chapter 182

POV: Remi

The newest version of my scout drone, or as everyone’s calling them, scout missiles, was heading towards another space portal. It was annoying that they refused to call it by the proper name.

All of this had become quite routine. We were clearing so many space portals that I had stopped counting.

A few taps on the screen beside me displayed the number 142. With this one, it would be 143. It was lucky that FH managed to upgrade her second inventory skill, Expansive Swarm, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the room for all the loot we have.

We would have a lot fewer problems with that if we could more effectively turn all those monster parts into processed materials, as that reduced their size around 100-fold.

The scout drone, moving stupidly fast, entered the space portal. FH managed to find out in only two months that yes, the deceleration gates that were incredibly expensive and only a couple of places had, were indeed derived from portals. A nice fact was that regular portals planet-side also had this effect.

It was magic tech at its finest. An incredibly difficult thing to do, but more manageable on a smaller scale. It turned out a lot of the leading courier services that deal with information transport use smaller versions for their small courier ships.

Hopefully, someday I will manage to get my hands on one of those ships. The amount of miniaturisation they managed seems incredible. Their ships are so small that only a crew of four, who are classified as a tiny species, can operate them.

It would only take the scout drone about 5 seconds to turn around and come back out, gathering all the data it could in that amount of time about the inside of the space portal, and then transfer it over after it was back in real space.

Yet nothing happened. A clock appeared on one of the screens, prominently coloured red, as it showed that the scout drone had gone past its expected return time. Seconds passed agonisingly slowly, eventually reaching 10 seconds with no sign of it.

“Angle us away from the space portal. Silent running.”

My commands were followed instantly as we adjusted course so we would pass by the space portal. The adjustment thrusters would continue to work, so our current heading would be as far away from the space portal as possible, but we would still be flying by quite closely.

The entire ship also quieted down as everything nonessential went through power-down sequences. Our power consumption continued to drop as everything was brought to the minimum level required to still be able to quickly respond to any threat.

We were now only running passive surveillance. To the outside world, we basically disappeared from the map. The only way to find us was to do so visually, which would be incredibly hard as we were in the middle of nowhere with no convenient sun to brightly illuminate everything.

“Launch a second scout drone.”

“At once, Captain,” FH answered back, and we watched as the second scout drone accelerated towards the portal. It was a nerve-wracking wait as it took the scout drone nearly 4 hours to make it to the space portal, even while constantly accelerating.

We picked up nothing in our surroundings besides the space portal. Everyone had gathered in the command centre, having taken their seats in case FH needed to use us.

The timer started as soon as the scout drone entered the portal, but this time it exited exactly at the right time. It started to transfer what it had managed to gather about its surroundings.

All of us went into high alert as soon as we started to see the data. Not only was this scout drone damaged, it only barely managed to survive the return trip. The inside of the space portal seemed to have been mined, with most of the mines having been destroyed by the first scout drones entrance.

FH quickly calculated the damage potential, and those mines would have destroyed our ship.

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“How are there any mines that survived?” Dean asked, not someone specific, just out loud.

That was a good question that we soon got an answer to. Not only were there debris and intact mines amongst it, but further back, there were obvious shapes that were spaceships. At least twenty of them, each one seemed to be pointed towards the space portal. There was also a singular space monster that seemed to stay in one place.

That space monster was most likely damaged. We had all been a bit curious as to how there were so many space portals that had damaged space monsters, usually only a few or even one.

Originally, we thought that this was a part of the life cycle of space portals that managed to stay open, and it still might be, but it’s obvious that there’s some presence around these parts that’s using these space portals.

That was made clear about ten space portals back, when we found once again only a few remaining space monsters inside, but these were the kind that would not survive a trip to another solar system, so why were there so few left inside? It made zero sense, so the only conclusion was that someone was harvesting the space portals without clearing them fully.

That was strictly against Adventurers Guild policy regarding space portals. Also, none of the portals we had been going through had been registered with the Adventurers Guild, so someone was doing things off the books.

But none of us had expected that they would try to set a trap for us. What I expected them to do was nothing, or try to contact us.

“It would have been best to just leave.”

“Told you so,” Bob said, sounding way too smug.

The question was what to do next. That was also the question the ones inside the space portal were asking themselves. We could jump into FTL in under a minute, and we were far enough away that nothing they could do would stop us. They wouldn’t even be able to do any damage before we were out of here, except for the scout drone.

