Chapter 2-1

LOCATION: EDEN'S ENDSYSTEM: Y6X-3H2

DATE: 2399

"Alex, what color is the sky supposed to be?"

"Hmm?" Alexander paused his work to look over at Yulia who was sitting at a little table he made for her in his shop. "Why do you ask?"

"When I told Sarah and Claire they were coloring the sky wrong, they looked at me funny and said the sky is supposed to be blue, not yellow."

He made a holographic hand appear on his avatar's face to make it look like he was pondering the thought. Yes, he had replaced the emitter yet again. This time he had hardened it against electronic interference as well as damage by covering the entire thing in armor. Was it overkill? Considering he had lost two of them in the span of a year, probably not.

"It depends on the planet you are on. On Eden's End, the sky is a hazy yellow from the sulfur in the air. On most terraformed planets, I suspect it would be blue like Earth. But that's only a guess on my part. I've only ever been here and on Earth."

She dug around in the box of crayons and pulled out a light blue. "Like this?"

"It certainly could be. The sky changes colors depending on the time of day. I've even seen a pink sky."

"Ew," she stated matter-of-factly as she went back to coloring her picture. Alexander watched her concentrate on her drawing, her tongue stuck to the side of her mouth. He chuckled internally. As it turns out, Yulia wasn't much of a fan of pink. That would have been good to know before he bought all of her bedding and decor in a pink flower motif, but the girl hadn't complained to him at the time.

She had no reason to complain back then, she was simply happy to be adopted. It seemed kind of obvious now that he thought about it.

He glanced over at the picture she was coloring in. It was an image of a house on a hill. A dirty brown hill. Apparently, she didn't know about grass either. The coloring books and crayons had been a donation of his to the pseudo-school that the residents were running. He called it a pseudo-school not out of disrespect. They actually did a fine job teaching what they knew. And that was the issue.

Until Alexander arrived with his learning modules, the people taught the kids what they knew. Considering how expensive the modules he purchased were, that wasn't much. Instead of relying on the modules, the residents of Eden's End passed down knowledge learned from generation to generation. He was impressed when he learned that most of the people on Eden's End were literate. It sort of made sense, all of the information they had was on tablets or the aging consoles littered throughout the facility. If you couldn't read the screens, you weren't going to get very far.

Introducing paper to them had been a fun challenge. The people teaching didn't know what it was supposed to be used for until Alexander showed them. At the moment, it was just being used by the younger kids to draw pictures with the crayons he made from some synthetic wax. Eventually, he hoped the teachers would embrace the idea of tests that he had floated to them.

He wouldn't push them though. He just wanted to ensure the people here were getting the best education they could. Part of that was to help them. The other part was to help him. Yes, his reasons weren't completely altruistic, but he didn't care.

The attack a month ago had been a rather rude wake-up call to everyone on Eden's End. Since then, more and more people have been accepting jobs from the job board. Most of those jobs catered toward improving the living conditions planetside. That still worked in his favor. The issue was what happened after that? He needed skilled workers to grow, which is why he was investing so much in the younger generation.

The adults could still earn access to the learning modules, but most of them were already set in their ways. The ones that weren't had already been trained up as much as possible by the Hawks. There was still a lot of work to be done to the facility before it was restored to its previous glory so that issue was a long way off.

He was just glad the bulk of that work was off his shoulders now. The less time Alexander needed to spend personally fixing the facility, the better. Speaking of not wasting time, his watch beeped to remind him he had an appointment. The spring wound timepiece was a completely unnecessary accessory since he had an inbuilt clock, but he liked it. The wristwatch reminded him he was still human inside this monstrous body of unknown origins.

"I have to go meet with some people. Do you want to come along or go play?"

It was not really a question for the little girl. "I'mma go play!" Yulia yelled in delight as she grabbed her picture and raced off to find her friends.

After Yulia's speedy departure, Alexander made his way to atrium A. It was the main atrium used by the people of Eden's End. As he walked, people actually waved and greeted him. He either waved or nodded in return. While not everyone had warmed to his presence, there had been a significant shift in attitude toward him after word started to spread of what he did during the attack.

Nobody was calling him a hero, thankfully. The heroes were those who gave their lives to stop the pirates. He made sure to bring that point up anytime someone mentioned the attack. But it didn't stop the rumors about him. He sighed internally and entered the noisy clamor of the atrium.

Being the largest space in the most occupied section of the facility, this atrium saw a lot of use. Today it was being used as a sort of farmers market. He wasn't here for that, but he certainly could use some fresh vegetables. Maybe he would barter for some on his way back.

Alexander weaved his way through the crowds. Mostly people just stepped aside when they saw him coming. The few who didn't notice his passage were usually too busy with something and he skirted around them.

Soon enough he came to an empty plot of land, much like the one where he built the playground. Only this one was filled with tilled dirt.

A group of people on the other side of the marked-off area were arguing with each other and pointing at the dirt.

"-not going to grow alongside the squash. How many times do I have to tell you?" an older woman stated.

"And you're the expert now, Sheila? Last I checked, my plot produced the most yield. What did yours do? Oh, wait, never mind, you didn't plant anything last year." The man crossed his arms with a smug look of triumph.

Alexander thought the two would come to blows until a third man whistled sharply to get their attention before nodding in his direction.

The three of them turned to him.

"We'll see what Alex has to say, Harper, then we'll see who's smug," the woman replied.

