Interstellar Incident: An Alicia Jones Novel 02 Read online

  He asked, “Why so many, from what you just said that one ship would have been able to take out the enemy five times.”

  Kristi added that one, “So imagine your ship’s surrounded by shield missiles, and then beyond that imagine all of those Shield missiles, and the ship itself, inside a globe of a few thousand of these during battle. They would lurk far enough away, to destroy incoming FTL missiles before Shield had a shot at them, far enough away that the resulting energy blast could be absorbed by Shield and the ship itself without much danger. It’s just more deterrent, they might drop their ships outside of FTL, but we’d still need to contend with their missiles in FTL. That’s why so many, we need a lot to compensate for the enemies throw weight.

  “Below FTL speeds our plasma cannons should be able to take out missiles as well. Between eight on each ship, and one on each of the eighty shield missiles, that’s a lot of fire power. Anyway, we have a list of suggested upgrades for all ship classes. The battlecruisers, the missile boats, fighters, shield missiles, carriers… did I miss one?”

  I smiled, “Combat shuttles.”

  She grinned, “Right, but aren’t those just fighter replacements?”

  I nodded, “Technically… yeah I guess. But we still have some of the old ones left too.”

  The general cleared his throat and we both looked his way. He had an amused look on his face.

  “Question, what about the EM field? If we keep things below light speed, that means the reactors will be at less than a percent, which means our shield won’t stop a missile, right?”

  I grinned actually kind of impressed with the question.

  “Good question sir. But no. Part of the upgrade is to put a very small gravity plate on different places on the ship’s hull. The gravity it generates will be controlled by the A.I. to weaken the anti-mass field by dispersion in different places, so the ship always has some mass and can’t reach FTL. It’s almost exactly like the weapon, but its harmless at sub light speeds and just prevents FTL transition.

  “The good thing is that the EM field and anti-mass field may be generated at the same time, but are two different fields resulting from that one process. Gravity has little to no practical effect on the EM field, so you can run the reactors at a hundred percent, and have extremely strong EM shields, and use the artificial gravity to disperse the anti-mass field.”

  He grunted, but looked pleased at my answer.

  “Alright, send me the info and I’ll get my scientists on it. I appreciate all you’ve done, and you certainly didn’t have to keep giving away your work like this if you didn’t want to. Still, you keep bringing me new work, so get out of my office.”

  He was still smiling despite his harsh tone.

  “Umm, sir, do you know how the other countries stack up against our ships?”

  The general frowned, “Why?”

  I shrugged, “Just curious, if Earth is called on again before we leave the empire, I’d hate to see the non-U.S. ships get scrapped because we held a technical edge.”

  He sighed, “Politics. We can’t just turn it over, their ships look a lot like your first generation, they don’t have our new stronger shields and are limited to saucer shapes, and they won’t get our new weapons either, they don’t even have the Shield missile defense system. At least, not yet. The president is working with various other leaders on a program, making a single Earth space navy. She even has a name in mind, Unified Space Fleet Service. As you can imagine, there are a lot of stumbling blocks to go around.

  “First, we have to agree with everyone else on guidelines when we leave the empire. I think we still shouldn’t mess with pre-FTL societies we may meet when we move out toward the rim of the galaxy, or even those that may develop intelligent life. The Knomen didn’t get it all wrong after all. We need to be cautious while looking for places to settle, and maybe building our own space empire of sorts.

  “Not everyone will agree with even that one simple thing. Some want to simply go our own way and never trust an alien as an equal, just like the Knomen. Where others want to aggressively make sure we aren’t threatened even potentially. Outside of that, everyone wants the top position in fleet operations to be given to one of their countrymen. So it’s taking time, and I don’t think we should share with Russia, China, Japan, or the European countries until that’s all done.”

