I nodded, “Our station is full of service-oriented workers, entertainment, arts, scientists, and inventors. We don’t manufacture anything except nanite devices and ships for sale, so our citizens wouldn’t lose their sense of usefulness in society. We could even maintain the local economy by selling the items to stores at the usual rates, like the manufacturers on Earth do. But Earth is another matter, even the colonies aren’t ready for that technology.”
Cassie smirked, “Not arguing, just saying.”
It looked good to me. We were holding our own, even if we couldn’t win in the moment, and Diana would have that tech ported over and tested in a relatively short amount of time. Of course, I was well aware that the enemy got a vote, but given what we knew of their building technology it would take them much longer to upgrade their fleets with new and better tech.
Chapter Fourteen - Interlude
The great hall pulsed with tension as the sunlight faded on the horizon. Exalted Hunter Sinzan, absolute ruler of the Vrok empire, vibrated in anger and disgust up on the dais. He was large, even for his kind, at fourteen feet tall and twenty feet long. He was old, but still strong, and believed he would rule for several more turns of their seasons before falling to the next hunter that would lead them.
Fifty of his closest hunters lined the walls as Hunt Master Suslo and Hunt Leader Oldun entered the great hall. They weren’t there for his protection, they were there to stand witness. His mandibles tightened in rage, but he held back the instinct to tear Suslo apart, for now. That effort became even harder, when he scented Suslo’s fear, the leader of all his fleets had much to answer for.
Hunt Leader Oldun had been the one to lead the specific fleet sent to test the humans, but he walked with his head high, and no sign of fear at all.
Sinzan growled, “Explain to me, how your foolishness just soured a sixty-year hunt, perhaps the greatest hunt ever pursued by our people to more than double our range in the stars. What possessed you to attack twenty years early?”
Suslo’s legs shook as he lowered his bulk to the ground before him, and it was all Sinzan could do not to lunge forward and tear out the coward’s throat. How the last Exalted Hunter had elevated this sniveling coward to Hunt Master status was beyond him.
Suslo replied, “Exalted one. The humans who replaced the Grays far outstripped their technology as our hunting fleets did. After they successfully discovered our probes, and then showed aggression by doing an active scan of our ships, I felt I had no choice but to test ourselves against them.”
Sinzan snorted, “Fool, their scan was the equivalent of a cub growling at an elder. Not a true challenge, they didn’t even cross into our range. Now you have woken them up, revealed our superiority and our weakness. They have small probes jumping around all of our systems and avoiding our ships, now they scout us and prepare to hunt. Fool.”
Suslo stammered, “The only way to know was to…”
Sinzan had enough of his sniveling, and he lunged forward with all six powerful legs. The coward was frozen, and he didn’t even try to fight as Sinzan’s forelegs pinned him down and he tore off Suslo’s head with his mandibles, and then spit it out.
“Take this fool out and destroy the body, he will have no honor in death.”
Sinzan retook the dais, and he couldn’t help but be impressed by Oldun’s bravery, he still didn’t scent fear from the fleet hunt leader. He waited until the witnesses had left, and dragged the body out with them, before addressing Oldun.
“What say you?”
Oldun replied, “I would not have attacked. Our only weakness was obvious before we did, and by basic scans we already knew their ships couldn’t stand toe to toe with us. There was nothing to be gained by a test hunt.”
“Explain.”
Oldun answered, “We have watched them cross their solar systems many times with the skipping drive, at the speed of light in normal space. The tactical uses for such a technology during combat are beyond obvious, we should have focused on defeating that instead so our prey couldn’t run from us. We still had over twenty years to figure it out, if we hadn’t started the hunt early, as it is now, my females are working on it as quickly as they can. It seems clear to me Suslo’s pride led his actions, at the loss of his creeping hunters in their solar systems.”
Sinzan asked, “Do they have a scent at least?”
Oldun replied, “Yes, Exalted one. They are working to discover the technology even as they search for its weakness. Although we don’t have the skip drive yet we do know it works similarly to how our quantum communicators work. It is believed if we can jam an unshielded communicator with a wave of some kind, that it will also work against the skip drive.”
Sinzan frowned, “Unshielded?”
Oldun nodded, “That is the problem. The skip drive can’t be blocked at the source, at their ships, we need to scramble their target space while they attempt to move to it. With a reach of one light second for local skips that’s billions of square miles in volume of space. I have confidence they’ll get it done however, and once they do our fleets will tear them apart.”
Sinzan grunted, and he was still impressed.
“In the meantime, we are vulnerable because of that sack of offal.”
Oldun said, “These humans are weak. If they come after our ships in the interim, we can continue to retreat. It is distasteful, but necessary due to Suslo’s foolishness. Given the Grays still live on their planets, and we’ve never seen the humans rule their range as they should, I don’t believe our worlds are in any danger at all. They are not to be underestimated however, I am sure they’re working to close the gap with us as well, but I believe we are closer.”
That decided Sinzan.
