The 3D printer was about to finish. During this time, I had only just managed to collect a tiny bit of mana and inject it into my core. I believe it had some effect, giving me more power, but if I had to guess, I would say it was under 0.01%.
 
This truly would take forever. I guess that’s why people challenged the portals—because killing there would get you a lot more mana that you barely had to do anything to integrate with your mana core.
 
So, for right now, I definitely needed to practice getting better at absorbing mana. This should allow me to control magic better and hopefully use spells. We still knew so little concrete facts—like how to learn spells.
 
Some sources say you can just make them up, some say you need some sort of teacher, and some say you need an object to help you learn them. Perhaps all three are true, but the quantum net can be frustratingly unclear.
 
Unfortunately, we couldn’t immediately jump into FTL, as I needed to secure everything because we would once again be under constant acceleration, and you wouldn't want anything flying around, especially if there was some sort of emergency. Fortunately, I had some drones helping me, which made the work go by faster.
 
During all of this cleanup, I was thinking about what to name this ship. The ship’s name was like its identifier. Of course, it had a complex unique code tied to it, but the name was important.
 
It’s like the name of a company—you registered stuff under it, you were able to dock in civilized space, and more importantly, as a space adventurer, it was the way to accept missions.
 
Eventually, I thought about the place we came from—the city I was born in and eventually left. The megacity of Forward Horizon was founded by a group of idealists who set out to build a city of the future. They succeeded in some sense, but the founders did not have the most pleasant endings. The name itself, however, I think would be good enough.
 
Forward Horizon Mark 1.0.
 
It’s not the best name, but I think it’s not the worst. Perhaps it would be bad to name it after the place I escaped from, but space was a really big place, and the Terran Empire would most likely be confined to the Sol solar system because of the FTL current.
 
The rest of humanity, especially the corporations, would always be a problem, but just because I’m human. So, the name of the ship wouldn’t matter much.
 
Then came the problem of my own name. Now that I truly did want to distance myself from. It would be better if everyone thought I was dead. But what do I call myself?
 
“Lola, what do you think would be a good name for me?”
 
“I think a perfect name for you would be Master.”
 
“Why did I even try?”
 
The cleaning was finished, and I had just entered the name into the quantum transponder and into the communication computer. Now I needed to give myself a name. The title would be Captain, of course, but what would my damned name be? What would I like to be called in the future?
 
I remembered my time working in a cybernetics recovery center. There was a dog there that helped people simply by being close to them. He wasn’t afraid of the cybernetics, and he helped so many people. Eventually, he died of old age, well into his 60s. So many people showed up to his funeral, and his name was Remi.
 
I’ve always liked that name. Remi. I guess that’s it. But then I would need a last name as well.
 
Graves. That would be good enough—since I should be dead.
 
“Remi Graves, how does that sound?”
 
“It’s nice to meet you, Remi Graves, but I would still vote for Master.”
 
“Well, fortunately, I’m the captain, so I get to decide.”
 
“Start running through FTL jump protocols.”
 
“Acknowledged.”
 
Sitting in this pilot chair was a bit of a different experience now after all the operations. Some of the scenes of me cut open flashed by and I shuddered a bit.
 
The screens were now back up, allowing me to see everything around me—which was blackness. This current view was only simulated, as basically all the cameras were covered up to protect them from cosmic radiation.
 
I started up the main engine. It would take a bit for it to properly be ready. The noise was unpleasant, especially now that I had my proper hearing back. Hopefully, there will be better solutions for propulsion.
 
The trip to the Trade Centre was not too long, but there were three fuelling stops just to make it there, and the two possible locations where I would like to go afterwards were both quite a lot further away. More specifically, I wouldn’t be able to travel most of the way using this strong of a current, which would make the travel time a lot longer.
 
When the engines were close to being ready, I hit the flick switch to start the klaxons to warn about upcoming acceleration. I felt all the drones waking up, running through the protocols to keep them safe during acceleration, and I watched on the screens as everything else that could move also did the same.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
 
When everything was done and all systems returned green, I pushed acceleration to 5G. We were so close to 7.7%, but it would still take us about 40 minutes to reach the correct speed. Whenever you leave FTL it seems you lose some speed.
 
