Starship Commander Trapped In A Fantasy World - 216 Complications

Standing in the middle of what had up until a few months ago been a vibrant town, the empire’s minister of magic found herself in an extremely unhappy mood as she picked up something from the ground.

“… What the hell is this?”

Examining the brittle dull crystal she picked up, the archangel minister applied the tiniest bit of force to it and watched as it cracked apart while her calm and collected demeanour did the same. Letting an extreme amount of mana bloom out from her wings as her rage started flowing out freely.

“Useless”

“Miss minister of magic?

“Fucking useless!”

In a fit of rage, the minister corrupted the area around her as her subordinates which were near her died screaming and in pain and agony.

“AFTER ALL THIS FUCKING EFFORT!”

All around her the mana stones which were supposed to have been ripe for harvest, reduced to useless trash. The mistake was as obvious as it was enraging, she should have done the job herself instead of leaving it to one of her useless subordinates which had been assassinated when the factory he was assigned to was destroyed. Stamping her foot down, the minister dug it a good few centimetres into the compressed stone as cracks spread out beneath her.

“GETTING SO FUCKING CLOSE, AND THEN NOTHING!”

The operation was supposed to have been perfect, the Empire would have exchanged a useless fringe state with multiple years worth of clean mana stones, a vital strategic resource needed to face their new opponent.

“REDUCED TO NOTHING!”

But now they had lost both and gained nothing. Worse yet the surviving Ta’ai people had most likely been recruited by the enemy, they would no doubt come to be strong allies facing her in the upcoming conflict. In other words, she had been completely defeated and utterly humiliated.

“BY THOSE WEAK AND INSIGNIFICANT CREATURES!? I WILL TEAR THEM ALL APART WITH MY BARE HANDS!”

Activating an offensive spell formation engraved in her skin, the minister’s eyes glowed pure red as destruction on an apocalyptic scale spread around her.

–

“Why are we all here?… I understand those 3, but why us too?”

Gathered in the middle Dax’s compound, not only Solaris, Lilly and Alice but also Mare, Iris and Lux all waited for what Dax was going to say.

“We’re all here because there has been a complication with my long term plans. That complication will come to alter how I will be moving forward. Because of that, I’m giving everyone here the chance to walk away without any repercussions. Okay then, allow me to continue.”

Instead of the numerous complaints he had been expecting, Dax was met with silence and even a smile from Lilly which urged him to continue.

“This is us for reference.”

Pointing behind him, a hologram showed a mirror of the room Dax was currently inside before it started zooming out at a rapid pace.

“And this is the planet where we’re currently located And in turn the star system.”

Having zoomed out all the way, the hologram currently showed the larger star system in its entirety as Dax continued.

“It is important to note that there is an almost endless amount of star systems just like this one, most of them in turn orbit around a single galactic core, or a supermassive black hole.”

Showing a render of the entire galaxy with its countless stars, neutron stars, black holes, star clusters and nebula, Dax saw how Mare’s eyes were slowly losing focus and thus moved quickly on as to get to the point while she was still conscious.

“For the information I need to share, we can forget about most of the normal systems in the galaxies and just focus on their cores. These supermassive black holes are how my people find out where they are inside the populated supercluster where the Galactic Empire is located and we know the surrounding galaxies quite well, even if we have never been there. The point I’m trying to make is, this place is conclusively not part of the plane of existence Lux and I are from. As it stands right now we have no way to get home, no way to return to the fight we left behind.”

For a moment, most of the people present saw Dax truly looking defeated for the first time ever. Since coming to this world, Dax had suffered immensely. He lost limbs, cursed, blown up and cut to pieces but he had still not given in, but this time was different.

“As it stands right now, that means we need to figure out a new way to get home and fast.”

Taking over for Dax, Lux started explaining with a blank expression.

“Which means we’ll need the FTL drive from our craft which carried us here in the first place to develop a method to get home. Our original plan for doing that was to slowly outpace the Empire economically while forcing them to waste their resources, then either confront them in a direct fight or cut a deal, but that’ll take too much time so instead, we’ll resort to cruel warfare.”

“Cruel warfare?”

Just hearing that phrase made Solaris uneasy, she knew full well how dealy the tools of war from Lux’s and Dax’s world were and how much destruction they could unleash if their restrictions for use were lessened or outright removed.

“Types of warfare that are illegal or otherwise outlawed in the Galactic navy war doctrine and carry penalties ranging anywhere from demotion and fines all the way to execution and jail time under the Imperial galactic law.”

“Of course it goes without saying that I’ll be the only one punished after leaving this rock and exterminating the Emergence will be me alone as I’m the commander.”

Letting that sink in for a moment, Dax was about to continue his explanation when Lilly burst into tears.

“So you are planning to commit suicide!? Then go right ahead and kill yourself, see if I care!”

“… Well, shit.”

Looking around Dax realized that the other people still present felt the same way as Lilly and took a deep breath as he scratched the back of his head.

