"So, what's up?" Alexander asked Theo as they entered an adjacent empty classroom.

"Nothing serious," Theo clarified, holding out a tablet. "I just wanted to give you an update on our sales."

Alexander accepted the tablet and glanced at the numbers. "I think you put an extra zero on the end of the income column."

"Nope, that's the correct sum," Theo smiled.

Alexander looked up at him. "How?"

"Well, the Navy purchased a thousand Kcomms after you signed that deal with them. That's how Qcomm learned about our new product, by the way. Someone in the Navy procurement office sold us out."

That wasn't too much of a surprise to Alexander. Someone from inside the STO must have spilled the beans. He assumed it had come from the private sector, however.

"The guy responsible has been arrested, but Qcomm probably won't get much more than a fine for their attack against you. The STO can't afford to piss them off too much until their monopoly is broken. Last I heard, the Navy is trying to negotiate their withdrawal from Varlen."

That was exactly why Alexander needed to break up the monopolies within the STO. The Corporations had far too much power, and Qcomm's actions just proved that.

"And the STO can't send any military ships because of the war, and the looming Shican threat. Lovely," Alexander replied flatly.

If it weren't for the discovery of the inactive hypergate, a BSE fleet action against Qcomms forces would already be underway, but now he had to reprioritize. The STO certainly wouldn't be coming to help, not after Alexander filled them in on what they found inside Xin territory.

Not that they could do much anyway. The STO was barely holding off the Xin fleets if the Lokis' intel was accurate. And the rest of the STO fleets were still redeploying from other areas because they were outside of normal comm range, chasing pirates.

Alexander was glad to see the STO decided to take firm action against the pirates, but their timing was piss poor.

"Pretty much," Theo confirmed. "Not everything about our new product leaking was bad, however. After our deal went public, the news sites were all over it, covering Qcomm's blatant attack on us. Honestly, their attack helped to legitimize our product more than our deal with the Navy did. Our sales to the private sector exploded practically overnight. As of the time of my report, we sold nearly fifteen hundred Kcomms to private individuals and smaller corporate entities. About a billion credits, give or take, after costs."

Alexander made an appreciative whistling sound at that. "That's not bad for only two products."

"Oh, no. That's only for the Kcomms. The pseudo-computronics sales are on the next page."

Alexander flipped to the second page. This time, he frowned. "Only eight million in profit?"

Theo nodded. "The Navy only bought a few for testing, and they didn't get as big a publicity boost as the comm nodes. I think most people are unsure of what they can do with such a powerful processor. You should have given the Navy some of your missiles. That would have sold them on the possibilities right away."

"I had other concerns on my mind by that point. Still, it's better than nothing, and the sales will grow with time. What about the other enterprises?"

"Page three," Theo said before continuing. "Our shell companies are up and running without issue, and the products are being smuggled off-world and to our other sites that are being 'set up.' The espionage on Earth is proceeding as expected. Production facilities for knock-off Kcomms are already going up in each major region. The delegates of the UEC are all patting themselves on the back because they think their spies were able to make off with the basic plans. None of them has any clue that we arranged the whole thing."

Alexander couldn't help but chuckle at that. He still found Theo's plan amusing even now. While Qcomm had all their focus on him and BSE, the knowledge of the Kcomm was spreading like a virus.

"How long do you think it'll take them to figure out the basic design?" he asked.

The leaked documents did contain the design for a working Kcomm, but those didn't contain the same advantages as his original design. Left out was his use of static field manipulation to read and send data. The Kcomms were functionally identical to his comm nodes, but Alexander found a much simpler method of reading and sending data. It just wasn't as quick or as accurate as the static fields that he used in his comm nodes. What it lacked in those areas, it more than made up for in price and availability.

"Hard to say," Theo said as he rubbed at his chin. "The EU representatives will probably get there first, but the other nations won't be far behind, because we can assume they all have spies in each other's countries. The design is simple enough that most should have the housing already set to go. If I had to guess, it'll probably be a few more months until one of them figures out how to create the entangled pairs of particles. If you want to speed it along, we could leak more," he offered.

