The journey was uneventful, and soon enough, after an hour of travel, the base was in view. Though this time, rather than plain old ruins, everything had been replaced by more of those nest structures they destroyed last time and a semi-built dome of what could only be artificial plants used as shielding by the fungi which they encountered on the beach a while ago.
"Raise the height of the ship and burn them all," he ordered, this time using a known strategy that proved to be effective.
"Copy that," the crew replied. High in the air, booming sounds once more sounded out within the vicinity. The idle fungi quickly scrambled around and let out screeches towards the air as if to intimidate the battleship away. It went completely unheard by those high in the sky; explosion after explosion sounded out. They had been building or growing more plasma cannons, but none of them, even in higher numbers, could reach the ship.
The plasma rounds could only fly into the air before flying straight down to the ground, sometimes even hitting friendly forces.
In the air, Ridge basked in the destruction caused by the heavy cannons and watched with a smile as they tore apart this new fungi base.
Ten minutes later, the last heavy cannon let out a shot, and Ridge raised his hand. "Hold fire."
"Holding fire," they repeated.
"Show me the images on the ground," he said.
It was completely devastated; the only things remaining at this point were many craters and fire burning the surrounding foliage and trees down. Perhaps in time the fire would stop, but for now Ridge felt the revenge mission was slightly accomplished. Becke didn't appear to be present at the time of the bombing, so complete revenge would have to wait.
"Good, let's get out of here," Ridge ordered. The crew, of course, obeyed. On the bridge, Yayha and Caroline joined Berkay near the navigation table that was no longer displaying the planet. Instead, as the ship left the atmosphere of the planet and entered space, they watched as the large scanner began to reach out, attempting to get information on the entire system.
The current battleship scanners were capable of passively scanning trillions of kilometers, but because there weren't any relays within said system, it usually took quite a while to buffer all that information, meaning when the ship actively scanned, it could only effectively reach out and scan twenty billion kilometers on every side and give that usable information back to them for use. Which, for an entire system, wasn't the greatest, but enough to perhaps find some more planets or asteroid belts. An immense help if they were to have landed on the planet with it intact; too bad it was heavily damaged, Ridge thought to himself.
Leaving behind the planet, the battleship made its way into the blackness of space, the stars illuminating the dark spaces; to the naked eye, the light pollution from said stars only served to block out their vision in front of them, and they could only see that they were moving into a dark abyss of nothingness; fortunately, they had the battleship to see in their stead.
Thirty minutes passed by quickly, and the scanner finally seemed to have got something. Hearing the noise, Ridge looked over and saw that a large asteroid belt was picked up. Walking over once more, he let berkay speak first.
"By the looks of it, this asteroid belt should be pretty rich in materials for us to build. It's around a million kilometers away as well, so the trip will take around eight hours, not very long in the grand scheme of things, " he said.
"Okay, go for it. Make sure to continue scanning for any other planetary bodies, excluding gas giants, of course. These asteroids can certainly help us build up, but unfortunately won't have all the resources we need; that's for certain," Ridge replied, watching on as the scanner brought up information on the asteroids.
So long as the scanner was switched to a focused mode, it could even penetrate and view ore and mineral deposits as well as ice deposits on some asteroids, which would be crucial to purify water while they were stationed there.
Of course, if there's enough interference, that wouldn't be the case, but it worked around seventy to eighty percent of the time. This was also the biggest reason Ridge waited another two days to get it fixed and replaced.
"By the way, designate the old planet we were on as Stira-1. It'll be helpful to organize our discoveries," he said before leaving to go inspect the ship and ensure everything was in order. As with most things, the higher-ups need only set a direction, and the subordinates would take care of the rest; that is, of course, if you're a hands-off leader like Ridge was.
The inspection was rather routine; the food supply was still low, but because they had lost another portion of the crew, it would be enough for them to last at least half a year, maybe longer, especially if they still followed their current slight rationing system.
The asteroids also had Ridge thinking while he was walking around the ship. Generally speaking, they had all the necessary components to create the glass needed for more vats. The only problem was space, though as Ryan said earlier, they could more than likely create a habitat dome. It'll be a lot of effort, was the problem in Ridge's view, but perhaps that trouble was worth doing.
In his estimates, they were likely going to be permanently stationed within that asteroid belt until they could enact their revenge if no other planet was found. And once they get more vats created, the food issue pretty much solves itself. Not to mention they would eventually be able to take those same vats and grow artificial humans, which would have a snowball effect on their efficiency in not only construction, but research, factories, and more.
His contemplation went on for the remainder of his inspection, and by the time he returned, he felt that it was a good idea to start off by the time they got there by building the glass dome and then the vats before anything else, including repairing the ship. The vision of a growing population with more than sufficient food supply was just too tempting.
"Commander, welcome back. Everything is on schedule. Unfortunately, no other planetary bodies have been scanned yet, which is somewhat surprising, but at the same time I think it might just be the limited reach of the scanner. Otherwise, we will be in a system that only has two stars and one habitable planet," Berkay said as he walked in.
Caroline had likely left to go do something else, and Yayha was still seated on the bridge scrolling through data on his wrist panel.
"Perfect on your first point, not so perfect on the second. What's the likelihood of there only being one planet within a system, do you think?" he asked.
Looking at the navigation table, holograms of the asteroids were showing at the moment; the crew, or rather Berkay, had seemingly pinpointed the largest asteroid they could land on. It also displayed the information on the resources that could be found there. A large portion of it was silica, sandstone, and sodium carbonate. When extracted from the rock of the asteroid, it can be mixed and smelted into glass, perfect for the vats and building a large dome. Of course, more regular metal deposits were also present and could be used to repair further and reinforce the ship later down the line.
In fact, Ridge was also thinking of perhaps building more ships when the time was right. Shipbuilding in itself, as a practice or capability, was exclusively run by the navy of the Coro Federation, meaning private corporations and traders could only buy the manufactured ships directly from them or face criminal charges and large fines if spotted building their own.
Luckily, Ridge's family was a medium-sized merchant family, and they managed to get their hands on a blueprint for small scooner-class ships. These were the smallest ship designs in the federation but heavily used by civilians for transporting supplies, reconnaissance, and other duties, perfect as well for transporting goods to sell or buy, not to mention it only needed ten trained crew members to move and operate one, overall it was less expensive than the larger ships, which were only sold by the navy branch of the federation when they typically got too damaged or were too old. Though battleships and above were never sold.
The effort and money needed to repair and get them running again usually wasn't worth it, so that's another reason the scoon class ships became more popular. Though larger entities with more finances usually ate those costs. After all, larger ships also represented more money to be made and more power to flaunt against other companies. Figuratively, of course; otherwise, the federation would simply destroy or directly confiscate everything from said entities.
Anyways, the Glovee family managed to get their hands on it after bribing a corrupt spaceport manager who oversaw the construction of scoon and frigate-class ships. Subsequently, the data was securely transferred to him during one of his rest days. This was mostly a measure to spread the data around the entire family in case one of them got caught with it.
Shaking his head at his stray thoughts, Ridge refocused his attention on what Berkay was saying to answer his initial question.