BSE Chapter 4-4

Other than the manufacturing areas, the Eden’s End facility was rather quiet for the most part with the majority of people assisting with repairs.

Something had awoken in the populace in the wake of the fight and was further cemented after they bore witness to all the names of those who had given the ultimate sacrifice to save everyone who lived there.

Even Alexander was changed by the sheer magnitude of what he had witnessed. It was hard not to be moved by the deaths of thousands. In a surprising change, a large percentage of the traditionalists had signed on to assist with cleanup and repairs.

Most of the people couldn’t do much, not being trained in spaceship engineering, but they could help by running parts, moving debris, or simply bringing food and water as needed so the other workers could keep on task.

The extra efforts bore fruit as two more ships were saved from the scrap pile. One of those was Jarl Ylva Bergson’s cruiser, which had sustained nearly as much damage as Alexander’s ship. The only difference was the damage wasn’t to the weapons, making repairs much more palatable. The other ship to get a second life was one of Char’s destroyers that had lost a quarter of its crew when a missile detonated nearly on top of it. Despite that, the ship remained mostly intact. Repairing that brought Char’s fleet count up to four again, which still wasn’t great but it was an improvement.

While the workers and volunteers focused on the internal issues, Alexander monitored the work of his bots on the exterior of the vessels. Repairs and replacement armor panels were being slotted in place as soon as they came off the printers, which were being fed from the newly constructed smelter dubbed The Maw.

Watching the massive mechanical arms feed an entire ship into the device had been an experience. They did have to prep the ships before feeding them into the machine though. He couldn’t just feed a fuel core in and hope for the best. For the sake of expediency, large chunks were cut out of ship hulls to get at those components, which were then removed and set aside.

The process would have been fairly quick except the storage tanks filled up and had to be swapped out rather frequently. Alexander had stayed with the ones used on his ring printers so there wouldn’t be any issues with transferring materials, but he would need to design bigger storage tanks eventually, just to reduce the manual input needed to monitor the process, which was being done by Traffic Control at the moment.

Despite that bottleneck, the process was still significantly faster than manual disassembly. A frigate was reduced to component materials in a little under a week, speeding up a process that had taken over a month before.

The larger wrecks were being sliced apart into chunks that would fit inside The Maw. Harlow’s vessel was being saved for last, mostly because the efforts required to cut through the armor would take time as well as the fact that Alexander wanted to see if anything aboard the ship was worth studying. Going by what he had seen so far, he doubted that would be the case, but you never knew.

Alexander wasn’t the only one with a full plate of work. Gabriella and the medical facility were packed to the gills with convalescing patients.

Not every one that they had rescued from the ships had survived, and those names got added to the monument. Those who did survive were being cared for by a combination of Eden’s End and Asgardian personnel. All of the medical resources had been brought down from the surviving ships and Alexander’s supply quickly dwindled as well to help keep these brave souls alive.

He didn’t care about the cost. The fact was that Harlow’s bounty paid for everything a thousand times over. A full one billion credit bounty had been placed on the pirate's head. Other bounties were claimed as well, and Alexander once again contacted his friend Jasper.

“Alex!” Jasper stated as the call connected. “I’ve been expecting to hear from you since hearing the story of Harlow’s defeat. Is everyone ok?”

“The people on the ground survived, but we lost some good people during the fight.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there any way I can help?”

“I need medical supplies, as much as the Zephyr can hold.”

Jasper nodded on the other end of the connection. “I can do that. Anything else?”

“I do actually have something else.” Alexander had Theodore Pembrooke spend time scouring the network and looking for small startup companies that were trying to break into the market with medical discoveries. He knew what would happen as soon as the larger companies got wind of them, so he was trying to get to them first.

Pembrooke had managed to connect with a few of the organizations. Some were understandably dubious of their offer while others outright declined. Those companies would likely vanish into obscurity soon since their leadership was blind to what the larger corporations would likely do. Theo did eventually find two parties who agreed to pull up shop and come out to Eden’s End. One was a small pharmaceutical outfit that had just come out with a new anti-radiation pill and the other made a few different types of medical supplies.

Alexander hoped they were keen on expanding their offerings once they arrived, but even a bit more production in Unokane would be welcome.

“I have two groups of people that have agreed to come. They will make their own way, but I have agreed to cover the cost of bringing their supplies.”

“Sure, send me the manifest.”

Alexander did, and waited for Jasper to look it over.”

“Uh, Alex, The Zephyr can’t carry this much. Some of these items are too big to even fit inside my cargo bay.”

“I’m aware. I was hoping you might know another freighter captain who would be willing to do the work. We have full security coverage over the space between Varlen and Eden’s End now, so there are no concerns about piracy. I will also be paying double the rate.”

