Ohing was abundantly clear to Alexander after the st attack, he o increase produ speed.

  While everyoelling him that what he was doing was a miracle and it would take normal people years if not more to get to this point, that simply wouldn’t cut it. There were threats out there that would return. He couldn’t imagihe pirates that fled would be happy about their loss. At some point, they would try again and he wahem to see a veritable fortress and turn around.

  Then there was the STO. Who’s to say they wouldn’t attack Eden’s End simply to erase any knowledge of Epsion’s Dawn from leaking out? sidering the shifty practices he was aware of them doing, he wouldn’t put it past them.

  Alexander needed a strong enough deterrent to make anyone sed guess attag this system. There were a few issues with what he wanted and what he could aplish though.

  With the smelter being damaged, that was going to slow down produ slightly. While he believed he could get it funing again, it probably wasn’t going to work nearly as well as it had before. Not that it mattered if Captain Na and the Destiny didn’t return soon.

  It had been three days sihe Destiny had jumped out of the system to escape the pirate fleet. Not that Alexander bmed Na for the choice. He would have dohe same thing in his position.

  Until Na decided to return or Alexander figured out a way to mine effectively to make up for his absence, his material options were limited. Once he repaired the smelter, he o focus on hauling the defunct pirate ships and rge debris to the station for recyg. With only five w robots, it was going to be a slow process.

  The robots and avaible materials had always been his main bottlenecks, especially in space. He had three more robots without chips in ste, but he was loath to use the few remaining advanced chips to operate them. Alexander had attempted to link multiple robots to one chip, but it hadn’t worked. Well, it had, but all the robots could only perform the same task at the same time. The advanced chips were powerful, but the self-learning algorithm took up a signifit portion of their processing power and without that algorithm, they were dumb.

  Alexander did have a few of the super-puter chips that he purchased for the specific use of upgrading the facility systems and operating as the puter core for starships. Would it be worth risking one of those very expensive and irrepceable chips to operate a bunch of automated stru robots though?

  The chips were certainly powerful enough to do the job. One chip could operate aire starship’s systems. It was too bad none of the surviving ships from Arkonis Anazi utilized them. The gunboats were too small to hat much processing power, and the frigate was too old. her utilized the advanced chips either. Their systems were weirdly hardwired into the ship and used antiquated systems that Alexander hadn’t seen before.

  He hadn’t had a ce to ihe derelict pirate ships from this most ret battle, but his hopes weren’t high that they used the newer chips either, except maybe that big ship that got away. The Epsilon’s Dawn, however… had two super-puters is hull.

  Alexander was staring at them right now. He was also looking at a nuclear bomb that was lio the two interfaces.

  Staring at the on while having a polite versation with Captain Krieger had been a bit awkward, but Alexander couldn’t quite figure out how to broach the topic of the on.

  sidering what he found on the bridge, the man must have tried setting off the device to scuttle the ship. That obviously hadn’t worked. But it meaher the interface to the device was damaged, or the on itself was damaged.

  her was a good sign. For all he khe momearted mug about on the ship, the triggering sequence might go off. Even standing here now was a risk he would prefer not to take. He examined his memories for anythied to these ons. No surprise, he came up bnk, other than the fact he khey were deadly, and that most global powers during his time oh used to have stockpiles of them.

  If this were any other ship, Alexander would have sent it crashing into the p just to avoid the hassle. But this ship was a treasure trove of possibilities, even if he couldn’t dissect it. It was also a bargaining chip as well as a means to keep Krieger and his surviving crew in line.

  With a sigh, Alexander approached the devid ied it closely. He didn’t touch it until he was sure there were no pressure triggers or anything like that on its surface. He did find a bio-ser and he almost chuckled.

  Before moving to open the panel on the front, Alexander moved out of the room and into the hall. When he had questiohe traitor, he had sucked out all heat from his extremity. And he already knew he could make his exterior fortably warm for when he held Yulia. He pushed on that ability until his exterior started to go from bck to a dull e.

  A yellow message scrolled through his menu, unreadable as always, but Alexander ig and pushed even harder until he started to glow red hot. The color of the distorted messages ged from yellow te and he held the temperature there. The dire lines painted on the walls and floor of the ship curled up from the radiaransferred through the floor. The lines fked off the nearby walls in a circle around him.

  When he figured he had burned off any possible biological inant that might trigger the sensor on the on case, he slowly reduced the temperature of his body until he was matg the ambient temperature of the room with the nuke, which was the same temperature as space, since all of the partmeher had holes in them or were open to others that were.

  Once he matched the background temperature, he moved bato the puter room and over to the on.

