Before Alexander even made it back to the apartment, his comm beeped.
Hello Mr. Kane.
My name is Anthony Baru, Operations Lead for The Hawks of Ganos. We received your action report from Fidelity Properties. The Hawks currently have an ongoing operation, but that will be completed in the next few weeks. If that timeline works for you, please let us know and we can start preparations. If not, we do have a subsidiary group that is available immediately and is more than capable of taking on this assignment.
Alexander was glad he had some wiggle room with the schedule, he really didn’t want to deal with some unknown subsidiary group when Violet had already vouched for the Hawks.
He went over the schedule in his head. Captain Daniel wouldn’t be there for a month and he could postpone almost another month if needed. Then there was the travel time to this planet – which he hadn’t learned the name of yet– however long that would take. Figuring that information might be rather important, he popped up the info packet as he entered the apartment. Now that he had a band that held the comm in place, it was much more convenient to use.
Turns out the planet didn’t even have a name, just some six-digit alphanumeric designation. That was fine. If people were living there, he was sure they had given it a name, he would just go by whatever they called it. Assuming it wasn’t something horrifically awful or obscene.
As for where this planet was located? It turned out that was on the opposite side of STO space. Not the complete opposite end though. If you flattened the star map and drew an angle to it, the star system was about at the 120-degree mark from Petrov Station using Earth as the center. It was also north of the galactic disk instead of south where Petrov lay. According to the packet, the planet orbited a blue dwarf star.
From what he remembered of astronomy, which wasn’t much, blue dwarf stars were only supposed to be theoretical. Seems his knowledge of astronomy was a bit out of date if that wasn't the case. It's probably why they built the research facility in the first place.
Before he got further pulled into the history of his new purchase, he responded to Mr. Baru and said that would be fine. He also supplied his travel itinerary and an estimated arrival timeline. He couldn’t give him an exact time because he didn’t know how long it would take.
It didn’t take long for Baru to reply.
That will be fine. It is within our operational window. We will coordinate with your ship before leaving STO space. Once we arrive at the planet, we will maintain facility safety until the end of our contract. If you decide to retain our services beyond that six-month window, there will be additional expenses though, just so you are aware.
That wasn’t a surprise. He couldn’t expect hired soldiers to just sit around waiting for him without getting paid. He sent an affirmative response and went back to the info about the planet.
It was habitable, barely. There was an atmosphere, but the sulfur content was so high, it smelled of rotten eggs all the time. That wasn’t him guessing, it was written right into the document. Not great, but air scrubbers should be able to take care of that.
Nothing but a few desert plants could survive on the harsh surface. It wasn’t hot, in fact, the planet ran rather cool, never getting above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. It was just super dry and the radiation from the blue star was higher than Earth.
The packet also contained a survey of the local area around the facility. The ground was chock-full of metals and rare-earth elements. Mining them did not seem to be a priority when they set up the facility though. Considering how easy it was to extract the same minerals from asteroids, he wasn’t surprised nobody had bothered going to this planet simply to mine it for resources.
As for the facility itself, he had to pause when he saw the square footage. Violet had warned him it was bigger than he might want, but this went way beyond what he expected. The facility was over four hundred million square feet of space. That wasn’t a facility, that was an entire city. Almost fifteen square miles to be exact. A small city to be sure, but a city nonetheless. And looking at the design documents, that only included the livable space. It didn’t even account for the sub-structure or maintenance areas.
If there weren’t people living there, he was going to have a really tough time maintaining the place even if Yulia helped him. Maybe he should have looked at the size of the property before agreeing to this purchase. Oh well, it was too late now. Not that he could afford to be choosy. With everything going on, he was more than happy to have a new home locked in so early. It made planning so much easier.
***
Alexander spent the next few weeks going over the specifics with Mr. Baru. The man was all business, which suited Alexander just fine.
The Operations Lead brought up a few concerns that Alexander hadn’t even thought about.
The first major concern he had was if there was a breathable atmosphere inside the facility.
While it was true the planet had a breathable atmosphere, it was extremely thin. With the thinner atmosphere, it made it feel like there was half as much oxygen as you normally needed according to the previous research done on the planet. It was low enough to cause breathing issues.
The rest of the planetary research was rather slim. The original inhabitants of planet Y6X-3H2-4 were more interested in the star, and only cursory studies were done on the surface and around the facility.
Stolen story; please report.
This meant they would need supplemental oxygen, or some way to increase the oxygen density in the facility, unless he wanted Yulia to suffer from hypoxia. That wasn’t an option. The facility probably had systems in place to do all of this already, but Baru said he should plan for any such systems to be offline or at best malfunctioning. Considering the age of the facility, the man was probably correct.
He took Mr. Baru’s suggestion and went over the blueprints until he located these systems. Then he purchased the requisite manuals to make repairs and print any parts he might need to fix or even completely replace the units. He lucked out here. Because the facility was so old, and the systems so antiquated, getting the manuals was rather cheap. Alexander thought of buying plans for newer environmental systems but he couldn’t justify the cost. The old systems had functioned for over a hundred years so repairing them should be fine. The last check-in at the station some eighty years ago said the environmental systems were still functioning within the lower range of tolerance. Eighty-plus years of neglect probably hadn’t done them any good though.
