After speaking with Matthews, Alexander had some things to sider. It would take a bit to e together before he was ready to present it to the rest of his team, but he was hopeful that a pn would e together. Hopefully, trying to work with Katalynn Char wouldn’t e back to bite him, but if he wao take the fight away from Unokane and to Harlow, he needed allies to work with.

  Alexander had already seen the news reports of Harlow nuking that one phere was no way he was allowing that psychotic bastard anywhere his system.

  He had purchased access to the gactiews to keep track of when Krieger was finally released from the Navy, but he was gd he kept it because it allowed him to learn just what Harlow was capable of if he didn’t get his way. It made his idea of w with Char look not so bad in parison.

  That being said, he had just taken his first steps down that long road to make anything a reality, and ohole along the way could derail that trip entirely. Finding allies was important, but it wasn’t immediately critical. He would o keep w at that long-term goal as time permitted.

  In the meantime, he o focus on finishing the pressed psma eje engine design so he could outfit the Talon while it was here for maintenance. Work on the project had been put on hold while he assisted Damien and the Hawks in their efforts to root out any more possible troublemakers.

  Speaking of troublemakers, Alexander had sequestered the crew who refused to sign up with BSE. inally he was going to let the people live normally like the rest of the people on Eden’s End until it was time to take them back, but due to ret events, he ged his mind.

  sidering one of the men, who refused to accept the tract, was caught trying to send coded messages back to STO space through the Q, Alexander felt vindicated with his decision. A few of those people grumbled vociferously, but Alexander put his foot down. They were moved to a temporary area in Atrium D where they could move around in a walled-off area. Food aertai were provided, but they were not allowed to mih the popuce.

  His treatment didn’t win him any favors with those individuals, but he didn’t care. They still had access to send messages to the Q, if they wao call for a ride, they were more than wele to do so. Otherwise, the pn was to send them back to a civilian station within STO space as soon as a ship was avaible. By agreement, the Hawks would eventually send someoo take them home, but by then, they would no longer be Alexander’s .

  Dalton’s ship might be an option, but it wasn’t desigo carry more than a handful of people at a time. And it was rather uh the modifications the man had doo it.

  As much as he would like those people out of his hair, he o focus on the important issues pguing him at the moment. Alexander knew he was fag an unknown deadliil Harlow decided to throw something new his way. He o be ready for that.

  Knowing that he was on a tight timeline, he was tempted to throw all of the superputers, Jasper had brought i shipment, into more trol ships and stru drones.

  The threefold increase in stru capability would be a game ger. At some point, he would do it because he had to, but not today. He simply didn’t have the o refurbish a frigate in a single month. If he had the avaible crew, it would be a different story.

  He thought about making a sort of automated carrier but dismissed the idea for the same reason he wasn’t making his own ships from scratch yet. His trol ships were the only ships Alexander had built so far, and they were a mess on the inside. He had not bothered taking into at many things when he built those ships, so the internals were a rat’s of cables and other trol systems.

  It wasn’t really a when the ship had no internal walls separating the space, but that wouldn’t work with an actual warship though.

  Another reason he hadn’t gohe carrier route was the issue with what it would carry. He really only had two optioher build a bunch of bots or use his ser ptforms. her of which was fast or maneuverable with their little ion engines. If he was setting up some static defensive point in a system, then the carrier would shine, but from what Alexander had seen so far, space battles happened very quickly and the area of space people could into was massive. Still, it was something to sider for the future.

  While the bots wouldn’t do a lick of good in a battle, he could put them to work mining. Yeah, that seemed like the best option in the short term.

  Alexander made some rapid flig motions that sent print jobs to all of his printers, including the three orbital ones he was now running. Within three days, those print jobs would be assembled into three new trol ships along with thirty new drohe drones would carry the mining modifications to help bolster his gging resource colles. He sent Mingyu a message, notifying him he would have pany out in the belt soon. He figured a heads-up would be wise sihe man had one of the only ore haulers in the system and he would be w alongside the new bots.

  He thought about it for a bit before sending the Hawks a message as well.

  Unlike Mingyu, who was likely deep in the mini, the Hawks replied rather quickly.

  His query had been a simple one. He wao know if they had cleared the two small mining ships that arrived with the rest of the refugees. They did, and both ships were clear of any traband.

  That was good. If they had found any traband, he would have andeered those ships and had the crew arrested, but then he would have been short on people to crew them. An ongoing issue it seemed.

  He looked up the crew ma aheir captains job offers. Alexander had a lot of credits, it was time to put them to work.

  It didn’t take long to get replies from the two ship owners. They both agreed to act as hauling barges for his mining operation. They agreed so fast that Alexander was sure he had overpaid. It was what it was. He heir ships until he could build a hauler of his oaying them a lot of money was the quickest way to make that happen. The two ships would likely not be able to keep up with his automated miners ohey really got going, but it was better than nothing.

