AN: 11 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
---
After resting for a while longer, the two returned to work, their lasers carving deep into the destroyer's hull as sparks rained like shooting stars, the glow of their lasers casting their figures against the sand. Mark had finally found a rhythm in the work as the hum of the laser, the slow drag, and the hiss of the splitting metal filled the air. It was brutal and exhausting work, and for some strange reason, oddly satisfying.
By the time nightfall had arrived, they had cut nearly a hundred and twenty meters of the ship into manageable sections. Betsy's flatbed was loaded even higher than before, its claw arm locked in place to keep the cargo steady.
Mark leaned against the rover, his EVA suit retracting to the point that only his helmet was left, allowing the cool night air to brush against his sweaty body. However, it wasn't long before Mark equipped the rest of the suit as the freezing temperatures of a desert during the night made themselves felt. "Not bad for a day's work."
Anahrin stood beside him, gazing at the fractured destroyer with something like reverence. "This ship would have once been considered the pinnacle of technology, purposefully built for war until it met its end. It lay in the sand for who knows how many years, silently decaying, and today it is being stripped for parts to give life to another. Strange, is it not? That even in ruin, it serves a purpose."
Mark followed his gaze, eyes narrowing. "It's kinda poetic if you think about it. I mean, in a sense, it's like death feeding life."
Anahrin's expression shifted, something deep flickering behind his eyes. "Yes, just like all things... It's a cycle. Nothing ever truly ends, something your very being is proof of. 'Death is never the end,' a phrase whispered by so many mouths, yet nobody ever held concrete proof of what lay beyond death... not until you strode along."
Mark shifted uncomfortably. Anahrin's words held truth. However, it was something that, although he understood and accepted, he hadn't fully come to terms with, even with all the months that had passed since then. He was even less comfortable with someone else knowing what would be considered his deepest and darkest secret. He shook his head to clear his thoughts before clapping his hand against the rover. "Come on, Ani. Let's get this load back before Betsy decides she's had enough of hauling starship parts."
Anahrin gave one last look at the wreck before climbing onto the top of the rover's cabin. "We can begin feeding the material into the nanoprinter tonight and begin construction of your ship across the next few days."
Mark tilted his head in confusion. "But, don't we need more material than we currently have?"
Anahrin chuckled as he shook his head. "No, why would we keep on doing this labor ourselves? You're going to get some rest, while I'm going to use the material to print equipment and some helpers to keep on gathering material for us."
Mark grinned, sliding into the driver's seat. "Oh, that makes way more sense. I thought we would be the ones doing everything bit by bit. Thank God you were thinking ahead."
The rover's engine rumbled to life, carrying them away under the glittering canopy of stars back in the direction of the factory. It took them even longer to return since they had to drive much more slowly than earlier due to all of the cargo they were hauling.
Unlike other planets, the nights on this world were very dark. Thankfully, the Rover was equipped with thermal imaging as well as an active path tracker that would show the driver the route they had taken to arrive at their current destination. It also helped that the mountain of rocks on top of the factory extended for almost 4 kilometers, and it was the only formation of rocks of its size for miles and miles.
By the time they reached the wide blast doors, the night was so dark that the desert seemed bottomless, with every single dune becoming indistinguishable from the next. Mark drove cautiously up the ramp, the tires squealing slightly under the weight of the cargo. The claw arm creaked as it fought to maintain the cut sections on the flatbed, but Betsy held firm.
Inside, the factory's dark interior slowly lit up as motion sensors triggered long strips of pale light across the vaulted ceiling. They parked near the center where the nanoprinter had been left, too big and too heavy to just be moved. It wasn't an elegant sight, looking like an inverted cathedral organ, all spires of matter-feeding tubes and attached emitter banks.
Anahrin wasted no time in getting to work, swiftly hopping off the rover and walking up to the printer's console. He activated it smoothly, its screen lighting up with words in a language that surprised Mark: English. Anahrin smoothly keyed commands in while Mark worked with the arm to unload the metal slabs from Betsy's flatbed, one at a time.
