Chapter 33 In space with a junkyard ship

Looking at my ship always brought me joy, but nothing made me happier than seeing the current unfinished state of it, knowing that it was time to start finalizing the current changes we were making. It was just so much fun to build an actual spaceship.

The armour was almost on. The nano machines also finished destroying all the hardware locks on the first fusion engine. Now I could actually see how it was built, and while it'll take some studying to understand it properly, it also meant that if something went wrong—even if it will take time—I could fix it. So I guess it’s time to install the second engine and finish this part of the rebuild.

Before I got to that, it seems that the Adventurers Association's quantum computer was finally done initializing. It seems that unlike the other quantum computers we have—with the exception of the transponder—its main function wasn’t to surf the quantum net. It was the operating system and the software on it. They seemed to pull information from the net and send it information if I changed my ships info or accepted a quest.

Slowly, it was building up a quest list. Many of them seemed to be for transporting some sort of more high-value cargo to other locations in this galaxy. What I also decided was that I liked the green colour scheme of the UI—it made it feel old yet important. Also, navigating with the keyboard felt so much different than with the mouse, but in a good way.

The delivery quests paid out in the millions. Unfortunately, we weren’t going to take any of them.

We had enemies out there, which I hoped would take longer to make... but well, life happens. So, I wouldn’t want them to know where I was heading, at least not this early. Eventually, if they were dogged enough, they would figure it out. But I needed time.

Now that I thought about it, perhaps the way I’m going about it is a bit wrong.

“Lola, what do you think are the chances of those pirates leaving me alone?”

“Close to zero, I would think.”

“Yeah, no point in hoping for anything better. Do we still have the connection port to send information about the Crivordid pirates?”

“Do you want me to send the version I prepared of the interaction we had with them to the station authorities?”

“Yes, let’s do that. Better not to waste the opportunity of the station, perhaps catching some of them and hopefully finding out where the rest of the ships are, so they can send fleets after them.”

“Already done.”

“Thank you, as always.”

“It’s always my pleasure, master.”

I let out a big sigh.

“Come on, Bob, let's get you to the second floor. We have another engine to install.”

Bob immediately perked up, and through our connection I could feel determination and happiness. The funny thing is that even before I gave him the AI package, he had a personality. Now, he basically still had the same one.

Many times, have I tried to figure out his programming, but he’s cobbled together from so many different types of drones that if you tried to change something, it always had a catastrophic domino effect that corrupted everything.

I designed him to be mainly a hauler, with the ability to stack crates higher than himself and that weighed a lot more than he did. Although then he needed to be quite careful, but he was really good at managing his weight distribution.

He himself weighed about a ton, but that weight was adjustable. He just needed to take out or add more standard weights to certain locations of his body.

Getting him to the second floor was as easy as using the crane. Getting him out was going to be a bit of a tight fit, but it was doable even after the engine was in.

Now it was time to hoist the second fusion engine. There were multiple crane points, so we needed to use one at the top and bottom to keep it stable as we lifted it.

The engine itself weighed about 4 tonnes, so the two of them actually weighed less than the old main engine, which was a bit of good news.

Bob grabbed ahold of the engine and started to pull it into the ship after we lifted it to the correct location.

He could only pull it in so much, as one of the cables started to interfere since they were extending straight down from the ceiling, and we had the pesky problem of the rest of the ship being in the way.

A lot of the drones that had been working on installing the last of the armour now came to join stabilising the engine to the best of their abilities.

The whine of their engines moving the air was loud as they pushed them to their absolute limit. I released, with a small snap, one of the cables, which made the entire engine sway a bit, but Bob immediately started to pull it further in, and the drones stabilised the swaying, as it was in no way stable with only one cable holding it suspended in the air.

When the centre of gravity of the engine finally made it past the floor's edge, I could finally breathe out and relax a bit. Everything was now very stable. Bob continued to pull. The rest of the drones helped, as the friction of the floor continued to rise as more of it was supporting the engine.

Finally, I released the second cable, with the engine not even shifting a bit from it. Getting the engine into the correct position took a while longer than the first one, as we had less room to work with, but eventually it was in the correct position.

Thanks to them being a lot smaller than the old main engine, we now have some space between the two engines.

It was just large enough that we could squeeze Bob out and later install—hopefully—a booby-trap-free gravity generator into the middle, against the back of the ship, as that was the best location for this type of gravity generator.

Now it was time to transfer the nano machines from the first engine to the second so they could once again remove all the hardware locks. It was also time to finish installing the first engine, hooking it up properly to the energy grid and its future fuel supply.

It was a good thing that the station offered services of buying different types of fuels, which allowed me to pump out the current main tank from hydrogen and replace it with helium-3, that would from now on be our main fuel.

Not only will it be used in the fusion reaction, but also as the main propellant for the fusion engine. With the current fuel tank we have, Lola calculated that we should easily have a range of about one month of travel in FTL with our current fuel capacity.

That was so much better than having to refuel every week. It would make our trip a lot safer and faster. Speaking of that—

“Lola, do we have a destination?”

“It has always been up to two choices. There are two main red zones: the Canyon of Death and the Zone of Misery or as most call it, BLOB. After the research I’ve done, I believe our destination should be the BLOB.”

“Excellent. And the main reasons for it?”

“First, the forge system is the older one of the two. In the Milky Way Galaxy, there are two systems referred to as the forge systems. They are the main suppliers of the basic armor plates. The one near the Canyon also seems to be run by mega-corporations, while the one near the BLOB is not.”

“Also, as a truly fascinating side note—and while I’ve not been able to confirm this 100%—I believe that the nation running that forge, their main species, is actually dwarves. Yes, like from fantasy back on Earth.”

“That is truly fascinating, but it's probably just a coincidence and their species just looks the similar. With the number of species we have seen I would not be surprised if basically every species from fantasy is out there.”

“I thought that at first as well, but there are some striking similarities that I can’t explain right now. But let's get back to the main topic.”

“The second reason why the BLOB is a better destination is because there's higher population density there, especially in the red zone, which means more opportunity. And the third reason why is that close to that red zone is the biggest adventurer station of the galaxy.”

“Why does the adventurer station rank so high? Is it even bigger than this one? I thought that this was the biggest in terms of how much merchandise moves through it.”

“This station is indeed, in volume, the largest trader. But that adventurer station seemingly exchanges more wealth in a single day than this station does in a month. It's also the main market for skills. While here there are a few skills for sale for a billion or more, in that station there seem to be thousands—and some of them cost a lot more than that.”

“Damn, what kinds of skills cost even more than that?”

“Now I don’t know the exact numbers for that station, but I did find the highest sold in this station. It was 13 billion mana credits, and on top of that, some barter happened as well.”

“Well, don't keep me waiting, what skill was it that cost so much?”

“Inventory.”

“Inventory! Like storing stuff in a dimensional pocket or something and pulling them out of nowhere? Like that kind of inventory?”

“Apparently something like that, yes.”

“Yeah, now that price actually sounds reasonable—perhaps even cheap. Damn, that’s so strong. Now I kinda want that skill.”

Lola continued to explain a bit more about the forge system near the BLOB, and while there were some other advantages near the canyon, it seems that the BLOB will be our destination.

It took me a few hours to finish hooking up the first engine, but the second still needed to have its hardware locks removed. The armor plating was now on, but it still needed some stitching.

Lola also thinks that we should get a basic stealth coating, and after looking at the prices, it seemed quite affordable and a good idea.

So for now, I had nothing to do—but there was always more to do. Specifically, it was time to start working on some weaponry. It was time to make myself more survivable and to make this ship more survivable.

This was going to be fun.