Chapter 9

The meeting went well, with the two representatives that had participated being very receptive of our plans. They wondered what effect it would have on their population, of course, and we explained that we hoped to improve their lives. We explained the dire circumstances that they had unknowingly been in and how we had already helped. Both were uncertain of the idea of their people serving on a carrier, but they said that the choice would be given to them. Alta explained how she didn’t want to waste her drone resources, so she hoped to have people trained in security and engineering, as well as teachers, vendors and eventually a command staff.

They seemed eager to see their access to the outpost expand, as well as seeing their people flourish and unite. We planned to meet regularly so that we could update one another on the progress. Though it could easily be done over comms, I felt that we needed to create a council of sorts that worked cooperatively to meet our goals. That was better served by face-to-face meetings, and I was happy that everyone agreed.

Tor’nak did try to circumvent the orders that I gave, but that resulted in his being incapacitated by the security drones. He woke up in a brig cell and spent the next three hours screaming, ranting, and attempting to break free. All that did was aggravate Alta and had her lengthen his stay. This was shown to every Mac’skarian on the outpost as a demonstration of what happens when one tries to take power that is not theirs. There was no one that cried out in his support, and the woman who had lost to him in the voting process for his position was picked to lead in his place.

After our first meeting I found that she was far better suited for the role then he had been. She revealed to us that she and her family had been threatened by Tor’nak, causing her to give up her candidacy. This led us to collectively decide to sentence Tor’nak to ten years of solitary confinement in his cell. He would be allowed items to pass the time, but nothing that could be used as a weapon or a means to try and circumvent the security field. He would be provided meals to ensure his health, but he would be alone with his thoughts and hopefully come out better for it.

With that out of the way, the next two months were a whirlwind of activity that saw massive adjustments to the Mac’skarian’s way of life. With the various drones from the Obsidian, as well as Alta’s growing group, we now had over sixty percent of the outpost repaired and livable. With this much of the outpost fixed, it allowed the Mac’skarians to spread out and begin to intermingle. The number of people who were interested in joining the cruiser’s crew was far higher than any of us expected, but we had to also think of the needs of the outpost. If we took around seventy-four to eighty-four Mac’skarians for our crew, that would leave roughly over twenty- two hundred people left. The minimum required security crew with the space we currently had access to is three hundred and fifty, with the full station needing over seven hundred. Though we had sixty percent of the station livable, the Mac’skarians were only utilizing around twenty-five to thirty percent of the space.

There would also need to be a crew manning the shipyard, which Tali says requires a crew of at least another two hundred. That diminishes the total available Mac’skarians to almost a quarter of the total. Then there is a command staff of another fifty, with fifty more needed for hydroponics bays. Then a staff of at least five hundred to study the aliens, as well as study and reverse engineer their technology. That cut the total in half, and, of those remaining, four hundred of them were children. That would be leaving only six hundred and fifty to manage the children as teachers and caretakers for the various infants. There would need to be repair crews, so that the drones could focus on exterior repairs and material collection. Over time, if we come across more Mac’skarian survivors, we might increase the crew on the cruiser, but, until then, I would focus on the station.

Another two months of work saw the various Mac’skarians coming out of the training cycles and beginning to take up their roles on the outpost. Around the same time, the construction of the shipyard was completed, and Alta had the lone salvageable Lionel class medium cruiser pulled in for repairs and retrofitting. The two Vir’take fighters were going to be repaired where they were currently floating in the system, and, thankfully, the AI interface modules were still active. Alta and Tali estimated that the fighters would be available to use for defending the station within two weeks but didn’t want to put them into a battle until they were able to retrofit them.

The research group had done an autopsy of the alien but had not found anything definitive for them to identify the creature. They did notice that they didn’t have vocal cords, and, as such, possibly communicated telepathically to one another. This also meant that, with a strong enough telepathic ability, they could dominate the minds of other races.

This would possibly explain why the Vart’othra would have willingly helped these aliens to destroy an ally. Still, without further information, there would be no telling what had actually happened.

The ship, however, had more to tell, and the revelations were shocking. The shield system of this vessel was nearly five times stronger and more efficient than that of the fighters of the Mac’skarian fleet, as were their weapons. Their armour and shields were of a composite that was able to absorb far more kinetic and energy damage before failing. Their sensor arrays were able to pick up everything within two sectors, which was double the range of the outpost’s capability. Their engines weren’t much faster than our own, but their power core had a much higher output, no doubt to power the weapons, shields and sensor array. Their torpedoes were not very different from our plasma torpedoes, but they were able to hold a much higher yield in smaller torpedoes.

Given this new information, the newly trained engineers were confident they could reverse engineer the technology within two more months, since it used a lot of fundamentals that matched our own technology. The kicker was they were confident they could merge our tech with theirs and generate even better versions. There were areas that we were stronger in, and where they were, but when combined, the mixed technology would be stronger than they were individually. They would have to run the mass-fabricators at full for a few weeks, but they were confident that with Tali and Alta’s aid, they could have the cruiser and fighters refitted with the new tech in four months. We told them they weren’t allowed to overwork themselves, but they assured us that they could do it within that time frame.

