Alexaood at the back of the bridge as Mingyu limped the still-crippled ship back to the refueling station. The reactor had e out of the attack miraculously unscathed. Power cables had to be rerouted through the corridors to return power to the rest of the ship, but that had been easy. The hardest part turned out to be Alexander’s job.

  He had to repair the underlying structure of the ship to keep it from tearing itself apart as they made their way back. A trip that would normally take a few minutes had takehree days. All in all, the entire project had taken a week lohan he first estimated. Any longer and he would have had to call it off and e back at a ter time. Yulia’s birthday was quickly approag and he wasn’t going to miss that to fix this hunk of junk.

  It was bad enough that he still didn’t know what to get the girl.

  She didn’t seem to want to be a captain of a ship like Markus, as far as he could tell. At least she had never expressed any i in something like that. She was mainly ied in building stuff, kind of like him. Giving her another puzzle kit to put together seemed rather thoughtless, especially since he provided those to her as a learning aide.

  He would o put some serious thought into what to get his daughter when they nded ba the p. Right now he o focus as the ship sloroached the new dog arm that had been built along the refueling station. ly maneuvered the ship into pd there was a soft k as the airlocks locked together. Two robotic arms extended from the refueli and locked against the top of the hull, providing three points of e.

  “And we’re secure. Great work, everyone,” Mingyu stated happily. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think me and my crew have earned a little vacation.”

  “It’s well deserved, Captain. Thank you for helpih this.”

  “I didn’t do it just for you, Alexahe faster we get a w warship in this system, the better. I hope your robots are up to the challenge.”

  Alexander hoped so as well. The repairs he made were just a series of steel beams that spahe damaged areas of the ship. The automated robots would o finish cutting away the damaged se, and then remove all the temporary supports before they could start making actual repairs to the ship. Without a very good model of the ship, it was more than likely he was going to have to redo ses a few times if his rept pos were out of spec. Despite that issue, it would still be quicker than building a ship from the ground up.

  “What are you going to ?” Na asked as he got up from the pilot's seat.

  “?” Alexander inquired. He hadn’t actually thought about giving the ship a name.

  “Yeah, you ’t just leave it unnamed, and I don’t think you wanna use the he pirates had for it.”

  He wasn’t sure he wao know, but he asked anyway. “What did they call it?”

  “The Headhunter.”

  “Definitely not. Any ideas? I’m not the greatest at naming stuff, I he first shuttle I fixed up Shuttle 1.”

  “I’m aware,” the man winced. Na paused to think for a bit, then smiled. “How about Eden’s Fury? Give the pirates a reminder of why they shouldn’t e here.”

  Alexander chuckled. “It works for me.”

  The ma over to the Captain’s terminal and typed in a set of ands. “…And done. Wele aboard Eden’s Fury, Alexander.”

  The four went down to the surfa the shuttle while Alexander finished a few things up on the ship. While it was docked to the space station, it would not just be dead weight. The ship would act as a sved ons ptform. It was too bad it only had autoons and PD the form of guns. Still, it was better than nothing. He finished routing the cable that would provide the energy to the tower that poioward the surface then he radioed the and room. “Lucas, I’m ready for an upli.”

  He waited a few seds for a respohe radio crackled, but he could hear the response clear enough. “Roger that. Beginning uplink.”

  Having to rely on light-speed unications sucked, but it wasn’t like they had an alternative. At least not yet. In a little ht months, when the Hawks returhat issue should finally be remedied.

  The uplink antenna started rapidly blinking red before finally settling into a green on the dispy.

  “ you hear me better, Alex?”

  “ing in crystal clear, Lucas. Your uplink is w perfectly.”

  He heard the man snort. “Of course it is. It’s the same uplink I used for all the asteroid cameras. Speaking of, have you given any thought to my proposal?”

  The man was talking about his pn to reactivate the derelict cameras with the help of the shuttle. “I’m fih y, but yoing to o provide the pos, or trade me for them. If the camera’s chips are shot, you’re out of luck though. I’m not wasting my very limited supply of puter chips on your cameras.”

  “That’s fihe man replied. “I was actually looking at the chips you were making. Who would believe something so a might actually have a use,” Lucas chuckled. “They would probably work for what I want, but I’ll o make some design ges to any of the asteroids that might he rept. I would also o protect the chips, those sili things don’t seem all that well shielded against radiation.”

  “We test them out and see what needs ging when it es time to use them. Let's finish our curres for now. I would like to be ready to leave when Branstourns in the m.”

  “Fair enough,” the man stated.

  It took a few hours to get all of the turrets sved to the surface. sidering they were never desigo do that, it was a miracle it worked at all. It required Lucas to rey what code o be ged to Alexander before they finally got the ons to respond to ands pside. There was a dey, but there wasn’t much they could do about that. It would just have to be ated for if the ons were ever needed.

