Tech Mage: Technomancer: Book One

by D. L. Harrison

  The nights I mostly spent with Diana after our evening meals. She was a lot more open about what she was working on without worrying about secrecy between us, or how the government might react to her sharing her projects. She enjoyed sharing her day, was passionate about her work, and equally interested in what was going on with me.

  Nanites required power constantly, they couldn’t power themselves, so she’d been working on a medical bed device that would run on external power, a lot like my armor would heal me actually, when I powered it with my magic. It’d be interesting if she could get any hospitals interested in purchasing one. A trauma victim, or someone with cancer, could be thrown inside the thing, and come out healed several hours later. Heart bypass operations could be performed with nanometer sized holes that were naked to the eye, and which caused very little trauma to the body. There were many possibilities.

  She was also doing studying and purely theoretical work, which might pay off in ways we couldn’t see yet. The healing was already a known thing, she’d just needed to design a machine to do it that wasn’t tied to a space ship or a fusion reactor. I was sure the FDA would be a stumbling block, but maybe not in other parts of the world, and eventually healthcare would be revolutionized. Nanites couldn’t heal everything of course, but it would make a big impact in operations, trauma, and oncology care.

  Beyond that, we also grew closer as a couple, and I was fairly sure I was falling hard for her, if not already there. My bed also hadn’t seen any use the last two weeks, as I’d been in hers. She’d also completely lost the lab coat, and she dressed a lot sexier though still professionally.

  I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that was all about me, I suspected it had a lot to do with not having a bunch of male geek subordinate scientists to keep in line. I believed that her change in dress had more to do with not having to dull her appearance to be taken seriously by her coworkers, since she was pretty much working on her own at that point, she dressed as she preferred to dress.

  Though, I would be surprised if I wasn’t at least a small part of that equation, she clearly enjoyed the way I looked at her and her effect on me, and she was also secure in the knowledge her intellectual prowess amazed me.

  My sister seemed to be rolling with things, and she felt useful working on ad campaigns for the station in social media, but I knew she’d be happier back in the real world. Hopefully that would be possible one day, or perhaps once the station had a lot of people and workers that would satisfy the lack she felt, as she made friends and perhaps found someone to share her life with. It’d be more like living in a city, once everything was running, and not in a vacuum with her brother and two other females.

  Not much had happened in regard to the U.S. government. Outside of verifying they had ten crews prepared to take the ships on delivery. They hadn’t even mentioned the jail breakout, or the defection of their head scientist, and I sure as hell hadn’t brought it up. I’d sent my ETA to L1, and I was fairly sure they’d be meeting us there with shuttles full of command crews.

  Outside of missile production, the ships and station were completely finished, and we had at least four days before our grace period was up and the psychopathic aliens released our location to the other FTL civilizations.

  The world seemed to be holding its breath. The riots had leveled off, but the stock market had taken a dive, and a lot of stores were out of emergency supplies. According to the news, the markets were all out of whack, and expected sales had dropped as people stayed home with their families. The restaurants, movie theatres, and other entertainment venues had been relatively empty the last two weeks. It probably wouldn’t get back to normal until we won, and even then it’d take a while.

  The president showed a confidence in our ability to withstand the coming attack, and other leaders followed suite to keep panic a minimum, but it was only so effective. I hoped he was right, it would all depend on how many ships attacked us, and how strong their technology was. We could only do what we could do.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I released two probe ships when we arrived, one of them went to L3 on the other side of the earth, and one of them went to L2 on the other side of the room. That would give me a full scan of the space around Earth, without the earth or the moon giving me a blind spot.

  The scanning technology could reach out to Jupiter, I could see a big part of the solar system, but it couldn’t see directly through large objects, so there were blind spots behind planets and moons. The important thing was there’d be no blind spots near Earth.

  Of course, the Earth’s fleet would be covering the other side of the earth, and the side I was on as well, but I didn’t want to miss anything, and if the enemy concentrated their forces on the other side of Earth, I’d be moving to join the battle.

  Cassie and Jayna were with me in the command center, hanging up their space station hats for the moment. We were all a little nervous about how they’d react to the massive station, that out-massed the ten large warships by five to one, and out-massed their seventy-five smaller warships by eighty to one. To further put it in perspective, a single level of my space station was bigger than Manhattan island at nineteen square miles. While it didn’t have skyscrapers, the public section of the ship was the top eighth of mile, a quarter of its half mile height, which was split up into thirty different levels.

  That meant the public part of the city was five hundred and seventy square miles, and that was just a quarter of the size of the station. The rest was the center where my home was with the three ladies, and the command center, plus tons of space for missiles, reactors, hydrogen gas, and all the systems that maintained and ran the space station, which was really a ship when it came down to it.

  The station could hold millions of people.

  One of the things Cassie had been talking about a lot the last two weeks was logistics. I suspected I’d be giving up a good portion of the space for food production, three or four levels, to make the station as self-sufficient as possible. I also listened to her advice, she was ancient, wise, and knew a lot about politics, government, people, and running things.

