POV: Mark
The glow of the station's simulated sunrise had already bathed the industrial ring in a soft, diffuse orange by the time I had woken up inside my room in the Shepherd. Ever since I clamped her down in Dock 1 yesterday, the thoughts of having to pay docking fees were no longer weighing on my mind.
Lyra was still out cold on my arm, having turned in her sleep to bury her face by my armpit. How kids ever slept in such a manner or found these positions comfortable was beyond me, but she appeared to be more than comfortable enough to drench my arm in saliva from her drooling.
I let out a soft sigh and spoke in a low voice, "You gotta grow out of this soon."
We got ready, ate breakfast, and I went to drop Lyra off at the orphanage to play with her new friends. I felt my mood swing. The lightness from my previous day's success had been replaced by the heavy, silent pressure of expectation. This was it. No more planning. No more meetings. Today I was going to begin working.
I stood in the office for a long time after cycling the lock, just absorbing the silence. Silas Kord's office smelled less of cigarette smoke now as the air circulation system was slowly winning the battle against decades of grime. But the room itself was still a disaster. Old schematics curled yellowly on the desk, the massive terminal was still partially covered in dust, and the rickety chair looked ready to collapse under a strong gaze. This was supposed to be the face of Shephard Orbital Works, the place where clients would discuss multi-million credit contracts one day.
"Marcos," I keyed into my comms, my voice echoing slightly in the small space.
"What can your humble servant do for you, oh so high and mighty, Mark?" He replied instantly, his tones shifting as he spoke. "I've already initiated the clean-up protocols for the main bay, kind sire. The drones are currently isolating the remaining non-hazardous waste and compressing it for disposal. Half of them have begun the relocation of the IUC patrol gunship to Dock 4, which I've contacted the IUC Navy about. They said they didn't need it and that it was supposed to be disposed of, so I guess you, my master, will use it as your next fixer-upper project."
I nodded to myself, accepting the unfinished ship that had just been gifted to me. "Not bad, Marcos, not bad. If you could prioritize the office next, it would be great. I need this to look like a functional place of business, not a storage closet for a bum. Please get the floor polished, and the walls too. And if you can, drop that voice. It's starting to send shivers down my spine."
"Understood. Give me about an hour and a half to get this place up and running," he said. "I had focused on getting the drones to polish the rest of the place after you returned yesterday."
I watched through the small, grimy window as a trio of small, multi-legged maintenance drones Marcos had repurposed using the lab of the Shepherd, detached from the ceiling of the main bay, and zipped toward the office door. I went to key the door open for them, but it slid open, and they swarmed inside before I even reached it.
"Oh, I forgot to mention this, but this place is pretty easy to hack," Marcos' voice came in through my comms.
"I figured," I replied.
While the drones worked their magic, I headed into the main bay. Kord's Orbital Graveyard, now SOW, was pretty big for its price. The pressurized volume of the facility was impressive, capable of hosting up to four medium-sized freighters or two large cruisers side-by-side.
The patrol gunship, already stripped of most external plating and clearly an abandoned project of refurbishment, looked forlorn and tiny in the massive space, especially next to the Shepherd. If it weren't missing all its armor plating, then it would look like a slab of metal that was about 80 meters long, 30 meters tall, and 30 meters wide.
I walked the perimeter, noting the massive magnetic clamps on Docks 1, 2, and 3. The control panels were old but functional, marked with heavy, analog switches and blinking lights. Dock 4, where the patrol ship was being moved, seemed to be reserved for long-term storage or salvage, lacking the primary repair infrastructure that the other 3 had.
My eyes drifted to the fabrication section, or what Silas had talked up as the crown jewel of the place. There was a huge, floor-mounted plasma cutter, the kind that looked like it could slice a starfighter in half, and a pair of industrial 3D printers, larger than the printers I had in my own inventory space. They were covered in canvas sheets, but even through the fabric, I could sense their potential.
"Marcos, can you confirm the operational status of the fabrication units?" I asked.
"Yeah, just give me a.... got it!" Marcos said. "The plasma cutter, designated Ironclad, requires a routine calibration, but the fuel cells are seventy percent full, or you could just have it connected to a source of energy the entire time. The industrial printers are designated as Forge Alpha and Forge Beta. They are both fully operational and have a small reservoir of common metals. Their last print was over seven years ago.... Mark, I highly recommend a diagnostic print cycle, hell, maybe even scrap them entirely and build a new printer using the ones you keep in your prison pocket."
"How do you even.... never mind," I said while bringing my hand to my forehead and rubbing my brow. "I'll need access to those user manuals, Silas mentioned. Dig them out of the terminal's archives and upload a condensed version to my G-comm."
"Sure, but I can just get the same manuals by-"
"No," I interrupted him. "And stop hacking the damn net, you're going to trip some wires or step on some toes one day. And I don't want the wrong kind of attention being drawn our way."
I spent the next few hours organizing things. I used the yard's comms system to inform traffic control that Dock 1, which was formally "Kord's Orbital Graveyard," was now permanently occupied by the Shepherd, so that they would know where to direct any ships that needed to come my way for repairs or any maintenance.
