Star Emperor

Once the drones came back he saw the extent of the damage and the situation was worse than he thought.

The two damaged drones were unusable for anything right now and needed repairs.

Just as he was thinking about a solution to this problem, the merchant vessel was detected by the sensors.

It didn't take long for the ship to dock with his station and the droid to enter.

-Greetings, station master.

Do you have materials for trade?

The machine asked.

-Yes.

It went almost identically as the first time.

-It will be 1.324.000 credits, do you accept this price?

The droid asked after calculating the value of the materials.

Andrew was shocked, he got over half a million credits more than he thought he would.

-I accept.

He said quickly, afraid that the droid might change its mind.

-If you wish to purchase something, the revised item list and prices were uploaded into your console.

The bot said and left just like before.

Andrew didn't waste time as he only had twenty minutes to make a purchase and the first things he got were all the items on a list he compiled during the last five days.

After that he still had over 800 000 credits left to spend so he ordered some more items and modules.

Unfortunately, the research module price was too high to get as it was priced at 6,000,000 credits, and like all the other modules it was just a basic one.

This means that it would have to be upgraded before any advanced research could be conducted.

After getting everything he wanted he still had ten minutes left and decided to see if he could find anything useful.

In the end, there was nothing that he needed immediately, and decided to save his credits for the next time.

Like last time as soon as he pressed and confirmed payment, the amount was deducted from his account and the droids started to bring the items inside his main module.

-The modules you ordered will arrive within one hour of Earth time.

The droid said before leaving.

The moment they boarded the airlock closed and the ship detached.

As soon as it took the materials from storage it flew to another station.

Andrew was more than happy with this trade as he got everything he planned to buy and much more, while he was still left with 400 000 credits in his account.

He even wondered if he didn't get carried away with this shopping spree he just had, especially when he was looking at the small mountain of items he had just bought.

Half an hour later with a flash of light, his new modules had arrived and he started connecting them to his station using drones.

This time he had bought two drone recharging modules, which doubled the number of his drones.

Instead of only one, he bought three more shield generator modules, to increase his chances if the situation from earlier repeated itself before he could take the enemy out.

Three additional storage modules which increased his storage capacity to 86 tonnes.

Six solar power modules to power everything, a drone control module, a communications module, a water storage module, capable of storing twenty tonnes of water, a life support module for redundancy, a drone repair module, a resource distribution module, and a drone manufacturing module.

Altogether he had bought twenty-one new modules and some upgrades that he would have to install himself.

Attaching new modules took him ten hours and another hour to go around them and transfer control to his console but in the end, he had everything ready, before he fell on his bed and fell asleep.

The stress and exhaustion from the previous day made him sleep for over ten hours but when he woke up he was rested and ready to test the new modules he bought.

The first test was the drone control module which allowed him to just use the drones much more efficiently than before and gave him more control over them.

The first order of business was to send the two damaged and one captured drone to the repair module.

Once they arrived they were scanned and the repairs list was compiled along with the necessary materials required to complete them.

The captured drone could be reset and added as his own after the data wipe and installation of the new operating system.

The estimated time for all three drones to be repaired and ready to work was calculated at 35 minutes from the moment the resources were available.

Since there were no available resources for now he decided to leave the drones there while chatting target list for the rest of them.

He marked the area around the station and assigned a dozen drones to gather every asteroid that was present there.

The remaining ten drones got their target list of bigger asteroids to bring back and all of them were programmed to return for recharge once their energy level fell below 25%.

With that out of the way, Andrew proceeded with the systems check, all the modules were operational, and the only modules still not at 100% were the shield generators which were still not finished with their charging cycle.

Since he didn't have to oversee the drones anymore, he got busy with the installation of the upgrades he bought.

The first was the proximity sensor upgrade and the life sign detection upgrade, which he had installed in the sensor module, their roles were self-explanatory.

The next one on the list was a universal translator that he didn't have to install as it arrived with the communication module.

Thanks to that he would now be able to read the messages on the local group channel as well as communicate with anyone in this star system.

The next two upgrades were software only and all he had to do was upload them.

They contained plans for mining drones and gathering drones, which he had to buy separately from the drone manufacturing module.

Mining drones were different in their function as they were designed to reduce the resource materials that were too big to fit in the processing module to the size in which they could be processed.

However, their production would have to wait until there were enough materials available, and Andrew knew that he would have to buy some of them from the merchants, the next time they arrived.

These were the last upgrades he bought this time and once they were all installed he had to deal with the rest of the items, starting with the assembly of a closet and another chest that he bought to have a place to store everything.

Dealing with everything took him two days, and before he finished, the two drones were repaired and ready to work while the third had a new OS installed and now belonged to him.

At the end of the second day, Andrew was tired but happy with his progress and even happier with the amount of resources he he got during this time.

Since the drones didn't require him to oversee them all the time he just set a list of targets and let them at it.

The result was over twenty tonnes of materials gathered and the water storage module topped off.

If this continued, he would have his material storage full before the merchants returned, and on that note, he decided to take a look at the updated items and modules list, since he didn't have the time to look at it properly during their previous visit.

He also hasn't forgotten about the bastard who tried to kill him with the drone, and he already come up with a solution if he tries it again.

Other than that he also did a full light-day scan of the surrounding area using his upgraded sensors to find out which stations were still occupied and which were only sitting there as their owners were already dead.