Time passed quickly.
It had been an entire month since the battle that had beaten the Helios Group to a bloody pulp.
Andy sat in the tactical command center, looking at the real-time holographic map of Sector 9, which was now almost entirely lit up with green markers. He didn't feel much relief.
This past month had been too quiet.
So quiet it felt surreal.
By all rights, a giant of Helios's magnitude should have had some kind of reaction after suffering such a massive blow on their own turf—with their main forces crippled and their reputation dragged through the dirt. Even if they didn't launch an all-out war, they should have at least sent some assassins or initiated a resource blockade.
But in reality? Nothing!
This wasn't because Helios had suddenly attained enlightenment. It was purely because they were rotten to the core.
According to intelligence sent back from the Mid-Hives by Sisyphron, the Helios Group was currently in a state of "administrative shock." An old fossil named Saul was busy cooking the books to cover up the truth of the defeat in Sector D and the disaster in the Acid Swamps. He was preoccupied with scapegoating the already-absconded Zeman and purging middle management who knew too much.
This led to an incredibly bizarre situation.
The "Absolute Blockade Line" that Helios had established around the perimeter of Sector 9 was basically a leaking sieve. The mercenaries responsible for the blockade weren't getting paid their full overtime, and they had to deal with sniper fire that could come from the shadows at any moment. Their morale had long since collapsed.
Their patrol routes were as rigid as a pre-set program—fixed times, fixed paths, they didn't even change the spots where they slacked off to smoke. Andy's "Black Spirit" spiders scurried right past their feet, and they didn't even bother to look down.
As long as Andy didn't lead a massive army brazenly through the front gates, these people simply acted like they saw nothing!
Can you believe it?
Then again, this was a common ailment of mega-corporations; the Imperial Administratum was even worse than Helios. When a disaster occurred, the first instinct wasn't to solve the problem, but to "solve" the person who raised the problem and find ways to erase the losses from the spreadsheets.
This administrative inefficiency gave Andy an extremely precious—one might even say luxurious—window for "low-profile development."
During this month, Andy hadn't been idle. The molecular matter reconstructor had been running almost non-stop. Raw materials went in one end, and finished products poured out the other.
Andy's stockpile of heavy weaponry and ammunition had reached an almost obscene level of saturation. The special rockets that he previously had to ration—the ones that made his heart ache with every shot—now filled three entire warehouses. As for the bolts for the CBS High-Explosive Crossbows, they were measured by the ton!
The shelter had completed its toughest phase of primitive accumulation, transforming from a refugee camp barely scraping by into a superpower warlord faction with its own independent military-industrial system.
But that wasn't what Andy was most satisfied with.
The real surprise was in the sky.
To be precise, it was at the top of Sector 9's abandoned orbital freight elevator.
Taking advantage of this undisturbed period, Andy had directed the Black Spirit spiders and several hundred newly produced heavy engineering drones to quietly repair the long-defunct orbital dockyard.
The job was done with complete stealth. Because the high-altitude sensors Helios had deployed there had broken long ago and no one had bothered to fix them, they assumed the place was a dead end. They never dreamed someone could be carrying out engineering projects up there.
Now, the dock's mechanical arms could move, the vacuum seals were repaired, and even the heavy freight guide rail leading straight to the ground was powered up.
Of course, precision facilities like the anti-gravity generator arrays and vacuum shield lifefields still needed production capacity from Sol's side to fill the gaps. Speaking of which, Sol's production capacity had suddenly exploded to an absurd degree over the last month. Who knew what stroke of luck he'd had? He'd have to have Sisyphron ask about it another day!
Andy turned his gaze to a black metal box on the command console.
It was the culmination of his hard work over the past month.
A brand-new starship fire control and navigation system, written based on the underlying logic of the Golden Age.
The hardware was assembled using core circuit boards salvaged from the New邦 (New State), combined with precision parts provided by Priest Sol and Andy's own hand-crafted architecture. The software was a high-efficiency operating system rewritten by Andy himself.
It was no exaggeration to say that if you plugged this thing in, it could independently take over any Imperial Navy frigate—independently!
If used on the New邦, it could increase the ship's response speed by 375% and improve fire control accuracy by two orders of magnitude.
