Our relationship was strong, and I paid her plenty of attention, but there was an extra intimacy and enjoyment in each other that night.
At the end of the night, she lay in my arms with her head on my shoulder, both our hearts slowing in the relaxing moment before sleep. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine my life without her. She was beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and so much more than I could say in all the small things we did for, and meant to, each other. Nothing was perfect of course, we fought at times, but I couldn’t think of a place I’d rather be.
“Love you, Diana.”
She kissed my chest, and said contentedly, “Love you, too. Thanks for tonight.”
I smiled, “Anytime, and all my pleasure.”
She giggled naughtily, and smirked up at me, “Oh, there was some for me too.”
She asked perceptively, “There something on your mind?”
I quipped, “Opposed to the rest of the time, when its empty?”
She nodded teasingly in agreement.
I laughed, “The future.”
Diana sighed, “Me too. Between the obvious assassination attempt using a criminal no less, and them not acknowledging us as a country and calling us rogue citizens and terrorists, it’s just a matter of time before the U.S. does something stupid again.”
I snickered, “That too, but I was wondering about our future.”
She blushed, “Oh.”
I dragged her body up and claimed a soft kiss. The way her soft silky skin slid against mine, made me wonder if I didn’t have one more round in me, not to mention the sweet loving way she kissed me back.
She asked, “What about us?”
“I’m happy, and things are great. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
She tilted her head, “Me too. Is there something you want to ask me, Scott?”
There really was, she was far too perceptive, but in bed after sex probably wasn’t the best place to pop the question, was it? I also worried it hadn’t been long enough, we’d only been together for four months, even if we’d been living together for most of that time. I didn’t want to scare her away, and if she said no things would blow up and get weird. Time to pull up my big boy pants.
“We haven’t really talked about it, just wondering how you felt about marriage, family, children, and all that.”
She teased, “All that?” giving me absolutely nothing.
I nodded, and I looked down into her eyes. She looked breathless, and more than wide awake. Nervous and excited. I really should’ve thought that through better, it wasn’t the time, but it was her perception of my preoccupied thoughts and question that got us here. So, not my fault, but I was sure it would be somehow anyway, for not being romantic enough. Still, too late and too awkward to backtrack now.
“I can’t imagine a night without you, much less a life. I love you. Would you be my wife, Diana?”
Her eyes widened, and then grew moist. Still, she didn’t make me wait all that long, before she put me out of my misery.
“I’d love to, yes,” she said breathlessly.
My heart hammered, but at her yes my whole body relaxed, I hadn’t even realized I was tensed up.
I said, “We can choose and pick up rings tomorrow, after work?”
She nodded, and bit her lip, “Two kids, I hated being an only child, but do me a favor and minimize the whole first lady of Astraeus thing.”
I smirked, “We’ll see. There’s state dinners, and interviews…” I got cut off as she slapped my chest and giggled.
We wound up staying up for quite a bit longer, truly talking about and planning out the future for the first time. Well, our personal future I mean. There was a joy in her eyes that was mesmerizing, and she didn’t tease me once about how unromantic I was, but I was sure it was coming at some point. We also got around to that last round…
Chapter Eight
There was a lot going on. Jayna and Cassie were in the conference room near the command center with me, and we were going over some things. A briefing really, to let me know what they were up to, which turned out to be a lot.
Cassie was practically glowing though, it seemed like the crazier things got, the happier she was.
“We’re patent pending on the weaker power sources, and were in talks with several manufacturers worldwide, except of course in England, Germany, and the U.S. Those three are still standing strong against recognizing us, though most of the other countries have, and at least all the important ones outside of those three are on board.
“Regardless, we’re talking to car and plane companies, electronics, lighting, heat and cooling, appliances, cell phones, and just about anything else that requires a power source. It’ll take years of course, but at some point, the electrical infrastructure will completely go away. Not just electric companies and power lines, but power infrastructure in homes, as everything is powered separately with cheap clean energy for years and years before it’ll need to be replaced.”
“Planes?”
She nodded, “The weaker power sources we feel comfortable with in atmosphere aren’t enough to power a high G artificial gravity field, never mind the needed inertial dampers at that rate of acceleration, but enough of them in parallel will power a small impulse drive. A quarter G of acceleration is nothing to sneeze at, and as far as plane speeds, or car speeds, they’ll eventually be moving very quickly. Also, at that rate of acceleration they won’t need inertial dampers.”
I nodded, “I can see that. So flying cars, no more jet fuel, and every powered device in a home, car, or on a person, will eventually be clean energy. That seems like a good thing, but all the energy sources out there will fight it. We’d be shutting down a lot of industries.”
She shrugged, “We won’t have to fight that. We’re marketing your ships and other inventions through our company, but we can’t overhaul the world, and you can’t design a new thing of everything. Once the patents are in, we’ll sell rights to all the different manufactures, and let them fight their governments, big oil, and all that.”
