Vivid Stars Online

As much as I wanted to rest, there were things I had to handle before I could. Organizing funerals for the fallen soldiers, checking up on the status of the town, and reporting the corrupted rift to the Duchess.

Thankfully, the Captain took charge of getting the injured seen and the corpses stored away, leaving me with one less thing to handle. With that settled, I went to meet with the mayor to handle my first two tasks.

There I found some good news, as the construction of the greenhouses was underway. There was still a long way to go, but we had the materials and the expertise to get them finished.

She was also able to organize the funerals and ensure that everyone who needed to be there was brought over. I didn’t have any real idea of what went into something like that, but she assured me that she had it handled. It would take a few days to prepare but would be done before I needed to fly to Sweden.

That was the biggest potential upset in my schedule, as it would take at least one day, and likely more out of my usual everyday login pattern. Ideally, I would get everything urgent done before then, giving me space in my schedule.

With the most important tasks finished, I handed over a collection of plant samples for David, thanked her, and took my leave. I walked a meandering path through the town on the way to the frigate, taking in the sights as I went.

From the outside, everything looked to be going just as well as the Mayor had reported. Half a dozen new buildings were being erected in preparation for the population boom we were hoping for in spring.

Just have to make it through winter first, I mused as I left the outskirts of the town. I’ve heard it snows here, but I don’t really know too many of the details. As long as the lake doesn’t freeze, we should have food, but there may be other dangers.

I made a note to do some research as I entered the frigate. A query to the ship’s systems informed me that Elana was working aboard, but I decided to leave catching up with her until later. I’d waited on reporting the corrupted rift long enough.

Instead, I moved toward one of the rooms with a working terminal and began typing up a report. Usually, I just sent brief messages to keep the palace updated, but I felt that this needed something more official.

That rift had been one of the largest threats I’d ever encountered, and it had been very close to the town. I was pretty sure the water floating above the rift had been the lake, which would explain how I’d encountered the first tentacle beast.

Even though the threat may have already been solved, I wanted to detail the entire problem in the hope of getting a stronger force out to have a look. We hadn’t stopped to fully explore down there, and there was always a chance that more beasts lurked below.

Since the tentacle beasts seemed to be a core part of the issue, I made sure to include the first two encounters I’d had with them, as well as the final battles. While I’d reported the first fight to the Explorers Guild, I doubted it would have been forwarded to the palace

It took me several hours to finish the report, after which I sent it through to the palace with a note that the Duchess should be informed. If anyone could organize a swift response, it would be her.

With the report sent, I moved to catch up with Elana over dinner. Linnea had been released by the medics while I was writing and had picked up dinner for the three of us.

It was a pleasant enough dinner, though it felt like my upcoming visit to Sweden cast a pale over the conversation. For some reason, neither of the sisters wanted to talk about it, each redirecting the conversation if I brought it up.

That didn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence, but I let the matter lie for now. There was still time before I had to leave, so I would hopefully be able to corner one of them on the subject eventually.

Due to this very avoidance, I instead got a very detailed update on how the frigate's repairs were going. Elana had finished as many maintenance drones as we had parts for, and they were making steady progress on the internal systems.

While we lacked the materials for the more exotic technologies, we had enough to repair the internal wiring, walls, and doors. The ship was already beginning to look like less like a wreck, and more like a professional warship.

The conversation wound down after that, and Linnea and I retreated to our quarters. It was the first time either of us had slept in a real bed in a week, and the experience was so enjoyable that we didn’t even stop for any fun before falling asleep.

The next morning, I woke to a ringing sound from my watch. I blearily looked at the caller's details before snapping to full attention when it showed Duchess Milena.

With a rush, I rolled out of bed and moved into the next room in case the call needed to be private. “Good Morning, Your Grace,” I said as I picked up the call.

“I got your report,” she responded, her voice terse and serious. “Are you sure the rift is no longer showing any signs of Corruption?”

“Yes. The signature changed drastically after I was forced to use the rift, returning to what I associate with the regular found in the wild.”

“That’s good,” she said, her voice relaxing. “Talk me through everything, I want to hear the full story.”

I started to go through events from when we discovered the hidden tunnel but she asked me to go even further back to my first encounter with the tentacle beast. At first, I thought it was a waste of time since I’d filled the report out, but the Duchess managed to draw information from me I didn’t even remember.

She was an expert at asking just the right questions to trigger my memory, and by the end of the story, I’d explained quite a bit more than was in the report.

