Blue Star Enterprises

The Captain glanced over at him before turning back toward the retreating form of Alexander. "Last I checked, you’re still on the payroll. So unless you want me to change that?"

"Got it, Captain," Wilkes smiled.

"I know you are suspicious by nature, but you didn’t speak to him as much as I did." He nodded toward Alexander. "That man, that man is a genius. I had an inkling he was someone special when we visited his shop, but I had no idea. Did you see the printer modification he did?"

"Yeah. Any idea what that was?"

The Captain shook his head and smiled. "Not a clue. Never seen anything quite like it. And that’s why I gave him my comm ID. That man is going to do great things one day. And I want to be there when he does. I just hope he can weather what’s to come."

"You mean from the mega-corporations?"

The Captain nodded darkly. "If he is lucky they won’t realize he improved upon their designs. Although we can’t rely on luck. He needs to register his work, it’s the only thing that will keep him safe. Sooner or later some corporate spy would hear of it and steal the design or worse. At least this way he has a chance of getting some money and still come out alive."

"Shouldn’t you have warned him then?" Wilkes asked, a slight tone of annoyance slipping into his words.

The Captain snorted. "You know as well as I that the corporations monitor the net with AI. Even though it’s illegal to do so. I don’t know where Alexander came from, but wherever it was, he was woefully ignorant of the galactic players. Despite that, he has an insatiable need to learn. A curious man like that would have tried to research the corporations if I told him what to expect. That would have triggered their detection systems and brought increased scrutiny down upon our new friend before he could secure his safety. The only way for him to grow is if he can avoid their gaze until he makes his improvements public. And to do that, he must remain ignorant for the time being."

"Alexander’s invention may be groundbreaking to us, but to Omni, I doubt it will even register as a blip. Once it’s registered as a patent, they won’t risk breaking the law over it. They will simply sick their legal department on it and drown the man in legal trouble until he agrees to sell the discovery to them. It may not be a clean victory for our robotic friend, but it will be a victory."

"I don’t like it," Wilkes stated.

"Neither do I, but some things can only be learned the hard way. I have faith that Alexander will see his way through this trouble and be better for it," the Captain responded. "Now, let’s get aboard, we have shipments that need to be made."

***

Fixing the engines on the Zephyr had been the highlight of Alexander’s month. Unfortunately, work was rather slow after that. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t mind. It allowed him time to tinker and let his mind wander.

The one thing he did after the Zephyr left was take Captain Daniel’s advice and register his design improvements. The man was right, he did deserve to make money on his inventions. And some money started coming in not long after. It wasn’t much but every little bit helped. Logically he knew humanity had built a faster-than-light communication method, but he had no idea how it worked. Everyone just called them comms, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. And to them it probably was.

It was during one of Alexander’s tinkering sessions that Yulia came around again. She had likely been missing him as he had been gone for over a week. A lifetime to a child.

"Whatcha building?" she asked as she hopped onto the stool.

At her interruption, he brought his mind back to the present and looked down at the desk. What had he been building? Lately, if he started tinkering on a project and then let his mind wander, he usually came back to something unexpected. It wasn’t something he had ever experienced while working for Yuri, probably because he didn’t have access to a printer or time to let his mind wander. Probably a good thing, getting caught modifying Yuri’s junk would have had all sorts of complications. Now he was free – well, almost free – to work on or tinker with whatever he liked.

"Um… nothing, just playing around," he stated as he removed the power supply and capacitor he had attached to the device during his stupor. He knew exactly what he had created, but not why or how. In his attempts to further his knowledge of the last three hundred years, he had purchased articles and historical documentaries on human history. Go figure, a lot of small wars had occurred during that time. Not much seemed to have changed in retrospect.

The item on the table resembled a 22nd-century laser rifle. One of the very early designs fielded during an actual conflict that wasn’t attached to a ship or vehicle. He had only ever seen the thing in a few war documentaries. While crude and bulky, it was more than capable of putting a hole in the station if held stable for a few seconds. That was a problem. If he was caught with the weapon, they would toss him out of an airlock without a second question. Station law took owning contraband weapons very seriously.

