Intergalactic Union

by D. L. Harrison

  The problem with that was they wouldn’t be able to hook anything else up to it, it’d work fine, but only for the augmented reality implant and nothing else. Like a laptop or tablet using the phone for a hotspot. By the end of the day I just gave it up, a couple of requests for a unique ship design had come in and other ideas occurred to me. Maybe I’d look at it again one day, or better yet recruit my wife’s help.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It’d been a long day, after being woken up at four for the second battle of the war and then dealing with backstabbing allies and normal day to day stuff, so I was pretty tired. I was half tempted to beg off on our night out this week when I got out of the shower, but Diana was already in a quite lovely red dress that conformed and caressed down her body. She had her hair up and earrings in her ears, and she was putting on the final touches of her makeup.

  My Diana was truly breathtaking in my opinion, but it was really the bright smile on her face and look of excitement when she glanced over at me that made that idea a complete non-starter. There was no way I could disappoint that smile, so I headed over to the closet instead.

  “You look fantastic.”

  She said, “So do you.”

  I snickered, “I’m not dressed yet.”

  She giggled, “Exactly.”

  I grinned, and I took care of that lack.

  “How was your day?”

  She smiled, “Good, got a lot done actually. Our daughter’s work inspired me on an older project, but I won’t ruin the surprise and talk about it early.”

  “She’s helping?”

  She shook her head, “Not with this, I don’t want her working on weapon systems until she’s older. She doesn’t have the outlook or maturity to divorce herself from its ultimate uses. It still bothers me to work on stuff like that, things that will one day kill our enemies, but I understand the need and that’s the universe we live in.”

  “I can agree to that, it still bothers me too, but I do it to protect Earth, our people, and mostly to protect our family. How did we get on this depressing subject?”

  Diana smirked, “Just lucky, I guess. The scan system she came up with was brilliant though, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded, “She’s your daughter, after all.”

  Diana finished up and turned as I came out of the closet. She grinned after I claimed a kiss, then asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Up for steak?”

  Diana replied, “Sure. And lobster?”

  I smirked, that didn’t leave us very many choices, there were only a couple of restaurants on the station that sold both surf and turf, though there were quite a few steak and seafood restaurants that sold them separately.

  “Sounds delicious.”

  She kissed me softly, and then looked up into my eyes and said, “We’re celebrating tonight, dad.”

  I was confused for half a second, at her calling me that, then I grinned like an idiot.

  “Really?”

  She smirked, “Yep, you must’ve gotten it right the first time again.”

  I kissed her to give my mind time to reboot, then said, “I love you. Do you know the sex?”

  She nodded, “A boy this time, according to the DNA scans.”

  “You’re amazing, a miracle,” I said with a little awe.

  She snickered, “It wasn’t that hard, but I’ll take it.”

  I took her hand and we headed downstairs. Cassie and Melody were already watching a movie, and once again had soda and pizza on the coffee table. We gave the latter a kiss and headed out to celebrate. It was a fun night, and we had a good time at dinner and then celebrated far more intimately once we got back home.

  Diana was a miracle to me.

  The next day I got a lot of work done.

  The first custom ship was fifty yards long, ten high, and twenty wide. It was basically a space yacht. I’ve built them before for the rich, but this one was a little different. Outside of the core ship’s systems, and sub-contracting out the luxuries like wooden fixtures and the furniture and walls it would also work in space, atmosphere, on the water, and under the water.

  Well, almost any spaceship would do all that, but I had to add in systems for sonar, fish finding, and all sorts of other stuff. The rich were weird, what can I say? It’d also be the first private ship capable of a hundred gravities of acceleration as well as having the second generation jump drive.

  I was a little tempted to make one for myself, but then I was weird as well. It’d been a while since we’d had a full vacation. Sure, beach days once a week, a night out once a week, we did take off time, but full on vacations were rare. I think I really needed one, once this whole mess with the Vrok was over with and the galactic union issue was worked out. A ship like that might be fun, we could go visit a few of our allies for a change, in comfort and style.

  The second custom ship design was a restaurant touring ship that would have live music and dancing. Similar to the luxury cruise ship in idea, but much smaller in scope and scale. This was just a small ship, for a two or three hour dinner cruise. Imagine booking reservations and going to eat steak, with the rings of Saturn overhead, or up above the plane of the galaxy looking down at the Milky Way in its entirety.

  The one other thing I did that morning was put out a whole lot more probe scanning ships, extremely small ones. If as we suspected, the enemy was going to try and take out my station in the same manner they took out the ships around their planets, then I wanted as much forewarning as possible.

  It was just after lunch when my daughter and her ever present A.I. guardian walked into the command center.

  Melody looked nervous, “I didn’t hack my way in,” she said quickly.

  I grinned, “I gave you access.”

  She squealed and tackle hugged me, reminding me she was still a preteen girl and not just a brilliant scientist, as if I could forget.

  “Thank you!”

