This Royal Navy welcomes hawai661 and Brian Banks to its ranks.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
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"Well then," I turned back to the mercenaries. "Come on in. Let's talk business."
The leader nodded and signaled two of his men to stay at the base of the ramp while he and the remaining operator followed me up into the belly of the Shepherd. As they crossed the threshold, the transition from the chaotic, noisy atmosphere of the dock to the pressurized, hum-filled interior of my ship was jarring. We had only walked a few feet inside the cargo hold, and with every break, you could tell the difference. The air inside was cleaner, filtered, and smelled faintly of ozone.
I led them past the racks of Thermal-Flow vents, noting how the leader's cybernetic eye whirred softly, zooming in and scanning the fabrication quality of the units as we passed. He didn't miss a beat, taking in everything as we walked. He scanned the pristine condition of the deck, the heavy-duty loading drones currently in standby mode, and, of course, the makeshift play area in the corner where Lyra's auburn hair, along with her eyes, could be seen as she peered over a crate.
I stopped near the central cargo terminal, leaning back against a heavy stanchion to keep the dynamic casual while still maintaining control.
"I don't usually host meetings in the cargo hold of my ship," I said, crossing my arms. "But considering I'm currently the galaxy's largest mobile kiosk, we'll have to make do. I'm Mark, and the AI you likely triggered the defense protocols of is called Marcos."
"An AI with a human name? Interesting... I'm Commander Klaus Vorn," the leader replied, extending a hand. His grip was strong and firm, definitely a corporate-style grip, but I matched it easily. "This is Lieutenant Halloway. We represent the Void Vanguard."
"The Void Vanguard," I repeated, digging through my memories to see if the name sparked a flicker of recognition from my days in the Navy. And it did. If my memory serves me right, the Void Vanguards were a medium-sized paramilitary group composed of over 2,000 members. Most of them were former military, so that meant that they were expensive, disciplined, and usually hired for jobs that required precision rather than just brute force. They were more corporate than mercenary, but the only way to hire them was through the mercenary association. All in all, they were a reputable outfit. "I've heard of you. You boys ran the blockade runner interdiction for the Typhon Mining Corp last year. Clean work."
Vorn's eyebrows rose slightly in appreciation. "It seems like you keep up with current events."
"Well, I had done my research on those operating in the area, though I never really thought I'd come face to face with any of them. But yeah, I tend to keep up with potential threats and potential customers," I corrected with a small smile. "So, you said your gunships are running hot."
"Hot is an understatement," Halloway chimed in. He was younger than Vorn, with a shaved head and tattoos creeping up his neck that marked him as a heavy weapons specialist. "We're flying modified Valkyrie-class assault transports. We've up-gunned the forward batteries to dual Gauz Autocannons and reinforced the armor plating. But the standard IUC cooling loops can't dump the heat fast enough to have the autocannons firing for long. In a sustained engagement, we're spiking into the red within three minutes. We have to cycle our fire just to keep the reactor from scramming."
"Hmm. That means you're losing DPS (Damage Per Second) and leaving yourselves open while your systems cool down," I finished for him. "That's a good way to get turned into floating debris scattered across the void."
"Exactly," Vorn said. "We had first seen your ad claiming to fix and retrofit ships while giving major boosts in performance, but then it was pulled. Then, while we were searching for your place, we heard the talks about some SOW thermal vents that claimed to increase flow efficiency by over 50%. We put two and two together, and here we are. If what these rumors claim is true, then we would have our problem solved. But in my line of work, we don't buy promises. We buy results."
"I wouldn't expect anything less," I said. "How many ships are we talking about?"
"My squadron has sixteen Valkyries," Vorn replied. "If the product works, then we are willing to outfit them all. And if you can handle the volume, we might have other work for a fabrication outfit that actually knows what mil-spec looks like."
I did the math in my head. Sixteen ships. At 750 credits a vent, assuming six vents per ship... that was a solid contract. But the money wasn't in the parts, but the word of mouth, the recommendations I would get, and the reputation I would build with this deal. The Void Vanguards were simply the gateway for me to take the step into the market of starship engineering.
Alone by itself, Shephard Orbital Works means jack shit to the average viewer person or to the bigwigs with pockets deep enough to have a custom ship built for them. Hell, this could even be the doorway for me to end up becoming a manufacturer for the Navy and create a whole new line of ships and truly build my own empire. Oh, think of the riches-
I shook my head and snapped back to reality, assuring Vorn of my abilities. "I can handle the volume. But I'm guessing you didn't walk all the way down here just to look at a brochure."
