Tilly was in the process of setting up the machines she ordered for her production line when Jupiter marched in with a smug expression. She was followed by a group of men and women that screamed run.

What worried Tilly was not the scary-looking people that Jupiter had with her, but rather her change in expression. The more Jupiter talked intimidating man who seemed to be in charge, the crazier her grin was.

"Jupiter, who are these people?" She asked warily.

"Remember the time I told you about the city isn't safe anymore and we might be attacked? I made some friends a couple of days ago at the bar and they agreed to take a look at our security setup and recommend some upgrades" Jupiter replied nonchalantly.

"Then why are you grinning like a mad woman?" Tilly exclaimed. To her horror, Jupiter's expression of a maniacal grin gave her goosebumps. "Because my sweet dear friend, Captain Thyrion and his team made some excellent suggestions!"

"Let me guess," Tilly asked with an exasperated sigh "electrical fences?"

"Oh no. That's planned way before" Jupiter replied while shaking her head, disappointed with Tilly’s lack of imagination. "It's electrical barb wires on top of five feet tall reinforced concrete walls supercharged by your new batteries that's guaranteed to fry anybody equipping even with a tier 1.5 medium armour or less.

"If that's not enough we have some old school holes dug. Inside were filled with pressure-activated stun grenades. Across the lawn will also have modified tasers and echo cannons that's set to decapitate anyone.''

Captain Thyrion coughed beside her and mumbled "Incapacitate. Civilian facilities are not allowed to use lethal force".

"Incapacitate any and all sorts of trespassers sort of a fully decked out heavy exosuit'' Jupiter corrected herself without missing a beat.

Tilly stared with her mouth agape, "isn't that.. slightly excessive? Where are you gonna get the credits to fund these upgrades anyway"

"Sorry to interrupt, but there was a misunderstanding" Bravo2 said as he walked up to them. "Captain here” as Bravo2 pointed with his thumb over his shoulder towards the captain, “just gave some examples and your friend just went crazy. This place is too small for all that. The reinforced concrete wall and some anti personnel measures would suffice"

Jupiter looked horrified. "No! This is supposed to be my fun! We need inflict maximum pai.. I meant maximum security. My friend's tech is very valuable!" she cried.

"I might have a solution for your friend's tech" Bravo 6 came in after inspecting the compounded and added. "Jupiter you're a programmer, right? You can put all her work behind a dead man switch. Basically it destroys everything inside if the file is opened incorrectly. It is quite common for top-secret folders"

Tilly let go of the breath she was unconsciously holding. "That sounds good. I could use your help Captain, can you come over to my workstation and I'll share the building controls with you"

Jupiter looked crestfallen. "Not fair! I wanted to do that!" Not willing to give up, she continued to argue with the poor man.

Ignoring her good friend, Tilly walked up to the control panel of the warehouse and started playing around with the holographic projection of the compound. She followed Captain Thyrion's suggestion and upgraded the walls to reinforced concrete. Then she doubled the thickness and height. She finally added some barbed wire on the top but skipped the electrical fence that Jupiter was proposing. 'That girl likes her tortures a tad bit much' she thought to herself.

"Will that be sufficient?" Tilly asked the Captain as she turned the projected blueprint to him. On it showed a medium-sized compound with two large red-bricked warehouses surrounded by an overly thick and tall fence.

"You'll want something else inside on the off chance that intruders managed to make it inside. A simple solution would be the upgraded taser. Other that that, it looks good" Captain Thyrion added, looking over the holographic model floating on top of a pedestal.

So Tilly made additional changes and sighed at the price tag. It cost an exorbitant 64,000 SC, half of what she had left from her loan. 'At least that'll get Jupiter to stop nagging me about security. I can finally turn my focus back to my research' she thought to herself.

She opened the available research papers tab, as it was becoming of a habit of hers, to constantly shop for research materials. After all, it was how the life-style tech tree progress. One item caught her eye, New alloy on improving Pallanium properties. The abstract showed a new experimental formula that managed to improve the hardness and tensile strength of the compound while maintaining the properties of Pallanium. Although not by much, every small incremental improvements helps.

She immediately bought the paper and dived into it. The paper gave her ideas to improve her experimental Pallanium alloy. She could perhaps if lucky, even have greater improvements than what was indicated in the paper.

***

Below the massive space elevator, Gulliver tapped his feet in anticipation. The goal of Gulliver and his friends that were working towards since the launch day has finally arrived. After the completion of the rebel shipyard mission, the party had finally earned enough SC for a medium-class cruiser.

Helix was the first to arrive with a spring in his step. He greeted Gulliver with a wave of his hand. They were soon joined by Phoenix and Horn. After a brief greeting, they make their way into the relatively spacious space elevator that able to comfortably accommodate 10 people inside with plenty of room to place their baggage at the centre. Despite the space elevator being the only one on the planet, the elevator itself was not full. There were only two others in the elevator with them, a short boy with red hair accompanied by probably his mother who shared similar facial features with him. The trip to geostationary orbit took them 15 minutes.

The stunning view of the matte grey planet below was lost to the excited four amidst their excited discussion. "Ok. I know we are going for a medium cruiser, but the four of us are definitely not enough to run the ship. We need to dedicate a large amount of our SC towards upgrading the AI and equipping it with robots'' Phoenix added at one point of their conversation.

