Chapter 51. Chief.

  “The drives on the halfling ship are still functional, maybe our drones can operate the ship, at least that way, we aren’t stuck towing it,” Watkins said as they made their preparations to return to the station.

  Greater in size than the Canon, the halfling ship wasn’t going to be as easy to haul around as the small chunks of salvage had been. Watkins quickly ran into some problems when tried to use his drones to operate the halfling ship, one of which was the limited time his drones and MOBS could stay away from his core energy. He was implementing a rotation plan to keep fresh units rotating in, and the others returning to the Canon to recharge.

  They would have to rotate MOBS between the ships if he wanted to keep the verminkin housed there for the time being. Bringing the survivors aboard Canon before he was ready for them would just lead to problems. As it stood, Watkins was having to include basic furnishing, shipsuits, and the like into his fabrication queue.

  The two crew quarters compartments aboard Canon, along with the bridge and CIC, had been pretty much stripped clean when he was first trying to scrounge up resources to repair the ship. Now, he was having to replace things as simple as bunks for the verminkin crew that he hoped to take aboard. For now, the building out of the two crew quarters compartments would have to wait until Wakins finished with his ship’s repairs.

  While his drones worked, Watkins realized that he needed to alter the ratio of MOBS to drones once more. He had a command limit of forty, and at least for the time being, his MOBS and drones only took up one command point. Lani reminded him that as his MOBS and drones attained higher levels, they would likely require more than a single command point each.

  There was a fight pending on the station, but he had to believe that he’d cleaned out a large portion of the kobold defenders there in his first assault. Their ship might be another story, but for now, and the immediate future, the kobold ship had its teeth pulled and couldn’t maneuver. The crew aboard were still a threat, but one that he didn’t have to deal with until he was ready to board.

  Watkins settled on a split of, 24 MOBS and 16 drones. He could alter that ratio to favor more MOBS if the fight became difficult, but 24 should give him a sizeable force to continue the station assault and have enough held back to keep watch on the verminkin. His drones were stretched thin, but he could afford to take some additional time for repairs if it was needed.

  You have completed level 1 research for your reprocessor. Salvage and biomass reprocessing will improve by 9% once the upgrades to the existing unit are completed.

  For researching Reprocessor, Level 1, you have gained 15 CP.

  Sending a drone to start upgrading the reprocessor almost made Watkins change his unit ratio. The upgrade was good news. While 9% didn’t sound like much, with the volume his reprocessor was handling, that small efficiency bump would pay large dividends.

  The question now was what to research next. Looking over his MOBS, he realized that there was going to be a lot more combat in their future. Presently, their weapons were woefully inadequate. He’d have to improve their firepower if he didn’t want to lose too many in the coming battles.

  You have begun research on Plasma Rifles, Level 1.

  The research on his plasma rifles seemed the better option over pistols. He currently had plenty of the higher capacity laser pistols that he’d taken from the kobolds and halflings. More than enough to equip his forces for the foreseeable future. Having upgrades to the heavier hitting plasma rifles would give him the firepower to deal with any more surprises like the mechs the kobolds had thrown at him earlier.

  His research on the rifles seemed to flow much easier than the reprocessor research had. Overall, it was a much simpler project and would only take a fraction of the time the previous project had taken. Watkins estimated that he’d have the rifle research done, and have time to print up new weapons, well before he was in position to renew their assault on the station. A quick check on the level one research module progress showed that it was up to 22%.

  “It looks like Skitterbach is conscious again,” Lani said, drawing Watkins’ attention to the med pod on the halfling ship. The drone he had in there monitoring the situation hit the pod release. Barely functioning, the halfling pod had brought Skitterbach back from the brink of death, but he was nowhere near completely healed.

  “Skitterbach, I have one of my own medical pods almost ready to go. I’ll bring you over to the Canon to use it, but if you feel up to it, I’d like you to return to your people and help get them settled in with our arrangement,” Watkins said.

  “Skitterbach hurt-pain much, but will do as Captain Watkins ask-demand,” Skitterbach said, carefully climbing out of the halfling med pod with the assistance of the drone.

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  “Great, I’ll have the drone assist you, and you’ll have my MOBS just outside the compartment if there are any additional challenges to your leadership,” Watkins said. Skitterbach slowly hobbled back into the cargo hold that housed the remaining verminkin. One verminkin was in the med pod on the Canon, which was taking longer than normal as the system examined and integrated verminkin physiology into its medical database.

  The verminkin in the cargo hold remained huddled in the center of the compartment, several of them still suffering from the wounds that the halflings had inflicted on them. At least they had all been fed and given enough to drink. He’d give their battered bodies time to process their meals before giving them more to eat. Shoving unlimited food at the half-starving verminkin might kill them quicker than the bite of a halfling would have.