"No," Vorn said, tapping his G-comm unit. "I have a bird on the pad just two berths over. She's running hot just idling. So before I entrust my squadron's ships to your hands, I would first like to see what these so-called miracle vents can do."
"We can get that fixed right now," I grinned. "Marcos, get the drones moving. We've got a live demo."
"Drones are online and eager to please," Marcos's voice filtered through the overhead speakers, his tone professional but with a hint of smugness.
"Bring her around," I told Vorn. "I think this bay should be wide enough to fit in a gunship alongside the Shepherd, though it will be a tight squeeze."
Twenty minutes later, the ship slid into the bay next to us. It was a mean-looking machine, and to my surprise, it did not sport the regular boxy look that most human ships had. Instead, it was angular, and its paint was a matte charcoal and crimson livery of the Void Vanguard. Even though it was still a good walk away from us, I could see the heat shimmer distorting the air around its rear exhaust ports. Its vents, God knows which IUC-sponsored corporation made them, were glowing a dull cherry red.
I grabbed a crate of Model 1Cs, the variant of vents that tended to be more popular with the high-performance ships, which usually were interceptors and gunships, and walked down the ramp. Vorn and Halloway followed behind me.
"Could you have your pilot kill the reactor completely?" I shouted over the whine of the cooling engines. "I need cold iron to work with, or the thermal shock will crack the seals."
Vorn barked an order into his G-comm, and the ship powered down. As the whine faded away, a heavy silence that had not been present earlier dawned over the docking bay.
"Marcos, scan the mounting brackets," I ordered, putting on a pair of gloves. I had taken it upon myself to stop using the pendant as much since it could paint a target on me, and also because doing things manually, like clothing myself, made me feel a tad bit more human. Don't get me wrong, the convenience of the pendant and its infinite options was superb, but now that I had Lyra to take care of, the sort of attention it would bring was not what I wanted. That being said, I was currently wearing it as a suit and boots, but no one would guess what it was from just a glance. Seeing any changes in it would.
"They're some Kidoshi mountings, a subsidiary of Solara Frontiers... They go by different names, Type 4 mountings," Marcos reported instantly via my earpiece. "They don't exactly conform with the average Type C model, but the 1C model should be a direct bolt-on replacement, though you will need to bypass the flow restrictor valve on their manifold to get the full benefit."
I looked at Vorn. "Your current vents are a little peculiar. I'm going to have to strip the restrictors, and doing that will void the manufacturer's warranty on the engine."
Vorn snorted. "Go for it. That warranty expired over three firefights ago. You're free to do whatever you have to do."
I gave him a nod and got ready to go to work, opting not to use the drones to automatically do the job as I wanted them to see me doing it. The human mind works in mysterious ways, and I have come to learn that there's a psychological difference between watching a drone work and watching a seven-foot man rip a fused vent casing off with his bare hands.
I climbed onto the Valkyrie's engine nacelle, its metal still radiating heat, but my suit compensated. I engaged the mag-locks on my boots and went to work. The old vents were practically welded on by carbon buildup and heat fusion. I grabbed the first one, braced my leg against the hull, and pulled.
It was an easy task for me, but a normal person would struggle to replicate what I was doing. With a shriek of tearing metal, the old unit came free, and I tossed it down to the deck with a heavy clang. It was blackened and warped.
"Junk," I muttered loud enough for them to hear. "Cast aluminum alloy with an absurdly low melting point. And they call this shit ground-breaking engineering. It's just utter garbage."
I took the SOW Model 1C that I had brought with me. It was easy to tell the difference between the two, especially when you took into account the fact that it was much heavier, denser, and made from a proprietary alloy blend that only my printers could produce.
Interestingly enough, I came to find out that the reason why Anahrin and I had been able to feed what was pretty much scrap metal and make an extremely advanced ship out of it was that the printers don't just print. They were nanoprinters in name only, but these Starthari creations worked at an atomic level, altering the quality of the metal being used and even shifting its composition to create other metals, as well as modifying other materials. For example, I could feed it pure aluminum, and from that, I could easily push out a slab of metal that was pure tungsten or pure copper. Compared to these printers, which I, and only I in the entire universe, had access to, human nanoprinters were eons away from getting anywhere near this level of technology.
I quickly slid it into place. The fit was perfect, micron-precise. I would even dare to go as far as saying that no one has this level of precision. I secured the locking clamps and used a laser-welder to seal the bypass on the restrictor valve.
It took me less than ten minutes to replace the entire port-side bank.
"Fire it up," I called out, jumping down and rolling as my feet hit the ground. It was a needless act since my body could definitely take the landing with ease, but it was more credible to just roll with the momentum of the jump.
I watched as Vorn gave the signal, and the pilot inside the ship engaged the ignition sequence. The engines whined to life, their pitch climbing steadily.