I found myself busy in one way or another, helping with various tasks on the ships or on the outpost itself. My willingness to work alongside them had nearly every Mac’skarian I interacted with accepting me and my position. The only ones that seemed to have an issue with it were Tor’nak and those few who felt his imprisonment was unjust. Their anger continued to increase until they were shown the rules and regulations of the Mac’skarian empire and the laws he had broken. When they realized that they would wind up in the same position if they thought to act on their anger, they cooled down and backed off. They were still angry, but they were more careful of how they acted on it, and they seemed to put it to more constructive purposes.

Over the course of those four months, Vish’ala and I began to really bond, and I felt fortunate that I had her support through all this. During the last month she began Fl’rokta, which is the equivalent to dating, with a young man working as an engineer in the shipyard. She was helping the crew prepare the Obsidian to receive the various upgrades that the research and development department was coming up with by combining the Mac’skarian and unknown alien tech. While I did enjoy myself each day working alongside my Mac’skarian compatriots, I found my evenings very lonely. Despite the amazing opportunity that this provided, part of me missed home for some reason.

“Is everything alright, Captain?” Tali asked one night, appearing in my quarters on the outpost.

“I find myself a bit homesick, Tali,” I answered with a sigh. “Despite every negative thing that happened before finding you and the Obsidian, I miss being around people like me. Don’t get me wrong, Tali, I have nothing but the utmost respect for the Mac’skarian people. Still, it makes it painfully obvious that I am the only one of my kind here.”

“I am truly sorry you are starting to feel that way, sir,” Tali said softly. “I wish that there was something that I could do, but the Obsidian will be worked on for the next month or so.”

I shook my head, looking out a nearby window, “It’s okay, Tali, it is just a silly notion that happens when a human is put into very unfamiliar surroundings and is totally alone in that new situation.”

“The Mac’skarians call it Far’th’rat’al,” she said, drawing my focus back to her. “It means longing for home. I know that Vish’ala is feeling that, as she was from Mac’skara, the home world and centre of the Empire.”

I shrugged, “That is true, but she has the benefit of being around others of her kind. To find someone to care for and help her through this troubling time.”

“Ahh, you miss physical companionship,” Tali stated with a slight nod. “Based on what I learned of your people, intimacy is an important part of your social interactions.”

I sighed and moved to look out the window once again, into the debris field that still remained floating around the outpost. It had taken two weeks to collect the bodies, both on the station, in the ships and in open space around the outpost. We had funeral rites for them and then I was surprised when they were taken to the larger mass-fabricators.

Noticing my confusion, Alta said, “When the empire began expanding beyond the stars, they felt that burying the dead was an old and outdated model. We knew that, using the meat of dead animals, we could add protein matter as well as various nutrients and minerals to the fabricator stores as well as for the food processors. A scientist at the early age of the fabricators, decided to dispose of his mother’s remains into one of these fabricators and found that they added many components the fabricators and processors needed. It took over two hundred years, but it became standard practice and the crew you buried on earth were the first in over two thousand years.”

The Mac’skarians found out about what I had done for their people when I had come across the ship and assisted in burying the bodies. They all thanked me for my kind words and the respect I showed when I assisted Tali. It had been what had really swayed them all to accept me and the position I had been given. After four months of working together, nearly all of the Mac’skarians were saluting me in the human military tradition and I knew that Tali, Alta and Vish’ala had a part to play in it.

When we hit the eight-month mark since we had begun our work, I found myself becoming stir crazy. Most of the debris had been collected and either used for repairs or put into the mass-fabricators to be used in the creation of something new. The Obsidian was almost functional, with Vish’ala and the engineers testing all the systems to make sure that they were working properly. The two Vir’take fighters had been repaired and had been worked on with two other teams. Since not all of the upgrades were necessary for them, the fighters were already operational and doing short range patrols. The sensor net had been changed to the new sensor system and was strategically placed on asteroids all along the system belt.

These were larger and more powerful than the one on the ship we found and could give us information on two sectors in every direction. We also used the data from the enemy sensor logs to figure out how they detected the scout ships when their scout mode was active and applied this refined system to the sensor arrays. The hope was that this would increase the chances of staying hidden from enemy detection methods, though there was still the risk of being destroyed by the various collisions that occur within an asteroid belt. This would hopefully allow us to have an early warning system, though our defences were limited at the moment.

I proposed that we build large versions of the hybrid shielding system instead of repairing the outdated ones that had previously protected the outpost. They would also add laser turrets and torpedo launchers to allow them to defend themselves. I also suggested that since the shielding system would be easier to do for now, that they build two full systems to run off their own reactors. They would be placed a few meters from each other but would be configured to provide two layers of defence. Once that was ready, we began to systematically re-armour the outpost. Given the changes we had made, after checking with Tali, we voted to upgrade the status of the outpost to that of a station. Given that it now had an attached shipyard as well as advanced shielding and armaments, it wasn’t much of an outpost anymore. That, of course, was met with a resounding ‘yes’, which Alta noted in her data core. I felt the urge to take the Obsidian out for a test run but didn’t want to do so until the defences were completed. Due to the severity of need, all work on every other project was halted and a mixture of people and drones worked tirelessly to have the new reactors, shield emitters and weapon platforms up and running.