Monroe

Chapter Two Hundred and Ninety-One. The Freedom.

Bob looked at the blue print that was spread across the table. "This looks sort of familiar," Bob muttered, picking up one of the pieces of paper and inspecting it.

"That's because he's straight up ripping off the Serenity," Amanda sighed.

"It's a solid design!" Jack protested.

"If we weren't using mana crystals as fuel, sure," Dave agreed. "Having the engines away from the body of the craft makes sense, if you are using fuel that isn't effectively inert. Given that we'll be generating thrust by activating ritual effects with mana crystals, we don't really need engines per see."

Bob squinted. "It says Universal Pictures at the bottom of this."

"It's a great design! Iconic!" Jack wasn't giving up.

"We'd be better off with a Borg cube," Amanda retorted.

"Bugger that," Jessica shook her head, "we're going to be putting the ship down on a planet, we can't just ignore areodynamics."

"That's what shuttles are for," Amanda replied.

"There's only twelve of us, all we need is the Serenity!" Jack added.

"You're the bloke who started us down this path," Jessica nudged him with an elbow, "you've been working on something, yeah?"

"I have," Bob admitted, then held up his hand and cast control air, create earth.

Above the table, an obsidian ship formed, suspended in air. It was a cylinder, two feet long by three inches across. Both ends were rounded, making it difficult to tell which end was the bow, and which was the stern.

"Ok, that's probably efficient," Jessica said hesitantly.

Concentrating, Bob continued to shape his spell.

Masts rose from the top of the hull, three of them, complete with sails.

"The fuck?" Jack asked.

"What good are...." Dave left his question unfinished as more masts and sails appeared, one set on the bottom, and then on either side, leaving the vessel floating in mid air with a dozen masts, sails deployed across all of them.

"From what I understand, dark matter moves through space, and is ultimately responsible for the expansion of the universe, which the system prevents by forming a boundary where it is returned to the center of the universe to begin its journey again." Bob said quietly. "It's attracted to planetary mass objects, where it settles, condenses, and forms monsters. I'm not a sailor," he shrugged, "never been a boat. But it stands to reason that we should be able to utilize the flow of mana through the solar system to effectively sail."

"Damn," Jessica whispered, then turned her brilliant smile toward him. "Sometimes I forget you're more than just a handsome bloke with a gorgeous kitty."

"I think that'll work," Amanda muttered thoughtfully. "You'd want to rig the sails differently, but yeah, if you can rig up a sail that can catch the mana, that could work."

"That's pretty cool," Jack admitted, "but we can propel the ship with magical ion thrusters."

"We can," Bob agreed. "That requires mana crystals though. If sails are feasible, how many mana crystals might we save by utilizing them? Also, knowing that rituals are detectable, wouldn't it be better to travel along the currents, as it were? We have no way of knowing what species might inhabit the dimensions we visit as we search for a new home. Some of them might be aggressive or even violent."

"That's a good point," Dave said. "We can't assume that every place we portal to will be safe."

"Another advantage of this design," Bob continued as the models sails furled and masts lowered themselves to fold into the hull, "is that we'll be able to open a portal large enough to move it through."

"Ah," Jack sat down.

"Ah," Bob nodded. "I can open a portal forty four feet in diameter. That'll go up before we leave, but assuming I'm capped, that's still only fifty-six feet. Does anyone else have their Portal spell capped?"

"I do!" Eddi said proudly.

"Do you have cooperative casting?" Bob asked.

"No," Eddi replied wilting.

"Do any of you?" Bob asked, and received headshakes all around, except for Harv and Elli.

"No dimension," Elli apologized.

"Nowhere near the cap," Harv added.

"So, I designed the ship at forty feet in diameter, and three hundred feet long," Bob explained. "I looked at schematics for destroyers and frigates, and I set it up to have all the compartments in the middle, with hallways running along the sides, along with pipes and conduits. It should have more than enough room for everyone, as well as an area to grow a garden."

"Twenty, maybe twenty-five rooms, each twenty by ten," Amanda murmured.

"Or some combination there of," Dave added. "Although I'm not sure we need ceilings over ten feet tall."

"Have you figured out what to make the sails out of?" Jessica asked.