"Hold it at 40% thrust," I instructed. "Simulate a combat idle."
The engines roared, blue plasma flaring in the exhaust cones as we watched the telemetry on Halloway's datapad.
"Core temp is... holy fuck, it's steady," Halloway said, his eyes widening. "Usually, we'd be climbing to 600 Kelvin by now. But we're holding at 420."
"Push it," I said. "80%."
The roar intensified, shaking the deck plates. The heat washing over us was intense, but I kept my eyes on the vents as they worked their magic. Unlike the Kidoshi vents, my vents weren't. Instead, they were shimmering, the heat dissipating so efficiently into the vacuum (or in this case, the docking bay air) that the metal itself remained stable.
"Temp is holding at 580 Kelvin," Halloway shouted over the noise. "Standard vents would be at 850 and climbing! This... this should be impossible. We're getting a 45% reduction in thermal buildup."
"Fifty percent," I corrected, pointing at the reading with a giddy grin on my face. "Once the flow stabilizes, it'll drop another few degrees."
Vorn stared at the datapad, then at the ship, and finally at me. "Cut it," he ordered.
The engines wound down, and the silence that weighed in the air was replaced in my mind by a "Ka-ching" of money.
"You said you have a yard?" Vorn asked, turning to me.
"Shepherd Orbital Works," I said. "Docking Platform 2, Industrial Ring. It's a full-service fabrication facility. I've got four docking berths capable of fitting a vessel of up to 350 meters long."
"We need the whole squadron done," Vorn said, all business now. "Sixteen ships. Can you take them all at once?"
I shook my head. "Not all at once. I keep the Shepherd in Berth 1. Berth 2 is currently holding my raw material stockpiles. Berth 4 is occupied by a... project. A dismantled gunship I'm stripping for R&D. Berth 4 is open."
I paused, rubbing my chin as I looked at the Valkyrie. It wasn't a large ship, relatively speaking. About the size of a heavy shuttle.
"However," I continued, formulating the plan. "Your Valkyries are compact. I can easily fit two of them in a single standard docking berth if we park them nose-to-tail. If I consolidate my assets... yeah, I can make it work."
"How?" Vorn asked.
"I'll just move the dismantled chassis from Berth 4 into Berth 2 with the materials," I answered. "It'll be tight, but it clears up Berths 3 and 4. That gives me four slots for you. I can take four gunships at a time. Two in Berth 3, two in Berth 4."
Vorn nodded, calculating the logistics. "Four at a time works. We can rotate the patrol schedules. One flight stays on duty, one flight comes in for retrofit."
"Turnaround time per flight?" Halloway asked.
"For just the vents? I can have the four ships done in about an hour or two. It doesn't really take that long, as you just saw," I said confidently. "Plus, I have other drones that are specialized for this. We lift them, strip them, fit them, and calibrate them."
"Done," Vorn said. "But while we're rotating them... we might have a bigger job for you."
We walked back up the ramp into the Shepherd. Lyra had abandoned her play area and was now standing by a shelf, watching us with wide, curious eyes. Vorn stopped, looking at her, then at me. His expression softened just a fraction, the universal look of a man who realized the giant mercenary-looking fabricator was actually a family man.
"Your daughter?" Vorn asked.
"Yeah. I named her after her mother... Her name's Lyra," I introduced her. "Lyra, say hello to Captain Vorn."
Lyra gave a small wave, hiding slightly behind the shelf. "Hi. Are you a bad man?"
I choked back a laugh and glanced at Vorn, who blinked, then smirked. "Depends on who you ask, little miss. But today, I'm just a customer."
"He's a business partner, Lyra," I corrected gently. "Go back to your drawing, sweetie."
We moved to the bridge to finalize the details. I picked up on the low whistles and deep breaths from the two men behind me as we walked through the corridors. I pulled up the schematic of the shipyard on the main holo-table.
"So," I said, highlighting the berths. "We start the rotation tomorrow. I'll head back to the yard tonight and prep the bays. You send the first flight of four at 0800 hours."
"Agreed," Vorn said. "But about that other job."
He leaned over the table, tapping the schematic of the Valkyrie.
"You clearly know your way around military hardware, Mark. These vents are impressive, but they're just a band-aid on a bullet wound. Our reactors are pushing too much power for the current conduit systems. We want to upgrade the main batteries to heavy rail-drivers, but the power draw crashes the nav-computer every time we run a simulation."
I looked at the specs he transferred over to the table. It looked a lot like one of those classic bottleneck issues Anahrin had made me face so many times during those months of learning. The Valkyrie chassis was solid, but the power distribution network was archaic.
