Blue Star Enterprises

He was glad he had waited. Two jumps past Varlen, they encountered an unknown ship running without a transponder. The ship fled at the sight of the gunship, but that was enough to tell Jasper that the outer systems were going to be far too dangerous to fly without protection soon enough.

As the two ships made their way to Eden’s End, he got to see what his friend had been up to in the last few months. While he had expected to see the Hawks’ massive troop transport orbiting the planet, he did not expect to see the large mining vessel sitting alongside it. Unless his friend had suddenly been able to produce ships from thin air, he doubted this ship had been built in the system. That begged the question, who had come all the way out here to mine?

The transponder ping tagged the ship as The Moonlit Destiny, belonging to Captain Mingyu Na. It didn’t take long for Jasper to recall that name. It seemed he wasn’t the only one curious.

"What is a Council Captain from Petrov Station doing way out here?" Wilkes asked.

"I’m sure Alexander will fill us in, but I suspect the rumors we heard are true." While nobody in the core seemed to know the extent of the pirate attacks, everyone was talking about them. There hadn’t been any concern when the topic was discussed though, which surprised Jasper.

"Captain, it looks like a station is already being built," Sierra commented.

Jasper returned his focus back to the sensor readout. What appeared to be the start of a small station was coming around the far side of the planet. "Well… if that isn’t a surprise." He hadn’t expected to see Alexander focus on building a station for some time to come. It seemed they had missed quite a bit since they left.

"Ping the Talon and let them know we’re going to come along their opposite side from the Destiny."

A few minutes later, they got a reply confirming their orbit. A day and a half later, they coasted in alongside the Talon. They could have been there faster, but he wanted to conserve fuel as much as possible.

During their journey in-system, the crew got a bit of entertainment as they watched a live feed of capsules being launched from the surface only for them to accelerate into a higher orbit and drop their payload near the under-construction station. Then the capsules would fall back into the planet and burn up. This happened every half hour on the dot. During their passage, the station had nearly tripled in size. Considering it was barely anything when they arrived, that wasn’t all that much but it was still impressive to watch.

"Is the shuttle loaded?"

"Yes, Captain. However, we are going to need the help of the Hawks to bring the larger items down."

He nodded and sent a message to Captain Matthews to see if he had any ships available. From what he could tell, most of the drop ships were floating around or attached to the station under construction.

The man replied quickly. "We have one drop ship on standby. I can let you use it for three trips."

There was only one large crate this time, so that wasn’t an issue. The rest of the cargo could be carried down by his shuttle on multiple trips. He responded to the man while Wilkes put the ship on autopilot. Everyone aboard was certified to maneuver the ship in case of an emergency, so he wasn’t concerned about having his only pilot fly the shuttle. He could have flown it himself, but he wasn’t nearly as skilled as Wilkes. When you dealt with planetary landings, it was smart to use the best pilot for the job.

The ride down was just as rough as he remembered, but Wilkes put them on the pad with a gentle touch. They both glanced out the cockpit window. Wilkes whistled at the new constructions going up just outside the facility.

"Those look like some nasty weapons. I would hate to be some idiot trying to land here uninvited."

Jasper only nodded in reply. He knew Alexander had planned to build defenses, but he didn’t know the extent of them. "I think those are only the baby ones, look over to the left, that circle in the ground. That wasn’t there when we left. How much you wanna bet that’s a weapon emplacement as well?"

The circle in question was over half the length of his shuttle.

"That’s not a bet that I’m willing to take," Wilkes chuckled as he began the shutdown procedure on the shuttle.

The entry opened and Jasper saw Alexander wave as he exited the facility to greet them.

Jasper waved back, but he doubted the man saw it through the auto-darkened glass.

He made his way to the back, which necessitated shimmying through the tight walkway between the stacks of crates. His people really had packed the shuttle as full as they could.

Once free of the cargo, he lowered the back hatch. His friend was there to greet him.

"Welcome back, Jasper! How was your trip?"

"Exhausting," he stated as he walked down the ramp to greet his friend. "Sorry about our delay, I hope it didn’t cause any issues?"

The face Alexander used to communicate shook. "No. I moved some things around and came up with some alternative solutions for other problems."

"I can see that. I assume the space station and mining ship are quite the story?"

"You could say that. Na provided the plans in exchange for safe harbor for his crew."

"So Petrov was attacked?"

Alexander nodded. "From what Na tells me, it was more an inside job than an attack. Although he was attacked as he tried to flee the system. Then the STO quarantined their ship, making it impossible to dock at any public station in STO space. Someone told him I was out here, so he came out to see if we would allow them to disembark."

Jasper frowned at that. "Are you sure everything he says is true? I don’t want to second guess your judgment, Alexander, I just want to make sure you’re safe."

"I appreciate your concern. And yes. As far as we can tell, everything he said is true. His ship even has the scars to prove it was shot at. Not something I would expect someone to attempt just to try and fool us. With our new defenses, I’m not overly concerned by a pirate attack anymore. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but we are far more prepared than anyone is likely to expect."

