Return to Earth: Mike Stedman: Book 3

by D. R. Rosier

  She said in a voice which very much matched her smug look, “Told you I could do better than a mood ring. Telepathy is very complicated, but empathy was easy. Well, easier by comparison.”

  He looked back to Alyndra in amazement, and could feel her happiness, along with the love and serenity of spirit. He’d asked for Chrystal’s help in overcoming his inability to read her emotions, but this was so much more than he’d thought possible. He’d known she cared for him, even loved him, but to feel how she really felt was overwhelming. He was suddenly overcome with emotion as he realized what this meant for them, including a fierce desire for her.

  Alyndra teased, “I guess that answers my question from yesterday.”

  He blushed.

  Chrystal’s smug look had morphed into a full on smirk, “Did I mention it goes both ways? Seemed only fair.”

  He blushed again, at the fierce surge of lust as he considered what effect this would have on their lovemaking. Not that they’d ever had a problem that way, that part of their relations had always worked very well. He took a sip of coffee to distract himself.

  He looked down at Nadia, who wasn’t actually sleeping, she was online.

  Alyndra said, “She’s working with your father on something, if anything breaks on the summit she’ll be right back.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, he couldn’t ask for more than that, she’d made him and their family, and their work her priority over the other.

  “What about you Chrystal?”

  Alyndra answered and he could hear the joy in her voice that he felt in his mind.

  “All of you, Nadia and Dahlia too, although you all can only sense me, not each other.”

  Chrystal said, “It’s more natural that way for those of us not natural telepaths. We might be able to handle it, but Nadia and Dahlia wouldn’t. Plus, we don’t need to if we can read their body language.”

  He supposed that made sense. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how intense the sex would be if they could all feel all their emotions. Probably too intense. Still, he was looking forward to trying that out with Alyndra. Okay, he didn’t think about sex all the time, he’d been half playing yesterday, but now that he knew Alyndra could read him he couldn’t seem to get it out of his head.

  Her love and obvious devotion to him wasn’t helping either. He didn’t understand it, but she truly was content. It wasn’t all about the shackles of duty that kept her at his side, there was so much more. He couldn’t help but notice how…

  He cleared his throat while he tried to clear his one-track mind.

  “So, plans for today while we wait to hear back from Celia?”

  Chrystal shrugged, “Not sure yet, but we should join Dahlia for breakfast.”

  He took Alyndra’s hand while Chrystal headed for the door.

  “We’ll be right out.”

  When Chrystal walked out, he turned to Alyndra.

  “I wanted to ask you, what you thought of the possibility of adding Dahlia to our family?”

  She replied without hesitation, “Whatever you wish.”

  He considered that. He could feel her emotions, and she’d really meant it. She was serene, and had no doubts about him, or about her perceived place in his life. It wasn’t just the life bond and duty, she was completely sure of him, felt safe with him, and loved him far more than he’d have guessed. There wasn’t one trace of doubt, worry, or jealousy, and he found he couldn’t argue against it. Even if it did feel a little wrong that she gave him so much power, but it helped she had total faith he was worthy of it.

  He tugged her gently, and she fell into his lap. He kissed her while he thought about her. Her beauty, what she meant to him, how much he cared, how much he loved her. And yes, how much he desired her. Now that she could read him as well, he wanted her to know how much she meant to him, and on every level from the intellectual, to purely lust and attraction, with everything in between.

  She moaned softly and melted into him, and he regretfully broke the kiss.

  He wanted nothing more than to make love to her in that moment, but they didn’t really have time. Maybe they could make time later, after they ate and made plans for the day. He smiled, he’d finally gotten the green light from all three of them to add Dahlia to their family and bed, but all he could think about in that moment was making love to the amazing woman in his arms.

  “Shall we go eat?”

  She nodded, and he felt the stirring flames of her budding desire from their kiss being snuffed out as she stood, as if she’d flipped some switch in her mind. If only he could do so as easily. He couldn’t wait until he could feel her desire fully stoked and out of control. Kind of like his was at the moment.

  He felt her amusement, no doubt of his own feelings, overlaying her serenity and contentment. He got up, and they walked out into the living room where there was a room service cart filled with an assortment of breakfast food. He waited for the three ladies to get theirs, before he grabbed a few pieces of fruit, some eggs, and a biscuit. He supposed Nadia must have eaten already.

  Disapproval flooded his mind as he sat down, and it took him a minute to figure out why. He guessed he better start letting Alyndra serve him his meals. It felt wrong to him still, but it wasn’t about him, it was about what she wanted.

  “So, what should we do today?” Chrystal echoed his earlier question.

  Dahlia said, “I should probably do some studying. I’ve learned a lot about Earth, but I should know as much as possible about your history of wars, including diplomacy.”

  Alyndra said, “That sounds like a good idea to me, perhaps we should just stay here and do research.”

  “Probably just as well,” he said, “I don’t feel as comfortable leaving Nadia’s body alone here anyway, while she’s logged into her android I mean, not like on the ship where it’s completely secure. I’ve been thinking though, do you think we should do the ship upgrades on the ships in Andromeda? The mines we left will be effective, but not as effective as the new turrets in our and Mars’ destroyer fleet.”

