Jacob cursed as he watched yet another tool float off into space. That was the third one today. Yet, he was getting better. The day before, he lost ten tools while working on the exterior of the station. That didn’t make the issue any less annoying, however.
One of the maintenance drones slowly tracked across the exterior of the massive structure, handed him a new tool, then turned back and headed inside once again, its tracks capable of holding it to the exterior without issue. Jacob envied the tracked robot. His suit had a similar capability, but walking with magnetic boots was a chore.
It had been a few weeks since he installed the new communication system, but he hadn’t used it yet. He was avoiding the issue by keeping himself busy doing other tasks. To be fair, they were important, maybe even more important than contacting Sha’la or Hallik. The station had finally managed to replicate the shield generator he purchased from Vorlos, and now he was installing them along the station’s hull.
The process was extremely labor-intensive, mostly because the shield generator he bought was designed to attach to a shuttle, not a massive space station, but it was the only style of shield generator available on Vorlos at the time. He tested three of the devices, and they functioned properly, so that was all he cared about as he threw himself into the work.
Jacob thought he knew how difficult it was to work in zero-g when he flew the transport, but that paled in comparison to working in the vacuum of space. The three maintenance drones floating away after having been sent to rescue him attested to that.
He knew he should have just cut his losses with the bipedal drone and made another one, but he had grown attached to the device. He conveniently ignored the fact that experiencing attachment was one of the symptoms of mental instability that the station had laid out about the merging process. He didn’t have time to go crazy, and if a bit of attachment syndrome was all he experienced, he could live with that.
Jacob decided to take a break after the drone delivered a replacement tool. He was too annoyed to concentrate, so he locked his drone in place and popped back into his apartment for a bit.
Franky was quietly sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the toy drone with single-minded focus.
Jacob watched for a moment, noticing the drone jerking slightly. The man was making progress after being released from his confinement. His behavior had also improved quite significantly since returning, which Jacob took as a good sign.
The drone stopped twitching, and Franky blinked and grasped the table to steady himself as the effort caused him to sway unsteadily. He glanced over at Jacob, then quickly looked away in embarrassment or shame. Jacob wasn’t sure which and didn’t feel like prying because he didn’t want to discourage the guy.
Jacob felt a bit bad about confining the man to his little windowless room, but if Franky had just been civil from the start, that wouldn’t have happened.
He turned his attention away from Franky and toward the couch. Barry was there, reading the manual. Jacob began to turn away before doing a double-take. “Barry, you’re awake?”
The man looked up from his manual and frowned. “I’ve been awake this entire time. I was…meditating, so to speak.”
Jacob threw his hands up in exasperation. “Why didn’t you say something? I thought you had gone catatonic.”
The man scratched the side of his face in embarrassment. “I guess I didn’t think about it. I’m used to living by myself.”
Jacob could understand that, but he still sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you’re going to do something weird again, please at least leave a note or something.”
“Um, sure,” Barry replied absently as his gaze returned to the manual.
Jacob shook his head and turned his attention to his last guest. Katty was nowhere in sight, so he figured she was still holed up in her room. When he checked the logs, he could see that she was a bit further along than Franky was in their efforts to merge with the toy drones. After she had recovered from her earlier attempt, Jacob had spoken with her about how to prevent it from happening again.
Neither she nor Franky was all that happy to learn that they needed to exercise their mental muscles before forming a full connection, but neither complained either. Jacob was going to tell Barry that as well, but he noticed in the logs that the man was already actively doing those exercises. That was a surprise, but what surprised him most was that Barry was weeks ahead of the other two.
It didn’t become clear why until Jacob looked at Barry’s personal logs. They dated back over a month, long before Katty and Franky had even attempted their first connection. Barry must have sensed that Jacob pinged the log because he looked up. A small smile flitted across the man’s face before he made a shushing gesture with his finger across his lips, then went back to his book.
