By the time I had my thoughts together again, I was alone on the bridge. Even Angel had left. I rose, opened a rift from my ready room door to my administration office door on Haven, and stepped through. The rift vanished behind me. It had been much easier this time, so maybe the practice under pressure had proved to be valuable training.
I immediately regretted choosing my office. I’d wanted to get Bob over for a chat, hence the choice, but instead, I found David Tollin already there waiting for me.
"How did you know I'd be coming here?"
"Jane told me."
"How did she know?"
A chuckle came over the coms. I was obviously becoming way too predictable. David ignored her.
"The results of the preliminary government study are in."
"And?"
"The majority want a kingdom, with…"
"Don't say it!"
"…you as their king."
"You said it!"
"Had to be said."
"Think of something else."
"You mean someone else?"
"That too."
"So you don't mind there being a kingdom, as long as you’re not king?"
"I could live with that. Once we get some defenses in place, I'll probably just vanish into the background. Go spend some time trading in Thorn's space or something."
"Getting really bored, no doubt."
"I never get bored. Not really. Way too much reading and watching to do. Even if the new government takes a large chunk of my credits in taxes, I still wouldn’t ever need to work again. I'd buy a new island with a decent beach again. Or find a way to get back to Gold Coast, and build a new house there."
"Dream on."
"I will. I don’t even know if Gold Coast has been colonized this time around. In the meantime, I will not be anyone's king, and if this kingdom rubbish keeps up, you'll have to find someone better suited than me to running things."
"There isn’t anyone."
"You could."
"Run things, yes. But king? No, would never happen."
"If you don’t want it, steer the discussion somewhere else. Somewhere which doesn’t involve me, and can accommodate the fact we are accumulating dependent allies rapidly."
"Talking of which, the Karn delegation got here before you did. They have an embassy set up already, as have the others, and for now, are not accepting requests to visit their world. I gather you suggested that?"
"I did. Let them take as much time as they want to decide to open up more."
"No problem for me. They joined the other meeting groups, and we almost have agreement on banking. Jane had a lot of suggestions. I assume you don’t want to know any of the details?"
"You may assume that, yes. All I want to know is if I buy a beer on Thorn's station, how much it costs me."
"I'm thinking the exchange rates will be settled today sometime, and banking links will be ready tomorrow. The Hurndalls for example are ready to get trading. I gather Richard has a ship load of speculative containers ready to come here across the links, as soon as he can actually pay for them. He intends to trade all the way to the other side with a load he has being sent to him as soon as freight loading fees can be paid at his end, and repeat sending us another load, once he's established what the other end of that space has different. Although I gather the family have already walked the rift network, and been sampling everything."
"So we can expect some new food and drink options to arrive soon then?"
"Apparently so."
"Otherwise? How're things going?"
"No problems. The prison tower was ready before you arrived, and the Keerah have their own floors. The whites are still not aware of each other, and we plan to keep it that way. The Roo space was ready about the time you docked, and the transfer is happening now."
"Planet side?"
"Still in progress, but Margaret reckons we can start marking out several small cities within a week. They have a number of potential sites listed, each with abundant fresh water, farming land, hunting and fishing, and without being anywhere near the rainforests or natural wonders."
"Good. When Margaret is happy, get the first one happening. We need a planet based governmental center at the least."
"Yes."
"Anything else?"
"Not at the moment, highness."
"OUT!"
He left grinning.
Fifty Nine
Bob walked in as soon as David was out the door.
"Jon old son," he said, while sitting himself down in one of the lounge chairs. "I hear you've been busy."
"I've been busy?" I responded, while moving to the lounge chair next to him. "You're the one who's been rebuilding everything behind my back."
"You saw Redoubt?"
"Pretty damn hard to miss."
"You like?"
"Of course. But it's not enough firepower for jump point defense, the way things are at the moment. Although it means we can do without a couple of the ships, which is good. If we go off like that again, I need more ships. We came a lot closer to disaster than I care to. The only thing saving us at the moment is magic, and I don’t see it as a long term solution to anything."
"How did the ships do?"
"BigMother was fine. The Scimitars are under shielded. In fact, all the other ships except the three titans are under shielded. The upgrades helped, but not enough. Unassailable took hull damage, mainly because I wasn’t paying attention, but Jane took her out of range in time to prevent serious damage. More ships is the only way we can speed up a battle, so running away doesn’t become the standard save arses maneuver of a lengthy battle."
"The tech team are still working on shield upgrades, but the main issue is power generation. We simply can't push enough power into the new emitters to generate significantly stronger shields."
"Any ideas?"
"Find a magician who can make new crystals like BigMother and the titans are using?"
"Worth asking about. Thorn said something about building stations using magic. The crystals might be easier. Or harder. I'll ask when I see him next. In the meantime, we need new fighters to replace losses."
"Jane sent me your Brawler design. The prototype she built arrived before you did, but it still needs some work. How many will you want?"
