The Innkeeper

As a general rule, most of the rooms in the Silent Wanderer had very few furnishings so as to use up as little space as possible. The main hall, where Lex was pacing, for example, only had a few sofas which were attached to the walls and a circular table that could retract into the floor.

On the roof there was a small module that could create projections anywhere in the room, and was hooked up to the main ship computers. This way, any information they wanted could be pulled up directly, anywhere in the room. The projections could even be interacted with.

The walls had silverish-gray plates with lights in between the grooves, but they could undergo a change to display the space around the ship, turning the entire room into a massive display.

These were nice features, but besides that the room was completely empty. It was not bad, since that would allow Lex to use the space however he wanted. Currently, that was as an empty room for him to roam mindlessly in.

He was thinking of every possibility he could come up with on how he could speed up his commute, but nothing inside the Inn was particularly helpful at the moment. As much as he didn't want to think about it, he may need to start planning for what he would do if they could not retreat to the Inn.

While that was less than ideal, since they would then be stuck outside the Inn for nearly one and a half years, he would have to deal with it if he could not come up with a solution. The greatest issue would be the possibility of the enemy pursuing them since they could not retreat to the Inn. They would be sitting ducks.

As of right now, there was still one possible hope to still make it in time. That hope was to teleport back to the Inn while Cirk traveled, go to the emporium and see if they had anything that could help. The universe was a big place, so it was not too much to hope for an item that could speed up interstellar travel by a considerable margin, right?

After all, he only needed to double the speed at which they were traveling through the stars, at the very least, or somehow jump through space. How hard could it be?

The door to the cockpit opened and Cirk stepped out.

"I've uploaded everything here, as you asked," Cirk said, handing Lex a small storage device.

What Lex had asked him was to record the entire interstellar map of the route they had to travel. He did not know if it would be useful, but perhaps the information might come in handy when looking for a way to speed up.

He was not concerned about the fact that he was about to leak highly confidential information. Right now, he had bigger problems.

"Great, keep flying. I'll be back as soon as possible. Hopefully I'll figure out a way to speed us up," Lex said before teleporting back to the Inn.

He was not concerned that when he would teleport back, he would be in the middle of space. Since he had teleported from the ship, he would teleport back into it. If the Inns' teleportation markers were linked to specific space coordinates instead of their location in retrospect to what was around them, then the guests would always teleport back to space instead of their planets. After all, the planets were also moving through space at quite the speed.

He wasted no time in going to the emporium as soon as he reached the Inn. Powell was clearly surprised to see him, but did not waste time with such idle questions. He recalled that Lex was in a hurry last time, and there was a great possibility that the situation had not been resolved yet.

"I need your help, although I'm not quite certain what kind of item can help me at the moment," said Lex as he approached the counter.

"The Silent Wanderer is currently en route to a specific planet. At its current pace, if nothing unexpected happens on the way, it will reach its destination in nine days. But I need it to reach there in less than five days. Preferably, even less than four days. What do you have that can help me? I can transfer whatever you give me directly to the ship, so that's not an issue."

Powell was stumped. This was an issue… he had never faced before.

"This… you have to understand that Silent Wanderer is a state of the art ship, and its hyperdrives are the best in its size category. Speeding it up… is just not possible. But that doesn't mean we can't help you get the ship to its destination faster. Let's see what we can do."

He pulled out a tablet and started to input various search parameters as he was narrowing down the list of items that he could potentially use at the moment.

"Can you provide details of the destination, or the ship's path? For example, the size of the stars you will be crossing? If there are any gravity wells nearby, or if there are any asteroid belts in your path? Do you have the spatial coordinates of the planet? How stable is the space in your surroundings? All of these can be crucial information in helping us determine how to get you there as fast as possible."

Lex slid the storage device to Powell and said, "this is all the information I have on the path. The space in the region is not stable, which is the greatest issue to begin with…"

One by one, Lex began to share relevant details while Powell kept narrowing his search parameters even more. Lex really, really did not want to get locked out of the Inn again, so he had to make this work no matter what.

Not to mention, the sooner he arrived, the quicker he could save the battalion!