Chapter 70 Clearing the Ships.

The next morning as soon as Andrew opened his eyes, he saw the beauty sleeping peacefully in his arms.

Not wanting to disturb her, he stayed motionless, allowing her to sleep for a few more minutes.

He didn't have to wait long as she opened her eyes not even five minutes later.

-Good morning.

Andrew said with a smile.

However, she just blushed remembering what happened in the jacuzzi, and hid her head under the covers.

It was meaningless and a bit childish, but that was the only thing she could think of at that moment.

Andrew was amused with her antics but decided not to tease her.

He was certain that it would take her a while to get over it, so he got out and started getting ready for the day.

Aelita got out of bed only when he was already gone.

She was embarrassed, not only by the last evening's kiss but also by her childish behavior right now.

-Why couldn't I simply go to sleep in my beginning module?

She thought to herself while getting ready for the day.

After his usual workout, Andrew went to the command center, which to his surprise was empty.

He was expecting to find Lanarine doing her scans as usual, but she was missing.

Taking a look at the internal sensors he found her in one of the sensor modules.

Since she was there, it could only mean that she was avoiding him.

This was so amusing that he started to laugh.

-What's so funny?

Ilia asked entering the command center.

-Nothing much, I just think that Lanarine is avoiding me after the last evening events.

He answered with a grin.

-That's just stupid, we live on the same station, there is no way to avoid you forever.

The doctor shook her head while sighing.

-I see that you do not have a problem with being in my presence.

-It's not like you are planning to force us to mate with you.

She shrugged.

-Your actions last evening did surprise me, but I guess, that we provoked you so I can't complain about it.

She explained.

-I'm happy to hear that you're not angry at me for that kiss.

Andrew said.

-Even if I was angry, what good would that do?

Ilia asked.

-You have a point there.

He said.

-Anyway, what brings you to the command center?

The human asked as she was usually cooped up in the medical module.

-I need a blood sample from everyone, but Runir and Tarina won't allow me to get their blood without your order, and I need yours as well.

-Alright, take mine first, then we can go get their blood.

Andrew said pulling up his sleeve.

The two ladies from the federation were now living in their own beginning modules and Andrew even lowered the control on them to level 4.

However, they were uncooperative and the only way to make them do something was to give them an order.

Iliana on the other hand was starting to gain his trust as he had seen her studying the biology of everyone on the station to avoid making another mistake, like the one with the drugs that were created to make him sleep and instead could potentially cripple or even kill him.

-What's this sample for?

Andrew asked curious about her research.

-I want to find out just how compatible we all are.

The previous research was done using the basic medical module, but since now I have a tier 3 medical module, I want to see if the previous results were correct or not.

Additionally, the previous results were based on the scan data, now that I can get your blood, I will be able to get better results.

The doctor explained.

Andrew nodded.

-Alright let's get the blood from others now.

He said, walking to the exit of the command module.

The two ladies from the federation were not too happy about the whole thing, but once Andrew gave them an order, they stopped protesting and allowed their blood to be drawn.

Aelita and Lanarine gave their blood samples without any issues, other than being a bit embarrassed seeing Andrew, but they got over it shortly.

By noon everything went back to normal on the station, even Lan returned to the command module, saying that the chair there was more comfortable anyway.

Aelita on the other hand went to the hangar modules to see the ships parked inside.

She wanted to start her research on them but was stopped by Andrew.

-Why bother with these wrecks when we have a few ships in way better condition?

He said and asked Lanarine to bring out the ships from the asteroid.

The first four were in great condition considering that they had holes left by the railguns in them.

Ships from the second group were much more damaged so Andrew proposed to store the four best ships in the hangars for her to research.

-Why don't we just put them all into hangars?

Aelita asked.

The ships were not that big and with four hangar modules, they could easily accommodate them inside.

-If you want them all, I don't see a reason to decline, but I want one hangar to be free for now.

Andrew said and the ships were transported inside the hangars and put one next to the other.

-Wanna go see what's in their cargo holds?

Aelita asked.

