Chương 492: Limitless Path Chapter Five Hundred Fourteen

Selene stayed with them two weeks, until the time that they had the cruiser space worthy and ready to test. The ship was fully sealed and the engines were working fine; Zelmainne assured the others that the Skip Drive was functional, if not at one hundred percent, but they didn't need to test that just yet. The first thing they tested was merely the vessel's ability to survive and maneuver in space, which all passed with flying colors.

It wasn't quite time to test the Skip Drive yet, but the ship was far enough along that they wouldn't be stranded, even if it would take a week to fly back to Earth on the 'regular' engines. Selene left at that point, not being able to take that much unscheduled time off without a better excuse, and the group continued both working on the cruiser and tearing apart the derelict.

Well, they weren't tearing it apart, but the speed at which they were disassembling it was little different that if they had been breaking it. It was already broken enough and they wanted to sell what was left of it, so that meant a lot of unbolting and unscrewing and precision cutting and snapping or slicing old welds. It was often rather tedious work, but they all became quite good at the basics of recognizing ship parts and pieces, not to mention tearing those parts and pieces apart.

Jaq had left a handful of tools for them, and they had found more tools early on in searching, especially in the hangar area, but it was surprisingly easy to take apart the ship without very complex equipment. Besides her forging hammer, Beth basically used a saw and a powered drill to do all the work. That and her muscles, which did come into play rather much when she was taking apart rooms and compartments with wall sections that weighed thousands of pounds.

It was cold-hearted, but when they were finally ready to test the Skip Drive, they did it with just one person. If the ship blew up or something, which Zelmainne scoffed at, only one of them would be lost. Blood volunteered and Beth, with much reluctance, let her be the one to give their new ship its maiden test flight, which was rather nerve wracking.

Even if everything went right, which Zelmainne insisted was guaranteed, it would take time to fly to the jump point, jump, let the drive cycle, and then jump back and fly back in. Beth wasn't sure if she or Val were more worried for the whole duration, which she thought was a pretty good sign for Val and Blood's relationship, and they were on the edge of their seats the whole time.

It turned out they worried for nothing, as Zelmainne was clearly more than knowledgeable enough to effect the repairs that the drive needed. Blood landed the ship back in the hangar and then conferred with the others while Zel and several other Ascended checked the engines, drive, and the flight logs. Blood herself professed that the flight had been incredibly smooth, and was also over the moon at her first true, licensed piloting of a starship.

The wolf had finished all the requirements and passed the final test for her starship license with flying colors during their long break and was now fully licensed for most starship operations. There were still one or two specialty tasks that needed further certification, but Blood could cover ninety-plus percent of ship piloting operations without issue, at least from a legal sense.

The others were much further behind, having only been working on their airship licenses, and not having made all that much progress recently. Beth was determined that they all have at least the most basic license, which would also help in teaching them how ships maneuvered; it wouldn't make it legal for them to pilot a starship, but it would teach them how to do it without killing everyone. Now that they had a working ship, with a fully working FTL drive, they weren't stuck on the derelict anymore.

Beyond that, they suddenly had way more options and possibilities, able to go just about anywhere in the galaxy, regardless of where the teleporter networks did or didn't go. Now, the ship still took time to fly, even at FTL speeds, and there were many areas deemed far too dangerous for them, but that did little to put a damper on their enthusiasm. Well, some were more enthusiastic than others, as Sera and Val were used to having access to starships and whatever they wanted with few caveats.

The others were much more impressed with having their own flying, functioning starship that could take them anywhere at any time. With that mostly sorted for now, they had two immediate tasks before them; get the dreadnought taken apart as fast and carefully as they could manage, and get their next rebirths done and keep heading for rebirth ten and Enlightened.

Beth was a little less concerned with rebirths, but that was also largely because she had a big advantage over all but Val with her Mana Physique already being made. There wasn't a lot they could do on that front right now, either, as they were lacking materials, and this wouldn't be a quick couple days to rectify. They had orders with Selene, placed during Beth and Sera's last visit and the others' interactions with her, but it would take time and she might not get every item.

Beyond that, Beth had reached out to Hall Masters and other contacts, including Mortaine and Zane, but the wait would be long and the price high. With more time until they could rebirth, that left the ship deconstruction, and they spent three months on it before they were starting to build up the materials for their rebirths.

They had gone from needing just about everything, though Bjorn was still largely an exception, to having several people about ready to rebirth, minus one or two items, and the others much more progressed along their paths. The ship deconstruction, in the meantime, had been going along in overdrive, with many of Beth's pocket Ascended helping tear the derelict apart at record speeds.

When Beth went to a section where it was just her and the Ascended, they could get everything torn apart in four days or just a bit more. Considering the size of the sections and how much work went in to breaking down wiring, plumbing, fixtures, doors, accesses, floors, walls, ceilings, security systems, and all the rest of the things that made up the complex interior of the dreadnought, four days was crazy. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Jaq had given them years to get the ship taken apart, and many years more to get the goods sold. Beth was kind of glad for all the time, as she was suspecting taking the ship apart was going to be much less of an issue than she first thought and that the selling of the parts was going to be much more of a struggle.

They already had Selene working overtime on their sales and purchase requests, and Beth asked around about anybody willing to buy ship parts, which did get more than a few questions as to why she was asking and what was going on. Zane and Fallon had their own shipbuilding facilities, though they weren't exactly massive, and more disappointingly for Beth, the two Manumitted had more than enough materials and better ways to acquire them.

