Chương 486: Limitless Path Chapter Five Hundred Eight

"What else?" Jaq asked.

"Ammo," said Bjorn. Everybody just looked at him for a minute before Jaq asked, "And?"

"And what?" Bjorn said.

"What about the damn ammo?" Val asked, glaring at the titan.

"There's a lot of it," Bjorn answered, sending the group a spreadsheet with listings of various kinds of ammo, from crossbow bolts to shells for massive artillery pieces.

"Not as impressive a quantity as you may think," Jaq said. When Beth raised an eyebrow, he elucidated, "This is a dreadnought. They are built to fly for years at a time without restocking, including fighting in major battles during that time. They have the facilities on board to convert raw resources into huge quantities of finished goods, and, yes, ammo is a finished good. They also have the capacity to gather more resources, though mining and extraction aren't their forte and they often are shit at it.

The ammo reserves he's found so far indicate levels at less than twenty percent. No dreadnought would fly that low; no ship of this size and fleet position would fly less than fifty percent."

"Meaning, whatever fight they were in before they jumped away and then abandoned in Jupiter's atmosphere, they went through a lot of ammo," Sera said.

"Try hundreds of thousands of rounds. Minimum," Jaq replied coldly.

"That's a lot of shots," Beth muttered.

"Now I really hope whatever was pursuing these guys doesn't show up," Val grunted.

"Why?" asked Kris quietly.

"They shot off eighty or ninety percent of their ammo reserves and still had to do an emergency warp jump to get away from whatever they were fighting. That doesn't sound like they were winning. Anything that could withstand a million shots from this thing, even if it was a group of beasts, is not something I ever want to fight," Val explained.

"Point taken," Kris said with a nod.

"Kris. Report," Jaq said.

"A lot of the living areas are missing everything, from kitchenware to clothing to furniture. It looks like some of the ship was never even used," Kris said.

"Not unusual," Jaq said.

"A ship like this could have multiple sections in mothballs for years at a time. How many sections have you gone through."

"I'm being more thorough, so I've only investigated two," Kris said quietly.

"That's fine," Beth cut in.

"Nobody found any warehouses or storage items or anything just laying around?"

"No dice," said Blood.

"I doubt we'll be that lucky," Sera said.

"Any storage items would have been taken, and they would have taken all the valuables with them."

"Maybe, maybe not," said Jaq mysteriously before dismissing the meeting. The group returned to what they had been doing, with Beth mainly looking at and assessing damage, which was important to do even if they weren't going to be fixing the derelict. They needed to know what they could pull off and when and what was in what state, so assessing the whole ship was something that needed done.

The whole shell was what she was working on, and that meant several EVAs out onto the hull and the use of Jaq's ship a couple times to do scans. Getting out on the hull and moving around with a version of a belt that kept her anchored to the hull and plates she put on the soles of her boots to allow her to 'grip' the plates wasn't fun, but it was work that needed doing. The ship was deep into the troposphere, the lowest layer of Jupiter's atmosphere, with the pressure being as much as ten times sea level on Earth.

The ship wasn't that deep, which was also a good thing in another way, as Jupiter had no surface, not as would be considered a surface on other planets. The troposphere, at a certain point, smoothly transitioned into a liquid state, as the heart of Jupiter was a liquid core.

This did mean that Beth, when exposed to atmosphere, was having a lovely time in about twice the pressure of Earth at sea level, getting submerged in heavy clouds of ammonium hydrosulfides, which did not feel pleasant on the skin, though she was tough enough to resist the acid. Jupiter was also hot lower down in the troposphere, with the temperature being anywhere from just below the freezing point of water up to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

The atmosphere was really not pleasant to be exposed to at all, and Beth had a mask that covered her whole face, including her eyes, as constantly slightly regenerating them was quite annoying. The harsh chemicals also were playing hell on the ship, considering all of its defenses and buffer were still down and much of the interior was exposed to the atmosphere through the great rents in the hall.

Plenty of times, one of the team would open a door to get blasted by some kind of ammonia ice and howling winds with quite a lot of pressure, having to jam the door closed again or else mask up and explore the compartment carefully. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. A week of exploration focused on clearing out beasts saw a lot of progress, though that was more from Jaq than from Beth's team.

Jaq was more focused on clearing out beasts than he was anything else, though Beth got the distinct impression that he was looking for something. Maybe that was because he had talked about having a time limit and he hadn't helped at all with cataloguing what was in the ship or any disassembly. Beth got a feeling there was more to the mission than what Jaq was saying, but she trusted him not to take them into more danger than what they could handle.

The only thing that was really concerning was what had done the damage to the ship, and in two million years, assuming Jaq was right about the timeline, those things hadn't shown up in the solar system. Not that anybody had observed or found record of, at the least, and that was good enough for Beth. She was a little curious, based on what they found, if the ship hadn't had anybody above Ascended, or even at Ascended, when it ran into trouble.

The ship was certainly tough enough, but Beth wondered if whatever they lost to would be able to stand up to Baelvyr. Or Tazeen, for that matter. As exciting as that would be, they had work to do, and a hell of a lot of it. Taking the ship apart was going to be a huge pain in the ass, but one thing would make it quite a bit easier; Beth's gate.

It wouldn't obviate all the issues with storing and transporting materials, but they could practically throw half the dreadnought in the back lot of Beth's residence area and it would remain there, in stasis except for when they were actively using the residence. They still had to use the gate, move the items in, stack them in places in the gate, and Beth would have to pull that stuff out somewhere discrete.

They also had to do the disassembly itself of all the pieces that weren't just laying about loose on the ground or in storage racks. Beth also wanted to get the cruiser more complete, and she had a plan for getting some of the work done. It went like this; there were certain restrictions on the reliquary, but she could still summon the Empyreans for a lot of tasks, and there was nothing that stopped her from summoning them and having them work on the dreadnought.