Why was it always weapons that his unconscious body drifted to? First a railgun and now this laser rifle. He didn’t even like weapons. He never even looked at weapon schematics on the net, preferring to stay away from them altogether. Looking up items like that sounded like a good way to get put on a list. The railgun, he somehow reproduced, was another handheld rifle he had seen in a video documentary.

After removing the firing components of the laser, he stored it inside his crowded storage closet. The printer, Captain Daniel, aka Jasper, had gifted him for his work, was too large to be assembled in his shop. As he had suspected it might be. So it was currently taking up most of the space in his storage. Alexander reached past the large collection of printer parts and set the rifle frame next to a few other similar devices.

He needed to melt these down as soon as possible but he didn’t have a recycler. He would have to use the public one to destroy the weapons. And he was sure bringing guns down there would have people asking all sorts of questions. He hadn’t crushed them yet because he was trying to understand why he kept making them so he could stop doing it.

So far he couldn’t find any rhyme or reason for the dozen or so various weapons he had assembled. That meant, for now, the safest place for them was out of sight until he could dispose of them.

The only thing that he could figure out was that it had something to do with how he ended up in this body.

He realized he had forgotten about Yulia in his haste to store the weapon. When he exited the closet, he found he had two other visitors. The men looked rough and wore patched and worn armored space suits.

"Apologies," he spoke as he closed the closet door. "I did not hear you enter. What can I assist you with?" He looked around but it seemed like Yulia had left when the men entered. He didn’t blame her, these men gave off a similar vibe to the type of people Yuri had trafficked with, and that Alexander preferred to avoid.

"Do you repair weapons and armor?" The bearded man asked.

Alexander’s gaze focused on the stunners the men carried. These were likely mercenaries. Although for all he knew they could be pirates masquerading as mercenaries. "I’m afraid I don’t have any experience working with weapons, nor the certification. I can patch up, repair, and maybe even upgrade armor though." While Alexander had some money saved up thanks to the work with Captain Daniel, he didn’t have enough to turn away work.

The man grunted and unclipped the detachable armor. The other man followed suit. "We’ll be back in a few days to pick them up." They turned to leave, but Alexander stopped them.

"I do require partial payment up front." Which was complete bullshit. But he didn’t like these guys.

The clean-faced guy reached into his suit pocket and tossed a credit chip on the desk. "That’s half. Do what you can, but we aren’t paying extra for anything fancy."

After they left, Alexander checked the chip’s value. It was honestly more than he thought it would be. But probably less than anyone else would ask for. He shrugged and took a look at the armor. It wasn’t anything special. The plates were marked ’generic universal’ on the backside of each. Which made Alexander’s job easier.

He had run into a few items with markings similar to this. They were things that had belonged to defunct companies or had been given over to the public domain because there were so many copies that it was no longer profitable to manufacture them or they were so outdated as to not be worth selling. That didn’t mean the schematics were free though. Instead of the money going to a greedy corporation, it went to the STO. He walked to the nearest console and purchased the schematics.

The armor design was well over a hundred years old. And thanks to his experience and research, he knew of at least three materials that were both lighter and more durable than what currently made up the plates of these suits. He mulled over using the newer alloys versus the original for a few minutes. In the end, it wasn’t his dislike of the pair that swayed his decision, it was simply the cost. The newer alloys were far cheaper to produce and print. Of course, he picked the absolute cheapest of the three. No point splurging on these men.

He set about stripping and cleaning up the substrate as the printer worked on producing new plates. The hardened material took far longer to print than normal metal.

While he was working, Yulia poked her head back in. "Are they gone?"

"Yes. Why, didn’t like them?" he asked without stopping.

She shook her head, sending her messy hair flying. "Markus says you need to look at people’s eyes. You can tell if they are good or bad by the eyes. Those men looked bad."

He couldn’t fault her logic there, those were definitely bad men.

Her fear quickly faded away as she began to tell him about her day. He smiled internally as he listened to her while he continued his work.