Jasper whistled at that. “I think I know a few captains that would jump at that. I’ll get back to you once I know more.”

Alexander thanked his friend and the call ended shortly after.

With that issue settled for the time being, he went to see how the armor plating for the prototype was coming along.

The new machines were too large to place inside his workshop without removing his current robotic assemblers, so Alexander had been forced to move them to a separate area nearby. The old storerooms had been modified by removing the walls and combining three of them together.

All of the items Alexander had been storing inside the rooms had been moved into the underground parking garage. It was the same garage that Yulia used for her go-carts, but while her track was on the same floor as their home, the storage was two floors down. He had Yi Na and his people place a blast door at the bottom of the ramp leading to the next floor, ensuring no curious children wandered down there.

The space hadn’t been utilized for much other than the storage of his auto carts until now.

Alexander entered the newly remodeled storage room. It was surprisingly quiet even though the three machines were hard at work assembling the panels. No moving parts and large vacuum chambers were the main reason for this silence.

He stepped over to the panel on the first machine and brought up the internal view as well as the log. The panel inside was hovering at a ten percent defect rate, which was as low as they had been able to get the process so far. This error rate was caused by defects in the material structure leading to weak points in the armor. While this didn’t affect the sensor absorbent quality of the material, it did mean it wasn’t as good as the stuff the STO had made.

From what Alexander had been able to determine, the STO’s sample had less than a three percent defect rate. The ablative nature of the armor meant the defective plates could still be used. It was more of a blow to his pride that he couldn’t beat the STO’s scientists than anything else. Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

It did mean the armor was slightly more prone to fracturing additional layers when struck, but that’s what it was designed to do. As long as it held up under normal use this would be fine for now.

Samples of the material were already being tested under load and had been attached to certain ships for the past few weeks to see how they performed in space.

There was a hiss from the other side of the room and Alexander watched as the vacuum area opened and the larger overhead crane arm reached down into the machine and plucked the square of material out of the chamber before whirring over to a pile off to the side and setting this newly finished panel down with the others.

He lifted the dense but relatively lightweight – for its size – panel and inspected it. Then he flicked it rather forcefully and it shattered in his hand.

Alexander sighed and tossed the broken pieces into the reclamation pile. That was what happened if the structural defects ran through the entire substrate. Even with the STO’s lower defect rate, they probably ran into a similar situation, just less often. For Alexander’s current manufacturing method, this issue occurred about once in every six plates and had only been discovered when one of the plates had been dropped on accident by Lucas. Since then this simple shock test had to be performed on each panel.

Once he was done with the tests, he piled the remaining plates into the cart and returned to his workshop where he would be bonding them with the frames.

It was a similar process to what the STO did, but Alexander’s had less of a frame or bezel holding the top. He was pretty certain that the bonding process would keep the two materials from separating, but he understood why the STO had chosen their encapsulation method. It would ensure that even if that bond came apart, the armor would remain in place. Since it didn’t take much in the way of extra material or effort to add a bit of extra precaution, he continued that process.

Those plates were set off to the side to cure while he pulled the ones from the previous day into the cart and made his way to the shuttle.

The ride up to the temporary ring dock was uneventful and he set the shuttle down in the hangar next to the partially completed stingray prototype.

The ship itself had been completed two days ago but still looked unfinished as it only had about ten percent of the stealth panels attached to it.

Branston climbed out from under the ship after the atmosphere in the hangar was restored.

“How’s the ship?” Alexander asked as he carried a bundle of the panels.

“Flight systems are functional, but until we actually get it out there, I won’t be able to give you any more information.”

Alexander nodded his avatar. “Do what you can to test the systems beforehand. Have you come up with a flight test plan like we discussed?”

Considering all the activity around the ring, someone was bound to notice the sensor void exiting the hangar when it was time to test it out, but they wanted to limit exposure while ensuring the most comprehensive testing.

Branston nodded. “I spoke with the Lagertha to determine the best time to launch. It seems like three in the morning is about midnight Asgard time and most crew will be asleep and the people on duty will be hand-picked by her. I had to guess at the other Jarl’s schedule but I think it’ll be fine. Once I launch, we’ll maneuver to the opposite side of Eden’s End before doing any thrust testing.”

“We?” Alexander asked in confusion.

“The Lagertha wants to be on the test flights to learn how the ship operates before they leave.”

“Makes sense,” Alexander admitted.

“Once we ensure basic tests are good, we’ll accelerate past the first moon and do jump testing. Vanguard is on patrol, so they will be nearby if any issues occur. From there, we will jump back and do the final atmospheric testing on the far side of the planet. That’s going to be the sketchiest part most likely, so I would appreciate having a shuttle or something on standby when we enter.”

“I’ll be there in person,” Alexander reassured the man.