  Point being, before I got off on a tangent, I’d have given anything to be a fly on the wall of their bridges, as they took in the size of it. Hell, the size of the ten huge warships docked to it was mind boggling enough.

  “We’re being hailed… this is the space station Astraeus, go ahead.”

  Yeah, I’d named the station after a female Greek titan, which meant Starry.

  A throat cleared, “This is Captain Emerson, of the Apollo, we’re due in five minutes with the crews of the ten ships.”

  It looked like they sent one of the smaller warships, probably with supplies too, as well as furniture, for the command ships.

  I replied, “You’re cleared to dock next to them, and move to the ships, or you can dock with each ship separately, if you’d prefer to avoid coming on the station. I’m not sure what your orders are, but I’ll work with you to get it done. I also need crew rosters with identity scans, unless you’d prefer that I just leave the permissions open for everyone, and let you lock it down. Lastly, they’re all finished building, but they’re working on missiles right now, the captains can re-task if they need to.”

  He replied, “The latter works I think, we have supplies to transfer too, and it will just be easier to directly dock with the ships one at a time to facilitate things. Stand by for the rosters and scan data.”

  He sent the data. It didn’t take me long to set the permissions. Outside of creating an FTL drive or copying it, the captain had full permissions to do anything, and the crew lesser permissions and access to the system. Of course, if the captain died or left the ship, those permissions would automatically be granted to the first officer or next in command.

  I also named the ships as they requested and updated their transponders, so Captain Emerson would know which crew belonged to which ship. It was going to be a long day, and I really hoped they didn’t try anything. Giv
en they turned down docking on the station itself, I decided they really wouldn’t, at least not until the battle was done.

  “You should be all set, and the ships are all cleared to decouple at will, when the crews are ready to move out. All ten black boxes are on the small fighter, so you can have them taken down to Space Command.”

  He replied, “Thank you, Astraeus, out.”

  He hung up.

  Cassie said, “That went well.”

  “It seemed to, let’s see what happens after they get the ships.”

  I suspected they’d wait until after the battle, but who knew, maybe they just wanted the big ships first? There was also the small concern of how other governments saw me, and I wouldn’t forget six of the ten large warships I built were being crewed by other countries.

  Fortunately, that brand of paranoia didn’t pay off, and the ships uncoupled and left the area for Earth orbit one at a time as the crews were loaded. I paid attention though, L1 wasn’t all that far from Earth orbit, not when it came to missiles travelling at six hundred gravities of acceleration. I’d only have a few minutes to raise the shields and come up with a defense.

  Cassie smirked, “I enjoy it when pessimism is unrewarded. I’m happy, it’s even logical, but I imagine the whole thing has General Mortenson foaming at the mouth.”

  I snickered, “No doubt.”

  There wasn’t much more to do as far as preparation. We hung out at L1, while the fleet encircled the Earth and stayed away from us. Outside of continuing to build forty-five hundred missiles every two hours the preparations were done. I’d continue building missiles too, until I was full up to capacity, then I’d be able to turn off the majority of reactors.

  But that wouldn’t happen until after the battle, unless the aliens made us wait longer than anticipated.

  Point being, we put our space station hats back on, and hung up our war hats until the aliens showed. Not that there was much for me to do at that point, but I learned a lot about how business really works by watching Cassie work.

  She was also becoming a friend and seemed to be enjoying herself and the challenge of what we were trying to accomplish.

  I imagined after six centuries something new was a rare thing for her.

  Regardless, I didn’t hear from the fleet again until three days later. I’d been wondering, but they finally caved, and started to send ten ships over at a time to fill up on fuel. I charged them at competitive rates. Of course, I was using off shore banking, in case they decided to freeze my accounts and steal back the money when they stopped playing nice after the battle, they wouldn’t be able to.

  In short, I was glad I’d taken the extra for the trip, and I was still full and my hull slightly shrunk to its default configuration after they filled up, absorbing the extra space the extra hydrogen had taken up. It’d be a while before I could build an automated tanker to make runs to Jupiter, building as many missiles as possible was just too important to waste power on anything else for the time being. Once I had one, it’d be a forty-four hour round trip, plus the time it took to extract and filter the hydrogen out of the atmosphere.

  I still wasn’t sure how that would work out, they were stuck for the moment, but I had no doubt America and other countries would build gas freighters of their own and get their own gas. Still, if my private and commercial ship idea came through, I could sell gas to them.

  For the moment though, I was in good shape, and could refill the whole fleet again twice over. Besides that, it’d be at least two months before they needed to refill, and that’s if they kept their reactors at a high usage the whole time, so it was likely to be quite a bit longer.

  We sat around at dinner that night, and all of us wondered when the enemy would finally attack. It could be any moment, since our month was up. At least, that’s where my mind was.

