“That’s the last of it,” Jacob said as the damaged section dropped away.
He stepped back and smiled, admiring his work with pride. The last four months had been blissfully quiet, allowing him to focus almost entirely on fixing Melody. There was still a ton of work to do on the vessel, but the beam being hauled away by the maintenance drone represented the last of the internal damage.
He could have had the station remove the damage months ago, as repairs began, but he left it for symbolic reasons. Now that he had worked out the modifications and changes that he wanted to make to the ship, thanks to input from Barry, Sha’la, Hallik, and a few others, he could actually begin restoring internal systems.
Technically, the station would be doing the majority of the work, along with continuing to replace the missing hull and armor, which required an enormous amount of material. Luckily, all the sections leading to those openings had been sealed off, so now the ship was finally repressurized for the first time in nearly nine hundred years.
Jacob still found it hard to believe that the Concord Imperium was traversing the stars thousands of years ago, while humanity had still been stuck in the Bronze Age. That amount of history was just staggering to him. He could sort of see why Xing’che and her people were so adamant to break free from their shackles so they could return to the stars.
It would be like if someone came around after Europe had extended its reach to the New World and told the settlers they weren’t allowed to sail anymore and returned them to where they had come from. The situation wasn’t quite the same, but it was similar enough.
Jacob set the plasma cutter down and made his way to the airlock. The ship now had two working airlocks leading to the station, which made traversing its gargantuan deck far less of a chore.
The upgrades Barry and Oliver Mercer had worked into the drones didn’t hurt either. The pair butted heads on the designs quite frequently, the most severe being their little spat over adding a display screen to the drone’s faces. Barry had argued that it was a pointless waste, while Oliver had said it would allow them to communicate better.
Jacob agreed with Oliver on that point, which is why there were two distinct models of bipedal drones now. One with a screen to display a face, and one with the original setup. Jacob adopted the new display style, which reduced the number of sensors he had access to, but it made interacting with people much easier.
He knew Barry wouldn’t adopt the new system, but he was surprised when Katherine refused as well. He had asked her about it, but she said she had her reasons, so he left it at that.
Despite Barry and Oliver’s disagreements on certain design choices, they had actually become close friends. Probably because they could bounce ideas back and forth without worry. Min-Jun had also taken part in a few of their discussions, but he was a lot less amenable to having his choices questioned.
In fact, Min-Jun had struggled quite a bit to integrate with anyone on the station. The few times he had bothered to interact with the locals, he came off as extremely dismissive.
Why Min-Jun had agreed to come out here if he didn’t want to interact with aliens was beyond him. It was probably to get his hands on alien technology. Jacob decided the man was not a good fit at the station and would be taking him back to Earth when he went next time.
Speaking of. He stepped out of the airlock and crossed the corridor. A door to the tram station whisked open at his approach, and he stepped into the ten-person pod.
It was empty, since nobody was allowed in this section of the station other than him, Barry, and Katherine.
“Where would you like to go, Captain?” the AI asked.
“Where’s Bob?”
“Bob is in the market district, in the training lounge.”
“Okay, take me to the market district.”
“Acknowledged, Captain.”
Jacob wasn’t surprised that his friend was in the flight trainer. When he wasn’t walking around chatting with the eiraxins in broken Trade Common, he spent most of his time in the trainer. Had been since Jacob built the device.
The doors to the pod whisked closed and accelerated down the track. The only reason Jacob knew the anti-grav pod was accelerating was that he could track its progress on a little display on the wall.
The pods didn’t move all that fast, but it was still quicker than running through the station. The only way he could have gotten to the flight trainer quicker was if he had hopped into a nearby drone, which he had decided to limit.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
His self-imposed restriction wasn’t due to any sort of discomfort or concerns with hopping between drones. Jacob had gotten over most of those issues. It was the risk of losing his humanity that bothered him. He already felt alien enough with his avatars running around, so he needed something to ground himself.
The pod eventually slid to a stop, and the doors opened to the cacophony of sounds from the market. A few of the eiraxins nodded at him as he stepped out of the pod, but most ignored him as they went about their business.
He saw a few of the six-limbed amuni, a handful of the shorter tiyau, and one of the koala-like bruth amongst the sparse crowd.
He was sure there were other aliens amongst the crowd; a bunch had visited the station in the last few months. Even a few he hadn’t seen before, like the ivathian, which looked a bit like a demonic goat with four eyes, which was a bit of a shock. It was the puatha traders that really gave him the creeps, though. They resembled daddy-long-legs spiders, only they were six feet tall.
Considering the wide berth most species gave them, he wasn’t the only one who found their forms creepy.
