Our daughter had no more pearls of wisdom, and we settled into making and enjoying dinner as we finally left our workday behind. It was a good night in, and Cassie finally called it a day and arrived shortly after we’d sat down for dinner and joined us. The politics of the war had her busier than I was.
We had another movie night. My wife’s choice that time, and we just spent time together. It was good to relax and recharge, to spend time with the people that made the fight worth it and engendered that deep need to protect. It wasn’t easy though, worries about everything that could go wrong popped up in my head on occasion, but I pushed it out the best I could and focused on the moment.
After Cassie left, and we put Melody to bed, the two of us settled back on the couch. I bodily turned her, and then started to give her a massage.
“You okay?”
She blew out a breath, “Fine.”
I laughed, “Now I know there’s something wrong.”
She gave me a guilty look, “I looked at the database during the movie, on my overlay. Just to make sure I wasn’t reinventing the wheel. The Grays tried my idea, for many years, multiple classes of nanites in a ship, and there’s even more issues with it than Melody implied. So much so I won’t even attempt it for the subspace beam weapon. We’ll go with the fabrication idea for that system as well as any other system that might be incompatible.
“I suspect we should stick to one type, and stick to nanite ships for all the benefits, while our technology advances the disparate systems may wobble back and forth between being integrated, and being non-nanite systems the ship builds and repairs with fabricator rooms.”
I nodded, “That sounds fine, spares in the core of the ship for any non-nanite systems should be good enough. Eventually, once the technology gets out, it’ll be even easier. Instead of fabricator rooms we can just use the second-generation energy to matter device with molecular bonding to build the originals and all the spares we want.”
She nodded.
I smirked, “Now, tell me what’s really bothering you?”
She sighed, “Our daughter makes me feel… stupid. She no more than absorbed that data earlier, and she already knew my idea wouldn’t work, without checking the Gray database. The nanites are awesome, but they’re extremely fussy in some ways.”
I snickered, “Now you know how you make me feel. Although, it also makes you sexy as hell.”
She shook her head in mock disgust, but her body didn’t tense up, on the contrary she melted back against me and her muscles started to relax.
I shrugged, “It doesn’t change anything, you should work toward advances without worrying about the nanite compatibility if something promising comes to mind. If the systems improve and work as part of the nanite system great, but if we end up with ships with a nanite shell and for mass one day, filled with all non-nanite systems except the fabricator nanite systems, well then that’s fine too. That’s still a lot better than a non-nanite ship in whole, as far as battle and convenience goes, if not as convenient as what we have now. The most important thing in all this is what you told me the other day, we can’t stop reaching for that next level of tech in the intergalactic empire arm’s race, not to mention internally.”
She nodded, “I imagine that only applies to tactical systems. We don’t need to improve life support for instance, and we already have an overabundance of power. But yes, shields, weapons, drives, sensors, computers, and inertial dampening are all on that list. As well as tactical systems we haven’t thought of yet. Nothing else really matters, it’s not tactical and more than good enough already.
“That’s just for our military though. I’ll still be looking at other things, I just needed to make tactical technology in war more of a priority in that equation than the last twelve years.”
“I get it. I agree, just don’t be too hard on yourself, you won’t make that mistake again.”
She sighed, “That feels good.”
I grinned, “No charge.”
She said, “I won’t make that mistake again, and in six years I won’t have to worry about it, since I’ll no doubt be working for my daughter.”
I smirked, and teased, “Already got the promotion paperwork submitted for the new head scientist of Astraeus station. I expect your resignation on my desk in five years, six months, and twenty-two days.”
She snickered, “I’m so proud of her, but she really does make me feel inadequate at times.”
I shrugged, “It’s the magic, you came to the same conclusion in a short time and are just as smart. You just need to learn things the hard way. It’s the magic not her intelligence that makes her absorb information so easily and quickly. Plus, she has no judgement yet.”
She patted my leg, “Stop trying to make me feel better. It’s more than just the magic, and I couldn’t be prouder that my daughter is more creative, intuitive, and intelligent than I am. The envy is just a tiny part of it and natural.”
I took her advice, just kept my mouth shut, and massaged her shoulders. Sometimes I couldn’t fix it, and just had to be there, but that was hard to remember at times.
“Me too, the proud part. As long as Darrell doesn’t come back to become our overlord, I’ll keep that opinion.”
She giggled, “Good point, nothing we can do about it though. Why don’t you take me to bed, I have a long day of testing tomorrow.”
“Tired?”
She shook her head, “Not yet.”
I knew what that meant, so I scooped her up and headed for the bedroom.
Chapter Sixteen
The U.N. was arguing the next morning when I got to the command center, they were two hours ahead since the station was on Mountain time still. For once, I was kind of happy politics was a slow and pain in the butt process, the longer they argued over the two issues, the more time my wife had to adapt the technologies before I’d have to try and hold off the committee again.
I grabbed a coffee as usual, and I sat down at the command table.
“Anything going on?”
