Coeus?

by Andur

  His dark eyes and the short hair in combination with an average body are my type. I don't like those over-trained types who paid a sizeable part of their income to a doctor in order to change their looks to the current beauty idea. Though his cold and expressionless face destroys any ideas of approaching him.

  It feels like he is regarding me as an unwanted pet that was pushed onto him.

  Of course I researched him over the net, but I came up with very little. He is a blank slate. The only facts I found out are that he passed all the tests for becoming a pilot with flying flags. Then he got an official employment at StarDrive, though some sources indicate that he already had previous ties to the company.

  Then he created his own company with money that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Gideon Corp is officially a subcontractor of StarDrive for testing new technologies and ships.

  Accidentally I am currently also on the company's only ship, which is registered as a freighter. There is no hint from where he got all the money.

  So either he has ties to the government or StarDrive. Those are the two most likely candidates who could have wiped his records clean. Most likely it's the latter since he is obviously tied to them.

  Suddenly Gideon leans back and sets his eyes on me. “Having your company crushed from one moment to the next must suck.”

  I almost choke on my coffee. “That's what you are thinking about? Almost two hundred thousand are dead! A hundred thousand are not accounted for!”

  My hands clench into fists and I start shaking as I start thinking about all my friends who probably died during the attack.

  He shrugs, looking down at his coffee. “It's surprising that the losses were so small. If you take the size of the station into account I would have estimated at least twice that number.”

  I massage my forehead and try to contemplate my situation. Apparently I am caught with a serious case of a techno-mage on this ship. I am also a little dense in some aspects, but at least I am able to care about people. I've to keep my emotions under control. It doesn't help to lash out at him for his lack of sympathy.

  “So let's try to go through this step by step. Apparently we have to deal with each other, so what's your problem. I can see that you don't like my presence.” I ask.

  He raises his eyes and looks deep into my eyes. “Living space.”

  I furrow my forehead. “Living space? This ship is huge if Sanguin told me the truth. What's the problem?”

  Gideon stands up and gestures for me to follow. The living room looks spacious enough. Behind the next door is a small kitchen, nothing special there. Taking me up the stairway leads us to a bathroom and a bedroom with a single, big bed.

  One level higher we enter a big storage room, filled with foodstuffs up to the ceiling.

  I bend over the cartons and start reading. “Pizza, lasagne, spaghetti, cheese noodles...” Even after several minutes of searching I fail to find anything remotely healthy.

  With a sour expression on my face I turn back to Gideon. He waited for me at the entrance. “Do you have salad?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Vegetables, fruits anything with vitamins?” I ask, feeling despair rising up inside me.

  “I don't like those.” Gideon focuses his gaze on the floor, thinking hard. Then he turns to the left and opens a compartment right next to the entrance. He leaves a handprint on the cover by doing so and I realize that it's covered by a layer of dust. It seems like he didn't touch the hatch since he started his trip.

  After some rummaging he unearthes a big box with the label 'Medical Supply' on it. Inside it are several boxes with pills.

  He turns his attention back towards me, expecting a reply.

  I roll my eyes. “Okay. I just hope that the supplies which Sanguin teleported to this ship contain something edible. What's next on the list?”

  Gideon leads me back to the cockpit where he finally decides to switch on the lights. I already gathered that he isn't a man of many words.

  “That's all? What's with the rest of the ship?” I ask, shocked. Where will I sleep? Is this leviathan really planned with only one pilot in mind? Which maniac designed this vessel? “Who designed this ship?”

  “Me.” Gideon bends down and picks up two worn plush toys. They look like they were extensively used and repaired many, many times. “That's all. The rest is completely automated.” He places them on the pedestal next to the pilot chair.

  Then he runs his fingers through his hair, looking around the cockpit. “We need to find a way to install a second acceleration chair. Otherwise you'll be crushed during our next battle.”

  I force my eyes away from the plush toys. Other grown men would be embarrassed about having something like this around, but Gideon seems to be completely oblivious of me seeing them. “Hah?” Crushed?

  “And you need a spacesuit.” He gestures at the chair. “Here, sit down. Familiarize yourself with the ship, but don't touch the controls. We are currently pursuing the enemy ship while the ship's manufacturing line is producing parts for the needed changes. I'll take my suit and go outside to supervise the work. We also need a bigger airlock to get the assembly sprites into the command module.”

  I don't need only a spacesuit. I need clothes and other daily niceties. I need my own room!

  Gideon leaves the cockpit and I wobble to the chair, then I drop myself into it.

  A moment later I activate my ability and connect myself to the ship. It automatically recognizes me as co-pilot and grants me the necessary rights after creating an account. Apparently Gideon already made the required changes while we were talking.

  I dive into the systems in order to study them. The more I explore the ship's design, the more I realize that this ship isn't a freighter. It's a dedicated warship!

  Upon trying to find out what Gideon intended to do with such a weapon I run into a firewall which is flagged as personal data. All I get is the flight plan of the ship's short life. It's very plain except for a random trip to an uninhabited sector close to the 'Greek' node.

