LOCATION: EDEN’S END

  SYSTEM: Y6X-3H2

  DATE: 2400

  The final jump into Y6X-3H2 was a relief for Alexander. Not that the trip back had been problematic or anything. It had been without issue, which was exactly how Alexander liked it. He was just gd to be home.

  As far as he could tell, everything looked the same as when they left, but they were still a few days out. He sent Yulia a message letting her know they were back. She robably asleep si was nighttime on Eden’s End. That was fi gave him time to ping the facility a an update on how things were going.

  It didn’t take long to get a reply, which was far faster than it should have been. “Hey, Alex,” a sleepy Lucas responded as he sat in the chair that faced the holo camera. “I assumed you were going to inquire about how everything was going when you returned, so instead of waiting for you to ask, I’ve been piling a status update to send you. Oh, this is a rec by the way, in case you haven’t already realized that. I simply sent daily updates to the cameras where you were likely to appear, and as soon as they picked up Fury’s transponder, it triggered this response.”

  Alexander chuckled as the video cut out and was repced with the attached file. He was getting predictable, but he was gd Lucas uood him well enough to have this information prepared well in advahe man tio surprise him with his efforts to grow and improve.

  Lucas had even itemized the report to show the status of projects in order of pletion time. The tunnel project was the first up, and it showed as pleted. The report detailed some issues the workers ran int the process, but the ineers were able to fix those without deying the projeore than a few days.

  Moving the lower-priority manufacturing to a new space was also marked as plete. That was a surprise, but a good ohe new manufacturing space had been cleared only a week prior to their departure so he had no clue how long it would take to move the older printers over there ahem up.

  Alexander had o do this to make room in his workshop for the newer printers, as well as the geion of the manufacturing cells that were being made with these more accurate printers. The drawback there was the ck of advanced puter chips to run these new robots. Once Jasper and the Hawks return, his issues with processors should be handled for the immediate future.

  A rge k of the items Alexander had asked the man to purchase were puter chips, seg an additional fifty advanced chips and five more superputer chips. It was a difficult decision to make sine superputer chip cost as much as twenty of the advanced chips. He wanted enough to outfit the remaining three frigates, as well as two more to make additional trol ships to increase stru and mining efforts in the system. He would need more eventually, but that was a good start.

  Spending that much money might seem like a poor choice sihe trol ships were limited to ten robots per ship, but those ten robots worked better for plex tasks. He ran into this issue when removing the damage from Fury and then towing it back. The robots had to be reprogrammed and then had to be manually synced as they learned individually. The single robots were more useful for simple repetitive processes, whereas the superputer-linked ones didn’t need any ht. You simply gave them a set of instrus and they carried it out while learning at the same time. So while there would still be a pce for singur bots, the linked ones were far more useful for Alexander’s pns going forward.

  The item on the list was Eden’s Resolve. Lucas had been niough to include a video of the ship's stru. Alexander pyed the rec.

  The time-pse showed the ship being towed into position and stripped. It reminded Alexander of a memory he had wheched a time-pse video of marine life stripping a dead whale to bare bones. It was more eerie when the carcass of the ship started to get put back together. The video stopped with only a small portion of the interior work plete, but it was going faster thahought possible.

  Fury had taken about five months to disassemble, repair, and reassemble. It looked like the mae learning had reduced the first two parts to just a month. To be fair, the pirate ship from the sed attack had less overall damage to the substructure than Fury had. Based on the progress though, he suspected the ship would be plete far soohan he had inally estimated, once again proving his use of the linked bots was the right choice.

  The st item on the list was the facility progress. It was still slow, but they reported that the main dome windows were finally starting to go up. They also repurposed the b maes, that were used to create the tuo the on empts, to use in clearing the blockages from the transport tunnels. Getting those tunnels cleared and an actual train up and running would likely speed up efforts to repair the rest of the facility. He would have prioritized that work, but there were rge ses that had colpsed and he had other things on his mind.

  Alexander was about to close out the report when another video popped up. This one showed Yulia.

  “This is a wele home message,” someone said to her off-s. He retty sure it was Nancy, the Head of Learning.

  Yulia crossed her arms. “I don’t wanna talk to him.”

  The woman sighed out of frame, “Yulia, we spoke about this. He didn’t leave you because he wao, he had to go because nobody else could do it. There is no reason to be upset at your dad for this.” When that didn’t seem to get through to the intractable girl, the woman tried something else. “How about you wele him home? It’ll make him happy. I’m sure you like it when he weles you back from school?”

  Yulia turoward the camera, clearly still angry. “Wele home,” the up from the chair and ran off. Alexander didn’t miss the tears that were starting to form in the girl's eyes before she vanished from the video frame.

  It broke his heart that she was still mad at him for leaving.

  A moment ter, Nancy appeared on s. “Sorry about that, Alex. We’ll wait a few days for her to calm down and try to record a better video. I really hope you don’t see this ohe woman reached out and the video flicked off.

