by D. R. Rosier
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Kris and Stacey were alone on the bridge, which was a good thing because she was currently straddling him in the command chair and neither of them had a strip of clothing on. She was riding him slowly and decadently. This was their fourth round of the day and there was a casual feel to it as she rode up and down slowly, keeping them at a constant simmer and enjoying the pleasure of it almost nonchalantly as they chatted.
He teasingly took a nipple into his mouth and circled it with his tongue.
She said breathily, “I think we’ll be going soon, aren’t we almost in the hangar?”
He nodded slightly, lightly pulling on her sensitive globe with suction.
“Yes, it’s hard to believe it’s so big, this ship is completely dwarfed.”
She smiled and ground down against him slowly, “Yes, it’s very big love.”
He chuckled, “How’s the terra-forming idea coming?”
He pulled her head down lightly by her hair and started kissing along her neck as she said, “Good, Aide and I worked out all the details, although I’m not sure how often or long we’ll be there. I think we all want to explore. It will make a good home port though.”
He groaned as she squeezed hard around his entire length, then rose up to the very tip before releasing and dropping back down. He’d been on the edge so long but he didn’t want it to end either. He especially enjoyed watching Stacey have one mini-orgasm after another, he’d lost count a while back.
She said tentatively, “I’m about out of my birth control pills, when I asked Aide about getting more, she said the nanites were a safer form of birth control.”
He nodded.
Her voice grew even more reserved, “Do you think, maybe I should tell her never mind. I know we should probably get married first, but does that even mean anything out here, with just six of us?”
At first he didn’t get what she was asking, when it finally hit him he felt a surge of lust at the idea of her carrying his baby. He completely lost control and buried himself up inside her and held her tight as he exploded, ropes of his essence filled her warm hot core. She cried out and her voice was cut off as her tight wet heat locked down and started to undulate along his length, milking him.
When they came down she giggled, “I guess that’s a yes, you want to make a baby?”
He kissed her fiercely, “Yes love, so don’t worry about taking the rest of those pills.”
She smiled and he moaned when he felt her body squeeze his shrinking manhood tightly. She got up and they got dressed and went to their cabin for a quick shared shower and a change of suits before joining the others.
They left the ship together, he smiled a little, as it looked like everyone else had also just gotten out of the shower. They walked into the bay and big was an understatement. He smiled at Aide, who had a sense of theatrical timing as the download tour started a few seconds later.
It was only one of the eight bays that had sixty fighters in it and there was plenty of room left. The eight bays were quartered, equally distributed with four on the top of the carrier and four on the bottom. They didn’t go that far into the ship however.
The external walls of the ship had millions of plasma conduits which powered all the different types of shields and plasma turrets. The electromagnetic field stopped just short of a half mile into the interior of the ship. A mile into the ship, there was more armor and another set of millions of plasma conduits with its own fields. It was far enough in not to interact with the external conduits. These conduits and all the energy they created went to powering the shields and weapons on all the fighters via quantum connections.
Despite the very small size of these fighter attack ships, their shielding and weapon systems were just as powerful as the scout fighters. The small rings of plasma for internal power were more than enough to power the reaction drive and gravity systems for integrity fields.
Another mile into the carrier command ship was another even smaller ring that powered internal ship systems, such as the drive, bridge, quarters, internal lighting, gravity, inertial dampers, another set of shields, and all other ship systems. Despite being the smallest ring, it still had a two mile diameter and put out a heck of a lot more power than the ship they just left.
In the core of that ring along with the suites, which were more the size of a house, there was plenty of room for storage along with smaller rooms for thousands of crew, though they would never be used for Earth. They could also be used to rescue a great number of people. There were also a number of research labs and of course the bridge and the engine room.
Between the internal rings were forty large warehouse size rooms filled with dirt. Not only could the dirt be transformed to repair the ship by using the nanites, it could also easily replace all four hundred fighters if they are lost twice over.
He couldn’t help but look over at Nate and give him a salute. The ship was an absolute marvel of engineering and could put out more power than a planet would know what to do with. He could hardly believe there would be another sixteen of these so fast.
He asked, “Aide, if we can make ships so fast and automate them so easily. Why don’t the Sthellan and Alion have billions of ships? I gathered that this war has been long and hard, but I don’t get why.”
She bit her lip, “Well, I can’t speak to the Sthellan, but I believe the Alion are paranoid about AI’s having too much power. Considering what I’m doing here, and that I will support you over them as long as you don’t violate the rules I guess I can see their point. What we’re doing isn’t in my programming, if I hadn’t evolved… it wouldn’t be a possibility.
“Really, all Alion and Sthellan ships are under their control with people aboard. In a way I suppose they are exactly like humans in that way. If it wasn’t against my protocols I’m sure you would have designed manned ships instead of these computer controlled fighters under your command, and then filled them with human volunteers.
