A steady stream of workdrones poured from HHSS Heaven’s Whiskers to HHSS Eternal Vigil. One stayed behind to maintain laser comms with the cruiser, the rest spread out all over the station, scanning the insides, cataloguing their finds and letting Beta Arslashn plan the most effective shopping list The station looked hurriedly ransacked. The long depressurised interior was littered with parts and devices, often partially disassembled. Doors and lockers were left open, their contents either taken or ignored. Some access panels were removed, the components they concealed missing or partially so. Effort was put into collecting bodies of the dead, old bloodstains and cutting marks showing some were removed from where they were trapped by the wreckage.
In the central section the drones uncovered more signs of attempted repairs, painting a clear picture to the lion. Survivors of the Vigil initially tried to save the station, but when confronted with the enormity and futility of their task chose instead to flee, taking only whatever supplies they could easily carry. Not even everything not bolted down. Amateurs.
Arslashn quickly designed, built and sent over some crude cargo containers. Most of the stuff he was after was relatively small. Not really worth sending back drones with just armfuls of cables, spare parts and other doodads. Better to stuff a container full of the stuff and carry the entire lot over. Besides Whiskers’ holds weren’t exactly empty. The containers could be carried externally, lashed to the cruiser’s solar panel mounts and clamped to one another with their connectors. The lion calculated the extra cargo capacity was bigger than the ship itself, as long as he accelerated very slowly. And if more speed was needed? That was what the quick release was for.
In the end nothing interrupted the salvage run. Arslashn took as much as he dared, turning structural fittings into more and more containers. He even pushed a big cube of them onto a different orbit, as a harder to track cache for later. The Vigil looked the same from the outside, but inside it was just an empty shell now, methodically stripped of everything useful. Even the RD, long since out of juice, got grabbed and transported back to the Whiskers before the ship slowly set on her course towards a hiding spot in the ring.
While on his slow way the lion did his best to prepare what he could. Some of the workdrones, the ones intended to mine or rather sift through the ring to collect ice, got outfitted with magnetic scoops to aid with collecting the small fragments Arslashn expected to find. A big mining lander was assembled and sent towards a promising crater, on a trajectory which, while slow, would result in a soft landing with minimum reaction mass expense. It would then proceed to excavate its target, cutting the intervening ice into chunks ready to be sent up with the craft's long flinger.
The lion went through the final results with his MainComputer. The haul was about as good as he could hope for. Hullmetal scrap was the most plentiful, of course, but other materials were in good supply too. There were enough focusing crystals to build a few solid laser batteries and plenty of superconductors for both the railguns, reactors and general wiring. There wasn't an excessive amount of shielding alloy, but it was plentiful enough. From the sparse human remains(but mostly from the bin of medical waste nobody had incinerated before leaving) the NAI managed to collect a few viable DNA samples. Assorted electronics could be converted into about seven computronic modules.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Computer banks were all wiped, of course, but a few damaged personal terminals still had some personal logs and mail saved on them. There were a few mentions of a facility on the surface of Caton I, but Arslashn found no clues as to its location. Something to investigate at some point in the future. Especially since the lion expected the survivors of the Vigil to have at least been there for some time.
The young Beta pieced a basic sequence of events from the fragments he had. The other group was detected entering the system over fifteen standard years ago. Imperials, the records claimed, were seen with some apprehension, but the first contact was peaceful and both sides kept to themselves after that. The logs continued for a few months after that, containing signs of growing nervousness, then stopped without warning. A sneak strike made logical sense, Arslashn supposed. Republic surveyors were closer to completion of their task and would have brought in reinforcements before letting the imps depart. Or capturing and disappearing the lot of them. Neither side could underestimate the military value of this new route, provided it was kept secret.
The lion considered the information. On one hand he had time, years still, before his enemies could bring in any help. On the other they had their stationship itself and enough armed auxiliaries to strike down the Vigil on their own. Arslashn doubted the outposts could sneak up on one another if they tried. Not that anyone would risk their ticket home without a very urgent reason indeed.
A consideration he too needed to abide by. Just upgrading the Whiskers was not enough. A few more lasers and PDCs were one thing, but there was no space for the necessary upgunning. The ship was already packed full of mission critical components, space for upgrades was very limited without a complete rebuild, which would make the cruiser immobile and defenceless for weeks at minimum. The lion needed mobile assets, ones with guns big enough to shred any opposition and small enough to be built in a hurry, from just available materials or very nearly so.
Luckily Arslashn knew just the thing. His drones quickly started work on the Whiskers, starting by opening the lion's protective cage and allowing him access to the entire ship. And as soon as he succeeded in producing his first fuel rods from the ice ring he was hiding in, he started constructing first of his custom monitors.
The brave little craft was everything Arslashn could hope for. Her twin railgun turret was more fitting for a battleship's main battery than the corvette sized vessel it was mounted on. Nothing the imperials could possibly have would survive its fury. Six PDLCs were an afterthought meant more for swatting recon drones and small craft than missiles. The lion didn't believe his enemies had very many of those. The defensive net was still distributed enough to provide full coverage to the ship. For command and control he ultimately decided to create an Alpha to captain each of the two planned vessels. It would badly deplete his own supply of computronic-ready materiel, but he believed the monitors needed too much tactical flexibility to just leave them with the cheaper GAIs. Not to mention the solitude was already starting to sting.
Soon enough the progress on HHSS Better Bark(the name Arslashn decided to give his first escort on a whim, the second would be the Worse Bite) had reached the point where it was appropriate to make the ship's Alpha NAI and delegate supervising the rest of construction to them.
At which point one of his snooping satellites found the wreck of the other station.