Chapter 78: Chapter 78 Ptah.
The more they talked the more mysteries were solved.
It turned out that this system was the capital of the confederacy and according to the A.I there was no contact with any other planets.
The relays were still there and functional as they were built to last for a very long time but there simply was nothing there except the information of the planets falling one after the other.
The fleet that was destroyed here belonged to the enemy that the confederacy was facing and it was destroyed soon after it managed to wipe out the capital.
The confederation fleet had nothing more to lose and they just wanted revenge on their enemies so they took the last remaining ships and went to attack their worlds.
The outcome of that attack was unknown but since there never was anyone who came to claim the planet then their best guess was that they exterminated each other.
When it was the A.I's turn to ask questions,Simon simply asked Athena to share her knowledge as it would be way faster than answering the questions one by one.
It took an hour for the A.I to talk things through but at the end of it all ,the shipyard A.I chose its name:Ptah.
It was also the name of the Egyptian god of craftsmen so it suited him perfectly.
Simon ordered the contract to be drawn and Athena took care of it personally.
Not long later,Ptah was a new A.I under a contract from the Terran Council.
The next thing on the list was upgrading the Thanatos and repairing some of the ships that were drifting in space.
-Admiral,to be honest it would be much easier to disassemble your ship and assemble it from scratch or maybe even a better solution would be to tow the Confederation flag ship into the dock and repair it while transferring all the components from your ship.
The confederation never named their ships so it can still be called the Thanatos while you would get a much bigger and more powerful vessel.
Ptah gave Simon his opinion on the upgrade plan.
-Then we would need to get it here using Thanatos but I'm not sure if we can control something that big with only one ship.
Simon answered.
He loved the idea of getting a better ship and even Athena was happy about becoming the new ship's A.I. even if it cost her the ship she was originally assigned to by her creators.
-That won't be necessary as the first ships that will be repaired are some of the space tug's that were in relatively good condition,but this will take some time as I'm still in the process of repairing the damage this shipyard sustained.
The A.I explained.
-It just occurred to me but once the fleet is ready to depart,what will you do?
Simon asked the question that just dawned on him.
-I will go with you all,this shipyard is a sort of a spaceship and it can also travel in FTL.
Hearing this Simon wasn't even shocked anymore.
For the time being the Thanatos was parked in the proximity of the shipyard and the scientists were happy that they could not only take more technology with them but also a working shipyard and even better a fleet that would be almost invincible in their own part of the galaxy.
The time it would take them to repair the ships was quite long but they had the supplies to do it and Ptah explained to them that once the shipyard was repaired the next in line were the tugs whose sole purpose would be to tow the remains of both fleets to the docks for repair and to be disassembled for materials.
The facility had thirty six docks that could be used at the same time so there was no need to worry about lack of space and the fleet would be ready within three months Earth time.
Another surprise was the power source that was used for the shipyard and their own ships.
It was something called vacuum energy,the scientists couldent understand it at all but they accepted that it worked and the fuel for the reactors was all around them in space.
The best news they heard was that the new ships were much faster than the Thanatos in FTL.
The terran ships could travel 40 light years in about an hour of FTL flight,The new ships they were getting ready to repair were four times faster making them travel 160 light years in the same time.
Thanks to this new power source and ships they would get back to earth in around six weeks while avoiding federation space since they still had to make stops to refuel and they didn't want to expose their new fleet too soon.
Ptah who even changed his avatar to match his new name started to like the exiles more and more especially after he was treated as an equal and no one wanted him to call them lord or lady.
He was busy most of the time with repairs and talking with Athena but he also had a task that he needed humans to accomplish.
All the ships that were selected for repairs would need to have an A.I and the decision was made to replace their onboard A.I's with new ones for the time being as it was unknown if the old A.I's would accept the humans as their new captains.
The problem was that the A.I modules were stored in an underground facility that Ptah couldn't connect to from the outside so the only way to get them would be for the humans to go down to the surface and bring them back.
Simon agreed with the A.I's assessment of the warship A.I's and sent two teams to the location provided by Ptah along with the security codes required to open the entrance and the map of the facility.
The task took a few hours but otherwise was uneventful and soon they had a small mountain of over a thousand new A.I's that were still slumbering in their data chips.
Unfortunately they didn't have the personnel to crew that many ships and it was decided that they would repair around two hundred ships and send a three person crew to each one of them and stack another thirty six ships in the shipyard docks.
-Then what are we going to do with the rest of the ships here?
We can't just leave them here for someone to find.
Theresa said when she was discussing this topic with Simon.
-Don't worry,this place was not found for more than 100000 years so it will be ok to leave it for a few more months.
I spoke with Ptah and the moment we get back to earth he is ready to be crewed and to transport people back here to repair the rest of the ships.
Simon explained the plan.
If this worked then in a matter of two or three years they would have a fleet that numbered in well over a hundred thousand ships and also there was a chance to recover more shipyards as Ptah had their locations in his database.
Other than that the humans also visited many of the research centers and military bases on the planet surface to gather the data on technologies that were at least two or three centuries ahead of what they currently had,according to Athena and Ptah.
The moment they brought this data back to earth,humanity would have another technological boom as they would become the most advanced species that they knew of and they would no longer need to fear the Federation or anyone else in their part of the galaxy.
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