Our Naval Fleet expands ever more, opening its arms to welcome in a new Admiral!
Stand proud, stand tall, hold your chin up high, for you are an Admiral in this Naval force! May your fleet glide through the cosmos and show every maggot just how great humanity is! Spread our name, spread our glory, and rise, Admiral Raccoon! For it is an honor to have you amongst our ranks.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
This chapter is published in your honor!
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The next morning, a handful of ships of the Void Vanguard arrived with a punctuality that was only possible due to the fact that they were former military. At 07:55, the shipyard's sensors picked up four signatures approaching in a tight formation. They maintained a distance of 100 meters from each other, moving as one unit in a diamond formation that spoke of hours of practice.
"Flight Lead to Shephard Control," A man's voice crackled over the comms. "We are with Void Vanguard and are approaching your yard. Requesting permission to dock."
"This is Shephard Control to Flight Lead," I replied from the shipyard's office, staring out the window at the bays and the approaching ships. "It's nice to see you all up and running so early. Permission to dock is granted. Berths 3 and 4 are lit for you. Two per bay, nose-to-tail as close as can be, but make sure to watch your intake spacing."
"Understood," the man replied as I watched the four Valkyries split. Two drifted toward Berth 3 and the other two toward Berth 4. Marcos vented the bays and opened their doors, allowing the four ships to touch down with synchronized thuds, their landing gear locking into the magnetic clamps.
I then hit the button to cycle the atmosphere while Marcos closed the doors, sealing the environment. "Welcome to Shephard Orbital Works, gentlemen. You all can go for a stroll around the station or watch me work. Choice is yours."
The next two hours were a symphony of organized chaos as some of my drones swarmed the ships before the engines had even fully cooled. I was down on the floor, directing the traffic, though I didn't really need to since Marcos was in control of them. However, it gave my spectators the feeling that I had everything under control, especially seeing my massive self moving between the ships, checking tolerances, barking orders to the drones, and occasionally lending a hand to torque a stubborn bolt or two.
The mercenary pilots and crews hung around the lounge I had set up on a structure separate from the office. They watched the operation with a mix of boredom and fascination. My guess is that they had gotten accustomed to military depots where a quick 20-minute job took a week of paperwork and lazy mechanics. Here, they saw a factory floor that moved with the speed of an F1 pit crew.
By 10:00 hours, the first group was done, and the ships were ready to leave.
"Group One, you are green across the board," I announced as I walked into the lounge. "Diagnostics show 100% flow efficiency, and everything else is as stable as can be for a ship with as much wear and tear as these."
The pilots quickly scrambled back to their ships and fired up the engines. As soon as they did, the resonating sound was noticeably deeper and smoother. The harsh, rattling whine of the overheated systems was gone.
I quickly stepped back into the office, the doors sealing before the depressurization of the yard began.
"Shephard Control, this is Flight One Lead," the pilot radioed as they slowly hovered backward toward the exit vector. "My temps are... damn, they're barely registering above ambient. You're a space wizard, Shephard."
"Damn right I am," I replied. "Send in the next wave."
As the first group departed, another formation appeared on the sensors. But this one was different. Five ships. Four standard Valkyries, and one that looked like it had gone ten rounds with a heavy cruiser and lost.
"That must be Vanguard-One," Marcos noted.
"No shit..." I breathed out.
How in the hell was that ship still able to navigate was the question of the century. As it limped into the yard, I got a good look at it. Its starboard armor was buckled, scorch marks raked across the hull, and it was venting atmosphere from a hairline fracture in the cockpit canopy.
Vorn's voice came over the channel. "Shephard, I'm bringing the old girl in. Treat her right."
"I've got a special spot for her in Berth 1. I made sure to dock the Shepherd as close as possible to leave enough space for her," I said. "Bring her in gently."
Vorn landed his battered command ship with surprising delicacy. As the clamps locked down and the bay was repressurized, I walked out to meet him. The ramp lowered, screeching in protest against bent hydraulics. Vorn walked down, looking at his ship with a grimace.
"Did someone throw a fucking train at you? It looks like it's been through hell and back," I observed, standing next to him.