“Scout drone, execute self-destruct,” I said silently through my connection with it, as I didn’t want the ship to send out any signals. The blip of the scout drone disappeared a few moments later.

We continued to wait, as I hoped that they would be making a mistake. Five minutes later, we managed to confirm a spaceship leaving the space portal, with many more to follow, all around 200 metres in length, but the designs were unknown.

“The ships might have been modified. Start running simulations by eliminating features that would be easily changed.”

“Acknowledged, captain.”

It was nice to hear her say that sometimes, and I knew that she said it because it was nostalgic for me.

Whoever these people were had realised they had screwed up by coming out as none of their scans managed to find us. They were now returning inside the portal in a disorganised retreat.

That was quite curious. This fleet composition also didn’t match any known pirates, so who were these people, and why did they make this area their home? One thing I was certain about was that this space portal definitely wasn’t their home, but it must be somewhere around here.

“Match found,” FH announced, with our screens populating with different images of the unmodified ships that we ran into. The written details reveal a lot; one data point is quite clear in its meaning.

The ships were not from our galaxy; they were from a previous age. They were one of the more common enemies you could find in an E-ranked space portal.

While the most common enemy you could find inside a space portal was a space monster, there were plenty of other things you could find inside as well. There could be entire fleets or large space stations; the list was endless.

“So, one of these E-ranked space portals around us most likely has these…” I tried not to butcher their species name, even while it had gone through our translator, “Wirtyorto inside a spaceship as the enemies of that portal.”

“Should we try to find that space portal?” Sam asked, but I didn’t know what to answer back.

“FH, are they known for using mines?”

“No, captain. The information I have about them from the Adventurers Guild doesn’t indicate that, and the knowledge on them is quite extensive.”

“What about the ship modifications? Not all of them were the same; in fact, none of them were.”

“Once again, captain, there are some variations, but my data doesn’t include the ones we saw today.”

My mind was racing with all types of possibilities, one getting more and more likely. I brought up the cultural data on this species as I lit up a cigarette. That helped me organise my thoughts a bit better.

“FH, use your scouting skill, but this time don’t focus on finding space portals, but artificial structures.”

Immediately, I felt the mana move, and while we were still running silent, it didn’t actually matter that much, as all the enemy ships were back inside the portal.

As monsters, this species was ruthless, having one of the highest danger ratings for an E-rank space portal. But everything made inside a portal was a ruthless monster. Some would stay like that because it was their nature, like the ones inside the black portal we helped clear.

These ones weren’t like that. Once they could leave their birth space portal, they would rapidly become like they used to be in life. Some called this reincarnation, and I guess in some ways it was. This particular species became like they used to be in life, pretty average by galactic standards in every metric.

When this happened, the Adventurers Guild’s policy with this species was to act in your best judgment. No one would punish you if you destroyed them or let them live, although you would get judged either way by the different adventurers who had differing beliefs.

Some believed everything that came from a portal should be viciously destroyed, while others believed in second chances, especially for the more peaceful species.

Now, they did try to destroy me, but if I were in their shoes, I would have tried to do the same. My cigarette was about to end, with me nowhere nearer to the answer of what we should do.

“Captain, I managed to pick up multiple artificial structures the size of small stations placed quite regularly around this area. They’re too small for proper habitation. Best guess is that they’re listening stations for the space portals; they are obviously farming for resources.”

“Display all the space portals we have cleared and our route.” The screen soon changed, showing quite an obvious line.

“The next time we do this, we need to be more random in our selection. But I’m guessing that the surrounding space portals here have a similar surprise inside.”

“Your orders, captain?”

We were up against an unknown number of enemies with unknown capabilities inside their home territory.

“Let’s do a flyby of one of those monitoring stations. Do we have that language key?”

“Yes, captain.”

“Compile a message that we will leave the area and not notify anyone. We’ll send it to the listening station, and then let’s head further towards our destination, getting out of this area. FH, you should be close, right?”

“Yes, captain. I can feel I’m getting close to a rank-up.”

“Excellent. After that, we’ll head to the Four-Leaf Station, sell off a lot of our materials, finally purchase the skills all of us want, and then start heading towards Earth to deal with that trouble.”