The inside of the Barricade was far more… normal. Store fronts for arms and armor dealers. An implant shop where the latest in publicly available cybernetics were being sold, perfectly ordinary stores selling rations of different varieties…

  And a food court, of sorts. These were mercenaries, all of them got paid well; and the food ranged from free basics, standard sort of fast-food chains that ran across the entire galaxy… to a handful of actually nice ones.

  Kyle led Sari past several fairly nice-looking places… and up to the door of one which had a fairly odd image in the front; of some sort of monster with a row of jagged teeth surrounded by tentacles. She glanced at him, then the sign.

  “...The hell is this?”

  “Exotica. When you look at the menu, the red ones just pass right through you, no nutritional value, but taste good and at least make you feel full for a while. The green ones have real nutrition, and just seasonings and flavors from Xenos.”

  She blinked. “...Huh. Wait. So… legit non-terran food.”

  “Those beasties, the IronBacks? Have a really strange, exotic flavor, and some of the same euphoric effect as the ale. There’s a thousand different species, found on a hundred different worlds… and while most of them have no real ‘food’ value, the tastes range from amazing to just confusing.”

  She nodded. “Huh. Most places just stick with modified terran crops. Cool.”

  Kyle nodded, and extended an arm. “Shall we?”

  She chuckled… and took his arm, as he led her in.. and an actual water arrived to guide them to a table.

  “Well hello, mister Huxley. Haven’t seen you here in quite a while.” Kyle blinked. He didn’t remember coming to this particular branch; there were at least six of them, but…

  “Its fine. Anything new and interesting?”

  The man gave a nod as Kyle and Sari settled into a table, setting menus down; one of the nice, old-fashioned places still using paper menus as an affectation.

  “Yes, actually! We’ve got what we’re calling a Kalabrian Death-Worm Steak. The flavor is unique, and its blood contains exactly the same chemical composition we call vitamin C. Most of the proteins can’t be processed, so the caloric value is still almost negligible, but still; that’s one more step on the path.”

  “Well then. We’ll try it.”

  ***

  Getting settled in at the Barricade wasn’t particularly difficult or time-consuming. The only real differences were that here, he was considered a VIP; getting them to actually charge him even the same rate as the salvage yard was a challenge; and that, at least at first, he wasn’t alone.

  A date with Sari was a fun experience; he had never really gone on dates before, and unlike his friends, she was up to date on the latest tech, and had been actively training all the way up til now; and had a very different experience, not having grown up around mercenaries.

  As he walked back to his ship, he considered her for the moment. Did he want her on his crew? Just to date her? Would it be healthy to hire her on, while dating her? Did he trust her? So many confusing questions, made all the worse by the fact that the first time he met her he was half-drunk.

  The terrible thing was, that if they didn’t have that NDA software uploaded, he’d consider Zeke and Billy trustworthy. All of the crew from the last voyage were decent people, aside from the traitor. He never even got to ask what Poisseux was named for, there had to be an absurd story behind it.

  He stopped at the airlock, blinking. Wait.

  She’d been dead, when the Empire had taken them. Had they… given her the NDA? She was a friend of Zeke’s. They’d come on together, with Billy. Could he… hire her? Did she get recovered?

  He considered it, as he set his helmet in place, and double-checked all of his hook-ups, his magnets, and his tools. No gaps. Air tank with plenty of capacity. Everything on and off properly.

  He nodded… and stepped out into…. Chaos.

  The two vessels were attached; the Sapper directly to the station, and the Diexi via a series of tow lines; and the crew had been nice enough to set a magnetized net up around the whole mess; both obscuring the contents from outside view as well as catching anything that he dropped before it flew off into the void.

  He studied the massive craft. She was a carrier; and a cruiser, in her old life. An armored core, a massive fighter bay, decent point defenses, and missile launchers. Designed to stay at the back of the battle and provide extreme-range fire support as her fighters did the bulk of the work.

  And now… it was time to decide what to do with her, and her contents.

