Fallen Empire

by D. L. Harrison

  I nodded thoughtfully, “Jess, go ahead and send the data to central command, anyone with our quantum communicators, and Tam’Diaz as well. Not sure there’s anything else we can do, until we get the scanning results for here and from our allies.”

  Or if the Vrok invade, but I left that part out, but none of them missed the unspoken words regardless.

  Jessica said, “Will do, but we could return the favor.”

  “Let’s hold off on aggressive action ourselves. At least until we see if we can determine their intentions without scouting their territory. If our scan pays off, then I’ll read the stealth ship right away instead of trying to communicate. It’ll take me less than a second to disable their self-destruct and I’ll be able to learn everything that way, without risking a war by going to their space.”

  Cassie nodded in agreement.

  I finished off the coffee, then it was time to call it a day. Assuming the other world leaders didn’t start calling me for information I didn’t have yet…

  Chapter Four

  “That smells amazing,” I said, as I kissed Diana on the head from behind. I just took a moment to enjoy her scent and presence with my arms around her, before I started to help get dinner ready.

  She already had a sauce going, and all I’d done is go change my clothes. She still had on the hot geek look, at least that’s what I called it, minus the lab coat. Based on the evidence around me she was making some kind of stir fry.

  I started to slice up the mushrooms set aside. Our dinners were usually the four of us, Diana, Melody, Cassie and myself. Cassie of course, would just have a drink, since she was on a liquid diet. Vampires didn’t really do solid foods very well, but they could enjoy coffee or wine and be affected by it, it wasn’t blood only. My sister, nephew, and brother-in-law ate with us at least once a week, but most nights it was just us.

  Melody asked, “Is everything okay, dad?”

  I wasn’t surprised by that question, she was intuitive, and it wasn’t often I sent her away so firmly because of work.

  “We have a mystery, but we’ll figure it out.”

  Diana nodded in agreement, “Did you wash up for dinner?”

  Melody rolled her eyes like only a pre-teen can, “Yes, mom.”

  I stole a chaste kiss as I delivered the mushrooms, and I could tell my wife was worried about what just happened at the end of the workday. I was fairly confident in our numbers and the strength of our ships, but when a long-term enemy does something different it’d be foolish to dismiss the danger.

  I pushed it out of my head though. I didn’t want to endlessly speculate about the Vrok’s motives in sending a stealth probe all night. I have to admit though, that it’s much easier to leave work behind when all I was doing was designing tech and protecting the station from spies and criminals.

  I got to work on the onions and peppers, while she stirred the sauce and then started to cut up the thin steak into small cubes.

  “What’d you get up to today, besides visiting me.”

  Melody started a diatribe of her day, from school and everything else she did. It was calming and familiar, and I wasn’t looking forward to her total conversion to teen when she’d no doubt start to hide things and give her parents short thrift.

  Of course, when she talked about her assignments, I only understood the edges of it. My daughter had the intelligence and knowledge greater than most post doctorates, but she was also still twelve and very much a kid that lacked adult judgement.

  It was maybe ten minutes later when Diana added the sauce in with the rest, and we all sat around the table and dug in.

  Melody asked, “Movie night, my choice?”

  Diana laughed, “We can do that.”

  Crap, Disney. Not that I truly minded, it was easy to get caught up in my daughter’s excitement. Pride and love would make it more than bearable.

  Cassie said, “I might need to take a raincheck and go back to work, my message queue is building about our mystery ship.”

  Melody sighed, but she nodded without argument.

  “Can I help? I got so bored today,” she dragged out the so cutely.

  Diana shook her head, “Nothing for us to help with yet. But I’ll let you get a look at all of my projects tomorrow, for one hour only, and we’ll discuss what you think. You are not to make any changes to those projects personally or perform an experiment.”

  My daughter bounced in her chair with excitement, but I wasn’t sure it was such a great idea. I also wasn’t dumb enough to go against my wife and disappoint my daughter at the same time.

  We finally moved on to lighter subjects and chatted over the rest of dinner, before Cassie left and I watched a movie with my two favorite ladies.

  The bed was warm and ridiculously comfortable as I held my wife. I really loved the Arnis, even after twelve years I felt spoiled by their smart products, even though I was very accustomed to them. The two of us were chatting lightly, more often than not late night was our only private time, between my beloved daughter AKA the terror, and our separate jobs, it was a struggle to find intimacy at times. But it was also one of our highest priorities, so we managed.

  Diana said, “Our daughter is growing up. I know you didn’t like my offer earlier but think of it like an extended schooling. She’s aware of all the rules, and how to conduct experiments safely, but I haven’t forgotten she can forget herself in her excitement. I won’t be giving her a job anytime soon, but supervised short looks into theoretical science and our current practical projects for it is reasonable.”

  I nodded, “I wasn’t going to argue.”

  Diana smirked, “I know, and I love you for that, but I don’t want you to worry. Plus, the simple truth is there’s nothing else to teach her about human understood math and sciences. All that’s left is the unproven theoretical and the Grays’ database, and our top-secret technologies. If she has nothing to focus on, she’ll be miserable.”

