Date: 2016-02-29T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: Alicia Jones has been through a lot since the invention of FTL, and she was ready to get on with her life as a scientist and put what happened behind her. She was done with the military, except perhaps a planned invention or two. She was also set to complete her dissertation defense, and has plans to buy a house and start a business with her best friend Kristi. Something she’d never expected happens though, when she calms down and starts to get back to her normal life, she wonders if a normal life is enough for her anymore. When General Denton calls her, requesting her help, she jumps at the c

Interstellar Incident

An Alicia Jones novel 02

Author: D. L. Harrison

Copyright 2016.  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 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Afterword:

About the Author

Other books by D. L. Harrison:

Book Description

Chapter 1

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

I sighed, “Yes mom, I don’t see the point in hiding anymore.  You don’t like my purple eyes and spots?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.  Guilt would be my greatest weapon.

I’d decided on the way back to Earth there was no point in hiding, the entire world had seen my photos side by side and would recognize me as Knomen either way I appeared.  I’d considered the idea of an all new face, but that didn’t appeal to me at all.  I liked my face, the way I looked, and it was who I was.  None of my friends minded, and that was good enough for me.  If anyone did mind, they weren’t worth my time, I wouldn’t apologize for who and what I was.

Apparently my mother thought I wasn’t being very smart however.

“But isn’t that dangerous Alicia?  Earth isn’t universally happy about alien contact and joining an empire you know.  You could be…” she trailed off.

I shrugged carelessly.  Actually I had some of the same worries, but I wasn’t going to let my mom know that, she’d smell blood in the water and go for the kill if she thought she could change my mind.  I’d only been home a couple of days, and came here right after debriefing with General Denton.  Officially I was a civilian again, thank god, and I’d come straight here to visit.  I’d promised to do so a while back and then one thing after another delayed me.  Perhaps I would change my mind about it later, but I didn’t believe I was likely to be attacked.

The fact that Nathan thought my purple eyes, and the markings on the side of my face and neck were hot, had nothing to do with my decision at all.  At least, I was pretty sure of that anyway.

I smiled confidently, “I think I’m safe enough, I’m working on a personal force field device of sorts too, so that should help once I get it right.”

It was the truth, but I was having trouble with it as well.  The prototype I built was rather… bulky.  And ugly as sin.  It looked like a bullet proof vest, but even more bulkier.  It would however absorb energy attacks such as lasers or plasma, but as far as guns it wouldn’t handle the really big ones unless I had the anti-mass field at a high level.  Still, I was fairly sure I didn’t have to worry about snipers though, and I refused to live in fear so… I didn’t plan to wear it very often.  Call me vain, but I liked the way I looked, and didn’t want to wear the bulky and shapeless vest.

She sighed and pulled me into a hug.

There was a lot I couldn’t tell her about all that had gone on, classified and all, but I’d managed to get the highlights across to her over the last couple of days.  Despite being out as an alien, she’d thought at first it was just for my visit, it wasn’t until this morning that she realized I would always look this way now.

“Are you and Tina getting along?”

I nodded slowly.

“Sure mom, I mean I don’t think we’ll ever be close, but we haven’t argued or anything.”

She sighed, “I suppose that’s all I can ask for.”

I spent the rest of the day with her, and stayed for the night since my dad was off working for the day, and I hadn’t gotten much time to spend with him this visit.  But I needed to be in Vegas tomorrow morning for my dissertation defense, so I planned to leave early the next morning.  I wasn’t worried about not getting there, I had my shuttle with the latest designs for EM and anti-mass fields on it right outside in the driveway.  Which meant it would take me about a minute to get from Dallas to Vegas, even if I went there via going east.

Overall it was a good visit, they might not have been my birth parents, but in every other way they were my mom and dad.

Chapter 2

I was pretty excited, and a little nervous about it as I headed toward Vegas, I’d gotten used to my professor being confrontational in his questions, but I wasn’t so sure about a roomful of people ganging up on me and doing the same.  It shouldn’t be that big a deal, I knew and understood every word of my dissertation, the thing was more than memorized, it was permanently etched in my mind after all the hours I’d put into it.

I also had other things on my mind that morning.  I hadn’t given up on the idea of forcing sub light-speed fights, and I also had that anti-gravity manual to go through that I’d picked up from Tressia on the way back to Earth.  Add in the business I wanted to build, buying a home in Monument, and still waiting for that third date with Nathan, and I had more than enough going on.

I landed in the parking lot taking up two spots with my extra long but about van sized as far as width and height went, shuttle, and headed for the door.  I couldn’t help the smile that spread on my face when I saw Kristi at the door.  Kristi had a lot more faith in me than I did, she was designing some sub-light weaponry, because ironically if I was able to succeed, the Earth didn’t have any weapons that didn’t go faster than light either.

I hugged her and kissed her cheek.  She looked gorgeous as always of course, constantly overshadowing me, though to hear her tell it, the shoe was on the other foot, though I’d never believe it.  I had on a professional looking blue dress with white designs on it, and two inch heels on.  She was dressed in a business casual gray skirt that came down to her lower thighs, and a nice pearl white blouse.

“What are you doing here?  I didn’t know you were coming.”

She snorted and shook her head, “Of course I want to watch you become a PhD.  I had to use the other shuttle to get here though, you didn’t even think of calling me did you?”

I blushed and shook my head.  Of course she had full access to my ship, so it wouldn’t have been hard for her to have the ship’s A.I. fly down one of the other shuttles.  I didn’t see any of the saucer kind around, so I assumed she sent it back to the ship when she got here.  It’s what I would have done rather than take up four parking spots, two were bad enough.

“Sorry, I should have, since I’m planning to go to yours.”

She grinned, “You better, you look fantastic by the way, are you ready?  Lunch is on me later.”

“I’m ready, let’s get this over with.”

She snickered at my nervousness, and we went inside.

The dissertation defense wasn’t as bad as I’d expected it to be.  It was thorough and professional, and although one or two of them did act aggressive and try to trip me up, I was able to stay calm, mostly due to my heritage.  Suppressing my nervous emotions wasn’t hard, and I had the knowledge.  When I left, I was officially done with schooling, and it felt a little strange to me, I’d been in school for one form or another for the last eighteen years.

For just a minute, it didn’t feel quite real yet.

Of course, I wasn’t a typical PhD just getting started.  With my invention and royalties, I was also on my way to being a multi-billionaire and about to start my own company, so really I just needed to suck it up.

Kristi and I had lunch on the strip, and we discussed the business and made up some plans.  Our home would be in Monument, our business close to Colorado Springs, and we also had plans to make a claim on one of the larger asteroids, and set up our own large scale fabrication there.  The idea being we could continue playing with ship and weapons designs, and use it for manufacturing any inventions we or one of our researchers, which we had none of yet, created.

Our own fabricator would be cheaper, as it could use those raw resources to build most anything, and we could get the hydrogen for the fusion power for free by scooping Jupiter for it.  When we left the restaurant, I noticed a high end A.I. store and pulled Kristi inside.  Al was pretty good, but very limited, and the visor I had was hardly high end.  Until recently I couldn’t afford anything better.

I figured now was a good time for an upgrade since my A.I. would have a lot more to look after.  I also convinced Kristi as my business partner to let me buy her one, as a business expense.  She’d never accept charity, but this was a part of doing business and she’d need it to do her job.

I knew I was kind of geeking out, but I couldn’t help myself.  I bought a mini-mainframe for Al to run off of, and I got the latest implant tech.  Basically it meant I wouldn’t need a visor anymore, the tech hooked directly into my optic and auditory nerves with medical grade nanites.  On top of that, the implant was connected via three hundred quantum entangled particles, there was literally nowhere in the universe I could go and not still be connected to Al, the internet, and have the ability to make phone calls or send text messages.

So now instead of seeing an overlay through my visor, or a video call, it would all be in my head.  Without the visor I could overlay a call, a television, even listen to music, all without anyone knowing I was even using an overlay.  It also had other cool features, like facial recognition for people that were bad with names, it would pop up an info box near a person or business contact they knew if requested, with whatever information they wanted, but of course I didn’t need that part of it, my memory was eidetic, I never forgot a name or face.  They did the insertion right in the store, it took very little time.

We walked back to the shuttle and I asked, “When do you want to look for a house?”

“We could do that today, I don’t have anything until Monday college wise, we could probably look for an office building as well.”

I looked through the listings quick and found one that was a little bigger than I was looking for, but it had something we kind of needed.  I ported it over to her A.I.

“How about this one?  I know the five bedroom and three baths are probably over the top, since we only need two, but it has…”

She interrupted with a laugh, “Two double wide garage doors, with four bays, which would fit two shuttles perfectly.  The price isn’t bad either.”

I nodded, “Even the smaller shuttle I built is a bit too tight a fit for a standard garage.  What do you think?”

She grinned at me, “Looks good to me, so we’ll have a few guest rooms, that won’t be a bad thing.”

“Alright,” I contacted the real estate agent, and they said they could be there in a half an hour to show it.

We took the shuttle over, it only took a couple of minutes to get there, and most of that time was getting on the shuttle and sitting down.  There was also the fact we couldn’t exceed the speed of sound below ten thousand feet without causing a serious ruckus, such as blowing out windows.  Still, that distance was easily covered in just ten seconds leaving a comfortable gap under the sound barrier.  From ten thousand feet up, to low orbit took a fraction of that time.

So while we waited we also looked at some office buildings, but none of them had what we needed.

Kristi shrugged, “We might as well just buy one and then refurbish.  We need what… a handful of offices and some labs?”

I nodded, “I’d planned on starting with three other researchers maybe?  Maybe a building manager slash human resources person to watch them when we aren’t there.  So let’s say eight offices, and eight labs so we have room to grow another three in the short term.”

She sighed, “Alright, there’s a small office building for sale, it used to be a doctor’s office.  It has the right amount of square feet for what we need.”

I was patient for a couple of minutes, and she sent me a floor plan of what it would look like when we were done.  It had an office up front for the building manager behind a welcome desk, and then a security door to the rest of the building.

Past the security door, there was a blank wall with a hall leading left or right.  Along the sides of the buildings were three offices with windows on both sides, in the center across from each office was a secured lab space, one each for each office.  The main hallway ran in a square between the offices and labs on the sides, the front office in the front, and along the back wall, there was a break room, bathroom, large conference room, and an emergency door.

She’d even put in a counter and coffee maker.

She shrugged, “Simple, but more than enough for our starting needs, what do you think?  I’m guessing if we send in some of the portable fabricators they can redo the current floor plan in a couple of days.”

“I love it, thanks Kristi.”

I called the number and indicated an interest to buy, and scheduled an appointment for later on this afternoon.  I also had Al submit paperwork for our company and had him set up business accounts, I wanted to buy the building under the business name.

“Do you like the name Divergent Technologies Research?”

She tilted her head back and forth, “Yup, it’s kind of catchy, and accurate since we’ll have a number of things going at once that don’t necessarily relate.”

I smiled, “Just what I was thinking.”

The house real estate agent pulled up and we got out to meet him.

My tastes ran pretty simple, I could afford a much larger place than we were even looking at, but would have felt more comfortable with something even smaller.  Despite that though, I fell in love with the place when we took a tour.  Outside of the three bathrooms and five bedrooms, the kitchen was huge with stainless steel appliances, and plenty of cabinet and surface space to work with.  The living room and den were large, and both had fireplaces.

There was a third large room as well that I wasn’t sure what to call.  We could probably make it some kind of game room, or knowing how I was possibly an at home office.  Out the back door by the kitchen was a large deck.  There was a second back door in the den as well, that led into an enclosed sun room which was made up of mostly glass, but also had a number of panes that could be opened with screens.  Most importantly there was a large Jacuzzi in the sun room, it was relaxing just looking at the thing.

Kristi said quietly, “I love this place, it is big, but it’s also… warm.”

I nodded and made sure the real estate agent wasn’t close enough to hear, no need to advertise how badly we wanted the place.

“I agree, it’s just on the right side of small enough I think.  I don’t get that cold impersonal feeling about it like really large houses.  We can decorate it cozy right?”

Kristi grinned, “That’ll work, I don’t want antiques I’m too afraid to sit on either.”

I returned her smile and took another look around, I felt excited about it.

I got the ball rolling on getting it inspected, and had Al fill out the initial paperwork.  If the inspection passed, the house would be ready to close fairly quickly.  I still had time to get out of my college apartment, but I was eager to get started with my new life suddenly.

It probably had to do with feeling disconnected.  I was never an idle person, always moving from one thing to another.  I didn’t like to just… stop and smell the roses as they say.  In a way, figuring out things and how the universe worked, was my roses.

Later on, Kristi and I toured the old doctor’s office, and it seemed to be in a nice area and was just what we needed.  I worked on closing that one too, but I’d be buying it under our business name.  There were no checks needed, or anything to fill out for loans, I would be buying both outright with cash.  It would just take a day or two to get the inspections done, although things like a broken foundation were easily fixable in this day and age, it was still the smart move to wait.

The two of us went back to our apartment then.  Luckily my fifteen minutes of fame were up, because the building was no longer surrounded by people.  There were a few people that snapped my picture, but no large crowds.  Still, I sent the shuttle back up to my ship rather than leave it in the parking lot.  It could be back here in minutes after all, so better safe than sorry.

It was a Friday night, so we had some dinner, and Kristi talked me into going to the campus bar.  I had a good time of course, and of course Kristi did her best to embarrass me by announcing my doctorate.  I’d been given so many free drinks I could never have finished them all.

There was nothing new about it though, I always have a good time even if she has to drag me out the door.  I just wished Nathan could have gotten some time off, if something there didn’t break soon I’d have to either look elsewhere, or officially join a convent.

Chapter 3

Artificial Gravity gave me a headache, figuratively speaking.  It wasn’t just a hard math; it was a completely new math with concepts that were hard to grasp for us three dimensional beings.  Kristi and I were going through the book, had been all weekend in fact.  It was Sunday just after lunch, and I was finally getting a handle on it.  Gravity required mass, mass bent space time, and the bent space time allowed gravity to… seep into to our dimension, for lack of a better word.  Obviously that’s a simplistic explanation for what was really happening.

Artificial Gravity skipped the mass part, and simply bent space time directly with a field.  Actually, there was nothing even remotely simple about it, but that’s in essence how it worked.  More than that though, gravity was an ever present field itself, it didn’t move, or radiate out from the center, it was just there where the bends in space time existed.  The key to artificial gravity was bending space time in a specific and limited area in a specific way.  That was about the best I could describe it without going into a multi-dimensional math breakdown.

The gravity plates had to be set for the area gravity was needed, and by design, the field needed to stop at the hull so anywhere between the gravity plate and the hull was at one gravity, but beyond, was nothing.  It had taken a while, but Kristi and I had a pretty good understanding of it now, how it actually works and the math behind it.  It also gave me a glimmer of an idea, but I’d need to think about it for a while.  It should be possible to project the field completely away from the emitter, although not too far away as the power requirements go up in a steep curve the farther away it gets.

“You have a call from Nathan,” Al said in his usual unemotional tone.

“Put him on Al… Hi Nathan, what’s going on?” I asked, possibly a little too eagerly because I caught a calm down look from Kristi.

I could hear the smile in his voice when he replied, “Alicia, I managed to wrangle a few days off.  I was wondering if you’re up to try our date again, I know its short notice, and a Monday night tomorrow, but will you be available?”

“I think I could squeeze you in, what’s the plan?”  I cringed at my word choice, at the obvious play on words.  It had definitely been too long for me.  Unless he did something really stupid, he was getting lucky tomorrow night.  Assuming we weren’t interrupted by an emergency… again.

He cleared his throat, “Just dress casual, I’ll pick you up around six?”

I replied, “Sounds good, do I need to eat?”

He said cheerfully, “No I have that covered.  And by the way, congratulations Doctor Jones, I’m sorry I missed it.”

I said softly, “Thanks Nate,” then in a teasing voice, “I’ll still let you call me Alicia though.”

He snickered and said in faux gratitude, “Thanks Doctor Alicia, I appreciate that.”

I laughed, and we talked for a little longer and then got off the phone.  Kristi raised an eyebrow at me, so I had to fill her in on what was going on.  I wondered where he was taking me, but a part of me didn’t care.  I’d enjoyed pool the last time we went out, I was sure he’d pick something fun and not typical, like dinner and a movie.

Kristi and I went furniture shopping online when I got off the phone.  The apartment we were in had come furnished since it was owned in part by the school, and we had a house to fill up, or at least will have to shortly.  Of course, we weren’t really buying actual furniture, merely the right to fabricate the designs.  It didn’t take more than a couple of hours to design all the rooms in the house.  I also had my main ship fabricator create a couple of more small fabricators.  I’d be able to send two to the office building, and two to the house when things were ready to go forward.

Both the office and house would take two or three days to complete after purchase.  I was really thrilled about it.  After dinner we vegged on the couch, giving our brains a break, and we watched a Netflix marathon of sci-fi shows until it was time to get some sleep.

Kristi was in class, so when the call came in clearing the office inspection, I called my shuttle down and headed to Colorado Springs to meet the realtor.  I also had all four of the smaller fabricators stuffed in the back.  When I got out the realtor was smiling.  She’d seemed a little nervous around me yesterday, but I guess she’d gotten over the fact I wasn’t technically human.

Maybe the ten percent commission on the sale had something to do with that.

“Good morning Miss Jones,” she greeted me.

“Good morning, is everything ready?

She nodded, “Just pending the funds.”

I instructed Al to transfer the funds to complete the sale.  A couple of minutes later the agent shook my hand, congratulated me, and turned over all access for the building A.I. for entry and ownership.  I waited for her to leave, and then I unlocked the office to let in the fabricators, and had Al activate them to build out the planned layout and office furniture.

I should my head as I closed and locked up, it was almost too easy since we didn’t have to go through all the lending crap.

I walked down to a coffee shop and grabbed a latte, and then started working on a small gravity device.  It occurred to me it wouldn’t hurt to have something that could protect me in a pinch.  Tasers and guns were illegal to own, but there were no laws against gravity.  Of course, that might change in the future, but new weapons were funny that way, no laws against them.

I imagined if someone attacked me, they may have trouble doing so when gravity slowly increased to four G’s directly under them.  That would make a two-hundred-pound man weigh about eight hundred.

I designed a small gravity generator the size of a large marble, or maybe one of those super bounce balls.  The energy source was small so it wouldn’t last as long as most reactors, but it would still last for about two weeks of constant use, which added up to a lot of short term uses before it would need a recharge of fuel, or a simple fabricated replacement.

I started one of the devices building on my shuttle, using the missile fabricator for it and took a sip of my coffee.  I was missing something obvious, and it was tickling at my brain.  I tried to ignore it, knowing my subconscious would let me know when the idea was fully cooked.

The other inspection still wasn’t done yet, so I started trolling the web for information on people looking for grants and assistance for scientific research.  It probably wasn’t the best way to go about it, but I was looking at what they were looking into first, and then checking out the scientists that were doing the research if I thought the idea had merit.

I’d thought about it, and the idea of hiring people the normal way just didn’t do it for me.  Kristi and I already had our ideas and the intelligence to develop them.  I wanted to help develop new ideas, not hire random college graduates that were looking for direction and wouldn’t recognize an original thought if they were hit on the head with it.

Not that there was anything wrong with most college graduates, it was simply a bad fit for a research based company.  I needed creative and brilliant inventors, not people looking for a nine to five paycheck.

Although I did put out an ad for a building slash H.R. manager.  Since we’d be doing research, I also put out a few feelers to security firms in the area, it wouldn’t hurt to have a single guard behind the desk to keep an eye on things and make sure nothing walked out.  The building A.I. would also watch, but it wouldn’t be able to stop someone.

Independent research grant requests were a matter of public record, so it didn’t seem like that bad of a plan.  Of course, I wouldn’t be offering them just money, I’d be offering them a job, resources, and major profit sharing.

I’d seen a couple of possibilities and had Al tag them for follow up when the call I was waiting for finally came in.  The inspection showed there was nothing wrong with the house, so I got the realtor on the phone.  He indicated he’d be there soon, so I walked back to the shuttle and went up to Monument at a rather sedate pace and flew manually, which was fun.  Going up into space and back down for long distances were a pain to do manually, it required a lot of field modifications for each step.  But just flying low in atmosphere was… really fun.

Almost the same short conversation played out with the second real estate agent.  He ported over the ownership and access to the house A.I.  I set the last two fabricators loose when he was gone, and took a moment to admire the mountain view.  It really was beautiful up here.  Either way, I’d be able to move in a couple of days.  I wasn’t sure what Kristi was doing yet, with the other shuttle she could reasonably move and commute quite easily until college was finished.

When I got into the shuttle, my new toy was ready.  I had Al take control of it, and was about to have him test it when I realized doing so in the shuttle would be stupid before it was calibrated.  If my gravity field crossed with the anti-mass field.

I froze… and then started laughing.  I was so slow sometimes.  The clues were all there, even all the warnings in the anti-gravity plating, that it shouldn’t ever be allowed to extend past the hull, for the obvious reasons.  It made me wonder why no one had done it before.  Then I realized of course someone had, the real question was, why hadn’t they been using it?

I took the shuttle up to my ship and started a new design, a few actually.  I wonder if the general would be annoyed with me, I’d have to show him the new toys when they were ready.  It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, a way to stop any FTL usage in an area would have been better, but this would be close enough…  I was doing the research in my ship’s lab, because this would be my design alone, and not shared with the University.

When I was finished with the designs, and upgrade designs to every class of craft, I implemented them on all of my ships, the big main ship and the two shuttles.  It was late in the afternoon by then, so I took my shuttle back down.

Kristi was home, so I sent her my new designs.

“Hey, we are the proud owners of a business building, and I got the house being furnished now.”

