The Conceptual Deck

When I woke up I spent a few minutes going over the past few days and realized I had two problems. The first one was that Ema had definitely not woken me up when I had asked, which wasn't all too surprising. Ema had shown she was perfectly content to ignore me when it came to my health, in particular getting enough sleep. The second thing I realized was that while I had managed to finish my third S ranked build, I had nothing to really build with it.

I had plans of course, a design in my head that I really wanted to be the first real thing the machines made, but there were close to a dozen things that I needed to make for the large production machines, LPM's to scan before I could get it started. And to do that I would need a few things.

Grumbling my way through my morning routine I left my warehouse apartment, glaring at Ema as my armor activated, my partner only chuckling as she landed her painting platform to follow me out of the warehouse.

"How did you sleep?" She asked through my suit's communication system.

"Well enough," I answered, flying slowly over to the massive LPM complex, landing on the observation platform around the drydock.

"I kept an eye on it," Ema volunteered. "It finished a few hours ago, nothing went wrong as far as I could tell."

"Good, that's good," I said absently, still taking in the massive structure before turning to step inside.

The doors opened automatically as we got close, closing behind us as we walked into the front third of the octagon shaped building surrounding the dry dock, the part built to be a public observation area. The building builder was still sitting there, not far from the main front entrance. I quickly accessed the BB computer interface, making eight equidistant platforms for the LPM's around the dry dock pit. The machine got to work, only asking for a few more bags of cement and eight ingots of ultra metal. Once I fed it the resources it needed I started it up, before leaving the building through the front door and returning to the warehouse.

Once inside I turned to Ema, not stopping as I grabbed the blueprint scanner from the LPM and headed to one of the UCM's, starting the copy process, which thankfully wouldn't take long.

"Okay, I have a task for you. I need scans of a few things, and I need you to get them for me so I can use the LPM to print out copies so I can then enhance them," I explained, picking up the original scanner and handing it to her. "I'm going to hang around until this is done copying, then take it and scan a bunch of stuff in Wakanda. I need some of the stuff they have there as well. In the meantime I'm going to move the LPM's into position."

"What do you need scanned?"

I gave Ema the list of things I needed her to scan, each addition making her eyes a bit wider. Eventually she nodded and traveled back down to Earth, leaving me alone to start moving things around. Thankfully it only took a few minutes to card all the machines together and head back to the large scale production facility, the updates to the observation platform almost done. I waited about fifteen minutes before the platforms were complete and I could deploy the LPM's into place all around the dry dock, the final one being the one with the scanner housing, which I put at the front of the pit.

Satisfied that everything was in position I returned to the warehouse, grabbed the completed scanner and traveled back to Wakanda. The river water pulled against me for a moment before I started fighting it, walking towards the shore, my stealth band already activated. I stepped onto the shore and immediately deployed my wings, flying low back over the river. I resisted the urge to start scanning everything, as there was plenty of time for that later, when this project was done. Instead I kept my eyes on the sky, patiently waiting for a flying ship to fly by. After about an hour I had managed to scan three different types of their flying vessels.

With my mission complete I traveled back to the warehouse, heading back out to the drydocks. With a few minutes of fiddling I managed to get the machines to just print the thrusters of each of the three Wakandan ships. It took about twenty minutes for me to gather everything they needed, but pretty soon the parts were taking shape. It was about that time that Ema returned from her task, and with a smile I added her scans to the production as well. With everything working Ema and I took a break, returning a few hours later to find three thrusters from the Wakandan ships, a few types of rocket engines that Ema scanned from the displays at Kennedy Space Center as well as the largest and most powerful jet engines she could find. There were also a few cockpits from a variety of aircraft, as well as the space shuttles.

I set the facility, which Ema was already calling the Octopit, to make three more of each as spares, planning on starting the next project before Ema stopped me.

"You need to finish this project first." She said, gesturing to the building around us. "It needs shields, maybe a wardstone, and life support."

I opened my mouth to argue, but managed to stop myself. I took a deep breath and let it out inside my helmet before nodding.

"Yeah, you're right," I admitted. "I'm starting to rush around anyway, I'm going to make a mistake eventually if I don't slow down."

Together we sat down and had a break, ate some food and talked about the last few days before we got back to work finishing the Octopit. It took us a few hours to fit the life supports and shield generators, as well as the wardstones, which had all been printed over the last few days any time that the UCM's weren't busy doing other things. The wardstones specifically took a little longer than usual because I wanted to adjust them not to prevent people from coming in, but to prevent people from touching the LPM's without being vetted first. By the time we were done the entire facility was protected by three layers of shielding, and covered by dozens of redundant life support systems. The shield also allowed me to put life support around the observation platforms, meaning that you could breathe within the confines of the shield system. It was safe, and I knew it was safe, but I still felt nervous walking around without my suit activated.

