chapter 205

Apparently, there were rules in this system that no one broke. One of them was that you owned what you killed or salvaged. Of course, if someone could take it from you by force, it would be different, but even with the dozens of ships that had shown up in this location, no one seemed to dare attack us or start salvaging our kills.

Most of the ships that were here weren't even that big or seemed to be really that well-armed. The trend continued of every ship being cobbled together from multiple ones. It seemed that most ships didn’t actually survive getting tossed into this star system.

The wrecks seemed to move in weird spiral patterns, being pulled towards the sun. The wrecks eventually ended up in an orbit around where Venus is in our solar system.

“FH, what's the approximate number of wrecks?”

“We have labeled anything a wreck that’s at least 10 metres in diameter. Using that, the estimate is around 4 to 7 trillion.”

“What?” My mind tried to make sense of that number. It simply didn’t. Except if... “How long has this star been like this?”

“Unknown, Captain, but some of the designs we have been able to identify go back near the start of this galaxy's use of FTL. This solar system might have been moving around the galaxy for over 200,000 years.”

“Oh, that's so bad, and there really hasn't been any escape from this place? That can’t be possible if it’s so old.” Silence permeated the command centre after my words as we all realised how bad of a situation this actually was.

Running some calculations in my head with the supplies we had on hand, helped me make sense of our situation. We could survive for a really long time, but we would need to build some better life support systems, as the current ones we had built on the assumption that we could resupply at least once a decade. Of course, that time would be cut a lot shorter if we weren’t rationing.

Some designs went through my mind, but then I looked at the tactical map, and the only real station in this star system. If they had survived here for a long while, then they probably had the best life support systems in the galaxy on board. Anything less and they wouldn't have any significant population.

“How many people live on that station?”

“Approximately 3.8 million. At least that's according to the information I can gather from its web. It's quite limited in what is accessible. The date of its founding seems to be around 12,000 years ago.”

That's a huge population that would require a tremendous amount of food each day, not to mention other requirements like air and so on. Looking at the display of the destroyed ships, I had to wonder how much air was lost by us destroying them and how much it cut down on the overall survivability of the whole population of this place.

“I need an exact inventory of everything we have, down to the last molecule. We need to know how much we can give away without compromising our long-term survivability.”

“Captain?” Sam asked me.

“Water and air are probably extremely expensive here, and so is food. And there are a couple of trillion wrecks out there, from freighters to battleships. Most everything that would be beyond expensive outside this place is going to be dirt cheap.”

“We aren't going to plan on staying here; that is not an option. We're going to get out of here, and in exchange for all the resources we have that are in demand here, we're going to get everything we can that is going to be in demand out there.”

“Understood, Captain,” Sam answered back with a sly smile on his face.

Already, my commands were being followed as a lot of drones were conducting an inventory of our entire ship. If we had missed something or something was missing, we wanted to know about it.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Bob was taking point, although he was not happy that I doubted his current numbers. He knew this was needed, but he wouldn’t be Bob without some grumbling.

“Captain, I have found a couple of mentions about something called the Devourer. Apparently, there are myths about a star that swallows all that comes near. The stories seem to be quite different from each other, and there are different names given to it, but all have two common parts.”

“One that starts with ships going missing from FTL, and the other an apparent star system filled with wrecks from which there is no escape from.”

Mine and Lola’s eyes met as we both realised what that last part meant. “Some did escape,” we said at the same time. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had a description of this star system.

“Excellent work, FH. I didn’t expect you to have data on the history of this galaxy that is so extensive.”

“When you purchased the extended storage in Four Leaf Station, I decided to fill up my current capacity at the time. Most technical designs were locked behind paywalls, but the history of the galaxy and the universe as a whole wasn’t.”

“And you thought it might be useful. Brilliant, simply brilliant. Now that we know that there is a way to escape, we must find it. We have scans of the outside of this star system. Do we need to get closer to the boundaries of this star system to get scans from this side as well?”

“It wouldn’t hurt, Captain.”