"Yeah," Vorn chuckled. "She flies like it, too. Steering is sluggish, weapon targeting is off by three degrees, and the power grid fluctuates every time I reroute power to anything. You think you can fix-"
"Hold that thought," I interrupted him, raising my hand. I walked around the ship, running a hand over the scarred hull, tapping at the damaged plating, and grimacing at the exposed conduit wiring that was sparking intermittently.
"Fix her?" I looked down at Vorn with a raised eyebrow and doubtful look that slowly turned into a grin. "Klaus, by the time I'm done with her, you won't even recognize her. I'm going to turn this thing into the scariest one of your entire fleet."
"That's quite the claim you're making, Mark," Vorn said with a raised eyebrow.
"Hey, I know I sound cocky and that this sounds impossible," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "But, trust me, I've got the skill, the knowledge, and the resources to accomplish just that."
Vorn nodded slowly, turning his lower lip upside down while he looked at his ship. "How long would it take you?"
"Give me a, I don't know, three weeks?" I half-stated, half-asked. "I'm going to need to fabricate custom mounts for the capacitors and reroute the entire weapon's system. But when she flies out of here, she'll be able to sustain continuous railgun fire for ten minutes without overheating, and I'll reinforce the armor plating with a hexagonal plating pattern, make her a little wider, a tad bit more angular than she already is... By the time I'm done with her, she'll be able to take a hit that would crack a frigate... maybe not."
Vorn extended his hand. "Three weeks it is."
I shook his hand and nodded, turning to go back to work.
"And Mark," I stopped and turned as I heard Vorn call out to me. "Don't disappoint me."
"I don't know the meaning of the word," I quipped.
As Vorn left to join his men for the rotation, I stood alone with the damaged ship.
"This is it," I said in a low voice. "This is the pivot point I've been waiting for. The first job that will cement me as a trustworthy quality ship engineer. Selling the vents is just part of the business, but this is what Anahrin trained me to do."
"Ooh, your self-monologue makes it feel like you are some sort of protagonist about to take the city by storm," Marcos said in a teasing tone.
"Marcos," I sighed. "Just queue up the fabrication. Have the Shepherd's reactor output to maximum for industrial synthesis. And pull up the blueprints for the 'Hellfire' class capacitor banks I designed in the sim."
"The unstable ones? Really?" Marcos asked, sounding amused.
"They aren't unstable. I just have to tweak them a bit," I countered. "We're going to make the Vanguard-One sing."
"Mark," Marcos said with a sigh of desperation. "You really ought to start applying for patents."
"Yeah," I said. "I'll get to that... eventually."
I walked back toward the office to check on Lyra. She was sitting at the terminal, wearing a headset that was way too big for her, watching the camera feeds of the drones working on the gunships.
"Papa!" she beamed when she saw me. "Look at the robots! They are dancing!"
I looked at the screen and saw the drones moving in perfect unison, stripping vents and installing new ones. It did look a little bit like a dance. Some sort of mechanical ballet of industry and profit.
"Yeah, bug," I said, stroking her hair. "They're dancing to the tune of 7.2 million credits."
I sat down in my chair and looked out the viewport at my shipyard. It was full, and ships were cycling in and out.
"Marcos," I said, putting my feet up on the desk.
"What can the universe's greatest AI do for you?" he replied through the speaker of the terminal.
"Order some pizza, the good kind. Extra pepperoni for the kid. And... get me a listing of available real estate in the upper residential ring. I think it's time we moved out of the ship."
"Why would you ever want to move when it's so much more convenient to just stay living in the Shepherd. One, you don't have to pay, and two, you're close to work," Marcos replied.
"That's a fair point," I sighed. "Alright, scratch that off the list. Just send me all the documents I need to fill out to start patenting shi- things. Start patenting things.
"Wise choice," he said. "And Mark?"
"Yeah?"
"I just want to say, I did some digging through some of the files I had downloaded," he said.
"Ok....?" I frowned a bit. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch would be proud," he said with a chuckle.
"Don't push your luck, you overpowered secretary," I scowled. "Just order the damn pizza."
---
POV Shift: Kenjiro Takagi
The artificial sunlight of Elyse Station was always perfect. It was a golden, sterile hue that filtered through the massive, crystalline domes of the upper habitation ring, designed to mimic a late afternoon on a terrestrial paradise that most of the station's inhabitants would never actually visit. Here, on the third most luxurious station orbiting Nova Celeste, everything was curated. The air smelled of genetically modified jasmine and ozone scrubbed to a medical purity. The gravity was a steadfast, comforting 1.0 G, with none of the faint, nauseating wobbles found on the industrial rings like Mechanicus or the frontier jitters of the mining outposts.