Kristi shook her head, “You’ve been busy today, let me go over this.”

I grunted, “If this is as effective as I think it will be, do you have any designs for sub-FTL combat?”

Kristi nodded, “I tried to make it as simple as possible.  One is a simple software update, for the missiles I mean.  We can tweak the field so that it weighs a couple of grams, and they’ll still reach somewhere around point six light speed with its current drive.  We can even load it in the ships programming so they can be changed on the fly in battle.  The explosion is the easy part, as they’ll just overload the fusion reactor on board.

“The second one is more like… a plasma gun.  It would require physical changes however.  The idea is to use the anti-mass particle cannon with a few alterations.  Mix the anti-mass particle field to contain plasma, if done correctly when the weapon fires it will be a directed thin energy blast moving at the speed of light.  Think phasers on Star Trek.  Obviously each gun, or cannon, will have to have a fairly robust medium sized reactor added in.”

I raised an eyebrow, “And if it’s wrong?”

She looked at me and said deadpan, “The ship blows up of course.”

I started to giggle, “Umm, that might be bad, any other ideas?”

She shook her head sadly, “Coward.  Okay, I admit the system doesn’t lend itself to stability.  I’m still working on it.”

I had a thought and asked, “Have you tried narrowing the gravity field that ejects it?  Perhaps just make the anti-mass particles around the barrel instead of inside, kind of like they are around a ship.  That would give the plasma injected negative mass, but the gravity field that fires it can be targeted at the plasma only in the center of the barrel.  It should work, right?  As soon as the plasma leaves the anti-mass field it should turn into pure energy directed away from the ship.  No go boom.”

She giggled, “Yes, no go boom.  Let me think about that a minute, it sounds good but let me do the math.  I’ll also look over your designs later while you’re out.  Oh… and no, I didn’t think of it.  The only other thing I had as a possibility was a rail gun, but that seemed like a bad idea.  Once fired they couldn’t be redirected, and unlike energy which will lose cohesion, it would keep going forever until it hit something.”

I nodded, “Okay, could you send that missile programming up to my ship?  And… if the other weapon works out have all my anti-mass particle weapons converted?  I’m actually already doing all the other upgrades.  I thought we could test them before updating the general.  Oh, do you think we can call them phasers, or will we get sued?”

“Yeah, I can do that if the math works out.  It shouldn’t take me long to figure out if your idea will work or not.  As far as a name, let’s just call them plasma cannons.”

I tilted my head not quite suppressing my smile, “Probably a good idea.  I’m going to get ready.”

She grinned, “Have fun on your date.  I’ll probably have this figured before you go, and Joe will be here around eight, just so you know.”

I sighed and got into the shower.  I’d never tested my gravity defensive weapon, so I had Al try a few things and run some scans, and get it calibrated while I was in the shower.  It should work, but the effective range was only about sixty feet.  Farther than that the energy requirements were just too high.  When I finished up in the shower I did my hair, put on a pair of matching white lingerie, a pair of jean shorts, a tight body hugging white shirt, with a looser casual red blouse over it and half buttoned.

I was pretty satisfied with the results, and it was almost six when I went back out into the living room.  I heard Kristi’s shower going, and checked my A.I., and apparently my idea worked, because my particle weapons were being upgraded to plasma cannons…

Chapter 4

Nathan knocked on the door about one minute to six, and I was actually ready to go.  I called out a goodbye to Kristi and opened the door with a smile on my face.

Nathan was wearing a pair of blue jeans, and a plain gray collared shirt that was tight enough to be distracting.  His blue eyes were glowing with approval as he took me in, and I smiled wider.

“Ready to go?” he asked with a lifted eyebrow.

I grinned, “Why, is that surprising?”

Nathan shook his head, “You look great,” and after a moment of hesitation he leaned in and kissed me.

I managed not to plaster myself against him with a little effort, it was a good kiss, thorough but short.

“What was that for,” I asked with a smile.

He took my hand and I wordlessly followed him down the stairs.

He cleared his throat, “Figured I’d get that first kiss out of the way.  You know, to save on awkwardness?”

I snickered, “Really?  Were things awkward then?”

He shook his head, “Just a… redefining of things maybe.  We dated, then you were my boss and we couldn’t… and now were dating again?  Seemed like the thing to do.”

I asked deadpan, “It was a solid plan, how about the second kiss?”

He grinned, “You’ll be the first to know.”

I rolled my eyes playfully and squeezed his hand to let him know I was playing.  He opened the passenger door of his car for me and I slipped in, and I couldn’t help the light smile on my face when I caught him looking at my legs before he shut the door.  I felt a little warm under his gaze.

He really was a good guy, it’s why I’d been waiting on our third date so long.

When he got in the other side I asked, “Where are we going?”

He started the car and pulled out onto the road, “Well, my pool skills fell short, so I thought I’d challenge you on a different game.  But first, dinner.  Do you like German food?”

“Sure, what game?”

He shook his head and said facetiously, “Very cutthroat, and I won’t show you any mercy, I do believe the establishment is called putt putt golf.”

I laughed, “Alright, I’ll try not to embarrass you.”

He teased, “Was that a challenge I heard?”

Miniature golf?  Seriously?

Actually after a little thought it sounded kind of fun, I hadn’t done that since I was a teenager.  It would be novel if nothing else, and sounded better than a typical date.  Plus, it was his company I wanted, anything else was up in the air as far as I was concerned.  I loved the feeling I got from him when he looked at me, he actually cared, and wanted to show me a good time.  Of course, that came with the attraction he felt.

We chatted a few more minutes before we pulled into a parking lot.  It was a German family owned and run Deli slash restaurant.  The place had a homey atmosphere, and the food was very good.  I tried the sauerbraten which is a pickled roast, along with a couple of beers.

After dinner we went to go play miniature golf.  I got a few strange looks from the family we followed, as well as the couple behind us, but they eventually stopped staring at me and I relaxed and started having fun.  Of course, I was reminded quickly that miniature golf was less about putting skill, and more about figuring out the trick for each hole with a dose of luck added in.  Skill was an element of course, but not a very large one.

In short, he cleaned my clock, and I wondered if he’d done a little recon on his own, in other words, played here before.  It didn’t really matter to me, I had a really good time.  When we got back to the car, he gave me that second kiss, and though it started out tentative, we were both breathing rather heavily when it was over.

I let Nathan take me home then, and I spent the night and almost all of the next day with him.  The real world just felt very far away during that time, and we were happily and passionately absorbed in each other.

I was tempted to stay even longer, he’d only get three days passes every once in a while since he was deployed so much, and I couldn’t seem to get enough of him, but we both had other stuff to get back to for his last day, so he took me home rather late on Tuesday night.  It was kind of a bittersweet moment, I was falling for him, but knew we wouldn’t do more than talk on the phone for the next… who knew how long.

Chapter 5

Kristi dragged the last twenty-four hours out of me as soon as I got in the door.  She seemed both happy and concerned for me.  I could understand that, it sucked seeing so little of Nathan, but the heart chooses who the heart chooses.  I was happy enough about it, nothing was perfect after all.

When we wound down, Kristi said, “Well while you were ignoring the world, I tested the upgrades today, and your weapon works better than I’d expected, and mine works as we thought they would.  So you can let the general know I guess, after you look over the data.  We also have a lot of applicants for the office position, and I found a few independent projects out there that need cash as well.  Oh, and the fabricators should be done sometime late tonight, or early tomorrow morning, so we can move any time after.”

I grinned, “So the world went on without me the last twenty-four hours?  I wasn’t sure.  Okay, I’ll look at all that and send out messages and schedule a few interviews.  How’s Joe?”

Kristi smiled and launched into describing her night last night.  I was pleasantly surprised by the changes in Joe, he’d always seemed wishy washy to me, hot and cold.  Joe and Kristi were often on for a few days and then off again.  But things had been going strong for them for a while now, I hoped the trend continued for her sake.  It was late when we both finally turned in for the night.

By Wednesday morning General Denton had already gotten back to me, and said he’d have some time tomorrow.  I figured I’d get to work on hiring an office manager all around assistant type person, and brought up a generated computer screen on my overlay, and started to thumb through the applications, and send messages to the ones I wanted to interview.

I jumped in the shower before heading up there, and took a tour around the building before my interviewing started for the day.  The building looked really good, and it made me want to go check out the house, but that would have to wait.

I interviewed five people, the job required someone to keep track of scientists and run payroll, as well as being available to answer questions.  The A.I. would help with most of that, but it all required human eyes as well.

Two of them weren’t interested when they learned how much work it was, and I wound up picking the one I believed was most qualified out of the remaining three.  Karen Shultz was in her mid-thirties, and seemed perfect for the job.  She had experience in all aspects of the business, and was confident she wouldn’t have a problem keeping up with just a handful of employees without assistance.

I set up her authorizations with the building A.I. for everything she needed to do, save the labs she had access to pretty much everything and would start tomorrow getting everything set up.

I took the shuttle up to the house and did a walk through while the shuttle went up to the ship to return the four small fabricators before coming back to me.  The house was beautiful, and it made me wish Nathan was with me so we could share the view out back.  Kristi and I could move in at any time, we just had to find the time to pack.

I had a few more hours to kill, so I sent a message to a Caroline Steadman who had a grant request out that looked interesting.  She was doing some cutting edge research on nanites, although the application wasn’t very forthcoming with facts.  I got that, she didn’t want anyone stealing her idea.  She had a master’s degree, and was out of school about a year now and had been trying to get an independent grant, but was having trouble for some reason.

Al said, literally in my ear, “Caroline Steadman is calling you.”

Huh, that was fast.  She must have her A.I. monitoring for grant related messages.

“Put her on Al… Caroline Steadman?”

She asked, “Yes, you messaged me about the grant request?”

I replied, “Yes, do you have some time to speak about it?”

She replied, “I’m on Long Island right now, visiting family.  I should be back in Colorado Springs in a few days.”

I thought for a moment, “Well I have a few hours now, maybe I could meet you somewhere?”

She snorted, “You’re joking, you’re going to fly out here just to have a conversation that could wait?”

I shrugged even if she couldn’t see it, “I have a shuttle that can get me there very fast, it’s not that big a deal.  Unless waiting has more to do with your family than the distance, I can respect that and wait.”

She sounded a little dubious, but said to drop in on her if I wanted.  She was at her sister’s house and could spare a little time, and then she sent me the address and GPS coordinates.  I grinned as I fed it to Al, and the shuttle shot up into space, reoriented, and was parked on the street in front of her yard before we’d even finished saying goodbye thirty seconds later.  I laughed a little, a part of me was looking forward to the shock on her face.

So… maybe I’m a little bit evil.

I got off the shuttle as soon as we hung up, and was ringing the doorbell ten seconds later.

A woman in her early thirties answered the door and looked at me shocked for a second, must be the alien thing again.  I was getting used to it, very few people were ever disgusted, or looked angry.  But shock at my appearance was as common as grains of sand on a beach.

I smiled politely, “You must be Lia?  Caroline’s sister?  She told me I could drop by to discuss her grant?”

Lia opened the door, “Come on in, she’s in the kitchen,” she said weakly.

When we got to the kitchen, Caroline looked at me suspiciously, “Were you outside the whole time, how did you…”

I shook my head, “No, my shuttle is just that fast, maybe I could show you later?  Anyway, I was here to make you an offer, but I’d like to know a little more about what you’re doing first.”

She looked at me a moment longer, “Take a seat.”

Lia asked, “Something to drink?  Tea, or we have coffee.”

I nodded, “Thanks, coffee works, cream and sugar?”

She asked, “Offer?”

I shrugged, “I’d like to be more proactive than simply handing you money as an investment.  The standard grant would give me forty percent control over your I.P. and any money earned from resulting patents.  I’m thinking in addition to that, I’d like you to work in my building, and draw a decent salary.”

She asked, “What’s the catch, same percentage, and you want to pay me on top of that?”

I nodded, “It would keep costs down, I have my own fabricators and infrastructure, so even with the salary and lab space it would be cheaper for me than paying out the grant amount.  The only other consideration I would ask for is first rights to manufacture, and if I did manufacture directly instead of us selling the rights, you would get fifty percent profit sharing.”

She opened her mouth and closed it.  I knew that was an unheard of generous amount.  Fifty percent of the profits would be much more money than a mere sixty percent of the three to six percent per unit she’d get otherwise.

She tilted her head, “Why?”

I grinned, “I’m obsessed with tech, and finding new things to do with it, I already have money.  My percentage will more than cover operating costs, and beyond.  So it’s worth it, also, it will mean that most likely your next idea would be done as part of my company as well, because you’d have a stake in the profits.  I’m looking for inventors, and scientists who create.  I expect when your first idea is developed, you’ll stay with us when your next idea comes up.  I suppose the only risk is if you retire, but I’ll take that chance.  So tell me what you’re doing with nanites, all this may be moot anyway.”

She frowned, and then nodded, “That sounds like a great deal, alright.  It’s ironic you said fabrication, because I’m working on the next generation of fabrication.  No large machines, just a swarm of nanites.  There’s also a maintenance and repair version, where they would monitor for any wear or breakage, and automatically fix it.  No need to take the car back to the dealer and run it through fabricator repair any longer.

“The problem of course, is power.  Medical nanites are feasible because they take the energy from the body’s electrical field, but taking raw material and building a… house for instance, takes a lot of energy.  Fabricators are big and use fusion generators, but nanites are too small for that.  Still, if I work out that issue the advantages are obvious, they build on the molecular level, so materials could be anything on hand, including dirt…”

I nodded, “It seems like no matter what, that you’d need some kind of base station.  Something that transmitted a high frequency low voltage electrical field they could feed off of.”

She narrowed her eyes and seemed to reassess me, maybe she’d thought I was just a pretty face for recruitment?

“That’s what I’m working on actually, the repair versions should be easier, like for the car or house they could pull of ambient energy from all the electrical systems.  The nanites have systems for induction and heat energy transfer as well.  But to build a house in the middle of nowhere… I was thinking a satellite system.”

I opened my mouth and closed it.  That… was actually really clever.  A very high frequency electrical field could be propagated for hundreds of miles without much energy loss.  Simply point the satellite at an area, and blanket it in energy for the nanites to soak up.  It would even work through most materials for nanites inside a structure.

I nodded, “Okay, I’m sending a contract your A.I., if you’re interested, sign off on it and I’ll see you in the office in a few days.  Take your time to read it over.  Since Kristi, my partner, and I will have a vested interest in your success, feel free to use us as a sounding board if you run into any dead ends.”

She thanked me, and watched as I got in my shuttle parked out front.  I hoped she would sign on, and if I could add a couple of more people to get things started, I’d be satisfied for a while.  I didn’t want to grow too big, I wanted to work with the best.  Money was secondary at this point in my life.  I also thought once a few inventions came out, there might be some symmetry we could find between them.

There were a few other people around from the surrounding houses as well, looking at me and the shuttle as I took a seat, and I waved to Kristi before I had Al take us up, practically instantly moving a thousand feet per second straight up.  We moved way too fast for human perception, I imagine it looked a lot like we simply disappeared.

Maybe I still needed to grow up a little more, because I was grinning about it wishing I could see their reactions…

Chapter 6

Kristi was home when I arrived, done with class for the day.  She grinned at me when I came in.

“Guess what, my professor agreed I should submit my dissertation as completed.”

I hugged her and said teasingly, “So I guess you don’t want to pack tonight then?”

She sighed, and just looked at me and shook her head sadly, before she said, “I had so much hope for you.”

I snorted a laugh, “We can move this weekend, or something, I’m just excited because I saw the finished house today.  Forget that.  Where are we going to celebrate, or are you going out with Joe?”

She grinned like a proud parent, “Aww, little one, I knew you had it in you.”

I glared at her and she held up her hands defensively.

“Okay, I’ll behave,” somehow I doubted her veracity, “Joe is working, I don’t know, dancing?”

“Did you want to wait?”

She gave me another sharp look as if I was dense, “Nope, we can just celebrate twice after all.”

I laughed, typical Kristi, “Alright… fine, club attire?”

She nodded.

“Let me know when you get a date for the dissertation defense.”

She grinned, “Fine, of course I’ll tell you when and where my dissertation will be defended.  We can celebrate that twice too.”

I nodded, just giving up.

It was still early, so we made dinner together and chatted.  I filled her in on my day, both hiring the office manager and our first scientist if she accepted.

She shrugged, “Is there a real advantage to that, we have portable fabricators after all.”

I nodded, “The building part is only a small edge, I think the repair thing will be bigger.  But picture dropping off a handful of nanites along with a mini-fusion reactor that creates a weak generalized electrical field.  They could replicate more nanites, and then start building whatever they needed to build.  Fabricators take more time and resources to create.  With nanites we could seed hundreds of asteroids a day to build defenses for our solar system against enemy FTL ships and weapons.  I suppose in the long run it’s just faster and a little more versatile.

“The real breakthrough in it, is the self-repairing concept.  Cars that never break down, buildings that don’t need maintenance, and other things like that.  Even little stuff, picture going out to eat, and you spill food on your expensive dress, or rip it.  Just hang it back in the closet to find it cleaned and repaired the next time you want to wear it.”

She sighed, “I see it now.  It won’t make the fabricator people happy though, especially the large businesses, like the one that built your ship.”

I sighed, “Agreed, but advancement always makes waves in society.  Life is change, and we can’t hold back, at least not until we’re safe from the Knomen.”

We chatted a bit more over dinner, and then got ready.  I obviously wasn’t in the market any longer, and I didn’t mess around on boyfriends, even if I wouldn’t see him for a long time.  Dating one at a time was enough for me, and I didn’t do one night stands at all… ever.  The three date rule was my gospel.  Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t let down my hair and have fun dancing in a club.

I put on a red strapless tube dress that hugged every curve, barely reached my mid-thigh, and showed plenty of cleavage.  Last but not least I slipped on a pair of four inch heels, and put up part of my hair but left some down, I thought I looked great.  I just wished Nathan could have seen me wearing this, we wouldn’t have made it to the door.  The dress would have been scandalous anywhere except a club of course.

Kristi was similarly dressed but in black, and she looked breathtaking.  We were sure to leave a lot of disappointed men behind tonight.  She wasn’t looking either since she had Joe, so most of the night we just danced with each other, but we didn’t turn down random dance partners either, we just didn’t let them buy us drinks, or dance with us for too long.

As far as having purple eyes and spots?  It just wasn’t a problem, apparently the kind of people that were anti-alien didn’t do dance clubs.  If anything it seemed to make me more attractive to the men there, I got more attention that night than I ever had in the past.  Perhaps it made me… more exotic?  I did my best to be gracious in my refusals, and there weren’t any serious problems.  Most of them just shrugged and went to find another woman to hit on, so we definitely had a blast.

The next morning Kristi and I, not so bright eyed and bushy tailed, managed to get to the general’s office for our morning appointment.  Oh, I was fine, I could live off a few hours’ sleep a night and did, but Kristi looked half asleep since we’d been out until about two thirty in the morning last night, or actually this morning.  He was in there with someone else, and we had to wait about ten minutes before the lieutenant let us through to his office.

“Good morning general Denton,” I said with a small smile.

He raised his eyebrow, “What trouble have you brought me today?  I got a lot of push back on the last round of upgrades.”

I grinned unrepentantly, “Then you’re going to hate me sir,” I put a small metallic tube on his desk, about the size of a travel coffee mug.  Yes, I know I’m obsessed with coffee, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw it for the first time.

He frowned and looked at it, “What’s this?”

I said thoughtfully, “What’s that army saying general?  One shot, one kill?  That’s the magic FTL bullet.  Just one will destroy any ship or missile traveling at FTL.  It’s not perfect for what I had in mind in denying FTL ability, but it will have to do.  It would force any enemies to fight below FTL speeds, or highly regret not doing so, and gives us an advantage I think.  There are two other upgrades as well, thanks to Kristi.  The anti-mass particle weapon got a plasma upgrade since its current form is now obsolete, so it does actual damage instead of field destabilization.  The second one is just a software patch to make the missiles work below FTL speeds.”

The General looked thoughtful for a moment, “I get the last two easy enough, but how does this thing work,” and he tapped the cylinder.

“It has its own FTL drive and shielding.  It’s just as fast as our other missiles in this size, but it has a much smaller reactor, so it can only go full speed for two days.  In a battle that’s practically forever, so I thought the smaller the better.  It will also be much harder to detect with a smaller power source.  What makes it so deadly, is when it gets in range of the target ship, it will create a gravity spike of two hundred gravities for a few milliseconds along the hull of an enemy ship.”

He nodded and still looked uninformed, so I explained the science a little better.

“The anti-mass particle weapons destabilized a ships anti-mass field by overloading one section with more anti-mass.  This will do the opposite, anti-mass and gravity don’t mix.  As soon as the gravity field hits the anti-mass field it will strip away all anti-mass particles for the part of the anti-mass field it intersects with.”

He looked thoughtful and grunted, “Okay, that makes sense… sort of.  But if that happens why does the anti-mass field work on Earth?”

I grinned, “Good question.  Because it’s only one gravity, and the field is constantly generating and stabilizing itself.  Also gravity is uniform on Earth, so it’s effecting the whole field at the same time.  But two hundred gravities, and only along a small portion of the overall field, will strip it long enough to expose the mass beneath the field to universal laws.  It will simply turn to energy.  The best part is the missiles fly next to the target ship and passes it head on, like two cars passing on a two lane highway.  When the target ship turns to energy, the gravity missile will be moving in the opposite direction.

“In theory the gravity missile can fly back to the originating ship when it’s done, and can even be refueled with hydrogen.  So they won’t have to be replaced very often.

