62. Life on the Supercarrier Part 1

It has been a few days since Abyssal's arrival on the Abigail E. Eternity. A few days of relative peace as Abyssal and her crew stuck to the insides of the S.A.S. Abyssal with little to no interaction with the outside. E or any other crew of the carrier has yet to make contact ever since. Abyssal could sometimes see human crew engineers moving in out of the bay to do maintenance but they never paid any heed to the S.A.S. Abyssal. Things were uneventful and everyone left them alone to do whatever they wanted as long as Abyssal wasn’t causing any trouble.

On the other hand, the repairs of the ship had been going well and Abyssal found herself with lots of free time all of a sudden. There's nothing much to do in her current situation, after all. One of the things that Abyssal had been doing was taking small pictures of the numerous fighters in the bay and studying them. She made numerous 3D models of the fighter ships and the drones that were moving about the hangar bay. She wanted to experiment with a few of the designs and took note of the ship architecture and their capabilities. It was interesting to know about how E would fight as compared to a normal battleship in space.

Now, she could be crafty and try to assimilate one of the hundreds of fighter ships in the bay, but doing so would only anger the beast. To minimize risk, it was a plan best done when she is about to leave the place. Abyssal had a nice plan ready for that time though. When the time comes, she would not hesitate to steal precious technology from the hands of that old woman in a girl's skin. For some reason, Abyssal could hear evil music playing in the background when she concocted that plan.

So, what is a core to do these past few days with absolutely nothing to do? Why… search the entire ship of course! Every single piece of her was in that location and she had nothing much to do. It was the absolute best time to finally put to rest, the age-old question: where the hell is her damn core? She knew that her core had to be somewhere in the damn ship.

So far, Abby had remained silent about the matter of Abyssal's core, refusing to answer the question no matter how many times Abyssal asked her. Forget about finding the core, Abby has shown to be hiding more than Abyssal cared to know about. She was supposed to be a part of her and yet, she was not.

At first, Abyssal thought that maybe she was a special case, that maybe her core never existed and that maybe she was indeed a conglomerate of consciousness of the sum of her total nanite count. It would make sense considering that she never had any lag when controlling the larger parts of her body, only the smaller one. However, that theory was quickly shot down when Abyssal realised that there was one time when she controlled the Fierca with no lag despite being almost a million kilometres away from the bulk of her nanites.

It also didn’t make sense that she would function so similar to a living core if she wasn’t one.

It would be nice if that was the case— that she was special but until confirmed, it was best to just say that her core was very well hidden and somewhere on the ship. And so, Abyssal decided to search, inch by inch, her entire ship. She even did so manually as to not want help from her other-self.

Abyssal had an idea, of course, on where her core might be, but decided it was best to take her time and searched the rest of the ship to make absolutely sure of it. The location of her core was of absolute importance. She couldn't defend herself if she doesn't know where she was, after all.

Her progress had been smooth as she had searched about 90% of her ship at this point in time. Within a day or less, she would eventually find her most sought over core. If it exists.

However, during the middle of this search, Abyssal can't help but notice that the supercarrier had been making jumps over and over again. Within a single day, there would be a minimum of at least two jumps. To Abyssal, this was no problem. To her and Kuon, the surroundings would only look distorted but nothing serious would ever happen.

The same can't be said to Meica though. Every jump that E made, only gave rise to a nauseous nekomi. While the effects on Meica weren't as bad as the first time, it was still pretty brutal on the young girl. She was slowly getting used to the effects though.

Still, despite her best efforts to hold it in, she eventually had to let one out. It was a day when an excessive amount of jumps was being made. The poor girl could only take so much before barfing all over the floor of the cargo bay. Abyssal could still remember how angry Kuon was at having to clean up over Meica. Soap isn’t exactly a common thing on Abyssal’s ship, after all.

'Oh right, there hasn't been any jumps recently, huh?' Abyssal thought to herself. She was currently in the captain’s quarters of the Fierca class, searching for her core.

