. My position was detected by an annoying destroyer. Just letting you know, this warp is different from your normal everyday warp so it's going to be a bit of a doozy. See ya later tah tah.”
E ended the communicators and suddenly, Abyssal’s sight became distorted. Bits and pieces of reality tore apart before assembling itself in different places. She could see the engine room from her location despite being in the bridge. Then, she could see reflections of herself appearing out of nowhere— it was as if she entered a room full of mirrors.
“Guys, I don’t feel so good, bleargh…” Meica said before falling to the ground as she held her stomach and mouth, to prevent herself from vomiting.
“Meica!” Abyssal yelled out and attempted to move closer to her. Attempted but to no avail. She could not move as if she was frozen in time. Time stopped for just a moment when suddenly, as fast as it came, everything went back to normal and her vision was now restored.
“Buu…. what was that…” Meica said as she got up slowly, trying her best to hold in all the fish in her stomach. Kuon went behind her before rubbing her back with her robotic arms.
“Whatever it is, it totally messed up our map,” Abyssal said as she viewed her GPS system. It was acting crazy, not knowing where to place Abyssal in the star chart and instead just placing her in positions before moving to another position. The map can’t be trusted. All that Abyssal knew was that she was still within the Lawless Maw Zone.
