This Additional Chapter is released in honor of Admiral Hawai661!
---
POV: Mark Shephard
The rest of the day and the following forty-eight hours were a blur of motion for me. I had spent them outfitting Vorn's gunship, the Vanguard-One, with the freshly printed armor plating. Well, to be accurate, I had learned my lesson from the time I had almost gotten crushed while installing the Shepherd's reactor. So, I chose to leave most of the heavy lifting to the automated riggers and the drone swarm, only monitoring their work from the gantry or the floor.
It was something that was both exciting and boring at the same time. I wanted to get my hands dirty, I wanted to feel the metal, to smell the ozone, to physically exert myself to burn off the residual adrenaline from the raid. But there was no point in doing so. My interference would probably only work to slow down the drones, whose precision was currently welding hexagonal plates of high-density ablative metal and ceramic composite to the gunship's hull faster than any human crew ever could.
So I watched.
I watched as the ship transformed from a skeleton with railguns strapped to it to something else. The new plating gave it a reptilian look, the scales overlapping perfectly to deflect kinetic impacts and disperse thermal energy. The new "Needler" railguns jutted from the prow like the fangs of a deep-sea predator. It was a weapon of war, refined and sharpened.
But as the drones worked, their welding torches flashing rhythmically in the dim light of the hangar, the things Sister Elara had shared with me started to play in my head on a loop.
"Gods don't like to bleed."
"Build your exit."
"The goal isn't to beat them. It's to outlast them."
Her story haunted me. Aurelia Lopez. A woman who had been at the top of the food chain, a shark in her own right, was devoured because she dared to swim in the wrong current. The image she had painted, the silent house, the simulacrums, the severed heads, was visceral. It terrified me more than Calloway's gun ever had.
What happened to Elara... that was something else. That was pure, unadulterated malice. It was the wrath of a god punishing a mortal for hubris. And I had just punched that god in the mouth.
I leaned against the railing of the gantry, looking down at my hands. They were large, capable of breaking bones, and designing ships and weapons. But were they big enough to hold back a tide?
"Marcos," I said, my voice echoing slightly in the vast space.
"I am here, Mark," Marcos replied, his voice emanating from my earpiece. "You seem... pensive. Is the armor seating incorrectly?"
"No, the armor is fine," I sighed, turning away from the ship. "The armor is perfect, in fact... It's the rest of it I'm worried about."
I needed to clear my head. The physical work wasn't doing it, and the silence of the hangar was just letting the demons talk louder. I needed noise. I missed the data Anahrin had force-fed me a year ago. I needed to focus on the one thing I could control: the business.
"I'm going to the office," I said, walking toward the stairs. "I need to look at the inbox. We can't ignore four thousand emails forever."
"A wise decision," Marcos noted. "The backlog is growing at a rate of 1.2 messages per minute. If we do not begin triage soon, we may miss critical opportunities. Or threats."
I walked into the office. It was empty. Kenjiro had finally gone to his quarters on the Shepherd to sleep. The man had been awake for nearly three days straight, and Lyra was safely at the orphanage and under heavy guard.
I sat down at the main terminal. The screen was a wall of text with urgent flags, high-priority notifications, and corporate letterheads cluttering the display like digital confetti. I cracked my knuckles and pulled the keyboard closer, something that humanity had still kept around for all these years.
"Alright," I muttered. "Let's see who wants a piece of us."
I had already instructed Marcos to auto-reject any acquisition offers. I wasn't selling SOW, not to SIGS, not to Aegis, not to anyone. Doing so filtered out the first wave of vultures, the investment firms looking to buy the IP and bury it, or the competitors looking to absorb the threat.
What was left were the requests for manufacturing rights, distribution deals, and partnerships. I opened the first one, a message from a mid-tier logistics company based in the Sol System, from the capital of the Empire.
Subject: Proposal for Exclusive Distribution Rights - Sol Sector.
Body: ...prepared to offer a 15% royalty on all units sold... guarantee placement in all major orbital refit stations...
"Fifteen percent," I scoffed. "They want to take my product, mark it up, sell it, and give me crumbs."
"It is a standard industry rate for a startup with no distribution network," Marcos pointed out. "However, given the performance metrics of the Model 1B, we could likely negotiate that up to 25%."