Sinzan said, “You are now Hunt Master with full authority over our fleets and the great hunt. Put all the fleets’ females on researching that technology if you must. We all saw how quickly the humans advanced past the Grays once they had Grays’ technology. They may not rule their range like we do, but they are clever.”
Oldun bowed his head once, “I accept the elevation, Exalted one. I won’t let you down or allow my instincts to foul our great hunt further.”
Sinzan waved in dismissal.
Chapter Fifteen
“Threx, how are you and your family?”
It was late the same day. Threx was the first alien I’d ever met and our trade with the Vax had been going steady for the last twelve years. We didn’t even nod at each other all that much anymore, we were both far more comfortable with each other’s alien features. The Vax of course, looked like a panda and bigfoot got busy and had a love child. They were fierce in appearance while they also looked cute like a Panda, and in the end they weren’t all that different from us humans.
Threx said, “Pherie is well, as are the children. You? I know your world is once again under threat.”
I nodded, “No good deed goes unpunished, but we’ve got a handle on it.”
He tilted his head in question.
I replied, “We are under threat because it’s our efforts that secure the fifty galaxies against the surrounding intergalactic empires. But it’s worth it to us, we’d have had to fight them either way, might as well keep the peace from the spots it’s been kept for thousands of years.”
Threx snorted, “You cannot deceive me, your hearts are soft.”
I laughed, “So, what can I do for you?”
Threx said, “I got my hands on a batch of medicines, and several million life extensions suitable for humans. Interested?”
I nodded, they were in high demand on Earth and we couldn’t get enough to cover that demand. The governments hadn’t tried to limit the people from using them once they were approved for use. No one was worried about overpopulation anymore. We’d have the opposite problem for a very long time, before we filled up the available worlds.
“What do you want for it?”
Threx said, “Coffee beans, and chocolate.”
I grinned, nothing like spre
ading a caffeine addiction across the galaxies. The Vax loved the stuff. It’d be provided by earth of course. I was somewhat of a broker for the Vax in our system, and I’d get a small cut of both sides for my fee.
It was also far more pleasant a task than dealing with war.
“Let’s talk volume…”
“Dad! Thank you, thank you, thank you,” said Melody excitedly, as she once again mugged me at the door.
I grinned as I hugged her back.
“You should greet me like this every night.”
She giggled, “I won’t tell anyone, the technology is really awesome.”
I smirked up at Diana, who gave me a subtle nod to tell me she’d already had a long talk with her about it, and that I wasn’t in trouble. I even got a warm kiss, so I was guessing she really liked the gift I’d sent her as well.
Diana said, “How did you do?”
I sighed, “Not as well as I’d hoped. I’m counting on the U.N. arguing as long as you need them to, actually. The rest of the committee seems content with the small edge, or rather they’d prefer to gamble on that then our scientists coming through with anything useful before the Vrok nullifies our advantage. Of course, I couldn’t tell them the full truth. On the good side, we got a million life extensions and other medicines to sell on the surface, and all it cost was a few truckloads of chocolate bars and a few tons of coffee beans.”
Diana smirked, and headed back to the kitchen with an excited pre-teen while I went to change out of the suit. By the time I got back downstairs she had stuff ready for me to chop.
Diana said, “I’m not sure how much time I’ll need to adapt it. My initial impression after studying the data all afternoon is that only the subspace beam technology will need to be independent. Everything else, the shields, inertial dampers, gravity drive, and our other weapons should be compatible with upgraded nanites, but of course I can’t be sure until we do the upgrade and test it in the test system.”
“Other weapons?”
Diana nodded, “The normal beam weapon should become eighty percent more powerful when the nanites can handle the heavier energy loads. Of course, that’s still only half as effective as what the subspace energy beams will be, at least against Vrok ships, but that will be useful if you lose a lot of those turrets. The nanites can endlessly form new ones as a ship is destroyed.”
That made sense. It was also a relief.
“So a hybrid design, we don’t need to abandon the nanites.”
Diana shook her head, “Not even if all the systems require non-nanite hardware, which I’m fairly sure won’t be the case. We could still use the nanites for most of the ship mass, power conduits and reactors, artificial gravity, reclamation systems, life support, and just about everything else. It’d just be a hybrid ship, like the old Gray ships required an independent fusion reactor.
“Instead of reactors, we’d just have non-nanite turrets. We could still use the old kind of point defense against missiles. The ships are huge, with a lot of unused space save the power, computer cycles, and mass needed for a dreadnought’s operation. I imagine we could make thousands of fabrication rooms, to not only quickly load up the hull with thousands of subspace beam emplacements, but also have tens of thousands of replacement beam turrets in the center of the ship.
“If the ship was hit, and lost some turrets, we could just shift those to the outside, hook in the nanite power feeds, and we’d have it replaced. Not as quick as reforming the nanites on the edge, but still light years better than a whole ship not made of nanites. We can do that with all four systems if we need to, but I really don’t think we’ll need to.
“We’ll start testing the nanites made with different materials technology in the morning, I already have several thousand iterations planned, loosely.”
