Cassie said, “We could see to our own security. Our merchants take a leap of faith and trust each time they go to another system to trade. If there’s an altercation it can be decided between the governments involved. We can set up an equal amount of spaces for traders on the station, and it would be each race’s delegate that apportioned out that space to their own people.”
Cirlok tapped the table, “I will agree to that, no central administration at all.”
Uvi nodded, “We can try it.”
Rena said, “We have a preliminary treaty, it’s what we showed the other trading worlds. We’ll give it to you, and you can modify it with the specific areas in question in each galaxy and send it out. You’re building the station, and while that happens, we can all elect representatives. Then we’ll meet for the first time and sign it.”
I imagined more problems would come up, but we’d deal with them when they happened.
“Alright, it’ll also be each race’s responsibility to furnish their portion of the central station where their traders can gather or open a storefront. I can take care of the delegate room myself. The empty station that will need to be furnished, will be ready in a week or two. I’ll also have the finished treaty back to you all in a day or two.”
Uvi nodded, “Agreed. We can meet back up in two weeks then, to discuss all the unforeseen problems that crop up as our people move into the station?”
We all agreed to that, and the meeting broke up.
Cassie snorted when they were all gone, “An A.I.? You need a vacation.”
I snickered, “I really do.”
Darrell said out of the blue, “I am not unbiased.”
No, he wasn’t. I’d been thinking of the Atan A.I.s actually, which was crazy. I escaped the room before Cassie could give me more crap, and we headed back to the control center.
Cassie said, “I’ll look over the treaty, and tell our ambassador to let the U.N. know they need to appoint a delegate.”
I nodded, “I’ve got the station.”
The data for the treaty and for the delegate numbers and races involved was already available as I sat down, and I started to design the station. The basic design didn’t take long at all. I created a platform and then stripped all the weapons out of it. It would have shielding, and it would have everything else, but no weapons at all.
Then I jumped it to the Gray’s home world and started it building. The delegate room was a decent sized arena, and I split up the rest of the central core with ten storefronts and five meeting rooms for each race which all fit in a couple of square miles of space. It was all put in a vast room which would have diurnal holograms of day and night, with the Gray’s stars as the night view.
There was a large docking ring on the bottom with fifteen thousand docking points along with cargo and landing bays to facilitate product exchange. That was all for the merchants.
It also had eight spokes each with nine hundred and eight discrete living areas each. Each living area had a main suite for the delegate that was two thousand square feet, and ten additional thousand square feet suites, along with a couple of meeting rooms.
The main suite would also have a small control room and command table, with limited influence on their living area to modify the room sizes, suite count, and other needs. Each discrete living area dedicated to a race would also have a direct dock and single airlock so the delegates could dock their ships and walk right into their living area on the spokes without dealing with the merchant areas.
In case another race joined, one of the spokes could just be built out a little further.
I also created a data mining snippet to look up the size of each race as well as their home planet’s atmospheric makeup and normal gravity, and I applied those values dynamically to the separate living areas. So, each race would feel at home when in their sections. The larger races would have proportionally larger doors and hallways as well, and the smaller races the same but the other way.
It was a start, anyway. I was sure there’d be some complaints and requests when the races started to move in, but I tried to make it adjustable and dynamic enough to keep those at a minimum.
All that took me a couple of hours, then I started on our claims in the other seventy-five galaxies. The database held all the interstellar capable races, and their claimed areas. It was easy enough to get the computer to do most of the work. I just specified a diameter sphere area equal to one percent of each galaxy’s full diameter, that wasn’t yet claimed, and would be as far as possible from claimed areas.
The computer spit back out seventy-five areas in the rest of the seventy-six galaxies. Obviously, we already had a claim in the Milky Way, and I passed those along to Cassie to have her add it to the treaty.
The last thing I did was start to build probes. I didn’t want to make them out of my spare fleet, because within those seventy-five new areas there were three hundred and eighty billion star-systems. I wanted to put a permanent visible probe in every single one of them to guard our claim, and to warn off any interlopers. They’d be ready by the next day, I just put three hundred and eighty billion of our scout destroyers, out of the two point five trillion we had in the void, on building one each.
“So, anything in the treaty we weren’t expecting?”
Cassie shook her head, “Nope. It’s exactly what we talked about in the meetings. The claimed areas in each galaxy as payment for us keeping the seventy-six galaxies safe, and a basic free trade agreement between all members. As previously discussed, any non-aggression or mutual support treaties will have to be done separately from the Intergalactic Union and directly between worlds. I’ll get it sent back out as soon as I add the data for the specific claims you just sent me.”
I nodded, “Pass along the station schematics as well, would you?”
I sent that as well, including what areas each race was responsible for in their own private areas and the joint central area.
Cassie said, “Looks good, I can do that. It’ll be connected to our station?”
