Before Alexander even made it back to the apartment, his beeped.

  Hello Mr. Kane.

  My name is Anthony Baru, Operations Lead for The Hawks of Ganos. We received your a report from Fidelity Properties. The Hawks currently have an ongoing operation, but that will be pleted in the few weeks. If that timeline works for you, please let us know and we start preparations. If not, we do have a subsidiary group that is avaible immediately and is more than capable of taking on this assig.

  Alexander was gd he had some wiggle room with the schedule, he really didn’t want to deal with some unknown subsidiary group when Violet had already vouched for the Hawks.

  He went over the schedule in his head. Captain Daniel wouldn’t be there for a month and he could postpone almost another month if hen there was the travel time to this p – which he hadn’t learhe name of yet– however long that would take. Figuring that information might be rather important, he popped up the info packet as he ehe apartment. Now that he had a band that held the i was much more veo use.

  Turns out the p didn’t even have a name, just some six-digit alphanumeric designation. That was fine. If people were living there, he was sure they had given it a name, he would just go by whatever they called it. Assuming it wasn’t something horrifically awful or obse.

  As for where this p was located? It turned out that was on the opposite side of STO spaot the plete opposite end though. If you fttehe star map and drew an ao it, the star system was about at the 120-degree mark from Petrov Station usih as the ter. It was also north of the gactic disk instead of south where Petrov y. Acc to the packet, the p orbited a blue dwarf star.

  From what he remembered of astronomy, which wasn’t much, blue dwarf stars were only supposed to be theoretical. Seems his knowledge of astronomy was a bit out of date if that wasn’t the case. It's probably why they built the research facility in the first pce.

  Before he got further pulled into the history of his new purchase, he respoo Mr. Baru and said that would be fine. He also supplied his travel itinerary and aimated arrival timeline. He couldn’t give him a time because he didn’t know how long it would take.

  It didn’t take long for Baru to reply.

  That will be fi is within our operational windoill coordih your ship before leaving STO space. Once we arrive at the p, we will maintain facility safety until the end of our tract. If you decide to retain our services beyond that six-month window, there will be additional expehough, just so you are aware.

  That wasn’t a surprise. He couldn’t expect hired soldiers to just sit around waiting for him without getting paid. He sent an affirmative response a back to the info about the p.

  It was habitable, barely. There was an atmosphere, but the sulfur tent was so high, it smelled of rotten eggs all the time. That wasn’t him guessing, it was written right into the dot. Not great, but air scrubbers should be able to take care of that.

  Nothing but a few desert pnts could survive on the harsh surface. It wasn’t hot, in fact, the p ran rather cool, never getting above 50 degrees Fahre. It was just super dry and the radiation from the blue star was higher thah.

  The packet also tained a survey of the local area around the facility. The ground was chock-full of metals and rare-earth elements. Mining them did not seem to be a priority when they set up the facility though. sidering how easy it was to extract the same minerals from asteroids, he wasn’t surprised nobody had boing to this p simply to mi for resources.

  As for the facility itself, he had to pause when he saw the square footage. Violet had warned him it was bigger than he might want, but this went way beyond what he expected. The facility was over four hundred million square feet of space. That wasn’t a facility, that was aire city. Almost fifteen square miles to be exact. A small city to be sure, but a city heless. And looking at the design dots, that only included the livable space. It didn’t even at for the sub-structure or maintenance areas.

  If there weren’t people living there, he was going to have a really tough time maintaining the pce even if Yulia helped him. Maybe he should have looked at the size of the property befreeing to this purchase. Oh well, it was too te now. Not that he could afford to be choosy. With everything going on, he was more than happy to have a new home locked in so early. It made pnning so much easier.

  ***

  Alexander spent the few weeks going over the specifics with Mr. Baru. The man was all business, which suited Alexander just fine.

  The Operations Lead brought up a few s that Alexander hadn’t even thought about.

  The first major he had was if there was a breathable atmosphere ihe facility.

  While it was true the p had a breathable atmosphere, it was extremely thin. With the thimosphere, it made it feel like there was half as much oxygen as you normally needed acc to the previous research done on the p. It was low enough to cause breathing issues.

  The rest of the pary research was rather slim. The inal inhabitants of p Y6X-3H2-4 were more ied iar, and only cursory studies were done on the surfad around the facility.

  This meant they would need supplemental oxygen, or some way to increase the oxygey in the facility, unless he wanted Yulia to suffer from hypoxia. That wasn’t an option. The facility probably had systems io do all of this already, but Baru said he should pn for any such systems to be offline or at best malfuning. sidering the age of the facility, the man robably correct.

  He took Mr. Baru’s suggestion a over the blueprints until he located these systems. Then he purchased the requisite manuals to make repairs and print any parts he might o fix or even pletely repce the units. He lucked out here. Because the facility was so old, and the systems so antiquated, getting the manuals was rather cheap. Alexahought of buying pns for newer enviroal systems but he couldn’t justify the cost. The old systems had funed for over a hundred years so repairing them should be fihe st che at the station some eighty years ago said the enviroal systems were still funing within the lower range of tolerance. Eighty-plus years of probably hadn’t dohem any good though.