“So picture five new very small landing bays, the size of a small closet, with a thousand of these things piled in each one, just like Shield it’s designed to self-propel itself via A.I. control, so… we don’t even need to use launchers.  If we had these a couple of weeks ago, we could have destroyed all the Seltan ships with one craft, over a day away from their fleet in FTL.  As long as they were in FTL I mean, if they just sat there… like I said, it isn’t perfect, but it should make battles more one sided, and even manage our enemies into sub-light.”

He asked, “Why so many, from what you just said that one ship would have been able to take out the enemy five times.”

Kristi added that one, “So imagine your ship’s surrounded by shield missiles, and then beyond that imagine all of those Shield missiles, and the ship itself, inside a globe of a few thousand of these during battle.  They would lurk far enough away, to destroy incoming FTL missiles before Shield had a shot at them, far enough away that the resulting energy blast could be absorbed by Shield and the ship itself without much danger.  It’s just more deterrent, they might drop their ships outside of FTL, but we’d still need to contend with their missiles in FTL.  That’s why so many, we need a lot to compensate for the enemies throw weight.

“Below FTL speeds our plasma cannons should be able to take out missiles as well.  Between eight on each ship, and one on each of the eighty shield missiles, that’s a lot of fire power.  Anyway, we have a list of suggested upgrades for all ship classes.  The battlecruisers, the missile boats, fighters, shield missiles, carriers… did I miss one?”

I smiled, “Combat shuttles.”

She grinned, “Right, but aren’t those just fighter replacements?”

I nodded, “Technically… yeah I guess.  But we still have some of the old ones left too.”

The general cleared his throat and we both looked his way.  He had an amused look on his face.

“Question, what about the EM field?  If we keep things below light speed, that means the reactors will be at less than a percent, which means our shield won’t stop a missile, right?”

I grinned actually kind of impressed with the question.

“Good question sir.  But no.  Part of the upgrade is to put a very small gravity plate on different places on the ship’s hull.  The gravity it generates will be controlled by the A.I. to weaken the anti-mass field by dispersion in different places, so the ship always has some mass and can’t reach FTL.  It’s almost exactly like the weapon, but its harmless at sub light speeds and just prevents FTL transition.

“The good thing is that the EM field and anti-mass field may be generated at the same time, but are two different fields resulting from that one process.  Gravity has little to no practical effect on the EM field, so you can run the reactors at a hundred percent, and have extremely strong EM shields, and use the artificial gravity to disperse the anti-mass field.”

He grunted, but looked pleased at my answer.

“Alright, send me the info and I’ll get my scientists on it.  I appreciate all you’ve done, and you certainly didn’t have to keep giving away your work like this if you didn’t want to.  Still, you keep bringing me new work, so get out of my office.”

He was still smiling despite his harsh tone.

“Umm, sir, do you know how the other countries stack up against our ships?”

The general frowned, “Why?”

I shrugged, “Just curious, if Earth is called on again before we leave the empire, I’d hate to see the non-U.S. ships get scrapped because we held a technical edge.”

He sighed, “Politics.  We can’t just turn it over, their ships look a lot like your first generation, they don’t have our new stronger shields and are limited to saucer shapes, and they won’t get our new weapons either, they don’t even have the Shield missile defense system.  At least, not yet.  The president is working with various other leaders on a program, making a single Earth space navy.  She even has a name in mind, Unified Space Fleet Service.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of stumbling blocks to go around.

“First, we have to agree with everyone else on guidelines when we leave the empire.  I think we still shouldn’t mess with pre-FTL societies we may meet when we move out toward the rim of the galaxy, or even those that may develop intelligent life.  The Knomen didn’t get it all wrong after all.  We need to be cautious while looking for places to settle, and maybe building our own space empire of sorts.

“Not everyone will agree with even that one simple thing.  Some want to simply go our own way and never trust an alien as an equal, just like the Knomen.  Where others want to aggressively make sure we aren’t threatened even potentially.  Outside of that, everyone wants the top position in fleet operations to be given to one of their countrymen.  So it’s taking time, and I don’t think we should share with Russia, China, Japan, or the European countries until that’s all done.”

I nodded, there wasn’t much to say to all that.  He was right.  If we couldn’t all agree to a single doctrine toward space exploration, then… things will get pretty messy.  Every country would have colony planets, where other countries weren’t welcome.  Some might even go out and prey on other species, and put a black mark on the rest of humanity.  They weren’t easy questions, and there were no simple solutions.

“So they know, I mean the world leaders know the truth now?”

The general nodded, “Yes, they were all shocked as hell with the Tressian history.  It’s the only reason I think the Unified Space Fleet service has a chance in hell of actually going through.  The one thing we can all agree on is protecting Earth, and leaving the empire.”

I nodded, “Thanks for telling us all that sir, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

He grunted, “You’d better Lieutenant.”

I raised an eyebrow and he shrugged, “You’re not on active duty Jones, but it’s still your Navy rank from after mission.”

We said our goodbyes and left his office.

Chapter 7

Kristi asked, “Pack and move today, or should we do more hiring?”

I shrugged, “Well, you know we do have an indoor hot tub, sort of, it’s in the sunroom overlooking the backyard… and the mountains.”

She grinned, “Right, packing it is.  You’re very wise.”

I snickered, and we headed home to do just that.  I also had Al send down some of the repair robots from the ship to help us, even without furniture, the clothes, books, television, dishes, silverware, Knick knacks, pictures, linens, small appliances, and everything else I didn’t list would take a lot of boxes.

We barely fit everything inside the two shuttles, which had a pretty large storage capacity, and headed over to the new house after sending in a vacate notice to the college administration A.I.  It was fairly late in the afternoon when we finished unboxing everything we’d boxed, and we had so many… blank spaces left in the house that needed to be filled.

Well, our bedrooms were good, but we had three bare spare bedrooms, and only one of the three entertainment rooms full of our stuff and Knick knacks.  The living room was good, but the den, game room, and dining room looked kind of empty outside of the bare furniture in it, that is.

We needed to do some shopping, for paintings and other household decorations.  It was something for another day though.  We were both done with work for the day.  Moving wasn’t fun, even with shuttles.

We parked our shuttles in the garage, for once not needing to send them back to the ship, we didn’t even have any really close neighbors, so we had no gawkers while doing it.  Two bikinis and a frozen pizza later, and we were lounging in the hot tub, watching the sun fall behind the mountains.  It was gorgeous, and so hard to believe the view was mine.

I’d earned it though, and I wondered what would be coming next.  I was excited about the company, and I’d done my best to protect Earth, I also didn’t see any paths to further upgrades, at least not yet.  The back of my mind was… quiescent on the matter.

Outside of Caroline’s project that is, it would be nice to have my ship infested by maintenance and repair nanites.  Still, I’d have to figure out another idea to work on for myself, the way I was building the business it would pretty much run without me.  Maybe I was a workaholic, because I hadn’t managed to relax for fifteen minutes before trying to fill in the time I could see coming after I had the last two hires done.

Despite not finding seeing any new upgrades to my inventions in the future, I did manage to find a few more uses.

It was probably paranoid, but I had two of the most advanced space ships on Earth in my garage.  Even the military didn’t have the hardware upgraded to mine yet.  Plus, there were people out there who hated aliens for no good reason.  I had both shuttles start cranking out twenty of those gravity emitters each, like the one I had for self-defense.  They were so small, that they could do ten each in one run, so it would only take a few hours for both runs.

I figured I could put couple in the house, and the rest around our property, and then give the house A.I. control over them.  Anyone that trespassed and ignored the warnings would find themselves stuck on the ground.

Thanks to the shape of the gravity balls, I also had a new idea for a shield suit that wouldn’t be bulky at all.  In fact, it would be perhaps an eighth of an inch thick, and formfitting enough to wear under regular clothes, so I had the machine print that out too.  It was basically thousands of little tiny balls inside the fabric, a few microns thick, which would all generate independent anti-mass fields, which would only effect the garment, as well as the EM field, or shield.

It wouldn’t be that strong, a ships plasma weapon could go right through it, but it would deflect a hand laser easily enough.  Also, the anti-mass fields would stop a bullet cold, when they hit the fabric the bullet would lose all mass… no mass equals no force.  The bullet would just stop against me, and I could just brush it off.  The only caveat, was the suit had to go from my neck down to my toes to cover my whole body.  Also, it wouldn’t work if I didn’t wear the high heeled boots I designed to go with it, the high heels held the power source to make it all run.

Hey, call me vain but I didn’t want to wear anything bulky.

Of course, whenever I had it on, I’d have to wear clothes over it that looked good, which meant no skirts, or shorts.  Either that or walk around like some super hero in a form fitting sexy outfit.  Nah…

“Do you want one of these made?” I asked Kristi as I sent it to her A.I.

She giggled, “I wondered why you’ve been so quiet the last fifteen minutes.”

I shrugged, “I also set up a security system of sorts,” and sent her the gravity stuff I was setting up.

She sighed and said half seriously, “I don’t know, I’m not a sexy but evil alien that must be stopped.  I don’t think I have to worry about being attacked.  Plus… I like wearing skirts and short shorts way too much.”

I snickered, “Me too actually, but I decided that was just a really bad reason to get a hole in my head by some nut bag with a sniper rifle.”

She looked thoughtful, “We probably couldn’t make it invisible, but I bet we could make the bottom look like stockings.  Wait a minute, you could make it like a bustier.  If you do that it will cover your head down to your mid thighs right?  Snipers don’t aim at a person’s ankles, or even their knees.”

I thought about that for a minute, “You’re right,” I cancelled that print, luckily the fabricator still had a couple of hours on the first job I gave it.  I fixed the design, and for the hell of it I specified one in red, black, white, and light blue.  It would look like a bustier when finished.  I also designed the power transfer to be wireless.  Then of course, as long as I was being that vain, made a new copy of all my shoes with at least two inch heels to power the things, then submitted the job and sent the new designs to Kristi.

She snickered, “Awesome, maybe I will do it, you know, just in case I’m standing close to you and the assassin is an exceptionally bad shot.  I guess I can live with no half shirts.”

I laughed and splashed water at her, I’d fed my vanity enough for one day thanks…

Kristi asked, “How does it feel?”

I grinned, “Really light, most of it is inside its own anti-mass field.  In fact, I think I feel a little lighter.  I’d hardly know it was there, if it wasn’t supporting my breasts.  It’s really comfortable too.”

She nodded, “You look great in just that and high heels, but go put some more clothes on.  I think I will fabricate some out, and I want pink as well as those four colors.”

I nodded, I didn’t really care for pink, but she loved it, “Go for it, my fabricator is your fabricator.”

She sighed, “So what did you think of Shelly Stengel and Carmine Scalia?  Should we interview them today?”

I said, “Sure, both of them look good on paper.  I really didn’t have anything else going on today, you?”

She shook her head, “Not really, just marking time until I get my appointment.  I have to do classes of course, but not on Fridays.  Have you patented that suit yet?”

I shook my head, “I’ll have Al do it now, it never occurred to me until now, but the military could definitely use something like this for ground troops.”

Maybe some gifts would help that along.  Since we needed so many and my ship had a fairly large fabricator, or at least much bigger than the shuttles, I sent measurements up to my main ship to fabricate a suit each, and two pairs of army boots with power sources to wear under their BDUs, for Barbara, Bill, Elise, and of course Nathan.  The fact that I would worry less about Nathan getting hurt or worse on duty while being protected by the suit may have had something to do with my gift idea.

She nodded, “Yup, and your little gravity balls?”

“Those are done already.  But I might not get it, artificial-gravity is basically just open tech since we brought it back from Tressia.  It’s not that different from a deck plate.  I’m pretty sure it’s not patentable.  I should be able to market and sell the fabricator design though.  I’ll go get dressed, did you want to message them?”

She nodded.

I went into my bedroom and threw on a pair of jean shorts, and a clingy shirt.  When I looked in the mirror it was impossible to tell I had any kind of protection going, I was even wearing a pair of casual two inch heeled sandals.  Then I realized if I was doing interviews as the head of a company, maybe I should be in something nicer.  I got undressed, and threw on a mauve pencil skirt that went down to my lower thighs just short of my knees, a matching pair of two inch heels, and a creamy white blouse.  I still couldn’t tell I was wearing a supportive, form fitting, and bullet proof bustier.  The light purple of the skirt also made my eyes pop a bit.

Kristi took one look at me when I came out, and went to go change too.  It would be interesting making the change from two women who constantly dressed casually in college to a CEO and CTO of our own company…

Just as we landed in my shuttle at our office building, I got a message from Caroline, she’d signed the documents and would start on Monday.  I assigned her an office and lab, and forwarded it all to Karen to get the woman set up with access, a benefits package, and all the other onboarding stuff that was needed.  Kristi and I walked in, and Karen was behind the front desk and smiled at us.

“Morning.”

She replied, “Good morning Alicia, Kristi.”

We’d decided to keep it informal as possible, I thought that would make our scientists more comfortable approaching one of us for help or insight.  Sure, I had to dress nicer, but I wasn’t turning into a corporate drone.  It was about my comfort level too.

“We’re expecting a couple of people over the next two hours.  Please escort them back to the conference room?”

She nodded and we headed back.  I wondered if I’d ever actually use my lab space, I liked working with my A.I. in the virtual, and more often than not would test a new concept out in space…

The next month went by quickly.

Both Carmine and Shelly joined the company.  Carmine was an engineer and he was working on terraforming.  We already had the tech to get that done, but it would take a couple of thousand years with what we had now to terraform mars.  He was determined he could lower that number significantly, to something more reasonable like a decade or two.  Obviously this would be extremely big when we moved out into the stars so I thought it worth the risk.

Shelly was an A.I. genius.  She was working on making A.I.s more intuitive.  So that they could interpret intent, and even offer suggestions or alternate possible solutions, rather than just following orders to the literal letter.  This had a lot of potential as well.  I could imagine for instance, with Caroline’s work added to theirs, an intelligent A.I. in control of a nanite storm made up of trillions of nanites at its command, to work whatever Carmine’s solution was to terraform a planet quickly and easily, yet able to fine tune it and even get creative when unexpected problems arose without human interpretation.

Obviously there were a lot more applications in mixing and matching, but the synergy between the three projects, and the fact they and others could be legally combined would mean great things in the future.  Perhaps it was hubris on my part, but the five of us were a hell of team.

I’d managed to get in touch with Master Sgt. Barbara Cooper, and she got permission from her C.O. for her group to try the suits.  Apparently they tested them very thoroughly, and I was making even more money now as they paid me a fee for each soldier they fabricated one for.  I’d also gotten a request from the general asking me to fabricate one of my versions for the President, since she was female.  That was… really unexpected, but in hindsight not that surprising.  I didn’t want to wear the military version either, why should madam President?  The president wore skirts and dresses too after all.

The general also kept me apprised of the ship upgrades.  They were going fairly slowly, so I imagined he had trouble with some red tape.  After all, it shouldn’t have been hard, the fabricators on board each ship could take care of the changes rather quickly.  However, all the new stuff was coming off the line with all the latest upgrades and to my specifications.  I was kind of flattered the Army and Navy eggheads hadn’t made even one change to my and Kristi’s work.

So far I couldn’t get the gravity self-defense fabricator template approved for sale to the general public.  Even with strict programming that would prevent someone from using a setting high enough to kill.  I was however selling quite a number of them to police riot squads, just one more non-lethal crowd control they could use.  Even the military was buying some, they didn’t have that much use for non-lethal weaponry, but the M.P.s would have a use for them as they policed our own troops.

I’d also managed a couple of more dates with Nathan, and the wonderful nights in his arms that followed them.  He hadn’t gotten any more passes, but I was welcome to be on base with my inactive rank, so whenever he was off-mission and off-duty, but still required on standby, we made that happen.

I hadn’t really thought of anything new to focus on for research yet, I was just supporting the other four in the company, and every once in a while I messed around with a new end product.  I built an unarmed mini-shuttle that looked like a normal street car, which I decided was more prudent to fly around Earth in, instead of a combat shuttle.  I made other new toys as well, but nothing really groundbreaking new, just a twist or new application on work I’d already done.

Kristi’s dissertation defense was scheduled a couple of months from now, in early September.  She was working on her own research, as well as helping me with the others.

The only other significant change over the last month was Joe.  He’d found work in Colorado Springs, and was currently living with Kristi and I.  He had his own room, mainly to keep his clothes and stuff in, but most nights he could be found in Kristi’s bed.  I had a feeling he would propose soon, his core feelings felt a lot more solidified to me now, and less indecisive.  It was interesting, I could almost gauge him changing day by day, maybe he was just finally growing up.  Either way, I was very happy for my roommate, but selfishly wasn’t looking forward to the day she moved out so they could have their own place.  She could certainly afford it.

I also spent a lot of money that month.  Holding on to it in the bank wasn’t good, I could stir the economy by pouring some of it back in.  It was actually coming in at an alarming rate, I got a small piece of every EM anti-mass superconducting coil built, and there were a lot of ships going up and each one had a great many of them.  Car manufacturers were starting to use them, as well as industrial loaders to move heavy equipment.  There were almost an unlimited number of applications for the anti-mass field, and that initial billion was growing obscenely fast.

I invested in a number of businesses, sometimes just short of a controlling interest so I didn’t get bogged down in management.  I just made sure good and smart people were making the decisions.  I also donated to charitable organizations, and some of the science programs in good colleges.  I also set up a number of scholarships.  Even with my business, the house, and all that, I was still making more than I could spend.  I’m not complaining, but illustrating the money itself was becoming a full time job, so I did some research on investment groups and financial managers, and put them to work.

I liked having money well enough, but I didn’t want it to become a big part of my life as far as time went.  I’d much rather be doing something more in science.

The biggest investment I made was the taxes on claiming three fairly large asteroids, and I went to Tressia for an afternoon to pick up three of those large advanced fabricators.  I didn’t have that much to make yet, but I was selling some things already, especially the armor suits and non-lethal gravity weapons, so I decided to go big on production.

Toward the end of that month, I started to get bored as everything equalized.  I still hadn’t figured out something to research, it wasn’t like there wasn’t a lot out there, it’s just none of it had interested me nearly as much as what I had just done.  Maybe I was just jaded, after all, my original dissertation was about making a stable strong EM field without ridiculous amounts of energy.  That in itself was a worthwhile and important discovery, but hardly as exciting and world changing as what had grown from that through serendipity.

Then the rest of it had come and… yeah, I was definitely jaded.  I needed to get over myself and pick one of those other fields soon, or I’d go stir crazy simply reviewing the daily progress of everyone else.  Either that or turn into a party girl billionaire and tour the world.  I almost laughed out loud at that ridiculous thought, I’d rather die… I needed to do something more.  Hell, without Kristi dragging me out a night or two a week I’d probably be a hermit.  Even if it turned out to be something small, I needed something to sink my teeth into.

Chapter 8

I was thinking of maybe doing black hole research, with anti-mass and gravity fields generation I figured I could get some probes pretty close.  There was a problem with the idea of course, because then I remembered the Seltan empire was between here and there, and who knew what lay past them?  I assumed that the closer to the core, the older the civilizations would be, if they survived long enough to reach space.

I was still considering it though, maybe if I went the long way around, send it perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy into the void, and came back in right by the black hole.  Kind of like going around the block instead of through a neighbor’s yard.  Yeah… I’ll do that.  Galactic center was about twenty-seven thousand light years from Earth.  That only left seven thousand light years from the edge of the Knomen empire, which kind of implied the Seltans were the closest to the core, unless they were mashed between us and someone else, which could be why they seem so desperate to expand.

Still, it was only another day of travel at top speed.  To be safe I’d need to go perpendicular for a day, about seven thousand light years, so that would make the entire trip for the probe only six days.  Actually, that was wrong.  I had made that trip across the empire in three days with the old shields, it would take closer to four days with the new tech to make it all the way to the core even with the detour.

Incidentally, there was another twenty-seven thousand light years of the galaxy to explore opposite the core from Earth, toward the rim.  So we had tons of breathing room, assuming we weren’t mashed and just hadn’t met the other neighbor yet.

“General Denton is calling,” Al reported in his even voice.

Thank god, I was really bored.

“Answer it Al… Good morning sir, what can I do for you?”

General Denton replied in a serious voice, “Come down to my office as soon as possible, wear something professional.”

I almost teased him, but decided to hold my tongue, “Yes sir, now?  What about Kristi?”

He grunted, “Now would be just fine Alicia, for future reference when a four-star general says as soon as possible, it means now if not yesterday.  No Kristi on this trip but you can tell her all about it when you get back home.  I’ll see you soon.”

He hung up then, and I sighed.  I couldn’t help but hope he had something for me to do, yet at the same time I hoped it wasn’t something bad.  I was already in the office, I had on a fairly conservative black dress that went from my neck, with a steep V cutout at the top that didn’t even come close to showing cleavage, and the hem tickled the top of my knees when standing.  I was also wearing black three inch heels.  It should do.

I shot Kristi a note and headed outside.  My ride nowadays looked like a sports car, without wheels of course.  I know, I was such a geek.  I jumped in and had Al take me to the general, I could fly manually, but it takes me much longer.  There was a lot involved.  He took me straight up to orbit, and dropped me back down, the car settling an inch off the ground in the parking lot by the general’s office before it settled to the deck.  It had taken just under thirty seconds.

I got out and walked into the building, the general was talking with the lieutenant.

He looked up at me and smiled, “Let’s go, you’re driving.”

I tilted my head, thought better of asking him if I was a taxi service now, and just nodded.  I was missing too much information to form any conclusions, especially a negative one, but being in the dark annoyed me.

He followed me out, and got in the fake sports car.

“Is this thing safe?”

I grinned, “It’s unarmed, but it’d take ten missile hits before it went down.  Where are we going sir?”

He replied, “White House, please land at least ten miles from there, and drive in the rest of the way.”

Huh.

“You heard him Al, make it so.”

