Samantha called me to her private conference room. She had bad news; my propulsion engineer was on the gunship. I was confused at first then I remembered her asking about continuing her work there while we went in system. Shit. Then Samantha asked my input on where we should go. We sat before the Union star Empire map crossing off systems first with heavy combat, leaving 560 systems. Then we sorted to systems that had navy shipyards and should not have strategic value to the invaders just yet. Forty-four systems. We started going through each system. After three hours we decided on Leionidus. It had two inhabited moons around a gas giant, two large asteroid belts with mining, and the system had a total population of 400 million with decent industry. We could get ship parts we could not fabricate to finish the repairs and upgrades and get a cargo of refined metals for delivery to another system. The sub space trip would be 17 days with another 11 hours in the gravity well.

We slid into sub space and I went to work. I had lost a third of my bots that were on the gunship and a pretty good young engineer, so my duties had tripled. Fortunately, Eve had come a long way. She was just as good as a basic engineer and worked nonstop. Besides maintenance I also built shells to go over the laser turrets that could be jettisoned. I also got all eight turrets functional and the targeting systems corrected and installed secondary systems and a secondary gunnery station in engineering. There was a major problem with our weapon controls. They were all wireless. If a ship used frequency jamming we would be helpless. Well, if I needed to I could be the gunner from engineering and it also secretly allowed me to train Eve as a gunner. AIs were not allowed to assume that role in the Union. I wanted to get some more certs done as I had finally caught up but the VR machine we had salvaged had been on the gunship since they had the bigger crew. So I made do with upgrading all the remaining bots. Improving their programming and parts.

We exited subspace a little further out than normal to be safe. What we found stunned us a bit. It was a Union armada, two battleships, two carriers, three heavy cruisers, six cruisers, eighteen destroyers, twenty-eight gunships and seventeen support transports. I just hoped we would not get ordered to join the fleet. It would be a death sentence if the war was going the way I thought. I had scanned the enemy corvettes from our last encounter and they were newer and had current technology, hell our sensors were better than most ships in the Union navy that were smaller than a cruiser on my screen. The Union navy had let itself lapse for too long,

We moved in system and Samantha kept me updated with her communications with the fleet. In the end we were to report to Station 22 and we would have new containers fabricated and stuffed with gunship, shuttle, heavy fighter and bomber parts. Well, those were the only classes of ship built in this system so they were just cramming us full with things on hand. We would be in the supply train for the fleet, just what I didn’t want. Samantha said we would have six days before the fleet would be moving. In private I tried to convince her we should head elsewhere. She seemed to waver but eventually decided to do her duty.

Well, our jury-rigged freighter moved in a synchronous orbit with Station 22 and I went about getting everything I could. I requisitioned tons of equipment and surprisingly got about a third of what I asked for. I learned they had expected half again as many ships for this fleet so had materials in abundance. Among the things I got were a case of 256 fuel rods that Eve could use, a brand new VR training suite for up to twelve people, six suits of space marine EVA combat suits, six thousand officer meals, forty thousand crew meals, two brand new cleaning bots, three old model engineering bots, tons of FTL parts for the original engine, four tons of raw materials for the fabricators, six backup generators and one heavy marine landing shuttle. The shuttle was due to a request for a cargo transport shuttle and when it was denied I asked for any shuttle and that is what they sent me. It kept me very busy and the one thing we didn’t get was more personnel. Hell, our freighter was an afterthought and we were just getting the left overs and no one was checking my requests. Our first officer had given me the job as he whined back at our origin station and I said I could do better so it was now my job.

Inspecting the marine shuttle it was very old but well maintained. It had been on one of the battleships and they had just received a brand-new shuttle. The shuttle was essentially an orbital drop shuttle for 24 marines in combat armor with two pilots and one gunner in the front. It had a micro jump FTL drive and a three-hour operational window on its fuel load, it was a high-performance pig. I just stuffed it in with the other shuttles. I was thinking ahead. If we lost the war we would have to run and the more shit we had to sell the better off we would be.

Well, the fleet we were drawn into was tasked with hitting the supply lines and then jumping deep into enemy territory and hitting their shipyards. I really had no confidence in our navies ability to do so as the Union was getting pushed back and bloodied constantly. Soon we were in warp trailing the fleet with the other support ships. Our first mate had also somehow managed a transfer for himself reducing our crew to just five. It was a ridiculous transfer but many combat ships were short and had trouble running three shifts apparently. He got a third shift on the bridge of a destroyer, well good riddance.

The problem was I was now the ship logistics officer full time. While we had plenty of parts now and stuff we didn’t need I was responsible for all requests from other ships raiding our cargo containers. We had mostly gunship parts but some parts were universal. After two supply ships took a little extra from the container I installed cameras and put Eve in charge of directing our bots to pull requests for incoming cargo shuttles. Eve got more than a few inquiries as to her relationship status by shuttle pilots. The shuttles that took extra denied doing so I just got pissed off. I had to manually update the available inventory on the fleet logistics portfolio which took a long conversation with a ranking fleet logistics officer explaining the missing items.