  I nodded, there wasn’t much to say to all that. He was right. If we couldn’t all agree to a single doctrine toward space exploration, then… things will get pretty messy. Every country would have colony planets, where other countries weren’t welcome. Some might even go out and prey on other species, and put a black mark on the rest of humanity. They weren’t easy questions, and there were no simple solutions.

  “So they know, I mean the world leaders know the truth now?”

  The general nodded, “Yes, they were all shocked as hell with the Tressian history. It’s the only reason I think the Unified Space Fleet service has a chance in hell of actually going through. The one thing we can all agree on is protecting Earth, and leaving the empire.”

  I nodded, “Thanks for telling us all that sir, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  He grunted, “You’d better Lieutenant.”

  I raised an eyebrow and he shrugged, “You’re not on active duty Jones, but it’s still your Navy rank from after mission.”

  We said our goodbyes and left his office.

  Chapter 7

  Kristi asked, “Pack and move today, or should we do more hiring?”

  I shrugged, “Well, you know we do have an indoor hot tub, sort of, it’s in the sunroom overlooking the backyard… and the mountains.”

  She grinned, “Right, packing it is. You’re very wise.”

  I snickered, and we headed home to do just that. I also had Al send down some of the repair robots from the ship to help us, even without furniture, the clothes, books, television, dishes, silverware, Knick knacks, pictures, linens, small appliances, and everything else I didn’t list would take a lot of boxes.

  We barely fit everything inside the two shuttles, which had a pretty large storage capacity, and headed over to the new house after sending in a vacate notice to the college administration A.I. It was fairly late in the afternoon when we finished unboxing everything we’d boxed, and we had so many… blank spaces left in the house that needed to be filled.

  Well, our bedrooms were good, but we had three bare spare bedrooms, and only one of the three entertainment rooms full of our stuff and Knick knacks. The living room was good, but the den, game room, and dining room looked kind of empty outside of the bare furniture in it, that is.

  We needed to do some shopping, for paintings and other household decorations. It was something for another day though. We were both done with work for the day. Moving wasn’t fun, even with shuttles.

  We parked our shuttles in the garage, for once not needing to send them back to the ship, we didn’t even have any really close neighbors, so we had no gawkers while doing it. Two bikinis and a frozen pizza later, and we were lounging in the hot tub, watching the sun fall behind the mountains. It was gorgeous, and so hard to believe the view was mine.

  I’d earned it though, and I wondered what would be coming next. I was excited about the company, and I’d done my best to protect Earth, I also didn’t see any paths to further upgrades, at least not yet. The back of my mind was… quiescent on the matter.

  Outside of Caroline’s project that is, it would be nice to have my ship infested by maintenance and repair nanites. Still, I’d have to figure out another idea to work on for myself, the way I was building the business it would pretty much run without me. Maybe I was a workaholic, because I hadn’t managed to relax for fifteen minutes before trying to fill in the time I could see coming after I had the last two hires done.

  Despite not finding seeing any new upgrades to my inventions in the future, I did manage to find a few more uses.

  It was probably paranoid, but I had two of the most advanced space s
hips on Earth in my garage. Even the military didn’t have the hardware upgraded to mine yet. Plus, there were people out there who hated aliens for no good reason. I had both shuttles start cranking out twenty of those gravity emitters each, like the one I had for self-defense. They were so small, that they could do ten each in one run, so it would only take a few hours for both runs.

  I figured I could put couple in the house, and the rest around our property, and then give the house A.I. control over them. Anyone that trespassed and ignored the warnings would find themselves stuck on the ground.

  Thanks to the shape of the gravity balls, I also had a new idea for a shield suit that wouldn’t be bulky at all. In fact, it would be perhaps an eighth of an inch thick, and formfitting enough to wear under regular clothes, so I had the machine print that out too. It was basically thousands of little tiny balls inside the fabric, a few microns thick, which would all generate independent anti-mass fields, which would only effect the garment, as well as the EM field, or shield.