The second issue Baru brought up was facility integrity. Being nearly two hundred years old, there was bound to be leaks and rust. The planet did get rain, even if it was few and far between. And because of the high concentration of sulfur in the atmosphere, it was heavily acidic. So there were bound to be issues to resolve there.
The facility had an answer for this already though. A large, fully robotic manufacturing dome was listed on the plans. It was probably used to create all the components or replacements the research facility needed.
Once he finished manufacturing any repair items he might need, Alexander would probably end up turning the space into his personal lab and research center.
With that in mind, he wanted to ensure he had the best start. He purchased three more printers like the one he had used to manufacture the Zephyr’s parts. Then he rented a storage room until the ship arrived. He knew how much cargo room the Zephyr had thanks to his communications with Jasper.
Alexander hadn’t intended on taking much more than food and water with him originally, but knowing any empty space aboard the ship would be wasted space, he decided to fill it up with everything he could think of. And he had a lot of money to work with.
Next on his list was a smelter. The one he purchased wasn’t the same as the behemoth Petrov station used. The smaller unit was capable of processing ten tons of material a day. And even then it took up a considerable amount of space.
He didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, it was a requirement for what he planned to do since the facility didn’t show any form of advanced processing on the schematics. From what he could tell, it mainly just used a relatively cheap steel alloy in its construction with the exterior covered by a thick cement-like paste mixed from the local dirt and rocks to mitigate the damage the rains caused. This was likely built using the refinery that was listed on the plans.
It certainly made logical sense to use what was locally available instead of shipping in all the materials. Set a few automated mining machines down, or even drone-operated ones from orbit, and the work could go on all day every day until it was completed.
Alexander didn’t have the kind of money needed to buy automated manufacturing drones. He would have to do things the hard way. Which was fine, he liked building and fixing things anyway.
He couldn’t forget medical supplies. First for Yulia, and second to help keep his cover. Of course, he also had to account for the fake medical pod he was using. Losing that space was annoying but necessary.
Alexander wanted to buy more of those quick heal meds the doctors used on Yulia, but the man hadn’t been lying when he said they got a limited quantity. The bare minimum to purchase one treatment was ten million credits. And that would have to be shipped from the manufacturer's planet of origin. According to the sales page, he might get them in six months to a year depending on the wait list.
Alexander was forced to abandon that hope. The price was staggeringly ridiculous. Despite that, he would have been willing to pay it. But he wasn’t willing to wait a possible year for them to arrive. And he doubted the company would ship them outside STO space anyway. Something that was so sought after would certainly be a target for criminals.
Instead of wasting his money on a single item, he purchased every available medication and diagnostic piece of machinery that was available for sale aboard Petrov station. All of that only amounted to two million credits. He may not know how to operate any of the devices, but he would learn.
That brought him to something he almost overlooked on his list of purchases, knowledge. He bought up any guide, walkthrough, technical manual, and blueprint that he could for every bit of technology he could find in the facility blueprints. He wanted to understand every moving part of that structure and how to fix it. After that, he spent another large chunk of money to get the printer documents for both Omni and Sinorus engines Class 1 through Class 4. This way he could study their designs.
He had plenty of funds left over and could have purchased the Class 5 and 6 schematics, but he decided against that. Both of those required orbital facilities to manufacture them. Purchasing the Class 7 and 8 ones was simply out of the question since they required him to be a military contractor.
Alexander had no desire to further the STO’s military capabilities or their bureaucratic nightmare of government.
That left Class 9 engines, but those were experimental and weren’t required to have available schematics. However, he had seen a few available for sale from the smaller companies.
That wasn’t the last of his purchases though. Considering he wanted to be completely free from the other manufacturer's influence, he needed to take it a step further. He purchased whole ship schematics as well as items he knew he couldn’t print like advanced computer processors.
This was pricy, but so worth it. One ship schematic covered every bit of technology aboard that ship. Considering he was planning on arriving aboard the Zephyr, he simply purchased that ship's design.
This purchase finally gave him his first look at the power plant as well as the FTL systems. A ship schematic didn’t go into as much detail on how stuff worked as a separate document might, but it did give you printable files to make replacement parts. He could figure it out from there.
And finally, Alexander purchased dozens of learning modules. They started from early elementary school and went all the way to advanced engineering. He purchased as many diverse modules as he could purchase. He wanted to ensure he had a wide source of knowledge. Although not the original reason for doing so, he realized if Omni was monitoring his purchases, it would make it harder for them to figure out what he was up to.
With all of his purchases complete, he looked at his much-diminished bank account. Even with all the spending, he still had more money than most would make in their lifetime. After receiving his cut from the attack, he still had over a hundred million credits. It was a good thing the facility had been so cheap. If he had spent the two hundred million he planned on the new property, he would be in debt after this round of purchases.