VR Headsets had a certain limited ability to accelerate time; and a much greater ability to slow things down; putting its subjects to sleep. Taking an organic brain and speeding it up grew less and less reliable the more speed you tried to get out of it; for Derek, he''d never been able to get more than perhaps twenty or thirty percent out of his own flesh and blood.


    While the overlay was running, he looked human. He felt human. What he breathed felt like air. But the simple reality is; he was a machine. A machine running at less than one percent of its mental capacity for the past few hours, since he awoke. His body could easily move at five times the rate of a normal human; so when the captain approved his request for overclocking, he simply matched things up.


    From his perspective, the crew as now moving at a crawl. The tech who had been showing him the operation of the hyperdrive appeared to be moving in a sluggish way; hand creeping towards the button. Watching it was... disturbing. He had access to every piece of data about the ship; but as of yet, didn''t understand it. That would take effort; and time. Something of which he now had plenty.


    He had worked extensively with orbital mechanics and fusion torch ships in his old life.. in his favorite ''game''. He knew what would happen if you applied just a enough force and twisted the path of one object to intercept another. How a miscalculation of a millionth of a percent; an object''s shape, composition, and center of mass being just a bit off; could completely ruin an attempt to accomplish his objective. AIs could help; he''d carefully tailored his Icon to help gather information and provide estimates over hundreds of scenarios. His navigation was almost there. He just needed a bit more work.


    Hyperdrives, though? The idea of an alternate reality where physics worked differently? Where mass actively decayed if it wasn''t protected, there was no speed of light, and nothing worked right? That was going to be hard.


    Hard, he could handle.


    ***


    For Technician Adrian Jacobs, watching Thompson work was amusing; reminiscent of his own wakeup call just a few subjective days before, as the skeleton crew of Outreach 13 woke up more people to help speed progress on the ship. His primary job was an intricate and complex one; as the mining process went on, he had to constantly manipulate the field that kept hyperspace from obliterating them all; or just dumping them in realspace; to sync up with the minor changes of the bow wave pushing them along, as well as the changing center of mass of the ship.


    For the most part, the former naval officer was able to cruise along at the same low time-rate as the rest of the crew; only 5% of real. Sometimes, however, some unforseen shift caused by a broken squid sending a hull plate crashing in the wrong spot would require him to pump all the way up to 100%, 1000%, or even higher to make sure the field didn''t collapse. A few of his adjustments had been because part of the asteroid had fallen out of the field, and he''d been forced to spend a few minutes that, to him, seemed like days, working through thousands of field configurations to keep things together.


    He was seriously looking forward to the final completion of the hull; when that happened the crew would be able to drop all the way down to less than 1%, and spend the rest of the journey in, subjectively, seconds. The overlay was nice; he''d gone on a few ''dates'' with one of the comms techs, but the idea of ''dinner and a movie'' just didn''t work right when you knew you didn''t actually have to eat, that the food was fake, and that, in reality, you were just standing together in a perfectly empty room.


    He needed a body. That cloning rig couldn''t be ready fast enough.


    After making a few more minor adjustments to the field, he glanced down at the blurring form of Thompson. There was no need to be in such a hurry. They had months before navigation would really need to do anything; their path was free and clear for thousands of light-years. Still. It''d be interesting to see if the kid could really build them a new home out there.


    ***


    Outreach 13 was a smoothly running machine. With each passing day, the raw materials of the asteroid were converted from rough rock walls and raw ore into tanks full of useful materials, smelted out into hull plates, or used by technicians to fabricate advanced components. For Captain Peterson, this wasn''t the job he''d signed up for. He''d been a starship captain; and hoped to be a commodore, leading a fleet of ships defending the earth. Not babysitting a bunch of trainees and has-beens, building the crew for a colony ship loaded down with robots.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    On the other hand... it was difficult to fault the plan. As he looked over the starmap ahead, he called up the raw materials assessment; and the planned ship construction. He had enough iridium to either build out four new hyperdrives, or three of them and a pair of Hypercannons.


    He''d seen a Hypercannon fired before. The weapon opened a nice clean line several light-seconds long, and transited everything in its path to hyperspace for a fraction of a second; obliterating anything along that path when it returned to normal space. Moments before his real body had died, he''d witnessed one fired on the Mars base. It hit so hard debris had cascaded up from the other side of the planet. There was no defense. Nothing could survive it.