The general tightened his grip on the dash board when we were suddenly surrounded by outer space ten seconds later, and just as fast we were back on the ground.

“How does this thing not burn up in re-entry?” he groused.

I grinned, “I just told you it could take the equivalent of ten nuclear explosions before its EM field failed, surely re-entry is just rug burn to the shield in comparison.”

He grunted noncommittally as the car started to fly a couple of inches off the ground in traffic.  It was a good thing I’d installed real lights to make it look real.  I hadn’t really intended to use it this way, it was just camouflage for a parking lot.  Granted, there were no wheels, but I was always surprised at what people miss.  Al was doing surprising well in traffic.

“I suppose you did at that,” he finally commented, about the shields.

“So what is this about sir?”

He peered at me a moment, “You’ll find out, all I can say is some people want to meet you.”

I stayed silent for the rest of the ride, we were waved quickly through the gate after the general showed his identification.  I told Al to park and then followed the general to the entrance where we were met by two secret service agents to escort us.  There was a tense moment, when I set the scanners off.

They both pulled out and pointed guns at me before I could even start explaining.

I held up my hands, “It’s my powered armor, I have the same setup the President does.  No doubt the small reactor in my heels set off the sensors.”

They still didn’t lower their guns, until the general barked at them to do so.  They looked at me warily as I put my hands down, and we waited while one of them touched his ear piece for instructions.  After a couple of minutes, they’d apparently gotten me cleared.

“This way,” one of them said, still not looking all that happy.

We followed them to a large conference room.  There were seven people in the room besides the general and I, and one was the vice president.

The general introduced everyone and we took a seat, but I was still a little lost after he’d finished.

The general had said, “This is Adrienne Fournier of France, Jonas Baum of Germany, and Gerald Anderson of England, they are here to represent the European Union as a whole.  Nadia Avdonin is here to represent Russia’s interests.  Similarly, this is Li Lei to represent China, Gorou Kimura to represent Japan, and of course Vice President William Tanner to represent the United States.”

There was a moment of silence before one of them spoke.

Adrienne leaned forward in his chair, “It is a pleasure to finally meet you miss Jones.  I know you haven’t been told anything, so allow me to catch you up as you Americans say.  We, the group of people across from you, are in charge of the Unified Space Fleet Service.  I’m going to refer to it as the USFS from here on out because it’s quite a mouthful.

“The USFS is responsible for anything that happens out in space, our intention is to keep the bureaucracy as small as possible, but we have a few goals we are sure of.  One, to get free of the Knomen empire.  Two, we will create a joint military navy, it will be responsible for protecting Earth from her enemies, and protecting any colonies that are formed.  It will also be responsible for protecting any pre-FTL civilizations from our citizens who go out in the galaxy to trade.  It will also be the only military arm allowed in space.  All countries with fleets will combine them into one service.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, “We will all work together and create these… laws and doctrines for space.  Of course, the civilians who go out to trade, and even settle will not be a part of our charter, as long as they follow the rules we set, they are free to expand or not for their country, or establish an independent colony nation of their own.”

He took note of my confusion, as did a few others.  I just had no idea why he was explaining this to me.

Nadia took over, “In short, we can set the rules of law by this committee, and give instructions to who controls the fleet to carry out our orders.  The one thing we haven’t been able to agree on is who should be top Admiral, too much politics at that level in the military, in all our services.  However, when we reviewed all you had done.  You went out and found new technology, maps of the Knomen empire, proof of their duplicity, and designed the strongest ships in space that we have, that are now protecting Earth.  You even went to battle to prevent brave American space navy ships from being used as fodder by the Knomen Admiral in command.”

She looked me in the eyes, “You did all this without asking for anything, and simply to protect your adopted planet.  Yes?”

When I nodded, she continued to my dismay, I knew what was coming and it was like watching a car crash.  Boredom wasn’t that bad, was it?

“You are a complete non-entity in the political arena, yet completely qualified and trusted by everyone in this room.  We, the entire board, would ask you to serve as commander of fleet for the USFS, to protect the Earth, protect our future colonies, and enforce our laws.  Eventually, once the fleet is cohesive and can act as one, we can retire you and promote one of the other Admirals in the service.  We are asking for a five-year commitment.”

I asked, “How much autonomy would I have as far as fleet resources?”

William Tanner asked, “What do you mean?”

I sighed, “If I agree to this, we need the fleet to be uniform, which means I want all the specs from all the different ships.  I’ll pull out the best of each, and then throw it back together to be space fleet ships.  Also, all military building for the separate countries needs to stop, or at least start building them to the exact specs I specify.  Shape doesn’t really matter, the technology behind it does, but still, there is an inherit ‘we are different from them’ if the ships don’t look alike, we should avoid that if possible.”

William asked skeptically, “So you want to give everyone the stronger weapons and shields we have?”

My eyes widened, “Sure, but perhaps Russia has a better A.I. and France might have better scanning technology.  China may have even more efficient reactors.  Those are all speculative guesses, but you get the point.  All my work has been on shields, speed, and weapons, those aren’t the only edges out there.  I’d want the best for everyone under my command, and not just for one country and allow the rest to get by.”

William raised an eyebrow, “I’m not sure that’s possible…” he trailed off when I stood.

I said with finality, “Call me when your serious, I’ll give it some thought as well,” and I walked out the door feeling annoyed, and a little pissed off.

If they couldn’t share technology, and be one service, then the whole thing was a joke and bound to fall apart as soon as the danger of the Knomen passed, assuming it would pass at all…  Regardless, I wasn’t sending in people barely armed with the basics, I wouldn’t use fodder.

The general caught up, “What was that about?”

I explained my reasoning, he just grunted.

A secret service agent stopped us, “Please wait here a moment.”

A minute later The Vice President along with Jonas and Gorou came down the hall.

William held up a hand and smiled, “I apologize for that, but it was a test, I didn’t mean that at all.  The U.S. has no intention of keeping necessary technology to keep all our people safe in space.”

Jonas spoke, “It was my idea I’m afraid, and I asked William to play along.  Although you seemed to act to protect all of Earth, you’re still a U.S. citizen which brought up a few doubts for me and Gorou.  We thought if you were the right person for the job you’d dig in your heels and argue, we weren’t expecting you to get angry and storm out.  Either way, the job offer is still on the table if you want it, and we will all be sending you all the specs and real data on our systems.”

I nodded, a part of me just wanted to leave, go do my black hole research, and be a scientist.  There was also a part of me though, that actually missed that short time I was an Admiral, and was doing something very important.  I remembered being scared, and upset, but there was also a certain… satisfaction to it.  Yes, I’d lost the one ship, but I’d saved a great number of lives that otherwise would have died, and not just Earth human, or Terran lives.

“Alright, I’ll do it.  Do I need to go back in there?  Or can you just send me the current… charter and laws, along with any current orders, and the list of specs along with all my resources?  Also, do we have a uniform yet?  We need a common one along with our common ships.”

Gorou bowed, “We can do that.  And yes, common uniforms were discussed.”

We talked for a few more minutes, and then I got out of there.  I hated meetings, just send me the work please…  I had the feeling though, I’d still have plenty to go to.

Chapter 9

When I received the data I dove in.  My first week was insanely busy, and I hadn’t been happier in a while, outside of my dates with Nathan that is.

I used my pull to get Kristi on my staff first thing, because she probably would have murdered me in my sleep if I didn’t.  But also because I valued her insights and creativity.

The list of laws was very short right now, and pretty much exactly what Adrienne had told me.  My only current orders were to get the fleet up to spec, and protect Earth.  We weren’t ready to face the Knomen yet if they decided to attack when we pulled out.

I made my personal ship, which could go toe to toe with any battle cruiser, my flag.  I did that because after some thought, I realized joining any other current ship while they were still split by country by looks and perception, could be construed as political or showing favoritism.  I made a few changes on it, added enough rooms for a small staff as well as the rooms already there for me and Kristi.  I also added a large conference room for the day when I’d be talking to all the admirals.  I also needed a bigger hangar deck to accommodate more than just a few shuttles.

In short, my ship grew while I was on it.  It took about a week, longer than just making a new one would take, but it was still my first ship, and I wanted to keep it.  It looked like an elongated saucer now, as if someone grabbed two edges of the saucer and stretched it out.  I also built up another level, so the widest part was about a third of the way up from the bottom.  I still hadn’t picked a staff, I’d go over Admiral’s later, after I’d figured out the specs.

About the only people on board I did have now outside of Kristi was a security team made up of Marines, and the equivalent military services for the other five countries and the EU at the insistence of the USFS board.  They’d actually used cots in a storage room until the marine area was finished building on my ship, but of course, they all wore the new common uniforms.

Kristi helped me narrow down the best systems.  Immodest perhaps, but I wasn’t surprised my and Kristi’s shield and weapons designs were the best.  Funnily enough, China did have the most efficient reactors as I’d said in the meeting.  Japan however, not France, had the best scanning tech, but France did have the best A.I.

Although the U.S. ships were already a design for shape that we created, Kristi and I knew it would be best to come up with something new, so we used my current ship as the default look for everything since nothing else looked like it.  I didn’t like playing politics, but sometimes it was just easier to be aware of possible issues, and to make sure they simply never came about.

By the end of that first week we had a new design for the missile boat, battlecruiser, carrier, and the command ship which was currently mine and would be the only one until I retired.  We also redesigned all the support stuff to a similar profile, there would be no doubt about a ship or weapon that belonged to the USFS.  Combat shuttles, transport shuttles, Shield defense missiles, normal missiles, gravity missiles, all of it got a different look.  We decided to just phase out the old style fighter craft, the combat shuttle could hold more weapons anyway.  About the only thing we didn’t change was the plasma cannon design, except of course for the upgraded reactor designs.

That also meant my combat shuttle and Kristi’s old shuttle got a remake.

Once we were done, I sent the new specs to all the fabricators dedicated to the USFS creation of our fleet and they got started building again.  I also sent specs for upgrades on those ships that could be easily upgraded both in shape and function.  The rest were ordered to stay as solar system defense only until replacements were made, and then they would most likely be defanged and sold to private concerns when we were ready with places for the public to go.

From my understanding, all exploration was to be done by the USFS, so a new world that could be settled needed to be found, and properly protected before civilians could move there.  The same was true of meeting other advanced worlds, we would explore, make a treaty if possible or trade agreement, and then authorize travel for trade and such.

The other thing I found out, which I hadn’t known, was that the U.S. had used my original probe design with scanners to seed the empire.  We had a good view of everything going on and who was traveling where.  It was pretty impressive, and we would do the same in the other direction when we explored in the direction away from the core.  For now, all exploration was secondary to withdrawing from the empire as peacefully as possible, and protecting Earth.

Some on Earth weren’t happy about it, but we couldn’t explore until that happened, the Knomen would see us doing it and come down on us before we were ready.  Knomen law had that five light year distance a year rule, to prevent… I wasn’t sure what.  Either way, I didn’t want to stir anything up until we were ready, and neither did the USFS board.

Once all the technology becoming completely uniform was in swing, I worked on getting everyone into the new USFS uniforms.  According to the manufacturers it would take a couple of months to get everyone clothed with enough uniforms to make it happen.  I considered using my own fabricators for it, the three on the asteroids could pump them out extremely fast.  But it would have been one of those conflicts of interest, since I’d have made money off of it.  So the uniforms would take longer than the tech… funny world.

I also reviewed all the admirals.  Currently there were fourteen.  Each country had both a rear or one-star, and an upper or two-star admiral in their fleets when they were separated.  I needed to interview them all, and then pick two to be vice or three star admirals, one to command the home fleet, and one to command the exploratory fleet once we started exploring.  I also needed to split up the other twelve in the two fleets.

Sergei Abramov from Russia, and Anthony Flores from the U.S. became those two vice admirals.

The new vice admirals weren’t happy with me when I told them to get with the upper admirals and mix the crews.  I knew there would be problems at first, but if we were to be one fleet… it was a necessary step.  Language wasn’t a barrier, as everyone had an A.I. with a universal translator.  If there were bigots in the crew, it was better to find them and send them home now, rather than when we were in the middle of battle and lives were on the line.

My original goal was to have two thousand ships in each fleet.  By that I meant battle cruisers and carriers in an eight to one ratio, respectively.  That wouldn’t count the smaller ships.  I arrived at that by simply doubling the number of ships the Knomen Empire had faced from the Seltan, for each fleet.

There was to be one vice admiral per fleet or two thousand ships.  The ships would be split into four sub fleets of five hundred for the upper admirals, so we needed to promote two rear admirals to make the eight we needed.  Then I split the sub fleets in half again, for the rear admirals, which meant we needed sixteen of those altogether, which after the promotions meant we were eleven short, which we would get from promoting Captains.

Each group of two hundred fifty ships under the one star admirals, would further be broken up into fleets of twenty-five, and commanded by commodores.

Obviously we didn’t have all those ships yet, we only had about three hundred, but we would be ready with the promotions and who to promote as the ships were completed.  I’d also let the vice admirals know that they’d better promote by time in service barring any red flags in their records, as far as I could tell, all their selections were made without consideration of what nation they’d come from.

I forwarded all of that to the USFS board for pre-approval, so we could just move on it when the time came.  So far the bureaucracy was very small, and so far everyone was determined to keep it that way, so it was going fairly smoothly so far, as smooth as a large undertaking such as this could go anyway.

By the end of the second week things were looking very good on paper, we had the plan, and it was getting done.  The ships that could be updated were finishing up, and the new ships were coming in.  With twenty fabricators, and the carriers taking twice as long as the battlecruisers, we would get four of the former, and thirty-two of the latter every six days.  That worked out a to about one eighty per month, so about one year and eight months to get our four thousand ships with the three hundred we already had.

The question was if it would happen fast enough and if the crews would work together, would the seven participating countries on Earth supply enough men to man them on the building schedule, or would the Knomen catch on and precipitate an attack before we were ready?

To be fair, I’d be confident enough to make a stand in about six months, we’d have over thirteen hundred ships at that point, a hundred twenty of which would be carriers.  Carriers would be carrying eighty combat shuttles each, so that made an additional ninety-six hundred small attack craft that could stand head to head with one of our older ships easily.  That didn’t even include all the stationary emplacements we were building and stuffing full with gravity and normal missiles to protect Earth from any incoming FTL ships or long range missiles.

That’s when I had the rug pulled out from under me…

Chapter 10

There wasn’t much going on that day, the vice admirals were busy as hell getting it all done, and I had no wish to have endless unproductive meetings.  My A.I. would be able to tell me if they fell behind schedule, beyond that I didn’t need to micromanage.  So Kristi and I were considering going back down to Earth and spending a day or so at the house, maybe going out.  It had been a hard two weeks of too many hours and no days off.  I was even giving some thought to tracking down a certain sergeant I know…

Al said tonelessly, “You have a Carl calling.”

Carl?  What the hell did he want?  The last time I’d seen him was after the bastard outted me to the world and he delivered my grandparents to lure me away from Earth.

“Answer it…  Hello Carl,” I said rather coldly.

Kristi looked up at me in surprise and the two marines on deck looked at each other questioningly.  That was fair, since it was probably the first time the marines had seen me truly annoyed.

Carl replied, “Permission to dock Admiral,” in an arrogant tone that made it sound like a direct order.

I closed my eyes trying to figure out what the hell he could want.  It was definitely too soon to start anything, especially over a mere surprise visit.  Possibly it was a fishing expedition about our buildup, but I didn’t want to assume anything either.

“Al, allow Carl to land in the secondary landing bay.”

Carl dropped the line as the bay doors opened, and I left the bridge and headed down there trailed by Kristi and the two marines, who had also summoned a second two-man team for backup.

The bridge was in the middle of the ship, and the landing bay was along the long side so it wasn’t all that far a walk, half the width of the ship which was maybe fifty yards.  A minute later I strode in, the two marines in the bay were eyeing Carl as he stood next to his ship, add in the two summoned marines and the two with me, and there were now six in the landing bay with us.  Carl’s ship was fairly small, maybe a little bigger than the combat shuttlecraft I designed.

“To what do I owe the pleasure Facilitator?”

He cleared his throat, “I’m afraid it’s not pleasure that brings me here, but duty.  We have become aware of a violation of our laws several months back.  You’ll have to accompany me back to Knomen and stand trial for your crimes?”

I felt the marines tense, “Stand down,” I ordered.  The last thing we needed was an interstellar incident by shooting one of the emperor’s direct agents.

“Okay Carl, what crime would that be?”

He frowned at me for playing dumb.  Maybe they didn’t have lawyers on Knomen, but I knew better than to volunteer information, I’d done a lot over the last few months.

“You went to Tressia, and supplied Earth with artificial gravity before they were a part of the Empire.”

I nodded calmly, which seemed to surprise him.  Did he think I’d try to lie to someone like me?  There’d be no point.  I guess I was still a hypocrite though, because I hated not being the only one with that advantage.

I spoke in a calm even voice, mostly for the benefit of the marines who were still too tense.

“The thing though Carl, is that I’m from this planet.  It’s not so simple a thing.  How could I be charged for bringing tech to my own home world?”

He shrugged, “That’s for the court to decide.”

I frowned, “Why can’t you do it… fine me or whatever and be on your way.  Isn’t that what a facilitator does?”

Carl nodded slightly and shrugged, “Normally that’s true, but you’re a special case.  Will you come with me peaceably or do I need to apply to your world for extradition per empire law?”

I could be obstructive, it was even a tempting thought just to annoy Carl, but I thought that would probably be a bad idea.  The less attention on Earth itself until we were ready the better.  However, I was curious about something…

“Why am I a special case?”

Carl shook his head, “I can’t tell you that, orders.  You’ll find out on Knomen.”

I suppressed rolling my eyes, and went over everything in my mind.  From what I knew the only ones in the Empire that outranked a facilitator was the emperor himself.  It had my mind spinning a bit, why would I even be on the emperor’s radar, much less…  I cleared my mind, it wasn’t helping me right now to think about it.

“Alright, I’m coming.  Kristi, can you keep an eye on things?  I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She frowned and nodded, it looked like she wanted to say something.  I subvocalized a message, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t stay in touch, and she seemed to relax a little.  The marines didn’t look happy at all, but they didn’t stop me.  I also sent a sub-vocal message to the board so they knew what was going on, and decided to copy General Denton at the last moment.  Obviously Kristi had no real authority, but I knew the Admirals would at least listen to her if she had something to say, she’d won their respect pretty quickly last week once they’d gotten past the beautiful woman being smart stereotype.

“Can I pack a bag?” I asked.

Carl replied, “No need.”

I sighed, and got on his ship.  I didn’t know what else to do, we weren’t ready yet.  Hopefully I’d just pay a fine and come back…

The first thing I noticed aboard his ship was the gravity was a little bit higher than Earth’s, I assumed it was set to Knomen normal.  The second thing, was that the inside of the shuttle looked more like a lounge than a control center.  I supposed there wasn’t a reason not to do it that way, if the computer was in control of flight.  The lack of manual flight controls bothered me for some reason, but maybe they were just hidden.  There were also two doors, I was going to guess and say it was the bedroom and a bathroom, I doubted the facilitator slept on the couch.

He said a little smugly, “Sit, make yourself comfortable, this is going to be a two-day trip.”

That seemed strange to me, even our older ships could get there in a day and a half… since Knomen was in the center of the empire, and it only took us three days to cross it.  Now we could cross it in a little over two, and be at Knomen in well… half that time.  Could the Facilitators really have weak tech like that, or was he just hiding his ships capabilities.  I was betting on the latter, they were supposed to be important, unless they depended on reputation to prevent problems that is.

Or, maybe they just didn’t want a facilitators ship to be that tempting to steal?

I took a seat on a couch across from him and the ship launched and took off at FTL without him saying a word.  Perhaps sub-vocal controls?  Or did they have thought controlled systems?  Thought control wasn’t actually that hard, the tech for it had been around for decades, it just wasn’t used because a human controlling their thoughts was hard.  The real problem was our A.I.s weren’t perceptive or intuitive enough to decipher what was a random thought, and what would be a command.  I supposed that was one more thing that might change from Shelly’s A.I. research.

He said arrogantly, “At least you haven’t completely denied your heritage, you appear as yourself now?” he waved his hand.

I shrugged as if it were unimportant, and it really wasn’t to me, “This is what I am and I’m not ashamed of it, so yes, but who I am is who I choose to be.  It has less to do with heritage than just who I am as an individual.”

He grunted in annoyance and changed the subject, “The door on the left is a bathroom, it will also cleanse your clothes if they need it.  Otherwise I can get you a jumpsuit.  The door on the right is the bedroom, we’ll be hot bunking it, so we’ll both have a little time to ourselves during the trip.  You won’t have access to any of the ship systems except for food, and the bathroom, while I am asleep.”

I tilted my head, “Works for me,” I said casually, and proceeded to ignore his presence.  I brought up virtual window to work in.

Unless they removed or destroyed my implant, my connection couldn’t be severed from Al.  He also hadn’t scanned me as far as I knew, or he just possibly didn’t care about my protective bustier, or my gravity generator.  Of course, the latter was off, so maybe it just hadn’t been picked up?

Since I had some free time, I worked up a design for a couple of probes for the black hole.  I could get close, but eventually the gravity would overwhelm my field and strip the anti-mass particle field faster than I could generate it, but I should be able to get close before that happens.  When I was done with that, I sent out more messages and then picked up a book to read, this one for just entertainment.

I could still work, but I figured I’d been working two weeks without a break, and could take one now even in my new circumstances.

The next two days were boring, but would have been more so without the implant, I was really glad I’d gotten it, he might have confiscated a visor.  We both only needed to sleep about three hours, so two times during the trip I got a few hours alone.  I wished I had a scanner so I could go over the shuttle nanometer by nanometer to find out the ships true specs, but I didn’t.  Have a scanner I mean.