I grunted, “Several thousand?”
She nodded, “We want to squeeze every ounce of efficiency we can out of it. I’m not convinced their designs are that.”
“Mini-platforms?”
She smirked, “Those too. Obviously, they’ll have to be loaded with one of the subspace turrets, and enough upgraded nanites for the shield and drive improvements. They might end up being a little bigger, because I assume that you’ll still want the ability for it to form a regular beam, disintegration, or anti-matter beam turret.”
I nodded, “Of course, not all our enemies will be immune to disintegration beams, and conversely they may have better defenses against subspace energies.”
All the ships would also need to create a whole lot more nanites, for the upgraded systems with plenty to spare to rebuild them if necessary. But that would all take less than half a day.
She shrugged, “Just a first impression though, no promises.”
“Why the turrets?”
She said, “The properties of the alloy necessary to convert power to subspace analogous energy would interfere in the operation of other systems, if it was present in the nanites that formed those systems. The nanites are an extremely complicated balance of materials to conduct and insulate power, and to form systems as well as communicate with each other to form and release bonds and move around.”
“So, do you think it’ll conflict with normal nanite operations, or with some of the other systems the nanites form?”
She tilted her head, “The latter, though I can’t prove that yet. The electrothermic superconductor in the old fusion reactors is the former.”
I grunted, “So, could we just have two classes of nanites? One for the turrets, and then the other for everything else?”
She looked at me like I’d declared the sky was purple, then closed her eyes for a moment.
“Why stop at two? You just made me very busy, and I want to go back to my labs.”
I wrapped my arms around her from behind, “No escape for you.”
She snickered.
I asked, “Why?”
She said, “Like I mentioned, the nanites are a complicated balance to wring the best efficiency out of all systems they can build out of themselves, but there’s also a lot of compromise in that kind of thing. Why stop at two classes?”
“There’s a practical strength to it, any nanite can build any system if half the ship is lost, which is useful. I just think two classes is better than one class and non-nanite turrets. Creating a class of nanites for every system just to squeeze a few more percent of efficiency wouldn’t be worth it.”
She shrugged, “The dreadnoughts are huge, quadrillions of nanites. A homogenous spread of several classes of nanites through the whole ship would ensure you didn’t run short of any of them. Ninety nine point nine nine percent of the nanites are basically just mass, processor power, and evenly spread vacuum nanite reactors. The systems they build are actually only a very small part of that, point zero one percent, or less even.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” I said cautiously.
She nodded, “Not now, I know I need to prioritize. I’ll work on the general upgrade for the main nanites, and getting the turrets done, either through a second class if possible or non-nanite turrets if not. But once the Vrok are taken care of it’d be a good thing to do I think, even if it does make it a lot more complicated.”
“You’re like a kid in a candy store right now.”
She twisted around and kissed me, “You always give me the best ideas.”
I smirked, “In my ignorance. I just ask dumb questions.”
Melody rolled her eyes, “You just pretend to be dumb. You’re not as creative as mom, maybe not as intelligent either, but far from dumb. Our magic gives us sharp instincts when it comes to technology.”
I frowned, as my wife nodded in agreement. Then I let her go and got back to chopping, because I was smart enough to know when it was time to call a retreat.
Melody said, “I think dad’s right, multiple classes will introduce a lot of complications in the nanites working together seamlessly, not to mention bonding and releasing correctly across multiple classes. We’d be better of
f having discrete systems for the turrets.”
Diana bit her lip, and I got the idea now she knew how I felt when she talked about technology over my head. Still, I wouldn’t bet against my wife getting the multiple class nanite to work in the future.
“Discrete systems?”
Melody nodded, “They’d need to be connected like non-nanite systems, with shaped conduits and connectors to join the systems. It’d be a mistake to bond different classes of nanites at the molecular level, that would add instability and inefficiencies. I don’t think the processors would be identical either with them being made from different materials, so instead of a ship being one joint huge multiple processor mainframe, it’d be two of them. That means command level software to pass information between them. The sensors wouldn’t be part of the same computer system as the turrets for instance, which adds a step to pass along a target lock, so less integrated. Not a big deal, just noting it adds as many complications as it would remove for a few percentage points of efficiency.”
“That’s your daughter,” I said lightly, not really sure I followed even all the obvious ramifications of that, much less all the subtleties implied.
Diana smirked at me.
“True, but the added need for extra programming would still worth it. It’d allow us to focus on improving a single system, without worrying how it would impact the whole, or if it’d work or not with other systems, while not needing to move away from nanite technology at all. Unless an advance in materials technology is inimical to nanite operation of course.”
“Of course,” I said cheekily.
It was a little interesting, but it was a long-term roadmap of what direction my amazing wife’s research would go in next. Our arm’s race with the Vrok was a little more critical, and I got the idea it could take years to figure out the other. She’d be focused on keeping it down to two systems now, with a general upgrade for the main nanites, and only create a different system for the turrets, be it with different nanites or otherwise.
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