  After all, the mines were limited. If the Canosians came back to wipe out the Kascorix, and possibly the other worlds, they could throw enough fighters at them and exhaust the protections. After that it would be simple to overwhelm the ships left there without the new offensive multi-array. The new arrays were not limited, and would last as long as the power sources would, which would theoretically last until the entire universe finally grew cold and ground to a halt. Say in several trillion years.

  In reality, the ship will break down long before then of course, but it was far better than one use mines. He wasn’t really happy with it, but he did have a responsibility for them once he’d denied them access to space. He wasn’t sure if he could just let them die if the Canosians attacked in earnest. Honestly, he was hoping they wouldn’t, but he knew planning for the best would be a mistake, he needed to plan for the worst.

  The new turrets were also semi-smart. They worked in conjunction with the sensors. He’d thrown around the idea of creating recognition systems for friendlies, but decided to go the other way instead. The turrets wouldn’t fire against any ships by default, unless he or Chrystal designated them as an enemy ship per the sensor readings, taking into account mass, energy readings, shape and size, and even life form readings.

  Then they would automatically fire on any specified ship type in range. It worked off readings, and all the enemy fighters were close enough alike that it would literally be a single thought. He hadn’t a choice but to automate it, he and Chrystal could barely control ten shuttles and the ship between them, that meant it would be impossible to control a bunch of ships, all with several hundred offensive arrays which acted independently of each other. Realistically, automation was the only way to go, and the only way to fight off a swarm like attack. Even an A.I. wasn’t fast enough to keep up with managing every aspect of that kind of battle.

  Chrystal nodded slowly, “I could add a matter/energy system to one of the probes y
ou designed, and send that out there to upgrade the ships. I could leave it out there as well, in case of repair or attrition, and set it up so if it ever lost connection to me it would self-destruct.”

  “That’s a good idea, it would be a nightmare if the Canosians got that technology. Go ahead and do that.”

  Dahlia smirked, “I’m not sure I would trust anyone else with it.”

  He smiled as he turned and she caught his eyes, now that he had the green light, he really did need to find the time to make it happen. Of course, if he knew his ladies, they were already working it into the schedule. He just needed to stay aware for the offered opportunity. They wouldn’t make the move for him, just give him the space to do it himself.

  Dahlia’s eyes were so blue…

  He felt more amusement from Alyndra, damn, that was going to take some getting used to. Although, it probably wasn’t all him this time, since she could read Dahlia as well, and she seemed equally taken with his eyes in that moment. He’d have to watch out for that when interpreting her emotions, it wasn’t always going to be about him. Even when they were alone, he could be surer but never positive on the subtler tones.

  He was suddenly glad he could only read Alyndra, Chrystal had made a wise decision. Otherwise he’d constantly be guessing about why who felt what way, it would be exhausting, and probably annoying. One was enough.

  “Thank you my love,” he said as he felt another surge of warm emotions, this time about Chrystal. One thing was for certain, his ladies had his attention, and were undoubtedly turning him into a sap.

  Chrystal replied, “My pleasure. I thought you’d like it. I did it for all of us you know, I can’t wait to feel how it works when she’s squirming in pleasure beneath us all.”

  He suppressed a laugh, as long as he wasn’t the only one.

  “Any other ideas before we start our day?”

  Dahlia said, “If it doesn’t work out, the summit I mean, you could always just conquer and rule the world.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, until he saw her fighting back a smile.

  Chrystal giggled, “Hey, that might not be a bad idea.”

  They all looked at Chrystal like she was nuts.

  Chrystal shrugged, “I’m not really serious, just worried what will happen if they do act entitled and shitty when they go out there. It would probably be better than what the Xarans would do to them.”

  He shrugged, “Let’s hope not, because they’ll have to live with that. I’m not going to be responsible for it, I don’t have the right, nor the inclination.”

  Chrystal said, “Of course, I didn’t mean you should actually do it, no more than blowing up the world.”

  He blushed, “I was only weeks old at the time. Just… let’s start our day.”

  He got up with his coffee and moved over to the couch, and he opened some overlays to go over his ship designs. He tried to ignore Dahlia’s snicker as Chrystal started to tell her stories about him growing up. It wasn’t until she stopped, and they all started doing their own research that he could focus. There was something comforting about them all still being there, even if they were all working on separate things.

  He was an inventor, but without an actual problem to overcome he didn’t see anything that had to be addressed. All the technology on his ships were fairly solid. Especially with access to the matter/energy technology, there just wasn’t anything he needed that badly. He brought up the math based on subspace and started to examine it. It gave him something to do, and it was a problem he wouldn’t mind working on.

  Level two subspace was much denser in size and energy over level one. They were able to travel about a thousand light years in just a minute. That enabled them to reach Andromeda in about forty-one hours, just a day and a half, and they could cross the entire milky way in less than two hours. Level one subspace was much slower, only going about four and a half light years per minute.

