Chapter 11 - Recovery

Erik: "damn, that was beautiful, and she learned so quickly! can you print me a drumset, Rose? I feel like playing maybe one of these days"

Rose: [well I can, but it won't sound the same as in your memories since the material properties will be different, and that will make the sound different]

Erik: "Hmm, okay fair enough, I still wanna try though, by the way, Rose, is the spaceship empty?"

Rose: [no, it's been taken over by the octopeople, they are building a village with barricades of bones and rocks around it like some kind of sacred place]

Erik: "well, another reason to get on well with them I guess"

Then he pointed to Inky and then the wheelchair, and then the wall, and a screen appeared showing they both going hunting that crab, then her shaking her head and staying in the bathtub and then one of her nodding and going with him, she understood and nodded, but pointed at her still healing tentacles, and in the screen appearing an image of him stepping in front of her and his shoulder cannon blasting the crab, killing it, also her wounds didn't hurt anymore and were healing way faster than normal.

They headed to the garage, where Erik put on the helmet and gave Inky her spear, then grabbed his own spear and helped her into the water, she stared at him for a second and then dove down to the cave.

Erik: "by the way, Rose, can you guide us to that crab?"

Rose: [yeah, I think I can]

Erik: "...how? wasn't it hard sensing it when I first arrived? are you becoming more powerful?"

Rose: [ (she giggled) no you silly, before you came I was bored so lots of parts of me were hibernating]

Erik: "Oh, that makes sense, well, what direction now?"

Rose: [ out to the left, the crab is stalking a being similar to a moray from your world]

Erik: "oh, that's awesome, I love fried moray skin chips, we can wait until they are both injured and kill them both"

Then they both came out of the garage with Erik leading the way, twenty minutes swimming later, they were in a rock formation observing the battle taking place, a Moray six meters long was fighting with the crab, the crab had the advantage though as it had multiple eyes and fast poisonous claws, they moray kept bleeding, so Erik thought 'can't let this end like this' and shot the crab on the tail, and when it paused and turned back, the moray used that moment to bite the crab in the head and half kill it, then the crab lifted its claw and gutted the moray, at that moment, not wanting to delay more, Erik shot both animals to death with 2 plasma shots and quickly grabbed them, with an impressed Inky quickly following behind and looking at him in admiration, he felt a bit smug, though deep down he knew it was all thanks to technology and nothing else, humans like to show off though.

Once back home, Erik taught Inky how to gut the moray and the crab, and then put them inside the refrigerator, then she stayed looking at him from her wheelchair as he cooked using the fish soup stock he made the other day with some moray and crab meat, and also put stripes of moray skin on the pan with a bit of fat stuck to make moray torreznos, they were crunchy and delicious, going really well with the fresh seafood soup, he also added fried crunchy kelp on top and some of the snails he boiled them on a different pot, popped them out, took their guts off and fried them, they were chewy but tasty, also some moray steaks as Inky had a big appetite he made hers medium and his a bit more as he didn't like steaks raw, and they had a delightful meal, after the meal he also wrapped some moray steaks in kelp and put them in the freezer to try dry aging them.

( https://youtu.be/LBki5yEZY-s )

At night he wanted to watch a war movie, but that would send the wrong message to Inky, so they watched a romantic and peaceful one, he almost fell asleep lots of times, Inky had all her attention glued to the screen while eating fried algae as a snack, he wished he had corn for popcorn, but it was still too early to grow corn though, maybe if he dug a big cave and waterproof it with lime from the seashells...or maybe on floating mud beds and reeds like they did on South America with chinampas, reeds cleaned water and their fibers were useful so he had some in his seed pack, also some papyrus for making rope and cat tails for antiseptics, he would probably need a bigger pool soon though if he kept adding plants, he went there sometimes to sunbathe and had to install a steam condenser as it was almost like a jungle how humid it was, the garlic and lettuce were growing nicely too, and the pepper and chilly plants were already small plants, with perfect growing conditions and no mold or insects to annoy them they were all growing fast, he could also try growing them on domes underwater like they did in Italy, but they would need to be close to the surface, something impossible on this planet.

As yesterday Inky slept on the bathtub comfortably, her appendages were 70% regrown already, when he woke up the next day and along Inky, he used some power tools to make her some armor using the plates from the armoured fish she hunted days prior, sticking them to a diving suit upper body for her that joined with the one for her backpack, she was happy with how it looked, he used the pick upper and lower ones from the jaw to cover her hips, the upper part of the head to cover her back under her backpack, sides to cover the sides of her arms, and lower part cut in 3 pieces to protect her belly but remain flexible, she really liked her bone armor, also as she controlled it she also stuck lots of clams and colourful shells making it actually like chainmail, being glittery wasn't a good option on the ocean, luckily they were on an ocean plateau so there weren't titanic predators here, in the highest part there was just 10 meters to the surface, it would be a good idea to install an sos beacon there he thought, it might break with the ice there in winter if it were to freeze as Rose said though, in the end he still needed to get to know this planet more.

Inky just looked at him waiting, she found it weird but the nice creature always seemed to be making sounds or thinking, well, not like anyone could talk out of the water anyway, the creature seemed not to like water though, it was really strange but she didn't linger on the thought for long, she wanted to go try her new armor, so she pushed her wheelchair closer and patted the arm of the creature to make it pay her attention, it looked surprised but showed his teeth, she did the same and pointed at her armor and then the hallway, the creature seemed to understand, gave her her spear and pushed her wheelchair to the water exit.

As he was pushing Inkys wheelchair to the garage, Erik asked

Erik: "Rose, what materials do you need to repair the vehicle below?"

Rose: [well, as for metals don't worry much, this facility extracts metal and minerals from the water and has accumulated already a lot, I will make a scanner later and you just need to scan it and I will make any missing pieces]

Erik: "Wow, okay, sounds awesome by the way, then make me a spring-loaded spear gun, I will gift it to Inky later" he couldn't help thinking 'a helper like this is the dream of any engineer...'

Rose: [ okay (^o^)/]