Ellie continued to search every hospital ship she could find without successes.

Ellie was able to avoid trouble with thousands of square miles of land to hide in and sensor drones. Xander's also hacked satellite feeds provided ample forewarning of trouble spots.

On one salvage run Ellie found the remains of an Armordyne Infiltrator. The bots were assassins, heavily regulated by the UEN. They could infiltrate buildings, camps, and enemy lines to hunt their targets so were carefully monitored and manufactured. Ellie smiled wide when she found the core AI module still intact form the crushed remains.

After a careful and thorough review of the AI coding, were she found several backdoors and hacks that she deleted, Ellie updated her M901's. This made the multipurpose bots extremely deadly and Ellie armed everyone. She was leery about Bob though. That bot made several mistakes and kept dropping stuff, not to mention the grenade he dropped the first time. Noving Bob.

Ellie tried to focus on the ship upgrades to keep her mind off her dwindling supplies of nanites. With the reinforced frame she turned her attention to the engines. Xander mapping of the area and Ellie salvage runs made finding them easy.

A destroyed heavy cruiser thirty miles away had surprisingly intact engines. These six engines were 18 feet in diameter and 16 feet long. Compared to Fatty's original eight engines that were 12 feet in diameter and 10 feet long the military engines were absurdly overpowered for a bulk cargo ship.

Ellie new reinforced grave plates could counter the increased gee forces of the overpowered engines and the increased inertial gravity could be managed easily.

Each engine had taken days to cut out form the wreckage. The bulkheads and heavy mountings were warped around the engine, making for slow work of cutting them free. Then Ellie had to fly each heavy engine slowly to Fatty's location.

It took three weeks to move them all. The bots worked hard reinforcing the engine mountings and rewiring the electrical grid and fuel lines to accommodate the out sized engines. Another month flew by as they worked. Mounting them after all the prep work was complete was relatively easy, a fast week of bolting and welding.

The new engine compartment now measured one hundred and twenty foot wide and twenty foot long, the original compartment only measuring one hundred and twenty foot wide and twelve feet long.

Ellie danced in glee as the last of the six engines were attached. Now cargo bays 11 and 12 were a total of eight feet shorter form the newly installed sixteen foot engines and a bigger four foot hallway.

The new engine compartment wider four foot corridor would allow Andy access to the front of each engine, through the seven corridors between each engine would be slightly under two feet almost a foot shorter then each of the prior nine corridors.

The aft cargo bays would lose more space form Ellie's redesigned deck plans.

Ellie would keep the front crew compartment almost the same, only upgrading the environmental plant and bridge with military hardened versions of the civilian work stations. Ellie was also installing a backup environmental plant. Ellie would lose two small crew cabins with the additional environmental plant but it was worth it for extra security a second environmental plant would bring through Ellie was not planning on using the front crew compartment anymore.

The front bridge would become an auxiliary bridge in case of emergencies. All control and command functions would be in the planned aft bridge.

Port side aft would have a large shuttle bay measuring thirty six feet wide and long with twenty foot high ceiling. It would also shorten cargo bays 11 and 12 on deck 3, the bottom deck.

Above that would be Ellie's workshop on deck 1. Forty two foot wide and thirty six long with an eleven foot high ceiling and a foot deep subfloor.

Ellie's was looking forward to having such a large space to work in without taking up a cargo bay.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

In the center of Fatty's aft end on deck 3 was a thirty six foot wide by thirty two foot long compartment. The central compartment contained six tanks that were six feet in diameter and thirty two foot long.

Ellie would use the large volume in two of the tanks to store water. With Fatty's environmental plant's water recycler that would effectively mean she would have unlimited water and not need to refill the tanks with water for years. The other four tanks would hold the large volume of helium 3 that the massive fusion reactor and engines consumed.

In front of the compartment was a thirty six foot wide and 4 foot long hallway with six foot high ceilings connecting the portside shuttle bay with the starboard crew cabins.

Above the water and fuel tank compartment on deck 2 was the fusion room, containing an overpowered dreadnought fusion reactor. The compartment measured thirty six wide and long with a twenty foot ceiling.

