Not that it made much difference, since she did everything through internal processes and didn't even touch the ship's controls. He felt the slightest hum from the engines as the Last Stand eased forward, and then the mind-bending sensation of rift travel. More intense than usual, in fact, hinting that they'd gone a much farther difference.
For a few seconds everyone on the bridge waited in breathless silence, eyes on the Caretaker. Ali, serene as usual, simply turned in her seat to look up at Aiden with her stranger's eyes. And not just because of the disguise she was wearing. Then her gaze drifted to Belix, and Barix, and finally Lana and the gunner.
“I know you all,” she said solemnly. “I trust in your natures. Which is why I take the risk of showing you what you're about to see. For humanity's sake.”
As she finished speaking, the main display activated for the first time in days. Unusually bare of information thanks to Ali's insistence on secrecy, with no more than simple visuals, but still more about the ship's surroundings than Aiden had seen since Ali took charge of leading them to this base.
From the looks of the system on the display, its star was a red dwarf. Which was hardly surprising, since those were the most common, and generally uninteresting since they weren't ideal for colonies. This one stood out for having two rocky planets orbiting it, which was more than average, but other than that he couldn't see much reason why HAE would stick a secret base here.
Other than its complete forgettability, that is. But then, that pretty much qualified 99.99 to the nth decimal place percent of the universe. They could've plopped it down anywhere.
Most of the display was taken up by visuals of three distinct manmade objects in the system. Two were large space stations with a utilitarian look, one fairly obviously a facility for refining raw materials, and the other a production facility of some sort, probably a shipyard. Near them, a ship that was nearly as large as the stations was in the process of approaching a small planetary body, likely an asteroid, to break it down.
Only . . . the proportions were all wrong.
Aiden frowned at the mining ship moving towards the asteroid, edging into position to devour it whole. He'd seen drones like this at work before, gathering resources from asteroid belts and breaking them down into smaller chunks, then sorting through them for useful raw materials. Which would then be taken to other ships or stations to be refined for use in construction and manufacturing.
These sorts of mining ships were literally the backbone of spacing, facilitating humanity's travel through the stars so it went from prohibitively expensive to simply expensive.
But if this was a normal mining ship, that meant the refining facility and shipyard were both absurdly miniscule, so much so that they'd be effectively useless. Assuming the visuals showed them to scale, which he had no reason to assume they weren't.
The only alternative was that the mining ship was actually much larger than any he'd ever seen. Which meant that asteroid was also likely not what he'd assumed; for one thing it was off on its own, not part of an asteroid belt like he'd expect a mining ship to be working inside for more efficient access to materials. And now that Aiden looked at it more closely, the planetoid was unusually round and smooth, more like a moon. He even thought he saw wisps of atmosphere.
He swallowed as realization dawned, glancing at Ali. “That ship's not eating an asteroid, is it?”
The Caretaker shook her head, although she was biting back a somewhat proud smile. “That's the first planet of this system.”
Shocked murmurs met her announcement, although the HAE staff didn't seem as surprised as his crew. But even they looked awed by the sheer scale of the image in front of them.
This was . . . impossible. If that ship was big enough to engulf an entire rocky planet, even a smaller one, and break it apart for processing, then it had to be enormous. Granted, it was likely almost entirely made up of empty space inside a framework, but even so the technology and development for such a ship would require a project that millions of people could work on for decades.
He didn't even want to imagine the expense.
And going on scale, the refining facility and shipyard both had to be roughly the same size, although probably also built to mostly enclose empty space. If they were entirely devoted to pumping out warships using the resources refined from an entire planet, they could build a fully outfitted fleet in a matter of years. Maybe months.
The Deconstructionist Movement had all the resources of humanity behind them. Trillions of people in thousands of systems, with who knew how many mining operations, shipyards, training facilities, and vast fleets of warships.
All of that seemed like an unsurmountable force to oppose. An enemy who couldn't be beaten by outright combat. But if HAE's Caretakers were eating entire planets and using the resources to construct more planet eaters, refineries, shipyards, and other infrastructure to create even more, they could reproduce exponentially.
Even if this system was the AI collective's first and only such operation, how long would it take before they created a force that could crush anything humanity could scrape together to oppose them? Swarm the only known intelligent race in the galaxy with ten, a hundred, a thousand times as many warships and troops.
Humans had been spreading across the universe for fifty thousand years, and in only a few decades they might be overthrown and enslaved by their own creations. How could anyone not view this sight with terror?
Barix cleared his throat, although even his usually sneering tone had a tense edge to it. “So, uh, is HumanAssist Enterprises hiring?”
Ali shot the slight man a wry look, then glanced at Aiden. He
