Chapter 10 Secrets.

Transporting all of the newly found supplies took 2 days of work even when using both grav-carts and the additional help from everyone.

There were so many materials that they had to store some of them in the dock when the med-bay and another room beside it were full.

Not all of the things they found were connected to medicine.

There were also 4 space suits that were in a good condition and more advanced than the ones used on the station, a few boxes of tools and parts and also 20 crates of MRE's among other things.

All those materials made the people happy, especially the food.

Protein bars kept them fed but their taste left a lot to be desired.

Tommy took one of the small first aid kits and added it to his personal equipment and Simon did the same.

While Alice was busy arranging everything in the med-bay with the help of Anna , Monic and Simon.

Tommy went through the whole ship collecting all the data chips he could find and he found a lot of them and he also had the luck to find a tablet that he could use to read them all.

It might have looked like he lost all interest in escaping, but that was just on the surface.

Deep down he still wanted to avenge his sister and best friend.

Almost every day he had nightmares about their deaths and he swore he would not rest before he destroyed those responsible.

But first he had to get the information he needed like star maps, engineering manuals,piloting manuals,weapons and tactical data and more.

His only way to get out of here was through knowledge and that's why he studied the station schematics and everything else he could find in the archives in engineering.

He made it his routine so that no one suspected a thing.

 And that was also how he found out that the so-called supply ship was just collecting materials without bringing anything into the station, in other words they were just slaves working for free and not knowing anything about it.

This station was designed as a self-sustaining shipyard capable of sustaining its crew indefinitely.

Its original purpose was to build ships from scratch using any materials around it.

When the local resources were depleted it could jump to another star system to find more.

And all of that meant that the nobles tricked them into thinking that they were sent to a specially designed place for exiles.

And that they had to work to survive, not to mention that they could cut off the supply of food and water. 

When in reality this station was just partially converted and was controlled remotely.

In reality this station produced all of the supplies by itself and the lack of fuel to the generators was a joke. This station used helium 3 as a fuel and was more than capable of topping off its fuel tanks within a week's time using the local star. 

All it took to fool everyone here was some slight adjustments and hiding the corridors by welding them shut, installing the magnetic harpoons and placing the station alongside two others like it and connecting them together.

The last piece of the puzzle was to leave the stations right smack in the middle of a system which was a ship graveyard and send the exiles here to work for them for free.

All they had to do now was to send a ship once in a while to collect the materials.

Those guys who tried to escape were probably caught by the crews of the bigger ships that were collecting the resources and used as an example to scare the others away with added pressure from stopping the production of nutrient bars and everyone was so scared that they stopped the others from escaping.

It was really very clever and the added bonus was the utilization of an old shipyard that was supposed to be shut down to reduce the costs.

In the end this shipyard once housed more than 2500 people and all of them had to be paid while new shipyards needed only around a dozen people to run it,the rest was automated.

So instead of shutting it down someone found a way to make more money off of it.

They probably newer imagined that someone with some engineering knowledge would be

sent here and even if they were who in their right mind would read the archives and look at the schematics which to most people meant nothing,so they either forgot or were too lazy to delete the files.

When he found all of that out a plan formed in his mind and if everything went well and he got lucky then maybe he could get everything he wanted without putting the rest of the exiles in any sort of danger.

The first part of this plan was to learn all the skills and knowledge he needed to take control of this station without the nobles knowing about it.

The only downside was that he had to do it alone, even if he shared his findings with the others there was no way in hell that they would believe him and even if they did they were too afraid to try and escape and there was also the possibility of someone being a mole.

Doing everything by himself was very time consuming but also the safest way to do it.

When he collected every chip he could find he went to the main area for a break.

At the central area he found Simon,Alice and Anna sitting together.

-Wow. How did they manage to get you away from the med-bay?

He asked jokingly,while sitting with them and putting his backpack on the floor.

The next thing he knew Alice had punched him in the shoulder while sending him a glare.

-It's not enough that you laughed at me in the dock,next you disappear when the rest of us were storing everything away and even now you make fun of me?

She said in an angry voice shaking her fist at him.

-In my defense i have to say that the situation in the dock was really way too funny and as for the rest i was helping you carry all that stuff to the med bay and then i thought about the scanner that i'm sure you want to set up in there so i went back to the shuttle to get these.

He showed her one of the data chips.

-I can't assemble it for you without some knowledge about it now can I?

Seeing the data chip and hearing his words made her mood a lot better.

-Wait a minute ,didn't you say that you are an engineer or something?

Asked Anna.

-No i'm not an engineer at least a never got to attend the engineering school

but I studied by myself for almost two years and I sometimes tinkered with different devices.

That aside engineering is a vast subject that's constantly expanding so there is no way to learn it all even if i studied all of my life.

He explained.

It was the truth but it also helped him to hide his lie.

He already knew how to set the scanner up and even if he didnt there was always a chip with an instruction in every box.

The others didn't know about it so no one suspected anything.

The added bonus was that Alice stopped being angry at him after hearing that he went to look for the information he needed to assemble her scanner.

What he didn't know was that she was far from forgiving him ,and the first chance she got she was going to make him suffer in the mad bay.