Star Feud

by D. R. Rosier

  It wasn’t like on Earth, where A.I. was just adaptive logic trees. They were intuitive, caring, and had moral beliefs. They were people, with their own quirks and personalities. Some of that was programmed, but in Jillintara and our daughters’ cases, it was also a result of their own learning with a dynamic growth matrix, just like a human growing up and learning from experience.

  I kissed her softly, and caressed her perfectly soft and supple ass. She was warm, open, and putty in my arms as I gently traced her generous curves with my fingertips.

  She sighed breathily, and melted against me. It was my turn to tease and please her, her turn to surrender, and I couldn’t wait to get started. Making her lose herself in bliss would be my pleasure, I’d be panting and ready for it again long before I finished her off, and would enjoy every intimate moment. Life could be complicated, but loving Jillintara was easy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The next morning right after breakfast, we went over the day’s itinerary.

  Natalya said, “I’ve taken the liberty of setting up a press conference followed by a sit-down interview with one of our top news people in two hours. After, we’ll get lunch in the city so you can get some visibility. Perhaps visit some historical sites in the afternoon?”

  Vik said, “You don’t waste time?”

  Natalya shrugged, “That attack was meant to either kill you, or if that failed discredit you. Both levels of the attack failed. I’ve no doubt they’re working on the next one, if they haven’t already put several contingencies in place. Regardless, the best thing to do is move quickly and try to stay a step ahead. Once those two things are done, you can stay in the safety of the palace for the remainder of the visit. Unless you have other plans?”

  Vik replied, “Alright, historical sites though? I’ve seen them all before.”

  Natalya smirked, “As a visiting captain and nephew perhaps, but the people should see the new emperor’s interest in our history.”

  I smiled, but also managed to hold in the laugh at the look of horrified anticipation at the boredom of the coming afternoon in his eyes.

  “Look on the bright side highness, we could be attacked.”

  He glared at me, and I just looked back innocently.

  Natalya said, “It’s not that bad, is it?”

  Vik sighed, “Of course not, and history is important so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past, but it’s all just stale information at this point. Been there and done that, and learned the lessons. Still, appearances are important, and worth the boredom, we’ll get it done.”

  I almost giggled at the Earth colloquialism he’d thrown in there, but I wasn’t done with my faux innocent look and suppressed it. I also knew he loved that about me, I didn’t give a crap about his title, I only wanted him, and he knew it.

  Natalya’s plan seemed to be solid, and it worked.

  The morning was interesting, and Vik was straightforward about things at the press conference and interview, though he did hold back any information which might give our enemies an advantage. I had no doubt our enemies were watching the public data-net, both internal to the empire and without.

  The afternoon was fairly interesting as well, since I learned a few more things about the Empire’s past, and the establishment of the Vehiri colony. It was a turbulent time in their history, they hadn’t yet made food, medical nanites, and other infrastructure truly free by that time, it hadn’t yet been turned over to the A.I.s.

  Technically, it wasn’t an empire yet either, though they’d met both the Raitov and Xulia races. The empire was formed as they found more worlds. Some didn’t join, some did given the advances brought by their Isyth visitors. They’d been searching for more worlds to inhabit of course, but they’d never found any. Not empty ready to move into worlds anyway, just ones that were already occupied by intelligent species.

  I still struggled with the A.I. part of it, but I knew the A.I.s themselves did not. Isyth truly owed their successful form of government to the fact they couldn’t be corrupted by power, unlike humanity and all the other races. They controlled food, water, electricity, and health nanites, which gave them incredible power, but they just served.

  I spent the night with Vik, and enjoyed the next day as well. I never really let my guard down, I didn’t think I was capable of it, but I could let my training and abilities keep up with things while my conscious mind relaxed a bit. Despite that, I was always aware of everything around me. That probably sounds exhausting, but for me it just was.

