The military returned to the RM-2 star system with the reorganized fleet.

In addition to those ships that ensure combat capabilities, the fleet also has a large number of engineering ships and transport ships full of cargo.

Relying on a massive investment in manpower and materials, the military took less than a week to repair the outpost that was half-destroyed by the afterglow.

After the outpost was repaired, the military's high-intensity sensors swept the entire galaxy.

Soon, an urgent report was passed from the grassroots level of the military to the top.

It was finally delivered to the person in charge of the outpost, the captain of the Ruler-class ship.

When the report was delivered, he was responsible for conveying the captain's instructions and also for handing over the report to the captain's deputy after sorting it out. He saw the captain's gloomy face, which he had not had for many years.

Two more days passed.

An abandoned mining space station in the RM-2 star system.

A small transport ship suddenly appeared near it.

The five people in the cabin were all wearing professional weapons and equipment. They were a special mission combat team.

The captain who was leaning against the hatch suddenly knocked on the cabin of the spacecraft beside him, drawing the team members' attention to him, and said, "Confirm the mission one last time."

"We need to enter the abandoned mining space station numbered DG-C-9527 to investigate the disappearance of the equally abandoned civilian mining ship 'Iron Ore' in the space station."

"Any questions?"

"No."

"without."

After receiving scattered responses from the team members, the captain's voice sounded again: "Let's go."

The small transport ship gradually approached the space station's dock.

However, before the space station's appearance could be seen with the naked eye, a team member suddenly said, "This should have happened thirty years ago, right? Why are we only finding out something is wrong now?"

The captain recalled the mission document he had read many times and said, "I heard that the person in charge of the detector blocked all the recorded spacecraft signals in order to save trouble and not have to go through the list of spacecraft in the galaxy every day."

"The sensors will only scan new ships, which is about the same effect, but the existing ships will be completely invisible."

"Now the outpost has been rebuilt and the sensors have been rescanned, and the problem has been discovered."

"There is a ship missing from the space station, and there are some signs of human damage."

The team member asked in surprise, "If the alien ships have been monitoring us, does that mean someone has lived on that abandoned space station for thirty years?"

The captain shook his head casually and said, "Not necessarily thirty years. I remember that the person in charge of the detector at the outpost seemed to rotate every five years, and a new person would be replaced every year. It is very likely that the ship disappeared a few years ago and was only discovered now."

"Anyway, regardless of how many years it has been, we are actually not sure whether it was done by someone inside the space station, or someone from outside sneaked into the galaxy and did it."

"If it's an insider, this person has probably been frozen in the cryogenic hibernation chamber. So after we go up, we have to look for clues in the living area where the hibernation chamber is located."

"Then why are we stopping at the dock?"

The captain turned slightly to let the team members see the gradually expanding space station outside the porthole, and said, "Because it is relatively open here, any danger can be discovered immediately."

"And doesn't it say so in the mission log? The space station was destroyed by a group of bugs hiding inside the asteroid."

"Even if our spacecraft's scanning equipment doesn't find anything, safety still needs to be guaranteed."

The team member asked curiously, "What kind of bug can destroy a space station?"

"A bug that is about the same size as a human on average."

"That's not the case. Can the carapace block bullets?"

"Tsk, don't ask questions that you shouldn't ask."

Seeing the captain's attitude, the talkative team members quietly shut up.

Under the control of the pilot, the transport ship gradually approached the dock of the space station.

After circling around the dock for a few times and finding no emergencies, the transport ship stopped steadily at the dock.

The hatch of the spacecraft opened, and several team members filed down, standing guard cautiously.

Although the space station's dock was dilapidated and stained in many places, it did not look dangerous at all.

Just now, when the spaceship approached with such a loud noise, no insects or anything like that came over, so this dock should be safe.

After confirming that there was nothing dangerous at the dock, the captain displayed a map of the space station on the inside of his protective suit helmet.

After confirming the direction, he said to the team members: "Let's go in."

The team members quickly maintained a formation that could respond to any emergency at any time, and quietly and quickly crossed the dock and arrived at the office area.

When they just entered the junction of the dock and the office area, a team member suddenly said in the communication channel: "What is this?"

The others immediately moved closer to the team member who was speaking and saw a smooth hole on the wall of the office area.

On the wall of the office area opposite to this wall, there is another identical hole.

