Alexander left the apartment a bit flicted. While it was true he wao spend more time with his daughter, he wasn’t pletely ho with her as to the reason.

  If his pns came together and the Fury was pleted on schedule, he knew he was going to be gone for aended period of time. A month at least, maybe more. He would discuss his abseh her in the ing weeks, but sidering how she reacted the st time he left, he wasn’t sure she would be all that happy he was going to do so again.

  He wasn’t sure how the STO would react when he brought their people and ship back either. If they reacted ively, Alexander was sure the new and improved Fury could hold its own, but it was still only one ship.

  Alexahought about simply dumping the crew in lifepods and turning around, but that really wasn’t an option sidering he o have a safe route to and from STO space. So he o take a more diplomatic approach, and hope the people in Varlen were ner-happy.

  As always wheered his workshop, it was a riot of noise and motion. Alexander had no pns to start any new big projects in the ing weeks, but he did o che the progress of his current projects before Fury was finished.

  The first thing he pulled up was the facility map to che the progress of repairs. As areas were pleted, the workers marked them off and the se turned green on his map. There was still less than forty pert of the facility marked green. Ahird was yellow, denotiions being worked on. And the rest was bck.

  He didn’t have the same capacity for repairs on the surface as he did in space so the repairs to the facility were gging quite far behind. It was also much more difficult for his robots to reach certain areas. The main dome especially was an ongoing headache due to its enormous size.

  The ehing had to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch, which wasn’t easy. Alexander had been forced to build three stru es to facilitate the process, further slowing down work pside. The dome also required a bunch of support while it was being structed. O was plete, the single rge tral support would carry the load, but there was nothing to hold up the walls until then.

  Alexander really wished he knew how the inal builders got around that issue. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any information on the stru processes used when they built the facility.

  The dome would have been finished by now if Alexander had prioritized the work. He didn’t do that for a few reasons. The first reason is that the workers needed experience before they tackled something so plicated. They were getting this by w on the smaller atriums and other areas of the facility that needed maintenand repairs. The sed reason is that he didn’t have enough manufacturing capacity for the main dome.

  Uhe other atriums, the main atrium was all gss. Well, teically that wasn’t true. It was a transparent ceramic material made from a bination of aluminum and magnesium that ressed aed, f a transparent substance.

  The resulting material was much strohan gss but it was also impossible to print because of the pressing aing requirements. That meant a specialized manufacturing line had to be built. There was no worry about s the materials for the ceramiposite. They existed in high quantities on the surface. That just left produg the substance as the bottleneck.

  With the help of the engineers, Alexander had gotten the manufacturing li up a few weeks ago. It was in a different area from his workshop though, sihe process produced a lot of heat and chemical vapors.

  The workers running this manufacturing line were familiarizing themselves with the process and runni batches now. If the ceramic had the correct properties, they could begin produg massive sheets of transparent material in another few weeks. The upside to all this infrastructure is that the material could be used to repy windows on shuttles or other spacecraft that may still use them, which were also made from the same substance.

  It would allow them to repurpose a few more of the derelict shuttles but other than that, he wasn’t sure how much he would his process going forward. If Alexander designed and built his own shuttle iure, there would be no windows. It would simply have external cameras like rger spaceships.

  Seeing as that process was going as quickly as it could, he turo the project.

  The tunnels meant to ect his ground-based orbital defeo the facility were slow going. Without a dedicated b mae, they had to be dug by hand-operated mining equipment, with each se being reinforced by crete before moving to the se. With the grid of ser defeellites plete, the tunnel project had been put on the back burhat was uable.

  Alexander didn’t want to leave without these mainteunnels being pleted. He put out a project request for more workers to hopefully speed it along. He also started designing a robot to assist with the process. He would have created an attat for his other robots, but the work was so specialized it simply wouldn’t be possible. If the ground hadn’t sisted of a hard rock yer only a few inches below the surface of loose sand and dirt, he would have simply excavated the hole and dropped prefabricated crete ses in pce before c it up again.

  The mining maes that were currently being used could dig through the hard material, but they weren’t designed for what he had in mind.

  The robot quickly took shape in his program. It would sist of four ses that ected together to form a ten-foot-wide circle. Cutting heads on the inside would reduce the rock to gravel and the workers would haul it off. Alexander was essentially recreating a b mae without all the fancy automation. He didn’t know why he had memories of b maes, but he did. At least the rock that was mined out could be processed for useful materials.

  The mae would take a few hours to print, then he would bring it to the first hole. Once he showed the workers how to operate it, they could easily move it to the and lower it into pce with the overhead es so it could be reassembled.

