Another week went by and Ellie needed something to do. She decided to upgrade Fatty. The ship was a basic design and with a little work could be very formidable. The first thing Ellie did was have the bots make her grav plate anti-gravity shields. With the size of Fatty and putting in a good safety margin she needed close to four thousand gravity plates. It took five months for her and the bots to make the grav plate sleds.

Ellie had to salvage the small fusion reactors to build them and that took more work than the grav plates or grav sleds. Fortunately positioning drones were standard on ships, she was able to dismantle the positioning drones and use their micro fusion reactor.

With that and finding another cargo hold filled with them, they slowly built the needed grav plate sleds. Finally they were ready. She started at the back of the ship. Sending in the first one to hover near the top left corner of Fatty, near the engines, she activated the grav plate. The metal groaned, shuddered, then with a scream of grinding metal lifted up. She set the height to seven feet.

Ellie sent the next one to hover near the trash six feet away. Ellie slow worked her way along the edge of the ship using twenty grave sled plates to uncover a one hundred and twenty foot wide by six foot deep trench in the rubble. Sending in another grav plate she started on the port side again and advanced the trench another six feet using anther twenty grav plate sleds.

Slowly and carefully she made her way down the top of the ship. The tonnes of rubble above her head caused her heart to race. Ellie knew that even if one failed the others would keep up the debris. It took two weeks but finally Ellie was standing on the forward edge of the ship, the last rubble lifted up and the top of the Fatty was cleared.

Ellie was happy with the work but it still was not finished. Using the grav plate sleds again like a grant shovel she pushed the trash away from first the port side hull of the ship, then the starboard hull. This took another three weeks but in a month, from start to finish, they had completely cleared Fatty.

It was eight months form Ellie's arrival to Cullen's Island but she was happy.

Ellie could spend days taking apart bots and hardware to see how they worked, without any interruptions. She still missed Rosa terribly but the work took her mind off it. The start of the month saw her bots stripping the hull. They made slow but methodical progress.

As they stripped hull, Ellie was looking for nanites. It was a long frustrating search. The nanites either degraded or the replicator's onboard AI self destructed, destroying them. Two months later and Fatty sides and top were now stripped. Without power Fatty couldn't lift up on its own. Ellie had the dig a small trench under and around the ship. This gave just enough room for Ellie to wedge grave plate sleds under Fatty.

The enhanced anti-gravity field was the only thing that made such an attempt work. Normal grav plates couldn't produce the strength of field to lift something of Fatty's weight.

Ellie had Xander control the grav plate sleds as they screamed in protest lifting Fatty four feet in the air. Xander smoothly flew the two thousand one hundred and eighty grav sleds under Fatty but not before almost half of the original lifting grav plate sleds burned out.

Only the AI's fast handling of the sleds prevented thousands of sleds getting crushed and setting them back months. The hull now bare they needed to salvage hull plates to get Fatty armored.

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Ellie found a battle cruiser twenty miles away. It was a burned out wreck but the hull was in surprisingly good condition. The fifteen M901's bots had to remove the plates and load them into the two grav trucks. When loaded they flew back to the ship and installed them, starting on the underside of Fatty.

Afterwards the bots flew back to the battle cruiser and did it again. It took hundreds of back and forth trips to fully armor Fatty. Four months went by as the M901's worked.

Even with a year of searching there still was no nanites, Ellie decided to cut her remaining dosages in half, giving her two more years to look for the nanites. Her condition would worsen but she had more time to find the nanites. In preparation for her future declining health she had salvaged an auto medical surgical tank. Some problems needed outside medical help beside nanites and auto medical tanks were fully capable of doing complex surgeries. Ellie hoped she did not need it.

“Ellie, I received a shipping manifest that reports four dreadnought size fusions reactors are being replace with new and more powerful reactors.”

Ellie was stunned. Those reactors were massive. The dreadnought size fusion reactors were 30 feet wide circles and the diameter of the fusion reactor cylinder measured 14 feet. Compared to Fatty's 16 feet wide circle and 5 foot diameter cylinder it was monster of a fusion reactor, enough to power a large metropolis.

Ellie squealed in glee. She needed one of those for Fatty! She had fixed her heavy loader and now Ellie was glad she had. Flying to the dump coordinates provided by Xander, Ellie landed. The two grav trucks operated by Steve and Bob landed beside Ellie.

Even form the air Ellie knew this would not be easy. As they landed by the first one Ellie wondered how long it would take to disassemble it. The M901's gathered around her.

“Alright the heavy loader could carry this but it is too wide and would fall off. I need you all to disassemble it into three equal pieces.”

Ellie looked at the fifteen bots in unpowered armor. Steve, the leader of the pack, nodded.

“Yes Miss Ellie.”

With all the bots helping it still took fifteen hours to break up the first reactor. Loading the first piece Ellie slowly flew it to Fatty. Another five hours of work and they had their first dreadnought sized fusion reactor stored away. Ellie was exhausted.

The next week had long, long, days. Ellie used the port side cargo bays to store the massive fusion parts for now. Each dissembled fusion reactor was stored in their own cargo bay because Ellie did not want to stack them and potentially hurt the electronics.

Ellie did a dance in glee. These reactors were awesome.

With the hull upgrade finished Ellie had the bots gut the aft end of the ship. Yanking out the damaged and destroyed engines first, Ellie then took down the bulkheads between the engines and cargo bays 11 and 12. For safety Ellie rigged several hologram projectors to project a junk pile behind Fatty. Outside it would look like anther junk pile and hide the completely open ship.

Before Ellie could install new engines she needed to add structural supports to the ship. If she installed new powerful engines, Fatty's current structure would twist and warp out of shape, then break apart from the stress of the engines thrust.

Ellie accomplished this by adding three more structural ribs between each of the old ribs of the ship and cross beams every five feet. Ellie also added diagonal beams between each crossbeam to form a repeating triangle, the most solid weight bearing structure in engineering.

Ellie had the M901's wield anther keel on either side of Fatty's top and bottom keel to form a solid foundation. In total the ship was more structurally sound then a battle cruiser. As the bots installed the new beams and cross braces they also ripped out the fried electrical grid, upgrade the data lines, and upgrade the environmental plant.

It took a full year of work with just fifteen bots, Ellie, and Andy holding beams in place for the M901's. Andy was amazing at grunt work. Ellie's condition was worsening and with dread at not finding nanites in the two years since leaving the orphanage, Ellie lowered her dosage to just a quarter dose. Another two years of worsening heath was better than a year of relatively good heath on the half a dose she had been taking. Ellie prayed to find the nanites she needed to live