“Pirates? All the way out here?” asked Henry. “What could they possibly want in this little corner of nothing.”
“First of all, it’s our little corner of nothing.” I stated with an imperious finger “Secondly they hit our scout ship, meaning that any vessel wanting to travel through our system is now under threat.”
“Can’t we just wait them out? Surely the pirates will leave once they notice that there is nothing to gain?”
I shook my head. “While that would be ideal, we can’t let the pirates get away unscathed, if we did they might let out rumors that our defenses are a pushover, which might attract other pirates, or warlords that decide that they could take better care of the Haderes system.” Besides that, we really need the convoy.
Henry shrugged nonchalantly. “Well let’s send the navy after them and be done with it then.”
“You don’t think I would’ve done that already if I could?”
Henry looked confused. “So we don’t have a navy?”
I sighed, luckily my savior came in the knick of time, heralded by a satisfying smack as Henry tumbled over from Grimar's back slap. “Give the yung lard a break Honry!”
“For the umpteenth time, IT’S HENRY!”
“Well, ya don’t hab te scream me bludy earz out Hikry!”
“IT’S HENRY!”
“I HEARD YA DA FIRST TIME HIGSBY.”
I stepped in before the comedic duo really started firing up their routine. “Calm down Henry, yes we have a navy. The problem is that the navy ain’t exactly big nor top of the line, and right now we don’t how many pirates there are.”
Henry caressed his back as he asked. “So how exactly are ya planning on fixing that issue? Are you going to pull a destroyer out of a magic hat?”
“I wish, but if I knew how to do that I wouldn’t be here now would I? So Grim any ideas?”
Grim closed his eyes in thought. “Wellz da problem ain’t sa equipment, sinze wez got da station floating in orbitz. No da problem isz the same az always.”
“A lack of resources.” Said a feminine voice from behind me, as Talis our planetary resource manager made herself known.
Talis stared at Grimar. “And where were you last night Grimmy?” Beads of sweat rippled off the bald engineer's head, it’s hard to say if it was from the work or Talis’s presence.
“I.. I was at the workshop as I always am!”
“Didn’t you promise me you would take me out to Shram’s place?”
Grim could feed our citizens monthly water supply with the amount he’s sweating.. Also is it me or does he manage to speak without an accent whenever Talis is around?
“Well, Grimmy?”
Grim motioned Talis to come near and whispered something in her ear. Sadly his mustache muffled the whispers so I couldn’t hear a thing. “Good, I’ll hold you to it.” As Talis turned around I could see glimpses of my own reflection in her glasses. “Ah sorry my Lord J.” she said with a playful smile. “Forgive my bad manners.” Said Talis as she did a small courtsie.
“Greetings to you too Talis.” I deadpanned.
“Now now Lord Jason that’s no way to greet your former ethics teacher.”
“So Grim any ideas?” I asked with a bit more force than usual. Talis had this presence that demanded your attention and I had no time to get swept up in it.
Grim took the social lifeline I threw him and ran with it. “Izz been thinking wez might be able to repurpose some of da three dai-mensional printas to fabricate fighter ship partz, so wez could assemble dem.”
I looked to Talis. “Do we have enough printer supplies to make that plan into a reality?”
Talis shook her head. “You might be able to make one full ship out of it alas that would not solve our problem now would it. Besides you’re all forgetting the more fundamental problem at hand. Even if you could get the ships ready who’s going to crew them hm? The cooks, the cleaners, maybe some more of those annoying suitors that have been bothering me recently?”
“So fighters are out of the question, but what about gunships?”
“Dat might, work lord, dem gunships iz little more then a sluw moving box with gunz.”
“That’s nice and all gents, but how exactly do you plan to make them?” Hummed Talis.
“Can’t we just repurpose the wrecks?” asked Henry.
We all turned around to him.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“What wrekz yee talkin a boot lad?”
Henry brought over a holo screen displaying the outskirts of the capital Harentiel where we were currently located.
“The A.U dumped a lot of things on Rafar over the centuries, some of which were old space vessels. Sure they are rusted to hell and buried under tons of waste and scrap, but it’s laying there, ripe for the taking.” Henry flipped through a couple of satellite images before landing on one with multiple highlighted wrecks. “These locations house the most easily repurposed wrecks though the readings indicate that they are mostly civilian ships with the odd mining vessel here or there.”