  It wouldn’t be that strong, a ships plasma weapon could go right through it, but it would deflect a hand laser easily enough. Also, the anti-mass fields would stop a bullet cold, when they hit the fabric the bullet would lose all mass… no mass equals no force. The bullet would just stop against me, and I could just brush it off. The only caveat, was the suit had to go from my neck down to my toes to cover my whole body. Also, it wouldn’t work if I didn’t wear the high heeled boots I designed to go with it, the high heels held the power source to make it all run.

  Hey, call me vain but I didn’t want to wear anything bulky.

  Of course, whenever I had it on, I’d have to wear clothes over it that looked good, which meant no skirts, or shorts. Either that or walk around like some super hero in a form fitting sexy outfit. Nah…

  “Do you want one of these made?” I asked Kristi as I sent it to her A.I.

  She giggled, “I wondered why you’ve been so quiet the last fifteen minutes.”

  I shrugged, “I also set up a security system of sorts,” and sent her the gravity stuff I was setting up.

  She sighed and said half seriously, “I don’t know, I’m not a sexy but evil alien that must be stopped. I don’t think I have to worry about being attacked. Plus… I like wearing skirts and short shorts way too much.”

  I snickered, “Me too actually, but I decided that was just a really bad reason to get a hole in my head by some nut bag with a sniper rifle.”

  She looked thoughtful, “We probably couldn’t make it invisible, but I bet we could make the bottom look like stockings. Wait a minute, you could make it like a bustier. If you do that it will cover your head down to your mid thighs right? Snipers don’t aim at a person’s ankles, or even their knees.”

  I thought about that for a minute, “You’re right,” I cancelled that print, luckily the fabricator still had a couple of hours on the first job I gave it. I fixed the design, and for the hell of it I specified one in red, black, white, and light blue. It would look like a bustier when finished. I also designed the power transfer to be wireless. Then of course, as long as I was being that vain, made a new copy of all my shoes with at least two inch heels to power the things, then submitted the job and sent the new designs to Kristi.

  She snickered, “Awesome, maybe I will do it, you know, just in case I’m standing close to you and the assassin is an exceptionally bad shot. I guess I can live with no half shirts.”

  I laughed and splashed water at her, I’d fed my vanity enough for one day thanks…

  Kristi asked, “How does it feel?”

  I grinned, “Really light, most of it is inside its own anti-mass field. In fact, I think I feel a little lighter. I’d hardly know it was there, if it wasn’t supporting my breasts. It’s really comfortable too.”

  She nodded, “You look great in just that and high heels, but go put some more clothes on. I think I will fabricate some out, and I want pink as well as those four colors.”

  I nodded, I didn’t really care for pink, but she loved it, “Go for it, my fabricator is your fabricator.”

  She sighed, “So what did you think of Shelly Stengel and Carmine Scalia? Should we interview them today?”

  I said, “Sure, both of them look good on paper. I really didn’t have anything else going on today, you?”

  She shook her head, “Not really, just marking time until I get my appointment. I have to do classes of course, but not on Fridays. Have you patented that suit yet?”

  I shook my head, “I’ll have Al do it now, it never occurred to me until now, but the military could definitely use something like this for ground troops.”

  Maybe some gifts would help that along. Since we needed so many and my ship had a fairly large fabricator, or at least much bigger than the shuttles, I sent measurements up to my main ship to fabricate a suit each, and two pairs of army boots with power sources to wear under their BDUs, for Barbara, Bill, Elise, and of course Nathan. The fact that I would worry less about Nathan getting hurt or worse on duty while being protected by the suit may have had something to do with my gift idea.

  She nodded, “Yup, and your little gravity balls?”

  “Those are done already. But I might not get it, artificial-gravity is basically just open tech since we brought it back from Tressia. It’s not that different from a deck plate. I’m pretty sure it’s not patentable. I should be able to market and sell the fabricator design though. I’ll go get dressed, did you want to message them?”