Mark approached Anahrin after he finished unloading all of the material by the nanoprinter. "So, how long will this all take?"
Anahrin tilted his head upwards, as if thinking. "Well, believe it or not, breaking down the material is what takes the longest. Printing, on the other hand, tends to be rather quick. That being said, it will probably take about 2 hours to break down the allows into their constituent matter before reconfiguring them into new constructs. But as I said, once it begins printing, the pace will be quickened. All in all, things should be ready for us to continue working by tomorrow morning."
Mark leaned against the glowing console, his EVA suit replaced by the usual sweats and hoodie get-up. "And what exactly are we making first? The ship's frame?"
Anahrin shook his head. "As I told you earlier, tools before toys, Mark. I'll be overseeing the creation of the laborers tonight since you and I simply cannot afford to spend weeks, maybe even months on end, dismantling a destroyer by hand. So, I'm printing workers to cut, carry, and sort. Machines without minds, but with precision, speed, and numbers that we simply lack."
Mark's brow lifted. "So, Robots?"
"Yes, though not entirely correct. Bots have enough intelligence to do as requested. What I'm printing are demolition drones, thirty of them, to be exact. Compact, strong, and fast. Each equipped with plasma torches and cutting beams far more stable than the tools you and I wielded today. And twenty cargo drones for hauling the materials back here. Once the workforce is in place, then we can begin on the frigate."
Mark whistled low. "Thirty and twenty of the little buggers. It should be smooth sailing from there on out."
Anahrin's lips twitched in a small smile. "Yes, it should be."
The nanoprinter began its process of breaking down the material. The air vibrated faintly as the smell of ozone filled the chamber. An invisible force slowly dragged the slabs of metal piece by piece through a red gate that had formed at the center of the printer. Matter was slowly pulled apart at the molecular level, shimmering dust clouds swirling in containment fields as they disappeared before Mark's very eyes.
After about 2 hours of continuous material breakdown, the red gate of the nanoprinter shifted in color to blue, and solid shapes began to condense. The first shapes appeared like shadows given weight, angular torsos, mechanical limbs, and heads without features came out of the nanoprinter, opposite to where the metal had been fed through.
A sleepy Mark was jolted awake by the shift in the printer's colors, and he now stared with childlike awe. He'd seen robots before, in movies and in the naval academy, sure, but he had never seen anything like this.
About halfway through the night, racks of machines stood ready, their chrome metal bodies gleaming faintly under the factory lights. The demolition drones were squat, broad-shouldered little machines with arm-mounted torches and serrated clamps. The cargo drones were larger, built on heavy treads with flat, reinforced backs that were specifically designed to bear weight.
Anahrin powered them on with a tap on a tablet-like device he held in his hands. One by one, eyes of pale blue lit up across the line, turning in unison as if awaiting orders.
"Holy shit," Mark breathed.
"These are nothing to be amazed by," Anahrin stated, though he couldn't hide the faint delight in his tone. "Let's get some rest, we've got a lot to do tomorrow."
---
For the next week, the drones would march out in a convoy every single morning, flanking Betsy across the dunes on the way to the destroyer. Once they arrived at the crash site, the demolition drones would swarm over what was left of the destroyer's hull like insects, cutting into its hull with their precision beams, filling the air with sparks and the smell of burning metal. The Cargo drones were doing their part, helping load the severed slabs, crawling back and forth between the wreck and rover until Betsy's flatbed was piled high.
Mark and Anahrin would oversee the loading process, sometimes hopping in with a torch to help guide cuts or adjust angles. The drones were efficient, no doubt; however, they weren't perfect in their work. More than once, Mark found himself shouting, "Hey, hey, you're carving the wrong line, you fucking clanker!" only for Anahrin to gently remind him that the machines, while responsive to orders, had no egos or feelings to bruise.
