Date: 2019-10-14T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy; Vampires
Description: Scott Akin is a new kind of mage, perhaps the first and only of his kind. Weak in comparison to other mages, but he has a special way with technology. But what good was rebuilding a car with magic, or hacking a computer, when an elemental mage threatens him with death? At least he was weak, until the government recruits him to advance their understanding of alien technology, of a ship that crash landed on Earth over seventy years ago. His life is about to change in a major way, and the surprises will keep coming, not all of them pleasant. Author’s note: This is primarily a space opera. The fan
Publisher: UNKNOWN

Tech Mage

Technomancer: Book One

Author: D. L. Harrison

Copyright 2019.  This is a work of fiction.  Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.  All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

Table of Contents

Chapter One. 4

Chapter Two. 9

Chapter Three. 16

Chapter Four. 25

Chapter Five. 32

Chapter Six. 38

Chapter Seven. 46

Chapter Eight 53

Chapter Nine. 58

Chapter Ten. 65

Chapter Eleven. 74

Chapter Twelve. 82

Chapter Thirteen. 88

Chapter Fourteen. 95

Chapter Fifteen. 104

Chapter Sixteen. 112

Chapter Seventeen. 118

Afterword: 122

About the Author 122

Other books by D. L. Harrison: 123

Book Description. 127

Chapter One

The deep whine of the motorcycle’s engine filled my ears as it ate up the road.  I was going far too fast for the Chicago streets, even that late at night, but I hit nothing but green lights as I raced across the city.

My heart raced as the ground started to buck and roll, like a wave of water.  My breath caught and adrenaline made my heart skip and then hammer as the motorcycle left the ground.  I winced, as the street below iced, my tires came down and found no purchase, and I jumped off the bike before it could crush my legs.  My feet landed on the ice and I started to slide as my heart tried to hammer out of my chest.

The motorcycle hit road and started to throw up sparks as it slid across blacktop, and I desperately brought up my power of telekinesis, the only damned useful power I had, and then jumped before the ice ran out and friction and road rash ruined my night.  The bike straightened up back to its wheels at my will, and I used my power to steady myself as I landed back on it, and then I opened up the throttle.

The bike jumped forward, and then stopped dead, as if it’d hit a wall, and as I sailed over it I saw that the bike had hit a wall.  A brick wall that was just suddenly there.  My mind panicked for a moment, but I directed my telekinesis magic and bled off the large momentum.  When my feet hit the ground, my arms wind-milled as I started to run forward.

I ran to the left and started down the alley, desperate to escape, but once again found myself struggling to stop, before I ran right into a wall of fire that sprung up in front me.

Shit.

I turned, and took deep breaths, as fear sent a shiver down my spine.  I could have jumped the fire with the aid of telekinesis, but I also knew the one that chased me could have set me on fire, instead of the alley.  Running just wasn’t an option anymore, the bastard was too close.

“Why are you in a hurry, boy?” asked an amused voice.

I frowned.  I hated that, and I was twenty-one, not a boy.  I’d just been graced with the worst power as a mage ever.  Oh, technomancy could be cool, I didn’t have to worry about losing passwords, or even needing passwords.  No computer was safe from me, no vehicle would ever break down on me either, technology was mine to control, understand, and even power.  But, in any kind of fight, it was pretty much worthless against an elemental mage.  Even my TK, which might come in handy against a normal in a fight, or even against a vampire or shifter, was worthless.  My enemy had shields against it, or against anything I might choose to toss at him.

“Just out for a ride, Dale.  What’s the problem?” I bluffed, poorly.  I wasn’t a coward, but I was terrified.

Dale laughed, “You’re a horrible liar, boy,” and the wall of the building next to me seemed to shimmer like a wave as Dale stepped out of it.

I cursed the day I’d met the bastard, and my own stupidity that night.  I’d gotten over my head, way over my head, on my twenty-first birthday, and had been drowning ever since.

Dale had black hair, cold dark brown eyes, and was wiry at about five foot ten.  He was also one of the most powerful elemental mages in the city.  Dale had on a long black coat that the older man thought made him look badass, but no one else in the city would dare tell him it made him look like a poser.  Still, the guy’s power was terrifying, and Dale was very creative when he took down rivals.

Not that I was a rival, I just wanted to get the hell out of Chicago.  I was done being used.  Technomancy made me shit in a fight, but it also made me, quite possibly, the best thief in the world.  A twinge of guilt hit my conscience even then as fear gripped my heart.  I’d had no choice really, not if I’d wanted to live, but that was just an excuse.

A small bit of magic shot out to hit the nearby power lines, it was my only chance.  I was pretty sure Dale was going to kill me this time.

As far as I knew, I was the only one with my type of magic.  I’d never heard of my kind before.  Hell, Technomancer was a title I’d given myself, there was no name for my magical ability.  There were plenty of elemental mages, though few of Dale’s power, then there were vampires, werewolves, fae, witches, and others.  Most humans had no idea of the supernatural world around them, though some did.  Those that did were smart enough not to talk about it.

I knew there was law enforcement for instance, that helped keep the secret and even policed supernatural criminals, which were mixed groups of human and supernatural.

I sighed, “I’m out Dale.  I won’t do it anymore.”

Dale clucked his tongue, and shook his head, “You’re naïve, boy.  You don’t have a choice.  You don’t want anything to happen to your sister, do you, Scott?”

I stared, not quite believing what I’d just heard.  Call me naïve as well, but the asshole was like a cliché from a mafia movie.

“Stay away from my family!” I yelled angrily, the sudden rage at the idea of my sister being even looked at by Dale turned my stomach.

But I immediately regretted that outburst, apparently I was a cliché from the same movie, only the victim.

Dale smirked, “Work for me.  Speaking of which, do you have it?”

I shook my head, “No.”

Dale’s smarmy smile went away, and he waved his hand.

I cried out as I was lifted and thrown into the wall behind me.  I screamed in pain, as I felt metal spikes grow out of the wall behind me and pierce my flesh.  The pain was agonizing, as they dug into my legs, back, and arms.  It was hard to think.

Dale smirked, “I have no choice, I can’t be seen as weak, but I also can’t let your talents go to waste.  Last chance Scott, work for me, or your little sister dies, maybe after I have a little fun with her first, and you get to work from a wheelchair.”

A steel spike pressed against my spinal cord.  I’d heard clothing tear, but it hadn’t broken skin yet.

As options went, those kind of sucked, which was why I’d agreed to steal for the bastard in the first place.  The pain was excruciating, and I wasn’t sure what to do.  Did I really want to die for my morality, or see my sister killed?  It was that second one that made me fold like a bad hand in poker.  I was so screwed, I never should have gone to that sup bar, gotten drunk, and showed off like an idiot trying to score with that hot vampire.  Shit.

I was about to answer, before I bled out, when my magic from earlier finally paid off.

A low growl reached my ears, and Dale disappeared under fur, tooth, and claw.  The alley lit up with a bright light, and the telekinesis holding me against the wall failed.  I slid off the spikes, and then fell to the ground right on my face.

I passed out.

I woke up to the steady beeps of the heart monitor, and my head felt like it’d been split open as I let out a groan.  The light stabbed my eyes, and it caused my heart rate speed up as I blinked furiously.  I let out a sigh as the light was turned off, except for the light in the bathroom.

Several thoughts flooded through my mind at once.  I was alive, in the hospital.  How long was I out, was my sister okay?  My magic reached out to the Wi-Fi, I’d been out three hours.  As for the second, I’d need my phone to find out, and I had no idea where my stuff was.

I turned my head, and I took in the person in the room with me.  The man was six foot four, built like a brick wall, and had on a suit.

“What happened?  Where’s my stuff.”

The man said, “Agent Carlson.  Shane Carlson.  We took you to the hospital.”

I barely restrained an eyeroll, and nodded instead, “Got that.  What about Dale?”

Shane frowned, “That was Dale Gibbons?”

Well, shit, if he didn’t know that then the bastard got away.  Of course he did, no shifter no matter how tough could take down Dale.  At least, not when he was aware, and shielded.

I said, “Yes, and my sister isn’t safe, the asshole said he was going to kill her.  Jayna.”

Shane frowned, and pulled out his cell phone as he left the room.

My heart raced, and I shut my eyes, my phone, wherever it was, wasn’t in the room.  I sent my magic out over the wi-fi, and I traced down her phone the hard way.  It wasn’t something I liked to do, because I lost awareness of my surroundings, but I only did it long enough to verify she was okay, for the moment.  She was in the dorm with her roommate.  I couldn’t see them, but I could hear their voices.

My sister Jayna was nineteen, and in college.  I released the magic, and the hospital room came back into focus.

Shane walked back in a moment later.

“We’ll keep an eye on her, but you need to tell us what’s going on.”

I sighed, and I nodded.

“When I turned twenty-one last month, I went out to celebrate with some friends, and exhibited bad judgement.”

Shane tilted his head, “What was her name?”

I laughed, “You’re not wrong.  I went to Neverland, a club on the east side.  I was stupid, tried to pick up a vampire by the name of Desirae, only to find out the hard way that she worked for Dale.  My power is unique, there’s not even a name for it.  I call myself a tech mage, or a Technomancer.  I’m rubbish in a fight, but if it’s technology I can make it do anything I want.

“Fun for a few bar tricks, or so I’d thought at the time after a few beers.  Before I knew it, she had me mesmerized and in the back office, as she explained to Dale how very rich they were about to be.  I’d never stolen a thing in my life, not until then.  I’ve been working with Dale the last month under duress, some untraceable money laundering, and creation of wealth.”

Shane narrowed his eyes, “Creation of wealth?”

I shrugged, “Money is all electronic, ones and zeros these days.  I didn’t have to steal money from anyone, I suppose you could say it’s the modern version of counterfeiting.  Anyway, Dale is one scary bastard, and I’ve been trying to figure a way out since day one.  I’m… not a thief.  Tonight, I decided the only way out was to cut and run, I planned to leave the city.  Identities are something else that’s all digital, I could have set myself up in another city where he’d never find me, under a new name, and found a job like a normal person.  Somehow, he figured out what I was up to.  He always says I’m a horrible liar.”

Shane shook his head, “Why tonight?”

I frowned, “I’d had the thought before, but I wasn’t in a hurry to never see my family again.  I guess I struggled with the idea of that, but I just couldn’t do it anymore.  I was supposed to rob a bank, clear out the cash, and pick up some magical artifact that the bastard is salivating over, from one of the safety deposit boxes.”

Shane nodded, “Some artifact?”

I shrugged, “Not sure what it is, he didn’t tell me, and asking questions isn’t healthy.  I can tell you it’s in safety deposit box fifty-eight, the US bank on Whacker.”

Shane frowned, “And you could do it?”

I nodded, “Like I owned the place.  Listen, protect my sister, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know to take the bastard down.”

Shane asked, “Just like that?”

I shrugged, “Immunity would be nice.  I was under duress and in fear of my life, after all.”

Shane smirked, “I’ll see what I can do, but you know he’ll never see the inside of a cell.”

I blew out a breath, “I know, but I also know your special department needs proof before taking down a supernatural.  Especially one as well connected as Dale.”

Shane raised an eyebrow.

I smirked, “Information stored on computers is technology too…”

Chapter Two

One week later…

The interview room was a little chilly as I waited for someone.  Not sure who, they hadn’t told me.

The last week I’d gone over every minute that I’d spent with Dale multiple times, as well as explained in great detail where all his illegal operations were, as well as the money.  As for me, I’d been held in a cell, though I wasn’t quite sure if that was for my safety or because they’d decided they’d throw the book at me too.  I knew for a fact my magic and abilities freaked them out a bit.  I may have been rubbish in a fight, but with my abilities I could cause a whole host of problems, ruin lives, and never leave proof behind.

Hell, if I was so inclined, I could walk into a silo, and launch a nuke.  After all, launch codes was just a fancy way of saying password.  That kind of thing made people nervous.  In truth, I just wanted my family safe, what was left of it.

I tried to relax as I glanced over to the booth behind the large mirror, but there was no one in there.  The door opened, and I snapped my head around as Shane walked in, followed by two people I’d never seen before.

The first was a distinguished man, dark brown hair and eyes, and about six foot one.  He was also in uniform.  A two-star general, and human, which made me wonder what was going on.  The second new person was a total knockout.  She looked eighteen, was about five foot one, and had long light brown hair and hazel eyes.  She had a curvaceous body, and quite possibly the most beautiful face I’d ever seen, with full lips, long eyelashes, and soft high cheekbones, with perfect skin.

She was also a vampire, which is why I’d said looked eighteen, but based on the power rolling off of her she was ancient.  She had on a red pencil skirt, matching jacket, with a black blouse with matching shoes with three-inch heels.

Regardless, the general and vampire beauty didn’t really go together in my mind, and I turned my head toward Shane in question.  The shifter didn’t look happy.

Shane said, “This is General Steven Schaefer, and Cassie Reed.”

The general said, “We have it from here, you can leave.”

Shane frowned, “What is this about?”

Cassie said, “You don’t have that clearance.”

Damn, even her voice was hot.  Perhaps it was a cliché, but most vampires were extremely attractive.  A shallow choice and attraction no doubt, of the vampires that turned them in the first place.

Shane scowled, and then left the room.  The sound of the door slamming shut sent a shiver down my spine, and I looked at my new guests as they sat down.

I echoed Shane’s questions, “What is this about?”

Steven cleared his throat, “Your future.”

Cassie smiled, and I almost regretfully turned to look at her.  I also managed to keep my eyes above her neck, though it wasn’t without effort.

“You have two choices Mr. Akin.  May I call you Scott?”

I replied, “That’d be fine, if I can call you Cassie.”

She nodded, “Scott, the government needs your help.  You came to our attention through channels, because of your abilities.  Abilities that would help your country.  We’re willing to make the charges you face go away, if you agree to work for us for a period of five years.  You’ll also need to sign a confidentiality agreement, never to speak of our project, and what you learn from it.”

I frowned, “My other option?”

Steven cleared his throat, and I guessed he was going to play bad cop as I turned my head in his direction.

“You will be charged with counterfeiting and we put you away for twenty years.  You should also know Dale Gibbons and Desirae escaped and fled the city mere hours ago, despite the overwhelming task force the FBI’s special division put together.  Your sister of course, is perfectly safe in her new life, as long as Dale doesn’t find out where she is.”

Was that a threat?  Did he just threaten to leak my sister’s new identity?

“Just who the hell are you people?”

Cassie said, “Officially, no one.  Unofficially we work for the president on a task that’s more secretive than our supernatural world.  You will be paid well, and work with cutting edge technologies, for the next five years.  That will pay your debt to society, and quite possibly much more.  All you have to do is sign this deal.  Your family will be safe, you’ll be safe, and you’ll be doing your country a service.”

She was extremely persuasive.

It was entirely possible I could walk out of there, there was no jail that could hold me.  I could also find my sister, and then go back to plan A and hide us both in a new life.  I could do it just as thoroughly as the Marshalls could, if not more so, and the general wouldn’t be able to betray her location.

But… it was a risk, what if I didn’t move fast enough?  What if Dale was still in town and they only thought he’d left.  We’d also be on the run for the rest of our lives, always looking over our shoulders.

I couldn’t deny I was also curious.  I could always sign to see what it was about, and then change my mind later.  Although, that felt wrong to me.  Despite the mess I’d gotten myself into, I’d always been a man of my word, and one to pay my debts.

Still, despite my curiosity being piqued as to what they were into, the general’s thinly veiled threat against my sister made him too much like Dale in my mind.  Enough to shoot myself in the foot, and endanger my sister?  Hell no.

“Let me read it over.”

She smiled again, and then pulled it out of a leather bag.

It took me almost thirty minutes to read through it, but both of them seemed patient enough.  It looked like a typical non-disclosure agreement, along with a deal to have all charges permanently dropped.  It also listed severe penalties for breaking it.  I imagined there was a deep dark hole for me spend the rest of my life in, if I ever violated it.

Basically, I couldn’t tell anyone about it, or else.

I was curious, but once again I caved because of my sister.  The general was probably as much of a bastard as Dale, but it was legal because he worked for the government.  Different rules for the people in charge, that was life.  I also had no doubt that Cassie wasn’t nearly as nice as she appeared to be, despite my male libido wishing otherwise.

“Pen?”

Cassie took out a pen and handed it to me.

I took a deep breath, and I signed.

Cassie reached out and gripped my hand, and I couldn’t help the reflex as I looked up quickly and into her hazel eyes.

She ordered, “You will not break your word,” her silken voice filled with the power of compulsion.

Well, shit.  Not that I’d had plans to anyway.

“That wasn’t necessary.”

She shrugged apologetically, “It was.  You’ll understand soon, time to go.”

“Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?”

She tilted her head, “That wouldn’t be ethical.  There’s a difference between forcing you to accept a job, and in making sure you keep your word once given.”

Maybe… a small one.

“Where are we going?”

She said, “No more questions, you’ll see when you get there.”

Right, no talking about it where we could be overheard, and we were in an FBI building.

They got up, and we left the interrogation room.  The concerned look on Shane’s face told me I’d just gotten way over my head again, and I was about to start drowning.

Story of my life.

When we got on the elevator, I was surprised when she hit the top floor, I hadn’t even noticed she’d hit the up button in the hallway.  When we got off, we went up the stairs to the roof, which had a helipad, with a Blackhawk on it.

I couldn’t help the excitement I felt despite myself, as my magic raced out and into the helicopter.  Avionics, weapons, the knowledge of the design, how it all worked, and how to control it flooded my mind.  New information and technology was rare for me, and of course there was a thrill at the idea of flying in a Blackhawk in the first place.

It wasn’t until the General and I got in the back, that I realized there was no waiting pilot.  Cassie hopped on and sat in the pilot’s seat.  Hot, and she could fly a Blackhawk, she was perfect.  I snorted at the thought, as the rotors spun up, and it was loud.  Even with the noise dampening headset on.

It wasn’t long before we were up in the air, and we headed southwest out of the city.

What the hell had I gotten myself into now?

Neither of my companions were all that talkative on the flight, and I couldn’t get any solid information at all.  I also couldn’t find evidence of a General Steven Schaefer, or a civilian contractor named Cassie Reed in any of the military databases I hacked on the go, with my magic.  Whoever they were, they weren’t in the normal systems, and I thought it likely their systems weren’t on the internet at all.

Still, how the hell did they get paid?  Their names would have to show up somewhere as a line item, but they didn’t.

We landed at an airbase in Illinois, only to immediately board a military transport to Buckley AFB, which was in Colorado right by Denver.  Then we took another helicopter up into the mountains.

At first, I thought we might be going to NORAD, but the helicopter’s avionics told me that wasn’t the case.  We were going in the wrong direction, and we were nowhere near Colorado Springs.  I resigned myself to the fact they weren’t going to tell me, but I wondered if they had any idea I knew exactly where I was, the bird had GPS after all.

We flew into a valley, and it wasn’t until we landed that I could see the entrance to a secret base of some sort, the angles from above just displayed a cliff with a large ravine.  No doubt to obscure the secret base from spy satellites.

Cassie shut down the helicopter, and the large doors opened up.  A few soldiers in BDUs came out to tow the helicopter inside, while we got out and walked into the mountainside.  There was nothing there, not really, it was a vast empty cavern, with several large elevators flush to the floor reminiscent of the ones in an aircraft carrier.

The general walked off without a word.

“Welcome to your new home, for the next five years.”

“Where are we?”

She smirked, “There’s no official designation, though some call it Area-53.  This mountain is an enclosed city, and one of the many military depots around the country, just in case our bases were to be taken out.  There’s enough ammunition, weapons, ordinance, tanks, and aircraft to fight a world war under this mountain.  Not to mention relief supplies, food, water, and all that.”

“Why Area-53?”

She said, “Easier to show you, than to tell you.  It avoids all the disbelief.  For tonight, let’s just get you settled in your quarters.  We’ll start fresh tomorrow.”

“We?”

She nodded, “I run the project, maintain secrecy, with compulsion if necessary.  I’m also a weapons specialist and pilot.  You’ll meet the rest of the team tomorrow.  This top level is just a deployment platform.  Second level is vehicles, tanks, and planes, third level is smaller arms, ammunition, food storage and the like.  Fourth level is where we’re going, it’s a contained town, we have our own BX and commissary, and if they don’t have something you want you can get it ordered, though it takes time to get it.  UPS doesn’t exactly deliver.

“There’s a mess hall where we all eat, our apartments lack a full kitchen, though there is a kitchenette with a fridge, microwave, sink, and coffee maker.  We have satellite television but no on-demand, we can only receive.  There’s also a movie theatre that carries all the current movies.

“The fifth level is where we’ll be tomorrow morning, and you’ll meet the rest of our team.  Listen, there are close to two hundred people in this mountain, but only our team has access to the fifth level.  That’s me, you, and two others.

“If anyone asks you about our project, report it, they should know better, but it happens.  Also, don’t even speak about the project to the few of us in the know, unless we’re on sub-level five.”

“Got it.  The general?”

She smiled, “He’s in charge of the base, and he knows what’s down there, but he’s not part of the team, he runs the whole place.  This way.”

She moved gracefully toward the smaller elevator in the rock wall, and I followed.  She used a security card to activate the elevator, and I pushed SL-4.

“How’d you wind up working here.  For the government.”

She replied, “Long story, for another time.”

My magic raced out of me with a thought, and I traced the elevator controls and computers.  From there I was in the network.  It didn’t take me long to realize there was no outside connection as I’d suspected.  I also wasn’t getting a cell phone signal.

The doors opened up into another vast cavern, with several buildings.  There were the stores she’d promised, what looked like motels, and storage buildings.  The place was maybe a quarter mile by a quarter mile, so there was no transportation outside of walking.  I tried to imagine living here for five years, and I failed.

There were also other buildings, that housed laboratories, presumably for all the scientists there that didn’t work on level fie.

It was the second time a gorgeous vampire had gotten me in over my head, although admittedly Cassie was nothing like Desirae, nor had I been trying to score this second time.  Cassie seemed friendly enough, but I knew looks could be deceiving.  I was also curious about level five, but it could wait for tomorrow.

She led me toward the motel looking building, and one of the rooms.

“I’ll see you in the morning, I’ll have your access ID which is used to purchase things and get around.  Please don’t leave your room tonight, there’ll be some food in the fridge, I’m sure you’re hungry.  I’ll come by and pick you up for breakfast.  We’ll also stop by the PX to get you some clothes.  I’d take you tonight, but it’s closed this late.”

I nodded, “Fair enough.”

She smirked, “Don’t look so down, you’re going to like the job, trust me.  If you have an emergency, I’m in the apartment next door.”

I nodded, although not in agreement, I’d reserve judgement.  I moved inside the apartment and shut the door.  I let out a deep breath, finally alone for the first time all day since I’d been in my cell at FBI headquarters in Chicago.

The apartment was a one-bedroom, full bath, living room and kitchenette.  It looked a lot like a swanky hotel room, which was better than I expected.  Though there was no warmth to it.  The living room had black leather couches, two end tables, a coffee table, and a flat-screen television.  Along one of the walls was the kitchenette, behind a half wall.  As she’d promised, there was a microwave, coffee maker, a small sink, a few cabinets, and a fridge.

I opened up the fridge, and there wasn’t anything in there.  I checked the cabinets, and there were some cans of pasta, soup, and the like, as well as a six pack of bottled water.  I heated up a bowl of chicken soup in the microwave, while I checked out the bedroom.  It had a queen-sized bed, two night-tables, a dresser, and a small closet.  The bathroom was a decent size, and it already had a fresh toothbrush, toothpaste, cheap electric razor, and soap and towels.

I was tempted to go check out level five, but I didn’t want to start out on the wrong foot.  I already felt out of place there, the last thing I needed to do was waltz around a top-secret installation and hack all the cameras and security, even if I could do it with my eyes closed.  Besides, there were also guards, soldiers with automatic weapons, and I couldn’t hack them.

Sure, with TK I could knock them out, but that would be stupid.

I swallowed my curiosity, ate my soup, took a shower, shaved, and went to bed.

Chapter Three

The next morning, I woke up to a knock on the door.  I rolled out of bed, and pulled on yesterday’s clothes, it was all I had.

Cassie greeted me with a smile, and I was taken aback again by just how enthralling she was.  I pushed that down though, the last thing I needed was a relationship, and quite frankly she was so far out of my league I’d need a rocket to reach that high.  She was wearing another pencil skirt and jacket, this time dark blue, with a bright red blouse, and quite frankly was the sexiest and most beautiful women I’d ever seen.  Including models on television.

Granted, that was a taste thing, but I really liked her long light brown hair, and warm hazel eyes.  I firmly reminded myself she was an ancient vampire, and my boss.  It helped, a little.

“Good morning.”

Cassie said, “Breakfast time.”

I nodded, and we headed toward one the large buildings.  There was an awkwardness there, partially because of how her beauty hit me, but a lot of it was new job jitters.  Especially for a job I’d been basically blackmailed into taking.

She said, “Breakfast is from six to nine, lunch from eleven to one, and dinner five to eight.  Otherwise it’s closed.”

The noise of the place was almost overwhelming as we went inside, there had to be over fifty people in the large dining hall.  We moved over to the line, and I grabbed a tray.  I loaded it up with bacon, eggs, some toast, and grabbed some coffee.

She had fruit, a bagel, and orange juice on her tray as we walked toward a table.

Unlike in Hollywood, vampires weren’t dead, they weren’t damned, and they ate normal food.  They also drank blood, about once week, and in my experience usually bagged or from a willing donor.

They were fast, strong, had compulsion, and their magic was all internal, making them heal faster and to help with physics.  To keep them from wiping out when the moved or stopped quickly, it wasn’t something they had control over though, it was all instinctive magic.  They also grew in power, grew stronger, faster, and more durable, over time.  They also didn’t age.

Other than that, most of the human fiction got it wrong.  They got tired in the sun, but they didn’t burn.  Older vampires like Cassie didn’t even get tired.  Silver also wasn’t deadly to them, conversely any bullet was, though they were tougher.  Like a human, a headshot would kill one, but anywhere else and they’d probably heal from it, even a heart shot.  Holy water would just get them wet and piss them off, much like splashing a human with water would.  They also didn’t have to be invited in, that was a demon thing.

She led us over to a table with two women already eating.  They were both right around thirty at a best guess, and both quite attractive.  Hopefully that wouldn’t be an issue, but working here for five years, no dating pool, and I was a very healthy twenty-one.  That could be a problem.

The first had raven hair, strikingly intelligent green eyes behind glasses, and tanned skin, with an oval face.  She had on a brown skirt, a creamy white blouse, and a white lab coat with pens in the top pocket.  She looked up and smiled at us as we sat down.  She was human, and though she had the whole sexy librarian geek thing going on, it was easy enough to ignore.

The woman next to her was five foot seven, with golden blonde hair, blue eyes, and a severely beautiful face with prominent high cheekbones and a slightly pointed chin.  I’d have said she was a ten, before Cassie had broken and recalibrated the scale.  She had on black slacks and a green blouse.  She was also the strongest mage I’d ever felt, an elemental mage that even dwarfed Dale’s power.

I wouldn’t want to cross her.

Cassie said, “Meet the rest of the team,” she waved at the first, “Doctor Diana Young, she’s the head researcher on the project and also a genius.  She has a staff, but most of them are working on tangential projects, and don’t have access to level five,” she waved at the golden blonde, “This is Jemma Wilson, she’s the security for both level five and us.  She’s the only security cleared for level five.”

Yes, and an army unto herself.

Diana blushed, “Nice to meet you, I’m excited to see what we can figure out.”

Jemma just nodded in a neutral greeting, and she kept eating.

I had no idea what it was all about, but I guessed I’d be mostly working with Diana.  Cassie ran things, and Jemma was security, whatever tech they wanted me to look at, I’d be working with Diana on it.

“Nice to meet you too,” I finally said.  Sure, I was a little annoyed at how I was recruited, but that wasn’t Diana’s fault.

I went ahead and dug in, obviously we weren’t going to talk about anything important until we were on level five.

After breakfast, Cassie gave me the ID she’d promised, and we went shopping.  I picked up a few pairs of dockers and collared shirts.  We also headed to the commissary and I picked up some coffee, milk, and a few things for the fridge.  That took us about an hour, and I took the time to change before we headed to level five.

Finally, I’d get some answers, and figure out what I’d gotten myself into.

Level five opened up into a long corridor when the elevators opened.  There were multiple normal sized doors on the left and right, and I could see they were labs as passed them.  We headed down the hallway almost to the end, and I could feel a strong magical shield beyond the double doors.

Cassie waved her hand at a door on the right, and I walked into a small conference room where Diana and Jemma were already present and seated.

“Take a seat.”

I nodded, and sat across from the two of them, and Cassie sat next to me.

Jemma said, “Before we get started, I’d like to learn more about your magic, and what it’s capable of.  I have my reasons, which will become clear in the following briefing.”

It was the first time I’d heard her voice, it was surprisingly soft and dulcet, given her hard eyes, deadly power, and job as security.

I nodded, “That seems fair.  I have telekinesis, like all other classes of mages, and that includes into the nano level as well, which I suspect is a large part of what I can do.  My magic can discern not only technological hardware, but software as well.  My magic feeds me what I need, based on my thoughts, intent, and focus.  It will also feed me the knowledge of what it is and how it works.

“Once I have that knowledge, not only can I control something with my magic and bypass security, I can also power it.  For instance, I never have to charge my cell phone, or even put gas in my motorcycle.  I don’t like to do it, because it leaves me unaware, but my magic can also take my mind inside of a network to access technology remotely.  I much prefer staying aware, and that requires being relatively close to the technology, say fifty yards or so.

“Last but not least, I can recreate anything I understand, which I believe is where the micro-kinesis comes in.  Of course, to duplicate a cell phone for instance, I’d need the raw materials to do so, so that isn’t always practical.  On the other hand, if my cell phone gets smashed, it’s easy enough to repair, since all the resources are still present.”

Jemma tilted her head, “So, if say you found an airplane without power, that has a tight security system and a homing beacon.  Could you power that plane, bypass the security, and suppress the beacon all at the same time?”

