Alexander stood at the back of the bridge as Mingyu limped the still-crippled ship back to the refueling station. The reactor had come out of the attack miraculously unscathed. Power cables had to be rerouted through the corridors to return power to the rest of the ship, but that had been easy. The hardest part turned out to be Alexander’s job.
He had to repair the underlying structure of the ship to keep it from tearing itself apart as they made their way back. A trip that would normally take a few minutes had taken over three days. All in all, the entire project had taken a week longer than he first estimated. Any longer and he would have had to call it off and come back at a later time. Yulia’s birthday was quickly approaching and he wasn’t going to miss that to fix this hunk of junk.
It was bad enough that he still didn’t know what to get the girl.
She didn’t seem to want to be a captain of a ship like Markus, as far as he could tell. At least she had never expressed any interest in something like that. She was mainly interested in building stuff, kind of like him. Giving her another puzzle kit to put together seemed rather thoughtless, especially since he provided those to her as a learning aide.
He would need to put some serious thought into what to get his daughter when they landed back on the planet. Right now he needed to focus as the ship slowly approached the new docking arm that had been built along the refueling station. Na deftly maneuvered the ship into place and there was a soft clank as the airlocks locked together. Two robotic arms extended from the refueling depot and locked against the top of the hull, providing three points of connection.
“And we’re secure. Great work, everyone,” Mingyu stated happily. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think me and my crew have earned a little vacation.”
“It’s well deserved, Captain. Thank you for helping me with this.”
“I didn’t do it just for you, Alexander. The faster we get a working warship in this system, the better. I hope your robots are up to the challenge.”
Alexander hoped so as well. The repairs he made were just a series of steel beams that spanned the damaged areas of the ship. The automated robots would need to finish cutting away the damaged section, and then remove all the temporary supports before they could start making actual repairs to the ship. Without a very good model of the ship, it was more than likely he was going to have to redo sections a few times if his replacement components were out of spec. Despite that issue, it would still be quicker than building a ship from the ground up.
“What are you going to name it?” Na asked as he got up from the pilot's seat.
“Name it?” Alexander inquired. He hadn’t actually thought about giving the ship a name.
“Yeah, you can’t just leave it unnamed, and I don’t think you wanna use the name the pirates had for it.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but he asked anyway. “What did they call it?”
“The Headhunter.”
“Definitely not. Any ideas? I’m not the greatest at naming stuff, I named the first shuttle I fixed up Shuttle 1.”
“I’m aware,” the man winced. Na paused to think for a bit, then smiled. “How about Eden’s Fury? Give the pirates a reminder of why they shouldn’t come here.”
Alexander chuckled. “It works for me.”
The man went over to the Captain’s terminal and typed in a set of commands. “…And done. Welcome aboard Eden’s Fury, Alexander.”
The four went down to the surface on the shuttle while Alexander finished a few things up on the ship. While it was docked to the space station, it would not just be dead weight. The ship would act as a slaved weapons platform. It was too bad it only had autocannons and PDCs in the form of chainguns. Still, it was better than nothing. He finished routing the cable that would provide the energy to the comm tower that pointed toward the surface then he radioed the command room. “Lucas, I’m ready for an uplink test.”
He waited a few seconds for a response. The radio crackled, but he could hear the response clear enough. “Roger that. Beginning uplink.”
Having to rely on light-speed communications sucked, but it wasn’t like they had an alternative. At least not yet. In a little over eight months, when the Hawks returned, that issue should finally be remedied.
The uplink antenna started rapidly blinking red before finally settling into a green on the display.
“Can you hear me better, Alex?”
“Coming in crystal clear, Lucas. Your uplink is working perfectly.”
He heard the man snort. “Of course it is. It’s the same uplink I used for all the asteroid cameras. Speaking of, have you given any thought to my proposal?”
The man was talking about his plan to reactivate the derelict cameras with the help of the shuttle. “I’m fine with you trying, but you’re going to need to provide the components, or trade me for them. If the camera’s chips are shot, you’re out of luck though. I’m not wasting my very limited supply of computer chips on your cameras.”
“That’s fine,” the man replied. “I was actually looking at the chips you were making. Who would believe something so ancient might actually have a use,” Lucas chuckled. “They would probably work for what I want, but I’ll need to make some design changes to any of the asteroids that might need the replacement. I would also need to protect the chips, those silicon things don’t seem all that well shielded against radiation.”
“We can test them out and see what needs changing when it comes time to use them. Let's finish our current tests for now. I would like to be ready to leave when Branston returns in the morning.”
“Fair enough,” the man stated.
It took a few hours to get all of the turrets slaved to the surface. Considering they were never designed to do that, it was a miracle it worked at all. It required Lucas to relay what code needed to be changed to Alexander before they finally got the weapons to respond to commands planetside. There was a delay, but there wasn’t much they could do about that. It would just have to be accounted for if the weapons were ever needed.