  He didn’t know when that video was recorded, but it seemed like Yulia hadn’t been willing to record a sed or that the others were even worse. He could uand why. Each attempt robably like ripping open the wound and giving her a fresh remihat he had left her behind, further adding ter over the euation.

  Alexander would o have a long discussion with the girl. While he would love to be here all the time, there were times when his work was simply going to take him out of the system. And while there might be times he could bring her along, most likely he wouldn’t be able to. She o uand that. He wasn’t upset with her about her aoward him. That was to be expected. Yulia could be mad at him all she liked, but taking it out on others wasn’t right.

  A few days ter, they docked at the station. Yulia hadn’t bothered to respond to the message that he sent her. He had been forced to che with her friend's parents to make sure everything was okay.

  They said Yulia had been a bit sullen during his abse had otherwise not done anything out of the ordinary. Sarah’s parents did say Yulia ending most of her free time in the carts.

  Alexander shouldn’t have been surprised by that. He thahem once again for watg her and transferred them some tributions for their efforts, even though they tried to turn it down.

  “Bossman!” Branston threw his arms out wide as he stepped out of the airlock. “How was your trip?”

  “Productive,” he replied, shaking the man’s ended hand. “How are things going for you while I was gone?”

  “Rather a bit more b than usual, Alex. There just isn’t as mueed for me to shuttle stuff into orbit when yone.”

  Alexander ughed at that. “I’m gd to hear you say that. Things are going to get busy again very soon.”

  “Oh,” the man quirked an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

  Alexander filled his only pilot in on what was going on.

  The man didn’t look all that happy that Alexander had agreed to work with the STO. “I kinda thought you would shuO, given what I’ve heard, but I get where you are ing from. Credits are credits and you ’t run a business without them. So I have some passeo ferry down?”

  “Yes. They are Captain Na’s family. There are some young kids, so no showboating.”

  The man rolled his eyes. “I be professional when the need arises. I’ll be so gehat they won’t even realize we’ve touched down.”

  “As for the other stuff, it’ll probably be a week or two before I get those on track. I also need a third shuttle,” Alexander muttered as he thought about possible bottlenecks and issues.

  “A third?” Branston asked in fusion. “Did something happen to shuttle two?”

  “Huh? Oh, no. After I unload the two smelters, I pn on leaving the sed shuttle for Fury’s use. With Resolve being ahead of schedule, maybe I should work oing two more shuttles up and running so Resolve have one as well. I want to make sure Eden’s End always has at least one backup shuttle, maybe two. I don’t think the remaining pirate shuttles be repaired anytime soon though. At best, I have four w shuttles, unless I start designing my own or divert the produ line for the dome for rept shuttle windows.”

  “My vote’s for the experimental shuttle,” Branston smiled.

  Alexander chuckled. “I’ll think about it. Oh, it looks like your passengers have arrived.”

  After Bransto with Mingyu, his crew, and the entire Na family, Alexander put the Fury in standby mode and ehe sve funs that would allow the ship's ons to be remotely operated from the ground.

  Ohat was done, he quickly dropped off and installed the two new smelters, nearly doubling his refining capacity in space. His ability to keep up with the material ing in hadn’t really been a bottleneck since he mostly fixed the first smelter. Once Jasper arrived with the main rept smelter, Alexander nning to retire the damaged oo the surface again. Maybe he could spend some time to figure out why it wasn’t w properly anymore.

  With that plete, he checked on the limited prihat were king out small parts and panels. There was a huge stack of them off to the side, held in pce by a few gravity ptes that were sged off some of the ships. If it wasn’t for those ptes, the staanufactured items would have been floating all over the bay.

  He watched as another panel finished and a robotic arm whipped over to retrieve it and deposit it on the pile. It was a waste of space to print all this stuff ahead of time, but there wasn’t nearly enough room in the bay for more than two printers and the smelter. Adding the other two smelters had crowded the small ore ste area even further. After Eden’s Resolve was plete, Alexander would probably remove the printers from the area.

  It’s not that they weren’t helpful, but his future pns called for something a bit different, which would make the first-geion printers rather redundant.

  He docked the shuttle ba the Fury’s hangar and waited for Branston to pick him up. While he waited, he pted what to do about the other report he had received from Damien.

  Less than a week after his departure, Shall had broken into his ste room. The man had carried out the robbery when Damien was asleep and almost mao get away. Security aying attention though and received the alert about the unauthorized exit from the facility. A few railgun darts through the man’s ship from the nding pad turrets made it so taking off was not an option.

  They mao take Shall into custody after that, but the report was light oails of how that all went down. He doubted the shifty smuggler had gone quietly, but there wasn’t a smoking crater oarmac, so he was sure it was quite the story.

  Alexander wasn’t sure what the man’s pn was or what he had even taken. Even if he mao get off the ground, there was no way he was getting past the rger railguns or the of defensive sers. Then again, the man may not even know about those. Shall wasly privy to what was going on in space.

  He sighed. All he wao do was e home, spend time with Yulia, and work on his projects, but once again he was having to deal with other people's nonsense.