Date: 2019-11-18T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Vampires
Description: Scott Akin managed to not only survive but flourish with his allied family, friend, and lover, as well as other support. Things are unsure for the space station. The country of his birth still wants to bring him up short. The one good thing is there’s almost as much potential and opportunity in his situation as there are dangers and hard work. Colony worlds, technical scientific advancements, new allies and friends, new enemies, and more to deal with. If that wasn’t enough to worry about, the Grays see humans with their technology as a threat. They don’t like threats… Author’s note: This is pr
Publisher: UNKNOWN

Astraeus Station

Technomancer: Book Two

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. 8

Chapter Three. 15

Chapter Four. 28

Chapter Five. 34

Chapter Six. 39

Chapter Seven. 44

Chapter Eight 50

Chapter Nine. 57

Chapter One

The boardroom was filled with bright red cherry furniture, dominated by the large mostly rectangular table with rounded edges and slightly thicker in the middle of all four sides.  Fine leather chairs surrounded it that would easily sit thirty, but currently there were sixteen guests present.  Eight pairs of representatives from eight different first world countries, the ones that had successfully claimed the available worlds in the territory granted by the grays.  Either by politics, paying cash to shut others up, or some other combination of chicanery on the world stage level.

My heart pounded in my chest like I was going into battle, and I fought the urge to wipe my hands on my pants, they were dry enough.  Ridiculous, but public speaking wasn’t my forte, not if I wasn’t pissed off and telling off someone trying to kill me anyway.

It’d been a month since that day we’d fought off the aliens, and I staked our claim on L1 with the space station and prevented the government from destroying us.  The only reason they were all there, was I was the only available person that could build them some colony ships.  Kind of a monopoly, good luck getting a court to shut me down.

In the center of the table there was a holographic mockup of a five-mile-long ship extremely similar to the colony ships of the grays, but there were a few differences.

“The colony ship will comfortably transport five million people in this configuration, as well as carry everything needed from food supplies, to farming equipment, building supplies, grains, cattle, and anything else you would wish to start a colony.  The ship itself is a mini-city, and it will provide shelter and rooms while a city is built on your planet.  I call it the phase one configuration, because you’ll want to mostly send people who build infrastructure and farms.

“Security is obviously important.  Upon arrival at the programmed destination, thirty small ships will immediately be separated.  They aren’t complete at that time, but they’ll be able to fight, and have at least a small complement of anti-matter missiles.  They’ll also immediately start growing.  In one month, you’ll have thirty small warships.  Twenty of those will stop at that point, the other will keep building.  The end of the second month six of those will be medium sized warships, and finally at the end of three months the last four will be the larger warships.  None of those will be capable of FTL, they’re there to protect your new solar system.  Obviously, you’ll need to send six hundred military men in the first wave, thirty crews of twenty, to run the ships.

“After three months, phase one will be complete, and the colony ship will reconfigure.  The living spaces will be removed, and seating added.  Some rooms will be set up like airplane seating, some will be set up like lounges for VIPs.  Regardless, the new configuration can accommodate fifty million people.  When the people on the ground have prepared the infrastructure required, you can use the ship to further colonize the ground, and raise up the population on your colony, and ease the population problems of your countries.  In Phase two, the ship will also be able to carry as many supplies as the first time.

“Finally, phase three will be at your discretion and will only be activated if you wish it.  You may continue to use the ship as a way to ferry men and supplies, or if satisfied that function has been permanently fulfilled you can reconfigure the ship one final time to a space station configuration, much like this one that you’re on now, and it will act as the command center for your fleet.  The benefits to that are obvious, you can use it as a local resource for refilling the ships with hydrogen.  Does anyone have any questions?”

The American general asked, “Will those ships be connected or controllable by you?”

I smiled, “No.  Like the changes I made on the warships in Earth’s solar system.  They’ll be hardcoded not to fire on the planet, the space station, or each other.  They’ll also be hardcoded not to accept towing, and any attempt to add FTL technology to the ship will be thwarted.  Other than that, I won’t be able to see where they are, or control them in any way.  I designed them that way so I wouldn’t have to worry about any governments taking action against my station, given my unique status, while also respecting the privacy and sovereignty of my customers.”

It was true enough.  The governments of the world were more than a little leery about buying ships I could take control of at a whim.  So, I’d figured out a way to prevent them from being used against me without controlling them.  The only ships I could remote control now were the thirty-two probe ships that acted as a part of my ship, that I had scattered around the solar system.

Someone asked, “They can’t be towed?”

I shook my head, “The reason we won’t add FTL to an armed ship should be obvious.  Only unarmed ships will be capable of exploration outside of our solar systems.  The instinct of self-preservation is too strong to gamble our entire civilization on, when merchants go to other systems, they’ll be accepting the risk of death should another race decide they need target practice.  Point being, if they can be towed you could hook up a warship with a commercial freighter, and then go take a look around.

“Towing is also worthless, completely unneeded.  If an engine was damaged the nanites would just reconfigure and build a new one.  One of you will figure out a way around this stricture, it’s kind of obvious when you put a little thought into it, but I advise you not to do it.  The galaxy is a dangerous place.”

A simple way around it would be to shut down all power to the ship, then it could be towed, new solar system, power it back on.  Except, I’d added a self-destruct of sorts, warships powering up that weren’t in their own solar system would stop being warships, all weapons would be reconfigured to hull, and any missiles would be absorbed into the ship.  In short, it would be a very costly mistake.

There was also another unseen benefit that I didn’t mention.  Warships were defensive and stuck in their solar systems, so there’d be no wars between colonies, if one of the countries back on Earth got in a snit.  I kept that benefit to myself however, I doubted they’d appreciate that point.

Oh, one more thing the ships couldn’t do was copy themselves, I’d removed that function except on my own station, making it a seller’s market.

Another asked, “What if we want more warships, or one of those gas freighters or merchant vessels you’re talking about.”

I nodded, “You have a number of choices there.  You can either come back here and buy one, or I’ve been working on something else, but you may decide against it.  I can set up a communication and building terminal that would be connected to my space station on a ship that would also launch when you arrived.  It’d be pretty small, and unarmed, but I’d have full control of it from my side.  Should you request another ship, or a merchant vessel through communications, once I’d received payment it would start building it.  Honestly, it would be less a ship than an… orbital factory.  It would also be constantly updated, as I came up with new designs back on Earth, they’d become available on the factory ship as well.  And as always, I’m willing to entertain a custom build should you desire something different.

“Of course, that would mean I’d have eyes on your space.  I wouldn’t divulge that information to anyone, but I would have it, and I’ll understand if that’s unacceptable to anyone.  If it is, the only choice will be to hop in an interstellar shuttle, which all your ships will have, and come back here to purchase one.  In short, privacy verse convenience.”

I’d managed to cut myself out of the building process completely, using the reactor fabrication designs Diana gave me.  It took longer, twenty-four hours a reactor instead of twelve, but it also made the orbital factory possible, without needing me for that step.

“Third, I suppose you could communicate with your home country back on Earth, have them buy it, and they can get it sent to you.

“Fourth option.  You can always buy it now, and it’d be mounted on the colony ship like the others.”

The general snorted, “Why would we ever choose the second option?”

I shrugged, “It’s convenient, and won’t require a crew from Earth to deliver it.  Then how would they get back here?  That’s four or five days one of your command teams would be playing delivery boy.  If your colony and country already delivers things back and forth a lot, then that won’t be an issue, but otherwise it’d be a lot more convenient.  I also expect the orbit around your worlds won’t be a top-secret issue, no doubt your worlds will trade, and other colony’s merchants will see your solar system, but in the end it comes down to trust.”

I looked around, “Any other questions?”

“How long will it take?”

I said, “I can build all eight in three months.  If you order a lot of extra ships to start their base build configurations may add a week or two, depending on how many.  Anything else?”

There didn’t appear to be any more questions.  Cassie had done most of the political and contact work on this project, but they’d all insisted on meeting and evaluating me.  I supposed it made sense to want to meet the man building their ships, but I wasn’t much of a salesman.  Cassie had worked hard, and there was a lot going on, it wasn’t just the four of us on the station anymore either.  A few resorts and restaurants were going up, though they weren’t open for business yet.

I was rather infamous on Earth at that point, though opinion was split.  A lot of people and other countries thought my homeland had been rather heavy handed.  Others thought I was an evil warlord.  In the end it didn’t matter, the only way America would’ve been happy with me was if I’d voluntarily laid down and died, as if that was what made someone a good citizen?  It wasn’t an option.  A lot of that positive opinion was down to my sister, Jayna had taken the advertising job tightly by the reins, and she’d ran with it.

The meeting broke up, and I headed for my home in the center of the ship, just off the command center and power station.  It was a lot nicer at that point, we had wood furniture, real couches, and all that, instead of metal tables and flight chairs for kitchen, living room, and office chairs.  The conference room was close to the edge of the station, near the docking ports, which was almost two and a half miles away as well as thirty levels up.  Needless to say, I’d added a transportation system to my space station…

Chapter Two

The warm scent of food reached my nose as I walked into our private quarters.  For the moment, it was still set up like a four-bedroom house, we all still shared the same kitchen, workout, and entertainment rooms.  I imagined at some point Cassie and Jayna would want their own place entirely, once there were more people to mix with at the station.

Cassie, Jayna, and Diana were already done for the day and chatting in the kitchen when I arrived.  Cassie was effortlessly stunning, in almost anything, it’d taken me some time to get used to it.  Words like goddess and enthralling wouldn’t be unreasonable as a description for the petite and sexy vampire.

She was five foot one, with long shimmering light brown hair, and expressive hazel eyes.  She had the face of an angel, and a tight, curvy, and petite body.  She was also an ancient vampire, which gave her a little something extra in the alluring department, the woman had a strong presence, and dripped sex appeal.  Her dulcet voice simply added to the effect.

Of course, I was starting to come to see her as a sister, and that appeal had very little effect on me, I was entirely too smitten with my sexy scientist.  That whole sexy librarian look was back for her, Diana tried to dress down at work so others took her more seriously, but it didn’t really work, at least not on me.  Anyway, she’d recruited some scientists from Earth to help her with her various research directions, which was why she’d started wearing the boring earth colors and lab coat again, not to mention those geeky glasses.

Besides the medical bed technology, which was currently being tested and evaluated in India, she was also working on several other technologies.  One of those being quantum communications without the need for entangled pairs.  According to the math and scientific theory we’d gained from the grays, it was possible, but it hadn’t been developed by them.  It would be similar to broadcast radio, or walkie talkies with channels, as opposed to single end to end entangled points.  There were many other things as well, weapons, defense, health care, and all that.  We already had several designs for communications that would make cell towers, hard lines, and satellites obsolete.

She was also looking into safer and cleaner power generation for the world.  We had that in the reactors, and fusion was cleaner than fission, but in the end it would still make a big old explosion in a reactor accident or sabotage.  Reactors just weren’t safe enough to put them in every car and home.  Point being, Diana was doing a lot of research, in multiple directions, so she’d needed a staff.

Diana was gorgeous, but I could be biased, seeing as I was rather besotted.  She was five foot six, with long straight raven hair that looked like liquid midnight flowing down to the bottom of her shoulder blades.  She had bright and intelligent emerald eyes, and creamy dark tanned skin.  She was extremely athletic and in shape, and quite limber and imaginative.  She was exceedingly intelligent, if it wasn’t for my magical ability to absorb technology and how to build it in my mind, there’s no way I’d be able to keep up.  Even there, she had a spark of creativity I lacked, I could understand and build any technology my magic encountered, but she could invent.

I’d stopped caring that she was eight years older than I was a while back, but I knew she thought of it sometimes, especially when we argued which was thankfully rare.  Nothing was perfect, but she was worth every effort.  We’d only grown closer the last month, and now that she could share her work with me, even that artificial wall between us had been knocked down.

Jayna, my sister, had gotten dragged along for the ride because the government decided to kidnap her.  She was stuck on the station because too many assholes on Earth would try to use her as leverage against me.  To her credit, she’d rolled with it and was even happy most of the time.  She’d taken to the challenge of our image and advertising with an impressive focus, for a nineteen-year-old woman who should be in college.

Like me she had light blonde hair, and ocean blue eyes.  Unlike me she was an elemental mage, but between the hair, eyes, and similar features I had no doubts we were truly family.  Not that it would’ve mattered to me, she’d always be my sister, but it was a point.

The three of them were making dinner together, and I moved in to help them.

“Everyone have a good day?” I asked, as I grabbed an iced tea from the fridge.

Cassie smirked, “We’re legal now, on communications.  We have official tie-ins to the internet, and for phone in three countries, so you need to cut off our illegal hacks of satellites.”

I nodded.  I was more than fine with that, it wasn’t like we couldn’t afford it.

Cassie was my conscious. In that if the power ever did get to me, and I turned into a warlord, she’d snap my neck when I wasn’t prepared for it.  She was fast enough to do it, if I had my armor on I’d kick her ass, but vampires were very fast, ancient ones even more so, if I wasn’t ready for it she could snap my neck in a blink.

We were great friends despite that fact, and in a way I kept her around just for that reason.  Power was corrupting, and at the moment I was powerful enough to take over the world.  It was also why I ceded control of the ships, and came up with that alternative, hard coding them to not be able to attack me instead.

It wasn’t personal, she’d explained to me as an ancient vampire, her and the other ancients formed a council of sorts after World War one.  Their focus had been on keeping stability in the world, or at least as much as possible given the violent natures of humanity.  Humans fed the vampires, so they were rather concerned about their food source.  We’d do no less, if our farm animals kept declaring war on each other.  It wasn’t quite the same, they didn’t see us as cattle exactly, but the comparison was certainly partially valid.

In short, she kept me honest.

She was also in charge of our political and administrative jobs on the station.  My job was to run the station, keep it secure, and protect it all, not to mention build everything we needed, or would sell.

“Done.  I disabled those connections, and I dispersed the nanites in the satellites.  Anything else exciting?”

Cassie shrugged, “I’m having trouble getting one of the governments to sponsor our space station.  Seeing as its armed, and we won’t share the technologies.  I can’t say I blame them, it’d put them at risk if things ever go sideways in a big way.”

Much like international waters, space had been defined in the same way.  After two hundred kilometers, it was international space.  The laws also said any commercial vessels or business ventures in space needed to be registered to a country, and that country was responsible for inspections and ensuring they followed all that country’s laws.  Anything other than a private spaceship had to be registered.

Our space station definitely fell into that category, especially with the resorts, restaurants, solar system tour, and other businesses starting to open up spaces.  We even had station security at that point, though for the moment that force was very small.  The resorts opening up would have their own security, station security was just about the docking ports, and public parts of the station, which were extremely underutilized at the moment, we were just getting started.

It was something I didn’t micromanage though, I worried about building for customers, external threats, and building test devices for Diana or anything my sister and Cassie wanted.  I’d hired Jessica Mills to handle inside security.   She was a bear shifter, had military and security experience, and headed up the security section of the station.  She was five eight, a redhead, and extremely athletic and strong even in her human form.

Technically, I ran it all, but I didn’t micromanage anything.  Cassie was a far better person for dealing with politics and all that, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start, much less her long experience and vast number of contacts in countries all over the world.

Point being, before I’d gone off on a few tangents, was that we were a big legal question mark in the eyes of the world, and Cassie seemed to be having trouble bringing us fully in line with the laws.  Legal communications and internet access were a good start, but we had a way to go.  We needed space ports, ways for tourists to come up here, not to mention workers for resorts and for the station itself.

“Options?”

Cassie sighed, “We could make you a warlord.”

I laughed.

She snickered, “Seriously.  Not a warlord, but instead of registering with a government, we could petition the U.N. to recognize us as a sovereign country, in space.  It’d be a lot of work, we’d have to come up with our own laws, security would become the police, and we’d need courts.  You’d essentially become a head of state, or dictator, because we wouldn’t be running elections.  The station belongs to you.  It would also make all the tech upgrades we sell, and ships, our exports.”

“That sounds complicated, are you sure?”

She shrugged, “I think so, I don’t think we’ll get a sponsor, they keep rejecting our applications.  For all the same reasons we’re being rejected, it should qualify us to be a country.  The three of us would be your cabinet, and we might need to add more down the line.  Still, it should be years before the station fills up, if not decades.  Not much would change, we’d just need our own laws.  I also suggest most laws being broken should lead to either community service or permanent banning from the station, we don’t want to fill up jails.  Anything less than a capital crime, which would have a more permanent consequence.”

I nodded thoughtfully, “If you think you can pull it off, just let me know what you need from me.  We both know who would really run the government.”

She giggled, which wasn’t all that comforting.

“I’ll set it up, you’ll be head of government, and responsible for enforcing the laws.  No different really than being in charge of the person we appoint as head of station security.  Taxes won’t be an issue, we’ll have our personal wealth from the ship business, and selling Diana’s inventions, and the government and station will be balanced by rents.”

I nodded, “I’m not really worried about that, the station and nanites maintains itself, so we won’t have to tax for road maintenance, or anything else like that, like a normal country would.”

She said, “Exactly.”

“It’ll get more complicated though, second generation.  In the beginning, we can offer dual citizenship for those that agree to move here, and banishment will work because they’ll have somewhere to go back to.  Next generation, we’ll have citizens of Astraeus only, they won’t be citizens of their parents’ country of origin, so banishment won’t work.  Other countries won’t want our criminals.”

She nodded, “You’re right, and we’ll adjust and come up with solutions.  Right now, we just need a basic body of laws and government to be accepted.  I don’t think it’ll be too big a problem for a very long time.  To start we’ll have mostly security as citizens.  The resort workers will be given visas for the duration of their employment.  I suspect most of the legal issues will be from tourists who won’t be citizens at all.  We’ll work it out, I’ve seen it time and time again the last three centuries, I have a good idea of what works, and will take care of it.”

I just nodded, and pushed away my other questions for the moment, like education, I trusted her.

Jayna said, “There’s a lot of interest for my ads.  I have some up for the station and you to influence opinion, as well as ads for nanite health beds, our new cell phones, data connections, computers, and of course the private and commercial ship designs.  I suspect that once we’re accepted not only will the resorts open, but you’ll be busy building and exporting a whole bunch of stuff.”

Yeah, I’d designed a cell phone using entanglement.  No getting out of range, in the entire universe, theoretically.  No doubt I’d be sued before I could sell the first one.

Diana interjected, “Nothing major, but we’re making progress.  My main focus is on safer clean power generation, which would be a game changer on the planet’s surface.”

I nodded.  Shuttles would replace planes, cars wouldn’t need gasoline, houses could be powered without an electric company that generated electricity through pollutants.  There were so many possibilities they couldn’t be listed, and I was sure each one would be a major disruption of economies, so we were moving slowly.  I wasn’t greedy, I had a space station, was rich already, and my personal life was going well.  I wanted to pass that on to the world, but we had to be careful, or we’d do more harm than good, at least in the short term.

She added, “I’m also working on a possible new weapon as well as a defense.  If it turns out to be feasible, we won’t have to worry about the grays anymore, we’ll have an edge.”

I nodded, and I pulled her in for a short and mostly chaste kiss, given our company.  It was something we’d discussed a lot the last month.  I couldn’t imagine the grays didn’t know we had their technology, yet they’d never even mentioned it.  We’d speculated a lot as to why.  One possibility was the network of ships I read was one of their older ones, and they had better tech and weren’t worried.  It just seemed counterintuitive that they wouldn’t care, were they that arrogant, or that secure in their twisted game that had gone on for who knows how many years to keep predator species in space in check?  Thousands of years at least, perhaps millions.

Sure, their planets were very well protected, but it wouldn’t take me longer than a few years to build a fleet capable of matching them, or at least matching what I’d seen.  They weren’t even watching us anymore, unless they had a separate ship network for spying on FTL civilizations.  We’d come to no conclusions, just a lot of possibilities, and who knew if the truth was even among those possibilities.

The best-case scenario of course, was that they didn’t care, and didn’t believe we were a threat to their evilly designed empire despite that.  It was still disturbing to me, though I had to admit it worked.  Any race attacking another would lead to their own annihilation, no exceptions.  They may get away with it once or twice, but eventually one of their prey will make it to the grays, and that civilization will cease to exist.

I suspected there’d be more violence, and deaths in the long run, if not for their twisted game which they controlled.  That didn’t mean I liked it.  On the other hand, it made our world and colonies relatively safe, now that we’d proven we could defend ourselves.  I doubted any other race out there would risk the genocide of their race on an attack on us.

The ones that had tried had been erased from the universe.  We hadn’t participated, partially because it disgusted me, but also because our warships weren’t FTL capable.  Given my stance on that, I’d suggest their design was very effective.  We could do whatever we wanted in our fifty light year territory, outside of that not so much.

Diana blushed, but seemed to enjoy the attention.

Dinner was finished cooking, and we all sat around the table to eat.  We had a roast, veggies, and mashed potatoes.

“So, power systems?”

Diana nodded, “We’re looking at several things.  One of the most promising is the strong forces the nanites use to bond to each other, so that they even remain one solid piece when power is disconnected.  Imagine a generator that uses those forces to bond and release in series, to provide motion.  If it breaks down, there’d be no explosion, it’d just stop generating electricity.  Think liquid metal flywheel.”

“That would be bad, say for a plane in the sky.”

Diana giggled, “Yes, if that was the whole system.  Like the ships it would use supercapacitors to store energy and clean up the current.  If the engine failed, then any car, ship, or shuttle would retain more than enough power to land, pull over, or if in space come to a stop.  Maybe even finish out the trip.  We’re also working on other theories, vacuum energy for one, but our initial findings suggest that may be even more dangerous than nuclear reactors when something goes wrong.

“Still it could be sized down to any application, since the energy generation can be scaled down to any level.  Imagine a phone with one, and a supercapacitor, the size of a pea.  You’d never have to charge your phone again.  Computers, remote controls, and tablets.  In other words, forget power generation for a house, or even wall-plugs, never mind merely shutting down polluting power plants.  Your car, oven, dishwasher, heater, air conditioner, lamps, air filters, fans, coffee makers… basically everything, could be sold with its own independent endless power source.  Two of them even, just in case one breaks.”

Oh, holy crap.  I’d been thinking something that could replace power plants at a house or car level, not down to the level of everything.

She shrugged, “Obviously for high power requirements, like what a space ship would use, reactors would still be the way to go.  But appliances, even air conditioning and dryers, don’t use nearly that much power, and they’d suffice.  It’s how it has to be, inevitably the more power something generates the more destructive potential it has.  The only truly viable answer for clean and safe energy on a planet’s surface will be separate small power sources for everything.”

“Planes with anti-gravity?”

She nodded, “Trickle charging high capacity super-capacitors.  The supercapacitors could hold enough energy for a trip, and the system could fully recharge while on the ground between flights.”

“Do you know how many people that would piss off?”

She giggled, “Yeah, if we figure it out, we’ll have to move carefully.”

“So why waste time on vacuum energy if it can be more destructive?”

She smiled, “Weapons?  To replace the need for reactors in ships?  Imagine if the nanites themselves were power generators as well?  Safety will obviously be a huge concern there, no one will want their ship made up of trillions of nanoscopic bombs.  One blowing could cause a chain reaction, so if we do work it out then we’ll have to see how safe we can make it, before it becomes feasible.  It might not be worth the effort, except to increase our understanding of the universe.  Although, it might be a useful addition in missiles only, and greatly enhance the yield of an anti-matter missile, not to mention greatly extend the range, way past two to three light seconds.”

Good point.

We moved on from that, and then started to talk and banter about normal things.  We usually talked about our day, what we had going on, and then put work behind us for the evening, as much as we could anyway.  There was so much going on, making the station a nation, scientific advancements, revolutionary products that would change the world, ship building and selling, a resort and city on the station, and the list seemed to never end.  A lot of times it was hard to let it all go, but balance in life was important.

It helped that Cassie was like a second sister to me, playful teasing included, and Diana could be damned distracting when she put her mind to it.  After dinner, we watched a little television, and called it a night.

Chapter Three

First thing the next morning I started the build of the eight colony ships, which would take three months.  Well, I started on it once I’d gotten done goggling at my account statement.  We wouldn’t have any trouble being able to afford supplying the station with the things only Earth could provide, which would very shortly be only luxury items and foods.  Our farm levels on the ship would start putting out food soon, enough for the amount of people up here at any rate.

The second thing I did was read over the messages.  Cassie had already sent out a memo about our intentions, and that our security force would require dual citizenship to remain a part of the security force.  I was glad Cassie had it all under control, I also had no doubt she’d have to deal with the U.S. who’d be against it, and had veto power in the U.N.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my country of origin, and America is an amazing place, filled with good people.  It was just the few with power that had ruined things there.  Enough said about that, as far as I was concerned it was in the past, and it would stay there as long as we weren’t attacked again.

I knew eventually they’d figure out how to make their own nanites, it was a production issue, our current level of technology wasn’t up to making them yet.  Once they had one, they could make more, and eventually have enough to build one of the energy to matter converters.  At that point, they could build anything they wanted, much as I could.

Somehow, I doubted they would hardcode rules not to fire on the station.  My hope was that by the time that happened, we’d be too established and necessary in the scheme of things for them to bother with.  Not to mention a few years of me not attacking the country and keeping my word would hopefully calm ruffled feathers and fears.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t prepare, I could always trump anything they did with my power to own and control technology, as long as I saw them coming first.

“Is this a joke?”

I looked up, I hadn’t even noticed Jessica come in the command center.

I corrected playfully, “Is this a joke, High ruler of Astraeus?”

She snorted, “Good luck with that.”

I nodded, “Your job won’t be different, you’ll just be enforcing our laws instead of the laws of a host country, and you’ll be chief of police instead of chief of security.”

She frowned, “There’s a whole lot less politics with the first title.”

I shrugged, “I’m not worried about it.  We’ll be a country but act more like a business, just with our own laws.  The only reason we’re doing it is because we can’t find a damned sponsor.”

She shook her head, “If you’re a head of state, you need guards.  You’ll also have politicians and heads of state visiting, not just gamblers and tourists.”

I sighed, “I’ll take guards if I leave the center of the station or the secured areas.  I don’t want to lose you, so what are you saying?”

She opened her mouth, and closed it, then said, “I’m just… annoyed.  Fine.  I’ll do it.  But I won’t handle the press or arrogant politicians, I want to hire people to deal with that aspect.  Both giving press conferences and guards for visiting politicians.”

Yeah, she could be a little touchy, most shifters were, and they didn’t like surprises.

I nodded, “I don’t have a problem with that, you might want to check with Cassie.  She’s putting it all together, make sure she doesn’t already have a plan for it.”

She sighed, “Fine.  What’s your real title?”

“Emperor Scott.  No, I actually have no clue, ask Cassie, and let me know.”

She laughed, “I’ll do that.”

One of the scanners went off, about five A.U. away from Earth, and I looked at the hologram of the solar system and zoomed in to the area.  It was a huge, ugly, and blocky red ship that’d just dropped from FTL.  There were large airlock doors tightly spaced down the sides of the ship, and I didn’t recognize any weapons at all.  Clearly, it was a merchant ship.

I quipped, “You forgot about security for visiting alien merchants.”

She scowled at me.

I pointed at the hologram, “Not joking that time.”

She looked at the command table, and her mouth dropped open.

“Shit.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

Excuse the language, but it turned into a clusterfuck of major proportions.  No one had any plans for when an alien merchant showed up, or at least not a joint plan.  There were six countries with warships, and no doubt they all had their own plans and proposed procedures, although I might be being generous in that regard.  I suspected over half of them hadn’t ever even considered the possibility the other races might want to trade with us.

Clearly, no one including the ninth idiot, that would be me, had bothered to tell anyone else their procedures.

The alien sent out a request to approach, and dock at the station to discuss trade opportunities.  Thanks to having gray technology, we already had translations for every language of the FTL races, so at least that wasn’t a problem.

Regardless, I sent out an invitation to approach, two others of the ships said we weren’t interested and demanded they leave our territory, three of the ships welcomed them but commanded they wait for an escort in system, and of course one of them proposed to go out and talk to them in person, no doubt hoping to cut me out or gain some kind of advantage for their country.

In short, we made a wincingly bad impression, and no doubt the alien merchant had no clue what to do.  Clearly it was something we should’ve worked out, but it’d only been a month, and we’d all been focused on our own backyard and rules for space.

I sent out a second message inviting a ship from each country to the station, and I suggested we could all meet the alien.  I also may have suggested we’d have a day before the alien got there, so could hammer out some agreement that wouldn’t make us look like idiots.  I felt a little uncomfortable with it, making a decision, and I knew it’d piss off some of the countries on Earth that we’d left them out without a chance to get in their own piece.

After an hour of fierce debate, and figuratively smacking my head on the desk multiple times, they finally agreed, and I sent another message to the alien to approach the situation.  I also apologized for the conflicting orders, and I further stated we didn’t have a procedure yet.

As I’d hoped, the alien approached at forty gravities, it’d take around twenty-four hours for him to reach the station, so the rest of us had a day to hammer it out.

We were all a little embarrassed, as we met up in the board room in the docking ring.  I was in the room with seven captains.  Russia, China, Japan, Israel, England, Australia, and France were all represented.

“First, does anyone object to him, her, or it coming in?  It seems to me that in our territory we hold all the advantage, we can even kill him and steal his ship, with no negative responses from the other races.  It seems to me we should want the other alien races trading on our territory, not the other way around where our ships and crews take that risk.”

No one said a thing.

“Right, so, any ideas?”

The Russian said, “We will not allow you to dominate any new technologies that may come in through trade.  It is bad enough we must come to you for ships.”

I nodded, “I get that, but that’s capability.  You’re sitting on a ship, one you could duplicate with study, work, and effort.  That’s like… complaining to Sony that you have to buy their televisions, instead of making one yourself.  We haven’t hidden any of the science or theories, just the applications as is our right, and the right of any inventor.”

I shook my head, “As I see it, we have to decide if we’re going to compete or cooperate, then we can build a system and see if we can get your governments to approve it.”

Two of the captains nodded, but the rest narrowed their eyes.  It was going to be a fun meeting.

“Explain,” said the French captain.

I shrugged, “If we compete, we can come up with a bidding system of some sort, based on what the alien is looking for, then whoever wins the bid can trade for whatever the alien is offering.  Obviously, only the countries that have the capability to meet the aliens needs, will be able to bid.

“If we cooperate the system will be completely different.  We’ll need to show at least the illusion of a united world.  We’ll share in expenses, profits, and share technological designs and advances equally.  Obviously, I’ll have an edge there in production, given my control over nanites, but it’s a very temporary edge if I’m sharing everything.  There’s a lot of things to be worked out, including procedures for aliens showing up in system.”

Cassie entered the room, and I couldn’t help but smile, thank the gods.

I really hated politics, and she’d stop me from doing anything too stupid.

The Japanese captain said, “We all wish to bring an advantage to our own countries.  Do we care what the aliens think?  So what if we appear as separate nations?  I agree we should use a bidding system.  It will take time to develop, far more than twenty-four hours, and should be done by our governments, not military captains.”

“We may have to wing this one, at least until they come up with something.  Obviously, out there, with our own merchant ships, we can look out for ourselves, but in our own home system we need rules to keep things as fair as possible.”

Cassie said, “I suggest in the interest of fair play, all of us here meet with the alien, and find out what they have to offer, and what they’re looking for.  Then we can let the various leaders wrangle it out and decide on interstellar trade procedures.  If the alien has to wait a week or two this first time, then that’s what will happen.”

I said, “The race is the Vax.  According to the information furnished by the grays, their primary exports are in the medical field.  It doesn’t say much else about it, I have a feeling the information is purposefully vague.  They look a little bit like a koala, if a koala bear was seven feet tall.  They’re also rated as one of the safest races for merchants of other races to visit.”

Cassie nodded, “For all we know it’s just a visit to determine what we might have.”

No one looked happy with the plan, but I supposed that was proof enough that it was fair.  We all talked a little longer, mostly going in circles.  It seemed a little self-serving, but meeting on the station seemed obvious since I had the accommodations.  I was also very glad it would be Cassie interfacing with the other governments, but I suddenly had a bad feeling every government on Earth was going to want to send an ambassador merchant of sorts to the station, to meet any aliens that dropped by and try to gain an advantage.

Cassie smiled, “Excellent, I suggest each of you contact your governments.  Hopefully, it will all be hammered out before the second alien shows up.”