With the Octopit facility now protected and habitable, I got to work on making the biggest fuck off thruster I could make. I layered and combined energy cell's, magic, and all of the thrusters and jet engines Ema and I had gotten our hands on. We triple stacked each of the Wakandan thrusters into the amalgamation. I worked in all of the thrust concepts I had from my first venture into Wakanda as well. The final result was a twelve foot wide and fifteen foot tall thruster that, thanks to the Wakandan influence, looked truly science fiction, like something straight out of Star Wars. Thankfully, the concave shape of the business end of the thruster, as well as the fact that it wasn't a solid structure meant it was just barely within my capabilities to card, though I had to sit down to recover every time I did.

In order to maximize the thrusters power I scanned it and used the scan to make a simple device at the bottom of the Octopit, basically the engine, connected to a block of ultra metal and a lever on the side, the thruster pointing up. It took a half hour to print and made the entire floor of the pit vibrate as I slowly turned the power up to full. With a pain killing ring on the opposite hand I sacrificed the tip of my finger a dozen times, carding the thrust on full power.

I worked those thrust concepts into a single thruster, before scanning it into the LPM, which I set up to print out a bunch of copies overnight. When that was going I cleaned up the bottom of the pit, storing spare parts and the cockpits I printed in the storage section of the observation building.

The next morning I finally finished the thruster, working all fifteen of the copies into a singular, penultimate form. Of course all of that was just the start.

The next few days were spent perfecting dozens of systems, working in enhancements, developing sub systems and everything in between. It took half a day to figure out the best way to work in the cockpit system, settling on connecting everything with communication and control crystals that I made into a group and could copy to include new things into the network.

On the fourth day I realized I didn't have a way to shift my weapons from small scale firearms to large scale, ship based weapons. I knew I had options, especially with the LPM scanners, but after thinking it through for a moment having an unarmed ship appealed to me. I could always add weapons later,or include them in later designs. I did, however, modify, improve and scan in the non lethal system I had developed with Tony. It wasn't until the eighth day that I finally started designing the actual project, at first roughly shaping it before starting to work all of the conceptually crafted scans I had stored up into a final design.

It was a ship, one hopefully capable of interplanetary travel, coming in at five hundred and fifty feet long and taking heavy visual inspiration from Stargate's Daedalus-class battlecruiser, though my design ended up being a little smaller than the original. It also had rows of thrusters along its back end instead of just two larger ones. I also included thrusters under the ship pointing down, and a few along the top facing up and some facing forward along its wings because I wanted it to actually be able to move around, not just point in one direction and go.

I added three layers of armor under the exterior hull, each five inches thick and pure ultrametal, with five inches of hexagonal honeycombing and bracing in between each of them. I placed the main cockpit smack dab in the deepest part of the ship, using conceptually crafted screens that let the pilots see the exterior without needing actual exterior cameras. The center of the ship also contained the main living quarters and barracks, with space for thirty people in small but serviceable rooms and another hundred in more cramped two person rooms.

The three mess halls, each complete with refilling fridges, full kitchens and room for forty people to sit comfortably at once were stacked on top of the living spaces. A series of larger rooms were filled with entertainment options, mostly televisions, arcade machines and bar games sat on top of those. I left a few dozen rooms along the back empty, just in case I needed to add something in later. I then immediately took six of them, joined them together and turned it into an infirmary. This entire group of rooms, as the place where people would be spending most of their time, was wrapped in another two layers of Ultra metal armor and honeycombing.

This space also contained fifteen of the thirty shield generators, which were responsible for the two layers of shields closest to the ship. In the original, fictional design both of the "wings" had been hangers for smaller ships, but considering I could compact any personal size ship into a much smaller space I kept one as a hangar but turned the second one into a garage. The hanger just led out, while the garage had a ramp system that could deploy from the bottom of the wing. I also included a brig, wrapped in its own extra layer of armor.

I added an engineering room, which was really just a room with a few UCM's including a single larger one, storage for repair tablets, a singular LPM that was connected to the ship and expanded storage for enough materials for that dedicated LPM to build an entire second ship.

Every hallway was dotted with security doors and weapon emplacements similar to the ones I had installed in Tony's house, though these could cycle through several different modes, several of which were extremely lethal. My final task was to riddle the structure with life support systems, tripling what it needed to keep the entire ship filled with air.

When I was finally done designing it Ema and I spent a full day shuttling over materials for the LPM's to use. When it was finally ready, Ema and I stood in front of the machine, ready to start it up and watch the fruit of our labors. I was about to press the start command before stopping and shaking my head.

