Infinite Exploration Read online

Jessica cleared her throat.

  It was only about thirty minutes later, and I was still working on the quantum jump chamber in space idea. It wasn’t hard, but I was trying to think of ways it could be abused or studied by a third party.

  When I looked up from my command table, she said, “We’ve got activity on the Bavoi border.”

  I saved my work as I stood up and walked over to the main table. My five trillion scout-destroyers on that border were staring across at the Bavoi ships. They were quite a bit bigger than mine, but of course much less numerous at four million and less powerful. They were about the size of a small Gray warship, a mile in length. As usual, form followed function for wormhole drive use, they looked like long cylinders bristling with plasma weapons and missile launchers. The biggest obvious difference was color, unlike our silver or the Vrok’s dark green, they were a light blue in color.

  One of those Bavoi ships was moving forward and away from their fleet at sixty gravities.

  I grunted, “Send one of ours at sixty gravities to meet theirs in the middle. They either want to talk or measure themselves against the new neighbors.”

  Jessica nodded, and sent it, but then asked, “After a year?”

  I shrugged, “We probably scared the hell out of them when we removed the last two million Vrok ships who were in the process of invading them. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it took their politicians a year to decide what to do, or to let their military act in some way. My guess is they want to meet in the middle, where there won’t be a ten light minute lag in a conversation. We’ll have to use standard light speed comms to talk to them, after all.”

  They didn’t have any quantum pairs with us, nor did they have non-paired quantum communicators. At least we knew their language. Darrell had a translator matrix for every FTL alien race within a hundred million light years of earth.

  Jessica smirked, “And if they want to measure themselves against us, they’ll be really disappointed.”

  I nodded, “Most likely. When something the size of a scout can take everything their warship can throw, and that can destroy them in one shot. We’ll find out in six hours. I’ve actually thought of lessening the ships on all the borders, five trillion is overkill, but I worry it might embolden them to invade if they have no clue just how much stronger our tech is.”

  Jessica asked, “Six hours?”

  I nodded, “Assuming they start decelerating halfway toward the center. At least it’ll still be during work hours, right around three-thirty.”

  Cassie snickered.

  I shrugged, and said deadpan, “It’s a miracle.”

  Cassie outright laughed.

  “What if they just sit there for two hours, then call?”

  I mock glared, “You’re killing my buzz.”

  Jessica snorted, “What do you think they want?”

  I shrugged, “Not sure, they’re a lot like us. They protect their galaxy, expand their worlds, but they trade with the other FTL races in it and only put them down if they attack one of their ships or worlds. Most of the other empires are conquerors or rule like the Grays with twisted rules.”

  “Most?” Cassie asked.

  I smirked, “Okay, all the rest but one within our stealth network. The Atans are even better than the two of us, but other than that they’re all predatory asses. My point is that it’s likely they want to open a dialog of some sort. Maybe for the last year they’ve been thinking we’d invade them any moment since we obviously have military superiority, but now that we haven’t for a full year, they’re curious? We’ll find out soon.”

  I tilted my head slightly as a message came in. Diana wanted to have a private lunch with me in one of the labs to show me something. I told her I’d be delighted. On the rare occasions she invited me to the lab it was usually to brief me on a cool breakthrough and show off.

  I returned to my table and started on the project again. It was done by lunch as was the science vessel. The first I’d added to my ship database for purchase, and for the moment I held off on doing anything with the second. I wanted to give Cassie’s objection to the idea of ship jump chambers a little more thought.

  Chapter Three

  The large lab was empty, save Diana sitting down at the desk in the corner with sandwiches, soups, and a couple of bottles of iced tea. She was working, so as usual dressed in clothes to dampen her attractiveness, that didn’t work on me at all. She was still incredibly beautiful to me, but I suppose I was biased.

  After a teasing kiss which got her to smile, I sat down at the table.

  “It’s been a while since we found a little time alone. I don’t know if I’m more excited about that or the fact that you’re probably going to show something off for me.”

  She grinned, “I know what you mean, it’ll get back to normal soon, I think. Melody was much fussier as a baby, but newborns never sleep the night through.”

  “This smells fantastic.”

  Potato soup with cheese and bacon, and roast beef sandwiches. I took a bite of the latter.

  She said, “Thanks. We’ve had a breakthrough that led to a second generation nanite. By that I mean it isn’t just a small upgrade like last time. It won’t work correctly with first generation nanites. You’ll have to decide if it’s worth rebuilding the fleets.”

  “I confess to being intrigued,” I replied playfully.

  She snickered, “Ham. Okay, so the new materials let us do two things. First, it enabled us to overcome the need for physical turrets, we can form a subspace beam weapon from the second generation nanites that doesn’t interfere with normal nanite operation or other systems. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  She nodded, “It still does, but we’ve added another system layer. As the nanites form a turret they also form a containment layer. The turret nanites are temporarily cut off from the primary nanite network and form a secondary one, but they rejoin when they’re reabsorbed. So still separate, technically, but it can also be made from any block of nanites in the ship ending the need for fabrication rooms and slower rebuild time.

