Voidwalker Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Crawling before you Run.

I was starring at the chunk of Activated Indium that I was slowly whittling down with the mining mode. It wasn’t a deposit as I had initially thought, but rather a chunk of rock infused with the mineral that was the size of a dump truck. Realizing it was a boulder, I decided to dig out a large cavern beneath it, and then mine away the earth below to let it just fall in. Then I would seal it away to keep the cold at bay.

The sound it made when it hit the floor shook my bones, and cracked the condensed stone floor. It worked though, since I wasn’t losing any energy for the shield in this sheltered location. It took me around thirty minutes to completely mine it to nothing, but I got five hundred and three units of the mineral.

Deciding to test something, I tried to discard some Ferrite Dust by throwing out of the inventory rather than just destroy it. It worked, to my surprise. Yet another thing different from the game, but made sense in this situation. I then discarded some activated indium from my inventory and dumped it onto the ground.

It was a raw chunk of the mineral in its purified form, and picking it up, it seems to weight around two or so pounds.

“One Kilogram. Metric system by another name” I hummed as I placed it back into my inventory. So, I had Two hundred and three kilograms of the stuff. That proved another theory of NMS technology true. 5th-dimensional Torus’s are a thing in No Man’s Sky, and surfing upon higher dimensions with the Pulse Drive to travel at FTL speeds in real space were a thing, so why not sub-dimensional storage technology?

Only the AI in the Exo-Suit could possibly handle organizing and handling such complicated functions. Something I was getting more and more thankful for, Insane AI or not.

“Alright. Let’s make some Chromatics”. I announced as I flattened the ground of the cavern first, leveling the area before doing anything else. Satisfied with the leveled room, I pulled out the Portable Refiner unit, and placed the Indium within with what little fuel I had left to power it, I watched as it got to forty three percent before it stopped, out of fuel.

“Eight hundred and sixty-four units is more than enough for now.”

Opening my construction menu, I placed down a Base Computer. I watched it open, stamping its legs into the floor to anchor itself.

My HUD transmitted the data from the computer to me, asking if I wanted to claim the site. “Yes.” I confirmed, and soon the computer sent out a wave of energy. I blinked at seeing the wave as a physical thing rather than just a visual representation of the HUD.

“Why did it do that?” I wondered. After a moment of thinking, I realized what it was.

“Nanites use resources to put together the structures through the manipulation of space via dimensional-technology. The Base Computer is the core of that…No Man’s Sky is not messing around.”

I patted the computer, impressed. It bleeped.

“Alert. New Construction Blue Prints Available.” My suit announced suddenly. My HUD announce that new items for the base, exo-suit, multi-tool, and item construction were now in my data.

“Huh, I hoped I would unlock things as I go. Good.”

Checking the base construction menu, I was surprised as I looked through it.

“I have all the Timber, Stone, and Alloy parts! So I can build right from the word go!” I looked over the other parts, but found I lacked large structural blue prints, and only had the portable refiner, the base computer, and the blueprint analyzer available.

“I’ll need that last one to get anything else I think…Oh.”

My thoughts came to a halt when I realized I had a new problem.

“Wiring Looms. They were a purchased product in the game, you couldn’t make them. They’re in almost everything…”

I took a pause, and allowed the anxiety to pass. It wouldn’t do me any good to freak out. Plus, given the way materials are being gathered, plus real physics instead of game physics are at play, it would make sense that I might be able to make he Wiring Looms down the line as one does with a lot of advanced NMS technology.

“Right now, let’s focus on getting fuel for my…everything. Carbon. First, however…”

I stood up and opened my construction menu. Of all the resources I had in abundance, it was Ferrite Dust, and the Alloy section used practically nothing but that.

“Let’s do this near the surface.”

Creating a new tunnel, I exited the ground and began to build a simple shack. Three walls, one floor and roof unit, and a door. My environmental shield decreased until I walked into the shack. I was shocked when the temperature went from seventy six below zero to sixty six degrees.

“Okay, what the hell is powering this thing?” I asked loudly as I brushed my hand long the wall, and gazed up to the lights built into the ceiling. “Solar? Thermal?...Fucking Space Magic?”

