Alexander arrived outside the doors to the manufacturing hub along with Travers and his team. Jallen had to return to his duty.

  He liked Jallen, the man was good with children and seemed to know just what to say to calm Yulia. He wasn’t quite sure about Travers yet. The man had been quiet the entire way and their iion irium had been brief. He also didn’t know how he was with children as Yulia had promptly fallen asleep after asking Alexao pick her up and carry her.

  He couldn’t bme the girl, they had quite aing m so far.

  “This is it,” Travers decred as he walked over to a busted entry pad off to the side of the rge set of dual doors. “Aeam was on this side of the facility, so I don’t know if this lock was broken before or after they got here. sidering how corroded it looks behind the box, I’m gonna say it was broken a long time ago.”

  “You don’t have to worry about who broke what,” Alexander assured the man. “I knew going in that there was going to be a rge amount of repairs ahead of me.”

  The man grunted in aowledgment. “Still, it looks bad on the Hawks if they are running around smashing things just to get in.” After some fiddling with the wires, the door troller beeped and the doors squealed open a few inches.

  “Those zy shits from B. There’s no way they ehis room to clear it properly. I’ll go to the atrium a a hydraulic jack to force the doors open.”

  “That won’t be necessary, I ha. If you don’t mind.” He held a sleeping Yulia out to Travers, who looked a bit surprised before he put his on away and took the girl. “This won’t take long, please step aside.” The group of meraries moved out of the way as Alexaepped up to the opening. He slipped both arms into the spad pulled.

  The droaned and for a moment, didn't appear it was going to open. Then with a loud metallic screech, the door slid open a few more inches. Alexander adjusted his hands and pulled again. The door moved much easier now, but still only opened enough to allow him to pass through.

  “After you,” he waved.

  Travers nodded and hahe sleeping girl back before he pulled out his rifle. “Go in assuming the room is hostile. On me.” With that he moved into the room, sweeping his fshlight one way while the guy swept his beam the other. Alexander waited while the rest of the team filtered into the room and cleared it. He was more than a little impressed by their professionalism.

  sidering he hadn’t been able to watch them in a during the initial operation to clear this facility, this gave him a good glimpse of how the Hawks worked. He could now see why they were the premier merary pany on Ganos, and why Violet from Fidelity Properties had reehem.

  “Clear,” came a series of calls.

  “It’s safe to enter, Mr. Kane.”

  “Thank you,” Alexander replied as he slipped through the barely wide enough gap. “And please just call me Alexander.”

  Travers nodded.

  Alexander walked over to where he recalled the light switch to be from the blueprints. With no surprise, he found it was missing. And so were the wires that led to it. “Any way we light the room up?” he asked.

  One of the men plucked a ball from a pou his belt. He shook it vigorously and the ball started to glow softly. Then the man hurled it into the dark room. After a few seds, the softly glowing ball exploded intht white light as it slowly hovered in the air on ter-rotating bdes that had popped out from the ter.

  “Fre droravers answered the unasked question.

  “!”

  The group chuckled quietly at Alexander’s ent.

  “Yeah, they e in handy,” Travers smiled.

  Alexander surveyed the room and frowned. “Where are all the robotic assembly maes?”

  He had gotten an iory of what items to expect when he arrived. And a list of items that might be here. The vehicles had been listed uhe ‘might be’ n so that’s why he wasn’t surprised to see them missing. But the robots had been listed as ‘present’ with a notation that they were in ste mode. All Alexander could see through the flickering shadows cast by the drone was a rge empty room, where things had once been.

  It was clear where the robots had once been by the ptforms left behind and the too- spots in the crete floor.

  Travers had been speaking into his radio while Alexander sed the room. He spoke up. “Nobody located any robotics moved to other areas of the facility. Someone likely stripped this room and sold them off. Probably quite some time ago going by how rusted and uhe door was. Do you want us to question the people to see if anyone knows what happeo them?”

  Alexander shook his avatar's head. He would have likely had to recycle the robots or rebuild them pletely anyway. There was also no point acg the people here of the theft without proof. If he wao fix this pce up in any reasonable sort of timeframe, he was going to heir help.

  That being said, he would have to make it very clear going forward that ibalizing the facility would get the person responsible and their family immediately expelled. He wasn’t going to spend all his time fixing this pce up just to have people stealing stuff stantly. “No. I will have a talk with Damien. I was hoping they weren’t in too bad of a shape so I could just fix them. Having them missing pletely is going to set my pns back by quite a bit though.”

  He sighed internally. “I think I’m going to start by fixing this door. you gentlemen notify the engi my cargo to this space? I sort through it after that.”

  Travers nodded before talking into his radio again.