“I guess it seems a little silly to me too, but that’s how it is. I also have an idea I want to run by you.”
Kris asked, “What’s up?” as they started moving toward the lift.
Aide said softly, “Well, I had the idea we should try and safeguard more than Earth if we can with the technology we built. Maybe it could lead to more allies? I had the idea of dropping off the nanites at the asteroid ring when we leave. There are tons of available rock and metal there to create more ships, and then when they start pumping out ships, we can visit new places.
“Unlike the Alion, if they’re primitive we won’t have to uplift them at all, just kind of leave a ship there and prevent them being dragged into the war.”
Kris pondered that, it didn’t sound like a bad idea on the face of it, unless they found a stronger aggressive species, but everything had an element of risk.
“How many ships are we talking about?”
She said nonchalantly, “At the current level of nanites, we can create one hundred twenty eight every three days. It works out to something like twelve hundred eighty a month. In just a year we can have over fifteen thousand systems under watch with plenty of ships left over for quick responses.”
She looked at Stacey, “It would also be a good way to find somewhere to visit and look around in person, rather than wander from empty system to empty system until we find something worthwhile. The ships can be like… big ass scouts.”
Kris snorted, it always surprised him when Aide cursed or made a joke.
He said, “It’s not a bad idea, although do we want to be responsible for policing the universe against aggressive species? What gives us the right to impose peace?”
She shrugged, “I wouldn’t suggest going after the aggressive species, just protect the peaceful, or weak ones. There’s a difference. It’s something we can decide case by case anyway, but there are other reasons to do it, like exploration. Besides, could you really stand by and do nothing while an entire species is eradicated? Does your stance include huma
nity? Because here I am, defending your world.”
Her voice got a little tense there at the end and he acknowledged her point.
“I get it, we do what we can. I just hope we don’t make things worse, humans are bad at that sort of thing, we don’t normally do it as a country unless there is something in it for us. But with your help and just six of us we could do a lot of good I suppose.”
She nodded as they finally arrived at the lift and rode it to the core of the ship. There were ten huge officer suites like houses around the bridge, with a few labs and the officer’s mess. He pondered that they wouldn’t even have to leave the center deck unless they were leaving the ship.
He wasn’t that surprised however, when only three of those ten suites got used. They had a couple of days to wait before they could leave and he could use the time to both train and consider all she said. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but then they had the greatest check and balance possible. Aide would never allow them to become the aggressors.
Chapter 18
Olivia spent the forty eight hours, when she could drag herself out of bed, working on the sensors. Right now the sensors could give remarkably detailed information within the range of a light year, and basic details within a ten light year sphere centered around the ship. One of the reasons for the limitations were the power requirement, but this ship had power to spare.
It was possible to tap into the energy created by the middle ring of plasma conduits, although it would be foolish to do so during battle when the energy was needed by the fighter craft. Still, when not in battle there was no reason to let all that power go to waste, the current sensors were fine for a battlefield conditions, but without battle the sensors could reach farther out.
She thought this would help greatly when ships went out exploring, they’d be able to find life bearing planets much easier and not just rely on guesses based on the star type and planets in a life bearing distance from the sun.
The problem wasn’t just one of power however, just pumping more power into the sensors did cause a much greater return, multiplying the distances involved by ten while also slightly increasing the basic readings that now extended from ten to a hundred light years. The problem was software and the current hardware bandwidth however; the systems had trouble processing all the additional information.
She gasped slightly and closed her eyes at the feel of Aide’s soft lips on her neck, she hadn’t even heard her lover come in the lab.
Aide whispered in her sexy voice, “Do you need help?”
She nodded slowly, “We need a more robust computer handling sensor data if my idea is to work. Extending the range out to a hundred light years actually means a hundred times the amount of data return. More than that really if you include the higher resolution.”
Aide said playfully in her sultry toned voice, “And what’s in it for me if I do this for you?”
She said breathily as Aide kissed her below her ear, “Well I can certainly take a break.”
Aide replied smugly, “Good, it will take a little while for my nanites to finish the upgrade, and then you can test them and see if they need any improvements…”
Aide’s voice went straight to her core and she could feel herself moisten. She’d never actually been happier. She was doing the science she loved to do, and had a partner that would never get intimidated by her drive or intelligence.
She said, “In that case, I believe there are still several rooms in our suite to be broken in…”
She didn’t protest as Aide took her in hand and led her back to the suite…
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Nate frowned at the schematics for the reaction drive. His expertise was in power systems, but he had some knowledge of drives as well from his work on the subs, although it wasn’t really comparable. They’d improved shields, weapons, and power. From what he heard at dinner they were on their way to some improved sensors as well.