And deeper into the space station, there are more such holes.

"This is a bit like the weapons of the Mechanic race."

The captain moved a little closer so that the recorder on his helmet could capture the exact appearance of the bullet hole.

The detailed analysis of the bullet holes needs to be handed over to professionals, who are only responsible for recording.

The team did not stay at the edge of the office area for too long. Following the guidance of the map, they soon found the mining space station management office safely.

There was no sign of chaos in the office, only a skeleton lying on the desk.

The computer in front of Bai Gu was not damaged.

A team member immediately stepped forward, removed the computer's storage device, and began to read the data using a small terminal he carried with him.

After operating for a while, the team member looked up and said to the captain: "Captain, we have the list of personnel for long-term hibernation in the space station you requested. There are ten people in total."

"In addition, I have also retrieved the overall personnel list of the space station and will send it to you immediately."

The captain gave him a thumbs up, and after the personnel list was sent over, he wrote down the names and appearances of the ten people.

After confirming that there was nothing else of value in the office, they went to the monitoring room which was also located in the office area.

But the monitoring room is quite chaotic.

Not only was there dried dirt everywhere, but even all the equipment was in a complete mess.

The team member in charge of managing the electronic equipment checked it out and finally only got a recording device that was barely not completely destroyed and needed to be repaired before it could be read.

However, everyone in the team knew that the possibility of this device recording valuable information was close to zero.

The two valuable locations in the office area have been searched.

The captain continued to look at the map and said to the team members: "Let's go to the living area next. The cryo-hibernation chamber is over there."

The team members followed the captain one by one, passed through the office area, and entered the public area in the center of the space station.

At this point, their nerves, which had been slightly relaxed, suddenly became tense.

Because in the corners of the public areas and in the passages leading to the lower levels, there are many growths covering them.

However, they soon noticed that these growths had lost their vitality and showed no signs of activity.

Moreover, there seemed to be many giant egg-shaped objects among the augmented creatures.

But now they are all gone.

After confirming that the surrounding environment was safe, a team member stepped forward to obtain some samples of the growths. While carefully observing the samples, he couldn't help but ask, "Are these things left by insects?"

The talkative team member also came over to the sample, took a look and said, "It should be. The source of the insect outbreak in the space station is probably down there."

The captain interrupted at this time: "Don't worry about these things, our mission is to find out where the missing spacecraft went."

The two men returned to the team very quickly, but they did not stop talking.

"Actually, I'm now curious about where all the bugs have gone."

"It's been thirty years. He should be dead."

"A bug that can survive on an asteroid died for no reason?"

"Anything can happen in space."

"Too."

The two quickly ended the topic and continued to follow the captain through the public area to the living area which was also covered with a large number of dried growths.

The density of the creatures here is less than that in the public area, and it will not affect movement at all if you pay a little attention.

The team quickly followed the map and found three cryogenic hibernation chambers close together.

They began their search in the cryostasis chamber closest to the common area.

However, the first two cryogenic hibernation chambers only contained completely destroyed equipment.

Until they entered the third cryogenic hibernation chamber.

The moment they entered, the team saw the skeleton of a corpse covered in a white coat on the ground and the carcasses of insects that had died with it.

"It should be Doctor Ding He. He is responsible for the daily monitoring of the personnel in cryostasis in the space station."

The captain finished his words and waved his hand to signal others to start searching.

Soon, everyone gathered around a cryogenic hibernation chamber.

Because this freezer has very obvious signs of having been opened recently.

A simple personal information is printed next to the freezer.

One of the team members read out the information without thinking: "Maintenance engineer, number 519, Chen Ming."

"Is it him?"

The team member in charge of electronic equipment was connecting his terminal to the hibernation chamber at this time. After a simple operation, he said: "It is likely that the human body parameter configuration of the cryogenic hibernation chamber matches the configuration in his system records, and I also found a record that this hibernation chamber was activated half a year ago."

“Who started it?”

"No one. It should be that the space station lost power once, which caused the hibernation chamber to restart, so the people were released. Didn't we see it during the previous scan? The fuel of the space station is empty."

"That's him."

The captain set the tone straight away.

"Now the question is, how did he survive and escape in that shabby civilian boat?"

"Who knows? Anyway, it's OK as long as we know who it is."

"I guess it's to protect a person who has lived in the mouth of insects for thirty years, as a representative of our human will to survive."