Dr. Kenjiro Takagi stood by the floor-to-ceiling transparisteel window of his office on the 40th floor of the Starship and Inter-Galactic Solutions (SIGS) regional headquarters on the business ring of the station. He held a cup of artisan coffee that cost more than a standard deckhand's daily wage, staring out at the slow, majestic rotation of the station's commercial spire. Below him, personal transport skiffs glided along invisible magnetic rails like shimmering koi fish in a pond.
It was beautiful, expensive, and god, was it fucking boring.
Kenjiro took a sip of the coffee, grimacing slightly. It was perfect, just like everything else here, and utterly devoid of character. He turned back to his desk, a sleek slab of obsidian glass that floated on a magnetic field, currently displaying the results of the last quarter's R&D cycle.
"Zero point three percent," Kenjiro muttered to the empty room, his voice flat.
That was the triumph of the month. His team, a collection of the brightest minds from the Core Worlds, funded by a budget that could purchase a small moon, had managed to increase the thermal dissipation rate of the SIGS Mark IV vent by 0.3%. The board of directors had thrown a gala. There had been speeches. There had been bonuses.
Kenjiro felt like throwing his award out the window.
He was the Lead Thermal Dynamics Engineer for the sector, a man whose name was on three different patents for alloy composition. Yet, for the last five years, his job had essentially been finding ways to shave credits off production costs while maintaining the bare minimum performance required by the IUC standards. It wasn't engineering. No, that would be actual progress. Instead, it was corporate accountancy masquerading as science.
He sat down, swiping away the congratulatory memo from the Regional Director. He pulled up the schematic for the Mark V prototype. They were switching from a titanium-composite weave to a cheaper aluminum-ceramic blend. It would lower the melting point by forty degrees, but it would save the company twelve credits per unit. The marketing team was already spinning it as "lightweight next-gen material."
"Garbage," he whispered, rubbing his temples. "We are building expensive garbage."
His G-comm terminal on the desk buzzed, breaking the silence. A holographic icon bounced into the air. It was a rugged, scruffy-looking emblem of a wolf howling at a moon, the personal sigil of an old friend.
Kenjiro's expression softened instantly. He tapped the acceptance key.
"Estarlyn," Kenjiro said, leaning back in his chair, a genuine smile finally touching his lips. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Did you finally crash that rust bucket of yours into an asteroid?"
The holographic projection shimmered and resolved into the face of Estarlyn Florez. The connection was audio-only for the moment, likely due to bandwidth issues where Estarlyn was, but the voice came through clear, rich with the rough timbre of a man who spent more time breathing recycled air filters than jasmine-scented oxygen.
"Kenji! You wound me, hermano," Estarlyn laughed, the sound accompanied by the background hum of a heavy fusion drive. "The Dust Bunny is a lady. She doesn't crash. She occasionally... makes aggressive contact with stationary objects. There is a difference."
"I see you haven't lost your touch for spinning a narrative," Kenjiro chuckled. "How are things in the void? How are Maria and the kids?"
"Maria is a saint for putting up with me," Estarlyn said, his voice warming. "Little Sofi just started pilot training in the sim-pods. She's got my reflexes, God help her. And Leo... well, Leo is asking when 'Uncle Kenji' is going to come visit and fix his datapad again."
Kenjiro felt a pang of guilt. "I know, I know. I've been... stuck. The workload here is relentless."
"Relentless doing what? Polishing your awards?" Estarlyn teased. "I saw the news on the trade network. 'SIGS announces revolutionary cooling breakthrough.' Zero point three percent, Kenji? Really? I've had sneezes that improved my ship's aerodynamics more than that."
Kenjiro sighed, picking up a stylus and twirling it. "Don't remind me. It keeps the shareholders happy, stock goes up two points, and that's all that matters in Elyse."
"Yeah, well, that's actually why I'm calling," Estarlyn's tone shifted. The playfulness evaporated, replaced by a serious, almost conspiratorial edge. "I need to run some numbers by you, and you alone. Not on that corporate grid of yours."