“Yes. I won’t control it day to day like an administrator, and people can use their own security, but the maintenance will be taken care of. I also want to make sure no one tries to steal the nanites or reverse engineer them. It also only has defensive shields, but I have a few thousand scout-destroyers keeping an eye on the system right now.”
Jessica said, “That’s good to hear.”
“I think it’s time to call it a day. The station should be built in five days. I just need to get the seating and accents for the delegate arena. They’re not going to want to sit on nanite chairs.”
Cassie smirked, “Probably not. I’ll come with you.”
Chapter Nineteen
The kitchen was a bit of a mess, but dinner was in the oven already and smelled delicious. I’d gotten changed, and Cassie, Diana, and Melody were in the kitchen when got back there. It was clear my daughter had helped Diana get dinner in the oven, just based on the huge mess. A stark reminder my daughter might be an adult level genius, but she was still just a kid in a lot of ways.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Melody announced, “I’m going to have a little brother!”
I pretended ignorance, “Really?”
Melody made a face, “You already knew,” she accused.
I winked, “Maybe.”
I started to clean up the mess, because clearly that was my job if my wife and daughter cooked. Melody helped me, while Cassie and Diana sat at the table, the former sipping a glass of wine, and my wife sipping an iced tea. No alcohol for her, which meant none for me, for at least fifteen months.
Dinner already smelled good. We were having barbequed brisket, corn bread, and homemade fries. Cassie and I told them about our day, and all we’d gotten accomplished.
Diana replied, “I have most of my teams on theoretical research, now that we’re all caught up. Both the fun stuff as well more advances in weapons and shield technology. No more expected breakthroughs
for a while though.”
I nodded, “Between taking the tech from the Vrok, the next generation jump drive, and the singularity weapon we’re probably set for a while.”
Diana said, “Exactly, we won’t stop pushing the limits, but right now we only have theories to investigate on paper, nothing practical. At least not defense wise. But it was a good day, and Melody’s a big help in the mornings.”
Melody interjected, “I’ve looked at a few of the sites out in the galactic voids, but most of it is very old technology. Not even close to the level most of our trade allies have, much less than what the Grays had, and never mind our technical level. But there’s still a lot to go through.”
“That’s about what I expected.”
We moved on from work talk and chatted about day to day things, as dinner finished cooking.
“We need a vacation, once the Intergalactic Union and the remaining Vrok ships are taken care of. Any ideas, besides spending a week on our beach?”
Diana said, “That actually sounds really nice. We can’t go anywhere else without pomp and circumstance on Earth, and I doubt our trade allied worlds would be much better that way.”
I nodded, “We could visit one of our unclaimed claimed worlds, check out one of their beaches, or natural wonders. Far far away from Earth, and politics.”
Melody asked, “Unclaimed claimed?”
I grinned, “Claimed by humans in general, as a star system in human space, but unclaimed by a country and without a colony.”
Melody smiled, “Got it. That sounds fun.”
Diana said, “Maybe, I’d want it well surveyed for dangers first.”
“We can take the old yacht, land it on the surface, and shield an area. Use it to sleep at night. Our sensors should be able to tell if the local fauna and flora are safe or not.”
Diana got up and pulled dinner out of the oven, and I helped her set the table.
Right as we sat down to eat, Darrell said, “My stealth network has found the remaining Vrok ships.”
I snickered, “Perfectly horrible timing. Where are they?”
Seriously, why didn’t that stuff happen during the workday, ever? I started to eat as Darrell briefed us.
He said, “They’re in the empire the furthest distance from our border with them. We have ships on that border of course. The empire in that galaxy only has one galaxy. They’re the ones with the light blue ships similar in size to the Grays smallest warship class. Their weapons and shields are comparable to the Grays level of technology as well, so they stand no chance against our or the Vrok’s ships.
“I don’t know much more than that, not even their empire name or what the race calls itself. Not even what they look like. I’m monitoring several of their world’s transmissions and I’m in the process of building a translation matrix, but that will take some time. I only know they’re limited to a single galaxy empire because the three closest surrounding galaxies are part of three much larger empires, which is knowledge based and determined by ship type. That includes the former Vrok empire by the way, so only two unknown empires.”
“What are they doing?”
He replied, “The Vrok have split up into two thousand fleets of a thousand ships, and they are currently invading two thousand of the local empire’s star systems. The galactic empire has tens of millions of ships to defend their borders and govern the other races in their domain, but they’re no danger to the Vrok, and they’re currently being annihilated in those systems.”
I grunted, “Thousand ship fleets, they’re probably going to set up two thousand build systems, try to advance their tech, and start making babies. In a couple of centuries, they’d be strong enough to come back at us again and free their two hundred and eighty-six thousand quarantined worlds. They messed up, they should’ve sent the fleets farther away, where we wouldn’t see them. Of course, that’s only thanks to you and your stealth network. Where are their ships now, are they all in systems?”