The other issue was the ammunition stores. They weren’t great. The large caliber autocannons each had thirty rounds in their magazines. The magazines held a total of one hundred rounds, but the pirates had either wasted a whole lot during their fight or they hadn’t been full in the first place. Going by how empty the rest of the ship was, he was going with the latter. It certainly seemed like Arkonis was a miserly piece of shit before his death. Except when it came to spending on himself.
The PDCs had a bit more ammo in them. Each could hold two thousand rounds of proximity fragmentation ammunition with about a hundred and fifty of these rounds left in their current canister. There were spare canisters in the armory aboard the ship. The problem was, that the autocannons on this vessel could not be reloaded until they were empty because the entire ammunition canister needed to be removed for rearming. And you couldn’t do that because there was some mechanical safety inside the loading mechanism that prevented the canister’s removal until it was empty.
Whoever had decided that that was a good design choice was clearly a moron.
That left leaving the mostly empty ammo canister in place or firing the remaining ammo into space and reloading it with a fresh one. Considering he didn’t have a way to manufacture replacement ammunition for the guns, he decided to just leave the ammo that was there and hope it was enough.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Neither option was a very good choice but Alexander had plans to get rid of all that ancient garbage and replace them with something else. He needed the rest of the ship in working order before he did that though.
Alexander had a lot of plans for this ship. Once it didn’t look like someone had taken a bite out of the side of it, he would be using it as a testbed for his first Class 4 engine. Since it couldn’t leave this system until it had a verified transponder it could easily be limped back to the station if it ran into problems. He did add creating cargo tugs to his list through.
Once Eden’s Fury was up and running, he would look at the other two ships. The small gunships weren’t worth spending another month trying to get up and running and back to the station to use as more slaved weapons platforms. At least not yet. And without crews, there wasn’t any way to use them as patrol ships, so they were a low priority.
With everything aboard the ship completed, he headed to the airlock to wait for the shuttle.
***
Dalton chugged down the pint of swill that this station, in the Char family territory, called alcohol. It was as foul as the pirates that made this shithole their home. He thought some of the backwater stations back in the Anazi territory were bad, but this place was worse. The pirates here were either washed-up old fools or young bucks looking to make a name for themselves.
The only reason he was in this dump was because this was where the trail for Arkonis had led him. And where it ended. The few people he paid for information only knew the man had come to recruit two ships and then he left. Nobody had seen any sign of those crews or those ships since. That wasn’t all that odd. Pirates died and ships were lost all the time. Arkonis had probably come out here to hire the crews as cannon fodder for that very reason. But some word should have gotten back here if their score had been successful or gone bad.
The fact that no news had circulated by now, meant the raid probably went to shit and there were no survivors. One less Anazi was good news to him, but that meant this mission to track down Arkonis had just gotten a whole lot harder. Dalton thought about demanding more credits for this job after coming to that conclusion, but he knew that bastard Harlow would simply put the money up as a bounty on his head if he did. It was better to just finish what he started.
Since he knew Arkonis and his people were likely dead, and wherever they had gone was dangerous, he decided to contract out the work of finding this system. Only he wasn’t going to pay for it.
He smiled and took another deep gulp of the foul liquid as he watched a crew out of the corner of his eye. They were arguing loudly amongst themselves and getting all hyped up. All Dalton had done was start a rumor that one of the Anazi brothers had found a huge score out beyond STO space in Char territory. One so big it would take multiple trips to plunder it all.
Letting pirates know that there was loot for the taking was like lighting off a plasma drive on a planet’s surface. The rumor had spread like wildfire and three crews had already left the bar, likely to find a ship that would take them for this information.
By the end of the day, every pirate in the sector would know about Arkonis’ score, and not long after that, he would be able to pinpoint the system he needed to head to. He wasn’t worried about any of these low-level idiots actually killing his target. If Arkonis had indeed met his end where his target was located, none of these pirates had a shot. Katalynn Char might if she got wind of this ruse, but then again she would probably be too suspicious of some random rumor to bother looking into it.
Dalton sucked down the last of the beer and made his way to his ship. When he arrived at the airlock door, he paused and frowned. Dalton leaned down and picked up the string he had tucked in the seal. Someone had opened his airlock. They were likely waiting for him somewhere inside so they could get the fusion activation crystal off of him.
Instead of heading through the airlock, Dalton turned around and walked further along the docking ring. He had specifically picked this docking location so there were no ships on either adjacent dock. When he reached the next one over, he stepped inside the airlock and sealed his vac-suit. He pressed a button to flush the air in the airlock.
