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  Astraeus Station

  Technomancer: Book Two

  Author: D. L. Harrison

  Copyright 2019. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter One

  The boardroom was filled with bright red cherry furniture, dominated by the large mostly rectangular table with rounded edges and slightly thicker in the middle of all four sides. Fine leather chairs surrounded it that would easily sit thirty, but currently there were sixteen guests present. Eight pairs of representatives from eight different first world countries, the ones that had successfully claimed the available worlds in the territory granted by the grays. Either by politics, paying cash to shut others up, or some other combination of chicanery on the world stage level.

  My heart pounded in my chest like I was going into battle, and I fought the urge to wipe my hands on my pants, they were dry enough. Ridiculous, but public speaking wasn’t my forte, not if I wasn’t pissed off and telling off someone trying to kill me anyway.

  It’d been a month since that day we’d fought off the aliens, and I staked our claim on L1 with the space station and prevented the government from destroying us. The only reason they were all there, was I was the only available person that could build them some colony ships. Kind of a monopoly, good luck getting a court to shut me down.

  In the center of the table there was a holographic mockup of a five-mile-long ship extremely similar to the colony ships of the grays, but there were a few differences.

  “The colony ship will comfortably transport five million people in this configuration, as well as carry everything needed from food supplies, to farming equipment, building supplies, grains, cattle, and anything else you would wish to start a colony. The ship itself is a mini-city, and it will provide shelter and rooms while a city is built on your planet. I call it the phase one configuration, because you’ll want to mostly send people who build infrastructure and farms.

  “Security is obviously important. Upon arrival at the programmed destination, thirty small ships will immediately be separated. They aren’t complete at that time, but they’ll be able to fight, and have at least a small complement of anti-matter missiles. They’ll also immediately start growing. In one month, you’ll have thirty small warships. Twenty of those will stop at that point, the other will keep building. The end of the second month six of those will be medium sized warships, and finally at the end of three months the last four will be the larger warships. None of those will be capable of FTL, they’re there to protect your new solar system. Obviously, you’ll need to send six hundred military men in the first wave, thirty crews of twenty, to run the ships.

  “After three months, phase one will be complete, and the colony ship will reconfigure. The living spaces will be removed, and seating added. Some rooms will be set up like airplane seating, some will be set up like lounges for VIPs. Regardless, the new configuration can accommodate fifty million people. When the people on the ground have prepared the infrastructure required, you can use the ship to further colonize the ground, and raise up the population on your colony, and ease the population problems of your countries. In Phase two, the ship will also be able to carry as many supplies as the first time.

  “Finally, phase three will be at your discretion and will only be activated if you wish it. You may continue to use the ship as a way to ferry men and supplies, or if satisfied that function has been permanently fulfilled you can reconfigure the ship one final time to a space station configuration, much like this one that you’re on now, and it will act as the command center for your fleet. The benefits to that are obvious, you can use it as a local resource for refilling the ships with hydrogen. Does anyone have any questions?”

  The American general asked, “Will those ships be connected or controllable by you?”

  I smiled, “No. Like the changes I made on the warships in Earth’s solar system. They’ll be hardcoded not to fire on the planet, the space station, or each other. They’ll also be hardcoded not to accept towing, and any attempt to add FTL technology to the ship will be thwarted. Other than that, I won’t be able to see where they are, or control them in any way. I designed them that way so I wouldn’t have to worry about any governments taking action against my station, given my unique status, while also respecting the privacy and sovereignty of my customers.”

  It was true enough. The governments of the world were more than a little leery about buying ships I could take control of at a whim. So, I’d figured out a way to prevent them from being used against me without controlling them. The only ships I could remote control now were the thirty-two probe ships that acted as a part of my ship, that I had scattered around the solar system.

  Someone asked, “They can’t be towed?”

  I shook my head, “The reason we won’t add FTL to an armed ship should be obvious. Only unarmed ships will be capable of exploration outside of our solar systems. The instinct of self-preservation is too strong to gamble our entire civilization on, when merchants go to other systems, they’ll be accepting the risk of death should another race decide they need target practice. Point being, if they can be towed you could hook up a warship with a commercial freighter, and then go take a look around.

  “Towing is also worthless, completely unneeded. If an engine was damaged the nanites would just reconfigure and build a new one. One of you will figure out a way around this stricture, it’s kind of obvious when you put a little thought into it, but I advise you not to do it. The galaxy is a dangerous place.”

  A simple way around it would be to shut down all power to the ship, then it could be towed, new solar system, power it back on. Except, I’d added a self-destruct of sorts, warships powering up that weren’t in their own solar system would stop being warships, all weapons would be reconfigured to hull, and any missiles would be absorbed into the ship. In short, it would be a very costly mistake.