"Are you telling a joke?"

The captain interrupted the two bickering team members and said, "Stop talking nonsense. It's time to go. Our mission is not over yet. We have to find this Chen Ming."

"Ah? This person might have died somewhere a long time ago. How can we find him?"

The captain didn't seem to care about this at all: "It doesn't matter whether we can find it or not, what matters is that we have found it."

"The universe is so big, where do we start?"

"The nearest one."

The mining space station welcomed its first guests thirty years after being abandoned.

At the same time, Chen Ming was holding a machine gun that could be installed on a small load-bearing point, standing on the horizontal elevator that could be found everywhere in the space station, and heading towards the space station administration.

A few days after he returned to the space station, he had already taken the time to test the practical precautions that needed to be taken in the mass refurbishment of weapons.

It just so happened that it was his turn to be on duty at the maintenance shop today, so he didn't need to go out on field work.

So Chen Ming directly gave the task of guarding the gate of the repair shop to a newcomer who stayed with him.

He skipped work, pushed a cart, and ran to the administration building with a brand new machine gun, ready to see the factory director.

If Chen Ming had not reported in advance that the workshop in the basement of the administration building needed a machine gun for testing, and the machine gun only had a bare barrel and no ammunition.

The security guards will definitely stop Chen Ming.

But at least he managed to bring the stuff in.

Brought to the factory director's office.

Chen Ming knocked on the office door and walked in after receiving a response.

The factory manager who was sitting behind his desk looked up and saw that it was Chen Ming. He said with some surprise, "It's Xiao Mu. What's the matter that you suddenly came to see me for?"

Chen Ming didn't waste any words. He pulled the cart into the office and said, "Director, take a look at this."

The factory director stared at the machine gun with even more surprise and asked, "What is this? The new weapon you bought? What's wrong?"

"This is one of those second-hand weapons you approved for me before."

The factory director stood up and walked to Chen Ming to observe the machine gun carefully.

As he looked at it, he couldn't help but half-kneel on the ground, stretched out his hand to touch it, and said while carefully confirming it: "Is this really second-hand? It can't be so new, right?"

"Wait a minute, oh... I remember now, you told Lao Wu before that you had the idea of ​​refurbishing the weapons, right?"

The factory manager said, noting the hidden corner of the weapon where the factory serial number of the weapon was recorded.

He just happened to have some impression of this number, which could prove that this weapon was indeed the second-hand recycled weapon that he had directly allocated to Chen Ming.

The factory manager suddenly laughed helplessly and said, "Old Wu and I didn't understand what you wanted to do before, but in the end it turned out that our technology was not good enough."

"So you came to me with this because you want to cooperate with the repair shop and make money by passing old goods off as new?"

Chen Ming nodded and said, "Yes, because I know that even if I have the skills, I can't do this kind of thing alone, so I will find a way to join the repair shop first, and then tell you this."

"Otherwise I won't even be able to see you, let alone anything else."

The factory director suddenly stood up.

He has confirmed that with his technical level, he cannot tell any difference between the weapons repaired by Chen Ming and the new weapons that have just left the factory.

And since Chen Ming is confident that he can do this, there will probably be no problem if he cheats other people.

"So you were planning to make money this way from the beginning?"

"Yes, but there was a little accident in the middle."

"Your accident was that you drove a civilian mining ship to destroy four merchant ships, and then brought back half of Yuhui's destroyer, which made you a profit, right?"

"Almost, but that was my captain's doing."

When the factory manager heard Chen Ming's words, he suddenly remembered what he had talked about with the hardware store owner Lao Wu a few days ago, and echoed: "Oh, yes, it's your captain."

"But it doesn't make much difference. You must have made money anyway. But since you have made money, do you still need to stay here?"

Chen Ming knew what the factory director meant, and said in a matter-of-fact tone: "You can never have too much money. I have already paved the way here. If you don't use it, it will be a loss."

The factory manager looked Chen Ming up and down and accepted his reasoning: "Yes, then let's talk business."

"What's the cost of refurbishing this thing?"

"My labor costs, plus the most basic materials needed for repairs, are gone."

“How is this different from having no cost?”

Chen Ming shrugged and did not answer the factory director's question.

The factory manager knew very well that Chen Ming would never tell such a lie that would cause him to lose a lot of money.