“No, I don’t have any plans to do anything that will warrant my execution when I return to the Empire, but I’ll most likely be demoted and put in jail for some time. Although there’s a decent chance that things won’t come to that, as we have some family on the other side that I bet are working on getting us home, namely so they can beat the shit out of me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go explain things properly to Lilly or will break your kneecaps~”

“Yes ma’am.”

—

While Dax had a wry smile on his face as he talked about the Avoaxian sisters there was a cold sweat dripping down his back at the same time, he was sure that if/when he returned he would be in for a truly agonizing experience, he had no idea how right he was.

“When I finally get my hands on him I think I’ll dip him in a vat of acid”

Speaking to no one in particular while staring without focus at one of the countless screens in front of her, Ra slowly felt the last few months worth of frustrations pile up. While Ra and her sister Mu had all the processing power they ever needed and detailed scans of the event, replicating it was another entirely different kind of issue, something which required inventing entirely new fields of study to even understand. Normally something like that wouldn’t really be an issue, but more pressing issues like the Emergence invasion meant that the sisters were working under time constraints, currently, it had been well over 10 years since any of them had taken a moment to rest or sleep while juggling other projects at the same time.

“A vat of acid is way too kind. When I see Dax I’ll make one of my new contractions capture him and rip him apart at a cellular level.”

“No designing new drones now, it’s a waste of processing power when we’re already finalized designs for the next 5 generations. How are you doing with the N generation supercapacitors?”

“Hit a bottleneck so now I’m running server sims on new heat exchangers while trying to supercharge that generator we made for that planet killer prototype. It is by far the only power supply that can hold up to the stress while delivering the needed power generation levels.”

“Ah, that one? How is it going?”

“I’ve blown it up along with a few star systems about 90 times so far, so it’s going good.”

“Simulated or real star systems?”

“What’s even the difference at this point?”

“… No idea…”

–

As the two sisters had well and truly started losing grip on reality, a Lazarus transport started docking at their top secret asteroid facility. Along with new processing cores for broken down servers and essential food replacement nutrient packs, the state of the art craft also carried a single person with it.

“God I hope those two abominations haven’t completely lost grip on reality”

Speaking a bit sarcastically to herself, Philippa had seriously considered the possibility that the chance that the two Avoaxian sisters might have completely abandoned all hope.

“Anybody still alive in here?”

“Kind of alive.”

“If you count this kind of existence as alive.”

“I brought ice cream.”

“”Praise the saviour!””

Moving faster than they had done for the entirety of the last decade, Ra and Mu swarmed Philippa as they enjoyed their first break from their constant work and updated Philippa on their progress.

“So, how is it going?”

“We’ve completed the CDT drive and most of the craft already.”

“And tested it too.

“Really?!”

Having expected that they were still in the theoretical phase of development, Phillipa was surprised to hear that the two sisters had just casually completed the first intended cross dimensional travel drive and had already tested it too.

“Yeah, wanna see it?”

“I do.”

With an instant response while her eyes were slightly glowing, Phillipa invaded Mu’s personal space with a look on her face which stated that she wouldn’t retreat until she saw the craft.

“Then let’s go, I still haven’t seen it with my own eyes either.”

Making their way from the sisters personal quarters and past the vast server farm which helped Ra and Mu do their complex calculations, the group finally reached an area where they needed to put on spacesuits, then finally they reached the drydock.

“Here it is, the CDT drive testbed. Designation: Lazarus CDT N generation command and control class destroyer, or L-CDT113 for short.”

“… That’s not really what I had expected.”

“Yeah, well it’s a prototype for a reason.”

Instead of some next generation, ultra advanced craft like Phillipa had expected, she was greeted with what could only be described as a half molten, stripped down corpse.

“Wait, did you say L-CDT113? Where are the others?”

“Most of them didn’t ever return only a few of them partially did, here’s what is left of L-CDT045 for example.”

Holding up a small vial with a single fleck of paint residue to show her, Phillipa realized that the corpse she saw in front of her was a vast improvement.

“The problem is the waste heat of the entire system, generated by the field stabilization and the power plant itself.”

“To stabilize itself and avoid ripping itself apart, the craft generates so much heat that it melts itself.”

“Reduce the heat so it doesn’t melt itself, the craft rips itself apart when trying to jump.”

“Increase the stabilization and the craft melts itself.”

“I see That sounds problematic.”

Being presented with the problems the Avoaxian twins were working on, Phillipa started getting a headache herself and suddenly understood a lot of their pain.

“Which is why we’re going back to the very basics and reinventing every single component.”

“As we’ve lost track of what technological generation we’re working on, we just started calling it N generation.”

“A few more years and we should have worked out all the kinks.”

Looking at the two sisters as they explained, Phillipa saw their tried and almost dead looking eyes, but behind them was an unmistakable spark of will which drew her in.

“How long till you two have put a working prototype together?”

“20 more years.”

“Give or take a few.”

“I’ll take an official leave around that time then. There’s no way you two go on this mission without me.”