Chapter 52 Abby Surgorov

I was in a good place. The crew was coming together and I had avoided another dinner with Suruchi and the passengers. I was on the bridge getting ready to transition to the Arana system. For real this time. I noticed Henry seemed extremely nervous. The ships doctor, Andie, had said he had some lingering post traumatic stress from the simulation. He was being counseled on it and she had given permission to remain on the bridge. Not that I had anyone to replace him.

The ship transitioned and Henry announced with some relief that there was no debris in our path and the system nav relay stations were asking for permissions to populate our radar. I affirmed the request and immediately our plot showed all the ships in system. I switched my station to a navigation setup and marveled at the ships in system.

I thought the Union navy academy system was busy! This put the Union to shame. Thousands of spaceships, dozens marked with a military IFF for the Sapphireians. It looked there were two main fleets in this system. One was orbiting the main populous planet and the other was stationed in the sole asteroid belt by some heavy mining stations it appeared. And those were the ships that the civilian nav buoys actually shared with us. I guessed there must be at least one more fleet stationed somewhere in this system in stealth. At least that is what I would do.

I studied the system. Six planets. The populous planet, Aranium, was slightly larger than Earth and covered in 50% oceans. The data said 12 billion people lived on the surface! Aranium had just one moon and it was dotted with domed farms. The other planet in the system was a light industrial barren world called Bastille. It was undergoing terraforming according to the data and was scheduled to have a breathable atmosphere in 350 years. It was also currently serving as a working prison planet. That is where I would find Abby. It would be a six hour trip to get to Aranium to drop off our passengers and do some trade. I told Henry to get permissions and a plot to a civilian station orbiting Aranium. There were six large stations on my screen and I didn’t care which one they assigned us to.

Suruchi appeared on the bridge and slid into a station. Confused what she was doing I peeked over at her screens. Oh, she was changing the fore viewing window on the luxury deck to show a closeup of Aranium. I didn’t know it could do that but it made sense. Suruchi began talking to me and I had to focus on her words. She wanted to know if I had selected our next destination and when we would leaving for it. She had asked me this a dozen times during the trip and I had put her off. I said the Ragnhild system would be our next stop and we would be leaving in thirty days. I was going to give the crew some leave. She turned around in her station to study me.

I knew Ragnhild was not in any of the suggested routes she had sent me. She didn’t ask why I choose it though. She did say that she had prepared the registration papers for Alicanto Excursions. She had a smile and said we also made 17% over projections for the trip. Apparently she had been charging hourly for use of the VR and steward bots. I didn’t know how I felt about pimping out the steward bots. I asked why was the VR so popular? I mean didn’t they have access to VR in the Gunther system. Suruchi answered yes but the resolution of my system was much higher and realistic. Also there were limits in the Sapphire Empire for the numbers of hours a person could spend in VR. Apparently outside of education a person could only spend 20 hours a month in VR to prevent VR addiction. I guess that made sense.

I commed Evira to make sure our fighters were covered up and secured. I felt pretty confident the entire crew was going to be loyal and if there was going to be a betrayal I might as well find out now. The worst case scenario was the fighters would be confiscated and I would have to pay a sizable fine for unlicensed military salvage.

Henry interrupted my thoughts and replied the station had assigned us where to dock at. Suruchi sent an announcement to the passengers so they could start making arrangements. Suruchi told me she would handle the transfer of our contracted cargo. For my part I wanted to get down to engineering and go over the FTL drives. I spent thirty minutes engrossed in the plot of ships though, clicking to identify a few here and there and looking at their profiles. The amount of trade going on was quite amazing. I tore myself away eventually and noticed Suruchi had already left.

I spent our six hour flight in system getting all my engineering tasks completed. With Eve’s help I had all the alerts under control and Nero sent me a report of his own progress. The ship was in good shape. I went to the bridge to watch the docking. We were going to be locked to the station and a large umbilical would be extended to our ship. Henry did a good job maneuvering and communicating with the station and soon we were locked on.