Alexander shook his avatar. "Nah, if we leak too much, they might become suspicious. If they want to benefit from it, let them work for their ill-gotten gains."

"I couldn't agree more," Theo said with a smile.

"Anything else before we head off?" Alexander asked.

After the successful test and the boon to BSE's pocketbook, he was in a rather happy mood.

"One last thing. Gabriella reached out to me. Apparently, she and Dr. Nord are butting heads over something, and she wants you to come see her."

Alexander sighed. He had his reservations about bringing Dr. Nord into the loop, but it seemed like the best solution for the time he had. Maybe he should have just disclosed his findings to the Navy and worked with them. That thought only lasted a moment before he dismissed it. The Admirals might have seemed friendly enough, but it was clear that the Navy had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. The moment he sent anything over to them, the information would have been sold to every corporation that had their hand in the cookie jar.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Why offer it up for free when he could sell it to the STO himself?

"Thanks. I'll go speak with her."

They exited the classroom just as a series of small bots trundled down the hall and into the holo theater. Alexander gave them a mental salute for their bravery before heading off to find Gabriella.

***

"You insufferable prick!" Gabriella shouted at a screen showing a smug-looking Dr. Nord. "How many times do I have to tell you, the data I sent is fine. If you weren't so stupid, you would realize that."

"As many times as it takes until you redo it properly and send me untainted data, or have you suddenly gotten a degree in medical forensics since we last spoke? Oh, wait, that's right, you don't have any degree," the man responded snidely.

Before the woman could blow up at the man again, Alexander cut them both off.

"What the hell is going on!" he demanded, making both of them jump.

They both started to speak at once, but Alexander cut them off once again with a shrill sound, making the pair wince and go quiet. "Gabriella first."

"I sent this asshole all of the data I collected on the Shican bodies, and he has the nerve to tell me I fucked it up and sent him duplicate samples."

"That's because you did," Nord responded in annoyance.

"Explain," Alexander said.

The man huffed, but laid out the samples on the screen. Alexander flicked everything over to a larger holo-screen, making it easier to read.

"As you can see," he said, highlighting three test results. "These are identical."

Alexander pulled those three documents up and looked them over, even pulling them into his mind space to verify Nord's claims. He didn't know anything about medical science or alien biology, but he could match documents. They did indeed appear to be identical. He even pulled in a few more, but they didn't match the first three. He noted the black bar at the bottom of each page and zoomed in. It wasn't a black bar at all; it was a densely packed code. Probably something from the medical equipment to ensure authenticity.

"Did you run the tests multiple times on each sample?" Alexander asked Gabriella.

"No. Why would I? I already told you I had no idea how to interpret the results of the tests. I took one sample from each corpse, and that was as far as I got."

Nord snorted in triumph, but stopped when Alexander glared at him.

"Do you see the black bars along the bottom of each report, Dr. Nord?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Do you know what they are?" Alexander asked evenly.

"I may not have worked on the newest equipment, Mr. Kane, but I know what an equipment stamp is. It allows for the test results to be fed into other lab instruments to save time manually entering them. It's also a check against the data transfer to ensure no corruption happens when loading a file. Again, why?"

"Those three highlighted documents all have different time codes. Those are three separate samples."

"What? That's not possible. How could three separate samples have the same struct–" the man trailed off mid-sentence.

"Did you figure something out?" Alexander prodded.

"I need to go over the rest of the results again. I'll let you know more when I'm sure."

Before anyone could argue, the man disconnected.

"Thanks, Alex," Gabriella said after a bit.

"No problem. You're a BSE employee, he isn't. I'll always have your back in that case. If he gives you any more lip, let me know and I'll cut him loose and find someone else to look over the data."

Alexander was giving Nord the benefit of the doubt because he once saved Yulia's life, but he only had so much patience for people outside of BSE and his friends. He was about to head off to his workshop when he got a ping on his comm. He swore internally when he saw what he was.

