Everyone was mourning the loss of their friends and cursing the nobles to high heavens.
Each and every person was determined not to let their sacrifice be in wain.
All of them knew that the faster the ship is ready the less the chances of anyone else being taken so they went back to work with the determination to get out of here before they lose anyone else.
Soon they finished dismantling the ships they had and brought in more.
Dock 1 was now full of fighters that were in the way of getting bigger ships.
Dock 2 now housed a passenger ship not much smaller than the destroyer they just took apart.
The framework on their cruiser was almost finished thanks to the materials they gathered and some ship building drones they found and managed to repair.
-We have some drones to help build the ship then why don't we build some to help with the material gathering?
Garry asked when they were discussing this topic.
-We can do it and it will probably make it faster to collect the materials but the problem is as always the energy.
We are already pushing our luck with what we are generating and we still can't determine if there is some kind of surveillance outside of the station.
Answered Tommy .
-We are working on a probe that we can send out to find out as the station sensors are almost useless with all the ships around us.
Sonya added.
-So you'll have to wait for a while, if we can be sure that nobody is monitoring us from outside then we can increase the power and get the drones that you want.
-Ok, but what about that generator that you built a few months back?
Tommy had forgotten about that when they took control of the station and it wasn't needed anymore they sent it to the material gathering platform.
But now that he was reminded about it, he got inspired.
-Garry you're a genius he said after a moment.
Everyone looked at Tommy not understanding what he just figured out.
Only Paul,Martha and Sonya understood what was going through his mind and nodded approvingly.
-We can create the parts and assemble something similar to that generator and place a bunch of them in dock 4 turning it into a charging station for the drones.
That way we can grant Garry's wish without increasing the output of the station's generators.
And the whole thing will be much easier now that we have matter converters.
Tommy said excitedly.
-It won't take long to set up something like that, we just need parts.
Paul said while nodding.
After that they discussed the number of drones and how long it would take to get the parts and assemble them.
With some help from the Simon's soldiers who were eager to do something more than just train and dismantle ships all day long and a few people from the salvage teams.
They managed to set up 50 generators and 25 drone charging stations that allowed them to add 75 drones in total to help with the work.
New drones were split between the tasks: 25 of them were construction drones assigned to build the ship and 50 of them were assigned to gathering materials.
All the drones were programmed to stop the work and go to dock 4 on command because there was no way they could operate if the soldiers came.
This feature came in handy when they spotted another ship coming.
It was the ship that brought new people, five of them this time, three women and two men.
They were greeted by Tommy,Simon and Alice and after some explaining they were more than happy to help and what's more two of the new arrivals were pilots that already had the implants.
When Tommy's group heard that they started to laugh.
-Whats so funny?
Asked one of the pilots,a woman named Agnes.
-You see, the nobles who sent you here just did us a great favor.
If not for that it would take us quite some time to train pilots from scratch.
Said Tommy while trying really hard to stop laughing.
When they finally noticed the irony the new arrivals also started laughing.
After the registration and some introductions the new people were impressed by the achievements that they saw.
After a tour around the station they were shocked once more when they were given a liter of booze each and told that they needed to drink it in one sitting to get rid of the drug that was probably already in their systems.
Men didn't complain but ladies were less than thrilled.
The next day all of them were having a hangover but otherwise were ready to start working.
Both pilots went to Jakob and Monic to help them with finding an escape route from the empire.
They also pointed out that it would be hard to get out of the ship graveyard without someone noticing, especially in a cruiser class vessel.
The other three joined the salvage crews and got shocked watching how fast the ships were dismantled.
After the drones came online the dock 1 was left to them entirely and they were dismantling ships like there was no tomorrow.
The human salvagers relocated to dock 2 and thanks to that the speed of dismantling the bigger vessel was also greater.
Garry welcomed the new arrivals and started their training the same day.
The cargo ship arrived and got its part of salvage like usual,Anne started to suspect that it was a drone ship or the crew didnt give a fuck about anything else,other than getting the materials.
When they were done with dismantling the ships, Garry proposed that they might try to get some bigger ships this time.
The reason for the rapid dismantling was that most ships were designed in a way that allowed for quick repairs meaning that if a ship got damaged they just swapped out the sections that were damaged and the ship could be sent on its way.
So the dismantling teams just had to disconnect the sections of the vessel and use a crane to send them to the gathering platform and the rest of the smaller parts was loaded t into the grav-carts to be also sent to the platform.
Their own cruiser was designed the same way because it was also easier to build ships using this method.
-We need a lot of materials and it doesn't help that we need to share with the cargo ship and the solution to this problem is getting a bigger ship to get the materials from which will also increase our productivity.
Garry spoke when they were discussing which ships to salvage next.
-Do you have a ship in mind?
Asked Tommy.
-Yes in fact i do.
Garry showed them the footage from the last time they pulled the ships.
-I want to get my hands on this light cruiser.
He pointed to the ship in the photo.
-it's within range of the tractor beam and i think that it'll get us more than 25% of the materials needed to build our ship.
Everyone thought about it for a while and had to admit that he was right.
- We will try to get that ship for you,but that's as big as I'm going to allow.
Tommy agreed with him.
-Why? You know that dock 2 can easily accommodate a small battleship.
Garry didn't understand why they didn't want to get the biggest ship they could get.
-Because if the big ships start disappearing in the vicinity or blue section,someone might notice it,and the last thing we need is someone catching wind of what we are doing here.
It was Simon who answered.
-Actually how far are we with the construction?
-Around 8% and in about two more days we will finish the framework and start working on the plating and interior.
Anne said after checking data on her tablet.
-Our progress is way ahead of schedule.
Said Paul With a smile on his face.
-If we keep this up the ship will be ready in the next four months plus another month for the rest of the equipment and ammunition.
Tommy said with satisfaction.