Vivid Stars Online

I arrived just a few moments before Elana entered the Guild lobby. She waved as she came in and I gestured up to the stairs. We greeted each other as we climbed up to the second floor, where I grabbed us a meeting room.

“This is about the computer we found, right?” she said as we settled into a set of chairs.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s out of power. I’m getting no response, no matter what I try with it.”

“That makes sense,” she said with a nod. “Even the best batteries run out, eventually. I’ve got a few things with me that might help.” She leaned down to rummage through the pack she’d bought as she finished.

“Excellent,” I responded, placing the tablet on the table in front of us. “Anything we can get off it should be useful, though I’m hoping for some kind of map most of all. Given my class, the more ruins I can find, the better.”

“Hmm, that makes sense,” she said while dumping a stack of tech on the table. “Give me a bit and I should have at least something for you.” With that, she started carefully examining the tablet.

Leaning back, I pulled up the Guild database to pass the time. Now that I was a full member, I could see a new section clearly marked Priorities. Pulling it up, I examined what the Guild was looking for.

It turned out there were a lot of things, almost all of them to do with shortages that the city was having. While the food was still at the top of the list, nearly every form of raw resource was also on there.

I guess it’s not just food they're having trouble with, I mused as I looked it over. Were they really importing this much stuff? Perhaps it’s because of their low natural resources and low infrastructure. It may just be easier to focus on a specialty and import the rest. What would that be, though? Psi-Tech?

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that was the most likely culprit. If they had been importing everything on the list in front of me before the blockade, then they had to have been selling something very profitable.

With Psi stuff being pretty much the defining factor of their planet, it made the most sense for a profitable export. Looks like it’s come back to bite them now. They pretty much have to build up an entire supply chain from scratch.

What this meant for me is that pretty much any resources I could find would put me in good standing with the Guild. Given that I was heading down into a cave network, I felt it wasn’t unreasonable that I would find a metal deposit down there.

I’ll have to check if my scanner can handle that kind of thing by default, I thought as I planned ahead. I could see it needing some kind of mineral database, at least to categorize everything. Given that the Explorer database was focused on Beasts, animals, and plants, I wasn't sure that it would cover this case.

Before I could pull up a search to find out, a triumphant cry from Elana pulled me from my planning.

“Got it,” she said with a grin. “It’s a form of contact-based charging, just like our watches. Though it needs more power than them.” She continued, gesturing to where the tablet now sat on a black cloth in the middle of the table.

It was now powered on and displaying a string of Arkathian runes. As much as I would have liked to translate them manually again, I didn’t want to keep her waiting that long. Instead, I pointed the face of my watch to it and focused on scanning the characters.

It took a few seconds for the software to pull each character from an image, however, only a couple of minutes later we were looking at a translation.

“So it’s looking for access permissions,” I sighed as I read it over. “I should have expected that. Of course, a military base wouldn’t just leave unsecured information lying around.”

Elana tilted her head in thought before responding. “What about your Item Attunement power? We thought the Arkathians used that for all sorts of things around the base. Could you use that to access it?”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” I responded, shaking my head. “I can only change physical things about the items I work with. While I guess software is technically physical in the end, it feels far too complicated to work.”

“Still, I guess there’s no reason not to try.” Saying that I focused on Attuning to the tablet. I reached out my senses and blinked as I felt a minor source of Psi energy from the same location as the tablet.

I was sure that it hadn’t been there before, it had to have been activated by powering up the device. Maybe this will do something, after all, I mused as I continued the Attunement process. A moment later, the tablet beeped and information scrolled across the screen.

“How do I translate this quickly? Like you did back in the facility.” I asked Elana. It would take far too long to do my scanning method with all this information.

“Oh, you just have to send it some queries on the network. It should work now that the device is on. Here I’ll show you.” She shifted her chair around as she finished before walking me through some steps on my screen.

Luckily, she had already assembled the needed software, and all I had to do was change what data to send to the device. While I wasn’t particularly tech-savvy, even I could manage it after she had walked me through the process.

“Nice,” I said as my watch began displaying a translated version of the information on the tablet. “Thanks, Elana, that’s going to make life a lot easier.”

“No worries,” she said with a laugh. “Now what’s on there, anything interesting? Unless you want me to leave, of course. I can see why you would want to keep this quiet.”