  There was also another unseen benefit that I didn’t mention. Warships were defensive and stuck in their solar systems, so there’d be no wars between colonies, if one of the countries back on Earth got in a snit. I kept that benefit to myself however, I doubted they’d appreciate that point.

  Oh, one more thing the ships couldn’t do was copy themselves, I’d removed that function except on my own station, making it a seller’s market.

  Another asked, “What if we want more warships, or one of those gas freighters or merchant vessels you’re talking about.”

  I nodded, “You have a number of choices there. You can either come back here and buy one, or I’ve been working on something else, but you may decide against it. I can set up a communication and building terminal that would be connected to my space station on a ship that would also launch when you arrived. It’d be pretty small, and unarmed, but I’d have full control of it from my side. Should you request another ship, or a merchant vessel through communications, once I’d received payment it would start building it. Honestly, it would be less a ship than an… orbital factory. It would also be constantly updated, as I came up with new designs back on Earth, they’d become available on the factory ship as well. And as always, I’m willing to entertain a custom build should you desire something different.

  “
Of course, that would mean I’d have eyes on your space. I wouldn’t divulge that information to anyone, but I would have it, and I’ll understand if that’s unacceptable to anyone. If it is, the only choice will be to hop in an interstellar shuttle, which all your ships will have, and come back here to purchase one. In short, privacy verse convenience.”

  I’d managed to cut myself out of the building process completely, using the reactor fabrication designs Diana gave me. It took longer, twenty-four hours a reactor instead of twelve, but it also made the orbital factory possible, without needing me for that step.

  “Third, I suppose you could communicate with your home country back on Earth, have them buy it, and they can get it sent to you.

  “Fourth option. You can always buy it now, and it’d be mounted on the colony ship like the others.”

  The general snorted, “Why would we ever choose the second option?”

  I shrugged, “It’s convenient, and won’t require a crew from Earth to deliver it. Then how would they get back here? That’s four or five days one of your command teams would be playing delivery boy. If your colony and country already delivers things back and forth a lot, then that won’t be an issue, but otherwise it’d be a lot more convenient. I also expect the orbit around your worlds won’t be a top-secret issue, no doubt your worlds will trade, and other colony’s merchants will see your solar system, but in the end it comes down to trust.”

  I looked around, “Any other questions?”

  “How long will it take?”

  I said, “I can build all eight in three months. If you order a lot of extra ships to start their base build configurations may add a week or two, depending on how many. Anything else?”

  There didn’t appear to be any more questions. Cassie had done most of the political and contact work on this project, but they’d all insisted on meeting and evaluating me. I supposed it made sense to want to meet the man building their ships, but I wasn’t much of a salesman. Cassie had worked hard, and there was a lot going on, it wasn’t just the four of us on the station anymore either. A few resorts and restaurants were going up, though they weren’t open for business yet.

  I was rather infamous on Earth at that point, though opinion was split. A lot of people and other countries thought my homeland had been rather heavy handed. Others thought I was an evil warlord. In the end it didn’t matter, the only way America would’ve been happy with me was if I’d voluntarily laid down and died, as if that was what made someone a good citizen? It wasn’t an option. A lot of that positive opinion was down to my sister, Jayna had taken the advertising job tightly by the reins, and she’d ran with it.

  The meeting broke up, and I headed for my home in the center of the ship, just off the command center and power station. It was a lot nicer at that point, we had wood furniture, real couches, and all that, instead of metal tables and flight chairs for kitchen, living room, and office chairs. The conference room was close to the edge of the station, near the docking ports, which was almost two and a half miles away as well as thirty levels up. Needless to say, I’d added a transportation system to my space station…

  Chapter Two

  The warm scent of food reached my nose as I walked into our private quarters. For the moment, it was still set up like a four-bedroom house, we all still shared the same kitchen, workout, and entertainment rooms. I imagined at some point Cassie and Jayna would want their own place entirely, once there were more people to mix with at the station.

  Cassie, Jayna, and Diana were already done for the day and chatting in the kitchen when I arrived. Cassie was effortlessly stunning, in almost anything, it’d taken me some time to get used to it. Words like goddess and enthralling wouldn’t be unreasonable as a description for the petite and sexy vampire.

  She was five foot one, with long shimmering light brown hair, and expressive hazel eyes. She had the face of an angel, and a tight, curvy, and petite body. She was also an ancient vampire, which gave her a little something extra in the alluring department, the woman had a strong presence, and dripped sex appeal. Her dulcet voice simply added to the effect.

  Of course, I was starting to come to see her as a sister, and that appeal had very little effect on me, I was entirely too smitten with my sexy scientist. That whole sexy librarian look was back for her, Diana tried to dress down at work so others took her more seriously, but it didn’t really work, at least not on me. Anyway, she’d recruited some scientists from Earth to help her with her various research directions, which was why she’d started wearing the boring earth colors and lab coat again, not to mention those geeky glasses.

