Kin didn't have obvious cyberware, but that didn't mean much, since most of his body was hidden under the spacesuit and anyway biological freespacers usually have a lot of internal cyberware, especially on their brain and nervous system.
He glanced at the cargo being unloaded. "Of course, we thank you deeply for your offer of help." He said, very politely. "The Junkers will take care of transporting your cargo where it is needed... Oh, you even have some gravity well projectors. Wonderful." He said, probably checking the cargo manifest with his mindware implants. "Then we'll use them... as grav well projectors 11098 to 11150." He said to himself, looking thoughtfully to the empty hallway. "Medical supplies will be stored with the others. Those will be of great help, too."
In fact, the 'spacers had been buying (or, rather, bartering), among other things, a lot of gravity well projectors, graviton-generating and manipulating technology, and similar space-distortion equipment, from many different sources. Were they all being used in this station? Those numbers were huge.
"Meanwhile, if we could use your help... ring sections 70 to 90, in the opposite direction, are one of the sectors specifically designed for lodging and necessities of Nepleslian traders, tourists and visitors, so we're mostly leaving them in the care of Nepleslian personnel, either volunteers like you, or civilian or military contractors." he pointed the other way, where the empty corridor ended in a large metallic wall blocking the way, with a huge double door.
Probably the station was to be divided in numerous sections, each isolated from the others by a huge bulkhead that could be hermetically sealed in case of a hull breach. It was standard issue on every spacefaring vessel, alright, but, even for such a large station, having more than 90 independent sections was security bordering on paranoia: it meant a bulkhead every 10 meters, possibly less.
The station could get cut cleanly in two by an aether cannon and keep working fine, losing only the damaged sectors, by the looks of it.
This design philosophy was actually slowly becoming pretty well-known among Nepleslian fleet personnel as a sort of inside joke, nicknamed "murphy-proof engineering" with a mix of respect and of thinking that all Freespacers are, in fact, nutcases.
"You can log in freely to Polysentience here, we've established a wireless network easily compatible with your computer interface." He explained, walking up to the bulkhead as the Junkers stayed behind, helping to unload the cargo and slowly, crate by crate, scuttling about and carrying every box to its rightful destination. "You can use it to check the basic blueprints for the hull and what those that were here before you built in that sector."
There... wasn't any planning at all? Basically, they said to every Nepleslian who came aboard to help, either because they had a contract or because they were volunteers wanting to give a hand, "Ring sections 70 to 90 are yours, go crazy"?
The bulkhead doors opened, revealing a familiar-looking area.
It looked a lot like the interiors of a Nepleslian ship, but, obviously, minus the symmetry.
More accurately, it looked like if someone had jammed together the interiors of a deluxe passenger ferry, a cargo ship, a scientific vessel and a battlecruiser. There were intersecting corridors, small crew quarters, large, elegant rooms, long and narrow cargo holds, elevators and industrial goods-lifts, what would probably end like an L-shaped dining room, a small observation deck...
...yeah, it was a mess. A familiar mess, but an incoherent mess nonetheless. Still, it looked habitable, comfortable even. The complete lack of symmetry or sensible planning, however, was a bit disturbing.
Here and there there were a handful of junkers, nepleslians and freespacers, both biological and automata, walking around, carrying construction materials, working or chatting.
"Is there anything you'll need?" Asked kin, stroking his moustache.
Meanwhile, outside...
Code:
Oh, you're one of those ar-tificial in-telligences Neps use! Well then, let me clas-si-fy your ass-ist-ance as "vo-lunteer aid". We get a lot of Nep vo-lun-teers wan-ting to help us. Just when most of us were think-ing that yours was a mercenary culture that only cared for per-son-al gain, back just be-fore the Dark-en-ing, you go out of your way to sur-prise us and pro-ve us wrong!
The broken robotic voice was sounding excited.
Code:
Un-fortunately it would be dif-ficult for you to help us re-pairing the fleet, both be-cause con-ditions on our ships are rather un-favorable to your biology, full of ra-dio-active materials and chemicals poison-ous for your or-gan-ism, and be-cause, well, our ships are quite different from yours as de-sign phi-lo-so-phy, it would be long and dif-ficult to explain.
A light on the ring-shaped station's hull began to flash.
Code:
But we're assembling a bit mo-re than a quar-ter of the Port Hope station with Nep-leslian bi-o-lo-gy and ne-ces-sities in mind, and we're leaving them the lead the-re so that they can build, well, how they like. I'm fla-shing the light of the dock-ing door, just next the Tran Se-ed "Halberd De-bacle". Thank you for your assistan-ce!
