Blue Star Enterprises

Chapter 2-42

LOCATION: EDEN’S END

SYSTEM: Y6X-3H2

DATE: 2400

The final jump into Y6X-3H2 was a relief for Alexander. Not that the trip back had been problematic or anything. It had been without issue, which was exactly how Alexander liked it. He was just glad to be home.

As far as he could tell, everything looked the same as when they left, but they were still a few days out. He sent Yulia a message letting her know they were back. She was probably asleep since it was nighttime on Eden’s End. That was fine, it gave him time to ping the facility and get an update on how things were going.

It didn’t take long to get a reply, which was far faster than it should have been. "Hey, Alex," a sleepy Lucas responded as he sat in the chair that faced the holo camera. "I assumed you were going to inquire about how everything was going when you returned, so instead of waiting for you to ask, I’ve been compiling a status update to send you. Oh, this is a recording by the way, in case you haven’t already realized that. I simply sent daily updates to the nearest cameras where you were likely to appear, and as soon as they picked up Fury’s transponder, it triggered this response."

Alexander chuckled as the video cut out and was replaced with the attached file. He was getting predictable, but he was glad Lucas understood him well enough to have this information prepared well in advance. The man continued to surprise him with his efforts to grow and improve.

Lucas had even itemized the report to show the status of projects in order of completion time. The tunnel project was the first up, and it showed as completed. The report detailed some issues the workers ran into during the process, but the other engineers were able to fix those without delaying the project for more than a few days.

Moving the lower-priority manufacturing to a new space was also marked as complete. That was a surprise, but a good one. The new manufacturing space had been cleared only a week prior to their departure so he had no clue how long it would take to move the older printers over there and set them up.

Alexander had needed to do this to make room in his workshop for the newer printers, as well as the next generation of the manufacturing cells that were being made with these more accurate printers. The drawback there was the lack of advanced computer chips to run these new robots. Once Jasper and the Hawks return, his issues with processors should be handled for the immediate future.

A large chunk of the items Alexander had asked the man to purchase were computer chips, securing an additional fifty advanced chips and five more supercomputer chips. It was a difficult decision to make since one supercomputer chip cost as much as twenty of the advanced chips. He wanted enough to outfit the remaining three frigates, as well as two more to make additional control ships to increase construction and mining efforts in the system. He would need more eventually, but that was a good start.

Spending that much money might seem like a poor choice since the control ships were limited to ten robots per ship, but those ten robots worked better for complex tasks. He ran into this issue when removing the damage from Fury and then towing it back. The robots had to be reprogrammed and then had to be manually synced as they learned individually. The single robots were more useful for simple repetitive processes, whereas the supercomputer-linked ones didn’t need any oversight. You simply gave them a set of instructions and they carried it out while learning at the same time. So while there would still be a place for singular bots, the linked ones were far more useful for Alexander’s plans going forward.

The next item on the list was Eden’s Resolve. Lucas had been nice enough to include a video of the ship’s construction. Alexander played the recording.

The time-lapse showed the ship being towed into position and stripped. It reminded Alexander of a memory he had when he watched a time-lapse video of marine life stripping a dead whale to bare bones. It was more eerie when the carcass of the ship started to get put back together. The video stopped with only a small portion of the interior work complete, but it was going faster than he thought possible.

Fury had taken about five months to disassemble, repair, and reassemble. It looked like the machine learning had reduced the first two parts to just a month. To be fair, the pirate ship from the second attack had less overall damage to the substructure than Fury had. Based on the progress though, he suspected the ship would be complete far sooner than he had originally estimated, once again proving his use of the linked bots was the right choice.

The last item on the list was the facility progress. It was still slow, but they reported that the main dome windows were finally starting to go up. They also repurposed the boring machines, that were used to create the tunnels to the weapon emplacements, to use in clearing the blockages from the transport tunnels. Getting those tunnels cleared and an actual train up and running would likely speed up efforts to repair the rest of the facility. He would have prioritized that work, but there were large sections that had collapsed and he had other things on his mind.

Alexander was about to close out the report when another video popped up. This one showed Yulia.

"This is a welcome home message," someone said to her off-screen. He was pretty sure it was Nancy, the Head of Learning.

Yulia crossed her arms. "I don’t wanna talk to him."

The woman sighed out of frame, "Yulia, we spoke about this. He didn’t leave you because he wanted to, he had to go because nobody else could do it. There is no reason to be upset at your dad for this." When that didn’t seem to get through to the intractable girl, the woman tried something else. "How about you welcome him home? It’ll make him happy. I’m sure you like it when he welcomes you back from school?"

Yulia turned toward the camera, clearly still angry. "Welcome home," then she got up from the chair and ran off. Alexander didn’t miss the tears that were starting to form in the girl’s eyes before she vanished from the video frame.

It broke his heart that she was still mad at him for leaving.

A moment later, Nancy appeared on screen. "Sorry about that, Alex. We’ll wait a few days for her to calm down and try to record a better video. I really hope you don’t see this one." The woman reached out and the video flicked off.

