Tech Mage

by D. L. Harrison

  Cassie nodded.

  I said, “This one won’t have that, it’ll also be separate, so I suggest this ship never flies or leaves your control. Each new ship will build a small device like the table in engineering, but smaller, like a desktop pc size. All we have to do is remove it, and then set it up somewhere with power. It’ll report all the data and information related to the ship back to wherever you set up the command center. They can also connect together, as long as they’re in physical proximity.”

  Cassie asked, “Connected? That helps us how?”

  “Manageability. What happens when you have ten thousand ships? Assuming you’d build that many, each one would have a separate black box. Instead of that, you could connect them all, and have twenty or thirty in the command center that monitored for anomalies, like break downs, disconnects, by location, or when one powers up its weapons. Watching all of them all the time would be impossible at that point, and take a command center the size of the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

  Diana giggled.

  I shrugged, “It’s essentially what the aliens have, and those connections are how I’d get magical access to all their ship types, it’s one giant wireless network that could theoretically span the universe given it operates over entangled particles. Not incidentally, it’s also how the command center communicates with all the ships. Instant communication, to communicate with a ship not in the network, it would be limited to light speed communications.

  “Want to take a look outside? The five ships are building.”

  Cassie nodded, “Sure. I’ll pass on that recommendation, that this ship goes nowhere.”

  We started to walk for the exit.

  “You know, this cavern will only fit about thirty ships.”

  Cassie said, “The general is looking into it. With the reactor shielded from detection, it shouldn’t be hard to find a base we can start stashing them in. For now, we’ll be limited to producing twenty-five a week, made from the five being built now. I imagine when we move to a new base, the original will stay here as a backup, just in case, and we can start cranking them out. I suspect plan greed will be a go once we have a large number of them.”

  I nodded, “I’d also suggest when you find pilots for them, all test flights happen in daylight, when our side of the Earth is faced away from the asteroid belt. They can’t detect the fusion plants, but if they have line of sight, they’d be able to recognize a ship. The optical scan systems are light years past what we have. We’ll also need hydrogen fuel soon, there’s enough for a couple of weeks, and the new ships won’t have any.”

  Cassie said, “Being handled. What about the shielding, without you there if we power down a ship won’t we lose the shield? Won’t the aliens see a blip before the reactor can fully power up?”

  I shook my head, “Supercapacitors. The shield is part of the startup sequence, and the capacitors will have enough energy stored to shield and fire up the reactor. Even the first time it’s started, the reactor on the builder ship supplying power will be connected for that first startup sequence, and to provide power. If for some reason that energy gets drained and there isn’t enough, the startup sequence will be aborted until another ship can hook up and provide the power, sort of like jump starting a car. The only thing you need me for at this point is assembling reactors, and the greedy plan.”

  We paused the conversation as we walked outside, and we took a look around. The main ship reconfigured itself repurposing a portion of the hull nanites to create an EPS conduit that ran toward the back of the cavern, with five T junctions to provide power to build the new ship.

  “The tubes are EPS conduits, the box they’re connected to off the T junctions are energy to matter converters. The ship built five of them out of repurposed nanites, like the power conduits, which will all be absorbed back into the hull when its finished. All five have already started creating nanites, it’ll take a week to make the several trillion that make up the ship, and most likely an extra day on top of that to create the resources for me to build the reactor and spare.”

  Cassie said, “Damn, that’s amazing. It can’t do more than five?”

  I shook my head, “The power requirements for energy to mass takes about eighteen percent of the reactor, leaving ten percent to keep the ship’s idle systems running. It could build a hundred ships at once, but it would take twenty times longer as the power demands cycled through.”

  Diana said, “There’s not much for us to do at this point but monitor, so I’m going back to the labs on four to get back to studying and learning.”

  Cassie nodded absently, and Diana waved awkwardly as she took off.

  It’d be interesting to see what she and her teams came up with, in comparison to what the aliens had. Assuming of course, the greedy plan was ever approved. Of course, the former would take years as the fabrication technology on Earth was developed to take advantage of the new theories, whereas the latter would take hours to gather and perhaps days to implement via my magic.

  “So, how did you wind up here?”

  Diana and I were sharing dinner, I wasn’t sure where the other two were.

  Diana said, “I was recruited right out of college. Some of the projects I worked on during my post-graduate work to get my doctorate were sponsored by the military. I guess I came to Schafer’s attention back then. I can’t talk about the projects, they’re still military secrets, but they were significant enough. I took over as head scientist on the project five years ago.”

  Huh, she got her doctorate at twenty-four? She was smarter than I first thought.

  Diana asked, “Your magic is pretty impressive.”

  I laughed, “It just got more so. Rebuilding a motorcycle engine isn’t nearly as impressive, or even a corporate jet.”

  Which really, led to a lot of that paranoia I spoke of earlier. Even I could see I’d become dangerous, on my own I could create powerful ships, even if I never shared the secrets with anyone else. I was… a national security risk. It was somewhat ironic, that the preparations I’d taken proved them right. Still, they’d never know, if they kept their word, and I walked in five years.

