Thomas and Jacob had done their fair share of odd jobs. This one certainly wasn't the oddest, but there was a part coming up that was going to be mechanically difficult. They had already dropped the mostly empty shipping container off at its designated coordinates and were currently moving to pick up two supposedly full crates drifting in the void. The goal was to get close to them without affecting them via the gravitational fields from their own ship. Then they were gonna have to vacate the atmosphere in the living compartment of the small freighter, open the lock, and somehow drift their ship using the Electromagnetic Field drive so that the lock engulfed the floating crate like some type of worm with an open maw consuming a large cube of, well, the metaphor was breaking down. Thinking about it logically, it really wasn't any more difficult than a docking procedure. It just concerned them because they were well aware that one of these crates contained missiles. Missiles, of course, had a bunch of safety systems preventing them from detonating unless primed, but who's to say that the mystery person on the other end of this trade hadn't done such a thing?
"There it is," Adam said as he gently turned the ship on its side so that its docking port faced the crate.
"All right. I'll start decompressing as soon as soon as the hatch is locked," said Jacob, who had already gotten the soft suit on. Jacob patted Adam's seat and disappeared into the galley. The hatch locked behind him. He hit a few switches and started canning the atmosphere.
"Quick comm check, you hear me, Adam?" came the voice over the bridge's speakers.
"Loud and clear," Adam responded.
"Gravity down to 0.1 standard, atmosphere stored, tethered in, opening lock now," said Jacob.
Adam waited with bated breath as he watched the indicator stating whether or not the locks were open. Once the screen showed both locks open he waited for Jacob's next message.
"Crate is visible 8 meters out, take it slow," came Jacob's voice.
Adam nudged the ship closer to the crate. A functioning lock would have sensors in it that allowed the ship's computer to give orientation information. A crate had none of that. So despite the fact that he could see it on camera, he couldn't line it up quite correctly without another person's eyes on it.
"Doing good. Keep it slow," came Jacob's rather unconcerned voice.
Adam kept his hands over the controls, waiting for any order Jacob might give him. The crate drifted out of sight, supposedly into the ship, but until he got the confirmation from Jacob, he wouldn't know for sure.
"Package received and secured. You can move to the next objective," Jacob said, his voice coming over the speakers.
Adam looked at his sensors and tried to judge whether or not it was worth approaching the next crate using gravitational fields or if he should just take the time and float there using the EMF drive. One was shorter, the other caused fewer issues if he screwed something up.
"How's your O2?" Adam asked.
"2.5 hours, going fine," Jacob said.
With that, Adam figured he'd just use the EMF drive. It was a full 15 minutes before he was relatively lined up with the next crate.
"Four meters out, move a meter backwards, please," Adam said.
This one took a few more directions; up, down, backwards, forwards, but Jacob kept calm and therefore, so did Adam.
"Both packages aboard, gravity back to standard, locks closed, atmosphere filling. You can take us out."
Adam let out a breath and started moving forward using gravitational pull instead of the damn EMF drive. It would be a day and a half before they reached their destination for delivery of the crates, but first, they had to make sure that said crates contained what they were supposed to.
Once they were situated far enough out of the rings that they weren't likely to hit anything or be attacked by some unseen party, both men made their way into the back and started unlatching the crate. Inside were various electronic bits and what looked like a disassembled chain cannon, along with a handful of various computer parts and a ship's transponder.
Both Adam and Jacob looked at each other, then to the other crate, slowly moving over to it and carefully removing the lid. Sure enough, this one held the thing that made them nervous. Four well-packed missiles. Nothing seemed odd. No blinking lights, no odd sounds, no indication that anything was armed or ready to blow. Carefully, they returned the lid to its proper position and left the crates. Adam would acknowledge that their package was delivered and the packages they were supposed to receive had indeed been received. Then they'd get new orders on where to deliver each of the bits. All in all, it was a pretty simple job and as long as the Sentinel Mercenary Group didn't start randomly harassing them, it would go off without a hitch.
***
The one working mining drone had been sent out to the freight container with the hope that it would be able to retrieve the airtight hatch by itself. It would return it to the open engineering bay of the gunboat. My job was to cut a hole in the floor. A very precise hole. Underneath some of the paneling was a network of wires and tubes that had to be avoided. I was going off of X-Talia's directions, and I wasn't too worried, but this certainly would be the first time I'd ever actively tried to put a hole in the deck plating of a ship.
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It took practically all day to get the correct size hole cut out. The new hatch slipped in, and after some welding and sealing it up with leak patches; I performed a bit of testing and I concluded that I had succeeded in my task. I was happy to get out of the hard suit, take a quick shower, and join Sam for dinner.
The galley hadn't needed any work other than patching the bulkhead that used to join with the bridge. The bridge itself was mostly gone, and the wall where the hatchway would have been now sported metal plates welded together and sealed over with leak patches. In many ways, the galley section of the cramped room was smaller, but the rec room section of it was larger. It was enough for four people to live and work, taking turns and shifts to keep an eye on the bridge. Presumably, it would have had a pilot, an auxiliary pilot, an engineer, and an auxiliary engineer. Those four would likely take turns doing the other ship duties like cooking and cleaning. Right now, that was me and Sam's job. I focused on the engineering side of things, and she was doing the cooking and cleaning. Nobody was piloting this ship because, let's face it, the bridge was slag at best.