Speaking of which, I had to take an exam last week to become a certified starship mechanic and unofficial engineer. I'd need more accreditation for that unofficial title to change to an official one. But this was enough for now.
I then set up a digital storefront using a standard template provided by the LCC licensing office, broadcasting our services: "Ship Repair, Fabrication, Retrofitting, and Custom Design."
By the time Marcos notified me of the delivery of the new terminal, the office was pristine. The drones had done an excellent job polishing everything, maybe too good a job. The stale air was gone, and so was the smell of cigarettes, but now the room made me feel like I was staring at myself through thousands of mirrors.
The only things left were the large window overlooking the bay, the old terminal, which I was working on disconnecting, and the newly installed desk I had fabricated using the smaller one of my nanoprinters.
The new terminal arrived on a small transport lifter, carried by a single, humanoid delivery robot that made me rethink the building models of the drones I currently have. From the looks of it, if given the schematics and instructions, it would do one hell of a job helping me out.
"Why didn't Anahrin make some of these robots instead? Would've probably saved us a ton of time," I thought out loud.
"And you probably wouldn't have gotten any real experience or appreciation for the work," Marcos chimed in through my comms.
"Fair point," I nodded. "But then again, this process will mostly be automated unless I actually wanna get my hands dirty."
Looking at the terminal itself, it was a sleek, modern piece of technology that was designed for high-end commerce. I spent the next hour going through the instructions and hooking the thing up. Once I did that, Marcos took over its systems, and I sat down in the new ergonomic chair I had also printed.
"Alright, Marcos," I said, closing my eyes. "Start broadcasting Shephard Orbital Works onto the public network. Time to get some business..."
---
I found myself using the new terminal the following morning, checking some things out, watching some videos, and just all around relaxing while I waited for customers to walk through the doors.
I heard the doors open and looked up with a smile plastered on my face, excitedly thinking I had finally gotten my first customer. But it was just a man with a tablet, a delivery guy responsible for the safe transfer of the 400,000 credits worth of metal I had Marcos order.
The delivery was monumental. It consisted of a mix of high-tensile metals needed to build a corvette that didn't come in neatly packaged ingots as I had imagined it would. Instead, it was a bunch of massive compressed blocks of metal that I was sure were dense enough to warp the floor if dropped incorrectly.
Four cargo barges, about 200 meters long each, had to take turns ferrying their cargo into dock 2, which I had designated the storage/material dock. The entire process took until midday, and the sheer mass of the material was intoxicating. I didn't view this as just metal, but as the beginning of something great.
"Marcos, use the small repurposed crane drones to stage the material for the printers. Keep Dock 3 completely clear for incoming work," I instructed.
"Alright, I'll be preparing a structured storage manifest based on alloy type. If you just give me a moment..." Marcos trailed off. "Hey, the new terminal is flagging a low-priority notification."
"Read it," I said.
"It's an advertisement confirmation. Your initial broadcast has been registered and is now active across the IUC local commerce network. In other words, we are officially visible now."
"And we wait," I smiled to myself and let out a sort of exhilarated sigh.
And wait, I did. A whole day passed, and there wasn't a single ping on the inquiry channel. No one keyed the gate buzzer, and the closest I got to having someone enter was the sound of one of the circulation fans failing and falling off its frame. I sighed in frustration and went to fix it while Marcos was still controlling the drones and sorting materials in Dock 2.
The second day was just like the previous. I dropped Lyra off at the orphanage that had pretty much become a daycare at this point, and returned to the yard. There, I checked the terminal, ran diagnostics on the plasma cutter, wiped down the new desk, and waited, but no one showed up.
The following day, I decided to spend my time more wisely. Instead of just sitting around doing fuck all, I stripped down the old printers that Silas promised were in tip-top condition. Color me surprised when I opened them up, and things were just as Marcos had said. A jungle of cables and stripped wires met my eyes, which made me just want to create a new, bigger nanoprinter using the materials from both of the old printers.
I summoned my 8x8 meter nanoprinter and fed the material to it. Marcos did me the favor of saving the old printer's measurements and specs, so I would just recreate them if Silas ever requested them. The process of making printers was far easier than I thought possible.
I found the saved files of the 8x8 nanoprinter and saw that there were various files for either bigger or smaller versions. So I decided I really needed something that would help me speed up the process when it came to bigger projects. I opted to make a circular, rather than square, nanoprinter that had a 25-meter diameter.
After absorbing all of the material, my nanoprinter was able to print out whole curved sections that would just interlock with each other and were meant for easy assembly. By the end of the day, I found myself with 12 separate sections with male and female end joints. I was even more surprised when I took a closer look at the sections and found that there were screws and bolts in them, actually being printed with the need to access maintenance points in mind.
That made me wonder.... "Hey Marcos, how much was each one of those printers?"
"The two printers you used as scrap metal to make this new magnificent beast?" The AI asked back.