  Realizing he was overlooking a resource, he messaged o person.

  “Captain Farthing, are you busy at the moment?”

  “Not at all, what I assist you with, Mr. Kane?”

  Alexander rolled his eyes at the woman's overly formal tohrough the radio. “First of all, call me Alex or Alexander, everyone does. As for what I messaged you about. How would you like to upgrade from a shuttle?”

  “Very well, Alex. You might as well call me Penny then, so long as the versation is between just the two of us. As frading, I would be a rather poor captain if I deed ht. I don’t want to be rude as you are my boss, but I assume you recall my stiputions.”

  How could he fet? You didn’t e across a Navy captain who didn’t want to pilot a warship every day. “I remember, Penny. The ship does have ons, but you will be using it to haul ore.”

  “…That’s a first. May I ask why you have an ore hauler with ons on it?”

  “It’s teically not an ore hauler. I’m referring to the ship we fiscated from the man who attempted to kidnap me and my daughter.” He chose not to mention the fact that he did indeed put ons on another mining ship.

  “Ah, that makes sense. Does that mean you are done searg the ship?”

  It was a good question. The answer was, yes and no. Shutting down the ship's reactor had given them full access to s the interior of the vessel. What they found was surprising. The ship had four small Gauss ons, and two PDCs hidden behind fake hull ptes. Not much of a surprise other than the fact there were so many ons on such a small ship.

  The bigger surprise was the massive optical array hidden in the front of the ship. He khe ship had one based on his eleic escapades through its puters during his brief stint aboard, but he hadn’t been prepared for just how impressive the array was. Alexached to pull it apart and exami, but he he ship intact for now. The only thing of was the explosives hidden throughout the ship. It took a dedicated team of explosives experts from the Hawks to clear out those to ehe ship was safe.

  It was actually a stroke of luck that the ship hadn’t blown up the moment Daltohe explosives were lio his bio signs, but thanks to some fluke with their range of dete, and Alexander having never released his grip on the ship’s puter, it wasn’t able to process the and. And ohe and failed, the puter wasn’t smart enough to realize anything had gone wrong. That was just another example of how close he had e to losing it all. He would not, could not let that happen again.

  “The ship is ready to fly, are you ied?” he asked instead.

  “It beats sitting around here,” she eventually responded. “Will I get some crew?”

  “The ship is desigo fly with a single person but pick four people from the other two crews.” This would short the other crews of the additional people he had promised them, but it couldn’t be helped.

  With the start of the academy ramping up, Alexander was hopeful at least a few of the locals and refugees would take advantage of the naval courses.

  If he had another year and ge, he could assign Markus to one of the ships as a Cadet, but that was well into the future.

  “Very well,” Penny stated. “Does this ship have a name?”

  Alexander wasn’t going to use the hat Dalton was using, but he did have one in mind. “It’s called Fafo.”

  “Fafo?” the woman asked. “That’s an odd name. Does it mean anything?”

  He smiled internally. “Nope, nothing signifit.” Alexander wasn’t sure if the term meant anything in this day and age, but he liked it as a bit of an inside joke. And if anyone did uand the meaning, well, they might learn what happens when they decide to mess with him.

  He gave her the expected timeline of when to ship out and said the vessel would be fully stocked and ready for her crew when they arrived.

  Noenny was onboard, he felt better about the three ships keeping up with his mining drohat should clear up any resource shortfalls and give Mingyu and his crew some mueeded downtime.

  That did push his bottleneck down the line, but Alexander had already anticipated that issue over a year ago. With the two smelters he purchased in Varlen, the two that he had Jasper buy for him, and even the malfuning ohat he had mao finally repair, he had more capacity to refierial than he knew what to do with.

  It wasn’t a bad problem to have. He just wished he could increase his employee t as easily, but that was a bottleneck he didn’t have much trol over at the moment.

  Alexander went over his orbital infrastructure o time to make sure he didn’t miss anything. There were things he wao implement, but they could wait.

  Seeing as he was using all of his assets to the best of his ability, he finally turo the hologram he had been w oire time he had been sending out texts and versing with people. His little trip aboard the kidnappers' ship did have one adva forced him to push his abilities and expand his mind, allowing him to multitask way more effectively than before. That was a small silver lining to that rather unwele enter.

  His once messy and voluted pressed psma eje design was now much sleeker and way more simplified. Even with all the redundant systems, the military Css 7 design was only half again as plicated as a Css 5, making it far superior to the Talon’s current Omni thrusters as far as simplicity went.

  The real question was, did they outperform the Omni thrusters? The ao that was, no. Alexander only had two sets of pressed psma eje thrusters to pare his design to, one from Omni, and the other from Sinorus. Based on those findings, it seemed there was a very slim design margin to get the thrusters to work properly.

  He tried all sorts of thrust e and expansion chamber figurations to try and optimize the output, but they all boiled down to the same shape. Alexander shouldn’t be surprised by that, pressed psma eje worked on a wildly different principle to pulsed fusion.