  She laughed, “I suppose not. Any suggestions on what I should focus on?”

  I thought about that for a minute, and I looked around to make sure we wouldn’t be overheard.

  “I suspect the more powerful ships are just the same nanite technology, but with different firmware to maintain the different ship and all its systems, a whole lot more of them, and perhaps larger or multiple reactors of the same size to power it. I would think programming that firmware would be up there in importance, and it could create any ship, weapon, or system you could think of, outside of the reactor. For some reason, the nanite technology isn’t compatible with reactor systems. Manufacturing of reactors is a big one too.”

  She nodded, “I have groups on all of that. It’ll take a long time to truly understand what we already have, before we can start trying to develop something new. I’m just getting to the point where I feel competent in operating it, much less in how it all works.”

  I shrugged, “It’s only been a few days.”

  Diana looked around, “Do you ever wonder what they’ll do with it? I mean, besides learn about it and try and defend ourselves from the aliens if they object to us stealing their technology. Sure, we could argue salvage rights, but…” she trailed off.

  I frowned. I hadn’t thought much about anything negative until I saw her concern, but the U.S. could use the tech to take over the world, pretty easily. I left off that part though, and I mentioned a few other things that had occurred to me.

  “Well, the tech could be used to replace communications with quantum entanglement, which would mean instant communication to probes around the solar system or beyond, not to mention no more cell towers or radiation from cell phones, wi-fi, and all that. It could also solve our energy problems, though there is some risk in fusion. The scanning technology would increase our security at ports, b
orders, and the like. How about a car that never needed repairs, nanite sky scrapers that would go up in a month, the medical systems could also overturn the health industry. Anti-gravity would make access to space cheap and easy, we could mine Jupiter for hydrogen, and other resources from around the solar system. Explore the stars? I suspect there’s a lot more.”

  She nodded, “Don’t forget starvation, the food replication part of the energy to matter systems. Still, all that would take a hundred years the way the government moves, they’ll keep it to themselves for a long time.”

  I snickered.

  She looked around again, “Balance of power.”

  I nodded once in understanding, and we dropped it without saying more. She was obviously worried about that, and I felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner. The scanners could pick up fissionable material, it would be child’s play for a few hundred of the small scout ships to sweep the Earth and destroy nuclear weapons, and nothing else the other countries had would have a prayer at getting through the shields on one of the ships.

  I liked America, and Americans were good people, but the government was a whole other thing, and they had no business ruling the world. Maybe it was naïve, but I really hoped they wouldn’t be doing that.

  The whole thing just seemed incredibly dangerous at that point, I had to worry about aliens, world wars and death tolls, not to mention myself. All jumps in technology caused waves, and we were taking a shortcut through thousands of years of advancements. It was cool, but it was also worrying.

  Chapter Six

  The next six weeks went quickly.

  The first five ships had been finished, which in turn had made twenty-five more, which the general sent off but wouldn’t tell me where. The black boxes were also sent somewhere else. I understood need to know, compartmentalizing, and all that, but I couldn’t help but feel untrusted.

  Regardless, that’d happened six times, so the government had a hundred and fifty advanced alien ships.

  Hell, it was possible they had thousands wherever they were being moved too, all waiting for me to show up and build their fusion plants. I doubted it, but it was possible each batch of twenty-five had been building a hundred and twenty-five a week since they’d left.

  I’d also thought more about the possibilities in the future, and I struggled with what I should and could do about it if the president decided to conquer the world. To that end, I’d also worked on my own personal project and kept tweaking things to make them more efficient, and things not quite so bulky. Personal nanite systems for a human sized body could be much smaller, thanks to the square cubed law, being a person I was much smaller than a ship two hundred feet long and twenty feet in diameter. Still, they required some room.

  If it isn’t clear yet, I basically built a powered suit with magic, modifying the nanite firmware to support that shape. The bad part was I hadn’t been able to test it outside of its quiescent form which conformed snugly to my body, I didn’t trust that I wasn’t being watched at all times.

  My magic could only power so many nanites, and everything there was a tradeoff. It had shields, flight which included inertial dampening, life support, healing, communications, and weapons. Theoretically, if it worked. I was sure it would work, but I just wasn’t sure if it would work well.

  I also worried that if shit did hit the fan, my sister would undoubtedly be in danger and used as a pawn, so I remained hopeful that I was just being paranoid as I considered plans within plans in case my government ever turned on me. I could go to her and set her up in a new life easily enough, but given all the CCTV and facial recognition I had no doubt it wouldn’t take them long to find her in a city.

  Which meant stashing her on a farm or something, and her kicking my ass for doing so and disrupting her life a second time.

  The main point was, I felt a sense of responsibility for it all, and I was so over my damned head it wasn’t funny. No, I couldn’t control the government’s decisions, most of the blame would be theirs, but they wouldn’t have the ships if it wasn’t for me.