The captains got up, and filed out, with promises to be back when the alien docked early the next morning, station time.

I asked plaintively, mostly joking, “Is it too late?”

Cassie tilted her head, “For what?”

“To turn myself in and get shot?”

Cassie giggled, “Yes, yes it is, Emperor Akin.”

I rolled my eyes, “Seriously, what’s my title?”

She said, “President would be best, it avoids all the negative connotations.”

I nodded, “Things are getting more complicated than I expected, but I’m rolling with it.  Are you enjoying yourself?”

She smirked, “Yes.  I’ve been tweaking governments a long time, I’ve never gotten to run one before.  It’ll be small, I promise.”

“Alright, be honest with me, how much hobnobbing am I going to have to do?”

She bit her lip, “I was thinking pizza for lunch.”

I growled at the poor change of subject, and she just laughed.

She said, “More than you want to, but not as much as you fear.  I’ll handle most of it, but state visits require a head of state presence.  For the most part you’ll get to hide out in the command center and play with your technology.”

I supposed it wasn’t all that bad, life was full of unpleasant tasks.  It wasn’t that I hated dealing with people, I really didn’t, it was the backstabbing two-faced politicians I could do without.

I nodded, “Pizza?”

We got up and headed to lunch together.

The next morning, we regathered in the conference room.  Cassie sat on my right, and at her insistence I had a scowling Jessica and one of her people standing guard in the corner of the room.  There were nine others filing in, none of them the captains from yesterday.  The governments were no doubt at that very moment heatedly hammering out rules for visitors and access to our solar systems from aliens, but they’d had enough time yesterday to prepare and send various politicians familiar with commerce.

I didn’t recognize any of them.  That said, it was the same seven countries, with two additions.  Germany and the United States had hitched a ride with a warship of another country so that they could be present.

We took a moment to introduce ourselves, but the names and faces went straight out of my head.  I wasn’t the best with names when meeting one person, much less nine smooth smiling politicians all cut from the same cloth, and if it was really important, I could cue the space station computer to remind me with a little magic.

The United States representative seemed very friendly, which made me nervous, but to be fair she probably was nice and not planning to kill me.  After all, she wasn’t the head of a counter-intelligence organization or a military person in charge of a black ops project with no oversight.  Israel and France had sent women as well, the other six were men in suites.  Not that I was judging the clothes part, I was wearing one too.

I wasn’t sure exactly how that happened, me being in a suit I mean.  It’d involved soft sultry words and sweet kisses from Diana, I’d lost that argument in a big way.  I had a feeling she’d been recruited by Cassie to make sure I was appropriately dressed for the first human-alien trade discussion.  Apparently, heads of state weren’t allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts with funny sayings to work, or you know, not even the business casual wear I usually had on.

In my defense, Diana was devastating when she put her mind to it, and she totally cheated using her not inconsiderable feminine wiles.

We all stood when the door swished open, and two of the Vax were waved in by their escort.  They did look remarkably like a koala around the face, white and black marked fur on their face, and their hands had wicked looking claws on the three fingers and opposable thumb.  I assumed the rest of their bodies were furred, but of course they were wearing space suits of some kind, or perhaps uniforms.

Almost like a koala bear got busy with a bigfoot, and they had a Vax.

I nodded my head, and wondered if I’d just declared war, since they’d have no context for that gesture as humanity mean it.  They were cutely fearsome of appearance, but I got a relaxed vibe from them.  I was sure they were nervous, new race might be crazy after all, but I was also sure they were used to meeting aliens, unlike any of us.

Truly, the fact that them attacking us would doom their species and worlds took a lot of the worry out of it.

“Welcome.  Take a seat, and we can introduce ourselves.”

The sounds that came out of the wall were clicks and soft growls, that varied greatly by speed, frequency, and volume.  In a communications call translation technology was far more transparent, since it only passed on the translation in real time, not the original words, but in person we’d have to wait through them.  Still, at least we had the technology, it was more than useful.

They nodded back, hopefully not an acceptance of war, and took a seat and we all sat back down with them.

The Vax said, “I am merchant Captain Threx, and this is my second in command, Pherie.  We are pleased to meet a new trading partner in the stars.”

The introductions went around the table, and I spoke up when it got to me.

“I’m Scott Akin, of space station Astraeus.”

Cassie introduced herself, and it went on from there.

There was a short awkward pause.

Threx said, “A pleasure to know you all.  I understand the initial exposure to the wider and sometimes dark truths of the galaxy can take time to settle.”

The American representative, Susan Rejewski I think, said, “We’ll be better prepared next time with better facilities and comprehensive information on what’s available to trade from our world.  In the meantime, the people assembled in this room have extensive knowledge.”

I frowned, better facilities?  Bitch.

“Before we start, would you like a refreshment?”

Susan shot me an annoyed look, but I suspected she was really annoyed with herself for not thinking of it herself.

Pherie bowed her head for a moment, and I started to hope it was a gesture of respect in their society too.  Well, I thought she was female, she was smaller than Threx, slightly thinner face, but for all I knew Pherie was a guy and Threx was the girl.  Or… neither were female, or both, it wouldn’t do to assume.

“Thank you, Scott Akin.  I believe water would be appreciated, we would have to test your other beverages for compatibility before partaking of them.”

The German representative, Karl something or other, poured two glasses, and slid them down the table.  We’d set up a pitcher and glasses, but they were in the center of the vast table.

Threx said, “We know very little of your race, or what you’d have to offer, though you do have something we desire.  First, a little about us and what we offer.  We’ve been interstellar traders for many centuries, and we’ve personally dealt with almost a third of the races.  One thing we can offer is information.

“The information offered by the Grays is just enough to get you into big trouble, we lost a lot of trading ships over the years to missteps on the territory of other FTL species.  To be frank, we believe it amuses them.  Regardless, we would offer you a database so that your traders won’t have to make the same sacrifices.  For instance,” he turned to Susan, “Showing your teeth is a challenge in many species, including my own, but we have long since developed thick skins in those matters, others have not.

“There are many things to be avoided, and some that are required, when dealing with other species.  We would share all that with you for the right price.

“Our second major export is healthcare.  We’ve mastered our bodies, diseases, and even genetic manipulation long before we reached for the stars as a species.  We could assist you with genetic abnormalities, genetic disease, better DNA correction to both extend life and make minor radiation exposure less destructive, and other enhancements.  We also have health scanning devices, and other technologies that will assist you out there in determining what would be lethal for you to consume, or to breathe.”

That would be extremely useful.  The nanites and health bed were perfect for trauma, operations, excising cancer and things like that, but it couldn’t really do anything about all those other things he’d just named.  It was also a hot-button topic on Earth.

He continued, “Our third major export is implant technology.  Communications, security, work, entertainment, all contained and implanted in the body in a bio-electric microscopic device.”

Karl asked, “Augmented reality type stuff, without external technologies?”

Threx replied, “If I understand you correctly, yes.  I am connected to my ship at all times, and even sitting here can review the status of it in a window only I can see.  The biggest problem with such technologies is thought interpretation of the user, and as I said earlier, we’ve mastered our bodies a long time ago.  There is more than three things of course, and I would be pleased to furnish a list, but those three things are what most races focus on that we meet.  Some… don’t, usually for sociological reasons.”

Susan asked, “And what is it your people desire?”

Threx shifted, and I wondered if he was nervous.

“We know you have the technology of the grays.  No new civilization has ever entered the galactic scene so definitively before.  Usually the battles are much smaller as well, none of the other species had an armada of thirty thousand warships, what would be the point?  We suspect the grays set up the Sonex, and they used you to do it.”

I nodded, “Can you explain that?”

He explained, “The Sonex were super predators, they couldn’t help themselves, it was in their DNA.  Most new races are shocked at first by the state of the fifty galaxies the Grays oversee.  The Grays are manipulative, but their system works.  They maintain an empire that they don’t even have to oversee, threat of genocide for attacking a neighbor and not committing genocide successfully is repellant to true predators.  Predators protect their home, and they hunt, but they manage their herds.  Killing all of something means their bellies will go empty the next season.  As a result, it works well, no true wars, just some greedy species taking a chance at spreading out their influence and space every once in a while.”

I nodded, “I agree, it disgusts me, but it is quite an effective setup to maintain peace among predators.”

It wasn’t pretty, it was an ugly truth, but in the end it was effective, even if horrifically so.

He replied, “Exactly.  Except, there’s always the exception that proves the rule.  The Sonex weren’t content to build warships to guard their solar systems, the rules chafed at their minds, and every attempt at trade was met with instant and overwhelming violence.  The Sonex psyche rejected it so strongly, that they built a large fleet of scout vessels, and started to gather as much intelligence as possible from all the other races, especially the grays.  It was more than clear to everyone, that they were determining what it would take to destroy the grays, and beyond that meet us all in battle if necessary.

“This is speculation now, not fact, but we believe that made the Grays very nervous.  Eventually, the Sonex would decide they had enough ships built and take the war to the galaxies.  The Sonex were very close to you, within three hundred light years, as I’m sure you know.  Anyway, turns out there was your planet, several centuries away from developing FTL flight, but you were hungry for the stars, there was a race to the moon going on at the time, and you’re relatively peaceful for a predatory race.”

I almost laughed at that.  Human science fiction had always taken the other tack, humans were too barbaric for space.  Turns out we were one of the nicer and nobler killer species out there.

He continued, “I suspect they found a way to get you their technology, and then sat back and waited.  The Sonex was a problem, and you were their solution.  They couldn’t attack the Sonex themselves without breaking their own rules, so they set them up to fail a takeover, when the Sonex had been successful the last three times in committing genocide and expanding their empire.  They knew the only way you could survive their attack was with Gray technology, fast building ships, and more advanced weapons and shielding.  I’ll also give you free advice, toe the line of the games, or the Grays might come back to collect.

“I think you shocked them.”

Susan asked, “How so?”

He asked, “Would you give away your best technology to a primitive race?  I suspect they figured Earth would die too, but that you’d have enough ships that one would get away to report the infraction.  Then the Sonex would be gone too, and their technology would only be in their hands again.”

Shit.  Without me that’s exactly what would’ve happened, Earth would’ve had much less ships in a month’s time, and would’ve been destroyed by the Sonex, except a handful of people on a scout ship, with nowhere to go.  It also explains the crash landing, and why the ship wasn’t recovered by the Grays.  It even put a new light on their ships poking around Earth for forty years, and in hanging around bases and nuclear reactors.  They were trying to drive us with fear to understand the technology and get out in space as fast as possible.  No doubt with centuries, the Sonex would’ve had time to build enough warships to be a true threat, and they needed us to grow up fast enough to trigger a new game, before that happened.

Those bastards had set us up to die, to remove a problem race that didn’t quite fit into their empire’s sick twisted setup.

“So, you’re telling us we’re the new problem race for the Grays?”

He nodded, “Exactly, but there’s no need to panic.  They can’t attack you by their own laws unless you attack someone else outside your territory.  That will keep you safe, you aren’t like the Sonex at all.  I suspect like us, you’ll guard your worlds, but will send out unarmed ships of trade to other territories.”

Susan asked, “How can you know that?”

He laughed, or at least I think he laughed, the sound was a little alarming actually.

“Because I am sitting at this table, and no one has killed me or blown up my ship.  You have been gracious, and you offered us your bounty for our comfort,” he waved at the glasses of water.

Susan nodded, “That’s all good to know, even if it’s just speculation it fits, but what does that have to do with what you want from us?”

“Technology,” I said.  Obviously, but I didn’t say that last part out loud.

He nodded in agreement, “I would not ask for weapons technology, at least not until our species gets to know each other better and trust is built, but I hope to convince you to part with a wormhole drive.”

Wow, if I was reading him right, the guy was practically salivating over the idea.

Not all that surprisingly, half the representatives in the room gave me an annoyed look, as they realized I was the only one in the room with the ability to trade with the alien.

“Do you trade the raw knowledge, or will we be trading services?  I would be far more comfortable with the latter.”

He nodded, “So we can’t install them on warships, very prudent, and a good first step.  We will of course trade information on the other races, no choice there because it is just knowledge, but for our medical advances and implants we sell our expertise and devices, those are protected from tampering to prevent reverse engineering.  We do not wish competitors for our merchandise either.”

“Good, so what are you offering, for me to install a wormhole drive on your ship?  One that will also be tamper resistant.”

I was already planning it out, I’d have to remove programming for just about everything the nanites could do, except for that one function, FTL drive and self-repair.  Just in case they did manage to reverse engineer it, they wouldn’t get everything.  Still, it was doubtful, unless they had a tech mage of their own.  I wondered if their species had supernatural races in it.

I kind of doubted it, if they had they’d have stolen the tech from the Grays a long time ago.

Threx said, “We would as I said, give you the database in return.  It is our most valuable resource, because we can only sell it once per species.  I will also give you a case of sample technology for our most popular exports.  Instructions on how to install it and use it will also be provided.  Both medically and for implant technologies.  We will also give you a communicator that will connect to our consortium, they can route the call to me.  Once you decide what devices you want, we can talk how many of which kind, and how many FTL wormhole drives you feel they will be worth.

“I imagine you can sell only that, until our entire merchant fleet is equipped.”

“Please excuse my curiosity, but why that technology?” I asked.

Threx said, “We are traders.  We channel all of our aggressive instincts into that hunt of a different kind, it works well for us as a species in this empire.  As I said in the beginning of our discussion, we have information on about a third of the species, all the ones closest to us.  The fifty galaxies in the empire span a vast amount of space, a lot of the species are simply too far away to make the trip worthwhile.  With our current FTL drives it would take months to get there, over a year for a round trip.  Wormhole drives would cut that down to days and open up possibilities for new business.”

I nodded, that made a lot of sense, “How many samples of each technology?”

Threx replied, “Fifty for the implant technologies.  Two thousand for the biological technologies, we understand most races will want a large test population before determining something is medially safe and without side effects.”

Susan frowned, “No side effects at all?”

Threx snorted, “We would not use it if it had side effects.”

I smirked, I wondered what Threx would think if he ever saw a drug commercial that listed all those horrific side effects at the end of it.

Threx said, “Of course, there are no samples for genetic diseases.  For that service we would need to run tests, and then lend the expertise of our doctors.”

“Alright, I think you have a deal, as stated, but I’ll get back to you within a day and we can discuss particulars.”

I stood up, and everyone else did.

Threx said, “Thank you for hosting us, we will await your decision on the ship.”

Threx and Pherie left the room, and their security escorts led them away.

I said, “Alright.  I think we should do it.  I’m also willing to share.  The database will be freely given to all of your countries, and others.  The samples will be split up, I’ll keep a few but otherwise will give the rest to the U.N. to split up among the countries with interest in investigating the products.”

Susan scowled, “And what do you want for your generosity?”

I didn’t bother denying the accusation, and I looked to Cassie.

Cassie said, “We’ve run into a problem, it seems no nation wants to sponsor the station, and take responsibility for it.  I’m preparing to declare this station an independent nation, with commander Akin as the president.  We’ll be making that declaration shortly, perhaps even this evening.  We would… appreciate, any influence or support your nations could muster in getting us recognized by the U.N. and other countries.”

I felt all dirty, asking for a wash my back and I’ll wash yours favor, damned politics.

Karl asked coldly, “And if we don’t?”

I nodded, “I’ll still give you the samples, this isn’t blackmail, we’re just making a point.  Market value attached will be my guide in the future when I sell them to Earth for a small profit, after equipping another one of their ships with an FTL drive.  Obviously, I’d also be guided by you and the world on what to ask for.  I’m willing to be reasonable, and I’d love to see a healthier humanity.  Of course, if I have no sponsor, and Astraeus isn’t recognized as a nation, then I can’t legally sell anything to any of the companies in your countries.  I can’t sell alien technology or cures, and I can’t sell my own inventions which many hospitals are already clamoring for.”

I looked around the room at each of them.

“By blocking this, you’ll in essence be shooting yourselves in the foot, since you have nothing to offer the aliens.  Honestly, I think I’m being very reasonable, downright generous, even.  I have a lot to offer the world just healthcare wise, between the alien’s tech and the health bed Doctor Diana Young developed, and a lot more besides that which will improve life in other ways.  Is asking for recognition as a nation really too much to ask?”

Of course, it’d occurred to me with my magic I could reverse engineer all the tech and just cut out the aliens, but that would be a dick move.  They’d be valuable as trading allies.  Plus, the Gray’s nanites were too power hungry to run on bio-electricity.  I’d have to build their micro-technologies, that would no doubt not be self-replicating.  That meant building it all myself, or even building huge factories to do it, which would bite into my time and money in a way that building an FTL drive wouldn’t.

Plus, the Vax would love us forever if we outfitted their merchant fleet.

No, it’d be much easier, and much better, just to install an FTL drive and let the aliens do all the work.  We’d also lose their consulting services if they were cut out, I had a feeling some of their services required their expertise, not just a syringe of magical cure-all.

I also wasn’t sure about their genetics science, for all I knew that technology was purely biological in nature, and my magic couldn’t do anything with biology.  I dismissed the whole idea, it’d be easier, more fun, and more profitable to deal with the aliens, and not try to take it all on for my own.  I already had my own technologies, more coming, and was in a great place financially.  It just made sense on every level not to abuse my powers in that way, morally, socially, and business wise.

Susan nodded, “I’ll do what I can, and can get behind that with a clear conscience, but I can’t give you any promises.”

I nodded, “I’m not asking for promises, just support and recommendations to the right ears.”

I had another card to play if it was necessary, but I hoped it wasn’t.  I’d also been purposefully vague about the other technologies.  I had the feeling if I told them I was going to completely disrupt the communication, transportation, and power industries the governments would stonewall any recognition hard.  Despite it making sense, I knew there’d be an uphill battle against the moguls who currently profited from all those industries, not many would care about the benefits of the newer technology, and even less would care about significantly lowering pollution on our planet.

The meeting split up.

Chapter Four

A hologram of Threx came up over the control table as he answered my call.  I carefully didn’t smile and just nodded my head.

I said, “You have a deal as outlined Threx.  The information on the races, and a sampling of all your available technologies for the wormhole FTL drive.”

He nodded back, “Almost all, like I mentioned earlier some will require adaptation to your species, others will self-adapt, and still others will require consultation and testing.  A full list of those other services and products will also be included.”

“I understand.  I’ll need the technical specifications of your ship.  At the very least, the power systems and precise architectural design and dimensions.  The former will tell me if you meet the power requirements, the latter is to design the field geometry of the drive and to determine install points.  I don’t need your other systems.”

“Install points?” he asked.

I nodded, “The drive isn’t a single device like subspace FTL drives, it’s a network of devices that will run along both sides of your inner hull.  Opening a wormhole is just step one, it needs to be maintained, and your ship needs to be shielded from the forces within the wormhole, or it will be torn apart.  Your ship is generally well shaped for wormhole travel, if a little big in height and width, which is why I have power concerns.”

It was a narrow and short, but a very long blocky rectangle.  I suspected it was designed that way for ease of loading and unloading cargo, the large airlock doors along the sides would mean anything on the ship was less than twenty yards from an exit.

Threx said, “Stand by a moment.”

It took a few minutes, but he sent me a data stream that included his power systems, as well as the power conduits which ran in maintenance shafts along the four edges.  That was just about perfect, actually.  His power systems were a little weak for the drive, it’d take close to a hundred and fifty percent power to open a wormhole, but only sixty percent to maintain the subspace tunnel once opened, and to shield his ship.

“While in FTL travel, is forty percent of your reactor output enough to maintain the rest of your systems?”

Threx frowned, “Barely, but I can get another reactor installed when I get home.”

I nodded, “I can design a system that will work on your ship.  The system will need to be charged at five percent power for thirty minutes to open a wormhole, or ten percent for fifteen, and so on.  So, once you open one you won’t be able to open another one right away.  That shouldn’t be a huge issue I wouldn’t think.  If you accidentally wormhole into a bad situation, you can always use the old FTL drive to skip a few light minutes while it’s recharging.”

He nodded in agreement.

I designed in a second supercapacitor in front of each of the devices, the initial wormhole opening would fully drain the extra, but ship’s power after that would be sufficient to keep it open and keep the second supercapacitor fully charged.

I also programmed it to fit his ship, and use his power systems and EPS specifications, or in layman terms, so I’d be able to plug it in.  Lastly, I designed a navigation substation for the bridge, which would be an extension on his current navigation console.  It would have its own navigational database separate from his, since he didn’t give me the specs on that I couldn’t fully integrate it.

Also, I stripped everything else out of the nanites, all other systems be they weapons, shields, gravity, and all the other instant designs it’d otherwise be able to transform into.  Even if they could hack a nanite and read the code without tripping the security protocols, at best they’d be able to reverse engineer an FTL drive.  Self-repair and the kernel operating system was the only other subsystem I left.

I said, “Can you open up the external door of bay eighty, and the hatch doors for the access crawlways, A1, B1, A40, and C… eighty-six.  Oh, do you have atmospheric shields?”

He nodded, and I relaxed.  My request would have jettisoned all the air on the ship in both engineering and on the bridge if they didn’t have it.  Atmospheric shields would stop the air from being lost, but wouldn’t prevent the passage of a shuttle, or the creepy arm of nanites that I intended to extend from the station.  The shield would automatically adjust and conform around the invading object to maintain atmospheric integrity.

He said, “Done.”

It seemed rather trusting at first, until I remembered he was completely at our mercy, and wouldn’t even defend himself if we decided to blow up his ship, or even steal it and try to learn their secrets.  Talk about bravery, being a merchant must be a terrifying job, and take more balls than working on a warship.

The nanites flowed like a pseudopod out of the station, remaining connected to the station as it dove into the open bay.  It needed to stay connected, to maintain power to the nanites.  Then a large block of nanites started to form in the cargo bay, enough to build the whole FTL system on the ship.

My own reactors were already replacing the mass I needed to use, they’d be done in less than an hour.

Once it was formed, and the nanites accepted the new programming I’d designed, a new pseudopod was formed and ran up into the crawlway access, made its way through into engineering, and plugged itself in.  At that point, the pseudopod from the station withdrew, since it had local power to finish the job.

The nanites then formed the components along both sides of the ship in the crawlway space, a thin EPS conduit of its own connecting all the components, until the drive was complete.  Then it used the access crawlway to access the bridge, and it set up a secondary navigational console which attached to the current one.

“Instead of using your EPS conduit junctions, I connected it all together.  The FTL drive system is self-repairing, as long as you have main power the system won’t go offline for more than a few seconds, even if your ship is partially severed by an attack.”

He was speechless for a moment.

“That was incredible, I knew it’d be fast to build, but I hadn’t realized it would install itself.  I’ll send the data in a transmission, and the sample container and communicator are available to be picked up anytime.”

I nodded, “I’ll send someone down.  I expect it’ll be a month or two, but I believe we’ll be doing business again soon.”

He nodded, “I’ll standby, and be ready to depart after delivery.”

That was a lot of nodding, I wondered if we were just doing it every so often because it was a gesture we held in common.

“Astraeus out,” I hung up.

I called Diana, I knew she’d love to poke around in that case, and I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d trust more to take our samples and forward on the rest to the world.  Of course, I was curious myself, about the augmented reality implants, and perhaps other cool shit as well.

Before I got up, I sent the new alien database on to the right places.

Diana scowled, “You are not going to be a guinea pig.”

I frowned, “But… I checked it with my magic, it won’t hurt me.”

Yeah, forget the phone I invented, the augmented reality implants made the thing obsolete.  Phone calls, entertainment like music, movies, and books, digital assistant, configurable control interface for other technology.  Augmented overlays, vision correction, the list went on.  Although, I didn’t really need the control interface part, my magic could already do that.  My magic also let me read data, but it didn’t let me watch a movie, or listen to music, or make a phone call and talk with my mind.

Admittedly, I was geeking out a bit.

I’d actually read all the technology with my magic, despite the fact I wouldn’t use the knowledge to cheat, I’d just wanted to know.  They really did have a lot of cool stuff, that wasn’t on the Gray’s ship.  Well, the implants and the intergalactic phone, which was ironically a less advanced version of the phone I’d created.  But… a lot of the medical stuff was biological technology though, and something I couldn’t duplicate.  Scary shit, like advanced intelligent viruses, that could read our DNA and automatically adjust a gene treatment to improve our DNA correction, extend life, and slow the visual signs of aging as well.

It was horror science fiction fodder, except I believed this stuff was the real deal, and wouldn’t turn anyone into a monster.

Regardless, I was a little leerier about trying that one, or the others.  There were gene treatments to correct and sharpen vision, hearing, and even partially reverse aging.  The list went on, including enhancements from the norm in strength, reflexes, senses, and the like.  There were even more in the attached list, which required Vax doctors to scan and adjust the medication, for genetic diseases, and things of that nature.

In short, with the Vax’s help, we could eliminate disease and all be disgustingly healthy, with longer lives and a few biological upgrades.  Add in the health bed technology, and even serious traumas would be correctable, as well as much less riskier procedures and operations.  Imagine a quadruple bypass being an outpatient procedure.

I figured the health industry wouldn’t be happy about that.  There was entirely too much money in sick and dying people.  That sounded pessimistic, but I knew it was just realism, the people making money off death would fight it.

Still, despite the risk Diana and I living longer sounded really good to me.

Point being, before I went off on a tangent, I was just wanting to inject the augmented reality implant which was pure micro-tech, I’d let others pioneer the life extension stuff, before I or someone I loved used it.  That was kind of screwed up, I know, but it was true.  I never said I was perfect.  Besides, better for someone terminally ill to try it first anyway, where even a bad reaction wouldn’t change their destiny all that much, there was nowhere to go but up for someone with a terminal condition.

I wasn’t completely heartless, and I knew if I was terminally ill, I’d jump at the chance, any chance, at a cure.

I was a mage and would already live a lot longer than most humans, I could wait until it was proven safe.

Diana looked hot as hell, so damned sexy, both angry and concerned for me at the same time, but I didn’t dare say that out loud.

“You can’t be sure of that,” she accused, “The tech might not be purposefully harmful, but for all we know it will make your immune system go haywire.  I trust your opinion implicitly when it comes to technology, but when joining technology to the biological you can’t use your magic to know everything about it.”

Shit, she was right.  Damn it.

“If something goes wrong, I can just use my magic to purge it?”

She shook her head.  My goodness, the stubborn look on her face and in her eyes was so damned sexy.

“Fine, you win.  I’ll wait until it’s proven safe.  Are you going to send it all on then?”

She nodded, “We don’t have test facilities, or a pool for study volunteers.  We might as well let the countries do it.  I imagine the implants will be tested and evaluated in a relatively short amount of time, but the others will be more long term.  At least two years, although the FDA will take at least ten, other countries won’t.  Two years isn’t so long to wait to be safe, before we take the risk ourselves.  I’m a little fascinated myself at life extension, and vision correction.”

“I don’t know, I kind of like the glasses, Doctor Young,” I really poured on the innuendo.  No doubt I’d have faced sexual harassment charges, if she wasn’t my lover.

She smirked, “Behave.”

“What fun is that?” I stepped closer.

She grinned, and then gave me a kiss.

I wasn’t sure if that was because she’d won the argument, or because of the way I looked at her, but I suspected it was both.  Funny thing was, I didn’t really mind losing the argument all that much, I’d have to geek out once it was declared safe.

She said, “I’ll get these all separated out, packaged, and sent to the U.N. for them to divvy out.  I will hold back a few things, is that selfish?”

“Like what?”

She said, “A few AG implants, a few life extensions, vision correction, and maybe one or two others.  Once it’s proven safe, we won’t have to wait for the next Vax to show up looking for a wormhole drive.”

I nodded, “Nothing wrong with a little selfishness, it all belongs to us, and we’re being generous sharing it with the world where it can improve and save people’s lives.  There’s no reason to feel guilty keeping even less than I already told them I was going to keep.”

She smiled teasingly although there was relief in her eyes, “Okay, you win that argument.”

I snorted at the bone she tossed me, and then stole another kiss before I left her to her work.  We still had half the day left.

It was all kinds of cool, and a hell of a trade for our first meeting with an alien merchant.

Chapter Five

In the end, the forming of a new nation was rather simple and took three steps.  Declare independence with permanent citizens established, be recognized officially by other countries, and finally be recognized by the U.N.  Still, I had a feeling I was the first one to do so by social media, at least partially.

On that evening, we had close to two hundred citizens, that mostly made up the four of us, and our security force and scientists which Cassie had managed to convince to accept dual citizenship.  Cassie had also formed our starting laws, which were mostly common sense and decency.  Cassie had also dispatched official notice on paper, a letter of intent and declaration to the United States that we were officially our own country, along with a whole list of blistering reasons.  It went there, because the government we were forming were all citizens from there for the most part, especially the leadership.

She also sent an official request for recognition of our nation to the other one hundred ninety-six countries on Earth, along with a proposed trade agreement that also went to the United States.  Lastly, which wasn’t necessary to form a nation but prudent given the circumstances, she sent a proposed treaty of mutual defense to all the nations that had armed warships flying under their flag in space.  It seemed prudent to let them know where we stood, if for no other reason, that we’d protect ourselves and the planet below.  Our space station nation was on the tip of the spear to protect Earth, and always would be, it might also calm ruffled feathers, for those that didn’t know our intentions.

In short, she did a hell of a lot of work since we’d made the decision to make it happen, so I really couldn’t complain when she sat me behind my desk, set up a camera, and gave me a speech to read that would be uploaded to various social media platforms and be sent to the press around the world.  I even kind of got the importance of it, world awareness would put pressure on leaders to accept us or not publicly, instead of just trying to sweep it under the rug so to speak.

“Good evening, I’m President Scott Akin, of the nation Astraeus, formally space station Astraeus.  We have officially declared our independence from our country of origin, but our intentions have not changed.  We took this course because we had no choice, but we are firm in our beliefs and principles.  We will defend the Earth alongside the other nations with ships risking their lives in space to defend not just themselves, but the whole planet.

“Our short-term goals are to open up official trade channels, and to offer the advanced technology we’ve been blessed with to improve lives on Earth, from healthcare to conveniences, as well as reduce pollution on Earth.  We wish to form trade agreements with countries, and establish security and rules for spaceports, so the citizens of the world may visit and enjoy the amenities of our station and even tour our solar system.

“We…”  I continued to read through the speech, and there were a lot of points on it including justification for past actions as well as patting ourselves on the back for saving the world from the Sonex.  Lastly, we diplomatically declared that we’d protect ourselves from any who threatened our new sovereignty, but that we hoped for peace and acceptance moving forward in this new world of infinite possibilities.

Cassie said, “Not bad, let’s do it again, this time…” she broke down in giggles when I glared at her, and held up her hands, “You’re too easy.”

I snorted, “Be nice, it’s been a long day.”

She smirked.

“What now?”

She said, “We run the station, do what we’ve always done, and wait.  We need to give the countries time to acknowledge us.  The last step is petitioning the U.N. to acknowledge us.”

I nodded, “Alright.  Dinner?”

She grinned, “I’d love some, you offering?”

I laughed, and then made the sign of the cross with my index fingers.

She snorted.

Yeah, crosses, holy water, not effective against vampires in the least.

“Will I have to do this again?”

She shrugged, “It depends on the world’s reaction, both socially and in the halls of power.  Not a lot, I’d say.”

I nodded, skeptical of that answer, and we left to join Diana and Jayna for dinner.

Two months passed and a lot got done.  The colony ships of course, were two thirds done, and continued to build.  In the end those eight ships would be equal to my station’s mass, each, so they were getting rather large.  They looked like huge long spokes attached the station.  Fortunately, they were much thinner than the station, so they were all on one side and away from most of the traffic to and from the station.

Our food production was in full swing, and the first vegetables and wheat were finished, and we also had vined fruit growing on one of the levels.  We still had to import a lot of things, meats, clothing, linen, wood, and the like, but felt our high-tech exports would more than balance that equation, even after other countries and businesses offered competition in those arenas, which wouldn’t be for a long time.  Eventually I hoped we’d cut that list even further, I knew Diana was working on a domed habitat.

The long-term plan was to use a habitat on the moon, or perhaps on Mars, to raise cattle owned by us, as well as trees for wood, fibers, textiles, linens, and all that.  The end goal was full self-sufficiency for our nation, but there was a give and take to trade, and we’d only stop importing if it ever came to be that Earth cut off our exports.