“Grim, Henry do you two think you and the engineer corps could patch them up, assuming we could dig them out of the wastes?”
“It will be hard ta say lord, but wez should be able to manigz somezing. Right Henz?”
“Only one way to find out.” Replied Henry.
“What do you think Talis, do we have the resources to make it happen?”
Talis looked thoughtful for a moment. “Assuming we could fix them up I’d be able to spare some manpower, but it would take too long to dig them out. By the time the digging is done, the pirates would already be gone or upon us.”
Whilst the three of them continued on figuring out the details I checked in with the A.V. system.
[Chip Repair progress at 5%]
“Open Construction system.”
[Opening Construction system]
[Searching for colonization blueprints]
[!!ERROR!! UNABLE TO ACCESS CB 14023]
[!!ERROR!! UNABLE TO ACCESS CB 06010]
[!!ERROR!! UNABLE TO ACCESS CB 05021]
[!!ERROR!! UNABLE TO ACCESS CB 13210]
I grabbed my head to steady myself as the endless barrages of errors continued.
After what felt like an eternity a new message came in.
[CB 00001 - Construction Drone - FOUND]
I felt the corners of my mouth rise as I read the specifications for the Construction Drone Blueprint.
“You think he’s alright? The chip might have fried his brains out..”
“Hill be fine lad, he can loze a few nuts’n boltz.”
“Lord J will be fine Henry, and if not I can always give him some old ethics lessons to get him back into shape.”
“Say whatever you want, because I might have found a way out of this mess.”
“Jason I always thought that pink would suit you.”
“Okay, maybe not everything Henry.”
Grim luckily put a hand over Henry’s mouth while Talis practically demanded an explanation of course she didn’t word it like that...
“So this Construction Drone can be easily fabricated from our printers for little cost and is used for resource gathering, construction, and repair work?”
“That about sums it up yeah.”
“So what’s the catch?”
“I don’t know. Only one way to find out.”
I connected my cyberware to one of the 3D printers in the engineering bay, loaded up the blueprint, and let it build.
The drone looked weird. To be specific it looked like a metal brick.
“Open Administration system.”
[Opening Administration system]
[!!ERROR!! [TACTICAL OVERVIEW] LOCKED]
[!!ERROR!! [ASSIGNING TASK ROUTINES] LOCKED]
[!!ERROR!! [COMMUNICATION NETWORK] LOCKED]
[!!ERROR!! [REMOTE CONTROL] LOCKED]
[Administration System Function - [COMMAND] - FOUND]
“COMMAND - Walk to me”
[!!CANNOT PERFORM ACTION!! 404 NO TARGET FOR COMMAND FOUND]
“Open the Management system.”
[Opening Management system]
[!!ERROR-]
I waited for the system to get all the error messages out before finally something useful again.
[Management System Function - [ASSET TRACKER] - FOUND]
In my peripheral vision, an arrow marker hovered above the drone, which still sat there in brick mode.
“Target Construction Drone.”
[Linked Subordinate Targeted - Rafarian Construction Drone V1 0001]
“COMMAND - Walk to me.”
The others were about to wonder whether or not I truly had a screw loose, luckily the brick- er Construction Drone began opening from its brick-like state.
The Construction Drone looked like a.. Well a..
“Is that a metal crab?” Asked Henry Rethoricly.
The cra- Construction Drone did as was ordered and walked up to me. While its structure was that of a crab its individual parts were different. To see if the crab could handle Rafars rough terrain we had some of the workers gather a bunch of scrap from storage and put it out haphazardly on the floor. I ordered the drone to walk to multiple locations of varying difficulty, which it achieved without much difficulty. It seemed that the legs were made so to have a good grip no matter the terrain, this however did come at the cost of speed, but could probably be offset for now by numbers. The claws as we found out had a limited size heating and cooling ray in them, allowing the drone to modify the materials it was trying to repair or gather.
“This is good enough for me, what about you three?”
All of them gave me a thumbs up.
“Then let's put the plan in motion and make General Thalia happy.”