We had still traveled quite a distance during our stay here as we continued to drift at near 7.7% the entire time, but it would be nothing compared to when we jumped into FTL.
 
When everything was at the correct speed and the FTL device powered up, the bubble formed, and I initiated the jump into a side dimension.
 
This time, the transition was a lot smoother as just before the jump I cut the thrust to 2.5G, and immediately after the jump I reduced the thrust down to 2.3G, so we wouldn’t be building up pressure in the front. The current felt the same as before, but this time we had a destination, so I actually needed to correct our heading.
 
Lola had run the calculations, and thanks to the quantum chips, she was able to do so extremely accurately and quite fast. We would be slowly heading a bit left on our trajectory toward the center of the galaxy.
 
That would eventually get us close to the edge of this current, and on our way, we would be stopping at two refuelling stations before we exited this current.
 
Moving sideways caused more turbulence, but we were updating the autopilot to hopefully be able to handle this. 2.3 G acceleration also felt like nothing. I would guess moving around would be a bit more troublesome, but even sitting here should be easier thanks to the upgraded cybernetics.
 
This first jump was going to take six days and seven hours and would leave us quite close to being empty on fuel. Hopefully, everything will work out well.
 
It took about two hours before we were confident in the autopilot taking over from me, but I still stayed in the pilot chair. It was one of the more comfortable places on the ship, and right now, only the bed was another place that would work as a resting spot under this direction of acceleration.
 
I really was expecting most of the time to be zero gravity—that’s why I didn’t design the ship to be more compatible for habitation under this kind of acceleration. I will definitely need to take that into account when I start designing the mark 2.0 of this ship.
 
In the meantime, I think it would be a good idea to also try to get a handle on collecting mana. Doing so was more difficult than before, and I thought I had gotten better, but no matter what I tried, I didn’t seem to be succeeding at all.
 
“Lola, why can’t I collect mana? Isn’t there supposed to be mana pushing us right now? There should be plenty.”
 
“You can only collect uninfluenced mana. The mana in this side dimension has been influenced, interacting like currents within this side dimension. So no collecting mana, no using it, you can do nothing with it. It’s the same as when someone has cast a spell—there’s no taking charge of the mana in that spell.”
 
“Well, that’s unfortunate. I guess I’ll scrap those plans.”
 
I unbuckled myself from the pilot chair, went and got my design notebook, and then got back. There were plenty of things I needed to work on, especially weaponry—I really needed a lot more than I currently had. And of course, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start working on the mark 2.0.
 
Six days and seven hours later
 
I decreased the throttle and watched as the bubble that surrounded us started to destabilize. It took only a few moments—exactly when Lola had calculated—and then we were back in normal space.
 
Immediately, I cut acceleration completely, turned on the quantum transponder, the communication computer and activated active sensors.
 
We got a visual on the refueling station almost immediately, and we were about 10 million kilometers away from it. It will take about a minute for the active sensors to start getting information back to us about the station and what surrounded it.
 
“Lola, nicely done. We’re exactly in the correct landing zone.”
 
“Thank you.”
 
It took about 60 seconds for the communications computer to make contact and for the station to respond. I suspected that they were already readying weapons just in case, and it took about two minutes longer for the two computers to finish handshake protocols. Even light speed was slow with distances like this.
 
We indicated that we wished to buy fuel, and in another minute, we had a path we needed to follow.
 
It was nice to see that all the programs were working correctly. The station itself was moving at 7.5% light speed toward the core. So, I needed to decelerate, so it would be moving toward us and not us away from it.
 
We would also need to do some corrective acceleration to get to the right spot. So first, I turned the ship using RCS thrusters to be pointed in the correct heading, which was actually not directly at the station because orbital movements didn’t work like they did in the atmosphere, where you just pointed where you wanted to go.
 
The first burn was almost three minutes long at 7.2 G. There were two more corrective burns after that, but they were later on. So right now, I started a long burn at 5 G that would help us match the speed of the station and get us quite close to it.
 
