With his progress deyed until Lucas finished cheg over the code, Alexander shifted his attention to other projects.

  The main attention of his focus while he waited for Lucas, was assisting with the facility repair efforts and preparing for when the Hawks would leave.

  That date was ing quicker than he would like and there was still quite a bit of work to do. Making sure the refueling station stayed on track after they left was at the top of his priority list. Some of the pos to ehat happened were already in the queue for unch. Mainly the parts for the rge robotic arms that he designed for capturing the pods. The rest he was getting ready to manufacture now.

  The robot arms weren’t anything special, simply mimig the robot assemblers he had in his manufacturier. They were just much longer.

  Alexander was still putting the finishing touches on the robots that would repce the Hawks’ engineers when they left. He didn’t want to just create single-purpose robots. That would be areme waste of resources. But he also couldn’t pack every ceivable tool known to man into oher, or that would make the things massive and impossible to build. He also had limited space to work with. If the robots were too big, it would make them impossible to unto orbit with their current capabilities.

  The design he decided to go with implemented sable tooling. Each robot had onboard ste for up to four tools and could switch them out depending on the work it erf. Three articuted arms, simir to the ones he built for his ste room robot, gave them the flexibility Alexander hem to have. With the upgraded robotic appendages, he didn’t o worry about stru issues as much.

  With the station being just a rge hollow regle built frur scaffoldiions sisting of round pipes, it made it easy to cmp things to the interior. Probably why they desighe structure that way in the first pce if he had to guess. No matter the reason, Alexander used the scaffolding design to great effect by implementing a series of rollers for his robot workers. He thought about making other designs that would work elsewhere but decided against it for now. It would increase the plexity of the robots and mobility wasn’t the moment. He just hem to run along a set path like a train.

  That didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking ahead. He desighe roller portion to be sed out, just like all the other pos on the robots.

  The rollers securely fastehe robot to the two outer rails of the triangur struts, allowing it to move bad forth along that axis. This meant they couldn’t move away from the side they were attached to but that was fi did mean he had to build four of the robots, one for each side of the structure. The maes came with log cmps, both physical and magic to ehey wouldn’t wobble around ohey were positioo start work. With two arms to hold the material in pce, and a third arm to do the work, they should be able to plete the station ahead of the Talon’s Chief Engineer’s predis or so he hoped. Assuming no supply issues cropped up.

  He sent the file to the printer ao retrieve four of the advanced puter chips. His generic breadboard chips weren’t going to cut it for the robots. Alexander had pns to build a puter chip manufacturing mae. Nothing that was capable of building the types of chips made today, mind you, but he thought he might be able to mimic the types of puter chips made in the 1980s or '90s with his current manufacturing capabilities. But he hadn’t gotten time to work on that project yet. It was high on his list though, because of the limited amount of advanced and super-puter chips he had on hand.

  He input the code into the door's lock. The room had previously been secured with a biometrics lock, but obviously, that didn’t do him any good. So a simple alphanumeric touchpad had been added. It wasn’t a perfect system by any means. Especially with his automated carts having to broadcast the code every time they entered, but it kept the casual passerby out.

  The door opened and he moved through the room until he found one of the padded cases with the chips inside. He picked up the case and carried it back to his workshop.

  By the time he returhe initial frame for the first robot had been printed and moved off the printer bed for the o begin. He really did love automation.

  Due to the straints of the capsules, the engineers would have to assemble the robots ohey were in orbit. Alexander had provided them with a detailed list of assembly instrus. They did ask about purchasing the pns for their own use, but he had to deny that request at the moment.

  Mostly because he didn’t have the desigered in STO space, so there was nothing stopping someone from stealing it. Not that he thought the Hawks would do that, but it was better to be safe. He also didn’t want the attention quite yet. Especially sidering what he learned from Lucas today.

  He opened up the ie partment where the chip would reside. Calling these things puter chips was a bit of a mishey were essentially the entire puter, shrunken down to the size of a two-inch cube. Having all the plicated bits built into one po meant printers didn’t o specialize in building motherboards or memory or any of those sorts of things. It just had to build the eg pos.

  It was a rather ingenious method. The puters could be ordered in all sorts of figurations as well. If you needed a wafer-thin puter for say, a tablet, you could have that manufactured. He had chosen the cheapest method, which was the cube.

  Alexander had looked into a printer capable of printing the cubes along with everything else. As it turns out, there were printers capable of doing that, but they were massive things that ore mohan Alexander had gotten from the Omni payout. At that point, they were more like assembly lihan a single prihe smallest one he looked at, out of curiosity, was rger than the refueling station he was building. It also had to be built in a vacuum for it to fun correctly at the pieter scale these advanced chips operated on. He didn’t even want to see what the requirements of the super-puter chips were. Those chips were expensive, and he only had ten of them.

  The iridest cube clicked easily into the housing of the robot and Alexander sealed the partment. He heard the thing beep quietly before it went through its self-test cycle. He didn’t have to worry about this code as it had been written by Lucas. The mae made hardly any noise as the actuators rotated. Then it beeped again and the sole it was currently lio showed an error.

