Cassie said, “Nope, but is ten of those little ships enough for each of theirs?”
Darrell replied, “Their shields are stronger than ours, by over half, similar to how our ships fared against the Vrok before our upgrades. With a hundred beams each we should be able to take out all their ships within twenty seconds. I estimate we’ll lose two to three ships in every group during that exchange. If they split their fire evenly instead of taking out a ship at a time, we won’t lose any. Ten to one odds will make the difference.”
“Alright, let me get their tech, then you can attack.”
Darrell highlighted the quantum link to follow, and I dropped my magic into the space station and followed it. As I downloaded all the data, I determined we were ahead of them everywhere else, it was just their subspace beams, shields, and wormhole drives that were better.
More than that, I was able to verify Diana was correct. Their wormhole drives were faster by tunneling into the layers between the first and second level subspace dimensions instead of normal space and subspace. The denser weapons and shields were accomplished by tighter specifications using new materials technology, something Diana would have to adapt to the nanites if possible before I could upgrade the fleets.
“Okay, I’m clear.”
I sent a quick message to Diana, so she’d know the new data was in the system.
I just watched then. With Darrell in charge of the fleets, a copy of him in every ship, the differences were stark. No basic commands and standard formations. The ships acted independently, and no two battles were done exactly the same way, but they were tailored to the target formations and specific locations. The ships jumped in and opened fire. As the enemy returned fire, the ships started to move evasively in a pattern that required the enemy to move their attacks from one ship to another.
Despite that tactic, we lost on average two ships per enemy ship as Darrell expected. Apparently he’d taken into account his ability to control the battles so finely. If I’d been in charge with my automated hammer, we’d have lost five or six ships per every Keldet ship.
“Give me ten seconds, then transmit.”
I sunk into my magic and sent it to the alternate Earth’s joint command center, which they called the United Space fleet. Then I jumped from the tiny stealth probe to the Keldet Empire paired communicator, and I took control on the other end.
Darrell transmitted his message in Keldet, and I routed it to all the races.
“The Keldet empire is no more, you are free of them. The current missions of genocide will be aborted immediately. You are free to do as you will.”
Short and to the point. Maybe I should’ve reviewed Darrell’s planned speech before we got started. Then again, it was probably just as well. I pulled my magic back.
When I came out of it, Darrell was also done taking down all the space stations and the rest of the Keldet’s space infrastructure.
It was almost too easy with Darrell doing most of the work, sure we’d lost ships, but we’d planned to.
“It’s done, keep an eye on those fleets and make sure they disperse before attacking either world.”
Darrell said, “Understood.”
Despite how scary it was because it was just… too easy, I was fairly satisfied with what we’d done. We’d secured that humanity’s future in that quantum universe, and the seventy-two million ships we lost were nothing to the tens of trillions I had sitting in our void.
We didn’t even have to talk to that humanity, the less we interfered the better. They’d gotten the same Keldet message after all, when I’d routed to all the Keldet’s FTL species in the thirty-eight galaxies, they’d gotten it too.
Then… all hell broke loose. I knew this was too easy.
Chapter Twelve – Interlude
Five minutes ago…
Captain Hius of the Keldet Empire said in a panicked voice, “Commander! We have a problem.”
Commander Jilo frowned at the captain. He didn’t like the panic in the younger officer’s voice and made a mental note of it for his next review. The universes could be an unpredictable and dangerous place, that kind of excitability wasn’t a good thing in one of his officers.
“Report, Captain.”
Hius winced, “Yes, sir. Universe nine five eight six was just attacked. Our civilization there just lost all their ships to a surprise attack. There’re three hundred and eighty million enemy ships, and they’ve taken over the borders and are currently destroying Keldet infrastructure. They are not destroying the Keldet planets, as of yet.”
Jilo nodded calmly, even as he felt quite a bit of shock himself at the news. He brought up the data on that universe. It’d been four hundred years since they’d encountered that version of the Keldet. They’d given them their best weapons and shields and upgraded their wormhole drives, but they had of course withheld the quantum universe jumping technology. At last report, they were expanding steadily, if a bit slowly for the emperor’s taste. At any rate, there hadn’t been any signs of another threat in that universe, which could only mean one thing.
They were being attacked by another universe, another race had quantum technology. It was bound to happen sooner or later, but he didn’t like it. They’d need to be dealt with.
Jilo looked up, and Hius was searching through their stealth sensor net data in that universe.
“What have you determined?”
Hius said, “There’s obviously another stealth net in that universe, one that’s not ours, and who knows how long it’s been under surveillance. They knew where every ship and space infrastructure of our Keldet counterparts were. Their empire was taken down in moments. We need to investigate further.”
Jilo frowned, “No. The last two orders given were to remove the two systems, Nyria and Earth. That is what must’ve triggered the attack. That makes these interlopers either Nyrian or human.”
Hius said, “With all due respect, sir. Neither the Humans nor the Nyrians have ever been a power in any of the universes we’ve visited. The humans here are still on their planet, and their technology is crude and uninspired.”