I frowned, “It would take a few seconds on the software side.  I could on the other hand, find and disconnect a beacon before powering up the plane, and bypass the security protocols in under a second.”

Diana smiled, “Perfect.”

I asked, “So, what’ve you got down here anyway, some experimental craft from another country?”

Diana giggled, “Not quite.”

Jemma gave Diana a look, then turned back to me, “Have you ever heard of the Roswell crash in forty-seven?”

Really?  No way.

“Yes, you have an alien space ship?” I asked doubtfully.

Jemma sighed, “Bear with me.  In forty-seven an alien ship did crash, it was covered up poorly, and taken to area fifty-one.  Several scientists were able to gain access to the ship, but no one was able to turn the thing on, figure out how it was powered, or anything else for several years.  Eventually, area-51 became a tourist attraction, the outer fences at least, and the ship was smuggled out at night and brought to another location where it was buried in another top-secret location.

“It wasn’t until the nineties, when certain members of government discerned the presence of the supernatural, and the sciences had advanced enough that we succeeded in powering up the ship.  The ship stayed powered for three tenths of a second only, and then died.

“We believe that three tenths of a second was long enough for it to send out a beacon, because several UFOs swarmed the skies above America that night, no doubt searching for their crashed ship.  We speculate the beacon wasn’t on long enough for them to get a fix, and the aliens eventually went away.  Still, the ship was moved again, one more time to this facility about a month later.”

Oh.  I wondered if that’s where the area-53 joke came from, since it was moved twice.

Diana took up the thread of conversation, her voice was as adorable as her hot-geek form of dress.

“Ever since then, we’ve been running experiments on alien technology found on the ship, but not a part of the ship.  We have a good idea how to power it back up, but we don’t dare before we can identify the beacon.”

“What do you suspect?”

Diana said, “I suspect the original power source was jettisoned, was perhaps even destroyed, before they entered Earth’s atmosphere and crashed.  Some kind of high-energy reactor.  We’ve identified several components which appear to be high capacity and extremely energy dense super-capacitors.  I believe it had just enough energy in the super-capacitors to crash-land, and to open the doors when it was investigated, and even turn it on for less than a second.  That action completely drained the ship.

“I believe with a nuclear reactor we could get it running again, but the risk of doing so has prevented us trying.  That’s where you come in.  I’m sorry for the hardship you faced, but it’s also what brought you to our attention.”

To say I was excited in that moment would be a massive understatement, I also felt a chill down my spine.  Alien technology, holy crap.

Jemma picked up a remote, and grabbed the keyboard, and when the screen powered on, she brought up a picture.

“This is from the Hubble telescope, and highly classified.  These are some of the asteroids that exist between Mars and Jupiter.  There was actually never anything wrong with the mirrors, this was picked up in the first few pictures, and a cover story was created to give the government time to decide what to do about it.  The aliens left our skies, eventually, but they didn’t leave altogether.”

She hit the keyboard, and another picture came up, of the same area but zoomed in.  I could barely make it out, but it was obviously too smooth and perfect in shape to be a natural object, and it had a glare on part of it, reflecting the sun.

“So, some ships have been sitting out there and watching Earth, for the last seventy-two years?” I asked.

Jemma frowned, “At least thirty years, but we can’t be sure since Hubble wasn’t launched yet in ninety.  It was also the nineties when UFO sightings finally dropped off around the globe, but regardless, it’s not the same ship,” she flipped through several photos, and although hard to make out it was more than obvious the ships sizes and even shapes varied in the photographs, “As you can see, it changes.”

Jemma took a breath, then continued, “Our thoughts are we’re being watched by an alien race, and as far as we can tell the tour of duty lasts approximately six and a half months before the current ship is relieved.  It’s an odd time period, so it’s been suggested that’s a more even measurement of time for wherever they originate from.  A half or full year tour of duty perhaps, based on their own planet’s year.

“We’re pretty sure it’s about the ship, they’re concerned we have the technology, but it may be more than that.  We don’t know their intentions, or why they’re watching us.  Some speculate they’re waiting for us to achieve a certain level of understanding before they come welcome us as the neighbors, conversely others believe they’re waiting for us to become a danger before they stomp us back the stone age.  It could be either of those two, or a million things between those two extremes.

“Our focus is on learning their technology, reproducing it, and being in a position to defend ourselves if necessary.  Your job is to find that beacon, disable it, and get the ship running, or tell us how we can get it running.  Your magic can charge a phone, but I’m not sure if it will be up to powering that ship, the theoretical energy requirements are equal to several cities.  You’ll be working with Diana on reverse engineering it, so we can understand it and reproduce it, without your help if necessary.”

“I probably can’t power it then, but I’ll be able to verify Diana’s theories, or discover what is needed, and where it will need to be hooked up.”

Jemma nodded, “If you have any doubts, don’t try,” she looked at Cassie, “Did we miss anything?”

Cassie shrugged, “A lot I’m sure, but that was a good overview.”

I asked, “So, the Velcro conspiracy?”

Diana snickered, “Fake.  There’s no Velcro on the ship.  But, the whole laser thing is true, we got that technology from this ship.”

I grinned.

Cassie rolled her eyes, but her smile took the edge off of the action, “You ready?”

I nodded, wouldn’t miss it for the world.  I even kind of understood her compulsion, she’d let me make the choice as to participate or not, but this was too big to trust to a signature on a contract.  Too many people were fickle, and this was… huge.

“Let’s go.”

The four of us got up and left the conference room, and it went through the double doors.  The craft was at least two hundred feet long, and about twenty in width, in the shape of a cigar.

“Huh, I thought it was a saucer.”

Cassie said, “That really was the weather balloon it hit on the way to the ground.”

There was an entrance toward the middle of the craft, it was a round hole that looked perfect.

“No door?”

Diana said, “I can show you the video later, though it’s in black and white.  I suspect it’s some kind of liquid metal.”

Liquid metal?

Enough with the questions, as soon as we were close enough to walk through the magic blocking shield, I sent my magic into the craft.

Shit, I fell on my ass, and felt dizzy, as information flooded my mind, not just systems, but whole new branches of scientific understanding.  To say I was overwhelmed by the technology would be an understatement, and my heart pounded in my chest as I took it all in.

Anti-gravity, viable fusion, artificial gravity which was completely different from anti-gravity.  The first involved anti-matter, the second dark matter.  Impulse propulsion.  Wormhole creation for travel between stars, though it was only viable far enough away from a gravity well.  It also explained the cigar shape, wormholes were geometrically more energy intensive based on how large the opening was.

Energy to matter used to create food or replacement parts.  Medical technology.  Nano-bots, self-repair, quantum computing, and the list went on.

We also had a problem.

Cassie asked, “You okay?”

I nodded, “I think so.  It’s not liquid metal, it’s nano-technology.  The whole ship is made up of nanites that bond on the molecular level, using the same quantum forces that hold an atom together.  When millions of the things moved and opened up the hull, I bet to the human eye it would look very much like the metal had turned to liquid.”

Jemma asked, “Hold an atom together?”

I said, “Sure, basic science.  An atom is made up of protons and neutrons in a nucleus, and electrons in the outer shell.  Without those forces holding the nucleus together, all matter would explode apart, until it was nothing but hydrogen.  Something has to keep those protons together, they’re all positively charged and should push away from each other, but they don’t.  It’s called the strong force, and holds them all together, quarks and shit.”

I shook my head, “Point is, the ship looks like one solid piece because all those nano-bots are held together and bonded at that level.  That’s where the problem comes in.”

Jemma asked, “What problem?”

“Well, everything in the ship is made up of nano-bots except for the power systems.  All the drive systems, life support, lighting, and everything else… including the computer.  Every nanobot has a tiny built in quantum processor, the control computer is the ship.  All the nanobots are connected together quantumly for instant communications between each other, and the ship is literally a computer made up of trillions of miniature processors.  Any damaged components can be rebuilt with re-tasked nano-bots.  The nano-bots can also be replaced and manufactured on ship, so it only runs at less than a hundred percent efficiency for a small amount of time.  The only exception is main power.”

Jemma frowned, “So… why is that a problem?”

Diana narrowed her eyes, “Because that means there’s trillions of beacons on the ship, the ship is the beacon.”

“Bingo.  I also believe with that many processors and being quantum, that the ship is most likely going to be sentient, unless the aliens took steps to prevent such an occurrence.”

Cassie asked, “Options?”

“We’ll have to risk powering it up and hope I can turn off the beacon before the aliens can triangulate our position.  The problem is it might be hardware and not software.  Consider this idea, imagine an airplane where the black box sits safely in a warehouse at Boeing.  I believe each nanobot is quantumly connected to each other, but also connected to a device on their home world, though that’s just supposition.  If that was the case, there would be no turning it off, even for me.  Maybe.

“The safe thing to do is we can try building our own ship, and just leave this one off.  The second option would be safer, but also much harder.  Actually, I take back the safer part, it’s only safer when it comes to the aliens.”

Jemma asked, “Why harder?”

Diana said, “Software.”

I smirked, “She’s right.  I can duplicate the hardware, and all the systems, but the control software not so much.  Not unless we turn it on, and I can read it.  I might be able to program it on the fly with magic, but it’d be dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?” Cassie asked.

I said, “Well, the anti-grav system is used to escape a gravity well, and the gravity system is for both artificial gravity and impulse propulsion.  Those systems use anti-matter and dark matter respectively.  I suspect if I get the containment wrong the first time on either of those systems, I won’t get a second shot.  Possibly no one on the planet will get a second shot.  There’s also other less scary problems, like gravity field settings, I could turn us into paste, or rip the ship in half, then there’s the shields, and a few other things that could make us all have a very bad day.”

Cassie frowned, “So, it’s either we risk the aliens to get the software intact, or risk blowing up the planet.”

I nodded, “That about sums it up.  Although I suspect the planet will still be here, just uninhabitable.”

Diana laughed, but Cassie didn’t seem to appreciate my sense of humor.

“I have a suggestion to minimize the danger on option one.”

I raised an eyebrow.

Diana said, “What if we take a small piece of the ship and leave.  Say, go to the desert about five hundred miles south.  You could power up just a few thousand nanites, and then see if you can disable the quantum connection that goes to their home planet, while leaving on the local one.  If not, turn them off, and we leave the area at high speeds.  According to last time, it will take them a few hours to reach the planet from out by the asteroid belt.”

“That sounds reasonable, good idea.  If I can leave it on a few seconds, I could get a good read of the control software, assuming it’s present in every nano-bot, like DNA in a human cell.  If that’s the case, plan B becomes a lot safer if I can’t disable the beacon.”

Diana winked at me.

Jemma said, “We’d need to get approval, my standing orders won’t allow any part of the ship to leave this installation.”

Cassie nodded, “I’ll go talk to the general, why don’t you give him a tour of the ship, and then go pick a part out.”

I didn’t really need a tour, I knew its exact dimensions after a magic scan, but on the other hand I really wanted one.  It’d be different seeing it in person.

The three of us headed for the ship, while Cassie headed for the exit.

Diana asked, “Any idea on the power source?”

“They use fusion.”

Diana snorted, “Cold fusion?”

“Nope, the sun kind.  Hot fusion.  They burn hydrogen at about five thousand degrees, their reactor is a sun the size of a basketball, with injectors to feed it hydrogen a few atoms at a time.  They discovered an alloy that makes thermoelectric energy highly efficient, and it’s also a superconductor without freezing temperatures.  The containment for the reactor turns all that heat into electricity to power the ship.  It does it so quickly and efficiently that the heat doesn’t accumulate enough to melt containment.  The tanks hold enough hydrogen to last a couple of months of hard use.  Much longer, if the ship is idle.  Anyway, it’s why the nanobots aren’t also containment, that alloy is extremely difficult to make.”

Jemma asked, “How do you know all that, if the core was damaged, jettisoned, and destroyed?  It wasn’t there for you to scan with your magic.”

I’d wondered if anyone would notice that discrepancy.

I smirked, “Because, there’s a spare in the trunk.”

Diana’s eyes widened, and it was my turn to wink as I walked onto the ship.

Chapter Four

The inside of the ship was much like the outside, at least where we entered.  The walls were a shiny light gray metallic finish.  It was also very open, it appeared to be large fifteen by fifteen, by one-hundred-foot room, and there wasn’t all that much in it.  Of course, it was basically a rectangle inside a tube, which meant there was plenty of small storage spaces between it and the hull that weren’t apparent.

A powered ship would be able to share that inventory, and even melt and shape the walls to hand it to the crewperson.  That central room was just about half the ship, and clearly for storage.

Diana waved toward the front, and we moved that way.

“Can I see your tablet, Diana?”

Jemma gave me a suspicious look, and I suppressed rolling my eyes.

Diana handed it to me with a curious look on her face, and I sent my magic into it as I walked, then handed it back.

I said, “Everything I know about it.  I organized it by scientific mathematical theory and discipline, then by system.”

Diana looked like she just might kiss me in that moment.

I said, “It’s worth looking at.  Are you guys worried the aliens might attack, because this ship is… a scout.  Maybe even an interstellar-shuttle.  It only has one weapon system, energy beam technology.”

Jemma frowned, “What are you saying?”

I stopped for a second, “Alright, imagine a caveman gets sent to the future, and finds himself a Humvee with a fifty-caliber mounted on it.  He’d be properly awed, might even take him a while to figure out how to open the door.  He eventually learns how to drive, how to fill it with gas, and how to use the mounted weapon.  Then… he finds out real fast he screwed up, when an apache shoots a missile at him, or a tank fires a large round, or an AC-130 brings the rain from so high up he can’t even see his opponent as the world explodes around him.

“This ship is awesome, nothing we have is close, but I’m suggesting for the aliens it’s probably just a tiny scout.  A tiny scout that could take over the world, but a tiny scout in their backyard.  Granted, they could be a peaceful race, and only have one weapon for self-defense, but if that’s true, then you have no reason to worry at all in the first place.  Well, except for them wanting to repo their technology from the primitive humans.”

Jemma asked, “What’s your point?”

I replied, “I imagine if Diana can learn the math and theories I put on that tablet, something stronger could be designed, if it’s necessary.  My point is getting this ship to work is step one, at best you’d be one ship against god knows how many enemy ships that are equal to it.  Assuming they even care.  I’m sure the general would tell you that hope is a shitty plan.  I hope none of it is necessary, but who knows what they’re up to.

“I’d even say the facts argue they’re peaceful, or they’d have made demands and started to dismantle the world looking for their ship seventy years ago.  My guess is they simply don’t want their tech to pollute our natural evolution, and they’re waiting to collect it.”

Diana said, “He’s right.  The underlying theories are more important than the ship itself, because human ingenuity will eventually take us in different directions than the aliens went.”

We started to move again, Jemma didn’t look all that happy with my insights, but I blew that off.  Still, it was an obvious point, we might be in even more danger by getting it working.

The door opened up into the bridge, which was a room about twenty-five by fifteen by fifteen.  The floor, walls, and ceiling were the same metallic color, but the four chairs were a dark brown.  The four chairs surrounded a large blank rounded table in the middle of them.  Of course, with power it wouldn’t be blank, it was a more advanced touch screen system, with a tactile holographic display above it.

Whoever the aliens were, they were obviously bipedal, and based on the height and size of the chairs they weren’t all that different from us.  Despite having seen it all with my magic, it was a little eerie seeing it with my own eyes.  Aliens.

We turned and left without a word, and we walked the length of the empty space to the back room, which was the engineering space.  I imagined it wasn’t empty when it crashed, and I suspected most of its cargo was in labs or storage rooms in this installation for catalogue and study.

A lot of the ship’s systems were integrated into the hull, the nanites themselves forming what a ship needed, including weapon blisters on the hull, on demand.  Engineering was mostly power generation and super-capacitors to clean and smooth the energy output of the reactor.  Really, a powerplant room would be a more accurate description, most of the ship’s systems weren’t in the back.

At the moment, I could see the empty place in the center of the room where the reactor would go.  It was also the only place the floor was open, which had allowed them access to study the super-capacitor technology below the reactor.  There were two chairs in the room, with a similar platform table as in the bridge, just smaller, that could be used to control all the systems.

The chairs were the only things on the ship that weren’t made from nanites.  I suspected though there used to be more, no doubt anything not part of the ship itself had been stripped out over the last seventy years.

I think the most eerie thing about it was it didn’t seem all that alien to me.  Once the underlying technologies were understood, it was almost an intuitively human design, but without that understanding the scientists of the past would’ve been baffled.

Diana said, “We can remove the supercapacitors, otherwise the ship seems to be one solid piece.”

I nodded, “There’s other components through the walls, but there’s no way to get to them without power.”

Jemma asked, “Can you duplicate it?”

I said, “I believe so.  I just need to duplicate the fusion reactor since it’s not made of the nanites.  The list of materials I’d need to do so is on Diana’s tablet.  Of course, we’d also need enough hydrogen to power it long enough to get out to Jupiter.  Oh, and chairs, we need chairs.”

Diana asked, “What about dark matter, and anti-matter?”

“The ship creates the latter, and it captures the former.”

Jemma asked, “What about the nanites?  The ship itself.”

I smiled, “The ship has energy to matter conversion, that’s used primarily for nanite replacement.  Once we have power to the ship, the ship can build another ship.  It makes sense to just focus on the chairs and reactor.  The ship could build five ships at once, given the insanely high-power requirements to convert energy to matter.  Of course, in a week, those five can build twenty-five, and in the third week those twenty-five can build one hundred twenty-five, then six hundred in the fourth week.  That’s seven hundred fifty-five in a month.  In five weeks, you’d have over three thousand.”

Jemma’s eyes bugged out.

“In short, the limiting factor will be in gathering enough of the exotic materials needed for the reactor.”

Jemma asked, “Why can’t the ship create that?”

“It’s too big.  The ship is made up of nanites.  It takes crazy amounts of power for it to create a nano-sized amount of matter in the matrix needed to create one nanite at a time, as one complete component of the ship.  The power required to build something macro is just… impossible.  You can’t create a little bit of it at a time, or it’d be a pile of sand, instead of one large piece.  Oh… I’m an idiot.”

Jemma smirked and raised an eyebrow.

I blushed, “The aliens can’t do it that way, but with my help we could.  I could take that pile of sand as raw materials, and then make the reactor with my magic.  Still, that’s just a shortcut, and I’m the only one on the planet that can do it.  It’d be worth it though, to conserve the elements that are rare on our world.”

Jemma nodded, “Obviously we’ll be having Diana figure out how to build the reactors, perhaps with a team, and perhaps that newer and stronger ship, but in the meantime, we could build up a fleet in the next five years.”

Diana said, “I think I’ll get started on that, who knows how long it’ll take to get approval to tear out the part and do a power test in the desert.  You’ll get me the software as well?”

I nodded, “As soon as it’s powered up.  Most of it’s there already, in the firmware.”

My mind raced as I considered the possibilities.

The approval took three days, and I used the time to get settled.  I hoped my sister was okay, there was no way for me to communicate with her while I was in this installation, but I had plans to drop her a secure message once we got in the real world again.  There wasn’t much for me to do, not until the ship was powered up, so I tried to relax.  The whole alien ship thing was hard to forget though, and I started to wonder at the wisdom of what we were doing.

I knew Diana had several groups working on the scientific theory and math of the several systems.  As far as I knew they didn’t know about the ship, and they must’ve thought it was just high-tech government breakthroughs.  Each of them studying a small piece and only Diana seeing the big picture.  Regardless, that was mostly speculation, it was all locked down and no one was talking about what they were doing.  I also knew it would take a long time before humanity came up with their own design of a larger and stronger ship.

I suspected I might have my own insights into that idea though, once the alien was powered up and I could see the full picture.

Regardless, it was three days later, and the four of us were on an apache heading south, just in case when I powered up the nanites that made up the supercapacitor I would be unable to shut down the secondary quantum connections to the ship’s home box, which I assumed was on their planet.

It actually worried me a bit, what would be their reaction if I was successful?  Would they think we failed to power it more than a second or two again, or would they be able to tell we disconnected their ability to monitor and locate the ship.

It was a risk, even if it worked it was a risk, so I wasn’t all that surprised it’d taken the admiral three days to get permission.

“I’ve been thinking.”

Cassie asked, “Did it hurt?”

I gave her a look, but she just grinned back.  I’d grown used to her hotness over the last few days, so things hadn’t been quite so awkward in my mind.

“In the eighties, there were reports of UFOs around nuclear power plants.”

Cassie tilted her head, “Go on.”

“Well, we’d had the ship for thirty years by then, what if they suspected we found a way to disable the quantum connections they use to track their ships.  Fission and fusion are both nuclear reactions, the ship’s sensors can detect nuclear activity.  What if they were looking for the ship?”

Diana said, “That’s very likely.”

I nodded, “So, what happens when we power it up in the middle of the mountains, with no cities nearby to power, do you think that might set off some alien bells, that they might check it out, or have they given up on that avenue of investigation.”

Cassie frowned, “What would you suggest.”

I said, “It’s all moot if I can’t disconnect the connection, but if it does work, I’d suggest moving it to a navy base.  Whoever is up there monitoring us, will most likely believe we’ve just brought another nuclear sub on-line, when we power it up fully.  Unless Diana has an idea on how to block their active scans.”

Diana said, “The ship’s shield should do it.  But that has to be dropped when people get on and off.”

I bit my lip, “I might be able to power a shield in engineering before we turn it on.  Then maybe set up a thing where either the engineering shields or external shields had to always be on, one or the other.”

Cassie nodded, “Look into that, moving the ship is the last option.”

We arrived in the New Mexico dessert, there was absolutely nothing around us as we landed, outside of scrub and rocks.  The rotor spun down as we got off, and we moved away from the helicopter.  I had the supercapacitor, it was lighter than it looked, but still plenty heavy.

I took a deep breath, and mentally crossed my fingers as I brought up my magic.  I flooded the device with it, and that time I also powered up the nanites.  The quantum connections between the nanites were obvious to me, as were the others that led to another place.  It was immediate communications, much like was described by Einstein’s spooky action at a distance known as quantum entanglement.

There was a part of me that wanted to follow that in my mind, with my magic, and see just what was on the other end.  Would I get into the alien’s computers on their home world?  What could I do with that?  Learn designs for other ships, other technologies, and who knew what else.  Their whole fleet was probably connected through their home box monitoring.  Of course, I resisted the temptation, the longer they were connected the more danger we were in.

Still, it tempted me for a split second.

The quantum connections weren’t breakable of course, but in essence they were nothing but a wireless transmitter.  I was able to override the security and in essence shut down that reporting function, which was just as good.  They could tell it was connected, but without the device reporting where it was, they couldn’t trace it, and may even just assume it was off.

In a way, that was both good and bad, because they’d know we’d activated part of the ship, but they wouldn’t be able to find it now.  What kind of response would that elicit?  If they were as paranoid as humans, I’d expect to be invaded.

I stopped powering it.

“I can only stop it from sending data, I can’t break the connection.  That means they’ll know we powered it up, but they won’t be able to find it.”

Cassie said, “On the helicopter, let’s not wait around for them.”

The four of us piled back on, and Cassie took us up and headed north.

Cassie asked, “Options?”

I touched Diana’s tablet, and sent the software I’d promised, then nodded.

“Options.  I can create a new ship, sort of, using the current ship as raw materials.  In essence, remake the nanites and discard the atoms that are quantum entangled with their home world.  I can do that before we power it up, and also set up the reactor shielding so they won’t detect it when it powers up.  Then we make copies of the ship from that copy.”

Cassie said, “That sounds like a plan, so they won’t even notice for a micro-second when it’s turned on?”

“Exactly.  I also have a risky proposition.  I also believe I can invade their black-box system, and most likely pull all that information.  In other worlds, I’d be able to read how big their fleet is, where it is, what other types of ships they have including weapon systems, and so forth.  I might even be able to learn their philosophy, and why they’re really hanging around.  Of course, while that’s going on, they’re going to know we powered up a piece of the old ship.  They won’t be able to trace it, but it’ll be active for a lot longer than a few seconds for me to accomplish all that.”

Cassie nodded, “That’s… tempting as hell.  Type up a proposal for it, with risks and rewards, and I’ll try to get it approved.  As for the other plan, that one seems pretty risk free?”

I replied, “It is, I’ll use a small part of the ship as a proof of concept first, to make sure my understanding is complete and I don’t mess anything up.  They won’t know we’re doing any of it, when I rebuild the ship or when we power it on.  It will take a while though, hours, possibly days if I have to stop and rest.  The ship is large, it’s a lot for my magic to change.  The proposal to steal all their other stuff is on your phone.”

Cassie smirked, “Ask first next time.”

“Yes, maam.”

I’d also sent that message to my sister, she’d left me one as well.  She was settled, and doing okay, but she missed me, her friends, and her old job.  I hoped they caught Dale soon, so she could go back to her real life, but I wasn’t holding my breath either.

Might as well get started on the flight.  Essentially, I used my magic to rebuild what was already there, minus the second entangled particle.  Now that I knew where it was and how it all worked, it was easy enough to do.  Easy to understand and direct, but not without effort.  Even that small part of the ship took me about five minutes, and my power and mind felt a little drained.  Reading tech and absorbing knowledge was easy for my magic, re-assembling matter was decidedly more energy intensive.  I decided to rest, and I’d power it up when we got back and verify it was all still working.

And it did, work that is.

I also kept the entangled particles that I’d separated, and I bonded them together.  If my greedy plan was approved, I’d need them later to connect my magic to so I could explore their systems.

Chapter Five

“You look tired,” Diana noted at breakfast, two days later.

I smiled, “Late night.  I managed to finish up the ship.  We can power it up, but I assume no joyrides.”

Jemma snorted.

Diana said, “No.  Too risky.  We need to stay hidden until we’re ready to face them, if in fact they ever confront us.”

“Any news?” I asked Cassie.

She shook her head, “No, I suspect they want to verify this first stage works.  Perhaps even make a bunch of copies, before we risk you diving into their systems.  In short, get the maximum benefit and level of preparedness we can get, before we introduce further risk.”

That made sense, yet without better and more powerful designs, I suspected even a few hundred scout ships wouldn’t make a lick of difference, except perhaps to get a lot of people killed.  But… it was reasonable to wait I supposed.

“They?”

Cassie rolled her eyes, “The general, joint chiefs, and the president, most likely.”

I nodded.

Rebuilding the ship wasn’t all I’d done the last two days either.  I’d been… playing.  Let’s just say that if I ever ran across Dale Gibbons again, I wouldn’t need help to paste his ass.  It was something I hadn’t reported either, call me paranoid, but I had a feeling they’d object.  In essence, the nanites disconnected from the ship and a nuclear power source were worthless for everyone on the planet, except for me, since I could power them with magic.

That opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities, but I was sure they’d have denied me permission since they weren’t reproduceable for anyone else.  Not unless they could create a pocket-sized nuclear reactor.  On the good side, it didn’t violate my signed contract not to talk about the technology or share anything I learned about it outside the group.

Call it… insurance.  I hadn’t forgotten the way I’d been recruited, it was in a way that would’ve made Dale proud, threatening and blackmailing me and my sister like that, but since they were the government it was all legal.  Nope, I hadn’t forgotten that at all, and it wasn’t lost on me that at some point I’d be expendable.  They needed my magic for the moment, but eventually they’d be able to build ships on their own without my intercession, as soon as Diana figured out how to manufacture the exotic alloys in the fusion reactors.

My usefulness might be extended if they approved the greedy plan, but that wouldn’t last longer than it took for me to put the data and specs of all their ship types on a tablet.  Although, then they’d have to manufacture it, they might wait until I build them prototypes that could reproduce themselves first.

Or I could just be paranoid.

The only one I really sort of trusted was Diana, she was a total geek, and all about the science.  She was also nice and upbeat.  She was the kind of woman I’d want to date, if dating any of them wasn’t a horrible idea.  Jemma ignored me for the most part and was all business, and Cassie always had a teasing smile or playful comment, but I suspected either of those ladies would kill me and not lose a wink of sleep over it, if they were ordered to.

Enough about that, I hoped I was being paranoid, both about the aliens and the humans, but my gut told me I was in a lot more danger from my fellow humans in this installation than I was from the aliens.

“Speaking of maximum benefit?”

Cassie nodded, “You have a go to power it up, and start five copies.”

I ate a piece of bacon, and then took a sip of coffee.  Despite my worries, I was also excited.  The technology was incredible and a blast to play with.

We finished breakfast, and we headed for sub-level five.

We had to be cautious, but it wasn’t brain surgery.  I used my magic to power up the nanite set up in a shield configuration in engineering, the spare reactor had already been set up.  Once the shield was active, I powered up the reactor.  Once the reactor was up and running, I withdrew my magic, the reactor kept the shield going that would stop the aliens from scanning a new nuclear reactor on the Earth.

There was one snag, the computer made up of trillions of nanites was a lot smarter and more powerful than the one that was formed in the desert, using a much smaller amount of nanites.  My magic was a match for it however, as I overrode its security and set its access.  At that point, the computer worked for us, not the aliens.

Also, it wouldn’t be an issue going forward, as those changes would be replicated out to the copies.

“We’re good.  The four of us have access to the ship, anyone else would be seen as an intruder.  Any of us can add others if we wish, for when it has pilots.”

Cassie asked, “Is it sentient?”

“To a limited degree.  I wouldn’t want to try to hack it, without my magic.  It’s aware, powerfully so, but that awareness is small and relegated to the ship.  It doesn’t have a big picture, if that makes sense.”

I tapped the table, and a hologram of all the ship’s functions came up.  There were some blinking red lights along part of the hull.

Jemma asked, “What’s that?”

I replied, “It has to rebuild part of itself, part of the hull was damaged in the crash, so it’s already replacing those nanites and self-repairing itself.”

That was completely true, but it was also missing some nanites that I’d appropriated.  I just left that part off.

I added, “I’m going to direct it to create the resources for another spare reactor, and I’ll assemble it before it stores it away.  I’m also directing it to create copies.  The copies will also have black boxes of sorts, similar to what the aliens have.  I assume you want to be able to track your ships?”