I opened the document Suruchi had sent me for the expense report. We did quite well. A curious line was listed as tips and three people were listed. Suruchi had 35 Sol credits, Dora 52 Sol credits and Finn 8 Sol credits. It was a bit odd but I really didn’t want to know why or how they obtained their tips. Henry walked by and scanned my screen. That was a bit rude but he did share that Finn had been contracted to transport some of the passengers down to the planet using the LUX shuttle. I checked and made sure the passengers were also covering the fuel costs. Ok that was fine but I would need to do a security sweep on the shuttle when it returned.

Henry left the bridge after I gave him permission to go to the station. I transferred pay to all employees of Alicanto Excursions. That way they had funds to spend on station. I sent them all a message that the Void Phoenix would be leaving the station in seven days to travel to Bastille. After that we would be returning here to pick up passengers and cargo for Ragnhild.

I opened my own accounts and winced. Credits seemed to evaporate quickly when you owned a ship. I opened my own purchase list and sent a command to search the stations digital storefronts for the items. The upgrade to the VR system was the largest expense by far and there were a few legal hoops to jump through to purchase it. Suruchi had taken care of most of them. I just needed to sign off that the system could not be sold or transferred to any Sapphireian with the time limiters removed. I applied my signatures. I needed to sell some of my precious metal stocks again.

I had a prepared list of materials I wanted to sell. Shinade also had all of her inventory of material stockpiles due to be exchanged here for credits. That was good as it would free up storage on the ship. I checked and she was getting a better exchange than at the Gunther system. There was a higher tax, 8%, on traded goods but she would still come out ahead. I ordered the stevedore bots to move her materials to the umbilical. I then selected the materials I was going to sell. It was going to be a wash in terms of storage for my materials. I was planning to purchase feeder stock for the alien hull plating machines. I only had enough material to resurface made 20% of the ship, with the exchange I could maybe do 40% of the outer hull.

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I was getting close on getting the devices to work. My biggest breakthrough was getting the alien maintenance bot functioning. It cleaned and prepped the machines for me. That was Eve’s idea. The power modulator for the devices had been missing but I found an identical part in the assortment of other parts we salvaged from the planetoid. I could now power them and run them on the alien preprogrammed hull plates. My last real hurdle was creating a terminal to transcribe the dimensions I needed to the Hy’Nar system. It was a base 12 system instead of base 10. Hopefully the two computer interfaces I was purchasing here would eliminate this last real hurdle to fabricating the superior hull plates.

Besides the precious metals I was also planning to sell two artistic life size statues. The statues were a pair, a male and female I presumed of the Hy’Nar race. They looked humanoid but slightly taller and thinner. The stone was mixed with a chromium/silver mixture that made it sparkle. I had made multiple scans to confirm the statues did not contain any technology or markings of the Hy’Nar race. From research I knew there was a large market for alien artifacts in the Sapphire kingdom. I hoped the age and aesthetically pleasing nature of the statues would yield a good pay day. Similar modern day sculptures went for around 2000 Sol credits from human sculptors. Dora was handling the statues auction. The auction was scheduled in 20 days and my information would be anonymous according to the auctioneer at the firm.

Most of the crew left the ship and Zed was left in my custody. I was on the bridge watching monitors as materials were transferred and scanned by the Sapphire station employees. I watched my account increase sufficiently to send out all my orders and start the refueling process. Eve was monitoring the exterior of the ship from another terminal. She would be on that the entire time we were docked here. I thought about getting some point defense lasers for the ship but decided to wait until I could replace the outer hull. With 30 days in system I would be able to get our original shields fairly functional. Right after I got the hull plating fabricators working I planned to work on the alien shield emitters.

I looked at my to do list and it was pretty short. The biggest thing was a note from Suruchi to make sure the lower passenger deck was cleared and ready to receive passengers. There were still a number of crates from the planetoid there that needed to be moved. That was 327 cubic meters of crates filled with the alien machines I wanted to study. The four cargo holds on deck 2 were packed solid, deck 4 robotics lab was packed, and deck 5, my alien research lab was also full. On Deck 1, our main cargo bay had space but I had planned to just use it for ship parts and contracted cargo going forward. I noticed my hover bike was also stored there and I put in an order to bring it up to shuttle bays. I had a number of safety features I wanted added and that should give Stavros and Elvira something to do in the future.

