Astraeus Station

by D. L. Harrison

  “When the enemy attacks and moves in, I assume from many thousands of directions in that extremely large sphere, the fleets by them can back up in a fighting retreat. Once their suckered in, the fleets with no enemy can leave the line, wormhole behind the fleets so they can’t escape, and dig into their backsides. Of course, that plan may be garbage, I just know out there near the FTL line we’d have flexibility and could move around the system at faster than light speed very quickly.

  “It just seems unwise to me to make the last stand around earth our first place of battle. But my idea might even be worse? I’ll let the admirals figure that out, and fight the fleet, while I fit myself in somehow. Who knows, simple might be better, have most of them out by Mars, wait for the enemy fleets to be stuck moving inward, say three hours of them accelerating in, then unload all our missiles since they don’t have a range anymore. Simple, direct, and brutal, and it could quite possibly work and make it a one-sided massacre preserving all our people and ships. We’d have like an hour to leisurely target ships and split up missiles, and then launch. At that distance and six hundred gravities, they’d be going a good percentage of light speed, and annihilate the enemy.

  “I’m not sure what plan is better, they both sound good to me.”

  Two admirals snorted, one said the first, the other said the second, then they glared at each other. I managed not to laugh.

  “So yeah, deciding tactics, and figuring out how to come up with five million crew, are two separate meetings most of us politicians don’t need to be in, though I hope I’ll be fully apprised of the chosen defense strategy this time, and I’ll also take suggestions on where my station can fit in.”

  “The rest of it depends on what happens next I think, as far as the aftermath when we’ve taken out the Grays. Releasing the colony ships, trade, what level of cooperation will we seek from our alien neighbors and traders. Expanding our empires borders past fifty light years, should we go to five hundred, less, more. At five hundred, the volume of spherical space goes up by a thousand times. Which means the possibility of nine thousand more life bearing planets within our new sphere. Without the Grays watching everything, we should create our own joint sensor network to monitor all the stars in our declared sphere. Unmanned probes to look for or warn off ships that encroach on Earth’s empire. I imagine at ten times the radius, there’ll be a lot more settleable worlds out there, and many thousands of resource systems.

  “I only mention it now, so all your leaders give it some thought over the next five weeks, and I’m open to discussing the possibilities technology wise. If we take down the Grays, there’ll be no more rules holding back other races, so we’ll have to be more vigilant, and create the level of cooperation we want with the other trading races out there.”

  I stopped there, I was losing them, they were all focused on the battle. Which was fair enough.

  The Chinese representative said, “If there’s nothing else for the broad overview. We need to split up into two groups. One to discuss tactics, and one to organize getting five million soldiers between all of us. We need to move fast, and the ships though easy to operate, will require some training time. Not to mention getting them outfitted with equipment, I imagine we don’t have time to fill crew quarters with soft beds, or to load up the bays with food. We can do so for the command ships, but the rest of them will have to rough it with sleeping bags on metal beds, and so forth.”

  I nodded, that was a good point, and not my problem. The ship could even provide water and rations if necessary, but I was loath to suggest it. That created food was mush, and kind of gross, even if it did have everything a body needed.

  There were no objections, and the meeting closed. As a recognized world leader I could monitor the other meetings, or at least review them, but I saw no reason to sit through them myself. I really wasn’t a tactician, and I had more than enough going on already.

  Instead of bothering Diana for an update on stealth and FTL communication technology again, I turned to the probe idea. Once the battles were done, we’d have a ton of ships half the size of the station that would be decommissioned. We simply didn’t have the crews for them. Just one of those ships could make thousands of probes capable of FTL and with the scanners to monitor a system. So, some of the fleet would be mothballed for future threats, but I could repurpose a small percentage of it to search out new life bearing planets and monitor things. Really, there was around thirty-four thousand G type stars within five hundred light years, so just a part of one of the behemoth ships would create enough FTL probes to cover it. Hell, it’d make several million of them. If the new largest warship could carry twelve million missiles, it could carry six million probes in the hull. Broken down, the ship would make tens of millions of probes.

  Well, that was easier than I expected, it’d taken me less than fifteen minutes. The probes would be about twice the size of a mini-platform, both to accommodate the wormhole drive and to power it. Once it got there it would mostly power down, and just retain enough power to run the sensors and the entangled communications.

  If only all our problems were so easily solved, I’d thought a probe network to keep an eye on Earth’s territory would be harder, turns out it was the simple part.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Diana flowed into the room with a grin on her face, and I hoped that meant good news. She gave me a kiss, and smirked. Damn, she really was sexy, and more beautiful to me every day.

  “Remember you told me to come up with an idea to use all those old reactors?”

  I nodded, a smile quirking on my lips.

  She tilted her head, “It turns out the superconductive material addressed several of our problems for quantum communications, instant communications, without entanglement. We’re not quite there yet, so don’t break out the champagne just yet, but we’re close.”

  “Define close.”

