Reflection

I was human oce but I was starting to forget how that felt was I just a mind on a machine a artificial construct or did my soul survive was I more than my parts or would I go to heaven when my mind was finally put to rest these thoughts intruded on my mind as I contemplated the newest star that I had visited. A white dwarf with a single planet bereft of life but covered in ruins which I now explored while seemingly having a existential crisis. Technology was my goal supremacy my future yet here I stood looking at the remains of a race that so completely resembled humans that you could drop on on earth without anyone suspecting that it wasn't their home world. I studied the technology and the information I was able to piece together thought there wasn't much of it and I came to the conclusion that something had either taken them completely without damage or something biological wiped them out it was a little scary honestly what could kill a planet without a single sign of damage.

I had returned to my starship and resumed my compilation of the data I had received from both of the last alien races and even managed to tweak my shields to be 6% more effective. After some testing I had figured out the jump drive tech and was starting on modifications when suddenly a enormous starship appeared in the system and sent out a ping. I was a bit startled to say the least it dwarfed my ship by at least 80% and my ship was a planetoid this was closer to a planet proper suddenly I was very glad I'd covered the exterior of my ship in fused layers of rock and every kind of sensor disrupting and dispersing material I could this thing was a true monster but why was it here.

I was sitting there stunned and terrified and watched as aswarm of smaller ships began rounding up asteroids and hauling them back to the large behemoth it was mining what the heck. I put everything into the jump drive I didn't want to end up being recycled in that monster and as power levels in my jump drive reached critical suddenly the jump drive failed and I realized that it had spotted me so I put the pedal to the floor and accelerated away while firing every weapon I had at the monstrous ship now giving chase.

Apparently my ship had the better acceleration though not by as much as I would like still my plasma lances were firing continually as I fled the damage to their hull finally prompted them to deploy shields and then I was literally doing nothing so I unloaded the rail-guns on it as well. The enemy warship started to adjust course repeatedly though my railgun emplacements kept hammering them and then they returned fire and I felt like I'd looked into the sun my shields held but I was being hit by a constant barrage of laser fire that should my shields fail would have quickly rendered meters of armor like a wood chipper on steroids. Under the laser barrage they had fired their own rail guns and I was forced to jink the ship out of the way to avoid the hardened shells.

My shields failing under the relentless barrage I noticed that the enemies shields had weakened to the point where some of my shots were getting through and so I kept it up until I had used all of my railgun ammunition and my plasma lance weapons were starting to overheat yet now the return fire had been reduced 70% and my shields were recovering. My minions working tirelessly feed more ammunition made out of the stores of resources that I had accumulated over time to my empty rail guns though I waited until they were fully reloaded before resuming fire with them and soon the front of the enemy warship was Swiss cheese and yet they still kept coming like some kind of zombie starship.

I had unloaded my rail guns twice and nearly burned out my plasma lances when the enemy ship finally died with over 50% of its mass turned into scrap metal and debris. I decided to approach the enemy wreck and do some digging and sent my minions to search for intact databanks and hard drives while I modified one of the main plasma drives into a massive version of my plasma lance I'd need more firepower to deal with another one of these monster ships. My minions returned with a complete databank and some bits of technology including one that looked suspiciously like a com system but it was weird looking at best so I assumed the worst possible case and jumped to the edge of the system where I could see if another ship arrived and escape if needed while I decrypted they alien databases. Not 5 hours after I had scurried off to my hiding place that a pair of those behemoths showed up and began scanning the area heavily.

I was at fairly extreme range but I figured my new plasma lance would do the trick so I focused all of my weapons on the nearest enemy warship and let it have the full power of my warship and oh boy was it satisfying to see that my newest creation simply burned right through the entire enemy ship and caused a ton of secondary explosions. The first ship was completely obliterated in the first salvo then I turned my guns on the second ship and this time their shields were up and still by the time the beams trailed off their shields had collapsed and their armor was showing limited damage so I fired a third shot. They must have been working overtime because they managed to get a shield up just before the beams hit still it was a repeat of the first shot Only this time it started reaching the internals.

My newest beam weapon had a 3second recharge time between shots and a 10 second time before I could fire the first shot so when I managed to get the drop on those ships and the fact they didn't have shields up for the first shot really put a dent in their possible responses when half their ships were simply destroyed outright. I fired my main plasma lance 4 times and destroyed 2 ships not bad but now I needed to leave I had obviously irritated whoever it was that owned those Ships. It was time to move on and figure out the new technologies just waiting for me to pry open.