  This person with the name Gideon Alvar is a single big mystery to me. Upon calling up the star chart I find three red dots leaving the system. One is the escaped enemy ship and the other two are the probes which were fired by the fourth ship. They are fleeing in different directions, but it looks like one of our ships will be able to catch one of the drones.

  The other drone and the enemy ship will leave the gravity well of Sol before we can catch them. The ship which we are hunting down is accelerating towards Rigil Kentaurus, also known as Alpha Centauri. It's a binary star system.

  The escaping drone is accelerating towards Altair.

  According to Sanguin's intelligence briefing the alien race has a warp-drive which allows them faster than light travel. They also have a means of generating unbelievable amounts of energy, which turns their ships into juggernauts with almost unbeatable shields and really powerful lasers.

  I experienced that first hand. If my station's lasers had focused any other ship it would've been atomized in an instant, but the alien ships lasted for seconds.

  On the other hand the aliens are using ion engines to propel their ships and lack the means to manipulate gravity in a meaningful way. That makes them incapable of reaching the same accelerations as our ships.

  Next I skip through the first contact records which were made available by Sanguin. The first missions found no signs of other intelligent races in a thirty light-years radius around Sol. Then a deep space mission returned with intelligence from a sixty light-years distant star towards the galactic centre.

  They encountered a colonized star system, but weren't able to do more than confirming that the people there were obviously in some kind of civil war. Ships of similar design were fighting each other.

  After the aliens tried to engage the exploration ship, the ship escaped by a hair's breadth, using our superior drives.

  After their return to Sol the elders decided that we aren't ready to conta
ct a war-like civilisation. Since Sol's resources still weren't used efficiently the elders decided that spreading our forces to colonize different star systems isn't wise. They buried the knowledge about long range teleportation and encouraged the technological and industrial build-up of our colonies.

  They hoped that we would stay undiscovered for a few more years and intended to release the knowledge about long range teleportation as soon as our military and industrial might grew too strong for a single system.

  Since we are now obviously discovered, the elders already started to build a dedicated war-fleet with this ship as a model, though their design has differences.

  Ships are being sent out in all directions to cover a sphere of thirty light years around Sol. They carry the necessary blueprints to build observation platforms and industrial nodes. For that purpose they are refitted with automated manufacturing lines and IMs, which are a recent invention and make this plan even possible.

  With astonishment I realize something important about the Coeus. It should have come to my attention when Gideon leisurely mentioned the changes he wants to make to the ship.

  The ship has two separate manufacturing lines and an army of IMs crawling through its insides. There is a patent on this technology and the fees to have even one manufacturing line with IMs are astronomical!

  The elders did this to avoid having our economy crushed over night. They released a plan to slowly turn our society's last workers away from their jobs as the IMs are taking over. Otherwise we would've been standing there with scores of unemployed people.

  Before my station was blown to pieces I was working hard on scratching the money together for a single assembly line and Gideon has two in this ship!

  My thoughts are interrupted as I notice Gideon's return. It has been a while. To my own shock I realize that two hours have gone by.

  I disconnect from the ship and stand up to face Gideon. He is holding a spacesuit? No, it's more like a dirty princess dress! There is a deep transparent v-cut in the front, which goes down to the navel.

  Taking the suit from him, I notice that the spine section is also transparent, running to the butt! “What's this?”

  “Your suit.” Gideon answers with a flat expression. “I took the design from a game called Warframe, like my own suit. Don't worry, the chair measured your sizes when you sat down. It'll fit perfectly.”

  “A game!? Warframe? What are you talking about?” I am beginning to get a really bad feeling about being locked up in a small, confined space with this guy! “There is no way I'll wear this!”

  “You don't like it? I thought you were the type. With all that lipstick and the make-up.” He looks down at the suit. “We can always change the parts which you don't like.”

  I reach for my mouth and wipe the lipstick off. Then I curse, remembering that I was searching for a partner before everything went to hell. “I was in the Coincidence during the attack.” I mutter.

  Gideon's eyes narrow. “That's why you looked so familiar. You are one of the women who tried to talk to me when I accidentally walked into that brothel.”

  Something in my head clicks and I remember that particular night. I and some friends tried in turn to pick up a sad and gloomy guy. It was just a matter of who would manage to pick him up. “No. It's. You. It's not a brothel!” I call out, feeling my face turning red.

  I have to change the subject. “This has to be changed! Especially the part revealing the butt!”

  For the first time since I met Gideon, he shows another expression than utter disinterest. But the emotion vanishes as soon as he displayed it. Was it disappointment?

  “And one other thing! What's about the assembly lines in your ship!? How are you paying for them? Are they illegal?” I ask.

  “Why should I need to pay for something that belongs to me?” He sighs. “Put it on for the time being and come with me. I'll show you how you can use an assembly line to make a new one. Design it yourself if you like.”

  He turns and leaves while my brain keeps making somersaults. I've never had a real brain short-out before. Either this idiot broke a ton of laws and will pay debts until the end of his life once someone finds out.

