Alexander finished sing out the st ammo ister aboard Eden’s Fury. He o speak with Lucas or whoever erating the security room to go easy on the remaining ammunition. This was the st of their supply and they didn’t have an easy way to produce more yet.

  He could make gunpowder, which was easy enough, but it couldn’t be manufactured with the printer due to its votile nature. Specialized maes o be manufactured to create the grains, and that meant designing and building a mae. He had built a few maes for manufacturing the high explosives used in the grenades, but it was actually safer and easier to produce the explosives than it was to produce gunpowder.

  The explosive pound started as a wet mix that resembled something like soft d got extruded into the g. The pound was safe under extreme pressure a. It took a very high-voltage spark to set it off.

  Alexander would have preferred not to bother with explosives unpowders at all, but the pressed gas used in the flechette rifles didn’t have quite the same oomph as their big cousins which used magic propulsion. It robably why the grenade uncher used eleagic coils to both fire and program the smart rounds. And also why the on was so heavy.

  Alexander wasn’t sure why that design was used in particur over just a ventional gunpowder charge, except that maybe it was designed specifically to work in a vacuum or pce where they worried about the gunpniting properly.

  That was all jecture on his part. Using the coils did have the advantage of making the grenades smaller, without redug their explosive potential, so there was one upside.

  All that being said, Alexander didn’t want to waste time and materials building a fully funal gunpowder manufacturing line, just to scrap it when he moved away from these archaic autoons.

  He already had the initial stages of a ser design in his program. But those pns were put on hold as other projects became a priority. With the pirates returning, he quickly shifted to the ser project as his main focus.

  As he was iing the ship, to see what the robots had managed i week or so, he thought about the design of the on. Like he had told the Hawks, building a ser was easy. It was just the ability to focus and amplify light properly. Alexander could easily create the lenses and focus medium to do this.

  The issue he was running into ower.

  Specifically, how much power to provide a ser, as well as how to provide this power. If he thought the orbital railguns were power-hungry, he got quite the wake-up call with the ser.

  Dr. Lund came in very helpful in this respect. He provided her with the armor specifications of the Eden’s Fury, specifically the most heavily armored portion. And she provided him with a calcution on the amount of energy it would take to melt through it.

  He took the figure she provided him and quadrupled it. A straight-on hit, even with a ser, was never really guaranteed. So he wao ehe on would do as much damage as possible even with an angled blow.

  The problem was, even if he built ten of his capacitor arrays, they would barely be able to provide the power needed for one shot at Lund’s provided power output, let alone his.

  Not ideal, but it was doable. If he scaled that up to his power requirement, there wouldn’t be enough free spa the Fury to power all of the ship’s main ons if he verted them all into sers.

  There were obvious ways around this. He could simply extend the duration of the beam, allowing for a weaker ser to burn through for lohat was less than ideal sidering the speeds, distance, and tempo of space battles he had withus far. The other idea he had was to simply shunt power directly from the reactor into the ser.

  It was teically possible, sidering pressed psma eje did something simir. But those reactors were designed with that in mind. He would o test a lot of things to see if his idea would work. The main s would be if the reactor could hahe draw and if the ser could hold up to that much power being shunted into it.

  As he stepped into the hangar, he decided to approach both paths. If his testing didn’t go well on the direct power shunt idea, he could at least repe of Fury’s main ons with a ser, giving it much me aility.

  The trip back to the surface was a quiet one. Branston, like everyone else on Eden’s End, was tehey had all heard the arm, and seen Damien’s people moving to secure the entrances. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on.

  He couldn’t bme the residents, he was on edge as well. The st pirate attack was still pretty fresh in everyone’s mind.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Alexander said as they touched down. “I hate to ask this of you, but could you remain in the shuttle for a few weeks?”

  “…Um, you’re the boss. But I ask why?”

  Alexander o Branston. “If we get another unwanted visitor before I upgrade the Fury, I want to be able to extract the crew of the Destiny instead of leaving them to the mercy of possible pirates.”

  The man grimaced at his choice of words. “Nobody should have to suffer such a fate. I’ll stay in the shuttle for as long as needed. If someone bring me some food and water, I’ll survive. While not the most fortable pce I’ve slept, I’ve experienced worse.”

  Alexander squeezed the man’s shoulder lightly. “Thank you for this. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

  Branston snorted. “Promise me I get to be the first to fly any experimental ships you build, and we call it even.”

  Despite the tense mood, Alexander chuckled. “It’s a deal. I’ll have provisions brought out for you.”

  ***

  “That’s the third ohis week,” Lucas told his brother.

  Damien grunted. “At least they came for Eden’s Fury this time and not those two derelicts like the st ship. Who knows what the pirates took from those ships before leaving again? And I guarantee you they told others about us.”

  Luodded at that. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any on capable of reag the Lagrange point, where those two ships were parked, to take out the st pirate that showed up. “Do you wanna notify Alex, or should I?” With the destru of the first pirate ship, and the st ship jumping back out of the system, they all k would only be a matter of time before more pirates appeared.

