Blue Star Enterprises

Most of the civilians had been flown down to Eden's End, but a few of the engineers had wanted to meet Alexander and thank him in person for their rescue as well as show him around the ships.

To say they were surprised to see him might be an understatement.

One man even reflexively reached toward his side to grab where a weapon might have hung, but came up empty. Alexander thought that was an odd reaction for a civilian and quickly reevaluated these people.

That man's name turned out to be Johan. Once they settled down and realized Alexander wasn't there to attack them, the man spoke.

"The few of us left up here were part of the original prisoners Arkonis captured, hell, I have no idea how long ago. I don't even know what year it is now." Alexander told them the date and they all cursed.

"Nearly a decade." The man shook his head and straightened his spine. "No time for sentimentality. You came to see our work, by Od- gods I'll damn well show you what we managed to create."

As they toured the ships, the man kept up a running commentary. "It may not look like much to you fancy corporate folks, but it gets the job done. Would have done a better job if Arkonis hadn't been such a cheap fuck! I hope that piece of bio-waste got himself killed." The rest of the group laughed at that.

"I can confirm Arkonis is dead," Alexander added, earning cheers from the group.

"Good riddance," Johan spat. "I hope he rots in whatever form of hell his people believe in."

The man and the people with him were interesting characters and based on their accent Alexander thought he had a pretty good idea of where they came from. He would wait until the end of the tour to bring it up though. No point spooking them right now.

As for the ships, they were not great. Alexander could see that without Johan pointing out the inefficiencies, that's how bad they were. And that was comparing them to the previous pirate ships Alexander had worked on, not his upgraded Eden ships. The substructure of the ship looked fine, but the components were never designed for ships this large. The secondary report from the Hawks detailed issues with bad air, poor waste reprocessing, and other issues including poorly welded seams that leaked, forcing a few sections to be closed off for safety reasons.

Considering prisoners had built these ships, he was surprised they worked at all. If Alexander were in their position, he would have done everything in his power to make sure these ships fell apart beneath their overlords after they set out.

Alexander was adding up every system that needed to be replaced in his mind-space, and adjusting his production needs as they walked. The internal systems were easy enough to reproduce on the ground, meaning he wouldn't need to add additional production time to his orbital printers for those components. That was good because the orbital printers would be running nonstop for two weeks just to produce the thrusters needed for these four ships.

The cruisers really needed to be converted to compressed plasma ejection, but the added time to install those systems would delay their departure by two to three weeks. He would hold off on those until Fletcher got back to Krieger.

They arrived at one of the turret rooms. It was completely empty, with a sort of punchout/plug fitted into the spot where a turret should have been.

"Like I said," Johan stated, "Arkonis was a cheap bastard. He only spared the money to outfit each ship with one set of autocannons. Not sure what he expected to accomplish with three-quarters of the weapons missing, but that was his problem."

They eventually arrived at the one working weapon system. It was an undersized autocannon designed to fit aboard a frigate, not a destroyer or cruiser. Alexander added twenty new railguns to his build list. Six for each cruiser and four per destroyer. He would need to check the dimensions, but it was possible the large railguns on Eden's End might be close to the right size to fit in this space.

The PDCs were the same, all undersized and designed for frigates. He wasn't all that surprised considering what he read in the report, but it seemed like a poor design choice. If you were just going to use frigate weapons, why not just stick to frigates?

A whole host of PDLs went onto his list. The power systems would take more time to install, but that could be done on route if needed.

The command deck was the final stop, and it looked identical to the outdated bridges aboard the pirate ships before Alexander had redesigned them. Separate terminals were all situated facing forward toward a large screen. There wasn't even a single holo emitter in the entire space.

He went over to the controls and flicked through them, bringing up the sensors and running some scans to see how good their resolution was. Piss-poor was the answer. They could see out to the nearest moon, but all he got back was a large blob to indicate something was there.

"Why are the sensors so bad," he asked Johan.

"They're older than dirt, that's why. No clue where Arkonis or his people got them, but I'm pretty sure my great ancestors had better sensors than this. I guess as long as they work, he didn't much care."

Alexander sighed and added new sensors to his list. He should be able to see at least individual contacts near the moon instead of the blob. It might not matter if Arkonis only had autocannons to work with, but Alexander would have railguns. And he cared about staying out of danger if possible.

They finished the tour of the final ship and Alexander was not impressed. As Krieger had stated in his report, the ships were a cobbled-together mess of old and undersized parts. He was doing the math and figured it would take at least two weeks to refit the ships using the full capacity of his manufacturing capabilities, minus the printers that were working on the station.