  I wasn’t sure if Natalya approved of me, and my relationship with Vik, but either way she didn’t say anything, and there was begrudging respect in her eyes by the end of the second day. To her credit, after her shock back on Isyth a month ago about Jillintara’s position of one of his advisors, she respected that as well.

  As for me, I liked her. She was a dreamer, and a bit naïve, but really that made her an almost perfect governor. It was alien, and I wondered if humanity could ever reach where the Isyth had.

  Perhaps. Humanity could be gracious, giving, and protective when life was going well. Maybe the same type of infrastructure would draw out those instincts, when the instincts of self-preservation and over ambition weren’t triggered by doubts or fears of survival.

  Then again, maybe that just made me a little naïve too. But… I wanted to believe it was possible. I knew what humanity was capable of, I was arguably created by, raised, trained, and conditioned by the worst of humanity. Really, it was a miracle I wasn’t a total bitch. Or… maybe that had been designed too, so I wouldn’t get any ideas about turning on my handlers.

  Telidur asked, “Penny for your thoughts.”

  I smirked at another Earth colloquialism. We’d just gotten back onto the ship, were in the bridge, and were getting the fleet together to move on to the next planet in the tour. We were going to Raitov next. I’d be a lot more nervous after that, when we visited Jervistad on Kaprorix, and Tek on Xulia. Which meant I needed to be even more cautious. The enemy wouldn’t attack when we were expecting one.

  He shrugged, “Been on your internet.”

  I snorted, “We need to come up with a plan against being ambushed by an enemy fleet in cloak. Jervistad and Tek know the strengths of our new ship, they won’t reveal themselves until they’re within weapons range, and have enough ships to overwhelm our shields. All our ships are more advanced, especially the one we’re on, but we’re far from untouchable if we can’t attack at a distance.”

  Telidur nodded, “It’s more likely we’ll be attacked on planet.”

  I muttered, “That’s what worries me.”

  He sighed, “Good point, any ideas?”

  I nodded, “Use an orb to emulate our ship, and we cloak and stay in the rear of the formation. If they all attack the decoy, we’ll return fire and tear them to pieces. My plan is short on details though, I suggest we do it during wormhole transition. We also need Jillintara to suppress the information, so it doesn’t show up on the military data-net, which they both have access to.”

  “Alright, make it happen, anything else?”

  I shrugged, “We’ll have to cloak the shuttle too, and fly over to our mock ship, so we appear to disembark from the right spot when we go down to… no, that’s not good enough. What if they attack as we’re leaving the ship. We’ll use a second orb to emulate a shuttle, and cloak ours. We’ll rendezvous with it on the way down, and overlap the image with our cloaked ship.”

  He frowned, “They’ll see it when we switch off.”

  I smirked, “We won’t switch off. We’ll remain cloaked, and when the hologram and sensor spoofing image of a shuttle opens the door, we’ll open the real door and step out.”

  He asked, “What would you do? Would you attack us in space, or on the ground again.”

  I sighed, “The last ground attack failed, I’d ambush in space. They’ve had a month to sneak in a few upgrades, and while our ship is near invincible from a distance, up close they’d destroy us rath
er easily if they got enough plasma hits in. At a guess, they must have between a hundred and two hundred ships. I can’t imagine they’d be able to build more than twenty, or less than ten ships a month at a hidden facility inside a planetary body.”

  “Something else is bothering you, what is it?”

  I said, “If Vik is killed, it will start a civil war, and put Solyra on the throne as Empress. That would still be a negative outcome for our enemies. If I was the enemy, I’d want her dead at the same time. I’m… worried about her, and I can’t be in two places at once. The palace defenses, royal guard, and the orbs I put on guarding her and Cyntariel should be enough, but I can’t be sure. One shielded missile launched from a cloaked ship could level the palace, and destroy most of the city.”

  I also missed them both. Solyra was like a little sister, and Cyntariel was… I wasn’t sure, but I cared about her. Cyntariel made my love life rather complicated, but the more I got to know her the less jealous I was about her connection to Vik.

  He pulled me into his arms, and I was a little startled by it, but we were alone.