  Diana and I had grown closer over the six weeks, and we spent a lot of evenings together. Just a friendship, although there were moments that I regretted that fact, it was the smart play. She really was sexy in a hot librarian geeky kind of way, if eight years older than I was. Still, it was the only woman available syndrome that brought up those brief regrets, so it was better left alone in my opinion. I’d survive.

  Not much changed with the other two on the team. Cassie and I joked around, but our relationship remained very shallow and I learned almost nothing of substance about her past or who she was as a person, and Jemma kept her distance completely.

  At the end of those six weeks we were directed to pack up, and we were told that we were moving. We’d leave the original ship in the secret installation, but everything else was going including Diana’s teams of scientists working to learn the new technology, scientific theories, and mathematical disciplines. On the fun side, we were being taken to the new base in one of the five building ships.

  I didn’t find out where we were going until we landed, and it turned out we didn’t go far at all. We were moved to Peterson AFB, right outside Colorado Springs. Which perhaps not so ironically was the base that space command was located out of. The ships flew into a vast hangar that would hold fifty of the ships side by side, and there were several hangars up and more being built.

  We were hustled across the base to a high security building, and then led to a conference room where the general waited for the four of us.

  Schaefer waved at the seats.

  “Welcome to civilization. This building is ours and where we’ll be doing most of our work. There are sublevels with labs for your scientists, Diana. We’ll also be continuing to build until we reach three hundred ships, but twenty-five a week is more than enough as the builders putting up hangars need to match our pace, four are up and we’ll need two more. That should be six more weeks.

  “Scott, you’ll continue to build the reactors as the ships come off the line. Jemma, your job is to keep anyone away from those hangars that doesn’t belong there, as well as ensure this building remains secure. It won’t be too long before the world finds out about our new ships, it’s only a matter of time before some idiot with a camera uploads a video to YouTube, but for the moment we aren’t ready for that.

  “Like I said in the beginning, welcome back to civilization. I don’t have to remind you all to maintain operational discipline and security, and of the serious repercussions of breaking your confidentiality agreements. Obviously, once the ships are known that part of things will be moot, but they’ll still be in force, you won’t be able to talk about how they work, or to share any of the internal technologies. I imagine it will be a long time before any of the tech is released for public consumption, possibly not in our lifetimes.

  “That said you have free run of the public parts of the base, and are cleared to leave the base, if you wish to spend your off hours in Colorado Springs, and to spend some of that money that’s been building in your accounts.”

  The general paused as we all absorbed that.

  I used my magic to send my sister a message, let her know I was okay, and my new location. Unfortunately, she was on the East coast, and I wouldn’t be visiting her anytime soon, at least not until I could take vacation time. Still, the idea of visiting the city was a welcome one.

  Schaefer said, “Scott, your plan has been approved. It’s a risk, but everything is for naught if we don’t know their true capabilities, and if possible, their intentions. See what you can find out, and get the data for the former to Diana, and Jemma for the latter. I also suspect you’ll have recommendations on what should be focused on next.”

  “Understood.”

  A flash of anxiety went through me, I was both excited, and a little scared to find out the truth of what lay out there among the stars. Not to mention what their response might be, if I activate the connections through my magic, bu
t they don’t receive any other data.

  The general said, “Good, I look forward to your report. Dismissed.”

  Jemma said, “We can do it right here, unless you need to rest first?”

  I shook my head, “I’m ready. Not sure how long it’ll take, it depends on how extensive their fleet is, and how many different types of ships and weapons they have.”

  Jemma nodded in understanding.

  I pulled out the small square I’d been carrying around for weeks, made up of all the entangled particles from the original ship, and I sent my magic into it. My mind followed, as I jumped into their network of ships.

  My first thought was that we were totally screwed. There were millions of ships, and it didn’t take long to figure out they were spread out in over fifty galaxies within a ten million light year sphere. The concept of that was so… vast and overwhelming. It was hard to even imagine the vastness of the milky way, which was a mere hundred thousand light years in diameter.

  If they chose to fight us, we simply had no chance.

  Their origin galaxy was Andromeda, about two point five million light years away, and which held twice the number of stars as our galaxy. A trillion or so.

  And… we had a hundred fifty scout ships, and we’d been to the moon sixty years ago.

  Fortunately, it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d feared, or at least, the evidence of their ship types pointed to a peaceful civilization of explorers. Most of those ships were scouts. They did have warships with multiple types of weapons, but they comprised less than ten thousand, and most of them were in Andromeda and for security for their settled planets. They’d spread out in Andromeda, but mostly their scouts were just watching other civilizations, possibly on the lookout for aggressive civilizations? They had no claimed space in other galaxies, they were just aware of what was going on in them.

  The amount of data was almost overwhelming, there were tons of pre-FTL species they were monitoring like the Earth, and it was all being communicated back real-time to their home world.