When he came out, I took a turn in the bedroom for three hours.  The bedroom was austere, there was very little in it accept the bed, a lockable wardrobe, and an empty bedside table.  I took a moment to check on things, and I’d gotten messages from the vice admirals, and I got messages from General Denton, and the USFS board to hang in there.  I read through them quickly, and then I got to sleep.

When I got up three hours later, at least there was a coffee waiting for me when I got out of the shower.  Carl seemed content with silence, for which I was grateful…  A wrong question or two on his part could put everything at risk before we were ready.  Plus, I really kind of hated him now for what he’d done in the past, and his arrogant attitude now.  Hate might be too strong a word, let’s just say his voice was irritating to me.

When we arrived at Knomen, I had to admit I was curious.  Who wouldn’t be?  We slowed as we approached orbit, and I could see mega-cities from space, hundreds of miles wide, that dotted the landscape.  Carl took the shuttle down quickly, and when we arrived it wasn’t at all what I’d expected.  We weren’t in one of those cities.  I looked out the viewport and there were rolling hills with dark green-blue grass.  The bark on the trees were brown, but the leaves had that darker green tinged with blue.

I was curious if it was because of the properties of foliage, or if it was just a side effect of Knomen’s atmosphere.

I turned and looked at Carl, he was studying me and I did my best to keep a bland face, but I knew I didn’t fool him.  I wanted to get out and take a deep breath of the air, I wondered what scents this world would have.  The world I should have been born on, and was glad I hadn’t been, no matter how damn nice it looked.

Carl nodded as if he’d found what he was looking for, and said, “Follow me.”

I followed him out of the shuttle and through a path that led to a garden.  I couldn’t help but move my eyes from flower to flower as I took in the scents of this world.  It was… stimulating.  I felt wide awake as well, my boredom left behind in the shuttle.  When we reached the other side of the garden, there was a very large sprawling building.  It had the square footage of a mansion, but it was all one level, and seemed designed to blend into the nature around it.

I was also confused, I’d been thinking I was under arrest and about to be processed somewhere.  Not delivered to some paradise.

That’s when my grandmother came out the door.

“Elira?  I hadn’t expected to see you.”

She smiled, “Welcome Alicia, even under these circumstances.  Welcome to my home.”

She looked tentative for a moment, so I stepped forward and gave her a warm hug.  My mind was also racing, how did my grandmother rate a house in the middle of a forest paradise, when surely most Knomen citizens lived in mega-cities.

I whispered, “So how much trouble am I in?”

She released me and squeezed my shoulders, “Come in, I’ll show you to your room,” she turned to Carl, “I’ll make sure she arrives in time tomorrow Facilitator.”

Carl just nodded without comment and turned around to leave.

When we got inside Elira sighed and spoke in a matter of fact voice, “You’ll be fined, and probably disowned, if not banished for your actions.”

I shook my head, “I don’t understand.”

Elira stopped, “He didn’t tell you?”

I frowned, “Tell me what?”

Elira shook her head, “Let’s get some tea, I can show you your rooms later, at least you’ll get a day’s use out of them,” she ended angrily.

“Are you mad at me?”

She shook her head, “A little disappointed you stayed on Earth, but I understand loyalty and I will come visit every once in a while, no matter what he decides.  They did a good job with you, your human parents I mean.  Problem is, that’s ruffled some feathers.”

I nodded, I had so many questions, the most obvious one was just how important was my family?  Apparently far more than I’d guessed, or had even considered a possibility.  We stayed silent as we walked to the kitchen, and she made the tea herself and joined me at the table when she was done.

She sighed and took a sip, and I did as well.  It was good, a little tangy but not too bitter.

She said, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.  I was forbidden too when we met on Earth.  Your cousin was embarrassed when you took control of the fleet, even though it was the fault of the remaining captains being too timid to take command.  When he found out you’d snuck to Tressia while Carl was tied up in negotiations,” she giggled, “Which is pretty damned funny by the way, he went through the roof.”

I shook my head, “But why couldn’t Carl judge me, and who’s my cousin?”

Elira snickered, “Your cousin is the emperor dear, and Facilitators can’t judge the royal family, only the emperor can.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.  I was trying to process what I was just told.  I wondered if I could just not tell Kristi, she’d probably start calling me princess… which would be annoying.

“Carl is a distant cousin as well.  You’ll find our family is wary of sharing power.  Most facilitators and even agents, like your parents, are part of the royal family.  It doesn’t mean all that much for you though, I think there’s around a hundred and twenty-two people ahead of you in the succession, and that’s about to be a hundred and twenty-four as soon as your cousins Ciara and Olive give birth, any day now.  My point is, when you chose Earth over Knomen, you were really turning your back on the ruling family, your family.  Of course, your cousin wouldn’t let us tell you, he didn’t want you if you’d only pick us for the power it would give you in the empire.”

I snorted, “I wouldn’t have taken it anyway.  I want a relationship with you, I want you to tell me about my parents sometime, but Earth is my home.”

She was silent for a moment, “Why the contempt in your chi when you said that?”

Chi?  Another word for aura, or soul, interesting.  I kind of liked it too as a description for what I did… soul reading.

I sighed, “You said it yourself, the Knomen empire is now wary of sharing power.  I don’t think it started out that way, but it isn’t good in my opinion.  The rules are less about protecting the empire and more about protecting power now.  It doesn’t matter, it won’t change.  I like you a lot, hell I might even like my cousin when I meet him, but the bureaucracy has gone too far.”

She looked at me for a moment, “Perhaps.  But we’ve kept the peace for over a thousand years among fifty races, and protected the Earth and many other races against any who would want to plunder it before you entered the FTL era.”

I nodded, “Those are some very good things, I’m sure there is more too.  But the good doesn’t excuse the bad, or vice versa.  It’s human nature though, all of the races have that within them, do they not?”

She nodded thoughtfully, and I shut up about it before she drew the wrong… or should I say right conclusions.

“So what will happen to me?” I asked softly.

She shrugged, “I’m not sure, at the least you will be fined, and most likely for not returning you’ll be removed from the succession.  He may go further though, and banish you as a traitor.”

I frowned, “Since I’m not here, or at least plan to be on Earth, what exactly would that do?  I’m also not a traitor, I was born on Earth and grew up there, to be a traitor I would have to betray something I held an oath or loyalty to.”

She raised an eyebrow, “I don’t think you are dear, but I’m older, and not in charge of everything.  I have some influence, but only as much as the emperor allows.  Banishing you would mean you no longer have authority over the other races as a Knomen, and if Earth was called up again, the Admiral in charge wouldn’t have to treat with you, or give you a preferred place in the formation.  The ruling would be sent out everywhere as well, so other planets would know you didn’t need to be bowed to or scraped over, or even simply get decent deals when trading.”

She looked at me in the eye, “In short, you’d just be another terran in space as far as authority, and would have to respond and obey the orders of all other Knomen Captains in space.  You also don’t seem bothered by that at all.  Why is that?”

I shrugged, “Mostly I’m not bothered.  Losing any say during a mutual act of defense concerns me, but the rest of it?  I’m used to not being bowed to.”

In a few months none of that would matter anyway, we’d either be free, at war, or back in the stone age.  One of the three at any rate.  I couldn’t tell her that though.

She nodded, “I like you Alicia, I hope he doesn’t go that far.  Did you know the Tressians are facing a fine as well?”

I shook my head, “Why?  Either I did wrong or they did in ignorance, how can it be both ways?  This is what I meant about the bureaucracy.”

She sighed, “It’s automatic, when someone is charged with the crime it goes down the line where the technology passed.  Your situation was, or is rather unique, so the laws don’t account for it.  Perhaps they’ll be pardoned, I don’t know.  You’ll find out tomorrow.”

The rest of the day we just talked.  She showed me around the place, and my rooms turned out to be a suite of five rooms.  It was an impressive place, but I hadn’t changed, so it was mostly just a nice place to visit.  Living in a place that big didn’t appeal.  The one exception to that was the gardens, we spent quite a while out there while she told me about all the different plants.

At the end of the day I compiled what I’d learned and sent it to Kristi, General Denton, and the USFS board.  I wondered for a moment if they would still all want me, if I lost the immunity to being in the first wave.  I hoped not, I’d done a lot more than just that, and so far they’d approved of the job I was doing, and no one had questioned the promotion lists.

Still, it had only been two weeks, and I was a problem and quite possibly a liability now.

My probes were built, and were on their way, I should know more in four days when they started taking scans if there’d be any issues with the Seltan about it.  Hopefully it wouldn’t trigger anything, I was taking them in closer to the black hole from above, in an area that wouldn’t support life bearing planets.

Kristi responded almost right away to my report, with the expected princess joke.  I hoped she’d get tired of that fast, but I kind of doubted it, my best friend was evil that way.  The General told me not to worry about it, even if we were on the front line again before we were ready to break, we’d chew up and spit out whatever the Seltans sent at us.  The board took a little longer to respond, but they showed support and told me to hang in there and get back as soon as I could.

So far nothing had fallen apart back home in my absence.  I was fairly confident in Sergei and Anthony, and they could still reach me if there were any issues they needed assistance with.

It was when I was falling asleep that I realized what the worry was that had been gnawing at me.  I would still support Earth. I, along with the rest of Earth, would want to be free of the Knomen if everyone knew what I and the world leaders knew.  It was a no brainer.  But if the Knomen didn’t let us go gracefully, I could find myself leading a war against my own family.  I hardly knew them except for Elira and Jorl, but that was enough, especially because I kind of liked them, so far anyway.  The idea of doing that hurt, it would be like holding a gun pointed at my own grandmother.

No.  It would be holding a gun pointed at my own grandmother, I corrected my thought.

Still, I had the idea I wouldn’t feel nearly as guilty when I met my cousin, I hoped so anyway…

Chapter 11

I woke the next morning very early as usual, and seemed to be the only one up, although I imagine a brigade could get lost in this house and I’d never find a sign of them.  After I washed my USFS Admiral uniform and took a shower, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a sweet fruit that was almost like an Earth plum, and made an egg sandwich.  I carried it outside to the garden along with a coffee, and watched the sunrise while I ate.

I felt both grateful and regretful.

I regretted I’d never know what it would be like to grow up with my natural family on this world, yet I was so grateful that I didn’t.  I liked my grandmother, but she hadn’t really seen the point I’d tried to make yesterday.  They didn’t have to struggle for anything, and they were entitled to a large extent.  So much so that morality and integrity had taken a back seat to expedience and power.

So much so they couldn’t really even see it was wrong.  I even wondered when they put those civilizations back to the stone age, after they simply expressed a preference to go their own way and not join the empire, if my family even believed the lie they told themselves, when they decided the race was too dangerous to allow in space.

Not that humanity couldn’t be just as bad, even worse in some cases, but I believed they tried to be more for the most part, I wasn’t even sure if the Knomen tried anymore.

My grandmother came out then, and called me in.  I followed her to their garage, although it was more like a landing bay, and joined her on one of the small shuttles.  I tried to relax, I was a bit nervous, but according to what I’d heard I didn’t have to fear my life, just possible banishment, and a big fine.  The first I could live with, and the second I could afford.

She didn’t go that fast so I was able to enjoy the scenery as we chatted.  I wasn’t all that surprised when I saw the rolling one story edifice we were going to.  It made my grandmother’s place look like a shack, though it still did well at blending into the nature around it.  It wasn’t one long block of a building however; it was more a great number of wings with covered walkways between them.  I had to admit it looked really impressive.

“My cousin’s house?”

She looked at me with a wry smile, “Yes.  Also the seat of government.”

I nodded and looked back outside as we landed.  There were two men outside who looked like they had no sense of humor, apparently the concept of the secret service was universal.  When I got up Elira gave me a firm hug.

“I’ll come visit when I get a chance, I’m not coming in.  Good luck.”

I returned her hug and said goodbye, then followed the men in.  I guess I was going straight home from here?  We didn’t go very far before I was led into a room, my grandmother must have dropped me off at the closest door for my trial in this wandering monstrosity of a building.  The room was medium sized, maybe fourteen by twelve, and held a couple of rows of chairs, that faced an elegantly inscribed wooden table with even more elaborate chairs behind it.

Carl was there, sitting in one of them, and he smiled at me woodenly, it didn’t reach his eyes and he felt annoyed at seeing me.  I guess we’d just go on hating each other then, and I could live with that just fine.  Still, I wondered why he bothered with a fiction that wouldn’t fool either of us, until I realized it was a show for the others in the room.

I took a seat close to Jarnud and Nora.  Jarnud still looked like he closed his eyes before picking out an outfit, and his hair hadn’t improved much either.  He gave me a friendly smile and a nod.  Nora… smiled too, but felt really pissed off, I guess she thought this was my fault, and she’d be right.  The last thing I ever thought was that they’d get caught in any backlash from my actions.

Another man came out, he was a bit older than Carl, but still young with darker hair.  When he didn’t sit in the center seat, I let my attention wander again, he wasn’t my cousin, well at least not the emperor one, apparently I had bucket loads of cousins around here.

Carl cleared his throat, “We’ll deal with the Tressian aspect of this crime without the Emperor present.  Nora, could you tell us what happened on that day?”

Nora went through the whole spiel.  By the way she was talking, I could tell she’d already told it over and over already, it had the feel of something very well memorized.  Carl nodded in all the right spots.  Then it was Jarnud’s turn.  He… well he made Carl cringe with his accent, and the way he talked all about how the young and beautiful Knomen woman came in to purchase stuff.

Nora actually looked terrified, and that scared me, because I really couldn’t see what the big deal was.  The guy was a little folksy, and had found me attractive, so what?  Did that really offend the fine sensibilities of my race?  What a joke, a bad one I mean.

I still don’t think I was ever scanned, because I was currently recording and streaming everything I saw and heard back to Al’s mini-mainframe on Earth.  I’d have Al forward it later.

Carl cleared his throat and held up his hand.  He looked… snootily offended.  Who’d have thought it, the grand menace in space is a snooty race who let political correctness go wild.  It reminded me of the movie Demolition man with Snipes and… that other guy that’s famous.  Stallone.  With the machine on the wall that printed out tickets if someone cursed, violating some morality statute.  I almost giggled at the image, but managed to suppress the urge.

They both looked at me anyway for a second, I forgot they’d feel my mirth, can’t hide anything on this damned planet.

Carl said sternly, “Although you were misled, you should have realized something was wrong and investigated when she didn’t even know about accepted currency, especially as she was accompanied by a group of humans who weren’t part of the Empire yet.  You will both be fined ten pounds of gold, Tressia will get a thousand pound fine of gold, and you both will attend a class before you return to your jobs, Jarnud on comportment, and Nora on service.  You may both go.”

I felt a surge of anger at that, and Carl looked at me warningly.  I couldn’t believe they and the planet were getting fined.  There was no way they’d ever question a Knomen, they were too afraid.  Although they all liked me after I saved some Tressians after the battle, except maybe Nora that is.  I felt Nora’s anger but she kept her head down and wouldn’t meet my gaze.  Jarnud… checked me out when he passed, I almost laughed again.  Maybe he does need a class.

Something told me it wouldn’t be that easy, especially for Nora, Tressia would be mad about it and would no doubt blame her.  I remembered what an ass her boss was, Telmun the station manager.  I waited in silence a little longer, and then another man came in.  Carl and the other guy stood, so I followed suit, it wouldn’t hurt to be polite on the outside, even if the emperor could feel my… inner glare.

I pushed that down a bit, I could control my emotions, so it would be stupid at this point not to.

The emperor sat, and I sat when the others did.

He looked at me for a moment, “I’m inclined to fine you a hundred pounds of gold, and let it go.  It was unfortunate when I heard, and this case is a little… sticky.  At the time you were technically a dual citizen, and even Knomen royalty at that, though you didn’t know it.  And from what I understand you didn’t even sell it to your… birth and chosen world, Earth, you simply gave the designs to everyone.”

He seemed almost amused.

I said neutrally, “I see…” and kind of trailed off not sure what to call him.

The emperor gave Carl a hard look and told me, “Sire, or your majesty, either one will do.  I’m afraid I can’t offer you to call me by my given name in this… proceeding.  It is Neman by the way cousin.”

He leaned back in his chair a little, “As long as you’re here, I’m curious, could you tell me why Earth is building so big a fleet.  At last numbers, they had… over three hundred I believe.”

Ah, now the lenience made sense.  Talk and I’ll send you home with a slap on the wrist, don’t talk and… I wasn’t sure what the second part was yet, but I needed to be careful.  Immediately after I had that thought, I wondered why it took them so long to come get me, surely they caught this earlier.  It occurred to me that this might well be the true reason I was in the room, so they could question me about Earth’s intentions.

“Defense, and exploration.  But mostly defense,” I said quite truthfully.

He frowned, “But what about your allies, surely such a buildup seems rather overdone.”

I shrugged, “What happened at Leira upset some people, we are at the edge of the empire the same way they are, just the opposite side.  Suppose we’re attacked by someone else that lives toward the rim of the galaxy outside the empire?  What if the new folks aren’t interested in simply taking control like the Seltan but would destroy our world?  I’m sure the Knomen and our other allies would come, but by then it might be too late.  From what I understand Alnot is building up a lot more as well, the rim worlds are at higher risk after all.”

It sounded reasonable, and it was all true.  I just hadn’t mentioned that on the list of people we needed to protect ourselves from, the Knomen were at the top.  He knew I hadn’t lied, but he also knew I was shading things.  I knew that because I can see that in people too.  It just wasn’t convenient at the moment, for me I mean.  I threw out one more bone reluctantly, hoping he’d see that as what I had been hiding earlier.

“We also intend to explore of course, and we’ll need enough ships to protect any new systems we find that can be legally claimed.”

He frowned and leaned forward, “Let me be blunt, do you, or Earth, have any intention of attacking Knomen?”

“No,” I answered back unequivocally.  And we wouldn’t, not unless it was in self-defense.

We didn’t want to take over the empire or anything stupid like that, what a headache that would be.  It would be a nightmare, we just wanted to go our own way, and maybe make our own allies farther out toward the rim.  Unfortunately, we wouldn’t be able to trade with anyone anymore in the empire.

He frowned, “What aren’t you telling me Alicia?”

Damn, he didn’t go for it, so I just sat there not sure what to say.  I couldn’t say nothing, I’d only be proving I had something to hide.  Kind of a damned if I do, damned if I don’t situation.  Still, saying nothing seemed to be the only thing that came to my mind, since the silence dragged out for a while, until the room felt… stifling.

The emperor blew out his breath, “Carl, find somewhere for my cousin to rest and think things over, perhaps she’ll be more willing to tell us in a week or two.”

A week or two?  Well at least I didn’t have to worry about torture.

Carl said, “Yes Sire,” and stood up.

I was taken down the hallway and down a stairwell underground.  I almost laughed, were they putting me in a dungeon?  Not quite, but I was underground, behind a very solid looking metal door.  It was also the nicest jail cell I’d ever seen.  It had a firm but soft mattress that felt really good to lie on, like a foam memory mattress or something.  It also had a full bathroom with all the amenities, with a privacy wall and door.

I hadn’t been expecting this at all, and I had a suspicion I shouldn’t have been quite so critical in front of my grandmother.  She was too kind and honestly so, but perhaps she’d turned me in without a second thought.  It wasn’t easy, but with concentration I could control my emotions to the point of making me feel a specific one, and Elira had been an agent.

Suddenly I wondered if she really was a kind grandmother, or just a superb agent who’d faked it.  I hoped I was just overthinking it, maybe the emperor was just overly suspicious, and we did have over three hundred ships now.  Hopefully… they wouldn’t move for a while on anything.

I created some messages, including the trial footage, explaining what I did and why, and sent it to the usual list of people.  Then I read through my vice admiral’s reports, and just for fun, the upper admirals as well, just to take an independent pulse of things.  Things were going well, of course, all we were doing was building and training, there was no real threat yet.

I looked at production numbers, the third run of the new ships was almost done.  That would make ninety-six battle cruisers, and twelve carriers each carrying eighty combat shuttles each, so nine sixty.  That didn’t even count the twenty shuttles in each battlecruiser, which was another nineteen twenty.  Add the three hundred older battlecruisers we’d already had…  It just wasn’t enough, I had a feeling I’d be stuck here for a while.  Another month we’ll add a hundred sixty battlecruisers, and twenty carriers with thirty-eight hundred combat shuttles.  At that point, our numbers will be good enough taking into account missile boats and stationary emplacements.  It was probably enough, as long as we didn’t leave our solar system for at least a year while we finished building up our home fleet.

I knew I was erring on the side of caution, by a lot, but to fail meant losing Earth so it wasn’t an option.

Actually, if our combat shuttles did as good as I believed they would, we probably wouldn’t have to build up so high, maybe just make a greater ration of carriers, maybe four to one, instead of eight to one.  I made a note of that and sent it to the vice admirals, curious what their advice would be.  Either way we probably shouldn’t make a change until we see how they actually perform.  They were deadly little things now, especially against an enemy in FTL, but not in FTL they just didn’t have the throw weight of a battlecruiser.  I think I just talked myself out of the change, and cancelled my message.

Either way, I guessed I’d have to sit here at least a month before getting the green light to try and escape.  It shouldn’t be too hard, they left me all my toys, and Al can bring me a shuttle easily enough.

I also took a moment to go over Carmine’s, Shelly’s and Caroline’s research status.  Caroline was getting closer, but she wasn’t quite there yet.  Shelly and Carmine were about where they were a few weeks ago, working hard but not getting a breakthrough yet.

