Chapter 40 – The little ship

"You said a dock is next?" I ask as we separate with Letty.

"Yup. Docks actually, there are three." Letty nods with a smile and turns around to the unoccupied wall now on my right, which is to the left from the door we entered through. And it's kinda segmented? Hm. "There's actually a storage and cargo bay as well, but it's a bit... unclear where's the division? Well, you'll see." She says as she walks up to the wall and taps on the panel.

The next second I am startled by a loud sound like a huge elctric motor and I see... the whole fucking wall splitting open. Damn.

I watch in amazement as the whole hall opens up onto another one even larger in size. The segments of the wall slowly slide into each other and are pulled to the walls just to the point that the stairs and shelves don't stick out. The whole space, including the workshop, has... at least eighty meters in length and around twelve in width, and now that I look at it, it must occupy at least fourth of the two upper decks.

I see a lot of boxes, crates and some loose parts laying on another row of shelves lined up by what I now realize is the inner wall, then a hoverer and what looks kinda like a fighter jet behind it in two of the three docks on the far end of the hall.

On the outer wall, which is on my right currently, there are four huge doors, or rather locks, meant for ships and other things, the closest one being the largest with a small door embedded into it and opening onto empty space, which is assume is a kind of cargo bay. There is a small wall separating it from the docks further into the hall. And looking up and around, I now realize that the rail for the mechanical arm goes over the whole hall, from the table on one end straight to the last dock. Another thing are stairs leading to another door on the inner wall in the far corner of the cargo bay, and third door directly under them that most likely leads onto the corridor.

I take a deep breath after taking it all in and look at Letty, who is meanwhile standing with one hand on her hip and looking at me with a grin and twinkle in her eyes.

"Fantastic. That's yours?" I ask, walking up to her and into the bay.

"Technically not really, but you can say so. Everything inside here are things mom and dad have no input into unless I ask them for help, like with the hoverer now." She waves her arm in the direction of said hoverer, which I didn't really see before but I assume it is the one she used to visit me. "That's also where I receive clients and any shipments. Basically everything that I do privately is done here not to disturb my parents."

"Mhm." I nod. "But, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't it like directly next to..." I wave my hand towards the wall with the table. "The main hall, or however you call it?" Well, technically I saw it behind the wall with my magic sight when we were closer, so I can't be wrong.

"Yeah, but it's all divided. And main hall, yeah." Letty nods. "This whole hall, and actually my whole deck, is suspended in vacuum by sort of... rails, though it's hard to describe, so barely any sounds or vibrations are transmitted to the rest of the ship. Come for a moment." She skips to the lock and waves her arm to follow her, to which I obliege.

"Lookie here." She points to the bottom of the lock where the metal floor ends. There is... another lock, which is now open, then sort of rubber starts and goes up and sideways for a few inches, and then there is the closed lock in the metal frame. "The first lock is thin, I often leave it open if we're not doing anything, but the main one is already in the outer wall of the ship. Here." She points her hand at the rubber-like thingy, that I now notice stretches around the whole lock. "You have vacuum. The rubber connects the outer wall of the room with the hull of the ship loosely so the room can move a bit if it gets shaken, and it doesn't jolt if the ship moves abruptly."

"Alright." I nod, impressed. That's something. I don't think I have ever seen something like that in any other ship. And now that she explained it, I finally understand what is that I faintly see with my magic sense. "But isn't it kind of... I don't know, unnecessary? Why do you have it here over your deck?" I ask, confused.

"Um, actually, I should have explained it earlier." Levia makes an embarrassed face and takes a deep breath. "So, did you notice how long the gateway from my deck to the main hall was? And that it was sealed from both sides?" I nod. Right, it was suspiciously long, like, three meters at least, plus the two locks on each end... and oh shit. I'm pretty sure there was this rubber on both sides, now that I think about it. And in the living room behind the glass, I think?

"Looking at your face I think you realized it, but I'll say anyway. The ship has the main hull with all the weaponry, and the insides are divided into a few parts. Inside each of them there is a suspended... um, block, for a lack of better word. The main sections are my private, my parents private, the public space, the engine, my parents workshops, and the docks along with cargo bays." Letty explains with a smile. "Each part of the ship is isolated and mostly independent, and it helps with a ton of things. It reduces vibrations and sounds greatly, be it during accelration and maneuvers, space battles however rare they are, or when entering planets' atmospheres, helps with maintenance because it works like a service access in itself, and if by any chance the main hull got damaged, it shouldn't affect what's inside."

I listen attentively as she explains it all and by the end nod slowly. "...That's something." I comment. It might be a bit wasteful, and it definitely would not have been so useful on a warship, but on a ship like this, where convenience and comfort are what really matters, it seems to be a great thing. Not like I have much experience and knowledge in this matter, but I guess it must be worth if they built it this way.

I turn back to the hall and look around briefly, admiring the whole thing, and I'm about to walk to the docks before Letty speaks up. "This door is to my corridor, that's the one by the stairs." I glance at her and see she is pointing at the upper one, then her eyes fall to the door under it. "The lower one is to the main corridor, just next to the stairs, though we barely use it. It's more for emergencies." She explains and looks at me.