Those would be churning out the six new gunships as well as the modifications for Captain Farthing's ship, Nemo. She named it after the enigmatic captain from the Jules Verne novel. It appeared her father wasn't the only one who had an interest in old Earth history.

He turned to the group of men who were quietly whispering amongst themselves. "Johan, You wouldn't happen to be a resident of Asgard perhaps?"

The group went quiet and the man named Johan turned to face him. "Never heard of the place," he said, lying through his teeth.

Alexander couldn't help it, he snorted at the man's obvious falsehood. "If we ran your DNA, you would all have records wouldn't you?"

The group didn't answer his question, but they were glancing around, likely to see if they could overpower his people and take the ship. Alexander needed to defuse the situation before they did something dumb.
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"I'm not here to arrest you or turn you over to the STO. We're not even in STO space at the moment."

"Oh yeah!" one of the other men shouted. "Then where are we?"

The man probably didn't realize it, but not denying his previous accusation and then responding to the next was pretty much confirmation that they were part of the Char clan.

"We're in a system called Unokane near a planet called Eden's End."

"That's the old research outpost," another man stated.

Johan glared at the speakers, shutting them up before he turned back to Alexander. "If what my idiot compatriots say is true, we're in Char space. If you know what's good for you, you'll release us so we can return home. We'll take one of the destroyers as restitution for our work and put in a good word when we arrive."

"I'm afraid that's not going to happen," Alexander said in a calm tone. "But you'll see home shortly. I plan on visiting Asgard in a few months to have a chat with Katalynn Char personally. Maybe she will even appreciate me returning a group of her people to her."

He looked the group up and down. "Then again, maybe not, you are a rather scruffy lot."

All pretense dropped at that. "You try living as a fucking slave under the Anazi's see how well you fare! Man can't even be given the honor of a battle to the death. No, I was taken in my Odin's damn sleep on a half-assembled station out in the ass end of nowhere. Then I'm put to work on that same damned station making ships for our enemy. Now I find out Katalynn took over for her old man. I guess that explains why nobody ever came to rid the station of the Anazi scum."

Alexander was brought up short by that news. "Wait, that was a Char station? I thought that Arkonis Anazi had built it."

The man spat, a habit that was getting on Alexander's nerves. "Arkonis Anazi wouldn't know the first damn thing about building anything. These ships," the man gestured around him, "were designed by Asgardian engineers and meant for real warriors, not those pissant scavengers who run around calling themselves pirates."

He wasn't going to argue the finer points of piracy with the man, but his words did give him a better insight into the Char family or Asgardians as they seemed to refer to themselves. "Thank you for the information, but that doesn't change the fact that you aren't taking this ship. You really only have two choices. You can come quietly and you will be sequestered until we leave, or you can make a fuss and we can deal with you the way the STO deals with pirates."

Alexander wasn't concerned about them having sabotaged the ships or anything like that. The ships had been searched top to bottom before the Hawks left the system with the pirate station, and the civilians had been aboard the Talon. They couldn't have done it during their tour either because Alexander or a team of Hawks had been with them the entire time they were on the ships.

He had only agreed to their guided tour because he thought he could get a bit more insight into the ships, and he had.

It took a while and some heated conversations between the people in the group before Johan turned back to him. "You swear on the honor of your family that you'll take us home? Because if not, we would rather die here and now than be subjected to another day as a slave for anyone."

That seemed like a rather drastic course of measure but he nodded his avatar. "I swear on my family's honor that you will be returned to Asgard, so long as you do not try to harm any of my people or break any of our laws."

Johan didn't seem all that enthusiastic about Alexander's change to the wording, but he didn't have much of a choice but to agree. Once everything was said and done, he motioned for the Hawks to bring the group down to the planet and place them in Atrium D under guard. He made sure to send a message to Damien alerting them of this group. There were too many to place them in the holding cells and they weren't exactly prisoners, so he wasn't going to put them in with the insurrectionists.

With Atrium D now being off-limits to the public other than for intake and the route to the parking lot racetrack, it made the most logical sense to place them there so they could cause the least amount of trouble. He also wanted them close so he could speak with them and the other engineers who were rescued some more. What he learned today was interesting, but he wanted a more accurate picture of Char, her people, and their homeworld. It would make negotiations with them much easier.

He had to pause and consider that for a moment. How had he transformed from a lonely man trapped in a robot's body to the leader of his own nation, now preparing to negotiate with other powerful entities—all within just a few short years?