I sighed, and then sent more personal messages to Kristi and Nathan.  I missed both of them, although for very different reasons of course.  Then… I brought up Netflix in a virtual window, and watched a couple of movies…

Chapter 12

I hated my jail cell after a week, but only on principal.  It felt like a comfy hotel room.  I’d even talked them into bringing me a coffee maker and a snack bar of sorts.  I was also able to command as easily from here as I did my bridge, with the exception of the personal contact that is.  I couldn’t really feel how Kristi was doing, or my admirals, everything was through virtual meetings.  I was also careful to subvocalize just in case my room was bugged.

Carl came in a few times the next week, trying to get me to talk.  I played the name and number card, and so far no torture.  They were even feeding me really well.  I compiled a projection of what our resources would be in three weeks which would be the one-month point I was in prison, I explained how we’d be able to defend at that point, and hoped they’d approve the breakout plan I’d also attached.

I’d stay here if I had to, if they said no, it was more important to prevent another stone age on earth, rather than getting me out of a jail cell.

But I was pretty sure at that point we’d be okay, unless they had something we didn’t know about, that would rip through us like paper.  But if that were true, it wouldn’t matter if we waited another nine more months to get home fleet up to full strength, which was two thousand ships.  We’d be doomed regardless.

Kristi did her best to cheer me up during that month I waited, but I could see she was worried about me.  Nathan called more than a few times as well over that time.  Like I said, it wasn’t that bad.  I was going stir crazy in one room, but it could have been so much worse.  I even got to be productive with my two jobs, since not only did I have time to review my employees work, I looked into those up close scans of the black hole my probes started gathering a few days ago.  I wasn’t entirely sure what it was telling me yet, or even if it would lead to anything besides educational information.

There was nothing wrong with that of course, I just preferred to focus on things that had practical applications, and might make a difference in peoples’ lives.

It was about three days after my first full month in my comfy jail that I got approval for my breakout plan.  Apparently the vice admirals I’d promoted completely agreed with me, we’d either defend, or be so badly outclassed that waiting wouldn’t have made a difference.  General Denton agreed as well, so the USFS board gave me the green light on my escape plan, and William told me in a private message to give the Knomen the finger on the way out.

I sent some commands to Al, and my personal combat shuttle launched and headed this way.  I didn’t want to risk lives on a rescue, plus the thing would get here in a day, that was half a day faster than the quickest Knomen vessel I’d seen, and three times faster than the speed of Carl’s shuttle.  Or at least, his apparent top speed.  Hopefully that and a little luck would enable me to escape.  If it did fail, I hoped it would fail on the way to the planet… before I got on the thing.

Carl came in early then next morning, a few hours before my shuttle would get here, and watched me for a moment before speaking.  I decided to beat him to it.

“Are you finally letting me return to Earth?” I asked in an annoyed voice.  I knew we wanted to leave communication open with the Knomen, Earth didn’t want war, but his presence and questions were really getting on my nerves.

Carl raised an eyebrow, “Actually talking today?  Why don’t you just tell us what we want to know?”

I shrugged, “Why do you have to know every little thing?  I already told you Earth has no intention of attacking you, or anyone else in the Empire.  Is that not enough?  Would you like to root through my closet?  I’ll even give you a good look at my kitchen junk drawer, it’s full of all kinds of interesting things.  Scissors, tape, thumb tacks, all that stuff.”

He frowned and I could tell he completely missed the point of my diatribe.

“You told me that first day we met, that you didn’t care about anything we did in the confines of our solar system, so why all this?  Surely all the races have their own secrets.  I’m the fleet admiral of Earth’s unified fleet, the information is not for me to dole out, and you and my cousin are holding me without charges of any kind.  Does that even matter to you?  Have you even considered asking the leaders of Earth your questions?”

He shook his head, “You are part of the Knomen family, you’re required to answer…”

I stopped him with my hand up.

“No, I’m not.  I chose and my loyalty goes to Earth.  I’m not opposed to having a family relationship with any of you, I’m not looking for enemies or trying to be difficult, but Earth is where I was born and my chosen planet, it doesn’t make me a built in spy for you or his majesty.  If he needs to banish me because of that, fine, but I don’t have to answer those questions.”

He looked… really annoyed.  My lips twitched.  I wasn’t really trying to be a pain, but I was hardly crying about the fact it was working out that way.

He sighed, “Even if that were true, as a member of the Empire you’d still have to answer our questions.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Really?  So all that stuff you said about, do what you want to in your own solar system was just crap?  What else have you lied about?  Our solar system is sovereign, I don’t have to answer shit about what we do there, and Knomen law backs up my position, does it not?”

He growled, “I liked it better when you weren’t talking at all.”

I snickered as he stormed out.  Way to be political Alicia.  Damnit.

It was quiet for a while after that, but he was back about fifteen minutes before my shuttle would arrive.  I’d estimated they’d have figured out where it was from and where it was going a lot sooner, but maybe they got a new sensor officer who was a little clueless, or something.

He stood stiffly after entering, “Why is there a shuttle from Earth inbound?”

I smiled, “It’s here to pick me up of course.  You wouldn’t take me home so I had to get my own ride.”

He shook his head, “You can’t leave, not until we release you.”

I sighed, “Might as well tell you the truth now, it doesn’t matter anymore.  You see, when I bought that tech from Tressia, I was also searching for the truth.  The truth of the Empire.  We read all about how you double talked yourselves into putting several civilizations back in the stone age.  The truth of the Empire is that you suppress dangerous civilizations, but also the peaceful ones if they happen to be independent.

“On Earth we would call that being a control freak, you fear losing control.  So anyone that doesn’t welcome the Empire with open arms is automatically suspect.  I said and meant we would never attack you, but I left out the part that the large fleet defending Earth is also there to defend against the Knomen Empire if you should attack us.  That was the only thing I left out.

“I imagine right now your Emperor is receiving a communication to that effect, we are pulling out, and going our own way.  We’ll respect your laws, stay out of your space if you ask it, or we can be friends, even allies, but that’s entirely up to the Empire.  We did pick your good rules, we’ll leave primitive civilizations alone, even protect them.  But we will be exploring toward the rim at our own pace.”

He hadn’t interrupted me, and he looked at me coldly when I finished, “That would be a mistake, and do you really think we’ll let you leave now?”

I shrugged, “You should, as of now you’re holding a representative of a neutral foreign power against her will.  One might even call it an act of war if something was to happen to me.”

I could tell that didn’t register at all, and I was afraid it was inevitable that they would attack Earth.  They wouldn’t get it until they got a bloody nose, and possibly not even then.  It wasn’t arrogance on their part, or at least not just arrogance, he and the empire by extension, simply couldn’t conceive of not getting their way or being obeyed.  All my speeches about self-determination and rights… I might as well have been talking to a rock.

I thought for a moment that he might attack me, but he turned and stormed out.  I had a little over five minutes before my ride got here, so I got to work.  The metal door was sturdy, but applying two hundred gravities at the right angle, and it was ripped right out of the wall.  There were no guards outside the room either.  Were they always so… blasé about security or was it because I was part of the royal family?

After all, it would be rude if I tried to escape.  Maybe even cause a fine.  Okay, I knew I was getting a little sarcastic in my head but I couldn’t help it.

I made it down the underground hall and up the stairs, and halfway down the hall to an exit before I ran into anyone.  It was two of those guys with no sense of humor.  They pulled some kind of weapon and pointed it at me.

“Freeze!”

I subvocalized instructions to Al, and applied some gravity to the situation.  I didn’t pull them down though, I slowly ramped up to six gravities sideways, and they were both stuck against the wall, their arms pinned down.  One of them managed to bend their wrist and shoot at me anyway, and I was hit by some kind of energy burst, but my EM shield bustier deflected it easily.

Once I walked past them, they couldn’t stop me, of course the field would release them when I got sixty feet away, the maximum range of the device, and the door outside was eighty feet or so away.  So I ran as fast as I could and burst out the door, I took a couple of hits on my back, but my shield held and I raced into the trees.  I could hear a pursuit, but I managed to keep my lead, and when I stumbled into a clearing I called Al, and my shuttle was there a few seconds later.

I hopped on, and we were in space and in FTL and racing from their solar system in a few eye blinks.  I was pretty sure that meant Al hadn’t been worried about breaking the sound barrier, and laughed a little hysterically at the thought.  I’m sure there’d be a fine for that… loud noises were bad.

I breathed out a sigh of relief, I had been half afraid they’d take me down with automated defenses.  Maybe they’d been too arrogant to think I could escape?  So they hadn’t warned anyone about the incoming shuttle?  I brought up a status screen, there were thirty ships following me.

Although twenty of them were falling behind fast, they were going about two thirds the speed I was, which was what I’d expected.  It was the other ten, who seemed to have no trouble keeping up but weren’t catching up either, that concerned me.  I ran some scans on their field configurations.  They’re faster ships were more like my bustier than my shuttle.

Let me explain that.

The old or original way, was to wrap the ship up in one spiraled superconductor and create a field.  The improvements I made were the long tubes, making it several overlapping and combining fields.  Which both made it immune to the anti-mass particle weapon, strengthened the EM shields by about five times, and increased the ship’s speed by fifty percent.

But when I made the protection suit the newer way, it had been bulky, and shaped as required, which is to say not at all humanlike.  More like an oval tube.  So I created the new set up, with thousands of pinpoint shields.  The difference was between a group of poles, or a lot of small beads equidistant apart which allowed the field… and the suit, to conform to the curves of a human body.

Thus satisfying my vanity.

That last part was how their faster ships were configured, a lot of very tiny pinpoint fields all combined together.  I did some math, and the benefit of doing it that way, compared to poles, as far as speed and power of the shield was negligible.  The only solid benefit I could see was if one of my poles failed, the two surrounding it would compensate with more power, but there was a limit, if two poles failed concurrently the EM and anti-mass field would be very weak on that side, of course the chances of that happening were slim.

With the amount of fields that they had though, it would allow more failures before the shield degraded.  That said, they were still very vulnerable to the gravity missiles, and I had a lot more than ten onboard.  So far though, they’d held their fire, so I was holding mine.  If there was going to be a war I sure as hell wasn’t going to start it.

After about an hour I started to relax a bit, and wondered if they were going to follow me all the way back to Earth.  It was then I got a transmission, it was a message from the Emperor to the Earth, and pretty much everyone in the Empire would see it.  Fair was fair, we’d done the same thing to him when the board told the Knomen we were done with them, both their rules and their empire.

Neman said sternly, “We do not recognize the right to secede from the Empire.  You have one chance to accede to our proper rule and submit yourselves for punishment, or we will move in and reclaim our space.  You have twenty-four hours to decide,” and he clicked off.

Huh.

I guess those twenty-four hours didn’t include me, because the ten ships following me opened fire with a missile each…

Chapter 13

In an FTL battle, the ship fleeing always had the advantage.  It would actually take a couple of minutes for the missiles to catch up to me, whereas if I fired at them, the closing rate would be milliseconds.

“Knomen ships, scuttle those missiles and break off, I am returning to Earth.  You have thirty seconds to do so, or I’ll destroy you.  Admiral Alicia Jones, out.”

Crap, well I took the job because it was exciting right?  Stupid.  I’d forgotten the taking lives part of it I guess.  They fired first, well at least it would be self-defense now.  In fact, this was an act of war on their part.  Still it wasn’t easy at all to give the command.  A small bay at the bottom of my shuttle opened, and ten gravity missiles dropped out, already going at full speed in my direction.  Then they just… slowed enough for the enemy missiles to catch up and flicked on their gravity field.

All the missiles were destroyed and I hesitated a moment.  Should I give them a last chance?  Or would it show weakness?  I frowned, because while I thought about it they’d launched twenty more missiles at me.

I sighed, and then ordered, “Al, take out the new missiles and then the ships.”

Each of the gravity missiles took out two missiles, easily avoiding the wash of energy when they exploded, and then the Knomen ships came next.  It wasn’t much of a battle at all, they hadn’t stood a chance.  Maybe this would give them second thoughts about attacking later, though I doubted it.  They may come in at sub-light speeds though, once they got close to our solar system.  I was sure they got readings on my weapons as well, perhaps that’s all it had been, the emperor threw away lives to see what we could do.

Crap.

Well, they’d have found out sooner or later.

“Al, slow down just long enough for the missiles to dock, and then go back up to maximum speed and refuel the missiles.”

He acknowledged in his usual flat voice.

I took the time to write up a report of my escape, and the short battle, before I allowed myself any feelings about it.  There was no doubt I’d just killed a good number of Knomen.  The fact they were smaller craft with probably a handful of people onboard each, and not full sized warships, was very little comfort to me.  I hated the way I felt about it, it wasn’t my fault and I couldn’t just let them kill me… but feelings don’t always make sense, and I threw myself into my work to avoid thinking about it.

There was also the idea kicking around in my head that my cousin just tried to kill me, I’d hazard to guess I wouldn’t be getting any holiday gifts this year from my biological family…

No more Knomen Empire ships tried to intercept me on the way back, and I managed to go over reports, work on my own project, and review my company’s projects.

When I got back to my ship, I had a welcome committee waiting for me.  Kristi pulled me into a hug, and to my surprise Nathan was there somehow as well, and gave me a chaste hug, I did my best to resist plastering up against him in public and on duty, I’d really missed his presence though… soul, scent, and touch.  It was really good to see him, but I mourned the fact I couldn’t run off with him for a few days.  If I didn’t miss my guess it would only be that long before the Empire tried to attack us.

Vice admirals Flores and Abramov were also present, and gave me a salute which I returned.

Abramov said in his low voice, “What’s the plan ma’am?”

I sighed, “Most likely they are coming in a couple of days.  We need to work on compiling my recordings over the last month and sending them out, propaganda pieces… but truthful.”

Flores asked, “What will that do?”

I shrugged, “Probably nothing, but according to empire law, it’s a mutual defense pact that the other races have to respond to.  What’s about to happen here is obviously an unprovoked invasion, unless they think leaving the empire is an offensive attack in itself.  Maybe a few of them will stay home.  At the very least, it will make me feel better about killing them if they know the truth about what their dying for.”

He chuckled, and then saw I was serious.

I nodded, “We will defend Earth, but if we can get some to sit it out, we should.  Plus, it will make me feel a lot less inclined to feel guilty if we try a peaceful solution first.  But I wouldn’t count on it, despite being against their own laws to join up and attack, they’ll be too afraid the Knomen will turn on them next.  It shouldn’t take all that long to do, I’ll submit it for approval to the USFS board of course, and then we’ll run some live simulations and fleet wide strategies on a few of the more likely scenarios we’ve built over the last few months.”

“Let me shower and change, I’ll meet you in the conference room shortly.  Also make sure everyone down to the last ensign has the vacuum suits under their uniforms, I don’t want anyone dying of stupidity when we go into battle.”

Abramov nodded smartly, “Yes ma’am, we’ll get some coffee on for you too.”

I laughed, “Thanks Sergei.”

He raised an eyebrow, “Purely self-defense ma’am,” and then he turned and left.

Was I really that bad without coffee?  Probably.

Kristi sighed, “It’s good to have you back Alicia, no more trips for you without me along.”

I knew she wasn’t teasing, and smiled at my closest friend and simply nodded.

Nathan whispered, “Need help getting ready ma’am?”

With my shower?  Hmm, I supposed maybe I had a little time…

Shortly became about forty-five minutes, but no one said anything when I walked in and I felt much more… relaxed now.  It would take a while to get used to wearing the skin tight space suit again.  Of course, I didn’t need to wear my bustier with it, since it had the shielding integrated inside it, and I had my uniform on over it to Nathan’s disappointment.

I blushed as I realized I didn’t even know how long he’d be here, or even how he’d gotten up to my ship.  We didn’t exactly have a chance to talk yet.  I cleared my throat and we got started.  We wanted to show that they’d illegally jailed me, tried to kill a citizen of Earth without provocation, namely me, and that any attack by them was illegal by Knomen Empire law.

The video we made wasn’t that long, we wanted to keep it simple.  It showed quite a few thirty second cuts from my month long incarceration and the questioning, then it showed the ships firing at me first, my warning, and my return fire.  It was very clear watching it, we wanted to be peaceful neighbors if not allies, but we wanted to go our own way and not be under the yolk of the Knomen empire.  I also added the clip of the applicable rules of engagement in the Empire, and pointed out that an invasion of Earth’s sovereign solar system was not covered under mutual defense.

With Kristi’s and Al’s help, along with several suggestions, it only took about an hour to throw together.  I sent it to the board, and then for the rest of the day we ran various live simulations.  I didn’t believe they would wait a full six days for the next batch of ships before attacking, so our current resources would have to do.

We currently had two hundred fifty-six battlecruisers, thirty-two carriers holding two thousand, five hundred and sixty combat shuttles.  Twice as many combat shuttles on the battlecruisers.  Plus, three hundred of the older upgraded ships.  For the smaller independent craft, we had three hundred missile boats.  We also had ninety-four permanent missile emplacements scattered around the solar system, all holding a good number of the three types of missiles as well as plasma cannons.

We were ready, but I still hoped we wouldn’t have to be.

During the simulations I got a call from Nadia Avdonin.  I spoke to her more often than the others on the board, most probably because we got along so well.

“Hi Nadia, what can I do for you?”

She smiled, “It’s good to see you back.  I like the piece you made, but we’re going to hold back on it until they’re a few hours away from attacking.”

I nodded, “Can I ask why?”

She waved a hand, “Politics of course.  We will be trying to talk peace with the emperor up until the last minute, and sending this to the other races could completely derail that effort.  It’s the truth, but it will also look seditious to the emperor, we’ll be trying to get them to turn against Knomen after all, even if it is just to show us neutrality.”

I frowned, “You’re right.  Still, as long as they have it for an hour, they can always pull back.”

She asked, “How are things going up there?”

“Good actually, we can get better and we will, but the response times for the drills are extremely good, we’re ready ma’am.”

Nadia made a face, “Call me Nadia, Alicia.  I’ll let you get back to it.”

I said goodbye and disconnected the line, and we got back to our simulations…

It was at the end of the day, right before I retired for the evening, when we saw on our sensor network that a fleet had started to gather about eight hours away from Earth’s solar system at high speed.  We could also see several more heading for that rendezvous point from all over the empire.  I wasn’t surprised, but it bothered me when Leira was a part of that number, but at the same time I also understood they didn’t have a choice.

Either way, it would take about three days for them all to gather.  I considered and dismissed a preemptive strike, we wouldn’t attack them until they attacked us.  I believed the best defense was a good offense, but not until after they’d started the war.  A preemptive strike would lose us the high ground.

It was Kristi, Nathan, and myself in my private dining room that evening.  We’d all worked hard, and would do so again tomorrow.

I asked curiously, “So how did you end up here Nathan?”

Nathan smiled, “Kristi told us when you were escaping, so I managed to get a three-day pass, mostly thanks to General Denton, and I came up here to meet you.  I need to go back in two days, but until then I’m at your disposal.”

Kristi nodded, “It was the least I could do.  Do you really think we’ll win?”

I made a face, “If they were attacking us alone I’d be more nervous, I don’t think the Knomen will use all their best stuff against us with the other races there to watch… and scan.  We set a pretty simple trap, if they use that same FTL formation as when we attacked the Seltans, we’ll slaughter them.  If they come in at sub-light speed, we have plasma weapons they don’t, as well as the missiles.  We also have a number of emplacements powered down we can use to ambush.

“Earth will be surrounded by the older part of the fleet, three hundred ships, along with Earth’s own Shield defense missiles and defense platforms.  I honestly can’t see a way they can win this first encounter.  If it was someone from Earth I’d be worried about sneakiness, but they’re form of warfare is like… the redcoats in the revolutionary war, all marching down the road in step with their muskets ready.  They have no subtlety at all, and they’ve been doing it that way for thousands of years so its ingrained habit.  They’ll have to come to terms with the idea of tactics in space battles and that they’re actually vulnerable to lose before they can change.

“We have ambushes, better tech than most and at least equivalent to some, and they’re coming here where we control the battleground.  I’m actually so sure it’s making me nervous, if that makes sense.  That said, they aren’t stupid, so this first battle will be all we’ll get.”

Nathan nodded, “If you expect the enemy to do one of three things, they always pick the fourth.”

I grinned, “Exactly, on Earth anyway, but in this case… I’m taking into account Knomen psychology.  They literally can’t imagine us inconveniencing them by winning I don’t think.  I doubt it would occur to them, or that they’d have to change something that’s worked for thousands of years.  When it does finally occur to them, then we’ll be in trouble.  I’m kind of hoping they decide to be a peaceful neighbor when we finish this first battle.”

Nathan cocked his head, “You don’t think we’ll counter attack?”

I shook my head, “Not right away, we need to build for a while.  We’re ready to defend, but not attack.  Besides, the goal is to become a wary neighbor with a fence.  If we did push the Knomen out of space and guard their world so they couldn’t reclaim space, what happens to the rest of the empire?  Would it be our responsibility to take over?  That would be… a mess.”

Kristi snorted, “And what happens when you kick their butt, and a handful of systems come to us secretly, because they hate the Knomen too, and ask for assistance.  Out of fifty I bet there will be some.”

I frowned.  I supposed we were stirring the pot.

“Stop that, your intelligence is showing.”

She snickered, “Yes princess, as you command princess…  Actually I haven’t been ditzy since we went clubbing over a month ago, maybe I forgot how.”

I smiled beatifically and said in a teasing voice, “Oh… I think you could manage it.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

Nathan grunted, ending our playful bickering, “That could be a problem, either way this will be interesting.  What happens if the Seltan attack, when the Knomen’s attention is on this side of the Empire?  I guess it isn’t our problem anymore but…  Then of course there’s exploring out toward the rim, who knows what we’ll find out there.”

I nodded, “No exploring until we have our two fleets, and I imagine the Empire problem will shake out and settle in the next two years.  Still, I would suggest if that happened we should sign on as equal allies, and help them do what we’re doing.  I know I sound all geeky saying it, but we don’t want an Empire do we?  And it’s a worse case analysis anyway.”