"Not yet," Bob admitted. "Mana is weird. I know I can get it to flow through electrically conductive materials, but I'm not sure how well insulators work." He sighed. "We also need to experiment with shielding. We can probably layer a pure sheild on top of the hull itself, but the masts and sails are going to need to be exposed to mana in order to function, which is where I plan to have the sensors placed as well. One of the problems I haven't managed to solve yet is that we're going to come out of a portal either unshielded, or totally blind. It'll take a few seconds to get the masts, and thus the sensors, back up."

"Sounds like we need to get up to orbit and do a little experimentation," Jack said, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Yeah, you're staying down here," Amanda said. "But you're not wrong, we do need to test materials for sails and see if the idea will even work."

"If not, the hull is still viable, and masts with sensors outside the shields is a winner," Dave added. "The ship design is solid, given the limitations of the portal spell."

"Sounds like we have a plan," Amanda smiled. "Dave and I will run a few tests in orbit, Jack, I assume you have a few friends who could actually help with design?"

"I know a guy who was working on a self sustaining super yacht," Jack mused.

"Jessi, figure out some sort of space suits for us?"

"Aye, aye," Jessica replied with a saucy salute.

"Everyone else, delve long and hard for attribute crystals," Amanda said. "We've got a bit over two months, hopefully we get lucky and everyone finds one, if not, well, we'll probably be on the ship for a while."

"You're forgetting the most important thing," Jack protested. "If we're going to have a ship, we have to name her! She's the wrong shape, but you can't go wrong with Serenity."

"The first ship of her kind, she can't be anything but the Enterprise," Mike replied.

"What about the Millenium Falcon?" Eddi said eagerly.

"The Intrepid," Jessica offered.

"Freedom," Bob said quietly. "Freedom from peoples expectations, freedom from politics, freedom from conflict. Freedom to simply be."

"Bob," Jack began slowly. "Are you a little bit of a hippy?"

"Shut it," Jessica threw a mana crystal at him, bouncing it off his forehead. "I think it's a lovely sentiment, and a great name."

"Freedom," Amanda rolled the word across her tongue, causing Dave to visibly shivir. "I like it."

Dave nodded.

"We don't really build boats," Harv said with a shrug. "Big monsters in the oceans."

"No naval traditions on Thayland," Elli agreed.

"I like it," Wayna said, accompanied by nodding from Eddi.

"So tentatively the IIDS Freedom," Jack said.

"IIDS?" Bob asked.

"Independant Interdimensional Spaceship," Jack replied.

"Well, this is cozy," Amanda said.

"It's a block of stone lined in lead with an airlock," Dave replied. "Space was at a premium."

The pair were currently sitting in a ten by ten stone cube, which was more like eight by six internally. Jessica had sourced neoprene suits, which they'd enchanted to keep a layer of atmosphere next to their skin, which kept them warm, dry, and provided air from the to breathe. The enchantments allowing them to see outside the suits weren't quite perfect, and everything had a slightly pink tint to it, but that was probably the effect of the sheild against solar radiation.

Bob's voice crackled out of the radio. "I'm sending you up, don't let the sensor out until I give you the all clear."

"Roger that, sensor secured until you authorize deployment," Dave replied.

They felt a series of jerks, as if their cube was falling for a split second, pausing, then falling again. It happened a few dozen times, and each time they had to authorize being transported through a portal. Finally they heard Bob's voice through the radio. "You should be in orbit now, send out the sensor."

"Roger, deploying sensor," Dave said, while Amanda shook her head.

"You're enjoying this a little too much," she accused him playfully.

"Babe, we're astronauts. How cool is that?" He grinned.

Dave looked through the tiny peephole into the airlock, and cast the control Earth spell that allowed him to open the airlock. He followed it up by releasing the sensor from it's clamps, and watched as it spooled out on it's short tether.

"We should have video," he said excitedly as he sat back down.

"We do," Amanda agreed, looking at the screen in front of her. Despite the pinkish tint, she could see the planet beneath them clearly.

"So cool," Dave muttered.

"It really is," Amanda giggled. "Now start cracking open those compartments on the sensor, we need to find something to use for a sail."

"BOB GET US DOWN! GET US DOWN NOW!"

