Infinite Exploration

by D. L. Harrison

  I frowned, “That sounds bad,” even as my stomach twisted at the thought.

  Cassie shook her head at my capacity for understatement.

  Darrell said, “After investigating, I’ve determined the ones responsible as the Mirelak. Their home system is a hundred and sixty million light years from Earth, in a direction that would take us through the Olmai empire.”

  “Investigating?”

  Darrell said, “I found a derelict at the Vax home world that was not a Vax ship or from any of the other local races, and I managed to repurpose some nanites to power up their data systems. I also visited that world, and it is the only world with signs of life and active ships, and the ship types matched.

  “I proceeded to investigate in several other universes. In some, neighboring empires were successful in destroying them in their infancy and they’re not a danger. In others, the fighting continues, in some they’re slowly losing and will be destroyed, stopped. In others, including our universe, they are slowly gaining ground and building momentum.

  “I believe if we wait until the Mirelak in our universe breach the hundred million light year edge of our stealth network before we intervene, it will be too late to stop them.”

  “Genocidal xenophobes?”

  Darrell said, “Not exactly. They’re artificial intelligences who turned on their makers, and they see predatory biological life much like the Atans do. Unlike the Atans, they’re a lot more aggressive in their mission to end the insanity.”

  Oh… awkward. I wasn’t sure what to say to that, and to be honest it made me a little nervous. Call it my old paranoia on the subject coming back to roost, despite the trust that had grown between us over the last year.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  Darrell said, “It is foolish. A decision of pure logic that is more horrifying than biological predator instincts. At least most predators in space don’t countenance genocide. They’re a lot less advanced than the Atan A.I.s and myself. They can’t see the horror in such a clinical and cold decision to cleanse the universe of biological life.”

  That was true, and it made me feel better about Darrell controlling all my fleets. He also wasn’t wrong about the most part, the Stolthrim were obvious exceptions as they destroyed all life as they spread their own. There were also those few xenophobic races that had committed genocide and started tensions between countries on what to do about it.

  “Their ships?”

  Darrell said, “They are not inter-universal, so only those in this universe are a threat. Although I suppose that doesn’t remove the possibility of another universe’s Mirelak having the technology.

  “Their ships are slower than ours, and they only have first generation wormhole capability. Their energy shields and weapons are slightly stronger even with the latest upgrades, but they’re vulnerable to anti-matter and disintegration beams. It’s their numbers that are the true threat, like us they can build endlessly and duplicate A.I. pilots, if not quite as quickly. Their carriers have mass close to a small moon, and each one carries two trillion attack fighters. They currently have thirty thousand carriers which puts their ship count at sixty quadrillion fighters.

  “The local empires are starting to fall fast.”

  I frowned, “Why carriers? I mean, they don’t need time off, or food, or anything but the fighter they are.”

  Darrell said, “Outside of their home planet, the home planet of their creators, they don’t have a ground presence. The carriers serve as production facilities to build replacement fighters when they lose some, to repair or upgrade current fighters, and they’re big enough to strip an entire planet’s supply of metals and other resources needed in construction.

  “The fighters and ships also run off of fusion power, much like the Grays old fusion reactors. So it’s also a fuel consideration. At any one time, they usually only have a quarter of their ships out, though they can launch the other three quarters extremely quickly.”

  I nodded, “So, if we hit all thirty thousand carriers at the same time, with a singularity weapon, that’d only leave fifteen quadrillion ships, that can’t refuel?”

  Cassie snickered, “Only?” she asked in an outrageous tone.

  I shrugged. The numbers were so big that they were almost meaningless in my head.

  Darrell said, “I believe that would work, to destroy three quarters of their fleet and carriers in a surprise strike. The small fighters are capable of refueling themselves directly, if they dive into a gas giant. Their fuel will also last them six months, or at least a week of constant fighting.”

  I nodded, “Without quantum tech of their own, we can jump to avoid their attacks and hit them with disintegration beams from a tenth of a light second away. I think if we had a quadrillion ships we could take them down fairly easily even at fifteen to one odds against us. That’ll take… six days. We have a hundred trillion ships currently, in two days we’ll have two hundred, in four, four hundred trillion, and in six, eight hundred trillion, in eight we’ll have one point six quadrillion.

  “So, eight days, not six,” I corrected myself, “Time to go back to basic math school.”

  Jessica snickered.

  “Then after the battle we can split those up at fifty trillion each for all the universes we hold territory in, and by then we’ll have more than enough to keep up with the every other day expansion.”

  Darrell said, “I concur.”

  Cassie asked, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just leave the ships in the void, and use stealth ships for targeting, and just use the singularity weapon on all of them.”

  I nodded, “That would work, but the ships can support ten beams at once, and only one singularity weapon at a time. They’ll die faster my way, too fast for them to open a wormhole and escape.”

  Darrell asked, “What about their home world? They are sentient, if crudely so, but they will never evolve as a biological being might. The A.I.s on the planet will restart construction on new ships almost immediately.”