They had to be within a certain range of her; it was a bit weird, as they could be in her gate and she could be outside of it and that didn't count, but there was a definite range they were limited to. The ship was larger than that range, so if she had one or more of them helping, they had to be working on the sections around where she was, but that still gave them plenty of space to work through.

The Empyreans were also an extra little trump card in case something far too strong showed up; they couldn't fight anything weak, but they could fight anything at the standard of Ascended or greater, which would at least buy the others time, depending on what was happening.

Not all of the Empyreans could, or would, get out and help, not with what one referred to as 'demeaning manual labor,' but more than just the ones that knew engineering or smithing were willing to contribute and, despite there current weird state, all of the Empyreans could access what was very close to their full strength. Erosh, again, was very helpful, Beth once again taken by surprise by the amount someone who had been an emperor and ruled over a large polity knew about something random.

Beth got the impression from him sometimes that he had done an awful lot in his life and that he was one of those guys who would always be saying things like "I used to be a shipbuilder when I was young," or "I used to run a ranch when I was younger," or "I used to be a birthday entertainer when I was younger." Even compared to many of the other Empyreans, he was a real renaissance man, knowing at least a little bit of everything or how to do just about anything.

He wasn't as good as a high-level engineer, and somebody like Jaq could run circles around him with ease, but he was a lot more knowledgeable than anyone in Beth's group. Jaq continued his search, meanwhile, without informing Beth or any of her group what exactly he was searching for or what they were doing there.

Well, they were cleaning out a beast infestation, looting, and doing some salvage work for likely too little pay, all thing considered, but Jaq very clearly had a mission in mind with coming out to the derelict. Beth was still surveying damage, allowing the Empyreans to work around her as she moved through the ship, but she was keeping an eye both on Jaq's movements and on anything that was unusual.

Of course, a ship that had been attacked by a monster, and that's what at least of the Empyreans insisted the signs pointed to, was already a highly unusual place, but there had to be something more to it than just what she was seeing. The Empyreans were no help on that front, not seeing or detecting anything obvious that would have had Jaq worked into a lather, so without him telling the group, they were totally in the dark.

The Empyreans were more helpful than she had first thought, particularly when she showed them the cruiser that her group had laid claim to. Zelmainne, the Empyrean who had first forged the reliquary, and the one that was probably the biggest mystery alongside Apogee, was both an extremely skilled enchanter and a very high-level engineer, which led Beth to have many more questions.

She wanted to know if he had Engineered the reliquary, which he was a bit cagey about, but if that had been even part of the construction, that would indicate crafting skills, at least at the higher levels, were much more complex and intricate than she had thought, and she already had several experiences with the insane things high-level crafters could do. What Zelmainne was much less reticent about was the cruiser, which he said he could repair fully with either the materials or the raw resources.

He could even convert things that were lying around or part of the derelict to the necessary parts and pieces, which he started doing after Jaq gave permission, only telling them to keep track of what they were taking to work on the cruiser. Sadly, the Skip Drive wasn't going to be an easy fix, and the derelict didn't have the parts and resources needed.

Zelmainne could fix much of the rest of the cruiser, or rather, he could complete the upgrades, repairs, and various modifications that the derelict's crew had been in the middle of when the attack had happened. He could get it buttoned up, inside and out, and get the turrets all built and operating. He worked with Erosh to finish out the interior, moving and placing walls and bulkheads as needed to get everything right.

That also allowed Beth to make some request or give some suggestions, letting parts of the cruiser be reconfigured to their exact specifications. Not that it really needed all that much alteration, but Beth had several things she wanted done or rooms rearranged, and it was easy for the two Empyreans to do the work. Zelmainne, in particular, seemed quite happy to be working on a ship, and not in the destructive manner they had been doing.

The group was going to be able to get the cruiser up and running sometime soon, but the Skip Drive was going to take a lot of time and money. It wasn't something that the Empyreans could just magic up a solution to; Beth would need to buy the resources or parts they needed and then give them time to fix. That didn't mean the ship was unusable; it would, in fact, be much faster and better in almost every way than their airship.

Again, the only downside would be that the thing was big and didn't fold up; they weren't hiding it in someone's back pocket. If the group decided to start using it once the rebuild was done and the 'regular' engines were up and running, they would certainly be announcing themselves wherever they went.

There wasn't really much worry about the ship being attacked, however, as the defenses were far more impressive than the airship, which could already handle most things up to level four hundred or just below before it was in the really dangerous zone. The cruiser would be able to tangle with things at least a couple hundred levels stronger, which was rather significant, considering every hundred levels was a big jump in beast strength, with levels five hundred and six hundred being no exceptions.

Beth did feel a bit useless while they were working on the cruiser for a while, and Jaq thought the same thing, apparently. Even with her working on doing some disassembly nearby, she wasn't exactly making any progress on what they were supposed to be focused on at the moment. Jaq eventually told her, and her two current sidekicks, to knock it off and focus on the mission at hand; they would have plenty of time to play later.

While rude, it was on point, so Beth had the two Empyreans stop their repair work and moved back out to continue what she had been doing, namely cataloguing damage and exploring the external-most bits of the ship right beneath the armor. It was while she was pushing through a set of heavily damaged compartments, the thick, caustic atmosphere of Jupiter whipping her hair around before she bound it in a bun, her skin itching the whole time, that she found a big break.

Maybe not a big break for their finances or anything, but what she was seeing was definitely something extremely interesting, and she started to get just a bare inkling of what Jaq was looking into with the derelict and just what the importance of the old ship might really be.