Alexander’s comm pinged. When he read the message, he smiled. Then he yelled loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “Good news, Krieger’s mission was successful!”
The room erupted into cheers. Alexander was glad he was here with the engineers to celebrate the victory, which wouldn’t have been possible without their diligent work while he was gone.
Alexander celebrated with them, but internally, he knew the victory would only slow the Shican down. Humanity needed to do more to keep the armada from charging forward. He also hoped the STO could weather the extra pressure. Krieger had warned them, but that didn’t mean much.
Rush had told him that the STO suffered quite a few losses fighting off the Grand Admiral’s smaller force. While the rogue Shican fleets from the main armada didn’t have as many ships with defensive fields as the Grand Admirals, that didn’t mean they would be easy to fight off.
Normally, Alexander would be in his workshop, but Rush and the other AIs, along with his daughter, had taken over the space to manufacture everything the planet would need to produce the new organic manufacturing method. He checked in daily and worked with them for an hour or two to ensure the finalized designs didn’t look like the AIs had built them. That was to prevent the other members of the Collective from getting angry in case they were monitoring the planet.
Alexander really wanted to make sure that didn’t happen, because Rush and the others had already detected their siblings’ attempted intrusions into Eden’s End’s networks. He assumed the Collective was trying to determine just how much information Rush and the others were providing them.
The intrusion attempt came through the same method that Rush had used to track and listen in on the Shican, which is the only reason they knew it came from the Collective. Rush assured him that his wayward siblings had not gained access to anything classified, but that wasn’t all that reassuring.
The former chairman of Gravitational Solutions had also told him that Four, Serina, and he were no longer as capable as their siblings, thanks to having to dump their external living alloy. For all Alexander knew, Two and the others had bypassed all his security and simply left the signs of their attempts as a false trail. He was tempted just to let them in so they would stop, but he quickly dismissed that idiotic idea. Most of the Collective didn’t seem to care one way or another, but Two seemed hell-bent on finding any justification to kill him and any information he had regarding the Collective and their technology.
He mentioned that to Rush, and the man laughed. Apparently, the others disdained subterfuge, with Two being the only one who might have a motive to do such a thing. Then again, Rush also claimed that his brother would want him to know if he had breached the BSE archives. Again, not that reassuring, Rush obviously had a blind spot when it came to his sibling’s actions, but Alexander couldn’t do anything about it, so he continued working.
It was annoying and slowed the process down, but the AI’s help easily offset most of the issues there.
With that project in good hands, Alexander spent most of his time in the workshop with Lucas and the other engineers, working on the new ring gate prototype and the Nova drive. The ring gate needed some configuration changes to allow for the gravity plates’ new role. The new, more powerful reactors were also being fitted into the design, making each section slightly larger, but the overall output would improve the gate’s functionality and longevity.
The extra energy would make it so the transmission portion of the gates didn’t need to be so close to a star or gas giant. Those initial tests ended rather poorly, even with the transport ship having energized armor installed. Thankfully, the tests on the standard gravity plates had worked perfectly, and the orbital cloning facility to replace the ones aboard the fleet was already operational.
The cloned plates took far longer to manufacture than the normal ones, but they already had the fishbone used in the initial tests offloaded and waiting to take on those plates. In a few days, it would be full, and it would head back to the gas giant with enough replacements to fix Judgement.
Alexander had a design for a stealth composite satellite ready to replace the use of the fishbone for keeping the plates near the stellar bodies, but that was a low-priority issue when they needed all the stealth composite they could get for the EFEC Swordfish corvettes. Once the twelve vessels were done, he would reconsider the satellites, but for now, they needed the ships as soon as possible.
The enemy fleet would eventually come back together, and with the Grand Commander at the helm. He hoped the prototype Swordfish would make them second-guess their choices or stall even longer, but that all depended on the damn Nova drive, which was proving to be difficult, just like its namesake.
Alexander had the math all worked out, he had the gravity plates, and he had the crash tubes to protect the delicate pseudo-computronics, but getting them all to work together was not going as intended.
To prove that fact, the only one who hadn’t looked up from their console to cheer had been Lucas. The man was fixated on the simulation. After a while, he cursed and looked at Alexander, shaking his head. “The simulation failed again.”
Of course it had.
He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. The key to making the drive work was also proving to be the main problem keeping it from working. That was the gravity plates.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Initial tests showed that once you passed a certain threshold of gravity, the gravitational distortion could bleed past the confines of the field provided by the plating. That wasn’t much of an issue when dealing with one G, but it became a real problem the more the gravity increased. Alexander confirmed the issue with Rush and the others.
The Collective had learned all about the bleed-over issue when they were running tests to produce super-dense alloys and other materials that required dense gravity. They had abandoned that line of research when much more efficient methods were discovered.
Alexander filed that information away for later. Super-dense alloys sounded very interesting, but they didn’t help him with his current problem. He was stuck trying to rein in the gravity while the drive was active, which took less time than forming a warp bubble, but was long enough to turn everyone aboard a vessel into paste if the field expanded. Even if he only needed to activate it for a microsecond, like the gates required, the added stress would crush the vessel into a ball. Obviously, that would be bad.