Jayna nodded, “As it is, we’ve already got things selling on Amazon, small things and a taste of that future with your inventions taking advantage of quantum communications and small power, but that’s just a small piece of the pie.”
Cassie said, “The countries that have colony planets will also most likely go straight to the cleaner infrastructure as well. There’s a lot going on, and my team has been growing to keep track of it all.”
“I get that. Power, transportation, and communication industries will all be changed. Have you been able to figure out what’s going on with England and Germany?”
The U.S. I got. The people and citizens were good, I believed that, but I also knew the government was corrupt, and filled with paranoid control freaks. I imagined if I’d come from any other country, their leaders would be blocking acknowledgement of our country, and trying to regain control of their former citizens. It was the nature of all governments.
Still, the whole England and Germany thing was a mystery. Not that it mattered overmuch, with the U.S. on the security council with veto power, it meant winning over all three, or we’d never be recognized officially by the U.N. Even if all the other countries had acknowledged us separately already.
Cassie shook her head, “Whatever it is, it’s top secret, and at a very high level. None of the ancients on the council in those countries have been able to figure out what’s going on there. Still, we’re a country in the eyes of most of the world, and we’ll get there in the U.N. eventually. The governments are huge, but it’s just a matter of time until they stumble across someone in the know.”
Right, with compulsion it’d be very hard to keep a secret from the vampire council embedded in their host countries. But, they couldn’t just barge in on the president and demand answers either.
“Can we play hardball? The colony ships will be done in a month, can’t we leverage that somehow. How can the U.S. buy a ship from a terrorist? That kind of th
ing.”
Cassie nodded slowly, then shook her head, “That would make us look petty, since they’ve already paid for it. It would also anger the pioneering American people and companies that are going to start up their new world, who are at this time lobbying for us to be recognized, and for the government to get over themselves. Doing that could backfire in a big way. Public opinion is on our side, I’m actually surprised they haven’t caved yet. We’re integral to the solar system’s defense, saved their bacon, and we haven’t done anything to piss them off, outside of you refusing to be murdered that is.”
“I’m selfish that way, and I’m not that surprised.”
Cassie frowned and shook her head, “I know they’re corrupt, but I worry they have a card we aren’t seeing. They’re stonewalling, and they’re biding their time for something. They really should have capitulated by now, so be careful.”
I nodded.
Jayna sighed, “Maybe we can’t threaten to derail their colonization effort, but I can work some memes and videos on social media that calls out their hypocrisy, and also highlights the fact we’re taking the high road and will deliver as promised, despite their spiteful attacks on us. General opinion of us is very high, after all we kind of saved the Earth three months ago.”
Cassie grinned, “That will work, but probably only in how we’re seen by the populace of those three countries, the governments will stonewall it. Still, it’s not a bad idea, because at some point the government will try to take us down again, and that favorable view of us in the population will help when we do stop them and kick their ass. Hopefully.”
“Right, they’ll spin it as our fault, and that we’re violent, never mind the fact we were attacked, and didn’t do the attacking. Every little bit will help there. Anything else?”
Cassie smirked, “Tons. Between opening alien relations for trade, new medicines, cures, and entertainment implants from said relations, all the changes to three multi-billion industries from your and Diana’s inventions, and becoming our own country. There’s a lot going on. It’s a great time to be alive.”
I sighed, and then resigned myself to a long meeting.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
In some ways, she looked even hotter to me when she dressed dowdy with a geeky lab coat and glasses instead of contacts. Admittedly, I was heavily biased, and it was probably the love talking. There was a two-karat solitaire on her ring finger as well, and a besotted smile on her face that hadn’t left since we’d picked up rings almost two weeks ago.
Not much had happened over those two weeks, except sales for ships I’d designed, personal and commercial, as well as the phones and small communication devices, and other things on Amazon such as small power devices had taken off. Of course, we were also two weeks farther along on the colony ship builds, just two weeks left give or take a few hours before I turned over the ships, and eight countries would load them up and claim new worlds. America, England, Russia, China, Japan, France, Germany, and Israel.
Nothing at all had changed in regards to our country’s acknowledgement from the three major hold outs. I think the worst thing about that was that we were disconnected from any announcement from the Grays as to their messed-up empire. The communication device given to our world was held by the U.N., and the transmissions and updates from the Grays about new worlds, notification of solar systems being attacked or getting caught attacking, wasn’t something I was privy too. I wouldn’t be privy to any of it, until our station was recognized as a sovereign country in the U.N., and we got those reports as well, as a member country.
I probably could’ve hacked my way in, in my sleep, but Cassie had asked me not to do that stuff anymore. All our connections to the internet, entertainment, and phone companies were all legal now.
In short, I hated being in the dark on what was going on past our heliopause.
Diana smirked, “Hi there yourself.”