Next to Abyssal was Meica who was helping put Abyssal on her quest to find her core. Meica could be seen with a less energetic attitude as she scanned the room.

"Thanks again for helping me out with this by the way. An extra eye really helps speed up the process," Abyssal said to the depressed Nekomi.

"Nyaa…" Meica responded lethargically.

"Still upset about that incident? Don't worry about it. Kuon is always angry. It’s like her default personality," said Abyssal.

'She wasn't always like that though. I used to remember she was a sweet obedient maid. I wondered when did she become such a ball of hate,' thought Abyssal as she let out a silent sigh.

"It's not that. Meica just upset cause ship keep doing weird teleporty thingy. Every time, Meica's mood ruined," Meica responded.

"Right. Sorry about that. Can't really help you much there."

"Muuu…" Meica responded.

"I wonder why is E making so many jumps? Is it a routine event or something? Is she moving around the zone? Is she being chased?" Abyssal asked all sorts of questions.

"Who knows. All I know is I hate it! People can get sick like this! Nyarghhh!" Meica yelled out, flipping over an imaginary table.

All of a sudden, a small thought came to Abyssal. She stopped what she was doing before facing Meica. "Actually wait, I got a question."

"Nyani?" Meica responded with a weird word.

"You are supposed to be this space fairing genetically engineered race, right? You are supposed to be more resilient to this stuff, right?"

Meica nodded twice to Abyssal's enquiries.

"Then… Why was Doctor Julia and all those kids in the residential area totally unaffected? Shouldn't they be in a much worse condition than you?"

Meica opened her eyes wide at the question. She then brought her hands to her chin and started to think of an explanation. "Maybe some sort of shield or some sort of medicine they took to minimize effect?"

"A medicine, huh? Doctor Julia did give you a medicine that worked almost immediately, right? Maybe something like that is distributed among the people in the ship."

"Could be."

"Hmm. Hey! Let's visit the doctor again," Abyssal said with a carefree tone.

"Nyaa?"

"You heard me. Let's visit the doctor and get more of that medicine she gave you."

"But Abyssal said that we should minimise contact with outside?" Meica

"I"m bored over here. And besides, I'm curious about stuff around the ship. A lot of technology that looked very cool that I can maybe secretly get a hold of, if you get what I mean," Abyssal tried giving Meica a little wink. To Meica, it only looked like the drone banking slightly to the right.

"Hoh… um, sure!" Meica agreed without giving things much thought. Or rather, she did for a while before completely giving up on thinking. She too was very much interested in the technologies inside the ship.

And so, the human girl with fluffy cat ears and a slender black tail carrying an oval-shaped drone walked out of the large shark class.

All while avoiding contact with Kuon, of course. To them, it was best that the cranky maid remain unaware of the situation.

* * * * *

Both Abyssal and Meica were currently on the way to the residential area— specifically on an automated walkway in the labyrinth that is E’s corridors. Abyssal mapped out everything the last time she was given a tour of the ship so there should be no problems on getting there. The only thing was that she had forgotten just how far it was from her own ship to the residential area where everyone lived. They’ve been spending about fifteen minutes already and they have still yet to reach the halfway point. It just served as a reminder that the supercarrier that they were on was kilometres in length and width— basically a small island.

“Ship is really big, nyaa,” said Meica.

“Yeah. I hope one day, I could build and control a ship this big. Heck I’ll settle for twenty per cent of the size,” replied Abyssal.

‘Still, did it take this long to reach the clinic last time? I was so on guard with E, I didn’t even realise that the time went by so fast…’ Abyssal thought to herself. She was currently being held by Meica in her arms like some sort of doll.

Why was Abyssal being held like a doll by Meica? Same reason why Meica held her at Ashen Port. When her identity was exposed by Doctor Julia, Abyssal noticed how easy it was for even a human to recognize a living core. While it seemed alright for them that a core would be walking around like that, something inside Abyssal told her that her identity was best hidden. Considering that some of the most powerful ships that Abyssal had met were controlled by living cores, her value in the galaxy must be something, right?  Walking around like this would make people naturally assume that Abyssal was just a normal drone instead, hiding her identity.

