Star Emperor

Andrew didn't have much to do besides collecting resources and planning his next steps.

The plans were necessary if he wanted to survive and the merchants were only available for around a year so if he was not self-sufficient by that time, it would be game over.

Fortunately for him, they left the list of available items on his console along with the prices of the materials they accepted.

He was not surprised that the list of materials was short, as gathering the more advanced materials required extensive research and advanced modules to process and store them.

The problem was, that even if he bought the basic research module, which was unlikely as there was no way for him to gather enough materials to afford one, not to mention other modules necessary to conduct research.

If he somehow managed to get them all, there was still the little problem of gathering enough materials to conduct the research.

The research required a lot of materials and would not begin until he had enough of them stored.

So for now his only option was to increase his storage capability and the number of drones he could use.

Of course, along with that, he would need more power-generating capability and he had to buy another shield module as the one he had right now was stretched way too much for his liking.

Also, his plan, to get more modules from the other stations, preferably from the ones whose occupants had kicked the bucket, fell through and the cause of that was the distance.

He was already unbelievably lucky to find one that was close enough for him to salvage, but the rest of them were way out of his reach for now.

To make matters worse, his sensors were not advanced enough to determine which stations had a living being inside and which were already empty.

One time before he went to sleep he set the scanner for the ten light hours area scan and it was exactly what was needed to find every station in the system even if he could not get to them.

On the positive side, his exercise regimen had yielded great results as his body slimmed down a lot.

He had no idea what his hellish siblings were feeding him to make him fat, and he was sure that it was their work, but its effects started to disappear.

Another piece of good news was that his storage area was now almost full and it contained mostly precious metals, for which he would get at least 700 000 credits according to the data that the droids left behind.

The last four days he was spending 12 to 16 hours before the console and marking the asteroids for the drones to bring back for processing.

Right now he was just waiting for the last batch of asteroids to be brought back and processed before he could finally have some sleep.

He was already working for more than 15 hours, intending to finish the work before going to bed.

The last three drones brought the asteroid back and inserted it into the processing module before flying off to be recharged.

He initialized the processing procedure before going off to bed.

The asteroid was around four meters in diameter, which was the largest his modules could handle and it would take around 2 hours for it to be processed, but he was not needed during the process so he went to get some rest and was out before his head even touched the pillow.

Six hours later he was woken up by a continuous notification.

-Incoming object on a collision course!

The console was notified continuously.

He jumped out of his bed in terror, only to see that the object was still far away, but it was not an asteroid or anything like that.

He ran the scans on it and the composition was mostly metallic.

Whatever it was, it was approaching his station at approximately 65 thousand km/h and would arrive within the next seven hours.

Thinking about it, Andrew knew that something didn't add up as his previous scans would have detected it days ago if it had been there before, but it was detected only now, and also the composition of metals was oddly familiar.

Just as he was about to give up, it hit him like a brick to the face.

-It's a drone!

He shouted, finally figuring it out.

-But what the hell would a drone be doing here?

Unless it was launched as a weapon.

He immediately checked its vector and retraced its trajectory.

What he saw stunned him.

This drone or whatever it was, was launched from his closest neighbor who was about fifty light seconds away from him.

-This doesn't make any sense, you can't launch a drone without a target…

He stopped talking to himself as it dawned on him.

-Unless you have a drone control module.

This solved the mystery but didn't give him any idea about what he was supposed to do about it.

If that drone hit his station, he was almost certain that the shield would not be able to stop it.

Then he remembered the damage to the station he salvaged and a shiver went down his spine.

This bastard, whoever or whatever he was, most likely was responsible for the destruction of his neighbor, and it seemed that he was the next target.

Andrew had a lot of questions as this whole situation had no sense whatsoever.

But his priority was to stop the drone from impacting his station.

Thinking about it for a moment he had only one choice and that was to launch his drones to capture the incoming one.

The chances of success were small and he would most likely lose a drone or two, but that was his only way to avoid destruction.

Without any hesitation, he targeted the incoming drone and sent half of his drones to intercept it.

The time went by slowly as he observed on the monitor as his drones got closer and closer to the incoming enemy.

It took them four hours to reach the intercept point and as soon as they did, the incoming drone went off course, most likely as a result of the interception attempt.

His display showed that two of his drones were now damaged but still functional.

It took another half an hour for the rest of his drones to finally capture the intruder and start bringing it back.

Andrew sighed in relief as the danger was neutralized and he was finally safe.

But just as he relaxed, it dawned on him that the bastard who sent this drone was really trying to kill him and he felt anger bubbling up inside of him.

He had more than his fill of being the victim, he was finally free of his diabolical step-siblings, and for the first time in years, he felt free, and now this alien asshole was trying to kill him.

This was too much and he felt something in him snapping.

Right now there was no way for him to retaliate, but in a few hours the merchants would arrive and then it would be a whole different story.

Whoever this alien bastard was, from that moment he was the enemy, and the only good enemy was a dead enemy.