Starship Engineer

Chapter 90 Research and Upgrades

My decision to remain here was met with mixed reviews. The hospitality staff had the big job of pacifying our passengers. They had paid for us to drop them off in a system that had been a cover for us to throw off our pursuers. They were unwitting pawns who were now getting trapped for six months in deep space. I gave Suruchi permission to pay them 1200 Sol credits each for their silence. They were also going to be refunded their tickets and would be allowed to utilize all of Void Phoenix’s entertainment options. We had 11 guests in six cabins.

My next task was going to be keeping everyone busy. One project that had been in the back of my mind for a while was the micro subspace drive on the Brotherhood’s shuttle. It had a range of 25 light years which was just insane for such a small vessel. I had disassembled the shuttle completely, but I wanted to get my marine drop shuttle upgraded. I presented this problem to Damian Loredo, my old FTL engineer, and my two married shuttle techs, Stavros Martis and Evira Martis. We also had the advanced navigation software and most of the sensors from the shuttle intact.

Stupidly, I had destroyed most of the bridge controls when I entered the shuttle from its nose, thinking that was the safest and most unexpected way to breach it. The three were actually excited and took on the project with excitement. Finn Martis, the son of the shuttle techs, was also pulled into the project.

My new shield engineer Hans Anders was brought to my research lab that contained the alien shielding devices. I didn’t have a lot of hope to get them reverse-engineered in a few months but at least he would be busy. Eve was doing her best to transcribe the alien archives and log pertinent items for review, so Hans had an alien operating handbook.

Nero was leading my salvage team on the station and the damaged frigate. The two old carriers, that made up the station had been welded together, were ancient fighter carriers. Each ship was 400 meters long and had multiple fighter bays stocked with tons of parts, feedstock for fabricators, munitions, ship weapons, and provisions. The fuel was still an issue. Most ships had a massive solar array that could be deployed to catch a sun’s energy and recharge batteries in an emergency while waiting for rescue. We were way too far from the sun for these to be deployed and only the frigate had a functioning one anyway.

Nero, my chief engineer, and Vicky, my logistics officer, were working with the remaining members of Kara’s crew on the station. Six were with munitions experts, and two were life support engineers, three were officers like Kara, one was a power systems engineer, one was a sensor operator, and the last was their medical officer. I wanted to work these old Union navy personnel in with my projects but still keep them distant from sensitive projects and areas on the Void Phoenix. I tasked Dora Kiernan and Edmund Asir with keeping the relations between my crew and Kara’s amicable. They were probably not happy having to wait six months for freedom, but at least I was rescuing them.

To help with crew relations, I kept my Doc busy by offering Kara and her crew SNAIL treatments for free. All of these individuals would have never been able to afford these treatments on their income, so I hoped this boon would keep them in line. The station’s doctor Will Swain, spent a lot of time in our medical bay with my Doc, Andie Niaz. Our medical bay was superior to anything that was on a Union ship, and I think he was crushing on our doctor a bit.

Keeping everyone in line and ship security was Abby’s job. Abby, Francis, and the five marines were going to be busy training and keeping tabs on any issues that may pop up. The stealth combat suits received rave reviews and gave the small squad some swagger. They didn’t like the fact that I ordered them to begin training in the suits in EVO actions. I was just using the suits to keep them busy, but training in the black was not fun for the marines unaccustomed to it.

Elias and Zoe had gotten their wish to pilot the fighters. The ships were 6% lighter since we had changed the armor to the alien hull material, giving them slightly better specs than the regular Sapphirean fighters. I ran our fuel and fighter operation time…I allowed them one launch every two weeks, for a total of 11 launches. That would reserve enough fuel for seven additional launches if we ran into a need to deploy them again for defense. To keep my pilots active, they had started cross-training with the marines in the stealth suits. This caused a lot of friendly competition as Zoe and Elias always destroyed the marines in the VR sims for EVO actions.

My two botanists, Miguel Asuni and Abraham Zaire, were already occupied. They seemed to be lost in their own little world, spending 14 to 16 hours a day in the small botany lab running tests and planning new growth plans. They wanted to take the massive seed I had procured from the Ederne system and germinate it. Those trees had been massive, and I wasn’t sure growing it on our promenade would be a good idea. Instead, I got them to put the seed into alien stasis to preserve it. Another fascinating piece of technology I hope to delve into further one day.

Reluctantly I had a few people join Haily on the alien sensor modules. I didn’t want to spread the knowledge that I was carrying these advanced sensors. There was a lot to these two massive devices. We could get them running and calibrate them, but translating the received data to the bridge terminals was a project in itself. Arthur Davies, the bridge sensor operator, joined Haily first. When I checked up on them one time, I realized they were comfortable being really close together and remembered Gwen saying they were in the early stages of a relationship…but that was a while ago. So that answered the reason why Haily was not pursuing me any longer.

