by D. R. Rosier
I nuzzled her nose with mine, her dark blue eyes were sad but still beautiful.
“Just the first part?”
She shrugged, “He’ll have a year to build too when this is done, with the resources of the empire behind him.”
I said, “It won’t be easy, but we’ll make it happen. He’ll be constrained by money at that point, and he’ll also have problems recruiting people to man the ships. Plus, we can use hit and run tactics, by the time we fight, I plan to have eyes on every system in the empire, and much more. Not quite a sensor net over the whole empire, but the next best thing.”
I kissed her softly, and caressed her back and hair, and she snuggled in tighter.
She said, “It just seems hard to believe, and I’m upset at the deaths.”
I replied, “Vik already touched on it, and despite how much more advanced the empire is over Earth, we have one thing in common. The economy revolves around resources, especially power. New ideas and breakthroughs, and even new applications of the same technology, are usually suppressed in favor of the status quo. No one wants to lose their milk cow. Plus, the dimensional technology is still fairly new and state of the art, maybe the new synergies possible with that technology just hadn’t caught up yet. People get into ruts, even brilliant scientists and inventors. I have no preconceived notions.
“As for the deaths, so am I. Upset I mean. It seems senseless, even though it did have a purpose, to weaken Denik.”
It was an easy thing to say it was necessary, when I wasn’t the one dying to weaken Denik and give hope to the rest of the empire. People like Denik wouldn’t care, but those of us with a conscience suffered a form of survivor’s guilt from it. Worse, I couldn’t help but feel grateful to the fact we’d lost our FTL capabilities, otherwise we’d have joined the fight and died along with them. That relief made me feel even more guilty. There was no point in going later and committing suicide, one ship against a whole fleet only carried the day in silly stories. We could do far more good in restoring the empire doing what we were doing right now, and who knows, maybe there were other lone ships out there in similar circumstances making plans of their own.
She asked, “Any hints? How are you going to solve the power issue.”
I said, “By partially making a geometric energy cost linear.”
She pondered that for a moment, and then kissed me. It was sweet, and lingering. I sighed in pleasure as her hands moved farther down my back, and I deepened the kiss. Then I rubbed my body against hers as she caressed and gently squeezed my ass.
I hadn’t thought we’d do anything tonight, but that was a lack of experience on my part. I’d never had a relationship before, or a true friendship, and one-night stands didn’t lean towards comfort sex. I learned all about that concept that night, as we made gentle love to each other under the sheets. There was no hungry desire, or roughness, just soft touches, and a sweet deliciously slow rise toward completion before we snuggled up for sleep.
Well, I slept, she probably watched me sleep all night…
The next day I worked on the probe system, which would become the heart of our new military data net. While I was doing that, the rest of the team was deploying and setting up the mining in a resource rich asteroid field, and started our fabricators building more fabricators and infrastructure. It would have to be extensive, we not only needed the ship yards, but support for the synth lab, A.I. creation, and all the other aspects needed when building a fleet, like missile and fighter production, shuttles, and the like. There was one other requirement that they didn’t know about yet, but I wasn’t sure yet what it would entail.
That night, I took a night off from my lovers and continued to work after dinner.
I figured I’d be bouncing between Vik’s, Telidur’s, and Jillintara’s beds, and for my own sanity I’d need a private night in there as well. I enjoyed their company, but sexually satisfying all three of them, every night, was an exhausting thought. Not a bad one, because I loved the pleasure of sex, just… too much of a good thing.
It was the following morning, that I was ready to reveal what I’d been working on, which was far more than they knew.
“Vik, I have that probe information ready, and it’s more comprehensive than I initially planned for.”
Vik said, “Let’s see it.”
Strangely enough, I felt more nervous about this presentation, than I had fighting for our lives on the Stolavii ship, or when doing a job for Uncle Sam.
I brought up a hologram on the bridge. It was a black tube with rounded ends, six inches in diameter, and just over six feet long.
Rilok said, “Wrong file, we don’t need to see your sex toys.”
Fuck, really?
Vik said, “Rilok… shut up.”
Rilok said, “Yes sir.”
Vik said, “How big is it?”
“Umm, that size sir, that’s how small the probe will be. The image is actual scale, and not a scaled model. Inside are the sensor packages for normal space and subspace, it also contains eight super capacitors, an impulse drive, and a quantum data connection.”
Telidur said, “I thought you said a gravity drive was impossible in something that size.”
I smiled, “I was wrong, and right. A missile has to be about the size of a fighter to fit the power source, along with a gravity drive capable of producing four hundred gravities of acceleration, which is quite large. It didn’t occur to me until after the download, but the small gravity emitters below the deck plates are tiny, since it only has to emit a one G field. So yes, a fast impulse drive is big, but since the probe doesn’t need to be fast at all, it’s got a one gravity of acceleration drive. The drive itself is actually just one of the emitters I just mentioned, which is more than powerful enough to create a gravity gradient field around such a small object. All it needed was a software change.
