There was very little else aboard the older Shican vessel that Alexander was interested in seeing, but the one thing he did request to visit was their computer core.

  Their guides shared a look before nodding.

  Alexander wondered what that was all about as he followed the strike team down the corridor. They passed a few more rooms before coming to one where the door had been cut out. Cold air spilled out of the room, curling into the air.

  Alexander crouched to fit through the door and froze once he stood inside the room. Stacked in row upon row were emaciated Shican bodies with wires running to implants in their skulls and tubes to their mouths.

  “What the hell is this?” he asked.

  “The Shican’s version of a server,” Four said in disgust as she entered the room.

  “You can’t be serious. Why?”

  “Shican lives are cheap,” she replied sadly. “Grow a clone, add a neural implant, and plug them into an interface. Then all you need to do is provide enough nutrients to keep their brains active, and you have a cheap, yet highly efficient supercomputer cluster. While not all Shican technology relies on such barbaric practices, all of their advanced computing needs are managed this way.”

  Alexander wanted to ask why they never mentioned that or why she seemed to care so much about the violent little shits, but he had been brought up to speed on the Collective’s dealings with the Shican. It was essentially the same as what they had done with humanity. The excuses they made for giving the Shican gravity plating didn’t make him feel any better about what they did, but he understood why they had done it. It seemed Four still harbored some feelings from her time spent as one of them.

  Four paused, then she turned candid as she looked at him. “I’ll share a secret with you, Alex. Most intelligent species fear computers that can think for themselves, or even those that can mimic such behavior. If the Shican knew how much humanity relied on their self-learning computers, they would have wiped you out on principle alone long ago. It’s dumb luck that humanity only leaned into the technology after Xin’s betrayal. After that, it was the STO’s not-quite-ban on the technology that saved your species for so long. If not, I doubt we would have ever met.”

  “And if they realized what you truly were?” he asked in response.

  “Nothing good,” she replied quietly, before sighing. “Then again, they never had any good intentions toward either of us.”

  Alexander made a noise of acknowledgment as he turned away from the corpses in disgust. “Can we extract any useful information from these minds?”

  “Maybe,” Four replied, “but the process would be too slow to be useful, assuming there was even anything left to extract. With the ship’s power being out, nothing is keeping these poor souls alive.”

  Their trip back to the shuttle was a quiet one. Alexander moved to enter the airlock, but Galloway stopped him with an outstretched hand.

  “Krieger wants to meet with you… Alone.”

  Alexander turned to Four, but the woman looked unperturbed by the situation.

  “Another shuttle will be here shortly to take her back to your ship,” Galloway added before Alexander could ask.

  Alexander wasn’t worried about them harming Four. He was more concerned about his people annoying the AI to the point that she reacted.

  Seeing as she seemed fine, he nodded to Galloway and headed into the shuttle.

  Unlike the previous trip, there was no one else aboard except the pilot, and the cockpit was locked tight. There was even a slight buzz coming from the door.

  They had set up a defensive field. He would have laughed at the paranoia of such a measure, but he was a bit too nervous for that. Plus, he was curious as to who had modified the shuttle to include the defensive field.

  Galloway seemed to be convinced that he was who he said he was, but if Krieger thought differently, there was very little Alexander could do to change the man’s mind.

  Alexander didn’t particularly care if Krieger believed him, so long as he was allowed to return home. All he wanted to do was see his daughter and friends. After that, he wanted to ensure the Shican realized the error of their ways.

  When the shuttle settled in the battleship’s hangar and the ramp lowered, Alexander stood frozen in shock.

  Instead of being met with armed guards and suspicion, he was met by a red carpet, an honor guard, and most of the crew gladly clapping as he slowly exited the ship.

  “Attention!” Krieger yelled. The entire room went quiet as every member saluted Alexander as he made his way across the rolled-out carpet.

  “This is not what I expected at all,” he said quietly as he stopped in front of Krieger.

  The man quirked an eyebrow slightly. “You could almost say it was a… surprise.”

  Alexander groaned audibly, getting a chuckle from the Admiral.

  “You’re right, seeing that expression is worth it.” He gestured for Alexander to follow him, dismissing the soldiers and crew. “Come on, we have a lot to discuss.”

  “How long did you know I was who I said I was? Galloway seemed to be convinced only when we spoke aboard the Shican vessel.”

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  “Since you first greeted me on the holo. Only you would find it amusing to see my shocked expression at seeing you alive.” Krieger glanced at Alexander as they walked. “I can tell you’re different, however.”

  “A lot of stuff happened,” Alexander admitted.

  The man nodded as they entered the room.

  The meeting room was a smaller one, meant for flight or deck crews. It was empty except for them, but Krieger had brought a chair capable of fitting his full-sized frame.

  Alexander started speaking even before he sat down. “I should be mad about the deception, but I’m more relieved than anything.”

  Krieger smiled. “I thought you might be. Why the hell are you working with Rush?” he asked, any amusement from his tone vanishing in an instant.

  Alexander filled the man in on everything that had happened on Eden’s End, and after that.

  The man listened quietly, but his serious expression only deepened as the story got to the part where the Collective was actively working against him.

  “And you put your fate in their hands?” Krieger demanded.

  “Not at first. I tried to work around them and behind their backs, but fooling AI as advanced as the Collective was never going to happen. I didn’t realize that until after Rush filled me in on what he had done to curtail his siblings’ actions.”

  “And the other two?”