I paused and thought about opening up the system index, and in an instant my entire view was filled with the four options. Planetary Data was more or less blank, save that it was “Ice World(?)” and giving basic data on the things I had used the mining laser on. I noticed “Atmosphere: Breathable,” and realized that I hadn’t paid any attention to my Life Support System. It was still full, so it might have been absorbing oxygen from the environment?

“Well, at least that’s something I don’t need to worry about.”

Changing the screen from planetary data to the catalogue, I checked in on a few things. I quickly learned that the details about the items in the catalogue are far more detailed than they were in the game. Evidently, all building designs follow a set of codes that require them to be able to use multiple sources of energy as a power source. Everything had a layer to absorb radiation and convert it into energy.

Same for positive and negative thermal energy (Hot/Cold), as well as even a layer of “Biotororic Bacteria” that basically takes anything from the air that is organic, eats it, which causes it to produce a reaction which is stored as electricity. I was lost regarding most of the terminology, but I got the gist. All these different systems give the pieces power.

These were just basic building parts though, for survival and outpost building. For actual facilities, you needed a whole team with all the available blueprints, or at least a lot of time and effort if just one person.

I checked the catalogue for the various recipes, and there were a lot more than the game gave me. I was overwhelmed by the number of different items and ways of making familiar items. Then I saw what I was worried about.

“Wire Loom.”

Looking at the recipe, there were a dozen ways to make the thing, but all of them required different levels of various materials to get the product. In the end, what was needed were materials that allowed it to be integrated into anything, and a nanite package to allow it to not only adapt for the need but bridge programming between the modification you are installing, and the object you are installing it on.

It was expensive too. For what is the “correct” recipe, you needed one hundred units of Platinum, fifty units of Chromatic Metal, fifty units of Magnetized Ferrite, and fifty units of Tritium. Of the other recipes, the amounts of various things got higher because they needed to be condensed for use, or something. Aluminum was in one of the recipes, so that was an option.

Two hundred Aluminum, fifty Chromatic Metal, fifty Magnetized Ferrite, fifty units of ionized cobalt, and one Di-hydrogen Jelly. In case you couldn’t go to space, y’know.

“Well, that’s another thing to deal with.”

Closing the Index, I nodded at my now full shield gauge. With my Environmental Shield fully charged, I left the shack and began to carefully melt away at the snow. I managed to hit some plants as I walked my shot along the ground, and absorbed enough to kept the capacitor from going empty.

Walking another line, I ended up hitting nothing at all, and wasting energy until I had only twelve percent left in the mining laser.

“Shit.” I growled, nervous as I began to point and fire once more.

Eventually, I started hitting something that began to melt a small bank of snow, revealing a fallen tree. I focused on it, as my life depended on it. The whole thing burst apart, causing snow to fall into the empty space, and giving me over ninety units of Carbon.

I refilled my Mining Laser to full, and began to fire away without anxiety. For the next half hour, I was melting snow left and right, retreating inside the shack when necessary, and shooting some more.

Most of what I was hitting game me Ferrite Dust, Aluminum, and Silicone Dust. I was happy to see that Aluminum might not be an issue like I had initially thought. It was the other stuff I had to make now. Cobalt being the difficult one. That led me to a thought.

“Can my scanner be calibrated?”

I walked into the shack and investigated this, and found that I could in fact do exactly that. It would increase the range of the scan from a few kilometers to tens of kilometers since it was searching only for a single item.

“This would have been really helpful to know.” I grumbled.

So I went through the process, and instead of Cobalt, I chose Carbon. I needed that now. Standing outside once more, I hit the scan function. My HUD lit up with a scanner wave that went out to ten kilometers, and my screen was lit up with all nearby sources of Carbon.

“Really would have been helpful!” I shouted angrily, before letting out a breath, and getting back to work.

It was not more than ten minutes when all the closest sources were broken down, and I was now nine hundred and twelve units richer in Carbon. I also gained thirty hydrogen units, and fourteen oxygen units. I quickly retreated, and placed down the portable refiner, fueled it, and finished off the rest of the Activated Indium. Now I had one thousand, nine hundred and eighty-two units of Chromatic Metal.

“Alright. So, I have that for now, but now I need to…ah, right. Blue Print Analysis computer.”

