Tech Mage

by D. L. Harrison

  I was a bit surprised, pleasantly so, when the cops didn’t open fire. Of course, in my suit that wouldn’t have mattered for me, but bullet riddled food would’ve sucked.

  It’d been over an hour, and I hadn’t heard back from Diana. Either she was shocked and disgusted by what I’d had to do, or she was in one of her labs and hadn’t even gotten the message yet. Or… maybe she was in protective custody and they wouldn’t let her respond.

  Regardless, I set course for Jupiter despite the desire to go talk to her first, in person. At sixty gravities of acceleration, including deceleration for the second half, it’d take twenty-two hours to get there. My plan depended on the Jovian planet, I didn’t have enough hydrogen to power all the reactors I needed to make, and even if the government was willing to supply me it just made sense to use the free stuff.

  Even as I left the atmosphere, I updated the plan. If I could use extra reactors to speed up building ships, then I could also build less reactors more often. Instead of one fifty in twelve hours, I made twelve every hour. That way I could assemble them and get them online, and then rest an hour before the next batch. Much more efficient that way. It was something to do, and I only had so long to build my infrastructure, before I needed to start on the ships, if I wanted to get it all done in my very tight timeline.

  I caught sleep in hour snatches, the whole trip there. By the time we arrived I had two hundred and sixty-four reactors up and running, and I took the ship into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and the ship collected the hydrogen and filtered out other elements such as helium and others.

  I kept the original thirty on reactor duty, while the rest started to make my ship bigger, add mass to it. My hull thinned and the ship ballooned out to a much larger size, as large volumes of hydrogen filled parts of my ship and were highly compressed.

  It would take me three more days to reach my goal of nine hundred reactors, with sleep factored in, three eighteen-hour days.

  I took the time to eat, and by then my skin was healed so I allowed my suit to disperse, and I stretched. I felt much better, and I took a hot shower. Fed and cleaned, I got back to work. I still hadn’t heard from Diana yet, but I pushed all those personal worries out of my mind.

  The three days were rather grueling.

  I was also pleased to see they’d taken my advice back on Earth, and they’d gone a step further. The hundred and thirty-five scouts they had left were combined by threes, giving them forty-five of the smaller warships being built, but they’d done the same with the smaller ships. Nine, instead of three, with three hundred of them that gave them an additional thirty smaller warships being built, seventy-five in total, still leaving them thirty of the small ships as shuttles.

  I knew of course, because my ship was connected to their ship network.

  Point being, we’d face the enemy with seventy-five small and ten large warships. Plus, my space station, which was going to be a beast.

  I assigned sixty of the reactors to each mile sized warship and started their build. I set them up how the government set up the small ones, just sixteen times the mass and space inside. I figured following their lead made the most sense, so a command team trained to run their smaller warships could move over to one of mine without needing to worry about anything new or different.

  The ships were teardrop in shape, bulbous in the front with a sharply thinning tail in the back. The command deck and engineering were in the center of the ship, and I duplicated exactly how they set up the smaller ships. Surrounding that was twenty bedrooms, workout rooms, entertainment room, laundry, mess hall, and smaller storage spaces including walk in fridges and freezers. Enough to comfortably deploy a crew for several months without returning to Earth.

  I had to improvise somewhat as I built out past that, as the ships were a lot bigger, and would therefore have more storage rooms, but functionally that didn’t matter. It was all storage space for missiles, the disparate systems that maintained the ship from shielding and weapons to life support. They were areas a human would never see or go in, and they were completely maintained by the nanites and ship itself.

  There were two small hangars on the outside to receive shuttles, and only two corridors to the center of the ship where the crew would be.

  In three weeks, they’d be built, and we’d top off on hydrogen for fuel, and head back to Earth. I’d build a freighter in the future, to automatically go for Jupiter runs, if my gas station idea panned out. I also planned to bring extra, and then shrink a temporary expanded part of my station once it was offloaded. I suspected they’d have trouble finding enough hydrogen to fully fuel the seventy-five ships they were building.

  Anyway, that would leave just three days for the crews to take possession, but I suspected the attack might take longer than exactly a month anyway. I also suspected any invaders were already preparing, with the betting going on, but it’d take time for them to get to our solar system and move in system.

  I sent a message to Cassie with all the specs and data, and also told her the black boxes would be on the bridge on delivery, if they wanted to add it to their ship network.

  My space station would also be built, and for those that haven’t already done the math, I had three hundred of the nine hundred reactors building it, which was five times the amount of reactors dedicated to the large warships. In the end, my station would have the mass of five large warships alone, and when it was all finished, I’d have nine hundred reactors to myself.

  Most of the time the majority would be powered-off and unneeded, I’d only need about forty for normal operations, but fully powered I could support twenty-two thousand energy beams. I also had three days to build missiles, nine hundred reactors could build forty-five hundred every two hours. That was a hundred and sixty-two thousand in total at the end of three days, and I suspected I’d have close to three times that when the enemy finally attacked, assuming it took them a week to move once our location was revealed. At the very least, I suspected three more days, which would give me over three hundred thousand missiles.