“Good work on removing the threat,” she said once I’d finished my story. “Usually I would be reprimanding you for trying to take it out with such a small force, but I understand that you had little choice.”

“It’s rare to encounter Beasts with supportive powers, and even rarer to see them used so intelligently. Corruption is a rarely seen and poorly understood phenomenon, though.”

“I’ll organize some elite troops and the best expert we have to come through tomorrow. They will ensure the threat is truly removed, and the expert will look you over in person. Do not use the power you received until then.”

“Understood,” I said in response. This was exactly what I had hoped for, and it even included a checkup for me. I’d been expecting to have to go into the city for that.

“I will also be organizing a medal ceremony for you and the soldiers involved,” she continued her tone light. “Normally dealing with a threat on your own lands wouldn’t warrant such treatment, but Corruption is considered a planetary threat.”

“Now I can’t reward you much so soon after giving you all that land,” said, dashing my sudden hope of getting access to another ritual chamber. “But an official ceremony should help to quiet some of the more vocal nobles who are complaining about your appointment.”

I thanked her, after which she hung up and left me to my thoughts. As usual, I was left wondering which of us had gotten the most out of the situation. It was something of a hazard of working with the Duchess, though it would be far more annoying if she didn’t treat me as well as she did.

As it was, I got the feeling this reward ceremony would be more for her benefit than mine. It would be a way to show that she’d chosen the right person for the job and would silence people criticizing her choice as much as it would people complaining about me.

Still, I had gotten what I wanted, so it wasn’t too much of a problem. A thought hit me, and I sent a message to the Captain asking to have one of the uninjured soldiers ready to guide the Duchess’ troops tomorrow.

I hadn't been asked for it, but I figured that having a guide would help get them to the problem sooner. It would be easier to cancel the help if they didn’t want it than to prepare at the last minute.

That gave me a day before I had to do anything, and I was planning on spending at least half of it resting. The weeks of danger and poor sleep had caught up to me, and before anything else, I returned to bed.

Linnea was still asleep, not having been woken by my call, and I slipped back in beside her for a few more hours. After we woke I spent a few hours with her before leaving her to rest.

She was on several days of bed rest by order of the medics, her wounds having been more serious than I’d expected. One of the downsides of having a high Toughness was that it let you take far more damage than usual and keep operating.

That would keep you alive in the field, but it also masked the problem and let you push yourself further than was recommended. It didn’t help that she’d kept quiet about the extent of the damage on the way back.

I would have to have a discussion about that with her at some point, but for now, I left her alone to rest. It could wait until she got better.

The rest of the day I spent some time helping Elana with the ship while bouncing ideas for setting up the mining and ore transport we would need off her. She had plenty to say on the subject and agreed that a network of underground rail was a good idea.

Despite the dangers that could be present in the depths, there were at least fewer beasts now that we had cleared much of it out. Compared to the surface, where they seemed to be an unending quantity, it was a much safer method of travel.

We put together a few initial plans, which would be useful when it came to the investor talks in a couple of weeks. I was extremely thankful that they would be paying for it, as I was getting low on available funds.

We had a bulk of cores to sell that would help, but I would need to funnel most of that into keeping my troops going. It wouldn’t be long until we had to take over protecting the town.

It was looking like I would be able to just barely keep things running until summer when we would hopefully get a bumper crop from David’s experiments. If that went well, it would give me all the funds I needed to finish repairs on the frigate.

That was likely to be the most pressing demand for the money, as I couldn’t imagine us waiting much longer to take the fight to the pirates. I was sure it would be before the next winter, giving me a timeline of roughly a year of preparations.

It was going to be hard enough getting through this winter without off-world supplies, so I couldn’t imagine them waiting longer than that.

I relayed that timeline to Elana, who agreed that it was doable as long as we managed to get all the missing materials for it, and managed to get blueprints for the missing pieces of technology.

I tried scanning the ships we had, the Gunboat, which the Captain had brought back for us, and the fighters, to no luck. While they both had shield generators, they weren’t designed to scale up to the level of the frigate.

I would have to investigate another capital ship to get what we needed, and I hoped that the medal ceremony would do it. The Duchess had said she couldn’t reward me much, but a tour of another ship shouldn’t be too onerous.

After a day split between resting and helping around the ship, I found myself surprisingly nervous as I settled into bed. The Corruption expert would be coming tomorrow, and I couldn’t help but worry about what they were going to say.