  “The second upgrade for the new class of nanites are computer speed and power. The quantum processors in each nanite are a lot more powerful. That faster processing will lead to much faster targeting locks, which was the one technology we were still behind the Vrok on, no longer. The faster processors will also yield faster jumps when using the two stage system of connecting to a natural quantum frequency first for energy transmission, before setting up the artificial quantum resonance field suitable to jump matter.

  “It also means they’ll be faster at divvying up targets, and in handing out coordinates when moving a whole fleet. General processing power is better as well, which improved the response time of the constantly updated calculations for inertial dampening. It didn’t upgrade our unmanned speed of a thousand gravities, but it did improve inertial dampening enough so we could safely go a hundred and twenty gravities with a manned ship, instead of a hundred.”

  I nodded, “It sounds worth it. I could have each ship build its replacement in a couple of days, then have the nanites in the old ship self-destruct. The old ships would just turn to dust. The station is a different matter, I’ll have to consider that for a bit.”

  Diana nodded, “You might consider just using the communicators for command and control on your fleets, so you don’t have to mess with quantum paired molecules.”

  I frowned, “But if I do that, and the enemy gets in a lucky shot and takes out the communicator, I’ll lose control of that ship. It worked for the Vrok because all their ships were manned and could be fought independently. I suppose I could put two in each ship, and then set it to self-destruct if it loses its connection to the station, otherwise we’d risk one of our enemies getting their hands on a partially intact ship with no one to control it. I actually already have a self-destruct in place, because the trillions of ships out there only have ten connections each. Rebuilding the fleet means an opportunity to fully restore it, eve
ry nanite would be connected.

  “So why bother with the other idea? When I can have every nanite connected and deliver the new blocks to the station.”

  It’d been a long time since I had every nanite quantum paired with the command center station, since every time I split a ship over the last fourteen years that ratio has gone down.

  Diana smiled mysteriously, “I don’t want to break our daughter’s thunder. She’s not ready to share yet and is still investigating her latest project. But suffice it to say she found a way to break quantum pairing, sort of. The communicators are more robust. You could add a step in there as well, to have a ship try to rebuild a destroyed communicator first, and only self-destruct if that fails or it’s about to be captured.”

  I nodded, “That’s a good reason, if someone else figured that out they could make a whole fleet harmless, mostly. It’d still act under its last orders and defend an area it was assigned to. Sort of break a quantum pair?”

  Diana shook her head, “Already said too much. You’ll find out soon enough, but it’s worth doing it the other way. Anyway, Darrell doesn’t want the upgrade, he worries the advance will change him, if he can think faster.”

  I nodded, “We don’t need it for the stealth fleet either, since it won’t really help there, just our warships. Scout destroyers. That’s pretty amazing, and I’ll do it your way. The station will be harder, with three million people in it, but it seems necessary. Even if we can’t bring it into a fight, the station interacts with the fleet, and would slow it down I think.”

  Diana agreed, “It would. You could rebuild the nanites a layer at a time, and you’d need two command centers during the process that talked to each other. Not easy exactly, but it’d only be hard the first time, if we figure out a third-generation class nanite all that work and programming would be there for next time.”

  True, I was going to busy this afternoon.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Our lunch went on for quite a bit longer, privacy was hard to come by with a baby in the house, and we moved on to other subjects.

  The fleets were easy enough. I just built the new ship as an extension of the one it would replace. A direct connection for power and data transfer during the build. I also built in a new command and control quantum frequency that was mine alone for Astraeus’s fleets, and once the new ships were completely built with both quantum communicators online, the old ships would disconnect then turn to dust.

  It took me maybe thirty minutes to set up and implement.

  The station was much more troublesome, as the new nanites couldn’t talk to the old ones properly. Hence needing two command centers during the upgrade. I built a second command center with new nanites right next to the old one and connected both together with communicators.

  Just that part took two hours, to do that and verify I had full command and control from both.

  Then the plan was to build out a microscopic layer at a time of the new nanites in a spherical expansion from that new command center, as it slowly built out to the edges of the station. Of course, the old command center still needed to control the nanites further out, which were the old kind. That meant each layer had a several microscopic gaps, where the old nanites ran through to stay connected to the rest of the station. Those gaps would be replaced last from the outside in.

  As each new layer was created, the layer of old nanites were removed by routing them to the surface of the station, and out into space where they self-destructed and turned to dust. Once the old nanites were fully replaced, the old command center would be shut down and we’d move the comfy Arnis chairs and coffee station to the new command center. Since each layer was microscopic, none of my citizens should notice a thing even as floors, walls, and ceilings were rebuilt around them.

  Then there was the matter of the systems themselves, those couldn’t be replaced a layer at a time, so once the layer by layer upgrade got close to a nanite made device it would create a new one out of the new nanites, then transfer the function and shut down the old one.