The U.N. had divvied out the implants and medical technologies, and those test studies were looking promising.  So far, there’d been no deaths, not even as much as a headache or sick stomach from using the technology, and lives had already been saved from the latter medical technology.

Over the two months we’d been officially recognized by over half the countries on the planet.  The biggest hold outs, at least in the first world, were the United States, Germany, and England.  The former called us thieves and criminals, and they ran counter-campaigns in the media calling us dangerous and untrustworthy, we weren’t sure why Germany and England were backing them.  Still, we hadn’t petitioned the U.N. for a vote yet, we needed their acceptance or there was no point, not when two of the three were on the security council and could veto.

On the good side, a lot of first world countries had acknowledged us, and were already in the process of building space ports or airport auxiliaries with customs stations for our exports, as well as to facilitate tourism in both directions.  Not all of them were active yet, but there were a few, and we worked with shipping companies for the products we had.

We had three open resorts on the station, as well as restaurants and shops, not to mention tours of the solar system.  In short, the station was open for business.  I knew Jayna was a lot happier, with the places open, even a few night clubs which broke up the monotony of running a station.

All of that filled in a very small part of the station, we were just getting started.

Probably the biggest thing was Diana’s breakthrough in low power generation she’d told me about.  It wasn’t free energy, but it was clean, safe, and seemed almost magical.  It could be sized down to the micro level to power electronics, or it could be large enough to power a building or aircraft.

As a result, we were selling alien high tech laptops, cell phones, health beds, and such on earth, all with built in independent power sources.  There was a lot going on there that I was only peripherally aware of.  We also offered small power sources to use with current technologies on Earth, and I was fairly sure Cassie’s staff were in talks with several companies to include a power source in their technologies during construction.  Such as cars, planes, and others.

Needless to say, the pissed off people were getting louder.  Especially in the power industries, such as batteries, gas, electrical, oil, and a lot of others.  Astraeus was far from universally loved, and us transforming Earth to better and cleaner technologies was going to cause a lot of waves, probably for years to come.  Job loss was something we had as a priority, we were even willing to lose a little money to help there, but it was what it was, and it would no doubt get a lot worse before things got better again.

New technologies were always disruptive, and power, communications, medical, and transportation were four of the biggest industries on the planet.  All of them multi-billion dollar industries, and they would be the largest impacted.

Still, in the end people would be healthier, and the world would be less polluted, which would make it all worth it, I hoped.  Sure, my main motivations were keeping us all safe, protected, and in a decent lifestyle, but I also firmly believed in a win-win situation.  Despite the unrest on Earth, I was proud of what we were doing and believed it would all turn out for the better in the end.

It was also something that would take years if not decades to fully saturate and transform those industries, which would also temper the bad side effects of disrupting economies.

The new colonies were a different story, and they could start out with the newer technologies without a large impact to Earth’s current and embedded industries.  Outside of water, sewage, and perhaps roads if they didn’t go with the flying car idea, there’d be little to no infrastructure needed.  Not with electric, data, communications, and other infrastructure which would all be replaced with wireless connections and localized power.

As for me specifically over that time, things were going well.  Cassie had made me make a couple of more videos, but for the most part I was just doing my own thing.  Designing electronics, designing power sources for various electronics and even just small boxes with an outlet, to power old stuff.

When the alien AG tech was approved, all my cell phone, tablet, and computer designs would interface with it for streaming, web access, phone calls.  Not Bluetooth, they’d be able to leave all their stuff at home if they wanted, and access it all virtually.

I’d also designed closed communications systems using entangled communications.  They’d be perfect for fully securing internal networks, or on the outside used for submarine communications instead of the old ELF systems.  It’d work anywhere in the universe.  Far too many things to list.

On the space ship side, I’d designed cruise ships, shuttles, yachts, and the like.  There were a lot of rich people out there that loved the idea, and I’d sold quite a few personal space ships to private owners.  They had two power sources, because I stuck by the idea running nuclear fusion in Earth’s atmosphere was just a bad idea.  But, they had enough superconductors and Diana’s new low and safe power generation technology to get it safely to the ground, and back up into space.  When in space, the fusion reactor allowed itself to be powered up, and the ships became powerhouses that could zip about the solar system at sixty gravities, just like a warship.

Then there was the commercial side of things, merchant vessels for both companies and countries.  Apparently, there were a lot of insane people on the planet, because they wanted to risk their lives to go forth and sell stuff, to aliens.  Granted, thanks to the Vax’s database on racial taboos and customs, that danger would be minimized.  I wished them luck, even if they would end up being my most serious competition for the world markets on advanced technology.

I was already so rich I could never spend it all anyway.

On the personal side, Diana and I had a few bumps, but in the end we were even closer.  It’d been over three months since we’d gotten together, which felt far too short for the feelings and desires she engendered in me.  I really started to seriously think about the long term in our relationship, but neither of us had broached that subject yet.

In short, life was pretty damned good for me, both professionally and personally.  We’d made a lot of progress as a nation despite all the road bumps.  We just didn’t give up, and we kept pounding at it.  Eventually, the world would be a better place.  It was a dangerous universe, but I started to believe I’d found my permanent place in it for my lifetime.  Nothing was perfect, but I took joy in my work and my relationship, and life was good.

The only thing I really missed, was the sun, and a cool breeze.  Maybe it was time to consider taking a vacation.

Of course, that’s when the other shoe dropped, and my past returned with a vengeance, to haunt me.

Chapter Six

I’d had an idea for a new product.  A cleaning robot that could form what it needed when it needed it using its own body mass, and it was powered by the small output power source Diana had invented.  No one would want a robot maid with a fusion plant at its center.  The trouble was A.I., there was a lot of safety features, even a maid robot the size of a person had billions of nanite processors, each one more powerful than most modern computers fashioned by man.

It was the software that was the problem.  The nanites prevented self-awareness on a macro level, so the intelligence of the ships and all that didn’t decide to act on the world around it without orders.  Of course, there was some interaction, like targeting sensors, or intrusion detection on the station, or many other things, but they were strictly defined things, and the weapons wouldn’t fire without specific instruction.

Cleaning by definition was messy and required insight and judgement with the ability for some level of self-initiative.

The parameters were a lot wider, between recognizing an enemy ship, or if something was truly a mess.  Like a randomly sized and defined spill on the floor for instance.  In short, a cleaning maid needed judgement, what to throw out, what to clean up, and what to pick up and put away.  I was trying to build something that actually worked, not something that randomly ran around the floor in chaotic patterns that missed vacuuming half the mess.  Those weren’t cleaning robots, they were toys.

The real problem was in deciding how much of their potential awareness to unleash.  There were moral implications to it, if I accidentally went too far, I’d be responsible for releasing a sentient lifeform, good or bad.  Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if I should try.  Maybe clearly defined and ordered cleaning tasks were best, and us humans could just pick up after the odd and unexpected spills.

Regardless, I was pretty focused on it when I half heard Jessica over at the control table.  She was in charge of docking and security for the main shift, and responsible for all three.

Jessica yelled angrily, “…teams to the docks immediately.  Hostile is to be considered armed and dangerous, deadly force is authorized.”

I frowned, snapped out of my building fugue, and looked over.

“What’s going on?”

Jessica growled, “Two of my people are dead.  I’m having trouble nailing down their location.”

I brought up the security footage by the docks.

Two guards were definitely down, and it looked like a tornado hit the place.  Walls were gouged out, and I felt chilled as I rewound the video.

Dale and Desirae.  What the hell were they doing here, and how did they get on the station?

“We’re looking for a sorcerer and a vampire.  Strong ones.”

On a hunch I ran a scan of the tunnels and small tram to the center of the station.  They were moving fast down one of the tunnels.  It wouldn’t take them long.

“They’re on the way here, locking down the command center and research labs.”

I connected with my magic and took care of that, as well as building the protective suit around me.  Theoretically the shields should stop Dale from tearing the walls apart with earth magic to get inside.  I also formed a number of shield emitters in the hallway in front their position as a trap, as well as a weapon or two.

I said, “Dale is a criminal, one I have history with and barely escaped from.  I don’t know how he got here, or what he’s up to.  He was the strongest sorcerer in my home town, but he should be on the wanted list back in the U.S.  He’s a cruel bastard, and he was using me under duress for my talents.”

Jessica scowled, “So he’s here for you?”

I nodded, “I can only assume he’s here for some sick entitled need for revenge.  The only question is if the U.S. government sent him or not.”

Maybe that last part was paranoid, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some black-ops group made some kind of deal with him after he’d been caught.  They really hated me down there, even if I managed to save the world, and all because I’d simply refused to die and protected myself.  The U.S., Germany, and England still hadn’t recognized us as a country.

The shield grid cut on when the sorcerer reached it, and the weapons were ready to fire from several directions.  That part of the station was far from other people, so I wasn’t overly worried about collateral damage.

I opened a channel.

“Dale, what brings you by?”

Dale snarled as his earth magic failed to harm the emitters through the shield, and he sent out a powerful fire and air attack to destroy them.  I wasn’t too worried, the shield was extremely strong, in the same class of the external shields which held off nuclear or anti-matter explosions.  He was an extremely powerful sorcerer, but weaker than Jemma had been, and Jemma had failed to get through the much weaker shields of my suit.

“Are you done yet?”

Dale snarled, “Screw you.”

“Listen up Dale, I’m inclined to just flush you into space.  You killed two of my citizens, and let’s face it, you kind of deserve to die.  So, did anyone send you, or are you just stupid?”

Jessica said, “Got him.  They arrived in a commercial shuttle under assumed names.  They’re booked for one of the resorts.”

That made a certain amount of sense.  It wouldn’t have been hard for them to leave America into one of the countries with a space port for tourism trade on the station.  It also handily removed any evidential link that he was sent by the government.  Assuming he was.

Dale said, “Let us go, and I’ll tell you everything.”

Jessica growled.  She was clearly unhappy at the idea of the bastard getting away, or walking from a deal, and the glare she sent my way backed up that impression.

I switched off the comms and said, “Relax Jess, you have my word, they won’t leave the station alive.”

Cassie said over comms, “I’ve been monitoring, and I’m right outside the shield.  Just knock them out, I’ll compel them as they wake up, and get us answers.”

Easier said than done, he’d have his own shields.  I couldn’t even just starve him of oxygen, because his power over air could refresh it.

“Is it worth it?  We’re in a different place now, politically I mean, and all the ships our allied countries are flying in space can’t fire on the Earth.  Say we find out what kind of deal they got, and who sent them, wouldn’t it make all the other countries on Earth nervous if I assassinate the architect of this plan from orbit?  They’re nervous enough of me already, it doesn’t seem prudent to remind them I could conquer the world if I wanted to, even if we both know I never would.  Just ruling this station is a pain in the ass.”

I hated the idea they’d get away with it, but I wasn’t just a citizen protecting myself anymore, I was the president of a nation.

Cassie tilted her head, then chuckled, “You make a good point, the old way won’t work anymore, and I’m impressed you can see that.  On the other hand, we’ll be able to bring accusations in media, social media, and when recognized in the U.N. we can call for sanctions.  A political black eye won’t be as satisfying, but it’s something.”

Yeah, but it would be so much more satisfying flushing that bastard into space.  I hadn’t forgotten his duress, or his threats against Jayna.

Dale scowled, “Well?”

After considering it for a moment, I added atmospheric shields to prevent losing air in the whole hallway, and then opened up a small tunnel to space.  The air was quickly blown out of the small shielded cell in the hallway and into space.  His power might’ve been able to filter air and remove CO2 and add oxygen, but it couldn’t create air.  He might’ve been able to hold it in place against the vacuum if he’d been ready for it, but he was obviously taken by surprise.

I tried not to smile pettily at the shock and rage on his face.  It only took a few seconds, and both of them hit the ground.  I immediately buttoned it up and dropped the atmospheric shields.  They both looked beat the hell up, but their chests were rising and falling in the corridor.  I used the nanites to form tightly around them with weapons facing in, like a suit of death, except for their head, and then dropped the shield.

Cassie moved forward.

“After you find the truth?”

Cassie smiled grimly, “I’ll do what’s appropriate.  A normal human assassin would get the benefit of the law and a trial, clearly this situation calls for a coverup, we can’t jail a sorcerer and vampire.”

I lifted the lockdown, but I shielded and closed off that part of the hallway just in case.  I had faith in Cassie, she was an ancient and powerful vampire after all, but Dale scared the shit out of me and I wasn’t going to risk anymore deaths.

Cassie, Jessica, and I sat around the command table in the command center less than an hour later.

Cassie said, “Their mission was to kill you, and kidnap and smuggle Diana off the station, they really want their best scientist back.  Their plan was to steal one of the station’s shuttles.  According to Dale they were to receive a full pardon for mission success, they were slated for death back in the U.S. for their crimes by the supernatural task force in the FBI, they’d been caught a little over a month ago.

“Regardless, they’re no longer a problem.  I’m not sure what we can do about this though, not without exposing the supernatural.  It’d be a risk to make accusations, because we can’t show evidence, or a trial, to back it up.  The U.S. would demand that accountability, then stonewall and say you’re just lying, unstable, and a danger.”

I blew out a breath, “Yeah.  Who was behind it?”

Cassie said, “An agent in the CIA, that is in the know about the supernatural world.  Dale didn’t have his real name, and who knows who his boss might’ve been.  I don’t like it, but we may have to call this good, at least Dale is no longer a threat.  You’re the leader of a nation, there will be other assassination attempts.  The cost of doing business.”

Oh, that was encouraging… not.  I was angry about it, but on the other hand not all that surprised either.  The U.S. government really hated me, and I didn’t see them acknowledging Astraeus as a country anytime soon.

“The damage is removed, and station repaired of course.  It was easy with the nanites.  What about our guards, did they have family on the station?”

Jessica shook her head, “I’ll write letters for their parents back on Earth, but neither of them were married, or had children.”

It just seemed really wrong to me, that the bastards behind it wouldn’t get their comeuppance, but it just wasn’t that simple anymore.  Damn politics, I felt angry and dirty, it felt like a betrayal of the deaths of my security people, even if we’d killed the ones that did it giving them justice in that way, if not the architects behind them.  Still, pushing revenge of any kind would just hurt us in the long run.

Chapter Seven

When I entered our living quarters that evening, the scents of bacon, ham, steak, and venison reached my nose.  Was that lamb?  My mouth watered, it’d been a while since I’ve had any of that, and our cattle and farm idea to make the station more self-sufficient was still on the drawing board.  Sure, the crops were a done deal on the automated farms on the bottom levels, but cows, pigs, milk, and all that were still in the planning stage.

My sister Jayna, along with Cassie and Diana were already in the kitchen when I walked in.  There were sausage links cooking in a pan on the stove, and several trays of meat that were cut up into samples.

Diana said, “Surprise.”

I couldn’t help my smile, and my stomach might’ve grumbled, but I took a moment to kiss Diana quite thoroughly before I sat down at the table.

“What’s all this?”

Diana smirked, “Give it a taste.”

I gave the steak cut up in cubes a try, and I sighed in pleasure at the explosion of flavors on my taste buds.  At Diana’s urging, I tried the rest of it, bacon, lamb, buffalo, pork, venison, sausage, and it all tasted good, but the texture of the meats all seemed a little off.  Delicious though.

“It’s all good, but what’s the deal?”

Diana said, “One of my scientists ran with the idea of cultured meats as a possible alternative to an animal farm.  The added benefit is it’s right here on the station, and with this we’re completely self-sufficient as far as food production goes.  Sure, we can still import, but we have everything we need for healthy balanced diet right here on the station now.”

I made a face.

Diana laughed, “Cultured meats never really caught on because without fat it tasted disgusting, does any of this taste bad to you?”

I smirked, “No, it’s really good actually, how?”

Diana said, “Obviously, a steak or side of beef is impossibly big for the energy to matter device.  There’s not much difference actually, as the various cultured meats grow in a vat.  What made the difference is using the energy to matter technology to form and create microscopic globules of fat, and to form them right inside the meat as it grows.  What do you think?”

I smiled, “It’s great.  The texture is a little off, probably because the fat isn’t a solid piece through the meat, but the taste is perfect, and I’ll get used to it.  So, outside of art and other luxuries, the station is fully self-sufficient now?”

Diana shrugged, “Pretty much.  Furniture, art, linens, not so much.  We could do it though, if we had to.”

“What else?”

I could tell she wanted to ask me something, just by her body language.  Whatever it was, she was excited about it.

Diana smiled, “I want a ship.  An automated test ship I can control.  I’d like to move it somewhere the other ships can’t see it, maybe in another solar system, not one of the ones with a colony planet but just a dead system.  Our ideas for more advanced weapons and power systems are at the point they need to be tested.  It doesn’t seem prudent to do so where others can see us.  Can you build me something that acts like an extension of the station, and give me full rights to it?”

I nodded, “It does seem prudent to keep an edge of advancement for ourselves, just in case, and that will prevent questions that would arise if we blow stuff up in our solar system.  I’ll have something ready for you in the morning.”

I used my magic to spin off another probe ship and set up the permissions.  I chose a random star within our fifty light year sphere that had no life bearing planets in it according to the data the grays gave us, and I sent it that way.  The only thing I locked down was the probe’s weapons systems wouldn’t work in any other solar system.  I had no doubts Diana wouldn’t use it to attack someone, but she had a lot of scientists under her, and it just seemed prudent to follow the same rules I’d made up for everyone else.  It would take hours for it to get far enough out to open a wormhole, but it’d be in place by morning for her team to work with.

It was also set up to keep getting larger, and to spin off small daughter ships for testing and remote sensors.  I supposed they’d be granddaughter ships in relation to the station, but point was if they accidentally blew up the main daughter ship, we’d have data on it.

“What kind of weapons?”

I was assuming she meant the advanced energy production that could make nanites self-powered, and therefore the ships as well, without a separate reactor.  I knew they already cracked the small-scale power which was already being offered in our devices and ships.  They would work on the kind of power I wouldn’t be comfortable with putting on a planet’s surface, or even in the atmosphere, like the fusion plants.  They’d been working on it for a while, the biggest problem was making that kind of thing safe.  If every nanite was its own reactor, then one exploding could lead to the whole ship going up.  Presumably, it was why the grays didn’t do that.

If the shields failed in battle on the current ships, the damaged nanites on the hull would just be sloughed off, and new shield systems would be built.  With their own power, that could cause a chain reaction.  Instead of brushing off some damage, the same attack could destroy the whole ship in secondary explosions.  She must be confident they can get around that issue somehow, or at least they were going to give it a try.

Diana replied, “A few things, we’re not sure what if any of them will be viable yet.  I’ll let you know in a week or so.”

I smiled, “Sounds good.”

I turned over control, and I let her know it’d be in place by morning.

Diana pointed at the trays and said, “So, can we go into production on this, offer it to our people and the resorts as a low-cost alternative to importing meats.”

“Yes, we’ll also add it as an option on the ships we sell.  It might be more cost effective than building cattle farms for the colonies once the ships are ready to go next month.”

Cassie said, “They’ll still need cows for milk production.”

That was a good point.  Still, it was a good plan, and would minimize that kind of need at the least.

We dropped the work at that point, and the conversation moved to more everyday things.

“You look fantastic, honey.”

Damn, she really did.  My Diana went from dressed down sexy librarian to goddess when she dressed to the nines.  Lovely green eyes, long raven hair, a face that got more beautiful to me every day, and her tight athletic body was wrapped up in a sinful red dress and black heels.

She truly was breathtaking, and I’d long since gotten over the fact she was older than I was.  I was hoping once the life extensions were approved, she’d lose even the small worry over it that she still held.  Eight years was nothing compared to the centuries we’d have together, if our relationship went the distance in all other ways outside of that shallow worry.  Really, that was her biggest worry I thought, she was very sure of me otherwise most of the time, or so it seemed to me.

We’d been living together the last four months or so after all.  About three and a half since she’d left Earth and joined me.

It’d been a while since we’d gone out, but after dinner I’d convinced her to give it a shot.  Of course, we’d have a guard presence with us in public, something I’d arranged with Jessica earlier.  I wasn’t just the owner of a station anymore, but president of a country.  Presidents didn’t usually go to dancing clubs at resorts.

Still, it wasn’t as dangerous as it sounded.  We had sensors that could pick up any weapons or explosives, and I’d feel a mage or other supernatural with my magic long before they were close enough to take a shot at me.  It was only the over two-mile distance between the center of the station and the docking ports that had allowed Dale to slip on board station without me feeling him.  He’d never gotten close enough to be a true threat to me.

Diana smiled, put her hands on my chest, and gave me a light kiss.  She looked happy, and more than a bit breathless and excited that we were going out.  I’d also like to think the admiration in my eyes had something to do with it as well.  Now that the station was up and running, we wouldn’t be stuck inside all the time, although for security sake we probably shouldn’t do it more than two or three times a month, and on random nights.  As time went on, more and more places would be open, I hoped anyway.

“Thanks, you look pretty good yourself.”

We left our home which was right near the command center at the center of the station, and we got onto a lift that would take us to the edge and then up a few levels to where the resorts were.  I took her hand as we got off, and I noted the security team that subtly followed us and pushed them out of my mind.

Between the three resorts and a few independent bars and clubs, there was more than enough variety to choose from.  It was a little bit like Vegas that way, lots of variety in clubs and bars, and there was gambling and even chapels to tie the knot and get married in space, overlooking the earth which looked like a large blue, white, and green marble.

We went to a jazz dinner club which had a live band.  It was bright and clean, subdued yellow walls, white tablecloths, fancy chandelier lighting over the tables but the dance floor was a bit dimmer.  Of course, we’d already eaten, so we just had a couple of drinks at the bar to loosen up, and then hit the dance floor.

More than a few people recognized us of course, but they let us be, and in truth I hardly even noticed overmuch, being mesmerized by her sparkling green eyes and the way she moved her body in that tight dress on the dance floor.  We had a lot of fun, danced, had a few drinks, and made our way home a few hours later.  Where the second part of our date started, and I got to peel that sexy red dress off of her.  It was a hell of a night, and something I was determined to do again.

Our relationship was strong, and I paid her plenty of attention, but there was an extra intimacy and enjoyment in each other that night.

At the end of the night, she lay in my arms with her head on my shoulder, both our hearts slowing in the relaxing moment before sleep.  Honestly, I couldn’t imagine my life without her.  She was beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and so much more than I could say in all the small things we did for, and meant to, each other.  Nothing was perfect of course, we fought at times, but I couldn’t think of a place I’d rather be.

“Love you, Diana.”

She kissed my chest, and said contentedly, “Love you, too.  Thanks for tonight.”

I smiled, “Anytime, and all my pleasure.”

She giggled naughtily, and smirked up at me, “Oh, there was some for me too.”

She asked perceptively, “There something on your mind?”

I quipped, “Opposed to the rest of the time, when its empty?”

She nodded teasingly in agreement.

I laughed, “The future.”

Diana sighed, “Me too.  Between the obvious assassination attempt using a criminal no less, and them not acknowledging us as a country and calling us rogue citizens and terrorists, it’s just a matter of time before the U.S. does something stupid again.”

I snickered, “That too, but I was wondering about our future.”

She blushed, “Oh.”

I dragged her body up and claimed a soft kiss.  The way her soft silky skin slid against mine, made me wonder if I didn’t have one more round in me, not to mention the sweet loving way she kissed me back.

She asked, “What about us?”

“I’m happy, and things are great.  There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

She tilted her head, “Me too.  Is there something you want to ask me, Scott?”

There really was, she was far too perceptive, but in bed after sex probably wasn’t the best place to pop the question, was it?  I also worried it hadn’t been long enough, we’d only been together for four months, even if we’d been living together for most of that time.  I didn’t want to scare her away, and if she said no things would blow up and get weird.  Time to pull up my big boy pants.

“We haven’t really talked about it, just wondering how you felt about marriage, family, children, and all that.”

She teased, “All that?” giving me absolutely nothing.

I nodded, and I looked down into her eyes.  She looked breathless, and more than wide awake.  Nervous and excited.  I really should’ve thought that through better, it wasn’t the time, but it was her perception of my preoccupied thoughts and question that got us here.  So, not my fault, but I was sure it would be somehow anyway, for not being romantic enough.  Still, too late and too awkward to backtrack now.

“I can’t imagine a night without you, much less a life.  I love you.  Would you be my wife, Diana?”

Her eyes widened, and then grew moist.  Still, she didn’t make me wait all that long, before she put me out of my misery.

“I’d love to, yes,” she said breathlessly.

My heart hammered, but at her yes my whole body relaxed, I hadn’t even realized I was tensed up.

I said, “We can choose and pick up rings tomorrow, after work?”

She nodded, and bit her lip, “Two kids, I hated being an only child, but do me a favor and minimize the whole first lady of Astraeus thing.”

I smirked, “We’ll see.  There’s state dinners, and interviews…” I got cut off as she slapped my chest and giggled.

We wound up staying up for quite a bit longer, truly talking about and planning out the future for the first time.  Well, our personal future I mean.  There was a joy in her eyes that was mesmerizing, and she didn’t tease me once about how unromantic I was, but I was sure it was coming at some point.  We also got around to that last round…

Chapter Eight

There was a lot going on.  Jayna and Cassie were in the conference room near the command center with me, and we were going over some things.  A briefing really, to let me know what they were up to, which turned out to be a lot.

Cassie was practically glowing though, it seemed like the crazier things got, the happier she was.

“We’re patent pending on the weaker power sources, and were in talks with several manufacturers worldwide, except of course in England, Germany, and the U.S.  Those three are still standing strong against recognizing us, though most of the other countries have, and at least all the important ones outside of those three are on board.

“Regardless, we’re talking to car and plane companies, electronics, lighting, heat and cooling, appliances, cell phones, and just about anything else that requires a power source.  It’ll take years of course, but at some point, the electrical infrastructure will completely go away.  Not just electric companies and power lines, but power infrastructure in homes, as everything is powered separately with cheap clean energy for years and years before it’ll need to be replaced.”

“Planes?”

She nodded, “The weaker power sources we feel comfortable with in atmosphere aren’t enough to power a high G artificial gravity field, never mind the needed inertial dampers at that rate of acceleration, but enough of them in parallel will power a small impulse drive.  A quarter G of acceleration is nothing to sneeze at, and as far as plane speeds, or car speeds, they’ll eventually be moving very quickly.  Also, at that rate of acceleration they won’t need inertial dampers.”

I nodded, “I can see that.  So flying cars, no more jet fuel, and every powered device in a home, car, or on a person, will eventually be clean energy.  That seems like a good thing, but all the energy sources out there will fight it.  We’d be shutting down a lot of industries.”

She shrugged, “We won’t have to fight that.  We’re marketing your ships and other inventions through our company, but we can’t overhaul the world, and you can’t design a new thing of everything.  Once the patents are in, we’ll sell rights to all the different manufactures, and let them fight their governments, big oil, and all that.”

Jayna nodded, “As it is, we’ve already got things selling on Amazon, small things and a taste of that future with your inventions taking advantage of quantum communications and small power, but that’s just a small piece of the pie.”

Cassie said, “The countries that have colony planets will also most likely go straight to the cleaner infrastructure as well.  There’s a lot going on, and my team has been growing to keep track of it all.”

“I get that.  Power, transportation, and communication industries will all be changed.  Have you been able to figure out what’s going on with England and Germany?”

The U.S. I got.  The people and citizens were good, I believed that, but I also knew the government was corrupt, and filled with paranoid control freaks.  I imagined if I’d come from any other country, their leaders would be blocking acknowledgement of our country, and trying to regain control of their former citizens.  It was the nature of all governments.

Still, the whole England and Germany thing was a mystery.  Not that it mattered overmuch, with the U.S. on the security council with veto power, it meant winning over all three, or we’d never be recognized officially by the U.N.  Even if all the other countries had acknowledged us separately already.

Cassie shook her head, “Whatever it is, it’s top secret, and at a very high level.  None of the ancients on the council in those countries have been able to figure out what’s going on there.  Still, we’re a country in the eyes of most of the world, and we’ll get there in the U.N. eventually.  The governments are huge, but it’s just a matter of time until they stumble across someone in the know.”

Right, with compulsion it’d be very hard to keep a secret from the vampire council embedded in their host countries.  But, they couldn’t just barge in on the president and demand answers either.

“Can we play hardball?  The colony ships will be done in a month, can’t we leverage that somehow.  How can the U.S. buy a ship from a terrorist?  That kind of thing.”

Cassie nodded slowly, then shook her head, “That would make us look petty, since they’ve already paid for it.  It would also anger the pioneering American people and companies that are going to start up their new world, who are at this time lobbying for us to be recognized, and for the government to get over themselves.  Doing that could backfire in a big way.  Public opinion is on our side, I’m actually surprised they haven’t caved yet.  We’re integral to the solar system’s defense, saved their bacon, and we haven’t done anything to piss them off, outside of you refusing to be murdered that is.”

“I’m selfish that way, and I’m not that surprised.”

Cassie frowned and shook her head, “I know they’re corrupt, but I worry they have a card we aren’t seeing.  They’re stonewalling, and they’re biding their time for something.  They really should have capitulated by now, so be careful.”

I nodded.

Jayna sighed, “Maybe we can’t threaten to derail their colonization effort, but I can work some memes and videos on social media that calls out their hypocrisy, and also highlights the fact we’re taking the high road and will deliver as promised, despite their spiteful attacks on us.  General opinion of us is very high, after all we kind of saved the Earth three months ago.”

Cassie grinned, “That will work, but probably only in how we’re seen by the populace of those three countries, the governments will stonewall it.  Still, it’s not a bad idea, because at some point the government will try to take us down again, and that favorable view of us in the population will help when we do stop them and kick their ass.  Hopefully.”

“Right, they’ll spin it as our fault, and that we’re violent, never mind the fact we were attacked, and didn’t do the attacking.  Every little bit will help there.  Anything else?”

Cassie smirked, “Tons.  Between opening alien relations for trade, new medicines, cures, and entertainment implants from said relations, all the changes to three multi-billion industries from your and Diana’s inventions, and becoming our own country.  There’s a lot going on.  It’s a great time to be alive.”

I sighed, and then resigned myself to a long meeting.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

In some ways, she looked even hotter to me when she dressed dowdy with a geeky lab coat and glasses instead of contacts.  Admittedly, I was heavily biased, and it was probably the love talking.  There was a two-karat solitaire on her ring finger as well, and a besotted smile on her face that hadn’t left since we’d picked up rings almost two weeks ago.

Not much had happened over those two weeks, except sales for ships I’d designed, personal and commercial, as well as the phones and small communication devices, and other things on Amazon such as small power devices had taken off.  Of course, we were also two weeks farther along on the colony ship builds, just two weeks left give or take a few hours before I turned over the ships, and eight countries would load them up and claim new worlds.  America, England, Russia, China, Japan, France, Germany, and Israel.

Nothing at all had changed in regards to our country’s acknowledgement from the three major hold outs.  I think the worst thing about that was that we were disconnected from any announcement from the Grays as to their messed-up empire.  The communication device given to our world was held by the U.N., and the transmissions and updates from the Grays about new worlds, notification of solar systems being attacked or getting caught attacking, wasn’t something I was privy too.  I wouldn’t be privy to any of it, until our station was recognized as a sovereign country in the U.N., and we got those reports as well, as a member country.

I probably could’ve hacked my way in, in my sleep, but Cassie had asked me not to do that stuff anymore.  All our connections to the internet, entertainment, and phone companies were all legal now.

In short, I hated being in the dark on what was going on past our heliopause.

Diana smirked, “Hi there yourself.”

We were in the control center, she’d just joined myself and Jessica.

“What’s up?”

She smirked, “We have some good results to share.”

She interfaced with the control table, and then brought up the daughter ship controls for the lab ship I’d given them and put in a barren solar system.  Oh, there were a couple of rocky planets, three asteroid belts, and two gas giants.  The solar system would be a good source of raw materials at some point, but no living worlds.

She said, “We figured out the power idea is a bad one.  At least, mostly bad, but found a way to leverage it anyway.  Self-powering every nanite on the main ship would be suicide in battle, the first time an anti-matter missile, or energy beam broke through the shields, and destroyed a nanite, it would start a chain reaction that destroys the entire ship in secondary explosions.  All our attempts to overcome that chain reaction failed, the system just isn’t fast enough to compensate and get ahead of it.  I suspect that’s why the Grays still use fusion.  But, it did have other possibilities, which I’ll get back to in a moment.  First, the demonstration.”