However—
At this moment, Andy was facing an extremely awkward misalignment of expectations.
He had the best control system in the world, but no ship.
It was like holding the keys to a Ferrari with a ten-thousand-dollar gas card in your pocket, only to find out you have to take the bus when you leave the house. It was infuriating.
Andy pulled up the holographic structural diagram of the New邦. This was the ultimate problem he had to solve.
According to the original plan, Andy was going to strip the core components from the crashed starship—Little Six's physical body, the Warp Drive, and the Geller Field generator—and transport them to the newly repaired orbital dock. There, using the dock's equipment and stockpiled materials, he would build a new hull, install the engines, and create a brand-new ship.
The plan sounded perfect. The logic was sound.
But when Andy actually began to calculate the engineering workload, reality hit hard.
First was the engine.
The warp engine, named "Voidwalker-IV," was the heart of the ship. It wasn't a small part that could be disassembled and put back together. To withstand the horrific pressures of warp travel, its core components were cast as a single unit.
Andy glanced at the data tag: Weight: 4,200 tons.
The ship was currently buried hundreds of meters underground, surrounded by a complex web of rock layers and architectural ruins. Without completely dismembering the ship and excavating the entire strata above it, it was impossible to move this behemoth out. With the resources Andy currently had, he couldn't budge this thing an inch.
Second was the Geller Field generator.
This was even more of a headache. It wasn't an independent device. To ensure the field perfectly enveloped the hull, the projection array was welded directly onto the ship's main keel. If it were forcibly removed, the calculation accuracy of the field generator would be severely compromised.
If the accuracy slipped, the resulting Geller Field would have holes. In the Warp, a hole even the size of a needle's eye is enough for the demons outside to crawl in.
So, it was a mess.
"This can't be moved either..."
Andy rubbed the bridge of his nose.
The laws of physics are ruthless; they don't give you a back door just because you're a transmigrator. Without transport tools capable of "brute-forcing a miracle," this pile of treasure could only rot in the ground.
Andy's eyes wandered over the hologram, finally landing on the overall structure of the New邦.
Though the ship had been buried for centuries and its interior decorations had rotted away—and though Andy had stripped its electronics clean—its skeleton was still intact. Rogue Trader ships were built with incredibly solid materials to survive in unknown sectors.
The main keel wasn't deformed. The armor plates had scratches but no structural damage. The cabins had plenty of damage, but they were all fixable. Even the vector thrusters used for atmospheric flight looked like they could work with a little repair.
A mad thought began to process within Andy's logic core.
Since he couldn't move the parts, he'd stop trying to move them.
Since he couldn't transport the engines to the dock to build a new ship, why was he obsessed with the concept of "building a new ship"?
Why not just use this old ship?
It was buried underground, with hundreds of meters of rock and Hive foundations pressing down on it. But at its core, it was a starship. It was a steel beast designed to struggle within the gravity wells of stars and weave through meteor showers.
Its thrust was designed to escape planetary gravity. Its armor was designed to withstand heavy artillery. A few hundred meters of dirt? Compared to starship-grade power, what was that worth?
Andy's fingers tapped on the console, pulling up a new simulation model.
What if...
What if he didn't dig? What if he didn't disassemble?
What if he took the repaired control system back, plugged it into the body of the New邦, and stuffed those twenty high-energy fusion fuel rods into the reactor?
Then, right there underground, he'd hit the ignition.
Start the main engines.
Turn on the Void Shields.
Use the ship's prow ram as a drill and push the throttle to the floor.
Let this multi-thousand-ton steel beast, pinned under hundreds of meters of earth, forcibly smash a path out from underground!
It would trigger a massive earthquake. It would completely collapse the Helios factory above. It might even cause half of Sector 9 to sink.
But so what?
As long as the ship could fly, as long as it could punch through the atmosphere, this was the most efficient solution.
Brute force creates miracles!
Andy looked at the big green "SUCCESS" on the STC simulation results, the blue light in his electronic eyes reaching maximum intensity.
"It's decided."
Andy stood up and grabbed the black metal box from the table. "We're not moving it."
"We're driving this big guy straight out!"