Chapter Eleven
The command center was private enough and we grabbed coffees before we sat down around the main command table. It was just Diana, Cassie, Jessica, and myself in the room. Diana seemed a little flustered.
“What’s up?”
Diana sighed, “I haven’t been looking forward to this. I do have a partial answer for what we’re facing, but we have a long way to go. The truth is my priorities have been a little screwed up the last ten years. I mean, I still had people on advancing weapons and defense technologies, but I haven’t looked at it myself in years.”
I frowned, “That’s a little harsh.”
She smirked, “Love you too. The Grays were doomed, because they stopped developing, they were comfortable at their level and I was able to make advances that outstripped them. If it hadn’t been us, it would’ve been the Vrok a little over a decade later. All the races from the Grays and the six surrounding empires had reached parity with each other ten millennia ago.
“All my advances however were just new technologies, we never bothered to look at the old ones. The hint I ignored ten years ago was the Atans new technology. They’re new ships were twenty five percent faster, have much more robust shielding, and their beam technology outstrips ours as well. But, they were peaceful, and their shields can’t stop our disintegration beams, so I felt… safe? Like it was good enough.
“The truth I refused to see until now was the arm’s race never stopped. Maybe the other four races still have Gray level parity, but what if they’ve been advancing too? The Vrok have, they’re forty percent faster, and our shield and beam weapons aren’t even comparable.”
I nodded, “But we have the jump drive.”
She smirked, “That’s the same trap I just explained. What if they do find a way to block it. We’d be slaughtered, they’d outrun us, outmaneuver us, and outpower us. Even the Atans could take us, if they figured out how to block our disintegration beam which is simply a field that removes matter bonds.
“Point is, I’m putting larger teams and my own eyes on material sciences, that can improve the current technologies across the board, as well as new technologies. We need more robust systems, that can take advantage of the power advances we’ve made. To not only enhance all our weapons and shield strength, but also computer targeting which we’re behind on too. Better inertial dampening, so our manned ships can accelerate faster. Even if the Vrok don’t ever figure out how to block a quantum jump drive, we may run into another race that can, and in that case, we’ll need it. The top unmanned speed will go up as well, if we can figure it out.”
“You’re being a bit hard on yourself, it was your invention that stopped the Vrok on the border after all, in the first battle. Without quantum jumping they’d have steamrolled us. But I won’t argue with any of that. I even get what you’re saying, the Vrok countered our newer weapons technologies, so we had to fall back on the old ones which aren’t up to snuff.”
She smiled, “Thanks for that, but this isn’t going to be something fast. Upgrading the old stuff with new material technology, hopefully including the nanites to make it easier. We’ll also be looking for new things that might be effective against them because they don’t have the shielding against it. I also haven’t given up on purely theoretical research either, just… cut back on it and put most of the teams on practical research.”
I nodded, “So what do you have for me, gorgeous?”
Cassie snickered, “You know this is being recorded for history, right?”
I winked.
Diana blushed, but didn’t look displeased, “Okay, well we have the shield updates for our ships and they’re ready to send out to update the fleet. For the analogous subspace energy beam. But our shields are still weaker, sixty percent of what the Vrok have. So instead of five or six seconds standing against their own beams, for us it’ll last a little over two seconds before being overpowered. That’s just a guess, since we haven’t been able to duplicate creating the power at all we can’t build a weapon to test it, but we were able to duplicate their shield configurations.”
“So even if we do figure it out that second part, we’ll be greatly overmatched.”
Diana nodded, “Exactly. They can withstand their own beams for five to six seconds, so our beams would be nine to ten seconds even if we figure it out. That’s still a lot better than the old beam technology, which is taking eighteen seconds. I feel like I’m letting everyone down, but I don’t even have an estimate on how long that materials technology advance will take.”
I frowned, “It’s always been us as a team that’s been so effective, maybe we need to look at it that way. What if I steal it, and give it to you. Then you’ll just have to figure out how to adapt it to the nanites and our ships, if possible. If not, we can use the second-generation energy to matter device and build the newer and more robust material technologies on the nanite ships, as solid systems. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could make ours even better and remove any shortfalls in their designs.”
Diana nodded, “I thought of that, but they self-destruct when they lose their shields, or even if you get a ship close to their hull. You haven’t been able to get your magic near them.”
I sighed, “What I’m about to tell you is as top secret as our second-generation matter to energy device.”
The three ladies nodded at me.
I said, “I designed a stealth ship, a mix of the Grays technology, but with a jump drive instead of a gravity drive so it can remain cloaked even on the move. We also have probes in all of their systems, and I can use one of those to create a quantum beacon to jump there, instead of taking a wormhole, which would show up on their scanners. If I’m lucky, I can go in, read one of their build platforms, jump to the void and self-destruct.”
Jessica asked, “Self-destruct?”
