Chapter 24 Ahead of schedule.

At the same time that Alesia was putting her sister in her place the shuttle of her human friends returned from orbit.

-It looks like we have a full load of fuel to use.

Mikael said with a smile after they checked the gauge on the tanks in the cargo hold.

-Let's pump it out and send it back into orbit. We will need much more than this for the ships.

Simon said and went in the direction of newly constructed storage tanks.

Emptying 20 tons of fuel took them 4 hours and as soon as it was completed they sent the shuttle back into orbit .

The next thing to do was to build the reactor that used helium 3 .

Construction was ordered immediately,and the fabricators started spitting out parts one after the other.

It took them another 5 days to finish building the reactor but the moment it started working they had more than enough power to continue with their plans.

First item on their list was an even bigger fabricator and more drones but that was left to the machines to deal with.

Next item on tha agenda was the design of the ships.

-Well it turns out that it's easier to build a ship from scratch than rebuild an already existing one.

Mikael confessed to his mistake.

-I also noticed that and i think i will just design a ship i like from one of the sci-fi shows i watched.

Simon said while thinking of piloting his favorite ship.

-Than what should i do?

I know nothing about ships other than those I saw on this planet.

Steuner asked.

Don't worry we will find a design that you will like and if not then we will design one for you.

Simon said ,trying to calm down the lizard man.

It turned out that his people didn't have an official name for themselves and he liked the sound of lizard man so it stuck to him.

-Well what kind of ship do you want to design?

Mikael asked Simon.

It's from a tv series and it's called BC-304. If I remember correctly it's around 200 meters long, 90 meters wide and 70 meters high but I will need to change some things to install weapons systems that I want.

He showed them the image that he created using the design program he found in the database.

-That's an interesting design but will it work?

Mikael asked.

-I don't know yet ,The design must be finished to run a simulation.

Simon answered and returned to designing his ship.

-Then what class will this ship be?

-In the series it was a battle cruiser so i think i will do it the same way.

Of course it wont have some of its technology from the series but i think it will work.

Simon answered.

-Then I will leave the design to you.

Mikael said with a smile.

-This will take some time and in the meanwhile we need to start collecting more materials for the ships and scraper drones need to make place for the construction site.

-Then let's select the ships to dismantle.

They decided on a place 400 meters away from Mikael's home as it was flat and there were not many ships around there.

They programmed the drone network on what to do and the drones went to work.

According to the network it would take three months for the drones to clear the place but the more drones the faster it would go so they programmed the fabricators to start producing drones as soon as they were finished with building the big fabricator parts.

Simon at this time was struggling with the design program.

The shape of the hull wasn't a problem but the interior was a different matter. He had to make some changes to incorporate two reactors needed to power the ship and all the weapons he wanted, not to mention the ammunition storage and an onboard fabricator,the drones and fuel tanks took quite a bit of space.

So he removed two hangars and all of the rocket launchers from the original design to make more room.

He also incorporated some smaller missile tubes and some torpedo tubes into the hull.

The MAC's were designed as the turrets and some energy weapons were also turret based but unlike the MAS's they were retractable.

He also designed four mine tubes on the back of the ship in case he had to run.

The shields were designed automatically when he designed the hull but he had to add the armor plating and combine it with some power lines to charge it with electricity in case his shields failed.

The electrical current in the armor plating helped to disperse some of the energy weapons.

From what he saw in the designs of the spaceships from other species they invested in lighter and faster ships at a cost of armor and fire power.

The only heavy hitters they had were the battleships and dreadnought class ships.

So as long as he didn't run into any of them he should be fine and even if he did run into one of them he still had a chance to win or at worst run away.

It took him a better part of the week to design the ship that had everything that he ever wanted and the simulations showed that it would work.

His ship could have a crew of 60 people but it could also be operated from the captain's chair.

The only thing it didn't have was a matter converter because he couldn't find any plans for them.

The next step was to design Steurners ship so he went to find him and they started the work on the lizardman ship.

At this time the big fabricator was built and all four fabricators produced more drones to speed up the cleanup of the construction site.

They decided long ago that the moment the ships were getting built they would put their trackers around them so that nobody had an idea to drop junk on their ships.

But that plan had to be changed,Mikael's tracker stayed in place as most of the devices were placed around his house.

Simon placed his in the construction site and Steuner placed his, in one of the ships on the other side of the devices just to make sure that they are protected.

It would take time to start building as they needed a lot of materials especially that Steuner couldn't decide on his own design and in the end they were building three identical ships.

-How much materials do we need to start the construction?

Steuner asked as he never even dreamt of building his own spaceship.

-Thousands of tons my friend and that's why for now we will be building drones.

Simon answered.

-Then it will take a long time before we have our ships.

The lizardman spoke.

-It will take months to build them but we are already ahead of schedule.

I thought that it would take years to build a construction base big enough to even start building ships.

And here we are, a few months and we just need some more drones to start the construction.