Kristi nodded and teased by pulling out a Star Trek reference, “So what, like a federation of planets?”

I laughed, “Nothing so grand as that.  No shared military.  Just a group of equal allies with a few basic laws to share in space.  Such as leaving pre-FTL civilizations alone, mutual defense, and no invading neighbors, only defense.  Basically what the Knomen set out to do, just not with all the oversight and arrogance.”

Kristi shook her head, “But if no one was in charge, who would enforce all that?”

I shrugged, “Everyone.  If one of the allied worlds attacked another, mutual defense would kick in and all other members of the treaty would combine to battle the aggressor.  I’m pretty sure that’s how the USFS will handle new alien civilizations when we explore.  Use the minimum amount of cooperation to get the job done and otherwise go our own way and worry about our own civilization and colonies.  It makes sense to do the same thing on the other side if it comes up.

“If any worlds don’t answer the mutual defense part of the treaty in my example, well they’ll simply be removed from our treaty.”

Kristi tilted her head, “How…”

I smiled, “Do I know all that?  They copy me on all their meeting notes.  Since it falls to me to enforce their decisions and policies out here in space I need to know about them.  That’s how I know what they’re planning.”

It was quiet for a while as we finished up dinner.

Kristi sighed, “I’m going to get some sleep, promise me when this is over in a few days we can spend some time back on Earth.  I think I forgot how to dance as well as act the bimbo.”

I snorted, “So, it’s hard working for the princess isn’t it?  I miss it too.  Between this and the business… yes, we will definitely get a few days off.  A week if the Knomen cooperate, or maybe two weeks and we’ll end our vacation after you defend your dissertation, so I can start calling you doctor.  Sergei and Anthony can handle the day to day stuff now without me, and I can review it all when we get back.  I can hear the tropical islands calling us now…”

She nodded and smiled, “I love being busy and useful, but sometimes I miss the simplicity of just being a college student.  But I didn’t mean to complain.  I’ll leave you two alone now, good night.”

Nathan and I talked for another ten minutes or so after Kristi left, before we moved on to more physical pursuits.  I didn’t want our relationship to be just that, and it wasn’t, because we talked all the time on the phone.  I only had him physically present for two more days, and I planned to make the most of it…

Chapter 14

The next two days went by too quickly.  During the day the ships drilled different scenarios, and at night I spent time with Nathan.  He was gone now though, returned to his unit.  The Knomen had continued to gather their fleet, and they had just over seven hundred ships.  They outnumbered us by virtue of large ships, but were completely outnumbered by throw weight with the combat shuttles, missile boats, Shield missiles, and emplacements.

They’d just been sitting there a couple of hours, and I imagined they were all on the Knomen flag ship being briefed.  Still, we were in condition yellow and our fleet was alert.  We moved the ships into a defensive formation, similar to the ones the Seltan had in the Leira system.  Of course, the trick to a good ambush is to show them what they’d expected to see.

It was a half hour later, that the ships all went to FTL, heading straight for Earth.  At the USFS board’s request, I transmitted our little propaganda film and waited for the inevitable.  I also noticed the back row, the Knomen, were quite a bit further back, maybe a ten second window instead of one like usual.  I made a quick change to the plan to account for that.

I felt… cold blooded as I watched the screen.  I’d just ensured the Knomen would not escape, or at least that had been my intent.  Was I bloodthirsty?  The idea that they were hovering so far back said to me they would throw away the rest of the fleet and run with the tactical data.  That pissed me off, since this entire battle was their idea.

I felt Kristi’s hand on my shoulder, “You okay?”

I nodded, “Yeah, I’ll just never like this part of the job, you know.  But I’ll do it.”

She squeezed my shoulder, “As long as we’re defending ourselves, from a real threat I mean, not like the Knomen do it, then we’ll be okay.”

I nodded, wondering if I’d just lied, and if I’d feel satisfaction when the Knomen ships burned.  I hoped not, but I recognized the feeling of righteous anger under my heart.  The first battle I was in had changed me, I’d had to come to terms with losses of those I commanded.  What would this one do to me?  They were the attackers, the ones that would heartlessly send us back to the stone age, rather than simply be a good neighbor.  I just didn’t know though, and I’d find out soon enough.

I smiled an hour later, when both the Tressian and Leiran ships dropped out of the formation and turned around.  At least that was a small bit of good news.  The rest of them kept going, and I wished I was a fly on the wall to hear what the Knomen admiral thought of it.  None of the other ships pulled out, but then none of the other worlds knew me like those two did, so it wasn’t that big of a surprise.

We broke for a quick meal, they wouldn’t be here for another six hours, and there was no point in maintaining the readiness levels above yellow yet.  We waited until they were a half hour away, then brought it up to condition red and got back to the bridge.

I sent a message, “Approaching Knomen Empire fleet.  You are trespassing in sovereign Earth space.  We intend no harm toward our former allies, but if you continue this attack, we will destroy you.  I say once again, according to Knomen law, what you are doing is illegal.  This is the only warning you will receive, if you proceed we will destroy your ships.”

They kept coming of course.  But I felt better about it now.  Almost as if the speech had been to salve my conscious, although that was only a side effect of its true purpose.

The first battle I’d been in, in Leiran space, we’d closed to anti-mass energy weapons range before firing missiles, simply because it was more efficient that way.  Missiles would do a lot more damage if the enemy’s fields were at all destabilized.  Our new shields didn’t have that problem, but they didn’t know that, and we planned our ambush based on that operational data.

We faced them with all the ships I listed earlier, but more specifically, if all added up from all the ship classes, shuttles, Shield missiles and emplacements, there were close to twenty-five thousand plasma cannons, and over six thousand missile launchers.  The plasma cannons were much higher of course, because there was one on the front of each Shield missile.

It was an overwhelming throw weight against seven hundred craft.  So overwhelming we could afford to hold back our plasma cannons as a purely defensive platform.  But despite all that, not one ship fired when the time came.  I had no interest in fairness, or giving them a chance, or letting them even fire for that matter.

Because a few seconds before they reached the attack range for the anti-mass weapons on the fleet of Knomen ships, our ambush plan took effect.  A thousand gravity missiles came online, targeted a ship, and ripped a portion of its targets anti-mass field away as they passed each other.

There was literally no time for them to react, and without their A.I.s knowing about or scanning for gravity missiles, not one of them was able to drop to sub light.

I felt a surge of overwhelming relief, because all I really felt was disgust, and sadness, at the destruction.  I was not glad that they were dead, I was horrified by the slaughter as six hundred and eighty-five ships disappeared in explosions of energy, as they were exposed to an Einsteinian universe at several times the speed of light, and were instantly transformed into energy.

And it was horrifying.  The first battle in the Leira system there had been hope despite it being a slaughter as well.  Some of the ships had been knocked out of FTL, automatically stopping when hit by an anti-mass beam, and then the missiles had torn the target ship up.  It was bad, so many had died in just a handful of seconds… yet there had been enough left after that destruction to rescue several beings.  Today, there was nothing but the afterimage of hot white energy in my eyes.

The ships, the people, they were simply all gone down to the last atom.

I said over fleet channel in a soft but still commanding voice, “Recover the missiles and refuel.”

We hadn’t even lost a missile in this opening gambit of the Knomen.  Not one human was put in danger.  I hoped that would be enough to encourage sub-light fights in the future, or they would continue to get slaughtered if they attacked again.  But then that had been the main intent of the gravity missile when I conceived it, fight in normal space or die.  I was pretty sure even the Knomen weren’t that stubbornly blind though, this trick wouldn’t work again, and next time some of us would die as well, I hoped that was a long time in coming.

But I was also sure it wouldn’t be.  This wouldn’t stop the Knomen, it would merely light a fire under them.

I took a few minutes to write up an after action report, and tolerated the congratulations that came in from around me.  I did feel good about the fact none of our soldiers died though, so… it was complicated in my head.

It took me a few hours to set everything to go on without me for a couple of weeks, both up here in space, and down on the ground with my company.  Well, two weeks or until the Knomen stuck their necks out again, and then Kristi and I left in the unarmed sports shuttle and went home.  I packed three bikinis, some sarongs, a couple a pairs of jean shorts and light clingy t-shirts, and two club style dresses.  I also took along the bustier, I couldn’t wear it with a bikini, but for the rest of the time off the beach I would have it.

It was ironic, I hadn’t spent all that much time in my nice big house, and now I was going out the door again.  We flew down to Aruba, to an all-inclusive resort.  I was looking forward to relaxing after the last six weeks, and all the hard work I’d done.  Everyone deserves time off right?  About the only thing that would make it better was if Nathan could have come along, but I was sure to have fun with Kristi along, and quite possibly get in a little trouble...

Chapter 15

In my defense, I was a little tipsy when I said to Kristi, “Check this out.”

We were lying on the beach, both of us soaking up some sun on the second day of our vacation.  We’d also had a few drinks.  I’d gotten a few strange looks, and even some angry ones from a few women, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I was an alien, or because of how good I looked in my purple bikini.  It was a tossup.

Anyway, I stretched out my hand going for mysterious as I sub-vocalized to Al, and my drink levitated up into the air and slowly moved to my hand.

Kristi gasped, and I started to giggle.

“What did you do, how did… was that an anti-mass field princess?”

I shook my head and nobly ignored the title, “No, I realized a week ago that I was terribly underutilizing my gravity defense weapon.  In fact, I’d been using it like a club when I had created a precision instrument.  Think Lagrange point, not anti-gravity.”

Kristi giggled, “Get mine.  Drink I mean.”

I floated her glass over to her hand, this time without the pantomiming.

She said curiously with a small slur, “So you’re just surrounding it in a one G gravity field orientated upside down?  That’s kind of obvious in hindsight.”

I nodded, “Exactly, it’s a little more complicated than that though, the main field cancels out the natural gravity from the planet… or at least equally opposes it.  Then there are secondary small gravity fields to raise, lower, and move things horizontally.  I created all kinds of commands for disarming someone, or even just holding them up in the air.  I figured that’s safer than crushing them against something, less chance of hurting them badly by accident.”

Kristi nodded, “Anything else, or just telekinesis mimicking?”

“Umm,” I took a sip of my drink as my fuzzy mind caught up, “A shield of sorts.  It’s not as good as the anti-mass EM bustier, but it will stop a punch, or move someone away from me.  It will even slow and partially deflect a bullet, but it would still get through.  But I can’t have it on all the time, it creates a half inch thick forty G field around my body like a bubble, so it’s an energy hog, and too dangerous to have on all the time anyway.”

Kristi sighed, “I bet you could fly with it.”

I snickered, “I probably could, but I’m not going to.  I like to feel the ground under my feet, or at least the hull of a deck.”

Kristi dared me like she was still five years old, “Chicken.”

I of course, being mature and all, subvocalized a few words, and started to hover a few inches over my towel.  A dare was a dare after all.

I stuck my tongue out, “There, I flew, I mean, I…” my mouth wasn’t working right, I tried one more time perhaps a little too loudly, “I’m flying.”

Kristi snickered and looked at me in mock amazement, proving once again she didn’t lose the ability to be a ditz, and then a woman about ten feet away screamed bloody murder.

Oops.

Which sent us both into giggles.  Like I said, in my defense, I was a little… or perhaps I was more than a little tipsy.  I settled back to the ground and tried to look innocent, as if all the people weren’t staring at me.  Nope, no levitating alien here, move along folks.

After a few moments of tense silence, Kristi stage whispered, “Can I have one of those?”

I nodded and my voice automatically put on a conspiratorial edge, “Sure, I have a bunch in the car.  I don’t like carrying them half charged, so I swap out a lot.  You’re welcome to a few until we can fabricate some more.”

Kristi asked, “How long do they last?”

“Two weeks of constant use at five gravities.  Obviously it varies, the field takes more energy the farther away it has to be generated, so five gravities at sixty feet takes about the same power as the close in shield at forty gravities.  That would kill the power in about… five hours?  Just using it to fly is a one G close in field so… it would last months.”

Kristi asked, “Does the Army know about this?  I bet the special forces would love jumping out of planes without a chute.  You only sold them to M.P.s so far right?  It would also kick butt for sweeping mine fields, or pressure sensitive IEDs, if you tripled the gravity in a small area, the mine would think it was stepped on.”

That… was a good idea.  I think.  My fuzzy mind thought so anyway.

“I’ll let the general know about it when we get back from vacation.  Good ideas.”

The people around us eventually calmed down, though I felt guilty when the screamer left the beach, and I sent my control program and options to Kristi’s A.I.  Then I ordered Al to bring me one of the gravity generators.  After all, he could generate a field around the ball itself and fly it over from the car.

Kristi grinned like a kid with a new toy when it floated into her lap…

We had a lot of fun on our vacation.  We spent our days at the beach, drank too much, went dancing at night, and for the most part ignored our research, our business, and the fleet.  Nothing lasts forever though, and our vacation was actually interrupted a week in.  I was ordered to get back to my ship, but not told why, so we checked out of the resort and we said goodbye to the white sand, clear blue ocean, and the perfect weather of the island paradise.

Still, a week was long enough to relax, I’d started to get bored during the last day and wanted to take a look through the black hole data.  Something about that data was causing the back of my head to itch, but I didn’t know what it was yet.  Either way, we went home and unpacked, once again using my house as a mere waystation, I got dressed in my body conforming pressure suit, and put on my admiral’s uniform.  Kristi did the same, the suit part that is, but she got to wear jeans and a blouse, and the two of us headed back to the ship.

I checked my messages and wished I hadn’t, I could barely believe how many had built up in just a week’s time.  It would take a couple of days to go through them all, and only because I didn’t sleep more than three hours a night.  But later, because I was surprised at who was waiting for me on the ship…

Chapter 16

When we stepped off the sports shuttle Nadia Avdonin was there, along with Sergei and Anthony, my vice admirals.  Nadia had a half apologetic smile on her face.

“Sorry to cut your vacation short, I know you deserved it, but something came up.”

I returned her smile, “No problem, I was starting to get bored anyway, what can I do for you?”

Nadia said in a low voice, “A Tressian and Leiran showed up yesterday, aboard a very interesting ship.  I’m sure the Knomen are still monitoring our media, and open communications.  We thought it would be prudent to meet them up here.  I wanted you here since you’ll have to make happen whatever we decide, so you need to keep me honest.  I think you know one of them, a woman named Nora.  The Leiran is Senna, who is a cousin to Alnot.  Kristi, you can accompany us, but hold any advice until we’re alone, okay?”

Kristi nodded.

I said dubiously, “I didn’t think Nora was very happy with me the last time we met.”

Nadia looked surprised, “She seemed to speak highly of you, either way we shall see.  They’re waiting for us in the conference room.”

I nodded and asked with a questioning lilt, “Interesting ship?  You can’t say that to a scientist and simply leave it at that.  Unless you want to torture me that is.”

Nadia snickered, “It’s completely invisible to sensors, although not optically.  Still, in space that’s as good as invisible when you can detect where the probes are and the ship is as black as space.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She just laughed, “You can ask them how they do it later.”

“Yes ma’am, I’m ready when you are.”

We followed her through the ship to the conference room.  Nora and Senna stood when we entered.  Senna bowed toward me and I returned it, and I exchanged nods with Nora.  Maybe she’d just been angry at Knomen in general?  She did look and feel pleased to see me, which was a pleasant surprise.  Maybe it had something to do with destroying that fleet.

Nadia sat down in the middle chair on the other side of the table, Kristi and I sat on either side of her.  I still didn’t know what was going on, so I stayed silent.

Nadia asked, “Can you explain again why you’re both here so we’re all on the same page?”

Senna and Nora exchanged glances, and Senna answered the question, “Our planets are tired of the way we are treated by the Knomen Empire.  Truthfully, I believe most of our civilizations felt that way.  Yet, we put up with it, especially us being on the border, because to turn away from the Empire would mean being conquered by it, or by our Seltan neighbors, who in many ways are much worse than the Knomen Empire.

“We… would like to ally with Earth, if you will support us.  We saw the battle in your solar system, I’d never seen anything so… one sided before,” she added cautiously.

Nadia asked, “Why do you think we’d be any better?  We are, but…”

Senna answered, “My sovereign has spent much time with Admiral Jones.  He trusts her, and she spoke highly of Earth.  This is… tentative, to see if we can get along or agree.  If not, we part friends, yes?”

Nadia smiled, “Yes.  We believe greatly in self-determination.  That means… any alliance would be limited to things such as mutual defense, free trade, and protecting the younger civilizations without FTL.  We would do it together, no one of us in charge.  We are just starting however, and are still building our own protections.  What do you think about all that?”

Nora’s eyes widened, “Just getting started?”

Nadia shrugged, “We have about a third of our projected home and defense fleet.  After that’s finished, we plan to build an exploration fleet, that will search out and guard planets away from our home world.  Assuming they can be terraformed, and are unoccupied.”

Senna nodded, “We are building big as well, what we need is someone to help if the Seltans attack us again in even greater numbers than last time, once we distance ourselves from the Empire, and we would do the same for you if you were threatened.”

Nora grimaced, “The Leirans have an excuse to build, with the Seltans so close, and being on the border of Empire space.  If Tressia started building to gain our autonomy, by all accounts we’re a rather safe isolated world away from the border, the emperor would come to suppress us quickly I think.”

Nadia looked unsure what she should say to that, and when she looked at me I think I startled all of them by what I said.

“So build your ships here or at Leira.”

Nora gaped at me, and Nadia looked at me questioningly.  I wondered I put my foot in my mouth.

“I don’t know if Nadia or Alnot would agree.  But if we are to become allies, and building ships in your home system would be noticed, build them here.  Surely we can sell an asteroid or two for you to crank out a few hundred ships, then take all the ships home at the same time with skeleton crews.  You’ll go from undefended to well defended in a matter of a couple of hours.  They wouldn’t be able to stop it.”

Nora narrowed her eyes and said, “But then you would have the specs on all our ships.”

I shook my head, “You misunderstand, I’m not saying we’ll build them for you, I’m saying get a handful of those advanced fabricator cubes of yours and move some of your people here in that ship that can’t be seen.  All we’ll be doing is providing you a safe place to do it yourself, without getting caught by Knomen.”

Nora asked, “What would you want in return?”

I wasn’t answering that one, so I waited for Nadia to catch up and figure something out.

Nadia took a moment to do that, “Well, I would say we’ll charge you for the asteroids and resources you use, but if we have a mutual defense clause, we wouldn’t need anything else to host you.”

Nora nodded slowly, I could feel her surprise, which was probably a good thing as far as getting a treaty out of it.

Nadia said, “Does anyone have a problem with what we discussed here?  Mutual protection, protect young civilizations, free trade?  Is there anything else specific you want to know about, outside what we’ve already tentatively agreed to, which is help with the Seltan problem, ship building here, and help seceding from the Knomen Empire?”

Senna shook her head, “That all sounds good, we will do our part in any alliance.”

Nora nodded in agreement, “Could we meet again in a day, maybe read over what this treaty will look like, and send it back to our leaders?”

Nadia smiled, “It just so happens we already have a treaty in mind, for when we met other civilizations out toward the rim.  I can provide that now and we can meet in a day or two?”

They both nodded, and left after getting a copy of the treaty to go back to their ship to review it and rest.

Nadia blew out a breath, “When you first said that I thought you were nuts, but it is the obvious solution to Tressia’s problem, and it will stimulate trade between us.  Will it be a security issue though?  Three hundred ships.”

I frowned, “We’ll take precautions, by the time they have three hundred ships, we’ll have over a thousand, also a great number of defensive installations and tens of thousands of the combat shuttles.  Plus, I trust them.”

Kristi nodded and said shortly, “I agree, I trust them too.”

Nadia blew out a breath, “I’ll be back when they’re ready to talk, I need to brief the rest of the board.  Did you notice how smoothly that went?  No males around to muck it up.

Kristi and I snickered, and said together, “Yes ma’am,” in perfect concert.

Nadia laughed impishly as she walked out the door…

Chapter 17

It was a couple of days later.  I was in my office off the bridge, staring at the black hole data with confusion.  I knew there was something there, I just couldn’t find it.  I reluctantly put it back down, I knew it would eventually hit me, probably when I wasn’t thinking about it at all.

I’d just read some reports from the business, Carmine had made a little progress, now it would only take a thousand years to terraform mars.  In other words, he still had a long way to go.

Caroline had made a little progress with fabrication nanites as well, but she was still having trouble drawing enough energy from a field to do the jobs that required the most energy, like bonding metals, which was a big part of both fabricating and repair.  Still, it had only been a few months, I was hopeful she’d get there eventually.

Shelly had made the most progress out of the three of them but wasn’t quite there yet.  I was kind of excited about the idea of giving Al an upgrade so to speak.  But it wasn’t ready yet.

We’d met with Nora and Senna earlier in the day, and now they were heading back home with a copy of the treaty for their worlds to sign.  Nora said it would be a couple of weeks before she could get back with some engineers and fabricators.

I did get a chance to tour their ship however, and while they hadn’t given me specs, I’d picked up enough visual clues to figure out how it worked.  First, it had a very large central power fusion core which powered the rest of the ship, instead of a number of smaller ones.

The General’s scientists probably would have given me crap over that, but it was necessary, even if still problematic for the cloaking.  The normal fields applied to hide the ships mass, so all they really had to do was hide the energy.  That’s why they pretty much kept it in one spot.  Around that fusion core, they had very large high capacity artificial gravity devices.

What it did was envelope the core in a gravity field bubble, the bubble was about a foot thick, and only inside a surrounding chamber so nothing could accidentally enter it, then beyond that, in the middle was the fusion core.  The gravity bubble itself used a majority of the energy created in the large fusion reactor, creating a bubble that was the equivalent of a few hundred Earth gravities.