She brought up the weapons systems, and she chose a new one.  The usual energy beam which was viable from one light second, and the much shorter-range anti-matter beam, was joined by a disintegration beam option.

She targeted both a small shielded probe ship, and a small asteroid, then fired.

Both the ship, and the asteroid just kind of… disappeared.  Holy shit.

She said, “The ray destroys molecular bonds at the atomic level, similarly to how the nanites flow and reshape themselves, the beam causes them, or the pure matter on the asteroid, to separate.  They weren’t really destroyed, just separated, the asteroid’s original mass is still there, just in molecular sized pieces.  Not subatomic, which is why there’s no explosion.  The current shielding on our ships can’t block it at all.  The only drawback is the effective range is even shorter than the anti-matter beam, maybe an eighth of a light second, which is knife range in a space battle.  It would be difficult to get close enough to use it against a stronger opponent, and probably unneeded against a weaker one.  Still, I built the option into our energy weapons, just in case because you never know.”

I grunted.

She smirked, “Don’t worry, I’m not done with show and tell, and I started out with the bad news.  Here’s the good news.”

She targeted a second shielded probe, and then fired.  Absolutely nothing happened.

She explained, “This probe has the new upgraded shields, to defend from such an attack.  We have to assume our enemies will match anything we come up with, so it seems prudent not to use anything we can’t protect ourselves from.  Anyway, back to power.

“Powering all of the nanites is bad, but at the same time a block of nanites the size of one of the fusion reactors will actually put off more energy.  That means we can build nanite reactors, instead of going through the trouble of building fusion reactors.  More than that, it means no more stopping for gas, if we decide to make the change, since that power comes from a combination of vacuum and Casimir energy.

“Still, we don’t actually want to do that, we want to make it safer.  A lucky shot could take out a big section of a ship or station, much like if the enemy managed to breach containment on a hot fusion reactor.  Here’s the thing, we can minimize that by spreading out the power, instead of in my example, using a block of nanites the size of a reactor, instead we’ll spread out the ones giving power through the whole ship.  If one gets hit, the surrounding non-reactor nanites will absorb the miniscule explosion and stop it from causing a chain reaction.  In short, the ship will have millions of microscopic reactors, all of them separated evenly throughout the ship, except maybe the hull where we could have a thicker group of normal nanites to absorb damage from enemy fire.  The larger the ship’s mass, the more power to run the mass of nanites.

“It also leads me to a much more effective weapon, at range.  Missiles are kind of throw away, and who cares if it blows up.  What I mean is, if a missile is taken down by point defense, it’s going to blow up anyway.  So, the missiles will be powered by self-powered nanites instead of pre-charged super-capacitors.  This gives us a huge advantage, because it won’t be limited to the amount of energy it can hold in its super capacitors, and the energy will technically never run out.  So, what does that give us?

“First, the missiles will have an unlimited range, forget only having the power to reach out two light minutes.  Second, the missiles will be shielded, we’ll have the power to burn so why not.  That adds up to forcing the enemy to waste even more power to take down a missile, which means they’ll be unable to split their fire as much when taking out a missile barrage.  For enemies without the Gray technology that can adapt the strength of their point defense on the fly, it may very well make their static point defense worthless.  The new shielded missile would’ve been immune to the point defense on the race that attacked us over three months ago, for instance.

“Third, the gravity and anti-matter missiles will be a lot stronger, more energy equals more powerful gravity field or more energy to burn creating anti-matter during transit.  Fourth, a new missile type.  Disintegration missiles.  They’ll be shielded and have an unlimited range like the others, and they’ll also have a disintegration beam.  Remember that short range limitation for the beams on the ship?  The missile will fly at the ship, and fire disintegration beams at it when it reaches an eighth of a light second from target, and it will fire once every second until it is either destroyed or passes out of range.  More than that, the missile is recallable if it isn’t taken down by enemy point defense, think of it more as a very small weapons platform than a missile, since this missile will never hit the enemy’s shields or ship.”

Oh, holy shit.

“You are so hot.”

She blushed.

Jessica snorted.

I shrugged helplessly, not quite sure myself why her deadly intelligence was such a turn on to me.

“That’s kind of amazing.  What if the enemy hits one of those stored missiles while it’s still in the hull?”

She nodded, “It’s a small risk, the missiles will be like a turned off reactor until they’re ejected from the ship, so there’d be no secondary explosions if the enemy broke through the shield and hit one still in the hull.  I suppose if an enemy beam or missile hits our missile right as it’s leaving the ship, that explosion would harm the ship.  One way to get around that danger is to eject the missiles opposite the enemy, and then have them fly around our ship then toward the enemy.  By the time they could be hit with enemy ordinance, the missiles will be shielded themselves and far enough away that we wouldn’t be harmed from backlash.

“Of course, that’s only a danger if our ships shields have gone down, in which case we’d be in deep shit and taking damage already.  With the shields up, it gives the missile plenty of time to power up, raise shields, and will be outside of our shield before it can be hit, which all in my opinion weighs positive in the risk verse reward quotient.”

I nodded, “I had no idea, but I didn’t expect this.  I’m more than impressed.”

She grinned, and she held out her pad.

I sent my magic into it, and I absorbed all the tech and how to build it.  Of course, all that was already on the computers, I wouldn’t have to use my power to upgrade the station’s offenses and defenses, but the point was I could now build it from scratch, and I’ll add it to my powered suit.

“I’ll get all those upgrades on our station and daughter probe ships.  Obviously, any ships we sell won’t have that technology in it, shields or weapons.  I’ll also start offloading the nine hundred fusion plants we have as I build new ships that we’re selling, eventually we’ll be powered by the nanites only.  Anything else going on?”

She nodded, “Not related to defense or the station.  We’re close to unpaired quantum communication, but it’s still finicky.  Other stuff is just life improvement and convenience type things, I’ll let you know when any of it needs to be added to our offered products online.”

I nodded.  That sounded fine, it’d probably take her hours a day to keep me fully updated on what she had going on.  It made more sense to just worry about communicating the stuff that solidifies into viable products, and god knows I wouldn’t understand the pure research at that level of science, so there was no point discussing those past what she dropped out of excitement in our everyday conversation.

She added, “I think we should wait another year and ten months for the life extension, and other biological upgrades we may want to try.  Two years should give us some surety there won’t be problems, given the Vax’s track record with medicine.”

“But…” I asked.

She smirked, “Two months seems long enough for the AR implant testing, there’s been no negative side effects, and they have no radiation at all being quantumly paired so there’s no unknown risk in longer exposure.  I know you’ve been dying to try them, and I’m pretty curious myself.  Phone, internet, television, entertainment, meetings, VR simulations, all in our heads and on virtual overlays.  Not to mention notes, contacts, organization, and all that.”

I said excitedly, “Jess, I’ll be right back, we’re going to medical.”

They both snickered.

Regardless, the Augmented Reality implants were cool, and could replace about every personal electronics device out there, but in the end, it was just another tech toy even if it did replace my cellphone, television, and personal computer, putting it all in my head and literally at the tip of my thoughts.  Not that I didn’t enjoy it, or that I wasn’t totally geeking out.  Got to love those Vax.

I also supposed waiting another twenty-two months wouldn’t make much difference in the genetic life extension therapy.  We were both young and healthy, and in the end, it wouldn’t make it less effective.

It also wasn’t lost on me after Diana’s presentation, that powered nanite suits were possible now, instead of using my magic.  But… they were incredibly dangerous, even just one nanite overloading could be deadly in a thin layer of nanites over soft flesh.  Otherwise I’d have built one to keep Diana safe, but for now I stuck with my own, which was self-powered through my Technomancer magic.

Chapter Nine

“Morning.”

The coffee cup in my hand steamed, and I took a small sip.

Jessica smirked, “Morning, boss.  The computer flagged some traffic last night when we were asleep, which was a bit odd, you should take a look first.  I don’t want to bias you.”

I grunted, and then took another sip of life-giving coffee as I sat down and brought up the logs.

The computers flagged any ships leaving and coming into the system, or that’s how I set it up.  Obviously, that didn’t happen a whole lot yet, the Vax had only visited once and so far they hadn’t been back.  No doubt waiting for our phone call to order more stuff.  There were some human merchant ships out there, I’d sold a few, but not all that many yet, and none of the rich people that bought an interstellar yacht had left the solar system yet.

I reviewed the logs, and ten scout ships… the original crash-landed kind that I’d first reversed engineered with my magic from the grays, had come in system early last night.  They’d set course for Earth, so I hadn’t been notified of it as they weren’t judged a danger to the station in the least.

The fleet around Earth responded and moved to intercept, but then suddenly stopped and returned to their station keeping around the planet.  The logs traced them all going down to Earth, loading up with people and supplies, then taking off and heading back out.  The sensors didn’t have enough data to tell how much they’d loaded up, but ten scout ships could hold a lot of people and supplies, a whole lot.

At that time, the ten ships were still in system, heading back out to where they could build a wormhole at sixty gravities.  What set off the most alarm bells in my mind, was where they’d picked up people and supplies.  The U.S., England, and Germany.

Son of a bitch, I was an idiot, a big dumb idiot.  The U.S. wasn’t blackmailing the other two countries to not recognize me, they were bribing them.  This wasn’t good.

I ran a search of all the logs for some specific information, and they came back negative.  Damnit all to hell.

“I’m getting Cassie in here, but I already have a good idea what happened, what is happening.  At the same time, I have no idea what to do about it.”

Jessica sighed, “Me either, based on your face I’m guessing my alarming conclusions are the same as yours?”

I laughed, “Possibly.  Let’s wait though, I don’t want to beat a horse twice.”

Cassie showed up looking fantastic as usual, and at my direction took an independent look.  It only took her a few minutes to catch up, and she didn’t look all that happy either.

Cassie blew out a breath, “They’re picking up command crews for a fleet.  They must’ve been building one in another solar system for the last three and a half months, since they tried to take you out and you took them out of space.  But how, none of the ships you sold or gave to the other countries to defend Earth have that capability.”

I smirked, and looked at Jessica, who just shrugged at me.  Rather than drag out the suspense, I took over.

“The tattle-tale ship.  I just checked the logs, and the scout ship they launched and sent to the Grays right after battle, but before confronting us, never came back.  I can only assume they heard what happened, and they have a top-secret entangled communication device on board which they used to get secret orders.  I feel foolish for not noticing they never came back, but in all the excitement it fell through the cracks.  So… that one scout was the only ship the U.S. still had three and a half months ago.

“Let’s assume worse case, that they were told to build a fleet.  Let’s also assume that fleet is two weeks away from being done, which would give the command crews some time to familiarize themselves with systems before their armed fleet comes back to Earth space.  In two weeks, it will also not so incidentally, be right after I turn over the eight colony ships.

“They probably timed it that way on purpose, because they know I could repurpose all that mass into thirty-six large battleships in less than an hour, it’s already built after all.  Or almost built.  Back to the point.

“So, first week they make five scouts with the one scout, second week twenty-five for a total of thirty, then one hundred fifty for the third week with a total of one eighty.  The fourth week they could build nine hundred more, or a total of one thousand and eighty.  Then, over the last three months, they could build out every one of those scout ships into a large mile long battleship.”

They both looked shocked.

I shrugged, “That’s worst case.  Of course, in truth, it’s probably a lot less than that.  I don’t think they could have fit twenty thousand people for command crews on just ten scout ships.  Still, even if they only took two thousand people, command crews for a hundred large battleships which is only a tenth of the worst-case scenario, they’d still out-mass us twenty-five to one.  But… only three to one, if they attack us before I turn over and release the colony ships.  So let’s assume they aren’t stupid, and we have at least two weeks to work on a solution.

“I’m not sure if I’m more worried that they’ll be coming for us again, or about the fact that three countries now have interstellar ships capable of conflict.  No doubt, after killing me, those three countries will take over selling ships, and eventually all countries will have an armed interstellar presence.  Not to mention, they’ll be able to fire on Earth, and other country’s ships.”

Cassie sighed, “I don’t see any flaws in your theory, but chances are they won’t be simple battle ships.  The U.S. did have all those templates, just no ships left to apply them too.  I think Diana created several classes of ship, at least in theory.  They could use those fighters, have carriers, and a mixture of different kinds.”

I nodded, “I was more concerned with the mass.  That will be more telling than anything else in a battle.  Surprise matters, but we’ll have hours to scan the fleet that shows up, and house to come up with counters if anything puts our plan in doubt.  Of course, my four times a mile-long ship mass should only have sixty-four reactors, but we have nine hundred.  That will make a huge difference as well, stronger shields, and able to fire more point defense and missiles.  Not to mention Diana’s upgrades.  Still, it won’t help that much, the station isn’t nine times as capable, because mass determines processing power, how many locks at once and all that.

“Regardless, we need to come up with a defense plan, or prepare to run so we can play the build game and come back.  Ideas?”

Cassie said, “We should detach the civilian part of the station, just like we would in an alien attack.”

I nodded, “Of course, it’d be contemptible to hide behind civilian lives.  It also wouldn’t work I don’t think.  There’s only three resorts, and a few bars and clubs, so it should be easy enough to just lose the top level, make it a probe ship of sorts where we’d still control it.  The automated farms can stay with us.  If they’re going to attack us, we should also clear the docking ports.

“Perhaps most significantly, we have all of Diana’s upgrades.  That will make a big difference.  I’ve also built several million missiles the last three months, which can be converted to the new ones easily enough.  In fact, that’s mostly done already.

“Lastly, the thirty-six probe ships, I should be able to make those nanite power houses, and in the next two weeks grow them to large battle ship size.  They’d easily grow six times faster, two weeks instead of three months.  Added to the station’s mass, assuming they do have a hundred ships and not more, that’d be five to two on mass, instead of twenty-five to one.  Which while not great, is a hell of a lot better.”

Jessica asked, “Can you do that with the station?”

I shook my head, “Too dangerous.  Though we could double the size in two weeks, with nine hundred reactors.  The problem is the other ships would see us doubling the size of the station, and the U.S. might abort and keep building.  I’m afraid we need to look weaker, or they’ll double their ante too, and depend on the new defense and weapons Diana has given us.”

Cassie said, “Won’t they see the small probes becoming the mass equivalent of mile long warships?”

I shook my head, “The reason I have probes at all is to see the blind spots of the inner system, because we can’t see those approaches from L1, or from Earth.  The Earth fleet is stationed around the planet, and don’t have probes out.  Right now, all of those ships are positioned where they can’t be seen, to monitor the approaches and spaces we can’t see.  They are all in the inner system though, before Jupiter, so as soon as the US, Germany, and England fleet shows up we can call them in.  At that point, they won’t have a choice and will be committed to their course.

“I’ll also be turning off the probe ships higher energy production at that point, and initiating the safer spread out nanite power cores, so the whole probe ship won’t blow up if their shields are breached.”

Cassie sighed, “And sending out more probes to build, so we can come closer to parity?”

I nodded, “They’ll see me spin out the new ships, which will get them wondering what’s going on.  If any of the ships in Earth orbit investigates, they’ll see our current probe ships growing.”

Cassie nodded, “I came to the same conclusion, I was just hoping you’d see a way around it.”

Jessica said, “Okay, one thing we haven’t covered, what if they don’t attack.  What if they just move in with their fleet, and open up trade, and start selling their ships which won’t be locked down at all.  The other countries would stop buying from you at that point.  I mean, you have those new missiles with no range, but chances are they won’t declare their intentions as soon as they get in system, or even set course directly toward the station to keep you guessing.

“Which will take that advantage off the board.”

Cassie sighed, “She’s right, we can’t fire first.”

“The cloaking and taking over their ships won’t work either, we have to assume they’ve figured that part out.  Still, I could design tiny probes and put them out there, say the size of a softball, and see if I can get any close enough, but us going out there like last time would be suicide.”

Cassie said, “Agreed.  All they’d have to do was tune the sensors a little differently, and they’d see us.  If they’re smart, all their sensors will be tuned slightly differently, so that we can’t adjust, going after one ship that way would be seen by the rest.”

“Back to Jessica’s point.  If they move in peaceably, and just open up a competitive ship building platform or space station, I’d be more than happy with that.  So what if they don’t buy our warships anymore.  We sell a lot of non-war products, and we can handle a little competition.  Even if they won a selling war there, we are highly diversified, including tourism.  We’re also self-sufficient enough and have enough money to stay in the black for the next several thousand years, I’m not worried about competition at all.  At worst, our city would grow at a slower rate.  Still, something tells me that’s wishful thinking.”

Jessica asked, “Why?  I mean, I kind of agree, but why do you think so?”

I said, “They’d have acknowledged us as a country if they wanted peace with me and to give up on their vendetta.  They wouldn’t have sent an assassin two weeks ago.  Acknowledging us would prevent me from attacking them neatly, and it’d give them the high ground.  No, they’re still calling us terrorists on the news, and trying to get other countries to repudiate their acknowledgment.  No, they’ll attack, the only question is how, when, and how they’ll spin it and justify it to the rest of the world.  Without acknowledging us, no U.N. membership, no sanctions if they cross a line.  Even if there was an outcry by other countries, the U.S. would have all the leverage.

“At that point, they’d have the only fleet in space that could go offensive on the planet and other ships, and with us gone they’d be the only game in town to get into space.  The other countries wouldn’t stick their necks out at that point, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot.”

Cassie said, “The people would be pissed, our products are very popular on Amazon, and I’d imagine they will continue to be until the power, communications, and travel upgrades are more mainstream.  Still, that wouldn’t really change anything.”

I nodded.  I also got started on my plan, the build thirty-six ships quickly plan.  Hopefully, our guesses were right, and that would cut down the odds to below double digits, five to two was a hell of a lot better than twenty-five to one.

“Okay, let’s assume we win, that Diana’s upgrades and my overpowered space station will overcome those odds.  Let’s decide now what happens then, because right after the battle I’m going to be very pissed off, feeling self-righteous, and once again in command of the only ordinance that can target Earth.  Say, Washington, DC.  Oh, we also need to take one of their ships, even if we have to beat it down first.  I want to know where their build system is, if we win this battle we can’t afford to have another one in four more months, and we’ll have to assume they’ll leave behind a ship or two.  That means at least one of their ships, we send no disintegration missiles against it.”

I had those smaller probe missile ships that I could send my magic through, to appropriate a ship no matter its internal security or permissions, but the trick would be getting that missile close enough to take over their systems and get into their data, specifically their navigation data.  Having a copy of their plan would help too, when I shared it with the world, and embarrassed them with their perfidy.

I had all the leverage there, on my ships that I sold to defend their solar systems, the armed ones would be stuck there.  They were essentially un-hackable and locked down to defend their own solar system and not be copied, and not attack allies or planets.  Sure, at some point they’d figure out how to build their own nanite, and replicate that out with whatever programming they wanted, but that would take a long while.  For now, they were stuck with copying what they had.  It was my own damned fault for completely forgetting the tattle-tale scout ship they’d sent out, and that I hadn’t found and destroyed three and a half months ago.

Cassie nodded, “I can agree to that, removing their out of solar system build site I mean, if we can find it.  It would be kinder to do that to all of their ships, but at five to two odds, assuming the odds won’t even be worse, there’s a lot of leeway between a hundred and over a thousand ships after all.  At two hundred, it’d be five to one, instead of fifty to one granted, but it’s a thing.  Point being, we can’t afford to be nice and not kill to defend ourselves with the new tech, not being so outnumbered.  Like you said, stealth probably won’t work this time.  No one is that stupid.”

I laughed.

“Agreed, that’s why I said one ship.  We’ll let those sailors live, if we can get more we will, but I won’t risk the station or death.  If they want war, if they attack us, they’ll get war this time, not tricks.  Back to the point, assuming we win, we trace down their build solar system and cleanse it.  What do we do about America, Germany, and England?  Can we afford to take the high road again?  We need to end this, and then look to the future.  The galaxy is a big dangerous place, war internally at this point is just stupid, damned paranoid spooks and power-hungry politicians, may they all be damned.”

Cassie frowned, “Taking out their leadership isn’t an option.  Not now that you’re a head of state yourself.  We have to assume this is all them by the way, at the highest levels, otherwise my people would have uncovered it weeks ago.  Sure, they’ll be ignoring that, and be coming after you personally, but they haven’t acknowledged Astraeus as a country.”

I noted, “The current ten large and seventy some odd small battleships won’t be an issue, they can’t stop us, or fire on us.  I get your point, but we can declare war can we not?  We can demand they acknowledge our sovereignty.  By attacking us, and failing, they will have lost both the moral high ground on the world stage, and any leverage they might’ve had with their ships over the other countries who have acknowledged us.  My question to you is, what’s the best way to do that?  Fine, Pennsylvania Avenue is off the table, but what isn’t?  In short, we need to kick them in the teethe, and give them no choice.  Once they acknowledge us as a country, and we’re a member of the U.N., they’ll have to start observing the niceties and stop trying to assassinate me or blow us up.”

I was already kind of pissed off, and we hadn’t even fought yet.  We’d also made a lot of assumptions, but I didn’t think we were wrong on any of it.  The only thing we weren’t sure about was how many ships the enemy would be attacking with.

Cassie nodded, “I’d be reluctant to mess with any of their colonies.  All three countries involved are on that list, and they’re waiting for the colony ships.  The people going are good people, who’ve all shown support to us.  Whatever we do needs to be here, and of course taking down their build system.  You should be ready to move immediately on that, if you do take one of their ships, it’s a foregone conclusion that at least one scout from there could run, and they’ll start all over somewhere else.”

Damn, I hadn’t even considered that.  My enemies weren’t stupid and wouldn’t wait for me to show up if I compromised one of their ships.  At least, they weren’t stupid outside of their insane need to take me down, and their need to be in control of everything.  I hadn’t attacked them even once, and I had only defended myself and refused to lay down and die for their peace of mind.  In truth, they were the damned terrorists, all I’ve done is protect myself, and the solar system.

“Alright, I have an idea for that.  Diana won’t be happy, but it’ll just be for two weeks.”

Cassie tilted her head, “Use the ships in our test solar system to build a small offensive fleet?”

I nodded, “I think with what’s there already, we can build out six warships in two weeks, and have them already far enough out from the sun to immediately wormhole to the enemy’s build system, as soon as we have the location.  We can also spin off a few more small test ships before we leave, so she has her mobile lab again at that point.”

Cassie smirked, “You get to tell her.”

I laughed, “Fine.  So, we have a plan for the battle, sort of, and a plan to prevent another one by taking their build system.  We avoid the colonies, but that still leaves the question of what to do here, on Earth, to get them to finally capitulate.  Assuming of course, we’re not defeated, but even then we can retreat and regroup if things start to look too questionable.”

Maybe.  Chances were that if we had to stand off a missile barrage all the way out to where we could safely create a wormhole, we wouldn’t make it.  We’d have to be sneaky, and I let the back of my mind turn over the possibilities.  The safest thing would be to detach the command center, and fight remotely, but they’d be watching for that no doubt, which meant I needed something new and unexpected.

Cassie nodded, “That’s easy enough.  We declare war as a nation, make our demands and set the conditions of their surrender, then give them a big bloody nose and wait for their response.  Military targets only.”

I nodded, “Agreed.”

I sighed and shook my head.

Jessica asked, “What?”

I smirked, “I’m more nervous about telling Diana I’m repossessing her toys for the next fourteen days, than I am about the impending attack.”

Cassie giggled.

I gave her a glare on my way out the door…

Chapter Ten

Diana was surprisingly understanding, or maybe I’d just underestimated her anger at the U.S. who wouldn’t just leave us alone.  She was more than willing to give up two weeks of testing further advancements, to put the ships in place.  I also suspected they might not have had any new ideas that were ready for testing out in the real world, but I kept that speculation to myself and didn’t ask.

We also decided at her suggestion to make twenty-four of the smaller warships instead of six large ones, which would make it easier to guarantee an intercept on any fleeing ships before they reached wormhole distance from the sun.  The best part was they’d be controlled from our space station, without a person on it.  Without the need for strict inertial dampening, the small warships would be capable of six hundred gravities of acceleration, ten times faster than a manned ship, which would reduce the chance of them escaping even further.

We could only control so many ships at once, at least well, but given when that started the battle here in SOL would be finished, the vast space station wouldn’t have a problem implementing commands and fighting that many ships at once at our command.

When we finished with that, she had something for me that was completely unrelated.

Diana said, “Norway, Sweden, and Iceland contacted me, or at least scientists from there that work with the government.  They want to set up lab spaces on the station, and to work through us to get some of those Vax doctors out here.  They’re very interested in doing some work to combat genetic diseases and defects.  I believe they’re hoping to figure out how to do it ourselves at some point.

“Sure, we’d still have to buy their stuff, but we could learn how to modify it and program it so it fixed things correctly, and how to target it to defects which are quite often unique.  They want to get the testing going now, and start some programs, so in ten years when all the enhancements and easier cures are available for widespread use, the more specific and random genetic treatments could be approved as well.”

“I’m not unopposed to charity, but what are they offering us in return for us selling a wormhole drive so they can have a Vax doctor or two to work with?”

She smiled, “A long term investment.  Theoretically at the end of ten years, when it’s approved by various first world countries and their equivalent to the FDA, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland will be the world’s experts of that niche of healthcare, where it isn’t just someone buying a standard injection, and it needs to be tailored to the patient and genetic disease.  They’re offering us five percent of the net profits for twenty years after it’s been approved on the worldwide stage.”

“Alright, I’ll ask for a Vax geneticist for two years, that should be long enough for them to figure out the process in tailoring the medicine, and I’ll see if we can get some AR implants out of the deal as well.  We can sell those as soon as they’re approved.”

She nodded, “Good plan, no doubt AR implants will be approved long before the life extension DNA correction, and enhancement and general cure cocktails that don’t have to be tailored and are ready for use.”

“That’s what I was thinking.  Anything else?”

Granted, we’d be taking those life extensions two years into the study ourselves.  That should be long enough to decide if it’s safe, even if the FDA made America wait ten years.

She smirked, “We need a vacation, we also need to set a date and plan our wedding.  I suppose it can wait until after the U.S., Germany, and England make their move, but we’ll always be busy.”

I nodded, “That sounds good to me.  Do you think it’s safe to go anywhere though?  On the planet I mean.”

She frowned, “Probably not, too dangerous, but we can always stay at one of the casino resorts.  There’s lots to do on station now.  I’ve always wanted to see Italy, or take a trip across Europe, but we’d be stuck visiting heads of state if we tried that, and we’d be dodging assassins.  Maybe you could spin off one of those fancy yachts you sell, and we can tour the planets of the solar system.”

“That last one sounds good, we can spend a couple of days at a resort, then finish out the week on a very private and personal space tour.”

She grinned, “Good.  Captive audience to plan our wedding day.”

I mock shuddered in horror, which made her giggle.

We made plans for lunch, it’d been a hell of a morning already.  Then I stole her toys, and I started building out ships.  That was twenty-four small warships for the follow up strike so they couldn’t do it again, and thirty-six large warships to help protect the station.  I also built out a few hundred of those softball sized probes that would enable me to steal one of their ships and get the data.  The only trick was getting it within the reach of my magic, a few hundred feet was a ridiculously small distance in the vastness of space, even in the solar system.  Of course, we only had to take over one of their ships, which would be easier once most of them were destroyed.

I was sure I’d have scenarios and ideas playing in my head for the next two weeks, we had a good guess on mass, but not on strategy or what their ships would actually be, or when they’d attack.  Hopefully I’d have a good idea what to do when the time came.  At the very least, it’d take them over ten hours to get to Earth after arriving in system, which would give us plenty of last-minute brainstorming time to round out our tactics.

I gave Threx and Pherie a call.  We negotiated for a while, and he’d be sending one of his cousins to drop off a scientist for two years.  They’d also be delivering a million AR implant devices.   That sounded like a lot, but in the end given over seven billion people on the planet it wasn’t all that much.  We’d be buying a lot more of them I was sure, and we’d start all over again when it came time to purchase the medical miracles and life extensions they offered.

Last, but not least, I set up a lab space, a suite for the geneticist to stay in, as well as rooms for the research doctors and test patients from Norway, Sweden, and Iceland.

I also found the cousin part somewhat amusing; it was nice to know nepotism was alive and well in the galaxy at large…

The next two weeks passed both quickly and slowly.  Quickly because there was a lot going on, and it all seemed to be coming fast.  Slowly, because I was frustrated, angry, and wanted to get the confrontation over and done with so we could look to the future.  If it wasn’t for Diana, I think I might have acted prematurely, but her presence and support, and our time together at night, helped with that.

Business as usual when we knew of the threat coming just felt wrong, even if I knew it was the smartest way and really only way to play it.  On the good side, preparations went well.  The ships were building up even faster than I expected, as each time we added a reactor’s worth of nanite mass, the building accelerated as it came online and powered five more energy to matter devices.

I thought of very little else in my spare time, but strategies of fighting and possible retreat, fortunately I was busy enough that I got some relief from that when one of the others claimed my attention with station duty or personal time.  Of course, none of the retreat ideas, if it became necessary, were foolproof.  Not if I waited for the enemy fleet to close first that is.

I believed we’d be ready for them, even at greater odds, but it would be a gamble.

The beginning of the second week the volunteer study patients and doctors arrived on station, as did a Vax scientist named Nix.  We also took on the AR implants, and set up another wormhole drive on Threx’s cousin’s ship.  The implants went into secure storage, until the time came when we were able to offer it for sale.

I’d also worked on a personal project of sorts, a device I’d never sell.  At first I’d rejected the idea of building a powered suit-ship like the one I had for Diana because it was too dangerous.  On balance, if she was hit with anything that broke through a shield the strength of a ship, and made one of the nanites explode, I figured she’d be dead anyway.  On the good side, small arms fire, steel weapons, small energy weapons, all would be protected from.

I also doubled the safety by adding in a containment field.  It was essentially just a second inner shield that would protect from an exploding nanite if something went wrong.  The powered nanites were spread out through the suit, but not evenly.  I put them mostly in the arms and legs, where they were spread out evenly there.  Theory being, people shot for heads and center mass, which lowered the chances of one being hit.  It was probably a waste of time, anything breaking through the shield at all would rip through the suit and damage the body, but I was driven to make it as safe as possible.

The suit had shields, a small gravity drive, life support, a nanite healing bed built in, and a navigation interface as well as threat detection sensors.  It could also fire weapons, both deadly and non-deadly.  Chances were it would never be needed, at least not in a large battle, if the entire station was destroyed the suits wouldn’t have a chance.  But, for assassins, an invasion, or abandoning ship without a ship, it would make a big difference.

I set it up to be self-triggered and to automatically trigger in appropriate circumstances, and if triggered it would take less than two seconds for a piece of the wall or floor they were standing on or next to, to build a suit around them.  Lastly, I gave Diana, Jayna, Cassie, Jessica, and the entire security force on station access to them.  I may have built it to keep Diana and those close to me safe, but it would be stupid not to use it to preserve the lives of my security force.

If I’d done so sooner, Dale wouldn’t have managed to kill two of them, or get as far as he did.  Of course, that happened before Diana broke the power problem, so I didn’t really feel guilty about the lack at that time.  I just felt stupid for not doing it right away once it was available.

As far as all the civilians, contractors, and other people on the station.  They would all be put in those instant escape pods I’d designed, which would take them to Earth if the ship was close to destruction.  I didn’t believe that would ever be a problem though, in battle the top levels of the station would automatically detach and move to a safe position.  Well, that would work against the attack coming because the U.S. would want to avoid collateral damage just as much as I did.  They wouldn’t purposefully target it.  For an alien attack, I’d have the detached part move to Earth and lower into the atmosphere above an empty spot in the vast pacific.  They’d be safe enough there, as long as the aliens were beat back.  If not… then the whole world and our race was dead anyway.

One other change I made was to missile safety.  When launching missiles only a couple of handfuls of nanites would be powered on, which was enough to power impulse to quickly clear the shields and the immediate vicinity of the station.  Once clear, all the nanites would power up, raise shields, and accelerate at six hundred gravities.  That took care of that danger quite nicely.

My mind did a lot of that those two weeks, contingency planning, and slightly changing protocols.

I felt like I was shooting myself in the foot.  Eight colony ships, with the combined mass and power of thirty-two giant warships, and I was about to release them to the idiots that were poised to attack me.  At least, that was true of three of the eight.  Of course, they couldn’t use them in the battle, the point was I couldn’t absorb and repurpose them for the battle.