“Then first we loot what we have here. Then we go to the station so we can get a real rundown of this place and see how wealthy we are. After that, we’ll do a flyby of the edge if it’s needed. They might already have the data we’re looking for.”

“As for the drones doing the looting, we need to also change their priorities. Air and water are now high up on that list, which means if there are pressurised areas on those ships, we need to find a way we can collect that valuable gas.”

“What about the corpses?” Dean asked, and immediately I realised what he meant.

“I really hope that they don’t eat them, but even without that, they most certainly use them as fertiliser. But, no, we leave them behind for the scavengers.”

“Yes, Captain,” everyone said back to me. Damn, it really felt good when they said it in unison like that.

We took our time with salvaging. Some of the ships were quite far gone. It was an interesting challenge having our priorities of what to salvage change so much. It was actually quite a fun challenge, and thanks to FH’s new skills, our drone swarms were performing well beyond expectations.

This also helped me understand the current shipbuilding this system was capable of. It seemed that they didn’t have a way to properly bond different types of metals. That’s why there were weak points in the hull.

Why they only had railguns also made sense, as you needed only electricity and a relatively tiny projectile to use them compared to lasers or missiles. There might be some laser systems that would work, but most required some type of gas to use them, and well, you simply wouldn’t have a supply here.

On the flip side, defences like shields seemed to be excellent, way beyond the average of the galaxy. With so many shipwrecks here, it made sense you could cherry-pick the best. I expected most shield generator devices to survive, as they were quite small and well-armoured, so when a ship broke apart, most of them would survive.

The same went for the stealth technologies of the ships, although they seemed to be rarer, as most of the scavengers that had shown up weren’t as well hidden as the ones waiting at the exit to attack anything that came through.

So, in terms of average ship power, ours was well beyond any of them. Now, there must be some strong ships here as well, as they were most likely to survive, but any ships that would be significantly stronger than ours wouldn’t actually be here because they would have been strong enough not to be pulled in, in the first place. So, we should be quite high up in the food chain.

That in itself was a weird realization. We have never been up near the top in anything, but now all of a sudden, not only were we incredibly wealthy thanks to the supplies we had on board, but we were also probably one of the strongest in the star system.

With everything useful looted from the surviving wrecks, it was time to move towards the station. We got quite a lot of good stuff, especially shield generators.

Only a few were better than what we currently had, and they were unfortunately not suitable for our current shifting shield systems, but they would bring a pretty good amount of credits if we could sell them outside this place.

Bob was already salivating, thinking about all the precious stuff on sale at the station that would be dirt cheap. He's probably going to cry at the end of this because we simply don't have enough cargo space to get everything he wants.

***

POV: Third Overseer

"Overseer, they have stopped looting and are now heading our way. Approximate arrival in eight days."

"Did they attack any of the scavengers?"

"No, Overseer. They even seem to have collected and left most of the corpses in large open spaces so that they are easily retrieved."

Was that a calculated move to show some goodwill, or were they practical, knowing that those corpses were incredible resources for survival? I looked towards the screens where the profile of the Forward Horizon and their captain was displayed.

We had no knowledge of this adventurer. We haven’t had a successful ship that survived entry for a while, but we have gotten bits and pieces of data from broken wrecks.

A line connected to me. It was him again.

"You really think he's going to be peaceful? You are too soft-handed. The only reason you're still in charge is because you have that station."

"The fuck do you want again? You want to do something, then stop camping every entrance and come here. Let's see what your ships can do against my station."

The line went dead almost immediately. They were annoying little rats, but we didn't have the forces to occupy any of the entrances ourselves besides the one. Because of that, those bastards got the majority of the new resources coming into the system.

Hopefully, this Remi Graves is a reasonable person and not one of those crazies that tries to get out of here no matter what. Every time someone has tried to escape, they always end up back here with their ship entering back through one of the entrances in pieces.

Usually, the entire station feels like you live in a grave, but once again, I could feel a bit of hope from the populace. That happens each time someone survives the entry. Already there's an increase in efficiency across many systems. When their hope gets crushed, every number goes negative for a while. Hopefully, this time the positive lasts long enough to make up for the negative to follow.