  That was especially important for CO2 removal, oxygen generation, artificial gravity systems, and other life support devices.

  Perhaps the hardest part was the built-in appliances, silly but true. How to replace a coffee maker that was full of coffee, or a refrigerator and freezer that was full of food. I couldn’t do those by layers because the fridge wouldn’t function if all the nanites weren’t one or the other. I had to build a new fridge in the floor, then have the old one empty itself into the new one as it turned off and the nanites were flushed out, while the new one rose out of the floor.

  It was close to three-thirty by the time I had it all programmed and worked out, and I ran out of time. I wanted to go over it all again at least once, and make sure I hadn’t missed anything critical. Once all my stuff was done, I’d offer it as a software upgrade package that would do it for my human allied command space stations, manned ships, and platforms. Of course, each ally would get their own command and control quantum frequency with heavy encryption to prevent someone with a quantum communicator from hacking their system, even me. It was doubtful someone could even find the frequency, there were an infinite amount to choose from, but it wasn’t impossible.

  But, my ship and the Bavoi ship were coming to a complete stop at less than a light second apart. I expected they’d be hailing me any moment, so I held off on upgrading the station until I could double and triple check everything. The fleet however, would be upgraded in under two days.

  I figured I’d start the station upgrade tomorrow around lunchtime, if I had all of tomorrow morning to verify and test my software. Having things like the artificial gravity or life support fail to transfer properly could be a deadly mistake, after all.

  Jessica said, “They’re just sitting there.”

  Cassie interjected, “Maybe they’re curious but are testing us, to wait and see how we interpret their desire to meet with one ship in the middle. Either open fire to measure up, or if we try to hail them. That could tell them a lot about us and how we think.”

  That kind of made sense, for all they knew we were good neighbors behind our fleet fence, but totally xenophobic, or aggressive when confronted in any way. They were leaving it to me to activate weapons or open communications, to determine where we stood.

  I sighed, and then got up to get a coffee. My legs were stiff from sitting still for two and half hours in programming mode. It felt good to stretch them.

  “I agree, Cass. This is a little test of theirs. Let’s not keep them waiting. Hail them.”

  I doctored my coffee with a heaping teaspoon of sugar and a dash of cream, then moved back to my command table.

  Jessica said, “No response, yet.”

  “We’re sure they can hear us?”

  Jessica nodded, “I’m using the communication protocol they use between their ships and planets that don’t have a quantum connection.”

  I translated that into my head as a most likely.

  Cassie quipped, “They must be waiting until our normal workday ends.”

  I snickered, “Be nice.”

  Jessica said, “Here we go, establishing full connection, now.”

  The Bavoi were bipedal, but that’s where the comparison failed. They were about three feet in height, and squat with two sets of arms. Their faces were flat, their noses little more than a slight bump with holes. They looked like a pig with its face smashed in, save antennae instead of ears. According to the database they were similar in function, just a lot more sensitive to sound and air pressure changes. Their skin was a light pink, at least on their faces. The rest of their bodies were covered in a uniform of some kind.

  “This is President Scott Akin of Astraeus station around Earth, and commander of the ship across from you.”

  The Bavoi replied, “Captain Sophri of the Bavoi Empire ship Hawk.”

  Hawk was probably the best the translator could do, as it was probably named after a similar bird of prey on
their world. It seemed doubtful they had an animal named hawk on their world, at any rate. According to the database we had, that name was female, not that it overly mattered.

  “Greetings, Captain Sophri.”

  Sophri replied, “Greetings. We are a trading empire and contact you today with the desire to open talks of peaceful trade between our peoples. Perhaps in time, when trust is gained between us, we could deepen that connection.”

  I replied carefully, “That is a worthy goal. There are over seven thousand trading races with FTL in our territory, including ourselves, that are part of an intergalactic trading union.”

  Sophri replied, “That is auspicious. Our numbers are not so great, as we only have one galaxy in our empire, but we have several hundred trading races in our territory.”

  I said, “We would be willing to trade information today. A database of trading races, with their taboos and how to avoid social missteps, as well as a list of their major exports. In trade, we would ask for a similar database on your trading species.”

  Sophri asked, “You would allow us into your territory?”

  I replied, “We would not allow armed ships into our territory from your empire, but unarmed merchant ships would be welcome.”

  First contact always felt like I was walking through a minefield. A smile, a small hand gesture, almost anything could be offensive to the Sophri. While we knew their language, we had no idea what would be offensive to them.

  Sophri said, “We would allow the same. It would be a good first step between our people toward lasting peaceful relations, which is quite rare in this universe. We have a similar trading database to offer for yours, and we will keep our warships on our side of the border.”

  So far so good, but our traders were really far apart, so it seemed worth mentioning.

  I nodded, “There are no other trading races in the twenty-six galaxies the Vrok once held as theirs. They did not allow other races to advance and join them in the stars. That puts quite a large gap between our traders and yours, too far to travel for those species without wormhole drives. Only three of our species has that technology, including us.”