I shook my head with a smile, while we hadn’t known each other for a long time, I felt like I could trust her at least somewhat. Besides, she’d had access to my watch before, if she wasn’t trustworthy, then I was likely doomed already.

“It’s fine,” I responded, before navigating through the tablet. It looked like my use of the Item Attunement ability had unlocked some kind of basic access mode. At a guess, I figured it was a default level of permissions available to anyone who worked on the base.

While most of the information on the tablet was inaccessible, I could pull up a basic map of the surroundings. It showed the mountain range to the north of the city and had four points highlighted.

I wonder, I mused, pulling up my map of the mountains. Sure enough, the closest location marked on the map was directly over the ruin that we had explored.

“Looks like there are more ruins in the mountains or at least three of them. They're all much deeper in the range though, it’s going to be hard to make it to them.”

Elana responded with a grin. “That’s still good though, right? I mean, even if they're hard to get to, at least you know about them now.”

“Yep,” I said, grinning back. “Thank you for the help. How much do you normally charge for your services?”

“No, it’s fine,” she responded, waving her hands back and forth and suddenly looking uncertain. “I don’t need to be paid.”

I blinked, unsure how to respond, before shaking my head. “You deserve to be paid, Elana. While I can understand you coming for free on our last mission since it benefited you so much, this is different. You took time out of your day to come over and handle this.”

“Oh, ok,” she mumbled. “Thanks, I’m just not used to… Well, thanks. How do three hundred credits sound? That’s what Linnea’s charging now.”

“That sounds good,” I said with a smile. Checking the time, I continued. “It’s been a bit over an hour and a half now, so I’ll send you five hundred credits.”

Her face broke into a brilliant smile as she stood up and started packing her bag. “Thanks, Jared!”

Nodding, I queued up the transfer before escorting her out of the building. Once she was on her way, I moved back up to my room and returned to scouring the tablet. Unfortunately, I found little else that I could access.

It felt like this was some kind of emergency mode, a way to let you find your way back to the base even if you’d lost your access so far. Though even that is an interesting clue, I guess. Presumably, that meant they were confident that none of their enemies would have access to Item Attunement.

That or perhaps their version has a unique signature that the device can detect? Either way, I’m sure they wouldn’t have left even this information lying around if just anyone could get access to it.

I really wanted whatever else the tablet had on it, however, it looked like I would have to wait. Perhaps I would find something in one of the other facilities that would get me access. For now, however, I put that aside for the future.

As tempting as it was to change my plans now I had this new information, I knew that would be dodging what I had already committed to doing. If I let this pull me away from the cave mission, I could see myself going down a chain of expeditions and avoiding it forever.

No, if I ever wanted to improve, then I needed to face it now. With that in mind, I returned to planning a trip up to the cave and into its depths. With no actual idea of how deep it might go, I had to plan for the worst.

At least accessing it would be easy, it was less than a day’s travel from what had become my usual drop-off point in the woods. We could make it to the entrance on the first day and camp outside before venturing in.

For that, I had a few ideas. First, I wanted to be sure that we had plenty of light down there, the experience would only be worse in the dark. Whatever source we used would have to handle multiple days of continuous output, since I didn’t know how long we would be down there.

Beyond that, I would need to stock up on normal supplies: food, medicine, and ammo. I was getting fairly low on all of them from my last mission, so I would have to purchase more.

The last thing would be any scanner upgrades or data packs that were needed for resource identification. If I could find something for the guild while I was down there as well, then I could probably move straight into a trip up to one of the other facilities when I returned.

Definitely best to keep Bradford happy, I mused as I began making a list. He’s giving me a lot of leeway, so I should ensure that I keep helping the Guild. If I just drop off the radar and stop being useful, he may start insisting on specific jobs.

While I had been happy with a direction to follow for my first mission, I now had multiple leads of my own to follow. I had no desire to go back to being led around, so that meant keeping a good relationship with the Guild.

The list was complete; I left to purchase everything I needed. With the start of the expedition set for tomorrow morning, I had the rest of the afternoon to gather everything I needed. I just hope it’s not too expensive, I thought with a sigh.

While I had just gotten a large payday, this was always the part that sucked the money out of my accounts. The cycle of gaining money and then immediately spending it on upgrades and consumables.

Still, I’ve got a lot more to work with this time, It shouldn’t be that bad. Buoyed by thought, I moved on to the shopping. The cave was waiting, and I would make sure to be as prepared as possible.