Chapter 887: Ship Upgrades Begin
The basic hull of the Cutter seemed to be already fit for every purpose that they had for it, not like some of the earlier designs, which couldn't hold up at higher speeds or in certain new situations.
This one was nearly perfect already, and their Warp Speed travel was well above average, though the ship's Warp Drive hadn't been optimized for extreme speed. It had more than enough power for Portals, weapons, shields and everything else that they had asked of it so far. By that standard, it was hard to complain that the Engineers didn't go further in trying to make it extremely fast.
It was designed as a scientific research cutter, not a military interceptor. Those two might be the same thing with Max and Nico on board, but that was beside the point.
So, while the research team worked on a way to theoretically get back to that layer of space and navigate through it, Max worked on more practical matters. He planned to start by making the ship a bit more liveable.
It was currently close to stock, with a lot of extra space, and Max thought that it needed some form of entertainment and relaxation. With the Arisen around, they couldn't risk an Android crew, but they had the technology to make solid holograms, and that should be enough to run at least a waterpark and tiki bar.
That was the most popular attraction aboard Terminus, especially for the Innu and the Giants.
There were a couple of empty hangar bays that he could use, but that would become inconvenient when they needed to bring random objects or visitors into the ship, so Max focused on using one of the empty gymnasium areas that weren't in use by the crew at the moment.
That would be large enough that he could make a proper little park with a sandy beach, some pools and hot tubs, as well as a bar area.
It didn't even require extensive design since they had made dozens of them aboard Terminus already. All that Max had to do was design a gravity slide course and then copy the rest. But now that he understood the Innu and the other Alliance species better, Max had an improvement to make. He would make the uppermost two-thirds of the tube transparent so that you could see the world spin around you as you looped through the course.
Max grabbed one of the Terraforming Array modules from the construction bay and placed it on a cart to roll through the ship. If anyone saw him, they would immediately know that he was up to something, but a Cutter was made to carry thousands of people, not thirty, so the chance that he would be intercepted was pretty low.
The location that he picked was close to the dining room that most of the Bridge Crew used, so it wouldn't be out of the way to go there to relax, and it wasn't far from the gym that they were actually using either, keeping everything convenient.
It wouldn't do to have his crew get lazy from just hanging around the pool for every meal.
The Terraforming device took longer to program than it did to create one single room, and Max looked with pride at the intertwined maze of waterslide tubes he had created. The side that the artificial gravity would hold you to was coloured to hide the gravity plating, but the rest was clear, letting those inside see out and those outside see the strange sight of water flowing on the top and sides of the tubes in defiance of natural logic.
"That should do," Max muttered to himself, then realized that he had a visitor.
Nergal cleared her throat and stared at the slides with pure greed. "Commander, Lead Researcher Nico says that we have a breakthrough. She has managed to attune a sensor to track both this layer and the other layer of space at the same time.
It still has some issues, or perhaps it doesn't, and that's just how space is there, but we have a visual of the other side that we might be able to use to navigate."
Max gave the room one last look before he turned toward Nergal and the door. "Alright, let's finish up in the lab, and then we can come here for dinner. I programmed it with a holographic bartender, and the full food menu is available, so you won't be missing out on any essential nutrients if you should choose to come here for meals and test the Gravity Slides."
"See, you really are too good to us. The clear tubes are going to be awesome. But how do I keep this secret for the rest of my shift? That's a lot of stress for one person." Nergal asked, with her head tentacles twining together in worry.
"It's one hour. Surely you can keep a secret for one hour until it's time to surprise the others, right? We can lead them all there, and you can enjoy their shock when they see it for the first time without knowing what they will find, just like you did." Max suggested.
The Innu nodded slowly, steeling her mind not to blurt out what she was so excited about. The task was made easier when they got back to the bay, and Nico had a large three-dimensional view of the sensor feed up in the middle of the bay.
The sight was familiar, just like the currents they had faced when they were on the other side, but now it wasn't empty anymore. Off in the distance, at the edge of their ability to detect other objects, there was an Arisen Cube passing through, surrounded by a strangely glowing blue energy barrier.
That alone was a vindication of the effort they had put in. If the Arisen were moving through that space, they needed to be there to detect them. It would finally give them the advantage of early warning before attacks and solve the mystery of how intense an attack was going to be once and for all.