Chapter 35. Canon.


    There was one ship that popped up in his memory. It wasn’t necessarily because of the ship itself, more of how the crew had fought their vessel. It was an Asheville class gunboat named Canon that had served in the Vietnam War. The ship had found itself on a mission up a river when they began to receive fire from both banks. Hundreds of rounds of small arms fire and eight rockets slammed into the ship, which returned fire with all its weapons.


    The commanding officer of the gunboat, Lieutenant Commander David Brooks, was wounded several times in the fight, including a broken leg. Unable to stand, Brooks ordered the crew to strap him into a stretcher and prop him up so he could continue to direct the guns. Half the crew were wounded, but they fought their way out of the ambush and inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy.


    That was the kind of captain that Watkins admired, a man who fought through the pain of his wounds to make sure his ship and crew won the fight. Yes, that was going to be a proper name for his new vessel. He would name himself after the ship that Brooks had commanded that day. They would be the USS Canon. He pushed the data on the old ship and its history to Lani, so she could review it as well.


    Your Vessel has been designated the USS Canon.


    “Captain Watkins, thank you for the information on the vessel you’re taking our name from. I think we’ll do our namesake proud,” Lani said after perusing the information on the original Canon.


    “I don’t know about you, Lani, but it feels better to have a name for our ship. Now that we’ve taken care of naming, we should see about getting these repairs completed,” Watkins said.


    While the drones had completed the bow section of his ship, there were still more repairs and fine-tuning to be done. The area of his hull where the void creature had hit him with the acidic slime also needed more attention, as did building up a reserve of salvage material. Things were piling up on his agenda.


    “Captain Watkins, I think we may have found the device that allowed the missile launcher to target our ship,” Lani said, drawing his attention to an intact chunk of debris.


    It was a sensor buoy and a quick scan of it showed the device still maintained at least some functionality. The buoy looked like a satellite from Earth to Watkins, a long, cylindrical main body, with two panels extending out from it. The odd panels seemed to perform two functions, they would gather solar energy, and function as passive scan receivers.


    “I want that, let’s haul it aboard and see if we can get the schematic,” Watkins said. He could already imagine creating a network of these across the system.


    “This is old, probably one of the ones that the council had placed here. It looks like someone has been tampering with it,” Lani said as they pulled alongside the buoy and Watkins sent a drone over to snag it. A quick inspection revealed that there were no hidden dangers in the device before they hauled it aboard.


    “Well, look at that, my old codes still work on this. Whoever added it to their sensor network didn’t bother to wipe the command codes, they just did a sloppy job of adding their own operating system over the top of the existing one. Just give me a minute or two and I’ll see what this little buoy has been up to,” Lani said.


    Data began to flow into Lani’s server from the buoy, and she shared the information with Watkins. The buoy’s memory module was damaged, but it still was able to store recent history. He could see that the device had slowly gathered data on his ship as they approached and fed that data into the disposable launcher that they had left behind to defend the jump point.


    Further back in its memory, Watkins could see when the buoy had been discovered by the kobolds, who conducted minor repairs and re-tasked the device for their use. He now had confirmation it was the kobolds who had left behind the missile launcher and had established some connection to the buoy.


    “Lani, is this thing still transmitting data to the kobolds? We know they have at least one other ship out there,” Watkins asked.


    “Yes, it’s set for occasional burst transmissions, and the next data packet isn’t scheduled to be sent for over an hour from now,” Lani advised.


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    “Can we alter the data; make it forget it saw us?” Watkins asked.


    “No, I can alter future transmissions, but they’ll have everything up until about ten minutes ago when the last transmission was sent. From now on, I’ll mask our presence, and they’ll have no idea we’ve taken back their toy,” Lani said.


    “Make it happen. I think we can handle a single kobold ship given its performance against the halfling vessel, but the more time we can remain undetected, the better off we’ll be,” Watkins said.


