Star Ship Girl Era: My Shipgirls Are Too Overpowered

Let’s go back a few hours before he decided to return to Larkspur Haven.

The deeper Aurelian went into Helion Bastion Twelve’s preserved records, the more obvious it became that this trip had paid off far beyond what he had expected when he first followed the clue here.

The bastion had lost things over the centuries, of course. Some stores had been stripped during older internal conflicts, some sectors had decayed, and some data clusters were damaged badly enough that even the restored command system marked them as incomplete.

But the true core of the place had never been opened to the awakened population, and because of that, the most important things were still there.

There were resources stacked in sealed vaults, rare items packed in old military containers, layered technical archives, and more blueprints than he had time to read in one sitting.

The stargate blueprint alone would have made the whole journey worthwhile.

But it did not stop there.

There were other structure plans tied to frontier expansion, fortress support, relay nodes, orbital logistics, and system defense. There were also warship files, and those held his attention longer than the rest.

Several Tier IV hull patterns were preserved in the bastion’s restricted archives, all incomplete in the sense that he could not make practical use of them yet, but still real enough to matter.

A strategic destroyer line.

A fast patrol warship line.

A heavy star battleship line.

And a research vessel line.

He read through the summaries one by one, calm on the surface, but inside, he was cheering as he hit the motherlode.

But as he read more and more, he slowly realized that he was not at the stage where he could build any of them.

That was the annoying part.

The blueprints were in his hands now, but his rank, industrial level, and current fleet structure still lagged behind what would be needed to actually make those designs live.

Even so, having the data now mattered. It meant the path existed. It meant future upgrades for his shipgirls no longer had to rely solely on family support, chance discoveries, or on using the system, which requires points he needs for other things.

And there was more ordinary value piled under the high-grade material, too.

Tier III engineering plans.

Military support templates.

Production logic for several useful accessories.

Enough direct and indirect technical material that, if fully digested and put to work, it could drag a newly spacefaring civilization all the way to a broad Tier III foundation without needing to go around blind.

That thought made Aurelian feel that this trip was worth all the effort.

It was not hard to imagine what might have happened if Larkspur Haven, or a world like it, had inherited something like this before the Kharov ever found it. Things would have looked very different.

Instead, the place had stayed buried beside a star, and the people nearest to it had almost been wiped out before anyone reached in and took hold of it.

Aurelian kept reading.

Among the preserved modification files, he even found a set of old enhancement plans tied to Lysara’s Halcyon Ward line.

They were not the exact advanced pattern he would have preferred, nor did they include the full Severance Lance package she had mentioned earlier, but they still had value.

Better power routing, heavier beam management, reinforced cooling, and partial combat-line conversion frameworks were all there.

Not the best answer, but still a useful one.

He let out a quiet breath and leaned back in the command chair that had been provided in one of the bastion’s upper strategic rooms, eyes still moving across layered screens while Lysara stood nearby in silence, giving him the space to think.

"You’ve been staring at those files for long enough that I assume the answer is good," she said after a while.

"It is."

"How good?"

He glanced up at her.

"This base alone has enough tech to support a civilization to a peak Tier III or even Tier IV, and there are enough resources to create a strong force."

That caused Lysara to show a slightly surprised expression, but she didn’t think there was anything wrong with what he found.

"So we really did drag something worthwhile out of the dark."

"Yes."

That was putting it lightly.

The more he sorted the bastion’s records, the more he felt the shape of future expansion becoming less abstract and more practical.

A stargate blueprint. Tier IV ship patterns. Support structures. Engineering lines. Rare-item manufacturing data. The kind of things that turned dreams of territory into actual plans.

And still, even with all that, what he needed most in the short term remained far simpler.

Construction ships.

More engineering capacity.

More hands that could build.

His fleet already had strong core ships, but if he wanted Larkspur Haven to become more than a rescued colony, then he needed infrastructure built fast, not one piece at a time by overworked specialists.

Fortunately, the bastion’s archives included what he needed there, too.

The engineering branch files were complete enough to start proper production later, though, unlike some of the rarer finds, those would need to be manufactured the hard way.

No miracle hull waiting in a hidden dock this time. Just real work, production lines, parts, time, and effort.

Which was fine.

He could work with that.

It was some time after that, while he was still sorting through archive clusters, that Seris requested permission to enter along with Meren.

Aurelian allowed it at once.

The two awakened entered together, both looking more at ease than they had before, though neither was careless.

They stopped at a respectful distance away.

Seris was the one who spoke first.

"We came to talk about the future of the awakened population here."

Aurelian set one data pane aside and gave them his full attention.

"I assumed you would."

Meren inclined his head.

"Then I’ll speak plainly. The bastion has changed hands. Most of us understand that already. The question now is what place we will have under your authority."

That was a fair question, as they had spent too long trapped in a sealed system with nobody above them but dead rules and old fear.

Now, a living commander had taken the center of their world. Of course, they wanted answers.

Aurelian folded his hands loosely in front of him and answered in the same direct tone they had already learned from him.