  “Four and Thirteen, or Serina, as she called herself, back on Eden’s End. They helped as well. They have also signed a contract to work with BSE, so I hope any bad feelings can be put aside while they help us against the Shican.”

  Krieger grunted, but his face never lost the sour look.

  “Speaking of, how is the war effort going?” Alexander asked, changing the subject. “And why are you way out here instead of on the front line?”

  Krieger tapped his fingers on the table for a moment before responding. “We were on the front line as of a few days ago. Then our satellite network picked up the Shican fleet racing toward this system. Once the Loki Order informed us of this, we departed to intercept them.”

  That statement only left Alexander with more questions. “Have the Shican really pushed that far into Union space?”

  The finger tapping stopped, and Krieger smiled again. “Surprising you twice in one day, the stars must be shining upon me.”

  The Admiral left the statement at that, forcing Alexander to ask the obvious follow-up question. He glared at the man for a moment, eliciting a slight chuckle from the man, before asking the obvious question. “Care to elaborate?”

  Instead of answering, Krieger activated the holo projector, and a secure document appeared. He added his credentials, and Alexander hesitated for only a moment, unsure if his new body would work with the security system. He pressed his hand against the icon, and the security lifted.

  He needed to have more faith in Rush and the others. They had obviously considered such a situation.

  The short video showed a slightly modified Fishbone ship approaching close to a star, where it deployed a bunch of small devices. After some time, the pieces came together to form a large ring.

  Alexander didn’t need to see the rest of the video to know what the device was, but he watched quietly anyway as the ring activated and ships started to come through.

  “Lucas figured it out? How did he overcome the acceleration issue?”

  “We call them crash tubes. Before a transit, everyone aboard secures themselves in one of the tubes. Laront called the whole setup a band-aid approach at best, but it works well enough. We have seven gates set up around the area. It allows us to redeploy the BSE fleet to hotspots and deal with breakaway Shican fleets, which there have been quite a few of recently. If it weren’t for that, I doubt we would have held off as long as we have. I don’t suppose you can shed some light on that?”

  How could Alexander have missed such an obvious method? As long as the tubes were under two feet in diameter, they would render everything inside molecularly stable. Some of the bigger guys were going to be stuffed in pretty tight, but it must be working. And the rings, that was an ingenious way to shift the gravitational pull of a star just long enough to activate the gate.

  Alexander didn’t want to think of any long-term consequences of such actions, but for now, it should be fine.

  He shook those thoughts away and answered Krieger’s question. “You recall the fleet that attacked Unokane? That group of ships was led by the Shican’s Grand Commander, and his absence from the armada is what is causing the Shican to do whatever they please. The man was more interested in personal glory than managing their armada, it seems. I know it seems stupid, but once you have the full story on the Shican, I think you’ll understand. Suffice it to say, the Shican fleet isn’t as monolithic a force as we once assumed. It is partially composed of disgraced houses and lower caste members of their society. Those are probably the same type you ran into here. It’s mainly those looking for glory, to be reaccepted into the empire, or to move up their social ladder. It isn’t much different from humanity in that regard.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Krieger replied. “I assume your return means that we can’t expect this fractured nature to last much longer.”

  “Probably not,” Alexander admitted. “What do you plan to do next?”

  “Question the prisoners, see if we can extract any useful intel, then move back to the front. The situation out there is still fragile… We could use another battleship.”

  “I would gladly give it to you, but I need to return to Unokane.”

  “We could swap a crew off of one of the damaged frigates,” Krieger offered.

  Alexander shook his avatar. “I would love to, but it wouldn’t do them any good. The ship was built in haste, and I didn’t have time to configure it properly to be operated by anyone besides me, and perhaps the Collective members who helped me. H—How many people did we lose?”

  Krieger sighed. “It’s not the first ships I’ve lost to this war, and it won’t be the last, but not as many as you might think. We’re running skeleton crews on all of our frigates because we simply cannot recruit and train people fast enough. The situation is improving slightly as recruits are arriving from other Union worlds, but that takes weeks. We’re actually producing more ships than we can crew at the moment, thanks to your bot swarms, which is a good thing.”

  Alexander nodded in sympathy. “Send me the names, I’ll make sure they get added to the monument when I return.”

  “We have people for that now,” Krieger responded in annoyance. “We need you to give us the edge in this conflict.”

  Alexander was surprised by the man’s tone, but he understood. While losing people was hard, they would lose far more if Alexander focused on anything other than how to end the war as quickly as possible.

  “I understand. Since we are heading in opposite directions, we should get a move on.”

  Alexander didn’t want to waste any more time than he had to, but he wasn’t going to take the new jump gates when Krieger would need them more. The video and schematics that Krieger showed him made it clear that the devices were extremely delicate and would burn out after only a dozen or so uses. Lucas was normally more cognizant of such issues, so the only possible reason for their limited lifespan must have been a hasty deployment.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Krieger replied. “The fleet is due for a few days of downtime, and we have some repairs to make. A trip to Unokane will only set us back a week at most. You might as well come with us.”

  “Are you certain? I’m not even sure my ship would survive the transit.”

  “It should be okay. The impact on sensitive systems is minimal, requiring only minor maintenance after a transit. You may need to lock down any computronics if you have them. Those don’t do well with the forced acceleration, but they handle the crash tubes just fine. I’ll forward the schematics. I don’t know about your body, but you might be able to make a crash tube large enough for yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Alexander replied. Now was not the time to mention his upgrade.

  Alexander thanked Krieger for the information and headed back to the Defiance. It was time to head home.

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