  She smiled, “It’s a tuning thing, experimenting, and software. No breakthrough is needed anymore, we just need to find the right design and polish the interface software. A week, tops, maybe sooner.”

  I nodded, “How would it work exactly, I mean tens of thousands of civilizations on a walkie talkie type system sounds… messy.”

  She giggled, “Yeah. Like I said, software. Theoretically there’s an infinite amount of bandwidth, of quantum frequencies. The primary frequency for our system will be data only and always active. A list of all the devices on the system, annotated by location, race, and user. Think of it as an addressing system, a smart yet decentralized switchboard.

  “If you want to call someone, you pick them out like you would in an address book on a smartphone. It would send a data packet out which all the receivers would get, but it’d be addressed, so only the addressee’s communications device would respond. Much like computers on a TCP-IP network. At that point, it would scan and find an unused frequency. Both machines would then open an audio/video connection on that new frequency, which none of the other machines would be listening to. Given the possibility of hacking, the new frequency would also be encrypted, and each encryption will be unique to the machines involved. So even if someone did build a hacking device to figure out what frequency two people were talking on to listen, all they would hear is white noise and gibberish.

  “The real trick of course, is getting one to all the different races. Probably why no one has bothered yet, because it’s just as easy to send one half of a quantum entangled pair.”

  I nodded, “Except this new way everyone could talk to everyone, instead of having thousands of different communicators for each race to have their own connection.”

  She nodded, “That’s why I’m doing it, and thought it worth the effort. It’ll also work great for keeping colonies in contact without having to maintain a specific command center and switchboard on Earth or somewhere else. It’ll work to connect fleets too, or civilian ships, the list goes on. Still, the problem I stated remains, it’ll be a lot easier for internal use.”

  “
Yeah, I have a plan for that. Well, two plans, but I’m hoping to find the stealth probe and evidence against the Gray’s first, along with a working non-entangled communication device, because I’m pretty sure my plan will only work once.”

  She frowned, “Don’t keep me waiting.”

  I grinned, “Yes, maam. I was thinking of the device down in the U.N. If they’ll let me near it, I can hack the Gray’s communication system with magic, at least once before they disconnect us to prevent us doing it again. I figure that will connect us to every race in their empire, and it’ll allow us to send a message. I can send the data on the stealth probes, the proof they violated the law instead of us, and of course, the technical designs and software for your new communication device.

  “At that point, anyone who is interested in having trade or communications with other species including us will build one and load the software, so we won’t have to send one at all, which neatly gets around that problem. I call it my three birds with one stone plan, because the other races will also be pissed at the Grays about the spying with the probes, and the Grays lying about that attack to manipulate them into wiping us out. My guess is a lot of them will still attack us out of greed for our stuff and in fear of the Grays if they don’t, but some won’t.”

  She tilted her head, “Second plan?”

  I smirked, “In case we fail to find the probes or evidence, I’ll still try three days before the battle, even if I can’t prove it. And send the data on the new device then. If for some reason, they didn’t just exclude us from that transmission that we need to be wiped out, and we’re already separated from their communication system in totality and I can’t hack a signal, I’ll go to plan B.

  “Plan B involves the Vax. We’ll pay them if necessary. They have contacts in thousands of systems, and all the systems that would be the most likely to build one of our communications devices anyway. The xenophobic and aggressive ones wouldn’t build one, even if we did manage to pull off plan A. I could send the data, our suppositions or proof as the case may be, along with the designs and software. The Vax can forward it all out for us. Of course, that’s just thirty percent of the relatively local trader civilizations, they haven’t traded in almost a three-quarters of the empire yet because of their older FTL drives and the time limitations to get there. Still, it will get the closest ones, and eventually that knowledge will spread, when the furthest ones they know share the design and system with those further out. Eventually, everyone in the old empire will have the opportunity to build one, if they want, it will just take longer.”

  She bit her lip, “Okay, but if we’re having them build them, I’ll have to include the metallurgical process for that alloy in the specifications and instructions, which will lead them to much better fusion reactors.”

  I shrugged, “We don’t use them anymore. It might let them use a reactor or two less in their ships, but it won’t give them other advances, will it? And that’s assuming they even think of it. They might just focus on the superconductor part of things, and never think to test it for thermo-electric qualities. Still, even if they did, who cares.”

  She nodded, “I don’t disagree, just thought I’d verify. We could make a lot of money selling that technology after all. I get giving away the communication devices though, can’t trade anything without communications.”

  “How about…”

  She interrupted, “Don’t ask me about the stealth system. I don’t have a clue. Even if we somehow come up with a new scanning technology in under five weeks, there’s no way to know if the thing isn’t already stealthy to that too. Right now, I don’t even have any theories past our current scanning technology. Much less the math, or the hardware. I’ve got a team on it, but who knows how long it will take.”

  “Have we tried looking for what isn’t there? Besides a ship or probe I mean.”

  She frowned.