Cassie nodded.

I said, “This one won’t have that, it’ll also be separate, so I suggest this ship never flies or leaves your control.  Each new ship will build a small device like the table in engineering, but smaller, like a desktop pc size.  All we have to do is remove it, and then set it up somewhere with power.  It’ll report all the data and information related to the ship back to wherever you set up the command center.  They can also connect together, as long as they’re in physical proximity.”

Cassie asked, “Connected?  That helps us how?”

“Manageability.  What happens when you have ten thousand ships?  Assuming you’d build that many, each one would have a separate black box.  Instead of that, you could connect them all, and have twenty or thirty in the command center that monitored for anomalies, like break downs, disconnects, by location, or when one powers up its weapons.  Watching all of them all the time would be impossible at that point, and take a command center the size of the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Diana giggled.

I shrugged, “It’s essentially what the aliens have, and those connections are how I’d get magical access to all their ship types, it’s one giant wireless network that could theoretically span the universe given it operates over entangled particles.  Not incidentally, it’s also how the command center communicates with all the ships.  Instant communication, to communicate with a ship not in the network, it would be limited to light speed communications.

“Want to take a look outside?  The five ships are building.”

Cassie nodded, “Sure.  I’ll pass on that recommendation, that this ship goes nowhere.”

We started to walk for the exit.

“You know, this cavern will only fit about thirty ships.”

Cassie said, “The general is looking into it.  With the reactor shielded from detection, it shouldn’t be hard to find a base we can start stashing them in.  For now, we’ll be limited to producing twenty-five a week, made from the five being built now.  I imagine when we move to a new base, the original will stay here as a backup, just in case, and we can start cranking them out.  I suspect plan greed will be a go once we have a large number of them.”

I nodded, “I’d also suggest when you find pilots for them, all test flights happen in daylight, when our side of the Earth is faced away from the asteroid belt.  They can’t detect the fusion plants, but if they have line of sight, they’d be able to recognize a ship.  The optical scan systems are light years past what we have.  We’ll also need hydrogen fuel soon, there’s enough for a couple of weeks, and the new ships won’t have any.”

Cassie said, “Being handled.  What about the shielding, without you there if we power down a ship won’t we lose the shield?  Won’t the aliens see a blip before the reactor can fully power up?”

I shook my head, “Supercapacitors.  The shield is part of the startup sequence, and the capacitors will have enough energy stored to shield and fire up the reactor.  Even the first time it’s started, the reactor on the builder ship supplying power will be connected for that first startup sequence, and to provide power.  If for some reason that energy gets drained and there isn’t enough, the startup sequence will be aborted until another ship can hook up and provide the power, sort of like jump starting a car.  The only thing you need me for at this point is assembling reactors, and the greedy plan.”

We paused the conversation as we walked outside, and we took a look around.  The main ship reconfigured itself repurposing a portion of the hull nanites to create an EPS conduit that ran toward the back of the cavern, with five T junctions to provide power to build the new ship.

“The tubes are EPS conduits, the box they’re connected to off the T junctions are energy to matter converters.  The ship built five of them out of repurposed nanites, like the power conduits, which will all be absorbed back into the hull when its finished.  All five have already started creating nanites, it’ll take a week to make the several trillion that make up the ship, and most likely an extra day on top of that to create the resources for me to build the reactor and spare.”

Cassie said, “Damn, that’s amazing.  It can’t do more than five?”

I shook my head, “The power requirements for energy to mass takes about eighteen percent of the reactor, leaving ten percent to keep the ship’s idle systems running.  It could build a hundred ships at once, but it would take twenty times longer as the power demands cycled through.”

Diana said, “There’s not much for us to do at this point but monitor, so I’m going back to the labs on four to get back to studying and learning.”

Cassie nodded absently, and Diana waved awkwardly as she took off.

It’d be interesting to see what she and her teams came up with, in comparison to what the aliens had.  Assuming of course, the greedy plan was ever approved.  Of course, the former would take years as the fabrication technology on Earth was developed to take advantage of the new theories, whereas the latter would take hours to gather and perhaps days to implement via my magic.

“So, how did you wind up here?”

Diana and I were sharing dinner, I wasn’t sure where the other two were.

Diana said, “I was recruited right out of college.  Some of the projects I worked on during my post-graduate work to get my doctorate were sponsored by the military.  I guess I came to Schafer’s attention back then.  I can’t talk about the projects, they’re still military secrets, but they were significant enough.  I took over as head scientist on the project five years ago.”

Huh, she got her doctorate at twenty-four?  She was smarter than I first thought.

Diana asked, “Your magic is pretty impressive.”

I laughed, “It just got more so.  Rebuilding a motorcycle engine isn’t nearly as impressive, or even a corporate jet.”

Which really, led to a lot of that paranoia I spoke of earlier.  Even I could see I’d become dangerous, on my own I could create powerful ships, even if I never shared the secrets with anyone else.  I was… a national security risk.  It was somewhat ironic, that the preparations I’d taken proved them right.  Still, they’d never know, if they kept their word, and I walked in five years.

She laughed, “I suppose not.  Any suggestions on what I should focus on?”

I thought about that for a minute, and I looked around to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard.

“I suspect the more powerful ships are just the same nanite technology, but with different firmware to maintain the different ship and all its systems, a whole lot more of them, and perhaps larger or multiple reactors of the same size to power it.  I would think programming that firmware would be up there in importance, and it could create any ship, weapon, or system you could think of, outside of the reactor.  For some reason, the nanite technology isn’t compatible with reactor systems.  Manufacturing of reactors is a big one too.”

She nodded, “I have groups on all of that.  It’ll take a long time to truly understand what we already have, before we can start trying to develop something new.  I’m just getting to the point where I feel competent in operating it, much less in how it all works.”

I shrugged, “It’s only been a few days.”

Diana looked around, “Do you ever wonder what they’ll do with it?  I mean, besides learn about it and try and defend ourselves from the aliens if they object to us stealing their technology.  Sure, we could argue salvage rights, but…” she trailed off.

I frowned.  I hadn’t thought much about anything negative until I saw her concern, but the U.S. could use the tech to take over the world, pretty easily.  I left off that part though, and I mentioned a few other things that had occurred to me.

“Well, the tech could be used to replace communications with quantum entanglement, which would mean instant communication to probes around the solar system or beyond, not to mention no more cell towers or radiation from cell phones, wi-fi, and all that.  It could also solve our energy problems, though there is some risk in fusion.  The scanning technology would increase our security at ports, borders, and the like.  How about a car that never needed repairs, nanite sky scrapers that would go up in a month, the medical systems could also overturn the health industry.  Anti-gravity would make access to space cheap and easy, we could mine Jupiter for hydrogen, and other resources from around the solar system.  Explore the stars?  I suspect there’s a lot more.”

She nodded, “Don’t forget starvation, the food replication part of the energy to matter systems.  Still, all that would take a hundred years the way the government moves, they’ll keep it to themselves for a long time.”

I snickered.

She looked around again, “Balance of power.”

I nodded once in understanding, and we dropped it without saying more.  She was obviously worried about that, and I felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner.  The scanners could pick up fissionable material, it would be child’s play for a few hundred of the small scout ships to sweep the Earth and destroy nuclear weapons, and nothing else the other countries had would have a prayer at getting through the shields on one of the ships.

I liked America, and Americans were good people, but the government was a whole other thing, and they had no business ruling the world.  Maybe it was naïve, but I really hoped they wouldn’t be doing that.

The whole thing just seemed incredibly dangerous at that point, I had to worry about aliens, world wars and death tolls, not to mention myself.  All jumps in technology caused waves, and we were taking a shortcut through thousands of years of advancements.  It was cool, but it was also worrying.

Chapter Six

The next six weeks went quickly.

The first five ships had been finished, which in turn had made twenty-five more, which the general sent off but wouldn’t tell me where.  The black boxes were also sent somewhere else.  I understood need to know, compartmentalizing, and all that, but I couldn’t help but feel untrusted.

Regardless, that’d happened six times, so the government had a hundred and fifty advanced alien ships.

Hell, it was possible they had thousands wherever they were being moved too, all waiting for me to show up and build their fusion plants.  I doubted it, but it was possible each batch of twenty-five had been building a hundred and twenty-five a week since they’d left.

I’d also thought more about the possibilities in the future, and I struggled with what I should and could do about it if the president decided to conquer the world.  To that end, I’d also worked on my own personal project and kept tweaking things to make them more efficient, and things not quite so bulky.  Personal nanite systems for a human sized body could be much smaller, thanks to the square cubed law, being a person I was much smaller than a ship two hundred feet long and twenty feet in diameter.  Still, they required some room.

If it isn’t clear yet, I basically built a powered suit with magic, modifying the nanite firmware to support that shape.  The bad part was I hadn’t been able to test it outside of its quiescent form which conformed snugly to my body, I didn’t trust that I wasn’t being watched at all times.

My magic could only power so many nanites, and everything there was a tradeoff.  It had shields, flight which included inertial dampening, life support, healing, communications, and weapons.  Theoretically, if it worked.  I was sure it would work, but I just wasn’t sure if it would work well.

I also worried that if shit did hit the fan, my sister would undoubtedly be in danger and used as a pawn, so I remained hopeful that I was just being paranoid as I considered plans within plans in case my government ever turned on me.  I could go to her and set her up in a new life easily enough, but given all the CCTV and facial recognition I had no doubt it wouldn’t take them long to find her in a city.

Which meant stashing her on a farm or something, and her kicking my ass for doing so and disrupting her life a second time.

The main point was, I felt a sense of responsibility for it all, and I was so over my damned head it wasn’t funny.  No, I couldn’t control the government’s decisions, most of the blame would be theirs, but they wouldn’t have the ships if it wasn’t for me.

Diana and I had grown closer over the six weeks, and we spent a lot of evenings together.  Just a friendship, although there were moments that I regretted that fact, it was the smart play.  She really was sexy in a hot librarian geeky kind of way, if eight years older than I was.  Still, it was the only woman available syndrome that brought up those brief regrets, so it was better left alone in my opinion.  I’d survive.

Not much changed with the other two on the team.  Cassie and I joked around, but our relationship remained very shallow and I learned almost nothing of substance about her past or who she was as a person, and Jemma kept her distance completely.

At the end of those six weeks we were directed to pack up, and we were told that we were moving.  We’d leave the original ship in the secret installation, but everything else was going including Diana’s teams of scientists working to learn the new technology, scientific theories, and mathematical disciplines.  On the fun side, we were being taken to the new base in one of the five building ships.

I didn’t find out where we were going until we landed, and it turned out we didn’t go far at all.  We were moved to Peterson AFB, right outside Colorado Springs.  Which perhaps not so ironically was the base that space command was located out of.  The ships flew into a vast hangar that would hold fifty of the ships side by side, and there were several hangars up and more being built.

We were hustled across the base to a high security building, and then led to a conference room where the general waited for the four of us.

Schaefer waved at the seats.

“Welcome to civilization.  This building is ours and where we’ll be doing most of our work.   There are sublevels with labs for your scientists, Diana.  We’ll also be continuing to build until we reach three hundred ships, but twenty-five a week is more than enough as the builders putting up hangars need to match our pace, four are up and we’ll need two more.  That should be six more weeks.

“Scott, you’ll continue to build the reactors as the ships come off the line.  Jemma, your job is to keep anyone away from those hangars that doesn’t belong there, as well as ensure this building remains secure.  It won’t be too long before the world finds out about our new ships, it’s only a matter of time before some idiot with a camera uploads a video to YouTube, but for the moment we aren’t ready for that.

“Like I said in the beginning, welcome back to civilization.  I don’t have to remind you all to maintain operational discipline and security, and of the serious repercussions of breaking your confidentiality agreements.  Obviously, once the ships are known that part of things will be moot, but they’ll still be in force, you won’t be able to talk about how they work, or to share any of the internal technologies.  I imagine it will be a long time before any of the tech is released for public consumption, possibly not in our lifetimes.

“That said you have free run of the public parts of the base, and are cleared to leave the base, if you wish to spend your off hours in Colorado Springs, and to spend some of that money that’s been building in your accounts.”

The general paused as we all absorbed that.

I used my magic to send my sister a message, let her know I was okay, and my new location.  Unfortunately, she was on the East coast, and I wouldn’t be visiting her anytime soon, at least not until I could take vacation time.  Still, the idea of visiting the city was a welcome one.

Schaefer said, “Scott, your plan has been approved.  It’s a risk, but everything is for naught if we don’t know their true capabilities, and if possible, their intentions.  See what you can find out, and get the data for the former to Diana, and Jemma for the latter.  I also suspect you’ll have recommendations on what should be focused on next.”

“Understood.”

A flash of anxiety went through me, I was both excited, and a little scared to find out the truth of what lay out there among the stars.  Not to mention what their response might be, if I activate the connections through my magic, but they don’t receive any other data.

The general said, “Good, I look forward to your report.  Dismissed.”

Jemma said, “We can do it right here, unless you need to rest first?”

I shook my head, “I’m ready.  Not sure how long it’ll take, it depends on how extensive their fleet is, and how many different types of ships and weapons they have.”

Jemma nodded in understanding.

I pulled out the small square I’d been carrying around for weeks, made up of all the entangled particles from the original ship, and I sent my magic into it.  My mind followed, as I jumped into their network of ships.

My first thought was that we were totally screwed.  There were millions of ships, and it didn’t take long to figure out they were spread out in over fifty galaxies within a ten million light year sphere.  The concept of that was so… vast and overwhelming.  It was hard to even imagine the vastness of the milky way, which was a mere hundred thousand light years in diameter.

If they chose to fight us, we simply had no chance.

Their origin galaxy was Andromeda, about two point five million light years away, and which held twice the number of stars as our galaxy.  A trillion or so.

And… we had a hundred fifty scout ships, and we’d been to the moon sixty years ago.

Fortunately, it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d feared, or at least, the evidence of their ship types pointed to a peaceful civilization of explorers.  Most of those ships were scouts.  They did have warships with multiple types of weapons, but they comprised less than ten thousand, and most of them were in Andromeda and for security for their settled planets.  They’d spread out in Andromeda, but mostly their scouts were just watching other civilizations, possibly on the lookout for aggressive civilizations?  They had no claimed space in other galaxies, they were just aware of what was going on in them.

The amount of data was almost overwhelming, there were tons of pre-FTL species they were monitoring like the Earth, and it was all being communicated back real-time to their home world.

There were five different ship types.  The scout like we had was the most common one, and they had energy beams as a basic protection.  Then there were three types of warships, a quarter, half, and full mile long version, and similarly shaped like cigars, but equally fatter as they grew in length.  The smaller one took three of the same size reactors as the scout.  The half mile warship took eight, and the full mile warship took sixteen.

The quarter mile version would take a month to build, the half two months, and full three months.  That wasn’t intuitive, I’d have thought the build time would be longer than that for the mile-long version which would have much more than just twice the mass of the half mile one, until I realized the sixteen reactors once brought online after a week of building would power eighty energy to matter converters, and the ship would finish building itself.  The two smaller ones worked similarly, the initial build was just a week to bring up engineering to get the reactors installed and online.  Then the ships finished building themselves.

All three warships had the energy beam weapons, a more powerful and potent one, but they also had anti-matter missiles, and close-range anti-matter beams.  Otherwise they were very much like the scout, except they had permanent quarters, bathrooms, and the like, while the scout ships were more like shuttles that could form temporary versions of that in the cargo section for long term surveillance.

They had five thousand of the quarter mile warships, two thousand of the half mile warships, and one thousand of the full mile warships.  That latter one seemed to be positioned around their home planets for protection.

The fifth ship was a five-mile-long behemoth, with a hundred and fifty reactors.  Like the scout, it only had beam weapons, war wasn’t its purpose.  There were only twelve of those, and they were purely for settling a new planet.  The ship would carry millions along with everything a new colony would need to get started.  I imagined it would also be useful for relocating a planet’s population in case of dire emergency.

Another reason to suspect they were peaceful explorers, was that despite having millions of ships, none of them were in combat at the moment, and they were monitoring tens of thousands of alien worlds throughout fifty galaxies.

Despite all I’d learned, the only truly new technology was the anti-matter beam and anti-matter missiles, the rest was just… building bigger, and something I’d have probably been able to figure out on my own, just like I’d adopted the nanites to make my suit of powered armor.

Regardless, I decided to recommend we don’t build the warships.  I suspected there was a chance they’d let it go, if all we had was the scout technology.  Not for sure, but there was a chance.  If we started building warships, we’d become a threat that even the most peaceful of beings couldn’t ignore.

Hopefully, they’d take my advice.  If not, I’d probably help, I didn’t feel comfortable making the decision for them.

Oh, one more thing, that absolutely terrified me, and I wouldn’t even think about much less divulge to the general.

Through the network connections, I could connect to every single one of their ships, and then order the nanites to break their bonds and disperse.  Not all at once, but it’d only take me a split second for each one.  No mass murder for me thanks.  I was actually tempted to destroy the link I had, before some power-hungry idiot figured out that little detail.

In hindsight, it was kind of obvious, just not a thought that was intuitive to me, mostly because I wasn’t a violent man.  Although, I wouldn’t mind seeing Dale again, some people just needed killing.

I let my magic go and came out of it, and as requested I gave the tech discoveries to Diana, and all the social stats, where they were, how many ships they had, settled planets, aliens they monitored, and my own observations and beliefs to Jemma.

Obviously, there was a lot of raw data I left out, or it wouldn’t have fit on Jemma’s tablet, but it wasn’t stuff that was all that important.

“The only thing new is the two new weapons, and even that’s not really new, since it just involves new applications of created anti-matter.  In other words, no knew scientific theory, just two new practical applications.”

Jemma sighed, “There’s been no change in the scout’s location.  Either they didn’t detect it or they’re talking about what to do about it.”

I nodded, “It would’ve flagged in their command center, so will ours, whenever a ship is disconnected or reconnected to the network while being powered off or on.  My magic powering and activating the connection counts.

“I suspect the latter explanation is likely.  Even without transmitting any data, the links coming back up would’ve been noted and flagged by the system.  With millions of ships who knows how long they’ll take to decide what to do, if their bureaucracy is anything like ours it could be a decade.”

Cassie and Diana laughed.

Jemma nodded, “Take the rest of the day off if you want, but you need to keep your phone on if you leave the base.  I imagine we all need to shop for food, too.”

I nodded, no more free mess-hall, although there were places on base to eat, I was sure.  I also needed to pick up new transportation.

I got lucky, picked up a nineteen seventy Corvette Stingray LT-1 for a steal.  Mostly because it didn’t run, and it was a broken-down piece of shit rusting in some old guy’s yard.  But… it had all original parts.  It was a pain, keeping magic a secret sometimes, I’d gotten spoiled the last six weeks working with people in the know.  Regardless, I got the thing towed to the base, and when no one was looking I suddenly had a mint condition fully restored LT-1.

Sometimes I really loved my magic.

By the time I got it insured and registered, and picked up some groceries from the commissary, it was getting late.  Hell, I didn’t really want to cook, and it was our first night back near a city of any size in six weeks.  I did a quick web search with my magic and then called Diana.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s late notice, but I don’t suppose you want to grab dinner in the city?  I’m thinking steak, it’s a nice place according to reviews.”

I grinned at the startled silence.

She replied, “Sure, give me twenty minutes.”

“Alright, I’ll pick you up.”

Which was easy enough, her being two doors down and all.

She snorted, “See you then.”

I took a five-minute shower, shaved, and threw on a pair of dark gray dockers, a dark blue collared shirt, and shoes.  I looked in the mirror to double check my appearance, and that’s when I realized I still had a smile on my face, and I was excited about tonight.  Not because we were in civilization either, I had a raven-haired and green-eyed face on my mind.

Damn it.

Whatever, she was just a good friend, something not all that common in my life, or that’s what I told myself.  Sure, I had plenty of buddies from college, but no real close friends.  I suspected that was more about me having to hide my magic and who I was from human friends more than anything else.  I’d never been close to other mages I’d known either, because until I ran into alien tech my power was cool in a geeky kind of way, but kind of crap in comparison.

That explained my growing attachment to Diana to my satisfaction, but there was a nagging doubt that I was just trying to baffle myself with bullshit as I headed toward the door.

I knocked on hers when I got there.  The apartments had external doors like a motel.

“Just a minute!” I barely heard, and I turned around.

It was a nice place, with mountains in the distance, and a lot of green.  I took a deep breath to relax, and then turned around as I heard the door open, and my breath caught.

The geek was dead.  No lab coat, which I swear she’d never taken off before in my presence, and her midnight black hair was down and flowed to the bottom of her shoulder blades like liquid shiny silk.  Not a pen in sight, not on the cute and tight red dress she had on that showed off her lithe and toned athletic figure, or the black shoes with three-inch heels.  Also, no glasses, contacts?  The hot librarian had left, there was just… hot.  She was absolutely enthralling, beautiful and sexy, and she had a shy smile on her face.

I was so screwed, because despite the stunning new look, it was the least impressive thing about her.  I reminded myself it was a bad idea to try to date the head the scientist of a secret alien technology project run by scary government people.

She smirked, which shook me out of my shock.

“You look great, ready?”

She nodded, “Thanks,” and pulled the door shut as she stepped out.

As we walked toward the car she asked, “Is that a 1970 LT-1?”

Holy hell, she was perfect.

“Yes, it is.”

She was twenty-nine, and the smartest person I’d ever met, there was no way it could work.  Yeah, I wasn’t buying that either.  Had this snuck up on us both, or was it just me?

I also wondered if it was a date, since it didn’t feel at all like our usually casual dinners in the mess hall.  That was answered when I found myself opening her door, and when she gave me a shy excited smile as she slipped into the passenger seat, while her green eyes sparkled.  Of course, that excitement could’ve been about the car, I frowned at that thought.

I took a deep breath, again, as I rounded the car and got in.

The car purred as I started it up, and I pulled out and onto the street, while she fiddled with the radio.

She said, “You need satellite radio in here, this thing is ancient.  Love the rest though.”

I smirked, and then pulsed my magic.

She gasped, as the radio kind of melted, and then reformed into a satellite radio.  Sure, I’d had to cheat a bit, I didn’t have the right parts, but a couple of the nanites made up the lack of more modern electronics.

She laughed, “Better,” and she went back to fiddling until she found a country station.

Country music?  Bleh.

Honesty, it was kind of a relief, I’d thought the woman was perfect, but clearly, she wasn’t.

We had a good time that night, steaks, good food, and she was either completely artless or the best player I’d ever met, but I was betting on that first one.  Both of us avoided talking about work, and we went through the sometimes awkward but exciting dance of a first date.

I hadn’t been really sure it was a date, at least not until I paid for the meal and she didn’t object or try to pay half.  It was an exciting thing, navigating the landmines so to speak, and she was a special woman.

It was also somewhat of a shock that I’d changed in the last six weeks of being stuck in an installation, it was the first time I’d been on a date with a beautiful woman, where scoring hadn’t been the point.  Shallow perhaps, but a lot of guys were in college, I guess I was growing up.  That said, it was certainly on my mind as a secondary goal, she was stunning.

Enough about that, except to say I hoped it wasn’t our last date too, as I gave her a goodnight kiss at the door.

Chapter Seven

“Can I talk to you a minute, Cass?”

It was the next morning, and I was back at the secure building we had across from the large hangars, coffee in hand.  There wasn’t much for me to do at that point, it’d be another five days before the next twenty-five ships were done, and I needed to assemble the reactors.

Cassie studied me a moment, then nodded and walked off.

I followed her to a conference room, and she shut the door behind me.

Cassie asked, “What’s up?”

I’d been giving it a lot of thought since yesterday, except perhaps during my date with Diana.

“I understand operational security, but can you tell me if the general and president wants to be exposed.  The general said yesterday it was just a matter of time, before that happened, and I’ve been considering that ever since.”

Cassie tilted her head, “Why?”

I frowned, “There’s also the aliens.  Consider this, the cigar shape is used for wormhole transitions, the thinner a ship the less energy it takes to open one up of sufficient size.”

Cassie nodded, and made a go on gesture.

“Okay, the point is the alien scouts were designed to scout other systems.  I don’t know if that’s even our plan, or even on our radar yet.  Has it occurred to anyone making the decisions, that the current shape isn’t necessary except for wormholes?  Not only that, but the only system on the ship that requires more than fifty percent power to run is the wormhole drive.”

She tilted her head.

I shrugged, “The craft can look like anything, or even be smaller, like a jet or small cargo plane.  I could reconfigure it to look like an aircraft, with wings, for the purpose of exploring our own solar system and operating in atmosphere.  In short, people that saw it would assume it’s just a next generation fighter, with space capabilities, without knowing the technical specs behind its operation, anyway.  More than that, the alien scout out there might believe it’s our tech, instead of just a copy of theirs.  Reverse engineered from theirs, but ours, you know?

“Say, a third of the size of what it is now, in the shape of a jet of some kind, and with a half-sized nuclear reactor.  That would generate enough energy for all the systems, and although it’d only be able to build two copies at once, it could do so at a third of the time, so six a week, or thirty-six a week for six of them.  You get the point.  The weapons and shields would be just as powerful as the larger version, the only limiter would be that they’d be solar system craft only, unless you want to build a carrier.”

She asked, “A carrier?”

I shrugged, “Sure, a big cigar ship with landing bays?  Or just leave them here for Earth defense, and just use scout sized craft whenever or even if it’s decided to explore other solar systems.  Just… giving options.”

She asked, “Why didn’t you mention this sooner?”

I snorted defensively, “I sort of did, buried in minutiae.  The capability is buried in the spec sheets, no doubt missed on the political side of things and the people making the decisions.  How can I anticipate a need if I’m kept in the dark as to intentions?  It wasn’t until we moved onto Peterson yesterday, which was a surprise, that I even considered the idea.  I’d have mentioned it, if I was in the loop, and could’ve anticipated the need.  Even now I’m guessing, for all I know the president wants it leaked for political reasons, and in that case this whole conversation is a waste of time.”

She smirked, “Good point, but don’t push it.”

I nodded, “I totally get operational security, and I’m not criticizing that need, I happen to agree with it.  Just saying, you can’t have that and expect to fully utilize my expertise and magic.  Things fall through the cracks when you compartmentalize, limiting the end result to only one person’s vision.”

She sighed, “Show me?”

“Sure,” I grinned.

She giggled, “Let’s go.”

I ignored the giggle and bright smile, and I was pretty much immune to her angelic appearance at that point.  It was her… management style.

We left the conference room, then the building, and headed for the hangar.

It looked much like any other aircraft hangar.  Metal walls, doors, and roof, smooth concrete floor.  The only major difference was the fifty alien ships in the vast space.  I picked one on the end with plenty of room left, and we went inside of it and back toward the engineering space.

“This might take a few minutes.”

The ship was off, so I powered the nanites in the wall to pull out the spare reactor, then used my magic to tear it apart and rebuild it into two reactors of half the size.  I did the same with reactor in engineering, so a reactor and a spare became four new reactors.  I plugged one of the smaller ones into the ship, and I powered it up.

That took a good twenty minutes, and I felt a bit drained, but the reprogramming part would be almost effortless.  It was something that would’ve taken me hours though, as I experimented to get it right, if I hadn’t been experimenting with the nanites and disparate systems for the last six weeks when it came to my armored suit, which I still hoped to never have to use.

Still, it was comforting to know I had it.

“We should get off for this part.”

She nodded, and we left the ship.

I implemented the program, and the ship flowed and changed, it did look a lot like liquid metal, but I knew it wasn’t.  It was just trillions of nanites flowing, so small the naked eye couldn’t detect the disparate pieces.

Three sleek planes took shape that looked like jets, they were reminiscent shape wise of a stealth bomber, but about twice as large and made of shiny light gray metal.  Kind of in between a bomber and cargo plane, but it looked deadly.  The cockpit had enough room for two seats, and to stand, and there was standing room in the back-cargo space.  For a moment, they were all joined together with tethering conduits, to maintain power to all the nanites, until the two separated ships powered on their reactors, then the tether was sucked back into the hulls.

I said, “Only one has a spare reactor, the other two will take about ten hours to build up the raw materials for theirs, and I’ll assemble them tomorrow morning.”

Cassie smiled, and it was one of the rare times it actually lit up her hazel eyes.

“That’s fantastic.  I’ll go brief the general, see what he wants to do.”

I returned to the building.  I wondered a lot of things.  What the plan would be with the aliens, what they planned to do with the technology that put America on top, what the aliens would do when they finally made a decision and did something, or maybe they’d just continue watching?  I also knew I’d be the last one to find out.  I wanted to be involved, but I was just the tech guy.

I also thought about dancing green eyes that I couldn’t get out of my head, and I wondered if I was nuts.  I’d never looked for anything but a little fun in my college years, after a serious breakup in high school.  Well, not until then, that is.

Diana gave me a blushing smile as we sat down for lunch, we were eating on base.  There was an odd mix of awkwardness after last night, along with a surprising level of comfort.  She was back to hot geek, with her lab coat and boring earth toned clothes.  I wondered if she did it on purpose, so people took her more seriously and didn’t focus on her looks.  After seeing her dressed to the nines, and sexy beyond belief, I’d have to say she did.

She said, “Heard you’ve been busy.”

I nodded, “I expect we’ll find out soon if the direction will change.  What about you?”

Subtle, but clear enough for understanding.  We weren’t exactly in a secure area, being explicit would earn us a spot on a firing line, and not the spot where the soldiers held the guns.

She smiled, “Good actually.  I think we’ve figured out that fabrication issue.”

I took that to mean the special alloy used in the fusion reactor, which meant I was about to be redundant since it was the only thing that they needed me for.

One more thing to think about.

Sure, I could design other ships, and do things faster, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before Diana could program the nanites as well.  More than that, she’d be creative, and be able to advance, I could only do what I knew.  Plus, the two ship types we already had didn’t need me involved to copy them at all anymore.  I’d done too good of a job automating things.

Sure, the general had said five years, but I didn’t imagine in his wildest dreams he’d thought we’d get so far in just six weeks.