  It was an error Alexander expected to see though. The message was simply letting him know there was nothing attached to the actuator assembly. Seeing no other faults, he put the robot in standby mode. Then he wheeled over one of the specifically outfitted capsules and lifted the robot into the foam padding inside.

  It took the rest of the day to finish up the four robots as well as the other pos that went along with them. He was gd the psma welder only required a ck of oxygen to weld properly. It would have been ara step to bottle i gasses and then a real pain to have to stantly ship them into orbit to keep the stru on schedule.

  A total of ten capsules were earmarked for delivering the four robots and their additional pos. It would set back stru in the short term, but ohe robots took over, that dey should turn around quickly.

  With the robots plete, he set the printers baaking more capsules. The capsules still took far too long, but he had optimized the prints from six hours down to four by removing the foam printing and delegating that to a separate mae. It did mean he had to manually shape the foam to fit, but it still took less time overall.

  If he pnned on keeping the capsule unch method, he would probably get around to making a shaped mold at some point so he could free up the printer.

  He piled two of the capsules on the cart ahe wheeled vehicle off to the uncher. One more thing to check off his list.

  ***

  “You’re sure everything was removed?” Alexander asked. He was looking at the simution software showing his first iteration still showing a failure.

  “As far as I could see,” Lucas replied. “Could it be your desig fun?”

  Instead of getting upset by the question, Alexander paused. It was indeed possible. He loaded in the Sinorus design and ran it. This time, it came back as fully funal, and it didn’t show the warning errors on the parts that were more effit than the Omni pos.

  He sighed internally. “It does indeed appear to be w. Thank you.”

  “Hey, don’t mention it. I gotta say though, that first design looked wild. Like on the order of magnitude of being a pain in the ass to work on wild. You may want to sider that. I know if I took a look at that, I would be like, nope.”

  Alexander loaded up the third iteration. “What about this one?”

  The man waggled his hand bad forth. “That looks slightly easier to work on but I’m not an engineer. You may want to ask them.”

  After Lucas left, Alexaested his ter iterations. Everything other than the first, sed, and third came back as funal. There was the possibility that the simution software wasn’t robust enough the extreme ges he made, but he decided to py it safe. Instead of going straight to the printers, he took Lucas’ advid loaded up the w designs into a holographic presentation. He needed a sed opinion.

  “Thank you for meeting with me again so soon,” he said as soon as Matthews and Chief Engineer Sullivan came on s. “I’m looking for an opinion on some engine designs if you would be willing.”

  The Captai a posed fa?ade, but he could see the small woman’s eyes slightly widen at his words. “It’s not every day I get to take a peek at experimental engine designs,” she stated in i. “I’m free for as long as the Captain allows it.” She looked at the man pointedly, and Alexander could swear he saw Matthews flinch.

  “Yes… We would be happy to give you as much time as needed,” Matthews said diplomatically.

  He nodded his avatar’s fad sent the presentation to them.

  It took hours for the woman to painstakingly go over every detail of the engines. She didn’t have the design specifications, but Alexander assumed she had been around enough eo know what she was looking at. And it seemed he was right.

  “This first one would be far too hard to maintain.” She poi four pos led into the interior. “It would require taking apart the entire bustion assembly just to get at these parts. Then you have to deal with radiation. If I was given a berth on a ship with an engine like this, I would quit. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh.”

  “No, not at all. I want your brutally ho opinion. What I make is going to eventually o be serviced by engineers just like yourself. If it's too difficult to work on, nobody is going to want to buy them, no matter how much better they are.”

  “Do you have any numbers yet?” Matthews asked. While he didn’t appear all that ied inally, he had e around.

  “Not yet. I built these designs after the st time I spoke with you.”

  Matthews and Sullivan paused and Alexahought they had paused the e. But they were just staring at him.

  “You designed all of these in five days?” Sullivan asked.

  “Oh, no,” Alexander chuckled. “It only took me a day to design them. I had to wait four days for Lucas Laront to fix my simution software.”

  Chief Engineer Sullivan opened and closed her mouth a few times before she finally spoke. “…I’m at a loss for words. You designed not one, but six w prototype designs in a single day?”

  He decided not to correct the woman by telli had actually been ten designs, but only six w ones. “Um, yes? But they are just simplified iterations from the first one.”

  She shook her head. “That expins why the designs look so simir. Still, if you correct the po pt, a some hard numbers, you may be looking at some serious tenders. This is a Css 3 engine, is it not? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Css 3 engine so pact.”

  “…Um… It’s actually a Css 4. Or more accurately, it's based on the Css 4 engines from the Zephyr.”

  “Alright,” the shorter woman said, getting up from the desk. “I’ve had enough surprises for one day. sidering what you’ve told me, you should have no issues moving the parts to be more accessible. Hell, I suggest you expand everything out so it matches a standard Css 4’s scale. Speed and efficy aren’t everything. If you make an ehat is signifitly easier to work on while being as fast and effit as current designs, that’s a market as well.” With those words, the woman walked out of the video.

  He heard the door shut before Matthews turned ba. “Chief Sullivan is correct. Saving time on repairs is sometimes much more important for certain people. Let us know if you need anything else, Mr. Kahe man nodded one final time before the video cut out.

  It looked like he had more design work ahead of him.