“At one G of acceleration, it can place itself in the center of any solar system in about a week. It’s also just a few pounds, and naturally stealthy, although not impossible to pick out with sensors it wouldn’t be easy.”
Jillintara asked, “What about a power source?”
“Outside of the super capacitors, which when charged will last about two days under drive power, and several weeks just running the sensors and data connections, there isn’t one. It’s powered externally via dimensional technology to transfer power from a reactor. That’s where the rest of it comes in, which is quite a bit more.”
The probe disappeared, and a large rectangular ugly looking ship appeared.
“This ship is about the size of a destroyer vessel, if wider, an eighth of a mile long, a hundred yards wide, and about fifty feet high. It is the heart of the probe system I’ve developed, and will be fully automated to build, deploy, and power six thousand probes. One for every star system in the empire. If you say no, we don’t have to do this, but in the end, it will allow us to spy on your brother, and stop anyone else in the future from doing what your brother did, and what we’re doing, building a secret fleet.”
Vic looked dubious, “So this will make probes, and fly around dropping them off, that will take a lot of power and resources.”
I smirked, “Actually, this ship will never leave this star system. I noticed something right away, all your ships are sleek, but I didn’t know why until a couple of days ago. The scout ship is about a hundred and fifty yards, the destroyers are an eight of a mile, the cruisers a quarter mile, and the battleships are a half mile, but they’re all tube like to a certain extent. The reason for that of course, is that the cost of building a wormhole is proportional to its diameter, on a geometric rise in energy requirements. The energy costs to put this cruiser through a wormhole is astronomical, excuse the pun.
“But… the energy cost to create a wormhole eight inches wide, is tiny by comparison, and cheaper than carrying them to their destinations, even by FTL. Far cheaper. That’s why the probe is a thin tube, I designed it with the idea of deploying them to the edge of every syst
em via a wormhole. This ship will have one of my new reactors, and will be controlled fully by an artificial assistant. It has no gravity or life support systems, and no FTL capability either. What it does is mostly sit on the edge of a system, since wormholes aren’t possible within a system.
“The front of the ship is one large room, with internally facing subspace emitters capable of creating a wormhole from inside the ship. The small wormhole will be created in the center of the ship, and one of the probes will enter it. The rest of the ship has the capacity to hold enough resources to create a thousand probes, when it runs out, it will fly in system, pick up resources from the mines, and replacement cores if it needs them, and then it heads back out.”
I paused for a moment, “I envision this as the core of our new data-net, it won’t be long until your brother locks us out of the empire’s data net, at least their military one. They only way we’ll be able to track his ships, activities, ship building, and find any other secret bases he might have, is to deploy probes. As long as we build this ship within the first six months, it will be capable of putting a probe in or by every system within six months. Which is right at the year mark when we plan to counter attack.”
Vik asked, “What happens if the enemy finds this system, and destroys that ship.”
I nodded, “We’ll have secondary and tertiary quantum links with every probe. One of those will be stored with us here on ship, the other will be stored in this system’s infrastructure which will have defenses at some point. If the ship is taken out, we’ll lose the ability to create and deploy more probes until it’s replaced, but the capacitors will last long enough to get another reactor online to feed them energy. If we lose this system too, but manage to escape, the last option is to power them ourselves with our copy of the quantum connection.”
Vik asked, “And it’s cheaper, viable?”
I nodded, “It’s cheaper than loading up a small scout with probes, and placing them out of the systems via FTL. Much cheaper, even without my new reactor design, which lessens the cost even further. To be fair, my reactor design also lessens the cost of FTL on our new destroyers, but even then it’s still cheaper. The energy requirements for an eight-inch diameter wormhole is relatively cheap in energy, by magnitudes. Keep in mind, we’re kind of cheating right now, it won’t actually cost us anything since we’re producing our own element illegally, we might as well take advantage of that and put out a comprehensive system to keep an eye not only on your brother, but it will help with the Stolavii as well when they get up to no good.”
Vik grunted, “Maybe, but we’ll have to replace those probes as they go bad, and continue to power them legally after the fact.”
I nodded, “Sensors and quantum data connections are low power, once deployed, the reactor on the ship won’t go above idle to supply all the power needs, and since it has no artificial gravity or life support, that idle power load will be much lower than on a fully functional and occupied ship. Sure, it will cost money, but a lot less money than running around in circles looking for Stolavii pirates, we’ll already know where they are, how many ships we’ll need to send, so it will save millions of credits in the long run, even when we have to pay for it.”
Vik said, “Alright, submit the fabricator pattern to Jillintara, and we’ll get it built early enough to put it all in place. Anything else?”
I shook my head, “Going to work with Jillintara on the new artificial assistant design next, for both our infrastructure support and on our new ships, we need the former as soon as possible at least. Then I’ll work on the new missile, and finally the destroyer design and power station. Did I leave anything out?”
Vik asked, “Power station?”
I nodded, “Supplemental energy over dimensional ports, to power those sixteen extra plasma weapons, battleship level strength shield emitters, and the wormhole drive. I could just make the engine room bigger, and sacrifice a cabin or two, but trust me, a power station is better. I’m thinking we could hollow out some space in one of the asteroids for it.”