    For now, he was content to slowly drift around the debris field, snagging all the juicy bits for his ship to turn into raw material. The research on Shields was finally completed, and he now had them at Level 0. It wasn’t an impressive system, but it was better than no protection other than his hull. He would need further research to rebuild the missing second wing of the shield projector, but the one he had could now be made functional.


    You have completed research on Shield Projector, Level 0. As the majority of this research occurred before unlocking your Core Points (CP) system, no CP will be awarded for this research project. Continue to research new technologies to generate CP.


    That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but at least he knew the system his core had designed was still working in the background. Boosting his core level was going to be crucial if he wanted to expand his abilities and eventually have greater command points to allocate. With the shield research finished, he had more work to do.


    A pair of drones were tasked with rebuilding the shield generator. As far as his next project, Watkins now had two torpedo tubes that were sitting there useless, so he had the research module start on those. Progress on his other research, the Reprocessor, was at 67.23% and was slowly plodding along. When it was done, he’d have to see about making the research modules themselves his next upgrade project. They seemed to be struggling with the reprocessor, and the fabricator would probably be even worse.


    “Watkins,” Lani said drawing his attention. "I’ve been able to tap into the network the kobolds are using. It seems they have found two other partially functional sensor buoys linked into their system, and we are now using them as well. One is located near the remains of the research station. Get this, the kobolds are using the ruins of the station as a makeshift dock for their vessels.


    “It’ll take me time to sort through everything in their database, but from what I can initially gather, the kobolds had three ships like the ones we saw in action. They were using this system as an out of the way pirate base to recover and repair after missions deeper into known space,” Lani explained.


    “Does that mean we have access to their star charts?” Watkins asked, excited about the possibility of new data to chart his course back home.


    “It’s limited, and so far, I’ve only found data on the system on the other side of jump point two. That one is another abandoned system, but it has a jump point link not only back toward the more inhabited systems, but also deeper into the unknown areas of space. The unknown areas are where the halfling raiders emerged from. It seems one of the kobold ships ran afoul of the halflings when returning from a pirate raid, and that fight we saw earlier was with the halfling ship that chased them into this system,” Lani added.


    “We’ll take whatever system data we can get, and at least we know part of the research station survived the attack,” Watkins said.


    “True, and it seems the kobold base is a relatively new thing. I can only hope they haven’t explored all the station’s remains yet. If they haven’t, there’s a good chance that what we’re looking for is still waiting for us,” Lani said. If she was right, his crew, and their memories might be waiting for them, but they were also just waiting for the kobolds to stumble across them.


    Watkins didn’t have a good feeling about what the kobold pirates would do with any data servers or stasis pods they found still aboard the station. He was going to have to step things up. They needed to reach the station as soon as he was combat capable. It was almost guaranteed that they were going to have a fight on their hands once the kobolds spotted them.


    “Lani, just to confirm, the kobolds did get sent the information about the missile launch,” Watkins asked, worried that there might be more ships out looking for them.


    “Yes, sadly, they would have received the data on the launch by now. Anything after that would have waiting for the next regular update, or for when a specific request was made for the data,” Lani said.


    “So, the kobolds knew their missile platform had fired, but they didn’t bother to ask what they had shot at, or if the threat was still out there?” Watkins asked. He had no doubt that the kobold pirates were probably as sloppy and lazy as some of the pirates he knew about back on Earth, but he couldn’t fathom them not requesting more information on a potential attacker.


    “That’s correct. There was no response or request for additional information from the kobolds at the station. I’m as confused as you are. For them to go through the trouble of setting up the missile ambush, and then ignoring when it triggers doesn’t make sense. I’ve placed false data showing that the missiles destroyed the target, but we still should have seen more of a response from them,” Lani said.


    “Maybe the kobolds are facing something more urgent than a report on missiles fired back at the jump point?” Watkins considered that there may be something going on back at the station, something that had captured the complete attention of the kobolds.


    “I think we need to head to the station right away,” Lani said. Watkins agreed, they had a decent amount of salvage aboard, and taking more time for research and upgrades were going to have to wait until they secured what they needed from the station.