The Wolves Ch. 009

"Good to see you as well. These are my friends Mason, Ben, Anja and Sonja." I said, gesturing to each. "Guys, meet Tich Igdaris. He used to be a Fleet Admiral when my father was alive, and he'll likely be one again in the future."

Tich and my friends exchanged greetings and then escorted us on our tour. He went in a different direction than the one he led me on when I was with my sisters, and the reason for that was immediately apparent. There were large windows on one side of the long hallway we were walking down. Each of them offered a great view of the cratered surface of the moon, and the blue planet we call home far in the distance.

"We're on the moon?" Ben exclaimed.

"Yup!" I answered. "From what I've seen so far, we're in a pretty big facility setup by people who fled from Scyftan space."

"How has this facility gone undetected for so long? If we can see Earth, shouldn't people be able to see this base with telescopes?"

"They would, if we weren't employing a stealth shield around the base, as well as active camouflage should that fail for any reason." Tich replied.

We enjoyed the view for a few more minutes before Tich continued the tour. We backtracked, and this time we stopped in front of the same window that I stopped at when I was up here with my sisters.

"You guys are going to enjoy this."

Seconds after I said that, the lights turned on again, lighting up all the ships in the hanger. My friends had a bigger reaction to seeing all the ships than they had when they realised they were on the moon. All of them wanted to get a closer look, so he took us down further into the facility and we entered the hanger. While they were walking through looking at the ships, I took the tablet out of my inventory and handed it to Tich.

"So it seems like you were being sneaky," I said with a grin. "How long were you working on that with Kor Gidres?"

"Almost ninety-eight years," he answered, with his own grin. "We had sporadic contact with him over the years. He decided to stay near Scyftan space, since he thought he could do more from there, than he could from here. It turned out he was right. Without this fleet, we would have to wait many years yet to go back and deal with Kaldrus Dhir. We actually would've had to wait until Abi was strong enough. Even then it would've been a gamble. With this fleet, though, it'll be easy."

"I saw that the frigates were called Prowler I class frigates. How do they compare to the prototype?"

"They are my pride and joy. They look nearly identical, but the Prowler I is much more powerful, and the stealth shield on it has been perfected. The Warvyn family are geniuses. They managed to take our designs and shrink the coils in the mass driver by about thirty percent, allowing more coils to be fit along the barrel. That increases the velocity of the projectile when it leaves the barrel, giving it much better velocity, as well as greater effective range."

"They had to come up with an alloy that could actually survive the extreme forces it would be put under when being accelerated to almost twelve hundred kilometers per second. They used tungsten, a metal called Stroelium, and some other metal they won't reveal to make the alloy used in both the barrel, and the rounds. Naturally they made it after themselves and called it Warvynium. When combined with enchantments, it is a very, very durable metal."

"The projectiles are no larger than your fist, allowing us to shrink the diameter of the barrels, and fit two more, for a total of four of them on each Prowler I. Unfortunately they couldn't find a solution to the overheating problem, so each barrel needs almost a minute to cool down to the point that it can fire again. It does allow the ship to maintain a pretty steady rate of fire at about one round every fifteen seconds, and it is absolutely devastating if a ship is hit by one without shields up. Even a ship with their shields up can't take more than one or two rounds before their shields go down."

"Besides the mass drivers, these new ones are also equipped with twelve gauss cannons, and eight missle tube. There are four dorsal, four ventral, two port, and two starboard. They could do damage to an enemy warship if they were focused on one spot, but their primary use is to destroy enemy missiles and lightly armored craft. There are two sets of four missile tubes that run vertically, on either side of the mass drivers. They can launch eight missiles, but it takes about forty-five seconds to reload the tubes."

We had walked over to the Prowler prototype that carried the girls to Earth while he talked. When we arrived at the ship, I didn't think a ship that size could carry that much armament, especially with the ship being built around the mass drivers, and them running most of the length of the ship.

"How is that much weaponry mounted on the ship? Wouldn't you only be able to carry a small amount of rounds and missiles?"

He laughed. "Ah, the beauty of dimensional storage. The vast majority of the rounds are carried in dimensional storage, and taken out when needed. The ship can hold about eleven hundred sixty tons of ammo. That's about three hundred missiles, sixty-five hundred mass driver projectiles, and hundreds of thousands of rounds for the gauss cannons. Even if it were to run out, it could easily be resupplied by any of the larger ships. The dreadnoughts that were built are so big, and have so much power available, that they can hold more than one-hundred thousand tons of extra ammunition."

"That's pretty insane, but why use gauss cannons over energy weapons for point defense and to combat fighters? Wouldn't it allow you to carry more missiles and rounds for the mass drivers?"

He shook his head. "Not with a ship this small. A lot of the power generated is used for firing the mass drivers, and additional power couldn't be spared to mount more than one or two energy weapons. Many of the other ship types have both gauss cannons and energy weapons since they have the power to spare. That's fine though, because gauss cannons are very good at doing what we need them to do. A Prowler I could cycle its mass drivers and launch missiles as fast as they could, all while keeping missiles and lightly armored craft away from the important ships."

"I see what you mean. Changing the subject, I assume you have somewhere set aside for Abi? I'll have to leave her here tomorrow night. We already bonded, and she's storing energy for her growth."

"That I do. We anticipated Abi needing somewhere to grow since she can't really be shown on Earth, so we had a hanger grown even bigger than this one. When your friends get back, I can show you where it is."

"Bigger than this hanger? Just how big is she going to get?"

"That all depends on what your mana regeneration is right now."

"It's almost forty-one mana per second."

"That is about what I've heard your father's mana regeneration was at around your age. If you follow a similar progression path as he did, and go for a regular long, thin ship, then you're probably looking at eleven or twelve hundred meters long. That's about battlecruiser size. She could probably give you more accurate measurements."

"Twelve hundred meters? You're saying in six months she'll go from this little crystal to a ship over a kilometer long?"

"That's right. It'll actually probably take you a lot less time than that, since you'll be leveling up as she does. That size would be if your mana regeneration stayed constant for the next six months."

My friends rejoined us at that point and he showed us to the hanger that would become Abi's home, at least for a short while.

"Here it is. It's about two kilometers long by one kilometer long. If she ends up surpassing one of those, she'll need to just hide behind the moon or something until we leave. After tomorrow, you will be the only one that has access to this room. If anyone wants to enter, they need to be accompanied by you."

"Awesome, thank you. Well, it's getting late and my friends and I need to get up early tomorrow, so we should be going.

"Understandable. I'll escort you back to the portal."

He did just that, and my friends and I left after saying good night. When we got back to the portal room, we also said good night to Omar and Yuki before taking the elevator back to the surface. Omar tried to get me to stay and try some Scyftan alcohol when he got off duty, but I had to pass. It was already past 22:00 by now, and it would be close to 23:00 by the time I actually get to sleep.

My friends got in my truck and we left the parking lot, heading for home. I dropped each of them off before pulling into the driveway, grabbing my stuff out of the back, and walking inside. I took a quick shower and then crawled into bed. I had just fallen asleep when that sensation passed through my body again.

It seems Abi just leveled up, again.