"So...no more temper tantrums?"

"No."

"No shutting me down and mindlessly ripping my bots apart?"

"No."

It's been three days since she calmed down. I didn't want to bring that 'accident' until sometime later. That being today.

"So, no more- ""No."

"You didn't even let me finish." She decided to finally wear some proper clothes since that fabric she had from the vat burned when one of the fabs blew up after her…fit. Supposedly it's just a simple lab coat along with some undergarments and pants and shirt.

It's not simple at all. The material from which her clothes are made of is heavy. Just her bra and panties weight around 2 kilograms. Her clothes are fire-resistant, corrosion-resistant and ridiculously elastic. I'm not sure why you need to have fire-resistant panties when you have pants that protect her much better, but there we go.

"You would say something stupid to which I would most probably reply with no." I guess, she's probably not wrong.

"What are you making any way?" It's not something that can harm me. No matter how bullshit Progenitor tech can get it sure as hell can't turn lemons into nukes. Right? Right?

Instead of replying she presses a button on the machine that looks like a microwave without the transparent front glass and it rumbles then she brings a mug I made alongside cutlery and dishware when I started making housing units that didn't come with anything. Not even a couch. A couch. One of the most important furniture a house must have aside from bed.

After a while the machine stops rumbling and we hear a ping. She opens the door and puts the mug in. Is that running water I hear? One of the cameras I the room zooms in on the machine and the mug inside and see water that's sprinkling. Like Sprite or 7Up…

"Alana, did you just make a soda machine?" She takes the mug out and takes a sip.

She turns towards the camera with a small smirk donning her lips. "Yes."

She takes another sip and this one is prolonged as she looks with amusement in her eyes at the camera.

…Fuck I want some soda.

"How's the progress with the bodies for others?" She asks.

"They're about done but I ain't getting them in those bodies. Not after your outburst."

She looks alarmed at that. "But you said that you want to help my people and revive them."

"Yeah but after you went on a scrapping spree, I don't feel so comfortable reviving more till we get this sorted out." I tell her.

"Look what I did is… It's not how I normally am. I do feel a bit ashamed at losing control but look at it from my point of view." She puts the mug down. "Before I was brought back, we were losing. Badly. Out of the literal millions of worlds we once held we now possessed only 300 of them."

She jumps and sits on the table. "When I was uploading everyone's minds into the data storage, I've been on one of the worlds that would be under siege soon. I remember when I was ready to upload myself and the enemy arrived and overrun the defense in matter of minutes. Then blank. I don't remember exactly what happened for the last few minutes of the mind upload. Then I wake up and see that the only chance at our survival is this." She gestures around the room. "I can't really see much hope for us."

She then sat there in silence.

"We should put it on hold for now. I don't think either of us will budge on this issue. Maybe talk about it tomorrow?" She sighs and nods.

"You talked about some construct at the edge of the system containing a massive amount of this weird matter-antimatter particle?"

"Yeah, there's this tuning fork looking thing called a Mass relay form the Mass effect franchise. It can somehow either speed up light allowing for faster superluminal travel without actually going faster than light or it lowers the mass of the object traveling or both. I'm not really sure."

She rolls her eyes at that. She believes that I'm just glitching and somehow used the data on culture and other records of species to construct my personality. Apparently, that's more believable. We'll see how believable that's going be when the reapers will be knocking at our doorstep.

"The Hermes probe is there collecting data. You want me to send them to ya'?"

With a simple nod as an answer I put the data on a screen in the wall. She's looking at it with contemplative look.

"Do you think that you could get some samples?" She asks.

"Not sure how. The metal extractors just turn the minerals and other things into metals and components for the machines."

"Then use the civilian mining units. We uploaded them on your drives for a reason."

I look through the database. "Huh. I thought they were just inferior to the metal extractor."

"No, they are for research purposes. Mine them, bring them here for study and I'll see what I can do. You should prepare for expansion to other systems soon. We'll need a lot of resources to have a good military strength." I make a dumb noise to which she raises an eyebrow.

"What?" She asks.

"How exactly am I supposed to move to other systems?" I ask her. It probably sounds dumb to ask but I really have no idea.

Her eyebrows are twitching furiously. "How? I…you just… Just use the Hyperium drive that we used to come into this galaxy. What's so hard to understand about that?"

"I…I don't have it. There's no 'Hyperium drive' in my database. So, no. I don't think I understand how I'm supposed that."

"What." I can hear the dot behind that word.

"How? When you arrived in a ship it had a Hyperium drive. Are you telling me that you somehow managed to lose an entire ship?" Her left eye was twitching furiously.

"What? No. Even I don't think I'm dumb enough to lose a ship with the only way of getting out of this system. I woke up when I was falling through the upper atmosphere." Her shoulders slumped.

"It's one of the main reasons I woke you up first. With your help I could find the right people to re-invent whatever FTL drive you guys were using." She rubbed her forehead.

"The Hyperium drive is…was an experimental superluminal engine that could help us travel across galaxies. It was made with us escaping our galaxy from the horror that wanted to kill us." Shit. That makes things way more difficult.

"C'mon, you guys must have some alternatives, right? If this 'Hyperium drive' was an experimental then that means you had a different FTL drive right?" She looks back at the camera.

"We had plenty of superluminal drives. The space wave drive was too costly in terms of energy consumption, only good for short bursts not even a light year distance. Thus, it was used for in system jumps. Then there's the hyper-lane drive but that one can only go through pre-determined pathway created with the birth of the stars. It would take around a day's travel to move around 50 light years. Downside was that the enemy could use that to make choke points and they did when we weren't the absolute galactic power. And then…then there's the Jump drive. It was almost perfect. 13 284 light year in a day. It only got faster after tuning it and making it better over time. The newest model could go as fast as 50 000 light year per day. The fastest and most precise superluminal drive ever made."

