Deepspace: Maxtom Captain of the High King (Ea)(Com)

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From an early age, Maxtom learned many lessons about how touch the universe is, and among them the biggest lesson he learned was the more invisible you are, the less you’re noticed and the less likely you’ll be beaten.

He took this lesson to heart the most and went through life riding on its wisdom, even when he acquired the High King and prepared to travel into deepspace. Being invisible was so important to him that he made it the main function of the High King.

Which turned out to be a great thing, as it saved his hand way more than a handful of times. The way his ship works is by using a special radio-absorbing plating around the entire outside of the ship, paired with an XI-P subspace core.

Those allow the ship to shift into what is only known as subspace, essentially disappearing to those in normal or deepspace. While in deepspace, the ship is not only invisible but also intangible, which makes them crazy powerful and super unique.

They can’t be seen or attacked by those outside subspace, but they can still attack those outside of it. However, like most powerful things, it comes at great cost. The larger the ship, the more energy is needed.

So for large ships, you can only use subspace for a few seconds at a time, even with the best equipment, making it virtually pointless to have. Then if you have smaller ships, you can stay in subspace longer.

The problem with smaller ships is that they still have many other features that need power, and are limited by the size of energy cores they can install, so at most it’s usually a minute or two that they can be in subspace.

So in order to make it work for the High King, Maxtom cleared out several of the ship's normal functions to replace them with extra energy cores. So now his ship no longer has energy shields, self-repair, and auto scanners.

Without them, he can keep himself in subspace for over ten minutes before the ship even begins to overheat, and if he really needed to, he could go even further until the ship overheats and powers off to reset.

Being in subspace meant he was basically invincible; he could attack without worry of being attacked and even sneak by potential hostile ships without them ever knowing, thus continuing his streak of being as invisible and unnoticed as possible.

Maxtom had just finished installing the newest update for his subspace core and was now sitting in the cockpit scanning for any asteroids with precious materials, signals, and other things of interest when he got the distress signal from Zeta-13.

Being that he likes to stay unseen and knowing that there was likely to be a lot of other ships trying to claim Zeta-13, Maxtom was going to avoid it, but he knew a bit about Zeta-13 from his days of sneaking around collecting information.

Zeta-13 had a ton of amazing parts stored on it, ones that could not only extend the time the High King could stay in subspace but also allow it to use less power. Not to mention the other vast amounts of riches the place contained.

It made it worth going, and since Maxtom could stay invisible, he got in there before anyone even knew he was here. So without delay, he made his way to the same sector as Zeta-13, and when he arrived, he found other ships but also a large amount of dangerous anomalies.

Maxtom saw other pilots struggling to make it through the space, and he let out a chuckle. He felt for them; if only they had what he had. Maxtom activated the subspace core and slipped into subspace, where the other pilots and the anomalies had no effect.

Maxtom casually flew by everyone and everything in the area, though he wasn’t a bad person, so he blasted a few asteroids away from the other pilots when he could. Maxtom then made it to the space station with no problem, though he wasn’t the first to arrive.

He did, however, scare the daylights out of the pilot who did make it first, as they jumped backward and fell on their butt when the High King came out of subspace and became visible again. When Maxtom got out, he apologized to them for it.

However, instead of being mad, they were super impressed and asked Maxtom about it. Maxtom wasn't all that used to talking to people, so he told them a bit about it, but luckily other pilots showed up, and he was able to sneak off.

Maxtom thought he was being smart by heading to the orbital elevator and going down first, but the others, not even knowing he snuck off, made it to the elevator before he could get it fully activated and ready to go down.

Maxtom then stood alone behind the others as they waited to reach the surface; however, the anomalies had other plans. It seemed it either didn’t want them to reach the surface or to reach it much quicker, as the space station and orbital elevator vanished.

Everyone started to fall to the surface, and Maxtom had to connect to his ship's system and activate Quorisha, which was his ship's AI that he kept off in order to divert power to the subspace core. Maxtom then begged her to start the ship and catch him.

She was as moody as ever, but she did it, catching Maxtom much quicker than some of the other ships caught their captains. Maxtom got inside the ship and then asked Quorisha to land the ship on the surface if possible.

Before Maxtom could get a reply from her about that command, everything went dark, like Maxtom had closed his eyes. When they opened again, Maxtom could feel she was lying on the ground, and she could see space above her.

Maxtom sat up, then stood up. She then went to dust the sand off herself, but as she looked down, she realized she was not only closer to the ground, but she was also wearing a bright purple skirt. Maxtom had no idea how it got on her or why she was so short now.

She inspected her body further and found she was wearing a matching crop top and that a good portion of her body was mechanical, almost like she was a cyborg, but there was something strange about the metal used on her new body.

The plating was the same as her ship, the same plating needed in order to allow the ship to go into subspace. Maxtom was confused, as it would never be used on a body like this, as a person can’t have a subspace core inside them, as they were too large.

As Maxtom was thinking about it, she felt something inside her activate, and suddenly everything looked different; everything was slightly grayer, and colors were duller, just like they were when she was in subspace.

Maxtom was amazed but confused, so she pulled up her HUD and did a system scan. Normally when she did this, it listed her name as the thing being scanned, but now it said it was scanning the High King, which Maxtom knew was nowhere to be seen.

Yet instead of showing the ship in the preview of the scan, it showed what looked like a young girl, who was very short and very thin. Maxtom looked down at herself; that seemed to match her current form, but she had no idea why her system thought she was the High King.

Then she slowly started to piece it together. She knew anomalies could make the impossible possible; she knew her body was different, seemingly fused with some sort of mechanical device, could go into subspace and her ship was gone.

The best explanation, though so very crazy, was that she and the High King were one now, which allowed her to use its ability to go into subspace. After the scan was done, Maxtom got a full report of her new body and its functions.

As she already discovered, she could go into subspace since her subspace core somehow shrank and was inside her. She also found that she could do more than just go into subspace; in fact, in her system, subspace was her third mode.

Her first mode was invisibility, which said that it causes people to simply not recognize she was there, making it so they don't pay attention to her at all. It also doesn’t have an off switch, so it’s constantly active.

Which would cause a lot of interference in day-to-day life, but luckily Maxtom prefers not to interact with people, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem. The second mode seems to be called distraction, and it requires Maxtom to stay focused to use it.

If she stops focusing on it, it will deactivate, but it’s pretty powerful. Even if she was standing right in front of someone and screaming at the top of her robotic lungs, no one would see, and if they did, they wouldn’t remember anything—not her clothes, actions, or anything.

Then back around to her third mode, which was the ability to use subspace. Like the High King, she can slip into subspace for about ten minutes safely, and it makes her invisible and intangible to those around her while allowing her to still mess with things around her.

It still takes a lot of energy, so her system says it’s not safe to use more than once a day, or else severe hunger will occur, then fatigue, and then loss of consciousness due to exhaustion. So it was best to only use subspace in an emergency.

Having figured all that out, Maxtom just stood there wondering what she was supposed to do. She was a small, young cyborg female with crazy new powers stuck on a very dangerous facility, one filled with treasure.

Maxtom looked towards the center; perhaps this was a blessing, one that she could use to her advantage. Maxtom looked down at herself and sighed. It seems she was going to have to make this body work for now and hurry if she wanted to claim Zeta-13.