In short, my ship grew while I was on it. It took about a week, longer than just making a new one would take, but it was still my first ship, and I wanted to keep it. It looked like an elongated saucer now, as if someone grabbed two edges of the saucer and stretched it out. I also built up another level, so the widest part was about a third of the way up from the bottom. I still hadn’t picked a staff, I’d go over Admiral’s later, after I’d figured out the specs.
About the only people on board I did have now outside of Kristi was a security team made up of Marines, and the equivalent military services for the other five countries and the EU at the insistence of the USFS board. They’d actually used cots in a storage room until the marine area was finished building on my ship, but of course, they all wore the new common uniforms.
Kristi helped me narrow down the best systems. Immodest perhaps, but I wasn’t surprised my and Kristi’s shield and weapons designs were the best. Funnily enough, China did have the most efficient reactors as I’d said in the meeting. Japan however, not France, had the best scanning tech, but France did have the best A.I.
Although the U.S. ships were already a design for shape that we created, Kristi and I knew it would be best to come up with something new, so we used my current ship as the default look for everything since nothing else looked like it. I didn’t like playing politics, but sometimes it was just easier to be aware of possible issues, and to make sure they simply never came about.
By the end of that first week we had a new design for the missile boat, battlecruiser, carrier, and the command ship which was currently mine and would be the only one until I retired. We also redesigned all the support stuff to a similar profile, there would be no doubt about a ship or weapon that belonged to the USFS. Combat shuttles, transport shuttles, Shield defense missiles, normal missiles, gravity missiles, all of it got a different look. We decided to just phase out the old style fighter craft, the combat shuttle could hold more weapons anyway. About the only thing we didn’t change was the plasma cannon design, except of course for the upgraded reactor designs.
That also meant my combat shuttle and Kristi’s old shuttle got a remake.
Once we were done, I sent the new specs to all the fabricators dedicated to the USFS creation of our fleet and they got started building again. I also sent specs for upgrades on those ships that could be easily upgraded both in shape and function. The rest were ordered to stay as solar system defense only until replacements were made, and then they would most likely be defanged and sold to private concerns when we were ready with places for the public to go.
From my understanding, all exploration was to be done by the USFS, so a new world that could be settled needed to be found, and properly protected before civilians could move there. The same was true of meeting other advanced worlds, we would explore, make a treaty if possible or trade agreement, and then authorize travel for trade and such.
The other thing I found out, which I hadn’t known, was that the U.S. had used my original probe design with scanners to seed the empire. We had a good view of everything going on and who was traveling where. It was pretty impressive, and we would do the same in the other direction when we explored in the direction away from the core. For now, all exploration was secondary to withdrawing from the empire as peacefully as possible, and protecting Earth.
Some on Earth weren’t happy about it, but we couldn’t explore until that happened, the Knomen would see us doing it and come down on us before we were ready. Knomen law had that five light year distance a year rule, to prevent… I wasn’t sure what. Either way, I didn’t want to stir anything up until we were ready, and neither did the USFS board.
Once all the technology becoming completely uniform was in swing, I worked on getting everyone into the new USFS uniforms. According to the manufacturers it would take a couple of months to get everyone clothed with enough uniforms to make it happen. I considered using my own fabricators for it, the three on the asteroids could pump them out extremely fast. But it would have been one of those conflicts of interest, since I’d have made money off of it. So the uniforms would take longer than the tech… funny world.
I also reviewed all the admirals. Currently there were fourteen. Each country had both a rear or one-star, and an upper or two-star admiral in their fleets when they were separated. I needed to interview them all, and then pick two to be vice or three star admirals, one to command the home fleet, and one to command the exploratory fleet once we started exploring. I also needed to split up the other twelve in the two fleets.
Sergei Abramov from Russia, and Anthony Flores from the U.S. became those two vice admirals.
The new vice admirals weren’t happy with me when I told them to get with the upper admirals and mix the crews. I knew there would be problems at first, but if we were to be one fleet… it was a necessary step. Language wasn’t a barrier, as everyone had an A.I. with a universal translator. If there were bigots in the crew, it was better to find them and send them home now, rather than when we were in the middle of battle and lives were on the line.
My original goal was to have two thousand ships in each fleet. By that I meant battle cruisers and carriers in an eight to one ratio, respectively. That wouldn’t count the smaller ships. I arrived at that by simply doubling the number of ships the Knomen Empire had faced from the Seltan, for each fleet.
There was to be one vice admiral per fleet or two thousand ships. The ships would be split into four sub fleets of five hundred for the upper admirals, so we needed to promote two rear admirals to make the eight we needed. Then I split the sub fleets in half again, for the rear admirals, which meant we needed sixteen of those altogether, which after the promotions meant we were eleven short, which we would get from promoting Captains.
Each group of two hundred fifty ships under the one star admirals, would further be broken up into fleets of twenty-five, and commanded by commodores.
Obviously we didn’t have all those ships yet, we only had about three hundred, but we would be ready with the promotions and who to promote as the ships were completed. I’d also let the vice admirals know that they’d better promote by time in service barring any red flags in their records, as far as I could tell, all their selections were made without consideration of what nation they’d come from.