With the fusion reactor being thirty foot in diameter this gave Ellie and the bots three feet clearance all around the reactor to access the reactor's electronics. Above the fusion room was a compartment thirty six wide and long with a six foot high ceiling.

Ellie was planning to create a greenhouse with flowers, modified trees, and grow fruits and vegetables to eat. Ellie could almost taste the fresh fruits. The starboard side of Fatty would be where everyone lived, if she ever had people join Fatty's crew.

There was another six foot hallway that would become the central starboard hallway. Thirty foot long with another six foot wide and long elevator in the aft end of Fatty and a forward elevator in cargo bay 12 that, like the elevator in cargo bay 11, doubled as an airlock. Next were the central starboard cabins.

These four cabins were small only twelve foot wide and eight foot long with nine foot ceilings facing the central starboard hallway. Ellie decided not to add a subfloor and rout the pipes and electrical grid up using deck 2's subdeck. By doubling up the subdeck for deck 3 and deck 2 she eliminated a lot of redundant piping and cabling. There was also a twelve foot wide by four foot long hallway in the forward section that lead form the central starboard hallway to the main starboard hallway. The main starboard hallway was four foot wide and thirty six foot long.

The four starboard cabins that were against the hull measured twenty foot wide by nine foot long. Ellie planned to make these one bedroom vip cabins. Up a deck was again a central starboard hallway six foot wide, then Ellie's vault. She planned to create a heavy armored, sealed, and medically clean room for herself that would replace the four small cabins that deck 3 had. Twelve wide and thirty two foot long with ten foot ceilings, the vault would have medical panels that eliminate germs by static electricity and special ultraviolet light.

Ellie also planned to add a mini environmental plant and fusion reactor. If Ellie ever found the nanites she needed to cure herself, she wanted to be protected for the year of treatment. If worse came and she did not find the needed nanites she would have a medically clean cabin to spend her last days in. Ellie shook her head at the grim thought, trying to clear it.

There was another twelve foot wide by four foot long hallway that connected the central starboard corridor to the main starboard hallway that gave access to the four starboard cabins on deck 2.

Same size and dimension of deck 3's cabins, twenty foot wide and nine foot long but with ten foot high ceilings instead of deck 3 nine foot ceiling and the one foot subdeck shared with deck 3. Up a deck on deck 1 was the kitchen and lounge compartment that was forty two wide and twenty two long and had eleven foot ceilings with a one foot subfloor.

In the aft end up a short flight of stairs was a six foot wide and long landing in front of starboard's aft six foot wide and six foot long elevator. The central deck 1, were the planned greenhouse would be, was five foot higher than the deck 1 starboard's lounge and kitchen.

Beside the landing and elevator, at the rear of the compartment, would be the environmental plant.

The old engines took ten feet with two foot hallway and the new engines taking sixteen feet with four foot wide hallway the length of the ship meant an eight foot shortage and the newly planned remodeling that would take another thirty six feet meant cargo bay 11 and 12 shrunk by forty four feet making both bays fifty wide and fifty six long. Close to half the original fifty wide by hundred long cargo bays. Ellie was happy with the sacrifice of two cargo bays for much more spacious living quarters.

In the central hallway were the old fusion plant had been located, now had three decks. The first bottom deck, deck 3, had an armory. Ellie wanted a secure place to store all her salvaged weapons. Fourteen foot wide, twenty foot long, with twelve foot ceilings should hold a large amount of the accumulated weapons, leaving a six foot wide, twenty foot long, and twelve foot high corridor, from the aft end compartment to the central hallway. Up a deck on deck 2 was the main engineering compartment, twenty foot wide and twenty foot long with ten foot ceilings that opened up to the fusion plant compartment, though it was six foot higher than the deck of the fusion compartment.

Up a deck, deck 1, was the main bridge. The compartment was twenty foot wide and 20 foot long with ten foot ceilings. The bridge was overlarge for a civilian ship but the space could not be divided neatly or evenly. Ellie was extremely happy with the design and even Xander gave a grudging approval through he through a lot of space was wasted. Ellie had laughed at that. Fatty was still a civilian ship despite Ellie's rebuilding. Now that Fatty was structurally enhanced, fully armored, and overpowered there was one thing they both agreed on, weapons.