  The sed issue Baru brought up was facility iy. Being nearly two hundred years old, there was bound to be leaks and rust. The p did get rain, even if it was few and far between. And because of the high tration of sulfur imosphere, it was heavily acidic. So there were bound to be issues to resolve there.

  The facility had an answer for this already though. A rge, fully robotiufacturing dome was listed on the pns. It robably used to create all the pos or repts the research facility needed.

  Once he finished manufacturing any repair items he might need, Alexander would probably end up turning the spato his personal b and research ter.

  With that in mind, he wao ensure he had the best start. He purchased three more printers like the one he had used to manufacture the Zephyr’s parts. Then he rented a ste room until the ship arrived. He knew how much cargo room the Zephyr had thanks to his unications with Jasper.

  Alexander hadn’t intended on taking much more than food and water with him inally, but knowing ay space aboard the ship would be wasted space, he decided to fill it up with everything he could think of. And he had a lot of moo work with.

  on his list was a smelter. The one he purchased wasn’t the same as the behemoth Petrov statiohe smaller unit was capable of processions of material a day. And eve took up a siderable amount of space.

  He didn’t care. As far as he was ed, it was a requirement for what he po do sihe facility didn’t show any form of advanced processing on the schematics. From what he could tell, it mainly just used a retively cheap steel alloy in its stru with the exterior covered by a thick t-like paste mixed from the local dirt and rocks to mitigate the damage the rains caused. This was likely built using the refihat was listed on the pns.

  It certainly made logical seo use what was locally avaible instead of shipping in all the materials. Set a few automated mining maes down, or even drone-operated ones from orbit, and the work could go on all day every day until it was pleted.

  Alexander didn’t have the kind of money o buy automated manufacturing drones. He would have to do things the hard way. Which was fine, he liked building and fixing things anyway.

  He couldn’t fet medical supplies. First for Yulia, and sed to help keep his cover. Of course, he also had to at for the fake medical pod he was using. Losing that space was annoying but necessary.

  Alexander wao buy more of those quick heal meds the doctors used on Yulia, but the man hadn’t been lying when he said they got a limited quantity. The bare minimum to purchase oreatment was ten millios. And that would have to be shipped from the manufacturer's p in. Acc to the sales page, he might get them in six months to a year depending on the wait list.

  Alexander was forced to abandon that hope. The price was staggeringly ridiculous. Despite that, he would have been willing to pay it. But he wasn’t willing to wait a possible year for them to arrive. And he doubted the pany would ship them outside STO spayway. Something that was so sought after would certainly be a target for criminals.

  Instead of wasting his money on a siem, he purchased every avaible medication and diagnostic pieaery that was avaible for sale aboard Petrov station. All of that only amouo two millios. He may not know how to operate any of the devices, but he would learn.

  That brought him to something he almost overlooked on his list of purchases, knowledge. He bought up any guide, walkthrough, teical manual, and blueprint that he could for every bit of teology he could find in the facility blueprints. He wao uand every moving part of that structure and how to fix it. After that, he spent ane k of moo get the printer dots for both Omni and Sinorus engines Css 1 through Css 4. This way he could study their designs.

  He had plenty of funds left over and could have purchased the Css 5 and 6 schematics, but he decided against that. Both of those required orbital facilities to manufacture them. Purchasing the Css 7 and 8 ones was simply out of the question sihey required him to be a military tractor.

  Alexander had no desire to further the STO’s military capabilities or their bureaucratiightmare of gover.

  That left Css 9 engines, but those were experimental and weren’t required to have avaible schematics. However, he had seen a few avaible for sale from the smaller panies.

  That wasn’t the st of his purchases though. sidering he wao be pletely free from the other manufacturer's influence, he o take it a step further. He purchased whole ship schematics as well as items he knew he couldn’t print like advanced puter processors.

  This ricy, but so worth it. One ship schematic covered every bit of teology aboard that ship. sidering he nning on arriving aboard the Zephyr, he simply purchased that ship's design.

  This purchase finally gave him his first look at the power pnt as well as the FTL systems. A ship schematic didn’t go into as much detail on how stuff worked as a separate dot might, but it did give you printable files to make rept parts. He could figure it out from there.

  And finally, Alexander purchased dozens of learning modules. They started from early elementary school a all the way to advanced engineering. He purchased as many diverse modules as he could purchase. He wao ensure he had a wide source of knowledge. Although not the inal reason for doing so, he realized if Omni was monit his purchases, it would make it harder for them to figure out what he to.

  With all of his purchases plete, he looked at his much-diminished bank at. Even with all the spending, he still had more mohan most would make in their lifetime. After receiving his cut from the attack, he still had over a hundred millios. It was a good thing the facility had been so cheap. If he had spent the two hundred million he pnned on the new property, he would be i after this round of purchases.