Danielle Forester, my software engineer, was leading the terminal translation from the alien sensors. She would be creating the bridge interface for the devices, which I assumed would be difficult if my issues with the alien hull fabricators were any indication. For some reason, Eve did not like Danielle, so the help Eve offered her was often late or incomplete. When I asked her why Eve said plainly that I was eyeing her too lustily. She was also upset Julie and I were not back together. Emotional actuation by Eve was getting stronger and more pronounced. Should I start to get worried? I kept this development in the back of my head.

Reluctantly I let two of Kara’s crew members join Haily. Garrison Saku, the sensor operator, and Maria Roma, the power systems technician. Both were not up to my standards regarding certs or intellect, but they were extrovert optimists, according to Julie. Julie said this would greatly help the project. Edmund and Francis had cleared both of them to work on the project as well after a psych evaluation by Doc. I had them quartered on my ship and paired an engineering bot with each to keep an eye on them.

The hull refit was being overseen by the same two, Saabir and Yannis. They had been on it from day one and were extremely competent, and they had also completed a rehull of the fighters and shuttles. My old marine assault shuttle actually looked new from the outside, anyway. Since we had enough feeder stock, I added the Caladrius to the queue for a refit as well. The Caladrius was attached to the belly of the Void Phoenix, and it was an ultra-fast courier. It had no subspace drive though. Unfortunately, it had been too large a ship to incorporate the micro FTL drive from the Brotherhood shuttle. Maybe Damian would understand the tech enough to add it the Caladrius in the future.

As a bonus for Saabir and Yannis, we were able to locate multiple small power cores in hangers. Almost all of these power cores were designed for small one-person fighters. And they could be made to fit on the hover bikes with some tweaking. Maybe a little too overpowered for the bikes, but the two were grinning the entire time I brought up the possibility.

Gabby was going to be busy. She was working with the life support techs on the station to keep everything functional and also working on the station’s 117 bots. All of the quality bots had been taken by resupplying ships or with the original station captain when he fled on the corvette. But I knew any functional bot was useful. So I charged Gabby with bringing them into the robotics lab, purging their data, and refurbishing each one before installing new programming. Each major overhaul would take her two to three days, so I expected her to be occupied the entire time we were docked here.

Gwen had the boring job of keeping everyone on board the Void Phoenix alive. The damage from the missile impact on our shields had rattled a lot of systems on our old ship. A few micro hull fractures and lots of leaks in life support needed to be handled. Since she was only had a half dozen bots assigned to her, she had a lot of work ahead of her. I enjoyed our dinners together, and she was starting to connect with Celeste and Amos. They recognized her and were always smiling when she visited in the evening. Gwen’s smile was getting better, still a little lopsided, but Doc said she was working hard to get the nanobots to correct the musculature and tissue—just a few more weeks.

Luna and Zed, Gabby’s dog, made the rounds on the ship every day after her classes with Julie. She was a cheerful young girl. If all the crew only realized how she acted in the VR sword and sorcery game, they wouldn’t think she was a young and innocent 13-year-old. Luna had started taking more specific courses recently. She was working on a very early navigation engineer track. When I asked her if she was interested in that, she said it was just an open position on the ship, and she wanted to stay on the ship. I asked her what she was really interested in, and she said she wanted to be like Abby, my security chief. The new power armor was so cool! I didn’t think this would fly with her parents. Instead, I told her she could get the certs for maintaining and repairing the power armor for now. This excited her, and she immediately worked with Julie to start on the certs.

Tora, my budding propulsion engineer, who had come on board as a navigation engineer, was the only member of my crew not occupied with a major project. The reason why is she was one month pregnant with Saabir’s child. This seemed a little off as Gwen had not been aware of a relationship between them, and they were not a couple. Doc confided that the two had gotten drunk and had…aggressive sex resulting in the conception of the child. Saabir had spent two days in medical for injuries. Tora seemed excited about the resulting child, and Saabir was indifferent. Well, another playmate for Celeste and Amos, I guess.

That left Kara, her three officers, and six munitions experts. They were all helping Nero sort and pick through the large storage hangers on the station. They were constantly finding things not on the manifest. The prior commander of the station had been fairly lax, so it was not a surprise. Kara confided that the prior station commander also took a fair amount of bribes from the raid ships not to report things they looted. He had stuffed his ship to the gills with his loot which is why not everyone had been able to make a getaway on the corvette. He only took enough loyal crew he needed to operate the vessel and his closest supporters.

The fact that Kara did not support the prior station commander raised my opinion of her. She was very attractive, but that could be due to access to cosmetic surgery. It might not be natural. She was present at our ship staff meetings, and while I didn’t think she was brilliant, she was attentive and thoughtful when she contributed. Even being a Navy officer, I would say she was growing on me.

My plan for the next six months was to work with Julie to reconfigure the Void Phoneix to incorporate some weapons. We were also hoping to alter the hull enough to hide the Void Phoneix from scans. My side hustle was packing all our available cargo space with anything valuable enough to sell. We would leave the station in a functional state, but I didn’t think I would ever return here, so I planned on squeezing everything of value I could manage.