  I kissed her hair, and said, “That does put a different light on it. I just want her to be a kid. It also can’t be easy growing up in the core of the station and not being able to go to a normal school.”

  She had friends at least, her cousin Brock, and quite a few of the other kids of the station’s security team.

  Diana nodded, “I bet she’d love a little brother or sister to look after.”

  She just stared at me for a few seconds, as my skipping brain came to terms with that innocuous seeming comment.

  Then I grinned, “Tired of sleeping?”

  Her face clouded slightly, but she knew I was joking. It was just the wrong time for levity, apparently.

  I laughed, “Me too. We should get started on that right away,” I waggled my eyebrows as I pushed the joke even further.

  Which fell flat.

  She sighed, “Really? I miss a little one in the house, and our daughter is like a mini-adult most of the time.”

  I nodded, we’d discussed this before, the timing of a second child, but she looked very serious about it this time. With the life extension she’d be young and healthy enough for childbirth for several hundred years, estimated. Of course, the life extension didn’t give her more eggs, but we’d had a bunch of them harvested and frozen a few years ago, so I doubted this second would be the last either.

  “I’m just teasing, but at the same time I really mean it. I love you, Diana.”

  She bit her lip, and we shared a lingering kiss. She also turned off her birth control implant that night, and we did get started on number two quite passionately, and I’ll just leave it at that.

  It was still morning, just after ten Astraeus time and I was back in the control room for a little over an hour by then. The hot coffee slowly woke me up.

  The mining vessel had been a bit tricky to finish up, any kind of physical automation usually was. The nanite computers were heavily contained by protocol to prevent the formation of artificial intelligence. That left creating a whole lot of logic trees, and defining almost every situati
on, so the controller of the mining probes only had to monitor and deal with the unexpected.

  The more that I defined, the less work they’d have to do, and conversely if it didn’t work smoothly enough they wouldn’t come to me for their needs anymore.

  Of course, I’d done similar things before. The automated platforms that weren’t at all subtle when fighting, and the cleaning robot. It was just… time consuming, even when using my magic to program, but I’d gotten most of it done yesterday before the excitement of finding a stealth probe in system.

  I spun off a build, messaged the company that they could pick it up in two days, and brought up the next custom build in the list. Or tried to, that’d been the last one, so I was actually caught up. It didn’t happen often, but that meant I had time to address other ideas and technologies.

  We were selling a lot of stuff through amazon. The discrete power outlet boxes had flagged off over the last ten years, now that every manufacturer was including power sources in their products, from toys to planes, cars and trains, and everything else. Pollution was mostly a thing of the past as centralized power became a thing of the past, though the infrastructure hadn’t been torn down yet.

  Still, we got a small royalty for every single one made and added to a device that needed power.

  The colonies had started out that way, so those worlds had hardly any pollution at all, save manufacturing. Our phone and data systems still sold very well, especially paired with the Vax’s AR implants which were capable of fully immersive experiences.

  Then there were the health nanite beds that almost every hospital on the planet now had, for treating both trauma victims, and to remove cancers or growths from the body. Clean plaque out of veins and arteries, similar to a heart bypass surgery but without cutting open a patient. It was cleared for several other operations as well, that used to be major surgery but was now a simple outpatient procedure.

  There were a lot of small inventions I’d come up with or designed from Diana’s research, as well as new iterations of things, a new application for a current technology.

  That was just a drop in the bucket though, the stuff we sold from figuring out and improving Gray technology I mean. Between the Vax, Arnis, and other trading worlds that didn’t involve me at all, the earth was unrecognizable from just a decade ago. Calling it the second technological revolution just didn’t cover the reality.

  But people were still people, that would never change.

  I took a moment to check for messages and the station’s and solar system’s status. Everything looked okay, we hadn’t found another ship yet, Jessica would’ve told me if we had anyway, but nothing else stood out to me.

  I turned my mind toward other possibilities with current tech, but nothing occurred to me right away. Creativity wasn’t something that could be rushed, and the real world didn’t give me enough time for my focused wandering thoughts to hit on something.

  Cassie said, “I hate to bother you, Mr. President.”

  Oh crap, whenever she calls me that it means I need to take my tech hat off and put on my leader of Astraeus hat. Fortunately, that really didn’t happen very often, but almost always in crisis.

  “What’s up?”

  Cassie smirked, “I’ve been fielding a lot of calls all morning from advisors of the world leaders, but apparently not having answers yet isn’t being accepted. The world leaders seem rather spooked, and they’re sending up a committee and expect a full briefing on this new threat.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. I may not have wanted to be in power, which made me take these kinds of things in stride, but all those world leaders on Earth did want their power. Which meant any perceived threat to that power, or even the chance of one, was taken more than seriously by them. It was human nature.