"I have to go, please let me know if you need any more interventions."

Gabriella waved him off, and Alexander jogged to the parking garage where Yulia's workshop and buggy resided.

As he neared the area, he encountered Dog acting as a sentry. The robotic companion barked down the tunnel toward the workshop, alerting Yulia that he was coming.

"Traitor," Alexander said as he walked past the robot, who looked somehow smug, despite not having that sort of response programmed into his code.

When he finally arrived at the workshop, Yulia was hastily finishing up, hiding what she had been up to.

"There's no point lying about what you were doing down here," he said. "I agreed to stop tracking you, but I still track everything that gets printed down here. We talked about this on the trip back. You're not old enough to fly a spaceship yet."

"But Alex," the girl pouted as she plopped down on a pair of extra tires lying on their sides and crossed her arms. "I know I would be great at it, I just do."

"That's not the point," he said, before digging through the pile of scrap she had neatly arranged to hide her crime.

He rolled out the housing of a small fusion reactor that she had printed. Calling it small was an understatement. The sphere was only a head shorter than Yulia, and had it been active, would have had enough juice to power a Stingray. The device had set off every alarm in his safety program, which he had put in place to prevent another coup attempt. Given the time and location of the print, he knew Yulia had to be involved.

"This," he said, waving at the four-and-a-half-foot-wide ball of metal, "Is dangerous. If you had tried to activate it, it could have gone critical and killed you and a whole bunch of other people. How did you even get a design for a reactor anyway? I know you didn't get it from my files. I locked the dangerous stuff up after you conned Lucas into helping you last time."

"I built it," she muttered under her breath.

"I'm sorry? You what?"

"I said I built it," she said slightly louder, then she added something he almost didn't hear. "With Dog's help."

"Dog, get in here!" Alexander yelled.

The mechanical companion stuck its head around the corner, like it had been waiting the entire time and knew it was in trouble.

It plodded into the room, its head held low.

"I built you to protect Yulia and be her companion, not to do this," he said, shaking the housing against the floor. "What the hell were you thinking, giving her plans to build a fusion reactor?"

Dog gave out a plaintive whine, and Alexander just shook his head.

Alexander wished he had a nose so he could pinch it in exasperation. Dog was self-learning to an extent, but it wasn't true intelligence, and he wasn't capable of considering the ramifications of problems he had never encountered before. His job was to protect Yulia and make her happy. If she somehow convinced him that helping her with this little project would make her happy, he was obliged to assist, and that was where the problem lay.

"No more unauthorized design help," Alexander stated.

"What!" Yulia shouted and jumped up from her impromptu chair. "That's not fair."

"And you're grounded for a week, young lady. For going behind my back and working on something I told you explicitly not to. Dog, make sure she gets home."

"I hate you!" she yelled, before running off.

Dog did his best to keep up with the angry teenager.

Alexander did his best to ignore the hurt that her comment made him feel, but he knew he could never fully forget. He turned to the housing and looked it over. It likely would have worked perfectly fine, and that's what scared him.

The robot had designed and built a ball reactor housing, which was not much larger than a shuttle reactor core, without any experience. It simply used the knowledge gained from the memories that Alexander had included. If he had to guess, that knowledge probably came from the gunships that sacrificed themselves to take down Harlow's supply ships. One of them had survived, and Alexander thought those ships had always been a bit more liberal with their instructions than they should have been.

He eventually pinpointed the issue to the weirdness they encountered in the older style processors that he used in his pseudo-computronics, or that specific batch. The error was corrected on later batches, and Dog's processor didn't have that flaw, but he still had the collective knowledge from the surviving unit. Knowledge Alexander had given to it when leaving for Earth.

If there was some latent intent left behind in the code, it would certainly explain the robot's shift in personality. If he was correct, that wasn't good. He had promised Yulia that he wouldn't add any further code to Dog, but he was going to extract the robot's current code base and look it over before he trusted the robot to continue protecting his daughter.