Star Emperor

When he opened his eyes, he was confused at the unfamiliar environment, but then he remembered what happened and what he had been doing before he passed out.

He heard his stomach demanding food and his throat was dry as a Sahara desert so it became his first order of the day.

The silver packet he opened contained four nutrient bars and two packs of a nutrient paste, which according to the instructions he found inside, was the equivalent of a full meal.

The taste left plenty to be desired but it was filling.

-Either someone didn't calculate a full meal for a human correctly, or my stomach had shrunk.

Andrew thought as he was full after eating two bars and one packet of paste.

Once he was done with the meal, he went to the new modules to see their status and redirected their information to his console.

Every module had its own console, but it would be a pain to go and look at each one every time he wanted to check them so he decided on the more efficient way of doing it.

The first one he visited was the solar panel module and it showed that it was 27% charged, but its power was also distributed to the other modules.

The life support module showed 16% of its capacity being used, which was natural since he was the only one in there, but it also meant that the air reserves that he got from the start were not used right now and it would be a great reserve in case something happened.

The next on his list was the shield generator which was already online and showed a charge status of 43% and a rising.

This made Andrew sigh in relief as he didn't have to worry about something punching a hole in his station anymore unless it was something that would be able to get past his shields.

Next was the resource processing module which was online and ready to work but had nothing to work with so far.

The last one was the drone charging module.

Surprisingly the drones came fully charged and ready to work, but he was too tired last night to even notice it so they were on standby and awaiting orders.

The whole tour only took a few minutes and after he was done he could control everything from his console in the beginning module.

-It's time to get to work.

He said to himself and started to activate the drones, but as soon as he reached the targeting date input screen he saw a major problem.

There was no map of the surrounding system, so he could not set a target for the drones to bring back for processing.

Thinking about this problem he remembered that there was an option to take control of a drone and pilot it manually.

Pulling up the drone's schematics he saw that they had a camera and a small array of sensors attached to them.

The range was very limited as it was only around a hundred kilometers in every direction, but it was better than nothing and he could use it to map out his immediate surroundings.

A few minutes later, a drone detached from its charging station and activated all its systems showing everything in the 100-kilometer radius surrounding the station.

The read-out made Andrew turn ghostly pale from fright as the space around him was filled with thousands of small asteroids, they ranged from a ping-pong ball size to three meters in diameter, and that was only in his immediate vicinity.

-How the hell didn't I see it yesterday when I was outside?

He muttered to himself, only now finding out just how lucky he was to be alive.

He immediately sent the rest of the drones to gather these rocks as there was no way for him to be safe until they were removed.

The drones went to work, the moment they got the data on their targets while he piloted the first one in the direction of the asteroid field he was neighboring right now.

For safety, he only used a 1% thrust to slowly map out his surroundings, the process was tedious and slow but it was also the safest way he could figure out right now, not wanting to lose a drone just to save some time which he had more than enough of.

While he was busy with mapping, the notification popped up, informing him that there were resources ready to be processed and awaiting his approval to start the process.

Andrew immediately stopped his drone and read through the notifications.

All the other drones have gathered their assigned asteroids and transported them to the resources processing module before reattaching themselves to their charging stations and entering standby mode while being recharged, not that they used up much energy.

The bonus was that they had mapped a bit more of his surroundings while they were gathering the materials, revealing many more small asteroids around him.

Using the console he sent them a new set of targets and initialized the resource processing on the ones that were gathered before returning to his slow mapping further out.

The rest of his day was spent like this with the breaks needed for food and other stuff.

At the end of the day, he managed to map out a way to the asteroid belt as well as around three hundred kilometers around his station.

While he was doing that he was also able to collect a few kinds of materials that he would be able to sell later, unfortunately, there was not much of them in the small asteroids and as of now, he was unable to gather enough to even make one bar of iron which was the most abundant in the small asteroids.

As he looked at the mapped area, he noticed that over a whole day, he didn't manage to remove even 0,01% of the surrounding rocks, not to mention that the materials he gathered were a far cry from what he needed.

-I simply don't have enough drones to do it.

He murmured lying on the floor and thinking about the day's work, trying to come up with a better plan for the next day.

He fell asleep thinking about it, but he had no better idea for now.

The next day he added a new activity to his routine which was exercise.

He needed to slim down and this was a great opportunity to do just that, especially since his tormentors were far far away and unable to spike his food or drinks, of which he was almost certain that they did.

But the first thing he did after waking up was to set new targets for the drones, to avoid wasting time.

He needed the materials and as of now he barely had any, which was a problem since he only had a few more days till the merchants came and he needed to gather enough to buy food and water and if possible a new module or two.

It was a new beginning for him and he just hoped it would not end prematurely.