Chapter 28.Progress and losses.

When the first parts of the framework were built everyone went to see it and felt that their hard work finally started bearing fruits. 

Tommy and the rest of the engineers were still busy as always, their current work entailed repair of the station sensors which were needed to monitor their vicinity and to check if there were some kind of guard posts,ships or other obstacles that could hinder their escape. 

The work went slowly but steadily and the rest of the people had always seen them either repairing some station systems or discussing their next moves with the rest of the leadership.

Without them knowing almost all of the original five members became de facto leaders of their groups.

Tommy was seen by everyone as the overall commander of the station.

Alice had taken charge of medical staff.

Simon found himself in command of all the soldiers even though most of them had higher ranks than him.

Anne became a leader of the monitoring crew in the command center.

Some others that joined later also became heads of their groups.

Garry was now in charge of all of the salvage operations.

Paul was the chief engineer and even Tommy respected his authority when they were working together.

And then there was Jesica who was their only designer and once she got a free hand she never stopped working unless Tommy ordered her to.

One day when they were having a break Tommy was talking with the other leaders.

-You know, there is something that's bugging me about the people we have here.

Tommy said with an absentminded look on his face as if he was thinking about something.

-And what would that be?

Simon asked.

- I don't have any complaints or anything but when you think about it then everyone here is at least highly competent and some are at a genius level,and I can't figure out why would the nobles send such people to the blue section instead of dispersing them among the stations.

-It's not that hard to figure it out, especially with everything we had learned about the blue section.

It was Paul who spoke up.

-Like you said most of the people here are at the minimum highly competent or outright geniuses which means that they represent a threat if they were set free.

The nobles aren't the brightest bunch in the universe but they are no fools and neither are their servants.

So they send the most problematic people that offended them to the place that will keep them in line and knowing that we can never be forgiven and with the plans you discovered earlier it was a very good plan but they probably never imagined that someone would take the control of the station away not to mention free everyone from the influence of the drug.

After some thinking everyone agreed that it was the most likely explanation.

-Well if they perceive us as a threat then we should not disappoint them.

Simon said with a predatory smile.

-With some luck they will know just how much of a threat we are in a few months.

Tommy said and everyone agreed.

In the dock area there was a lot of activity as always.

-So how much longer will it take to dismantle this batch?

Anne was talking with Garry about resource gathering.

-I think that it would take another month to be done with them,faster if Martha manages to get the crane working and even faster if we can get the second gathering platform online but till then we are stuck to our current output.

The second platform was bigger and it could conwert more materials not to mention that it was capable to accommodate way bigger parts and that was why they needed to get the crane operational.

-The crane will be operational tomorrow at the earliest as for the second platform you need to talk to Sonya about that.

Martha said coming their way.

-I'm going there right now to see if she needs any help,the crane needs some parts and they won't be ready until morning so there is nothing i can do about it.

-Thank you, it's already way faster than I thought and if we can get those two things operational it'll speed up the progress significantly.

-No need to thank me.To be honest, work like this is the reason I decided to become an engineer and I never thought that I would have so much fun while being an exile.

Martha said with a smile.

-I think that none of us ever thought that we would be doing what we always wanted to doin here but look at us now.

I can dismantle all the ships I ever wanted without some idiot slowing me down,you can repair all the equipment that we need ,Anne can write any program that she wants,and don't even get me started on Alice or Jesica.

They all laughed at that last remark.

After some more talking they all went back to work.

Two weeks later the second platform was operational and after some testing it was put to work along with the crane.

Anne Directed all the materials from that platform straight to the warehouse used to store the materials for their ship.

Just as Garry predicted their efficiency would rise by at least a 100% since now they could just detach the whole sections of the destroyer in dock 2 instead of taking it apart and cutting the bigger parts so that they would fit on the grav carts.

At the same time Paul finally was able to repair and activate the sensor array of the station.

Unfortunately with all the ships around there was no way to get any readings about the system they were in.

A few days earlier Jesica presented the finished design of the ship and everyone was very impressed by the finished product.

After that she was asked to design some more things like the shuttles for the ship and Simon wanted her to design some power armors and weapons for everyone.

She was very happy that her design was appreciated and determined not to fail everyone's expectations about the new tasks.

When Tommy told her that she had free rain over the designs she smiled from ear to ear and immediately went around to gather information about what kind of shuttles and armor she needed to design. 

In the meantime Alice informed everyone that she had everything ready to start implanting people with synaptic links.

However the decision was made to put a hold on that because if someone was taken away then soldiers would be suspicious of the sudden appearance of the implants.

At this time she also informed them that all of the survivors from the yellow section were released from the med bay and thanks to the regeneration tank they managed to repair in the main med bay all of them survived and were now fully healed.

Unfortunately not everything went according to plan and they lost two people from the material gathering teams that were taken away by soldiers.

Before they went they promised to not reveal anything about their plan and only asked Tommy to get everyone else out of this place.

They knew that what awaited them was death but they had no intention of dragging everyone down with them.