"You see any other two printers?" I quipped.
"Yeah, the two you pulled out of your prison pocket," he said, sounding smug. "But those aren't on the horizon for humanity for the time being. Well, the bigger one was a Macktronik NPS20 Mk3, 2 generations older than the current Mk5. Its current resale value for one in perfect working order is 20 million credits."
My jaw almost hit the floor when I realized I had just scrapped 20 million credits. "You're telling me I could've just fixed them up, sold them, and had at least 20 million credits and made a new one with the materials I had ordered.... fuck."
"Yeah, pretty hasty decision making on your end," Marcos agreed. "The other one was a newer, although smaller model. It was a Macktronik NPS10 Mk4, which was valued at 25 million credits if in perfect working order."
I rubbed my eyes and pressed my palms against my face. I had just tossed 45 million credits, or what could've possibly turned into 45 million credits, to the burner.
"Well, nothing you can do about that now," Marcos stated. "That is, unless you want your company to become a nanoprinter manufacturer."
Oh, I was tempted to say yes. As a matter of fact, I was going to say yes, but Marcos' next words made me stop cold in my tracks.
"But these machines are heavily patented," he said. "Meaning that if you create something that is clearly based on an older model or their more contemporary models, then you are immediately giving up any rights to the original manufacturer you used for innovation. Meaning you'd just be gifting them your work and money."
I felt my shoulders sag. It really seemed like making a quick buck in this universe was all based on either luck or mercenary work. Something that probably explained why there were so many pirates in the fringes of IUC and VIC space.
I left the shipyard, picked up Lyra, and returned to the Shepherd, where we had dinner, and Marcos ensured Lyra scrubbed thoroughly. I lay on my bed with Lyra as she let out some surprisingly loud snores for a kid. She clutched her little alien plushie and seemed exhausted. I went to sleep thinking about how I was going to make money.
I woke up the next morning and repeated yesterday's routine. I put together the printer and did a handful of test prints based on parts for the Shepherd's engines. Everything came out perfect, but there was still no client showing up at my front door.
It took me going through half of the week to realize what the problem was. It wasn't my pricing, since I had yet to set any, nor was it my non-existent reputation. The real problem was the location.
The shipyard was located on the deep industrial ring, an area designed for high-traffic bulk cargo and the absolute heaviest maintenance, the kind of work only major corporations or the IUC Navy handled. I was surrounded by massive, imposing factories and the skeletal docking spaces connected to the station, yet they seemed like they were their own mini stations. And worst of all, they belonged to conglomerates like GalNet Dynamics and AstroForge.
That more than explained why Silas was renting such a high traffic area for so low. It's because people didn't stroll down this strip. They came here with a pre-arranged contract, or they didn't come at all. To a potential customer searching the IUC network, SOW was just a tiny, newly registered LCC buried under pages of results for megacorp services. I was a tiny fish in a polluted, corporate ocean, and my 'storefront' was a dingy little office in a perpetually noisy, sparking corner of the station.
I tried running a micro-advertisement campaign, paying for the cheap, introductory package that cost me 50 credits a day for basic visibility. My actions felt like a desperate claw at a straw for air while drowning.
Five days had gone by since I finished making this place nice and had gotten my shipment of materials, and still nothing. I found myself obsessively cleaning the same small window overlooking the yard, hoping that removing one more layer of cosmic dust would somehow reveal a queue of customers waiting outside.
My routine shifted from productive setup to desperate busywork, and I found myself sorting through Silas's old schematics, which Marcos had dumped onto a spare partition of the old terminal. They were mostly outdated repair blueprints for IUC patrol craft, low-grade stuff, but even shit was occasionally useful.
The silence was the worst kind of torture I had faced, and the only way to drown it out was by having Marcos play some of the greats from my past life on Earth. But even listening to these songs, songs that made you want to move around and get shit done, made me feel hollow.
When I picked up Lyra that evening, her excitement only amplified the hollow feeling of my day.
"Papa, Papa! We learn colors! Sister Elara say I do good blue!" she chattered, holding up a finger stained faintly with blue synthetic paint.
Her speech was improving massively, something that reminded me of my own memories as a child back on Earth. I remembered how I had returned to my homeland in the USA and didn't know how to say the word "but" in English. However, one summer running around the parks and trying to converse with other children was all it took for me to get the hang of the English language, even if it was a little butchered.
"Blue is a great color, kiddo. Did you have fun with Jory today?"
"Jory bad," she announced with the serious frown of a statesman. "He hide my blue block. I tell him no. He give back!"
The simple clarity of her life, block, color, Jory bad, was a sharp contrast to the impenetrable complexity of the galactic corporate landscape I was currently navigating. "I need to be successful so she can worry about blue blocks, not about where her next meal is coming from."
The pressure was mounting. After one full week, I had zero revenue, and my remaining balance had dropped to 262,145 credits after a week of operational expenses and advertising.
'I was now holding on to my last quarter million,' I thought to myself. 'I think I shall play a sad song on my tiny Violin.'
---
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