Jilo grunted, “Send a fleet to take care of it, now. We will not wait like cowards, when just one of our fleets outnumbers them by almost three to one. I want one of their ships captured, that will tell us all we need to know.”
Huis said, “Yes, sir. Sending orders to fifth fleet, they’re next on tap for a cross universe mission.”
Jilo wasn’t as certain as he acted, but that was the fate of a commander. Showing any doubt would destroy morale and just get him stabbed in the back in the long run.
The fifth fleet was a trillion ships strong. It wasn’t often they had to dispatch a full fleet, but on the good side they’d never encountered an enemy that could withstand a full fleet before.
The ships jumped, most of the human’s three hundred and eighty million ships were surrounded by three ships, some by two.
He felt his shoulders relax slightly, as their ships started to explode.
Hius said, “Their ships are small, it will be difficult to capture one. We’ve also discovered that their ships are made of nanites, which will make it even more difficult to…” Huis trailed off.
Anger surged in his chest at the captain showing signs of cowardice once more. His eyes flicked down to his console, and then adrenaline surged powerfully locking up his body as he saw the battle status.
Their unknown enemy had jumped in ten trillion more ships, outnumbering them ten to one, and fifth fleet was being massacred. The command to order a retreat got stuck on the tip of his tongue. If he retreated then he was dead. If he watched his fleet torn apart, he was dead. Such incompetence or cowardice in a commander would never be accepted.
“Why aren’t they jumping?”
Hius replied in a daze, “Sir, the small ships are putting out some kind of quantum resonance burst a hundred times a second. The waves are distorting any attempt to create a quantum jump field.”
Well, that meant
a retreat was out too, if they couldn’t use the drives in a tactical fight then they couldn’t use them to retreat either.
It wasn’t like it was his fault, he’d never imagined the enemy could come up with that many more ships so fast. He considered sending sixth through tenth fleet but dismissed it. What if the enemy had even more ships? They’d fought the first battle at ten to one odds, and now the second they did the same. They obviously were committing only that ratio of numbers, so who knows how many ships they may possess.
By the time his muscles unlocked, fifth fleet was nothing but a memory.
He straightened and stood up, “I will report this to the Admiralty personally.”
He thought sadly of his wife and children, he knew he’d never see them again, as he left the command center and took the elevator to the top floor. The Keldet Empire helped other empires of Keldet, it was the way the universes should be, with them in control and on top, but never at the risk of their own universe’s empire.
Of course, it was a no-win scenario, he’d have been shot for cowardice if he hadn’t sent in the fleet.
He decided to blame it on the humans. It was just a guess, but the only clue they had was the attack came right after sentencing humanity to destruction. Blaming the Nyrians would be worthless, since Nyria no longer existed in their universe they couldn’t be used as leverage...
Chapter Thirteen
“Damn, didn’t see that coming. I mean, I knew there were probably other races, and even other Scotts running around the universes, but I didn’t think we’d run into them so fast. It also explains how the Keldet got so big in this universe compared to ours, they had help. I have a feeling they did what I wanted to do for the Earth in the universe that the Vrok was using for food stock, before Cassie talked me out of it. They gave them technology.
“Darrell, I need a connection to one of those ships. Wherever that Keldet empire is, their top priority will be to find and destroy us, so we have to get them first. That means finding an intact quantum communicator in one of their ships, whatever universe it’s set to should be theirs.”
Self-defense had to be our highest priority.
Cassie said, “Agreed.”
Darrell said, “I found one mostly intact, no power and open to space, but the ship itself is otherwise in good shape.”
I sent through my magic and jumped it from our scout destroyer to the enemy ship it hovered next to. There was no power, but just reading the hardware I knew they didn’t have anything we didn’t already have. Their weapons and shields were exactly the same as the Keldet local to that quantum universe, which told me they’d shared those technologies but not quantum technology, from the communicators, to the jump drive.
They also didn’t have a quantum singularity weapon.
I could never power the whole ship with my magic, but when I found their communicator, I was easily able to power that up with just my magic, and I pulled the data from it. Not just their universal frequency, but I got more too, including their data frequency. By its very design, a non-paired quantum communicator meant decentralized command and control on that data frequency.
Which meant I knew their fleet numbers.
“Okay, I know what universe they’re in, and I also know they have nine more fleets of a trillion ships, plus millions more at their borders. I’m splitting all our ships, so we’ll have ninety trillion in two days, to keep the ten to one odds that’ve been so successful.”
Darrell said, “Got it, I can put one of the ten new stealth networks there tomorrow morning, that will give us a full day to gather data and plan our attack on the following day.”
“Darrell, disintegrate the rest of the enemy ships, we don’t want any races from this universe reverse engineering it. It’s bad enough in a couple of centuries every FTL race in our territory will be mucking about in other universes, if they figure it all out.”
