Alexander peered into the engine e of the Zephyr. It had been perforated in a dozen pces and a rge k was missing off of one side.

  He retty sure he could fix it if he had a big enough printer. But he didn’t and that wasn’t the only problem. Other pos of the engine were also damaged. It was a miracle the thing hadn’t exploded.

  Alexander lowered himself using the industrial lift. It was time to break the bad o Captain Daniel.

  He found the man speaking to another member of his crew. The Captain noticed him approag and patted his crew member on the shoulder before sending them off and greeting him.

  “So, Alexander. you fix it?”

  “I believe I . But I do not have a printer big enough to make a hrust e.”

  The Captain rubbed his in thought for a moment before responding. “How much for a printer?”

  Alexander motioned for the Captain to follow him over to a terminal. After doing a quick search, he brought up a model that he was certain would be barely rge enough to hahe rgest po, which was the engine e. It wasn’t cheap by any means but it was what he o plete the job.

  The Captain took one look at the price before he stuck his credit chip into the mae and pressed purchase on it. “Alright.”

  For a moment, Alexander just stood there. He thought for sure the man would balk at the cost. This robably a stupid move, but Captain Daniel seemed like a standup man so he had to ask.

  “Why didn’t you haggle or even bat a the cost of the printer?”

  The Captain ughed. “You haven’t been in business long have you?”

  Alexander made his holographic face shake bad forth.

  “I kind of figured. Even with the other costs you quoted me, including this printer, you are still only chargienth of what the other quotes came in at. The reason I didn’t balk at the cost of the printer is that you are also the only person oation illing to repair it instead of repg it.”

  “Is it too te to charge you more?” Alexander mented, making the Captain ugh.

  The captain cpped Alexander on the side since he couldn’t reach his shoulder. “We will both e out of this ahead, my friend. So long as your work is good, I will let you keep this printer.”

  Now that wasn’t something Alexander had expected. The prihat Captain Daniel had just purchased ore than aire year's worth of rent for his small space. He o do more ship repairs, it seemed that was where the money was at.

  Alexander smiled. “Yenerous Captain. I will use this as a learning opportunity, and I will try not to disappoint you with my work.”

  “Bah,” the man waved away his . “I’m sure it will be fine. And none of this Captain nonsense. My friends call me Jasper.”

  “Thank you for this opportunity, Jasper.”

  Alexander got to work dismantling the engine cowling while he waited for the prio be delivered.

  He wasn’t sure where he was going to store the massive mae after the Zephyr and their crew left, but that roblem he would be happy to figure out ter.

  It took a full day for the prio arrive. sidering the size and very specific use of a prihis rge, it was likely stored in some dusty room on the sed ring. Having it take so long to show up was fih Alexander. He simply worked through the night, disassembling the engine and removing the damaged parts.

  In some way, it just felt natural to him to be disassembling and fixing a ship. He had no memories of being meically ined though so he wasn’t sure where that feeling came from. From what he could piece together of his old life, he retty sure he had been some sort of b researcher. The specifics of that time were garbled though.

  By the time m arrived Alexander had the entire engine and cowling disassembled and id ly on the hangar de the order it o go ba. He had stopped by his shop at one point to print out a few of the smaller pos that needed repg. Other parts could have fit on his printer, but he didn’t trust the cheap prio do a proper job for the more important pos.

  At about mid-m the printer finally showed up. It took about an hour to assemble a on the far side of the hangar. Although Alexander wasn’t happy with just a simple test. If he was going to do this job, he was going to do it to the best of his ability. He set about building the interrupter. Only this was much rger than his previous design. It o be to fit the much bigger printer and also produce a rge enough interruption field.

  It had been months since his early tests of the device that had broken his first printer. Alexaweaked the design siderably sihen. Assuming he did his calcutions correctly, the new design should be much more effit at g out the artificial gravity field. Although he hadn’t been able to test if that was true or not.

  It may seem like a dangerous gamble to use an ued piece of teology on this very very expensive printer. But the overall fun of the interrupter device hadn’t ged. And he khat at least worked.

  As he added the adjustments, he was aware of a steady stream of Zephyr crew ing and going. It was much the same as the day before. Some would stick around to watch for a bit before heading off to the station or into the ship. If this had been shortly after he first opened his shop, he may have found the attention uling. He didn’t mind it so muymore. The shift of attitude seemed to happen around the time when Yulia started visiting him. Without the girl, he may have ended up as a ky old hermit, like Yuri.

  With the final piece of his modification in pce, he checked the bolts to ehe device was securely fasteo the floor. He would have preferred to weld it to the deck, but this wasn’t his hangar so he couldn’t modify anything. He could only use the existing mounting locations which were thankfully standard.

