Chapter 2-22

Now that Alexander had everything pulled from the ship that he could, without actually taking it apart, he waited for Branston to arrive so he could return to the surface and begin his next project.It didn't take long for the pilot to land in the hangar and return him to the facility. "Oh, before I forget, please give this package to Captain Krieger if you would."

"What is it?" the former Navy officer asked in confusion.

"They are the ID tags from the bodies we recovered. I sealed them all in one of the rooms aboard the ship, so they could perform whatever burial rites they wished when they returned home."

The man's face turned solemn as he accepted the package. What Alexander hadn't added, was that the box also contained the fusion activation crystal for Epsilon's Dawn. While the ship was a bargaining chip, he felt like a little bit of goodwill would go a long way here. He never intended to keep the ship, so holding it hostage wouldn't feel right.

Alexander would have delivered it in person, but after seeing the ship's armor, he didn't think it would be much of a leap for the STO Captain to figure out he might come from the same source as the base material. That secret would likely be exposed eventually, but he decided now was not that time.

He entered his workshop and set the items he had procured down on one of the workbenches. Before Alexander started testing how many robots he could link to one supercomputer interface, he needed to answer another burning question he had. He walked over to the mass spectrometer and put the armor sample inside. When the results came back, he wasn't surprised by what they showed. It was made from pure carbon. It wasn't a clear answer, but it was another data point that led him to the conclusion he had suspected for some time. There was one final test he needed to run before he would be certain, or at least as certain as he could be that his hunch was correct. Alexander stored the sample in another container and placed it in his storage room next to the pieces that had flaked off of his own body.

While he was in there, he retrieved one of the supercomputers and the three robots that he had in storage. He returned to the workshop and queued up the design for his robots. He set the manufacturing array to produce ten more.

As that was going, he set the supercomputer into the holo scanner. It accurately marked the locations of the computer's contacts and Alexander built off of that. He figured he could go about linking robots to a central processor in two ways, with a tether, or wirelessly. A tether would be faster and make it impossible to block the signal, but the downsides of the limited range and hassle of dealing with a physical limitation were a deal breaker for Alexander. That meant a wireless connection was the only viable path.

He started designing the core controller that would be powered by the supercomputer with wireless transmission in mind. Alexander borrowed the uplink designed by Lucas and added that to the model he was building. He still couldn't believe the man had designed such an efficient and powerful radio transceiver from cobbled-together spare parts. Wanting to ensure the controller had backup options, he included a tight beam laser link, as well as infrared and microwave transceivers.

Alexander would have loved to use FTL comms like the Qcomm's used, to facilitate communication between the robots, but he didn't have a sample of the technology to try and reproduce it yet.

Since the controller was going to need to be in space as well as be able to communicate in multiple directions at once, Alexander added plenty of power systems, ion drives for maneuvering, and even one of his Class 2 engines similar to the one Shuttle 1 had. Only it was his fourth-gen version, which dialed back the efficiency to more closely match Dr. Lund's optimization model. It was also the first generation he designed specifically for each class of engine, instead of just using the Class 4 as a base and moving stuff around to fit. Doing that was fine when testing, but nobody was going to buy an engine that had to be modified for each craft. Not when they had standard designs already available.

By the time Alexander's design was complete, the controller was half the size of a shuttle and looked a bit like a porcupine with all its sensors and antennas. He saved the design and started a new one. The new design was much simpler. There were no engines, no fuel storage, and no power systems. It was just a block to hold the supercomputer and two dozen cables running off of it with transceivers on the ends shaped like cubes. The cubes had electrical contactors around the exterior that perfectly matched where the advanced chips had theirs.

He sent that design to the old printer and it wasn't long until the very simple device took shape.

Once it was done, Alexander took one of the cubes and opened up the computer core on the robot. He placed the cube into the open space for an advanced chip until he heard a soft click, notifying him it was locked into place. He repeated this process for the other two as well. He did need to bypass the safety lockout that prevented the robot from operating if the core was open, but that was easily accomplished with a jumper wire.

He would have removed the safety lockout, but he didn't want to damage the robots. He needed that core to lock in place when he built the wireless cores that would eventually go into them.

Once that was done, he moved over to the controller and was getting ready to work on that when there was a knock on his door.

"Come in," he called while he continued working.

Captain Na entered the room, looking concerned. That couldn't be good. Searᴄh the Nôvel(F)ire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

"Mingyu, I'm glad you and your people are safe. I assume this visit is to discuss why you were gone so long?"

"Yes, and no," the man said with a sigh. "Alexander, me and my entire crew owe you a debt, and I plan on repaying it, but it's getting far too dangerous in this system. Unless you can assure me that you have an immediate solution to that problem, it might just be safer for me to take my chances in STO space as an outcast. I hope you can understand."

Alexander did understand. The fact that Na was considering going back to STO space told him how important this was for the man. He put down the tools he was using and gave the Captain his full attention.

"I see. I can't say I blame you. If I were in your situation, I might make a similar choice. Actually, I probably wouldn't have even come back to let you know. I would have simply headed to STO space-" Alexander's words trailed off as he realized that was exactly what Na had done. Something obviously changed his mind though or he wouldn't have come back.

"…We were on our way before I stopped and turned back around. That's why we were gone for so long. I'm sorry if that feels like a betrayal, but my crew and my ship come first."