  With the same care he used for delicate eleics, Alexander removed the cover and examihe internals of the oood there in surprise for a long time until he ughed good and loud. The on wasn’t real, although it had been desigo appear real. Its eerior was empty except for a note written in marker on the inside.

  Sorry, we weren’t able to get our hands on an actual nuke before the ship was uhey are surprisingly hard to e by without arousing suspi. Hopefully, you will never see this note. If you are seeing this means you attempted to scuttle the ship and realized it wouldn’t work so you came dowo find out why. For that, we are sorry. All we suggest is that you manually smash as many things as you , and if your reactor is still w, set it to full output and disable the tai field. Good luck!

  -STO BO Engineering Team

  He assumed the BO stood for Bck Ops. Alexander just shook his head at the absurdity of it all. The STO with all their rules aions couldn’t even mao acquire something as outdated as a nuke, a teology that would ultimately protect their iment. Yet somehoirate had gotten their hands on one of the ons without issue.

  He put the panel ba pd tinued searg the ship. The empty on might have been just a decoy, so he would make sure there wasn’t a single partme abe enough to house a sed or real on before he did anything else.

  His radio bli him ohird day of sc the ship. He read the message and sighed in relief. Captain Na had finally returo the system. He typed a response back since he was in a vacuum at the moment, letting Lucas and ground trol know to have the man dock at the station.

  It would be crowded with five ships, but they would make do.

  He was almost doaloging anything of i on the Dawn. Holy, he was a bit let down. Other than the armor and whatever system allowed the ship to mask its jump signature, there wasn’t much that set the ship apart.

  Sure it had sers instead of Gauss ons, but when Alexander measured the energy output of the ons, he was surprised to see they weren’t as powerful as the one he built for the Fury. And that was even before he factored in the direergy shunt from the reactor, whicreased the ser’s output signifitly.

  What he did learn from the ons, was ways to improve his own. That little of knowledge came from one of the ons that had been struck by an enemy projectile and torn open.

  It wasn’t easy walking along the outer hull of the stealth ship, but the ptes that made up the carbon armor didn’t cover the eerior of the ship. Each armor pte was tained by a metal frame that was coated in some light-abs paint. Wheraced the actual damage to the ship, he found most of it came through those butted-together metal seams and not the strange armor. He doubted the Aliens who had e up with the armor would have desigheir ship with such a vulnerability. It seemed like this robably some sotion by the STO or a teological limitation on their part when trying to reproduce the material.

  sidering what he saw of the ptes themselves, he wondered how strong a ship ed entirely ierial would be. While he hadn’t run his sample through the mass speeter yet, he was almost certain it would be a match for his body. If it was, that would make the armor extremely strong. He wondered if the alien ship the STO recovered had self-repair like he did. If the aliens could repair their armor as he did ba Petrov station, it put their ships leagues ahead of humanity.

  Once he was done oer hull, Alexander sged a few batteries and super-capacitors from damaged areas where they wouldn’t be missed. Krieger and his crew would likely realize he stole stuff from the ship but they wouldn’t be able to prove it. If they fronted him, he could simply deny the allegations. He somehow suspected they wouldn’t though, at least until a rescue came along to take them back to STO territory.

  Unfortunately, Alexander couldn’t figure out how the Dawn’s system worked to mask the gravitational signature of a jump. When he examihe FTL drive, it looked exactly like every other FTL drive he had ever seen, just with slightly newer hardware. That meant there was some software in the design that allowed it to do what it did.

  Using a few tricks he picked up during his early repair days, Alexander supplied power to a terminal in the maintenan for the FTL drive. Then he used the trick he used on the Fury when he unlocked the hidden safe to access the terminal’s core programming. Much like it had with the safe, the programming window popped up inside his mental space. Uhe safe, this programming was encrypted and also had signifit safeguards io prevent its theft.

  Alexander was so used to watg code that he didn’t uand that he could pinpoint the moment the defensive programs triggered.

  The program first tried to send a message to a line Alexander had traced to the puter core. If he had to guess, it was meant ter the self-destruct. Even if the bomb was real, the power Alexander roviding the terminal, was only enough for the terminal. It quickly faded away in aerior e.

  When the program realized it had failed, it tried attag him directly. Other than a slight tingliion ing from his fingers, he didn’t sense anything. He realized the program was using the power ierminal to try arocute him. That was cute.

  He would o warn Lucas about that nasty little bit of code.

  The st thing the program attempted to do was to erase itself. It did mao do that ihe terminal, but not before Alexander had secured a copy of the program inside his mind space. Whe back to the surface, he would tra into a chip ahe younger Laront have a field day with it.