Jessica said, “We have a ship full of Arnis heading in, they should be here in three hours. They dropped out of a wormhole five hours ago. They have reservations at one of the resorts.”
I nodded, it was worth noting. The Arnis loved to trade luxury smart materials for arts, entertainment, and other cultural riches of the other races. They’d been sending ships full of Arnis to enjoy our station for a few years now. My citizens were very respectful, and there were no xenophobes working for me, but there’d been more than one small incident with Earth visitors to the station.
Nothing violent, but vitriol was more than enough to freak out an Arnis. The race was extremely polite and wary. I liked them, but their visits were somewhat of a tightrope walk. At the same time, it was more than worth it for all the smart materials in their holds, that they’d use to pay for their vacation on my station and I could resale to the planet.
The ridiculously comfortable Arnis clothes and furniture were in as much demand as Vax life extension treatments.
“Increase security at that resort just in case, like last time.”
Jessica nodded absently, “Already done.”
“What’s up?”
Jessica shook her head, and then focused on me, “Sorry. I’m not sure, but it looks like one of the U.S. ships are on an intercept course.”
I frowned, and debated with myself, then decided screw politics.
“Do we have their quantum communicator address?”
The main database was ridiculously huge, there were billions of them now, among all the disparate civilizations. That didn’t even cover humanity’s private data link channel between all human ships and planetary locations, which was in the hundreds of thousands. Of course, a search could get it, their communicator identity would be married with their ship’s name and type.
Jessica nodded, “When they hailed us on arrival for an approach and docking course.”
“Hail them, and then see if you can figur
e out what the U.S. wants.”
Normally, the U.S. ignored all merchant ships after Astraeus cleared them, especially with the Vax and Arnis who’s merchants dealt exclusively with us, at least when they came to our system. I did have some competition now with the other space stations, but none of those were true cities like mine with civilians, a huge growing city, and resorts. The others were smaller, and little more than cargo warehouses in orbit ran by their military people, as well as their command centers for the ships they built and designed.
Jessica frowned as she hung up, and looked over at me, “They’re matching course and speed, to link up and perform an inspection. The Arnis claim the ship’s captain told them it was merely a tightening of security precautions because we’re at war with one of the great empires surrounding our fifty galaxies.”
“So, America suddenly cares what happens to us, I’m not buying it. The unarmed Arnis passenger ship is nowhere near Earth, and there’s several small fleets between the moon and Earth right now.”
Jessica shrugged, “Maybe it’s just a new blanket regulation for all non-Earth ships entering the system. Sure, I doubt they care overmuch what happens to us, but it’s been a long time since we’ve been enemies.”
That… was likely enough, and probably just the simple truth, but I was still annoyed they hadn’t notified me of the change. I sent a rather pointed query to Clarence James, I couldn’t imagine they’d dare to do the same thing to the Chinese if the merchant had been headed for their station. At least, not without prior notification and approval.
Clarence popped up in my augmented reality interface, that was fast. I answered the call.
Clarence said, “Mr. President. I apologize for the misunderstanding. Have you checked your messages yet this morning?”
Actually, I hadn’t.
“No?”
Clarence smiled, “We have our best generals and admirals working on a that counter-invasion plan to remove the Vrok as a danger to our sovereignty. They started on our offensive planning a few minutes ago, but the first thing they discussed last night was our defenses, and how they could be tightened up. They all liked your mini-platform defense plan since it costs no money and should be very effective, but they also discussed other dangers, including the possibility of subverting our trade allies or even just putting them under duress. We don’t have eyes on their systems after all, for all we know there’s Vrok ships in orbit of Arnis right now, threatening to open fire on the planet. The Arnis passenger and cargo ship might not be a military threat, but they could be forced to acts of terrorism to save their own planet, or even set to spy and try to steal earth nanite technology if under duress. That holds for all our trade traces.
“The minutes and conclusions of last night should be in your messages. The United States volunteered to perform all interdictions of incoming merchant vessels, since they have the largest manned fleet in the system. In addition, we’ll also be highly curtailing access to Earth’s orbit and efforts are being made to expand our constant scanning for stealth vessels out to two light seconds as we build more mini-platforms.
“Similar measures have been taken in all our colony systems as well.”
“Alien ships are already forbidden Earth orbit.”
He nodded, “For our own merchant vessels, returning from other worlds. They’ll have to submit to a search as well, before gaining access to Earth’s orbit, in case the enemy has taken their ship or some other form of duress.”
I blew out a breath, “I have no objections to any of that, it seems prudent.”
If a bit paranoid, but war was like that sometimes. Plus, objecting wouldn’t get me anywhere if the other main eight countries in space were on board everyone else would follow, even if I disagreed, which I didn’t.
“However,” I added, “The Arnis are a sensitive race, I do hope the inspectors will be respectful of our trade allies and aware of the peculiarities of their taboos and cultures during the performance of their duties.”
Clarence nodded slowly, “That is our aim. There will be a learning curve, but all captains assigned to this activity have strict orders to study the database for all the races that send merchant vessels here.”
Yeah, not perfect, but it would have to be good enough.