  Cassie said, “I got a nibble from Fortis Memorial, in India. They’re interested in purchasing one of the medical beds for evaluation and testing.”

  Diana smiled, “That’s good news.”

  Cassie nodded, “We can deliver it after the battle, though it’ll depend on access.”

  Diana shrugged, “Stealth shields. They should work to slip past our own ships, if not against the enemy. We’re also going to need food soon anyway.”

  That was true, I’d gotten several months’ worth for myself, but with four of us the last two weeks that estimate had gone way down. We had maybe a week left, two if we pushed it.

  Cassie replied, “I’ll see what I can do, get a large shipment prepared in the same area. I think it’d be best if we avoided landing anywhere near the U.S. It also looks like lawmakers the world over are working on rules and laws for space. A great number of them are suggesting something similar to maritime laws, like international waters.”

  “How would that work exactly?”

  Cassie said, “Instead of two hundred miles offshore, it’d start two hundred kilometers above the surface. Anything under that would be considered the airspace of the country below, anything above that would be international space. It also means any kind of commercial ship would need to be registered to a country, and to submit to inspections of said country. We’d fall under that description, since a space station couldn’t be considered private, we’d have to register with a host country and adopt their laws.”

  “That sounds… annoying.”

  Cassie laughed, “Maybe, but it’s the price of doing business, and would lend us legitimacy. Otherwise we’d be labeled a rogue state. For the moment, we’re four fugitives and the only thing holding back U.S. forces is fear. With it, we’d be sovereign territory of another nation, which would make attacking us a far riskier proposition, at least politically. Assuming the laws are agreed upon. Everything is in flux for the moment.”

  She shrugged, “There’s also a lot of talk about the eight worlds, so you should consider a colony ship for the business. Probably wouldn’t sell many of them, but we could use a large infusion of cash. We’re going to need to make the ship as self-sufficient as possible.”

  I nodded, “I’ve been looking into hydroponics, or the idea of simply creating loam and enriched earth to grow in. We should be able to automate farming, save the animals. I believe we could make it fully self-sufficient, but some things like beef we’d have to import, but we could live without if we had to.”

  Diana asked, “What about canning, jarring, processing, it’d have to be more than just a farm.”

  I smirked, “Nanite packaging. Even better, it would cut down on waste, trash. Empty jars of tomato sauce would be thrown into a recycle bin which would power on the nanites and just reabsorb them back into the ship. It’d be a lot of programming work, there’s a lot to do of course, but grain for instance, after it was harvested could be processed into breads and pastas, the ship creating what it needed to do it temporarily. Complex machines are possible, and energy fields could be used to preserve and secure moving parts, instead of grease.”

  Cassie grinned, “You’ve been busy.”

  I laughed, “My part of running the station comes later, the split of responsibilities gives me a lot of spare time until we actually have people to protect, so I’ve had some spare time to look into a few things.”

  Cassie said, “I’ve also got a lot of interest from companies, a number are interested in being the first in space to offer hotels and resorts. I suspect our city will start out that way, a resort here and there, with stuff like tours of the solar system. A true city where people choose to work and live permanently in space may never happen. Of course, there’d be a lot of permanent workers, but only those that support those hotels and resorts. At least to start.”

  Diana said, “You should look into research companies too. A lot of scientific experiments could benefit from being done in zero-G labs.”

  I said, “Or we can just sell them a device that makes a lab on Earth zero G.”

  Diana tilted her head, “True. There’s a lot of possibilities for the alien tech we ha
ven’t even talked about. Still, I suspect our medical technology will be a draw. I mean, a lot of advancements will take years and years to be adopted by Earth, I suspect the station will be more of a draw for population than you expect. We shouldn’t have any problems drawing a police force for example, from disabled veterans with permanent injuries, that will turn out not to be so permanent after all.”

  Cassie tilted her head, “You might be right, I hadn’t looked at it from that angle before.”

  Cassie turned to me, “Most of the world also doesn’t understand why you’re such a big problem to the U.S. Obviously, they can’t exactly out you, since the supernatural world is still hidden from most.”

  That was a good point, most even in the U.S. government wouldn’t know I was a tech mage, I imagined that caused some interesting conversations, as the president tried to explain to others why they couldn’t just attack and secure the station.

  Jayna said, “I don’t suppose you can get us real furniture, while your arranging that food drop near India?”

  Cassie giggled, “I’ll make it a priority.”

  I stiffened, and I brought up a hologram of the solar system over the table. There were several flashes of light thirty-two light seconds away from Earth, which was about four A.U. out. The flashes kept coming in a staccato of light flashes.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Diana nodded, “I suspect that’s a different form of FTL from wormholes, one that’s far less efficient. A sort of subspace FTL drive. The technology and theories suggest its possible, but I never pursued it because we already had a better technology.”

  I frowned, “So, our ships are probably more advanced?”

  That’d been our theory, the gamemasters had the best technology, which meant so did we.