Vik nodded, “I’ll trust you enough to hear the whole presentation later, once you have a design.”
That just made sense, he’d have to approve everything I did…
Chapter Four
The next three weeks were a whirlwind of activity. The battles went by and ended predictably, and Vik’s brother was now in charge of the empire. We still had access to the public data net, but as we’d feared we were cut off from the military network. Not that there were any military resources left for us to watch through anyway. As a result, we had no idea what he was up to, and we probably wouldn’t find out until we got the probes up and running, which would be at least six months. The first fifty or so probes would go to the known and occupied empire systems, five with planets, and a bunch of resource systems, and then we’d fill in the rest of the systems as time allowed.
As a result of all that, we felt rather cut off, and I had a feeling all our imaginations were far worse than the reality. The public data net didn’t have much on it, only about the food prices, and taxes coming into effect. So far, there hadn’t been much griping about it, people were either afraid to speak out against Denik and his ideas, or those people were being suppressed. Either way, there was no evidence on the data net for either one. It was probably a mix of both.
Still, as our own plans moved forward, there was a cautious optimism among us, and the sadness of the battles had started to fade by the end of those three weeks. It wasn’t back to how it was, or normal, but the usual banter and talking had made a comeback of sorts.
I’d worked with Jillintara, and as much as I’d have liked giving her five hundred sisters, we didn’t have the knowledge or technology to build an organic Isyth body like the one she had. We’d have to settle for her dynamic matrix, and they’d organically grow in intelligence and capability as time went on, but without the physical bodies. In essence, they’d be better than the current assistants, but not as Isyth like as Jillintara was.
Hopefully, I wasn’t contributing to the building of Skynet, because the one thing we didn’t put in them was the overrides. Maybe they’d be servants, but they wouldn’t be slaves.
We started to build those first, the five hundred and some odd assistants would be ready to take over the infrastructure once the ships were ready to be built, along with my probe ship, the power station, and wherever else they would be needed. Maybe we could make them bodies later.
The missile design was the easiest for me. I more than doubled the yield of the plasma simply by ripping out the power system entirely, and extending the plasma containment by more than half. It would be entirely powered by the ship’s power systems that fired it. I also updated the software, so it was possible for it to cut engines, and re-fire them if required. That meant it could go farther than two light minutes, but also go part of the way ballistic, and start accelerating again when it came to aiming at the target near the end. That would both extend the range, and save money, which was an important consideration to the empire. It also meant any missiles that were spoofed and not destroyed, could return to the ship after the battle instead of self-destructing.
The other advantage to this besides being cheaper to make without their own power systems, was in a short-range battle where the missile only needed to go four or five light seconds, instead of accelerating for two light minutes, it would only burn the exact amount of energy it needed to get there, whereas the old missiles would just waste all that extra potential energy.
My relationships with Vik, Telidur, and Jillintara grew as well, and the more I got to know them, and they got to know me, the more vulnerable I felt. Having friends and lovers was a new experience for me, and while it was great, it was in its own way, also terrifying. I’d hated the restriction on Earth, but it had also made me a very independent person, which I supposed made it harder for me to trust my heart. But… I was growing closer to all three of them despite that.
Rilok was still an assho
le. No change there.
Last but certainly not least, those three weeks were mostly spent on the destroyer upgraded design. Which had everything I promised, and more. They were hardly super weapons, and an older style cruiser would still kick its ass if it was one on one, but two on one would be an even fight, and it could take on three older destroyers and have a chance at winning all on its own.
Sadly, the best part of the design, was it would do all that extremely cheaply. Still expensive, but not nearly as bad or inefficient as the current designs.
“You ready to hear my pitch?”
I wondered briefly how the assistant would translate that. After all, they didn’t have baseball.
Vic said, “Been dying to hear it.”
I smiled, and brought up a hologram, of three metallic balls. One was large, one was smaller, and then one was very small. Next to that, was a tall two by two foot square column, with access ports. Next to that, was a hologram of the ship itself to scale. It looked a lot like the current destroyers, but with more weapons on the hull, and more external airlocks. I’d removed a lot of the crew quarters, since like this experimental ship, the new ship could be run by advanced A.I. with just a command crew.
“Okay, the shield emitters and extra plasma weapons, nor the wormhole drive require an explanation. There’s also a lot more storage room without so many crew quarters. I’ll stick to the power systems in my pitch, which is really the difference maker here on powering those weapons and drives.
“The large metallic balls are power cores, where the element is coated on the inside, and where all the magic happens. The large one is the core used on a cruiser, which is the power output capabilities we need for this new class of destroyer. The second one has an internal surface area of half the large one, and are what the current destroyers use. The tiny one, is a tenth the size of the old destroyer core, and a twentieth the size of the cruisers.
“The power capabilities are linear there, so it will take twenty of those small power cores to equal the power output capabilities of this ship, which is what we need to power the wormhole drive, and the more powerful shield emitters and extra plasma weapons.”