She added, “I had a good time last night.”

I took that as a hint, though I’d already been planning on asking her out again.

“Me too.  How about Italian tomorrow night, we can go dancing after?”

I was exhilarated as I tried to pretend my heartrate hadn’t just gone up, and I felt out of my league.

She smiled, “Okay, I’d like that.”

We chatted easily for the rest of lunch, avoiding work which we really couldn’t talk about anyway, and it was easy as breathing.  We didn’t really match, not on a work level, but on a personal level we had a lot of things and beliefs in common, as well as plenty of chemistry.

Both of our phones went off toward the end of lunch, of course I didn’t have to look at mine.

“The general’s calling a meeting at one-thirty.”

She checked hers, “Me too.”

We had just enough time to finish up lunch, before we got up and headed back to the building.

The general, Cassie, and Jemma were already there waiting for us when we got back, and the latter gave the two of us a speculative narrow-eyed look I didn’t appreciate.  We took a seat, and everyone looked toward the general.

General Schaefer said, “I’ve looked over the new ship type and approve.  Good job, the last thing we need is the world freaking out on us.  We’re going to start manufacturing those instead.  For now, the scouts will remain hidden, we will need them eventually, but it seems wise to keep them out of the public eye and from the aliens at this time.  The president wants three hundred of the new planes, we’ll stick to the hundred fifty scouts we have at this time.  How long will that take?”

“Two every two and a third days for each ship, or to triple what we have.  If we fully leverage the resources, that’s… less than two weeks.  Three to start with, then nine, twenty-seven, eighty-one, two-forty-three, three hundred.  So… eleven and a half days, give or take a few hours.”

The general nodded, “Good, for now we’re also going to hold off on the larger ship sizes you discovered.  Given the aliens’ ship counts we need to move cautiously and figure out where they stand first, we also want to consider making our own designs.  Especially since the ships can be any size if they stay in our solar system, and our priority would be on protecting Earth.  It seems wise not to copy the ship shapes of the aliens.  We also don’t have enough information to decide, the designs need to fit the circumstances out there.”

That made sense.

He continued, “The president is considering contacting them first, with one of the new ship types, but in… twelve days.  I only mention it because everyone in this room will be going, except for Doctor Young.  We have pilots, but a first contact mission means me.”

“Me too, sir?”

The general frowned, “Is that a problem?”

“No, sir.  I’m more than willing.  Just… surprised.”  At being included, but I didn’t say that part, though it was implied in my tone.

Schaefer replied, “I want you there in case things go south, you can commandeer their ship if necessary, can’t you?”

“If we get close enough, and two ship lengths away is very close in space.  I could also strengthen ours with my magic.  The new ship although smaller has equal combat capabilities as well, so we won’t be outgunned if it comes down to it.”

He grunted, “Good.  We’ve been reviewing the data, is there any way to find out how many inter-stellar civilizations are out there?”

I considered the information I’d absorbed from the aliens.  The scouts were monitoring tens of thousands of pre-FTL civilizations in over fifty galaxies, but they didn’t monitor other FTL races.  Best guess, politics had a lot to do with that.

I shook my head, “We can only safely deduce they have thirty-one trading partners of some form or another, based on the unique ship types in the database that have been detected around their worlds.  There’s no way to know how many interstellar civilizations exist that don’t interact with them.”

The scouts and warships around their planets only registered the ships of other civilizations that visited them on their home world or settlements.  Without scouts in those home systems for other civilizations there was no telling, although I bet the aliens had a good idea.

There was also no way to know why they monitored pre-FTL societies, perhaps to judge if they’re a threat or not when they reach space, or perhaps simply to make sure they didn’t violate taboos during first contact.  Obviously, at that point they make some kind of deal, or try to, which leads to them not spying on the system anymore.

Anything I came up with would be a guess, although the fact there was no wars going on out there that we can tell, implied that any unsuitable worlds are prevented from spreading out into the galaxy, somehow.  That thought gave me pause, unfortunately.  Humanity could be noble, but we could also be assholes.  Dale and the general were proof of that.

No current war could also imply they obliterate their enemies quickly when it comes up.  Now that I thought of it, it seemed odd that their database wouldn’t have FTL civilizations in it, if only so their ships didn’t violate any borders.  Perhaps it was in another database, but why would it be segregated out?  I couldn’t think of a good reason, but then they were alien.  Humans were hard enough to figure out, aliens would be… alien, in shape as well as in thinking.

Hmm, perhaps the alien database and ship network I’d seen was only for their military ships.  None of the ship types had been freighters, or personal ships without weapons, so perhaps I just had an incomplete picture.

“Any questions?”

“Should I get those copies started?  I’ll have to move them into the new empty hangar.”

The general nodded.

The meeting broke up, and we all got back to work.  It also occurred to me my worry about the U.S. taking over the world was probably wrong, otherwise the general wouldn’t have been worried about other countries reacting badly to our new technology.

Maybe.

Still, I imagined it was more than the U.S. watching our alien scout by the asteroid field.  I wasn’t sure what worried me more, what the aliens would do when we went to say hello, or what the other countries of the world would think when they saw us go out there to meet them.  The impulse drive would get us out there in less than a day, so there’d be no doubt we weren’t using rockets, and that we had inertial dampening.

I supposed I could be wrong, maybe it was a secret only the U.S. knew, but at the very least other governments with satellites couldn’t fail to miss us going into space, and they’d track our progress and eventually see the alien.

And how would our government react if Russia, China, or another world power lost their minds over it?  Was that why he wanted three hundred of them before we went, instead of as a defense against aliens, a defense against humans and other countries?

I was along for the ride because of my magic and I was part of the project, but I had very little to no influence on the project, and none to speak of when it came to policy.  Point being, there wasn’t anything I could do about it but wait and see how it all unfolded.

Life was about to get very interesting, regardless.

Chapter Eight

My heart pounded to the bass line as we danced under the flashing colored lights.  Our second date was going very well, but it felt more like the tenth date after all the time we’d spent together the last six weeks chatting, eating, and working together.  Our second official date, but we were already friends, and knew each other far better than a second date would imply.

She also looked like pure sinful delight, in a little black dress, red heels, and dear god could she move that tight body of hers.

Alluring didn’t cover the reality, I’d never felt so captivated by or close to a woman before.

As I’d noted before, her looks were the least of what held my attention.  She was gorgeous dressed up, but not in a way that stood out from all the other hot women in the club that night.  Not that I’d been looking, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Diana.

She was… genuine.  A rare trait in anyone, male or female.

We were both glowing after a few songs, and we moved off the dance floor to take a break and get a couple of drinks.  The music was incredibly loud, so we just shared a fun easy smile as we sipped our drinks, and she sat close enough to brush up against me whenever she moved.

I put my arm around her, and she leaned into me with a soft smile, it felt right.  I had no idea where it was going, or where it would end, but I was definitely enjoying the ride.  I had hopes it would be more than just a fling, for the first time in four years, but it was too early, and the future was too cloudy, for more than that.

I was also glad the weekend had started, it was Friday night, and outside of starting the second copy run of eighteen ships late Saturday evening, when the first one finished, I planned on doing very little work.  We’d had weekends off before of course, but in an installation buried beneath a mountain there wasn’t all that much to do for entertainment.

I felt another mage nearby and turned my head in that direction, by the bar, and I saw her right away, her dark blue eyes bored into mine from across the room.

Jemma?  What the hell, was she following us?

Diana noticed the change in atmosphere, and she stiffened against me as she followed my gaze.  She frowned as we shared a look, and she nodded toward the exit.  It wasn’t long before we made it to the car, and we got inside.

“What is that?”

Diana sighed, “Overzealous security, try to ignore it, we’re both important assets,” she leaned over and kissed my cheek, and when she moved away, she left her hand on my leg.

There might’ve been some tingling going on.

I nodded, “Happen often?”

Diana giggled, “No, I don’t get out much, to be honest.  I spent most of the last five years under that dreadful mountain, only the excitement of the work kept me sane.  This… whatever this is that’s growing between us, isn’t a problem I don’t think.  It’s about our value to the project.  She was probably just watching our backs, even if it is a little creepy.”

I started the car, and pulled out and onto the road, “I did notice she didn’t look all that pleased at the meeting yesterday, when we showed up together after our lunch date.”

Diana sighed, “I noticed that too.  I also don’t care, do you?”

“No.  I… really want to see where this goes, Diana.”

She smiled, “It’s a horrible idea, and will never work.  I’m older than you, and you’re a mage that lives in a different world.  I also suspect our project is about to transform.  With the data you got… my teams have made a lot of progress, control isn’t a problem already, duplicating the ships, but we’ll be focused on advancements and theory to exceed what the aliens have, while you handle practical applications assuming they don’t just go to fabrication on it and cut you loose early.”

“I agree, it’s a bad idea and totally doomed to failure.  The powers that be could whisk us apart at any time.”

She smirked, “It’s still early, would you like to join me in my apartment for a drink?”

I laughed, “I’d love to.”

So, I did, and it was one of the best nights of my life, or perhaps I should say weekends of my life.

It was Tuesday midday, and I’d just gotten done setting up the twenty-seven ships to build fifty-four more.  I practically stumbled into the small office and made myself a coffee as I sat behind a desk.  Assembling eighteen reactors had drained me pretty badly, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so drained magically, and I realized there was no way I’d be able to do that for fifty-four new ships in two and a half days.

My magic did regenerate quickly, I could do fifteen every two hours, so it would take me eight hours to finish them, which would slow down production.  I don’t know why I hadn’t thought that through earlier, but there it was.  It would be even worse for the last two batches.

Unless, I cheated.  Sort of.  I went into the other hangar, and I took the time to set up a reactor build only on several of the larger scout ships which weren’t in use, enough of them to create two hundred and seventy-three reactors in twelve hours.  That way I could assemble ninety a day for the rest of the build, fifteen every two hours, and finish within a few days, which would keep the build at the promised build-rate.

The trick being without a reactor, the ship couldn’t make copies of itself.  Duh.

I didn’t really want to go to the general and tell him I was a moron and couldn’t make the promised date.  The effort would also be manageable, if leaving myself a little weak.

I took a sip of coffee, satisfied there were no more stumbling blocks to my promised schedule.

Diana and I were doing well, and both on the same page.  Neither of us were players or saw it as a fling, but at the same time the future was too unsure for serious commitments of any kind, and it was still early days.  In short, we were taking it as it came and having fun, with the hopes it would keep coming indefinitely.  She was… an incredible woman, and we’d been inseparable in our off hours the last few days, neither of us able to get enough of each other’s presence.  Despite no promises, there was plenty of passion and nascent affection to go around.

I also hadn’t slept in my own bed, since last Thursday night.

As far as we could tell there was no official problem with it, but it was obvious to us both that Jemma saw it as an unwelcome complication in her world, but neither of us cared.  That was Jemma’s problem, and I didn’t waste any thoughts on it besides noting it.

We may have been an unlikely couple, but so far it was working out better than any of my past relationships.  Perhaps that was more about me than her, the last couple of months had changed me, made me grow up perhaps, but in the end it took two, so it was definitely an us.

I shivered, as I felt a sudden change in… potential.  I frowned, and pulled out the small cube of entangled particles, that were no longer entangled.  Crap, the only way that could happen was if the alien’s side of that connection had been destroyed, likely turned to energy.  I tossed it in the trash, and I set off toward the building at a jog.

I poked my head into Cassie’s office.

She had on a gray sweater dress today, with black stretchy pants on under it.  As usual, she looked like a nubile goddess despite her ancient age, but I barely noticed as she looked up at me in question.

“The aliens destroyed their end of the quantum entangled connection to the ship.  I guess the connections without data coming in made them nervous, I don’t think they could have detected my intrusion with magic, but I won’t say it’s impossible either.  It could be all they’ll do, or it could’ve been just a first step.”

She checked something on the computer.

“Their ship hasn’t moved yet, but I’ll let the general know.  Most likely we’ll stick to the schedule, unless their ship moves in, then we might leave early to go meet it before it can reach orbit.”

“Understood.  You never did tell me how you wound up working for the government,” I added playfully.

She deflected, “It’s a long story.”

I nodded, and then left her be.  Can’t say I didn’t try, but I guessed at that point we’d always have a shallow friendly relationship of no substance.  She was as private as the inscrutable Jemma, but at least she was friendly, even if I could never really trust her.  Her true nature was a mystery, but there was nothing inherently menacing about that, it just made her the boss.

There was only so many times I was willing to reach out, it was hard being isolated, though I’d found a close friend and now lover in Diana, I was used to having more friends around.

The price of working on top secret alien projects, I supposed.  Of course, I kept in touch with old friends and my sister online, but it wasn’t the same as in person.

I slowly relaxed over the next few days, as the alien ship continued to linger and hadn’t made any move toward us.  Perhaps that was their standard procedure, wait for the other guy to come out and meet them.  It even made sense from certain angles, until we had the tech to get out there, we probably weren’t worth talking to, plus it was just polite.  Like knocking at the door to the solar system and waiting for us to answer it without getting in our faces.  Though I was loath to apply any motivations to aliens without proof, it could be both of those reasons, one of them, or something else entirely that I’d never think of in a million years.

They were close enough to be seen if we looked in the right direction, but far enough away that it’d take years to get there on a ship with rockets, when it was under a day for the constant acceleration potential of a ship with a reactor, inertial dampers, and an impulse drive.  It would take a little over ten hours to get there at a constant sixty gravities of acceleration, which was the maximum acceleration of the ships.

The bottleneck there was more the inertial dampeners, than the impulse drive.  Missiles could accelerate as fast as six hundred gravities, without flesh and blood to worry about, there was no need to compensate for gravity’s effects through acceleration.  Of course, the range of a missile was limited, without a reactor it only could accelerate until its stored power was exhausted.

The next week passed quickly as the rest of the three hundred ships were built.  So far nothing had been done as far as the project organization, but Diana dropped enough hints to let me know I was definitely not needed for the current tech anymore.  Sure, I was convenient, and faster than fabricating reactors the normal way, but replaceable.  Advances were all in her court, I couldn’t do those, and I couldn’t even build them until after she built a prototype for me to read, and advances were long term blackboard stuff, where my magic was more action oriented.  I suspected the general would make decisions in regards to all that after we spoke to the aliens, depending on what went down.

I tried not to worry about it, or to wonder what it would do to my relationship with Diana if we were sent in different directions, and perhaps even worked on separate bases, if I continued to work for the government at all.

I also hadn’t heard anything at all about Dale.  He hadn’t been caught, and as far as I knew the special unit in the FBI didn’t even know where he was, he hadn’t resurfaced anywhere yet.  I was fairly content to let them handle that though, as long as my sister stayed safe.

It was that next Tuesday morning, when the general, myself, Jemma, and Cassie got on one of the ships that looked like a bigger version of a stealth bomber, and headed into space.

What I didn’t know at the time, was simultaneous to that, the president went to address the U.N. to reveal the alien presence in our solar system to the world, and that America’s space force was going to go say hello.

Yeah, fun times.

Chapter Nine

The cockpit had two flight chairs installed in it and was pretty small.  They’d also installed first class airplane seats in the back where cargo or ordinance would usually be stored.  Last but not least, there was a fridge, kitchenette, and fairly nice boardroom table with leather chairs in the back.  There was also no cockpit door at the moment, it’d been removed.

Of course, the ship could make food and water, but only a tiny bit at a time, so the food was more like a nutrient rich paste loaded with proteins, vitamins, and minerals the body needed.  Point being, I wasn’t all that surprised to see a kitchenette.  What the ship made was… survival rations, the equivalent of a starving man eating bugs in the wild, just not quite as gross.

I wasn’t all that surprised when Cassie slipped into the cockpit, being the team’s pilot and weapons expert, not to mention project manager.  She flew everything else after all.  The rest of us took seats in the larger room.

“You know, we should have space suits of some kind, decompression suits at least.  The ship can reseal and even repair itself, but that could take a few minutes under certain conditions.  Far too long to be exposed to vacuum.”

Of course, in this little ship it might be a moot point, too much of the ship would likely be destroyed if the shields were breached in battle for it to recover in a reasonable amount of time.  Still, a space suit, eject, and search and rescue would be possible with enough of an air supply.

Ironically perhaps, I already kind of had one.  Although, it wouldn’t be easy to power it for ten hours with my magic to get home.

The general nodded, “Those are being worked on for our space force, body suits under uniforms and generic helmets that will bond with any size jumpsuit.  We’ll have to do without.  What’s our ETA?”

Cassie replied, “Ten hours, twelve minutes.  We’re cleared for takeoff.”

Schaefer ordered, “Take her up.”

There was very little sensation of movement as the ship rose off the ground, glided out of the hangar, and shot up into the sky, but there was some feeling of being heavier on our backs as the ship shot straight up.  The ships had anti-gravity to leave orbit, because while inside gravity wells impulse, artificial gravity, and inertial dampening didn’t work quite right.  Or at least it didn’t work perfectly.

Regardless, once we’d shot out of the atmosphere a couple of minutes later, and left the Earth’s gravity well, all sensation of movement stopped, and the artificial gravity stabilized at the bottom of the ship, making it feel like we were just sitting still on the ground.

When in reality we’d started accelerating at sixty gravities, and we’d keep accelerating until we reached the halfway mark in five hours and five minutes, then we’d reverse acceleration in order to come to a full stop when we arrived at our target.

With the door open, we could see the hologram above the flight table, which showed where we were in relation to the solar system, and our projected course.

“It seems wrong not to have windows.”

Jemma snorted.

The general just grunted.

I could set up wall displays of our surroundings that would look and act like windows, but I decided to just leave it alone.  It was going to be a long flight.

“The plan?”

The general said, “You’re here if the shit hits the fan, otherwise I’ll do all the talking.”

Right, of course.  Sit down and shut up.  Not that he was wrong, I was a college graduate who’d managed to get in up to my neck in illegal shit under coercion, and I hadn’t even managed to find a starting job in my area of study.  Still, he didn’t have to be such a dick about it.

The general added, as if thinking the same thing, “It depends on what they do and what their long-term intentions are.  The last thing we want to do is start trouble with this civilization.  I’m prepared for several scenarios.”

I got up and headed for the kitchenette, it looked like they’d installed one right out of a commercial airplane, possibly the same one they’d stolen the first-class seats from, “Anyone else want a coffee?”

Ten hours was a long flight with a taciturn general and a sorceress head of security.  Even Cassie didn’t chat with the general around, and like I’d said earlier, no windows to stare out of.  So I worked on my own contingency plans, just in case it really did hit the fan.  Our chances would be shit against millions of ships, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight.  Still, most of those were scouts, their warships just numbered in the thousands, which was still quite overwhelming.

Chances were though, they wouldn’t leave their worlds undefended, we might even survive the first wave if we were ready for it.

The largest bottleneck to building fast was power.  It occurred to me the largest massed mile-long warship took three months to build, but that was with just with the sixteen reactors that powered it.  Sixty-four reactors would build one in three weeks, four times as quickly.  Double that, and it’d take ten to eleven days.  Then it could fly off with its sixteen reactors, and the others could be used to speed build the next ship.

Of course, that added the second bottleneck, fuel for that many reactors.

Shielding was pretty consistent across the board, the only real advantage to the biggest ship was all the ordinance it could hold, which meant it could fight a lot longer before exhausting it’s pre-made supplies.  Granted, the sixteen-reactor ship could also support sixty energy beams at once, so that was an advantage too.  A reactor could build five missiles at a time when idle every two hours but replacing missiles in battle wasn’t really a viable thing.  Too much power would be in use on a fighting ship, and it simply took too long.

Still, at rest, a mile-long warship could build just under a thousand missiles a day, and it could store hundreds of thousands in its mile-long hull.  It was safe enough, the anti-matter in an anti-matter missile was created in transit to the target, once it was far enough away from the launching ship where it being destroyed prematurely wouldn’t harm the ship in the explosion.

Even a warship didn’t require all that many people, twenty command crew for three shifts, and half that to monitor engineering and the ship.  The ship repaired itself, there was no need for huge crews, it could also move stuff around inside it, and all that.  Point being, very little of the mile-long ship would be used for a bridge, engineering, quarters, and mess hall.

If worse came to worse, the mile-long warships could also cannibalize its own hull to create missiles in an emergency, so the largest ship won on that score as well.  The nanites could be repurposed for anything.  Although, that was limited, the whole ship couldn’t turn into millions of missiles at once for instance.

A missile was ninety percent supercapacitor, which was the power source for both the small impulse drive that accelerated it at six hundred gravities.  The only other systems on it was the targeting sensors, and of course a very small unit to create a few grams of anti-matter, and to keep it in a containment field until it hit the target.

So, in short, the sixteen reactors wouldn’t be able to fill that many supercapacitors at one time.

It took me a few hours to come up with a viable plan, one that was still probably doomed to failure.  If they turned out to be aggressive, we just didn’t have enough time.

The alien scout ship we went out to meet wasn’t in the shape of a tube, but it was about the same mass, maybe a little more, no doubt for food, beds, and all that.  It looked more like a wider rectangle, and a little shorter than sixteen feet.  I guessed that it was a scout ship, it had just been modified once they’d arrived to accommodate separate quarters for the crew to make it somewhat livable for a six-and-a-half-month tour.

No doubt, it’d reform into a cigar tube once they were ready to leave and moved far enough out from the sun to open a wormhole.

We all moved to the conference table, save Cassie who was flying, which I noticed had a holographic display on it.

As soon as we came to a stop, a hundred miles away from the scout, Cassie said, “They’re hailing us.”

The general said, “Answer it.”

The hologram turned on, and the first thing my eyes were drawn to was their large inset black eyes.  They were hairless, their faces thin up to their eyes, above that they had bulbous heads.  They were also rail thin, and they had gray tinged skin.  They didn’t look exactly like the grays of alien conspiracy legend, but they were damned close.

One of them smiled, and he, she, or it, revealed razor sharp teeth.  The voice sounded far too human for comfort, if that made sense.

“I’d hoped you’d make it out here before I was recalled.  Welcome to the wider galaxy.  We have some information for you, call it a welcome gift of sorts, then we’ll leave.”

The general looked out of his element for a moment, maybe none of his scenarios included the alien’s approach.

“A gift?”

The alien nodded, “Of sorts.  A gift of information.  Call it… the rules.  It will also have a list of inter-stellar societies, as well as those willing to trade and what they have to offer.”

He frowned, “Rules?  Is there a society, or empire, or…” he trailed off.

The alien tilted his head, “We’re all winners out here general.  After millions of years of evolution and struggle, every race in space are the most successful predators that nature and our planets could come up with.  Humanity was… what do your people say?  Humanity is the big fish in the little pond called Earth, now you’re surrounded by all the other big fish.  Society, empire, those would be meaningless, and foolish.

“Predators can respect each other general, warily keep our distance, even trade if the situation calls for it, but predators of different species cooperating past that?  Never happen.”

The alien paused, “The rules are something predators understand, and can live by.  The reason the galaxy isn’t torn by constant war are the rules we all live by.  Which are simple, you can do anything you want in your space, but don’t get caught preying in another’s.”

The general grunted, “Don’t get caught?”

The alien said, “We are the stewards of pre-FTL societies, none are to be approached or messed with.  I’d recommend leaving them be.  After they join us out here, we’re done protecting them.  Included in the gift to you, is a fifty light year border of space around your planet, there are eight settleable worlds that belong to Earth within that border.  It is all in the download we have for you.

“To put it simply, if another race attacks you and tries to take the Earth, and you report that infraction of the rules to us in person, all other races in our little game will move to overwhelm and completely eradicate the ones that broke the rules.”

The general said, “That’s insane, why would they all agree to do that?”

The alien smiled, “Because afterwards we hold a raffle of sorts.  All the participating civilizations in the chastisement get a chance to win the removed race’s home world and satellite worlds for their own.  The species in space support the rules for that reason, and it’s why the gift of eight habitable worlds is a two-edged gift.

“Of course, in your borders you can do anything you want, and won’t be attacked by all the civilizations for it.  But, use common sense, if you start taking out traders, none of the worlds will do business with you.”

The general asked, “If that’s what happens, then why would anyone ever attack us?”

I suppressed an eyeroll.  Don’t get caught.  We were so screwed.  On the other hand, at least it wouldn’t be the aliens with millions of ships attacking us.

The alien smirked, “Don’t get caught hunting out of your territory, general.  To report an infraction in person general, you’d need a ship, and there’d need to be humans alive to do so.  There’s always a predator out there that’s stupidly greedy and willing to take a chance to expand their empire’s size and influence.  New planets and additions are usually tested early, in the hopes they aren’t ready.  In fact, there’s actually heavy gambling over these kinds of things, like in your Vegas.  Good luck general, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, truly.  You have a grace period of one month before we fully release your information to the other races.”

The general said, “One month?”

The alien shrugged, “Time to place the bets.  Be well.”

The hologram winked out.

Cassie said, “They disconnected audio and video, but there’s a download in progress, and they’re moving off.”

The general said, “We could destroy them, it’s in the rules.”

I nodded, “It wouldn’t help, I’m sure their world was watching, and they’re taking bets already.  Plus, we really don’t want the millions of ships owning aliens to take our territory, do you?  It looks like they’re the gamemasters, which means they probably cheat.”

The general growled, “Get us headed toward Earth.  They’re crazy.”

I wondered if they were.  It was a brutal game, but it would also stop all-out war, constant shifting alliances and betrayals, and make it every predator for themselves.  Unless it was a joint hunt with a fifty light year territory prize at the end.  It almost made sense, in a brutal way.  It would get all the species to focus on defense to defend their territory, while offering a horrific and unwinnable scenario in most cases for conquering species.

It also explained why they protected pre-FTL societies, not out of some high mindedness, but to ensure there’d be new players in the game, which would keep all the other predators in the galaxy engaged with their game.

It was sick and twisted no doubt, nothing like I’d expected, but it apparently worked.

For those races like humanity that could cooperate in the short term, there was trade between worlds.  It was also clever in another aspect, I bet no home world would risk sending out armed ships into the galaxy, in case their captain lost it and spelled the end of their whole race by even defending themselves in another’s territory.

An armed freighter defending itself at another world, would be an infraction, an attack on another predator’s territory.  That would make trading… dangerous as hell.

Cassie said, “Sir, the download is complete.

The general said, “We’ll be ready, we’re already in production.  Jemma, we’re clear of the enemy, do it.”

Do what?

My mind exploded in agony a moment later, as every nerve in my body felt like it was set on fire.  I was on fire, and I couldn’t even think past the agony much less summon my magic.  So much pain, that I didn’t even feel it as her telekinesis lifted me from the ground and shoved me back into the wall hard enough to shatter bones.  The hull of the ship melted around me, never breaking its atmospheric seal, as I was thrown into space.

I breathed out my breath into the vacuum of space as my lungs collapsed.  I’d be dead in seconds.  My body felt like a raw nerve, a big third degree burn over all my skin, and I was going into shock, but doubted I’d live long enough to make it there.  Still, the pain had lessened as the vacuum put out the fire and the shuttle raced away from me, enough that I could think again, and I summoned my magic.

Nanites swirled around me and formed the suit of armor I’d hoped to never use.  I took a gasping breath, as the life support systems turned on, and my whole body screamed at me as the nanites went to work repairing my burned flesh.  I felt like I might pass out, and fought it with every ounce of my will, if I passed out my magic would go quiescent, and the armor would lose power.  It wouldn’t fall apart, but it wouldn’t be creating atmosphere anymore either.

I’d suffocate to death.

I brought the flight systems on line, and I chased the shuttle.  Fucking bastards.  My own government just tried to kill me, for what?  It’d be a while before I found out, if ever.  I had suspicions of course, I was a national security nightmare.  It was the whole government paranoia on capacity equals intent, they couldn’t stop me from being the best thief on the planet, or in creating or giving away the powerfully technology.

Actually, they could, or they used to be able to.  I was compelled to follow the NDA I’d signed, but of course trying to kill me had just broken it, and I’d make them regret it.  How long had they planned this?  I suspected it was Diana that put in the final nail by figuring out reactor production, they hadn’t needed me anymore, my last useful task had been to protect the general if the aliens attacked.

I was also beyond furious, and I was imagining all sorts of ways to exercise my rights to self-defense.

I was accelerating at the same rate as the shuttle, which meant I wouldn’t catch up to them for a little over five hours, until they started to decelerate for the second half of the trip.  After they started breaking, I’d rendezvous with them very quickly.

Make that intercept, rendezvous was for allies, interception for enemies, bastards.

My skin slowly numbed, and my mind came into focus.  It’d take a lot longer for the nanites to repair the burns, but at least the pain was gone.  I’d have to leave the suit on for a couple of days at least, I’d need sleep, but I’d have an alternate power source in just under five hours at that point.

I took the time to go over my plans that I’d made in the shuttle.  Not that I gave a shit about protecting the government that just tried to kill me, but my sister, Diana, and I lived on Earth too, damned right I was still going to fight.  Apparently, I’d be doing that without the dubious help of the United States.

I had no idea what we might be facing, but knowing we had a month before we were attacked helped to work a lot of details out.  I also had to adjust things, knowing the government would be working against me as well.

The rage I felt cooled over those five hours, but not so much I wouldn’t see justice done.  Or vengeance, whatever.

Chapter Ten

When I’d narrowed the range to the shuttle to a few hundred miles, they opened fire.  The beam partially hit me, but I was flying at them superman style and presented a very small target, the shields absorbed the part of the energy beam that hit me.

My suit had beam technology as well, but not nearly powerful enough to break through the fighter’s shields.  I started to jig randomly, which was partially effective.  It was very hard to target something a foot wide and two feet long, and I hoped they were shitting their pants as the range closed.

As soon as I was within a hundred yards, my magic raced ahead and connected with the ship.  The controls in the cockpit melted into the floor, though I didn’t cancel their deceleration they wouldn’t be able to fire at me anymore.

I was pissed again, full on anger as the agonizing pain of five hours ago was revisited in my mind, and the betrayal of a team I’d worked hard for, even if I hadn’t fully trusted them.