"It's not the reactor," I said, zooming in on the schematic. "It's your distribution nodes. They're series-linked. When the rail-drivers charge, they suck the juice out of the avionics bus before the reactor can compensate. You need a parallel shunt system with a capacitor bank to buffer the draw."
Vorn looked at Halloway. "What did I say?"
Halloway shrugged. "I'm a gunner, boss. I just pull the trigger."
"I can do it," I said, looking up at Vorn. "But it's not an hour job. That's a full teardown of the internal bulkheads. New conduits, capacitor installation, and a complete rewrite of the power management software."
"We have a bird that's currently grounded," Vorn said. "Vanguard-One. She's my personal command ship. Took a heavy hit to the starboard quarter last month, but she's still space-worthy, though barely combat-ready. If I give her to you... Can you turn her into what we need?"
"A full refit?" I asked, feeling a spark of excitement that had nothing to do with money. This was engineering. This was what I had learned to do and was now getting the chance to actually put into practice for others rather than just myself. "I can do better than that. If you give me the ship and a budget, I can strip her down and rebuild her with SOW specs. New vents, new power grid, capacitor banks for the rail-drivers... hell, I can probably squeeze another 15% out of the main thrusters if I re-align the fusion injectors. I'm even willing to design some engines that would work perfectly for her and other ships of her class."
Vorn grinned, a predatory expression that matched the wolfish nature of his profession. "If you can do that, Shephard, I won't just pay you. I'll put the Void Vanguard on exclusive retainer with your yard. No one will be touching our ships but you."
"That sounds like a profitable arrangement," I said, extending my hand again. "Bring Vanguard-One in with the first wave. I'll put her in the priority slot."
"Consider it done," Vorn shook my hand. "We'll wire the deposit for the vent retrofit tonight. 10% upfront?"
"That works," I nodded.
As they left, walking down the ramp with a new swagger in their step, I stood at the airlock and watched them go. The Shepherd felt suddenly quiet again.
"Marcos," I said softly.
"Way ahead of you, boss," the AI replied. "Contract drafted and sent to their secure server. Deposit of 720,000 credits just hit the escrow account. Total contract value for the vent retrofit on 16 ships and the ground-up rebuild of the one ship is 7.2 million credits."
I nearly choked on my own spit. "Seven... point two?"
"Military pricing, Mark," Marcos sounded gleeful. "You don't charge mercs the street price. You charge them the 'I keep you alive' price. Plus, the rush fee for priority docking."
"Wait, but wouldn't that drive business away?" I wondered.
"Nope. All corporations do it," Marcos refuted. "Matter of fact, the cheapest they'd probably get all of this done would be 12 million if they went to any other reputable LCC or corporation."
"I love you, Marcos," I said.
"I love me too," he replied.
I walked back to Lyra, who was yawning and rubbing her eyes. The excitement of the "bad men" visit had worn off, replaced by the late hour.
"Okay, bug," I said, scooping her up. "Time for bed. We've got a busy day tomorrow. We're going home to the shipyard."
"Are we gonna fix more ships?" she asked sleepily, resting her head on my shoulder.
"Yeah, baby," I whispered, kissing the top of her head. "We're gonna fix a lot of ships."
The trip back to Docking Platform 2 was a blur of logistical planning. I handed full control of teh Shepherd to Marcos, who piloted her while I spent the transit time with Lyra.
When we docked at the SOW yard, the familiar sight of my own facility was a welcome relief. Technically, it was a massive, industrial cavern compared to the cramped public docks. But space was tight.
"Alright, Marcos. Time to play Tetris," I muttered, looking at the monitors.
I changed from the suit I had and into my armor, my pendant doing quick work. Even though the docks were pressurized, I preferred the armor in case of any accident happening. It was an extra layer of protection to preserve my life.
Moving the dismantled gunship from Berth 4 to Berth 2 was a delicate operation. The chassis was stripped, so it had no engines or avionics, just a hollowed-out shell of durasteel. I hooked up the heavy-lift gravity tethers and gave Marcos the order to move it.
"Ease it up, Marcos. Gently," I said.
The hull of the ship floated off the deck, and I guided it manually, walking underneath the floating tonnage like an ant carrying a leaf. We drifted it across the central corridor and stacked it partially vertically in the back of Berth 2, bracing it against the raw material containers. It was a squeeze, but it cleared the deck in Berth 4 completely.
"Berth 4 is clear," Marcos confirmed. "Berth 3 is also clear. Diagnostic systems are green. We are ready for the Void Vanguard."
I wiped sweat from my forehead inside the helmet. "Good. I'm going to go get some sleep since morning comes fast."
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