This wasn’t some fancy STO-certified airlock, so there were no safety measures in place. If he had wanted to, he could have flushed the entire station, at least until the emergency doors activated. But that was a good way to turn everyone here against him. And the people who operated the station. The station guns would cut through his ship with little trouble so while it was tempting to do so, he resisted the itch.
Once the air was vented, he opened the exterior airlock and stepped out into space, using his suit thrusters to push him toward his ship. Dalton landed on the far side of his ship with a gentle landing. The environmental systems would probably mask the sound of his boots touching the hull but he wanted to ensure nobody heard him. He entered the code to the hidden airlock and an armored panel slid aside. Once he squeezed himself into the small space, he shut and sealed the exterior door. Once the outer door was sealed, he plugged into his ship's cameras.
Four men were waiting for him near the cargo bay airlock. He tsked in annoyance and flipped through the cameras until he found two more people tearing his ship apart, looking for the crystal.
He didn’t find any more people aboard his ship and none of the pirates were in sealed vac-suits. That was foolish of them.
Dalton activated the cargo bay ramp and the four men inside were sucked out into space, along with some of his supplies. The loss of the supplies was annoying, but not the end of the world.
The other two paused at the sound of air rushing out of the ship and quickly tried to seal their suits. One even managed it. The other passed out before he could get his suit sealed.
The lone survivor ran toward the cargo bay, but Dalton wasn’t in the mood to let him walk away. He activated the ship's lockdown and sealed the ramp door. The man was now trapped inside the cargo area. He was screaming something, but Dalton hadn’t bothered pumping oxygen back into that space. Once life support was back up in the rest of the ship, Dalton stepped out of the hidden airlock and into his cabin.
He whistled a jaunty tune to the banging of the cargo door as he made his way to the reactor room to restart it. The man trapped inside the cargo area would run out of suit oxygen eventually, but he would have plenty of time to reflect on his poor choices in life.
***
After Alexander returned to the surface, he contacted Gabriella, figuring she would be the best to speak to about what he wanted to accomplish. He found the woman in the area that was converted into a hospital. “Gabriella, would you happen to know the families of those who lost people during the attack?”
She nodded quizzically. “Of course I do. I know pretty much everyone down here. Why?”
“When we were aboard the ship, we came across a safe full of credits. I want to split it between the families that lost loved ones.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment, Alex –,”
“– but the people here have no use for credits,” he finished for her. “I’m aware. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that. Instead of credits, I was going to offer them contribution points for trade, but I quickly realized my entire stock isn’t worth nearly as many credits as we found.”
“…Out of curiosity, how much did you find?”
When he told her, the woman’s eyes grew wide.
“By the stars, Alex! That’s probably more money than the entire lot of them have seen in their entire lives. I’m sure they would appreciate the gesture, but it would be mostly meaningless to them.”
“I actually thought about that. What if I offered them the platinum card for the library instead? I know people here value knowledge so thought that might be more appreciated.” The platinum card was the same biometric card Alexander had given to Markus. It wasn’t actually made of platinum, that was just the classification he used for it.
“T- that might not be a bad idea actually. Knowledge is much more useful than some digital money that is only good in STO space. And while your offer to trade would include the learning modules, I assume you restrict some of those?”
“I do, and even the platinum has some restrictions, but not many, and even those can be waived by me if the people are trusted and show aptitude in a certain area. Does this mean you’ll speak to these people for me?”
She chuckled. “I’ll round them up for you, but this is something you need to present to them, not me.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. Have them meet me in Atrium D.”
It took a few hours for everyone to gather, Alexander waited until Gabriella popped in. The woman looked around and nodded to him before leaving again.
With everyone present, Alexander cleared his throat. Silence quickly fell over the people present. “Thank you all for coming. I don’t want to take up too much of your time so I will make this brief. As some of you have likely realized by now, everyone here lost someone during the attack. I know they all fought to defend this place as their home, but as the owner, I still feel responsible for their deaths. While this won’t fill the holes left by their losses, I would like to offer each and every one of you full access to my educational library.”
Muttering broke out amongst the crowd until someone spoke up to ask a question. “How long is this offer good for?”
“There’s no time limit. The cards will be good for the rest of your lives.” The way the crowd fell speechless at that, he probably should have led with that. “If you are interested, please step forward.”
The crowd of people practically mobbed him. While surprised, Alexander took it in stride as he handed out the cards. The people thanked him profusely, making him feel like a sleaze. He was pocketing all the credits while they were just getting access to knowledge that he already owned.
He knew these people valued knowledge more than money, but it still didn’t feel right. If he wasn’t aware of how important learning modules were in the STO before today, this cemented it for him. It also disgusted him. Knowledge should be spread.
The only reason he wasn't giving full access to everyone was because it was a bargaining chip and one of the few he had other than medical treatments. And while he still felt iffy about the whole situation, he vowed to turn the majority of those credits into more learning modules.