Darrell said, “I estimate there is a ninety seven percent chance that speculation is correct. They are all in systems, and hours away from the FTL line moving toward planets.”
Oh, it was like Christmas morning. Except the part where I had to go back to work. I finished off my plate quickly, then gave Diana a kiss.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two. Leave the dishes, and I’ll clean up the kitchen when I get back.”
Diana asked, “Is this it?”
I nodded, “I think so, they won’t be able to run again, that’s for sure.”
The situation was a bit treacherous as well. I planned to simply jump in, destroy them, and then jump back to the void with what I had left. Of course, that military action would be happening in one of the empires we now shared a border with. They might be grateful I’d assisted them and left without invading myself, but I couldn’t count on it.
Nor could I allow the Vrok to start two thousand ship-building programs.
The stealth network had ships right outside those systems, so it was easy enough tie that into my fleet. I assigned a hundred thousand ships to each fleet, a hundred scout destroyer ships per enemy ship, which added up to two hundred million scout destroyers altogether. A mere faction of the two point five trillion I had in the void.
I also manually entered in the local empire ships energy signature and mass as an ally that wasn’t to be fired on under any circumstances, even if they started to fire at me while I was fighting the Vrok. The last thing I needed was another damned war.
I wanted a vacation instead.
At ten turrets per ship, that was a thousand beams per enemy ship, which would take them out in five to six seconds. The larger number of smaller ships would do a lot better than platforms. If they hit every one of my ships with ten beams, it’d take them almost a full minute to break through the shields. If they concentrated fire, they could take out ten percent of my fleet as I annihilated their whole fleet.
The shields on the small ships were just as powerful as shields on a dreadnought, though admittedly there was less surface area which would make a small difference. Point being, I was sending more than enough, and if I lost a tenth of my ships that was a fair trade.
Once those were assigned, I used the subspace scan data from the stealth network to gain the subspace resonance frequencies for use by my fleet. The stealth network gathered a hundred disparate natural resonance frequencies a light second ahead of each enemy ship, then passed them on to the jump drives in my ships.
Which all opened a tiny energy connection to those natural resonance fields and created the artificial one through it that was suitable for physical matter jumping. My ships jumped.
They just stood and waited, then opened fire as soon as the enemy’s ships came in range. With only a thousand ships, and their ship formations set up with wide gaps to maximize killing the tens of thousands of enemy ships in each star system, there was no way they could do that dancing maneuver either. Nor could they slow down or turn fast enough, they were locked on their course by pure momentum save slight vector adjustments.
They opened fire as well, and we exchanged subspace beams. I smiled grimly when their ships targeted all of mine evenly, with ten beams each. Maybe that was automatic, a computer decision driven by point defense priority. Whatever the reason, it didn’t look like I’d even lose one ship because of it.
Six seconds later they were still almost a full light second apart, so as their shields fell and their self-destructs went off to prevent an enemy from capturing their ship. My ships were quite safe from the ensuing explosion at full weapon’s range distance.
A plan finally went without any surprises or it turning sour. It was an annihilation, and the same thing happened in all two thousand systems, like clockwork.
A lot of the local empire ships had been destroyed, but there were still tens of thousands of them left in the deep inner system near their planets. They set a heading toward us, but I initiated a jump and left their space far behind.
; The Vrok were finally fully quarantined, and no longer a threat. They did have a stealth network, but without physical access to those hidden probes they couldn’t weaponize them. Nor could they start building ships, being stuck on their planets.
We had physical probes in all two hundred and eighty-six thousand of their planetary systems to ensure it, as well as in all their three million food worlds. The races there could start growing in technology as well. Not to mention the stealth network and Darrell had an eye on them too. The Vrok just weren’t a threat anymore, as long as we didn’t drop the ball in the future, and we kept an eye on them.
It was a huge relief, and weight off my shoulders. Of course, there were twelve empires around the new seventy-six galaxies that Earth protected, on fourteen borders. The universe was a dangerous place, but without a current war I felt like we could get back to business as usual.
We’d have to keep an eye on them, or they’d start building ships on the surface. But that level of vigilance wouldn’t be hard, not when the computer would flag any suspicious activity for us.
I just hoped the new neighbors weren’t too upset we’d violated their sovereignty, to take out the last of the Vrok fleets.
It’d taken less than a half hour, all said, and I headed back home where I belonged.
Chapter Twenty
“The war is over.”
Diana smirked, “You said that already.”
I grinned, “What I mean is, I just have a few things to wrap up tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a while before the station is ready and the delegates start to move into it. At least a week. Seems like a good time to go on vacation, before the next unseen emergency falls on our heads.”
Diana snickered, “Alright, I think I can get my scientists ready for me to be gone that long, in the morning.”
“We’ll pick out a destination at lunch and go.”
She said, “You should let Jayna and Jessica know now, the former to join us and the latter to make security arrangements. Cassie?”
Intergalactic Union Page 13