"Alright." I nod. "Is the corridor in the same block as this?" I wave my arm around to indicate the whole hall.

"Yeah. Technically that corridor is also mine, but I barely go down there apart from when I'm going to the main hall. It doesn't go further than the stairs apart from a service passage to the engines."

"Okay. What about the rest of the ship?" I ask and immediately frown. "Or actually, how are there eight decks with all the blocks? Do you count them separately? Or how does that work?"

"Um, gimme a moment." She says and she waves her hand, and a small holographic panel appears in front of her. She taps it a few times quickly and I notice a small projector popping out on the ceiling just before a large, long hologram appears in the bay. It takes me around half a second to realize it's the ship, though it's more of a guess since I've never actually seen it from the outside.

"It's Abyssa." Letty says softly, confirming my thoughts, and I focus on the ship.

It is around four times as long as it is high, and its width is a bit lower than its height. It's mostly rectangular, but there are three things to note. First is the small topmost deck above the main hall, which spans barely third of the ship's length and smoothy hides into the hull closer to the back.

The second is that despite being rectangular, the shape of the thing is smooth and rounded on the edges, and especially on the front and rear. I can see a distinct shape of that living room we've been in a while ago in the front and on the top of the thing. Its nose is round quite like an upright barrel, and its top is slanted, since there is the glass window in the living room. Then the rear is round like a cylinder put sideways, and I can see distinct protrusions there that most likely are the engines.

And finally, the third thing is that in the ship's rear there is a kind of... sphere, which sticks out from the sides, but not from up and down, and has around sixty meters in diameter, starting around thirty from the back. There are two large beams protruding out of the sphere on each side that rest along the hull, and it takes me a while to realize they are... weapons. Because I've no idea what else it can be if not an at least sixty meters long barrel of a weapon resembling an electromagnetic cannon on each side of the ship. Hell, that is something.

They sometimes install similar weapons on cruisers and dreadnoughts, and here they have two such monsters on a destroyer.

"Before you ask." I hear Letty's amused voice from my side. "The cannons on the sides are retractable and usually hidden. From the outside there is no weaponry visible."

"Alright." I nod, gulping. "That's a relief. A weapon of that caliber is suitable for a battleship, isn't it?"

"Uh, kind of? In size, yes, but, um, it has quite a bit more firepower." She says in a small voice. "Abyssa is quite young actually, barely twelve years old, and was made with all the newest technology known by Mechanical at that time. She was also modernized a little bit along the way, though they were only surface changes. I'm not sure how far ahead Abyssa is comparing to the ships you know, but it's more of less on the level of Empire's experiments. Like, a hundred years ahead or so. I'm pretty sure Abyssa wouldn't lose to Imperial dreadnoughts in service in terms of pure firepower. And definitely not to cruisers."

I blink a few times in surprise. "...Okay." I gulp again. "That's something."

Empire is like, the strongest power out there in Milky Way. They have around sixty star systems under their rule, almost half of all known to be colonized, and their technology is recognized as the most advanced in quite many aspects. One of them, and the one they owe their vast territories to, is spaceship engineering in broad meaning. And Letty just casually told me this little destroyer could easily overpower their cruisers, which is a whole size above destroyers. Sure, destroyers are fast and filled to the brim with weaponry while cruisers often serve different purposes than destroying things, but cruiser class is still usually over four hundred meters in length.

It's like telling someone that a certain lightweight is easily capable of beating best heavyweights in boxing. Theoretically possible, but unbelievable until you actually see it. Not like I don't trust Letty.

"Well, anyway." Letty waves her hand dismissively, dragging me out of the rabbithole. "I wanted to show you the ship." She drags the panel to herself and taps on it a few times, and the hologram becomes mostly transparent while a few sections inside it light up. "These are the blocks. The one we are in..." Her voice trails of and she swings her arms, enlarging the hologram. "Is here."

She points out a block on the starboard, so the left side of the ship, and it changes color from blue to light red. It starts around the a bit into the sphere in the rear, so around eighty meters from the back of the ship, and reaches up to its midsection. It takes up around two thirds of the ship's width, making it occupy around fourth of the two upper decks. The starboard at the block's length belongs to the main hull.

I nod to Letty, having seen and taken the thing in.

"Yup. So to the front from it there is the main hall with all the rooms on the sides and the living room. My parents' private deck is directly under it, occupying more or less half of the third deck, further down there are their workshops, those take up another half of a deck, though frankly it's the tallest single deck, and the three lowest decks are almost wholly cargo bays, storages and decks, largely joined together." She says, pointing at a corresponding block each time, through the three relatively smaller ones in the front of the ship to the largest one on the bottom, divided distinctly into four uneven parts and taking up over third of the rectangle's height, stretching from the sphere in the back to the front of the ship.

"What about the eighth deck?" I quip in as she is taking a breath. "Cause you said there are eight, but mentioned only seven. Is it the small one on the top?"