  I was concerned too of course, but I’d like to think my concern was more… logical and based in facts, and not out of fear. Although, my daughter’s safety put that to doubt. I suppose that was easy for me to say, since I was at the tip of the spear of the effort to discover the purpose of our hidden visitor, but on the other hand I wasn’t calling and bugging our trade allies and the Atans for an update either.

  “You sure you don’t want to rule?”

  She couldn’t of course, the rest of the vampire council would kill her. Vampires nudged from the sidelines. They didn’t take direct control of governments. I even got the impression the other leaders of her kind weren’t all that happy with her at times, for taking the second spot and running Astraeus for the day to day political issues.

  “It shouldn’t be that bad. Just tell them the truth.”

  I gave her a skeptical look, “Don’t they already have the data we sent? I can’t tell them anything else.”

  She ignored that quite logical objection, and said, “They’re docking in five.”

  Right, and the conference was two and half miles away, time to get moving.

  “You coming?”

  She nodded and stood up.

  “Mind the store,” I said over my shoulder.

  Jessica just grunted in the affirmative at that.

  Cassie and I got on the horizontal lift with two of my personal security, and we shot off toward the edge of the station. There were docks around the whole station, on multiple levels, with conference rooms scattered around the circumference of the docking ring, but Cassie knew which one they’d be docking to.

  The conference room we went to was one of the Arnis equipped, and I sighed in comfort as I took a seat and sipped my coffee. We had maybe two minutes, before the central command committee showed up.

  “What’s been the major questions?”

  Cassie said, “Not so much about what happened, but what we’re doing to address it.”

  Right, I had almost two hundred world leaders that were armchair quarterbacking my decisions. I couldn’t blame them, since I was acting on behalf of the world for their security. It also wasn’t quite as bad as I was making it out to be, I got it, I just didn’t like politics, and doubted I ever would.

  But everyone had to do things they didn’t like doing, it was called life. My family, and the tech business was all pleasure for me and my passion, and this part really wasn’t too great a cost to pay. I wasn’t that spoiled or entitled.

  “That makes sense.”

  I considered what we did, and were doing, just gathering data in our space, allied space, and Atan space, not Vrok space. But after quickly thinking it over I decided it was still the best course. If there was a chance the Vrok spied on us because us replacing the Grays made them nervous, then investigating for threats and mapping out their territory would probably start a war. If it was more serious than that, then we’d find out when they attacked the four million platform fleet I had in their face, long before Earth was under threat.

  The committee walked in, and it was all the usual suspects. Those that had a military presence in space. The U.S., France, England, Russia, China, Japan, Israel, and Australia. I recognized a few of them, but there were new faces as well. Twelve years sees a lot of changes that way, in politics. The U.S. and Japan had sent civilians, the rest of them were in military uniforms.

  “Good morning, take a seat, and welcome to Astraeus.”

  The U.S. representative didn’t waste time. The augmented reality popup told me he was Clarence James, attaché to the president. He spoke as he sat down.

  “President Akin, we’re all concerned on Earth at this possible new threat. Especially as it originates from an outside empire that rivaled the Grays.”

  I nodded, “As am I, which is why I launched an investigation. So far, no more have been found in Earth’s solar system, are all of your countries scanning yours?”

  He nodded, “Our colony worlds are clean in the inner solar system, we’re still scanning out toward the gas giants.”

  “I’m not sure what else we should do, at least until we get back data from our trade allies in the fifty galaxies and the Atan.”

  The Rus
sian colonel snorted, “It is an act of war. They are obviously scouting us.”

  I nodded, “That’s one possibility, one that we’re prepared for, but there could be another explanation. We should wait until the data is in.”

  Clarence nodded in agreement, which took me by surprise. It always did, whenever the U.S. agreed with anything I said or did.

  “But what then?”

  I said, “We have their language in the Gray translation database, and we could confront them with our findings. Until they attack us and remove all doubt, I believe our focus should be on de-escalation efforts.”

  The Chinese representative tilted their head, the popup named him Admiral Chen Lao.

  “I just got a message one of our colonies stumbled on a stealth probe moving out of system, and we were able to set in an interception course that would’ve caught them inside the FTL line. Three seconds later, probably when the probe figured that out based on our ship movements, it self-destructed.”

  I frowned, it was going to be hard to get their technology and data if they were self-destruct happy.

  “So, they’re definitely watching our systems, or had been until now. I don’t think they were in place long, or we’d have caught them sooner. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other colonies had similar probes trying to exit. They must’ve recalled their probes when they realized we could defeat their cloak.”

  If indirectly, they actually didn’t know that, how we found them I mean.

  It’d been seventeen hours since we intercepted the first probe, but with their weak propulsion system to remain cloaked it’d take them over two days to reach the FTL line, either subspace or wormhole. A sudden itch went through me, to start working on a new ship. I think the obvious just struck me, on how to create a fast-moving cloaked probe. The quantum jump drive took hardly any energy at all, compared to other drive systems.

  I pushed that down though, not sure that cloaking was a technology we should ever pursue in the real world. It’d make our neighbors nervous, if nothing else.