  I said, “Don’t abuse it, if you get bored. But I figured if you’re going to be working on projects a couple of hours a day as part of your education, you might need the access.”

  She promised, “I won’t. That’s why I’m here, the quantum mass detection field is up. Though, there might be a problem, but I have a solution.”

  “A problem?”

  She nodded, “There’re thousands of hits on the system. Best we could figure is there’s been a lot of ship to ship battles between star systems. It was stupid of me to think we’d just pick up the Vrok’s remaining twenty-four million ships. There are no natural masses out there, but beings are very good at making messes.”

  All the scan did was look for quantum resonance bias in subspace, to indicate there was mass in the corresponding location in real space. There was no way to figure out what she was detecting, just that something was there.

  I snickered, “Good point, that is a problem. My guess is they’re broken up into six to eight places, and not all bunched together. So, your solution?”

  She said, “We’ll jump a small cloaked probe from Darrell’s stealth network within a few light hours of the mass readings. One of the tiny ones, his size that the small stealth probes can make quickly and easily, that were meant for system ingress of enemies and potential enemies.”

  I nodded, “That’d work. You got that, Darrell?”

  Darrell said, “I’ll take care of it, we should know where they are shortly.”

  She grinned, “It also might give us a look into the past. I doubt we’ll find more advanced technology, but just think of all the civilizations that have risen and fallen throughout time. We could find a goldmine of information, and maybe even something useful we don’t have even if not more advanced.”

  “That’s a really good point. Have the stealth probes move in close in cases like that, and you can read it with your magic from here.”

  She bounced on her toes, “Really?”

  I nodded, “But you’ll have to do the work, make reports, not just have fun. Chances are you won’t find an
ything not known or in the Grays database, but it’s worth the look. It’s also a longer-term thing, not a priority over your education, and I’ll help when I have free moments. We can do it together. No powering systems without approval, just read the technology.”

  She said, “Great. I’ll let you know when Darrell finds them.”

  She gave me another hug, then left.

  Cassie asked, “Was that wise? The database and her work with her mother has been… sterile, so far. But those ships’ logs could be filled with the ugly realities of life in this violent universe.”

  I nodded, “That’s why I told her to just read the technology, and not power it on. Without power our magic can’t read software or stored data, just technical schematics. If something looks promising, I can check it out first.”

  Cassie smirked, “Never mind then.”

  I snickered, “How is your day?”

  Cassie said, “Alright, you made a lot of people in government angry, saving their lives and pointing out the unheeded warnings given like you did. It’s not wrong, or even all bad, but it’s divisive. The council is working extra hard to cool things down. It’s human nature and not your fault of course, but it’s worth noting.”

  Jessica said, “I increased security just in case. No one has tried to kill our president for a while.”

  Cassie nodded, “I don’t think it’s that bad. They’ll be looking for mud to throw though.”

  I shrugged, “I’m the one who got stabbed in the back, what did they expect would happen? It’s fine, things will settle, and we’ll be even more independent. Our civilians and economies will interact, but I’m done taking military direction.”

  Maybe I didn’t have the keenest military mind, and my plans weren’t the best, but the technological edge was enough to make up for that. In short, they needed me far more than I needed them, and I wouldn’t pander to their political bull-crap.

  Cassie smirked, “They probably figured you’d stonewall like they would, and that he’d get away with his deception to save face. You care more about integrity than image, which is unthinkable for them. To be fair, they need to get re-elected, and actually want their jobs.”

  I snorted.

  “Speaking of jobs?”

  Cassie waved a hand, “It’s a thing in progress, it’ll take time. I’ll let you know when my people are ready to turn over my public responsibilities to. I’ll still be here though, doing the background stuff, and writing your speeches.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The data came in, and the enemy fleets were found just an hour later as well as several ship graveyards at the sites of large battles in the dim past.

  All the enemy ships were broken up in eight fleets of three million, as I’d guessed a few days ago. They were also just five hundred light years away from my border fleets, on the very edges of the galaxies those borders existed on.

  I could only imagine they were there to take over the borders, if I had recalled all the ships to deal with the invading fleet yesterday morning. Since I hadn’t, they’d just stayed there, probably waiting for orders.

  It took me a couple of hours to program in all the orders, but there were a few gaping holes in my original plan. I couldn’t risk using the fleet on our border with Vrok space, or to pull three million ships off the Vrok’s border with the Atans. It seemed obvious to me in hindsight once I’d thought it through, but they had to have at least once cloaked probe watching all my fleets, so they’d know when to move in.

  There was also no chance in finding those theoretical probes, because the fleets were in the void, so I had to assume they were there.

  Point being, if I lessened the fleet on the border of their and Atans’ space, and completely removed the fleet guarding the direct border between us, they’d know something was going on. I wasn’t a military mastermind, but even I knew to surprise the enemy you had to keep showing them what they expected to see.

  I’d learned a few things.