“Thanks for clarifying.”
Clarence nodded, and disconnected.
Then, I did what I should’ve done before calling in the first place, I read all my messages…
Cassie smirked as she walked in just after lunch, I hadn’t seen her all day.
“Jump to any conclusions lately?”
Jessica snickered, then slapped a hand over her mouth and looked at me guiltily.
I took the high road, and just ignored them both.
Cassie said, “Sorry, I could’ve briefed you if I’d been here, I think I need a bigger staff. Astraeus is getting too big for my current one to handle, and with the added political babysitting with the war going on I’ve had a crazy morning.”
I shrugged, “Hire them then. It’s not like we have a tight budget.”
Really, we were probably the only country in the U.N. with excess funds and absolutely no debt at all. No thanks to any personal acumen as far as economics, it was all thanks to the nanites which were free from my point of view, and they made us a ton of cash in ships and other products. In short, we cheated outrageously.
Of course, a lot of countries were doing better that way as well. With humanity disgustingly healthy there was no more need for most aid programs, from free health care to disability. Not just from accidents or trauma, but other disabilities as well. Even food stamps and unemployment was practically non-existent, since many of the pioneers who started new colonies were among those who couldn’t get jobs.
Cassie nodded, “I also have good and bad news. The good news is the U.N. are arguing about sharing cultured meat technology. I suppose it’s good no one is suggesting genocide, but many feel we should just quarantine the Vrok and not worry about it. Food is their problem, and they eat intelligent life. Half decries that as inhumane punishment, starving most of their population, and insist they should be given the technology and let them decide whether to use it or not.
“The bad news is the U.N. already made a decision on the other issue, after only a half day of arguing. We’re going to take over the borders, and we’ll protect the twenty-six galaxies like we already are the fifty, from other super intergalactic empires around the Vrok currently.
“The next steps there, as far as exactly what we’re doing in that space, claiming a small portion, spreading out in it, or even what we do when the three million races start to advance without their suppressive overlords and get FTL. We can figure all that out later.”
Damn, I’d been counting on much less cooperation. Damned U.N. had to start getting things right, now? What’s up with that?
I blew out a breath, “Hopefully they’ll argue long enough on the second issue to buy Diana enough time to give me something viable to present to the committee.”
Cassie asked, “What’s your thought there, on the protection part?”
I shrugged, “Carve out a small space in every galaxy equal to what we have here. That will give us over two hundred thousand living words to eventually occupy, more or less. A good payment for our effort to keep out the other large empires, without controlling the races who already live in those galaxies, giving them plenty of room to expand when they get in space.”
Cassie asked, “And when those races do get FTL, and start invading or trying to control their neighbors?”
I shook my head, as my conscience tweaked. I didn’t really know, we couldn’t save everyone, and I wasn’t willing to run a true empire when they had to follow our laws. That didn’t seem right either, and eventually humans would lose themselves to that much power, and hardly be fair. Life simply wasn’t fair, and I didn’t want to lose myself to ambition or pushing my own morality on others.
“Not sure. Perhaps take a page out of the At
ans and the Grays books. We’ll monitor them for ingress from one of the surrounding empires until they’re in space, then they’re kind of on their own. Even against each other, at least they’ll be at a similar technological level.”
Cassie said, “That’s the Grays, what about the Atans?”
I said, “Oh. Well, we ignore them, maybe even trade with them, but if they attack us we knock them out of space and let them try again later. No genocide, not even reduced to the stone age, but we can give them a wakeup call.”
Cassie said, “If they attack other local pre-FTL societies, enslave them or just exploit them?”
I shrugged, “I think that’s the we can’t save everyone part. Otherwise it’s a true empire and we’ll just make it worse.”
Cassie nodded, and looked relieved, “That’s something I can live with. Protect our small areas of space in all the galaxies from all comers. But only protect the growing to FTL races and the borders from the large threats, internally we can’t interfere past that, I don’t think. Not without becoming what we’re fighting against.”
That was my idea, and it wasn’t perfect, but what in this life was?
Jessica said, “The Arnis have been cleared, and the U.S. ship is moving away.”
I replied, “Good, make sure second and third shift are aware of the new security precautions.”
Jessica smirked, “Consider it done.”
I nodded, “I’ll let our trading allies know, so they aren’t surprised at the gate so to speak.”
Cassie snickered, “Good plan.”
I took a sip of coffee, and I got back to work. Solar system tours were expanding again, the Arnis weren’t the only race to be curious about visiting other worlds and enjoying their amenities from shopping to cuisine and culture. Think cruise ship stopping in multiple ports, but worlds instead of islands and mainland. A space luxury liner of course, which required a lot of imports from Earth, because nanites were a lot of things but they weren’t luxurious in the least.
I even set it up to look like a luxury liner in a lot of ways, including a very large open room on the top deck running the full length of the ship where the ceiling and walls were hidden behind realistic holograms of the surrounding space, including a few pools with bars. From the inside, it would appear the top deck was open to space. I had a little fun with it.
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