Blue Star Enterprises

Alexander's haste wasn't brought on by any immediate sense of fear or concern, however, that was always in the back of his mind. Without knowing what Harlow was up to, Alexander was left guessing when or if the man or someone associated with him would show up again soon.

If the 'Pirate Emperor' sent more people like Dalton, they could probably handle that without much issue now. What concerned Alexander the most was where Harlow and his fleet were. For all he knew, the man could be heading there right now. That was the main driving point for his urgency.

Alexander assumed that was a possibility because Harlow had pulled back shortly after Dalton's death and he didn't believe in coincidences.

As soon as Krieger turned up with the fleet, Alexander had wanted to begin the mission to Asgard, but the conditions on the recovered pirate ships were so poor that he couldn't risk sending them the way they were.

At the moment, the cruisers and destroyers were little more than larger, slower frigates. They didn't even have completed weapons systems according to Krieger's report, so they were even worse than that. If he wanted Char to take him seriously, he needed to change that, but he also knew he couldn't take the time to entirely retrofit the ships to his standards without knowing what Harlow was up to.

If he knew the man's whereabouts, Alexander might be able to plan better, but Harlow had pulled back from the front and simply dropped off the STO's radar. That didn't bode well for anyone. He was going to need Krieger to reach out to Fletcher to see if the Vice Admiral could shed some light on the pirate's erratic actions.

As soon as he entered his workshop, he gestured to the holo display. The area flickered to life and Alexander quickly zipped through a list of files for his projects that were either abandoned or shelved for a variety of reasons. There were hundreds of ideas that had never panned out or were simply worse iterations of what he was already doing. Alexander held onto every design, even if they were worse.

He quickly arrived at the folder containing ship projects. There were only a few designs in the folder since he had only recently gotten serious about building ships. Most of the designs were early iterations of the fishbone ship and his control ships. There were a few early layouts for actual warships, but he hadn't taken those past the concept phase. Looking at them, he was glad he hadn't. They would have been subpar designs at best with what he knew now.

None of those were the ships he was looking for though. Soon he found the ship in question and poked the file, sending it to the main display. The image showed a small corvette class ship. When he had originally come up with this idea, he wanted to use the largest ship he thought he could get away with for the design.

Unfortunately, there was no way he was going to be able to complete a full corvette in a month, let alone the four he wanted to, not from scratch anyway. If everything had been laid out properly and tested beforehand, then maybe he could do it, but not yet.

Knowing he couldn't make a corvette work, he stripped the exterior of the vessel, then the bulkheads, leaving only the internal components behind. He saved this design as a new gunboat and pulled in the scans from the pirate gunboats he had been originally intending to refit, but had eventually scrapped.

The best part was he still had the FTL and reactors from those ships, meaning he wouldn't have to build them. The gunships used the same reactor type that shuttles used. At least the gunships Alexander had seen did. Their reliance on the ability to refuel did limit them a bit but he was ok with that since the Talon would have plenty of fuel aboard for the trip.

He quickly manipulated the designs until the old externals from the corvette fit into the shell of the gunship. Alexander would have preferred to design a new ship from the ground up, but he simply didn't have time to do that and all the testing involved to ensure a new design would work properly.

Even with what he was doing now, he was left with a mess of an interior that no self-respecting pilot would ever fly. It was a good thing it didn't need a pilot.

The idea he had scrapped so long ago was the use of automated warships, similar to his control ships. He realized it wouldn't be a feasible idea because the cost of supercomputer computronics was more than the entire cost of the corvette he had planned to place it into.

The vessels also wouldn't be all that good. Once you took into account all the processing power required to run the ship systems, you weren't left with much for stuff like tactical processing, and weapons operations. His control ships didn't run into this issue because they rarely if ever deployed their bots until they were at their destination, and then they just made the occasional adjustment to their orbit to remain near their location, while the rest of the computronic module processed commands to the bots.

That would not be the case in a fight. An automated warship would need to process everything it normally did and then some, requiring more than one computronic supercomputer to do so, making the thought of building one even less palatable. Even Epsilon's Dawn still needed crew and it had two computronic supercomputers aboard. That meant ships larger than a corvette would probably need three or more modules to work without a crew. It was an unsustainable model with the STO computronics.