Still, we had an inkling of what was coming, and I believed we were ready for it.  Any good trap or ambush required showing the enemy what they expected to see, which meant I needed to give up those ships to lure them into attacking and not aborting their plans.  I just hoped I wasn’t trapping myself in truth, and that Diana’s tech made the difference.  The new missiles were absolutely deadly, but they had to get very close to be effective.

Of course, close was relative, all the other missiles had to actually impact an enemy ship to be effective.

Cassie whispered, “Stop scowling.”

I laughed, “Yes, maam,” and I thought of Diana as I pasted a slight smile on my face.  Thoughts of my fiancé made the smile real, even if she had abandoned me for this.

Cassie as usual was beyond gorgeous, one of those rare beauties that defined the scale.

I was used to it and immune to it thanks to time and my love for Diana, but she truly was a vision.  She accompanied me as we walked into the large landing bay the ship from Earth was docking to, which was right in the middle of the large colony ships.  The ship coming in held eight command crews from eight different countries.  The smile of course, was for the press which were already set up, taking pictures and video, and would no doubt love to catch me with a scowl on my face so they could show the world I was deranged and dangerous.

Diana wasn’t there, she wasn’t my wife yet, not first lady, and she had a day job.  Plus, she’d just gotten her toys back, as the twenty-four small warships in our lab solar system moved out to where they could open wormholes, poised to move as soon as we had the intelligence of where the enemy’s build system was.

At least, that’d been her argument for avoiding the press, and the little ceremony we were having to turn over the colony ships.  It seemed a little absurd, but I got it.  It was a historically significant moment, as eight countries took possession of the colony ships which would spread out humanity between nine worlds, including Earth.

Still, it was extra ironic, since we expected our enemies to make their move quickly after they were released, the trigger to violence, instead of the hopeful thing it should’ve been.  To be fair, it was both, and I was proud of the colony ships and my design, with the three stages I’d designed it was a complete solution.  From starting a colony with resources and a relatively small population, to delivering larger amounts of population, and finally to a defense fleet command space station similar to my own.

There were twenty security people stationed all around the bay, and we had a low level forcefield set up just in case our enemies tried to assassinate me again.  If there was an assassin out there, they weren’t magical.  Cassie, Jessica, and I were the only supernaturals in the room.

Cassie stepped up the podium after the docked ship finished unloading personal.  She waited patiently for a few moments, as the conversation in the bay came to a stop.

“Good evening, and welcome to Astraeus.  It’s a pleasure to have all of you here, at the culmination of our joint efforts.  Members of the press, crews of the colony ships that will shortly set forth, I give you the president of Astraeus.”

I really hated speeches, but I managed not to lose my smile as Cassie stepped back and winked at me from an angle none of the cameras or people would see.  I stepped up and took her place.

“Good evening, and welcome.  This is a historic moment for our world, as we spread out in the stars, led by the brave men and women before me.  No longer will our race be dependent on one planet, and the security of multiple planets are apparent.  It would make it more difficult for a predatory race to remove us, not to mention natural disasters on a global or system scale.  They go with my hopes, and I feel blessed to live in such a time, when so much change and advancement comes to mankind.

“It has been an honor to assist in such an endeavor, and to build and design those ships, but I’m in awe of the men and women with a pioneering spirit who will leave our solar system and start a new life on a far-off world.  It’s easy to get caught up in the changes that have come about the last few months, to become inured to it, but it’s moments like these when we can step back, and both celebrate and be awed by this new age for the human race.  The future is bright.

“There are so many changes and advancements coming, and as we grow and meet more trading partners out there, there will be many more.  It’s a wonderful time to be alive, and I wish you all the best of luck, and my hopes go with you.”

Cassie took over again as I stepped back, and she had a pair of security escorts to take each command crew to their specific ship.  They weren’t all the same.  They’d all ordered a few extras, China, Japan, and Israel asked for a larger defense fleet, and two of the countries asked for a factory ship to make ordering new ships easier from their new world.

Once they cleared out, the press asked a few questions.  Perhaps, not surprising, none of the questions were about the reason we were even there.  Regardless, it wasn’t all that long before I made my escape, I mean, left the bay…

Cassie smirked, “Not bad.  You’re getting better at it.”

I sighed, “I don’t want to get better at it.”

She grinned, “Price of power, my friend.”

I nodded, “I get it, and thanks for keeping it to a minimum.  That actually wasn’t too bad, it helped that I’m truly excited about it.  This is the hard part.”

“What is?”

I looked over at her, “Waiting, of course.  I’ll feel a lot better, when our enemies finally show us their cards.”

When we got back to the command center, the eight ships were already decoupled and moving off.  They were going to Earth of course, they’d need to load up the people, equipment, food, and other supplies they’d need to get a good start on a colony.  A lot of that equipment was part of the ship build, but not all of it.

Cassie finally said, “I imagine it will take a little time.  No doubt as soon as the ships were released their fleet was notified of it.  They might even wait for the colony ships to leave the solar system, it’s possible they’ll believe the ships have back doors in them and that you can take them back even now.  After all, they don’t trust you.”

Yeah, that was true enough.  Bastards.  Of course, there weren’t.  I had a connection to a small factory ship on two of them, which they knew about, but it was independent of the colony ship.

Chapter Eleven

In a lot of ways, when the moment finally came, it was somewhat of a relief.  It was the next day, and we were in the command center, when one hundred and twenty large warships showed up on my sensor net.  It was more than we’d hoped, but a whole lot better than the worst-case scenario we’d feared.  Still, the odds against just my station would’ve been thirty to one.  With my thirty-six surprise warships, it was an even three to one odds on mass alone.

There was also no question they were coming for me, they didn’t even try to disguise it by setting a course for Earth.  They were deployed in twelve groups of ten and headed my way.  They’d also come out from twelve different directions in a globular formation.

I laughed a bit nervously at that.  They really didn’t want me to leave.  Although, they obviously wanted me to sweat, as they hadn’t opened up communications yet.

“I guess they gave up the fiction of not attacking me, to ensure I couldn’t escape.  In their minds, even running and facing one group of those ships the odds would still be more than two to one in their favor, and they could easily vector in three to four more groups.”

Jessica smirked, “Good thing you don’t plan on running.”

I nodded in agreement, and I sent a message to Cassie.  She was usually dealing with government, law, and making contracts with manufacturers, and otherwise doing all that government support stuff she seemed to thrive on, that I hated.  Leaving me to focus on defending us, securing us, and in my spare time inventing and building our personal company’s exports.  Point being, in battle I wanted her insights.  It didn’t take long before she’d joined us.

I’d also notified Diana and my sister of course, but neither of them are tacticians.

I brought up the hologram above the command table, showing where they were, their projected courses, and their time in transit.

“Alright, they’ll be within missile range in a little over ten hours, but they’re already in our range of course.  Obviously, we don’t want them to abort, so I think we should do nothing for four hours.  The thirty-six probe-battleships are between one and two AU out.”

I shook my head, probe battleships, never thought I’d say those particular words together.

I continued, “Which means six hundred gravities will bring them in to surround us in a protective grid in less than four hours, about half would get here at three.  At that point, they’ll be close to the halfway point to our station, and they’ll be coming in system at close to their maximum velocity.  It’d take hours to stop and reverse out, which means they’d be just as committed as we are to the fight.  At the same time, we’ll separate our top levels, and send them to the other side of Earth.

“Their only real abort option once we reveal our trap in four hours, would be to change their vector, and not slow down at all, and just blow past us as fast as possible and race for the other outer edge.  Which… they can’t afford to do, not with that leaving us free to missile them to death in safety.  I’m also hoping they contact me before then, and they’ll make demands and state their intentions before those four hours are up.”

Cassie asked, “So you can fire early?”

I nodded, then shrugged, “Even with them in an obvious attack profile, and moving toward the station, they’ll call foul if I fire first without even a warning.  A declaration of intent would come in handy to justify us using our greater missile range.  Still, I’m not depending on it.  The trick will be overloading their point defense.  If they miss even one disintegrator missile it will absolutely devastate their ships.  But, point defense can fire from one light second, and our missiles can only fire from an eighth of that.”

It was why that attack was so deadly, the shields wouldn’t stop it, and if within range the energy would rip apart the entire ship, as opposed to being a focused explosion of antimatter that would only impact the hull and not destroy all that much mass.  Unlike a normally built ship, the nanites could easily slough off the destroyed portion and immediately form new shield emitters.  It’s what made them so powerful.  The disintegrator beam completely countered that ability, it would atomize the whole ship in huge swaths.  Maybe not in one shot, but it would destroy a whole lot more of the ship than focused explosions, and the missiles could fire multiple times as long as it was within range.

Of course, it had a huge downside of the short range.  The particles involved had an extremely short half-life and would be ineffective past that.  That’s why we could still be overwhelmed, I was just gambling that three to one wasn’t overwhelming enough to save them.  To their credit, thirty to one definitely would have been.

She smirked, “If you want a declaration, just ask for one.”

Oh, right.  Why didn’t I think of that.  Of course, they could have already sent one.  At their distance, it’d take over thirty minutes to get the signal.  It was why I was looking forward to Diana solving the quantum communication issue, without directly paired entanglements we couldn’t communicate faster than light speed.  Sure, if someone on Earth routed it, it might work, since they surely did have entangled connections with someone giving orders and making plans on Earth, but fat chance of that happening.

In truth, it was entirely possible they’d already sent their demands, they just hadn’t arrived yet.

I opened a channel, “This is President Akin.  To the fleet of one hundred and twenty large warships vectoring toward my station.  What are your intentions?  Your profile is overly aggressive.”

I cut it off, and then shrugged.

Cassie said, “So, we have four hours before we’re doing anything?”

I nodded.

She sighed, “I can leak it to the press, along with our data.  It’d be best to establish the truth there, before the U.S., Germany, and England start spinning it.”

“That’s fine, just don’t talk about our response at all.”

Cassie smirked, “Don’t teach me to suck eggs boy, I know all about operational security.”

I laughed, “Fine, get out of here, I’ll see you in four hours?  That’s when I’ll detach the top levels and recall the ships, since you didn’t have an alternate suggestion.”

Cassie nodded, “It was well thought out, and it forces them to commit even at the new odds, regardless of still being in their favor.”

I nodded, “If anything changes, I’ll update the table, so keep it in your overlay.”

She smiled, “See you soon.  Don’t you dare separate before I make it back to the core of the station, I imagine that goes double for Diana.”

I sighed, and then nodded.  That was likely, she couldn’t really help during the battle, but she’d kill me if I tried to make her evacuate with the civilians on the station.  Jayna as well probably.

“I’m already updating her and Jayna too, they’ll make their own decisions, like it or not.”

She snickered, and then left the command center.

Four hours, time to get lunch, coffee, and possibly take a nap.  My implant would keep me connected, and when it came down to it so would my magic.  I wasn’t worried about missing anything, and space battles were long.  I was jesting about the nap of course, we had plenty of time to plan and react in a space battle given the vast distances, but that was taking it too far.  I was well rested, and the battle would be joined in ten hours, and take less than a few minutes after that.

A whole lot of waiting, and minutes of terror.

The time passed slowly.  There was no response to my challenge and request for information.  I wasn’t all that surprised that they wanted me to sweat and retain a little bit of doubt.  On the other hand, that gave us a free hand in the press.  Pundits were already discussing it, and most were declaring it an obvious attack despite only having circumstantial evidence of it.

Regardless, as a result I was a little conflicted when the time came to show our hand, and I surprised the enemy.  I had no choice but to do it, otherwise the fleet would get in range of my probe ships while they were still separated and alone, which wouldn’t do at all.

What made me conflicted, was when they saw the three to one odds, they could abort.  Hell, they could even say they were vectoring in for a gas refill, or something equally absurd.  It would be an obvious lie, since their silence the last four hours didn’t lend itself to peace after all.

The command center held me, Jessica, Cassie, Jayna, and Diana at the four-hour mark.  There was a security team in the core, just in case, but the majority of them were in the upper levels to keep the peace when the station was separated.  I didn’t think there’d be panic and riot, but it made sense to make sure.  Plus, if we did lose, there was no reason to endanger so many security people when they couldn’t contribute to a space battle.

I initiated the separation, and I sent the civilian section to the other side of the Earth.  Then I transmitted the statement saying why we were doing it, to safeguard our citizens, tourists, and visa workers from an offensive fleet bearing down on the station.  That’s all we said, we knew it was the U.S., England, and Germany commanding those ships, but we had no proof outside the shuttle stops.  Just more circumstantial evidence, which they’d lie, spin, and refute after the battle.

Still, those shuttle stops were part of the leak that Cassie arranged.  Clear minded people would come to the correct conclusions, especially since those three countries not acknowledging us as a country was still a prevalent news story.

Then as planned, the probe ships fully powered up, and headed back to the station at six hundred gravities.  There was no way the enemy could miss it.  They still had the apparent advantage, but if that surprise didn’t make them at all nervous about things, they were idiots.  As a rule, military admirals weren’t idiots.

If nothing changed, it would be four hours before our thirty-six ships englobed the station defensively, and between five and six hours before they were in weapons range.  It depended on if they slowed down to a stop to slug it out, or if they didn’t decelerate the whole time and merely fired upon us as they passed by.  What they did depended on their intentions, if they wanted to claim the station and all my advances, they’d have to fight us until we surrendered and not blow by, or until the station’s mass was mostly destroyed but still present enough to read all our plans.

Of course, plans seldom survived contact with the enemy, and if you were sure the enemy would do one of three things, they’d be sure to do the fourth.

“Thoughts?”

Jayna said, “Fire all the missiles now.”

I laughed, “Nice idea, I’d like to.”

Obviously, these ships weren’t like the last battle when taking down the Sonex.  Just twenty-five missiles wouldn’t get close.  Assuming they had sixty-four reactors, which was the standard for the largest warship, they could target and destroy sixty-four missiles at once.  Except, halve that, since my missiles were shielded.  I didn’t expect to get them right away because of being underestimated either, their scanners would tell them the missiles were shielded, and automatically adjust the strength of the beam to get through.

So, thirty-two missiles every two seconds.  From a standstill, it would take the missiles close to five minutes to go a light second even at six hundred gravities.  That means targeting every ship with at least five thousand missiles to get through their point defense and close enough to open fire.  Of course, with several million missiles, I had more than enough to send four times as many.

I planned if it came down to it, to launch one point two million missiles, that was ten thousand missiles for each ship, more than twice what would be needed, just to be sure.  Targeting wouldn’t be a problem, I only had to target one hundred and twenty ships which would take less than a second, then pass that targeting data to ten thousand missiles for each target.

Our point defense with nine hundred reactors was quite a bit more robust, but no doubt they’d have millions of missiles too.  Of course, my shields would be much more effective against the older ordinance, and they had unshielded missiles with smaller yields, and I had thirty-six ships to absorb a lot of damage and add in their own point defense before the station was even hit.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t be overwhelmed quickly.  It was quite possible in fact, that mutual annihilation would be the result of an up-close slugging match.  That’s why I was hoping to be able to justify firing early, that would make all the difference.  One, they wouldn’t have a chance at firing back.  Two, the longer the missile travelled, the faster it would transverse the one light second distance.

Cassie said, “Let’s hope they completely miss the softball sized probes.  They give off very little power, and the mass barely registers on sensors.”

Hope was a bad plan, but it would be nice.  Still, I wasn’t going to depend on my magic to get us out of this.  Still, they were very small, and put out almost no power, just enough to fully power and move quickly if a ship got in range.  The space around the station was heavily seeded with them out to a light minute, but space was big.

“That’s true, but their sensors will see through our cloaks now, so they have solved that problem.”

It was over an hour later, and I relaxed slightly when they started to decelerate.  Unless they changed their mind, they planned to come to a full stop just outside of missile range.  Perhaps they’d make their demands at that time.  I didn’t imagine they’d take that tactic if they didn’t plan to talk to me first.  Even better, they’d be outside of their missile range for a minute or two before they closed, which would give us the advantage.  Unfortunately, they’d close that distance and get off a missile barrage long before our shielded missiles reached them.  It wasn’t that much of an advantage, we’d just kill them before dying spectacularly two minutes later if they launched enough ordinance.

Of course, from a dead stop, at the edge of missile range, it changed all the numbers.  It’d take our missiles just under an hour to cross the distance, and the last light second when they finally reached us would be a whole lot less than five minutes.

Five more hours.  I really hated waiting, and I kept second guessing myself and our plans.

Diana and Jayna had left the command center, and they came back in fifteen minutes with a plate piled with sandwiches, and a six pack of soda.

“I love you.”

She just smirked, and we all dug in.

An hour before they arrived, we had the fleet of large warship-probes surrounding us in every direction.  Much like last time when we detached a part of the station, those would be the mass we’d sacrifice to keep the main station intact, and to avoid a quick destruction.

I’d subtly moved the softball probes in position at their predicted arrival point, but as I’d feared their point defense reached out and destroyed them all before they got within a half light second, much less a few hundred feet.  My magic was unknown to the masses, but I was sure the command crews of those ships had been thoroughly briefed to keep any tech far from their ships, if not completely why that was necessary.

“I think I have an idea, the missile platforms can fire a beam once per second, is it possible to program them to sensor target secondary targets, before they reach an eighth of a light second range to their primary target?”

Diana asked, “What are you thinking?”

I shrugged, “If I launch one point two million missiles, about halfway they’ll cross paths with the enemy’s volley.  I was thinking until they’re in range with the enemy ship, that would be one point two million independent weapon platforms with a single disintegrating beam weapon.  They could take out if not all, most of the enemy’s missiles as they fly past each other.”

Diana tilted her head, “That… I’m thinking with that idea we don’t even need the thirty-six warships as protection at all.”

I snorted, “Better not to count on any one idea, but I take your point.  We have thirty minutes to reprogram them to take targets of opportunity before they reach the primary target assigned by this ship.”

Diana sat down at a console, and she got to work.

“Normally I’d say we didn’t have the time, but all we have to do is add the point defense software of this space station to the missile platform software, and make sure the disparate functions are prioritized correctly.  Give me ten minutes.   Are we using the new missile exclusively?”

“I was going to send half, and the rest split by gravity and anti-matter at a one to five ratio.  Given this new development, I’m going to send ninety percent of the new missile, and target one ship out of ten in the twelve groups with the older ordinance, even if more powerful and shielded.  We have to ensure at least one ship survives to get the information we need, and twelve chances at that seem pretty good.  I can make sure some of the missiles abort if needed, so we don’t fully destroy those ships.

“I’ll also be launching a hundred takeover missiles that will trail the offensive strike, ten for each ship targeted.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to use my magic through it to snag at least one of the ships.”

Jayna said, “You realize that you’re assuming their missile capabilities are what all of ours were four months ago, they could’ve upgraded too.”

I frowned, “They don’t have Diana.”

Diana blushed.

I added, “But… you make a good point.  Still, nothing we can do about it until they launch, and we can scan their missiles for their capacity or any changes.  That’ll give us a few minutes heads up if we need it, and hopefully if they are more advanced the point defense missile idea will make it a moot point.  Unless they’ve discovered the same exact disintegration beam, and they have effective shields against it, anything else shouldn’t have that large an impact.”

Cassie said, “Realistically it’s doubtful, if we look at the suspected timeline.  The command crew of the scout that went to tattle on the Sonex didn’t have a scientist in it.  They would’ve been ordered to build what was available from the templates Diana created and were left in the system.  Their scientists could have been working on something, on paper, and sent updates when they sent the command crews, but most likely they’re bending all their efforts on how to create their own nanites with their best scientists.”

Diana said, “Maybe not, we’re not doing that.  Of course, we have Scott who can do it with his magic if it was needed, but we’re not even close to having the infrastructure and ability to make a new one without the old ones and energy to matter converters.  I suppose that’s an easy way to do it, create an energy to matter converter, and feed it the nanite structure.  Of course, even that technology is several iterations of tools away for us at present.  It’ll be a while, before we overcome the block of needing nanites to make more nanites, simply because making the energy to matter device is impossible without nanites.”

She sighed, and stretched as she stood up, “Software’s ready, and I uploaded it to all the missiles.”

“Thanks.  Let’s hope that does it.”

Diana shook her head, “You just thought up a way to completely make mass and power calculations in battle meaningless, unless the enemy gains the same technology.”

Maybe, but I wasn’t ready to relax yet.

The last fifteen minutes crawled, as a hundred and twenty ships came to a stop, in twelve groups of ten surrounding the station at just over two light minutes distance.  To my surprise, they opened up several landing bays, and hundreds of fighter sized craft left the ships.  According to the scan, they most likely had two reactors, with two independent weapons.  At a guess, they probably had a few missiles as well, but they were too small to carry many.

The small ships took up a defensive shield position around their mother ships, and given the amount of humans the enemy had picked up with ten shuttles, they were no doubt unmanned.  This must be their next iteration of the separate mass idea, the ships would be additional protection, both stopping missiles with their point defense and with their own mass if necessary.  No doubt they could swarm and attack as well.  Each ship had two hundred fighters, which meant they could take down an additional four hundred missiles every two seconds, and if need be sacrifice themselves to take out an additional two hundred.

Of course, they could only take down a hundred of our missiles, it would take their full power to overcome our missile platform’s shields.  Still, that was more than triple the amount of missiles they could defend against than expected.  Ironically, given the missiles faster speeds after accelerating for an hour at six hundred gravities, I didn’t have to adjust my decided payload from earlier.  One point two million would still be more than enough.

Obviously, they did have a few upgrades from the last battle, hopefully that was the extent of their surprises for us.  It also became clear why they hadn’t called yet, they’d wanted me to sweat, and then worry with this latest surprise.

Jessica said, “We’re getting a call from Earth on our operations line.  I suspect it’s them, to prevent the two-minute light lag, they’re probably routing through their systems, then over Earth’s internet to route into ours.”

I nodded, “Answer it.”

The screen popped on, and it showed the bridge of one of the ships.  It was telling, it was obviously a command ship, though I couldn’t guess which one.  Point was, I saw high ranking military men in U.S., German, and England uniforms of service.  That actually made things easier.

Cassie was set to feed it all to the news, at a five-minute lag.

“This is President Akin, may I ask who’s calling?”

I sounded amused, and confident, and hoped that shook them, but they didn’t look worried at all.

“Admiral James here.  Despite the surprise of your illegal fleet, you are outmatched.”

I nodded, and questioned, “Illegal?  I don’t think so.  This station is an independent country, what is it you want admiral, I’m a busy man and don’t have all day?”

Cassie gave me a look, as if to say, don’t be an asshole, this will make the news later.

The admiral said, “The United States does not recognize you as a country, and we know it to be a pitiful attempt to hide behind politics.  You are in fact nothing but a terrorist, who stole technology from the country you professed to serve.  You will surrender immediately, turn yourself and your station over unconditionally, which rightfully belongs to the United States, and you will be afforded a military trial.  No lives will be lost, but press your ridiculous assertions, and we will utterly destroy you.”

I snorted, “Right, in politics it’s good to lie big.  I suppose in truth we should turn over all our toys, after all, the Grays own it, don’t they admiral?  The United states, and the two other countries associated with this farce, are the only countries that deny our status.  I’m done playing games, if you haven’t noticed, the population of my country is safe on the other side of Earth.

“Your arrogance astounds me Admiral.  I don’t even meet the definition of terrorist.  I saved the world with my efforts.  The most ironic thing of all admiral, would be that this station would belong to the United States, if an out of control General hadn’t decided to kill me.  All I’m guilty of is self-defense.  A country doesn’t have a right to murder their own citizens out of hand, without a trial, or even a charge.  Damned right I went my own way, and if I hadn’t the world would be destroyed, and humanity would be no more.”

I took a breath, and shook my head, “There’s no point to this conversation, you know my stance, it’s been in the news the last four months, and most of the world is on my side in this.  Let me ask you admiral, are you sure you want to do this?  You could set up shop, protect Earth and your colony with that lovely fleet of yours, and even be my competition.  I have no ill will toward the people of my former country, just the hypocritical murderers that pursue my death.”

The admiral shook his head, “There is no choice, my orders are clear on this, and come from the leaders of the United States, England, and Germany.”

I nodded, “Very well admiral.  In that case, I have no choice.  This now, is an official declaration of war, which will shortly be provided to the media.  Astraeus is at war with the United States, England, and Germany.  I will accept your countries’ conditional surrender at any time.  The conditions are as follows, you will acknowledge me as a country, treat me with dignity and follow international laws, and demand my acceptance into the U.N.  But don’t worry admiral, I won’t start attacking the surface until after I’ve removed your fleet.”

We’d talked about it a lot, once that was done the assholes would have to stop coming for me.  Oh, they could still send assassins I supposed, and probably would, but the outright attacks would stop, they wouldn’t be able to justify it anymore.  Unless the senate declared war, but I doubt that would happen.

The admiral said, “You can’t be serious.”

I said, “From you admiral, I’ll accept an unconditional surrender only.  We’re done talking.  Either they’ve lied to you, or you’re as divorced from reality as most leaders are.  I’m a world power to be reckoned with, and I run my own country, and all I’ve ever done is defend the Earth at my own peril.  It’s that simple, really.  Don’t forget, you just bought a colony ship from me, I find it interesting that your three countries would buy from a terrorist.  I’m done playing games, this is the end of the hypocrisy, one way or the other.”

I hung up, and I launched our missiles.  One point two million was a lot, but it was less than ten percent of my ordinance.  I’d only fire more, if it became necessary.  The enemy fired missiles two minutes later, but they came to a stop again once they were in range and missiles were launched.  Each of their ships sent out two hundred thousand missiles, which added up to twice what we’d sent.

I was fairly confident our missiles could get all of them.  That was only two each, and they’d be in range of each other for a lot longer than four seconds.

Cassie criticized, “Not terrible, but world leaders aren’t wise asses, and don’t use flippancy.”

“Yes, maam,” I said in a faux ashamed voice.

She giggled, “Stop that.”

It was a bit silly, but it helped with the nervous energy.

Chapter Twelve

Jessica said, “Umm, we have a development.”

I raised an eyebrow, and looked at the hologram of the battle, then noticed it.  Thirty of the small warships, and three of the ten larger warships were moving in our direction.  Each larger ship led a formation of ten of the others.

Jessica said, “We’re being hailed, by the three large warships.  Russia, China, and Israel.”

I frowned, “Answer it, put us on a party line.”

She nodded.

“This is president Akin, the four of us are on the same call.”

There was a moment of silence, then a heavily accented Russian voice said, “This is Captain Nadia Petrovna.  We have been directed to assist you against the foolishness of the United States and their allies in this matter.  Though we cannot fire upon their ships, we can shoot down missiles.  I suspect it is a political maneuver more than anything, to make a statement, but we can help a little.”

The Chinese and Israeli captain said much the same thing.

“Thank you, captains.  The gesture is more than appreciated from your governments.”

We all hung up.

It was kind of a surreal moment, two of the assisting countries had always been the competitors in my mind, as a citizen of the U.S.  I still love the U.S. though, it was just the damned idiots in charge, who couldn’t let things go.  I supposed I wasn’t all that surprised, it was the combination of pride, fear, and ambition that emboldened them so.  Oh, and let’s not forget about arrogance, they saw me as a rogue citizen, so much so that they couldn’t see the obvious.

Still, it’d be a mistake to think them idiots, they were just blinded by the past, history, and a need to be in control.

“So, are we going to make any of these advances available for purchase as upgrades to the ships.  They can’t attack us, and while betrayal might always be a concern, the true danger is outside of our solar system, so the stronger our allies in protecting Earth the better.  Still, against any other alien race, besides the grays, even the old tech is a huge edge.”

Cassie frowned, “As long as it was locked down, they can’t use their current ships against us or Earth either.  As long as we hold that edge, I don’t see how it would matter.  Diana?”

Diana sighed, “Giving them shielded missiles, and the beams, means giving them powered nanites.  No more gas station.”

I laughed, “We’re diversified enough to survive, I think.  The only question is what we’ll do with all the reactors we have.  Can they be repurposed?  I’d planned to cycle them out as we made new ships, but if we make new ships with the distributed powered nanite scheme there’s no point in keeping them at all.  In that case, I should just initiate the upgrade now and shut down all our reactors.”

I added, “We also wouldn’t have to use the lesser power sources for shuttles or other ships that go to the surface in atmosphere for safety.  We could just turn off… say ninety percent of the distributed nanites.  Even if the few that were left did blow, it wouldn’t cause a whole lot of damage, not even to the ship much less the surroundings.  It’d also still be more than enough power for a low G atmospheric entry and landing.”

Cassie nodded, “I think that’s probably the best way to go on it, honestly.  Given all we’ve discussed, our initial impulse to keep it all to ourselves seems rather paranoid and controlling.  As long as the ships are locked down, we can’t be betrayed, and the nanites are un-hackable to our science at this point, save your magic.”

Paranoid and controlling, she was right, and I didn’t want to slip into the same blind stupidity as the U.S. was at the moment.  At least, their top paranoid advisors and the president.

I grunted, “I’ll take care of it, after the battle, and update our ship and object sales interface to include all the new toys.  The probe fleet here and in the ships in the lab system are already using the new way.  I suppose it would even be safer, without all that raw hydrogen on the station.  The station won’t lose any mass, but it’ll also be maybe a third smaller, as those empty pockets go away.  Unless someone has objections, or suggestions?”

No one did, so I added it all to my to-do list.

Diana answered, “I’m not sure, just shut them all down and put them in storage, then dump the hydrogen.  I’m sure a highly thermoelectric and superconductor cores will come in handy for something, at some point.  If nothing else, the technology has nothing to do with the nanites or advanced weapons systems, we could always sell them to a merchant of another race.”

Huh, that was a good idea, put them in storage it was.

Jayna said, “I’ll work on some ads, and press releases.  Obviously, not for the weapons tech, but the rest of it that’ll go in our commercial and private ship sales.”

I nodded, and silence fell as our eyes were drawn back to the status hologram over the command table.  It’d still be almost twenty minutes before the missiles passed each other at the halfway point.  The last half of the trip would only take twenty minutes, almost a full forty for the first half, at the constant acceleration…

It was somewhat of an unconventional flight, with unlimited missile launch capability and a relatively small amount of ships.  I was pretty sure we weren’t going to have a problem winning, even more so since I’d had Diana reprogram the missiles to take out targets of opportunity.  She’d told me weeks ago to think of them more as weapons platforms than missiles, I felt a little foolish I hadn’t thought of it until the last minute.  I also wondered if I wasn’t missing something equally as obvious.

Granted, twenty-four thousand fighters acting as a shield around a hundred and twenty large warships, or maybe I should call them carriers, changed that a bit.

“What do we know about the enemy’s missiles?” I asked, a few moments before they’d pass each other at the halfway point.

Diana shook her head, “They appear to be standard missiles.  They’re unshielded and carrying a small amount of anti-matter.”

Explosions started to fill the hologram, bright flashes of light in an incredibly large sphere around the station at one light minute out.  I wasn’t too worried the explosions would take out our missiles in return, they were shielded, and although relatively close an eighth of a light second was still thousands of miles.  The matter of the missile of course fell apart, but the anti-matter reacted differently to the beam.  The amount of destruction was shocking.

When the explosions cleared, there were still one point two million missiles moving toward the enemy, and not one was approaching our station or the thirty-six ships.

I shivered, and hoped I was a good custodian of such terrible weapons.  My ambitions were simple, and not to rule, I just wanted my own corner of things and not to be attacked.  Was that too much to ask?  I was sure they’d set me straight if I ever went too far.

“I wonder if they’re checking their pants right about now.”

Jayna snickered.

Diana said in a Cassie voice, “That’s not very presidential.”

Everyone laughed, including Cassie.

I sighed, “They’ve got twenty minutes, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll surrender.”

A couple of minutes later we got our answer, when they launched over four million missiles.  They also sent their unmanned ships with them.

“Thoughts?”

Jessica said, “It seems clear, they’re hoping the twenty-four thousand ships can knock out enough of our missiles to not only let most of their four million through, but thin them out enough for their ships point defense to take out whatever’s left.”

I ran some numbers in my head.  It wouldn’t be exactly right, but when dealing with millions of something, being off by a few thousand won’t matter all that much to the end result.