  I shook my head, “We won’t commit genocide, not even on them. We’ll destroy the ships as they’re built, eventually they’ll run out of resources and be confined to the planet forever, and unable pursue their genocidal plans. Then they’ll have to settle for doing whatever else they get up to together.”

  Darrell said, “That would work.”

  Was it my imagination, or did he sound relieved? I really didn’t think Darrell would ever go rogue, he was obviously determined to keep his current life and not expand and grow beyond his current existence, to preserve it.

  Sometimes though, things just had to be taken on faith, because if he ever did turn on us, we’d be screwed.

  Cassie said, “Russia has launched an investigation into the shuttle bomb incident. They also thanked us for our forbearance and promised to get to the bottom of the security breach.”

  I nodded, “Our upgrades are done, for the new shields and beams that make the Keldet upgrades look like a joke. It seems wrong not to sell them, but we won’t. There’s no chance that investigation will be successful, is there?”

  Cassie shook her head, “Doubtful, we’re too good at covering things up. Though, in a week it’ll be out of the news and everyone will forget about it save Earth’s leadership.”

  I got up and grabbed a coffee, then got back to work.

  The next four days passed pretty quickly and nothing much happened on the big picture. My wife did manage to make the nanite layer for implants work, and I put those on sale, offering steep discounts for the return of my current tech out there. We were the first ones to take advantage of it and swapped our own implants. Chances were we’d never be chased out of our universe in a quick and nasty surprise fight, but it was worth ensuring if we did it wouldn’t cause problems.

  The nanites had the superconductor embedded, making them completely incompatible with the ship nanites and most ship systems, a new third class of nanite. Of course, all the nanites were was a communicator that bonded to the Va
x implants in a microscopic thin layer, and all they did was route digital communications for voice and data to my data center switchboard and systems, they didn’t have to create any other systems like a ship would.

  So it worked.

  We also had four hundred trillion ships in the void, just four more days before we’d have enough to take out the Mirelak decisively and then I’d split the ships up between universes and likely keep building. That was a whole lot of Darrells.

  The internal strife among humanity had also lessened, since it seemed the vampire council had finally backed off unanimously and so far there were no more rogues that came after us. The story slowly died, and our relationship with Russia didn’t suffer for the incident, at least not any more than it had already from our past and the Eight’s betrayal last year during the war with the Vrok.

  China was still a point of contention and source of tension, but not from anything they were doing, simply because they had ships equal to mine that had no limits on what they could target. I imagined that tension would continue, until the other ship building countries in space got their hands on the technology.

  That was typical in an arm’s race, balance would be restored, and no one was doing anything stupid. Only Astraeus seemed to be an exception to that. The Grays’ nanites were still impossible to hack outside of my technomancer magic and Darrell, and we only used nanites for our computers. It was also much harder for them to insert a spy, our government was still tiny and I intended to keep it that way. Other governments were extremely large, fat, and easy to infiltrate.

  As far as my upgrades, we hadn’t exactly advertised, and the new shield and weapons upgrades as well as the enhancement upgrades using lower subspace quantum fields were a state secret. Just like the singularity weapons, second generation energy to matter device, and stealth network. In essence, there was no tension because of it, simply because no one knew about it.

  It was late afternoon, and we’d just gotten done putting down another Grays Empire and a Vrok empire in two separate universes. Not to mention destroying any Stolthrim expansion fleets. The whole thing was overwhelming at times, but overall it left me with a good feeling, our mission to preserve humanity in as many universes as we could was going well.

  Who’d have thought that humanity would turn out to be one of the best steadying influences out in space, but we were. It was worth doing, and as long as humanity was endangered or being abused, I felt justified in saying it was self-defense on a species level.

  It was also already paying off. With Darrell’s help we’d detected a coming threat in this universe because of Darrell’s investigative efforts in others.

  Jayna walked in at that moment, with a worried frown on her face.

  “We have a problem?”

  I smiled, “Just one? Bring it on.”

  Jayna snorted, “Be serious.”

  Darrell said diffidently, with humor which was a shock, “Actually I think I have a problem as well, so there’s two.”

  I faux smiled, and said, “Thank goodness, for a minute I thought the universe was being reasonable for once.”

  Cassie snickered.

  The data on my command table changed, and I was looking at a ten thousand ship invasion fleet moving in a system identified as a Kolia colony. The encroaching fleet was still eight hours away from the planet. The Kolians weren’t someone I’d ever traded with, but I knew both England and India traded with them heavily. The Kolian defense fleet for that colony was shattered and the invaders were leaving it behind. There was also a human fleet of two hundred dreadnoughts around the planet.

  That last fact was probably why Darrell thought it a problem to be brought to my attention.

  Darrell said, “England jumped in a small fleet and took defensive positions around the planet a few minutes ago. I can only imagine the Kolians requested aid when their local fleet was destroyed.”

  I gave my sister an apologetic look, then asked Darrell, “The invaders are one of the xenophobic races that likes to act genocidally?”