Once they returned to the factory, the nanoprinter would consume the endless stream of alloy, breaking it down before starting to spit out fresh constructs for the creation of the ship. One by one, support struts, bulkheads, plating, conduit bundles, and much more would be made, carried over by the cargo drones to another chamber where the skeleton of the heavy frigate was beginning to take shape. It was an immense cradle where beams of dark composite were being slotted together by cranes that Anahrin had printed and operated through his tablet.
It was a painstaking process since they had gone with a sleek and angular hull shape that would have effective armor, which meant that every single joint had to be heavily reinforced against stresses that would only exist in the void. And worst of all was the fact that they had to assemble everything on the planet, where its gravity fought them every step of the way.
Anahrin started to show a side of himself that Mark had never seen: frustration. One evening as they labored over a massive truss, Mark heard Anahrin muttering under his breath. "Ships were never meant to be made in the damn ground, then be sent out to space," he paused to direct the drones to lift it while Mark hung in the air, using huge bolts to bind sections together with a drill, before a drone would go over all of the joining areas, welding the metal structure together for extra strength. "In space, things are almost weightless, in a sense. There is no bending of materials, no heavy lifting necessary, as parts just float, waiting to be put into place and then joined together. Down here, each beam groans under its own mass, and the weight of things becomes very real."
Mark grunted as he forced the riveter into place, sparks leaping from the seam. "Yeah, well, we don't exactly have a shipyard orbiting above us, do we?"
Anahrin gave a dry chuckle. "No, what we do have is a bunch of space debris from the little scuffle you had a couple of months ago still orbiting this planet." He looked up at the half-finished framework. "But perhaps there is some poetry in that. A frigate born of a graveyard."
Mark let out a sigh of relief as he finished bolting the beam down. "Yeah, yeah, you and your poetry. Perhaps you could give me an actual hand with this instead of just using that tablet of yours."
Anahrin shook his head at Mark. "No, I don't think I will."
---
Time crawled away for Mark, and by the sixth day of work, the ship's framework had actually begun to resemble the outline of a vessel. Massive ribs curved upward, defining the belly of the ship. Longitudinal beams stretched the length of what would one day be her spine, and standing beneath it was Mark, feeling dwarfed as he stared up at the structure.
The work was grueling at best. More than once, drones overloaded, their circuits shorting under the strain of carrying tons of alloy across shifting sand.
Mark cursed every time one would stop working mid-haul. "And here I was thinking that a civilization that could live fifteen thousand years would have figured out how to make a drone that doesn't fry itself halfway home."
Anahrin only shook his head, kneeling to repair the fallen machine with tools that seemed to flow out of his very palms. "We did, we just do not have the correct materials to create such things, after all, metal can only be repurposed to so much by the nanoprinter. Plus, machines are imperfect, just like the hands that guide them. That is why I printed many, not just one. They're also easy enough to repair, rather than discard."
The nights weren't any easier for them either. While the drones would recharge and the nanoprinter worked without pause, Mark and Anahrin would take turns supervising the process. Sometimes Mark would catch Anahrin staring for far too long at the growing framework, his face a mask of thoughts, the faint light catching in his weary eyes. Other times, Anahrin would be the one catching Mark off-guard, whispering strange phrases. He once caught Mark running his hand along the beams with a crazed look on his face, all the while he whispered, "My Precious."
By the end of the second week, the frame of the heavy frigate had risen to about 80 meters tall and spanned almost 300 meters in length and 100 meters in width. It was still a shell of what it would become, but looking at the framework alone, one could get a semblance of what it might turn out like. Mark climbed onto the scaffold one evening, pausing mid-step as the sight stole his breath. For the first time, the scale of it truly sank in. It was massive, and he was the one carving it into existence.
Anahrin joined Mark; his movements felt slightly slower than before, but it didn't seem to affect him. Together they stood side by side, looking out across the steel frame.