"I have to invite Tony," I said, turning to Ema. "He would hold it over my head for the rest of my life."

"He is going to hate you for doing this too," Ema pointed out. "This blows everything you've ever done out of the water…. by a lot."

"Yeah… I can't wait to rub it in his face!"

Ema and I went back to the warehouse, cleaned ourselves up a bit before I called Tony and asked if he was ready to see what I had been working on. About thirty minutes later I picked him up from the mansion and brought him to the warehouse, handing him a sleek and comfortable space suit, which I had designed as an EVA suit for the ship. There were hundreds of expanded boxes filled with them all throughout the vessel. It was lightly armored, by my standards at least, had its own separate life support system, which I had already added to my own suit and had small non burning thrusters that could act as a jetpack in low gravity and as a simple jump pack system in normal gravity.

I showed him how to put it on, which was extremely basic as it all deployed from a chest plate, before guiding him out of the warehouse. Between the low gravity and the jump pack we made it to the Octopit in short time, though Stark stopped to stare at it for a long moment as we crested a hill. As we entered the facility I shrunk my armor, Tony doing the same to his EVA suit.

"This is the Octopit, which Ema named after its shape and the giant pit in the center," I explained, guiding Tony to the glass wall on the inside of the building. "Any guesses at what it's for?"

"Fitting your ego?" Tony asked. "You're going to start rivaling mine soon."

I chuckled and shook my head, before stepping through a doorway and out onto the observation platform. Tony shouted and recoiled, only for me to stop and turn as nothing happened.

"... Well that's embarrassing," Stark said. "Please tell me you didn't give the entire Moon an atmosphere."

"No, the shield counts as a room, letting the life support system I designed fill it with air." I explained, Tony hesitantly following me out to the primary LPM. "Go ahead, take a look."

Tony frowned and stepped closer to the machine, activating the interface. His eyes went wide when he realized what he was looking at and the scale of it, quickly scrolling through.

"Bullshit. There is no way you can just make this thing," He said, still spinning and manipulating the image.

"It's the culmination of a lot of work, experimentation and a lot of powerful concepts," I explained with a shrug. "And this one is just a proof of concept really."

"…What's its range?" He asked, finally looking up from the terminal.

"Infinite. I mean people will start to go insane eventually but they won't run out of fuel, air or food."

"How fast is it?"

"I… don't quite know to be honest," I sheepishly admitted, Tony hitting on something Ema and I had realized early on but really had no way of figuring out, at least none that we could think of. "I know the thrusters are powerful, really powerful. But for all we know it could finish and not be able to lift off of the scaffolding. You know how my crafting works, it's hard to tell these things before the project is done."

"And what would you do if it is a bust?" He asked, chewing the inside of his cheek as he looked back at the terminal.

"Scan it into the system and try to improve it. Probably work on the engines, maybe come up with a lighter conceptual metal blend. My ultra metal is already lighter than steel but I could make it light with the right materials. I-"

"I want to build the next one," Stark said, cutting me off. "We can work together, come up with more powerful stuff using my tech. Cutting edge stuff."

I laughed and nodded, patting his arm.

"Sure Tony, though it might be a while," I admitted. "Depending on how this goes… well it's either going to be something I keep a secret for e very long time or… I honestly don't know what else."

For once Tony didn't have a scathing or sarcastic remark, simply nodding in agreement with me.

"It will certainly change things," He said, before shaking his head before looking at me. "So, are you going to start it?

I nodded and stepped forward, Tony taking a step back to let me get closer. I scrolled through the blueprints before getting back to the screen with the start command. I took a deep breath, shared a look with Ema who simply smiled and nodded, before pressing the button.

For a long moment nothing happened. That moment extended to thirty seconds, then a minute and then two. By the five minute mark I was getting nervous, about to card the LPM to see if it was still functional when Ema bumped my shoulder.

"Look at the bottom, it's starting with the scaffolding," She said, her arm pointing down.

Sure enough, a quick look down over the railing showed a huge amount of scaffolding was almost growing from the floor, growing by inches. I knew it would slow down a lot when it reached the hull, but it was still exciting.

"How long is it going to take?" Tony asked, looking down next to me.

"About a month." I explained, still looking down into the pit. "Lots of conceptually crafted stuff for the builder to make which slows it down a lot."

"Not bad. C'mon, let's go back to the house. I think we both need a drink."

Hey guys, just a reminder that if you would like to show your support and help me spend more time writing, you can head over to my Pa_tre_on(my usernames for both platforms are the same) Either way, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.