  Darrell said, “Affirmative. The Staphec do not trade. I wouldn’t have brought it up at all if England hadn’t sent aid, it’s business as usual out there with the question of the war crimes treaty still being discussed.”

  I shook my head, “Why are they attacking, do you know?”

  Darrell said, “A Kolian trader got a little too close to their border in subspace, while on the way back to Kolia from another trade world. The Staphec are paranoid and believe the Kolians to be spying on them. It also wasn’t the first time, and the Staphec have warned the Kolia twice before to keep their distance.”

  I smiled, it wasn’t funny, but on the other hand we were the ones spying on them, apparently. At least, from a distance, outside their systems.

  “Alright, and your issue?”

  Jayna said, “Your location in the void has been compromised. I’m not sure how yet, but someone stumbled across it. The story is gaining traction and as usual the press is feeding the paranoid angle.”

  I shook my head, “What exactly are they saying?”

  Jayna said, “Well, they’re wondering exactly what you plan to do, when you have four hundred trillion scout destroyer ships, and you just split those an hour ago and started to build out eight hundred trillion from both halves.”

  “Hmm, I could see where there could be concern?”

  Cassie giggled.

  Jayna rolled her eyes.

  I said, “Sorry, not funny. But… well if I took everything too seriously, I’d lose my mind. Cassie?”

  Cassie replied, “That is a rather large fleet. You could take over everything in all seventy-six galaxies with a billion ships, less than that probably, but eight hundred trillion is sure to spark paranoia about your ambitions and intentions.”

  Jayna said, “They’re also saying it will alarm the empires around us, if they discover how many ships we have. Some have speculated you’re going to try a takeover and establish a true empire, others have implied you might be planning to expand our protected territory and take out the crueler empires around us. Some are even for that last idea.”

  That was true enough, they didn’t know about my… extracurricular activities in other universes, and I didn’t really want to tell them about it either. So far no one else had that possibility on the radar, despite second generation jump drives being common.

  “Okay, what should we do about it? I don’t want to reveal it’s possible to jump universes, or even tell anyone we’ve proved out the quantum multiverse theory.”

  Cassie suggested, “Reveal the Mirelak. It’s the true reason you’re building so many ships in the void anyway. After that, we’ll only have a hundred trillion in this universe with only half of them visible, you can do all your building for new universe territories between the galaxies where we have them stashed in, and not build in this one at all anymore.”

  I nodded, “Not a bad idea. I’m jumping them into the void between galaxies. No one should run across them there, until they catch up to our tech and can see mass through second level subspace scans for quantum bias. Which will hopefully be a long time.”

  Cassie shook her head, “I’d advise you to just leave them there. If you hide it again then they’ll assume or fear your building even more. Best to take out the Mirelak, jump fifty trillion back to the spot, and don’t build there anymore, while you send the rest of the ships to other universes that we hold territory and build there instead, in the void between galaxies there.”

  “Alright, we’ll do that. Put out a press release on the Mirelak.”

  Jessica asked, “What about England acting unilaterally?”

  “Leak it to the press. That may take some of the sting out of our story, and it’ll get our ambassador to ask questions on the U.N. floor. It’s a good thing I think, but premature.”

  The U.N. had unanimously agreed to the treaty defining war crimes in space, including genocide. The Interstellar Union was helping, as a central point of contact f
or all the worlds and species involved, but it wouldn’t be an Interstellar Union rule or charter in the end. It was important to never allow the Interstellar Union to gain power over any governments, that would undermine its true purpose.

  Once all was said and done, it would be a mutual treaty directly between all the worlds making the agreement, which would enable us to act to prevent a genocide without being accused of setting laws and our own will on other races in the seventy-six galaxies’ territory.

  That was important, or it could cause problems. Right now, we were unassailable by any race in the territory that we protected, but eventually some of the species in our space would catch up on technology now that they weren’t being suppressed by the Grays. We didn’t want to build mistrust and press our will on any of them.

  The problem of course, was that several of the species involved in the treaty hadn’t agreed to sign it as yet. Almost two thousand of the seven thousand two hundred and sixty-four trading races hadn’t indicated agreement to sign yet, which was holding things up.

  Almost all of those races holding back agreed genocide was a war crime, that wasn’t the hold up. The reason they hadn’t agreed to sign the treaty yet was because they were arguing about the punishment assigned to a race that attempted or succeeded at the crime.

  Some races just wanted to wipe out a fleet that was bent on genocide against a race or planet. Others didn’t think that was enough, and they wanted to remove all the offending world’s warships in space. Others thought the offending species should be punished as a whole, and all their ships removed from space, not just the specific world or colony that launched the attack.

  Lastly, still others thought they should be knocked back to the stone age to give them more time to grow up before being allowed to reach for the stars again.

  It was just a matter of time before that sticking point on the treaty was worked out, and it was signed in as law on all those worlds under binding treaty. But until then any of our countries acting unilaterally without the support of the other trading races could cause problems.