  Somehow, Yulia was still fast asleep in his arms, despite the bright light h only fifty feet away and the screeg of the rusted door. He was beginning to suspect she had stayed up all night in her excitement.

  W while carrying her wasn’t ideal, but there was no soft surface to set his daughter down on. So he did his best. sidering he was a robot, his best retty damn good.

  It didn’t take him long to remove the panels along the bottom of the door. A pool of stagnant yellow water greeted him when he moved the heavy pieces off to the side. And if he could breathe, he was sure the smell of rotten eggs would be permeating the rht about now.

  That expihe rust. This part of the facility retty far away from the colpsed se, so water and rust infiltration shouldn’t have reached this far.

  He reached his free hand into the brackish water a around for the drain hole. It took a bit to find it and pull the rag out that had been stuffed i reminded Alexander of the feeling you got when trying to remove food stu the sink drain. He shivered mentally at that thought. Why couldn’t he have fotten something like that instead of all the other important stuff? Bleh!

  As soon as the rag was removed, the couple of inches of disgusting water drained away, revealing the mess hidden for who knows how long.

  The once e-coated track itted rusty mess. And one of the rollers had fallen into a se that had pletely rusted away. It was no wohe door wouldn’t open any further. It would o be pletely repced. To do that though, he needed one of his printers set up, and they would never fit through the doors.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Travers?”

  “Yes, Mr.– Alexander?”

  “ you show me to my residence? I o put her down before I work properly.”

  Travers picked two men to watch the open door before leading him to the small room down the hall that would be his apartment. It had been lived in by someone, but that someone was now waiting aboard the Talon for a trip back to STO space to face their punishment. It’s one of the reasons he picked the room.

  “This is the closest living space to the workshop. It’s also far away from any others. That is probably why the individual we arrested was living here. You may want to scrub this pce with industrial ers as soon as possible,” the man wrinkled his nose. "Smells like body odor and illicit substances.”

  “Do you think Yulia will be fine for the night?” If the room was that bad, he might just find the est bedding he could and move it bato the manufacturier.

  “If she keeps her mask on, it should be fine. I will leave a few people here to keep an eye on her and alert you if she wakes up.”

  “I know this isn’t part of your duty, so thank you.”

  “Use us as hat’s why we’re here.”

  ***

  It took Alexander four hours to remove one of the heavy steel doors from the tracks. And that was only thanks in part to Travers and his men assisting with the hydraulic ram after he finally relented ahem grab it.

  From there he was able to move the printer into the space piece by piece. Printing out a new duide was not ideal. It was rougher than the inal and had to be printed in parts because the only printer he could fit through the opening wasn’t rge enough to do it as a single piece.

  He really needed a the or precision grinder, but a door that could open was better than a door that couldn’t.

  They reattached the door and pushed it into the pocket of the wall. It shook as they moved it, but it wasn’t as bad as he had feared. The sed door followed, and he reinstalled that as well. Now that he had full access to the room, the engineers began bringing in his cargo using portable jacks.

  The manual devices looked almost exactly like Alexander remembered from four hundred years ago. He supposed there wasn’t muprove on the simple oving devices. He did see the wheels had been repced with omni rollers though.

  While he worked on unpag and printing things, the Hawk’s engineers started examining the wiring in the room. They didn’t have anything else to do, so they just kinda stuck around.

  He was gd for the help. They fished out the old corroded wiring and Alexander hahem a brand new roll from his iory. He didn’t have enough of the electrical wire to rewire the eation but he had enough to redo this room and a few others. He had expected to have a wire mae here to make more, but that was gone along with everything else. Repg it was not high on his priority list at the moment.

  After a few hours of work, the lights in the cavernous room flickered fitfully to life. The few that still worked at least. He added ‘printing new LED lights’ to his growing list of to-do items. At least the main power to the room was still funal. That did mean people had to steer clear of the hacked-off copper cables that hung limply from where the robot stations used to reside though.

  With the lighting w, the engineers moved to the task of assembling the printers. If it wasn’t for them assisting, he would still be mug about in the dark or with the stupid door. It roof that not even he could do everything. He would have to thank them for their assistance.

  Alexander made a o speak with Damien to see if they had any engineers who wao help. Ohe manufacturing b and running, he would quickly find himself too sed with tasks to actually finish them all. And it was better to find out now, while the Hawks were still here, rather than find out in six months that there were no qualified individuals among the locals.

  He doubted that was the case though. The drifters had mao keep this pce operational for who knows how many years. Even if they weren’t ventionally traihere had to be people who lived here who knew how certain things worked. If they didn’t, he had the learning modules to train anyone who wao learn. It wouldn’t e free though.