  Once he came to that clusion, he simply designed his thrust e to split the differeween Omni and Sinorus’ designs. The insignifit thrust differeweewo was so negligible as to not matter. Instead, he focused on improving the psma flow, aor output, which was the real bottlene his design.

  A smoother flow meant a more stable thrust. Using an idea he had kicked around for a while, which was once again brought to the forefront of his attention by the unique use of the static fields on Dalton’s ship, Alexander ed the psma flow in a static field instead of the eleagic field that it was normally tained by.

  The emitters looked a little weird with their pt, but he just wao see what it would do when he ran it through the simution software.

  It didn’t work, but it didly fail as he expected it to. He added back the eleagic field geors but left the static field emitters aed them again. Alexander wasn’t sure if the two would have strange reas or not, but this is what testing was all about.

  There seemed to be some rea to having both fields active in the taiube, but it was a small ge. Not enough to justify adding both to an already plex propulsion system. If he could find a way to bih fields iure, then maybe he could revisit the design.

  He moved on to the reactor. Alexander’s knowledge of reactors robably his weakest subject as far as the propulsion pos on ships went. He had a few memories of reactor designs from ba his day, but the reactors of the twenty-fourth tury had little in on with those antiquated designs. And why should they, those designs had never even seen ercial use, while these reactors were used every day.

  It didn’t help that he had seen dozens of differeor designs over the years. The one he was looking at now was called a ball reactor. It was a simple spherical reactor that made a miniature star at its ter. It was rge, plicated, and not very effit, but it was one of the simplest reactor designs that Alexander had access to. This was the type of reactor the Moonlit Destiny had.

  For all its fws, the reactor was nearly maintenance-free, which is why it was still in use on quite a few ships.

  The Talon’s reactor was a whole differe. Alexander didn’t have schematics for it, but he was allowed to study the design and watch the reactor in a. It e of reactor called a disk reactor and it looked like a squashed ball or infted pancake. Ihe reactor was a series s. Depending on the reactor output, there could be up to seven of these rings. The Talon’s reactor only had three. The main ring, and two auxiliary rings.

  Instead of eng the entire reactor in aromagic field, the rings sort of taihe psma in a loop of magism that kept the energy far enough away from the delicate rings, while also keeping it from tag the outside of the tai vessel.

  The reason for the separate rings was that it allowed you to pull psma from the auxiliary rings to use as the ship’s thrust, while not disturbing the main power ring. And if you somehow disrupted the flow of one or both of the auxiliary rings, the main ring was desigo restart them without interruption.

  It was a beautiful design, but Alexander had no idea how to recreate it. He had a few prototypes in the works but none were funal at the moment.

  The final design was what the shuttles used. It was a simple reactor that used the magic field to hold the fuel in pce while a grid of sers heated it to ignition, simir to how the pulsed fusion drive operated. It was the smallest of the reactor designs that Alexander had access to, but it also had the lowest output. These smaller reactors weren’t desigo hahe higher energy fuel tained in the fifty-year cores that starships used either. The shuttle reactors could only vert heavy water and super heavy water into fusible material.

  He retty sure he could increase the efficy of the reactor and shrink the entire design by quite a bit, but that didn’t really solve his problem of ing up with a reactor design for his pressed psma eje thrusters.

  In the end, Alexander decided to just retrofit his eo the reactors that were already avaible oalon and the Destiny. It would take a bit more work on his part, but why bother reiing the wheel when it was already there?

  The Talon might not see much improvement, but it would have brand-new ehe Destiny, however, should see a slight improvement over their outdated Sinorus engines.

  With that decision, he made a quick ge to the design to allow for the e ge and queued up the eo the orbital printers. Once his new trol ships were done printing, it would be time to retrofit the Talon.

  It was good timing since Eden’s Resolve would be leaving shortly with the first delivery for Vice Admiral Fletcher. That gave Alexander a little over two months to finish the retrofit for Talon.

  Alexander checked his watd saw it was nearly time for Yulia to get out of css. He quickly saved his work and locked down his workshop before heading out to pick her up.

  He knew he had been a rather negligent father tely, but he was doing his best to spend time with her whenever he could. It would have been much easier if there was a sed parent for her, but Alexander had no iions of finding a signifit other. Even if he sidered it, what would be the point? It wasn’t like he could make them happy, and he was starting to realize he probably wouldn’t have the same feelings for them as he did Yulia.

  Alexander’s feelings had e back when Yulia was first attacked ba Petrov Station, but Alexander barely felt anything towards most people even now. The few exceptions were his close friends and the people he hated with a burning passion, like the pirates who attacked the facility, Dalton, and Harlow. Everyone else just fell into a grey area of plete emotional disi for him.

  Maybe one day he would figure out a solution to that problem, but for now, he had enough people he cared about.