This small disguise would somewhat pay off when on the way to Doctor Julia’s clinic, Abyssal and Meica would encounter the captain of the Abigail E. Eternity. On the automated walkway, not far from them was a man in military uniform walking while interacting with a device of sorts. It looked like some sort of high tech mobile communication device. He had a rather serious look on his face and was tapping on the device rather furiously. He was on the opposite side of the walkway and crossed paths with them. Soon the person who was in front of them was now behind them, moving towards an unknown destination.

Naturally, both Meica and Abyssal ignored him and went on with their life. There was no reason to talk to him, after all. However, the captain of the ship seemed to think otherwise.

All of a sudden, the automated walkway stopped moving and a voice called out to them from behind.

“Wait. Turn around,” the man said in a stern tone.

“Hmm?” Meica did as he asked and turned around.

The man put the mobile device he was holding into one of his pockets before fixing his sailor hat. He then moved closer to Meica before stopping just shy of a meter. “I don’t recognize you.”

“Meica new in this place, nyaa!” Meica replied with a smile.

‘I don’t think that’s what she meant, Meica. Well, I guess it is true…’ Abyssal commented internally.

The man scrunched his eyes before taking a closer look at Meica. “No… You aren’t a personnel. I don’t remember approving another Nekomi on board. They usually go on battleships, not carriers. Who are you and what are you doing on my ship?”

Not long after saying that, the man moved to the sides and tapped on the walls of the corridor. Suddenly, the wall opened up, revealing a turret aiming towards Meica and Abyssal. The barrel of the gun lights up in red, giving it a menacing look.

“Wha?!” Meica let out a yelp at the sudden threat. Abyssal, on the other hand, remained quiet, preparing herself...

“Answer or I will use force,” the man replied. The barrel of the turret started to make weird heating noises as he said so.

“Mei-mei-meica from the the—” Meica tried her best to answer but only ended up stammering. Her body was paralysed and her body was shaking. Her tail was stiff, pointing upwards.

“Hmm? Wait, I take it back, you do look somewhat familiar…” the captain said before moving closer to inspect Meica further. This was responded to with Meica moving a step backwards.

“Hmm… where have I seen you before…”

“She’s a guest captain, I would suggest stepping away from the poor girl and lay your perverted hands off her,” E’s voice came out of nowhere. The turret that was previously pointing at Meica, was now pointing towards the captain.

“A guest? You never told me we had guests? Also, dammit stop pointing that thing at me, this counts as threatening your superior officer and is punishable by law, ya know.”

“She’s the crew from that ship we picked up a few days ago. Astral’s leftovers. The ‘pilot’ of the ship. Also, what are you going to do about it? Send me to jail? Gahaha!”

“You never told me there was a crew on that ship.”

“Of course there would be people on the ship dummy. What? The ship is going to move all on its own?”

“Why were there no reports about this? Don’t you think the captain of the ship should know who and what is on board?”

“Hey, you were there, man. You even told me to do whatever I want and I did just that? Why are you complaining now? She’s completely harmless by the way.”

“Goddammit, this woman…” the captain clicked his tongue before taking a look at the watch on his wrist. “I don’t have time for this.”

Letting out a small sigh, the captain faced Meica before giving her a small nod. “Well then, sorry about that. I didn’t know better. I hope you enjoy your stay around here. Please do try to stay out of trouble when you are on this ship though. I already have a lot on my plate. You can go to E if you need anything. I’m sure you two are acquainted.”

The captain then left the place. The automated walkway became functional again and the turret went back into the wall as if nothing happened. As he left he gave Meica another look before looking downwards towards Abyssal. A confused expression appeared on his face for a short moment before he turned away, going back to whatever he was doing.

“Phew… are you alright, Meica?” Abyssal asked as all the tension in her body went away.

“...um, yeah,” Meica responded. Her body was still shaking but overall she was doing alright. “Military people are scary, nyaa…”

Abyssal gave Meica an awkward laugh. “They always are…”