I also wondered if my death was the real reason Diana had been left behind, I had no doubts in my mind she wasn’t in the know, and I wondered what they’d planned to tell her.

The ship sucked me in the same way I’d been sucked out, without breaching the hull, as the nanites moved to my will, and not the will of the pilot.  I’d also closed off the empty cockpit, so for the moment I wouldn’t have to deal with Cassie.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure I was going to kill her yet, I’d been waffling on it for the last five hours.

Immediately the suit was surrounded in the fire of a powerful elemental sorceress, but my suit shields held.  I lifted my hand slowly, and I fired an energy beam at the bitch.  It also made me feel a lot less conflicted about vengeance, she’d immediately gone for the kill, pure self-defense.

She screamed, her magical shields holding back the majority of the attack, but enough heat leaked through that the skin on her severely beautiful face bubbled and her clothes started to smoke.

I did to her, what she did to me, and hit her hard with telekinesis, the agony of her burns kept her from deflecting it.  The ship’s hull turned to what looked like liquid metal, as she went flying out into space.  Unlike me, the murderous bitch didn’t have a suit.

The general sat heavily into a chair, a resigned look on his face as I turned to him.

“Why?” I demanded.

The general scowled, “You’re weak, and you have far too much power.  You allowed yourself to be coerced and worked with a twisted man just to save your own skin.”

I laughed, but there was little humor in it.

“Did the president order it?”

The general snorted, “No, it was on my authority.”

“So, you decided to kill a civilian, a citizen, on your own authority?”

The general scowled, “National security.”

“Do you know why I laughed general?”

The general shook his head.

“Because general,” I threw his words back into his face, “you’re weak, and you have far too much power.  You allowed yourself to be coerced by me, into answering my questions, just to breathe a little longer.  Turns out you’re just human too, huh?”

The general turned red in the face.

“Are you going to kill me?”

I nodded, “Yes.  You’re guiltier than Jemma was, you gave the order.  Plus, as soon as I let you go, you’d use Diana and my sister against me, for national security.  Let’s just say I’m going to set an example, for your successor.”

I hesitated a moment, it was self-defense.  I knew if I gave him a chance, if I let him live, he’d come at me with everything he had and from angles I might not even see coming.  There’s no way in hell anyone would hold him accountable.  I couldn’t turn him over to the cops, or even expect any kind of trial for attempted murder of the first degree.  He was a general in charge of black ops, that just wouldn’t happen.

If it was just me, I might’ve taken my chances, but it wasn’t.  My sister and Diana would be drawn into it, not to mention the Earth would have a much better chance of defending from an attack in a month with me helping.

I was merciful, he didn’t even cry out.  It was over before he knew I’d even attacked, the pinpoint energy beam between his eyes switched him off like a light.  Despite my anger, and self-justifications, I felt like I was going to throw up, and collapsed into one of the chairs.

I sent my magic out to go over the rules and the download.  There were hundreds of inter-stellar races, about half of them offered trade of some kind, the other half were isolationist.  The rules of their sick game were very simple, exactly how he described them.

With a thought, I opened the wall back up to the cockpit, and brought up the controls so Cassie could fly it.

She was no threat, at least not at the moment.  She could snap my neck in the blink of an eye, or mesmerize me by looking into my eyes, at least, she could do that if I wasn’t in my suit.  There was no looking into my eyes, they were covered, and I saw through a display and her strength was nothing compared to what the suit gave me.

“It was the plan all along, wasn’t it?  That’s why you held me at arm’s length, no point in getting to know a man who’s already dead.  It’s also why Jemma was so out of shape about Diana and I getting together, she feared the consequences of my death if Diana learned the truth.”

Cassie tilted her head, “Yes.  When the general figured out just how powerful you were, that data systems and technology were your bitch, he decided you were too much of a risk to ever let you go.  Even on our team and under our scrutiny, you scared the shit out of him.  Am I next?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know, have I made my point?  You need me, or do you really want to risk the world on what you all can build without me?  Not that I’m on the team anymore, or what’s left of it.  I’m going to borrow fifteen of the scouts, but I’ll return them before the month is out.  I’m going to build some warships.  I also have recommendations.”

Cassie smirked, “I’m listening.”

“Scrap the scouts, they’re worthless now that we know the realities of our galaxy and neighbors.  The last thing Earth needs is anyone leaving our territory with a ship with weapons, the only society with scouts are the ones that came up with the game, to watch over pre-FTL societies.  We should concentrate on nothing except warships to defend Earth.  If you combine three together and reconfigure them for the quarter mile sized warships, they’ll build out within the month grace period.  Fifty small warships is nothing to sneeze at.

“All warships should be locked down once their configuration is decided on, if you don’t go with cigars, so they can’t leave the solar system in case a captain loses it.  I’ll be locking down what I build, not completely of course, but the designs for wormhole drives will be inaccessible and not built in the ship.

“My second recommendation is we need to spread out to the other eight planets as soon as possible, it will make us a less appetizing target for those that might wish to expand their empires.  It would be far more problematic preventing any ships from reaching the grays to report an infraction if we were in multiple solar systems.

“My third recommendation is limited sharing with the rest of the world.  We don’t have time for world war three anymore, the human race can’t afford it, or an imbalance of power between nations.  We also have eight new planets to split up, that should satisfy most sane people.

“Fourth, the small ships, the one we’re on now, can still be somewhat useful as shuttles, but if you include anti-matter missiles, they could probably carry six or eight of them under the wings.  That’s nothing to sneeze at if we have thousands of them around Earth.  That said, I think the small, medium, and large warships would be more useful for defense, and stick to the smaller ships for shuttles.

“Fifth and last, leave my sister alone, and Diana too.  You need Diana anyway.  I don’t have to remind you how dangerous I am, politicians who give orders behind desks will be held accountable for any foolish orders.  Work with me to protect the Earth or attack me and degrade our ability to defend.  Those are your choices, I hope you’re very persuasive when you brief General Schaefer’s replacement.”

I paused a second, “Oh, and assemble crews for warships, I can build them, but I can’t fight them all.  If you can’t agree to that I’ll have to find crews somewhere else.  I’m sure Russia or China would be thrilled to work with me.”

Cassie asked, “How many?”

“Ten I think, the mile sized ones, that can support sixty beam weapons and hold hundreds of thousands of missiles.   Four times bigger than the ones you guys can make, but they’ll be sixteen times the mass.  Your ships will only support twelve beam weapons, and sixteen times less missiles.  I’m also going to build a gas station, a fleet that large will go through a lot of hydrogen.”

Cassie said, “What if we combine eight of them instead of three, and use all the spare reactors, then we’ll have… sixteen of the big ones.”

“Not enough time, we only have a month, with sixteen reactors it’d take three months.  I’m going to be making a lot of reactors to make up the shortfall, enough to cut the build time by a quarter for all ten.  You’d need sixty reactors for all eight to build them in under a month.  Plus, variety is probably important, but a general or admiral would probably give better advice there.  Eighteen big ships, verse ten big and fifty smaller warships would probably give the Earth better coverage.”

Cassie nodded, “That actually makes sense.  A gas station?”

I nodded, “Sure, basically a space station.  It’ll be a temporary measure most likely, although it’d be convenient to refill by Earth so maybe not.  You could get it from the source, send ships out to Jupiter to fill up the tank, which is at least a two-day trip there and back.  My rates will be reasonable.”

She laughed, “Rates?”

I said, “Got to make money somehow, and it looks like I just lost my job.  I considered the idea of charging for the ships I build, but they self-replicate, so that’s a dead end one time fee, and I’m not going to blackmail the world to save it either.  Eventually, I could see a population on the space station, stores and restaurants, tourist traps.  I’m also considering making unarmed ships for trade at some point, assuming we win in a month, and those I’ll sell.  They’ll be totally locked down so they can’t arm themselves or duplicate themselves.”

Cassie said, “We could make our own.”

I nodded, “Free enterprise.  The government can make their own and trade with other worlds, but what about companies?  Cruise lines to the other human settlements, personal space yachts, and all that.  Those ships will be locked down as I said, and they’ll be made to order.  I don’t know, my future plans are all a little fuzzy and I’m focused on the next month right now, but I figured it was probably best to put some distance between us.  Living on a heavily armed space station seems like a good idea.  I haven’t even worked out how to do supply runs yet.”

Cassie asked, “What about Diana?”

My heart lurched at that.

“I don’t know, hopefully she’ll visit, I could pick her up in a shuttle, similar to the smaller craft but unarmed.  If she’s still interested that is.  I’m almost positive the general’s replacement won’t want me anywhere near a top-secret base or space command.  I also expect we’ll both be far too busy for the next month.  What do you think?”

Cassie smirked, “She won’t be hurt or threatened, but I wouldn’t be surprised if her and her teams are moved to a new undisclosed location and she’s prevented from communicating with you.  That won’t be forever though, the general dying won’t endear you to anyone.”

I nodded, “No, but my only option is fear, and to meet deadly force with deadly force.  Anything less will get me killed, as I’ll always be classified as a national security threat, and men in charge of national security will never believe I’m safe enough if left alone.  Hopefully they’ll be happy knowing I’m in space, where I can’t get close enough to read their top-secret computers and plans.”

Cassie replied, “You’re right of course, you didn’t really have a choice.  I’ll work on getting those crews, I’ll also recommend we leave you alone.  We’ll see what happens.  The president should’ve already told the world about the aliens, so we’ll see what happened with that when we get back.”

Wait, what?

“Seriously?  It’ll cause a panic when people find out the truth, or when he suddenly becomes tight lipped about the outcome.”

Cassie shrugged, “That’s inevitable.  I’ll pass along our conversation, and I’ll let you know about the crews.  I’m a little surprised you didn’t kill me.”

I frowned, “Someone has to deliver the message, and we need to cooperate at least for the next month.  Plus, you didn’t give the order, and you didn’t try to kill me.”

She laughed, “I opened up the hull, but I won’t argue with you.”

The conversation trailed off there, we sort of had a plan, or at least an outline of one.

As soon as we got in range of Earth, I sent a message to both Jayna and Diana to let them know about the whole mess.  It also felt selfish, but I did let Diana know she was welcome to join me if she wished.  I doubted she’d make that decision, but I knew I’d always regret not asking if I hadn’t.

I also scoured the news sites, the president had addressed the U.N.  So far, there seemed to be shock, and a lot of speculation.  I expected if the truth got out, that we were most likely going to be attacked in a month, then people would panic.

Of course, when the president heard about it, I was sure the press release would have a lot of spin on it, a part of the truth, but not the full truth.

As we got close, I launched some nanites off the ship and attached them to one of the communication satellites.  It was a device I’d built in the last hour that connected to my suit via entangled particles, and I didn’t share that tidbit with Cassie.  I had plans to leave the Earth for almost a month, and I wanted to have a communications access point where I could monitor things and stay connected, even make phone calls, from Jupiter.

I didn’t waste any time, I packed up some clothes, my personal care products in my bathroom, and went right back to the hangar.  I had some time, Cassie was on board with my plan, and it would take her time to fully debrief.  She’d promised me an hour’s head start, as they’d start with the alien’s conversation and the download of the rules and our defined territory in space.

I don’t know why I trusted her, but I was depending on her sense of self-preservation, ten giant warships would make a huge difference in the battle before us.  After… if we survived, I doubted she’d be at all trustworthy.

My magic raced from me and started to reprogram fifteen of the ships, which joined and melted together.  It wasn’t hard, I’d had a lot of time to design it on the way back to Earth.  I also changed the permissions on the nanites, the ship couldn’t be changed or controlled by anyone but me.  I made the hull very thick, and I filled in all of the empty space on fourteen of the ships as they combined, and on that last ship I made two compartments, one for thirty reactors, the other pretty much a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, though everything was metal but the reclining leather flight seats.

Nanites were awesome, and could create anything I could imagine, but not something soft, like a bed or blanket.

In short, the ship I created was fifteen times the mass, but not fifteen times the size.  It was only about three times as wide a cigar shape, a little over forty feet in diameter, but still two hundred feet long.

I immediately started all thirty reactors building more reactors, even before I got on the thing.  They could each build five at once, each one taking twelve hours.  Which meant I’d have a hundred and eighty reactors in twelve hours, of course I’d have to put one hundred and fifty of them together.

Between what was left energy wise in the thirty reactors, it was more than enough to fly the ship.

I got on and flew… to a Super Walmart in a small town in Tennessee.  No icky paste for me.  I left the ship hovering about fifty yards in the air, and I jumped down in my suit.  I got a lot of strange looks, but no one challenged me as I went into the store.  I bought enough food to last me for several months, and while I was at it, I bought a small day bed with a thin mattress.

There was quite a crowd outside, including several police, as I left with six carts of groceries and a bed.  The employees that helped me out looked a bit nervous, but I didn’t stick around for questions.  The ship snagged me and all my groceries, and then lifted us back into the ship.

I was a bit surprised, pleasantly so, when the cops didn’t open fire.  Of course, in my suit that wouldn’t have mattered for me, but bullet riddled food would’ve sucked.

It’d been over an hour, and I hadn’t heard back from Diana.  Either she was shocked and disgusted by what I’d had to do, or she was in one of her labs and hadn’t even gotten the message yet.   Or… maybe she was in protective custody and they wouldn’t let her respond.

Regardless, I set course for Jupiter despite the desire to go talk to her first, in person.  At sixty gravities of acceleration, including deceleration for the second half, it’d take twenty-two hours to get there.  My plan depended on the Jovian planet, I didn’t have enough hydrogen to power all the reactors I needed to make, and even if the government was willing to supply me it just made sense to use the free stuff.

Even as I left the atmosphere, I updated the plan.  If I could use extra reactors to speed up building ships, then I could also build less reactors more often.  Instead of one fifty in twelve hours, I made twelve every hour.  That way I could assemble them and get them online, and then rest an hour before the next batch.  Much more efficient that way.  It was something to do, and I only had so long to build my infrastructure, before I needed to start on the ships, if I wanted to get it all done in my very tight timeline.

I caught sleep in hour snatches, the whole trip there.  By the time we arrived I had two hundred and sixty-four reactors up and running, and I took the ship into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and the ship collected the hydrogen and filtered out other elements such as helium and others.

I kept the original thirty on reactor duty, while the rest started to make my ship bigger, add mass to it.  My hull thinned and the ship ballooned out to a much larger size, as large volumes of hydrogen filled parts of my ship and were highly compressed.

It would take me three more days to reach my goal of nine hundred reactors, with sleep factored in, three eighteen-hour days.

I took the time to eat, and by then my skin was healed so I allowed my suit to disperse, and I stretched.  I felt much better, and I took a hot shower.  Fed and cleaned, I got back to work.  I still hadn’t heard from Diana yet, but I pushed all those personal worries out of my mind.

The three days were rather grueling.

I was also pleased to see they’d taken my advice back on Earth, and they’d gone a step further.  The hundred and thirty-five scouts they had left were combined by threes, giving them forty-five of the smaller warships being built, but they’d done the same with the smaller ships.  Nine, instead of three, with three hundred of them that gave them an additional thirty smaller warships being built, seventy-five in total, still leaving them thirty of the small ships as shuttles.

I knew of course, because my ship was connected to their ship network.

Point being, we’d face the enemy with seventy-five small and ten large warships.  Plus, my space station, which was going to be a beast.

I assigned sixty of the reactors to each mile sized warship and started their build.  I set them up how the government set up the small ones, just sixteen times the mass and space inside.  I figured following their lead made the most sense, so a command team trained to run their smaller warships could move over to one of mine without needing to worry about anything new or different.

The ships were teardrop in shape, bulbous in the front with a sharply thinning tail in the back.  The command deck and engineering were in the center of the ship, and I duplicated exactly how they set up the smaller ships.  Surrounding that was twenty bedrooms, workout rooms, entertainment room, laundry, mess hall, and smaller storage spaces including walk in fridges and freezers.  Enough to comfortably deploy a crew for several months without returning to Earth.

I had to improvise somewhat as I built out past that, as the ships were a lot bigger, and would therefore have more storage rooms, but functionally that didn’t matter.  It was all storage space for missiles, the disparate systems that maintained the ship from shielding and weapons to life support.  They were areas a human would never see or go in, and they were completely maintained by the nanites and ship itself.

There were two small hangars on the outside to receive shuttles, and only two corridors to the center of the ship where the crew would be.

In three weeks, they’d be built, and we’d top off on hydrogen for fuel, and head back to Earth.  I’d build a freighter in the future, to automatically go for Jupiter runs, if my gas station idea panned out.  I also planned to bring extra, and then shrink a temporary expanded part of my station once it was offloaded.  I suspected they’d have trouble finding enough hydrogen to fully fuel the seventy-five ships they were building.

Anyway, that would leave just three days for the crews to take possession, but I suspected the attack might take longer than exactly a month anyway.  I also suspected any invaders were already preparing, with the betting going on, but it’d take time for them to get to our solar system and move in system.

I sent a message to Cassie with all the specs and data, and also told her the black boxes would be on the bridge on delivery, if they wanted to add it to their ship network.

My space station would also be built, and for those that haven’t already done the math, I had three hundred of the nine hundred reactors building it, which was five times the amount of reactors dedicated to the large warships.  In the end, my station would have the mass of five large warships alone, and when it was all finished, I’d have nine hundred reactors to myself.

Most of the time the majority would be powered-off and unneeded, I’d only need about forty for normal operations, but fully powered I could support twenty-two thousand energy beams.  I also had three days to build missiles, nine hundred reactors could build forty-five hundred every two hours.  That was a hundred and sixty-two thousand in total at the end of three days, and I suspected I’d have close to three times that when the enemy finally attacked, assuming it took them a week to move once our location was revealed.  At the very least, I suspected three more days, which would give me over three hundred thousand missiles.

As opposed to the large warships, which would only be able to make about six thousand each in six days, with their sixteen reactors.

My station was a dreadnought behemoth.  Call me paranoid, but I really didn’t want the fleet to turn on me as soon as the enemy was put down.  Which my paranoid mind told me was a likely possibility.

That more than anything was the reason for the overkill, I wanted to make them think twice before trying to take me out.  I’d also be settling in at the earth-moon’s Lagrange point, just to give a little distance and not make anyone too nervous by proximity.

Hell, if it came to it, I’d just move to one of the other worlds in our territory.

Anyway, it was shaped like a big honkin’ flying saucer, a half mile tall and five miles in diameter.  I figured that would maximize docking ports, at least without having weak structural points on the station like spokes.  The bottom two tiers around the whole thing would dock a hundred ships at a time, just to fill up with fuel.

The top two tiers would dock hundreds of smaller ships, just in case there were people crazy enough on Earth to want to open stores, hotels, and restaurants in orbit.  I hoped so, because I really didn’t want to live by myself.  The top part was thinner and would be the public area.  The bottom part was where all the storage was for hydrogen, missiles, and all that.  In the middle was my own living space, control center, and engineering.  Really, as I’d said before, engineering is misleading, it was the power room, nothing but reactors.  All the ships systems were fluid, made on demand with nanites, self-repaired, and all over the ship.

If I ever built and sold civilian or commercial locked down and weaponless ships, I could power on a few unused reactors and build it at any docking point.

Regardless, I hoped it was all worth it, and enough.  I hoped it would be, I got the idea the grays were the most powerful as far as warships, and we had their technology.  Time would tell though, and we could still be buried in numbers.  Seventy-five small warships, ten large ones, and my space station.  Those numbers sounded good, but they were probably small compared to what other races had after who knows how many centuries of building.  Even a human could be taken down by rats, if there were enough in the swarm.

It’d have to be enough, or Earth was screwed.

Chapter Eleven

“Scott?” Diana answered.

Damn, it was good to hear her voice.  My body flooded with emotions strong enough to tell me I missed her a hell of a lot more than I’d thought I had, and that I just maybe might like her a whole lot more than I’d thought too.  Shit.

“Hey, they’re treating you alright down there?”

Diana replied, “It’s been a mess, I’ve been on lockdown the last week, when I read your note I kind of lost it.  I didn’t get it until you were gone for hours, and Cassie verified all of it for me.  You have to believe me, I had no idea what they were planning.  I also suspect this conversation is being monitored.”

I replied, “I know, I believe you.  I also miss you.”

She sounded relieved, “I miss you too.  I’d love to join you, but you know they have me working on that power disparity… for the aliens.”

Yeah, that was subtle, not.  I guessed she was still working on different or better technologies than the aliens had, using the underlying sciences their reverse engineered tech taught us, but the implication was I was the enemy they had their eyes on.  It was a good point I hadn’t thought of before then, as soon as Diana handed a better weapon to the military that got around alien technology, I’d be their number one test subject.  How did I not see that sooner?  Too much going on.

How was that for ironic, my girlfriend was working on a way to kill me.  Though, from her outlook it was to protect Earth from those sadistic grays who saw the rise and fall of interstellar civilizations as a game to bet on.

I also took it to mean she wanted me to pick her up, and I hoped I hadn’t read into it.  I knew she couldn’t say it right out, as she’d said she was being monitored.

“The ships are on schedule, I should be back in a couple of weeks.  You’re safe?”

Diana replied, “On base.  I haven’t left, things are a bit crazy out there.  The world knows an attack is coming, despite the president’s assurances and spin that we’ll be fine, a lot of people haven’t bought it.  There’ve been a lot of riots across the world, mostly here and in Europe.  Then there’s all the other world powers, they’re not happy with the United States right now.  They’re all demanding to participate.  As it is, I suspect England, France, Russia, China, Japan, Israel, and Australia will all be given command of one of the ships you’re building.”

“Well, they can’t be copied, and they can’t fire on an Earth ground target, so no worries about world takeover plans, and they can’t build an FTL drive.  Other than that, they can be modified and reshaped.  Any marketing ideas, for a startup space station?”

She giggled, “Sounds like a management and sales nightmare.  You need someone good at researching and developing.”

Okay, that was a second big hint she wanted me to steal her away.  Research and development was what she did, and it was an awkward way of implying management and sales.  I also had to assume her watcher was smart enough to realize that as well, it wasn’t all that subtle.

Suddenly I regretted leaving like I did, I should have invaded the building and taken her with me.  I was a bit surprised but also very pleased, I missed her more than I could say.  We’d said no promises but apparently my heart hadn’t really listened, it was… startling just how much she meant to me.

“I should be taking notes.”

I sent my magic through the connection, and I brought up her notes app on her phone.  I doubted they could monitor that, and I left her instructions if she really wanted to join me.  It took me a couple of seconds.

She replied, “You really should, it isn’t often I share my pearls of wisdom too.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, and I’ll look into hiring soon.”

It was actually a good point, outside of her hint to pick her up I mean.  I didn’t want to turn into a mall administrator, renting out business spaces to companies, and selling gas.  At least, not alone, if it actually worked there’d be too much for me to handle.  I probably needed a lawyer too.  Hopefully, the countries would leave me alone, and be slow in opening up their own space stations as competition.

I wasn’t greedy, I just wanted to be left alone, and have enough money to live comfortably, but I was actually starting to think I’d make a whole lot of the green stuff.  Getting the governments to leave us alone was the real trick.

She said, “I should go, it might be a few days before you hear from me again.”

Translation, she had very little reason to go out to the hangars where the ships were kept.  Really, it was either steal a ship, or wait until I got back and could send one.  The plan I sent her was pretty much that, I could grant her access to one of the ships and she could join me, or plan B had been me getting her when I got back.

It didn’t seem like either of us wanted to wait two more weeks, and I could tell she was very ambivalent about the idea of working toward a technology for the government that could take me out.  Of course, her joining me wouldn’t end that threat, I was sure the scientists that worked for her were very competent, and the best in their fields.

“Alright, I’ll talk to you soon, Diana.  Miss you.”

She replied, “Me too,” and the longing in her voice sent a shiver through me.

I wanted her with me, on the other hand I wanted her safe.  The two concepts fought one another, but I was selfish enough that I wouldn’t try to talk her out of it.  Plus, it was her decision.  She wouldn’t be giving up her life for me either, which I knew would have doomed whatever we had together as resentment built.  She could still do research and development on the station, so I wasn’t worried about that.

I’d just be her personal life, as she was mine, the two of us would still have our own things professionally.  It was insane if I thought about it too long, but it seemed we were both emotionally invested deeply enough that it was worth the insane risk to see where it all went.  I wasn’t sure if I was in love with her or not, we’d only dated a few weeks, but I knew I didn’t lack for affection or caring.

Next to my sister, she was the only one I really cared about on that blue-ball.

An hour later I checked her notes app.  Even without the active phone call, it wasn’t hard to follow the signals through the cell tower for my magic.  She’d left a date and time in the note I’d created, the next day and at six in the morning.  I’d be ready, I also wouldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to her.

The space around me was vast, and so close to Jupiter I had a lot of blind spots as I scanned space for any signs of new ships.  I knew any on the network were all back at Earth, but I couldn’t assume the government was stupid, they knew I’d been able to track the aliens’ ships through fifty galaxies.  How hard would it be for them to create a new ship and simply not add the black box to the network system and send one after me?  The answer of course, was not hard at all.

It probably wasn’t necessary, but I heeded my paranoia.  When it came to national security what wouldn’t a government spook do?  The answer to that was nothing.  Nothing at all.

I designed a new ship of sorts, maybe better to call it a subordinate ship or nuclear-powered probe.  I built in quantum connections directly attached to my space station command and control interface.  In short, I’d be able to control the ships from the command interface on the station, and all their scans would be reported back directly to the station.  I wouldn’t have to be submerged in my mind and magic to see what they were seeing.

The ships were small, even smaller than the fighter ships back on Earth.  The large space station ejected two hundred of them, formed them from the growing mass of the space station, and took two hundred reactors with them.  They may even be better named as probes, since they were unmanned ships.

The two hundred ships moved around Jupiter and its moons, and basically created a huge sensor net with no gaps, which my space station combined and collated for a much clearer picture of the space around me.  I was pretty sure I’d see any ships coming from Earth, before they even got near Mars, much less Jupiter.

At the same time, it wouldn’t interfere with my building plans.  The two hundred reactors would be adding mass to those probe ships at the same rate they had been on the station, for the entire time they were out there until I recalled them and re-absorbed all the mass.  It took less than ten percent power to run sensors and to maintain their position, which left ninety for it to keep creating nanites with five energy to matter converters.

More than that, without the need for inertial dampers and life support, the probe-ships were very fast and could move at six hundred gravities.  Something that might come in useful at some point.

With that done, I felt a lot better about the idea of submerging myself in my magic and technology at a distance, even without someone there to watch my back.  At least, I’d have an over ten-hour window knowing nothing could show up and surprise me.

Five in the morning came early.  I took a shower, shaved, and warmed up a frozen breakfast sandwich for some breakfast.  I was more than wide awake at the thought of Diana being in danger come six, but I brewed a pot of coffee anyway and filled up a mug.

My mind raced as I thought about all the things that could go wrong, that I couldn’t help with from over seven hundred million kilometers away from Earth.  I also considered all my plans, builds, and tried to find gaps or new ideas.  A big fat nothing occurred to me, which I thought was probably a failure of imagination on my part rather than me having covered all my bases.

When quarter to six came, I got comfortable in the flight chair and reclined it back.  I checked space one more time, which looked clear all the way back to Earth orbit, and I sent my magic into the nanites that had a quantum entangled connection with the Earth ship network, those fifteen scouts I’d appropriated that were currently part of my station.  My mind followed the magic to the command center, and then back out to one of the ships in the hangars.

I was also pinging Diana’s phone location, so I’d know if she went into one of the other hangars, though I was fairly sure all the smaller ships left were in that hangar.  The rest of them had combined to build those small warships, and they were actually in orbit.

I powered it up, and I noted there were two guards outside the hangar.

Then I waited, and waited some more, relatively comfortable with the fact I had no awareness of what was going on where I was in orbit of Jupiter.  It was my least favorite part of my magic, but then I’d never been so isolated before.

Six in the morning came and went.  Diana’s phone was on, and it was on another part of the base.  The idea of powering up, taking off, and swooping her away occurred to me, but I held off.  Partially because the government and I had a temporary alliance with the alien attack coming.  I honestly didn’t think they’d try anything until the upcoming attack was fought off, and me stealing a ship, blowing up stuff, and kidnapping their head scientist sounded like a good way to end that truce.

But mostly, I held off because she was on the move.  That reassured me she wasn’t being held in one place, or she wasn’t stuck in a dangerous situation.  Several minutes passed while I waited, and I was on pins and needles when she started to move toward the hangars.  Or at least, her cell phone was, I tried not to think too hard about that.

The sensors picked up voices a minute later.

The guard said, “Halt, identify yourselves.”

I was floored by the response, or rather the voice I heard give the response.

Cassie said, “Cassiopeia Reed.  Stand down.  Doctor Young is here to test a new theoretical ship configuration.”

Cassiopeia?  I hadn’t seen that one coming, I’d never heard her full name before.  Never mind the fact why she was there at all.

The guard replied suspiciously, “That’s not on the schedule, maam.  I also don’t recognize your other companion.”

The sounds of very brief struggle reached the sensors, as flesh met flesh, and the two guards went down.

Cassie said, “I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to do that, let’s go.”

The large hangar door started to slide open, and I felt a major shock when I saw who the third person was.  If I hadn’t been lying down, and working through my magic, I imagine I’d have felt unsteady.

What the hell was Jayna doing there?

It turned out I didn’t even have to mess with the access, since Cassie was an administrator of the system and already an approved pilot.  The three of them got on the ship, and Cassie slid into the cockpit.  A few moments later, the ship shot out of the hangar and steeply climbed toward space.

“Umm, what’s going on?” I asked brilliantly.

Cassie said, “Not right now, I’ve got seventy-five small warships to avoid, they might not be finished building mass and missiles, but they’re operational.”

Oh, shit.  Good point.

Jayna said, “That’s so creepy, aren’t you on Saturn, or Jupiter or something.  What have you gotten me into this time, Scott?”

“It’s not my fault a general tried to assassinate me.”

Cassie sighed, “Not now, children!”

Oh, right.  I’d have blushed, if I could feel my body.