-Sure, but first go put your armor on.

Andrew said and went to get his own armor.

-Can I come as well?

Lanarine asked before he left the command center.

-Alright, but you also need to wear your armor.

He said.

The only one without armor was Ilia, but she was not interested in getting inside these ships.

Instead, she went back to the medical module to continue her research.

The three of them meet in the first hangar where three ships are stacked next to each other.

-We are not in space so why do we need the armor?

Aelita asked.

-Because there could be more dangers inside than just flying pieces of metal.

Till now we only entered the cargo bays and the engineering compartments.

This time we are going to go through the whole ship, so it's better to be safe than sorry.

Andrew explained.

Before they got there, he even stationed some guardian drones around the ships, just in case the pirates had some tricks up their sleeve.

There was no way for them to enter the ship like they used to, but thankfully the hangars came fully equipped and had ramps for boarding and leaving the ship.

It took Aelita a few minutes to crack the lock, but soon the door was opened and they entered into the dark vessel.

Inside they found a mess, caused by rapid decompression, and a few bodies of aliens.

Andrew recognized one of the species since it was identical to the four-armed alien he caught and gave to the merchant once.

This one was not so lucky and ended up dying of asphyxiation.

Both ladies were terrified when they saw the bodies, so Andrew moved the dead pirates to the compartments that were the closest to them.

He would take care of them later as there was no way that the bodies could stay in the ships.

All together hr counted 22 bodies in the whole ship, which was not surprising since this was a ship from the first group and they did launch their pods, so the rest of the pirates were already drifting in space.

Entering the bridge, they didn't find any bodies, because of the two bucket-sized holes made by a railgun round.

Looking through the compartments, they found a lot of items belonging to the crew along with many kinds of weapons, and some food stores, or at least that's what they thought as the items would need to be analyzed, before confirming what they were.

Other than that there was nothing too remarkable about this ship.

The cargo hold was the last place they visited and they found four crates there.

-How are we going to get these out?

Lanarine asked, as the crates were big and looked heavy.

-If I can power the ship back up, then we can use the crane and cargo bay doors to unload the crates.

Aelita said.

-The question is can it even be done?

Andrew asked.

-I don't know yet, but before I get to work, would you mind getting rid of the bodies on the ship?

She asked, not wanting to have anything to do with them.

-I will, but for that, the ship needs to be moved back into space, and while we are at it, we might also take the crates out.

Andrew said, thinking about the best way to remove the bodies.

-What are you going to do with the bodies?

Lan asked.

-I'll send them in the direction of the system stars.

The human said as it was the best idea he had at the moment.

Both ladies left the hangar after that while Andrew got to work.

In the end, he didn't need to take the ships out, all he did was turn off the gravity inside the hangar and he could easily move the bodies and the crates.

The bodies got tied up together by their clothes and he pushed them out of the hangar, where a drone was waiting to pick them up and send them into one of the suns.

This foursome work took the rest of the day before he cleared all the ships, in total he found almost two hundred bodies, so if he wanted to remove them in the normal way, it would take days of hard work to accomplish it, but without the gravity, it took him at most 45 minutes to clear one ship and some didn't even take 20 minutes as there were almost no bodies inside.

Once he was done with the bodies, he took the crates outside and the drones transported them to the storage module, they usually used to store them.

This time the amount of crates was much higher, as he found 63 crates altogether.

Before he got back he asked the doctor to bring a canister of decontamination spray, and wearing her space suit she sprayed him from top to bottom, making sure his armor was clean after the work he had just done.

-We need to research the decontamination module.

-Agreed, I'll add it to the list, when I get back.

Once the two of them came back to the command center, it was already late.

-We have 63 crates, but let's open them tomorrow, alright?

Andrew said in a tired voice.

-I can wait, let's get some rest.

Aelita smiled.

-In a moment, I need to add some research.

Andrew sat in the command chair and added the decontamination module as well as the tier 2 robotics research.

If they ever needed to clear the ship like that again, he was planning to send the droids to do the dirty work.