"Yup. It's like the command deck? It's in the main hull and it's barely used out of the time mom is piloting, though the main comms are there. So when we're landing on a planet or something and we need to get clearance for landing, dad is usually there." She replies quickly, glancing at me, and focuses back on the hologram. "Though Vela usually takes care of those matters, but well."

"In the center of the sphere there is the reactor and Vela's core, that is an isolated round block itself, on the rear there are engines, but they are in the main hull. The rest are various systems, though large part of them is in what we call the mess block in the center of the ship. Some small devices we rarely use are there as well. Like moms pod for shaping, come to think of it. Any questions?" She looks at me with raised eyebrows.

She stays silent for a while as I'm processing and sorting everything she just said.

"I'm missing some space. A lot, actually." I say finally. "What's on the other side of the corridor? And to the right, by the workshop? And to the left, by the docks? Because I doubt this block isn't rectangular."

"Ah. Right, behind the living room there are some systems and storages, and under my bedroom there are some empty rooms, but I don't use them. Though, hm. I might need to use them now, because I can't really fit everything on the upper floor..." Letty muses. "Anyway, to the right, so closer to the core of the ship, there are some more systems, and there are additional storage spaces for the docks. They are hidden though, so you won't see them from here."

"So you're a bit cramped here, aren't you? Also, where's the... stairs, ladder, whatever, to the lower floors? I don't think I saw it anywhere in the main hall."

"It's, um, putting aside the three ladders in the front, middle and back of the ship that connect all the decks, there is a door leading down in the main hall just next to this corridor." My girlfriend explains, gesturing somewhere to my front, which is probably supposed to indicate the corridor. "It's not any different from other doors though, so I'm not surprised you missed it."

I nod and Letty tilts her head to the side as she finishes and makes a thoughtful expression.

"Did I tell you about Vela?" She asks uncertainly. "Yeah, I did. She's Abyssa's AI. She's semi-sentient, which means she is a sentient being, just without some functions some people might deem necessary to classify as fully sentient, for example she only has simulated emotions for now, though she's working on it. That's why I'm usually referring to the ship as a she." She explains with a small smile, but her mood visibly worsens a moment later. "For some reason she had a critical error a while after I took you abroad, and we're now waiting for her to finish maintenance and boot herself up again."

"Alright." I smile, shaking out of my reverie around the ship, and turn to Letty. "I assume you'll be introducing us to each other as soon as that's done?"

"Yup, probably." She nods. "Though I've no idea when it will be."

"Mhm." I look back at the hologram, then back at Letty. "Speaking of ships, what about the two in the docks?"

"Huh? Oh, those." She looks to the side at the divider and the hoverer peeking from above it. "Come on, I'll show you." She says, waving her hand and leaving the hologram in place for now. We pass the four feet tall divider separating the docks from the rest through a rotary door on the side, and I look curiously at the hoverer and what looks like a fighter jet in the square docks.

"This is the hoverer I used to get you from Gaia." She gestures to the eight meters long, four meters wide, and three meters high black shape.

It's on a base of a rectangle, its front is sharply slanted and rounded, its sides close to vertical, and its back actually vertical. It looks more or less like a modern hoverer from Gaia, though unusually large. Those things are usually four to six meters long, but I guess all the technology must fit somewhere. Though when I walk around it curiously, I spot another obvious difference. Two long vertical plasma thrusters, one on each side of the cargo trunk.

"It's for emergencies, and for places that lack gravity. There are eight more small hidden ones." Letty says before I am able to ask. "It can reach a hundred meters per second easily without them, but that's in one G, like on Gaia. With them it's quite like a spaceship." She smiles as I look at her with raised eyebrow.

"Don't tell me this thing is space-worthy." I say in flat voice and she nods, trying not to outright grin.

"It is, though it's not supposed to be used in space." My girlfrind clarifies as I glare at her jokingly. "For that I have the jet." She gestures to the second craft in the docks, which is a fair bit different.

To put short, it is what is commonly called a space jet, though the official naming was something different, because of its speed and shape. A long, sleek, ten meters long and six wide triangle that can maneuver in space, is made to survive entering planets' atmospheres, and can easily pass the speed of sound on planets. Typically, that is. This little shit is probably better.

"It's just like any other space jet, though it's a fair bit better than most in techincals. Has a sublight drive and is almost self-sustainable." Letty says simply. "I could tell you the technical details about both, but I don't think you want them?"

"Nah." I shake my head. "Though, what does almost self-sustainable mean?" I ask curiously.

"It has everything you need to stay alive for a long while, but limited supply of most of that and no waste managment. You can stay inside for a month tops, maybe two if you push yourself." She explains and I wiggle my eyebrows.

Not like I'm complaining, but these things are usually for short flights between planets or stations and not suited for staying inside for much longer than a week, and that is already stretching it.

"Alright." I nod and look at Letty with a smile. "Is that all you wanted to show me?"

"Um, kinda?" She says uncertainly, glancing back at the workshop. "I can show you to the gym or other things in the main hall. Do you want to do it now?"

"Nah." I grin, stepping up to her. "Now I wanna cuddle."