  That should solve his tunnel dilemma.

  up was the station. And he wasn’t talking about the refueling station. They needed an actual station, one capable of dog ships and ag as a shipping hub.

  It might seem a bit strao think about building a shipping hub when he had no ers and nothing to ship, but an actual station would take far loo struct thatle refueli. So he wa well underway before he o worry about it being an issue.

  The first thing that would go into the design of a ation was a shipyard. As that was likely to be Alexander’s first need. As much as he would have liked to build a fully enclosed hangar rge enough to host something like the Talon, that simply wasn’t going to happen, not anytime soon anyway. His initial design would be an exposed manufacturing yard, which wasn’t all that unon from what he knew.

  It just needed a dog bay, a disembarkation area, and a hangar for a shuttle and material ste. Eventually, it would have a small hangar for ships to offload, rooms to stay in, and other amenities. Alexander was a det engineer, but he wasn’t a structural engineer. Every time he tried to design su orbital facility, the testing showed it would not hold up to the stresses involved. The closest he got to a w model was when he used the inal design for the fuel depot and scaled it up. That wasn’t going to work for what he to do.

  After wasting a few hours aing nowhere, he sighed ahat project aside. In time he was sure he could figure it out, but his time was in short supply. Instead of wasting his own time, he had the funds, he might be able to purchase a workable design when he went to STO space.

  Last on his list was his ship project. Eden’s Fury was nearly plete. In a few more weeks the final yer of armor would be in pd system testing could begin. He was looking forward to that. After that came the shakedow ihe system to look for any issues that might crop up. Oside, the ship would look almost identical to what it was before, at least structurally. The only visible difference would be the ons.

  I was a whole new beast. Everything other than the fusioor was repced. With the new superputer core supplementing the other puterized systems, the ship could run on a crew of as few as five people. Alexander didn’t implement any of the stealth teology from the Dawn into the Fury. He didn’t want to ruffle the STO’s feathers just yet. Besides, he had no clue how to recreate the armor. The only teology he could have implemented was the jump dampening, which wasn’t all that useful without the stealth armor.

  That didn’t mean he didn’t take anything from the stealth ship. Incorporating the improvements into the sers made them slightly more powerful than the ones he had before. The ons were far more accurate and less proo overheating thanks to the improved design as well. Alexander did drop his power shunt idea, at least for now. It was simply too much of a risk. He would look into the idea ter to see if the process could be improved and made more viable. It was clear from the fight that it did increase the energy output of the ser by quite a bit. Having something like that in your back pocket in case of an emergency might be a good idea. He would work on that when he had time.

  While it wasn’t a major project, Alexander did o che the missiles. He was able to collee of the explosive pounds from the pirate missiles that were shot down. What he found was that the substance was exactly the same as what was in the grenades, which made it easy since he was already produg that explosive pound.

  With him being short on advanced puter chips, he couldn’t recreate the active avoidand eleic termeasure systems that the pirate and STO missiles had, but that was fine. His missiles might be dumb, but they were still capable of finding a target based oical trag system that Lucas built. In some ways, that was eveer sihe missiles did any active sensors, which is what the STO’s trag software looked for first and foremost. They would show up as a heat signature ohey fired their boosters, but that could be masked by adding simple decoy fres. So that’s what Alexander did. Would it work? Maybe. It wasn’t like he was eager to start shooting at STO ships to find out. If everythio pn, the missiles would remain ued unless some pirate tried to wayy them on the way.

  Finding nothing else on his project list to worry about, Alexander set about creating a supply list for Fury. Half of Na’s crew would be along for the maiden voyage and shakedown run. They would also be the crew piloting the ship back to STO space. Trying to vince Captain Na to accept had been a difficult versation to have. In the end, Na only agreed because he would finally get to talk to his family in near real-time. Alexander assumed the other members of his crew agreed for simir reasons.

  That meant he needed provisions for them. He also o include provisions for all of Captain Krieger’s people. Thankfully, the Dalenty of supplies for that, so it was just a matter of moving it all over from the derelict vessel.

  Alexander liked to give people the be of the doubt, but sidering Krieger’s people would outnumber Na’s on the voyage back, he was going to take some precautions. Biolocked pulse rifles for all of Na’s crew, as well as biolocked bridge, engineering, and on spaces. The STO crew would also be monitored a in a certaiion of the ship during the trip. That was overkill as far as security went, but it wasn’t enough for Alexander. He would also be monit the ship from Epsilon’s Dawn since he had to remain aboard the damaged vessel for the jumps.

  That was about as safe as he could make the trip.

  If Krieger was as smart as Alexahought he was, he would ensure his people pyed nice. If not, the crerepared to handle any issues.