I finally decided to move the material to aft engineering. There were three blocks of four crew cabins in the aft section of the ship. I think I could utilize 8 of those cabins and the common space for them to squeeze everything in. I programmed the stevedore bots to work on it. That done I was free to figure out how to get Abby.

Suruchi had sent me packets of information and forms. She had filled out quite a few of them in preparation for this. I connected with the government database and starting submitting the forms for Abby’s release to my custody. It was not just paying her remaining balance on her term. There seemed to be a new fee every few forms I submitted. Fortunately Suruchi was a lawyer in the Sapphire Empire and made the process relatively easy for me. Just a few Sol credits here and there but in the end it added up to another 86 Sol credits for her release. I submitted the final form and I had a choice. I could pick Abby up or she could be transported to me for another 40 Sol credits. I selected the delivery option as it would probably be a wash in cost for fuel and time. Estimated transfer time was 16 hours! Damn that was quick but not surprising. When I did my search I noticed there were a large number of prisoners listed for release. Their Union payers just hadn’t arrived to transport them home yet.

I had sixteen hours to rest. I checked on the engineering bots and told Eve I was going to a quick nap in. I no longer needed my SLUMBER unit as my cabin was now connected to Julie’s VR system. I selected an educational program on the Tirani race.

The Tirani’s were best described as a humanoid bear-like being. They had a dense bone structure, thick dark fur and layers of muscle. They were the apex predator on their home world. They stood a massive 2.5m in height in height and weighed 300kg. First contact with humans did not go well. The Tirani didn’t have space capability until they captured a human craft. Two hundred years later and they had secured their home world and traded sparingly outside of it. The reason they hadn’t been erased from existence by the humans was due to the fact their home system had nothing of value. The humans that had first contact were just a small colonization fleet that greatly underestimated the Tirani threat and their intelligence. Now Tirani could be found at the fringes of human space trading and hiring themselves out as mercenaries.

I woke from my rest and checked the clock. I still had 7 hours till Abby got here and I got confirmation that she was in transit on an inter system shuttle. I checked my messages and the most interesting one was someone was offering to purchase Samantha’s ship for a crazy amount of money, about 30% more than I would have guessed its value. I checked and found Samantha was still on board in her cabin. Andie had sent me reports that the child she was carrying was healthy. It was due in 4 weeks time. Shinade’s own due date was just two weeks away and I was looking forward to it.

I decided to prepare the cabin on deck 8 for Abby, it was the largest cabin and adjacent to the main armory. I guessed on her size from memory and ordered her two marine grade skin suits and other clothes from the station. I tried to decorate it as well but I wasn’t sure of her tastes so I just went with two small alien sculptures. One was of a graceful fish breaking the waves in a leap and the other some intertwined geometric shapes.

That done I waited by the umbilical connection while using my PerCom to send out orders to the engineering bots. They had found a new stress fracture in the ship’s skeleton and that was concerning as I didn’t think we encountered anything to cause it. My best guess it occurred during our landing on the planetoid but was too small to locate at the time. It wasn’t a difficult fix just a few hours for a pair of bots.

My PerCom beeped. The transfer shuttle had docked and Abby was being escorted to the ship. I was going to play it cool. I let them escort her up the door and stood on the other side when it opened. Abby was standing there in tan coveralls with two Sapphire marines behind her. She was thin. I remembered her as having a thick amazon build. My first thought was damn all the clothes and skinsuits I got her wouldn’t fit. For her part Abby looked guarded as the door opened, then confused, then recognition hit her face and her eyes widened. It had been two years since I had last seen her and I doubted she had given me much thought during her incarceration.

I said, “Hi Abby, lets blow this popsicle stand.” It was a saying from the pirate show and I didn’t actually understand the idiom but I liked the character that said it in the show. For her part Abby’s jaw dropped, reattached itself and turned into a grin and a short nod.