The small ship arrived into space, and Cassie immediately went to sixty gravities of acceleration.  She was pointed rim-ward of the solar system, but her course wasn’t even close to pointed at Jupiter, she was off by at least thirty degrees, on both declinations.

Diana said, “We’re being hailed.  Hi Scott.”

I almost laughed, “Hi Diana.”

Cassie shook her head, “This is a test flight, approved by General Mortenson.”

The ship replied, “You will cut engines and standby while I verify, there’s nothing on the schedule.”

Of course, there wasn’t.  I was even kind of impressed, the control room and ship network setup they had seemed to be tight.  The United States military were sharp people, which was why my paranoia was so sharp those days.

The warship in progress broke out of orbit, and they started to follow.  At least only one of them had.  I had my attention split between the small ship and the command center, although it wasn’t easy.  I’d be able to see if the warship brought its weapons online.  Then… I’d have to react.

Diana spoke, “This is Doctor Young, it would be inadvisable to stop the test at this time.  We don’t have time to play games, the enemy will arrive in just over two weeks.”

Another voice joined the argument, “This is General Mortenson.  I approved no testing for this morning, stop that ship, by any means necessary.”

Oh crap, the jig was up.  Who knew the general would be a morning person?

The warship captain said, “You heard the general.  Last warning, cut engines and prepare to link up, or we will open fire.”

Well, shit.  This wasn’t going to help my relationship with the U.S. government.  I was about to abandon the small ship, go to the big ship, and brick it.  Basically, remove all permissions and turn it into the largest paperweight ever made.  I’d fix it later of course, once they were out of missile range which was two to three light seconds depending on relative speed and vectors.

But Diana had her own plan, and she beat me to it.

“Got it, activating stealth shielding.”

As soon as the shield came up, Cassie changed her course to point directly at Jupiter.

The captain and general weren’t happy, but I only half listened as the general tore the captain a new ass for letting the ship evade them.

“Stealth shielding?”

Diana said, “Not as cool as it sounds, I designed it based on our own scanners, it won’t work against the aliens unless their scanners are calibrated the same as ours.  In short, it’s a one trick pony for this escape.  I thought it best if you didn’t have to get involved, they hate and fear you enough already.”

I sighed, “Still cool.”

Diana giggled, “Isn’t it?  I do have real upgrades though, a second missile type, and shielding updates to defend against it.  I plan to share it with them, but I thought it wise to give it to you first.”

I shivered, no doubt it was something that would’ve given them enough edge to kill me, unless I bricked their whole fleet, which would end in the alien destruction of Earth.  Not really an option.

“So, Jayna, Cassie?”

Cassie said, “Long story.”

I laughed at the typical Cassie dodge, and her lips twitched.

Cassie said, “We’ll fill you in when we get there.  I don’t think we should trust the comms through the command center, and you probably shouldn’t spend hours with your mind in the ship.”

“Alright, sounds like a plan.  I’ll also arrange two more sets of quarters.”

Cassie grinned, “Good, we have supplies in this ship you know, if you haven’t checked.  The thirty shuttles have been outfitting the crew quarters on the warships for days.”

That was good, because soft beds and sheets were the one thing that I couldn’t make them.  I did have a whole lot of leather flight seats though, and I could add a few to the command center and galley.

“What kind of missile?”

Diana said, “You know how gravity tech and inertial dampers don’t function as well in a planetary gravity well, it’s why we can’t go sixty gravities of acceleration until we leave Earth’s well.”

“Yes.”

She continued, “I built a gravity missile that pulses a high gravity gradient through an enemy ship when it hits.  If the ship is moving at high acceleration it will screw up inertial dampening for a split second, long enough to make the crew pancake against the closest bulkhead.  Even without acceleration, it could do serious harm.  As an added benefit, it wouldn’t harm the ship itself, which could be claimed at the end of battle.  Our current shielding doesn’t block gravity at all.”

That sounded wicked.

“Alright, I’m going to cut off the magic.  I’ll work on those quarters, and I’ll hail you as soon as we’re in communicator range.  I’m looking forward to the story, though I’m sorry you two got dragged into it.”

Cassie said, “Not your fault, let’s put the blame on the assholes, where it belongs.”

Jayna said, “I agree, and I’m fine.  Doesn’t mean I won’t give you shit though.”

I laughed, “Good to know.  I’ll see you all soon.”

I cut off my magic, and got to work setting up another two quarters, showers, metal furniture, and all that.  I also moved those leather flight seats around.  I had plenty of time, it’d be almost fifteen hours before they arrived.

Chapter Twelve

The emotions that flooded me when I set eyes on Diana scrambled my brain, and the welcome kiss I got from her had other side effects that made me a bit of a mental mess.

She smiled widely as she took a step back, and despite the blush on her cheeks she didn’t break eye contact until I looked toward the others.

Cassie said, “We have a lot to talk about.”

My paranoia had considered it might all be a setup, but ultimately, I’d dismissed it, and was fairly calm standing there unarmored in the same room as an ancient vampire.

I gave Jayna a hug before I replied, and I could tell she was as worried as I was, but equally glad to see me whole and well.

“This way,” I took Diana’s hand as I walked them to the center of the growing behemoth that was my space station.

She looked startled at the gesture for a moment, but then smiled almost smugly as she squeezed my hand and held it.

“So, what happened?”

Cassie said, “I gave you the time you needed to appropriate the fifteen scout ships by going over everything in timeline order, all hell basically broke loose when I got to the part where I explained the plan we’d come up with together.  They didn’t agree with my reasoning at all, that for the moment the Earth was in danger and we had to work together.  General Mortenson is even a bigger asshole than Schafer was.  Anyway, I was arrested for treason, which I still think is a matter of opinion.”

“How could they not agree?”

Cassie shrugged, “They think the seventy-five small warships will be plenty to defend Earth, that we don’t really need the ten larger warships or your space station.  That you were an unknown quantity, too powerful, and uncontrollable, even more dangerous to the security of the United States than the aliens who will want to wipe us out.  Idiots.”

“How can you be so sure, capacity equals intent kind of stuff.”

Cassie snorted, “Because I’m three hundred years old, and I know how to read people.  You are dangerous, and you’d make a horrible enemy, but you’d be a much better ally if we’d chosen that route, and you’re trustworthy.  I’m a good judge of people, and I thought they would take my recommendation, but General Mortenson is an asshole, and dismissed my judgement.  He doesn’t know me.”

She shrugged, “Anyway, I cooperated the last two weeks, from my cell and under guard I expanded the access rights for the ships.  That made them pretty nervous, with the General and Jemma dead, there weren’t all that many of us left that could grant access to our ships.  I suspect that kept me alive since you’re the only one who can add more admins.

“Diana visited me a few times, she was obviously afraid for you, especially with those new missiles being developed from the new sciences and disciplines that were opened up for us.  My loyalty still lies with America, I just… have a very different outlook than those who are currently in charge at the moment.

“Regardless, your sister was picked up two days ago, I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

I sighed, “I’ve been busy building a fleet, I’ve been keeping tabs on her phone.”

Jayna said, “I don’t have it anymore.”

Right, I figured that out already, so I’d screwed up.

Cassie took up the story, “Anyway, when she showed up in the cell next to me, I decided their plans were likely to get a lot of people killed when you figured out what they were doing, so it was at that point I stopped cooperating.  Sometimes paranoia can lead people to stupid decisions, and military counter-intelligence was about to get the world destroyed in my opinion, if you and they came to blows before the invasion.

“I used compulsion to gain my freedom, while I stayed mostly in my cell.  I was able to find out what their plan was.  When you took the ships back to Earth to hand them over, they were going to demand you turn over the space station as well and submit to arrest, using threats against your sister as leverage.  Turn yourself in and be assassinated in your cell, or watch your sister be destroyed.  That kind of thing.”

I felt a surge of rage at the thought, but the fact my sister was ten feet away and giving me worried glances, calmed me down.

“Yeah, so much for my warning.”

Cassie smirked, “I warned them against messing with her rather strenuously, and I told the general straight out it would get him killed and merely put the country, the Earth, in jeopardy.  Anyway, Diana visited me right before she called you, that’s when we made our plans.  When Diana came to the jail to pick us up early this morning, or yesterday as the case may be, I broke myself and Jayna out, and we drove over to the hangars, you know the rest.”

Well, that explained why Diana’s phone had been across the base, and why they’d been late.

“So, what are your intentions?”

Cassie smirked, “Don’t trust me?”

“For now, I do.”

She sighed, “I get that.  I pretty much ignored you the whole time, and made no effort to get to know you, that’ll change over the next two weeks, and I’m sorry for it.  I was following orders, doesn’t really excuse me for my part of things, does it?”

I nodded, “Being open with me would be a start.”

She replied, “I need sleep, but we can talk more tomorrow.  As for my intentions, I think I’m done working for the government for a while, being a fugitive and all.  Working in a space station sounds interesting, and I have mad organizational skills.”

“Seriously?”

She nodded, “If you’ll have me.  There’s no jurisdiction in space for one.  I’m also well connected, and older than the United States.  If you really want to turn the station into a tourist trap, private and commercial ship building and selling, and have companies open stores and stuff, I can help with a lot of that.  I even know a few blood sucking lawyers who are very good at international business law.”

“Vampires?”

She snickered, “Nope, just the normal kind.”

Oh, lawyer jokes, I snorted.

“Alright, we can talk.  I honestly have no idea where to start on something that big, and I could use the help.”

She nodded, “The first thing we have to do is find a sponsor country.  Like a cruise line ship on the ocean, at least until space law is worked out.  I’ll give it some thought, and I’ll run it by you tomorrow.  We have what, two weeks to kill, and all your building is static, preparing for and assuming success against the aliens, we might as well get started right away.”

“Jayna?”

Jayna sighed, “I don’t know yet, I know I can’t go home, at least I hadn’t had a new life to disrupt yet in my new city.  Wasn’t there long enough to establish myself, and to find new friends.”

I frowned as guilt shot through me, “Sorry.”

Jayna shook her head, “Sorry, not your fault.  Well, mostly not your fault.  Let me sit in on your meetings tomorrow, maybe something will come up around here I’m interested in doing.  I’m sure the two of you will need help.”

I nodded, “On the good side, you can get in touch with all your friends, at least online and on the phone.  There’s no reason to hide from your old life anymore, even if you can’t physically go back.”

Jayna smiled, “That’s something at least,” then pulled out her phone, “Your magic is creepy, how the hell do I have a signal, and four G access?”

My sister was an elemental mage, not nearly as powerful as Jemma was, or even Dale, but more than respectable in power.  She also had the same light blonde hair and ocean blue eyes I had, and we had similar looks.  I had no idea why my magic was so weird, or uniquely related to tech, but it definitely wasn’t a case of adoption.

I snickered, “I built a cell tower on the station with nanites, that’s quantumly linked to a communication satellite in Earth orbit.  You might notice a small data lag when surfing on your phone, from the satellite link, but voice you shouldn’t notice at all.”

Cassie said, “We’ll have to address that, when we offer space for companies, create our own for ships, register with a country, and all that, we can’t be stealing data or voice network time.”

I replied, “Got it.”

We arrived at the center of the ship, even with two weeks of building left, it’d been almost a two mile walk from where the small ship was docked.  The last mile of diameter would grow the slowest, as the spatial mass went up geometrically.

While we’d been talking, the ship itself had moved the furniture and all that to their quarters using flowing nanites and small gravity fields.  That, and personal hygiene items for their bathrooms, towels, sheets, and all that.

I showed them our common living area, which was essentially a kitchen, and I’d used some of the extra leather seats to create a living room and media and entertainment room of sorts.  Real furniture would be better, but for the moment we had metal end tables and a coffee table.

I’d also improvised a workout room and equipment, which was again, all metal, but much better than nothing.

More of the leather seats had gone into the creation of a meeting room off the kitchen, with a flat-screen for presentations, and a conference table made of metal nanites.  Last but not least, Diana was pleased to see her own private office and lab, which was decked out with several advanced computer systems, a comfortable leather chair, and desk.

Diana had been kind of quiet until Cassie and Jayna went to their personal quarters, and I turned to her.

“Are you alright?”

She nodded, “I am now.  Thanks for setting that up for me, I’ll make good use of it, and it’ll keep me from going crazy.  Four quarters?”

I shrugged, “I didn’t want to assume.”

She bit her lip, “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I’m also sorry I dragged you into this.”

She raised an eyebrow, and then she pulled me into her room.  That seemed fair, she had a much better and bigger bed than the small daybed I’d picked up at Walmart.

“Seems you did assume anyway, if not about our sleeping arrangements.  There’s no reason to be sorry.  This wasn’t all about us, although I am very happy to be here with your right now, and I was very concerned what they might do with my advances in regard to you.”

I raised an eyebrow in question.

She said, “I already revealed my doubts to you of their intentions, before it all went down, if subtly.  I’ve been looking for a way out for a long time now.  They recruited me five years ago out of college, I already told you that.  I was excited at first, naively so.  Alien technology, what wonders and advances could we bring the world.  It was the chance of a lifetime, a dream and ambition to satisfy myself and a need to give back all at the same time.  Of course, once you cracked it for us and opened up a million possibilities, the military had me focused solely on destructive applications and research with the new scientific advancements and theories revealed to us.

“My requests for teams to work on medical advancements and other areas that would improve the world, from clean power generation to safe transportation, were all turned down.  The president revealed the technology, ships, and aliens to the world, but the scientific theories and knowledge behind it remained above top secret to all but a few.

“I saw a world where planes didn’t crash, and children didn’t die of cancer, they saw a weapon and power to intimidate and influence the rest of the world.  I know that’s naïve, and I might have even been satisfied if they’d pursued both, but they didn’t.  The last straw was when Mortenson ordered me to come up with a way to take you out, so it was about you to a certain extent, but it wasn’t all about you.

“I’ll be happier here, where I can research whatever I want.  I’m just as much of a fugitive as you and Cassie are, perhaps more so.  Building new ships won’t be the only business we personally run on our space station, I plan to explore the possibilities, and we can sell other advancements and inventions as well, if we can stay a step ahead of the government that is.

“My point being, you have nothing to be sorry for, this is a dream for me, I can now do what I’ve always wanted to be doing.  You… us, well that’s just a bonus, and only half the story.”

Her little speech had me a bit… speechless, and the excited passionate look in her intelligent emerald eyes stole my breath.  She was right of course, we’d host a lot of companies if we could get things running, but I hadn’t considered our own company would be selling more than ships.

I’d understood life was a balance, and she’d have her science to satisfy her ambition and the business side of her life, as I had my stuff going on business wise, while the two of us pursued the more intimate and personal sides of life.  In short, I knew we had a shot, and both of us could have a full life right there on the station, but I’d failed to think past that and what her work would mean for the world.

Assuming of course, the world was still there in a few weeks.

I was kind of blown away by her vision of the future, as she rocked my world with the possibilities.  Clean power generation, nanite health care, entangled communications would replace satellites and most transmitted communications over time, planes with anti-gravity so they couldn’t fall out of the sky and crash, cars with inertial dampening would stop crash deaths, and a million other things that weren’t even on the radar, because she hadn’t invented them yet.

I finally got out, “You are so sexy.”

She blushed, “Show me.  I’ve missed you.”

So I kissed her, and I proceeded to show her just how much I’d missed her the last two weeks.

Chapter Thirteen

The next morning, once we got out of bed, I integrated her missile designs, as well as the shield updates.  It wasn’t perfect, the missile would still rock the ship hard, but it wouldn’t cause a deadly catastrophic failure.  I also went ahead and sent the programming updates to the ten ships, as well as to Space Command on earth so they could update their smaller warships.

I wasn’t all that surprised when they didn’t send me a thank you note.  I imagined they weren’t happy at all, I was a little surprised they hadn’t sent a ship to Jupiter.  Maybe they felt they had no choice, between me and Cassie we’d backed them into a corner of sorts, and it was too much of a risk to confront me before the battle with the aliens.  Still, I was surprised they’d been able to see the logic in that, I was sure the president and General Mortenson were furious, not to mention the joint chiefs and the pentagon.

I knew that bill was coming though, eventually.  Hopefully we could settle things mostly peacefully, I hoped they’d get one look at my space station and tuck tail, but I doubted it.  I also wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.  The bastards had tried to assassinate me, and they kidnapped one of their citizens to use as leverage against me.

After breakfast, Cassie, Jayna, and I stayed at the table and grabbed another cup of coffee each, instead of moving to the conference room I’d made, while Diana went to her office with a smile on her face and a desire to study and research new technologies.

“So, how’d you wind up working for the government?”

Cassie smirked, “I suppose you’ve earned story time.  You’ll also realize why I didn’t share this while we were working on the base, even past the fact I tried to avoid getting to know you as much as possible.  Despite that, you impressed me anyway in the short time we worked together.”

She shook her head, “Anyway, a little background.  I was born Cassiopeia Renault right outside of Paris, in the fourteen hundreds.  At six centuries old, I’m one of the elders of our race.  When America was formed, I took a ship over with a couple of my turns.  We lived simply, we didn’t kill for blood, and we kept the secret for ourselves, along with the mages, witches, and fae.

“In short, we minded our business, and lived our lives in obscurity much like any citizen the world over.  It wasn’t until nineteen fourteen when our priorities changed.  The start of world war one was alarming, and technology started to advance at a frightening rate.  I was five hundred at the time, and I got in touch with other elders of our world, with the help of some of the witches.  We discussed it for a long time.

“Vampires depend on humans for life, and the last thing we wanted to see was you destroy yourselves.  Try to imagine how you would feel, if your cattle and vegetable fields had started destroying each other the world over.  Humans aren’t cattle of course, they’re more than that, but it amounts to the same thing practically speaking.  War wasn’t anything new, but for the first time we saw the potential for humanity to wipe itself out worldwide.”

She paused a second to gather her thoughts, and sip at her coffee.

“Speaking of food.”

She smirked, “There’s some blood in the frozen food supplies we brought.  Where was I, right, the humans had started a world war, the first one, and I got together with the other elder vampires.  It was then that we took a more… direct interest in the survival of your species and my old one.  I volunteered to take America, since I was the oldest one on the continent, while others focused on the other world powers.

“We did our best to avoid world war two, but Hitler was just too much of an asshole, and he had powerful elemental mages in his employ so we couldn’t compel him to cut the shit.  Regardless, I wouldn’t say I controlled America, the government is too big and diverse, but I did whisper in ears at times, calm emotions.  You could even say I worked for America, because my interest was in their stability as a world power.

“Then when fifty-seven rolled around, the conspiracy of an alien ship, a UFO, in Roswell came to light.  Let’s just say it piqued my curiosity, so I ran it down.  Humans can’t lie to me, and with a light compulsion they have to tell the truth, so it didn’t take me long to discover what’d happened, and where the ship was, despite all the confusing lies and coverups the government threw in my and everyone else’s path.

“Needless to say, an alien ship and technologies that would throw off the balance of power in the world was not conducive to stability.  I still kept an eye on the rest of what was going on, but I felt I needed to be central to the issue to keep an eye on it, so I got myself into the program as a civilian consultant and manager with a few compulsions in the right ears.  I did that as little as possible mind you, and I regret not using compulsion when the general informed me of his ultimate plan in regard to you.”

She shook her head, “Maybe I’m too old.  I was there to protect stability in the world, what was one life to me?  When I’ve seen so many come and go the last six centuries?  I know.  That sounds horrible, but it’s the truth.  Anyway, that’s how I wound up working in area fifty-one, then two and three, and finally on Peterson.”

I tilted my head, “So, the reason you’re really here is to influence me, so I don’t start world war three.”

She blushed, “Damn, you’re more perceptive than I expected.  I knew you’d work it out, but not that fast.  I could fix things with compulsion on Earth, but too many in the government know about me and what I am, it’d be obvious I was manipulating the government, generals, and the military, and might start a vampire hunt.  So, I helped Diana and your sister escape, and came here to keep an eye on you instead, while one of my elder associates will take over my place in America.  My goal as always, is preservation of the human race, and to make sure they don’t destroy themselves.

“That said, it also feels like the right thing to me.  I don’t believe you’ll lose your mind and start world war three, but I can’t take the chance, so here I am.  I also wasn’t lying about my interest in the station, it’s a turbulent but exciting time, and helping to run a space station, sell ships, and perhaps other things, sounds fun.”

I nodded, “I’ll trust you then, since I know I have no intention of starting a world war.  But if they move against me, I will respond in force.  What will you do?”

She smirked, “Maybe not that perceptive after all.  I’d do nothing, as long as it was an appropriate response and not a major escalation.”

I frowned, and Jayna laughed.

Jayna said, “Don’t you get it, you’re ultimately good for stability.  The U.S. with a monopoly on advanced alien technology would be a temptation to take over the world, or at least hold that possibility as a threat over the rest of them.  But here you are at least a fulcrum in the balance of power, they don’t control you, and you plan to build and sell ships that can go to the stars, trade, look around, or just create a colony on one of the eight worlds.  You’re doing her job for her, by keeping America in check.  She’s just here to make sure you don’t go too far.  It was already your influence that made America reluctantly agree to other countries crewing some of the ten ships you’re building, or so Diana told me on the way here.”

Oh.  I hadn’t gotten that far in my head yet, but I could see it now.

Cassie nodded, “What she said.  I’m also going to enjoy myself, and your company.  If you can see past my mistakes, I think we can be friends as well as business associates.  You really can trust me, and if you become a monster you can trust me to stop you.”

Yeah, that was actually comforting, in a disturbing way.  It was also becoming apparent to me that the way she treated me, teasing and playful, was actually who she was as a person.  It’d only felt fake before, because of the emotional disconnect on her side as she didn’t want to get to know a dead man, and just end up mourning me.  It was cold, but I kind of got it.

It was a bit disturbing, but I thought I could get past it, I already trusted her and her implied and stated purpose, and I thought we could build a friendship within those bounds.  She was an incredibly beautiful and sexy woman, but that wouldn’t be an issue either.  My relationship and feelings for Diana shielded me from some of that, enough that I wouldn’t fall prey to that kind of manipulation, and I was mostly used to it after several weeks of association.

“Alright, so business?”

She nodded, “I’d suggest we split duties.  You’re responsible for the safety of the station, designing ships and technology to build, while Diana gives you more technology to add to that.  You’ll also make sure it’s full of gas assuming that part pans out.  I’ll administer the station, deal with legalities, and use my contacts to get in some vendors, and deal with money.”

“That’s a start.”

She said, “The vendors will be responsible for furnishing the spaces, all we have to provide is four walls, a floor, ceiling, lighting, security, and power.  Shipping their stuff up here will be another price point, and something we can handle by you creating shuttle trucks, or whatever we’ll call them.”

I smirked, “Cargo shuttles.  I’ll also make commercial shuttles for people to come up, we’ll need a deal with a country, or several countries, to use their airports, or perhaps to build a small spaceport.”

She nodded, “I’ll handle that part, or my contacts will.  Anything else?”

Jayna said, “Advertising.  The vendors will advertise they’re on a space station, vacation destinations and all that, but you’ll need to advertise your businesses.  Space yachts, freighters, and custom ship business, plus whatever other inventions Diana comes up with.  By the way brother, you’re batting way out of your league there, I like her.”

I grinned, “Damned right I am.”

Jayna smirked, “You could also advertise tours, build a ship to cruise the solar system.  You could either let a cruise line take that part, or just hire some pilots and make it part of the station’s amenities.”

“Are you volunteering?”

Jayna tilted her head, “I guess I can take advertising, it sounds interesting.”

I said, “What about the government?  They’ll try to block it all from happening.”

Cassie winked, “Just worry about the military, and keeping the station secure from attack.  I’ll handle the legalities and politics.  There’s too much money in it, I’ll be able to leverage a solution, as long as you keep us in one piece.”

I nodded.  It looked like I was in charge of security and manufacturing, so I wouldn’t have to interface with customers or vendors renting spaces all that much.  That… was more than fine with me, I wasn’t a business major, I was the tech guy.

“Do either of you need anything from me to get started?”

Cassie said, “I just need the specs on the finished station, or at least for the top part so I can price the spaces and know what I’m working with.  Changes are possible, in case some loon wants to build a water park, or a huge hotel?”

I nodded, “Yes.  I’ve given you read access to everything.”

Jayna said, “Not much, but maybe some mock up pictures of ships and specs to include in the advertising.  Just to give a general idea of what’s possible and what can be customized.  I can handle the rest of it on my own.  I’ll also start a website.”

Cassie said, “I’ll also be hiring, the two of us can’t keep up with it all.  If nothing else we’ll need people in sales, and a show room of sorts for custom ships for personal and merchant use.”

“Agreed.  We’ll also need a station security force.  I can handle ships, but even I can’t be awake twenty-four hours a day, and we’ll need feet on the ground to enforce station laws in the public part.  It’s going to be a huge five-mile-diameter round city, with multiple levels.  I can automate some security, but…”

Cassie nodded, “I’ll look into that as well, though that will interface both our jobs as security and administration.”

Jayna snorted, “So Cassie is mayor and you’re chief of police and a building contractor.  Plus, manufacturing ships and whatever else Diana comes up with for our personal business.”

That kind of put it in perspective, I’d been thinking too small.  I was in way over my head, and far more confident about fighting off aliens than running a tourist city in space.  Of course, it would be a constant work in progress, and the city would be slow to fill in piece by piece.  I imagine despite the size it’d start off like a small resort.

“You’re right, and you’re the head of the tourism and advertising bureau.”

Jayna snickered, then looked as overwhelmed as I felt by the idea.

Cassie nodded, “One step at a time, it’s not as overwhelming that way.  Let’s get started.”

The mockups were fairly easy, I designed a sampling of ships, and I didn’t have all that much to do besides that yet, I was already on the ball as far as securing the station.  There were a lot of steps to go through before I’d be buried in work and need assistance.

It was also somewhat comforting to know I had the easier job, protect the station, and build stuff.  Internal security would be farmed out, and my responsibility, but one I could mostly delegate to who we hired.

It was a start, and it’d all take time to make happen.

The next two weeks passed quickly as the builds finished, and we loaded up on fuel before we started back.  I started building missiles with the ships and the station as planned, one gravity for every four anti-matter missiles.  The ten large warships were attached and secured to the station for the trip, I couldn’t fly them all by myself after all.  I also absorbed all of the probe ships back into the hull as part of the preparations for our twenty-two-hour trip back to Earth.

I set course for Lagrange point one in the Earth-moon system, and I started us on our way.

I’d spent the days working with my sister and Cassie on getting things up and running.  For the most part after two weeks we were still working on preparation steps, such as legalities and contracts, infrastructure stuff, and we hadn’t even started looking for vendors yet.

The nights I mostly spent with Diana after our evening meals.  She was a lot more open about what she was working on without worrying about secrecy between us, or how the government might react to her sharing her projects.  She enjoyed sharing her day, was passionate about her work, and equally interested in what was going on with me.

Nanites required power constantly, they couldn’t power themselves, so she’d been working on a medical bed device that would run on external power, a lot like my armor would heal me actually, when I powered it with my magic.  It’d be interesting if she could get any hospitals interested in purchasing one.  A trauma victim, or someone with cancer, could be thrown inside the thing, and come out healed several hours later.  Heart bypass operations could be performed with nanometer sized holes that were naked to the eye, and which caused very little trauma to the body.  There were many possibilities.

She was also doing studying and purely theoretical work, which might pay off in ways we couldn’t see yet.  The healing was already a known thing, she’d just needed to design a machine to do it that wasn’t tied to a space ship or a fusion reactor.  I was sure the FDA would be a stumbling block, but maybe not in other parts of the world, and eventually healthcare would be revolutionized.  Nanites couldn’t heal everything of course, but it would make a big impact in operations, trauma, and oncology care.

Beyond that, we also grew closer as a couple, and I was fairly sure I was falling hard for her, if not already there.  My bed also hadn’t seen any use the last two weeks, as I’d been in hers.  She’d also completely lost the lab coat, and she dressed a lot sexier though still professionally.

I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that was all about me, I suspected it had a lot to do with not having a bunch of male geek subordinate scientists to keep in line.  I believed that her change in dress had more to do with not having to dull her appearance to be taken seriously by her coworkers, since she was pretty much working on her own at that point, she dressed as she preferred to dress.

Though, I would be surprised if I wasn’t at least a small part of that equation, she clearly enjoyed the way I looked at her and her effect on me, and she was also secure in the knowledge her intellectual prowess amazed me.

My sister seemed to be rolling with things, and she felt useful working on ad campaigns for the station in social media, but I knew she’d be happier back in the real world.  Hopefully that would be possible one day, or perhaps once the station had a lot of people and workers that would satisfy the lack she felt, as she made friends and perhaps found someone to share her life with.  It’d be more like living in a city, once everything was running, and not in a vacuum with her brother and two other females.

Not much had happened in regard to the U.S. government.  Outside of verifying they had ten crews prepared to take the ships on delivery.  They hadn’t even mentioned the jail breakout, or the defection of their head scientist, and I sure as hell hadn’t brought it up.  I’d sent my ETA to L1, and I was fairly sure they’d be meeting us there with shuttles full of command crews.

Outside of missile production, the ships and station were completely finished, and we had at least four days before our grace period was up and the psychopathic aliens released our location to the other FTL civilizations.

The world seemed to be holding its breath.  The riots had leveled off, but the stock market had taken a dive, and a lot of stores were out of emergency supplies.  According to the news, the markets were all out of whack, and expected sales had dropped as people stayed home with their families.  The restaurants, movie theatres, and other entertainment venues had been relatively empty the last two weeks.  It probably wouldn’t get back to normal until we won, and even then it’d take a while.

The president showed a confidence in our ability to withstand the coming attack, and other leaders followed suite to keep panic a minimum, but it was only so effective.  I hoped he was right, it would all depend on how many ships attacked us, and how strong their technology was.  We could only do what we could do.

Chapter Fourteen

I released two probe ships when we arrived, one of them went to L3 on the other side of the earth, and one of them went to L2 on the other side of the room.  That would give me a full scan of the space around Earth, without the earth or the moon giving me a blind spot.