“They’ll be able to take out about half of them, before our missiles destroy their ships from range, and maybe a quarter of their missiles as they fly by.  That’s still more than enough on the other end to take out their hundred and twenty ships.”

Diana asked, “What?”

She could always tell when I had an idea.  She hadn’t asked me what I said, but what I was thinking.

I smirked, “We should have given them energy beams too.  If they had energy beams, they wouldn’t be outranged for the seven eighths of a light second difference.  I’m sure they could support one turret, of any of our beam weapons.  Then they could switch back to the far more effective disintegration beam when they get in range.  Not just for this weird situation, they’d be far more effective at taking out enemy missile barrages.  Speaking of which, how fast can we make that happen?”

It was too late at that point for the million missiles in transit.  The one hundred takeover missiles were connected to the ship via entangled particles, and I could control them to take over a ship they crash into.  But, the other missiles were not.  Once given orders and launched they were just automated platforms run by software with their own sensors and weapons.

Of course, I could transmit new orders, I just couldn’t update their software.

Diana tilted her head, “Not long, if we use the stations software again.  It’s point defense uses beams, but it’ll switch over to the deadlier weapon at the closer range.”

“Well, you’ve got about forty minutes, maybe a little longer.”

Diana nodded, and got to work upgrading the missiles for the second time this battle.  Really, I was dissatisfied at that point in calling them missiles.  Offensive mini-platforms was probably a much better name for them.

“Why forty minutes?” Jayna asked.

“Because I’m going to launch another two million of them to act as point defense against the enemy’s missiles that will get through.  Between that, our thirty-six ships, and the station itself, we’ll easily stand off the three million or so missiles that will get through our remaining missiles near the enemy.  Once taken out, we can power down the missiles to a distributed power configuration and recall them back to the ship.”

Cassie grinned, “That’s brilliant.  Does anyone else feel like they’re cheating?”

I laughed, “Blame Diana, totally her fault we won’t even get scratched.”

Diana mock glared, but it quickly turned into another blush.

It went about as I’d predicted, ten minutes later.  The missiles were moving extremely fast, and once reaching the one light-second range the enemy’s twenty-four thousand ships opened up, and destroyed one missile every two seconds.  They gutted almost five hundred thousand of my missiles before the range closed to an eighth of a light second, and then they were just gone.  Without anti-matter in the small fighter ships, they just fell apart unto dust.

Of the four million enemy missiles, they got in three more strikes instead of the two I’d estimated, which took out about one and a half million missiles, so there were still two and a half million moving our way.

The seven hundred thousand missiles we had left would be more than enough to finish the job… In just five minutes.  A part of me, the laudable part, hoped the enemy would surrender, and I’d be able to spare the crews.  There was also a part of me that hoped they didn’t, because they surely wouldn’t have given me mercy or quarter if the shoe was on the other foot.

Diana said, “Done.”

I snorted, “You still have thirty minutes.”

She giggled.

I launched two million missiles, or mini-platforms, but they only flew out a couple of thousand miles around the station, maybe a thousand past the ships, and then held station.  I was more than positive when the two and half million missiles arrived in about forty-five minutes, not one of my ships or the station would need to fire.  I also knew the enemy wouldn’t be around to see the level of their failure, since their time was up, very shortly.  Of course, their bosses would, on Earth.

“I feel silly calling them missiles.  Let’s change the shape of them to little ships, and we’ll call them mini-platforms.”

No one answered me, as the hologram lit up with explosions as our missiles closed range.  The hundred and twenty enemy ships took out a lot, but far less than their fighter shield had been capable of.  About half really, or a little less.  They took out close to three hundred thousand missiles, but that left four hundred thousand coming in range.

They opened fire as they passed the ships, and one hundred and eight ships just turned to dust, their shields completely worthless.  The disintegration beam missiles immediately began to decelerate, and they’d get back to the station in three hours.

A moment later anti-matter explosions lit up the hologram on the last twelve.  I aborted the rest of the missiles when a gravity missile slipped through the downed shields and killed the crews.  The timing was somewhat difficult, and eight of them were erased from existence.  The other four however, received one of the control missiles as it slammed into the ship.

Over half their mass had been destroyed, but there was more than enough left for me to connect through their systems with my magic via entanglement, and back to their top secret command center.  The first thing I did was download all the data I could connect to, and I reviewed it quickly.  No doubt, the entangled communicator wasn’t part of that system as a safeguard.

I snorted.

Diana tilted her head.

“Sorry love, it looks like I didn’t need to take over your toys after all.”

The command and control center was in the other system, of course it was.  Which meant, I made the two ships that stayed back to protect the system my bitch, spaced the crews, and ran scans for any ships not in the command and control system.  When I found the missing scout ship that started this mess, the only thing not connected and independent, I opened fire with my two new warships and removed it from existence.

I checked the software, and outside of the carrier configuration with unmanned shield fighters there really wasn’t anything new.  Regardless, I sent that configuration to Diana, and added it to our own systems, even if I was using something very similar already with the thirty-six ships and mini-platforms.

Last but not least, I destroyed the outpost by self-destructing the ships.  I’d had to do it that way, if I’d destroyed the command post first, I’d have lost connection to the ships, which would’ve been bad.

Well, not last.  Because then I reconfigured what was left of the four ships in our solar system, and I started them moving toward the station.  They were mine now, and after combining they’d amount to two more ships.  I did take the time to rework their security however, they wouldn’t be capable of weapons use outside of our solar system, and they were locked down like all the other ships.  Maybe I’d sell them, I wasn’t sure yet.

I decided to leave the twenty-four ships in our lab system there, as a future surprise if needed.  Except… I started them building again, so they’d be the largest sized warships when they were finished.  So, thirty-eight large warships in SOL, and twenty-four large warships in our lab system.  When they were done in about two weeks, closer to ten days actually.

As expected, the last two point five million missiles were destroyed quite easily by our mini-platform defense, and they returned to the station.

Jessica said, “We’re being hailed, I think we just frightened our allies.”

“Answer it.”

The same three captains appeared above the holographic command table.

I smiled, “Once again I thank you and your governments for the support.  The new technology you’ve seen in action is a relatively new development.  In fact, some tweaking has been done to them today, after seeing them in action.  Please let your governments know that all these upgrades will soon be available for your ships if they want them, they will also be standard on any new warships we sell.  In addition to the shielded mini-offensive platforms and new beam technology you saw in action today, there are also upgrades in power generation that will make the current fusion reactors obsolete.”

Nadia asked, “You intend to share this technology?”

I nodded, “Of course.  It will just make us better able to defend our world as allies.”

Nadia said, “Along with the fact that we couldn’t use them against you.”

I smiled, “I can admit that.  I suppose that does make it easier for me to share my advancements freely.  Or, sell them.  It seems prudent given human nature.  No country on Earth would share their most advanced weapons systems with every other country.  In Astraeus’s case, we can get around that with the limitations imposed in the firmware.  And gladly so, as our joint fleet’s purpose is to protect our world.  Our worlds.”

Nadia nodded, and the other two captains promised to pass on my message.

It was true enough, but I really wasn’t looking forward to the time when they licked the problem, and they were all producing their own nanites.  I supposed I’d have to learn to live with the possibility of betrayal, and I’d build up those relationships to hedge my bets.  I doubted I’d ever truly trust the U.S. though.  It was hard to trust someone that didn’t trust you, and who was mad at you for not laying down and dying.

That kind of thinking was insane, wasn’t it?

Perhaps I was just naïve, but I really did believe that.  We were all in the same boat, we couldn’t afford to argue up here in space, not surrounded by so many enemies.  I imagined the colonies would have it easier that way, since they’d all be from the same place.  Still, I think most average Americans would agree with me, unfortunately the most weren’t in power.

I tilted my head, and I sent the four ships in another direction instead of the station.  To Earth.  Call it melodramatic, but there was a certain symmetry and justice in using the weapons meant to kill me, to forward my war…

It was an ugly thing, but it had to be done.  It was more than apparent to me they’d never see me as a world power, and having the ordinance of a first world country, unless I used it at least once.  Not to defend and put up with their hypocritical rhetoric, but offensively.  Since Cassie looked fierce, and didn’t snap my neck, I’d have to say she agreed with me.  Diana wasn’t happy about it, but she also thought it was necessary.  If anything, Jessica and Jayna thought I was too nice about it, avoiding deaths the way I was, even against the enemy’s military.

As wars went, it wasn’t much of a war.

I held the orbitals, and the three countries had absolutely nothing that could harm the ships in orbit, much less reach the station at the Lagrange point on the other side of the moon.  All they had was hypocritical and spiteful rhetoric, and in a war outside of political discourse and stupidity, that meant absolutely nothing.

The ships arrived in orbit about the same time our civilian levels of the station returned and rejoined the space station.  We were one piece again.  I also had taken the time to work up an upgrade and modify the new ships, adding the mini-platforms and vacuum energy nanites.  The latter went into all the non-military designs as well.  It didn’t take long.

The ships fired anti-matter missiles, without creating the anti-matter.  Essentially, turning them into kinetic warheads that devasted large swaths of military bases and equipment, though I refrained from impacting anywhere near populated areas, it certainly made my point.

Germany and England surrendered within the hour.  They’d gotten greedy, and had taken a chance, thinking to wield weapons in space that weren’t limited by partnering with the U.S. and their build project in secret.  Now that it had fallen through, and the U.S. didn’t have any space assets save in their colony system and locked down by my firmware, they had no real reason to continue with it.  After all, they really had nothing against me personally, they were just taking advantage of the United States leaders’ insanity and fears.

The two countries also put pressure on the U.S. to relent, acknowledge me, and their U.N. ambassadors demanded we be accepted into the U.N. through press releases, since the U.N. wasn’t in session.

My old country, that I loved, didn’t relent for days.  I moved extremely slowly, but estimated I’d caused hundreds of billions of dollars of damage to their military infrastructure.

At the end of it all, Astraeus was recognized by the U.N., and a part of it.

I had no real illusions.  Sure, they couldn’t get up to their past antics, but I also knew I still needed to worry about black-ops groups and political sniping.  Since I had no stake on the world itself at that point, outside of protecting it, I didn’t really give a crap.  Still, overall the station, what we’d done for the world, and the horrific actions of trying to destroy us despite that, meant there were a lot of people that approved of us.

I called those that did, the sane people.

It took us about a week before we felt everything was on an even keel.  The new technology, the geneticist research, our updated sales information for ships and equipment, as well as our defenses.  We’d even sent down an ambassador to the U.N.

All in all, I hated that it was necessary, but it accomplished our goals, and unlike other wars not one life was spent outside of those lost in their offensive fleet.  Just… trashed a whole lot of money’s worth of stuff on their bases.  In playground parlance, they’d started it, and I’d had to bloody their nose to get them to stop.  It was what it was.

Point being, Diana and I were more than ready for that vacation.  Two days in a resort where she could be pampered, and we can spend time alone and having fun.  Then a five-day romantic cruise for two, of the solar system’s planets in one of the higher scale yachts I had for sale.  It’d been a hell of a crazy four months, closer to six including from when I was recruited, and all the craziness started.

It was time to unwind, and to relax a bit.  Even presidents got vacations, and in truth Cassie ran most of the government, and my sister could handle any sales through our company.  Sure, I was needed, but a week off wouldn’t end the world either.  Of course, if an emergency did happen, I’d be reachable.

Chapter Thirteen - Interlude

Jevis grunted as he acknowledged the alert on his console, and he brought up the data.

The other races in the empire had no idea just how closely they were watched.  The stealth probe project was completely separated from the rest of their military.

It was an advantage in the pre-spaceflight solar systems with intelligent life to have a scout there.  A visible scout.  It would prevent the barbaric races throughout the galaxy from attacking early, or taking advantage of a primitive society, which was against the law and would end in their destruction.

Not out of any morality, but the most aggressive species would destroy themselves before reaching spaceflight.  It was better that way, the predators that did make it were bad enough.  Plus, the great game and the gambling would come to an end, if new species weren’t allowed to rise and be challenged in a proper manner.

Of course, the Grays needed to give those races an outlet, fully suppressing instincts that powerful would lead to failure of control, which is where the rules had first come in.  Before their race had risen to dominance in the fifty galaxies, owning the entire andromeda galaxy outright and controlling the other fifty through subtle pressures, war out in space was a constant thing.  Civilizations would rise and fall from week to week.  It’d been chaos.

The rules were simple of course, if a race attacked another’s sphere of influence, and took them out, they got to claim it as theirs, but only if their target was FTL capable and officially a part of the empire.  This of course, ensured those with very aggressive instincts had a managed outlet to take out their destructive tendencies.

Failing to destroy all of an enemy, meant the attacking race would be destroyed by all, and their territory given away in a game of chance to those that participated.  This was far less common, but it was enough of a risk to ensure most of the predator races were too wary to take the chance in facing the combined might of all the races.  It also had the side effect of giving all those races that managed to suppress their conquering instincts, an outlet for those instincts in destroying others without risk to themselves, and them having a possible chance to extend their empires past the fifty light year mark the Grays enforced.

It was a brutal system of control, but also quite effective, and had led to relative order in their vast empire encompassing the fifty closest galaxies.

There weren’t even any questions of what compromised an attack, even a merchant ship merely defending themselves in another race’s system counted as attacking, and even that defensive action would spell the end of the merchant’s civilization.  No gray areas at all in the rules.  Black and white rules led to stability and order.  Any attack in another system, regardless of cause, would end in the destruction of one of the races involved.

Of course, spying on any race openly when they had FTL would lead to negative results, yet it would be foolish not to keep an eye on them.  So, their intelligence branch had their own stealth ship system, separated from the rest of the military of millions of scout ships, and many tens of thousands of warships.  They were really just unmanned probes that had advanced stealth technology not available in the rest of their fleet.

He reviewed the data the system had flagged, it was from a fairly new species to their community, less than a year.  The people there called their system SOL, and their planet Earth.  He snorted and rolled his eyes, might as well call it bright light in the sky, and dirt.

It looked fairly typical, even if the savages had their technology, until he saw the missiles cross each other, and one side was completely destroyed.  He felt… alarm, they had nothing at all that could do that, and how the hell were they shielding something that small?

Jervis was quite alarmed when he finished reviewing the scan data of their internal skirmish.  By law the Grays couldn’t do anything about it, there was only a handful of rules, of laws, after all, and nothing that limited the various races in their own systems.  If anything, the Grays would encourage such behavior and internal strife, it was a healthy outlet for aggression that wouldn’t affect their own race, or any others.

In short, the rule of non-interference in another’s territory wasn’t out of any sense of morality, but because if they did try to dictate at that level, all of the races would turn on them.  Sure, they’d win the battle, but the number of deaths would be alarming.  They’d have no choice but to commit genocide on an intergalactic scale, on thousands of races.

He knew that, because it’d happened once before in the dim past of their empire, and they’d had no members left until some of the monitored pre-FTL systems had once again started to flesh out their territory and the great game started again.  It’d been why the stealth military intelligence branch had been created, to avoid a recurrence of such a horrific event.

Point was, he hoped his superior wouldn’t shoot the messenger.  This wasn’t a good thing, for the first time a race not only had their technology, but they were also apparently making shocking advances to that technology.  Oh, they could still win, they had tens of thousands of warships, but over time that could change.  The new race didn’t have their stealth technology, but that wasn’t much of an edge outside of information.

The Grays took the long view in everything, and according to the data these barbaric humans weren’t aggressive enough to get themselves destroyed.  Oh, they were predators, just like the rest of the FTL species, but they were also capable of a surprising level of cooperation under the right circumstances.

He shook his head, packaged up the data, and sent it on.  He just hoped he wouldn’t be reassigned to the Elba sector, what a horribly boring galaxy that was.

High leader Tellus glared at the colonel shaking before him.

“Colonel, you assured me over sixty years ago that the plan was foolproof.  That the Sonex would destroy Earth and any of our technology they managed to reverse engineer, except for the one ship that would escape and reach us.  All so we could safely remove the Sonex who sought to rise above themselves before they became a true threat.”

Tellus took a deep breath.

“Instead, the situation is much worse, and now you’re telling me it’s even worse than we first thought, not four months ago?”

The Colonel replied, “Yes leader.  I still can’t explain how they managed to more than get access to fly and navigate our scout ship, much less build warships.  Those functions were locked down, and they should’ve been inaccessible.  I’m equally shocked they’ve managed advances to our technology that gives them a clear edge in combat.  We’ve put our scientists on it, to try and figure out what they did, but so far they don’t even have a clue what kind of beam that is, or how they power shields around their missiles.”

Tellus sighed, “We’ve been on top too long, and stopped development because no one has ever risen to our level of technology before.  This is a problem, do you have any suggestions?”

The colonel relaxed slightly, apparently he wasn’t going to be shot for the biggest blunder in the millions of years of their civilization, ever.

“Well, just one, leader.  They use our technology.”

Tellus gaped, “That’s the problem you idiot!  Not a solution.”

The colonel replied carefully, “What I mean to say, leader.  Is that… do you think any of the races would know they were facing one of our ships, or one of theirs?  We can reshape our ships too, and hologram technology…” he trailed off.

Tellus frowned, and looked thoughtful for a second, before his eyes widened in understanding.

“Colonel, that would be a clear violation of empire law.”

“Desperate times, sir.  It’s the only thing I could think of that would eradicate their society and destroy the leaked technology before they grow further in threat potential.”

The leader sighed, “I’m afraid I couldn’t give such an order.  Of course, you were speaking hypothetically, weren’t you Colonel?”

The colonel said, “Of course sir, I’d never do that.  I wouldn’t bet against the humans doing something extremely foolish however in the very near future.”

The leader smiled grimly, “Good luck colonel.  If the humans happen to do something inexplicably stupid, why I might actually make sure your promoted, instead of hanged.  Am I clear?”

The colonel quailed, “Yes, leader.”

“Dismissed!”

Chapter Fourteen

The week passed quickly, and our vacation was exactly what the doctor ordered so to speak.  I was in a fantastic mood, well rested, and deeply in love with Diana when the yacht arrived on the station.  Besides resting, playing, loving, and building our intimacy higher, we’d also managed to set a marriage date for a month later.

It’d take a little time to get the custom dress she wanted ready, and of course I was a head of state and needed to send out invitations.  The wedding itself would be just friends and family, but there’d be a rather large reception afterwards.  I’d pretty much just gone along with whatever she wanted, putting the ring on her finger was my goal for the day, the rest was just dressing, and all about her.

There’d been a couple of work things that had come up.  For one, I’d approved a section of the city to be used as embassies, that would have their own private docking ports.  Of course, they’d need to buy the diplomatic courier ship I’d designed if they didn’t want to fly commercial to the station on a shuttle.

The second thing had been approving all the upgrades my allies bought for the ships they controlled, making them just as deadly as my station and shield warships.

I gave her one more kiss goodbye, as she headed to check on her scientists and research projects, and I headed for the command center.

Cassie and Jessica said simultaneously, “Welcome back.”

I smiled, “Good to be here.”

I should’ve known of course, that the other shoe was coming.  I’d forced peace on my old country, Astraeus was recognized by every country on Earth and a part of the U.N.  The colony ships were heading out of system all loaded up.  Our system was protected well.  Even my personal life, my friendship with Cassie, the way I’d grown even closer to my sister Jayna of the last few months, and the deep loving relationship I had with Diana couldn’t have been going better.  Add to that the tech and ships we were selling to governments and corporations as well as private citizens, we were rolling in the money, and our station’s city was growing.  Two more resorts were going up, including one with a water park.  There were also a great number of requests for people to emigrate and join our security force, or to open businesses outside of the resorts and as citizens of Astraeus.

Sure, the U.S. still hated me, but they wouldn’t be attacking me anymore as a terrorist or private citizen, which made all the difference.  I wasn’t universally loved on Earth either, but overall those that even cared at all, approved of all I’d done and was doing.  There were also merchants out there making deals with other civilizations without me involved at all thanks to the Vax’s database.  I saw that as mostly a positive, I wouldn’t mind the competition at all, with everything going on for humanity there was so much potential for wealth creation, more than enough to go around.

I’d also reviewed all the information the Grays disseminated out to all the races, and there was nothing overly alarming in any of it.

In short, life was going too well in this new age of humanity.  Sure, we’d overcome some pretty scary challenges, both to my life and this station, and to humanity as a whole, but we’d won through.  Outside of quenching my curiosity, I hadn’t really given Threx’s theory of what the Grays had done, and his warning to watch our backs a second thought.  After all, the merchants out there were locked down, they couldn’t defend themselves even if they were willing to risk humanity’s destruction.

In truth, I should’ve saw it coming, but I didn’t.

I asked, “Anything need my attention?”

Cassie opened her mouth to answer, but Jessica interrupted.

“Sir, Threx is calling.”

I nodded, I’d integrated the entangled communicator into the command center, so it could be routed like any of our communications.

“Threx, how are you?”

Threx replied, “I am well, but I am calling with dire news.  I feel it is the least I owe you, though my government would be angry for this action.”

I frowned, and the back of my neck tingled, “What is it?”

Threx said, “Your race has been convicted of unsuccessfully attacking another.  Your world will be attacked by a joint fleet of several civilizations in one month’s time, a little over five of your weeks.  I am transmitting the data now.  I suspect you are innocent in this, and that this is the Gray’s solution for the conundrum of your continued survival with their technology, as their suspected plan to have the Sonex destroy you failed.”

I frowned, and said, “Wait one, please.”

We brought up the data, and it was of a merchant ship that looked exactly like one of ours.  Of course, I didn’t recognize the captain of the vessel as one of Earth’s merchant captains as he argued with a species we’d have never even dreamed of visiting thanks to the Vax database.  The race fired on the on the merchant vessel, who returned fire and destroyed the alien ship.  Then the merchant fled, opened a wormhole, and escaped.

I sighed, “That wasn’t us.  We have records of who’s on our merchant ships, and I can tell you that person is a fabrication, a hologram, and this was nothing but a lie.”

Threx growled, “I suspected as much, but no one would believe you.  They wouldn’t believe the Grays would break their own laws.  They also wouldn’t care, even if they did.  Most of them see this as an opportunity to gain another fifty light year swath of territory.  Some might pause, but the grand majority would attack anyway, even if they had proof.  As you know, it’s almost impossible to prove a negative, and you can’t really do it, can you.”

I got that.  They were greedy and it was a chance to expand, and they’d also fear calling our game masters liars and cheats.  Still, there had to be something we could do.

I sighed, “No, any data we sent would be suspect, after all, we’d just have to leave out one record to falsify things, that’s not proof at all.  I suspect if there’s any proof, it would be on the Gray’s systems.  They must have a record of it, somewhere.”

Threx shook his head, “I doubt it.  They could’ve built a new ship and kept it off their command and control net.  That’s what I would’ve done to get away with it, and any scans or evidence they might have would actually suggest it wasn’t their ship.  My race will not attack yours, we don’t participate in such things, as I have said before we direct our instincts to hunt in commerce, not war.  Good luck.”

“They might have probes in our system, the timing of being right after a conflict, where we showed advancement to their technology, is suspect.”

Threx nodded, but he had nothing else to offer.  Still, the warning itself was priceless.

Threx hung up, and the three of us looked at each other, completely horrified.

“Let me start building, then we can plan, and notify Earth.  No doubt, we didn’t get word of it and our communicator at the U.N. was cut out of the loop.”

They both nodded, and I connected my magic to the station.  It’d be faster that way.

First, I split up each of the thirty-six large warships into sixteen small warships, and then powered up all the nanites.  With that much power, it’d take about a week to get the resultant five hundred seventy-six small warships back up to large warship size, when it would split again.  The second split would yield over nine thousand warships at the end of two weeks.  At three weeks it would be over a hundred and forty-seven thousand ships.  At four weeks, over two point three million, at the end of five weeks, over thirty-seven million large warships ready to meet how many combined fleets?

We’d have to research that answer.  I was a little shocked by the numbers, and just how fast we could build with nanite reactors as opposed to building fusion reactors.  The larger the ship got the faster it would build.  The reason for one week instead of two was the small warship was a lot bigger than the starting point of the much smaller scout ship, starting out that much bigger shaved half the time involved.

Of course, without missiles they wouldn’t be as effective, so I changed things.  I hoped I wasn’t missing anything else obvious, and moving too fast, but I could always change things again.  The important thing was not wasting a second of growth potential.

I integrated a missile growth system, which would delay the growth cycle by a day and give us only four cycles instead of five, with three extra days at the end to get the missile count in the millions for each ship by the deadline.  Of course, there’d only be two point three million ships, instead of over thirty million, which I hoped would be good enough.  It should be, since those two point three million ships would be loaded, with trillions of shield and attack mini-platforms, rather than thirty three million ships that just had energy weapons.

Plus, we could never man that many ships.

I suspected that would be more than enough.  With shielded missiles, it wouldn’t take more than one, maybe two, to destroy ships not on our technological level.  I doubted even the joint fleets added up to billions of ships.  Which meant our biggest threat would come from the Grays, who I assumed would be joining the attack to make sure of us.

I took the twenty-four ships building in the other system, and I set up a similar growth cycle.  They were small warships already.  So that meant only three weeks of growth, since the first week would be blown to get them to twenty-four large ships.  Still, that was another hundred thousand ships filled with millions of missiles.

So, two point four million in total, all carrying about three million missiles.

When I came out of it, I was relieved to see Diana there already.

“Hi.  Umm, I suspect there’s a cloaked probe of some kind watching us.  It would help to find it, before the Grays figure out just how many ships that we’re going to have in five weeks.

“Oh, and we need about two hundred and twenty million people willing to fight a ship.”

Diana frowned, “I’ll give it some thought, the first one.  If they do have cloaked probes, it isn’t like the cloaking field I used.  Are you sure?”

I shook my head, “It makes sense, given the timing.  I imagine your advances scared the crap out of them, a beam that ignores their technologies old shields, shielded missiles, and all that.  Scared them enough to violate their own laws.”

Cassie said, “That’s pretty much the population of America, almost.  Why so many?”

I said, “We can handle running thirty-six probe warships, and assigning targets for millions of missiles which will act independently for secondary targets.  But greater enemy ship counts will make targeting harder, and we can’t automate two point four million ships, and quite possibly several trillion missiles.”

“Two point four million?” she asked, clearly shocked.

I nodded, “Thirty-six ships split sixteen ways, the resultant split every eight days, adds up quickly.  Thanks to Diana’s power systems, we can build a small warship out to a large one in seven days.  The extra day is for missiles.  If we had a little more time, I could make it thirty-eight million large warships.  Point is, this station can’t automate that many.

“Even thirty-six only works because we had them set up defensively as additional mass and automated point defense.  Fighting in a liquid battle, we can’t do more than control ourselves and our small platforms.  We’re limited to targeting about nine hundred targets a second, and in passing that data to missiles adds a bit more.  Not a problem against a hundred and twenty ships, but we’ll be facing hundreds of thousands of ships, if not millions.  That means we need command crews, for each and every ship, to do their part of that.

“On the good side, that’s only offensively.  If we use our small platforms for point defense, they’ll run themselves, and be able to target a million attacking missiles a second given there’s a million of them around each ship.  But we need crews for long distance ship targeting and missile firing.

“The Grays will have less warships when we’re done, even if they do have several million more scout-craft.  But, if we survive the first attempt to destroy us, we’ll have time to outgrow them.  Just one more week, and we’ll have more giant warships than they have scouts.  Assuming we survive.  Then we can go on the offensive, but that’s a whole barrel of shit I’d rather not uncork.

“But we need crews, which means going to Earth and asking for them.  China has a huge army, and should be able to fit the bill, and take most of the ships.”

Cassie said, “We’ll never be able to crew that many, thirty-eight million I mean.”

I nodded, “Probably not, but we could double the two point four million in a week, including missiles.  After we see where we are when it’s done.  Half that four point eight million warships can be an offensive force.  Hell, we can just make it an even five million, two point five per fleet.”

I shook my head, “The point is, we really can win against a multi-fleet blitz, with crews.  The question is should we go on the offensive.  I think after I figured out those numbers, and seeing what potential Diana’s upgrades really gave us, I’m not overly worried about losing.  Though it’s still more than a possibility, we’ll be stronger, but we can still be swarmed and destroyed if they come with higher numbers.

“Given the amount of FTL societies out there right now, it’s entirely possible.”

Cassie frowned, “We’ll have to put them down, if we just fight defensively, they’ll just keep coming at us until we succeed.  We can out-build them with the new power systems, by leaps and bounds, but humanity itself is limited and becomes the bottleneck at that point.  We can only crew so many ships.  We’ll need to counterattack quickly and destroy their infrastructure.”

I nodded, “Agreed, and it’s one of the reasons I want to find that stealth probe.  If so, it’s probably hooked up to a central command system like their ships are.  If I can get my hands on one, we can not only build our own version, but completely blind the enemy by destroying theirs.  Not just the one in our system either, I can take out the whole system if I act quickly enough.

“But… the future past that point worries me.  What happens if we do win?  If we take down the infrastructure around thousands of high-tech worlds in Andromeda and destroy their war-fleets.  Do we have a moral responsibility?  Their current system is brutal, and disgusting, but it works.  If we don’t replace it with something else, or take over what they have, the results will be horrifying.  All those conquering races held back by fear will enslave pre-FTL societies, expand their empire, fight their neighbors.”

Jessica frowned, “Do you think it’ll be that bad?”

I sighed, “Maybe not as bad as all that, but bad enough.  The thirty or so percent that trade we’ll be able to work with.  Most of the rest are probably just aggressively defensive, xenophobic, and will just continue to aggressively defend their borders.  Most of the super aggressive races would’ve been eliminated by the Grays’ current system of governance, but I’m sure there are some that will take up conquest, that only haven’t done it before out of fear of the Grays.  We’re talking about toppling an empire of tens of thousands of FTL societies controlled by fear, taking down the game masters.  The resultant violence across fifty galaxies will kill trillions of beings, if not more.  There are tens of thousands of FTL societies, and millions of pre-FTL societies with intelligent life.

“Yet… Cassie is right.  We can’t fight a defensive war and win, and we can’t just lay down and die because of that cost. The question is what do we put in its place, assuming we win.  Granted, it won’t be totally our fault and responsibility, we have a right to defend ourselves and destroy our attackers.  Hypocritical attackers who assume we were their enemy, and that are breaking their own laws to remove us.  But… I feel like we have to at least try to minimize the waves of violence that are sure to come.

“Obviously, that’s not up to me, not alone.  But, I’d like to have some ideas to share with the world when we inform the world leaders of what we’ve just learned.  Otherwise, it will just be chaos when the point comes up.”

Diana said, “It sounds like you don’t need me anymore, I’m going to work on detecting that probe you think is in our solar system.”

I nodded, “Thanks, love.”

She smiled lightly, but then bit her lip in worry as she turned away and left the room.

Cassie said, “I don’t like the idea of taking over and being gamemasters to perpetuate the current political landscape.”

I laughed, “Me either.  It’s like solving world hunger by killing half the population.  It’s crude, and unimaginative.  Simple solutions to complex questions are always crude and brutal.  The world isn’t black and white, but shades of gray.”

Cassie smirked, “What do you suggest?”

“The trading societies are the ones we know are capable of limited cooperation, but at the same time we have to avoid anything too grand.  A simple non-aggression treaty might be possible, and perhaps even mutual defense against those races outside the treaty.  Similar to what’s there now in some ways, but a little more complicated.  Self-defense of a merchant for instance, would be allowable.

“Some loss of life is inevitable, but the first time a treaty system is invaded, and we all reach out and kick the shit out of the one that did it, the other seventy percent made up of aggressive loners will at least leave us alone.  There’s a lot of space out there, Earth for instance could easily expand our empire out to five hundred light years of a sphere without running into competition, perhaps farther.

“So, then there’d be rules in our Earth empire, to leave pre-FTL societies alone within it.  Then what would we do for those out of our sphere, and among the treaty systems.  Do we protect them too, or ignore it when others prey on the weaker races outside of our sphere?  It sounds heartless, but I’d say the latter outside of the treaty.  We have a right to defend ourselves, those we have a treaty with, but we can’t save everyone or be the good guy everywhere.  The universe is too big, and too violent, and trying to protect everyone would make us their rulers, and it’d be just as wrong as what the Grays are doing.”

She nodded, “I’ll think on it.  As you said, there’s no easy answers, at least not ones that aren’t also brutal in nature.  I also agree we have the right to life, to defend ourselves, and it’s okay to be a little selfish.  We can’t save everyone.  What about the ship limitations?”

