108 Upgrade Plan

Over the next few days, Kita spent a lot of time in the Labs. He both organized everything in the lab to how he liked it and also spent some time organizing the information he had about the unknown Alien race.

Calling them the Unknown Alien race was a bit unwieldy and writing 'unknown aliens' everywhere in his reports was a pain. So he had decided to call them Celestrex from now on. Kita decided on this name on the fly and didn't think too much into it.

Although he wanted to work a few other research projects, but that wasn't possible currently as the Labs didn't have many essential equipment. So he could only put them off for later.

As he was finishing up one of his tasks, he got a notification from Noel.

The ship was about to exit FTL, He wanted to know If Kita was gonna be there.

Kita looked around. There was only Noir who laid on a table to the side around. He had been holing himself up in here for the past few days. Although he loved to work like this. But he currently had a lot more responsibilities.

He needed to address these responsibilities.

He quickly picked up Noir and got out of the Lab.

As he entered the Bridge, he looked around, everyone was at their usual stations. Noel was busy doing something, And all the other operators were also busy working on their tasks.

"What's the ETA for our exit?" Kita asked as he took his seat.

"2 minutes."

Kita looked forward as the time ticked away.

At the 2 minutes mark, The fast moving rainbow lights on the projection began to slow down as all of them felt the telltale sign that they were exiting FTL.

Transitioning back to realspace from hyperspace always felt a bit weird. But this wasn't too uncomfortable. And the newer drives were better at lessening this feeling to a degree. But it was still noticeable.

All the Operators went to work as soon as the Jeager finished it's transition. There were a lot of work that needed to be done.

The next Lagrange point needed to be calculated, The next hop distance and everything needed to be cross checked and the FTL drive needed to be prepared for the next hop.

The current star system didn't have any name. It was a pretty generic system with nothing much going for it. It only had a single gas giant. An Automated Miner was responsible for mining it. Occasionally a hauler would come and take away the precious gasses.

It seemed that there weren't anyone else in the system aside from them. That was good. It made things a lot easier if they were the only one.

By the time the FTL drive had finished cycling, the ship had already reached the Lagrange point. so at the next opportune moment, It left the unknown star system behind and towards it's destination.

After successfully transitioning back into FTL, Kita left the bridge and went to the engineering bay to talk with Hugo. He had given the guy a task, he wanted to see how it was progressing along.

As he entered the Engineering Bay, he saw Hugo working on a machine of some sorts. Kita couldn't figure out what it was.

Noticing Kita enter, Hugo quickly put aside his tools and turned to look towards his boss.

"Hey boss. What brings you here?" Hugo said with the usual smile plastered on his face. Kita had seen him serious only once till now.

"Nothing much, Are you done with the task? What kind of upgrades do we need to support another FTL drive?" Kita asked.

"Oh, yeah. I'm done with that. I've already prepared the list of things that needs upgrading. I'll sent you the detailed list of thing." He said as he began to fiddle with his comm.

Kita received the list as took a look at it.

He was impressed at how thorough Hugo had been. He had listed everything that needed to be upgrade, and a detailed explanation why he thought it should be upgraded and even provided the justifications of the replacement parts!

As Kita read through it, He became quite impressed by Hugo's dedication. It seemed that the guy was quite honest and dependable.

Kita couldn't find any fault with his list of things.

"Great! You've done a really good job at this! I'll make sure to prepare a budge for everything. Do you know how long it would take for you guys to upgrade the ship?" Kita asked.

"Well, I'm not sure I can upgrade all this by myself. I'll need to hire the help of the professionals for some of these parts. So, I think I can get it done under a week if everything goes right." Hugo assured him. It was normal that he wouldn't be able to handle all the upgrade himself with his team. Some of the parts were really complex and needed specialized handling to work properly.

"Great. Plan out a schedule for the upgrade with Noel and the others. I'll leave this to you." Kita said with confidence.

"Thanks for your trust boss, I won't let it go to waste." Hugo said with confidence.

"Great! I'll be on my way then."

Huge left the engineering bay and walked towards communications section. As he entered Elena's Office, he saw her working on a terminal and the huge tower nicely installed in a corner of the office. It seemed that everything was going alright.

"What brings you here little brother? I thought that the Stupid project has made you forget about me."

Kita didn't bother to reply to her. Instead he replied with an question.

"Is your machine ready?"

"But of course! She's been ready for the last few days."

"Great! I need you to run a background check on everyone aboard this ship. With how people are. I don't want any traitors among us when I set out on our voyage." Kita said in tone that conveyed he was serious.