  So, I found myself making more ships despite myself, so I could match their numbers. I needed seven million more. Three million more was easy, I did lessen the fleet between the fifty galaxies and the Atans by three million, I just left the other border fleet alone. That gave me twenty million ships, and I cut off a fifth of the nanites from every ship to make four million more.

  Since they only had to rebuild a fifth, and not a full half, it’d take less than twelve hours. The engagement wouldn’t be for at least that long, so I could let them rebuild without waiting to start the plan.

  I had all twenty-four million build the cloaking device and emitters, split them up into eight fleets of three million ships each, then quantum jumped them to five light seconds from their fleet. I also dynamically assigned an enemy ship to each of my ships. At three tenths of a gravity of constant acceleration the ships would arrive within their ranks in exactly twelve and a half hours, so they’d be fully built and at point blank range. At that small gravity of acceleration, they’d also remain fully hidden and cloaked during that trip.

  I smirked, and then shook my head in disgust.

  I supposed I had no one to blame but myself, that the next battle would be happening at three-fifteen AM in the morning instead of during my workday. But it would be imprudent to wait, as soon as their cloaked attack failed, assuming there was one and it did fail, then the Vrok would have no choice but to admit to themselves they couldn’t win as things stood. At that point they’d have to send away their fleets to form a remote empire and build up for their revenge.

  “Jess, take a look at this plan. You see any holes in it?”

  It didn’t take her long. Move in over twelve and a half hours, to point blank range, and open up with five thousand subspace beams, one ship to one ship. With equal technology, the best they could hope for is mutual annihilation, but with the edge of a surprise attack they might not even last long enough to fire back. Just five to six seconds, and they’d be toast.

  Jessica said, “A half mile distance is pretty damned close.”

  I nodded, “Their ships are only a couple of miles apart, plus I have to be close enough to jam their wormhole drives if they’re set to automatically engage on sighting the enemy.”

  Jessica nodded absently, and looked through it, “Looks good. Simple straight forward plan, very little can go wrong with it, unless the ships are seen approaching. At three tenths of a G acceleration I don’t see how they possibly could. Our sensors are better, and we wouldn’t see it coming, not in the void.”

  “Alright,” I activated the plan and they started forward, slowly.

  Jessica snickered, “I just can’t quite believe you just volunteered to be in the command center at three in the morning. The timing is up to you this time, you know.”

  I sighed, “Tell me about it, but it’s essential our attack go off before theirs, and three AM will be forty hours since the last battle ended. We estimated at least three days for their plan, if we’re right, but I don’t want to risk it.”

  The attack was actually at three-fifteen, but it’d be prudent to be fully awake and in the command center, at least fifteen minutes early. The system would also wake me, if anything changed, like their fleets being moved.

  Jessica said, “Got it, I’ll set my alarm.”

  “I think I’ll call it early. I’m caught up on my ship designs, and things are secure.”

  Cassie said, “Enjoy it, I think I’ll do the same.”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon with Melody. We worked on her telekinetic control, the only active part of our magic, and just hung out. She was growing up far too fast, but I couldn’t be prouder of her.

  The coffee in my hand was a lifeline, as I took a sip. It was almost three in morning, and I’d managed to shower and get dressed without waking Diana as I quietly left our home and headed to the command center. Both Cassie and Jessica were there already.

  The former looked perfect as usual, and like it wasn’t an ungodly hour
to be awake. Jessica looked like her normal self too, except she clearly needed a coffee before I engaged.

  “Morning.”

  I checked the status as I sat at the command table, and some of my ships were already within the ranks of the vast three million ship fleets. It’d be fourteen minutes before they came to a full stop, and fired thousands of beams broadside to their targets, which would be what broke the cloak. There was no indication the enemy even had a clue we were there.

  Jessica replied, “Morning,” while Cassie just nodded.

  Jessica took a long chug of her coffee, then said, “It looks like the stealth net is fully up, at least in the seventy-six galaxies. There are two hidden Vrok’ installations in the twenty-six galaxies.”

  I blew out a breath, and then nodded.

  “After the battle, I’ll send ships to take them out, and cancel the probe blitz. I left it going because I didn’t want the enemy to see any changes before our final battle. We have to assume they have stealth probes all over the place in their space, outside of systems, if they had the same in our space for the last thirty years.”

  Cassie said, “We might not ever find them.”

  “Yeah, they’ll have eyes out in space, but they won’t be able to get in space or start a new build program. They also won’t be able to turn their cloaked probes into rigged mines without access to space. Let them watch, as long as they stay on their planet and keep their probes out of our systems where we can’t find them, I don’t care.”

  Even simply plans can run into problems, and that’s about when fickle fate and Murphy’s law conspired to ruin my day.

  My board alarmed, as one of the enemy ships launched a shuttle. The shuttle set a course toward another ship in the formation, and of course was on a direct collision course for one of my dreadnought platforms. My first thought was to jump it away, but of course all my ships were in their jump suppression field by then.