Chapter 88: Homeward bound

Chapter 88: Homeward bound

Natasha and I stepped onto the bridge and headed straight for the new console, located behind and to the left of the main pilot's station. The battle bot who was stationed as a makeshift early warning system looked up as we entered but immediately looked back down at the sensor console.

"Alright, so let's see how you turned out" I mumbled, sitting down and activating the screen.

Unfortunately, this chair, while comfortable did not contain the basics of how to use the console, as the pilot's chair did. Instead, I had to puzzle it out myself. Thankfully there weren't any random buttons or poorly labeled nobs, it was all a pretty easy-to-understand touch screen with a few different tabs and a central home screen. The shields, sorcerous damascus, and the engines all had similar screens, where I could boost the power available to them by a ridiculous factor. I tabbed through to the shield screen and adjusted their input, tripling their strength. Immediately a red bar started slowly filling, a timer at the top counting down from ten minutes. I lowered the Tesseract energy input, and the bar slowed down even more, while the timer increased.

"Okay, so it seems like there is only so far I can increase the shields," I explained. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that an Infinity Stone would burn out my systems."

I tabbed through to the engines and increased their energy input, noting that the red bar rose much slower when compared to the shields. The layer of sorcerous damascus on the hull was in the middle, rising faster than the engines but slower than the shields.

"Could you improve that at all?" Natasha asked, standing behind me and looking over my shoulder.

"Probably, using the scans of the ship we got, assuming it wasn't a hunk of junk," I said with a shrug. "Some directed tech development might work as well. If Tony designed something that absorbs and directs high amounts of energy or power I could conceptually craft that to impossible levels and then layer that into the development of all of the systems I want to use the Tesseract to boost. But even then it will probably have limitations. It's an infinity stone, those don't tend to get controlled very easily."Updated from novelbIn.(c)om

I tabbed away from the energy distribution tabs and focused on portal creation, going through the screen with a fine tooth comb. I quickly realized the first problem.

"It's asking for some sort of coordinates," I explained with a frown. "But I don't know them. Fuck, alright, I'm going to have to hard-code a trip to Earth then. Do you want to come to watch or hang out around the ship? I don't know how long this is going to take and I'm probably going to start by working on something else so it can start in the background."

"I'll come with you, but who is going to watch over the bridge?"

I gesture to the battle bot, who was still looking down at the sensor console, watching it closely.

"It's been long enough, anyone who could track us would have already gotten here. I think we should be good."

"Well what about the portal projector?" She asked, looking down at the console. "How dangerous would a random jump be?"

"Consider the ridiculously small percentage of space that actually contains anything probably fine. Not like we would have to worry about hyperspace lanes or gravity wells" I admitted, looking down at the console curiously. "As intuitive as it might be, though, I don't know if it has a random function"

I spent another ten minutes going through the console before deciding that it did not have a random function, but it did have a method of selecting the nearest star system. I tapped on the system. After a minute of thought, I engaged the portal projector.

The ship shuddered for just a moment before a beam of energy fired out from the ship, the placement of the viewscreens making it look like it came out from under us. A pale blue beam of energy raced out before stopping and exploding into a massive portal, easily big enough for the Void Skipper to get through.

"Wellat least that works," I mumbled, standing up and heading to the pilot's chair, sitting down and taking control.

After double-checking to make sure the stealth field was up I guided the Void Skipper in, entering the portal in one easy swoop.

"Sir! The sensor screen has changed sir!" The battle bot said after standing straight and turning to me.

"Thanks, power down for now," I said, rolling my eyes as I brought up the sensor readings on my screen.

The system was small, with only a singular, cold planet orbiting around a sun that threw off similar readings to sol. I did a wide sweep of the entire system before leaning back and studying the view screen.

"Alright, we are now six light years away from where we first came through the portal," I said with a smile before turning to Natasha, who had followed me to the pilot's seat.

I walked further into the bridge and plopped down at the Tesseract control console, waking it up and scrolling through the tabs, ignoring the new weapons tab and selecting the new portal projector tab.

This new tab was simply an image of the Earth, with the moon floating around it. I could spin it around and select anywhere around it, from feet over the surface all the way past the moon's orbit, as long as it was an Earth-centric portal.

"Alright, let's get home," I said, selecting a space by the moon.

"Is it wrong that I kind of want a few more days off?" Natasha asked.

"Not really. Your welcome to stay with me for a bit if you would like, I'm likely not making contact with anyone for a day at least."

"Why not?"

"Thor is going to want to take the Tesseract back to Asgard and I want to keep it," I admitted with a shrug. "They want to use it to fix something, and I'm going to offer an alternative way. Plus I need to convince Fury to let Asgard have the Mind Stone, so I'll need to make something to barter with in exchange."

"Any ideas?" She asked, quickly getting over her surprise about what I wanted to do.

"A few, but it depends on the feasibility. I want to bounce ideas around with Ema, and your welcome to stick around and watch," I said with a smile. "Now do me a favor and hop in the pilot's seat, and fly us through."

"Sure," She said eagerly, quickly heading to the pilot's chair.

As we talked the portal had opened, the beam of energy the same color as the first time, only this time coming from slightly above and to the left of the forward viewscreen.

"Should I leave the stealth field on?" She asked, looking over her shoulder at me once she was sitting.

"Yup, I would prefer not to be seen until I'm ready."

Natasha took control of the ship near perfectly, guiding us closer and closer to the portal, our projector maintaining it until the last second when it cut off. The portal stayed open though, decaying slowly as we passed through. Looking back at the aft view screens I could see the roiling smoke-like energy of the portal closing behind us. The moon floated beside us now, the Earth filling the forward viewscreen completely. Both of us stared for a while.

"I hadn't realized until just now how nervous I was about getting back here," I admitted, Natasha, nodding along. "I knew eventually I would figure out a way, but"

"I knew you could do it, but I know what you mean," Natasha agreed. "So?"

"Oh, yeah, put it in orbit around the moon," I said, watching as the beautiful redhead maneuvered the Void Skipper into position.

When the ship was in a stable orbit and set to autopilot, I traveled the both of us down to the warehouse.

"Ema! I'm home!" I called out, taking a step off the landing pad only to stop and look around.

There were ten trunks, which I immediately recognized as my robot trunks, stacked by the landing pad. There were also a whole group of caduceus droids standing by a whole extra section of UCMs. The UCMs were printing out nurse stones by the dozens, while the caduceus droids, who all had landing pads duct taped to their backs, organized them into crates.

"Welcome back!" I hear Ema shout, turning to watch as she came around the lounge corner.

She did not look happy.