Kenjiro sat up straighter. Estarlyn was a hauler, a good one, but he wasn't an engineer. If he was asking for a consult, something was usually on fire or about to explode.
"Is the Bunny okay?"
"She's better than okay, Kenji. That's the problem, or, well, the mystery," Estarlyn said. "I'm currently hauling a load of refined iridium from the belt. It's a heavy payload. Usually, running at cruise velocity with this mass, my rear manifold temps sit at a cozy 800 Kelvin. If I push the engines to 110%, I start getting warning lights within ten minutes."
"Standard operating limits for a Bison-class hauler," Kenjiro recited automatically. "Your cooling loop can't cycle the plasma fast enough to mitigate the buildup. It's a design flaw in the intake geometry."
"Right. Well," Estarlyn said, looking elsewhere, "right now, I'm pushing 115% thrust. I've been running hot for three hours to make a delivery window."
Kenjiro frowned. "Estarlyn, you're going to slag your injectors. Back it down."
"That's the thing, Kenji," Estarlyn shook his head. "I'm looking at my core temps right now. 480 Kelvin."
Kenjiro froze. He blinked, processing the number. "Sensor malfunction," he stated immediately. "Your thermocouples are shot. If you were running 115% thrust on a Bison with a heavy load, 480 Kelvin is physically impossible. You'd be melting the hull plating if it were that low. You're likely running at 900+ and your gauge is lying to you. Cut engines immediately."
"I checked the sensor, Kenji," Estarlyn said, shaking his head. "I even triangulated with the backup probes, and it's real. I'm staring at the exhaust output right now on the external cam. There's no distortion or that familiar cherry-red glow. The heat is just... gone. Vented. And my fuel consumption? I'm down 7% on the burn rate."
Kenjiro set the stylus down. He was a man of science, and science dictated that Energy In equals Energy Out. "Explain. Did you install a cryogenic flush system? Did you upgrade to military-grade heat sinks?"
"No," Estarlyn said. "I just bought some new vents."
"Vents?" Kenjiro scoffed. "Passive thermal vents? Estarlyn, the best vents on the market, the SIGS Mark IVs, would give you maybe a 2% drop if you were lucky and God was smiling on you. You're talking about a 40% reduction. That's not a vent, that's more like playing with magic."
"It's not magic, it's Engineering," Estarlyn corrected. "I stopped at Mechanicus Station a few days ago. Was having some trouble with the port-side array, needed a swap. Saw a guy... well, saw a ship. A big, scary-looking frigate parked in the commercial docks acting like a storefront. The guy running it is a giant. Said his name was Mark Shephard. Said he makes them himself."
"A startup?" Kenjiro rubbed his chin. "Garage manufacturing? Estarlyn, be careful. These independent fabricators usually bypass most, if not all, safety protocols. They might use unstable alloys that dissipate heat quickly but degrade under stress. It works great for a week, and then it shatters and takes your engine with it."
"I thought about that," Estarlyn admitted. "But he gave me a money-back guarantee. And get this, he offered to buy them back for double if they didn't work. But that's not why I'm calling. I'm calling because I pulled one of them off before I installed the rest, just to look at it. Kenji... It's not cast. It's printed. Fucking printed! Some molecular fabrication or something. And the geometry... I've never seen internal fluting like that. It looks organic."
"Send me the telemetry," Kenjiro commanded, his curiosity piqued despite his skepticism. "And send me a visual of the part if you have it."
"Yeah, I got you," Estarlyn nodded. "Don't let your bosses see this, or they might send a hit squad."
A moment later, a file appeared on Kenjiro's screen. He opened it, expanding the data streams across his three monitors.
He started with the raw numbers.
Engine Power: 115%
Fuel flow: Nominal
Exhaust velocity: High
Core Temperature...
Kenjiro leaned in, his nose inches from the glass. The line on the graph was flat. Beautifully, impossibly flat. It sat at 480K like a rock. There were no spikes, no fluctuations. The dissipation curve was almost vertical. As soon as heat was generated, it was gone.
"This defies the thermal conductivity of standard durasteel," Kenjiro murmured, his eyes darting across the numbers. "He must be using a copper-silver substrate, or maybe a synthetic diamond weave... but the cost would be astronomical."
He opened the image file.