"I'm afraid I don't know why you three requested this meeting," Alexander said.

"You have all those fancy learning things, don'tcha? I'm sure you even picked up some farming or hydroponics ones. Tell this idiot over here that you can't plant potatoes next to squash. Just because one grows above ground and the other underground doesn't mean they are compatible."

"…Um. I don't know anything about farming. But if you three want access to the farming modules, I can trade you time with them."

"Told you he wouldn't know," the second man muttered quietly. But he sounded rather smug about it.

It would have been too quiet for a normal person to hear from where he was standing, but he still heard it. The woman must have heard it as well because she glared at the man. "I bet you half my harvest next year that I'm right."

"What!" the man uncrossed his arms and stepped back.

"What, what? Are you afraid of losing a bet?"

Harper's anger at the woman's statement gave him the courage he needed. "Hardly. Fine. Half my harvest. Not like what I'll make off you losing will be much anyway but if it knocks you off your high horse, then it'll be worth it." The two shook hands and turned to him.

"What did you want in trade?" Sheila asked.

"Ten percent of your crops and a guarantee that you will work at increasing your crop efficiency and yields."

"Ten percent!" Harper sputtered before Shiela cuffed him in the shoulder.

"Don't be a daft idiot. If Alex here has learning modules for increasing harvest, then you should be able to double or triple your output with little effort. These aren't little anecdotes passed down from family to family on how to plant and tend crops. It's knowledge gained by massive corporations over centuries."

Harper spit on the ground. "Who needs that shit. If you wanna waste your time and effort, be my guest. But I already have proof that my family's ways are the best. Otherwise, I wouldn't be the top performer each and every year. And don't think I'll take any bullshit excuses when these fancy new ideas cause you to fail. We shook on it, if you renege I'm going to Damien." Harper stomped off after that.

Sheila just gave the younger man a dismissive wave. "Churlish idiot. That's what happens when you're a third-generation drifter. You lose touch with reality and the corporations become the boogeyman. So," she said, turning back to Alexander. "Ten percent?"

"And a guarantee you will try to increase your yield."

She laughed at that. "That's kinda what I'm already after, big man. You got yourself a deal," she stuck out her hand and Alexander shook it.

"What about you?" he asked the silent man.

The man glanced at Shiela and she gave him a small nod. The man sighed and offered his hand. "Name's, Frank."

That's all the man said. Alexander assumed that was a yes and shook the man's hand.

"Excellent. Do you both know where they teach the children?"

Frank nodded.

"No clue, but if that's where we gotta go, I'll just follow Franky," Sheila nudged the man, earning an eye roll.

"Just tell the teachers you're there to use the learning modules. They will set you up on a terminal." He handed the two some metal cards he kept in a pouch on his utility belt. Yes, he called it a utility belt. "These will allow you to access the modules. Give me a day or so to set the correct ones up for you, then feel free to use them as much as you need."

They thanked him and went off to till more of the hard ground. The fact they did it all with hand tools or crude implements meant he was probably going to get requests to make more efficient farming tools at some point.

That was a problem since Alexander didn't know anything about farming. He sighed and added it to his growing list.

That damn list was like a hydra, cut off one head, and two grew in its place. He was starting to get it under control though.

With his meeting over, he headed back to his workshop. It had taken a month to clean up and fix the internal damage caused by the pirates. Most of that damage was caused by the three grenades going off but not all of it.

With the workshop back up and running, that left the destroyed railguns as the only remaining damage from the pirate attacks.

Workers were still excavating the pits before he could even think to rebuild them. It was a good thing they still had three working orbital railguns and all the turrets surrounding the landing pads after they were reset. The EMP attack hadn't actually caused that much permanent damage. The only things permanently damaged by the attack seemed to be his crude computer chips. That was a cheap and easy fix. Once those damaged computers were swapped out with new ones, the interior turrets and the other devices that used them were back in working order. They would still be subject to the same flaw, but he wasn't about to waste the scant supply of contemporary computer chips he had purchased from STO space on those.

When he got more time, he would come up with a solution to help protect them better than the thin film of copper foil he encased them in now. It would probably work, but it was so delicate it tended to tear. The film also caused heat to get trapped inside which would likely cause the chips to fail quicker. He realized he was only swapping one issue for another but it was a temporary fix.

That wasn't the only problem he was facing after the attack. A week ago, they finally started up launch operations again. The launch went fine and the capsule made it into orbit only to explode when a piece of errant debris struck it. With no way to track the cloud of broken pieces left behind by the destroyed pirate ships, each launch was like rolling the dice. That was unacceptable because it halted all construction of the space station.

He was also running into a raw material shortage issue on the ground as well. The miners simply couldn't keep up. Captain Na and the Destiny had dropped off a quarter load of unrefined ore and the smelter had worked through it, leaving a huge supply of high-grade material waiting at the station. But if he couldn't get it planetside, it didn't do him much good.

That meant the main priority on his list was getting those shuttles up and running or at least one of them working. They were operational, according to the report Captain Matthews had left him, if you weren't too worried about sudden decompression or engine loss. Apparently, the pirates hadn't been overly concerned by these issues.

The things were hunks of junk. And that was being generous. He was going to have to go through them with a fine-toothed comb and once they were functional enough for a sane person to fly them, find a pilot willing to do the work. Sёarch* The nôᴠel Fire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Despite all the setbacks and issues he was facing, Alexander was excited about what the future held.