Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered

But that was normal.

It did not frustrate him as much as it would have frustrated someone less patient.

Still, he knew the truth of it, but it was a bitter pill to swallow for someone who was able to level up quickly till now.

If he wanted to keep expanding properly, he needed the starport finished, not just partially functional.

He needed proper fleets, not just elite shipgirls, no matter how capable they were on their own.

He needed infrastructure built by more than personal effort, something that could run without him watching every step.

And he needed to make better use of the people already under his control instead of trying to do everything himself, because that approach would only slow him down in the long run.

That thought led him back to a different question, one that had been sitting in the back of his mind for a while, and since he could not afford the answer he wanted most this month, he changed direction instead of waiting.

He spent the cost to ask about high-level structure blueprints instead, choosing something that could support everything else.

The answer he received surprised him.

The clue pointed not to some distant hidden ruin beyond his current reach, but to an abandoned stellar base near Lysara’s ruined homeworld, positioned beside the star itself.

Even more importantly, the remains there included the blueprints for a stargate, something far more valuable than most structures.

That was enough to pull his full attention at once, pushing everything else aside.

A functioning or reconstructable stargate in this region would change everything, not just locally but for future expansion.

Even a blueprint alone would be an enormous gain, something that could shape his plans for a long time.

Lysara knew nothing about it when he mentioned the broad area. She had operated from stations and local military ports during her old service, not hidden stellar bases.

If there had been something like that near the star, then it had been above the level of officers like her; something kept quiet.

So Aurelian took her with him and went personally, not trusting secondhand checks for something like this.

The trip was not long, and once they arrived near the star, he understood immediately why no normal scan had found the place casually.

The base was hidden well, buried in stellar glare and field distortion in a way that made it almost disappear unless you came close enough and at the right angle, blending into the environment.

When it finally emerged on the display, even Aurelian had to stare for a moment, taking in the scale.

It was enormous.

The structure curved along part of the star’s edge like an artificial ring segment, massive enough to compete with large starports in scale.

It was not as beautiful as civilian megastructures, but it had the quiet presence of something built for war, logistics, and survival over a very long time.

Lysara looked out at it and said softly, "I had no idea this was here."

That did not surprise Aurelian.

A place like this was never meant to be common knowledge, and the fact that it had stayed hidden this long said enough about how it had been built.

The stranger part was that it still had power.

Even after all this time, some of its systems were running, not fully active, but not dead either.

Aurelian guessed the base had been feeding itself from stellar energy all this time, which explained how it had remained alive enough to wake when they approached, maintaining just enough function.

As Lysara’s ship drew closer, the outer dock began to respond on its own. Small guide drones emerged from hidden ports and moved ahead of them, unarmed and orderly, drawing a safe route inward, as if they had been waiting for something to arrive.

"This is one of their old automated control systems," Lysara said, watching the drones. "The port on my world had something similar once, though ours was destroyed long before you found me."

Aurelian gave a small nod. He had seen enough of old systems by now not to be startled by that kind of thing, even if the scale was different.

"Then we go in," he said.

There was some risk, of course, but not enough to keep him outside staring at it forever. Most of the visible defensive emplacements had been removed or dismantled long ago, and if there were still internal dangers, they would have to judge them after entering, not before.

So Lysara accepted the guide path and brought them into the stellar base, following the route without deviation.

Inside, the place was in much better shape than any of them had expected. Maintenance drones still moved through the passages and docking lanes, carrying out basic tasks with slow, patient precision, as if time had not changed their routines.

They had no visible weapons and showed no hostility at all, simply continuing their work.

The whole place felt abandoned, which did not surprise either of them, as they had expected.

As they came to a halt in one of the inner berths, a group of service robots began moving toward the ship in neat formation, their movement steady and controlled.

Aurelian watched them through the display and said, "Let’s ask first. If this place still has a command layer, I want access before I start forcing anything."

Lysara agreed with that at once, without hesitation.

Rather than bringing the whole encounter onto the base floor, she simply opened the controlled reception channel and allowed the robots to come aboard under her supervision, which was safer for everyone involved and easier to manage.

Aurelian stood ready beside her while the first of the machines entered, watching carefully but without tension.

Even as he watched them approach, another thought moved quietly through the back of his mind, returning without being forced.

Before Yelena had left, she had passed along Lucian’s message, that someone had come looking for him and that his parents had apparently wanted word sent the moment he or one of the triplets could be reached.

He still did not know who that person was.

That detail had stayed with him more than he expected, because he had a few guesses as to who the other person could be.

For now, though, he set it aside.

Because the old stellar base was slowly opening in front of him, and whatever waited inside it was likely to matter to everything that came next, something he could not ignore.