  He tapped the side of his helmet. They wouldn’t be as versatile, on a ship they weren’t programmed for. But his surviving maintenance bots; all four of them; would help him get all the doors open so he could get a better idea of what he was dealing with… and what he could sell.

  Even better, one of them could put the bodies in body-bags for him, so he didn’t have to actually handle them; and he knew there were bodies. Probably more than he’d seen so far, even.

  He pulled up a display of the ship, and as the bots crawled into the wreck, he determined what he wanted to keep, and sell for parts or scrap.

  The outermost hull was going, as was the existing flight deck. The core, most heavily armored part; the auxiliary reactor, the bridge, the officer’s quarters, the storage for munitions… he was going to keep. The heavy beams that formed the base of the ship.

  The crew quarters, and the pilot’s quarters? They’d be emptied out and become the new flight deck.

  He carefully studied the intact portions of the ship. The folks who’d taken her down had mostly failed to penetrate her armored hull, and blasted away almost all of the point defenses. But. Two big shots had struck the main reactor, and the flight deck. The rear third of the ship was… actually mostly intact.

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  So. He could carve out an almost-cube shape, thirty meters tall and wide, and… well, no, more like fifty long. Just a giant floating box. Six decks of what used to be the ship.

  The rear half, where the auxiliary reactor was, would be where he’d setup the primary; the one from the Sapper; and maybe move it somewhere else. The two bottom decks would be hollowed out, and become the fighter bay. The third deck from the bottom would be the missile bay, and storage; mostly because thats where the armored missile storage compartment already was, and it had feeds built to pass missiles out.

  The top three decks? Additional storage, crew quarters, medical bay, a mess hall….

  He plotted out the design. Imagining how much of the ‘Stealth’ armor plating he would need to cover it. Where he could put turret feeds. Actual launch bays instead of having to open up the ship.

  His HUD showed him a 3D display as he worked, looking at the Sapper and the Diexi, cutting parts off one image, moving to another.

  Ran the numbers on conduit he would need, armor plate he would need.

  He needed a defense system to help with plasma, too. And he could put the guns from that Empire ship on the third deck, aimed forward.

  The engines for the Diexi were intact. And more than enough for the resulting mass. So.

  Over ninety-nine percent of what he would need was right here. Most of the effort would come in disassembling the Sapper, cutting off the extra parts of the carrier, putting it all in, boring holes, rewiring, mounting equipment…

  He gave himself a slow nod.

  The resulting ship would be bigger, heavier, and far, far more durable than the Sapper. It could hold more fighters, carry more crew, but not be any more difficult to maintain. And once he put the stealth plating on, it would take much longer for someone to spot; which meant he should be able to survey a system and get the hell out without being seen.

  He was hoping to find dragons. So he needed something to protect from that plasma breath weapon. He… should check to see if he could get any of that ablative stuff that the Empire ships had carried. Either spray a cloud of it between him and the dragon, or mount it under the stealth plating.

  Either way. This was gonna be a long project. Time for step one.

  ~Mister Huxley, this is Admin. The Harbinger of Sorrows is incoming, and your mother has requested you meet her for dinner.~

  He blinked… and chuckled. “Admin, could you advise her to come meet me on the Diexi instead at her earliest convenience? Tell her that her son picked up a gift for her.”

  ***

  Inventory time.

  Forty-three body bags, all magnetically grappled to the hull. Over thirty with intact bodies. The others with… parts. Most of them not matching; it was probable that he had bits and pieces of over a hundred crew in here. Some of them died in their bunks.

  Thirty armor suits in Republic dark green. Six taken off of their wearers. The rest still neatly organized in the armory.

  Sixty-two laser pistols, of the low-intensity ‘Beamer’ variety. Great for unshielded or lightly armored flesh, terrible for armor penetration.

  Thirty Needle rifles, with attached 50mm grenade launchers. Two broken but repairable.

  One katana; clearly captured off of an Empire soldier, and at least a century older than the wreck itself. It might even be from old earth. The scroll attached said ‘Nanking’, which was as far as he was going to go into it; it had been mounted in the captain’s quarters, on the wall.