    He tapped his Icon; patting the golden fox, the fur feeling real and warm against his skin. "Skyler, call up the staff. We need to make a decision on this, and I''d like some input."


    The signal went out. The overlay... warped. Time compression turned up, everyone going from 5% up to 500% in a few moments; when the meeting was over, unless it laste for hours, they''d have lost only seconds, as comms synced up... and they all appeared to be seated around a conference table.


    At one end, Captain Peterson sat. Resource assessments and ship plans before him. Along the row the top-ranking officers on the ship; Engineer Adrian Jacobs; a bit older, pale-skinned, bearded, and, from Peterson''s Trek-fan perspective, unfortunately american rather than Scottish; Weapons officer Leanna Smith; the definitely scottish freckled redhead; and his Fabrications Officer, Ichika Amari; who Peterson very definitely was not supposed to be looking at the way he did, nor should he be taking her hand and smiling before starting off the conference. But hell. There''s no more navy. No more earth. Who cared?


    "Alright, people. I got Amari''s latest assessment. The Iridium situation is better than we hoped. We''ve got three possible plans here, each with advantages and disadvantages. Following standard procedure, we should, if possible, fully kit out the Outreach ship itself, build two Destroyer class vessels complete with Hypercannon, and then however many scout ships we have the material for. We all knew that wasn''t likely to happen. If I build two Destroyers, that''ll leave us with enough Iridium to make, probably, four Hypercannon; one for each ship, including 13, and a replacement spare. This is what core doctrine would have us do."


    *The image appears over their heads. Two six-hundred meter Destroyers; long, sleek craft, completely lacking the redundant spin gravity generation older ships had kept.


    "Alternately, we can build four scout-class ships, and if we do build a Destroyer, which we already have the spine laid down for, it would be without a main gun. Making it completely helpless if there''s anyone here with shielding worth a damn." The next diagram appears; showing four 350-meter scout ships and a somewhat different version of the Destroyer. "Frankly, that idea is absurd to me. The best option to me seems the third."


    *A new diagram appears; showing three new constructions alongside the 13. "For me, the obvious choice is to ignore doctrine, build two scout-ships, one destroyer, and get hypercannon for the 13 and the destroyer. We can keep the Destroyer with the 13 for protection, and scout nearby stars with the others. Its marginally more risky than building a pair... but allows a compromise between effective firepower, and still being able to scout without bringing the entire flotilla to each system."


    Jacobs toys with his beard as he studies the tiny fleet before him. "That''ll leave us with a substantial amount of additional raw material. The plan already calls for fully loading the 13 up with drones, torches, and prefabs. Are we just going to dump the excess into hyperspace once its all done?"


    Amari coughs gently, smiling. "Actually, we''ve already got a plan for that. Once we''ve built as many ships as we''ve got, and have them all fully loaded, we''ll use the remaining materials to build as many solar panels and prefab station blocks as we can... and when we get where we''re going, already have what we need to build a rudimentary orbital habitat. No artificial gravity.. but we can set it spinning and have a solid base of operations big enough to fit our ships inside if need be once the drones finish assembling it."


    Smith brings up the image; zooming in on the 13. "I noticed the hypercannon here seems... wrong. Too thick, too short. This thing won''t have the sort of range it needs for a real fight."


    "Thats the thing..." Peterson grins. "Its not meant to be just a weapon. Its a terraforming tool. As ridiculous as it sounds, that thing can be used to release truly ridiculous kinetic energy, and help redirect the path of objects in orbit. If we go with this plan, each of us here at this table gets their own ship. All Captains, myself on the destroyer as Commodore. Though..." He turns to Amari. "If he turns out as well as I think he will, Mr. Thompson should probably be your XO on the 13. He''s probably going to be the best one to figure out how to use that thing, but he needs a captain with enough time in service to keep the naval people working for him."


    Amari nods for a moment. "Perhaps. I''ll make that decision when we get there; it might be best to just create a new position for him. Earthforger, or some such nonsense."


    Peterson tilts his head. "Once the ship is yours, I''ll leave that up to you. For now. We''ll go with plan C. One destroyer. Two scouts. Once everything''s complete we can crew up our own ships... and just drop down to a percent. Fast forward to the end, as it were, and really get to see some strange new worlds for ourselves."