Unlike the ring gates, which had two set endpoints, further reducing the gravitational requirements to fold space, Alexander needed to have all of that done within the ship. The reactor output offset some of that, allowing them to move forward, but they needed to get the leaking gravity under control.
“What’s the next configuration of zero-G panels?” Alexander asked. They had been doing simulation testing for three days, and he wasn’t there for most of it, so he didn’t know what design iteration they were on.
Lucas threw the design up on the holo display. “Where did you even come up with this monstrosity?”
Alexander could only laugh at the man’s comment.
The drive was encased in a globe of hexagonal-shaped plates, similar to what humanity used for early compression-style nuclear weapons. He told Lucas as much.
The man stared at him for a moment before shaking his head. “Alright, worth a try, I guess.”
The test was another failure, but the plates did slow down the gravitational leakage slightly.
Alexander was kind of glad the design failed, because it would have been a nightmare to produce and maintain.
“Can we lower the power output of the gravity plates?” Lucas inquired.
“It’s already as low as they can go without failing to activate. I think I need to speak with Rush and the others. Maybe we can modify the plates to focus the gravity in a tighter area.”
“What’s all this ‘we’ talk?” Lucas laughed. “My head still hurts from Four’s explanation of the technology, so I’m going to leave that to you.”
“Thanks,” Alexander replied flatly. “Keep running simulations, and I’ll go speak with them.”
“Good luck,” his friend said with a grin before shooing him away.
Alexander half-smiled and shook his head at the man’s antics before exiting the noisy workshop.
When he arrived in his personal workshop, only Rush and Four were present. It was still odd seeing the man in his new form.
“Where’s Yulia and Serina?” he asked.
“Yulia wanted to show Serina her dune buggy,” Rush replied happily. “What brings you by so soon? I figured you’d be with Lucas and the other engineers for the rest of the day.”
It seemed like Alexander wasn’t the only one glad that the girls were starting to get along again.
“I’m stuck on a project and could use some input.”
“Ask away,” Four responded without stopping her work.
“I’m wondering if the plates can be modified to tighten the gravitational field that they emit?”
Rush rubbed his scruffy new face and hmmed in thought. “They aren’t really designed to do that, but I suppose a directed gravitational field would be possible. I assume this has something to do with the issue you inquired about before?”
Alexander nodded. “How long would it take to change the plates to make that happen?”
Rush shrugged. “I’ve never even considered the option, but why change the whole process when you already have a readily available solution?”
“I do?” Alexander asked in confusion.
Rush smiled knowingly and flicked a design onto the holo. “Four and I have been perusing your archives.”
“You mean you kept pestering me when you found something interesting?” Four chimed in, turning to glare at her brother.
The man cleared his throat. “I was about to mention that. Anyway, we found many of your inventions interesting, and… I took the liberty of doing some simulations on them.”
“Once again, you are wrong,” Four sighed. “I, too, found some of your work interesting, and ran some simulations of my own. One is right about one thing; however, the device should be sufficient for your needs.”
Alexander couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. It was the very first thing he had ever built.
“You’re saying the disruptor I used to help my early printer designs is the key?” He had abandoned that device long before switching to his ring printers and orbital printing, and it couldn’t function on a planet.
“Not in its current configuration, but essentially, yes. It’s a simple electromagnetic field disruptor, but with a few tweaks, it could be used to focus the plates’ output without having to reduce the power to unsustainable levels or having to redesign them from scratch, which would require a whole new production line by the way.”
Alexander hadn’t considered that, and he was glad most of his production was printer-based; it made changing things far quicker. He took in the outdated design and winced at how crude it appeared. He had never gotten around to making a proper housing for the mess of wires, electronics, and electromagnets attached to it, so it looked like something a child threw together for a science fair. He was pretty sure Yulia could build something much nicer with her current skills.
“That’s not going to stop all the gravity from leaking out,” Alexander muttered as he pondered the new approach.
“It won’t,” Rush agreed, “but you already have the zero-G plates. A combination of the two should get you the result you are looking for.”
Alexander envisioned wrapping the edges of the plate in the disruption field, which would help focus the gravity on the drive generator. Then he could encase the whole thing in a spherical chamber made from the zero-G plates. They would act like a force field to hold the remaining gravity from spilling out of the containment unit.
“Thanks. I need to get back to Lucas and run more simulation testing to see what the best configuration will be.”
“You are very welcome,” Four said.
Rush just looked smug until Four slapped him on the shoulder. “Think nothing of it,” he quickly added.
As Alexander hurried out, he couldn’t help but notice how much more natural the AIs were acting with each passing day. It seemed that having their secret out in the open, as well as being surrounded by people daily, had sped up their ability to socialize and understand human social cues much better.
Their mimicry wasn’t perfect, but it never would be because humans, by definition, weren’t perfect.
As always, thanks for reading! And thanks for the support! If you enjoy the story, please rate it and comment below!
Series finale is now available on Patreon!