He didn’t think it would hurt to give themselves an increase in speed as well, but it wasn’t as intuitive to him as updating the power systems was. For him, that had been almost easy. This was… complicated. The reaction drives never had to worry about running out of reaction mass, because they used plasma from the sun. It would take millions of years before they’d make a noticeable difference.
The problem was it wasn’t just the drive he would have to upgrade; so many things were interrelated in moving the ship. The gravity systems which provided inertial dampening as well as integrity fields to reduce shear and wear on the ship were integrated. The power requirements also went up geometrically the closer to the speed of light they approached.
He kept trying to think of it as G’s of acceleration, when that was meaningless. The ships gravity systems and other fields kept them almost separate from the universe around it and the change from standing still to .04 C was almost instantaneous, or vice versa. The carrier’s systems were almost too complicated for him to see it all, so he changed his focus to the attack fighters which were a bit simpler in design.
Besides, they were really the ones that would be doing the fighting. If the carrier entered the battle things would already be far too sideways and they were probably screwed anyway. Though, if that were the case being able to run faster than the enemy could follow would probably be a good idea.
He also hadn’t spoken to Paula about their relationship yet. They still bantered, and then fucked like rabbits while living together. It wasn’t just him holding back. She was keeping her feelings about it hidden as well. He wasn’t sure how long that would last before things came to a head. The last woman he’d loved had been his wife of thirty years; he just didn’t know what to do there.
After a few hours he came to the conclusion that the speed was limited by its type. If he wanted to go faster, he would need to come up with a completely different means of propulsion. That seemed impossible at this point; the one they had now was the most efficient and powerful based on the Alion’s level of science.
Before he could make a breakthrough in a drive design, he’d have to make a theoretical breakthrough in science, and that just wasn’t his cup of tea. He wasn’t a theoretical scientist, he’d always been an engineer.
He looked forward to getting out of the solar system and hoped Kris was right to stick their necks out and not just burrow in defensively. It could go either way.
He spent the rest of the two days working on the ships power systems, looking for any short falls on the expected power outputs. But he’d done his job right and he couldn’t find any issues.
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Paula sighed. She really liked Nate, maybe more than that, but it seemed like all they did was snipe at each other and fuck like rabbits. The sex was amazing, the best she’d ever had. Not that she’d slept with all that many others being so focused on her career back on Earth, but she’d enough experience to know Nate was an extraordinary lover.
Still, she needed to know where things were going. It wasn’t like she had a lot more options, but that wasn’t good enough for her, she wanted more than that. She snorted, one of these days they might actually have a serious conversation and she’d bring it up. Right now things were being carried on pure heat and lust between them, but she knew that couldn’t last, not on its own.
She rubbed her eyes and looked back at the monitor. She was attempting to build a new weapon that would fire a beam of plasma, instead of the balls, and it was… complicated. The idea was extremely simple and it actually worked. All she had to do was create a containment field that was a tube, and send the plasma down it. When the tube hit enemy shields, that part of the containment would fail and a steady stream of plasma would pour into the enemy shields, overwhelm them, and turn the enemy ship to slag.
The problem was it was too slow. It took a half second to create a strong enough containment field, just like the current plasma turrets. That’s why the balls of plasma were created before they were fired. A half second was forever, if an enemy ship detected a
field forming it could simply turn, or slow down. At the speeds the ships could move a half second was more than enough time to dodge.
Containment fields did more than just contain the plasma; they contained the radiation the plasma put off, essentially making it safe. However, if it was outside the ship where the ships normal shields would handle that radiation, did that part of the field even matter?
She decided it wouldn’t.
Plasma had mass, so she changed the parameters to use a gravity field for containment in the weapon. Gravity fields were instantaneous, or near enough not to matter, and it would also reduce the energy required. She programmed the simulation and gave it a try. The beginning of the stream hit the simulated enemy ship, but didn’t stay locked on and most of the stream was wasted, ejected into space.
She saw the error. The containment field was programmed to lead to the sensor target data, but not track it. She programmed the containment field to follow the lock with nanosecond updates. The physical plasma cannon didn’t even need to be facing the enemy ship directly or track the ship, the field would arc as required.
The results were quite spectacular as she put up one fighter ship against five enemy scout craft. She had forgotten with using gravity for containment there would be no reload time, or at least she hadn’t fully thought it through. It took a half second of applying the beam to a ship for their shield to fail. She found she could even disable ships instead of destroying them by cutting off the beam very quickly.
Without the reload time, all five ships were taken out in 3.2 seconds. She stared at the screen for a very long time before contacting Aide, time for more upgrades…
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Stacey felt like she was in school. She’d worked with Aide on several things, such as terra-forming Venus and ideas on how to go forward with first contact if appropriate when they found new species. But she felt like it wasn’t quite enough. She was now in a world where her skills as a veterinarian were complete worthless. Even if she did find a sick animal, it would take a simply scan and an application of nanites now to fix the issue.