  As opposed to the large warships, which would only be able to make about six thousand each in six days, with their sixteen reactors.

  My station was a dreadnought behemoth. Call me paranoid, but I really didn’t want the fleet to turn on me as soon as the enemy was put down. Which my paranoid mind told me was a likely possibility.

  That more than anything was the reason for the overkill, I wanted to make them think twice before trying to take me out. I’d also be settling in at the earth-moon’s Lagrange point, just to give a little distance and not make anyone too nervous by proximity.

  Hell, if it came to it, I’d just move to one of the other worlds in our territory.

  Anyway, it was shaped like a big honkin’ flying saucer, a half mile tall and five miles in diameter. I figured that would maximize docking ports, at least without having weak structural points on the station like spokes. The bottom two tiers around the whole thing would dock a hundred ships at a time, just to fill up with fuel.

  The top two tiers would dock hundreds of smaller ships, just in case there were people crazy enough on Earth to want to open stores, hotels, and restaurants in orbit. I hoped so, because I really didn’t want to live by myself. The top part was thinner and would be the public area. The bottom part was where all the storage was for hydrogen, missiles, and all that. In the middle was my own living space, control center, and engineering. Really, as I’d said before, engineering is misleading, it was the power room, nothing but reactors. All the ships systems were fluid, made on demand with nanites, self-repaired, and all over the ship.

  If I ever built and sold civilian or commercial locked down and weaponless ships, I could power on a few unused reactors and build it at any docking point.

  Regardless, I hoped it was all worth it, and enough. I hoped it would be, I got the idea the grays were the most powerful as far as warships, and we had their technology. Time would tell though, and we could still be buried in nu
mbers. Seventy-five small warships, ten large ones, and my space station. Those numbers sounded good, but they were probably small compared to what other races had after who knows how many centuries of building. Even a human could be taken down by rats, if there were enough in the swarm.

  It’d have to be enough, or Earth was screwed.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Scott?” Diana answered.

  Damn, it was good to hear her voice. My body flooded with emotions strong enough to tell me I missed her a hell of a lot more than I’d thought I had, and that I just maybe might like her a whole lot more than I’d thought too. Shit.

  “Hey, they’re treating you alright down there?”

  Diana replied, “It’s been a mess, I’ve been on lockdown the last week, when I read your note I kind of lost it. I didn’t get it until you were gone for hours, and Cassie verified all of it for me. You have to believe me, I had no idea what they were planning. I also suspect this conversation is being monitored.”

  I replied, “I know, I believe you. I also miss you.”

  She sounded relieved, “I miss you too. I’d love to join you, but you know they have me working on that power disparity… for the aliens.”

  Yeah, that was subtle, not. I guessed she was still working on different or better technologies than the aliens had, using the underlying sciences their reverse engineered tech taught us, but the implication was I was the enemy they had their eyes on. It was a good point I hadn’t thought of before then, as soon as Diana handed a better weapon to the military that got around alien technology, I’d be their number one test subject. How did I not see that sooner? Too much going on.

  How was that for ironic, my girlfriend was working on a way to kill me. Though, from her outlook it was to protect Earth from those sadistic grays who saw the rise and fall of interstellar civilizations as a game to bet on.

  I also took it to mean she wanted me to pick her up, and I hoped I hadn’t read into it. I knew she couldn’t say it right out, as she’d said she was being monitored.

  “The ships are on schedule, I should be back in a couple of weeks. You’re safe?”

  Diana replied, “On base. I haven’t left, things are a bit crazy out there. The world knows an attack is coming, despite the president’s assurances and spin that we’ll be fine, a lot of people haven’t bought it. There’ve been a lot of riots across the world, mostly here and in Europe. Then there’s all the other world powers, they’re not happy with the United States right now. They’re all demanding to participate. As it is, I suspect England, France, Russia, China, Japan, Israel, and Australia will all be given command of one of the ships you’re building.”

  “Well, they can’t be copied, and they can’t fire on an Earth ground target, so no worries about world takeover plans, and they can’t build an FTL drive. Other than that, they can be modified and reshaped. Any marketing ideas, for a startup space station?”

  She giggled, “Sounds like a management and sales nightmare. You need someone good at researching and developing.”

  Okay, that was a second big hint she wanted me to steal her away. Research and development was what she did, and it was an awkward way of implying management and sales. I also had to assume her watcher was smart enough to realize that as well, it wasn’t all that subtle.

  Suddenly I regretted leaving like I did, I should have invaded the building and taken her with me. I was a bit surprised but also very pleased, I missed her more than I could say. We’d said no promises but apparently my heart hadn’t really listened, it was… startling just how much she meant to me.

  “I should be taking notes.”

  I sent my magic through the connection, and I brought up her notes app on her phone. I doubted they could monitor that, and I left her instructions if she really wanted to join me. It took me a couple of seconds.

  She replied, “You really should, it isn’t often I share my pearls of wisdom too.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, and I’ll look into hiring soon.”