I grimaced, “I already removed the FTL limitation on warships.  In anticipation of the need to take out the Grays.  I’ve left the planet and ship limitation, since it will work perfectly as a friend and foe system.  I imagine over two million ships and several trillion missiles will get messy, and that’s just on our side.  It’ll prevent friendly fire.  That limitation won’t affect our ability to fight the Grays, even if they shape their ships and missiles to look like ours, the system will know.  All the new ships are made from my probe warships, so they’ll all be command and controlled by this station, can share targeting data, and all that.”

Cassie said, “Our allies won’t like that.”

I shrugged, “it’s too many ships, we don’t have a choice.  I won’t override their orders or actions against an enemy, or any jackassery, but all ships will share data freely, it’s the only way it can work and prevent friendly fire.  I hope they trust me that far, we all live here after all.  Besides, they’re not buying the ships, they’re just crewing my fleet to defend Earth.”

She smirked, “Good point, and that’s our lever point.  Not their ships, and they can’t afford to buy two million ships.”

“I just hope none of us want to go conquering, is it naïve to think we’re above that?”

She shrugged, “I don’t think so.  We’re on nine planets now, and space is big.  There’ll be plenty of room to spread out, and to make friends out there.  Most wars are fought over resources, I imagine at five hundred light years there’ll be another hundred planets or more we could move into, not to mention thousands of resource systems without life.  There’s no reason to compete.  It’ll also help because after taking out the Grays we’ll be the strongest militarily, and have very little to fear, all of which will temper our aggressive instincts a great deal.”

I nodded, and hoped we weren’t both naïve, because that sounded right to me.

“Alright, anything else?  I think we should just pack up everything we’ve just talked about from the moment Threx called us until now, along with the data Threx furnished us with.  Give the world leaders time to absorb it and calm down, before we all get in the same room and decide what to do.  From defending ourselves, to taking down our enemy, to living in a new galaxy that won’t be quite as… calm.  Obviously, all group decisions and not just up to us, what we discussed is just a starting point.”

Yeah, things just got complicated as hell.

Cassie said, “Good idea, I don’t think we’ve said anything needing to be censored.”

I nodded, and took care of that, then said, “I suppose it’s too late for a second week of vacation?”

Jessica snickered.

Chapter Fifteen

The conference room was tense, and it had high level people from several first world countries.  It wasn’t that we were excluding the rest, so much as only including the countries with large armies.   The United States, Russia, China, North Korea, and India all had armies over a million soldiers, then there were others who were hooked in via a video call, twenty more countries that had over a hundred thousand or more soldiers.  Not to mention world leaders, including myself.  I wasn’t actually present in the conference room at the U.N. complex.

“Good morning.  I’d like to, if we can, talk about the colony ships first, which are still in transit to their worlds.”

I paused for a moment, and I was relieved when no one objected.

“Starting colonies right now would be a mistake.  If the enemy has a probe here, you can be sure they have a probe in the eight systems with life bearing worlds they’ve so generously given us,” I took a deep breath, and dropped the sarcasm, “I don’t think it would be wise to split the fleet I’m building to try and protect nine worlds, and while the fleet a colony ship will build out is formidable enough to hold off a single species attacking, they won’t be formidable enough to face down multiple species swarming in on them.

“Instead, I suggest we turn them from a vulnerability to a worst-case scenario asset.  If the countries that own them agree, the colony ships should hide somewhere in the void between stars within our fifty light year sphere.  If the worst should happen, and we are lost, they could go in eight different directions and leave Gray space, perhaps find a galaxy outside of the fifty claimed where they could continue the human race.

“I don’t believe we will lose, not for a moment, but it seems prudent to prepare for the worst, even as we consolidate our fleet to protect our home world without leaving the colony’s backsides hanging out in the wind, so to speak.  When we defeat the Grays in Andromeda, they could continue on with their mission as planned.  Two months out in the void will be boring, but they should have more than enough supplies.”

The room was silent for a moment, then soft conversation broke out which lasted for quite a while.  I patiently waited, and sipped my coffee, as they argued about it.  In the end though, it’d be up to those eight countries that bought them, on if they wanted to take their chances or hedge their bets.  Most of the people in the room didn’t really get a say, and in the end I didn’t either.

The Russian representative said, “I think we should move on.  This is a high level meeting, and we will have deeper meetings later to take a more detailed look at all the issues brought up here today.  I suspect we will take President Akin’s advice, but obviously not all of us have to.  We only have five weeks, there’s no way we can sufficiently protect nine solar systems in that time, quite frankly I’m amazed and thankful we can even protect one in that time.”

There was general agreement in the room.

I noted, “For myself, besides building the ships, Astraeus is looking for that suspected cloaked probe, though there’s no guarantee we’ll find it.  I suspect a scanning breakthrough is required to do so.  If any of your scientists want to take a crack at it too, that would be good.”

The India represented asked, “To what end.”

I nodded, “Just another approach to mitigate this war.  If we can prove the Grays are spying on everyone in the empire it will piss people off.  It’s also the first step in finding proof the Grays and not us were behind the attack and it was part of a deception.  It’s a long shot, granted, but worth the effort in my opinion.  If we can find and get that data out, we’ll most likely only have to face the Grays, and the other races will drop out of the attack.  At least, the ones not burned up with greed, that will no doubt do it anyway.

“We’re also working on the comms problem.  An FTL communicator that doesn’t require entangled pairs, since I believe we only have entangled pairs with a handful of races at this point, thanks to our brave merchants.  I’ll keep you all updated on it, and it’s just something we’re trying to do within five weeks, that will probably fail.  Unfortunately, no one can dictate breakthroughs in technology, but my head scientist tells me they’re very close to quantum communications without entanglement.  Similar to radio broadcast, but universe wide.

“Plus, looking to the future, it’d be better if we could prove we didn’t do it.  If only so we’re trusted later on.  Otherwise, it’s going to look like we’re power hungry maniacs taking down an ancient civilization.  That’s going to make it harder to continue trading with other races, never mind making some kind of joint treaty between trading civilizations.

“One more point.  Finding and removing their stealth probe means they won’t know our final ship counts, or how we’re deployed.  Taking out the spies in any war is pretty important, I think.”

I shrugged, “Moving on, to the meat of this meeting, the battle for our solar system.  We’ll have two point four million ships.  A command crew of twenty would give you six on the bridge in three shifts, plus a captain and first officer.  Unfortunately, I don’t think we can meet that.  That’s forty-eight million crew.  Of everyone represented here, we probably only have fifteen million military personnel, and I imagine none of you would be happy stripping the planet.

“Instead, I suggest we split the ships into fleets of a thousand.  That’s twenty-four hundred fleets, all with a flagship that will have a full command crew of twenty.  Which is only forty-eight thousand people of full command crews.  The other ships will be in an enslaved formation, and they’ll move with their thousand ship fleets automatically.  If the command ship is destroyed, the ships will automatically slave to the closest command ship, or if necessary and impractical, that can be overridden.

“The rest of the ships will have a team of two on them, which adds up to just short of four point eight million people.  They’ll need to stay well rested without relief crew, so they’re ready at any time.  Fortunately, space battles are short on actual fighting, if not the duration leading up to them.  All they’ll need to do is launch a small missile defensive perimeter, and defense is taken care of.  The rest of their efforts will be in offense.  Someone to control and lock in weapons before firing offensive small-platforms, and what kind given the situation.  The second person will be taking orders, keeping an eye on the bigger situation, and if necessary they can override and pilot the ship.

“If we defend successfully, we’ll build for another week.  At first, I was thinking of doubling the fleet and leaving half here in case of a second wave of attacks, but I don’t think that will work, because we’d need another five million soldiers to man them.  Instead, I’ll double the mass of the ships, a new large warship class half the size of a colony ship, instead of a quarter.  We can call them dreadnoughts or something, and they’ll be holding a twelve million small-platform complement, instead of three million.  We’ll leave half here, and half will go to Andromeda and put the Grays down.  How thoroughly that’s done is something we should discuss.

“Once the war is over, we can decommission most of the ships, and mothball them for the next major blow up, so you can have most of your people back.”

The U.S. representative said, “There’s no tactical considerations in all of that.”

I smiled, “I’ll be fighting my station, and risking myself as usual.  But, I’m responsible for building a fleet of ships, which will remain in my care if only in name.  That and all the other stuff I said I’m doing, is my true purpose in all of this.  I’m the logistics, intelligence, and counter-intelligence part of this, in short, getting us the hardware, weapons, and ships we need to defend.  However, I’m not a tactician.  The skirmishes I’ve won have been thanks to overwhelming force, and greater technology.  We’re going to be two point four million ships, defending against who knows how many civilizations.  We could be facing billions of ships.  I’ll leave those tactics up to the admirals, but if you really want to know my opinion…

“I’d leave four hundred thousand ships around Earth for enemy ships that manage to sneak past the fleet, forty fleets englobing the Earth a light minute out in every direction, and I’d put the two million ships left a few light seconds within the FTL line that englobes our solar system.  The distance from the sun at which FTL and wormhole creation becomes possible.  That’s an impossibly huge area to cover, even for two million ships, or two thousand fleets of a thousand.

“When the enemy attacks and moves in, I assume from many thousands of directions in that extremely large sphere, the fleets by them can back up in a fighting retreat.  Once their suckered in, the fleets with no enemy can leave the line, wormhole behind the fleets so they can’t escape, and dig into their backsides.  Of course, that plan may be garbage, I just know out there near the FTL line we’d have flexibility and could move around the system at faster than light speed very quickly.

“It just seems unwise to me to make the last stand around earth our first place of battle.  But my idea might even be worse?  I’ll let the admirals figure that out, and fight the fleet, while I fit myself in somehow.  Who knows, simple might be better, have most of them out by Mars, wait for the enemy fleets to be stuck moving inward, say three hours of them accelerating in, then unload all our missiles since they don’t have a range anymore.  Simple, direct, and brutal, and it could quite possibly work and make it a one-sided massacre preserving all our people and ships.  We’d have like an hour to leisurely target ships and split up missiles, and then launch.  At that distance and six hundred gravities, they’d be going a good percentage of light speed, and annihilate the enemy.

“I’m not sure what plan is better, they both sound good to me.”

Two admirals snorted, one said the first, the other said the second, then they glared at each other.  I managed not to laugh.

“So yeah, deciding tactics, and figuring out how to come up with five million crew, are two separate meetings most of us politicians don’t need to be in, though I hope I’ll be fully apprised of the chosen defense strategy this time, and I’ll also take suggestions on where my station can fit in.”

“The rest of it depends on what happens next I think, as far as the aftermath when we’ve taken out the Grays.  Releasing the colony ships, trade, what level of cooperation will we seek from our alien neighbors and traders.  Expanding our empires borders past fifty light years, should we go to five hundred, less, more.  At five hundred, the volume of spherical space goes up by a thousand times.  Which means the possibility of nine thousand more life bearing planets within our new sphere.  Without the Grays watching everything, we should create our own joint sensor network to monitor all the stars in our declared sphere.  Unmanned probes to look for or warn off ships that encroach on Earth’s empire.  I imagine at ten times the radius, there’ll be a lot more settleable worlds out there, and many thousands of resource systems.

“I only mention it now, so all your leaders give it some thought over the next five weeks, and I’m open to discussing the possibilities technology wise.  If we take down the Grays, there’ll be no more rules holding back other races, so we’ll have to be more vigilant, and create the level of cooperation we want with the other trading races out there.”

I stopped there, I was losing them, they were all focused on the battle.  Which was fair enough.

The Chinese representative said, “If there’s nothing else for the broad overview.  We need to split up into two groups.  One to discuss tactics, and one to organize getting five million soldiers between all of us.  We need to move fast, and the ships though easy to operate, will require some training time.  Not to mention getting them outfitted with equipment, I imagine we don’t have time to fill crew quarters with soft beds, or to load up the bays with food.  We can do so for the command ships, but the rest of them will have to rough it with sleeping bags on metal beds, and so forth.”

I nodded, that was a good point, and not my problem.  The ship could even provide water and rations if necessary, but I was loath to suggest it.  That created food was mush, and kind of gross, even if it did have everything a body needed.

There were no objections, and the meeting closed.  As a recognized world leader I could monitor the other meetings, or at least review them, but I saw no reason to sit through them myself.  I really wasn’t a tactician, and I had more than enough going on already.

Instead of bothering Diana for an update on stealth and FTL communication technology again, I turned to the probe idea.  Once the battles were done, we’d have a ton of ships half the size of the station that would be decommissioned.  We simply didn’t have the crews for them.  Just one of those ships could make thousands of probes capable of FTL and with the scanners to monitor a system.  So, some of the fleet would be mothballed for future threats, but I could repurpose a small percentage of it to search out new life bearing planets and monitor things.  Really, there was around thirty-four thousand G type stars within five hundred light years, so just a part of one of the behemoth ships would create enough FTL probes to cover it.  Hell, it’d make several million of them.  If the new largest warship could carry twelve million missiles, it could carry six million probes in the hull.  Broken down, the ship would make tens of millions of probes.

Well, that was easier than I expected, it’d taken me less than fifteen minutes.  The probes would be about twice the size of a mini-platform, both to accommodate the wormhole drive and to power it.  Once it got there it would mostly power down, and just retain enough power to run the sensors and the entangled communications.

If only all our problems were so easily solved, I’d thought a probe network to keep an eye on Earth’s territory would be harder, turns out it was the simple part.

Chapter Sixteen

Diana flowed into the room with a grin on her face, and I hoped that meant good news.  She gave me a kiss, and smirked.  Damn, she really was sexy, and more beautiful to me every day.

“Remember you told me to come up with an idea to use all those old reactors?”

I nodded, a smile quirking on my lips.

She tilted her head, “It turns out the superconductive material addressed several of our problems for quantum communications, instant communications, without entanglement.  We’re not quite there yet, so don’t break out the champagne just yet, but we’re close.”

“Define close.”

She smiled, “It’s a tuning thing, experimenting, and software.  No breakthrough is needed anymore, we just need to find the right design and polish the interface software.  A week, tops, maybe sooner.”

I nodded, “How would it work exactly, I mean tens of thousands of civilizations on a walkie talkie type system sounds… messy.”

She giggled, “Yeah.  Like I said, software.  Theoretically there’s an infinite amount of bandwidth, of quantum frequencies.  The primary frequency for our system will be data only and always active.  A list of all the devices on the system, annotated by location, race, and user.  Think of it as an addressing system, a smart yet decentralized switchboard.

“If you want to call someone, you pick them out like you would in an address book on a smartphone.  It would send a data packet out which all the receivers would get, but it’d be addressed, so only the addressee’s communications device would respond.  Much like computers on a TCP-IP network.  At that point, it would scan and find an unused frequency.  Both machines would then open an audio/video connection on that new frequency, which none of the other machines would be listening to.  Given the possibility of hacking, the new frequency would also be encrypted, and each encryption will be unique to the machines involved.  So even if someone did build a hacking device to figure out what frequency two people were talking on to listen, all they would hear is white noise and gibberish.

“The real trick of course, is getting one to all the different races.  Probably why no one has bothered yet, because it’s just as easy to send one half of a quantum entangled pair.”

I nodded, “Except this new way everyone could talk to everyone, instead of having thousands of different communicators for each race to have their own connection.”

She nodded, “That’s why I’m doing it, and thought it worth the effort.  It’ll also work great for keeping colonies in contact without having to maintain a specific command center and switchboard on Earth or somewhere else.  It’ll work to connect fleets too, or civilian ships, the list goes on.  Still, the problem I stated remains, it’ll be a lot easier for internal use.”

“Yeah, I have a plan for that.  Well, two plans, but I’m hoping to find the stealth probe and evidence against the Gray’s first, along with a working non-entangled communication device, because I’m pretty sure my plan will only work once.”

She frowned, “Don’t keep me waiting.”

I grinned, “Yes, maam.  I was thinking of the device down in the U.N.  If they’ll let me near it, I can hack the Gray’s communication system with magic, at least once before they disconnect us to prevent us doing it again.  I figure that will connect us to every race in their empire, and it’ll allow us to send a message.  I can send the data on the stealth probes, the proof they violated the law instead of us, and of course, the technical designs and software for your new communication device.

“At that point, anyone who is interested in having trade or communications with other species including us will build one and load the software, so we won’t have to send one at all, which neatly gets around that problem.  I call it my three birds with one stone plan, because the other races will also be pissed at the Grays about the spying with the probes, and the Grays lying about that attack to manipulate them into wiping us out.  My guess is a lot of them will still attack us out of greed for our stuff and in fear of the Grays if they don’t, but some won’t.”

She tilted her head, “Second plan?”

I smirked, “In case we fail to find the probes or evidence, I’ll still try three days before the battle, even if I can’t prove it.  And send the data on the new device then.  If for some reason, they didn’t just exclude us from that transmission that we need to be wiped out, and we’re already separated from their communication system in totality and I can’t hack a signal, I’ll go to plan B.

“Plan B involves the Vax.  We’ll pay them if necessary.  They have contacts in thousands of systems, and all the systems that would be the most likely to build one of our communications devices anyway.  The xenophobic and aggressive ones wouldn’t build one, even if we did manage to pull off plan A.  I could send the data, our suppositions or proof as the case may be, along with the designs and software.  The Vax can forward it all out for us.  Of course, that’s just thirty percent of the relatively local trader civilizations, they haven’t traded in almost a three-quarters of the empire yet because of their older FTL drives and the time limitations to get there.  Still, it will get the closest ones, and eventually that knowledge will spread, when the furthest ones they know share the design and system with those further out.  Eventually, everyone in the old empire will have the opportunity to build one, if they want, it will just take longer.”

She bit her lip, “Okay, but if we’re having them build them, I’ll have to include the metallurgical process for that alloy in the specifications and instructions, which will lead them to much better fusion reactors.”

I shrugged, “We don’t use them anymore.  It might let them use a reactor or two less in their ships, but it won’t give them other advances, will it?  And that’s assuming they even think of it.  They might just focus on the superconductor part of things, and never think to test it for thermo-electric qualities.  Still, even if they did, who cares.”

She nodded, “I don’t disagree, just thought I’d verify.  We could make a lot of money selling that technology after all.  I get giving away the communication devices though, can’t trade anything without communications.”

“How about…”

She interrupted, “Don’t ask me about the stealth system.  I don’t have a clue.  Even if we somehow come up with a new scanning technology in under five weeks, there’s no way to know if the thing isn’t already stealthy to that too.  Right now, I don’t even have any theories past our current scanning technology.  Much less the math, or the hardware.  I’ve got a team on it, but who knows how long it will take.”

“Have we tried looking for what isn’t there?  Besides a ship or probe I mean.”

She frowned.

“Just saying, isn’t there a relatively even spread of stellar dust out to the heliopause, thinning evenly on its way there?  If there’s a spot with absolutely nothing in it, not even background radiation…” I trailed off.

She nodded, “You want me to look for indirect evidence.  That’s not a horrible idea.  It’ll take time though.  I’ll have to adjust the software and do a very detailed scan of a very large solar system.”

I nodded, “Thanks, although you might start with Earth orbit.  Chances are it will be close enough to Earth for detailed passive scans, definitely no further than the asteroid field past Mars.  If you find something, I can zip out there.  I bet my magic will find it, as long as I’m in range.  Of course, I’ll wait until the fleet is built.  Three days should give their leadership time to pull out of the attack, and to consider things.  I fear if we expose them, they’ll do something rash and attack early, so just in case we’ll wait for the last minute.”

If they attacked now, or even in two weeks, we’d be totally screwed.  Of course, waiting was a risk as well, since they’d see our building.  Maybe I’d take out the stealth probe but leave off on the transmission until the last minute.

Or maybe I could just move the building fleet to a spot the probe can’t see, away from Earth.  Then do it all right before we move in the fleet and pick up the soldiers on the planet.  That was a better plan.

She asked, “What will you say to convince the U.N. to give up the Gray communications device.  You can’t exactly out the supernatural races, no matter how important it is.”

“I’ll tell them I can hack it, once.  And send the proof of the Grays’ lies and spying, as well as an alternate way to communicate.  Also, that it will only work once.  If they ask how I’ll say proprietary technology we’re not going to share.”

She nodded, “Alright, I’ll get started on that scan.  See you at dinner?”

“Can’t wait.”

She smirked, and then left the command center.

I took a deep breath, and I tried to relax.  The building would finish without me, I had the probe system done, and my pre-battle plans were in place if not ready yet.  Outside of the attack life went on, so I turned my attention to running the station, and my inventing, even as I monitored the meetings going on.

The next four weeks passed quickly, there was far too much to do and only five weeks in which to do it.

The easiest thing had been finding the stealth probe, the cheeky bastards had it in Earth orbit, no doubt to keep a close eye on us.  It was about the size of a shuttle.  As I’d suggested, she’d scanned for unnaturally smooth holes in the stellar dust, and we found it in less than an hour because she’d chosen Earth as the starting point.

To verify it wasn’t something else going on, I took a ship to the surface, and passed by it.  Something that was no doubt routine to the probe and wouldn’t be flagged by the software.  I didn’t try to hack it, or even connect to it, I just verified my magic could feel it there and connect.  It could.  Maybe that was overly paranoid, but something had tipped them off when I did it for their fleet of ships.  If I only got one shot at it, I wanted to make it count.

As long as I was there on Earth, I approached the U.N. security council and managed to persuade them to give me the communication device.  Since in their eyes, the Grays were the enemy, and would soon be gone, the device was easier to get than I expected.  It simply wasn’t important anymore, and it’d be more than worthless when we wiped the bastards out.

I’d also moved the building ships that first week to the other side of the sun where the probe wouldn’t see them.  There was only five hundred seventy-six in the first round, so they’d never believe for a second that we’d have over two point four million in less than five weeks from then.

In short, everything was in place for my plans for before the battle, although I wouldn’t know the results of it until I moved on it.  On that last building day, I planned to hack the probe and look for proof, do what I could to sabotage that system, then immediately hack the communications system and send that data, along with the communication device data for the unentangled communication system Diana would have finished up.  In all, it should take me less than a half hour to do all of it, giving the Grays little time to respond or cut us off.

I also wouldn’t know if I could still hack their communications system until the last moment.  I was afraid if I tested it, they’d notice and disconnect it from the system, like they had the original scout ship.  Of course, I’d have the communicator Threx gave me if that was the case, and then go to plan B right away.

Once their probe was eliminated, the hidden fleet would round the sun and start loading soldiers with shuttles.  It wouldn’t take that long, with two point four million shuttles, they’d all be loaded at once from specified pick up points, then they’d deploy the ships.

The eight countries with colony ships took my advice, and for the next five weeks plus, they’d be waiting out there for the war to end.  After which, depending on which way it went, they’d either flee the empire in eight disparate directions to restart humanity somewhere else, or go to their assigned worlds right there in Earth’s territory.

The tactical meetings went on for weeks, but in the end the plan was quite simple.  We’d have four hundred thousand ships, or four hundred fleets, englobing Earth at two light minutes out.  They’d be the last line of defense.

The solar system was just too huge.  Even with the remaining two thousand fleets, to cover everything.  There was also the problem of intimidating the attackers, we thought they might take one look and abort, call for reinforcements, or… something.  I suspected even the four hundred fleets would give them a moment of pause.

As a result, they’d modified my plan A in the meeting.  We’d be taking the rest of the fleets out of the SOL system completely, and station them one light year away in the void between stars.  They’d have three days out there to finish familiarizing themselves with the controls, and to run a few simulations.

When the enemy fleets arrived, we’d take the time as they started to move in to assign fleets to the different breach points and vectors in the sphere of our solar system.  Then about an hour later, the two thousand fleets would wormhole behind the attacking fleets, accelerate toward them at sixty gravities, and launch defensive mini-platforms and an appropriate number of offensive mini-platforms.

It’d be a hell of a surprise against the enemy, and a whole lot more organized than my idea of using FTL to reposition fleets around the spherical FTL line around our solar system.  A lot less chaotic, and a complete surprise for the enemy, I couldn’t argue it and agreed with them.  I was an armchair tactician at best.  Obviously, they’d also have an hour to tailor their response to the reality of the attack, and not what we suspected, which would make our response a whole lot more certain.

As for the space station, I’d be staying where I was, as the third line of defense.  Of course, I’d also be able to fire mini-platforms and keep an eye on things through the sensor data net, as all the ships would be connected to my station.  In fact, I’d be routing all that data through me and to the command center on Earth where all the disparate Admirals would run the overall battle.

Given that it would most likely take them between ten and thirteen hours to get the fleets in range of Earth, given an estimated forty to sixty gravities of acceleration, we shouldn’t have a problem taking them out before they got anywhere close to missile range of Earth.  At least, most races had that two light minute range limit to their missiles, without the powered nanites they all would.

Of course, if there were more than two thousand enemy fleets all very far apart, which was likely… we’d have to improvise, and things might get a little ugly.  We could split into sub-fleets under one command ship, but it’d be closer to two, four, or more groups of independently flown ships.  Still, staying in formation wasn’t exactly a top priority.  Or we could take out two thousand fleets at a time then switch to the next.  It’d all depend on how many attacking fleets, and just how far apart they were, on if that was a viable plan or not.

Things were going about as well as could be expected, honestly, given the numbers and limited time to get ready.  If it wasn’t for Diana and her power systems breakthrough, along with Threx’s generosity of spirit in warning us, we’d have been more than screwed.

The build continued on schedule, and as the fifth week started up, we had the expected amount of ships building up to large warships for the last time.  After the battle, we’d double the mass and quadruple the mini-platform complement in about a week, and then take the war to the enemy.

At the end of those four weeks, something else came up as well, that was completely unrelated, and planned.  We’d decided not to push the date back on the wedding, and all our ducks were in a row for the battle, so we could even afford a few days for a honeymoon, if not the entire week, given no emergencies came up.

Chapter Seventeen

The bed was warm, toasty even, and extremely comfortable with my wife against my side.  I really didn’t want to move, or get up, at all.

The wedding had gone well, it’d just been Jayna and Cassie as witnesses, along with Jessica and a couple more security people at the chapel.  The reception had been a little more crazy, good music, food, speeches, and a lot of guests, some of which I even knew.  Some weird hybrid of a state dinner and wedding reception at the same time at the resort, though it was a lot more fun than that sounded, once the alcohol had started to kick in.

The last week we’d had a delightful honeymoon on the yacht, and we’d only been interrupted twice all last week.  Otherwise we’d been more than a bit absorbed in each other, and in our attempts to get a family started.

Regardless, I didn’t want to get up, it would mean the honeymoon was over.  The ship had just announced we’d reached orbit, and it was time for the craziness to begin.  The invasion was slated to start in just four days, the ships on the other side of the sun just had a day of growth left before they’d be complete.  It was time to kick the Grays in the teeth, and more importantly, poke out their eyes, figuratively speaking.

“We should just stay in bed.”

She giggled, “Sounds tempting, but we have work to do.”

I snorted, “You just can’t wait to get your hands on the new tech.”

She tried to look innocent, but totally failed.  I knew she was looking forward to me stealing the stealth probe technology so she could sink her mind into it.  Not that there was anything wrong with that, I just didn’t want to leave our bubble yet, and rejoin the real world.

I sighed, and we got up and took a shower, got dressed, and headed for the bridge of the yacht, which was ridiculously posh.  Soft light brown leather seats, and the command table was in a dark brown wood, as was the floor.  It looked pretty good, but it was a pain to make, since nanites obviously couldn’t simulate wood, part of the yacht was constructed, if using automation.

I set an orbital course that would take us close to the stealth probe, and as we got near it I stretched out my magic.

The first thing I did was reprogram the nanites so the enemy couldn’t give orders to the probe.  The probe was closer to a sub-ship or probe of a command center, meaning they could remotely control it, much like I could my own sub-ships from the station.  That was entirely different from the ship network they had, which only logged incoming reporting data to a command and control collection point, and it opened up a lot of possibilities I wouldn’t have been able to do with the Grays fleet when I was in the system.

The second thing I did is rip down all the firmware and software of the probe, for Diana and one of her teams to study.  The cloaking itself was accomplished by a science I didn’t truly understand, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be able to operate it, or even build one.  At the moment, I wasn’t sure we’d ever use that technology at all.  Bottom line, Diana would have to figure out how it worked, in order to figure out how to find it faster than scanning for blank spots.

Then I followed the entangled links back to the system, and I dove into the available data.  I found the incident easily enough, and even the transmissions that went back and forth between the holographic human that didn’t exist and the race that was attacked.  Yet… there was no real proof in it.  The probe systems data was all passive, and there was just no way to prove it wasn’t us.

I was a little disappointed, but I hadn’t truly expected the whole plan to go to plan.  Just partial success would be more than good enough for me.  I took over the command center through the probe links, and issued orders for all probes to decloak, move away from the planet, and self-destruct.  Once that was sent, I bricked the command center by locking out all access and pulled my mind back to our probe.

Our systems probe, I just decloaked and turned to dust.  Obviously, it hadn’t gotten the self-destruct orders, since I’d removed the permissions earlier.

“Alright, you should have all the data you need, step two.”

Diana just smiled at me, like I’d just given her the best wedding present ever.

I connected to the communication device, then sighed.  I’d really hoped that part of the plan would work.  Still, it was worth carrying on with the plan just to muddy the waters, and to get our quantum communications device design and specs sent out.

“They removed the entangled particles from their side, which means all those uncloaking and self-destructing probes will have to be self-explanatory for most of the races.  Damn it.”

She nodded.

I set course for the station, and then called Threx.  While I waited, I signaled Jessica to move the fleet.  Controlling that many ships in battle would be impossible but sending them all the same orders to head to Earth would be easy enough.

Threx answered, and he nodded which I returned.  We still did that a lot.

“Threx, I have some information, some technology, and I need your assistance.”

Threx frowned, or at least I thought he did.

“What do you desire of us?”

I nodded, “You may have noticed a probe decloaking, then moving away from the planet and self-destructing?”

Threx nodded warily.

I said, “That probe belonged to the Grays, and the same event just happened over every world in the Grays’ empire.  They’ve been spying on everyone, for tens of thousands of years, and I have the data to prove that beyond a doubt.  Beyond that issue, I have a short statement about the so called Earth attack canned, and I also have gathered circumstantial evidence only, about the attack we were accused of actually being the Grays to illegally kill us all.  We can’t prove that part, not without a doubt, but since the Grays will be proven to be liars and spies, perhaps some will believe and not attack my world.  Lastly, I have the designs, specifications, and software for a communications device system we invented that works instantaneously via quantum principles without entangled pairs.  What I’d like to do is have you forward that message and data regarding those three things to all your trading worlds.

“I’m hoping at that point, anyone interested will build their own device, including your people, or perhaps several.  It seems more efficient than going to fifty some odd thousand worlds to drop off an entangled pair, and only having it work for us and not between those worlds.  This will ensure everyone can talk to everyone, if their civilization chooses to build it.  Obviously, the aggressive xenophobes won’t build it, but that’s fine, since they don’t trade anyway.  I’m also hoping, the worlds you trade at the edge of your reach, will forward it on to others.”

There was a pause, as Threx thought that through.  I didn’t rush him, it was a lot of information and all at once.

Threx nodded, “Just for the technology you speak of, I would do this.  But it isn’t that simple.  We trade with many worlds, but I don’t have a communicator at each one, I have maybe three hundred worlds that I have personally visited and trade with on a regular basis.  I will forward what you sent, along with my own recommendations, to both those worlds and my people.  After that, it will be out of my hands, but I suspect the other merchants in our fleet would be delighted to pass it on to their world contacts as well.  The gift of communication is a big thing, I will honor you in my memories.”

I grinned, “Thanks, but don’t count us out yet.”

I sent the data, which included all the plans, software, video files, and a nice sampling of data from the probe network that was damning to the Grays.  That last one was something we could prove, the problem was we couldn’t pass that to everyone, but such was life.  Still, I had no doubt most would come to the right conclusion, if be a bit confused about the probe outing itself and then self-destructing.

He grunted, and nodded as the transmission ended, before he disconnected on his end.

Just because, I added the new quantum communicator as ship upgrade, both military and civilian.

Diana said, “From what I’m seeing this wouldn’t work on a warship.  At least, it would to set up an ambush, but any kind of active sensors, shielding, weapons fire, or even impulse drive would give it away.”