One Nano-carbine tube, and seventy units of Magnetized Ferrite later, I was staring down at the newest addition to this little shack.

“Alright. Let’s see what we can see.” I said as I activated the interface and started pouring over what was available. I was surprised when I saw the available blueprints were what you would expect aboard the Anomaly. It had every single blueprint there, for everything one could build. I was shocked even more that I could buy these for not just data, but also for nanites. On top of that, not only building blue prints, but also the crafting recipes were there, which normally would be its own separate station on the Anomaly.

“Well, this makes things a hell of a lot easier…though that means I must find Platinum, or risk abominations if I want to pay with Nanites. I have not seen any wreckages of technology just…burning randomly about.”

Leaning back from the computer, I calibrated the scanner to find Platinum. In an instant it found some…ten kilometers below me.

“Ah hah, no.”

So, I scanned for Cobalt. Same result, only eight kilometers this time.

Copper? Found, and holy smokes. “Four hundred meters down, and one hundred meters away.” With a thought, I nodded and made my way back into the cavern, and began carving a tunnel down at slight angle. Given how effective the Terrain Manipulator was at digging, it was a breeze, and I reached my target in about five minutes.

Using the scanner, I got a good look on my HUD where it wall was, and began to mine it out using the smallest setting to maximize the number of units I got out of it. It took me an hour, and I was getting hungry, and thirsty, but I had seven hundred and nineteen units when I was finished.

I was feeling damned good.

I was fiddling with the scanner as I walked up, and noticed a function I hadn’t seen before.

“Technology? Hey, maybe I’ll find something. My luck’s been good so far. In actually finding things in range.” I said with a nod before entering it and scanning.

I stopped with a hard step when I got a hit. One hundred and forty meters away from me, and sixty meters below the ground.

“Let’s Goooo!~” I shouted as I jogged near to the closest portion of the tunnel and started tunneling at the widest diameter.

When I finally reached it, I smiled at what I could see. With a loud hiss of the dirt being removed, I went from smiling to horrified.

Not everyday you see a Humvee like vehicle with a few human skeletons in it.

I slowly walked towards the vehicle, and took in the details with the Analysis Visor. According to the data, they all have been here for two hundred and ten years. I let out a sigh, long dead.

“How the hell did you get down here? Better question, Humans? In No Man’s Sky? Anomalies, sure, but really? Like this?” I wondered out loud. With a shrug of acceptance, I began to salvage what was there, and was at least respectful to the dead by not handling them too roughly.

With a deeper scan of the truck, it appeared that it was in good condition and can be restored with a bit of work. I would need to take it apart though, since it didn’t have those No Man’s Sky systems that allowed Nano-tech to just instantly repair the thing.

Looking over the objects in the vehicle, I noticed a few signs of who these people were. The Department of Mega-Engineering. Sounded cool, but other than that, nothing too noteworthy. There was one thing of note, and that was some unique looking laptop. It looked busted as hell, but I knew that it was possible with my technology that I could get some data out of it.

I scanned it, and its hard drive was completely corrupt save bits of data.

I looked at all the entries the suit gave me, and I frowned as this data was looking familiar. There were not really any names to go with anything, but it mentioned Jump ships, dropships. Nothing otherwise.

“Okay then. I guess I’m gonna…wait. Hold up. Can’t I just scan the vehicle and make a version using NMS-Tech?”

I point the scanner, and with the machine reading my intent, does a deep scan of the vehicle. It took about thirty seconds, but once it was finished, it managed to read seventy one percent of the vehicle, and then extrapolate the rest based on data of other Exo-Craft, raising it up to ninety five percent.

It showed me what it couldn’t get, and it was stuff that wasn’t a part of the vehicle, but rust and organic materials that damaged it as a result of time. I dismissed those things, and now had a complete blueprint.

“Redesigning Exo-Craft. Time to completion, one hour, fifty minutes.”

“Well shit. If I find more stuff, I’m giving it the No Man’s Sky treatment.” With nothing left to do, I hit the truck with the laser, and broke it down a piece at a time, until it was no more.

Most of it fell under one material or another, but I got enough resources to build a few new things.

My stomach alerted me that I needed food, and I began my trek back up.

“Let’s see what I can do about this now.”