  Speaking of which, the captain also had a single old-fashioned revolver, in a nice carrying case, complete with ammo and a cleaning kit.

  One hundred seventy-six intact Republic skinsuits, mostly in dark green, but with some that had a thicker radiation-resistant coating and orange bands for the engineering crew.

  Two hundred and twelve ‘Personal Belongings’ boxes that belonged to the former crew, and had been in officer’s cabins or attached to the end of bunks. Mostly with pictures of family, small mementos. Some even had letters home. Anything that looked like it had sentimental value, he stuffed into the appropriate box as he went through the quarters. Considering his grandfather had been alive when this ship was wrecked, quite a few people would be happy to see these.

  Six hundred and seven thousand credits in loose chips. There was apparently a bit of gambling going on in one of the repair bays, where most of it was.

  Two thousand and seven 50mm munitions in three different types; most of them a sort of Flak round good for taking out missiles or fighters, but there was actually a separate, smaller, storage for the 50mm rounds in the armory with the rifles, which had both armor-piercing high-exposive rounds and stun munitions.

  One hundred and nine 100mm munitions, with a mix of Flak and Breacher warheads, as well as seven ‘Orbital Strike Munitions’; designed to survive atmosphere and detonate on a ground target. Amusingly enough, covered with a more primitive version of the heat-resistant layer most modern missiles carried.

  Thirty 150mm Breacher munitions.

  Six 150mm OSM missiles. Just bigger versions of the 100mm ones.

  Seven 200mm hydrogen bombs.

  One hundred and two crates filled with chains of gatling needle ammo.

  An enormous cache of repair parts for everything on the ship, whether it be the reactor, conduits, the Mars-class fighters a ship like this carried, and even a single bomber-class ship.

  He… could actually fix the reactor. It was out of date, but that didn’t mean it was bad. Just old. The Sapper’s reactor would probably end up being backup.

  He stared at the inventory. He could sell the missiles, and they’d more than pay for this ship. She was clearly one of the ones tasked with bombing the AI research facility off the map. It was…. Odd… that there was so much left on-board.

  Equally odd was that some of the crew were clearly killed by boarders, and only a couple had managed to arm themselves.

  ~So, son. You wanted me to meet you on this scrapheap for some reason?~

  Her perked up, and chuckled, tapping the comm. “Warn the station you’ll be off-comms for a few, slap the big red button by the door, and then come down. I’m sending you directions right now.”

  He studied the listing. What to sell, what to keep. Repairing a broken reactor was not a one-man job. He’d need some drones, and some help. Good, competent, help. If he wanted this done in less than three months, he’d need to sell some parts and hire on a few engineers temporarily, on top of investing in dozens of maintenance drones.

  He didn’t have the plan finalized… and he also wanted to find more railguns. The absolute best he could, that would fit in this length. Enough to give a single solid dragon-killing punch.

  He could hear the faint buzz as the privacy field was activated; his mother had hit the button… and then the faint clanking of magnets on metal as she worked her way down the hallways…. Until she arrived outside the hatch, rapping on the doorway.

  “So, whats the big deal? This is way too much effort for a late apology birthday gift.”

  Kyle glanced back at her; she was wearing her usual bone-studded white armor suit. “Oh, I saw something, and I just had to get it for you. I also knew that you wouldn’t want it to be catalogued. Ideally, nobody would ever know I gave it to you.”

  She blinked. “....And what is that?”

  “Seven hydrogen bombs. State of the art for over two hundred years ago, 200mm models. I don’t think they can make a bomb that powerful much smaller even now. Clearly intended to be part of the bombardment here.”

  His mother looked around at the cache of ordinance… and stopped, looking at the row of bulky cylinders marked with a radiation hazard warning. She picked him up, jerking the magnets free as she squeezed him tightly. “You are the best son ever. And you can tell your brothers that. This….”

  She set him down and studied them for a moment. “The things I can do with this much untraceable firepower…. You’ve made an old woman very happy.”