  That was a ratio of over two hundred twenty to one. If level two subspace was two hundred and twenty times faster, how much faster would level three subspace be if they had the power to reach it? He discovered theoretically by the math involved, level three subspace was far more dense than level two. If they could successfully enter it, they could travel at over two hundred thousand light years a minute. That would be less than thirty seconds to cross the milky way, and instead of forty-one hours to Andromeda, it would take less than fifteen minutes.

  Did they need to go that fast? Probably not, but it would help if they needed to respond quickly, he did plan to go check out the closest galaxies for predator species, and there were over a hundred of them within ten million light years. The furthest of which would only take an hour at L3 subspace, instead of six days at level two.

  Of course, power wasn’t the issue, his new vacuum energy power sources had enough energy to burn, especially if he used more than one. Power just wasn’t the bottleneck issue this time. The real problem was the emitters couldn’t channel enough energy to reach L3 subspace, not without burning out the emitters in micro-seconds and having his ship destroyed in the energy backlash.

  It was the same issue that caused him to go to three tiered shields against the Kascorix. To make it work he’d need to design an emitter that could take the power throughput, which meant finding a new alloy, or a new element altogether capable of creating a subspace aperture.

  “Can you get me a refill Alyndra?”

  He felt a surge of warmth from her as she grabbed the cup. Nope, still didn’t understand it, but he supposed he didn’t need to. Some women needed gifts to be happy, apparently all she needed was to feel useful to him because of the debt and bond she had to him. He also had the feeling she was a bit submissive, because like before her feelings were all involved as well. She enjoyed serving him, and if he kept telling himself that, and kept getting the immediate emotional feedback, he may actual come to believe he wasn’t taking advantage of her situation someday.

  Either way, it made him feel better about asking her to do stuff.

  She gave him a kiss, and handed him a full coffee before getting back to her studying. He knew there was a lot to learn about Earth’s wars and the politics of peace.

  He got back to work.

  He considered for a moment the matter/energy device. All matter really was in the end, was a stable energy configuration. Everything was energy. If he could make a coffee, or build a ship, could he directly form a subspace field around the ship? It didn’t take long before he knew that was more than just a possibility. More than that, a ship using it wouldn’t need any emitters at all. If they had two they could even use one to create gravity fields and even propulsion.

  More than that, the energy/matter device could handle insane amounts of energy, they had to in order to build matter so quickly. He figured out quickly enough it could get them to L3 subspace.

  The problem was, that meant he’d have to install a matter/energy device on every ship he wanted capable of level three subspace. One of the caveats to his permission to use the Vathiecium was for it to be strictly under his control at all times. That meant they’d need to build elaborate safeguards and self-destruct systems on all the ships, just as Chrystal was doing with the probe.

  While that sounded fine in theory, the execution would be problematical at best, and murder at worse. What if there were thousands of A.I.s, humans, or other allies on the ships in Mars fleet. What if Chrystal died in an accident or an attack, and all those ships lost contact with her because of it. Chrystal would come back, but as a result the entire fleet would be destroyed, also killing all those people.

  While he could just install it on his ship, and perhaps the un-manned stealth probes he intended to send out locally and to other galaxies, he couldn’t afford to install it anywhere else. Which meant he needed to find a different solution, a new kind of emitter.

  Still, the idea of trying it out on his ship, and the probes was tempting. A probe that fast could spend just a few seconds per solar
system to gather data while looking for inimical races. Plus, his ship would be very fast at least. Truthfully, he was kind of geeking out on the idea and getting excited. Still, he ignored that, and stuck to his initial thoughts. He needed to find a way to do it without putting Vathiecium out of his control, or lives in danger.

  That put him back at the drawing board, and he brought up the required elements, and started to play around with different ideas and alloys. Unless he got lucky, it could take years of experimentation to find something, assuming it was even possible, and there was no real guarantee of success.

  He just felt like he was missing something obvious, as if he already had the answer and just couldn’t see it, but couldn’t imagine what…

  Chapter Nineteen

  After a quick discussion, they decided to order pizza for lunch, maybe they’d do another restaurant for a late dinner. Dahlia didn’t really want to be studied like a bug under a microscope after what happened yesterday during their tour of the city. He was pretty sure Alyndra felt the same way, but she’d never complain about it.

  They ordered four pizzas with different combinations of toppings, and he sent Nadia a message so she could take a lunch break and join them and eat.

  That’s when he got an incoming call.

  “Hello, this is Mike Stedman.”

  Celia replied, “It’s me. The summit is set to start in the morning at nine local time to Switzerland. I’ll send you the information. I’ve been assured by the Swiss leadership you are welcome for the duration, and have your hotel information. Any questions?”

  He said, “That was fairly quick.”

  Celia snorted, “That’s not a question. Suffice it to say between the worldwide tension, and the offer I put on the table, most of them jumped at the chance. They others are coming because of that. So far, we have the U.S., Russia, China, England, Germany, France, Japan, along with Australia. I’m not sure if we’ll have more additions, I wouldn’t be surprised. The first day should be a lot of boring speeches, no doubt laced with accusations and suspicions. We’ll also go over the suggested treaty, which will be my responsibility. The second day you’ll have a chance to speak, and answer any questions. You’ll be free to leave after that, or stay to watch. Then who knows how long it will go on as people quibble over the treaty.”