  Besides the medical bed technology, which was currently being tested and evaluated in India, she was also working on several other technologies. One of those being quantum communications without the need for entangled pairs. According to the math and scientific theory we’d gained from the grays, it was possible, but it hadn’t been developed by them. It would be similar to broadcast radio, or walkie talkies with channels, as opposed to single end to end entangled points. There were many other things as well, weapons, defense, health care, and all that. We already had several designs for communications that would make cell towers, hard lines, and satellites obsolete.

  She was also looking into safer and cleaner power generation for the world. We had that in the reactors, and fusion was cleaner than fission, but in the end it would still make a big old explosion in a reactor accident or sabotage. Reactors just weren’t safe enough to put them in every car and home. Point being, Diana was doing a lot of research, in multiple directions, so she’d needed a staff.

  Diana was gorgeous, but I could be biased, seeing as I was rather besotted. She was five foot six, with long straight raven hair that looked like liquid midnight flowing down to the bottom of her shoulder blades. She had bright and intelligent emerald eyes, and creamy dark tanned skin. She was extremely athletic and in shape, and quite limber and imaginative. She was exceedingly intelligent, if it wasn’t for my magical ability to absorb technology and how to build it in my mind, there’s no way I’d be able to keep up. Even there, she had a spark of creativity I lacked, I could understand and build any technology my magic encountered, but she could invent.

  I’d stopped caring that she was eight years older than I was a while back, but I knew she thought of it sometimes, especially when we argued which was thankfully rare. Nothing was perfect, but she was worth every effort. We’d only grown closer the last month, and now that she could share her work with me, even that artificial wall between us had been knocked down.

  Jayna, my sister, had gotten dragged along for the ride because the government decided to kidnap her. She was stuck on the station because too many assholes on Earth would try to use her as leverage against me. To her credit, she’d rolled with it and was even happy most of the time. She’d taken to the challenge of our image and advertising with an impressive focus, for a nineteen-year-old woman who should be in college.

  Like me she had light blonde hair, and ocean blue eyes. Unlike me she was an elemental mage, but between the hair, eyes, and similar features I had no doubts we were truly family. Not that it would’ve mattered to me, she’d always be my sister, but it was a point.

  The three of them were making dinner together, and I moved in to help them.

  “Everyone have a good day?” I asked, as I grabbed an iced tea from the fridge.

  Cassie smirked, “We’re legal now, on communications. We have official tie-ins to the internet, and for phone in three countries, so you need to cut off our illegal hacks of satellites.”

  I nodded. I was more than fine with that, it wasn’t like we couldn’t afford it.

  Cassie was my conscious. In that if the power ever did get to me, and I turned into a warlord, she’d snap my neck when I wasn’t prepared for it. She was fast enough to do it, if I had my armor on I’d kick her ass, but vampires were very fast, ancient ones even more so, if I wasn’t ready for it she could snap my neck in a blink.

 
We were great friends despite that fact, and in a way I kept her around just for that reason. Power was corrupting, and at the moment I was powerful enough to take over the world. It was also why I ceded control of the ships, and came up with that alternative, hard coding them to not be able to attack me instead.

  It wasn’t personal, she’d explained to me as an ancient vampire, her and the other ancients formed a council of sorts after World War one. Their focus had been on keeping stability in the world, or at least as much as possible given the violent natures of humanity. Humans fed the vampires, so they were rather concerned about their food source. We’d do no less, if our farm animals kept declaring war on each other. It wasn’t quite the same, they didn’t see us as cattle exactly, but the comparison was certainly partially valid.

  In short, she kept me honest.

  She was also in charge of our political and administrative jobs on the station. My job was to run the station, keep it secure, and protect it all, not to mention build everything we needed, or would sell.

  “Done. I disabled those connections, and I dispersed the nanites in the satellites. Anything else exciting?”

  Cassie shrugged, “I’m having trouble getting one of the governments to sponsor our space station. Seeing as its armed, and we won’t share the technologies. I can’t say I blame them, it’d put them at risk if things ever go sideways in a big way.”

  Much like international waters, space had been defined in the same way. After two hundred kilometers, it was international space. The laws also said any commercial vessels or business ventures in space needed to be registered to a country, and that country was responsible for inspections and ensuring they followed all that country’s laws. Anything other than a private spaceship had to be registered.

  Our space station definitely fell into that category, especially with the resorts, restaurants, solar system tour, and other businesses starting to open up spaces. We even had station security at that point, though for the moment that force was very small. The resorts opening up would have their own security, station security was just about the docking ports, and public parts of the station, which were extremely underutilized at the moment, we were just getting started.