"Four squadrons for 617 wing. Two each for the Scimitars. For each additional Scimitar if any more are built, two more, since we have more pilots from the mercenary squadrons we can allocate. We do need a carrier based heavy fighter, capable of taking multiple hits from Ralnor big guns."
"We can test that."
"How?"
"Remote pilot one to a safe place, and fire battleship guns at it, noting the damage for each full hit. I think we're close to being able to adapt some of the properties of the Keerah hulls too. Might allow all ships to take a couple more hits, if they don’t happen close together."
"Keep working on it."
"I will. I've been thinking about jump point defense though, and came up with this."
He waved at the wall, and it lit up with a station image. He pulled it out into a full three dee image.
"Holy shit!"
"Indeed."
He was grinning. The station was fairly simple, and obviously had no living areas on it at all. And nothing except droid airlocks, and a single freight airlock on the bottom of the central cylinder. So it appeared to be an AI run station.
What drew the eye, and looked almost shocking, was the eight arms coming from the middle, extending out to a mounting for over and under ball battleship turrets, with four guns each. This made sixteen turrets, with sixty four guns, over two thirds of them able to fire at a jump point at the same time. Thrusters allowed it to be spun, presumably at turret recharge rates, so fire could be continuous as the station rotated.
Between the arms were capital ship missile launchers, on the turrets themselves were point defense turrets, and every arm had mosquito launchers.
The one station had more
firepower, both offensive and defensive, than a dreadnaught.
I blinked, and the image changed.
"What the hell?"
"They're stackable."
The image had changed from one station, to three joined stations, tripling the firepower. I did the math.
"Three of those should be able to hold any jump point on their own."
"That’s the consensus of opinion. Would you want them in a stack of nine?"
My jaw fell open. He grinned.
"No, stacks of three will do nicely. Three of them allows placement so they can protect each other."
"Threes it is then. How many do you want?"
I counted jump points. One for our frontier. Two for Thorn's space. One for Karn. Three for the crossroad system. Seven jump points. This math was easy.
"Twenty one, yesterday."
"Twenty one will take a while to build. We can dedicate fabricators to the turrets. The hulls are fairly simple to build. The power plants, shield generators and emitters, are already being produced, but we can step them up as well. But Jon, the stations will still have the same shield issues as our ships."
"Noted. Get them started. Karn need the first set. Thorn's two systems next, then our jump point. Although, we still have two human groups to contact, and like as not, they'll need them as well."
"So add another six to the list?"
"Yes. We'll know if we need them long before the last six are ready to be started."
"Good-oh. The two new titans are almost ready, but I don’t want to release them until their power issues are solved. They worked well enough with all of them connected up to four crystals, but on their own, they amount to one shot platforms, and while it’s a great shot, thereafter, they're just sitting ducks."
"What are you doing with the other ships?"
"The plan is to put two titan turrets on each dreadnaught, making them a super-dreadnaught. The turrets are done, but…"
"Not enough power. The rest?"
"Defiant will come out as a dreadnaught, although more of a missile platform than any other ship. I'm in the process of ripping the cruiser sections apart, and the whole ship will be completely redesigned. The pocket battleships will become a dreadnaught as well."
"How did you get Daniel to agree to that?"
"I didn’t. I mentioned it to Susan, and she shifted Greer to Relentless, and O'Neil to Dauntless. He and his crew moved without a sound, although they're on Haven at the moment while the work is done. Not sure where Greer is, but he's seen the first draft of the new fighter, so in all likelihood, he's with the dev team now."
Greer had been a squadron CO once upon a time, flying American heavy fighters. With no duties, I wasn’t at all surprised to find him adding his experience to a new heavy fighter design. Between him and Lacey, we might just get a design which could survive.
"Anything else I need to know about?"
"A request is in for builder droids for the planet. What's the priority?"
"Ships and stations first. But if you can spare some for basic city infrastructure and a governmental center, we can get whatever government we form installed on the ground from day one."
"Didn’t I hear something about…"
"No, you didn't."
He left laughing.
Sixty
The committees all tried to get me to join them.
Being back on Haven was obviously a bad idea, so I pulled Aline out of prisoner detail. She parked her combat suit and weapons in my penthouse lobby, and we caught a travel car to the rift to Redoubt. On Redoubt, we stepped through the rift to Thorn's station.
There, we asked how we found where Thorn was, and no sooner asked, than he appeared, and the three of us shifted to a nice sandy beach down on the planet.
"Reminds me a bit of Gold Coast," said Aline.
And it did for me too. I'd owned an entire island there, with a house big enough to accommodate the whole team. Presumably, nothing remained of it now, having never been built. I looked around with interest.
The sand was pure white, the beach going off for a good way in each direction. Behind the beach was a house, and a little further along I could see another building which looked a bit like a twenty first century motel, plonked down behind the dunes.
"You could have pinged me," said Thorn.