The scanning technology could reach out to Jupiter, I could see a big part of the solar system, but it couldn’t see directly through large objects, so there were blind spots behind planets and moons.  The important thing was there’d be no blind spots near Earth.

Of course, the Earth’s fleet would be covering the other side of the earth, and the side I was on as well, but I didn’t want to miss anything, and if the enemy concentrated their forces on the other side of Earth, I’d be moving to join the battle.

Cassie and Jayna were with me in the command center, hanging up their space station hats for the moment.  We were all a little nervous about how they’d react to the massive station, that out-massed the ten large warships by five to one, and out-massed their seventy-five smaller warships by eighty to one.  To further put it in perspective, a single level of my space station was bigger than Manhattan island at nineteen square miles.  While it didn’t have skyscrapers, the public section of the ship was the top eighth of mile, a quarter of its half mile height, which was split up into thirty different levels.

That meant the public part of the city was five hundred and seventy square miles, and that was just a quarter of the size of the station.  The rest was the center where my home was with the three ladies, and the command center, plus tons of space for missiles, reactors, hydrogen gas, and all the systems that maintained and ran the space station, which was really a ship when it came down to it.

The station could hold millions of people.

One of the things Cassie had been talking about a lot the last two weeks was logistics.  I suspected I’d be giving up a good portion of the space for food production, three or four levels, to make the station as self-sufficient as possible.  I also listened to her advice, she was ancient, wise, and knew a lot about politics, government, people, and running things.

Point being, before I got off on a tangent, I’d have given anything to be a fly on the wall of their bridges, as they took in the size of it.  Hell, the size of the ten huge warships docked to it was mind boggling enough.

“We’re being hailed… this is the space station Astraeus, go ahead.”

Yeah, I’d named the station after a female Greek titan, which meant Starry.

A throat cleared, “This is Captain Emerson, of the Apollo, we’re due in five minutes with the crews of the ten ships.”

It looked like they sent one of the smaller warships, probably with supplies too, as well as furniture, for the command ships.

I replied, “You’re cleared to dock next to them, and move to the ships, or you can dock with each ship separately, if you’d prefer to avoid coming on the station.  I’m not sure what your orders are, but I’ll work with you to get it done.  I also need crew rosters with identity scans, unless you’d prefer that I just leave the permissions open for everyone, and let you lock it down.  Lastly, they’re all finished building, but they’re working on missiles right now, the captains can re-task if they need to.”

He replied, “The latter works I think, we have supplies to transfer too, and it will just be easier to directly dock with the ships one at a time to facilitate things.  Stand by for the rosters and scan data.”

He sent the data.  It didn’t take me long to set the permissions.  Outside of creating an FTL drive or copying it, the captain had full permissions to do anything, and the crew lesser permissions and access to the system.  Of course, if the captain died or left the ship, those permissions would automatically be granted to the first officer or next in command.

I also named the ships as they requested and updated their transponders, so Captain Emerson would know which crew belonged to which ship.  It was going to be a long day, and I really hoped they didn’t try anything.  Given they turned down docking on the station itself, I decided they really wouldn’t, at least not until the battle was done.

“You should be all set, and the ships are all cleared to decouple at will, when the crews are ready to move out.  All ten black boxes are on the small fighter, so you can have them taken down to Space Command.”

He replied, “Thank you, Astraeus, out.”

He hung up.

Cassie said, “That went well.”

“It seemed to, let’s see what happens after they get the ships.”

I suspected they’d wait until after the battle, but who knew, maybe they just wanted the big ships first?  There was also the small concern of how other governments saw me, and I wouldn’t forget six of the ten large warships I built were being crewed by other countries.

Fortunately, that brand of paranoia didn’t pay off, and the ships uncoupled and left the area for Earth orbit one at a time as the crews were loaded.  I paid attention though, L1 wasn’t all that far from Earth orbit, not when it came to missiles travelling at six hundred gravities of acceleration.  I’d only have a few minutes to raise the shields and come up with a defense.

Cassie smirked, “I enjoy it when pessimism is unrewarded.  I’m happy, it’s even logical, but I imagine the whole thing has General Mortenson foaming at the mouth.”

I snickered, “No doubt.”

There wasn’t much more to do as far as preparation.  We hung out at L1, while the fleet encircled the Earth and stayed away from us.  Outside of continuing to build forty-five hundred missiles every two hours the preparations were done.  I’d continue building missiles too, until I was full up to capacity, then I’d be able to turn off the majority of reactors.

But that wouldn’t happen until after the battle, unless the aliens made us wait longer than anticipated.

Point being, we put our space station hats back on, and hung up our war hats until the aliens showed.  Not that there was much for me to do at that point, but I learned a lot about how business really works by watching Cassie work.

She was also becoming a friend and seemed to be enjoying herself and the challenge of what we were trying to accomplish.

I imagined after six centuries something new was a rare thing for her.

Regardless, I didn’t hear from the fleet again until three days later.  I’d been wondering, but they finally caved, and started to send ten ships over at a time to fill up on fuel.  I charged them at competitive rates.  Of course, I was using off shore banking, in case they decided to freeze my accounts and steal back the money when they stopped playing nice after the battle, they wouldn’t be able to.

In short, I was glad I’d taken the extra for the trip, and I was still full and my hull slightly shrunk to its default configuration after they filled up, absorbing the extra space the extra hydrogen had taken up.  It’d be a while before I could build an automated tanker to make runs to Jupiter, building as many missiles as possible was just too important to waste power on anything else for the time being.  Once I had one, it’d be a forty-four hour round trip, plus the time it took to extract and filter the hydrogen out of the atmosphere.

I still wasn’t sure how that would work out, they were stuck for the moment, but I had no doubt America and other countries would build gas freighters of their own and get their own gas.  Still, if my private and commercial ship idea came through, I could sell gas to them.

For the moment though, I was in good shape, and could refill the whole fleet again twice over.  Besides that, it’d be at least two months before they needed to refill, and that’s if they kept their reactors at a high usage the whole time, so it was likely to be quite a bit longer.

We sat around at dinner that night, and all of us wondered when the enemy would finally attack.  It could be any moment, since our month was up.  At least, that’s where my mind was.

Cassie said, “I got a nibble from Fortis Memorial, in India.  They’re interested in purchasing one of the medical beds for evaluation and testing.”

Diana smiled, “That’s good news.”

Cassie nodded, “We can deliver it after the battle, though it’ll depend on access.”

Diana shrugged, “Stealth shields.  They should work to slip past our own ships, if not against the enemy.  We’re also going to need food soon anyway.”

That was true, I’d gotten several months’ worth for myself, but with four of us the last two weeks that estimate had gone way down.  We had maybe a week left, two if we pushed it.

Cassie replied, “I’ll see what I can do, get a large shipment prepared in the same area.  I think it’d be best if we avoided landing anywhere near the U.S.  It also looks like lawmakers the world over are working on rules and laws for space.  A great number of them are suggesting something similar to maritime laws, like international waters.”

“How would that work exactly?”

Cassie said, “Instead of two hundred miles offshore, it’d start two hundred kilometers above the surface.  Anything under that would be considered the airspace of the country below, anything above that would be international space.  It also means any kind of commercial ship would need to be registered to a country, and to submit to inspections of said country.  We’d fall under that description, since a space station couldn’t be considered private, we’d have to register with a host country and adopt their laws.”

“That sounds… annoying.”

Cassie laughed, “Maybe, but it’s the price of doing business, and would lend us legitimacy.  Otherwise we’d be labeled a rogue state.  For the moment, we’re four fugitives and the only thing holding back U.S. forces is fear.  With it, we’d be sovereign territory of another nation, which would make attacking us a far riskier proposition, at least politically.  Assuming the laws are agreed upon.  Everything is in flux for the moment.”

She shrugged, “There’s also a lot of talk about the eight worlds, so you should consider a colony ship for the business.  Probably wouldn’t sell many of them, but we could use a large infusion of cash.  We’re going to need to make the ship as self-sufficient as possible.”

I nodded, “I’ve been looking into hydroponics, or the idea of simply creating loam and enriched earth to grow in.  We should be able to automate farming, save the animals.  I believe we could make it fully self-sufficient, but some things like beef we’d have to import, but we could live without if we had to.”

Diana asked, “What about canning, jarring, processing, it’d have to be more than just a farm.”

I smirked, “Nanite packaging.  Even better, it would cut down on waste, trash.  Empty jars of tomato sauce would be thrown into a recycle bin which would power on the nanites and just reabsorb them back into the ship.  It’d be a lot of programming work, there’s a lot to do of course, but grain for instance, after it was harvested could be processed into breads and pastas, the ship creating what it needed to do it temporarily.  Complex machines are possible, and energy fields could be used to preserve and secure moving parts, instead of grease.”

Cassie grinned, “You’ve been busy.”

I laughed, “My part of running the station comes later, the split of responsibilities gives me a lot of spare time until we actually have people to protect, so I’ve had some spare time to look into a few things.”

Cassie said, “I’ve also got a lot of interest from companies, a number are interested in being the first in space to offer hotels and resorts.  I suspect our city will start out that way, a resort here and there, with stuff like tours of the solar system.  A true city where people choose to work and live permanently in space may never happen.  Of course, there’d be a lot of permanent workers, but only those that support those hotels and resorts.  At least to start.”

Diana said, “You should look into research companies too.  A lot of scientific experiments could benefit from being done in zero-G labs.”

I said, “Or we can just sell them a device that makes a lab on Earth zero G.”

Diana tilted her head, “True.  There’s a lot of possibilities for the alien tech we haven’t even talked about.  Still, I suspect our medical technology will be a draw.  I mean, a lot of advancements will take years and years to be adopted by Earth, I suspect the station will be more of a draw for population than you expect.  We shouldn’t have any problems drawing a police force for example, from disabled veterans with permanent injuries, that will turn out not to be so permanent after all.”

Cassie tilted her head, “You might be right, I hadn’t looked at it from that angle before.”

Cassie turned to me, “Most of the world also doesn’t understand why you’re such a big problem to the U.S.  Obviously, they can’t exactly out you, since the supernatural world is still hidden from most.”

That was a good point, most even in the U.S. government wouldn’t know I was a tech mage, I imagined that caused some interesting conversations, as the president tried to explain to others why they couldn’t just attack and secure the station.

Jayna said, “I don’t suppose you can get us real furniture, while your arranging that food drop near India?”

Cassie giggled, “I’ll make it a priority.”

I stiffened, and I brought up a hologram of the solar system over the table.  There were several flashes of light thirty-two light seconds away from Earth, which was about four A.U. out.  The flashes kept coming in a staccato of light flashes.

“What the hell is that?”

Diana nodded, “I suspect that’s a different form of FTL from wormholes, one that’s far less efficient.  A sort of subspace FTL drive.  The technology and theories suggest its possible, but I never pursued it because we already had a better technology.”

I frowned, “So, our ships are probably more advanced?”

That’d been our theory, the gamemasters had the best technology, which meant so did we.

Diana shrugged, “Relatively, for the FTL drive, yes.  But I suspect their anti-grav, artificial gravity, and impulse drives are comparable.  We’ll know when we figure out how fast they’re moving.  The FTL drive speed and efficiency won’t help you in battle.  Their speed and maneuverability in normal space, shields, and weapons will be far more telling.  How many flashes?”

I swallowed, “Over a thousand, and they’re still coming.  We have anti-matter missiles.”

Diana shrugged, “Cleaner and easier to make than nuclear missiles, but not a whole lot of difference when it comes to blowing something up.  Yield matters more than type.”

Right.  I pushed the better technology out of my head, older and simpler didn’t mean less effective, even if it was less efficient.

Cassie said, “So, outnumbered then?”

I looked at her like she was nuts, she’d sounded excited, but she just grinned.

Cassie shrugged, “Hopefully mass makes a difference, and their ships are small?”

Diana said, “Size and shape wouldn’t be a major factor in sub-space FTL, it’s just a lot slower than a wormhole, slow enough to make inter-galactic travel prohibitive.  We can assume our attackers are one of the inter-stellar races from our galaxy, and probably one quite close relatively speaking, to get here in less than a day.”

Jayna asked, “So they could all be huge and not cigars?”

Diana nodded, “Yes.”

The flashes finally stopped.

“Ten thousand.  To less than a hundred.  That’s… a hundred to one odds.”

Worse actually, but Cassie was right, tonnage mattered more than raw numbers.  At least, that’s what I told myself.  On the other hand, I had over two hundred and sixteen thousand anti-matter missiles in my hull.

It was impossible to get details from the range we were at, but the ships formed up into twenty tight groups of fifty, and they started to head our way.  It’d take a few minutes to calculate their acceleration.

I frowned, “The Earth fleet is moving out to intercept an A.U. out, an Admiral Graves just gave the order.”

Jayna asked, “Why is that bad?”

I shrugged, “For all we know another ten thousand ships came in on the other side of the sun several hours ago, and will arrive simultaneously, and we won’t see them until their just eight light minutes away.  There’s also velocity to consider, the fleets will shoot past each other.  The aliens will be travelling extremely fast, and still decelerating an A.U. away from Earth.”

Cassie said, “Maybe he’s counting on them not wanting to let a ship escape, which could spell the doom of their civilization.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they adjust their acceleration to meet our ships in battle.”

I grunted, “That’s a good point, but still a hell of a risk.  If they do shoot by what will stop them from firing on Earth?”

Cassie said, “Unless they’re depending on you.”

Well, that would be shocking if true, but it was another good point.  Not that they couldn’t depend on me, but that they actually would.

Jayna said, “It would also manipulate you into staying here, and not fight near the fleet.  They might be concerned you’d turn against them at the end of battle, instead of the other way around.”

I nodded, “I’m sending a probe ship out around the sun, we should know if there’s a second fleet in four hours.”

Cassie raised an eyebrow.

“Unmanned ship.  It can go six hundred gravities without worrying about squishy humans.”

Diana giggled.

The data was in on the enemy, “The enemy ships are accelerating at forty gravities, twenty-one hours to get to Earth, although I bet Cassie is right and they’ll start decelerating early to stop at the fleet, in which case battle will start in eighteen hours.  Either way, we’ll know if there are any more enemy ships in our solar system before battle is joined.  If not, we’ll move three light seconds out, just to ensure the Earth isn’t hit by a stray missile.”

Cassie said, “That leaves fourteen hours once we verify there is no second fleet.”

I nodded, “Yes.”

Cassie tilted her head, “And at six hundred gravities, it’d take three point four hours to reach where the fleet will make its stand.”

“You’re suggesting I break off a quarter of the station as a probe ship, with say half the missiles built, and race out there to support them?”

Cassie nodded, “If there’s no second fleet.  If there is we’ll need everything we have to face it.”

I nodded slowly.  It wasn’t a bad idea.  I could carry ten missiles for each of the enemy, and I knew the fleet had a similar amount, at least they did between all their ships.  A probe ship of that size would also support about five thousand energy beam turrets, which could be used for both attack and missile defense as long as the computers weren’t overwhelmed.

The trick of course was the combat system wasn’t that robust, it couldn’t fire a hundred thousand missiles at once, at ten thousand different targets.  I could target maybe a hundred at a time, with multiple missiles.  Our ships would take a tremendous amount of punishment in that time period.  They were slower, but I suspected that wouldn’t matter nearly as much as the strength of their weapons and shields.

Our shields were good enough to take many missile and energy beam attacks before buckling, and even that required hitting the same area.  The force field was generated by many emitters spread over the hull, and they joined together in an energy lattice of sorts.  It was why a small scout technically had the same shield strength as my space station, although size did matter in one way.

The shields would weaken in only a very specific place when the ship took a hit, in theory on the space station I could take hundreds of missiles at once, as long as they weren’t all grouped together to hit one spot.  On a smaller ship there was less area to spread out the attacks.

I wasn’t a damned general, and we knew next to nothing about them.  On the other hand, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try, especially since I’d be safe back at L1 while I fought by remote control.

The admiral it turned out, had a plan to probe the enemy’s capabilities, the very thing I was worrying about.

“He just gave orders for two of the smaller warships to continue accelerating out.  No doubt to gauge their weapons and shields capabilities, so he can form a better plan and know what he’s working with.  We’ll have much better information on the enemy’s strength in about ten hours.  Fortunately, they still haven’t cut me out of the system with the fifteen scouts I took, so we’ll get that information as well.”

Jayna said, “They might hold back, to preserve some secrets?”

I frowned, “I doubt it.  At that speed they’ll both be going their fastest velocity during the trip, in opposite directions.  They’ll only be in missile range for maybe ten or fifteen minutes… thirteen minutes.  If they hold back and don’t take our warships, they could go tattle on them.  They won’t risk any of our ships escaping the battle.”

Diana shook her head, “Unless they can scan the ships and know they have no FTL drive.  Still, we’ll learn something when they come together.”

“Alright, some data’s in.  They have fifty warships of similar tonnage to our seventy-five smaller warships.  We can probably conclude they’re the command ships, for the two hundred ship groups of fifty.  The rest of the ships are a tenth the size of that.  So, it’s ten thousand to eighty-five odds in numbers, and they out-mass the Earth fleet by four and a half times.  Even if we do have more effective shields and weapons, it will be ugly.”

Their ships were also shaped like cubes, and kind of ugly looking.  They had rounded edges though, no sharp corners, probably for shield stability.

Jayna said, “I thought of another reason they might not want you involved in the fight.”

“What’s that?”

Jayna said, “Your magic.  You could absorb the new alien’s technology in seconds, there might be something in there that would give you an immediate edge with nanites to build it.  Sure, our ships are more advanced in most ways, but maybe not all.  They’ll want to control access to what’s left of that armada, assuming they win.”

Oh, shit.  She was right.  Still, I doubted it was a major consideration, protecting Earth would be the priority, but no doubt that consideration was in there somewhere.

“Alright, I’m going to catch some sleep, so I’m alert when all the fun starts.”

They all agreed, and we all finished up dinner and went to take a nap.

Chapter Fifteen

If part of the government’s plan was to keep me away from alien technology, they’d failed.  I got the space station moving toward the sun, there was a second fleet.  The only good news was that it was half the size.  So, it was only five thousand to one, instead of ten thousand to one.  And they only out massed me by about six to one.

Yeah, only.

I was moving three light seconds toward the sun at the right vector to intercept the path of the enemy fleet.  It was the spot they’d be at when the earth fleet met the other fleet.  I hoped both of us won, because the alternative was just unthinkable.  I’d also start retreating almost immediately, even before they reached me, so I’d be able to stay in weapons range the entire time it took to get back to Earth.

Just in case, I’d figured out an escape vector.  We could accelerate twenty more gravities than the enemy could, and if we lost, I’d be taking a trip to the alien world.  Assuming we could fend off a missile barrage.  Regardless, I’d see their civilization destroyed out of spite, even if the Earth was lost.  Obviously, that was the last-ditch plan, and one to be avoided.  I was sure the admiral of the Earth fleet had similar plans.

It’d been ten hours since dinner, and the four of us were in the command center.  The two Earth warships were approaching the enemy at high speed, and we were about to find out if we had a chance in hell to actually win the battle.  I couldn’t help but be awed by the bravery of the two crews, who were all but being sacrificed just to find out the enemy’s capabilities so the admiral could come up with a plan.

Missile range was reached first, long before energy beam range.  Both Earth ships fired sixty missiles, that targeted eight ships.  Two enemy ships were targeted with four, two with eight, two with twelve, two with sixteen, and two with twenty.

It was a good plan to determine how many missiles it took to be effective.

The enemy ships were hardly idle, and several hundred missiles launched a few moments later, which told us their range was similar, about two light seconds.  It also told us they were limited to six missiles at a time, and they didn’t have nanite ship technology.  They launched from missile ports, which meant they’d have a reload time.

That was a huge plus for us, we could launch missiles from anywhere, and as quickly as we could generate sensor locks.  Literally just eject them out of the hull, much like I’d been thrown out into space.

The scans also told us they had sixteen large beam emplacements, and over a hundred smaller ones which were probably point defense, though we wouldn’t know what kind or how powerful until they were fired.

Our missiles were ten percent faster, and they reached their ships first.  The small turrets fired ten-centimeter lasers.  They didn’t seem to have ECM capabilities, but seeing as our missiles targeted mass with gravity sensors, and didn’t use lidar or radar, that wasn’t a huge surprise.  The enemy ships targeted with four and eight missiles successfully defended, and they destroyed all the missiles with point defense.

One of the ships shot down all twelve missiles, the other one however missed three.  The three anti-matter warheads exploded against the shields, and caused visible damage on the hull, taking out several point defense lasers, one of the main energy weapons, and two launchers.

The two ships facing sixteen missiles were overwhelmed.  The one that took five was heavily damaged, and they started to drop back as their systems went offline.  The second one was hit by eight, and secondary explosions destroyed the ship.

Both ships facing twenty missiles were destroyed.

That was all a good sign, it meant two hundred thousand missiles should take out the fleet, the bad news was the fleet didn’t have that many, the good news was I had far more than they had and faced a smaller number of ships.  Sure, their command ships would be harder to take down, but it was a good sign, for me.  For the fleet, it meant things would get down to energy range.

Of course, the aliens got a vote too, and several seconds later the area around them lit up with energy beams shooting from the hulls of the two small warships.  They targeted and destroyed the enemy missiles by the dozens, but the enemy had fired hundreds.

At least fifty got through on both ships, and they were lit up by nuclear fire.  Well, shit.

When it all cleared away, the ships looked pockmarked as the shields tried to recover, and the ships shrunk as the damaged parts were sloughed off and ejected by the working nanites.

Both ships fired a hundred sixty missiles, targeting ten ships each with sixteen missiles.  It made sense, that was the number that had overwhelmed, if not totally destroyed the ships, and missile numbers would need to be held back.  It was the difference between the earth fleet taking out half with twenty missiles each, or close to seventy two percent with sixteen missiles, before they closed to energy range to finish the battle.

I had over two hundred thousand missiles, so I’d be using twenty each just to be sure.

The enemy fired again, and just based on that I thought their missile firing cycle was thirty seconds, but not so for our war ships.  Our warships spat out a hundred and sixty missiles every few seconds, as they locked on and targeted ten ships at a time.  I estimated each warship had around fourteen hundred missiles after four days of building with six generators.

In short, they emptied their missile supply in just sixteen seconds, and had targeted just eighty of the ten thousand ships each.  Add in the five they already destroyed, and they’d taken out a hundred and sixty-five ships.  Except, when the missiles arrived two of them managed to beat the odds, and to survive the sixteen missiles targeted on them.

Energy range was still six minutes away, and given the thousands of enemy missiles being launched, as they tripled the amount of ships firing, I wasn’t sure they’d make it that far.

The numbers did make a difference, each ship could fire six missiles every thirty seconds, but with two of their groups firing they were putting out six thousand missiles at a time.  The two warships were overwhelmed time and time again, despite their energy beams taking down a whole lot of missiles before they could hit.  The ships slowly shrunk and were ultimate destroyed in the third wave of missiles.

That told me our fleet was screwed.  They might have a chance, if they had enough missiles, but they’d never survive long enough to get in energy range.  At least, not the smaller warships, the large warships had a lot more turrets and computing power, and my space station had five times what theirs did.

I only faced five thousand, which meant a hundred thousand missiles would finish them off at twenty a piece.  I had over two hundred thousand missiles in my hull.

I started to spin out a freighter and loaded almost half my missiles onto it, it took about twenty minutes.  It was also still part of my ship, set up like a probe ship, so I could control it.  It took off toward the fleet at six hundred gravities, and would get there in just under five hours, a full five hours before the fleets met in battle.  Plenty of time.

I opened a channel, “Admiral Graves?”

“Who is this?”

“Scott Akin.”

He growled, “Get off this channel!”

“Shut up and listen, I think you’ve come to the same conclusion I have from that test, without enough missiles per enemy you’re going to lose, long before you close to energy range.  I’m sending you half of my stock, a hundred thousand, that should be more than enough to at least give you a chance.  It’ll rendezvous with you in five hours… and six minutes.  That’s over twelve hundred missiles a ship, which should effectively double your stock.”

Cassie covered her mouth and snickered, probably because I told an admiral to shut up.

The admiral grunted, “That will help.  Any other advice,” he asked sarcastically.

“Actually, now that you ask, I do.  The enemy fired an overwhelming number of missiles, but they all hit within seconds of each other in groups of six given the small disparate distances.  If you spin your ships that will spread the damage across your shield matrix, which should help, a little bit.  Your shields are really thousands of tiny little shields, so it will make a difference.”

Cassie giggled, and even Diana was smirking.

I winked.  It was true enough, I planned to spin the saucer shaped space station myself, when we went into battle.  The less the missiles hit the same place, the longer the shield would last.

“Damn, he hung up on me.  Not even a thank you, for my gift of a hundred thousand anti-matter missiles.  It’s going to take a month after the battle to get back to fully stocked, not that we’ve ever been there.”

Diana asked, “How many?”

“A million.  The station could hold a lot more than that, but that seemed like a good number to me.  Especially given this battle.  Do you think others might try, if this civilization fails?”

Cassie said, “I hope not, they probably won’t give us a month to restock missiles if they do.  Still, I suspect our attacker’s civilization being taken out will remind them of their own mortality, and they’ll still be able to join in on an attack on our invader’s civilization risk free, and to have a chance of winning their territory.  Given all that, I doubt they will.”

That was a good point.  The universe was a seriously messed up place.

Jayna asked, “I wonder how worried they are, they must be surprised at our capabilities, and it’s not like they can retreat.”

No, they really couldn’t.  If they retreated their civilization would fall.  It was a hell of a gamble, their only chance to survive at that point was to win and destroy us.  It was… disturbing.  I knew it wasn’t our fault or responsibility, but by defending the Earth we’d be causing the extinction of another race.  Not reporting them wasn’t an option, that would only encourage others to try.

“Okay, the ship can power twenty-two thousand beams, but that’s a moot point, since one is more than enough per missile.  The fleet we’re going to be facing can launch thirty thousand missiles at once.  We can target maybe five hundred a second given how large we are and how much computing power we have.  That’s a full minute of point defense fire to take down thirty thousand.  We won’t get that much time, maybe half that given we’re retreating.  So how do we survive being hit by fifteen thousand missiles every thirty seconds?”

Cassie asked, “How long to take the enemy ships out?”

“We can target eight hundred ships every two seconds with twenty missiles at once, since our mass is eighty times what the small warships are.  So, in essence we’ve already won as far as defending the Earth, since it will take longer than sixteen seconds for their first volley of missiles to reach us.  The question is, how do we survive two waves of thirty thousand missiles, assuming they fire a second volley before our missiles reach them.”

Jayna asked, “Why the discrepancy between missiles and ships, eight hundred every two seconds for ships, and five hundred every second for missiles.”

“Actually, there isn’t one, or rather the discrepancy isn’t in the target, it’s in the beam to missile difference.  In beam range we could target five hundred a second, be the target a ship or missile.  The extra second is in launching the missiles, which allows us the extra time to target an additional three hundred during that time period, the other two fifths of the latter second, is for handing those coordinates over to the missiles.  So back to the question, how do we prevent mutual annihilation?”

No response.

“Well, we have ten hours to figure it out, I’m getting a coffee.”

We moved to the kitchen, and I came up with an idea, but I didn’t really like it.  It would put us back to step one and make us vulnerable to the Earth fleet attacking.  But I’d do it if we didn’t come up with anything else.  Essentially, I could reverse the probe ship idea, detach a smaller ship with most of the reactors and the command center, and run away from the rendezvous point for battle.  In essence, I’d be sacrificing over ninety eight percent of the station mass, and about sixty-four reactors in a volley of mutual annihilation.

In short, the station would become the unmanned ship or probe, while the small ship was the command center.

We’d fight the station through remote control, and to mutual annihilation.  Then I’d have to take a month to completely rebuild the station and replace those reactors, then a second month for missile stock.  There’s no way the U.S. would give me that time though, not without the threat of alien attack held over their heads.

Which meant… we’d have to leave the system, and then build out in another system and come back to Earth two months later.  That… would work.  We wouldn’t even have to go to one of the eight systems with a move in ready world, we could go to any system within fifty light years, and there were a lot of stars in that much space.  Well, as long as the system had a gas giant, we’d need fuel.

I still hated the idea, but it covered all the bases if we left the solar system, Earth’s fleet was stuck in the solar system, and they’d never find us in time to make a difference.

I shared the idea, then added, “One of you needs to take a ship to Earth now, and then pick up enough food and blood bags to last the four of us for three months.  That extra month is padding, it should only take us two before we can return.  Unless, you have a way for the station to survive the battle?”

Diana said, “No, but we shouldn’t have to sacrifice that much of the station.  You said it could fit a lot more than a million missiles, I suspect it could hold hundreds of millions given its vast size.”

I tilted my head, “If we say, cut it in half.  The targeting potential would be equal, with the station being connected with quantum connections, so we could still target the same amount of ships and launch that many missiles.  Then it’d take us two weeks to build up the station to its former size and four weeks to build missiles.  I’d also only have to replace thirty-two reactors.  That helps, but it also still leaves us vulnerable for three weeks, instead of five, before we had a decent number of missiles.”

Diana said, “What about your connection, they can’t do a thing.”

I nodded, “Yes, I could brick their ships, but they’re not stupid.  I expect they’ll remove me from the network right after the battle, if not during.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not ready to disconnect the fifteen black boxes from the original ships I took at a moment’s notice.  The only reason they haven’t done it yet, is because it gives them a way to keep an eye on me as well, and to monitor our battle and what my station is up to.  I think either way we’re going to need to leave, your plan just means for six weeks instead of eight.  I suppose we could cut it down to four, at that point we’ll have five hundred thousand missiles and a full-sized station.

“Hell, even if we did come up with a plan to survive two of thirty thousand missile bombardments, we’d be out of missiles and vulnerable.  Although, twenty-two thousand energy beams are formidable in itself.”

Cassie said, “You’re assuming they’ll attack.  The fleet will be just as gutted as we will be.”