"You see, Mark," Anahrin said softly, his voice carrying both pride and fatigue, "this is why ships are built in orbit. Here, we have to fight the ground, the air, and the weight of every beam. In space, we would have finished this stage in a few days, maybe a week, not two. But…" He gestured at the framework, coughing into his fist before forcing the sound down. "Here, on this forgotten planet, we have done, not the impossible, but the highly improbable anyway."
Mark wiped sweat from his brow and grinned. "Then maybe that's what makes her special. She's not just another ship assembled in a sterile dockyard. She's born out of sweat, stubbornness, heat, and a little bit of insanity."
Anahrin chuckled, his laughter breaking into a rasping cough. For a moment, Mark reached out, but Anahrin steadied himself, shaking his head. "Perhaps. A ship forged in hardship may endure where others falter."
They stood in silence for a long moment, the faint hum of the nanoprinter echoing through the other chamber. Anahrin then shifted and pulled up the ship's schematics. "Have you thought of a name for her yet?"
Mark shook his head. "Nah, still waiting for her to be done and then I'll think of something, something that feels right."
Anahrin nodded his head in agreement. "A ship's name is quite important to its identity. It's good to see that you're waiting for something that feels right... I've downloaded some schematics from Stellar Dynamics' Class 5 engines. They're not the greatest, but once we change the things that need changing, they won't even resemble them. I've also got these reactor schematics I want you to take a look at. The spacing has already been carved out for where it will be placed, but there is room to toy around with. Increase output, efficiency, and a few other things. Same with the engines. This will be the most eye-catching Heavy Frigate the universe will see for a while."
Mark chuckled at that, though his gaze drifted back to the towering frame, something fierce and protective stirring in his chest. "Yeah, it will. But I trust that the weapon's systems you had me design after all those lessons will be more than enough to have anyone with sticky fingers running the other way. She's going to be armed to the teeth, not to mention the power-to-weight ratio that I know I will achieve once I redesign those engines. Ooh, momma, she's going to be the most lethal Heavy Frigate out there for a while. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to push her to punch above her weight and be a danger to Cruisers. If only we could make her a stealth ship as well."
Anahrin nodded in agreement, though his eyes lingered on the growing shape before them with a trace of sadness. "Yes, shame that although this will attract a lot of attention, it will not be enough to have the IUC and CIV's navies on your behind for having technology they've just barely breached. However, I am sure that with time, you will come to have enough power to have whatever you want, to show some of your cards with no navy daring to tell you otherwise."
Mark smirked before tilting his head. "Hey, I never really asked you, but how did you always manage to get your hands on schematics from all of these corporations. And the ship schematics of Thor's Hammer as well. I'm guessing that you're going to say something like-"
"Primitive Technology," Anahrin smirked as he completed Mark's sentence. "I took advantage and connected to humanity's web while that dreadnaught was still in orbit. It's how I learned so much about humanity's history, and all their schematics. Sure, you have to pay for them, but having such primitive coding meant it was child's play to bypass certain security measures. After that, I set up a new identity for you. Talking of which, I also opened a bank account under your name and transferred a hundred thousand Imperial credits to your account. Don't worry, there's no way to trace that money, and its owners will not even know it's missing. It's been accumulating interest, too. Right now, your current balance should be about 103,256 Imperial Credits. That's worth about 139 thousand and some change in Coalition Credits, if you prefer to go to CIV-occupied space. The current market exchange rate is 1 Imperial Credit is equal to 1.35 Coalition Credits."
Mark stared at him, dumbfounded.
"What?" Anahrin asked. "Have I got something on my face? Eh, it doesn't matter. That dreadnaught left a long time ago, and I don't think anything has jumped into this system since then. Not even recovery crews from the IUC. I'm guessing they either did not want a further escalation of conflict or you weren't worth much to them."
Mark stifled a chuckle and looked down at the drones bringing in finished materials from the nanoprinter's chamber. "Man, you're an asshole... But at least you're my asshole... wait, that sounded weird."