I forwarded all of that to the USFS board for pre-approval, so we could just move on it when the time came. So far the bureaucracy was very small, and so far everyone was determined to keep it that way, so it was going fairly smoothly so far, as smooth as a large undertaking such as this could go anyway.
By the end of the second week things were looking very good on paper, we had the plan, and it was getting done. The ships that could be updated were finishing up, and the new ships were coming in. With twenty fabricators, and the carriers taking twice as long as the battlecruisers, we would get four of the former, and thirty-two of the latter every six days. That worked out a to about one eighty per month, so about one year and eight months to get our four thousand ships with the three hundred we already had.
The question was if it would happen fast enough and if the crews would work together, would the seven participating countries on Earth supply enough men to man them on the building schedule, or would the Knomen catch on and precipitate an attack before we were ready?
To be fair, I’d be confident enough to make a stand in about six months, we’d have over thirteen hundred ships at that point, a hundred twenty of which would be carriers. Carriers would be carrying eighty combat shuttles each, so that made an additional ninety-six hundred small attack craft that could stand head to head with one of our older ships easily. That didn’t even include all the stationary emplacements we were building and stuffing full with gravity and normal missiles to protect Earth from any incoming FTL ships or long range missiles.
That’s when I had the rug pulled out from under me…
Chapter 10
There wasn’t much going on that day, the vice admirals were busy a
s hell getting it all done, and I had no wish to have endless unproductive meetings. My A.I. would be able to tell me if they fell behind schedule, beyond that I didn’t need to micromanage. So Kristi and I were considering going back down to Earth and spending a day or so at the house, maybe going out. It had been a hard two weeks of too many hours and no days off. I was even giving some thought to tracking down a certain sergeant I know…
Al said tonelessly, “You have a Carl calling.”
Carl? What the hell did he want? The last time I’d seen him was after the bastard outted me to the world and he delivered my grandparents to lure me away from Earth.
“Answer it… Hello Carl,” I said rather coldly.
Kristi looked up at me in surprise and the two marines on deck looked at each other questioningly. That was fair, since it was probably the first time the marines had seen me truly annoyed.
Carl replied, “Permission to dock Admiral,” in an arrogant tone that made it sound like a direct order.
I closed my eyes trying to figure out what the hell he could want. It was definitely too soon to start anything, especially over a mere surprise visit. Possibly it was a fishing expedition about our buildup, but I didn’t want to assume anything either.
“Al, allow Carl to land in the secondary landing bay.”
Carl dropped the line as the bay doors opened, and I left the bridge and headed down there trailed by Kristi and the two marines, who had also summoned a second two-man team for backup.
The bridge was in the middle of the ship, and the landing bay was along the long side so it wasn’t all that far a walk, half the width of the ship which was maybe fifty yards. A minute later I strode in, the two marines in the bay were eyeing Carl as he stood next to his ship, add in the two summoned marines and the two with me, and there were now six in the landing bay with us. Carl’s ship was fairly small, maybe a little bigger than the combat shuttlecraft I designed.
“To what do I owe the pleasure Facilitator?”
He cleared his throat, “I’m afraid it’s not pleasure that brings me here, but duty. We have become aware of a violation of our laws several months back. You’ll have to accompany me back to Knomen and stand trial for your crimes?”
I felt the marines tense, “Stand down,” I ordered. The last thing we needed was an interstellar incident by shooting one of the emperor’s direct agents.
“Okay Carl, what crime would that be?”
He frowned at me for playing dumb. Maybe they didn’t have lawyers on Knomen, but I knew better than to volunteer information, I’d done a lot over the last few months.
“You went to Tressia, and supplied Earth with artificial gravity before they were a part of the Empire.”
I nodded calmly, which seemed to surprise him. Did he think I’d try to lie to someone like me? There’d be no point. I guess I was still a hypocrite though, because I hated not being the only one with that advantage.
I spoke in a calm even voice, mostly for the benefit of the marines who were still too tense.
“The thing though Carl, is that I’m from this planet. It’s not so simple a thing. How could I be charged for bringing tech to my own home world?”
He shrugged, “That’s for the court to decide.”
I frowned, “Why can’t you do it… fine me or whatever and be on your way. Isn’t that what a facilitator does?”
Carl nodded slightly and shrugged, “Normally that’s true, but you’re a special case. Will you come with me peaceably or do I need to apply to your world for extradition per empire law?”
I could be obstructive, it was even a tempting thought just to annoy Carl, but I thought that would probably be a bad idea. The less attention on Earth itself until we were ready the better. However, I was curious about something…
“Why am I a special case?”
Carl shook his head, “I can’t tell you that, orders. You’ll find out on Knomen.”
I suppressed rolling my eyes, and went over everything in my mind. From what I knew the only ones in the Empire that outranked a facilitator was the emperor himself. It had my mind spinning a bit, why would I even be on the emperor’s radar, much less… I cleared my mind, it wasn’t helping me right now to think about it.