If Barry wanted to hide the fact that he was farther along than the other two, Jacob wouldn’t argue. He shook his head, had some food, finished his break, then got back to work.
The station was going to require thousands of shield generators, and he had yet to place more than a dozen. Thankfully, he wasn’t alone; the maintenance drones were slow and not equipped to handle the initial phase of the process, but they could finish the install.
The initial work was handled by the three new bipedal drones and one drone ship that Jacob had manufactured. The drones would eventually belong to his three guests, but until then, Jacob was happy to put them to work.
Jacob had loaded the three drones with modified maintenance drone software. It didn’t make them any better than the maintenance drones. In fact, they were quite a bit worse at most maintenance tasks. The only advantages they had over a regular maintenance drone were their ability to get into tighter spaces and the finer dexterity with their limbs.
Those advantages made them the perfect tool to install the shield generators. Between the three, they had outpaced Jacob’s efforts by five units. That was almost thirty shield generators placed in total.
More would have been completed, but he was running low on materials to produce them. It was beginning to be a real pain in the ass to balance supplies, repairs, and upgrades. The second bottleneck came in the form of the single drone ship, which moved the bulky generators into their locations.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Jacob knew he would run low on materials, so he did something proactive and built a fourth bipedal drone and stuck it aboard the transport on its way back to Vorlos so he could just hop between drones at will without wasting time on the trip. He should have done that ages ago, but he was still thinking like a meat sack. He only checked in on the drone when his timer indicated it had completed a transit leg of the journey. He might not even bother with that soon, considering the upgraded phase coils were significantly more stable than the old ones. Ten jumps and the coils had yet to experience a single failure. He still kept the old ones aboard, however, just in case.
He didn’t know if the new coils were just that much better or if the redundant coils aboard the transport made them last longer. Either way, he was happy with the result. The eiraxin vessel certainly hadn’t had any redundant FTL systems, and it had made the trip without losing its coil.
Jacob couldn’t be sure if that was normal for all vessels, but he hadn’t seen any replacement units inside the smaller ship when he removed their coil. So, unless they had ejected the damaged units during transit, they had made the entire trip on just one.
The thought of relying on a single point of failure without a backup sounded risky, and he actually preferred the old Concord design.
A ping interrupted his thoughts, and he checked the alert. The transport had finally arrived at Vorlos. Jacob transferred over to that drone and completed the landing.
His time spent at the station was short. Jacob had learned from Sha’la that he could place buy and sell orders before even docking, which saved a ton of time. Sha’la wasn’t on duty, and neither was the other individual from his last visit. The new port liaison was all business, which Jacob was fine with.
Jacob had only brought two crates of the power cores this trip, and Sha’la had already agreed to purchase a full crate during their last visit.
He could have brought more, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself anymore after learning just how valuable the units were. He also had more than enough funds saved up to fill his cargo hold twice over, even if he came empty-handed.
The inspection went quickly. The remaining crate was purchased by the station and whisked away while the materials he had purchased arrived to fill the empty space. The process of going back and forth to buy materials was extremely boring, and Jacob didn’t know how the merchants did it. He didn’t want to admit that the bounty hunter was right, but it looked like he was going to have to sooner rather than later.
Jacob had been hoping to fully enclose the station in shields and have more defensive drones before he had to decide, but he had run the numbers while the transport was on its way to Vorlos.
With his current approach, it would take just over three years to buy the materials necessary to cover the massive shipyard with shield generators. That was if he used every single trip just to buy materials for the generators. That meant stopping any repairs to Melody’s hull, not producing any power cores, or doing anything else. That was unacceptable.
He didn’t even want to think about how long it would take to deliver the materials to repair Melody. Spending over a decade running back and forth doing supply runs didn’t interest him one bit.
There was always the option of scaling up his operation by adding more transports, but that took time, materials, and more money, slowing everything else down in the short term. Plus, he didn’t want to have to manage more than one transport. That sounded exhausting. He could ask the others for help, but they were still in the dark on most things. They knew the ship that had abducted them was damaged, but they didn’t know how badly, or that the AI responsible was now dead. They just knew that the AI didn’t communicate with them.