  “Will notifying him ge anything?” his brother asked. “The man is already busy trying to get those two ships towed to the station so they be covered by Eden’s guns. He should have just scuttled them instead of wasting his time. How’s his progress by the way?”

  Instead of making fun of his brother’s worried tone, Lucas flipped the camera feed to the frigate. Six small points of light could seen in the video feed. Alex had apparently built two more of his stru robots and then built ion propulsion packs and a long tow cable to repce where their legs resided. Three were assigo each vessel, slowly towing them toward the space station, where they would be attached to the Fury so they were protected by the guns.

  “Slow,” Lucas stated after a minute.

  His brrunted and pressed the button for Shuttle 1. “Branston, you read?”

  “This is Shuttle One. I read, what’s up?”

  “We have another unknown ship in the system. Sending you the coordinates now.”

  After a bit, the man responded. “Ok… What do you wao do about it?”

  “You’re armed aren’t you?” Damien replied tersely.

  Branston chuckled over the radio. “The shuttle has a small on on it, but I wouldn’t call this tin armed. At most, I shoot down a missile or two with the ammo still on board. So if you expect me to throw myself at an unknown ship, you fet about it.”

  Before his brother could blow up over the radio at Branston, Lucas cut him off. “Let’s wait and see what this ship does. For now, they’re not doing anything aggressive. Maybe they will just leave?”

  His brother fumed but eventually nodded his head slightly.

  It was a good thing they decided to wait and see. A few hours ter, they picked up a transmission from the ship.

  “Eden’s End, this is Shall. Ya’ll ok down there?” There was a collective sigh of relief at hearing who the ship beloo.

  Shall was one of the freighter Captains who delivered goods to them occasionally. The maainly wasn’t their friend, he made far more in trade thaems he traded were worth.

  “We’re fine,” Lucas sent, after first sending the code phrase they had agreed upo time the old Captain was around. “Where’ve you been, anyway? It’s been over a year.”

  Lucas verified the return code phrase and smiled.

  “Yeah, well, this part of space has been rather too busy for my liking. Thought I would let things calm down a bit. Theer the system only to find whatever this is.” Lucas could practically see the mauring to all the new is on his ser.

  “Yeah, things have ged a bit. You turn your transponder ba, the system’s safe.” If anyone iO space learned Shall had an illegal mod to turn on and off his transpohe best he could hope for was being arrested. With the pirates being more active, he was more likely to get destroyed by one side or the other though.

  “Don’t look very safe,” he heard the man mutter. But soon his transponder code icked up by the sensors. Luever muderstood why Shall had named his ship Fool’s Gold. Then again, their uncle was an odd one, preferring to work alone.

  The Fool’s Gold touched down on one of the empty nding pads a few days ter, beating the ships Alex ulling to the station.

  A gruff older man with a scraggly beard tromped down the ship's ramp. Damien and Lucas had both e to greet the mert.

  “Y to give this old man a heart attack by trag him with those big bastard’s guns?”

  “Protocol,” Damien responded coldly.

  The mert grunted and took a breath from the mask hanging around his neck. “I fot how shit this atmo is. Still ’t believe you idiots chose this pce to live. Although, you may not be here much longer if Char gets wind of it.”

  “Have you heard something?” Damien asked.

  The man chuckled. “I would have to be deaf not to. The whole bck market is buzzing about some huge pirate score that’s about to go down.” The man deliberately looked at the neon empts when he said that. “Didn’t think it would be here though,” he sighed. “What have you idiots gotten yourselves into?”

  “We could ask you the same, Uncle,” Lucas smiled.

  The man rolled his eyes. “I told you not to call me that. Don’t matter that I’m your mother’s brother. The word makes me feel old.”

  “You are old,” Damien stated ftly.

  “Well, no shit! Doesn’t mean I o be reminded of it. Now stop stalling and spit it out, what’s up with all this?” he gestured around.

  “Someone bought the research facility,” Damien replied.

  Shall’s eyebrows rose. “Well, that certainly is news. Going by all the oys, I’m guessing this person is filthy rich?”

  “Don’t even think about it, Uncle,” Lucas warned, which felt really weird ing from his mouth. That weirdness must have registered with Damien and his uncle, because they both just stared at him.

  “Have the stars go, or is my hearing going? To think, my little nephew could have had his attitude ged so abruptly. This sounds like a story I o hear.”

  Lucas gave his uhe middle finger and the two chuckled.

  “Well, maybe irely. As for you,” he looked over Damien. “Where’s that pretty girl of yours?”

  Damien narrowed his eyes. “Just because you’re old, doesn’t mean I won’t knock your ass out.”

  Shall ughed. “I see you haven’t ged.” The man walked past them and headed toward the building. “You two ing, or you gonna stand out here all day staring into space?”

  Lucas could hear his brrinding his teeth in annoyance. “One of these days,” he heard Damien mutter under his breath. Lucas just shook his head and hurried to catch up with their uncle.