  “He won’t do that, that would open up the same option to be used on him. It would also ensure a rebellion. The people wouldn’t stand for a ruler that massacred a whole city just to kill one innocent woman. If not his sense of morality, politically and strategically he couldn’t afford that kind of attack. It’s also illegal to use ship class weapons in an atmosphere. They want to rule the empire, not destroy it.”

  I nodded, “We could resolve both issues once we have our new fleet, but I have a feeling this will all be settled within a month, much less in two when our fleet is complete. We can’t afford to lose a lot of ships, the ones we already have might not be enough against the Suateran and Stolavii fleets. Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t attacked us yet.”

  He shrugged, “Maybe, but as long as this ship isn’t destroyed, we could take out both fleets from a distance, with just the one ship.”

  I frowned, “Probably. We’re assuming they haven’t had any breakthroughs either, but war is the mother of all invention, and they aren’t stupid. Sorry, don’t mean to be negative, but we need to plan for the worst, and hope for the best. How are you doing?”

  Telidur smiled, “Good. I’m looking forward to tonight.”

  I raised an eyebrow, and shamelessly tossed my hair, “Really?” I asked a bit of a flirty tone.

  He snorted, “Yes.”

  He stole a kiss, and then stepped away as the bridge door opened. The bridge was hardly the place for intimate exchanges, and I felt flushed as I looked up. My eyes widened as I saw the poleaxed look on Vik’s face, and a smugness on Jillintara’s. I doubted they’d slept together, they hadn’t been alone long enough, but it looked like Jillintara’s seduction was proceeding smoothly.

  I couldn’t wait to talk to her, and she tossed me a wink as she sat at her station. There was also something wrong with me, because I didn’t feel any jealousy at all. In fact, I was more than a little turned on by the concept.

  Vik said, “Set a course out of the system, time to go to Raitov.”

  Telidur said, “Yes sir,” as he sat at his station, and the small fleet moved away from the planet.

  Chapter Twenty

  Raitov. Raitov was the fourth and last planet to be added to the empire. Of all the races in the empire’s spatial boundaries, they were the most inhuman and alien. Some might argue it was the Kaprorix, the saurian race that was, but at least they were bipedal, the Raitov weren’t.

  The Raitov was a bug like race, and their socio-political system was a hive like society. They were perhaps Vik’s greatest ally because of that, and could be his worst enemy if Xylla was less than pleased. They all tended to go in the same direction, whatever direction the governor of the planet was going in. Besides being governor, Xylla was also somewhat of a hive queen, she ruled absolutely, and everything was done for the hive.

  Of course, I say somewhat, because it wasn’t possible to equate them to an ant mound, or a bee hive, they were intelligent and self-aware, but like the other races their instincts played a large part in things. It’s what made them so loyal to the emperor, and the emperor’s family line. They were a hive, and they saw the empire as a larger hive they were a part of.

  When the first Isyth ship entered the Raitov system, they found a planet of alien life. There was evidence of a very advanced civilization, almost as advanced as the Isyth. Yet, they weren’t in space yet. The answer to that question wasn’t long in coming. They discovered the Stolavii were preying upon the planet, much like how they’d been preying on Earth the last two hundred years or so.

  The Raitov had tried to reach space, multiple times, but were always suppressed during raids from the Stolavii.

  It didn’t happen overnight, but the Isythians made contact, and that eventually led to them joining the empire. The Isyth fleet managed to stave off the Stolavii so the Raitov world could get a foothold in their own system. The Isyth empire wasn’t one for charity or good will, but it was still a mutually beneficial relationship. The empire got a lot out of it for their assistance. The merge of technical knowledge alone caused a large burst of growth throughout the empire. Much like the one happening with my advances, but on a slightly smaller scale.