The market had been Xing’che’s idea. Barry and the judicator were still trying to lure out the people behind the attack, but whoever they were, they were being cautious. Jacob wasn’t surprised. If even half of what they already suspected was true, there was something huge growing behind the scenes.
Keeping the extent of their investigation hidden was the main reason why Judicator Ghrroaqq had reached out to him in the first place. Jacob didn’t want anything to do with the man, but Barry had agreed to assist.
Barry wasn’t the only one who was busy.
Katherine had taken on the role of the de facto liaison for all the aliens who visited the station. Her initial hesitation and anger toward the aliens had eventually cooled. That didn’t mean she was a pushover. She worked closely with General Roberts and his team to ensure everyone was safe. As far as Jacob knew, only a few individuals had been detained.
Most of the people who visited the station seemed unconcerned with the eiraxins walking around, but there were always exceptions. One of those exceptions had been held for an entire month before a bounty team showed up to drag them back to Astryx space, where they had additional bounties.
Jacob was more than happy to let them take the individual, as it meant one less thing he had to concern himself with. Katherine wasn’t quite on the same page in that regard. She wanted that individual to remain locked up in the station’s holding cells.
Her reaction was entirely emotional, but even Jacob couldn’t blame her. The man had assaulted one of the eiraxin women that she had grown quite fond of. The individual definitely regretted their choice after the fact. Honestly, he was surprised she had restrained herself so much. After a trip to the autodoc to get the individual patched up and thrown in holding, Jacob asked Roberts to keep Katherine away.
It turned out to be unnecessary, but he was still glad he had done so.
The crowds thinned, and Jacob finally arrived outside of a small shop at the far end of the concourse. The sign above the door simply read ‘Bob’s’.
“That’s what he ended up naming it?” Jacob shook his head and headed inside.
Despite the unassuming name, the place was packed. It was a cross between an arcade and a bar, except the arcades were all flight simulators and the bar only served non-alcoholic beverages. Bob had made quite a name for himself amongst the locals when he displayed his skills in the Omacron Six sim he had built, and they asked to be trained as well. Having to explain that it was just a game and not the actual controls of a ship had led to some confusion.
That’s when Bob had come to him. “I want to become a pilot,” his friend had stated.
Jacob saw no issue with that; he would have given his friend access to the virtual simulator, but Bob was not able to merge, which devastated him for more than one reason. His friend quickly overcame his disappointment, however.
“—too jerky,” Jacob heard Bob’s voice. “You need a smooth hand. Here, let me show you.”
Jacob made it to the back of the business just as Bob shooed a young eiraxin out of the flight couch.
“You can’t go like this,” Bob said, jerking the flight stick around like a lunatic, earning amused chuckles from the group watching him and an embarrassed look from the young man he had booted from the chair. “You need to be smooth, like with the ladies,” Bob winked, earning a second round of snickers from the group, while making the young eiraxin man go even more beet red.
Then his friend demonstrated the stick movement. “Slow is smooth.”
“What about combat?” someone asked.
Bob snorted at that. “You’re talking to the wrong person. I’m barely proficient with flight controls myself. But that’s all the time I have for now. Have at it, Jardle.”
The young man nodded and retook the seat, while his friends watched on to see if he got any better.
Bob nodded toward Jacob, and Jacob headed toward the office with him.
“Your Trade Common is getting much better,” Jacob said as the door shut.
“The eiraxins are a great help with that,” Bob said with a smile.
“No new incidents?” Jacob asked.
Bob grimaced at that. “Not since we last spoke, what, three weeks ago?”
“Shit, has it been that long?” Jacob said. “Sorry, I should have visited more.”
“It’s fine,” Bob waved off his concern. “I knew you were busy, and once you built out this place for me, I spent most of my time here.”
“And teaching it seems.”
“Yeah, turns out I’m rather good at that, who would have thought?”
Jacob and Katherine had benefited from Bob’s training, Katherine more than him. He decided to keep that thought to himself, so he didn’t open up old wounds.
“And how’s your practice going?” Jacob asked.
“Eh,” his friend said, waggling his hand back and forth. “In Omacron Six, you can make a few mistakes and get away with it, but with a real ship, you don’t have that luxury. I still occasionally crash when taking off in the simulator. It takes an amount of focus I was not ready for, but I’m getting there. I got time.”
“Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to fly the Abyss Pearl back to Earth?”
“ You’re joking, right?” Bob asked. When Jacob didn’t laugh, Bob looked surprised. “Wait, you’re serious. What if I crash it?”
“I’ll be there to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Okay. Next question, how am I supposed to control it? If I recall correctly, the controls weren’t built for humans.”
“The remodel was completed last week.”
Bob rubbed at his chin. “Can I think on it?”
Jacob nodded. “Sure. I have a few things to finish up, anyway, so I don’t plan on heading out for another week. Let me know by then.”