Expansion

Space no longer was a time consuming journey my ship could now reach light speed in a couple days where before it was an impossibility I had energy shields and gravity onboard these were all impossible before and yet I still craved more speed more power I felt like I was becoming some kind of power mad droid. My megalomania lent itself to my latest body no expenses spared my wires were silver and platinum my processors the most powerful ones I could build my armor the toughest alloy I could create and my gadgets were in the hundreds I could now fire a miniature plasma beam from every tentacle or use them as plasma drives I was now twice my previous size with three times more power output I was a beast though I still couldn't figure out hard light shields for myself.

As powerful as my individual body was I was dwarfed by the shear power of my starship even though I was now a large man sized egg covered in multi function tentacles my starship was a moon sized weapon of mass destruction and exploration. My moon sized starship could accelerate at a speed of 800 gravities in any direction it chose and it positively bristled with my 2 plasma lances rail guns and point defense laser batteries that tripled the output of my first version.

As I sailed through the void pushing at the very limits of speed and technology I contemplated far to much but also discovered a few new improvements that I could utilize. The trip to the next target star system took 20 years and during the trip I only found a few minor improvements that I could implement though I did tweak with my minions software but beyond that I didn't achieve much I was at a technical plateau. It was as I neared my next target star system that I spotted energy discharges so instead of stopping like I normally would I slowed down to somewhat moderate speeds and took a trip through the system and found it a battle ground.

Plasma beams and laser fire set the mood in the system one side firing missiles like rain the other lashing out with long range plasma weapons neither side was really winning though I could tell that the side using plasma weapons were using something different from my own. I got excited but I waited patiently for the battle to end though it ended in a draw both sides whittled down to a handful of battered starships so I swooped in like a proverbial Hoover vacuum and took any starship I could get my hands on that didn't have any crew remaining though a couple did have some that I didn't pick up. I rushed down to the cargo bay I'd snatched all of the ships to and began trying to translate the data from their hard drives it took a while and mean time I had an audience of forty armed beings who were grunting and howling at me I'm assuming it was in their native language though who knows.

After forty minutes of them hooting howling growling and murmuring I finally cracked the database and had a complete understanding of their language and what they had been saying the last 40 minutes so I told them that they were welcome to stay until I returned to their fleet but that would have to wait I even said it in their native language. I thought that would calm them down but then they started even more of a ruckus and making demands of me I took exception to being treated like a armed butler and blasted one with a tentacle and said that the next to demand anything from me would receive the same treatment. Silence was pervasive on the deck my display had stunned the creatures and shown that I was not adverse to violence something that I'd picked up in the database pointed that out to me the strongest were the leaders of their race. After dropping off my uninvited guests I began dissembling their ships well the intact pieces anyway each part was categorized and logged anything that stood out as better than my current tech was placed in a pile while everything else was thrown in the recycling pile and the pieces that I didn't understand yet were placed in a third pile.

These aliens both had a form of FTL drive one was a short range jump drive the other was a hyperdrive that required star lanes to function I took the jump drive and set it aside for future examination and experimentation the hyperdrive I didn't want to toss but it was less useful to me than a proper jump drive so I categorized and logged each part of it so I could come back to the technology in the future. Damn did I love being a droid it came with all kinds of benefits perfect memory being one and the ability to delete unpleasant memories if I wanted yeah it was great though I never tinkered with erasing memories that could probably go bad.

The technology I wanted proved to be a variation on my plasma lance concept but instead of a beam it creates a magnetic bumble and launches that interesting though I felt that it was simply too lacking for a proper weapon system though it did work adequately over short range ie under 1au thought I could probably increase that significantly with my tech on hand. Other than the FTL drives and the plasma bolt gun technology the only other technology that peaked my interest was their shield technology that seemed to work by channeling plasma into a specific frequency around the target essentially creating a barrier that would stop most things aside from light based weapons and higher velocity particle weapons.