"I can see that," Jasper stated, glancing over at one of the turrets that was being constructed in the distance.

Alexander chuckled. "Come, let’s get this stuff moved inside and I can show you all the changes. I think you’ll be surprised."

***

It took over an hour to unload the shuttle, even with Alexander, Jasper, and Wilkes all working in tandem. They would pile the crates onto the transporter and when it was full, it would roll off to his secure storage room near his workshop.

Since he wanted to limit who had access to that room, he had installed robotic cranes that ran along the ceiling. They quickly and efficiently unloaded the automated cart so it could return for the next load. The cranes were much smarter than the stupid loaders aboard Petrov, thanks to the self-learning algorithm he built into them. He had learned more programming thanks to hanging around Lucas, but he still wasn’t at the level where he could program anything too complex. The robotic arms reused the code from the robotic assemblers, with the addition of the self-learning functions.

He could have had Lucas just program them, but he needed to improve his own programming. Doing it himself also ensured the code was safe and free of anything funky while also testing the new design he had implemented to build the cranes. So far the man hadn’t done anything to make him think he would do something fishy, but Alexander was just being cautious by not relying on the younger Laront to do everything.

His new robots were similar to the old robotic manufacturing line, with their inflexible appendages that required rotational servos at the base, the elbow, and the wrist. But instead of the old geared joints, Alexander had replaced them with rotary actuators, much like he had with his railgun design. The cost in time and materials was quite a bit more, but he deemed it acceptable.

The accuracy of the actuator was far superior to gear drives because there was little to no backlash to compensate for. And when you had to build parts with tight tolerances, you didn’t want to worry about compensation errors.

It was complete overkill for the simple cranes. But after seeing how well the crane functioned, he was already incorporating the improvements into a new generation of robots meant to replace the engineers working on the space station. The new robots would be needed sooner rather than later to complete the station.

"Now that we have the ship unloaded, let me show you what I’ve been up to."

As the pair walked into the facility, the shuttle took off again. It would be a few hours before it landed with another load. Plenty of time to tell Jasper what went on while he was gone, and show him everything.

"Welcome to where the magic happens!" he stated as they walked into the manufacturing center.

"Other than all the machines seeming to be constantly churning out items, I don’t see that much has changed in here since I left," Jasper chuckled.

"True. But it’s a good place to start. I’m currently producing parts for the defenses, parts for the facility repairs, and parts for the station. Oh, and I’m also printing out capsules to launch into orbit pretty much non-stop."

"We saw them on the way in. Are they only single-use?"

"Unfortunately. We are recovering some of the material when they crash down, but I can’t afford to add a parachute or landing system without wasting even more space inside the small enclosures. It’s annoyingly frustrating, but it’s what we have at the moment."

"It seems to be working for you though," Jasper commented as he watched part of the clamshell take shape in the printer. "How are you launching them into space anyway? Did you get the launcher operational?"

"We did. And let me tell you, that was a pain." Alexander told Jasper about the struggles with the launcher as they walked through the facility and toward the launch control. They were in luck. They arrived just as the system was readying for another launch. "We could launch faster if the facility transit system was intact. It takes my transporter fifteen minutes to drive across the facility to deliver a newly loaded capsule. Then another ten for the old crane inside the launch room to move it to the loader. Add another four minutes for the blast doors to close, and we just decided to launch every thirty minutes. It works out though, since the engineers in orbit can only work so fast."

"I don’t think you know just how impressive this is, Alexander."

Alexander shrugged. "Sure, it’s impressive. But it feels so slow. There are so many things I want to work on that I can’t even start until this is done, the facility is repaired, or the defenses are in place. It’s frustrating."

"Everything you accomplished in a little over two months is impressive, don’t get me wrong. That being said, I think you should take a step back and reevaluate your timeframe."

Alexander sighed. "I would love to slow down. But it feels like so much is happening beyond our system, I’m afraid if I do, something horrible will happen."

Jasper patted him on the arm. "Delegation is your friend. I can see you’re doing some of that already but don’t try to spread yourself too thin. Focus on what is most important to you and have others worry about the rest. Speaking of what matters, have you been spending time with your daughter?"

Another sigh escaped Alexander. "Not as much as I would like. It turns out all the orphans from Petrov came with Captain Na. So she’s been spending quite a bit of time with them and the few friends she has made here. I didn’t want to take her away from that."

"I’m sure she is happy her friends are here, but you are still her father. Take the time to make memories with her. I may not be a father myself, but I still recall the times my father spent with me. And she will too."

After they exited the launch control room and got to a quiet spot, Alexander thanked Jasper. "Thanks for telling me that. I sometimes feel like the people here are afraid to tell me something or speak out like I might banish them or something. And the Hawks, while good at their jobs and nice enough, tend to act like employees rather than friends. Some are better than others though, but I doubt they even considered what you just told me."

Jasper laughed lightly. "That’s what friends are for. You’ll make more in time."