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Well the days started blurring as we hopped from system to system. We would spend a few days in a system engaging and scaring off small groups of ships, do repairs and then FTL to the next.

Now I was the only male on a ship with four women. You would think I could get some love somewhere but that was not the case. The mood was somber, and I knew my engineer and the navigator were a couple. Maybe the captain and the sensor operator where also a couple? Well, I just focused on my job. I made upgrades to bots, did maintenance, worked on certs, and played with our shuttles, laser turrets and propulsion. Eve was remarkable and kept my spirits up. If I didn’t know she was a construct, I would have thought her human. Her programming had evolved so much and I added two modules to increase her memory. The added memory technically put her past 'allowances' but who was checking?

A few weeks later I had completed one more FTL cert and a few propulsion certs. I had stayed in shape sparring with Eve. The laser turrets had a 13% power increase, at the cost increasing cool down between shots from 0.6 seconds to 0.66 seconds. I had the drop shuttle mostly refit. It now had additional fuel tanks to triple operation time to 9 hours at the cost of halving its possible marine compliment. Well, that space was filled with pallets of officer meals anyway. It would be better than an escape pod. I spent a few hours on the simulator to be able to fly the beast. It took 240 hours of flight time in simulator programs to earn a copilot cert. Well, it was hobby. I also played around with a heavy space fighter sim and light space/atmo fighter sim. Usually, I had Eve as my copilot in the sim. Well, I was not very good. To get a cert you not only needed to accumulate hours in the sim. Well, you also had to pass 17 combat and emergency simulated tests to get certified. The first test was easy, one on one combat, but after that I just died in the sim. Well Eve was much better; she might fail a test but then pass the next attempt. The problem was I could not register her accomplishments.

We eventually had a major encounter. The enemy had a battleship and half a dozen cruisers at the core of its fleet. Our sensors watched from the edge of the system. We were grouped with other freighters and our flotilla screen had two destroyers and six gunships. The battle lasted over seven hours and even though we won and lost no ships we took a lot of damage. The victory broadcast quickly went out over the galactic net. The freighters reunited with the fleet in system and all our cargo containers were just moved to a small cruiser that had bays to repair gunships. So we were empty. I was hoping they would send us to get resupply in another system but no luck.

We were assigned to search and rescue duties and salvage after our containers were coopted. Our scanners had 79 escape pods marked and 2,196 individual beacons. The Union distress beacons had all been addressed so these were all Sapphire Empire emergency beacons. Our sensor officer tied into the rescue grid and we were assigned J-45 in the grid. We had debris from a heavy cruiser and a few smaller ships. Just two active escape pods and 37 individual emergency beacons. I programmed our bots as we flew in. The captain commed both escape pods saying we were on the way and would get them after we addressed the individual beacons.

With our excellent sensors we quickly found the beacons and found 19 viable rescues. The rest had no thermal signatures. I was tasked with getting the old holding cells back to functional status. We ended up rescuing 17, 2 died before we got to them. The escape pods had 8 and 6 people. So we ended with 31 prisoners, 11 women and 20 men. Guess who was named temporary warden, yeah me. I just separated them by sex and put Eve on guard duty. Well we had to switch to salvage now. We had no containers, so I got my bots to cut large flat exterior plates from the cruiser and make rough boxes welded to the frame of our transport. I had also been diligently scanning the ship. All my space able bots were on build duty so I could just plan.

I wanted the six heavy fighters I found most from my scans, all had some minor damage but were the most valuable and easily taken loot. Next was as much of the cruisers advanced computer systems on the mostly intact bridge. Then the intact forward armory which had 48 suits of powered combat armor and heavy weapons but this required some cutting to the interior. We had just finished loading and locking down the fighters and crates of parts for them when Eve commed me. The prisoners had made an escape attempt. She had killed six and injured seven others.

I ran to the deck and the cells. The male prisoners had broken the magnetic door locks, shit I hadn’t really searched them. I had thought they would behave themselves as we had just saved them. There was blood everywhere. Eve had tried to subdue first but when she was overwhelmed she went lethal till they stopped trying to fight. They were asking for medical treatment but I was worried. I went and got a med kit and pulled out a few things then gave them the rest. Two more died over the next few hours but it was their own fault. I went to make sure Eve was ok and made sure the few cuts to her synthetic flesh were fully repaired.

I had just finished with moving the entire armory to a cargo pod and was moving onto pulling in some damaged shuttles when I was told by Samantha we had just 6 hours left before the fleet was going to move out and we were to send our salvage list to logistics in three hours. I looked at everything I had mapped and determined the exterior sensors were better than what we had so started on them. An hour later a massive Sapphire fleet entered the outer system. Three battleships, twenty-seven cruisers and many, many more ships. I ordered my bots back and we looked at the cluster fuck on the screens.