That left Hallik’s plan to open up the station and entice traders as the only viable alternative, which also meant bringing the other three in on the discussion sooner than he wanted to.
He sighed and decided to push that problem off until the latest shipment returned.
***
Jacob knocked on Katty’s door.
The woman appeared with a glare, but quickly softened it upon seeing him and not one of the others. That didn’t mean her tone was any friendlier, however. “What?”
“I need to discuss something with you three. Can you come to the kitchen?”
“Three?” she asked in confusion as she stepped out of the room, doing her best to hide the mess inside.
Not my room, not my mess, Jacob told himself.
“Yeah, Barry is active again.”
Katty lifted an eyebrow slightly, but otherwise didn’t comment as she followed him to the kitchen. Barry and Franky were both there. Franky looked annoyed by the interruption, but he kept his features flat, while Barry was buried in his document once again.
The older man looked up. “I hope this conversation will be quick,” he said before flicking his eyes back to the manual in his hands.
“It should be,” Jacob replied, gesturing for Katty to take the seat next to Barry, while he placed himself next to Franky.
Once everyone was seated, Jacob cleared his throat awkwardly and began. “I need to discuss your future.”
Based on the tense reaction from Katty and Franky, that was probably not the right way to start the conversation.
Jacob realized how his words might have sounded and waved his hands. “I’m not talking about killing you or anything if that’s what you thought. I’m referring to what you do once you can all control your drones. I believe you are all capable enough for the next step in the process.”
“And what is that?” Katty asked, arms crossed.
“To become individuals aboard the station,” Jacob proclaimed proudly.
The three shared a skeptical look, and Barry even set down his manual to interlace his hands. “To what end, Jacob?”
Jacob blinked in confusion. “I just told you.”
“And I understand that, but what does that mean? It’s abundantly clear that you have full control of this virtual space and the station. Why do you need us to become individuals?”
That wasn’t entirely true. Jacob opened his mouth to say as much, then closed it. Did he need them to become individuals? He figured they would want to do that so they could explore the station, but they could do that virtually if they really desired. It only really helped him if they started operating drones. And he had to admit that part of the reason was selfish. He wanted them to take part of the burden involving the station out of his hands.
He reordered his thoughts in a fraction of a moment and started over. “Bodies for one. You can explore the station from the virtual world, but it’s not the same as experiencing it from inside a drone. It’s why I spend so much time away. The rest, I’ll admit, are selfish reasons.” He could have lied, but he didn’t really see the point.
“Such as?” Barry gestured for him to continue.
“There is a decision that needs to be made about the future of the station, and I don’t want to make it without your input since you three are tied to the station currently. To do that, I need you to see some things for yourself.”
“Does the issue directly affect my storage space?” Barry asked quietly.
“Um… It shouldn’t,” Jacob responded.
The man nodded and picked up his manual. “Then I am not interested.”
The other two stared at Barry in shock before turning to Jacob.
Surprisingly, it was Franky who spoke next. “How soon can we get into our bodies?”
Jacob had to shake away the confusion he felt at Barry’s refusal before he registered Franky’s words.
“Oh, um, today, if you can manage it. I have each of your drones set up in the security office. Who wants to try first?”
“Katty can go first,” Franky said in a rare moment of selflessness.
That was just as surprising as Barry’s rejection, and he stared silently at the young man for a moment.
Jacob wondered if he somehow slipped into an alternate universe where everyone’s personalities were flipped. Then again, if he were, Barry probably would have jumped on the opportunity instead of shunning it. He shook that thought away and looked to Katty.
“You want to give it a shot?”
“I can only stay connected for thirty seconds or so before it becomes too much,” she admitted.
“That’s fine. I’ll prep everything beforehand and let you know when to connect. It should be enough.”
“Alright, let’s do it,” she said much more confidently.