“How can you not have any shield catalogs?” I asked. “You have thousands of catalogs.”

  “Valerie asked me to avoid buying anything excessively dangerous,” Maggie explained as we made our way back through the strato carrier after inspecting the shield systems. “That list includes biological and chemical weapons, structural destruction systems, and shield systems.”

  “Okay, I understand biological and chemical weapons, but why the other two?” I asked, confused.

  “Well… I may have gotten a little overenthusiastic testing my catalogs during the Siege of Seattle, and one of those catalogs may have caused a building to collapse. When Val found out, she freaked out,” Maggie admitted. “In my defense, I didn’t know it would cause that much damage. I did check if there were people in the building, and it was extremely effective at taking out the antithesis on the street.”

  I chuckled. “And the shield systems?”

  “Well… I like to test my devices before I take them apart, and Val was concerned that if I bought shields, I might try and shoot at myself to test them,” Maggie replied. When I very slowly turned and looked at her, in horror she quickly put up her hands. “Don’t worry, I don’t do anything that dangerous anymore. I use combat dummies to test my armor now.”

  “Does that mean you used to test your armor while wearing it?” I asked.

  “I used to be a lot more enthusiastic,” she admitted. “My old apartment building had to be condemned due to all the exotic chemicals and matter in there. Once I met Val, I calmed down and started implementing better safety systems.”

  “If you’re better now, maybe you should sit down with Val and discuss getting shield systems taken off the list. You’re obviously interested in them, and she may be open to letting you try them now that you’ve implemented some safety procedures,” I said.

  “Maybe! I’ll ask her later!” she chirped.

  We fell into silence for a moment as I struggled to think of something to talk about. The Strato Carrier had a lot of tech in it, but it was spread all over the massive ship, so we had to spend a lot of time walking through the bare metal halls of the ship.

  “You said you used to take your devices apart,” I finally said. “Why?”

  “Of course! I used to work for a company called Eclipse Technologies, where I reverse engineered Class I technology,” Maggie explained. “They weren’t exactly the biggest company, so I only got to do it occasionally, but it was my passion. When I became a samurai myself, I may have gone overboard at first, dissecting everything I could to try and figure out how it worked.”

  “Hence the condemned building,” I nodded.

  “Exactly!” Maggie exclaimed. “Now I work in a sealed lab with the proper safety measures while I work.”

  “You’re still taking shit apart?” I asked, surprised.

  “It’s my passion. I take things apart, analyze the mechanisms, and as long as the device doesn’t have combat purposes, I release it to the mesh for anyone to download and use,” she said. “When I started, almost no one downloaded my stuff, but now each release typically gets millions of downloads.”

  “You release them for free?”

  “Of course! Most samurai just sell their tech to megacorporations so they can make a quick buck, but I believe these plans should be available to everyone so we can learn from them and grow as a species,” Maggie explained.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “That’s a noble goal,” I agreed.

  “Speaking of learning…” Maggie said, glancing my way. “I hear you started a school, teaching undercity kids bleeding-edge technologies. A couple of my followers were talking about it.”

  “That wasn’t my original intention,” I admitted. “I just wanted to give them a chance to get a basic education and maybe have a better life than I did. I didn’t expect that the AI I’d purchased to teach the classes would be so effective that they’d be teaching postsecondary topics to the oldest kids after just a year. Now the school is so popular we’ve got kids coming from several sectors away and even had some richer kids trying to sneak in.”

  I sighed. “I’m trying to find a good place to establish another campus, because the school’s been running at capacity for months.”

  “It might seem like a chore right now, but I’m sure it’ll be worth it in the end,” Maggie said, nodding sagely. “Hey… Would you be willing to loan me one of those teaching bots?”

  “You can just have one if you want,” I snorted. “They’re just a unique skin and AI applied to the basic combat bot. It’ll take less than five minutes to perform the conversion, but why? I doubt they’ll be able to teach you anything new.”

  “You’d be surprised. I may be a whiz with mechanics, but I still have a lot to learn about the underlying principles of a lot of the tech. If your bots are capable of Class I education they may be able to provide some context to some of my research.”

  “If you say so. I’ll have one prepared and waiting by your car before you leave,” I said, sending a quick command through the network to start the conversion process.

  “Is there anything I can help with? Maybe provide you with access to my catalogs so you could add a few finishing touches to the ship. You could put some flooring down and maybe a coat of paint on the walls so not every corridor is bare metal.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t really afford to make a big purchase right now,” I said. “Besides, I’ve already started replicating both the flooring and wall panels for the forward section--the beavers have just been too busy to install it.”

  As the next bulkhead slid open, revealing another identical unadorned metal corridor, Maggie glanced over at me. “It doesn't have to be paint and flooring; I have tons of things you could add. Security cameras, smoke detectors, blenders, emergency eject buttons… all sorts of stuff!”

  “Do you really have a catalog for emergency eject buttons?” I asked.

  “Of course! You never know when you’ll need to eject something,” Maggie replied. “Saved my life a couple times.”

  “I have no idea if you’re being serious right now or not,” I muttered.

  “That’s probably for the best,” Maggie smirked. “What did you mean you can’t afford more upgrades anyways? If the global incursion was as messy around Calgary as it was here, you should be swimming in points. Even after buying this monstrosity.”

  “I also invested in a ton of catalogs, including Class III Matter Reconfigurators and Linear Accelerator weapons. I figured I better get a couple big purchases out of the way while I had the points so I could start rolling out the upgrades the next time I got in a fight. I may have had to cut back on some of the Strato Carrier’s weapons and subsystems, but I made sure everything was modular so they could be implemented later.”

  Maggie frowned and cocked her head to the side. “You cut back on weapons? Isn’t that counterproductive? You could probably have bought something half this size if you just wanted to carry your bears around.”

  “I cut back on the initial weapons setup,” I clarified. “Although I couldn’t afford to install any of the main guns with points, I could install some weapons I had on hand. The beavers installed the UHR in the lower main turret, and now they’re pulling the main guns off some of the Kodiaks and mounting them in twin-linked turrets around the hull. That should be more than enough to deal with most incursions.”

  “You’re pulling the guns off your IFVs?” Maggie asked.

  I shrugged. “It’s cheaper than buying a new blueprint, and it costs me next to nothing to just recycle the hull and make a new one, so why not? This ship has a lot of tertiary weapons, and all this costs is time and power, both of which I have a lot of.”

  “You know, you may be the only samurai I know that would go that far out of their way to save points and optimize their purchases. Not that I’m complaining. I completely approve of purchasing more catalogs whenever possible,” Maggie said, nodding rapidly. “Speaking of which, would you do me a favor? Share your catalogs with me! I could really use a matter reconfigurator in my work, and I don’t know anyone else that has access to the class III catalogs. In exchange I’ll use my catalog access to buy you a blueprint or piece of equipment you’re holding off on!”

  “I don’t mind sharing, but I should warn you, the Class III machines are extremely expensive. It’ll probably cost me more than this entire ship to upgrade my current setup,” I said.

  “Not a problem, I have an enormous number of points available,” Maggie replied. “It turns out that when you only buy Class I catalogs and tech, your points tend to build up, even when you buy as many catalogs as I do.”

  “If you say so,” I said as we stepped up to the next bulkhead, which opened up to the residential area. “We can make all the arrangements when we get to the cargo bay, just before you go. Would you like to visit the bridge next?”

  “Absolutely!” Maggie exclaimed, bouncing in excitement. “Lead the way.”

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