  “Verminkin, see-know that Skitterbach is back. Captain-boss Watkins has kept his word and heal-helped Skitterbach. We now keep-give our word to help-assist,” Skitterbach said, leaning heavily on the drone as the pains of his partially healed wounds left him almost out of breath.

  “What happen to Shterix? She was taken-hauled away by drones. Is she food-larder for our captors now?” One of the younger-looking verminkin asked.

  “No, she is in the medical bay of my ship, the Canon. She is being cared for and will return once her injuries are healed. I’m creating additional medical pods to help the others that are hurt, but it will take a bit of time to complete them,” Watkins said through the drone.

  “Are we really not going to be eaten-consumed by the hungry ones?” the young verminkin asked, his boldness bolstered by a lack of punishment for speaking up earlier.

  “You can know-understand now that Captain-boss will keep his word with our people. As I said, we need to serve-obey and we’ll have enough to eat, and a place to stay,” Skitterbach said. Watkins was happy to see that Skitterbach was jumping feet first into his role as leader and that seemed to have no reservations about their agreement.

  “What can we do-work to help?’ the young verminkin asked. Watkins thought about it for a minute. He wanted to eventually have the verminkin aboard as sapient crew to help control the ship. The designs for simple command consoles were in his database, and those could be used by the verminkin to assist in several ship functions.

  By taking some of the burden off his core, Watkins could focus on other tasks. He wasn’t sure how the system his core had developed to show his progress would handle it, but Watkins knew that there were efficiencies to be gained here. Sadly, it did seem that the verminkin were woefully underprepared to crew a starship.

  “We will train you, and I’ll ask that you all work as hard as possible to learn your new tasks. New quarters are being built for you aboard my ship, and in a while I’ll have more food delivered here. My goal is to bring you aboard as soon as we have a place ready for you. Once you’re settled, a training regimen will be established,” Watkins explained.

  “My people hear-obey Captain-boss. We work hard-strong to help,” Skitterbach said.

  “I know you’ll work hard and let me be clear. There will be no further attempts to wrest control from Skitterbach. I’ve placed him in charge and as the captain of this ship, it is my decision alone to make. In fact…” Watkins said pausing for a bit as he considered the ranking system used by the navy. “Skitterbach will be the Chief Petty officer aboard our ship,”

  “What is chief petty officer?” Skitterbach asked.

  “It’s a higher enlisted rank in my navy, one designated an E7. This rank confirms that you’re in command over the rest of our verminkin crew. They will be assigned ranks once their training begins, but until then, they can all be considered Spacekin Recruits, which is what we’ll call the E1 rank,” Watkins explained, changing the term seaman to spacekin to better reflect the environment and species he was working with.

  “You see-hear, I’m Chief Petty Officer E7,” Skitterbach said with pride. He seemed excited despite the pain he was in. Even the other verminkin seemed to perk up once Watkins gave them their official rank.

  “I’ll have some new shipsuits printed up for you all, and I’ll include your rank tab and name on them. Skitterbach, assign one of your people to take over while you are given a tour of Canon,” Watkins said. The second med pod was ready, and he wanted to get Skitterbach inside it as soon as he could, but he didn’t want to bring further attention to Skitterbach’s weakness in front of his people.

  “You, Srak, you get names of everyone. Tell-speak to drone and organize-plan anything else Captain-boss wants from you while I gone-away,” Skitterbach ordered.

  “Thank you, Chief, follow the drone that you arrived with. I’ll have another one come in to work with Spacekin Srak. By the way, everyone, that’s one of the appropriate ways of addressing Skitterbach, you can just call him Chief instead of his entire title,” Watkins explained.

  The drone helped Skitterbach out of the cargo hold, and toward the Canon where the med pod waited. Work on the third pod was almost done, and he would continue to bring over the most heavily injured first. He also began to work on shipsuits with US Navy ranks on them for his new crew. These verminkin seemed to respond well to being given a rank within the command structure. Watkins doubted they had been given any true recognition in their lives before.

  These were a different species, but some things were universal. Give these verminkin something to work toward, a place to belong, and some respect for their efforts, and he just might forge a capable and loyal crew out of the scraggly creatures. To that end, lots of training was going to have to take place.

  “Lani, I’ve got another job for you. I’d like you to develop simple training modules for our new crew to work through. You can access my database and see how training was accomplished in the past. I’ll have consoles built on the bridge for them to practice on. These guys have little to no real education, so you’re going to have your work cut out for you,” Watkins said.

  “No problem, I can get that handled, but you need to realize that means I can’t help with boosting the drone work efforts while I’m assisting the verminkin,” Lani replied.

  “That’s fine, we’re relatively safe here, and have time to get repairs completed even without the boost you provide them,” Watkins said.

  Watkins looked over the progress his drones were making. Everything was going smoothly. He had his ship, another as a prize, and the crude makings of a real crew. Everything he needed to take the rest of the system under his control was in place. Now, he just had to make it happen.