LOCATION: EDEN'S END

SYSTEM: UNOKANE

DATE: 2402

"Welcome back, Alex," Krieger said over the comm.

"Thank you. I know we just spoke a few days ago," Alexander admitted, "but it feels different being home."

"Everything is still on schedule," Krieger said before Alexander could ask.

Alexander chuckled. "My questions are becoming too predictable. What about the Qcomm folks?"

"They gave up the chase in Varlen. Not that there were many more than your first encounter. Only two more frigates and a handful of gunships joined them as they tried to intercept you."

"Are they still there?" Alexander hadn't expected Qcomm to be quite so committed after they got spanked hard by Tempest, but it seemed that the megacorporation wasn't ready to give up.

"I'm afraid so," Krieger confirmed. "They've already turned away a dozen ships heading in our direction. Some simply decided it wasn't worth approaching the corporate blockade; others were warned that if they continued, their safety couldn't be guaranteed. None have taken the risk, but we are monitoring their fleet and the handful of gunships they sent into the system beyond Varlen, who are running without a transponder now."

"Attacking us wasn't enough; now they are threatening to commit open piracy?" Alexander just shook his avatar in disgust. "Have you heard anything from the STO other than the statement that our little spat was an internal corporate matter?"

Krieger shook his head. "No. The Lokis followed large credit donations to influential figures in the system, where you were attacked, and those individuals are all claiming we started the violence. If it wasn't for your efforts at establishing the Kcomm deal with the Navy, I'm pretty sure BSE forces would have been listed as pirates by now."

"They are trying to drive a wedge in our relationship with the STO, and cut off any possible income from Varlen. It's a smart move, since they can't risk striking at the manufacturing plant on Earth because the STO is personally guarding it now." That little arrangement came about as part of the reparations Alexander managed to get due to the attack on Earth.

The security was completely unnecessary. Alexander had established ten other manufacturing plants on Earth under different corporate identities, using all human labor to hide his involvement in their creation.

The man who Theo hired to run the Nevada location knew of all the sites and would eventually sell that information to others once he felt like his position was secure, but that was kind of the point. Alexander wanted the information on how to create the communication nodes to spread.

In the meantime, BSE's finances were looking healthier than ever, even with the additional drain to create more ships, faster. As another reparation, the STO Navy had agreed to set up a credit allowance that knocked off fifty percent of the cost of a Kcomm for civilian purchase for the next two years.

While only a few hundred of the devices had been sold by the time they were attacked by the Shican, the Navy's endorsement, as a third reparation, had boosted sales. They were now selling out faster than he could produce them. Theo would have the actual numbers soon.

A few of the units had even gone offline. While Alexander couldn't say for certain, he was pretty sure it meant people were trying to study the devices.

Alexander didn't track where the Kcomms went or listen in on conversations like Qcomm did with their devices. The only thing he did was add one end of a single quantum entangled pair of particles in each device to notify them if a device was destroyed. He had originally added that as a safety feature for his fleet, but it worked just as well to keep track of existing units.

Speaking of existing units. "Any word from Captain Voss?"

Krieger frowned. "No, and I'm beginning to get worried. I know the node is still active thanks to the tracking feature, but what if they got boarded and captured, or the ship was damaged, and the comm node is still in one piece?"

"If the comm mode is still linked, it means it can still be operated. I believe basic training has been updated to include instructions on how to connect any tablet to a comm node to allow for communication after Grace was attacked."

"I know, but what if they are all dead?" Krieger asked in concern.

Alexander sighed. "I know you're worried for Captain Voss, Vitor, but give the woman some credit. The chances of them all dying and the node surviving are slim. You know just how tough that alien armor is. She probably had a very good reason to disable the connection."

While a comm node could never be separated from the ones it was linked to without being destroyed, a captain could cut power to the device, rendering it inoperable. If a comm node stayed in that state for over a year, the internal battery would run dead, and the systems keeping the quantum-linked particles connected would fail, cutting the link and letting the control center know the fate of the ship on the other end.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Alexander hoped it would never come to that.

The use of the Admiral's first name got his attention, and the man nodded. "You're right. It's highly unprofessional of me to act this way for one captain."

"Caring about someone more than someone else is just human nature. So long as you don't let that get in the way of your duties, it's fine. We aren't the STO," Alexander responded, not admonishing the man for his actions.

It would have been highly hypocritical if he had.

Krieger cleared his throat and nodded. "What are your plans now that you're back?"

"We need to discuss getting rid of the Qcomm blockade before it becomes too large to deal with easily. That can wait until we land. The biggest thing I want to focus on is how to get an advantage over the Shican. I know Lucas is making headway on the defensive fields, but even if we figure them out and integrate them into the current fleet, it's only going to put us on par with the aliens' defensive measures. It doesn't do anything to address those plasma weapons or lasers. I think we're going to have to move ahead with mass production of the carbon composite armor. It seems to be the only thing effective enough to reduce the damage caused by those weapons. I was hoping we could test it more thoroughly before it was deployed, though."