  He made his way over to the trol panel for the printer and got it powered up. It beeped for a bit as it readied its material ste tanks. Ohat was dohe s turned green and it fshed into the programming menu.

  Alexander fed it a small poo start with. As it began to print, he ran into the same issue he had with the cheap printer. But he had already expected that to occur. He quickly adjusted the settings and started again. This time the printer hummed along happily as the po rapidly priself.

  Ohe print finished, a ser quickly gave him a 3D view of the part’s internals. He wished his smaller printer had this sort of quality trol feature. It made ensuring the part was funal much easier than stig it on a separate ser.

  As the parts were pleted, he set them off to the side and input the oo get printed. He worked through the rest of the parts before moving the newly printed pos over to a testing station. He was gd the hangars came standard with the devices.

  As he was running the diagnostic tests an insistency popped up. There was a small varian the efficy output of his new pos pared to the design specifications. Only 2% or so, but there shouldn’t be any.

  He approached Jasper sometime around dio rey the issue. The Captain and crew were lounging in a break area on the far side of the hangar. “Excuse me for interrupting. I have a moment of your time, Jasper?”

  “What’s up, Alexander?” the Captain asked after they walked a distance from the crew.

  “Would it be possible for me to remove and examine some pos from the ines?”

  “Why?”

  “I found a slight variand I just want to e isn’t an error in the calibration tool.”

  “I don’t see an issue with that. We arely in a hurry to leave. Our delivery tract was retracted when we failed to show up on time anyway.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Jasper waved away his . “Hardly your fault. This happened even before we docked at Petrov station. Besides, the downtime is appreciated by the crew. Even if most of it is spent making sure the ship is in tip-top shape.”

  After the two separated, Alexander spent the night pulling apart the other two engines aing the pos. The testing device was correct. There was an even rger discrepancy with the old pos, likely due to age or wear and tear. Acc to the device, his newly printed parts were better than the inals. That shouldn’t be possible.

  It had to be due to the low-gravity printing process because he hadn’t ged anything else in the design. It was easy enough to test if he was right though. He disabled his modification and ran another set of prints. These new parts matched the manufacturer's specificatioly.

  He had to scratch his metaphorical head at this. Certainly, a pany the size of Omni had access t printing. So how could they have missed such a simple way to improve their product line?

  It was a question he had no answer for and it wasn’t relevant to his work. He did have a solution to the efficy differences, in his design, pared to the inal he had actally stumbled upon though. He simply printed out three full sets of the rept pos using his method. Alexander could have simply installed the inal manufacturer-designed pos, but why would he do that when he could upgrade the engines for the very same time, money, or effort?

  By the time the m rolled around, Alexander had the two undamaged engines mostly ba w order. The Captain must have noticed all the parts lying around and came over to speak with him.

  “Did we take more damage than I thought?” Jasper asked in .

  “No. Remember that variaold you about?”

  The man nodded.

  “Well, some of the pos I pulled for testing were worn out slightly, I decided to repce them t all the engines in lih the new parts specs.”

  “I appreciate the thought, Alexander, but that wasn’t in our inal deal. We could have adjusted the thrust output aboard the ship to pensate. How much of a variance did you find?”

  “The cost was negligible, it just took a bit more material and time. As for the varia was a small amount. Around two pert.”

  The Captain’s eyes went wide. “Two pert? In thrust?!”

  Alexander shook his head. “Efficy.”

  The man turoward the modified printer. “And you did it with that?” he motioned.

  Alexander nodded.

  “I know you told me you never worked on ship engines before, but if I was skeptical about that before, even with your quid effit work, I’m not anymore. Alexander, a two pert increase in efficy is huge.”

  “It is?” Alexander asked in fusion. He k would make trying to bahe engines out annoying but other than that he didn’t see the big deal.

  “Absolutely! If a new engine model es out with a .25% increase in efficy, the big shipping panies gobble them up. Do you know why?”

  It wasn’t hard to guess now that Jasper had poi out. “Fuel.”

  “Exactly. Using only a fra less fuel per trip might not seem like much. But when you’re burning thousands or even tens of thousands of credits in fuel for each shipment, those savings quickly add up. My God man, you ister this improvement so you sell it. And so someone else doesn’t steal it from you.”

  Alexander didn’t think he had done anything all that special but the Captain seemed to think he had. “I will do as you suggest. Thank you, Jasper.”

  The man smiled broadly. “No, no. Thank you. With these improvements to the Zephyr, I believe I’m going to be outbidding a fair portion of my petition for the foreseeable future, and it's all thanks to you. I want you to have my personal ID. If you need anything. And I mean anything, you tact me. Got it?”

  Alexander nodded.

  Jasper went to walk away but paused. “Oh also, call me if you have any more improvements like this. I will happily test them out.”