The next few hours were a struggle in futility. Most of the contacts Mingyu had given him never responded. The few that did either told him to fuck off, or said they had no idea who this doctor was and blocked him after Alexander told them how he got their contact information.

Mingyu and the Na family had apparently become pariahs after the station fell to the pirates. To be fair, it looked really bad. First, the entire Na family left days before the pirates arrived. Then Mingyu escaped, becoming the sole surviving Council Captain, while Harlow killed off the other captains. Alexander couldn't exactly blame the people on Petrov for their opinions. If he lacked the full story, he might feel the same way.

He tried to explain what happened, but the people didn't want to hear it.

Alexander didn't get anywhere until he connected with a gaunt-looking gentleman.

"I know you," the man said in a hoarse voice. "You're the robot that fixed stuff on the second ring."

It took a moment for Alexander to place the individual because the man had gone from being a bit portly to looking slim, bordering on sickly. The man had never given his name, but Alexander recognized him as one of the few customers he had during his time on the station. He mentally referred to him as the maintenance tech.

"That's right… How are you doing?"

"You mean because I look like a skeleton wearing a skin suit?" the man asked with a coughing laugh. "I'm alive, so I guess I'm better than the people the pirates spaced. And better now that the STO is finally bringing food into the station. Never thought I'd praise those bastards," the man muttered.

"I'm glad to hear that. I was actually trying to get hold of someone else, but none of my other contacts have been any help. Maybe you might know how I can contact them."

"Can't say until you give me a name, but you helped me out of a few tight jams with my boss by fixing stuff for me, so I guess I can return the favor. Who're you looking for?"

"Dr. Nord. He worked in the medical center on the second ring."

"Oh, sure, I know the Doc. He's still alive and kicking as far as I'm aware."

"He is?" Alexander asked hopefully.

"Sure, but he left Petrov as soon as the STO chased those pirate fucks out of here. I even went to his retirement party."

"Do you have a comm address for him?" Alexander asked hopefully.

If the doctor retired, he might not want to help Alexander, or know anyone who could. Still, he would rather try someone he knew before reaching out to others. Katalynn probably had capable medical people, but the Union's medical sciences were still years, if not decades, behind the STO's.

"Sure," the man said before picking up a grimy tablet and scrolling through the screen until he stopped on a contact name. He pressed it and flicked it toward the screen, and Alexander received the information shortly after.

"Thanks again," Alexander said before disconnecting.

The doctor was a bit harder to get hold of. Not because he was busy or anything. The man was living it up on some tropical paradise, and his female companion kept saying he was otherwise occupied.

Alexander simply kept trying until the woman huffed in annoyance and finally brought the comm bracelet to Nord.

He did his best to ignore the giggling and sexual banter between the two before the woman handed Nord the comm.

"This better be important," an annoyed, slightly older, and significantly skinnier Dr. Nord replied.

The man paused when he saw who was on the screen. "Mr. Kane."

"You have a good memory, doctor," Alexander replied.

The man chuckled. "Hard to forget you. How is your daughter, Yulia was it?"

"She's doing good. She's going to be fourteen soon."

"To be young again," Nord said wistfully.

Visit My Virtual Library Empire (*) for more.

"You don't seem to be doing too badly," Alexander commented.

The man laughed. "Yes… Money will buy you most things. I'm glad I saved up all my life, but I wish I had retired four years ago. It would have saved my body a few additional aches and pains, but enough about me. You didn't reach out to hear me grumble, so why did you, Kane? I can't imagine it was for medical services or advice."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Actually," Alexander replied. "It kind of is. I have an unusual situation, and I need someone who might be able to take a look at some xenological remains."

"The Shican?" the man asked, sitting up in his beach chair. "Now that I might be interested in looking at."

"I was hoping you could point me to someone else. I wouldn't want you to put off your retirement."

"Do you know what they don't tell you about retirement, Kane?"

"No."

"That it's boring as hell. There are only so many times you can watch the sun set, or the waves lap against the sand while you drink some fruity alcoholic beverage, before it becomes dull and routine. The only thing I still look forward to is my female companion, and her time with me is running out because she didn't come cheap."

Alexander chose not to comment on the man's choice of vices. "If you're interested, I can send over a contract. I would also prefer if you keep what you learn between us, and don't sell it to the STO or corporations."