I nodded, “Alright.  Let’s split the ship, head to Earth, pick up supplies since orbit is unblocked at the moment with all of the fleet gone.  Then we can head for Jupiter with half the ship to rebuild and create missiles.  If they leave us alone, we’ll stay and talk, and eventually when ready return to L1, if not we’ll leave the solar system.  The best I can offer is to make leaving our last choice.”

Cassie sighed, “It’s problematical politically speaking, without a voice here the government can paint us any way they want, even as cowards that fled the solar system under fire.”

I smirked, “Quantum entanglement has no range.  We’ll still be connected to the internet and can make phone calls through the communications satellite I seeded, from anywhere in the universe.”

Cassie asked, “If they take it out?  They can probably trace our access.”

I frowned, “We can seed a bunch of them when we get back, even seed a ground station when you pick up food and blood.  Thanks for pointing out that lack.”

Cassie nodded, “Alright.  We’ll do all that.  But only if they remove your access to the ship network and physically move to attack us.  At least we’ll have proof to share to the other countries that we were attacked by U.S. forces.  I still think it may not come to that, especially with six other countries up here to bear witness to their betrayal after our joint battle.  Your job is to keep us physically safe, but my job is to do it politically, and it will work better if we can stay.”

I nodded in understanding.  Either way we’d need the food, so we’d get all the preparations done.

“We’ll stick at L1 for the moment, just in case a few ships do make it through, from either battle.  It’d be bad if we destroyed all but a handful, and those few ships laid waste to Earth.  We’ll gauge the need to leave earth, or the solar system, depending on what happens after.  Some few are bound to get lucky, and even avoid being disabled or destroyed by the twenty missiles, despite the overkill.”

Ten minutes later, we were headed back to Earth with most of the hydrogen gas, while the other half of the station which was loaded with all but a few missiles was headed for the intercept point.  There was no point in waiting, so I was already building thirty-two new reactors with three hundred, which meant it’d take less than an hour for it to be done and to get back up to nine hundred.  Then I’d focus four hundred fifty on building mass, and four hundred fifty on building missiles.  It’d take a full month to rebuild half the station that way, but I thought arming us with missiles was equally as important as regaining mass, and we’d have five hundred thousand missiles in that same month.

Two weeks after that, we’d have a million missiles with all the reactors working on it, and I’d be satisfied I’d done all I could to keep us safe.

Even half the reactors would build over two thousand missiles every two hours, twenty-seven thousand a day.

Wait, that wasn’t right, where was my head?  It only took three hundred reactors a month to build the full station, the other six hundred had built the large warships.  With four fifty I was looking at ten days tops to restore the station, then I could cut over to all missiles.

Diana asked, “Should we share our plans?  They’re probably facing mutual annihilation as well.”

Damn, why didn’t I think of that?

“We probably should, though it rubs me wrong to save a fleet that could be turned against us, but if anyone else attacks us the solar system would be basically undefended.  We don’t have a choice, and I should’ve thought of that.  Besides all that, it’s just the right thing to do.  I’ll have to give them the technology configuration for it, and they’d have to learn it, accept it, and implement it in the next nine hours.  Let’s hope for their sake the Admiral is openminded enough to try it.”

I sent our evaluation of our chances, along with our solution and the configuration updates they’d have to make to duplicated it, to form an extension of their ships via quantum connections, essentially a single ship in two or more pieces.

Diana smiled, “Thanks.”

“When you’re right, you’re right.”

She bit her lip, “We have nine hours before the battle, maybe we should go back to bed.”

I almost said I wasn’t tired, until it occurred to me that she hadn’t said anything about sleeping, and the warm look in her eyes energized me.

“I like that plan.”

I got more than a little lost in her sparkling green eyes.

Cassie snorted, “Don’t mind me, I can handle the pickup alone, I’ll also drop off the med bed while I’m at it.”

Jayna laughed, “I’ll come with.”

The two of us headed for our room, not even responding…

Chapter Sixteen

There was a lot of waiting in space battles.  Space was huge.  Enough waiting that between planning strategy and preparations, we’d had time for a six-hour nap, not to mention a several hour marathon of physical intimacies.

The irony that the battle would end less than thirty seconds after the first missile was fired blew my mind.  Twenty hours of waiting, for a minute or less of terrifying violence.  I wondered at the enemy’s preparations, and what they’d been doing during that time.  No doubt this five thousand ship fleet had been meant as a surprise flanking maneuver, but they’d been aware of us and that their plan had failed for several hours.  I wondered what they made of the fact there was just one humongous ship facing them, a two and half mile-wide saucer that was spinning like a top.

It’d been almost twenty hours since they’d entered our space, and the four of us had just finished up another meal and were moving back to the command center before the attack started.  If all went well, we’d move toward the wreckage in an effort to pick up more technology.  Diana had been right, they were less advanced thanks to our alien technology from the scout ship, but they could have some cool shit anyway.  Not any of the major systems, but perhaps the small stuff.

Several of the craft might even be fully operational, due to about a fifth of the missiles being gravity missiles.  It would be pure chance for only gravity missiles to get through, but statistically it should happen at least a few times, given five thousand tries.

We’d also noted there were a few scouts out there, alien ones belonging to the grays.  Were they going to show it live?  Like some sporting event the various interstellar races had bet on?  Sick bastards.

We arrived at the command center, and sat around the control table, the hologram at the moment just showed local space around the ship, and the enemies we’d be fighting.  We’d look in on the fleet, once we were done with our task.

“This might not go as badly as we thought, they’re in tight groups of fifty, but the one hundred groups are spread out pretty far in a ten by ten grid.  We’ll only be in range of the first ten at once, then another ten a minute or so later.  So, facing five hundred ships at once.  That’s only six thousand missiles, not sixty thousand.  We can take out two waves of six thousand missiles a minute.”

Despite that, I didn’t stop building, I’d figure out what to do with the extra mass when the ships came back together as one.  Maybe make a shitload of missiles out of it, or perhaps spread small probe ships around the solar system to keep an eye on things.  Yeah, that second one.  With the thirty-two extra reactors I could build thirty-two probe ships and send them out to keep an eye on the whole solar system.

The waiting ship started to accelerate away from the enemy, as they came into range.

Of course, there was a slight problem, their deployment was a bonus, but we’d screwed up.

My ship targeted eight hundred at a time, the first wave had five hundred, so it was a moot point.  Ten thousand missiles shot out, and right after we launched the enemy sent six thousand.

As expected, all six thousand missiles were cut out of space, the problem was our attack wasn’t nearly as effective as I’d expected.  Only about half the enemy ships were taken out of action.

“Shit, I’m an idiot.”

“Why?” Diana asked.

“When the enemy fleet and our two small warships came together, they were moving extremely quickly toward each other, at the peaks of their forward velocity.  Plus, add in the six hundred gravity acceleration of the missile, and the enemy ships had a lot less time to take them out, then they do now.  We’re moving away from them, and they’re much farther along in their deceleration to a full stop at Earth.  It means we need to fire more missiles per ship since they aren’t closing nearly as quickly.”

I launched a second volley, twenty-five per ship, while they got off a third volley of three thousand missiles.  That seemed to be effective, enough got through to overload their point defense.

As all the ships in the front group went red, Jayna asked, “So, we’re good?”

I snorted, “We would be, if we had a hundred and twenty-five thousand missiles.  Too bad I gave up a hundred thousand of them, and we’re about twelve thousand short.  I bet that fucking admiral already took it into account, and he didn’t bother mentioning it.”

Well, I wasn’t a military genius, I just wished I hadn’t missed something so obvious.  In hindsight, it was obvious.  I’d accounted for the fact I’d have more time to knock down missiles, why hadn’t I reversed it?

The battle continued as the second group reached range, and we launched twenty-five missiles a ship.  It went like clockwork after that, not one missile hit our ship, all waves of six thousand missiles were shot down, none of them even got close to the hull.

The problem came in the tenth and last wave, when we only had enough missiles to take out twenty more ships.  That left nine hundred and eighty enemy ships.  Fortunately, the continued barrage of five thousand eight hundred and eighty missiles every thirty seconds was under control, and the ship took them out effortlessly.

It looked like it would come down to energy weapons when they got in range in just six more minutes.  The problem there was I had no idea what to expect from the enemy’s beam technology.  Their point defense was ten-centimeter lasers, but their bigger energy weapons probably weren’t quite so prosaic.

I gave the command to start cannibalizing the ship for missiles, and the reactors were able to charge thirty-two of the created missiles every two seconds, but I only fired twenty-five.  Every two seconds, a ship was taken out, that was thirty a minute.  So, we’d only be facing eight hundred when they got into energy range.  Not good, but better than nine hundred and eighty.

There were no blocking beams, so when they got close enough, I fired a single beam at one hundred and sixty ships.  The missiles didn’t require full power being unshielded, but against ships with shields I had to go with full power, and each reactor could only power five beams at full power.

Their shields weren’t up to the task of blocking our beams, half were damaged, the other half went up in secondary explosions.

That left seven hundred and twenty when it was their turn, eighty damaged.  They couldn’t fire all their turrets, some were facing the wrong way, but they each fired four.  Turned out the alien ships used a form of plasma energy weapons.  Twenty-eight hundred and eighty beams hit the saucer.  Lower technology or not, the shields couldn’t withstand that much energy all at once.  Fire ripped into the ship but not all that far, as the spinning shield caused stuttering damage as the attacks had to break through over and over again.

My stomach twisted, my poor ship.

Another hundred and sixty beams reached out for the enemy, which took a hundred and three of the targets out of the fight.  All eighty of the ones that were damaged, plus twenty three of eighty fresh ones.

The enemy fired again.  It went on like that for a while, the beams firing every second from my ship, and the enemy returning fire and digging into the ship.  In the end, almost half the mass of my halved ship was destroyed.  We’d been lucky, if it hadn’t been for them coming in ten waves, we’d have wasted a lot more missiles before I’d have realized the problem and adjusted.

It also cut down my rebuild time to five days with only half the reactors working on it, instead of ten days, as we could reclaim a quarter mass back.

I sent the ship to burn all the damaged enemy ships out of space, except for the two which were intact but offline, as the crews had been killed by gravity missiles.

The hologram adjusted as I tuned into the other ships and took feeds from them.

“Bastards.”

Cassie giggled, “What?”

“The feed, they did fire twenty-five missiles to start with.  Of course, they were fifty thousand short on missiles.  Look, there’s two thousand ships left, instead of the thousand we faced, but they have a lot more mass than I did.  Seven times the mass.  They’ll lose a few ships to energy range, but the fleet should be mostly intact, and they won’t lose any of their cores, so they’ll be back up to size in a month.  Maybe a month and a half for the large ones, if they lose all of the detached part.”

It was just a minute later when they reached energy range, the battles had happened pretty close to simultaneously, as we’d set up.  Which was why we missed the beginning and missile exchanges.

The ships tore into each other, but the enemy remaining was completely out-massed, and facing superior shields and energy weapons.  Fifteen of the smaller warships completely lost their detached probe warship, but as I said they’d be back up to full size in just two weeks.  The rest were damaged, but there was still plenty left to be reabsorbed when all was said and done.

I also noted a scout ship left one of the larger ships, probably the admiral’s ship, and headed away from the sun.  My guess was they were off to report the infraction to the grays.  I wondered if the Earth would participate, and to try to win a raffle for the territory after helping to commit genocide.  I knew I wanted no part of something like that.

It put the picture of a swarm of locusts descending on a town in my mind, and I shivered.

I also wondered if we’d be getting some kind of alien receiver array, so we’d get those updates from the grays, and be able to place bets.  It was a messed-up thought, but I could seriously see there being a reality show about it.

We headed back to L1 from Earth orbit, while our detached piece made its way back towing two alien ships.  My ship would beat the fleet back to L1 by hours, so I wasn’t worried about them trying to stop me reading the alien ships.

Still, I felt nervous, even more anxiety than for the alien attack.  If the U.S. chose to attack me at this point, I’d be taking human lives in self-defense, but that seemed a lot harder to me than defending Earth from alien conquerors.  Whatever, we had plans, if they tried something.  On the good side, they hadn’t cut me out of the network yet.

That worried me too, since it meant I had no idea what their plans may be.  It was hard to counter something I couldn’t see coming…

The alien race that attacked us turned out the be the Sonex.  I felt a lot less guilty about the possible future, the race had four of the fifty light year spheres of space in our galaxy.  Which meant the bastards had performed genocide three times before, and they’d gotten away with it.  They’d have done it a fourth time on Earth, if it hadn’t been for that scout ship, and my magic which opened all the technology for us.

If we’d have taken a normal path of evolution to the stars for a species, we’d have been wiped out.  The galaxy was a better place without them in it.

The two ships had been interesting, but there was nothing useful about them to me.  Sure, I’d never gotten a chance to learn how to build a nuclear missile before, but we already had anti-matter missiles.  There was also the different and less efficient FTL drive, which had been interesting to learn about, but once again something we didn’t really need.  Their impulse technology wasn’t all that different, but their inertial dampening had been less efficient, which was the reason they’d been limited to forty G instead of sixty G acceleration.

In short, the grays had the equal or better of everything the Sonex did, and by extension so did we.  I suspected there’d be no more free lunches that way for our species, it would be people like my Diana that improved things from here on out.  I’d just be able to incorporate that new knowledge into a product a lot faster than anyone else on Earth.  Even that was debatable, given the facility of nanite construction, but I still held the edge of being able to control any tech I was near.  Plus, for the moment, only the United States and I had that nanite construction edge.

I’d reabsorbed the mass that’d been left, and I spun out those thirty-two probe ships and sent them out as planned.  It was worth setting back the rebuild another day or two.  I wasn’t really expecting anymore alien conquerors to sneak around the sun on us, but it was better to be prepared.

Crap.

“I’ve just been cut off from the fleet.”

Cassie nodded, “We expected that.”

I nodded, “Should I let them keep an eye on us?  They won’t see much, just our position and systems.  If it comes to a confrontation, I can always turn it off.”

Cassie frowned, “I think that would be the wrong tack.  You aren’t going to appease them by letting them see what we’re doing.”

That was a good point, I was just hoping they wouldn’t confront us and let things go.  It wasn’t a likely scenario.

“Well, I did promise to return the ships I stole.  What’s another day of rebuilding, and thirty more reactors?”

Cassie smirked, “You did.”

It took a little time, but I managed to form the original fifteen scouts, set them up to fly back to Earth, and ejected them from the hull.  What took the most time was removing all the updated programming from the nanites, like the stealth shielding and additional weapons.  I also got the thirty more reactors building.

Jayna asked, “How much trouble are we in?”

“The Earth fleet out-masses us by about three and half times.  The small warships combined are an even trade, and it takes four of the giant warships to equal us and there’s ten of those.  They also lost an equivalent amount of mass in the battle, so that’s a wash.  Time is on our side, we’ll rebuild a lot faster than they will, but that gain will be transient.  Especially if they start mass producing more ships.”

Diana said, “That’s very possible, we were bringing up mass production of reactors when I left.  They can build five every twenty-four hours.”

I nodded, “That’s enough to start a build of the smaller version of the warship every day, or the largest one every three to four days.  After three months’ time they could have one large warship finish building per three days.  Doesn’t help them now, but obviously the power disparity will go up over time.  That’s assuming they don’t copy the mass production setup five times.”

I shook my head, “I doubt they’ll wait though, and they already out-mass us.  Our only advantage was the ship network, without that ace in the hole we may have to retreat.  For the moment, their course will take them straight to Earth orbit, but that could just be a red herring to trick us and get within missile range.”

Jayna asked, “Isn’t that a bit paranoid?”

I shrugged, “Why else remove me from the network just then, if not to pass along orders on how to deal with us.  Sure, they could have just done it because the danger passed, and they don’t need us anymore, but do you want to gamble our lives on it, and the lives of the men on half those ships?”

Cassie asked, “You want to run.”

I sighed, “In two weeks we’ll be in much better shape.  But no, I think I have another plan, and it plays to my strengths.  I’d been focused on the problem, not the solution.  If death comes, it’ll be on their heads.”

I fed my magic to the ship, built a hundred very small devices, and spun off one more probe ship.

I told them my plans, Diana’s eyes widened, and Cassie snickered.  My sister just shook her head and smirked.

Chapter Seventeen

From the relative position of the space station, Earth’s fleet was hovering about eighty thousand kilometers above Earth, right over the North pole actually.  It occurred to me they’d taken that position just in case this turned into a shooting war, it’d be bad to have Earth right behind them.  Despite the distance to L1, they were on the edge of effective energy range of the space station, which was about one light second.

Cassie said, “We’re being hailed.”

“Answer it.”

A hologram of who I presumed to be Admiral Graves came up over the command table, a little higher than the holographic display of the tactical situation around Earth.

“There was no need to call and thank me Admiral.  I was very pleased you took my advice, and there was no loss of life in your fleet.”

Jayna giggled, and she slapped a hand over her mouth.

It took all my will not to crack a smile, at the look on the admiral’s face.

The admiral said, “Listen son, you know that’s not why I’m calling.  Enough is enough, you need to turn yourself in.”

“For what admiral?  For defending myself against a general who sought to assassinate a civilian, the man responsible for handing the United States advanced alien technology.  All because of what I might do?  Capacity doesn’t always equal intent admiral, only to the paranoid.  Are you paranoid?  If it hadn’t been for me, the earth would be burning right now Admiral, without my space station and actions that fleet of five thousand would have burned the world, on their way past to ambush your fleet from behind.  Let me tell you how this can go.  We can co-exist.

“I officially reject my citizenship, I’ll never set foot on United States territory again.  I’ll stay in space, vacation in the Caribbean, and run my space station.  I’ll even agree not to sell FTL ships with weapons to other countries, so they don’t accidentally get us killed by the insane races in this galaxy.  Do your allies know what my country did, and what I did?”

The admiral snorted, “You can’t fight the government.”

I smiled, “Admiral.  That’s true for any citizen, except perhaps me.  I don’t have the armaments of a citizen admiral, I have the military power that exceeds the majority of countries on the planet, combined.  Going by tonnage, second only to the United States.  We’re confident given the truth, most of the world would be on our side.  The United States is a great country, but there are dark corners Admiral, and I’m not going to surrender just to be murdered, or put in a dark hole until I die, merely for choosing to live.  Hell, you bastards kidnapped my sister, like some bank robber, goon, or mafia, to control me.  Yet it’s legal to coerce a citizen with kidnap victims, because you’re the government?  Not this time, this time you’ll be held accountable.”

He was turning red on the screen.

I said, “It’s up to you admiral.  I submit you’ve been given illegal orders, you should refuse them.  Especially because I will hold you accountable if you don’t.”

Graves growled, “How the hell are they illegal?”

I snorted, “Because I’m just a citizen general, remember?  Don’t you read your constitution, the military can’t be brought to bear on the citizenry.  If you fire on me, or try to take me down, America is pretty much declaring me a country of my own.  Country Astraeus.  I’d suggest you turn this matter over to the FBI, they can come try and arrest me.  Unless of course you mean to say you agree with killing citizens, and generals with no oversight in their black operations have every right to kill Americans if they want?”

Graves said, “You’re a terrorist, and a combatant.  That changes the rules.”

I snorted, “Yup, terrorists are always saving the planet, and preserving lives in the military.  I’m not even going to dignify that with a serious response.  Oh, one more thing Admiral, just in case you forgot, I’m rather good at technology.  Our conversation is being streamed to Facebook, YouTube, and several other venues, including the press.  I may have also sent all the audio-visual records of my dealings with the government, the fight up here to protect Earth, and all that.  Lastly, I know it was Admiral Davis, NSA director Adams, and General Mortenson behind the orders.  They will be held accountable for those illegal orders if you follow through on them.  Men like that who hide behind power usually get to murder innocent civilians, not this time.”

The admiral growled, “Was that a threat?”

“No admiral, a promise.  I will defend myself, and I won’t do so by harming the good men and women merely following corrupt orders.  Everyone has the right to self-defense, and they are the architects of these murderous orders.  I imagine the president might be upset, because I will take other steps to preserve my life as well.  I obviously can’t trust you.”

The admiral shook his head, “You’re deluded, son.  I’d hoped we could handle this peacefully, if only because of the deeds you named earlier.  But we can’t have a loose cannon up here in space.  Clever words, and even a lot of truth I grant you, doesn’t change that fact.  Last chance, surrender peacefully.”

“By your definition, deluded terrorist?  None of my actions have been threatening.  If anything, the United States has profited by this partnership, and could’ve continued to do so indefinitely.”

The admiral made a motion with his hand.

I heard, “Sir, weapons are offline, they won’t respond.”

I turned off the shield cloak, and revealed a little ship sitting in their midst.  The ship I was actually on.  I’d been talking to the admiral through a quantum link to the space station, then over typical airwaves to his ship.  I’d also been adding those little devices I’d made to all the ships, I’d just had to be personally close enough to them to shut down a few shield emitters and suppress alarms.

In essence, the entire fleet were now sub-ships of my command center, and I could override anything they could do locally.  The plan had occurred to me when stating the problem, I couldn’t control their ships anymore.  So, the best way to handle that was to regain control, direct control instead of through a network.  A small ship, a distraction, a cloaked field, and a little time.

What had Cassie said?  Technology was my bitch.

“Checkmate, admiral.  You’ll be happy to know I’ve upgraded your ships, to minimize deaths.  It was an oversight I’m sure, but there was no technology for abandoning ship, nor life pods.  You should also know I’ve declared space a no United States zone.  I can’t trust you, so you can’t be up here.  Goodbye admiral, I’m afraid only your men get to enjoy the benefits of the new tech.”

Several missile sized pods launched from all the ships toward Earth, save seven, those crewed by other countries.  The nanites of course, had surrounded the crews in a new design life pod, and launched them from the ship.  Much like a missile, it had a limited power life with supercapacitors, but it was more than enough power to last for days.  It was only the constant six hundred gravities of accel that drained the large supercapacitors quickly in normal missiles.  Not that they needed days, as the anti-gravity kicked in and lowered them safely down to the planet’s surface.  I’d sent them all to Thule air base, since we were over the Arctic circle.

As for Admiral Graves, I’d ejected him into space too, just without the pod.

Of course, I wasn’t done.  With the ships being mine, I had another path to the command center and all their alien tech resources.  All their fighter shuttles took off to rendezvous with the fleet, and they’d land on one of my new shiny warships.

Finally finished stealing all their stuff, the black boxes on the ground turned to dust, as I forced the nanites to decouple.  Of course, the entanglement was still there, but good luck to them getting a display out of a pile of nanite dust.

It wasn’t a permanent solution, the United States still had access to all the knowledge, and they were building reactors.  Eventually, maybe in a few years, they’d figure out how to build the nanites too, without another ship to jumpstart that building process via energy to matter creation.  Then they might be a threat to me again, but not for a long while, and I’d be watching.

Still, I hadn’t been lying.  The president was going to pissed when those jackasses reported to him, he hadn’t been involved in the orders to kill me.

Speaking of which, I wasn’t quite done.

Davis, Adams, and Mortenson all had cell phones, and I had ships with deadly weapons.  I targeted their positions with a pinpoint strike, a beam just an inch wide, from space.  There was some collateral damage, as the beam lanced through the buildings they were in, but no other humans were harmed.  Just a few new airholes in some buildings.

Promise kept.

Cassie said, “What now?”

I smiled, “The other countries haven’t tried to kill me, yet.  I don’t want to live in a vacuum alone any more than you do, so hopefully they’ll see things our way.  You should call the other seven ships, have them contact their governments.  We have seventy-two small warships, and three more giant warships for rent.”

Diana giggled.

As for us, I set course for the station, which was where we belonged…

Afterword:

I hope you enjoyed this story, if you did please leave a review.  Reviews are the lifeblood of independent authors, and I would greatly appreciate any constructive feedback or opinions.

This was the first book of the Technomancer series.  I tried not to leave any cliffhangers, but obviously there’s a lot of places this story can go, and several threads have yet to be resolved.

About the Author:  If you have any comments or suggestions you can send me an email at dlharrisonauthor@gmail.com  If you like my work, or even if you don’t, please consider leaving a review of this book.  I can also be found at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7456808.D_L_Harrison

Other books by D. L. Harrison:

http://www.amazon.com/author/dlharrison

The Formerly Dark Mage, by D. L. Harrison – This stand-alone fantasy book follows the life of Silvia and takes place in a world unique and separate to our own.

Silvia is a dark mage. Unfortunately, she finds herself about to be sacrificed. Someone must have told her evil master about her plans to kill him and take over.  After that, things just seem to go downhill. She has no choice but to escape the kingdom of Zual, something that to her knowledge has never been done before. She will need to deal with many issues she never had to face before.

Among those issues, the white mages, and her conscience.

The Rise of a Dark Mage - This stand-alone fantasy book follows the life of Cassandra, it takes place in the same world as The Formerly Dark Mage, but happens three hundred years later, long after Silvia is gone and some shocking changes have taken place in the world.

Cassandra is a dark mage in the kingdom of Zual, she’s also a mage prodigy.

She hates both her kingdom, and her master.  She wants him dead, not to take his place, but so she can leave and explore the world.  Her ambition will drive her to rediscover the secrets of the strongest of magic.

She is determined to succeed, or she’ll die trying.

Celia Winters Novel Series

Witch’s Moon: A Celia Winters Novel Book 1

Celia Winters was raised by her single mother, and her earliest memories are of the store her mother owns and the nearby coven, who have always been her family’s close allies and friends.

She grew up believing her magic was weak, but she was satisfied with her life, and happy.  She was a midwife, healer, and supplier of surrounding covens.

Then her mother died, and she’s about to discover she isn’t who, or what, she believes herself to be, not completely.  She will learn that her entire life up until now was a lie.  She’ll need to figure out her place, who she is when she no longer recognizes herself, and try to hold on to her closest friends as she gathers enemies for the simple crime of her existence.

She’s stronger than she believes, but will it be enough?

Power of Air Series:

Just a Psychic: The Power of Air Book One starts off this series.

Ben has grown up with missing memories of his early childhood.

He has known he was a psychic since his earliest memories, seeing the future and gaining knowledge with his gifts.

Is it possible he isn't just a psychic?

Ben's world is about to be turned upside down as he turns twenty-one, all is not as it seems.

Alicia Jones novels is a series that follows a bright young inventor and scientist named Alicia Jones.  It is a space opera and light science fiction.

The first book is titled First Contact:

Alicia Jones is a genius, and a little odd.  At just twenty-three years of age, she is close to finishing her doctoral dissertation.  But when she tests her latest theory in the lab to generate a strong EM field, it has very unanticipated results.  Results that lead to faster than light travel, and first contact with another race.

Her life just gets more complicated after that, when she finds out who she really is, and that the universe may not be as nice a place as she’d been told.  Her determination to help keep Earth safe takes her to places more dangerous and strange than she’d ever envisioned.

Spirit Sorceress series, by D. L. Harrison is a new urban fantasy series.  Miku is a spirit sorceress who spent the last one hundred years growing up and learning about her power in the forests near Seattle Washington.  She’s about to make her debut in the big city, but not in a way she ever expected.

The first book is titled Spirit Sorceress:

Miku is a spirit sorceress who spent her unusually long childhood in the forest away from the city with her mother and father.  After tragedy strikes, she finds herself alone and on her own.  She knows that one day she’ll need to move to Seattle, and fully accept her birthright, and if necessary finish her training on her own.

But before she’s ready, and still in grieving, a rogue vampire and his band come along and change everything.  She’ll need to learn her new place in the world, and find some allies quick if she’s to survive.

Katrina Baker Novels, by D. L. Harrison is a new series about a super named Katrina Baker.  Problem is, she gets caught up in her mother’s plan, who is a mad scientist and supervillain, and gets herself transported to another world in the multi-verse.  A world where mages, witches, clerics, and the gods are real.  Not to mention the monsters…

The first book is titled Banished:

Katrina baker is a super.  She has mental abilities such as telekinesis, telepathy, and others.  Her parents are supervillains, and she isn’t all that sure she’s cut out for that line of work.  Her empathy with others through her power makes it hard to be uncaring, much less mean or evil to people.  Problem is, the last thing she wants to do is disappoint mom and dad.

Katrina gets caught up in her mother’s supervillain plot to get rid the world of the indestructible hero Omega, and that’s when it all goes really wrong, and she finds herself on another world.

Banished.

Will she be able to find her way back home, or even understand this new world of gods and magic, or will she die trying?

Rise of the Empyrean Empire – This series is space opera / science fiction.  Space, technology, other worlds, aggressive and far more powerful aliens, artificial intelligence, evolution, and advances to the point humanity doesn’t have to work to maintain infrastructure.

The first book is titled: Scout Ship

Michael Williams followed in his father’s footsteps, and joined the UEDF, the United Earth Defense Force, when he turned eighteen.  Due to heroism and long distinguished service he’s elevated to the rank of Lt. Commander when most of his peers have just attained senior lieutenant.  His career appears to be going very well.

The year is 2263, and the EUDF is in several star systems in a twenty-light year radius from earth, but are expanding even further.  He’s assigned to a one year exploratory mission to become accustomed to his new rank, one that will finally culminate in reaching a new star system, 61-Virginis is just short of twenty-eight light years away, and he’s excited to be one of the first humans in a new solar system as they finish the race across the void between stars in the scout ship Columbus.

There will be challenges he never imagined though, especially not on a simple survey mission.  Because mankind always thought they were alone in the stars.  They’re about to find out they’re wrong, very wrong…

Book Description

Scott Akin is a new kind of mage, perhaps the first and only of his kind.  Weak in comparison to other mages, but he has a special way with technology.  But what good was rebuilding a car with magic, or hacking a computer, when an elemental mage threatens him with death?

At least he was weak, until the government recruits him to advance their understanding of alien technology, of a ship that crash landed on Earth over seventy years ago.

His life is about to change in a major way, and the surprises will keep coming, not all of them pleasant.

Author’s note:  This is primarily a space opera.  The fantasy elements of the book are tangential at best, and I don’t believe that will change through the rest of the series.  Oh, there’s mages, shifters, witches, and vampires in these pages, but that’s really not the focus.