  She nodded.

  I went into my bedroom and threw on a pair of jean shorts, and a clingy shirt. When I looked in the mirror it was impossible to tell I had any kind of protection going, I was even wearing a pair of casual two inch heeled sandals. Then I realized if I was doing interviews as the head of a company, maybe I should be in something nicer. I got undressed, and threw on a mauve pencil skirt that went down to my lower thighs just short of my knees, a matching pair of two inch heels, and a creamy white blouse. I still couldn’t tell I was wearing a supportive, form fitting, and bullet proof bustier. The light purple of the skirt also made my eyes pop a bit.

  Kristi took one look at me when I came out, and went to go change too. It would be interesting making the change from two women who constantly dressed casually in college to a CEO and CTO of our own company…

  Just as we landed in my shuttle at our office building, I got a message from Caroline, she’d signed the documents and would start on Monday. I assigned her an office and lab, and forwarded it all to Karen to get the woman set up with access, a benefits package, and all the other onboarding stuff that was needed. Kristi and I walked in, and Karen was behind the front desk and smiled at us.

  “Morning.”

  She replied, “Good morning Alicia, Kristi.”

  We’d decided to keep it informal as possible, I thought that would make our scientists more comfortable approaching one of us for help or insight. Sure, I had to dress nicer, but I wasn’t turning into a corporate drone. It was about my comfort level too.

  “We’re expecting a couple of people over the next two hours. Please escort them back to the conference room?”

  She nodded and we headed back. I wondered if I’d ever actually use my lab space, I liked working with my A.I. in the virtual, and more often than not would test a new concept out in space…

  The next month went by quickly.

  Both Carmine and Shelly joined the company. Carmine was an engineer and he was working on terraforming. We already had the tech to get that done, but it would take a couple of thousand years with what we had now to terraform mars. He was determined he could lower that number significantly, to something more reasonable like a decade or two. Obviously this would be extremely big when we moved out into the stars so I thought it worth the risk.

  Shelly was an A.I. genius. She was working on making A.I.s more intuitive. So that they could interpret intent, and even offer suggestions or alternate possible solutions, rather than just following orders to the literal
letter. This had a lot of potential as well. I could imagine for instance, with Caroline’s work added to theirs, an intelligent A.I. in control of a nanite storm made up of trillions of nanites at its command, to work whatever Carmine’s solution was to terraform a planet quickly and easily, yet able to fine tune it and even get creative when unexpected problems arose without human interpretation.

  Obviously there were a lot more applications in mixing and matching, but the synergy between the three projects, and the fact they and others could be legally combined would mean great things in the future. Perhaps it was hubris on my part, but the five of us were a hell of team.

  I’d managed to get in touch with Master Sgt. Barbara Cooper, and she got permission from her C.O. for her group to try the suits. Apparently they tested them very thoroughly, and I was making even more money now as they paid me a fee for each soldier they fabricated one for. I’d also gotten a request from the general asking me to fabricate one of my versions for the President, since she was female. That was… really unexpected, but in hindsight not that surprising. I didn’t want to wear the military version either, why should madam President? The president wore skirts and dresses too after all.

  The general also kept me apprised of the ship upgrades. They were going fairly slowly, so I imagined he had trouble with some red tape. After all, it shouldn’t have been hard, the fabricators on board each ship could take care of the changes rather quickly. However, all the new stuff was coming off the line with all the latest upgrades and to my specifications. I was kind of flattered the Army and Navy eggheads hadn’t made even one change to my and Kristi’s work.

  So far I couldn’t get the gravity self-defense fabricator template approved for sale to the general public. Even with strict programming that would prevent someone from using a setting high enough to kill. I was however selling quite a number of them to police riot squads, just one more non-lethal crowd control they could use. Even the military was buying some, they didn’t have that much use for non-lethal weaponry, but the M.P.s would have a use for them as they policed our own troops.