"Yeah, right," I deleted the email. "Next."
The next one was from a manufacturing consortium on Elyse. They wanted to license the blueprints and even offered a hefty upfront sum of fifty million credits for the right to produce the vents in their own factories.
This one made me pause.
Fifty million credits was the same amount Thorne had offered me to buy all of my patents. It could be an exit strategy right there. That was the moon base and safety Elara talked about. I could take that money, buy a place of my own, and vanish from the giant cluster of humanity into a quieter place.
But then I thought about the blueprints. To license the manufacturing, I would have to give them the specs, and to do so, I would have to show them how to fabricate the fractal lattice, I would have to give them the blueprints to the nanoprinters, I would have to give up a multi-generational leap in printing technology, essentially handing over the keys to what was allowing me to develop newer and better.
"Mark," Marcos said softly. "I detect hesitation. The capital injection would be significant."
"It would," I admitted, leaning back. "But think about it, Marcos. If I give them the blueprints... what's to stop them?"
"Stop them from what?" Marcos asked.
"From doing exactly what Vance did to Elara," I said, gesturing at the screen. "Once they know how to build it, they don't need me anymore. Sure, we have a contract and patents. But we've seen how much those are worth when a trillion-credit corporation decides they want something. They'll find a loophole. Or they'll 'leak' the design to a shell company in unregulated space. Or they'll just manufacture it, stop paying me, and dare me to sue them in a court they own."
"The risk of intellectual property theft is statistically high in the current corporate climate," Marcos agreed. "Especially for a disruptive technology."
"Exactly," I rubbed my eyes. "If I sell the manufacturing rights, I lose control and hand over my only leverage. Right now, the only reason they haven't carried out another attack as SIGS had done is that I'm the only one who can make these things work. I am the bottleneck. If I remove the bottleneck, I become expendable."
I deleted the email.
"No licensing," I decided firmly. "We have to keep production in-house and maintain the monopoly on the lattice. If they want the vents, they buy them from us, fully assembled, with the tamper-proof seals intact."
"That will severely limit our growth rate," Marcos countered, playing devil's advocate. "Our current fabrication capacity is limited to the nanoprinters you currently have in store and the three docks we have here. Even with the printers running 24/7, we can only produce maybe eighteen thousand units a week. From all of the emails, demand is currently six hundred thousand units."
"Then I can just expand," I said. "I'll make more printers, lease more shipyards, I'll do something. But whatever it is, we'll be doing it ourselves."
I scrolled through the list. Hundreds of small LCCs (Low Capital Companies) were reaching out. Some were genuine mom-and-pop repair shops wanting to stock a few units. Others were clearly fronts for larger entities trying to sneak in the back door, which got their asses filtered out.
"Marcos, set up a wholesale portal for verified independent mechanics," I ordered. "Guys like the one at the arcade. Small orders only. 400 units max per month. I want the working class to have access to this, not just the bigwigs."
"Alright," Marcos said. "I'll be creating a 'Mechanic's Tier' and add them to that list."
I continued sifting through the messages. It was exhausting. Everyone wanted something. Everyone wanted to be my friend now that I had made a name for myself. Where were they three months ago when I was sitting around waiting for someone to walk through the door and give me a household appliance to fix?
"Greed," I muttered. "It's all just greed."
I wanted to help humanity advance. I truly did. I wanted to see ships flying faster, safer, more efficiently, and further than ever before. But I also knew the nature of the beast I was feeding. After coming across the Vulpinians centuries ago, Humanity's great "Age of Exploration" had come to an abrupt end, choosing to stay within the realm of what they had explored. If I gave them the tech, they would use it to squeeze more profit out of the little guys.
I felt trapped. Trapped between the desire to grow and the need to survive.
"Mark," Marcos interrupted my brooding. "Perhaps you should reconsider the message from last week. The one you asked me to flag for later review."
"Which one?" I asked, distracted by a particularly aggressive offer from a mining guild.
"A repair inquiry," Marcos stated. "It's from the IUC Navy."
I paused. I vaguely remembered it, well, remembered Marcos saying there was an interesting message in my inbox I should take a look at. It had come in about 2 weeks ago, when Kenjiro and I were so focused on the Hellfire breakthrough.
"Pull it up," I said.