We were in the control center, she’d just joined myself and Jessica.
“What’s up?”
She smirked, “We have some good results to share.”
She interfaced with the control table, and then brought up the daughter ship controls for the lab ship I’d given them and put in a barren solar system. Oh, there were a couple of rocky planets, three asteroid belts, and two gas giants. The solar system would be a good source of raw materials at some point, but no living worlds.
She said, “We figured out the power idea is a bad one. At least, mostly bad, but found a way to leverage it anyway. Self-powering every nanite on the main ship would be suicide in battle, the first time an anti-matter missile, or energy beam broke through the shields, and destroyed a nanite, it would start a chain reaction that destroys the entire ship in secondary explosions. All our attempts to overcome that chain reaction failed, the system just isn’t fast enough to compensate and get ahead of it. I suspect that’s why the Grays still use fusion. But, it did have other possibilities, which I’ll get back to in a moment. First, the demonstration.”
She brought up the weapons systems, and she chose a new one. The usual energy beam which was viable from one light second, and the much shorter-range anti-matter beam, was joined by a disintegration beam option.
She targeted both a small shielded probe ship, and a small asteroid, then fired.
Both the ship, and the asteroid just kind of… disappeared. Holy shit.
She said, “The ray destroys molecular bonds at the atomic level, similarly to how the nanites flow and reshape themselves, the beam causes them, or the pure matter on the asteroid, to separate. They weren’t really destroyed, just separated, the asteroid’s original mass is still there, just in molecular sized pieces. Not subatomic, which is why there’s no explosion. The current shielding on our ships can’t block it at all. The only drawback is the effective range is even shorter than the anti-matter beam, maybe an eighth of a light second, which is knife range in a space battle. It would be difficult to get close enough to use it against a stronger opponent, and probably unneeded against a weaker one. Still, I built the option into our energy weapons, just in case because you never know.”
I grunted.
She smirked, “Don’t worry, I’m not done with show and tell, and I started out with the bad news. Here’s the good news.”
She targeted a second shielded probe, and then fired. Absolutely nothing happened.
She explained, “This probe has the new upgraded shields, to defend from such an attack. We have to assume our enemies will match anything we come up with, so it seems prudent not to use anything we can’t protect ourselves from. Anyway, back to power.
“Powering all of the nanites is bad, but at the same time a block of nanites the size of one of the fusion reactors will actually put off more energy. That means we can build nanite reactors, instead of going through the trouble of building fusion reactors. More than that, it means no more stopping for gas, if we decide to make the change, since that power comes from a combination of vacuum and Casimir energy.
“Still, we don’t actually want to do that, we want to make it safer. A lucky shot could take out a big section of a ship or station, much like if the enemy managed to breach containment on a hot fusion reactor. Here’s the thing, we can minimize that by spreading out the power, instead of in my example, using a block of nanites the size of a reactor, instead we’ll spread out the ones giving power through the whole ship. If one gets hit, the surrounding non-reactor nanites will absorb the miniscule explosion and stop it from causing a chain reaction. In short, the ship will have millions of microscopic reactors, all of them separated evenly throughout the ship, except maybe the hull where we could have a thicker group of normal nanites to absorb damage from enemy fire. The larger the ship’s mass, the more power to run the mass of nanites.
“It also leads me to a much more effective weapon, at range. Missiles are kind of throw away, and who cares if it blows up. What I mean is, if a missile is taken down by point defense, it’s going to blow up anyway. So, t
he missiles will be powered by self-powered nanites instead of pre-charged super-capacitors. This gives us a huge advantage, because it won’t be limited to the amount of energy it can hold in its super capacitors, and the energy will technically never run out. So, what does that give us?
“First, the missiles will have an unlimited range, forget only having the power to reach out two light minutes. Second, the missiles will be shielded, we’ll have the power to burn so why not. That adds up to forcing the enemy to waste even more power to take down a missile, which means they’ll be unable to split their fire as much when taking out a missile barrage. For enemies without the Gray technology that can adapt the strength of their point defense on the fly, it may very well make their static point defense worthless. The new shielded missile would’ve been immune to the point defense on the race that attacked us over three months ago, for instance.
“Third, the gravity and anti-matter missiles will be a lot stronger, more energy equals more powerful gravity field or more energy to burn creating anti-matter during transit. Fourth, a new missile type. Disintegration missiles. They’ll be shielded and have an unlimited range like the others, and they’ll also have a disintegration beam. Remember that short range limitation for the beams on the ship? The missile will fly at the ship, and fire disintegration beams at it when it reaches an eighth of a light second from target, and it will fire once every second until it is either destroyed or passes out of range. More than that, the missile is recallable if it isn’t taken down by enemy point defense, think of it more as a very small weapons platform than a missile, since this missile will never hit the enemy’s shields or ship.”
Oh, holy shit.
“You are so hot.”
Astraeus Station Page 7
