Chương 405: Book 7 - Chapter 2 - Refits

"How are the refits going, Spooky? Will they be done by the time you arrive?" I asked the little holographic bear standing in front of me.

"The engine and missile systems have already been upgraded," he replied without turning to look at me.

"Since you paid extra for nanite upgrade packages, all the beavers had to do was spray them down with the provided canisters and wait for the nanites to do all the work. They have to disassemble all the old reactors and shield generators to make space for the new ones, and since taking all the reactors out at once would be a bad idea, they're doing it piecemeal. It'll take a couple of hours, but the first set will be done before we arrive."

"Uh-huh, and what about the weapons and manufacturing?" I prompted.

"The new matter reconfigurators are already in place. We had the badgers move them in and the Beavers just need to plug them into the power grid," Spooky said, before pausing.

"The weapon upgrades, on the other hand, are going to take a while. The beavers have to cut away a significant amount of the upper and lower decks to make enough room to allow us to retract and swap out the secondary turrets. It'll take several days before they'll be ready to test the system."

"We're going to be without secondary weapons for several days? Tell me you're joking," I grumbled. Spooky shook his head.

"Don't worry, they'll be online through most of the work," he replied.

"Like I said, most of the work they have to do involves ripping out corridors, reinforcing the area, and creating weapon bays underneath the turrets. The Shatterstorms will likely only have to be offline while they're connected to the storage system."

"Good. Nyx tells me that most of our weapons will be borderline useless against underwater targets, which is why I wanted to prioritize upgrading the missiles. It was surprisingly easy to modify them so they could enter or even be fired underwater. That being said, I still want to have as much firepower available as possible, just in case that fucking thing surfaces," I said.

"Speaking of underwater combat, how is the Marsupial coming?"

"Slow," Spooky replied, before looking at me.

"I don't understand why you insisted on making the Marsupial aquatic. You could have bought a submersible for a fraction of the points."

"That's true, but between the Global Incursion and dealing with that piece of Phobos, the Marsupial has been slowly getting further and further behind tech-wise. We didn't even launch it during the defence because it only had a single Class II turret and no shields. I'm sure that even the projectiles from the augmented Model Fives would have been able to penetrate its hull. It needed an upgrade, and this seemed like a reasonable time," I explained.

"By making it subaquatic," Spooky said, obviously not impressed.

"That's not the only improvement we're making," I said, defensively.

"The hull is getting reinforced; it's getting an additional turret and two Class III coaxial cannons, missile racks, and, of course, shield generators. It'll be tanky enough to wander into the most infested areas and provide fire support for the troops when Bear Force One isn't fast enough, or we don't want to risk the mother ship."

"But you bankrupted yourself getting it set up," Spooky said.

"So? I bankrupted myself multiple times over the last few days. Most of Bear Force One's upgrades came just from my share of the Model Fifty-One-S's bounty, and trust me, that was quite significant. The thing is, Class III tech is so expensive that all it took was a couple catalogs, and a few upgrades, and I burned through it all," I said.

"A couple catalogs, and a few upgrades," Spooky snorted.

"You filled the manufacturing bay with Class III matter Reconfigurators then bought a dozen new blueprints. What I don't get is why you still refuse to purchase the Class III bear blueprints." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"It's not that I refuse to purchase them," I said.

"It's that I'm concerned that I'll be unable to produce them in significant quantities. Most Class III tech requires rare elements and materials, and considering the salvage crews are breaking down the ruins of old cities and towns, we're not exactly bringing in a lot of that shit. I could use points to purchase the materials I need, but that kind of defeats the point of printing my own forces."

"You could have picked up the plans in case you needed to print Heavy, or more likely Bob, a new body," he said.

"If one of you guys went down, I'd rather rebuild you on-site, with the best tech I have available, rather than waiting for another generic Class III body to print," I said.

"You guys deserve better than that."

"And what about your team leaders, the ones with Class III AI?" Spooky asked.

"Well… they deserve better, too, but I've got to have priorities. We're chasing a very dangerous enemy through the ocean. I figured I should have SOMETHING capable of aquatic warfare," I said.

"And it didn't occur to you to waterproof the bears?" Spooky asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I may need the bears to help deal with an aquatic horde or something eventually, but during the chase? Unlikely. What are they going to do? Swim after the Gene Tender? Please, they'd sink faster than I would," I said.

"No, if we need to do massed underwater combat, then I'll either get the blueprint for a Class II aquatic bot, and Class II aquatic weapons, or plans for some sort of diving suit for you all. Class II equipment is incredibly cheap compared to Class III stuff; I'm sure I'll have enough points by then."

"You better double-check because I'm sure you don't want the Gene Tender to slip away just because you were underprepared," Spooky said.

"That's… true… I'll check after we finish up here," I said.

"Getting back to the matter at hand, how long until the Marsupial is up and running?"

"It'll be a couple hours," Spooky replied.

"In order to be airtight, the Beavers needed to apply a nanite coating, which broke down the old armor plating, and reformed it in a watertight, and pressure-resistant way."

"I don't get why that would take so long," I muttered.

"They did the same thing for the engines and missile tubes."

"Yeah, well, that's because they didn't need to be outside the ship while applying the nanites to the missile tubes," Spooky said.

"They've got a pair of their jury-rigged maintenance vehicles keeping pace with Bear Force One, spraying the outside of the Marsupial in flight. They can't do the internal improvements yet either, because the process severely weakens the armor, so if someone steps on a section that's mid-transformation the armor might buckle, causing them to fall through."

"And since the Marsupial's so thin, there's no subfloor, just the outer hull," I said. Spooky nodded.

"Exactly."

"Then tell them to start designing a subfloor too," I said.

"They're going to have to run power conduits, piping, and electronics to get the new weapons working anyways. Might as well have a way to cover them up and keep the bears from stepping on them. The beavers already have the plans for the Marsupial, I doubt it'll take long to do, not with the Class III Matter reconfigurators."

"Right," Spooky replied.

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, what's your ETA?" I asked.

"I know you probably want to play it a little safe, since the engines were just upgraded, but I'd feel a little better having the full firepower of Bear Force One in place, just in case we need it."

"About that," Spooky said with a smirk.

"Look up." I frowned, walked over to the Ursa's sliding door, yanked it open, and looked to the east, only to find Bear Force One cresting the mountains. I blinked a couple of times, then leaned over and stuck a finger into my ear before looking back at the Strato Carrier.

"Spooky, I think I'm hallucinating because I can see Bear Force One coming over the mountains already. We've only been sitting here for about an hour so…" I shouted back at the hologram.

"It's no illusion, the Class III engines are significantly faster than the Class II ones. No more struggling to keep the ship in the air since all that extra power went to the thrust," Spooky explained.

"In that case, I think I've gone deaf," I said, before opening and closing my mouth a couple times, trying to get my ears to pop.

"The new engines are also extremely quiet compared to the old ones," Spooky laughed.

"No more oversized turbines either. It's all anti-grav and drive engines."

"A miracle of technology," I exclaimed.

"Wel, l I'm glad to have you. Since you arrived so quickly, you can coordinate with Heavy and see if there's anything you can do to accelerate the process. If not, head out towards the middle of the search zone in case we find something or one of the other samurai needs fire support. Got it?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" Spooky replied with a salute.

"And Spooky, I'm glad you made it so fast. Hopefully with your help we'll have this thing located in no time," I said. Spooky just groaned and held his face, so I looked at him confused.

"What?"