  The other issue was the ammunition stores. They weren’t great. The rge caliber autoons each had thirty rounds in their magazihe magazines held a total of one hundred rounds, but the pirates had either wasted a whole lot during their fight or they hadn’t been full in the first pce. Going by how empty the rest of the ship was, he was going with the tter. It certainly seemed like Arkonis was a miserly piece of shit before his death. Except when it came to spending on himself.

  The PDCs had a bit more ammo in them. Each could hold two thousand rounds of proximity fragmentation ammunition with about a hundred and fifty of these rounds left in their current ister. There were spare isters in the armory aboard the ship. The problem was, that the autoons on this vessel could not be reloaded until they were empty because the entire ammunition ister o be removed for rearming. And you couldn’t do that because there was some meical safety ihe loading meism that prevehe ister’s removal until it was empty.

  Whoever had decided that that was a good design choice was clearly a moron.

  That left leaving the mostly empty ammo ister in pce or firing the remaining ammo into spad reloading it with a fresh one. sidering he didn’t have a way to manufacture rept ammunition for the guns, he decided to just leave the ammo that was there and hope it was enough.

  her option was a very good choice but Alexander had pns to get rid of all that a garbage and repce them with something else. He he rest of the ship in w order before he did that though.

  Alexander had a lot of pns for this ship. O didn’t look like someone had taken a bite out of the side of it, he would be using it as a testbed for his first Css 4 engine. Si couldn’t leave this system until it had a verified transpo could easily be limped back to the station if it ran into problems. He did add creating cargo tugs to his list through.

  Once Eden’s Fury and running, he would look at the other two ships. The small gunships weren’t worth spending another month trying to get up and running and back to the station to use as more sved ons ptforms. At least not yet. And without crews, there wasn’t any way to use them as patrol ships, so they were a low priority.

  With everything aboard the ship pleted, he headed to the airlock to wait for the shuttle.

  ***

  Dalton chugged down the pint of swill that this station, in the Char family territory, called alcohol. It was as foul as the pirates that made this shithole their home. He thought some of the backwater stations ba the Anazi territory were bad, but this pce was worse. The pirates here were either washed-up old fools or young bucks looking to make a name for themselves.

  The only reason he was in this dump was because this was where the trail for Arkonis had led him. And where it ehe few people he paid for information only khe man had e to recruit two ships and then he left. Nobody had seen any sign of those crews or those ships sihat wasn’t all that odd. Pirates died and ships were lost all the time. Arkonis had probably e out here to hire the crews as on fodder for that very reason. But some word should have gotten back here if their score had been successful one bad.

  The fact that no news had circuted by now, meant the raid probably went to shit and there were no survivors. One less Anazi was good o him, but that meant this mission to track down Arkonis had just gotten a whole lot harder. Dalton thought about demanding more credits for this job after ing to that clusion, but he khat bastard Harlow would simply put the money up as a bounty on his head if he did. It was better to just finish what he started.

  Since he knew Arkonis and his people were likely dead, and wherever they had gone was dangerous, he decided to tract out the work of finding this system. Only he wasn’t going to pay for it.

  He smiled and took another deep gulp of the foul liquid as he watched a crew out of the er of his eye. They were arguing loudly amongst themselves aing all hyped up. All Dalton had done was start a rumor that one of the Anazi brothers had found a huge score out beyond STO spa Char territory. One so big it would take multiple trips to plu all.

  Letting pirates know that there was loot for the taking was like lighting off a psma drive on a p’s surface. The rumor had spread like wildfire and three crews had already left the bar, likely to find a ship that would take them for this information.

  By the end of the day, every pirate in the sector would know about Arkonis’ score, and not long after that, he would be able to pinpoint the system he o head to. He wasn’t worried about any of these low-level idiots actually killing his target. If Arkonis had indeed met his end where his target was located, none of these pirates had a shot. Katalynn Char might if she got wind of this ruse, but then again she would probably be too suspicious of some random rumor to bother looking into it.

  Dalton sucked dow of the beer and made his way to his ship. When he arrived at the airlock door, he paused and frowned. Dalton leaned doicked up the string he had tucked in the seal. Someone had opened his airlock. They were likely waiting for him somewhere inside so they could get the fusion activation crystal off of him.

  Instead of heading through the airlock, Dalton turned around and walked further along the dog ring. He had specifically picked this dog location so there were no ships oher adjat dock. When he reached the one over, he stepped ihe airlod sealed his vac-suit. He pressed a button to flush the air in the airlock.

  This wasn’t some fancy STO-certified airlock, so there were no safety measures in pce. If he had wao, he could have flushed the eation, at least until the emergency doors activated. But that was a good way to turn everyone here against him. And the people who operated the station. The station guns would cut through his ship with little trouble so while it was tempting to do so, he resisted the itch.