The man gave a snort at that. "That's not an issue. I couldn't care less about the STO or the corporations and their money. They let us rot in pirate hands for years until someone got rid of Harlow for them. I have no interest in getting mixed up with either group. You pay me well for my expert opinion, and that's all I need."

Alexander would include an NDA, but it would only last until the doctor's work was complete. The information on the aliens was more of a curiosity for Alexander than of strategic value, so having harsh penalties might scare the doctor off. And since he didn't have a lot of time or a large selection of medical professionals to pick from, Nord was his best bet. The fact that the man seemed interested was also a good sign.

He sent over the contracts, and Nord signed them. Once that was done, Alexander put him in touch with Gabriella and let them both work out the issue. While they were working on that, he got started on the prototype for the new jump drive that would be installed into the modular test ship.

The poor vessel had been sitting unused since before Alexander left, but it was finally being brought back online for this project.

Alexander spent the next few days finishing the module. The test ship had never been designed to house two FTL drives, so the warp drive had to be removed to make room for the new one. It wasn't a big deal for a test, and it wouldn't be an issue going forward either. The Seahorse already had a space for the new equipment.

The new drive took up more room than the warp drive, but he thought it might be possible to stuff one into a Stingray. If he did that, the gunship would lose a significant amount of mobility, because it would be locked to whatever system it transited to, and couldn't jump inside a system without a warp drive. Those were two very big issues, and the main reason why he had designed the Seahorse. He needed the gunships to maintain their mobility.

Even with the processors Alexander had, a significant bulk of the new drive was dedicated to processing. For the drive to work, the ship needed to be able to know exactly where it was in space and where the endpoint was. Then it had to track both positions in real time while the bridge was formed between those gravity points, which were constantly changing and moving. In other words, finicky and slow.

Alexander estimated it could take up to ten minutes to form the bridge, assuming the connection worked. There was no way to tell if it worked or not until the bridge formed, unless you had a ship on the other end, monitoring gravitational fluctuations near the site. Having an extra ship in the area could alter the gravity enough to make the link fail, so that was not possible.

The best he could hope for was to have his satellites monitoring the planet from far out in space. Luckily, not everything was doom and gloom with the drive. While it was finicky, thanks to Lund, Alexander had one of the most accurate gravitational detectors available.

He replaced the modular testing ship's sensor cluster with a new one, dedicated mainly to sensing for gravitational disturbances. With the ship being automated, he didn't need to worry about adjusting the drive to accommodate people moving about aboard the vessel, which would have been a nightmare.

Once the new modules were in place, he uploaded the start and end points the ship needed to jump from, then brought one of the automated fishbone ships around to latch onto the smaller vessel and jump it closer to the gas giant in Unokane, where the test needed to take place.

The research core in the facility had crunched all the available gravitational and planetary data they had, and Alexander lucked out. One of Unokane's gas giants had a very similar gravitational profile to another gas giant just over a dozen jumps away, deep inside Union space, and conveniently within a system monitored by a pair of stealth satellites.

The system was essentially dead. It had a red giant, a small rocky world that orbited so close to the star that material was getting burned away, and a single gas giant, far from both. There were no asteroids or other dust in the system. They had either been consumed by the star or ejected when the star expanded into its current form. All of that made the system very undesirable.

Not that any of that mattered for his test.

When the ship was connected to its ride, Alexander made his way to the Academy. They were going to monitor the test in style by utilizing one of the holo theaters. A comm node aboard the modular ship would allow him and the others to see what went on without being there.

Who knew? Maybe one day he could learn how to make gravitational tunneling safe for regular travel. That was a back-burner project, though. He would much rather figure out the issues with gravitational folding. According to Lund's research, it should be a much safer and versatile alternative, but having three forms of FTL wouldn't be bad.

Lucas, Admiral Krieger, and Archie Matthews all joined him in the theater shortly after the transport vessel detached from the modular test ship. The transport quickly left the ship behind to ensure it didn't affect the test.

"I hope this is all being recorded for posterity," Archie said. "It's not every day that humanity tests a new form of faster-than-light travel."

"Recorded and stored in triplicate," Theo said, entering a bit late. "I would have sent out a press release, but Alexander wanted to keep this top secret."

Alexander just rolled his avatar's eyes at the slightly miffed tone in Theo's words. "It's not like it really matters since people can't use it, but if it makes you feel any better, you can tell the universe about it in a year if the Shican don't show up."

"Let's hope they don't show up then," Theo said.