"I'm hearing a but in there." She nods at my response.

"For some inexplicable reason that we simply couldn't solve the Jump drive couldn't allow us to leave the galaxy. We learned that the hard way. When the swarm attacked, we didn't worry that much but when we lost three fourths of our empire our defeat inevitable, we decided to leave and take our vengeance later. We would have an entire new galaxy to bring to our heel and use its resources to save ours." She sips whatever remains in her mug and puts it down with a bit too much force causing it to shatter on impact.

"Except we couldn't. The Jump drives simply moved us to the edge of the galaxy and no further. The hyper-lane drive doesn't work across galaxies. The space wave drive. The slowest of them all. Even with the energy requirements met there's this… build up and eventually it would release it and cause the ship itself to twist as space violently corrects itself. Hardly of use for our mission."

Oh, by the emperor. I know where this is heading. With a sigh I ask. "Who do you need revived to make the Hyperium drive?" She looks up in surprise at the fact that I'm offering something I just a few moments ago said I wouldn't do.

Not letting go of this chance she immediately replies. "Kala."

She says it with such certainty and shine in her eyes. Hmm. Must be a close friend of hers. Hm hm hm. Kala, lil'Kal, kala.

"You might need to be a bit more specific there are like 5 Kalas here. Not sure which one you want." She rolls her eyes.

"Kala Mika." If I had brow they'd furrow.

"You want me to bring back a psychologist in order to make an FTL drive?"

"No, I can make the Hyperium drive all by myself." I stop dead in tracks.

"Then we don't need to revive anyone, though right?" She crosses her arms and gives the camera an unamused look.

"The Hyperium drive is an extremely difficult device to make and I wouldn't trust anyone with making it. Thus, we need to make alternatives. We'll revive people that worked on the other drives and they'll make the schematics so you can install them into our vessels whilst I work on my project." She explains in detail.

"And the psychologist?" I ask her.

"You said it yourself you don't want a repeat of what I did. Unlike me Kala would probably be confused but definitely not violent. With her help we can calmly wake up others without them lashing out." She's not wrong.

"Ok. She'll be awakened in about five days since the readjustment to her body will take a while." Interesting thing about the bodies. They are blank slates. Basically, when the body is made it lacks any distinguishing features thought that in and of itself is a distinguishable feature and… ok look. The body lacks any reproductive organs, hair it doesn't even have a progenitor skin color. When I want to revive someone, I select them and upload them and the program within the vat automatically finds her genetic code and basically rewrites the code of the body in the tube. Obviously, it leaves the super soldier things in, but it alters the body drastically in a short period of time. Meaning that the goo they're in also acts as a coolant. They then gain whatever traits their original body had minus defects and plus super body that's ripped without even going to a gym.

I'm somewhat jealous.

What was the other thing? The sample, right.

"I'll have the mining civ-bot ready and loaded on Astraeus in half an hour. Though it will take some time to travel there. It will be within a day, but the trip back will be a long one."

She chuckles. "Commander, where is the element located?" A weird question.

"On an asteroid floating just in a ring around the third planet. Ya' know the one with the ring."

"And how big is the asteroid?"

"I dunno you could stack like 5 commanders on top of each other. The thing is pretty round too. No potato or some Frankenstein fry." That's like 75 meters and if my math is right that's over 1,77 million cubic meters. That's a lot of volume. A lot of potential resources.

I think that I'm thinking too small. I'm so focused on having every planet and moon covered in extractors that I forget about the little guys. Already I started ordering multiple Orbital launcher to make more Astraeus to launch at the asteroid ring around the planet.

"Commander!" I'm brought out of the self-induced enlightenment and back to reality by Alana's voice.

"Yes?"

"Add a fabrication unit or two." Eh?

"Why?" She gives me a disappointed look.

"To cut travel time. You said it yourself a trip back would take far too long. Thus take a few fabricators with you and when you land make them build a ring teleporter after that the mining unit will simply travel through the portal and be picked up by an air transport." Again, she's not wrong and it's really smart. Not surprising since she's the smartest there is.

"When you deliver it, I'll take a look at it and see what can be done with it. After that I'll start working on the Hyperium drive."

"How long will this 'checking' take?" I dunno why but it feels like she's stalling. For what? Not sure.

"Around 3 to 5 days." Huh, that's almost about the time that…

"You just don't want to work on it until your friend wakes up."

"Yes." And there we go. Could have been stalling for worse things but this is pretty good.

"At least you're honest."

"Honesty a one of the first steps to building trust." She replies.

"True that."

And like that we started to, well, not make up but definitely tolerate each other. Kala definitely helped in that regard when she woke up. Never thought I'd need a psychologist in my life.

So, yeah here we go. About the ending, Kala will be revived in the next chapter. Dave just mentions her right now to make her presence a bit more… welcoming I think is a good away to put it. A lot of people don't like Alana and Kala is someone whom I want to make as pleasant as possible.

As for any errors. I literally wrote this on the very day I uploaded it. I simply didn't have time to write in the week. Now I could make excuses like working on a project that would determine my future employment or the absurd number of tests my teachers decided to throw our way since next week is free. However, the excuse I'm going with is this… after I was done each day, I had time to work on this, yet I spent it watching Microsoft paint versions of anime openings. Yep, that's the excuse I'm using. I'm sorry...kinda.