  The empire had a lot going for it now as well. More ships in space, more resources for cheaper cost meant more credits and flourishing citizens. There was also the other new technology, being able to track things in all the empire’s systems with the probe network, as long as it wasn’t cloaked, and the new ships would eventually mean the Stolavii pirates and slavers would be put out of business. Not only would space travel expand exponentially, but it would be a lot safer. Not risk free, but being hijacked and enslaved wouldn’t be happening anymore.

  Assuming I managed to keep Vik alive long enough to see it done. Stability with the new fleet would take at least two months, and then some at a slower growth rate. The economic boom would take years to level off as we built thousands of freighter and merchant vessels. The math was pretty easy, there’d be ten times the commercial ships to keep up with resource demand. If the fleet had five hundred ships, that was almost five thousand commercial vessels, which would mostly be the size of a cruiser. Ironically, we could only build thirty ships of that size a month, fifteen at the two shipyards we planned to lease. It would take almost fourteen years, of course there’d be civilian’s building as well, so maybe in half that time?

  Point was, the next couple of months were key to it all happening. The empire and life wouldn’t be perfect, but we’d be a whole lot more secure after that. As long as the Kruterran empire behaved at least. I also wondered how long it would take for our scientists to advance our subspace knowledge and sciences, although I wasn’t going to hold my breath. It would be a while.

  I still wasn’t sure why the Stolavii and Suaterans hadn’t attacked yet, perhaps they didn’t have data on the new ship’s capabilities. Otherwise, they’d know they needed to attack soon, or give up on the idea completely when the one hundred eighty rolled off the line in just over three and a half weeks. Maybe they were still planning, and trying to figure out what happened to Denik’s blockades. It’d only been a month.

  Of course, they could have new technology too, but with the probe network we’d have seen any tests for that. They had no reason to build and move ships under stealth like Tek, and or Jervistad, only those two assholes knew about our eyes on all the systems. Or at least, we didn’t think they were aware of the probe network yet. That was one secret Vik had kept from the press, and off of the public data-net. Knowledge was power, especially tactical knowledge that the enemy didn’t know we had.

  I set up one of the orbs and launched it, as soon as we went through the wormhole, we’d cloak as the orb brought up its holographic and spoofing systems. Then we could slowly drop to the back of the formation. While I did that, I half-way listened as Telidur briefed Jillintara and Vik on our new precautions.

  “
Lori!”

  My mind replayed the last few seconds, he’d asked me if I could figure out a way to detect a cloaked ship.

  “Sorry, no. The cloak is effective on the electromagnetic spectrum, gravity and mass, and subspace energies. There are just no emissions for us to detect passively. Active sensors? It will absorb radar, lidar, gravity waves, and every other active scanning technique. About our only chance would be to hit it. Maybe someday, we’ll eventually advance in dimensional technology, and be able to detect quantum effects, and trace that kind of thing, but right now with our knowledge and tech it’s impossible.”

  Vik asked, “You’re sure?”

  I frowned, did he want a miracle?

  I withheld my comment about not checking my ass yet, and gave it some thought. There was really only one thing that the cloak didn’t account for, but that was because it wasn’t needed. Dark energy was confined in the reactors, there were no dark energy emissions from a ship.

  If we emitted a harmless low level dark energy field, we’d catch any ship that went through it cloaked, as their presence would disturb it. The problem with that was twofold, I wasn’t sure how to do it, how much energy it would take, and I was pretty sure it would only be effective very close to the ship which would negate its usefulness.

  Gravity could be sent out in spherical pulses, it was one of sensors in fact, could dark energy be sent out in pulses? Dark energy was a force similar to gravity, partially its opposite, so it should be possible. If someone did work out how, I wondered how long would it take to add a dark energy layer to the cloaking fields to negate the new scanning technique?

  I replied, “Get with our eggheads, ask them to figure out a way to create a low level dark energy pulse, like we send out gravity waves as part of our active sensors. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to see it ping a cloaked ship if they can figure out how. I can’t do it, I’m good at adapting, improvising, and improving current tech, or stuff that’s been proven and tested before, but this will require some creative work. While you’re at it, ask them if they can create a high powered dark energy beam.”