Mortaine didn't even know if he had a ship, so he was very little help, and others like Jaq or Baelvyr had absolutely no interest in ship parts. A bit of a bright light in the dark times came from Val, who called back to her clan and managed to get them interested in buying some parts and pieces. Val's grandmother was the one who met them to discuss the details, though they met in a neutral location, the first time they had been off the derelict in more than four months.

At this point, the old ship was much more skeleton than anything else, though Sera pointed out that it more resembled a bug that had had its insides drained out. They hadn't taken care of the outer hull much, meaning there was a large, hard shell around a mostly empty interior. Beth didn't think it quite fit, especially as there was still a skeleton there and bugs didn't have that, usually… maybe… she was pretty sure.

Whatever the case may be, they flew back to Earth, where Beth again encountered a problem she had thought of before and forgotten; what to do with the ship. They could just park the cruiser somewhere, which would work, but then if they went through the teleportation network, the ship wasn't going to follow them. It was damnably inconvenient that it didn't fold up into a little cube like Beth's airship did, but then again, it was a bit too big and too powerful to be doing that.

They also wouldn't exactly need it where they were going and for what they were doing there, so Beth found a place where it wouldn't be bothered by too many beasts or people and parked it there. The ship had extensive security systems, far more and far deadlier than the airship did, and Beth was more concerned about the cruiser accidentally toasting someone that was just curious than she was about the thing actually getting stolen while they weren't watching it.

They teleported to a random planet, or random to Beth, but Val clearly knew her way around and led the others through the city they had landed in and to a specific hotel. The place was just the kind of place would have thought of if Val had mentioned a hotel; richly appointed, covered in gilt, strewn about with fine art, staffed by beautiful and skilled people, and overall carrying an air of grandiose superiority that slightly set Beth's teeth on edge.

Luckily for her, she didn't have to stay there, or even be there for very long; they were meeting Tera and then they were going to likely have to go somewhere with a bit more space to make a trade. After they were done with all that, they would likely be leaving the world, depending on Tera's disposition and any requests she had, so it was even less of an issue.

Val led them up through the building and to a room on the top floor; of course Tera had taken one of the two penthouse suites for a stay of likely no more than two days. Beth expected nothing less. The deal went relatively smoothly, and likely would have even without Val there to vouch for them and with their past interactions with Tera. The woman did seem distracted, but Beth wasn't going to pry, as that was either peak-Ascended, or, as she suspected, Exalted business.

Tera had never said exactly what her tier was, and even Val confessed to being in the dark about the much older woman's exact level of strength, but Beth was betting good mithril on it being Exalted.

They moved from the hotel to a warehouse, Tera having rented the entire thing for a month just to have somewhere to do the exchange, and possibly store some of the less valuable pieces, but she managed to fit everything she wanted to buy from their group within her storage power, leaving the warehouse to sit empty for the next twenty-nine days or thereabouts. They took another quick break after that, not a month or two, but just under a week for every to rest and relax.

Being on the derelict could be pretty stressful at times, even if the team wasn't exactly very susceptible to the atmosphere. There was still a fear of falling out of the ship and down into the planet itself and that would end rather badly. Out of the group, only Sera and Kris had the ability to fly, and they had to transform back into their base forms to be able to do that. Bjorn, Blood, Val, and Beth would all be pretty fucked if they fell, though there were a few things they could do that might save them.

Well, Bjorn always had hidden depths, and Val likely had a bunch of life-saving trinkets from her family, and Beth could go into her gate or get the airship out and unfold it. That really left Blood, who might be able to survive for a time, but digging her out of liquid hydrogen and helium would be more than a bit of a nightmare. There wasn't that high of a chance of falling out of the ship, thankfully, and as long as Blood kept to safer areas, it wasn't anything to really worry about.

The team continued the disassembly and deconstruction after their week of rest, and the ship continued coming apart at record speed. The more they took apart, the more the parts piled up everywhere. Beth felt like she was swimming in titanium plates, steel cross-connects, bolts and screws and washers and nuts, clear plastic and diamondoid panels, and on and on. She had stacks of faucets in her necklace, while a room in the residence area of her gate had showerheads and flexible hose for plumbing.

She had the sinking suspicion that she would be tripping over dreadnought parts for decades to come, and she took some time at one point to get everything both more organized and more consolidated. At some point, she would just do a flyby and drop everything on Selene, maybe even literally, and then let the freshly minted Exalted figure out where to store twenty thousand extra doorknobs.

Despite their feverish pace and the amount the Ascended helped, the ship was a dreadnought, something they ought to always keep in mind. Months and months of work blended together, Beth staying in touch with family and friends, those that weren't on the derelict working, through the comms beacon in the cruiser. The dreadnought either didn't have an intact comms beacon, it wasn't powered, or it was missing entirely, but they were more than able to make do with the cruiser's.

Beth and Blood had even showed off the ship at one point, taking their family and some people from the neighborhood for a bit of a joyride, but they were carefully with how fast and far they flew and what they showed off. Not that Beth didn't trust her family or neighbors, at least not to try anything sneaky, but many of the people in the neighborhood had loose lips. Even Sabs' mother, who was a very nice and rather competent person, liked to gossip from sunrise to sunset.

A good way to control information about them and their equipment, which the ship counted as, was to just make sure nobody was told or shown that information.