Now that he had the new processors, that cost was no longer an issue. At least with a smaller ship. Alexander wasn't sure it would work at all for anything larger than a corvette, assuming he ever got to designing one. The reason for that was simple. He would need to stack eight of the new computronics together to make the system work on a gunship. Unless they figured out the issue causing so much processor speed loss between modules, it wouldn't matter how many they stuck together, it would never be enough to run a true warship.

The design was nearly finished when his alarm beeped. He quickly saved the changes and went home to make Yulia supper. He wanted to finish this work before the fleet arrived in orbit, but it wouldn't be at the expense of spending time with his daughter.

Alexander wasn't going to start construction on them until he got to speak with Krieger and the other captains anyway. Depending on what work needed to be done to the four pirate ships, they returned with, his manufacturing resources might be better spent working on them before he considered building the four automated ships.

***

Might's shuttle shook as it entered the atmosphere, Vitor did his best to ignore it as he went over his report for the fifth time, checking to make sure he hadn't missed some detail. Having Alex cancel their conference call shortly after proposing it, and then not responding to further inquiries had him worried that he would soon be out of yet another job.

While he knew he made mistakes during this mission, he would have done it all again given the same circumstances. If Kane couldn't see that, maybe it would be best if he moved on.

Vitor glanced out the front window of the shuttle and saw the three dropships carrying the corporate gunship just touching down.

There had been significant changes in the space around Eden's End since the fleet had left and it seems those changes had continued on the surface as well. A large new dome was going up on the far side of the massive facility. He could see the spark of welders as workers moved about like ants. Vitor even spotted some of Alexander's bots roaming around the construction site. They seemed quite a bit less animated than the space-borne ones.

"Touchdown in five," the pilot called over the ship comm, alerting him and the other passengers to brace themselves.

While the warning was appreciated, it was unnecessary. The shuttle set down gently and the landing gear absorbed most of the jarring sensation.

He thanked his pilot and began unstrapping himself as the man ran through the shutdown sequence.

By the time the cargo ramp lowered, Vitor could see the rest of the shuttles from the BSE ships coming in to land as well. He had seen that the final pirate ship was now converted into a BSE warship by the name of Eden's Revenge and he was curious who would captain that.

There was now a covered vestibule in front of the entrance, so Vitor waited there for the other captains while his people headed inside to rest and relax from the long mission.

Someone must have been watching, because as soon as Hall and Ramirez joined him, he got a ping on his BSE comm – which was a bastardized hybrid of a radio and a small tablet – to meet at a certain conference room.

The three captains made their way there and found Alex waiting for them. The robot motioned them inside. "Please shut the door behind you and take a seat, we have a lot to discuss."

As soon as Hall closed the door, Vitor spoke up. "I take full responsibility for any issues that occurred during this mission. If you see fit to punish anyone, punish me."

Alexander just stared at him, his avatar blinking slowly. "I didn't bring you three here to punish you for what happened during the mission. While I don't agree with all of the actions you took, I wasn't there. And while it would have been safer to stay on mission… It was eventually successful."

***

Alexander found a bit of humor in watching Vitor struggle to understand why he wasn't in trouble, but he needed to move this meeting along. "Ships got damaged and people got hurt or killed, but that was bound to happen at some point. The only question you three need to ask yourselves is did you learn anything from the experience? If that answer is no, you should probably hand in your badges."

When nobody stepped up, Alexander nodded his avatar. "Good. I canceled your earlier meeting because I realized we have been underestimating the pirates. Do you all agree this is the case based on your experience?"

The three men nodded.

"Had we known they had connections to corporations, I would have advised against this mission altogether," Vitor added.

"That is a troubling discovery, but not what I mean. The pirates alone have been much more organized, and with significantly better technology than I've been led to believe. Some of this might be because of a few corporations backing their actions, but we can't discount their intelligence and ability to innovate. You've seen it for yourselves with the pirates' gravity traps and the compartments hidden through the use of static field generators. I didn't really think too much about this at the time, but Krieger, you saw Katalynn Char's flagship, what were your thoughts on it?"

"It was the largest pirate ship I've come across, and I would estimate it to be ten to twenty percent larger than the cruisers we recovered from Arkonis' shipyard. It was also the most heavily armed, with railguns and even a laser."

Alexander nodded at that. He had gone back over the footage and specifically reviewed anything with her ship. "Have you ever seen a ship like that before?"