This would take quite a few hours, but it was a lot better than trying to refuel or even dock at trade stations, because those were inside solar systems, and you would need to decelerate completely, which would take quite a while.
 
When we reach the one-million-kilometer mark, we need to immediately contact the station again so we can communicate with video instead of just text, allowing them to better verify that I wasn’t a pirate and was actually the owner of this ship. There would still be a three second delay, but that was manageable.
 
There was also the problem of my payment to them, as I would not be able to dock because of the radiation from my ship.
 
After hours of constant acceleration, we finally reached a close enough distance, so for the first time, I called aliens.
 
We weren’t the only ones here. There were five other ships as well—two of them accelerating and three of them currently refueling or docking. The ships looked quite normal, more of what you would expect spaceships to look like, but they still were a bit aerodynamic. I think most spaceships were going to be like that because of the FTL currents.
 
It was quite fascinating to see those ships. All of them were bigger than mine, but two of them were still in the tiny category, while the others would fit into the small B category, meaning they weren’t bigger in length than 150 meters.
 
All of them seemed to have visible weapons, but they were all listed as civilian cargo transports. Most likely, there was no law about how many weapons you could have on any ships, even civilian ones.
 
The station itself was quite big. It was 600 meters in length and width, making it quite circular, although the surface definitely wasn’t, with many protrusions— that kinda looked like houses.
 
The main station part was close to 100 meters in height, but underneath it were huge tanks filled with what was most likely all the different kinds of fuels nearly 900 meters in height. A large portion of that was probably fuel for fusion cores, as basically every ship was powered by them. Including every other ship here. It was not nice to be one ship without this signature.
 
The call finally connected, and I saw an alien. It had three eyes, one more at the top of its head. It was covered in fur that looked kind of like a swaying grass field. I think it was quite small in size, but it was hard to tell. I guess it kind of resembled a rabbit, but the head shape was off and no big ears.
 
It started to speak in a language I didn’t understand, but a moment later, the universal translator took over, and I started to hear it speak in my language—although the mouth movements definitely didn’t correlate. If I tried, I could still hear the original language as well.
 
“Greetings, ship Forward Horizon and its captain, Remi Graves. I see you wish to buy approximately one ton of hydrogen and 100 kilos of liquid nitrogen. Is that correct?”
 
“Yes, it is,” I said in Standard, as I didn’t wish to send it my language code. I didn’t want it traced back, just in case some other humans came through this place.
 
“Ohh, Standard! That’s a pleasant surprise. We are detecting some serious radiation coming from your ship. Now, normally this is not a problem—we see it often enough—but you don’t seem to have an account with us. So, I was wondering how you were planning on paying for your fuel?”
 
“I was hoping I could do a drone delivery of standard gold currency.”
 
“Yes, this is something we offer, but we need payment before refueling. Is this something amenable to you?”
 
“Yes, it is. I would also like to open an account and hope to deposit more so future refueling would be simpler.”
 
Its demeanor had changed over the course of us talking with everything said taking about three seconds to hear and then respond. It wasn’t the smoothest of conversations. My AR was indicating that the way it was currently presenting itself according to this species database meant it was pleased.
 
“Ah, yes, we can do that. I also see that your refueling ports are a bit of an unusual size, but nothing our facilities can’t handle. I will get the forms filled for your account.”
 
“After depositing the gold, you will receive the White Flinx’s refueling collective credits. They will then be deducted by today’s fueling and from any future ones. Please follow the provided path to the correct depositing station, and if you have any more questions, feel free to contact me again.”
 
“I shall. Good day.”
 
“And good day to you, captain of the Forward Horizon.”
 
And with that, my first contact with alien life ended, and it felt so routine, so ordinary. Well, at least things seemed to have gone well.
 
Reading the listed prices, it was going to cost me 1,127 mana credits to refuel, which translated roughly to about 13,000 of this company’s credits. I would be depositing 5,000 mana credits, which was half a kilo of gold.
 
Fueling was not going to be cheap, but funnily enough, helium-3, which would be a better fuel, was actually cheaper because it was so much easier to get, thanks to there being so many gas giants.
 
It would take another few hours before we were in the correct location. Hopefully, nothing bad would happen before that.