Cassie grinned, “Yeah, if we’d only known earlier what we were giving away when we sent out the plans and data for that non-paired quantum communicator.”
I nodded, truth was truth.
Jessica said, “Another war of sorts. The price of protecting humanities. It’s only been a few days too. So I don’t imagine this will be the last war we walk into, when we run into other races with cross universe technology.”
Cassie asked, “Should we give up on the idea?”
I looked Jessica’s way too, for her answer.
Jessica shook her head, “Better we run into them in other universes, and not wait until our own is invaded. It’s worth the risk, to save billions of human lives every two days, I think. Darrell and the nanites give us a distinct advantage as well, not to mention your magic, Scott.”
I said, “Agreed. Competition shouldn’t stop us. We just have to stick to self-defense. If that Keldet multi-universal race had let it go, we wouldn’t be attacking them. But they’re conquerors, and we’re a threat they’re going to be searching for, so we need to confine them in self-defense.”
Cassie shook her head, “We attacked their Keldet in another universe, wouldn’t we have done the same in their place?”
“Here in our universe yes. In another one, no, not if they did what we did, and only quarantined Earth but otherwise kept them safe. We defend ourselves from everything, but the other humanities only from destruction or exploitation. We left the Keldet worlds alone, just took them out of space.”
Cassie nodded, “I’m in, just clarifying where we all stand, given the startling change.”
I smiled, “Good. So what’s going on in our universe?”
We got back to our normal day.
The scents of garlic bread, meatballs, and tomato sauce reached my nose as I moved toward the kitchen. When I walked in, there was also spaghetti boiling on the stove, but I only had eyes for my wife who looked amazing in a pair of yoga pants and a long black t-shirt.
I gave her a lingering kiss in greeting, since we had a little privacy with Cassie, Melody, and Michael in the living room. Our intimacy had heated up lately, in direct proportion to Michael sleeping the night through and letting us get some much-needed rest.
“Hi, gorgeous.”
She grinned, and then gave me a playful push as I moved away to start setting the table, and put out the drinks, grated cheese, and other condiments for Italian.
“How was your day?”
I nodded, “My days are crazy now, other universes…” I filled her in on what happened.
She nodded, “I have a team working on the second-generation wormhole drive. It’s working on a test ship already, it’s just a matter of calibrating it. It’s so much faster it’s taking time to work out precise navigation.”
We didn’t really need it, not with jump drives, but it was something we could sell to other races without compromising the whole quantum technology multiple universe thing.
She added, “The shields and weapons will take a little longer. I already determined we can do it without creating a class three nanite. It’ll just be an upgrade to the class twos that will be compatible with the previous version. But that’ll take a few days, probably.”
“No rush, we can take them without it, and we’re moving in two days.”
Diana smirked, “So despite your best intentions, you’ll be dealing with other universes four days in a row?”
I nodded slowly, that was true.
Darrell would be putting out ten more stealth networks in ten more universes tomorrow morning early AM. One of those would be to the multi-universal Keldet empire, but the other nine had a high probability of yielding at least one more universe to muck about in. Then we’d deal with the empire the next day, and the day after that we’d have the next ten universes with stealth networks.
Not to mention the two or three universes Darrell could take care of unilaterally tomorrow.
Obviously, there was going to be a lot of bleed over, adding ten universes to our stealth network every two days.
“Yeah, if the crap hits the fan in
our universe, we’ll obviously have to pause until that’s cleared. It’s also taking away a little time from my invention design, though what we have out there now is more than good enough. It’s really not that time consuming though, what we did today only took a half an hour in total, the rest of the time I was working my normal job.”
Diana tilted her head and pointed out, “I figured it would be more than that.”
I nodded, “If I had to program the strategies and assign targets, and do all the research on new universes, it would be very time consuming. But with Darrell in charge of the stealth network, feeding me the important information up front with no research, and controlling the fleets and assigning those targets, battles just became a whole lot easier for me.
“I can just focus on the big picture, building our fleets, and upgrading the ships when it comes up.”
Diana bit her lip, then kissed me.
“It’s a lot of responsibility.”
I shrugged, “It is, but I’m used to it. We’ve had the human race on our shoulders for fourteen years, and what we’re doing for other human races isn’t nearly as comprehensive. The satisfaction I get from it makes it worth it, and you keep me steady.”
She grinned, “I do?”
There may have been more kissing at that point, until the timer for the spaghetti went off and we got the food on the table.
The others joined us at that point, but of course Cassie just had a glass of wine while the rest of us dug in.
I asked, “Anything new in lower subspace. What should we call it anyway? It seems like subspace should be called upper-space, or something, and the lower frequency quantum fabric should be subspace.”
Melody grinned, “True, but the other races would have questions. Lower subspace works for just us. The small ship I sent into that lower subspace within a solar system died in seconds. The energy dampening or entropic force is definitely far more dense and powerful within the inner solar system corresponding space. Like subspace it has no matter, or at least our sensors didn’t pick up any.
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