"Is that one of the reasons you outfitted Kaela's ship with the stuff?"

Alexander nodded his avatar. "I was hoping she would get enough data on the optical mimicry aspect of the new armor that we could continue to improve it, but it might be better to simply start outfitting our current ships with what we have."

"There is always something new on the horizon, but sometimes we must work with what we have," Krieger replied. "The military refers to what you are going through as analysis paralysis, but there are other terms I've heard used as well."

"As apt a term as any," Alexander confirmed. "We will work with what we have and roll out updates as they become available. Since a war with the Shican might be far from home, we can't expect ships to simply fly back to Eden's End for upgrades or major repairs, so I've designed this."

Alexander flicked the design up on the screen, which would be reflected on Krieger's end of the call.

"A mobile dock?" Krieger asked after examining the schematics for only a few moments.

"Precisely. After seeing the size of Harlow's ship and the Shican one, I realized there is no real size restraint to sending a ship through FTL. We simply need to build a larger jump drive and provide it with enough power to make it happen. I'm not sure how the Shican managed the task, but enough was left of Harlow's dreadnought to see that he just had multiple reactors on board. His integration of the reactors and the linked jump drives was crude at best, but it worked. I'm pretty sure I can do it with a single large reactor and a new generation of jump drive, thanks to Dr. Lund's research notes."

"You made a breakthrough in her research?" Krieger asked in surprise. This is part of a series from My Virtual Library Empire (M|V|L1EMPYR).

"Not quite. Dr. Lund was working on many avenues as she tried to find a new method of FTL travel. One of those was a mathematical equation to increase the energy efficiency of the current warp drives, which allows more power to be used to create a larger warp bubble. It didn't really do anything for the speed of travel, so she discarded that line of research. Considering some corporation within the STO must have already come across the same solution, I'm not surprised she tossed it out."

"The Goliath-class transports," Krieger guessed.

"Yup. Unfortunately, the manufacturer is keeping those secrets close to the chest, and there were no knowledge articles available on the subject. There wasn't even a repair manual. I contacted the company to ask about purchasing one of the transports and if the purchase would provide the full suite of repair manuals. They said they don't sell to unapproved parties and ended the call. I looked into that because I was under the assumption that all STO corporate entities had to provide maintenance and repair schematics, but apparently that isn't the case unless your product is publicly available."

"Another corporate loophole, go figure," Krieger frowned.

Alexander agreed. "It's annoying, but it is what it is. It doesn't change the fact that I can create a larger jump drive. The mobile dock and construction yard won't be as large as Harlow's dreadnought, but it'll be quite large. It will also be fully automated."

"What? How? I thought you said your computronics had an upper limit to their effectiveness?"

"They still do, but I was finally able to complete the processor redesign I had been working on. It still won't allow us to fully automate anything larger than a frigate, but I plan on fitting three separate clusters aboard the Leviathan-class mobile construction yard. One will be for operating the ship. Another will be dedicated to maintenance, construction, and resource collection. The final cluster will be specifically for defensive systems, which will include coordinating a series of new laser capsules, similar to what is around Eden's End, as well as eight stingray gunships."

"That's a significant investment in time, resources, and ships, Alex. Are you sure it's worth it?"

"Probably not, but we need forward operating bases, and until we know where and how the Shican plan to attack, a mobile option is far quicker and cheaper to produce than a full station. The ship itself won't be all that expensive. It's mostly just hollow space for mineral processing, manufacturing, and bot storage, with a few reinforced gantries to hold vessels in place while they are repaired or printed."

Krieger paused to think on that. "It would certainly reduce the delay in rearming our fleet at the Xin border. Ever since the Xin fleets took out the Asgardian stations, they have been forced to fly in supply ships. The stretched supply line also prevents us from pushing into Xin territory to deal with the fleets we know are already out there. How long until one is operational?"

"Three months," Alexander confirmed.

Krieger's eyebrows rose. "That quickly? That's as fast as we produce a frigate now."

"Like I said, the Leviathan is mostly empty space. I also spent a considerable amount of time making all of the structural components standard to speed production. Lucas is already making adjustments to the print schedule to fit the new components in. The ship won't be designed for combat, but the ones we'll be deploying to the frontline will have the stealth armor, making them virtually impossible to find for anyone who doesn't have its location or one of the comm nodes."

A mobile military asset that could punch far above its size was going to surprise anyone dumb enough to come looking for it. The only downside to them was that they would be slow, which is why he decided to outfit them with the stealth armor.

The bots might give it away, but that was a risk they would have to take. He couldn't justify redesigning the construction robots to work with the alien armor, at least not right now. The bots would have to wait until he figured out how to grow the carbon composite like the aliens did.