  Ohe air was vented, he opehe exterior airlod stepped out into space, using his suit thrusters to push him toward his ship. Dalton nded on the far side of his ship with a gentle nding. The enviroal systems would probably mask the sound of his boots toug the hull but he wao ensure nobody heard him. He ehe code to the hidden airlod an armored panel slid aside. Once he squeezed himself into the small space, he shut and sealed the exterior door. Ohe outer door was sealed, he plugged into his ship's cameras.

  Four men were waiting for him he cargo bay airlock. He tsked in annoyand flipped through the cameras until he found two more people tearing his ship apart, looking for the crystal.

  He didn’t find any more people aboard his ship and none of the pirates were in sealed vac-suits. That was foolish of them.

  Dalton activated the cargo bay ramp and the four men inside were sucked out into space, along with some of his supplies. The loss of the supplies was annoying, but not the end of the world.

  The other two paused at the sound of air rushing out of the ship and quickly tried to seal their suits. One even ma. The other passed out before he could get his suit sealed.

  The lone survivor ran toward the cargo bay, but Dalton wasn’t in the mood to let him walk away. He activated the ship's lockdown and sealed the ramp door. The man was noed ihe cargo area. He was screaming something, but Dalton hadn’t bothered pumping oxygen bato that space. Once life support was back up in the rest of the ship, Dalton stepped out of the hidden airlod into his .

  He whistled a jaunty tuo the banging of the cargo door as he made his way to the reactor room to restart it. The man trapped ihe cargo area would run out of suit oxygeually, but he would have plenty of time to refle his poor choices in life.

  ***

  After Alexander returo the surface, he tacted Gabriel, figuring she would be the best to speak to about what he wao aplish. He found the woman in the area that was verted into a hospital. “Gabriel, would you happen to know the families of those who lost people during the attack?”

  She nodded quizzically. “Of course I do. I know pretty much everyone down here. Why?”

  “When we were aboard the ship, we came across a safe full of credits. I want to split it between the families that lost loved ones.”

  “That’s a lovely se, Alex –,”

  “– but the people here have no use for credits,” he finished for her. “I’m aware. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that. Instead of credits, I was going to offer them tribution points for trade, but I quickly realized my eock isn’t worth nearly as many credits as we found.”

  “…Out of curiosity, how much did you find?”

  Wheold her, the woman’s eyes grew wide.

  “By the stars, Alex! That’s probably more mohaire lot of them have seen in their entire lives. I’m sure they would appreciate the gesture, but it would be mostly meanio them.”

  “I actually thought about that. What if I offered them the ptinum card for the library instead? I know people here value knowledge so thought that might be more appreciated.” The ptinum card was the same biometric card Alexander had given to Markus. It wasn’t actually made of ptinum, that was just the cssification he used for it.

  “T- that might not be a bad idea actually. Knowledge is much more useful than some digital mohat is only good in STO space. And while your offer to trade would include the learning modules, I assume you restrie of those?”

  “I do, and eveinum has some restris, but not many, and even those be waived by me if the people are trusted and shotitude in a certain area. Does this mean you’ll speak to these people for me?”

  She chuckled. “I’ll round them up for you, but this is something you o present to them, not me.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough. Have them meet me in Atrium D.”

  It took a few hours for everyoo gather, Alexander waited until Gabriel popped in. The woman looked around and o him before leaving again.

  With everyone present, Alexander cleared his throat. Silence quickly fell over the people present. “Thank you all for ing. I don’t want to take up too much of your time so I will make this brief. As some of you have likely realized by now, everyone here lost someone during the attack. I know they all fought to defend this pce as their home, but as the owner, I still feel responsible for their deaths. While this won’t fill the holes left by their losses, I would like to offer ead every one of you full access to my educational library.”

  Muttering broke out amongst the crowd until someone spoke up to ask a question. “How long is this ood for?”

  “There’s no time limit. The cards will be good for the rest of your lives.” The way the crowd fell speechless at that, he probably should have led with that. “If you are ied, please step forward.”

  The crowd of people practically mobbed him. While surprised, Alexaook it in stride as he handed out the cards. The people thanked him profusely, making him feel like a sleaze. He ocketing all the credits while they were just getting access to knowledge that he already owned.

  He khese people valued knowledge more than money, but it still didn’t feel right. If he wasn’t aware of how important learning modules were iO before today, this ted it for him. It also disgusted him. Knowledge should be spread.

  The only reason he wasn't giving full access to everyone was because it was a bargaining chip and one of the few he had other than medical treatments. And while he still felt iffy about the whole situation, he vowed to turn the majority of those credits into more learning modules.