  “Just saying, isn’t there a relatively even spread of stellar dust out to the heliopause, thinning evenly on its way there? If there’s a spot with absolutely nothing in it, not even background radiation…” I trailed off.

  She nodded, “You want me to look for indirect evidence. That’s not a horrible idea. It’ll take time though. I’ll have to adjust the software and do a very detailed scan of a very large solar system.”

  I nodded, “Thanks, although you might start with Earth orbit. Chances are it will be close enough to Earth for detailed passive scans, definitely no further than the asteroid field past Mars. If you find something, I can zip out there. I bet my magic will find it, as long as I’m in range. Of course, I’ll wait until the fleet is built. Three days should give their leadership time to pull out of the attack, and to consider things. I fear if we expose them, they’ll do something rash and attack early, so just in case we’ll wait for the last minute.”

  If they attacked now, or even in two weeks, we’d be totally screwed. Of course, waiting was a risk as well, since they’d see our building. Maybe I’d take out the stealth probe but leave off on the transmission until the last minute.

  Or maybe I could just move the building fleet to a spot the probe can’t see, away from Earth. Then do it all right before we move in the fleet and pick up the soldiers on the planet. That was a better plan.

  She asked, “What will you say to convince the U.N. to give up the Gray communications device. You can’t exactly out the supernatural races, no matter how important it is.”

  “I’ll tell them I can hack it, once. And send the proof of the Grays’ lies and spying, as well as an alternate way to communicate. Also, that it will only work once. If they ask how I’ll say proprietary technology we’re not going to share.”

  She nodded, “Alright, I’ll get started on that scan. See you at dinner?”

  “Can’t wait.”

  She smirked, and then left the command center.

  I took a deep breath, and I tried to relax. The building would finish without me, I had the probe system done, and my pre-battle plans were in place if not ready yet. Outside of the attack life went on, so I turned my attention to running the station, and my inventing, even as I monitored the meetings going on.

  The next four weeks passed quickly, there was far too much to do and only five weeks in which to do it.

  The easiest thing had been finding the stealth probe, the cheeky bastards had it in Earth orbit, no doubt to keep a close eye on us. It was about the size of a shuttle. As I’d suggested, she’d scanned for unnaturally smooth holes in the stellar dust, and we found it in less than an hour because she’d chosen Earth as the starting point.

  To verify it wasn’t something else going on, I took a ship to the surface, and passed by it. Something that was no doubt routine to the probe and wouldn’t be flagged by the software. I didn’t try to hack it, or even connect to it, I just verified my magic could feel it there and connect. It could. Maybe that was overly paranoid, but something had tipped them off when I did it for their fleet of ships. If I only got one shot at it, I wanted to make it count.

  As long as I was there on Earth, I approached the U.N. security council and managed to persuade them to give me the communication device. Since in their eyes, the Grays were the enemy, and would soon be gone, the device was easier to get than I expected. It simply wasn’t important anymore, and it’d be more than worthless when we wiped the bastards out.

  I’d also moved the building ships that first week to the other side of the sun where the probe wouldn’t see them. There was only five hundred seventy-six in the first round, so they’d never believe for a second that we’d have over two point four million in less than five weeks from then.

  In short, everything was in place for my plans for before the battle, although I wouldn’t know the results of it until I moved on it. On that last building day, I planned to hack the probe and look for proof, do what I could to sabotage that system, then immediately hack the communications system and send that data, along with the communication device data for the unentangled communicati
on system Diana would have finished up. In all, it should take me less than a half hour to do all of it, giving the Grays little time to respond or cut us off.

  I also wouldn’t know if I could still hack their communications system until the last moment. I was afraid if I tested it, they’d notice and disconnect it from the system, like they had the original scout ship. Of course, I’d have the communicator Threx gave me if that was the case, and then go to plan B right away.

  Once their probe was eliminated, the hidden fleet would round the sun and start loading soldiers with shuttles. It wouldn’t take that long, with two point four million shuttles, they’d all be loaded at once from specified pick up points, then they’d deploy the ships.

  The eight countries with colony ships took my advice, and for the next five weeks plus, they’d be waiting out there for the war to end. After which, depending on which way it went, they’d either flee the empire in eight disparate directions to restart humanity somewhere else, or go to their assigned worlds right there in Earth’s territory.

  The tactical meetings went on for weeks, but in the end the plan was quite simple. We’d have four hundred thousand ships, or four hundred fleets, englobing Earth at two light minutes out. They’d be the last line of defense.

  The solar system was just too huge. Even with the remaining two thousand fleets, to cover everything. There was also the problem of intimidating the attackers, we thought they might take one look and abort, call for reinforcements, or… something. I suspected even the four hundred fleets would give them a moment of pause.

  As a result, they’d modified my plan A in the meeting. We’d be taking the rest of the fleets out of the SOL system completely, and station them one light year away in the void between stars. They’d have three days out there to finish familiarizing themselves with the controls, and to run a few simulations.