Bob sat up and sprinted out of the tent he'd been sitting in. Running to the center of the clearing, he stuffed his hand into his satchel and started casting his summoning spell.

He'd learned a bit about summoning from the Karcerian Empire. One of the things he'd learned was the spell 'Mark of Summoning.' It was what they called a conjunction spell. It utilized both Transmutation and Summoning, requiring both to work. It placed a mark on an object, which amplified the casters ability to summon that object. The version they'd taught him had been for a voluntary summoning, but he could easily see it being used for a forceful summoning, and while they'd denied that it had ever been used in the Empire, it was clearly a slave brand.

In this case, he'd placed it on the cube.

"FUCK! THAT WAS THE SENSOR!" Dave's voice screamed from the radio back in the tent.

The next one hundred seconds were the firmest evidence Bob had ever experienced in proving the law of relativity.

The ritual finished, and the cube appeared in front of him. As soon as it hit the ground, he heard the inner airlock door open, and Amanda, then Dave, scrambled out of the top of the cube. The each grabbed one of his arms. "Into your inventory, go go go!" Amanda shouted.

Bob opened a portal, and fell into his inventory, nearly landing on Monroe, who was occupying most of the kitchen in his tier six form.

"Thank fucking god," Dave breathed, slumping to the floor and leaning against Monroe, who was slowly waking up.

"What happened?" Bob asked.

"There's a ship up there, and it's not friendly," Dave replied.

"A ship?" Bob asked dumbly.

"Pretty sure," Amanda said, sitting down next to Dave and burrowing into both his side, and Monroe's fur.

"Everything was going as planned, we found a visible flow of mana, manuevered over, and started testing the different materials," Dave began.

"Porcelain by the way," Amanda's voice was muffled. "That tested the best."

"It did," Dave agreed, wrapping an arm around Amanda. "We were working our way through the rest of the candidate materials, when suddenly this burst of light hits the sensor and it just vanishes."

"We looked out the airlock, and saw this white and gold star shaped thing moving toward us," Amanda said.

"We saw it shoot another ball of light at us, and we called over the radio for you while we engaged the maneuvering thrusters," Dave continued. "We juked another two shots, which came out of the gold tipped tips of the stars, and a third one was coming at us when you got us down."

"We've definitely got to get out of here," Amanda said.

"The way that ship was shaped, no matter what angle you were looking at it from, it looked like a sunburst," Dave said grimly.

"Fuck," Bob said. "Suddenly I'm even less interested in meeting with Huron."

"Since when did the Church of the Light get spaceships with freaking laser beams?" Amanda asked.

"I don't think they do," Bob muttered.

"It was their fucking Holy Symbol, Bob," Dave objected.

"Yeah, but they didn't have the knowledge until recently, and they haven't had the time," Bob said quietly. "But it's been over two years since the pamphlets became common knowledge. How long do you think it would take to fly a ship from Parceus to Thayland?"

"Parceus? I know the people here came from there, but it's been like, thousands of years, why would they suddenly show up here?" Amanda asked.

"Maybe I'm just being paranoid," Bob admitted, "but what if someone, say a devout follower of the Church of the Light, came to the conclusion that I had some sort of special access to the System? While the Pantheon of the Light doesn't care enough to send people over to help less than a half of a percent of their planets population, someone who might be able to get around the restrictions they operate under, that's a valuable resource. Valuable enough to build a ship to fetch?"

"Shit," Dave muttered. "The Gods that oversee Thayland, or whatever they call it, they oversee Parceus as well."

"Can they do that?" Amanda asked. "Could someone just send up a prayer signal like that?"

"Again, I may just be being paranoid, but that's the first thought that came to mind," Bob replied.

"We can't take any chances," Dave said. "You've got to go back to Earth."

"Yep," Bob agreed. "I can stay in my inventory and delve my Arcane Depths. I'll pop out every so often to pull my email."

"It's going to make it difficult to do any testing," Amanda said. "We'll basically have to go to the other side of Thayland and launch from there, and that's assuming there is only one ship, and that it's more or less staying put."

"If you check the video, I bet you'll find that ship was sitting right over the Church of the Light in Harbordeep," Bob said.

"No bet," Dave replied. "Fuck."

"Fuck," Amanda agreed.

"Fuckity fuck fuck fuck," Bob added.