The email opened. It was stark, official, and devoid of the corporate fluff that filled the other messages. It bore the seal of the Imperial Union of Celestine Navy High Command.
To: Shepherd Orbital Works
From: Office of Fleet Logistics, 7th Fleet
Subject: Request for Specialized Repair / Salvage Operation
Body:The 7th Fleet requests the services of Shepherd Orbital Works for emergency repairs on two (2) Aegis Sentry-Class Corvettes sustaining heavy hull and structural damage during a deep-space encounter with pirates. Additionally, the fleet is transporting the hulk of a third Corvette, registry UNS-C 404 'Retribution' (Decommissioned/Wreckage).
Due to the specific nature of the damage, high-velocity kinetic impacts and thermal stress fractures, standard repair docks are deemed insufficient for the required turnaround time. Intelligence suggests your facility possesses specialized fabrication capabilities suitable for high-tensile armor reconstruction.
Terms:1. Repair of active vessels to combat readiness.2. Disposal/Salvage of the 'Retribution'. The hull is deemed a total loss. Ownership of the hulk will be transferred to SOW as part of the compensation package.3. Payment: 10,000,000 Credits upfront, an additional 40,000,000 Credits upon completion.
ETA of Fleet Arrival: 4 weeks.
I stared at the screen.
A total of fifty million credits. What was up with everyone offering fifty million? Plus a Corvette hulk. Even a wrecked Corvette was worth millions in scrap and spare parts. And if I could fix it...
But that wasn't what caught my eye.
"Why me?" I asked aloud. "Marcos, look at the date. This was sent a week ago. Before the raid. Before we were famous. We were a nothing shop at a station. Why would the 7th Fleet bypass the massive military shipyards to come to me?"
It didn't make sense. The Navy had contracts with Aegis Aerospace. Hell, these were Aegis Sentry-Class Corvettes, they had dedicated docks for them! Coming to a private contractor on Mechanicus was... irregular. Highly irregular.
"I found the anomaly curious as well," Marcos said. "So I took the liberty of decrypting the digital signature attached to the work order. It is not a standard automated logistics request. It was authorized manually."
"Manually?" I frowned. "By who? A quartermaster?"
"No," Marcos said. "By the Fleet's Admiral."
I froze. My heart hammered against my ribs, a sudden, violent rhythm that had nothing to do with the threats of the last few days.
"Marcos," I whispered. "Who commands the 7th Fleet?"
"Admiral Kaelen Strathmore," Marcos replied.
Kaelen Strathmore.
My adoptive father.
I closed my eyes, and for a moment, I wasn't in the office of SOW. I was back on The Whisper of War, the heavy cruiser he had commanded before being promoted to an Admiral, and where I had spent my teenage years after my mother died on Strara O86. I saw Kaelen, stern, gray hair starting to make its way onto his head and beard, with eyes that saw everything and judged nothing without cause. He was the man who had taken me in after the VIC had attacked, after my world had fractured like glass in this life over 22 years ago. He was the man who had taught me honor, duty, and showed me the path to becoming an IUC Navy Captain.
And he was the man who had probably mourned my "death" aboard the Perseverance the most.
I "died" two years ago. And since then, I haven't even made the effort to reach out to him. After the small fleet I led got wiped out by VIC forces that were not supposed to be where they were. After I fell for over a kilometer to a pool of water, and was rebuilt by Anahrin. After I had returned to civilization.
I have never made the effort to reach out to the man who had taken me in as his own without ever having to. I mean, I couldn't. I was a different person now. I had memories of my previous life, a new face, a new body, a daughter, a whole new life. Part of me wanted to think that it was cleaner to let him mourn a hero than to burden him with a ghost.
But now...
"He knows," I said, opening my eyes. "He has to know."
"It is a logical conclusion," Marcos analyzed. "The name 'Shephard Orbital Works' is not exactly subtle, Mark. You used your surname. And you are operating a heavy frigate, just like your old self did, with a special military registry. A man of Admiral Strathmore's intelligence would connect the dots."
"But why send a work order?" I asked, pacing the room now. "Why not a message? Why not 'Mark, are you alive?'"