So after a brief thought, he said, "In that case, all your previous tasks are cancelled. You don't need to do tasks like cleaning up the battlefield or training newcomers."

"You just need to receive recycled weapons every day, perform refurbishments of this quality, and you can use the equipment in the repair shop at will."

Chen Ming interrupted and said, "I don't need to use the equipment in the repair shop. I have my studio on my ship and I can work on the ship."

"I see. How efficient are you at using your own equipment?"

"For the ones I brought here, I can probably refurbish fifty a day."

"How many?!"

"Fifty."

This is not the upper limit of the weapon repair speed, nor is it the upper limit of Chen Ming's mental strength, but Chen Ming is worried that if he says it too clearly, people will not believe it.

The factory manager simply did a mental calculation at this point.

The value of an ordinary civilian small ship weapon ranges from 50,000 to 200,000.

If it is a military weapon, the price can be three to four times more expensive.

The recycling price is completely negligible compared to the normal selling price of new weapons.

The profit that Chen Ming can obtain by purchasing weapons and refurbishing them is almost equal to the value of the weapon itself.

Suppose the average value of weapons sold by the repair shop in a day is $200,000, and fifty weapons can be sold in a day.

That would mean nearly 10 million in net profit a day.

In fact, it may even be more than that.

The pirate space station is highly mobile and the edge star field is very dangerous, so spaceships and weapons are a necessity.

The amount of weapons sold every day will only increase, not decrease.

Besides, there was no need for him to ask Chen Ming to refurbish small and worthless weapons.

Refurbished military weapons and medium weapons are definitely better choices.

Although these two items sell slower, the profits are definitely higher than those of low-level weapons.

You have to know that when the repair shop is doing the best business, the daily revenue is generally around 40 to 50 million, and when it is the slowest, it is about a few million.

It's really an exaggeration to say that Chen Ming alone is worth half of a repair shop.

After all, if you buy weapons from suppliers and then sell them, you can only make a profit of a dozen percent of the selling price at most.

How could it be possible to make a profit of more than 90% of the selling price like the refurbished weapons made by Chen Ming.

The actual profit margin is ten times.

The factory manager calmed down his slightly excited emotions and said, "Well, how about a 50-50 split of the final profits?"

Chen Ming thought about it for a moment.

What the space station needs to do is to provide sales channels and recycling sources for second-hand weapons, and use their relationships to obtain the factory codes of the weapons.

These are things that Chen Ming absolutely cannot do, 50% is almost enough.

So he agreed directly: "No problem, do you need to sign a contract?"

"No need, just treat it as your normal work assignment. I'll give you a list of your refurbished weapons when the time comes, and you'll be able to see where they're going and the selling price."

"You work in this field, so you must know the prices of weapons. Your share of the money will definitely not be less."

We've talked about weapon refurbishment.

Chen Ming did not leave in a hurry, but continued to say to the factory director: "There is one more thing, Factory Director, I want to make a fake identification code for a few spacecraft."

"This is easy. Go find Old Wu and he will help you with it."

Chen Ming did not move, and said hesitantly, "It's a bit troublesome for me to get a fake identification code for the spacecraft, because there is Yuhui's ship inside."

"Afterglow ship?"

The factory manager thought about it and said, "It's not impossible. Some people in other places have done this kind of thing for collection."

"I'll contact them for you later. It may take some time to get it, and the cost will definitely be different from other ships."

"I understand this. I am not short of money for the time being."

The factory manager nodded slightly, and suddenly asked curiously: "You kept Yuhui's ship and wanted to take it back. You didn't do that to study whether the AI ​​core can be controlled by you and whether it can be used to drive the ship?"

"no."

Although Chen Ming denied it, the factory manager acted as if he didn't hear it and said, "If you really want to do something like this, I suggest you do it here."

"If you go back to the prosperous star field, the patrol team will come to scan you from time to time. If your AI core is scanned, it will definitely be confiscated."

Chen Ming didn't say anything, and the factory manager didn't care. Seeing that Chen Ming had no intention of leaving, he asked again, "Do you have anything else to say?"

"have."

Chen Ming gave a positive answer and said, "In addition to Yu Hui's ship, there are two military ships whose identification codes I want to get."

"With a militarized subsystem installed?"

"That's about right. It's a military ship."

"?"

(End of this chapter)