I nodded, “I don’t want our allies to know we have or used the cloaking tech. The more paranoid among them will think we’re spying, even if we aren’t. That’s why I didn’t make the probe blitz cloaked probes.”
Cassie patted my back, “I’m so proud of you, my naïve boy is growing up.”
I gave her a glare, but she just snickered.
“Anyway… that should do it. We’d have their materials technology to go a hundred gravities unmanned, a thousand unmanned, and their more powerful weapons and shields. Not to mention how they create that energy. That, along with our jump drive will make us tactically superior by a long shot, though with the thousands to one numbers differential with the mini-platforms I’m not sure that would even matter at that point.”
She shrugged, “Their ships have over a thousand turrets for point defense, we’d win but they’d still take a large price of our ships. If that works, once I adapt their technology, I’ll put my people on the next advance in material technology. Point being, it won’t be an excuse to rest on our laurels. Who knows what the other four empires are doing, or the empires beyond them, or beyond them. Not to mention all the races in the fifty galaxies, they’re all behind now but you can bet they’re working on that gap. The arm’s race never stops, and I won’t forget again. Not only new but improved old tech to give us options when the new tech fails.”
She wasn’t wrong about losing ships, even with the new tech. If I wanted to take them out fast enough before they could wormhole retreat from battle while their scientists tried to come up with a way to counter the jump drive, I’d have to hit them with everything instead of ten percent. As for her latter point…
“I don’t think anyone’s going to argue, and it wasn’t a deadly mistake, so let’s move on?”
She smirked, “Fine, you’re right, I just… feel stupid. Not that the last ten years have been a waste, we’ve figured out some amazing things, just nothing that will keep us alive from predators out there.”
I nodded, “So, once that’s done, we’ll present the upgrade as an option, for suitable renumeration. We’ll also credit the advances as yours, to anyone not in this room. An
d Melody, since she’d figure it out anyway. She’s the only other person that has a full picture of what’s going on in our labs, all the other scientists only have small pieces.”
Cassie snickered, “Fair plan, but let’s make sure it works first. They might see right through the cloak, for all we know.”
Yeah, there was always that.
“Anything else?”
Diana said, “That’ll be significantly faster with your espionage help, but it’ll still take time to adapt their systems and materials tech, and to test our adaptations. Possibly weeks, since we’re talking about more than one system. Their ships should yield advancements across the board, with the exception of life support, sensor suites, and power generation.”
“Right, I’ll try to delay the war from our side, until we’re in a better position to take them. That shouldn’t be hard, because with our current tech either side that attacks will lose. Or at least, not win.”
Cassie sighed, and shook her head faux sadly, “And after showing so much promise earlier.”
I laughed ruefully, “Fine, it’ll be hard, but it should be easy.”
Cassie grinned, “Better.”
Diana giggled, “Alright, I’m going to get back to it.”
I nodded, “Is it possible it is subspace energy? What if they’re opening a tiny subspace aperture and holding it open, somehow attracting subspace energy into a containment system, and its uniform appearance is a side effect of packing it in… or something. Then they fire it, rebuild the containment systems, and start over again.”
Her eyes unfocused for a second, and she said, “Absolutely not… it’s too uniform to be truly subspace energy. But, I think that might actually work as an alternate avenue to very similar results. I’ll hold off on it though, unless your mission fails later. I don’t want to keep re-tasking my scientists, it’ll give them whiplash.”
“Fair enough. I’ll see you tonight, gorgeous.”
She gave me a kiss, and headed back to work, while Cassie and I headed to the conference room for another meeting. She really was too hard on herself in my opinion, but she wasn’t wrong. It was entirely possible without the jump drive and disintegration beam, we were the weakest technology wise in our corner of the universe, as far as empires anyway. Even internally, the other countries not to mention our friends the Arnis, weren’t all that far behind Astraeus technology. I’d never push my wife, but I was happy she’d reprioritized.
Chapter Twelve
The conference room was a little tense, and everyone looked grim as they came in, though I couldn’t blame them a bit for that. I wasn’t in a partying mood myself. I took a sip of my coffee, and I tried to relax as my mind lingered on the agenda and what I was hoping to walk out with. Time, without revealing my intentions to launch a top-secret mission to steal their tech, like we’d appropriated the Grays.
It was similar, but different. The Grays had been stupid enough to hand us a ship, but the coming mission was pure espionage. Still, we were at war, so I wasn’t going to feel guilty over it, and I hadn’t tried to peruse the Atans technology, despite my curiosity there.
“I sent the data to the joint command center two hours ago, but let’s review the salient facts to get started. The Vrok have two hundred and eighty-six thousand worlds in twenty-six galaxies, and there are close to three million food planets with low technology intelligent races. They’re completely different from the Grays that way, they’re protecting their herds, and they’ve been expanding non-stop without destroying worlds.
“It seems to me they’re having population issues, specifically feeding, because there are still unclaimed worlds they can spread to in their galaxies. So, they’re expanding to claim more food worlds, and their population is so vast they’re not going to have a problem manning ships like we do.”