To put that in perspective, the Sun was only twenty-eight Earth gravities, and it had the potential to slightly bend the trajectory of particles travelling in space.  This high gravity field, bent any scanning particles looking for energy away from the core.  It was really that simple, if the particles couldn’t find the fusion core of a ship, the ship wouldn’t show up on the sensor board.

I thought it wouldn’t be that hard to make one, but I wasn’t that focused on it at the moment, and it would require a major rework of the power systems.  I still believed central power was a horrible design, especially for a warship.  Perhaps we could make a spy ship or two in the future, but I didn’t believe it would ever be widely used because of the inherent drawbacks…

My door chimed, and I opened it from the console on my desk.  It was Sergei, and he walked in with a serious look on his face.

“Have you seen the latest probe data yet?”

At first I wondered why he cared about black holes, until my mind jumped to the right track.  I had Al bring up our latest scanning data of the empire.  It wasn’t until I found the Knomen data that I figured out what had him so worried.

“They’re building,” I announced the obvious, it was why he was here after all.

He nodded, “What should we do?”

I frowned, “Let’s wait for the first batch to come out, take scans and see what they have as best we can figure out.  If we’re building faster, I’d rather put it off for a few months.  We can leave what’s here, in Earth’s solar system, and take three months’ worth of ships to Knomen later if we have to.  They probably are building up for an attack, but for all we know they are simply replacing the twenty ships they lost.”

He raised an eyebrow skeptically, I didn’t believe it either, but it was possible.

I shrugged, “It won’t hurt to wait, if they are doing a mass buildup, I’ll recommend to the board that we should stop them, but let’s just watch for a bit first so we have something solid to tell them.”

He nodded, “Yes ma’am.”

“Do you have anything else?”

He shook his head.

“Dismissed.”

He turned and left, and I looked at the data again thoughtfully.  They only had ten fabricators, not the twenty we did.  But I’d have to reserve judgement until I saw how fast those fabricators were and what came out of them…

It was less than two days later, one day and twenty-two point four hours to be exact, that the first new Knomen ships were completely built.  They were large as I’d expected, about twice the size of our battlecruisers, and maybe a little smaller than our carriers.  I got as much data from the scans as I could, prepared a briefing, and then Kristi and I headed down to Earth to meet with the USFS board.

They had their own offices now, inside the U.N. complex.  Regardless, it was a no fly zone so we needed to come down outside of NYC and use roads the rest of the way.  We found ourselves in a large conference room and I used Al to interface to the video systems while Kristi and I waited for the seven of them to show up.  They trickled in one at a time, and then we got started.

“Good morning.  We have scans of the first ships from the fabricators in the Knomen home system we spotted two days ago.”

I brought up a picture of the ship.

“You can see they are still using a saucer shape, despite their shield configurations being able to support virtually any shape.  Their shield power and speed will be comparable to ours, and you can see in the picture…”

I rotated the craft…

“They have twelve beam weapons, and twelve missile launchers, half again as many as we do on a battlecruiser, but less than we have on a carrier.  We can’t determine from the scans what kind of beams they fire, but we know that it doesn’t match their anti-mass particle weapons.  I’d speculate it’s something similar to our plasma cannons, but I can’t be sure.”

I turned toward them, “This is where not waiting long enough to secede will bite us back a bit, even though I know we didn’t have a choice.  I suggest it’s too dangerous to attack now.  They still have a hundred old ships in their system, as well as fifty in each of their colony worlds.  We also don’t know what defensive emplacements they may have, which are probably sitting offline until they’re attacked.  If we move on them with the fleet, the Earth would have nothing but the static emplacements to protect it.”

Gorou asked, “So what do you recommend?  We can’t just sit here and let them build.”

I nodded, “We have a slight edge in building capacity.  In one month from now, we’ll have a hundred and sixty battlecruisers, and twenty carriers, to their hundred and fifty new ships.  That doesn’t include the forty-eight hundred combat shuttles those ships will be carrying.  I suggest we wait a month, and attack them with that.  That will keep what we have now as our core defense until we can finish building up to our proposed numbers.

“Another reason to wait, we can’t be sure they aren’t just rebuilding what they’d lost.  I know that isn’t likely but…  it’s a big step.  I wouldn’t suggest knocking them back to the stone age, but if we do this we will have to ring their planet and keep them from regaining space until they agree to peace.  Otherwise they’ll simply try again.

“That means… we’re looking at the Knomen Empire collapsing, and who knows what would happen then.  It’ll be chaotic out there.”

Adrienne nodded, “We’ve considered that.  All the races fear the Knomen, some of them will join us right away we think.  The others will be suspicious, and if they have grudges against neighbors may decide to build up and start trouble.  At the very least things will be tense for a while, at worst it’s a powder keg.  That said, we can’t let the Knomen attack us because we fear it will lead to others doing something rash.”

I nodded, “I agree.  This is on the Knomen, they attacked us, and it looks like they won’t stop anytime soon.  Regardless, does a month seems like a good time frame to everyone?”

Jonas Baum, the German representative asked, “Do you have an attack plan?”

I shook my head, “Not a formal one, not yet, but I imagine we’ll probe them first with some shield missiles accompanied by gravity missiles while we sit on their doorstep so to speak, just a light year or two away.  Once they react we can move the ships in to a light day distance, while watching for any missiles and be ready to drop out of FTL at the first sign.  Once we’re that close, we can stick to sub-light for the rest of the way in system, and not risk what we did to them happening to us.  Kristi programmed the A.I.s to automatically drop FTL if they detected a possible gravity missile heading toward the ship, human reactions just aren’t fast enough.

“I’m almost positive they’ll have gravity weapons now as well, so this one isn’t going to be a quick fight or quite one sided.  But we’ll still have numbers on our side, and our ships will be surrounded by Shield and gravity missiles, and a large number of combat shuttles as we move in.  I’ll get with Sergei and Anthony, and have something for you in a few days.”

They asked a few more questions, ones I couldn’t really answer about the enemy.  Scans only showed so much, until their weapons went active, we wouldn’t really know what they could do…

A few days later, we had a few tentative plans to present.  Which one we were going to use depended greatly on the enemy.  However, we were taking a break from it all today, because I wouldn’t miss Kristi’s dissertation defense for anything short of an enemy attack on the solar system.  Hers was taking place in Chicago, and we went a little early and had some breakfast before heading over.

Joe showed up as well, I hadn’t seen much of him lately, but I knew Kristi had been going down to see him at least three nights a week once we were done with our work day.

Kristi didn’t eat very much.  I remembered how nervous I was when it was my turn, so I didn’t tease her… too badly.  She did very well though, sometimes I forgot just how damned smart she really was, she tended to hide it, even when not acting like a bimbo, she often downplayed her opinions and ideas.  She was also a much better programmer than I’d ever be.

Afterwards, I said gravely, but couldn’t quite control my grin, “Doctor Wilder.”

She grinned back at me, “Doctor Princess Admiral Jones.”

I rolled my eyes and she winked.

Joe shook his head at our antics, “So how are we celebrating?”

“A relaxing day at home followed by dinner, drinks, and dancing.  The hot tub and view should take the edge off enough to enjoy tonight.”

Huh, Joe, Kristi, and the third wheel alien in the hot tub.  Maybe I’d pass on that first part.

Kristi looked at me as if she knew exactly what I was thinking, “Why don’t you see if Nathan can come out and play.”

I thought about it for a minute, then shrugged and called.  He was on base right now, and if I couldn’t abuse my position as the USFS Fleet Admiral every once in a while, what good was it?  It wasn’t every day my best friend became a doctor, and I’d feel much more relaxed about it if we could hang out as two couples.

He could and did in fact join us, and we had a lot of fun that day and into the night before we had to get back to work the next day.

Chapter 18

I spent a lot of time with Sergei that month planning out our attack on the Knomen system.  Anthony was the defense fleet Admiral and I didn’t see him nearly as much, although I did keep up with his reports.  Sergei would be heading up the exploratory fleet.  I still thought of it that way, although we would technically be using it as an invasion fleet shortly.  Still, the intent behind it was right.

The exploration fleet would be responsible for exploring, protecting our colonies and interests away from our solar system, and sometimes that meant a good offense.  The Knomen empire had started this fight, attacked us despite assurances from me, that we had no intention to harm the empire.  Now… I supposed we were in a state of war.  We simply had no choice but to end it, and we couldn’t do that sitting in our own solar system playing defense.

Shelly was very close to a much more intuitive A.I. that could interpret not only what, but why a command was given and could also be creative in its response.  A simple example, if I asked it to take me to a certain restaurant, it would intuit I was hungry, and if that restaurant was closed, or fully booked, it could locate and offer an alternative place to eat.

Obviously that’s a simple example, more esoteric concepts were possible as well.  The problem was it still had trouble differentiating when a good time to ask questions or offer alternatives was.

For example, the middle of a battle where seconds meant life or death, wasn’t a good place to ask questions or give alternatives.  Sometimes we would need the A.I. to just follow orders even if it thought of a possibly better option.  It was a delicate balance.

The USFS board continued to try a diplomatic solution, and kept me in the loop on their progress.  None of us really believed the Knomen would back down, but the effort was important.  Not only to be true to our own conscious, but to show the other races that the choice to go to war was entirely due to the Knomen.  Still, it was more than just a salve for our personal sensitivities and propaganda, if the Knomen sued for peace, and meant it, we wouldn’t attack.

Nora had come back, with a group of engineers, and they were currently working on building their fleet.  Although given what was coming, they probably didn’t need to anymore, at least not in secret that is.

The day we left, Sergei joined me on the bridge.  There had been some debate on if I should go or not, or simply send Sergei out.  I was sure he could handle it, but I believed Kristi and I needed to be there to quickly assess their tech, and quite frankly the idea of sending someone else while I waited safely back in Earth orbit did not appeal to me at all.

Regardless, those of the opinion that a fleet admiral should stay in the home system were overruled.

When we were a few hours away from Knomen, we launched the shield missiles around our formation, when we were thirty minutes away, we launched the gravity missiles to englobe both the ships and the shield missiles.  I felt a little warier the closer we got, but there were no signs of an enemy ambush outside of their system, and if there was, I was confident Al could give the command to drop us all out of FTL, if missiles came online either ahead or in our wake.

We stopped a light year out from their solar system and ran scans.  As our probe reports indicated, there were two hundred older ships, and a hundred and fifty-two of the newer ships.  There were still no apparently static defenses, but I didn’t buy it.

I nodded at Sergei.

Sergei ordered, “Send in the initial probe.”

Forty shield missiles, surrounded by eighty gravity missiles went for the system at FTL speed.  Ten were targeted at the fabricators, and the other thirty were targeted at newer ships.  The Knomen replied with defensive fire from their ships, sending out a hundred and twenty missiles to intercept.

Our gravity missiles moved forward, and we found out right then, that they had gravity missiles as well, because they destroyed each other.  Forty of the eighty Shield missiles managed to drop below light speed before the enemy’s gravity missiles got there, the other forty disappeared in spears of light.

The remaining ones started to move at sub-light speed, and fire their one plasma cannon at enemy targets.  It didn’t take long for the enemy to take them out, using their own energy weapons on the ships.

I sighed, “What do you think?”

Sergei frowned, “They did what I would have, if they have permanent emplacements like we do, they kept them hidden, the ships were more than enough to handle what we sent.  At least we know for sure they have gravity missiles, and plasma turrets, so it was still worthwhile.”

That’s about what I thought as well.

Kristi spoke up, “The missiles are returning to the ships, the eighty that survived that is.”

I nodded, “Take us to a half light day from their solar system, that should be safe enough based on their response, but drop us out early if we need to.”

Sergei gave the orders, and we popped into FTL and back out after a few very long seeming seconds.  The enemy hadn’t reacted at all.

“Take us in at point four, keep alert, if anything moves at FTL from now on, enemy missiles or ships, kill it with a gravity missile without orders.”

Sergei passed the orders, and we waited.  Well, it was my bright idea to slow the battle down and bring tactics into it.  At point four light speed it would take us a little over a day to close the distance.  The missiles being much smaller and lighter could go point six, but of course we kept them around us.

“Sergei, get some sleep, and I’ll go after you.  Make sure the ships weapons officers are rotated often, every few hours.  We’ll launch combat shuttles at two hours’ distance.”

He grunted, sent out my orders, and then left the bridge.

Kristi asked, “What do you think will happen?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know, they’ve been in space for a long time, it depends on how many hidden emplacements there are.  If it was just the ships, I’d simply send all our Shield and gravity missiles in now to overwhelm them.  But we’ll probably need them for defense here shortly so…”

Kristi asked, “Coffee?”

I grinned, “Sure, thanks Doctor Wilder.”

She snickered, “Anytime princess”

Yes, our banter was rather on the silly side, but it was also stress relieving…

The hot shower did more to relax me than the three hours of sleep.  I pulled on my pressure suit and uniform and made my way back to the bridge.  We were coming up on the two-hour mark when I walked in and took a seat next to Sergei.

I was suppressing my nerves already, and knew my palms would be damp if I wasn’t able to regulate my body the way I can.  Sergei looked as cool as a cucumber, and I was a little jealous, he looked calmer than me and had none of my advantages.

I nodded at him and we launched the combat shuttles.  Once they were all in space, all four thousand eight hundred of them, they each launched their own gravity missile defense, and took off at an angle to our heading at point five light speed.  The object being to flank the enemy by the time we arrived.

Still the enemy hadn’t fired, or brought up all their defenses… assuming they had any.  The next hour and a half, I imagined all sorts of nasty things happening to my fleet, while I projected confidence and calmness.  I even had a coffee to sip on.

At fifteen minutes out I ordered, “Start the sub-light missile barrage.”

We were holding the Shield and gravity missiles back for now, but we also had cargo holds full of standard missiles, and between the shuttles, carriers, and battlecruisers we could throw sixty-four hundred normal missiles every few seconds, although right now we were doing ten second increments.

That sounds like a lot, but they had over five thousand plasma weapons, and an equal amount of missiles they could launch.  Still, we were launching that many every ten seconds and they quickly moved away from our formation and raced toward the enemy at point eight light speed.  So even if we were thirty minutes away, the missiles would only take fifteen, and that gap was shrinking quickly now.

The enemy finally responded, launching their own missile barrages.  Our gravity missiles held position, waiting for anything moving FTL, but our shield missiles moved to intercept the incoming, and we had quite a few plasma cannons as well.

The first five barrages by both sides were met and destroyed, I couldn’t believe they didn’t have emplacements, but I was starting to doubt that assertion as another minute passed, and another six salvos of missiles were knocked out.  One or two made it through, but did no real damage.

But then over five hundred enemy platforms came online, filling our screen with red dots.  They all started firing an additional twenty missiles each, for ten thousand in total, tripling their throw weight in a second.  I knew things were about to get sticky but they’d finally revealed all their cards.

It was time to reveal ours.

“Now Admiral,” I said in a calm voice, my nerves only betrayed by not calling him by name.

Sergei ordered, “Launch the boats, launch all boats.”

The twenty carriers all launched twenty missile boats each, for four hundred total.  They were about twice the size of a shuttle craft, but we’d managed to split them up to squeeze enough into each of the six bays.

As soon as they were clear of the carriers, they launched one hundred missiles each, or forty thousand total, and they did so at FTL speed.

The way I made gravity missiles, they were tiny ships, each battlecruiser carried five thousand, and the carriers carried twice that.  Which meant we literally had a million of the little things and that didn’t even account for the twenty or so in each of the combat shuttles.  The reason I made them like little ships was because they’d all be available at the same time, and throughout the battle.

For two reasons.  Attrition, we had so many, mutual suicide gravity missiles meant whoever had the most would win at the end, because they’d wind up having a free hand in FTL while the enemy was still under threat.  The second reason I made them that way, was in case the enemy did what I just did.

The Knomen had gravity missiles, but only through their launch platforms.  There was no way they could launch forty thousand in one go, they could only do approximately fifteen thousand at a time right now.

The forty thousand missiles split the available targets, there were three hundred and fifty-two ships, and five hundred emplacements.  That was forty-six some odd missiles for each target with a lot left over.  They stopped a few thousand of the missiles of course, close to fifteen thousand of them, but there were still enough to tear through the enemy fleet, and emplacements, and we hadn’t even gotten inside plasma weapon range yet.

The battle wasn’t over however, even if the enemy was down.

The Knomen had sent three barrages of fifteen thousand missiles, they’d gotten those off while we were launching the missile boats.  We had the plasma cannons and shield missiles to get them all, if they’d been sent evenly across the fleet, but they had targeted one side to try and overwhelm one part of our line.

I also realized there was no more enemy waiting with gravity missiles.

“Move half the shield missiles to that area now,” I ordered.

Sergei sent the order out, but it was too late for the first barrage.

We lost close to three hundred Shield missiles in the first volley as they shot down and absorbed several missiles each before going down, but the few missiles that did get through to a ship were easily absorbed by the shields in moderate numbers.  It would take ten missiles to destroy one of our ships, about the same as theirs actually, and that only happened twice.

Still, I had to suppress a wince when I saw those ships go offline.

Before the second volley of Knomen missiles arrived, half the shield missiles for the remaining fleet went to FTL for a nanosecond, for all practical purposes they jumped instantly between the next two barrages in flight and our threatened ships.  The second and third barrages were stopped cold.

Two ships.  So little a sacrifice to win this battle, but it still seemed like way too much to me.

The missile boats had done the job they were intended for, overwhelming fire power.  If the enemy had been able to continue tossing missiles like that, I was sure we would have started to lose more ships as we lost our Shield missiles.

I looked at the board, there were no red dots left.

“Destroy the fabricators, move the twenty carriers around Knomen and demand their surrender, isolate them to the planet, and start a search for survivors with the combat shuttles.”

I had to steady my hand before I took my next sip of coffee.  I didn’t even want to think about how many Knomen I’d just killed.  I also hoped their emplacements had been unmanned like ours were.

Well, if I wasn’t banished from Knomen after escaping like I had, I sure as hell was now…

Chapter 19

We managed to rescue three Terrans and one hundred forty-eight Knomen, and delivered the enemy to the planet before we called off rescue operations.  We, the entire fleet, stayed for a couple of days, waiting for things to shake out.  The USFS board sent out a message to the other species, outlining our reasons, and what we were forced to do.  They also included a message about the treaty alliance of equals they had already started with Leira and Tressia.

The Knomen home world was on the brink of rebellion, angry at the royal family about the mess they found themselves in.  Nothing was truly resolved there yet, except they were unable to threaten us anymore.  So far the other Knomen colonies were silent, and hadn’t done anything to indicate a build-up or an inclination to cause problems.  No doubt they weren’t very happy with the royal family either.

If they ever wanted to join our treaty alliance as separate worlds, I think that would be a good outcome.  It would be nice to know that there were others of my race that weren’t so… I shook my head throwing off that thought, all that mattered was who I was, and how I acted.

Twenty-one of the other empire worlds expressed immediate interest and sent representatives to Earth to learn more about the treaty.  I was also informed by the USFS board that Nora and Senna returned to Earth to explain why they’d joined with the Terrans.  Even if they all signed on, which was far from a sure thing, that was only twenty-three out of fifty.  Twenty-seven of the races were quiet, undoubtedly taking a wait and see attitude.  I was sure some of those were just cautious, but I was also sure many of them had their own agenda to pursue without the Knomen threat to keep them in line.

As long as they didn’t threaten Earth, or an ally, I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

Once three days had gone by without any indication of retaliation from the other Knomen worlds, the battlecruisers went home and me with them.  Sergei and I left a rear admiral upper in charge of watching the Knomen with the twenty carrier fleet and we left half the missile boats behind as well.  We hadn’t harmed the world at all, or its production capability on the surface, so someone had to stay behind and make sure they stayed put until they capitulated.

When I got back to Earth the next day, I was debriefed for a few hours, and then released on leave.  Seems I got a vacation every time I was in a battle or kidnapped.  Is it weird to say I was hoping I wouldn’t have any more vacations coming soon?

Ship production was steady, and we still had quite a while to go before we met our goals, but we were still on schedule.

I was conflicted about the battle itself, and the lives lost, but that was normal wasn’t it?  As soon as I didn’t have a problem doing something like that… it would be time to retire.

I had a lot to keep an eye on.  Kristi’s and my company, the black hole data that still refused to yield its secrets to me, the Knomen, the remnants of the empire which was now broken, the Seltan toward the core, and I also had to keep a wary eye toward the rim, because we still had no idea what awaited us in that direction at all.

Whatever it was, I still had over four years left in my time commitment, so I’d be in the thick of it for a while…

It didn’t mind the responsibility most of the time, but it was still heavy.  I also had my closest friend Kristi, and Nathan to keep me grounded, and some time off to unwind after the battle.  I wasn’t sure how I got to keep Nathan for a week this time, but I had the feeling Denton had something to do with it, and I was grateful.

Life overall was good, and as I fell asleep that night in his arms, I wondered what would happen 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 appreciate greatly any constructive feedback or opinions.  As with the first story, I finished up the major plot meant for the book, but obviously there are many plots left unresolved, not to mention character development and inventions to create.  Maybe one day I’ll get used to allowing loose ends as the space opera genre demands.

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.

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.

Book Description

Alicia Jones has been through a lot, and she was ready to get on with her life as a scientist and put what happened behind her.  She was done with the military, except perhaps a planned invention or two.  She was also set to complete her dissertation defense, and has plans to buy a house and start a business with her best friend Kristi.

Something she’d never expected happens though, when she calms down and starts to get back to her normal life, she wonders if a normal life is enough for her anymore.  When General Denton calls her, requesting her help, she jumps at the chance, and finds out sometimes in life you have to be careful what you wish for…