It was a high-resolution scan of the vent Estarlyn had bought. It looked... aggressive. The standard SIGS vent was a smooth, aerodynamic curve designed to look sleek on a showroom floor. This thing was industrial, angular, and utilitarian. But as Kenjiro zoomed in on the cutaway view Estarlyn had scanned, his breath hitched.
The internal structure wasn't just a simple channel. It was a fractal lattice. A recursive geometric pattern that maximized surface area within a finite volume to a degree Kenjiro had only seen in theoretical papers on hyper-cooling.
"Who are you?" Kenjiro whispered, staring at the part. "Who designs a fractal cooling lattice in a cargo bay?"
"You seeing this, Kenji?" Estarlyn's voice brought him back.
"I'm seeing it," Kenjiro said, his voice quiet. "Estarlyn, how much did you pay for this?"
"750 credits," Estarly said flatly.
Kenjiro laughed. It was a sharp, incredulous sound. "750? The material cost alone for a structure this complex should be double that. If this data is real, and if the alloy holds up... this vent is worth five thousand, easy. SIGS sells our 'premium' vents for 1050, and they are, pardon my language, aluminum shit compared to this."
"He calls it the 'Shepherd Orbital Works' Model 1B," Estarlyn supplied. "Said he's set up on Mechanicus. Has a shipyard there, but he was selling out of his ship to move stock. Kenji, the guy had a line. And he was installing them right there on the pad. Drones, military precision. The whole setup screamed 'overqualified'."
Kenjiro stood up and paced his office. He looked out at the beautiful, fake garden of Elyse Station. For years, he had told himself that he was at the pinnacle of the industry. That SIGS was the leader because they had the resources, the labs, the funding. He told himself that the slow progress was just the nature of physics—that they had hit the wall of what was possible with current materials.
But he was looking at a graph from a freelance hauler that proved him a liar.
Someone, somewhere on the gritty, industrial ring of Mechanicus, had broken the wall. And they were selling the sledgehammer for 750 credits.
"Estarlyn," Kenjiro said, turning back to the screen. "You said he's on Mechanicus?"
"Yeah," Estarlyn nodded. "Should be on Docking Platform 2, or wherever he parks that beast of a ship."
"Do you know if he... is he hiring?" Kenjiro asked with a raised eyebrow. "Or looking for partners?"
Estarlyn laughed. "I don't know, amigo. He seemed pretty self-sufficient. Had an AI that was smarter than most of my crew, controlling a hologram and teaching a kid. But he's definitely shaking things up. I've already told three other guys in the convoy. If this spreads, SIGS is going to have a problem."
"SIGS already has a problem," Kenjiro muttered. "They just don't know it yet. They're celebrating a point-three percent gain while this 'Mark Shephard' is handing out forty percent gains like candy."
"What are you going to do?"
Kenjiro looked at the Mark V prototype schematic on his other monitor—the cheap aluminum garbage that would save the company twelve credits. He looked at the fractal beauty of the SOW vent.
He felt a hunger he hadn't felt since graduate school. The hunger to see something new. To touch real innovation, not just cost-effective iteration.
"I have some accumulated vacation time," Kenjiro said slowly. "I think it's time I took a trip."
"To where?" Estarlyn asked with a raised brow. "To Risa? A tropical moon?"
"Mechanicus Station," Kenjiro said, a smile spreading across his lips.
Estarlyn choked on his drink. "Mechanicus? Kenji, you're a creature of Elyse. You freak out if your sheets aren't 600-thread count. I know the two stations orbit the same floating rock, but outside of the residential area, Mechanicus smells like sulfur and desperation. You'll stick out like a sore thumb in your silk suits."
"Then I'll buy a jumpsuit," Kenjiro said, already pulling up the transport schedule on his terminal. "I need to see this, Estarlyn. I need to meet this man. If he's doing what this data says he's doing... he's not just a mechanic. He's a savant."
"Alright, it's your funeral," Estarlyn said. "But hey, if you see him, tell him I sent you. Maybe I'll get a referral discount on my next retrofit."
"I will," Kenjiro said. "Safe flying, hermano."
"You as well, Kenji," Estarlyn said before the connection cut, and the wolf sigil vanished.
Kenjiro stood in the silence of his office, running a hand over his combed hair. "Holy shit."
---
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At least 1 more chapter will be uploaded today in honor of our new Admiral!
Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Sci-fi is the way.