Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered-Chapter 101: Gaining More Than Another Shipgirl
Aurelian exhaled again as he began to understand another one of his shortcomings.
That was the downside of archaeology. With living people, language was a problem you could solve quickly enough.
With dead records, it could waste hours or days, and sometimes longer if the material was damaged badly enough.
"I can’t wait for my AI core to arrive," he said.
Solenne was quiet for a second, then a faint smile touched her lips.
"Looks like the planet has more than it seems."
Aurelian looked up immediately. "What did you find?"
"A blue artifact," she said. "A cognition core. It appears to be an old military processing unit, and it should be able to interpret the local script once installed."
That made him smile slightly.
"Good. Bring it up."
The smart core was delivered to Solenne shortly after and integrated quickly. Once it was online, the old records stopped being a wall and became a resource, and that alone changed the pace of everything.
Solenne went through them quickly, sorting useful items from dead clutter, skipping over repetitive and damaged fragments that had no real value.
She did not waste effort on things that only looked important. She pulled out what mattered.
Most of the documents were war records.
The civilization that had once ruled this region called itself the Vhaloric Directorate. According to what remained, this world had once been one of its frontier military worlds.
There was no clear record of the final fall in the files they recovered, not in any single complete document, but there were signs of escalating emergency mobilizations, evacuation orders, and repeated references to environmental collapse weapons, which was already enough to paint an ugly picture.
There were also old star maps and resource distribution charts, both useful enough to keep, especially for anything tied to future movement or expansion.
More importantly, there were technical archives.
T1, T2, and T3 materials in abundance, and fragments of T4 work as well, though the most sensitive portions seemed to have been deliberately damaged or erased before the world went silent, as if someone had made sure the most dangerous parts would not remain whole.
Aurelian read through the translated summaries one by one, calm on the surface but clearly satisfied, his attention staying fixed on the details.
Military energy systems.
Mech production notes.
Armored ground vehicle frameworks.
Starship support engineering.
Starport construction modules.
A great deal of it would need time to digest properly, but even incomplete data of that quality was valuable, the kind of thing that could shape future growth if used well.
"This is more than just a cruiser clue," he said.
Solenne nodded. "It looks like it."
Then, not long after that, she found what they had actually come for, the thing hidden beneath everything else.
The clue was hidden in a report about one of the final repair cycles on the planet. Following that, she located an underground starship warehouse, sent mechs to verify it, and within minutes, the answer came back.
The heavy cruiser was there.
And thankfully, it was not wrecked, nor was it half-crushed under debris.
Instead, it was still sitting in its bay, waiting where it had been left.
The mechs entered first and cleared the route. Interior checks followed, and after another short wait, Solenne reported again.
"The inside is stable. Main structure intact. You can board it."
Aurelian did not waste time after that.
This time, he went down alone.
Solenne still had to maintain fleet awareness from above, and Rhoswen was better used as a guard and immediate reaction force than as someone following him through quiet corridors underground.
He took a mech to the surface, entered the base, and moved slowly through the underground complex, as they were not sure whether something would happen as they walked by.
This is something everyone learns, since there is tech that can distinguish living beings from mechs, and it is pretty low-level.
The path through the military facility was long but smooth. Most lighting was dead, most signs were faded, but the silence inside the base was the most unsettling thing, as this is when something creepy or dangerous comes up and eats them.
But nothing happened while they were going, which did not surprise him but did disappoint him a bit.
When he finally entered the warehouse and saw the ship for himself, he understood immediately why the clue had called it a heavy cruiser.
It was enormous.
Long enough that calling it merely a cruiser felt almost stingy. By Solenne’s earlier estimate, it was around twenty-five hundred meters in length, only a little shorter than Astra’s hull, and broad enough through the midsection that it gave off the weight of a combat ship built to stay in the line rather than dart around it. It looked like the kind of ship that had once anchored formations and kept fighting after lighter hulls would have pulled away.
No wonder the clue had pointed to it so urgently.
Aurelian stepped aboard with the mechs leading him toward the command section.
The interior of the ship was still spacious, even after all these years, and the overall preservation was much better than the state of the world outside should have allowed.
Whatever systems had sealed and preserved it had done its job well. The halls were dim and cold, but they were intact, and intact mattered more than appearance.
By the time he reached the captain’s cabin, his expression had calmed down, as it was finally time.
Another ship.
Another chance.
And if the clue had done its job properly, then this one would not be ordinary either.
He stopped in front of the command center and looked over the dormant room one last time before speaking over the line.
"Solenne," he said, voice calm and even. "We will have another sister joining as I’m starting the activation now."
Her reply came without delay.
"Understood. Outer space remains clear for now. The intercept net is still in place."
Good.
Aurelian lifted the prepared source fragments and began.