His suspicions about the man's extended absence were confirmed. "I won't say that your actions don't hurt me. They do, but I'm not going to hold them against you. While it's true we have a deal, I don't believe either of us expected two entire fleets of pirates to show up unannounced when we agreed upon that deal. You asked if I had an immediate solution to this pirate threat. I don't. I can assure you I'm working on one. Before you say goodbye—" Alexander stopped the man, noticing his expression fall with disappointment. "Listen to my proposal. You wouldn't have come back if you didn't think I could make the system safer."

Alexander waited for Mingyu to mull over his words.

It took the man a few minutes before he finally replied. "Very well, I owe you at least that much."

He nodded to the man and motioned him over to the holo display where he modeled all of his projects. "After the attack, I knew we needed more defensive options in space. We can't simply rely on spy ships from the STO coming along to save us next time."

That got a slight chuckle out of the severe man. "Is that what that strange ship docked at the station is? Even parked right next to it, the Moonlit Destiny's sensors were having a hard time picking it up."

Alexander nodded. "We also have the STO survivors in our med bay waiting for a trip back home. That's not really your concern unless you're willing to take them back to STO space."

"The STO can do their own cleanup," Mingyu responded coldly. It was a far nicer response than Alexander expected after they made the man and his crew pariahs.

"Fair enough," he continued. He pulled up a design he had come up with in the wake of the attack.

The captain of the Destiny scratched his head. "Your defensive option is the clamshells you used to deliver components to the space station?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Alexander played the animation. While the exterior of the clamshell looked mostly the same as those he had used before, as soon as the front levered open, it exposed a laser. "They won't be as powerful as a ship laser, but we can crank out dozens of these things a week. They are limited to a single shot before they have to recharge, but if Lucas can target them all in the same spot to fire simultaneously, they will melt through any ship's armor with little effort. That's not all though."

The next image Alexander brought up was The Moonlit Destiny. Twelve points along the hull were highlighted before small domes appeared in those spots.

"You plan to arm the Destiny?" Mingyu asked in surprise.

Alexander shrugged. "Why not? You said it yourself, it's not safe out here. And we don't operate under the STO's rules. The smaller railguns are the same size as the ones protecting the landing pads so they aren't going to turn you into a warship. But you shouldn't need to worry about running from gunships or small corvettes anymore."

"…Arming us would make it impossible to return to STO space," the Captain commented quietly.

"It would. It's why I never brought up the option before."

"Changes like this would require the Destiny to remain docked for months. Are you sure that's wise?"

The fact that the man hadn't outright rejected the proposal put a smile on Alexander's face. "Normally, it would. But the turret pods are self-contained. It took me some time to figure out how to make that happen, but I was able to make it all work. All you need to do is route power to them and weld them to the outer hull. The rest is just software and training."

The man was quiet for a bit again. "Can we change out some of the railguns for point defense cannons? While shooting back sounds nice, I would prefer some way to defend against incoming missiles."

Alexander smirked and zoomed in on the ship. "I figured you might ask that." The much closer view of the ship showed the four railgun turrets, two on the top, and two on the bottom of the ship. There were four PDCs, one for each corner. "The point defense cannons use the common flechettes. You'll probably need to turn off your artificial gravity to run all the weapons systems until a dedicated power system can be put in place, but this should give you some much-needed peace of mind. What do you think?"

"I think you knew this conversation was coming a long time before I did," Na relented.

Alexander laughed lightly at that. "Rumors spread like wildfire down here, Captain. Once I heard your people were worried about more pirate attacks, I started coming up with a solution for you."

The man sighed, then turned away from the holo display to look directly at him. "If you can make these changes happen before the next pirate attack, my crew and I will stick around. If you can't, we'll jump out, and you won't see us again. That's the best I can offer." The man stuck out his hand and Alexander shook it without reservation.

"You just keep the ore coming, and I'll ensure anyone who tries to mess with this system the next time won't even live to regret that choice."

Alexander watched the man leave. Losing Mingyu at this stage would be disastrous to his plans, which is why he offered to arm The Moonlit Destiny. He was glad the man accepted the agreement.

He turned back to his creation and placed the supercomputer into the cradle. Once it had power, from a simple wall outlet, he tested the programming.

The computer effortlessly managed the three robots. Over the next six hours, Alexander kept adding more and more robots as they came out of the printer until the strain was too much even for the supercomputer and they started to glitch out. It seemed like the number of independent robots the computer was capable of handling was twelve. He decided to reduce the number of robots assigned to a controller to ten to ensure there was some wiggle room for more complex commands.

With that done, he checked on the printer in the station. It had already produced two of the turret pods for the Destiny. By tomorrow, the remaining pods would be complete, along with enough ammo for three reloads. His pod design wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Normally reloading them would require a spacewalk, but Alexander decided to include one of the construction bots for reloading to ease the burden on Destiny's crew.

Now that the arming of Destiny was underway, and his testing of the new supercomputer interface was complete, Alexander began printing out the components to build his first ship. If you could call the bundle of sensors and engines a ship. While he was printing those parts on the surface, to be shipped into space via the shuttle, the frame of the control ship was already under construction in orbit. It was a simple enough task for the unlinked robots to complete.