I frowned, “Then how do they get it in… oh.  The probe’s been there since we were in caves, hasn’t it?  It was in position around our world long before we launched the first satellite, or even built a telescope.”

She nodded, “I suspect so.  It uses the low power breakthrough I made a while ago to power it, with its main power down.  Which is more than enough to run the cloak field, passive sensors, and fire up the reactor if it ever needs to move out.  It also uses the planets electro-magnetic field somehow, to keep its orbit from degrading, for station keeping.”

I smirked, “You’re so hot when you geek out.  Passionate, beautiful, and sexy as hell.”

She blushed, “Ass.”

I nodded easily in agreement.

She grinned, “It’ll take me a while to figure out how these fields work, although figuring out how to defeat it may be moot.  Scanning for blank spots works of course, but gathering and sifting data at that level is time consuming.”

I shrugged, “Someone else could invent it, it’d be nice to have a way around that if it ever came up.”

She nodded, “Other reasons too.  Not only just for the point of knowing more mysteries of the universe, though I doubt we’ll ever use it, there also might be any number of other useful applications using the underlying technologies, other than stealth I mean.  Are you going to stare at me like that all the way back to the station?”

“That was the plan,” I said, completely unashamed at showing my adoration.

Her lips twitched, and her voice came out breathy, both of which betrayed the faux annoyed look on her face.

“It’s distracting.”

I grinned, “Is it?  You know, love, it’s at least a half hour to the station from Earth orbit.”

She bit her lip, her eyes smoldered, and then she dropped the data pad with a sultry look I’d never tire of seeing.

I guessed our honeymoon wasn’t quite over yet…

Chapter Eighteen

The time passed slowly on that last day, as we sat in the command center and waited for the enemy to come.  The first fleet came with eight thousand ships, the second with six thousand just ten minutes later.  The fleets were coming from all over the galaxy, and possibly beyond the galaxy, but they all showed up at specified coordinates, at least that much had been coordinated.

In the end, there were just over ten thousand fleets, between four to eight thousand ships each.  The total ship count was estimated at just over sixty million.  Of course, those almost thirty to one odds were heavily skewed, taking into consideration we had two point four million ships, each with three million mini-platforms, a full third of which would be used defensively.  That was two point four trillion defensive missiles, and five trillion or offensive platforms.

To put it in perspective, even the largest eight thousand ship fleet with their eight missile launchers could only put out sixty-four thousand missiles per volley.  Which made our numbers beyond overkill, given just one ship of ours could stand off that whole fleet’s missile attacks with a million defensive platforms, each taking out one missile.  There was no point even launching our full defenses.

Of course, things would get dangerous, very dangerous, if they could get within energy range, then their higher numbers would be devastating.  Except, we had more than enough offensive shielded mini-platforms to make that scenario extremely unlikely.

Another problem was we had two thousand fleets.  That meant each fleet needed to face five enemy fleets.  The enemy fleets were split up too well, englobing us, to make that approach impractical.  Which meant every fleet became five sub-fleets of two hundred.  The command ship for those five sub-fleets would be giving out orders, and then sending each one to an enemy fleet.  That’d take a little time to split up into groups and assign the targets, but we had plenty.

Two hundred warships don’t sound like much against a fleet of eight thousand, except those two hundred ships had six hundred million missiles between them.  Yeah, I’d totally overbuilt.  I suspected just forty thousand of our mini-platforms would take out the strongest fleet present.  The key would be maintaining our distance.  Given the size of the solar system, and mini-platform missiles with unlimited range, I didn’t think that’d be an issue.  At all.

I almost felt sorry for them.

The only exception to that was the Gray fleet of course, I didn’t feel sorry for them at all.  They had two thousand warships in the game themselves.  Although they still outnumbered the fleet going for them by ten to one, and they could launch millions of missiles at once if they wished, just like we could.  However, their missiles had a limited reach of two light minutes, and their point defense wouldn’t be nearly as capable without our platform technology.  Our ships on both sides could take down a little less than a hundred missiles per second, there was no difference there, but we had mini-platforms, each of which was independent and if we launched a shell of a million mini-platforms, that was another million missiles per second our side could defend against.

Times two hundred ships, and the defensive capabilities were boggling in scope.

That technology of Diana’s truly blew any semblance of balance of power between us and the Grays out of the water.  It was only my caution, and my reluctance to feel smug and overconfident, that didn’t let me relax.  The battle hadn’t even started, and it seemed to be in the bag, at least in my mind.

It’d be a slaughter, not a battle.  But there was always the unknown, their nanites could reconfigure on the fly, change just as fast as ours, who knows what the enemy has been up to the last five weeks after seeing our new technology in action?

I followed the orders that the generals and admirals worked out, and less than thirty minutes after the enemy ships had started to move in they’d assigned sub-fleets to enemy fleets.  The commanders on ship had also used the computers at that point to assign specific targets to each ship, ten each.  Of course, those ships were way out of range, but they were able to share the scanning data of the four hundred thousand ships in system.

“Coffee?”

Jessica laughed nervously, “I’ve got plenty of energy, sir.”

Cassie smirked, “I’ll take one.  Thanks, Mr. President.”

Jayna giggled, “Me too.”

Diana just lifted her cup, “Still half full.”

I laughed at Cassie’s teasing, I didn’t imagine it was often a president got his advisors coffee.

It seemed like a good way to break up the tension, moving around and doing something I mean.  I knew the fleet wouldn’t move for another half an hour, even if the plan was solidified at that point.  At another thirty minutes, they’d be farther out of energy range.  It would make it extremely unlikely at that point that the ships could reverse and escape, or worse, close into energy range where the advantage would actually be theirs, before our missiles going six hundred gravities caught up to them from behind and took them out.  We’d probably still win, given our mini-platforms, but why risk any deaths at all.

All of the enemy fleets were moving at forty gravities, though I suspected many of them could do sixty like us and Grays.  They were obviously coordinating to arrive at Earth at the same time.

I gathered up three coffees, the god drink, and headed back to the command center.

Cassie asked, “What’s bothering you.”

I shrugged, “I don’t see how we can lose, they’re completely outclassed, as long as we keep our distance.  A battle of this size without a single casualty on our side, it just seems… too good to be true.”

Cassie nodded, “Which violates the whole Murphy principle.”

I laughed, “Exactly, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.  The Grays have had five weeks to analyze the attack I fought off.  That they haven’t run away in just the face of four hundred thousand ships, less than a fifth of our true fleet, is… disturbing.  They’re not stupid, and they should know they don’t have a chance at this point.”

We were relatively silent then, for a little bit, thinking dark thoughts.  I had no doubts we should remove the grays, genocide was an ugly thing, but they’d committed genocide on perhaps hundreds of thousands of plants over the last tens of millennia, for the length of their empire.  Attempting to kill all of us, well it was self-defense.  If even one got away, they could rebuild quickly, given their technology.

That was another worry, I suspected we had all of their worlds in Andromeda, but they also had millions of scout ships spread out in the fifty galaxies.  How could we ensure getting them all?  I wasn’t sure we could.  Unless, I went along, and sent out an update to brick all their ships.  Still, that wouldn’t be all that easy, unlike the probe network the ship network was different, less capable that way.  Which meant I’d have to trace every ship one at a time with my magic to take it out.  Even if I did one a second, that would take years.  It wasn’t really practical.  It’d be more practical to deploy a ship to each system with a scout in it, take out a million ships per mission.  About the best I could do would be to get access to the system again from another ship, or on their home world, and then pass along the target information to the fleet, and I’d send updates if any of the ships moved or fled.

I didn’t know, and of course the world leaders and militaries would get a say and probably set the tactics to be used.

Still, I didn’t imagine it would easy to take down an ancient space empire.  They’d just made it necessary by their perfidy.

“Here we go,” Cassie said.

The ten thousand sub-fleets of two hundred ships took a wormhole in, behind the ten thousand enemy fleets they were assigned to.  They all locked on their assigned ships, and in total they launched six million mini-platforms.  One hundred of them for every ship, we were pretty sure that would be major overkill, no ship outside of the Grays could defend from that many, not before they removed the ship from existence.  Most of the ships would probably die as soon as they got within a light second, and they could fire their energy beams.  Some few might survive and take out a few, before they got to an eighth of a light second and fired the disintegrator beams which their shields would be useless against.

Thing was, overkill wasn’t a waste.  Any surviving platforms would be recalled, which I suspected would be most of them.

The mini-platforms jumped forward at six hundred gravities, and a short time later, the ships started to follow at a speed that would maintain the longer range.

The enemy ships all fired back with their own missiles, a volley every thirty to sixty seconds depending on the fleet or their technology.  As expected, our ships launched a hundred thousand missile shield, no point in launching a full million after all.

The only different battle among the ten thousand fleets, was the fleet going after the Grays.  They launched much more than a hundred missiles per ship.  They in fact, they launched a total of two million missiles.  That was one thousand mini-platform missiles per ship.  The Grays’ point defense might be able to handle that, except as soon as they were in range each ship would be hit by a thousand energy beams from those assigned missiles.  That would take out their shields without a doubt, and it’d dig into their ships enough to disrupt that kind of thing.

The Grays launched twenty million missiles back.  One hundred thousand at each of the ships.

“That’s not nearly enough.”

Not even close, and I got a really bad feeling about it.

Chapter Nineteen - Interlude

Admiral Naveen was nervous.  She hadn’t liked the fact the humans had four hundred thousand ships, when there were less than a thousand just five weeks ago, and no data indicating such a build up from the intelligence section.  Incompetent bastards.  Most of them had already been executed, following yet another debacle of four days ago, when their systems were hacked, and their stealth network was discovered and destroyed.

She suspected all the fleets present except hers would be destroyed.  That wasn’t really her concern, the other races present in the attack knew the humans had Gray technology.  They were probably just greedy enough to make the sacrifice of people and equipment to claim nine living worlds and another hundred light year diameter sphere for their empires.  Even if all the ships blow up, all ten thousand of them would have an equal chance to claim the prize when it was raffled off.

Of course, she hadn’t expected they’d all die when they got here.  At last report they could’ve easily overwhelmed them with all the numbers, but such were the vagaries and risks of war and conquest.

Then, she’d gotten another shock, as two million more ships had arrived through wormholes, and fired at their backsides, then launched missiles.

“Kalen, are you sure about this?”

Kalen was one of their head scientists, and he had come to a surprising conclusion by researching the Grays’ technological archives.  If he was right, they had a chance, if he was wrong, they were just totally screwed.

Kalen replied, “Yes, Admiral.  I am sure, it’s the only thing that fits.  Fifty-three-thousand years ago our scientists made a similar breakthrough.  The only way they could be shielding missiles or powering something that small and powerful is vacuum energy, nanites that are self-powered.  We used them instead of fusion for a few decades without incident, until we found out they had a fatal flaw.  A vulnerability we were never able to overcome.  The Stolthrim discovered it, or I should say, they wiped out whole fleets until we analyzed the data and figured out what they were doing.  We tried for a long time to fix it, but we were forced to return to fusion power.  The project was shelved several years later, and we flagged it for review if we ever increased our theoretical knowledge relating to that phenomena.  Obviously, we never did.”

The Stolthrim were one of six of their long-standing enemies, a bug-like race, and quite powerful in their own right.  There was a reason the Grays had stopped expanding after taking over fifty galaxies.  Not out of boredom, or lack of ambition, but because they’d ran into several other multi-galactic empires who were more than a match for them.  There’d been a ceasefire the last ten thousand years or so, but they were ever vigilant on the borders just in case war came again.

Kalen added, “It would also explain how they built so quickly, the entire ship being a powerhouse of energy.  The numbers add up, if you multiple their starting fleet by sixteen every week.  I apologize for not anticipating this.”

The admiral waved her arm, “Not your fault.  One of the other races must’ve warned the humans this was coming, else they wouldn’t have built such a large fleet.  Do you think we set them up?”

The admiral wasn’t sure, but just based on what she knew it seemed likely.  It tweaked her sense of honor, but she was forced to admit the humans having their stuff plus advances was a frightening one.  The first time their empire was truly endangered from within since the time they’d started to forge it.

“Forget I asked that.  Time for missiles?”

The weapons officer said, “The missiles have already passed each other, they took out almost half of ours.”

The Admiral said, “Good,” and then she brooded as she looked over the command table.

She wondered if they’d survive.  She supposed it all depended on how fast they could react and adjust.  It’d still be close to eleven and a half hours before she got in range to their inner fleet, and she fully expected some of them to flee, which meant finding them and chasing them down later, without a stealth probe left in their empire.  At least their world would be dead.  She’d been expecting to close with them first, less time for them to adjust or run, which made the two million ships behind her fleets even more unwelcome, as they forced her hand early.  She had no choice but to use the new weapon, or her ships would be destroyed.  Tactically, it sucked to use the surprise so early in the battle, but she had little choice.

Those incompetent bastards in intelligence, if they weren’t dead already, she’d skin them alive and then kill them slowly.

Chapter Twenty

The missiles had crossed, and many of the enemies’ missiles had been taken down, but the volleys sent weren’t enough to get them all, not even against the Grays.  Still, there were tens of thousands of defensive mini-platforms for what was left before the ship’s defenses would be tested, it shouldn’t be an issue.  Regardless, for the other fleets, not the Grays, they’d taken down several missiles in each volley.

Yet, I still worried, the Grays just couldn’t be that stupid.  They’d run an empire for who knows how many millennia, perhaps even from the time of the dinosaurs, whatever it was in truth, it’d been a long ass time.

I stared in shock, at what took place next.

The ten thousand fleets, as expected, were totally annihilated, and they’d managed to take out maybe five percent of the missiles fired at them, the rest were recalled to the ship.  The destruction of sixty million enemy ships happened in seconds, and none of their missiles even came close.  All were destroyed in the first moment they crossed the one light second line to the missile shield, much less the ships point defense.

As for the grays, our missiles arrived and crossed that one light second barrier, then exploded.  The gray ships didn’t fire even one point-defense beam, all the missiles blew up, and it looked a lot like a nuclear explosion would.  It didn’t make sense.

The Grays’ missiles on the other hand all exploded before our defense missiles could fire.  A split second later, all twenty million defense missiles, and all two hundred ships, went up in nuclear fire.  I felt a chill go down my spine, and couldn’t help but doubt the evidence of my eyes.

“What the fuck just happened?”

Jayna sounded shocked, but said, “That’s not very presidential.”

Cassie shook her head, “He gets a pass on that one, that was… what the fuck happened?”

There was no indication on the plot of what happened, but that didn’t mean the scanners missed it.  It just meant whatever that was, the scanners weren’t programmed to display it on the command hologram.

Diana shook her head, and grimaced as she brought up the scan data.

“There’s not much data here on what the ship was reporting to us, whatever happened, it was fast.  I doubt we’d even be able to figure it out at all, if they weren’t all technically probe warships constantly sending us data.  Just a second.”

It was closer to a minute later, when the blood drained from her face.

“The power systems.  The nanite vacuum reactors exploded.”

I frowned, “I thought that wouldn’t be a problem with a distributed system.”

Diana nodded, “It wouldn’t be.  If they were hit by a blaster beam, or there was a fault, the explosion would be relatively small, and be absorbed by the nanites around them.  But what happened is there was a huge power spike.  For about three nano-seconds the amount of power they pulled from the universe was off the scale, thousands, perhaps millions of times more powerful than normal.  Like a reactor overload.

“That changes things, the released energy was millions of times more powerful than a reactor breach at normal power would’ve been.  It doesn’t make sense.  I’m assuming those missiles did something to cause it, but I’m not sure what yet.”

Jessica interjected, “An Admiral has tasked the closest eight sub-fleets to intercept, and immediately launch missiles.”

I growled, “Idiot,” then hit the comm line, “This is President Akin.  I suggest we hold for now.  We have ten hours or more before their fleet will close with our inner fleet.  We need to figure out what happened, and how to adjust, or we’re just throwing their lives away, not to mention wasting missiles.  If you must do something, then just launch missiles.  For all that’s holy, don’t let any ships get within two light minutes of that fleet, or they’re dead.  Give us a little time to figure this out.

“All we know right now, is they somehow caused our reactors to overload and explode, at a rate and power that should be impossible.”

I released the button, sort of like mute.

Diana frowned, “I don’t think our scanners caught it, or maybe they just didn’t have enough time to pass it along.  Systems status on the ship is constantly reported, in real time, outside sensor data is different.  There’re a few milliseconds of delay in processing it, and the ship blew up in nano-seconds.  If we want to know what they did, we need to preserve one of their ships, and get a hold of one of their weapons.”

I frowned.

Diana gasped, “Wait.  I think we have the answer on our sensors.”

“How is that possible, they’re several A.U.s away.”

Diana said, “Subspace.  There was a perturbation in subspace at the exact moment their missiles exploded, and around their ships when our missiles exploded.”

I frowned, “Subspace is a mess inside a solar system, isn’t it, unusable?”

She bit her lip and nodded, “Which is probably the only reason every ship in the system didn’t explode.  Subspace destabilized the energy field they generated past a light second.  If we’d have met them out in the void between stars, we’d all be dead.  We’ll, maybe not all, I suspect the range of the weapon is close to two A.U. where FTL is possible.”

Oh, good to know.

“Any idea what it does?”

Diana smirked, “Give me another five minutes.”

I nodded, “You have a few hours, no need to rush.”

Jayna choked, and I winked.

Cassie said, “You seem rather relaxed.”

I shrugged, “If Diana doesn’t figure it out, we’ll just launch old style missiles, without vacuum energy.  We have enough to overwhelm them before they can get close to our fleet.  Actually, let me set that up now, just in case.”

Cassie said, “The old missiles have a two light minute range, that means by definition our fleet would need to be in their firing range as well.”

I nodded, “Yes, but I was thinking a hybrid set up.  The current missiles, but at one light minute from target it will power down most of the nanites, build a honking big supercapacitor, charge it, and shut down the rest of the nanites.  No vacuum reactor power at all, when it gets in range.  Still, I’d rather fix the issue, because then it will just be an old-style missile without energy beams of any kind or shields, but if not, we can always fix it later.  That fleet is dead, they just don’t know it yet.”

“Honking?” Cassie asked in an amused voice.

“Yup.”

Silly perhaps, but it was a relief valve of sorts for our anxiety.  It could be a lot worse.  We’d lost two hundred ships, and four hundred soldiers.  If they hadn’t been forced by our sneak attack to give up their technological edge early, it’s entirely possible they’d have easily destroyed the whole inner fleet before we could fix the issue, or at least work around it.  Even if some managed to run, the Earth would’ve been destroyed.  One way or the other, we were going to win this.

It took me maybe fifteen minutes, it was all there already, the old missile specs I mean.  I just needed to program a trigger for transformation.

Diana said, “It seems to change the laws of physics.  Almost like shorting out a battery, it thins the barriers and causes a major surge.  It’d be like… the water pressure to your house going from fifty PSI to fifty million psi for a short moment, exploding pipes.  Obviously, nothing like that, I’m just trying to put it in terms easily understood.  The problem is, how do you counter something like that, or put in a failsafe.”

“I’m not sure I get the problem,” I admitted.

Diana said, “They’re not doing anything to our devices, to our pipes that are taking in the energy.  They’re effecting the universe, in a limited way.  No safeguards we could come up with on the reactors could balance that out, no more than the toughest pipe fittings could withstand fifty million psi.”

I nodded, “So you’d have to shield the universe to stop it.  Preserve the water pressure at fifty PSI, to continue your simile.”

She nodded, and started to laugh, “Shield the universe, of course, why didn’t I see that.”

“No need for sarcasm, but it does get right to the point.  Of course, we don’t have to shield the whole universe, just the part our pipe runs through.  Maybe a containment shield, that keeps the subspace energy field weapon away from the reactor nanites and the laws of the universe in that small spot.”

She frowned, “You’re not wrong.  If we could shield the miniscule microscopic part of subspace that the nanite reactor’s location corresponds to there’d be no effect.  Absolutely right.  Of course, that begs the question of how to do that.”

I snorted, and waved my hand, “No problem, my head scientist will figure it out.”

Cassie giggled.

Diana glared.

I shrugged, “Sorry, but I am confident in you.  At least I understand the problem, and sort of barely understand the fix, but I’m afraid I don’t understand how difficult that fix would be.  Is there a chance at it, or do we go with my plan B.  It also will mean converting all the ships back to the old power systems, that’s too big of a vulnerability to risk if we can’t remove it.  We might be able to depend on it for building fast, but after the build we need to put reactors in place.  Can you do it, the attack part I mean?”

She nodded, “It’d take a little experimentation, but it shouldn’t be hard.  We already know how to make shields and fields in FTL space, with the FTL drive.”

I nodded, “We’ll try to preserve one of the ships, so we can get the information the easy way, but no promises.  I’m also assuming this isn’t easy, but I do have confidence in you.  If we can shield ships in FTL, why not blank space?”

Diana asked, “Assuming it isn’t easy?”

I shrugged, “The Grays obviously know about it, if they figured out what we did to shield missiles, and then figured out how to blow us up in five weeks.  That would take duplicating our technology, and then figuring out its weakness.  That seems a little fast.

“I’d wondered why they’d never developed the technology and still used fusion, thought maybe they were just lazy after being on top and untouchable for so long by the other races, but I’m thinking now that they did discover it, a long time ago, and that they never figured out a way to fix the vulnerability.”

Diana said, “That seems likely.  You’re really thinking I can figure it out in hours, if they’ve had years, possibly thousands of years to work the problem?”

I shrugged, “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

Diana blushed, “No promises.  We can shield in subspace, but that’s after the ship actually transitions into it.  Projecting a shield into subspace from normal space is an entirely different matter.  I also don’t have to remind you that subspace in a solar system is so dangerous it will rip right through those aforementioned shields like a knife through tissue paper, and it’s also why the weapon has such a small range in a solar system.”

I nodded, “But…  Square cubed law.  We only need to shield a few microns, not a huge ship.  Won’t that make the shield millions of times more powerful for the same energy expenditure?”

She bit her lip, “Yes, that’s true.  If I can figure out how to project a shield into subspace, I suspect holding it is more than possible, even in a solar system for an area that small.  It’ll also eat up a lot of the power we take in, most likely.  We might have to increase the reactors by a third even in the distributed setup to get the same balance of energy we get now, which should still be safe enough for a normal overload or breach.  We were very conservative when we set that part up, given less than fifty percent of the safety margin gave us far more power than the equivalent fusion reactor setup.  Now… give me some quiet.”

“Yes, dear.”

She faux glared, and I impudently winked and took a sip of my coffee.  She pretended to hate it, but I knew it turned her on, knowing just how proud I was for being married to someone so much smarter than I was.  She was beyond brilliant, and although my confidence in her was a bit tongue in cheek as I teased her, I’d also meant every word.  Maybe my magic and ability with tech helped there, made me not feel so overshadowed, but it was all true nonetheless.

That said, we were ready for plan B just in case she failed to lick the problem in a few hours, and I could update the whole fleet on the new missile software in minutes.  Thanks to being connected to every ship, I’m really glad I hadn’t bent on that point.  Plan B would just take a whole lot more missiles to pull it off, which we had more than enough of.  Chances are, she would fail, and it would take time and research to get something like that done.  On the other hand, I’d never underestimate her, and shielding and subspace science was very mature, even outdated.

Still, it hardly seemed probable the aliens never pursued this avenue of research, it seemed obvious.  No.  Not just obvious, but the only approach which could possibly work at all.  Then again, Diana was very smart, and had dumbed down the problem so all of us could understand it.  Perhaps it wasn’t as intuitive as I believed given that, just my wife was.  Intuitive I mean.

Whatever happened, it’d happen one way or another in the next ten hours.  Though, probably within five, we can’t afford to wait for the last minute…

Chapter Twenty-One

It was just an hour later.

Diana snorted, “I’m the smartest idiot I know.”

I wasn’t touching that one.

She added, “I need… ten minutes.”

I looked at the command console, and she’d brought up the lab system.  She was spinning up two new ships, the size of a toaster oven.  From what I could tell there was power, and a tiny gravity drive.  It only took a couple of minutes, given the lab ship was running at full power, every one of its nanites powered up.

Then one of the ships started to fly away.

She continued to work on the second ship for several minutes, I was curious what she was doing, but too afraid to ask or interrupt her.

It was almost fourteen minutes later, when she smirked, and the second ship powered up and moved in the same direction as the first one.

“Sorry, it took me a minute to figure out how to duplicate the weapon.  The computer helped a lot, it tried several million iterations before they matched the subspace field projected by the weapon.”

I nodded, with a confused look on my face.

She shrugged, “We need to test my fix, don’t we?”

“Why are you the smartest dumb person?  Not that I’m agreeing with that second part.”

She grinned, “Nervous?” she teased, then shook her head, “Alright.  The whole shield idea just wasn’t going to work, so I went the opposite way with it.  Instead, I made the destructive field part of normal operation.  You could say I made the old nano pipes pico sized.  So, the default operation is to extend that field into subspace which causes the overload, but I built the new reactors with a small enough tap into that much more powerful field to compensate for the greater power.  As it is, that little ship is being powered by one nanite, and I suspect it could power a much bigger ship.  Of course, it isn’t a million times powerful than the old one, as I said the tap, or pipe, is much smaller, to continue the earlier comparison.

“Still, if this works it will be even safer than the old way.  We’ll be able to cut back on the distributed nanites by almost half, and at that point we’ll be running at about twenty percent capacity as far as safety is concerned.  If you split a ship powering every nanite this way, it’d take about three days to regrow each ship into sixteen more.  Later, when you double the mass and create your fleet of dreadnoughts, with twelve million missiles, I’d say it’d take two days, tops.”

“So… dumb because the weakness just became an upgrade, instead of a problem to solve?”

She touched her nose, “Exactly.  Of course, we need to verify.  The field the weapon creates shouldn’t be cumulative, but it’s possible it will create an instability that won’t be as bad as going nuclear, but it could knock out our power systems and burn out the nanite.  I might have to tweak things at that point again, but I’m pretty sure there’s enough safeguards in there already to handle the hiccup I anticipate to the power systems.”

She built a missile then, and then fired it at the retreating ships which had just exceeded the range of a light second.

The missile exploded, and the first ship that went out went up like a nuke.  The second ship just kept going.

She frowned, “There was a small surge followed by a slight brownout, but no problems.  Probably because as I said, the new nanite is running at twenty percent capacity.”

“So… the fix isn’t just a software upgrade?”

She shook her head, “Afraid not.  We’ll have to have every ship create a few million new nanites of our new design, which won’t take long at all, to take over as the power systems.  Then the old ones should be shut down permanently.  I mean not used as reactors, every other function will still work fine, unless the ship is in a very safe place and for building only.  The missiles will need a ten thousand or so.  I can set it up so it will automate it.  I’ll prioritize the missiles, they’ll be upgraded in an hour.  The ships an hour or two after that.  That means we can still fire over eight hours before the Grays reach the inner fleet, and the ships will be immune long before the enemy fleet closes, even if they weren’t going to be blown up sooner.  I’d say once updated, another volley of two hundred thousand missiles should do it.”

She added, “I’ll even integrate it into the design templates you have, for any new ships and missiles being built.”

“Thanks.  I’ll let the command center down on Earth know what’s going on, and when they can launch those missiles.  It looks like he’s already got six fleets following, maintaining a six light minute distance for safety.”

She nodded, and we both got on it.

I probably should’ve been amazed at her insight to do what she did, turn a vulnerability into a more powerful power system that used that field instead of trying to block it.  It wasn’t intuitive, without that field projected to subspace the new nanite reactors wouldn’t have enough power to power themselves, much less a whole ship made up of them.

The enemy didn’t go easy.  Despite a thousand missiles for each ship, nailing them with beams as they closed to an eighth of a light second, and then erasing the ship from existence with the disintegrator beam.  There really wasn’t much they could do given that, but they did manage to get off almost sixty million missiles, most likely their full complement, but our point defense mini-platforms took care of them and no other humans died.

As soon as the board was cleared, I started to double the ships, and quadruple the missile complements.  Dreadnoughts with a twelve million mini-platform complement, they’d be beasts.  They’d also be done in two days, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I also took one of the spare ships and built them into very small yet still FTL capable probes.  We had five hundred light years to explore in every direction, no point in waiting on that, and we were justified in watching our declared systems.

After all, if we could be sure of anything, it was that the enemy had been monitoring the battle.  They already knew their weapon had been effective, and now it wasn’t.  The sooner we attacked Andromeda, the less time they’d have to work on a countermeasure for our technical superiority.

Which is why we weren’t celebrating the major victory, and instead we were immediately planning out that campaign to launch in three days, instead of week.  Whatever the plan was, it’d be a bear, they had millions of ships, and tens of thousands of planets.  Fifty thousand of those, give or take a few.  We also hadn’t decided whether it would be genocide, or if we’d take a different approach.  At least, no one had said it outright yet, but I hoped it was the plan.

Surely, they deserved it, but a part of me urged that we should be better than them.

After that… well it was all a little fuzzy.  Did the Grays have enemies outside the fifty galaxies?  Would the other trading races trust us and believe us framed, or would they see us as unconscionable conquerors?  Would any of the other races encroach on our newly declared thousand light year diameter sphere territory?  Would other races take advantage of pre-FTL societies, was there anything we could or should do about it if they did?  Would other races build the communicator and contact us and others?  Would there be a treaty of some kind, or would it be every race for themselves.  We didn’t know the answers to any of those questions.

Honestly, I’d have just been happy trading with Earth, trading with the Vax, trading with other cool aliens when they came to visit, and running the country and station of Astraeus, but in life you don’t always get what you want.  At the very least I’d stay vigilant, nor would I be shy with my opinion when it came to all those things.  But… I wouldn’t complain or try to push my own morals forcefully if the world’s leaders decided on something I didn’t like.

I also wondered if I’d managed to start a family yet, I knew Diana was looking forward to having kids as well.

Who knew, but whatever happened, we’d deal with it.  No doubt everything wouldn’t go our way, it was the nature of life.  But… a healthier world, a protected world, colonies, longer lives, non-polluting power, and endless possibilities for better technologies through trade.  Sure, we were pretty set as far as military power and technology, and Diana would continue to push that forward, but there were a lot of aspects of life and technology that the other races could help us with.

Like the Vax’s medical and implant tech, and another merchant had a line on better manufacturing equipment, fabricators, and the like.  After all, nanites couldn’t do everything.

At least, not yet.  Diana was working on it, and that actually might be a reality soon.  She had that disintegrator ray that could break the strong bonds between molecules, and basically atomize things.  We could also bond or un-bond nanites on that level, so the technology was there already mostly.  It was just a matter of time before we could do the reverse to normal matter as well, and bond it.  That meant we could build larger things atom by atom, without nanites, and not have it be a pile of atomic dust as we bonded them one at a time as we created them.  She’d told me about it last week, during our honeymoon.

Still, even with that, we’d need the technology and material understanding to build it, and that kind of thing would require a lot of thought besides.

It seemed worth trading for instance, if only to have allies.  If we’d screwed the Vax, and I’d made their nano-implants and figured out how to make their medicines and cut them off.  Then… Threx never would’ve called with that heads up, and he’d saved us because of it.  That warning had changed everything, and saved humanity.  Being good traders and neighbors would just pay off.

Plus, being able to make anything would blow up the economy.  Food, beds, linens, toothbrushes, televisions, anything we could think of and had a pattern for, once it wasn’t limited to just nanites for practical purposes.

So yeah, even if that worked out, it might be better to just continue to sell ships and my inventions, and to buy the stuff we needed.  I’d have to think about it.  At the very least, it’d be a good backup for Astraeus to become fully self-sufficient if there was ever a need.

Point being, there was a hell of a lot going on, and a complicated and uncertain war with the Grays was only a small part of it.  The future was ours to make, and I hoped it’d be a good one.  Time would tell what came next.

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 second book of the Technomancer series.  I tried not to leave any major 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 managed to not only survive but flourish with his allied family, friend, and lover, as well as other support.

Things are unsure for the space station.  The country of his birth still wants to bring him up short.  The one good thing is there’s almost as much potential and opportunity in his situation as there are dangers and hard work.  Colony worlds, tech scientific advancements, new allies and friends, new enemies, and more to deal with.

If that wasn’t enough to worry about, the Grays see humans with their technology as a threat.  They don’t like threats…

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.