"Now that you mention it, no. I'm not much of a historian where ships are concerned though, but I don't recall any human entities using frontline warships that large, assault ships like the Talon excluded. I simply can't see the cost being worth the effort to build them."

"In the pre-STO days, certain entities used carrier ships. Those were quickly phased out as ship combat got faster and fighters weren't able to be upgraded to include the newer thrusters to keep up," Hall added. "Gunships eventually replaced the fighter role as they just need a resupply ship." Before anyone could ask, the man added. "I studied military history as my thesis for command school. I wanted to be an Admiral, but it took me too long to reach the rank of Captain."

The man looked younger than Archie to Alexander, but he already knew the STO had age limitations on certain ranks.

"Thank you for the information, Captain Hall, it does clear a few things up for me," Alexander stated. "As for the pirates, they seem to be in a time of innovation and research where the STO is stagnant. That wouldn't be a bad thing if the pirates weren't our enemies, but they are. You all know the end goal is to have a loose alliance with the Char family to eventually deal with Emperor Harlow and that monstrous ship of his. We can't underestimate Char and her people either. Originally I thought fourteen ships would be plenty to show our strength when we arrived in Yggdrasil's Eye, at least allowing us to talk on even terms. Now I'm not so sure. With that in mind, I'm adding four gunships to the fleet."

He flicked the holo projector to show the newest ship.

"No offense, Alex," Krieger stated, "but I don't see four gunships doing much to shift the balance. Especially since we barely have enough people to crew the ships we already have."

Krieger had a point, and it was one Alexander had already taken into account. "This is an automated vessel. I actually need to thank you, for bringing me the means to create it."

Krieger looked puzzled for a moment before realization struck him. "You mean those outdated processors?"

"Not exactly," Alexander admitted. "The processors were junk. Most failed in testing. Those other parts aboard the ship were much more important. It turns out they were an entire assembly for a nano-scale chip fabricator. I would like to say it was as simple as putting all the parts together and pressing a button, but it took time to get production going. Once I did, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I'm sure you noticed the massive increase in orbital construction going on. None of that would have been possible without that fabricator."

"Shoulda asked for more money," the man muttered under his breath.

Alexander heard his words and laughed. "Check your bank account. I'm certainly not an ungrateful employer."

He waited while the man pulled up his comm tablet and checked his balance. His eyes grew wide before he put the tablet back down. "That's more than I managed to save during my entire time in the Navy."

"All of the BSE crews received combat pay as well. It's triple the normal pay and the least I can do for people who are willing to put their lives on the line to make BSE thrive. Now for the bad news," Alexander added after getting their hopes up. "Your people will have a month of downtime before the next mission. That means there is a lot of work to do before then. I want to go over those new ships myself and see what can be improved in the time we have. At most, I suspect we will only have time to upgrade the weapons to railguns and maybe the engines to my own design."

"I know you've expanded your production capacity, but are you sure you have time to make these changes?" Krieger asked. Stay updated with empire

"I won't know until after I inspect the work on each ship. I would prefer not to spend too much time on them since they will need to be taken apart and rebuilt at some point in the future to bring them up to my standards, but I also want them to go in with the best chance of winning if these talks break down. That is another point we need to discuss. Since this next mission is meant as more of a diplomatic one, I will be coming along. I won't be looking over any of your shoulders though. I have completed my qualifications to become a captain and will be taking command of one of the two cruisers. Krieger, I want you in command of the other. Hall and Ramirez, you will be assuming command of the two destroyers. I'm sure this will feel like a downgrade since you are used to the automation on the Eden ships, but I want the most experienced people in command of the most powerful ships. Eventually, they will get the same BSE treatment as time becomes available, but for now, we will work with what we have, any questions?"

"Can we bring our crews with us?" Ramirez asked.

Alexander nodded his avatar. "If you think that's best, then yes. Pick the closest equivalent from the Hawks to swap over to the BSE ships."

"What about the civilians?" Hall asked.

"Bring them through processing. I'm sure some might like to stay, but most will probably want to head home at some point. I will need to speak with Captain Farthing about running a transport service back and forth with some of the automated gunships as scouts and to defend her until she reaches a civilian station." That meant he would need two more ships and a modification to the fishbone to allow for the safe transport of people.

This is why he wanted to speak with his captains before he kicked off construction. Now he had additional goals he needed to meet.