"Upgrading the ship AI has already been given. The base AI assistant is absolute garbage. The forums couldn't stop complaining about it" Horn said. "The problem is, to get any decent AI for the ship is gonna cost a fortune"

"We could get a light frigate instead. Then we don't need a fancier AI to compensate for the lack of sufficient crew.” Gulliver said. Turning to his friend, he asked “Phoenix, you’re the only one with real experience working on a bridge. What’s the minimum you think would be needed to fly a ship?”

“Bare minimum? Three. A pilot, Weapons Officer, and Comms. I would also like a captain for directions, but arguably that position can be left empty and the ship will still fly.” Phoenix added.

“What’s the point of having a captain then if the ship can fly without one. Not like he’s doing any of the important jobs in the ship other than sitting around giving orders” Horn said. Gulliver slapped Horn across the back of his head, “Haven’t you been in a group project? You should know how chaotic it is coming to a decision. I would imagine it would be even harder with people shooting at you. Take it from someone who does all the group work in university.”

“Yes and no” Phoenix chuckled. “I would imagine anyone in the bridge could also act as a captain while performing other duties. Especially with an AI reducing the load”

“So at the end of the day, we still need an upgraded AI unless we find more people.” Helix sighed. He suddenly perked up, “Unless! We recruit the NPCs for some help?” Horn scoffed and immediately shut Helix down “Are you gonna pay for the NPC? We’re not rich you know, and earning SC is a pain in the ass.”

The elevator lurched to a stop as they reached the space station located at the top of the space station in geostationary orbit. Gulliver was surprised when the lady that was quiet the whole trip suddenly turned to them before exiting. She said to them, “If you youngins are looking to buy your first ship, I recommend splurging on the ship AI. Trust me, it will help way more than you think. Also, you can always transfer or clone the intelligence when you get a better ship. My husband works as a ship designer so I hope this advice helps. He always complained about young explorers whose only concern was about who can shoot the bigger missiles.” prompting Helix to look away while whistling. “Good luck picking out your first ship!” she winked and walked away with her son as soon as the door to the space station opened.

“I guess that settles it?” Phoenix asked. “Geez, this game is filled with so much advice from NPC at the most convenient time. It’s as if it's trying to make up for its limited tutorial by providing tips during loading screens”

“Makes you wonder how those players mess up so badly in the forums,” Helix said. Gulliver smiled towards Helix, and said “It’s because they’re too prideful to take advice from others, let alone NPCs. We were once like them if you remember.

“Let’s go. Don’t wanna miss our ride to the moon.” Gulliver ushered his friends to the shuttle that ferried them to the moon which hosted all the shipyards, including the one where they retook from the rebels four days ago. Gulliver’s mind wandered to the possible repercussions from their recapture of the shipyard. He tried to analyse the situation and predict the possible response with what he learned in university. After all, he majored in conflict resolution.

His face contorted into a frown as it reminded him of his looming deadline of selecting a research topic for his final dissertation. He has been in a dilemma over what topic to pick as he couldn’t decide on one. ‘Perhaps I should do a comparative case study on the current conflict in Palladium. Dad did mention he and his colleague were considering examining the institutions.’ Gulliver thought to himself.

The trip to the shipyard took them half an hour from the spaceport above the space elevator. Half an hour which they spent going over what each wanted in the ship.

Surprisingly, Horn asked for a full set kitchen in the mess hall, alongside food storage facilities in the ship since they were planning on undertaking extended expeditions for explorations. Everyone immediately agreed as Horn's cooking with the game has improved tremendously in the past two months, not only does the food taste better, it occasionally provided buffs as well. It was a discovery that exploded the forum a month ago. Food buffs weren't guaranteed. It required tremendous skill from the chef to pull off consistently.

Establishments in the starting planets that were capable of such feats were extremely rare and expensive, which was the reason it took the players a month before the feature came to light. Rations and pre-made meals could never provide those buffs. None that they know about.

Phoenix's request was for advanced avionics, with features such as implant linkages. "You don't even have an implant, why would you need those?" Gulliver asked her. "Not yet. It is an essential component in flying big ships, all the NPCs had it and I plan to get one asap. Everyone should get one, especially Helix as it can also be linked with your heavy armour" she pointed her reply to Helix which caused him to perk up.

"I understand, but we can upgrade the linkage later on, we can have the advanced sensors but not implant linkage. Those are expensive." Horn said to which Gulliver agreement. "I want a weapons lab. Allows me to research and make new weapons." Helix chimed in which garnered an eye roll from everyone.

"We know Helix, we already accounted for that." Gulliver said. Everyone looked at Gulliver wondering waiting for him to continue. Realising the gazes of his friends, he asked, "Why are you guys looking at me?"

"Well, any request?" Phoenix said. Gulliver tilts his head and hums, "Not any that comes to mind. It's not like I enjoy maintenance, I just picked it up thinking it might be useful for the party. And all ships come with one. I haven't really thought about it. Maybe in the future but not now."

"Oh well, means we have more budget for something else" Horn rubs his hands imitating an evil racoon as he gave Gulliver a greedy smile.

They touched down at a medium lunar shipyard run by a family. A few ships could be seen berthing on deep holes dug into the satellite planet. An old man was waiting for them as they alighted.

The old man's voice boomed as he opens his arms wide and greeted them, "Welcome to Scovill's shipyard, the spiciest and oldest yard still in operation on the moon! I'm James, the owner of this proud establishment."