He tapped his head, which reminded me he'd had a PC implanted while in the care unit. Aline smiled at my forgetfulness, but it was more a matter of having too much on my mind. As usual.
"What can I do for you?" he went on.
"There's a number of issues we need to discuss, but I thought making a social call was better than asking you to come to my office."
He laughed.
"Lounge room, or here on the beach?"
The beach was hot. Wherever we were on his world, it had to be smack bang in the middle of the tropics.
"Lounge room," said Aline. "Too hot out here."
"This is winter," laughed Thorn, and waved us up a well-worn path towards the house.
Once off the beach, I could see another house further inland, and a path leading there, as well to the line of rooms now fully visible behind the dunes. In the middle of what you could call a glade, was what looked like an entertainment area, with outdoor cooking facilities.
As Thorn opened the door, three figures emerged from the other house, and started towards us. Inside, we were greeted by Tasha, Thorn's wife. She waved us into lounge chairs, and Aline automatically selected one of the two pairs, with the chairs set side by side, and obviously designed for couples to be touchy feely close enough. Thorn and Tasha sank into the other pair, leaving three singles for Jen, Jess, and Lea, who turned up a minute later. Lea did the honours with drinks and munchies, before settling in a chair herself.
Of the four women, Tasha still looked the frailest, although significantly better than when I’d first seen her. The other three seemed to have bounced back really well, and for a moment I wondered if Jess was using a gym of some sort. Jen's eyes had a light in them I hadn't seen before, even more so than at the party. And even Lea looked like she felt like she'd been renewed.
I used the cover of sipping my drink while observing the women, cut short by a frown forming on my face as I realized I was drinking ginger ale which had obviously been imported. I'd tried theirs already, but found the ginger a lot heavier, so not quite as refreshing as what I was used to. Their beer was a heavier alcohol content as well, realization of which spurred me to ping Jane to get warnings on advertising, should a merchant start selling the beers from here. The ex-Pompeii part of my people were still getting used to Australian alcohol content. Last thing we needed were unexpectedly drunk people causing problems. All Jane pinged back was a laugh.
It was Jen who turned small talk towards what I wanted to talk to Thorn about.
"Thorn tells us your upgraded smaller carriers did a good job in the recent battle. Was he correct?"
"They performed up to my expectations, especially given the pilots flying them, but they still have issues."
"What sort?"
They were all looking at me intently.
"We can't generate enough power for effective shielding. I had to move both ships well away from the battle in the later stages, to prevent them being hit badly when their shields failed. The battleship I had there did lose shields, and took hull damage. They did really well for the time in battle, but I'm not planning on going into a fleet level battle again with only four ships. The risk of losing one is too great, especially against the Ralnor."
"You don't like losing ships?" asked Lea, grinning.
"I HATE losing ships."
"Losing ships is part of war," said Jen.
"Only if you do stupid."
"You are aware you can do everything right, and still lose?"
"I'm aware. But it still implies being stupid about something. Or suicidally heroic."
"You don’t do heroic?"
"Of course he does," said Aline. "It's rescues he
has a problem with."
"He doesn’t do rescues?" asked Jess.
"Of course he does rescues," stated Aline. "He just hates the necessity."
"Needing rescue means you did something stupid."
They all looked at me strangely.
"So you being rescued from the middle of a sun meant you did stupid?" asked Thorn, grinning.
"Yes."
"How so?"
His face was serious again.
"Turned out I could have changed the sun into a giant without needing to go into it at all."
Jen turned to Thorn.
"I like him. First admiral I've met with the right attitudes, but is still human."
"You implying I'm not human?"
Thorn looked hurt.
"Oh course you're not human."
Thorn had a wounded look now, but the others were laughing.
"How does your ship not have the same shielding problem?" asked Jess, changing the subject back.
"Different power source added on top of our normal ones."
"How different?"
"Crystal technology from a civilization long gone from where we originated from. We did a short trip into the future, were led to four of them by a higher being, and managed to integrate them into the power systems. Three of them are on my three titan ships, and the original one is on BigMother, although it's not quite as effective given how we dug it up."
"How far into the future?" asked Lea.
"Fifty two years," said Aline. "That was a rough trip, and some of us almost died there."
"Why go?" asked Tasha.
Aline and I laughed.
"We didn’t know there was a time displacement at the time," I said. "The Sirius system had four suns, and the interaction of two of them created a temporal distortion. Earth was uninhabitable when we left. But in the future, it was a pristine world again, allowing us to find and retrieve the crystals. In hindsight, I wish we'd collected the rest. But four was all we needed for the Darkness War." I paused, looking around at them. "Why the interest?"
"I want one of the Scimitars," said Jen.
I frowned. Lea saw it.
"Jen used to be an admiral. Thorn kept us up to date with command ships for a long time, at least until we retired. And we still have a small fleet of traders working for us, supplying us an income. But since we came out of your care units, we've been thinking we want back in."
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