“Alright, I’m coming. Kristi, can you keep an eye on things? I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She frowned and nodded, it looked like she wanted to say something. I subvocalized a message, it wasn’t as if I couldn’t stay in touch, and she seemed to relax a little. The marines didn’t look happy at all, but they didn’t stop me. I also sent a sub-vocal message to the board so they knew what was going on, and decided to copy General Denton at the last moment. Obviously Kristi had no real authority, but I knew the Admirals would at least listen to her if she had something to say, she’d won their respect pretty quickly last week once they’d gotten past the beautiful woman being smart stereotype.
“Can I pack a bag?” I asked.
Carl replied, “No need.”
I sighed, and got on his ship. I didn’t know what else to do, we weren’t ready yet. Hopefully I’d just pay a fine and come back…
The first thing I noticed aboard his ship was the gravity was a little bit higher than Earth’s, I assumed it was set to Knomen normal. The second thing, was that the inside of the shuttle looked more like a lounge than a control center. I supposed there wasn’t a reason not to do it that way, if the computer was in control of flight. The lack of manual flight controls bothered me for some reason, but maybe they were just hidden. There were also two doors, I was going to guess and say it was the bedroom and a bathroom, I doubted the facilitator slept on the couch.
He said a little smugly, “Sit, make yourself comfortable, this is going to be a two-day trip.”
That seemed strange to me, even our older ships could get there in a day and a half… since Knomen was in the center of the empire, and it only took us three days to cross it. Now we could cross it in a little over two, and be at Knomen in well… half that time. Could the Facilitators really have weak tech like that, or was he just hiding his ships capabilities. I was betting on the latter, they were supposed to be important, unless they depended on reputation to prevent problems that is.
Or, maybe they just didn’t want a facilitators ship to be that tempting to steal?
I took a seat on a couch across from him and the ship launched and took off at FTL without him saying a word. Perhaps sub-vocal controls? Or did they have thought controlled systems? Thought control wasn’t actually that hard, the tech for it had been around for decades, it just wasn’t used because a human controlling their thoughts was hard. The real problem was our A.I.s weren’t perceptive or intuitive enough to decipher what was a random thought, and what would be a command. I supposed that was one more thing that might change from Shelly’s A.I. research.
He said arrogantly, “At least you haven’t completely denied your heritage, you appear as yourself now?” he waved his hand.
I shrugged as if it were unimportant, and it really wasn’t to me, “This is what I am and I’m not ashamed of it, so yes, but who I am is who I choose to be. It has less to do with heritage than just who I am as an individual.”
He grunted in annoyance and changed the subject, “The door on the left is a bathroom, it will also cleanse your clothes if they need it. Otherwise I can get you a jumpsuit. The door on the right is the bedroom, we’ll be hot bunking it, so we’ll both have a little time to ourselves during the trip. You won’t have access to any of the ship systems except for food, and the bathroom, while I am asleep.”
I tilted my head, “Works for me,” I said casually, and proceeded to ignore his presence. I brought up virtual window to work in.
Unless they removed or destroyed my implant, my connection couldn’t be severed from Al. He also hadn’t scanned me as far as I knew, or he just possibly didn’t care about my protective bustier, or my gravity generator. Of course, the latter was off, so maybe it just hadn’t been picked up?
Since I had some free time, I worked up a design for a couple of probes for the black hole. I could get close, but eventually the gravity would overwhelm my field and strip the anti-mass particle field faster than I could generate it, but I should be able to get close before that happens. When I was done with that, I sent out more messages and then picked up a book to read, this one for just entertainment.
I could still work, but I figured I’d been working two weeks without a break, and could take one now even in my new circumstances.
The next two days were boring, but would have been more so without the implant, I was really glad I’d gotten it, he might have confiscated a visor. We both only needed to sleep about three hours, so two times during the trip I got a few hours alone. I wished I had a scanner so I could go over the shuttle nanometer by nanometer to find out the ships true specs, but I didn’t. Have a scanner I mean.
When he came out, I took a turn in the bedroom for three hours. The bedroom was austere, there was very little in it accept the bed, a lockable wardrobe, and an empty bedside table. I took a moment to check on things, and I’d gotten messages from the vice admirals, and I got messages from General Denton, and the USFS board to hang in there. I read through them quickly, and then I got to sleep.
When I got up three hours later, at least there was a coffee waiting for me when I got out of the shower. Carl seemed content with silence, for which I was grateful… A wrong question or two on his part could put everything at risk before we were ready. Plus, I really kind of hated him now for what he’d done in the past, and his arrogant attitude now. Hate might be too strong a word, let’s just say his voice was irritating to me.
When we arrived at Knomen, I had to admit I was curious. Who wouldn’t be? We slowed as we approached orbit, and I could see mega-cities from space, hundreds of miles wide, that dotted the landscape. Carl took the shuttle down quickly, and when we arrived it wasn’t at all what I’d expected. We weren’t in one of those cities. I looked out the viewport and there were rolling hills with dark green-blue grass. The bark on the trees were brown, but the leaves had that darker green tinged with blue.
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