  It was actually a good point, outside of her hint to pick her up I mean. I didn’t want to turn into a mall administrator, renting out business spaces to companies, and selling gas. At least, not alone, if it actually worked there’d be too much for me to handle. I probably needed a lawyer too. Hopefully, the countries would leave me alone, and be slow in opening up their own space stations as competition.

  I wasn’t greedy, I just wanted to be left alone, and have enough money to live comfortably, but I was actually starting to think I’d make a whole lot of the green stuff. Getting the governments to leave us alone was the real trick.

  She said, “I should go, it might be a few days before you hear from me again.”

  Translation, she had very little reason to go out to the hangars where the ships were kept. Really, it was either steal a ship, or wait until I got back and could send one. The plan I sent her was pretty much that, I could grant her access to one of the ships and she could join me, or plan B had been me getting her when I got back.

  It didn’t seem like either of us wanted to wait two more weeks, and I could tell she was very ambivalent about the idea of working toward a technology for the government that could take me out. Of course, her joining me wouldn’t end that threat, I was sure the scientists that worked for her were very competent, and the best in their fields.

  “Alright, I’ll talk to you soon, Diana. Miss you.”

  She replied, “Me too,” and the longing in her voice sent a shiver through me.

  I wanted her with me, on the other hand I wanted her safe. The two concepts fought one another, but I was selfish enough that I wouldn’t try to talk her out of it. Plus, it was her decision. She wouldn’t be giving up her life for me either, which I knew would have doomed whatever we had together as resentment built. She could still do research and development on the station, so I wasn’t worried about that.

  I’d just be her personal life, as she was mine, the two of us would still have our own things professionally. It was insane if I thought about it too long, but it seemed we were both emotionally invested deeply enough that it was worth the insane risk to see where it all went. I wasn’t sure if I was in love with her or not, we’d only dated a few weeks, but I knew I didn’t lack for affection or caring.

  Next to my sister, she was the only one I really cared about on that blue-ball.

  An hour later I checked her notes app. Even without the active phone call, it wasn’t hard to follow the signals through the cell tower for my magic. She’d left a date and time in the note I’d created, the next day and at six in the morning. I’d be ready, I also wouldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to her.

  The space around me was vast, and so close to Jupiter I had a lot of blind spots as I scanned space for any signs of new ships. I knew any on the network were all back at Earth, but I couldn’t assume the government was stupid, they knew I’d been able to track the aliens’ ships through fifty galaxies. How hard would it be for them to create a new ship and simply not add the black box to the network system and send one after me? The answer of course, was not hard at all.

  It probably wasn’t necessary, but I heeded my paranoia. When it came to national security what wouldn’t a government spook do? The answer to that was nothing. Nothing at all.

  I designed a new ship of sorts, maybe better to call it a subordinate ship or nuclear-powered probe. I built in quantum connections directly attached to my space station command and control interface. In short, I’d be able to control the ships from the command interface on the station, and all their scans would be reported back directly to the station. I wouldn’t have to be submerged in my mind and magic to see what they were seeing.

  The ships were small, even smaller than the fighter ships back on Earth. The large space station ejected two hundred of them, formed them from the growing mass of the space station, and took two hundred reactors with them. They may even be better named as probes, since they were unmanned ships.

  The t
wo hundred ships moved around Jupiter and its moons, and basically created a huge sensor net with no gaps, which my space station combined and collated for a much clearer picture of the space around me. I was pretty sure I’d see any ships coming from Earth, before they even got near Mars, much less Jupiter.

  At the same time, it wouldn’t interfere with my building plans. The two hundred reactors would be adding mass to those probe ships at the same rate they had been on the station, for the entire time they were out there until I recalled them and re-absorbed all the mass. It took less than ten percent power to run sensors and to maintain their position, which left ninety for it to keep creating nanites with five energy to matter converters.

  More than that, without the need for inertial dampers and life support, the probe-ships were very fast and could move at six hundred gravities. Something that might come in useful at some point.

  With that done, I felt a lot better about the idea of submerging myself in my magic and technology at a distance, even without someone there to watch my back. At least, I’d have an over ten-hour window knowing nothing could show up and surprise me.

  Five in the morning came early. I took a shower, shaved, and warmed up a frozen breakfast sandwich for some breakfast. I was more than wide awake at the thought of Diana being in danger come six, but I brewed a pot of coffee anyway and filled up a mug.

  My mind raced as I thought about all the things that could go wrong, that I couldn’t help with from over seven hundred million kilometers away from Earth. I also considered all my plans, builds, and tried to find gaps or new ideas. A big fat nothing occurred to me, which I thought was probably a failure of imagination on my part rather than me having covered all my bases.

  When quarter to six came, I got comfortable in the flight chair and reclined it back. I checked space one more time, which looked clear all the way back to Earth orbit, and I sent my magic into the nanites that had a quantum entangled connection with the Earth ship network, those fifteen scouts I’d appropriated that were currently part of my station. My mind followed the magic to the command center, and then back out to one of the ships in the hangars.