Chapter 45 – Plans for Conquest

--- The next day ---

Erik was sunbathing on a hammock on the third floor, each end of it attached to big bones he had hammered into the ground, thinking about his future plans.

The lamps on the ceiling giving enough light and heat, he had also set up fans on the ceiling like the ones used on tunnels to increase airflow, so a light breeze was grazing his skin as he rested also.

He had seen it in an old movie, and decided to try, he was quite satisfied with the result.

Since winter was coming, the cold would make marine beings on the outside weaker and lethargic, and that meant it was the perfect opportunity to go after the snake kelp forest!.

he couldn't help smiling at that thought, and as he was smiling, he felt a tap on his shoulders and opened his eyes, and saw Inky smiling at him while wearing a big sunhat, carrying a tray with a glass of water for him.

Erik: " Oh, for me? thanks a lot babe" it was cool and refreshing, he felt great.

Inky wrote.

Inky:" what smiling for? happy?"

Erik: " Yeah, I thought of a good plan, do you remember the scary kelp forest behind here?"

Inky nodded solemnly as her face paled, it was a scary place.

Erik: " well, once all the octopeople are inside the mountain and safe from the snakes' rage, I plan to start attacking the kelp forest!"

Inky started to sake him by the shoulders.

Erik: " it. will. be fi. ne. in.ky, stop!"

She stopped but still looked worried.

Erik: " why don't you sunbathe with me to relax?"

She looked at the ceiling worriedly and wrote.

Inky: " light strong, hurts skin"

Erik: " oh..., sorry, sometimes I forget, guess it's the same for you too, let me give you a kiss at least"

She bent over and kissed his lips, smiling at him, her smile used to look terrifying to him, but now it just looked charming.

He got up and kissed her again and said.

Erik: "okay, let's go up babe, we can take a relaxing bath and chill for a while, and do the base tasks later, I also need to go to the village after all that"

He put his arm around her shoulders and went up with her to the onsen, as she rested her head on him while clinging to him too, and they had a relaxing long bath together.

--- Later that day ---

He went to the village and got passage to his spaceship, parking the transport inside the village next to the spaceship.

once inside he noticed something worrisome, the hatch wasn't opening as smoothly as the first time.

he checked the sides, and he could see rusticles starting to form in exposed metallic parts, that would be a problem, if they were similar to the bacteria that ate the titanic it would take tens of years, but it would still make it so he had to do annoying restorations.

( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halomonas_titanicae )

They were also starting to form in all cracked, bent, and ruptured areas, the spaceship was not complete after all, it had mostly survived the crash thanks to a methane eruption that broke the water surfaces tension as Rose told him, but parts of the spaceship had broken off on the atmosphere and flown far to other parts of the planet, mostly the gravitational support outer rings and secondary landing spaceship as this one was supposed to remain on orbit.

He would need to speed up the spaceship retrieval of this section as it had all the important modules in the long term, he could only sigh as stuff kept piling up.

He retrieved the computers and the chemistry module, with the help of Inky and a dozen warrior octopeople, and tied it to the transport.

He also took all the unbroken solar panels that were just 12, and the broken antennae so Rose could scan them and make a copy.

--- One week later ---

Over the next week he would do daily trips to the village to retrieve a module and make space for it on the second floor, by now he had retrieved the:

Genetics, Cloning, Agriculture, Multimedia, Control AI, Kitchen, Gym, Security, Printing, Medical, Surgery, Cryogenics and Living Space modules, he had had to scrub each clean before opening them to see different levels of conservation inside each.

There were only the engines and the body of the spaceship left, the engine he would leave it temporarily on a platform on the third floor as it needed to dry up and a wide space, it might take him centuries to repair it if Rose scanned it and there were missing pieces.

All the lights, switches, cables, and the looking bay he planned to use them for the octopeople city, and the straight central body part of the spaceship as a ladder to go inside his future base above the water, although it would deteriorate, compared to Rose's improved alloys there was actually not much other value on the spaceships cracked and bent body, and he could always weld some plates together and round them using hydroforming, the alien workshop also had a metal welding glove too so it was easy, with a big current going from finger to finger the metal welded easily, it could also cut like a plasma cutter.

His favorite new module was the kitchen, as now he didn't have to wonder how to do things or ask Rose like in the alien kitchen, in here he could easily cook whatever he wanted, it also had a robotic chef and lots of dehydrated food packages.

That night he ate a rehydrated and baked pizza along with Inky that liked it a lot, Erik enjoyed it particularly as he missed cheese, he would save the food from Earth for special occasions though, as he might have to live in this world for hundreds of years.

he wanted to try making a big prairie fourth floor full of edible flowers and fruit trees, and have his bees there, the gene-edited bees on the cloning module were also without stings so there was no danger, he could try having some where the sheep and chickens too on the third floor, but there was no need for flowers there as the sheep would just eat them.

"by the way Rose, are there any coral reefs on this planet?"

[...that's an interesting organism, filtering beings yes, but there are no corals with symbiotic relationships with colorful algae like in your planet, the water is too deep in most places, there are similar things to the south in warmer waters though]

"are there are places near the surface or really close"

[yes, this base ceiling is just 10 meters from the surface with at least 8 football fields of space, but what you don't understand is that a waterworlds oceanic currents distribute the heat really well, so although this base is far north, temperatures are more uniform since there are warm water currents nearby, and that's why you would need to go way South-]

"Okay, so no coral at this latitude 'cause surface is too cold, got it"

[...and-]

"enough about that, yeah water currents and the temperature are homogeneous, so there are filtering corals?"

[...yes]

"where?"

[...deeper, and others south from here]

" oh come one..., can you tell me their size and what they eat?"

[between 1 to 10 meters tall, eat by filtering the water and also eat small animals (=ε= ) ]

"Okay, thanks Rose, that seems to be an interesting ecosystem"

[maybe you should go and see then ¯\(-_-)/¯ ]

"no, I don't wanna die and I'm not in a hurry, only a fool would risk his life for no reason, I can always create exploration robots to go explore, and once I have satellites orbiting this world I will have GPS too, time makes everything easy"

[you are boring (=ε= ) ]

"boring people live long~" he shrugged

He planned to make first some probes to send sinking into the abyss to check, he would make it with the same resistance as his body so to make it go just where he could also go, for now, putting his life at risk for nothing would be stupid after all, even if he had to reach the metalworking factory and fight the crab people, it had been a long time already, so there was definitely no need to hurry now.

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