  Or he is fucking, filthy, insanely rich?

  25. ~Waiting.~

  “

  [8:34]: I want to know what happened at Jupiter and I want to know it now!

  [8:34]: We are researching it Mr. President.

  [8:35]: Researching isn't enough! I want answers!

  [8:35]: What about the giant city which flickered into existence above the Philippines and vanished?

  [8:35]: A hallucination, Sir!

  [8:35]: Shared by the citizens of the entire island?

  [8:35]: It may have been the mages, Sir.

  ”

  -Earth, Australia – Earth's Central Government Building

  -President's Office Protocoll

  En route out of the System

  Gideon

  My ship tries to evade, but yet another laser beam spears through my shields and armour. One of the fusion reactors turns critical, but I manage launch a last set of missiles from point blank range. This time my opponent won't be able to evade. There's no way to take out all the gravitational warheads before they reach their target.

  Then the cockpit is consumed by fire and I die.

  I yawn and open my eyes. Three days of playing through various VR-simulations are wearing me out.

  “We killed each other. Again!” Cyla grumbles in her seat beside me. “Your gravitation missiles were a surprise. Do you really think we can rig up a spell matrix small enough to make it possible?”

  Tapping my fingers on the armrest I contemplate my newly devised simulated weapon. For the sake of preparing ourselves for possible future battles we started training against each other.

  Both of us are allowed to make changes to the simulation as long as it stays inside certain parameters.

  “I honestly don't know. It would be the answer against their damned shields. All the power in the world wouldn't help them if they are smeared across their decks by the force of thirty Gs. At least I hope that they are made out of flesh like us.” Maybe the techno-wizards in Paul's research lab can make the idea work.

  I already forwarded a draft to them, but they have to miniaturize the concept. “Your trick with using the missiles to create phantoms of your ship wasn't bad either. Maybe we can use it in the short run. All we have to do is to remove the warhead and replacing it with an ECM-generator. The battles could very well be decided by electromagnetic warfare.”

  Cyla nods. “If this training wouldn't feel so pointless. We aren't military. There should exist a dedicated navy to do this. The elders made a poor choice in handling the situation like they did.”

  I tilt my head. She isn't wrong, but she isn't completely right either. “They did what they could under the circumstances. If they had created a dedicated navy, everyone would have asked what we need it for? If they had made the knowledge about long range teleportation public, then surely some idiots would have spread across the neighbouring systems, encountering the unknown much earlier. There is no way to tell which avalanche we are about to break loose. They did the best they could in giving all pilots and faceless a semi-military education.”

  Cyla snorts. “I always wondered what the theories regarding space battles were about. Do you really think that we can catch the enemy ship? I wish our sensors had gathered more about their drive. They went FTL a while ago, all we got is a trail of photon emissions.”

  “I think we could wreck our brains all day about it. The truth is that we know the theory behind warp-drives, but we have no idea on how to put it to the field. I would like to call the photon trail a front-wave from going FTL. It seems like they enclosed themselves in a space time bubble to slip through real space while annihilating all matter they encounter in the real universe.” I answer.

  Cyla picks up on my thoughts. “Space isn't completely empty. There is always some dust in the way
. That means if we know what to look for, we can detect their entry and exit points in a solar system. It may also be the reason why they didn't engage their drives so close to the ecliptic. Running into a larger mass could knock them out of FTL.”

  I scratch my itching beard. “That's actually an interesting idea. We've to confirm it though. It would be nice if we can use it against them. Given that we know their speed and course, we could arrange a nice and solid rock for them to run into. It sounds doubtful though, we would have to get a really exact measurement on their exit vector and hope that they can't change course during FTL-flight.”

  An incoming call from the net distracts me. Upon checking up on the identity of the one who called me I scowl. “Bitch!”

  “Excuse me!?” Cyla calls out.

  “Oh, sorry. Not you! I meant the incoming call!” I try to clear up the misunderstanding.

  “Your ex?” Cyla asks with a doubtful voice.

  “Close. My mother.” I terminate the call without even considering to answer it in front of Cyla.

  “Was that really okay?” She turns her gaze to me, studying me with interest.

  “Her entire existence is one big nuisance to me.” I answer, refusing to look at Cyla.

  After a short silence I decide that there is no point in postponing our departure any longer. “So should we try our luck then? There is no way to tell how fast the enemy ship will arrive in Rigil Kentaurus or if it is even going there.”

  “Then we shouldn't wait any longer and go there. It'll take some time to set up the recon-platforms throughout the system. If the ship hasn't appeared by the time we are reconnected to the quantum-net we can think of other options.” Cyla answers and starts issuing orders to the ship's teleportation matrix.

  I check on the fusion reactors and the power banks which are buffering the needed energy for the transition. With the alterations to the spell matrix we are now able to jump almost ten light years after buffering energy for a little less than a day. Unfortunately the changes to the matrix don't help in avoiding the wear on the energy banks.