X-Talia currently resided in one of the server racks I had purchased so that we could expand her capability. Technically, she was the one flying the ship, though you couldn't really call it flying as our maximum acceleration at the moment was a single G, less we tear the amalgamation of ship parts free from each other. In the time between the fight and the recent delivery, we had got the galley situated, made sure all the environmentals were working, messaged David Sullivan to make the exchange of weapons and a few other components for a few things we needed, and plastered chunks of the hull of the new vessel with working sensors from the two other vessels. Currently, we were flying the Starship Amalgamation. It wasn't going very far. On a positive note, I currently was in possession of three power cores, two Grav-drives, and a handful of random parts that were going to be the basis for a new endeavor.
Sam's suggestion had been that we get it fixed up, then run off to a different system. I would have agreed, but there was one problem with that logic. The Rift Drive had been destroyed, and the mercenary group ran the gate used for vessels that didn't have drives. We were stuck in this system, stuck in a system where both the pirates and mercenaries were working together and had decided they didn't like us.
"I feel useless," Sam said, a forkful of pasta halfway to her face.
I looked up at her. "Useless?" I said. "Before you, I ate a bunch of garbage."
She stared blankly at me for a moment before her lips twitched into a smile, and she gave a short laugh. "Yeah. Ok, but apart from cooking and cleaning, I don't actually do anything."
"I could walk you through the visual site inspections," X-Talia offered via the ship's speakers.
"That would take it off my plate," I said. "To be fair, I only do stuff when there's a problem." The statement wasn't exactly true. I still flew the ship when there wasn't a problem, but on normal day-to-day operations, I ran VSI, did any minor maintenance issues, and played video games.
Sam seemed to consider it for a moment.
"Ah, yeah, I guess you're right," she said.
"And you're here for serious problems. Like when I have a rock sticking out of my leg," I said, pointing my fork at her.
"Yeah, but to be fair, don't ever do that again," she replied.
"Well, you don't have to tell me twice."
After dinner, Sam and I spent time watching a movie before hitting the rack. Hitting the rack, that was a new way for me to experience idioms. The bunks were very much rack-like. Sam and I slept across from each other, separated by a narrow walkway. It would be back to grinding and welding in the morning. Time was going by at a crawl and it was rather frustratingly as I slowly got the ship welded back together.
With the new hatch installed, I was then able to weld ratchets to both the ship hull and that of the freight container, wedging the thing tight and welded it in place. With enough sealant and welding, we now had a new room attached to the ventral section of the ship. Actuators and a wirelessly activated lock mechanism were wired in, so X-Talia could open and close the freight container like a large cargo bay.
We had sold some stuff for way too little so that we could get an order of stuff for way too much, but as the cargo container was attached, the drones were moved in, and a shiny new hodgepodge of wires, chairs, screens, and other gadgets got wired into the space available in the Rec room to function as a small bridge. The ship was coming along quite nicely.
The Gunboat wasn't gonna be winning any beauty contests. It was ugly inside and out, with only the galley keeping all its panels in place and lacking extra wires. Many of the components from the Res-a-tesseract had been stripped, and we'd be stripping even more when the plan hatched by X-Talia, Sam, and myself started shaping into fruition. The Res-a-tesseract had a working power core, Grav-drive, and enough systems in the bridge to fly the damn thing.
With all the scrap metal we had, we were welding together a… I hesitated to call it a ship. A small vessel with no environmentals that had a single ripper cannon, two detachable missiles, and could be controlled by X-Talia. Let's call it a drone fighter. X-Talia had primarily been focused on the programming for it, creating decision trees so it reacted with some logic given its orders. Ideally, I would sit in a gunboat and remote control it. However, due to the vast distances in space, that wasn't a viable option. Not only would there be lag from what I told it to do, there's also lag from me seeing what was happening. The thing had to be dumb enough that it didn't overcomplicate simple tasks, but smart enough that it could essentially execute given tasks on its own. It was taking most of X-Talia's current processing power.
Finally, we had a working ship. The shields didn't cover the entire thing and it only had one working point defense cannon, but we still had several missiles. We detached the leftover carcass of the Res-a-tesseract and drifted off into the void to hunt pirates.
"So what are we calling the ship?" X-Talia asked.
"I'm going with Retribution," I said.
"We need an actual registration number."
"No, we don't. We can't get to a station anyway, and we shouldn't be using a transponder."
"Hmmm," was X-Talia's only reply as we found a lone Free Light Mining Consortium barge and took up position far enough away where we didn't seem to threaten it.
"We're being hailed."
"Put it up please."
"Unidentified vessel, please state your name and purpose."
"This is the Retribution. Please don't mind us. We're just waiting for pirates to show," I said, hoping they wouldn't go find a different mining spot.
"I don't really want pirates to think we're plotting to take them out," came the concerned sounding response.
"If they hail you, you can warn them that somebody's using you as bait."
I waited several minutes, but there was no reply and the mining barge didn't leave its position, apparently deciding it was more profitable to continue working at its little honey pot instead of searching for a new one. That was fine with me. I sure hope this plan worked.