"Perhaps he needs to verify," Marcos suggested. "Or perhaps he knows that an official channel is the only way to get to you without alerting... others. After all, the IUC High Command believes you are dead, and there was the rat who sold you out. If he reaches out personally, it would leave a record. A logistics request is buried in bureaucracy."
I looked at the email again.
ETA: 4 weeks.
He was coming. He was bringing his fleet here. To my doorstep.
The realization brought a wave of emotions I wasn't prepared for.
Fear? Yes.
Shame? A little.
I had lied to him by omission for two years. But mostly... mostly it was hope. Kaelen wasn't like Thorne. He wasn't like Vance. He was a good man. If I needed an ally, a real ally, one with a fleet and the moral compass to use them, there was no one better in the galaxy.
And 50 million credits? That was the war chest.
"He's giving me a chance," I realized. "He's giving me a way out."
The hulk, the Retribution. He was giving me a Corvette. He was arming me.
"Marcos," I said, my voice steady now.
"Yes, Mark?" Marcos asked.
"Reply to them," I ordered. "Tell them that we are more than willing to accept the contract. Tell them we have the facilities ready and we await the fleet's arrival."
"I had already sent it two weeks ago when we got the message," Marcos stated. "Remember, we are 'partners' in this, so I had to make a business decision while you were 'indisposed.'"
I sat back down, staring at the screen, and smiled. Marcos had already set up the appointment, meaning the reunion had already been set in stone before he told me anything.
I wondered if he would recognize me. I looked different. I was taller, fitter, stronger. My eyes, face, mouth, and my very being had been altered. But Kaelen should be able to recognize me simply by my stance. If not, I'll just have to use our keywords.
"Mark?" a voice called out from behind me.
I turned. Kenjiro had stumbled out of the back room, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His hair was standing up in every direction.
"Are we getting sued or something?" he yawned.
"No," I smiled, a genuine, if nervous, smile. "We just got a job. A big one."
"Bigger than the gunship?" he asked with a yawn.
"Much bigger," I said. "We're fixing the Navy, Kenji."
Kenjiro blinked, waking up fast. "The Navy? The IUC Navy?"
"The 7th Fleet," I confirmed. "They're coming in three weeks. Two corvettes for repair. One for salvage."
Kenjiro walked over to the coffee machine, looking dazed. "We're going to need more drones. And more iridium. And... Mark, we barely have room for the Vanguard and the other ships that come to get their vents replaced."
"We'll make room," I said. "We'll reserve the bays before they arrive and... shit, we're going to have to clear out the materials to open up that other bay. But we are taking this contract."
"Why?" Kenjiro asked, pouring a cup of tea. "I mean, not to tell you what to do with your company, but you already have a bunch of vent orders to fulfil. You'll be raking in money in the billions in a year or less. What's the point in taking on a military refit? It's dangerous work under high scrutiny."
I looked at him. I couldn't tell him the truth. Not yet.
"Because we need friends in high places, Kenji," I said. "And because I have a feeling that when the 7th Fleet gets here... things are going to change."
Kenjiro nodded slowly. "I guess friends with railguns are good friends to have."
I nodded and stood up. I had two weeks to get my shipyard ready for an Admiral. I had two weeks to prepare to face the ghost of my past. And I had a sneaking suspicion that Kaelen Strathmore wasn't just coming for repairs. You don't bring a fleet to an unknown shipyard just to fix military vessels.
He was coming for me.
"Marcos," I said softly.
"Yes?" Marcos asked.
"Start running simulations on Aegis Sentry-Class Corvettes' structural repair," I ordered. "I want to be able to strip a hull blindfolded by the time they get here."
"Gotcha," Marcos stated.
"Alright! Break time is over," I said. "Kenji, get some food. Then I need you to look at the power grid for Bay 3. If we're docking Corvettes, we need to up the amperage on the magnetic clamps."
"On it," Kenjiro said, energized by the new challenge.
I walked out of the office and onto the gantry. The smell of the shipyard filled my lungs. I looked down at my hands and realized that they were shaking. Was I really ready to face my past? Well, it didn't matter, since right now it was heading towards me at full burn.
---
For advanced chapters, you can head to my Patreon at
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
where you can read up to 25 Advanced Chapters
Chapter 49 is in the works and will be uploaded later today, bringing the number of advanced chapters up to 26.
Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Sci-fi is the way.