I looked around, and it didn’t look like anyone disagreed with that.
“They currently have forty-two million ships. Twelve million of them seem to be their old technology, on three of their borders including ours. Their other five borders have the new ships, four million each. So thirty two million are tied up on the borders, leaving them ten million new ships running around their twenty six galaxies and for use as an invasion force.
“As far as I can determine, they have another million or so unarmed ships, or at least lightly shielded only, for… merchant vessels. If you’ll accept that term, because they gather the food.”
I paused for a second, and we all seemed to still be on the same page.
“If you’ll note, none of their warships are in systems right now, just outside the FTL lines for their internal and invasion fleet ships. They also don’t have the numbers to successfully invade us given we can avoid their weapons with the jump drives.
“In essence, if they attacked us, we could whittle their ten million ships down to zero long before they could reach one of our planets from the FTL line. If we attack them, they could simply wormhole out. A wormhole takes five or so seconds, so they might not even lose any ships. So in essence, neither of us can attack successfully right now. Which is why they haven’t launched a second attack in the last four days.
“I believe the right move to make is to trust in our scientists to find an edge against them, before their scientists figure out a way to counter our tactical advantage. My head scientist has already figured out a shield better than what we have, but it would only hold one to two seconds before our ship’s shields were brought down, as opposed to a split second. That’s not enough of an edge, yet.”
Natalya said, “But if you concentrated your fire, you could take out some ships before they could wormhole out.”
I nodded, “Two thousand in a couple of seconds, if I focused all my mini-platforms from one of my fleets. They’d just wormhole to another system, or worse, in the void where we don’t have eyes. That’s assuming they even let us close. Their intentions are clear, by avoiding being caught in-system past the FTL line, they won’t engage us. That tactic will be problematic enough if we do gain shield and weapon parity at some point.”
Chen said, “We could hostage their worlds.”
I sighed, “We could, but then if they call our bluff, I sure as hell won’t be firing on them. I assume we’re going to quarantine them to their worlds and keep them out of space, while we take over the guard over their seven borders, not including ours since it won’t exist anymore. Am I mistaken?”
Clarence cleared his throat.
“That’s two separate issues so let’s tackle the second one first. You think we should protect and claim twenty-six galaxies?”
I nodded, “Otherwise we’ll just get a new enemy on our border, when one of the seven empires around them expand. There’s no other FTL races in those galaxies, so we can watch the borders and leave probes in all the occupied systems. There are also hundreds of thousands of unoccupied living worlds left in those galaxies, for humans to expand past locally, over millennia, without knocking heads with the local FTL races in the fifty galaxies we freed from the Grays.
“Things get a little sticky in the future if we do that. For instance, what authority if any will we have over the other races living in our space when they reach FTL. I don’t have a definitive answer for that, except to say we should probably let them do whatever they want, as long as they don’t attack or trespass on our claimed worlds in that space we protect.
“I also know if we defend ourselves and remove the Vrok as a threat in space to protect our own sovereignty, that I don’t feel good at all about the idea of leaving three million pre-FTL species at the mercy of other aggressive empires, who will surely move in and fight over the space, if we don’t protect it.”
Natalya said, “He’s not wrong, we’ll have earned the right to move in when we take that space from our enemies, who attacked us first. Perhaps we could reserve another ten thousand light year diameter sphere of space in all twenty-six galaxies. That’d give us what, over two hundred thousand worlds to expand to and diversify where
humanity lived in a great way at the same time. It would also leave most of those galaxies for the local species to claim when they reach FTL, so our presence there protecting them from empires won’t be a huge point of contention for most clear-thinking beings.”
I nodded, “That’s not a bad compromise, take a small piece of all the galaxies we’re protecting before anyone from those twenty-six joins us in space.”
Chen said, “Surely we should discuss this later, we’re putting the cart before the horse.”
I shook my head, “Perhaps the particulars of how we’re doing it, and if we should limit our claims and how it all works, that can wait, we have plenty of time to figure that out afterwards, and we do need to win first. But we also need to decide if we’re going to protect those twenty-six galaxies like we’re doing the fifty when we sent the Grays back to the stone age.
“That part needs to be worked into our campaign plans, like the grays we need to replace those fleets as they’re destroyed or replace them if the Vrok recall those border fleets for defense. If we don’t, the other empires around them will take an unguarded border as an invitation to move in. We don’t want that, because then we’ll have to fight them too, if we decide to keep the space.”
Chen looked thoughtful, then nodded, “Point taken.”
Admiral Grady said, “Agreed, we need to decide that much now, or take it to our leaders before we fully map out a campaign. Let’s put it to the side for now, since I know I don’t have that authority. We’ll need a full U.N. vote, not even just us, for a decision that large we need to present a united front when dealing outside of our human sphere of space locally.”
No one objected, so Grady continued.
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