He didn’t know when that video was recorded, but it seemed like Yulia hadn’t been willing to record a second or that the others were even worse. He could understand why. Each attempt was probably like ripping open the wound and giving her a fresh reminder that he had left her behind, further adding to her anger over the entire situation.

Alexander would need to have a long discussion with the girl. While he would love to be here all the time, there were times when his work was simply going to take him out of the system. And while there might be times he could bring her along, most likely he wouldn’t be able to. She needed to understand that. He wasn’t upset with her about her anger toward him. That was to be expected. Yulia could be mad at him all she liked, but taking it out on others wasn’t right.

A few days later, they docked at the station. Yulia hadn’t bothered to respond to the message that he sent her. He had been forced to check in with her friend’s parents to make sure everything was okay.

They said Yulia had been a bit sullen during his absence but had otherwise not done anything out of the ordinary. Sarah’s parents did say Yulia was spending most of her free time in the carts.

Alexander shouldn’t have been surprised by that. He thanked them once again for watching her and transferred them some contributions for their efforts, even though they tried to turn it down.

"Bossman!" Branston threw his arms out wide as he stepped out of the airlock. "How was your trip?"

"Productive," he replied, shaking the man’s now extended hand. "How are things going for you while I was gone?"

"Rather a bit more boring than usual, Alex. There just isn’t as much need for me to shuttle stuff into orbit when you’re gone."

Alexander laughed at that. "I’m glad to hear you say that. Things are going to get busy again very soon."

"Oh," the man quirked an eyebrow. "Do tell."

Alexander filled his only pilot in on what was going on.

The man didn’t look all that happy that Alexander had agreed to work with the STO. "I kinda thought you would shun the STO, given what I’ve heard, but I get where you are coming from. Credits are credits and you can’t run a business without them. So I have some passengers to ferry down?"

"Yes. They are Captain Na’s family. There are some young kids, so no showboating."

The man rolled his eyes. "I can be professional when the need arises. I’ll be so gentle that they won’t even realize we’ve touched down."

"As for the other stuff, it’ll probably be a week or two before I get those on track. I also need a third shuttle," Alexander muttered as he thought about possible bottlenecks and issues.

"A third?" Branston asked in confusion. "Did something happen to shuttle two?"

"Huh? Oh, no. After I unload the two smelters, I plan on leaving the second shuttle for Fury’s use. With Resolve being ahead of schedule, maybe I should work on getting two more shuttles up and running so Resolve can have one as well. I want to make sure Eden’s End always has at least one backup shuttle, maybe two. I don’t think the remaining pirate shuttles can be repaired anytime soon though. At best, I can have four working shuttles, unless I start designing my own or divert the production line for the dome for replacement shuttle windows."

"My vote’s for the experimental shuttle," Branston smiled.

Alexander chuckled. "I’ll think about it. Oh, it looks like your passengers have arrived."

After Branston left with Mingyu, his crew, and the entire Na family, Alexander put the Fury in standby mode and engaged the slave functions that would allow the ship’s weapons to be remotely operated from the ground.

Once that was done, he quickly dropped off and installed the two new smelters, nearly doubling his refining capacity in space. His ability to keep up with the material coming in hadn’t really been a bottleneck since he mostly fixed the first smelter. Once Jasper arrived with the main replacement smelter, Alexander was planning to retire the damaged one to the surface again. Maybe he could spend some time to figure out why it wasn’t working properly anymore.

With that complete, he checked on the limited printers that were cranking out small parts and panels. There was a huge stack of them off to the side, held in place by a few gravity plates that were scavenged off some of the ships. If it wasn’t for those plates, the stack of manufactured items would have been floating all over the bay.

He watched as another panel finished and a robotic arm whipped over to retrieve it and deposit it on the pile. It was a waste of space to print all this stuff ahead of time, but there wasn’t nearly enough room in the bay for more than two printers and the smelter. Adding the other two smelters had crowded the small ore storage area even further. After Eden’s Resolve was complete, Alexander would probably remove the printers from the area.

It’s not that they weren’t helpful, but his future plans called for something a bit different, which would make the first-generation printers rather redundant.

He docked the shuttle back in the Fury’s hangar and waited for Branston to pick him up. While he waited, he contemplated what to do about the other report he had received from Damien.

Less than a week after his departure, Shall had broken into his storage room. The man had carried out the robbery when Damien was asleep and almost managed to get away. Security was paying attention though and received the alert about the unauthorized exit from the facility. A few railgun darts through the man’s ship from the landing pad turrets made it so taking off was not an option.

They managed to take Shall into custody after that, but the report was light on details of how that all went down. He doubted the shifty smuggler had gone quietly, but there wasn’t a smoking crater on the tarmac, so he was sure it was quite the story.

Alexander wasn’t sure what the man’s plan was or what he had even taken. Even if he managed to get off the ground, there was no way he was getting past the larger railguns or the net of defensive lasers. Then again, the man may not even know about those. Shall wasn’t exactly privy to what was going on in space.

He sighed. All he wanted to do was come home, spend time with Yulia, and work on his projects, but once again he was having to deal with other people’s nonsense.