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  The bottleneck there was more the inertial dampeners, than the impulse drive. Missiles could accelerate as fast as six hundred gravities, without flesh and blood to worry about, there was no need to compensate for gravity’s effects through acceleration. Of course, the range of a missile was limited, without a reactor it only could accelerate until its stored power was exhausted.

  The next week passed quickly as the rest of the three hundred ships were built. So far nothing had been done as far as the project organization, but Diana dropped enough hints to let me know I was definitely not needed for the current tech anymore. Sure, I was convenient, and faster than fabricating reactors the normal way, but replaceable. Advances were all in her court, I couldn’t do those, and I couldn’t even build them until after she built a prototype for me to read, and advances were long term blackboard stuff, where my magic was more action oriented. I suspected the general would make decisions in regards to all that after we spoke to the aliens, depending on what went down.

  I tried not to worry about it, or to wonder what it would do to my relationship with Diana if we were sent in different directions, and perhaps even worked on separate bases, if I continued to work for the government at all.

  I also hadn’t heard anything at all about Dale. He hadn’t been caught, and as far as I knew the special unit in the FBI didn’t even know where he was, he hadn’t resurfaced anywhere yet. I was fairly content to let them handle that though, as long as my sister stayed safe.

  It was that next Tuesday morning, when the general, myself, Jemma, and Cassie got on one of the ships that looked like a bigger version of a stealth bomber, and headed into space.

  What I didn’t know at the time, was simultaneous to that, the president went to address the U.N. to reveal the alien presence in our solar system to the world, and that America’s space force was going to go say hello.

  Yeah, fun times.

  Chapter Nine

  The cockpit had two flight chairs installed in it and was pretty small. They’d also installed first class airplane seats in the back where cargo or ordinance would usually be stored. Last but not least, there was a fridge, kitchenette, and fairly nice boardroom table with leather chairs in the back. There was also no cockpit door at the moment, it’d been removed.

  Of course, the ship could make food and water, but only a tiny bit at a time, so the food was more like a nutrient rich paste loaded with proteins, vitamins, and minerals the body needed. Point being, I wasn’t all that surprised to see a kitchenette. What the ship made was… survival rations, the equivalent of a starving man eating bugs in the wild, just not quite as gross.

  I wasn’t all that surprised when Cassie slipped into the cockpit, being the team’s pilot and weapons expert, not to mention project manager. She flew everything else after all. The rest of us took seats in the larger room.

  “You know, we should have space suits of some kind, decompression suits at least. The ship can reseal and even repair itself, but that could take a few minutes under certain conditions. Far too long to be exposed to vacuum.”

  Of course, in this little ship it might be a moot point, too much of the ship would likely be destroyed if the shields were breached in battle for it to recover in a reasonable amount of time. Still, a space suit, eject, and search and rescue would be possible with enough of an air supply.

  Ironically perhaps, I already kind of had one. Although, it wouldn’t be easy to power it for ten hours with my magic to get home.

  The general nodded, “Those are being worked on for our space force, body suits under uniforms and generic helmets that will bond with any size jumpsuit. We’ll have to do without. What’s our ETA?”

  Cassie replied, “Ten hours, twelve minutes. We’re cleared for takeoff.”

  Schaefer ordered, “Take her up.”

  There was very little sensation of movement as the ship rose off the ground, glided out of the hangar, and shot up into the sky, but there was some feeling of being heavier on our backs as the ship shot straight up. The ships had anti-gravity to leave orbit, because while inside gravity wells impulse, artificial gravity, and inertial dampening didn’t work quite right. Or at least it didn’t work perfectly.

  Regardless, once we’d shot out of the atmosphere a couple of minutes later, and left the Earth’s gravity well, all sensation of movement stopped, and the artificial gravity stabilized at the bottom of the ship, making it feel like we were just sitting still on the ground.

  When in reality we’d started accelerating at sixty gravities, and we’d keep accelerating until we reached the halfway mark in five hours and five minutes, then we’d reverse acceleration in order to come to a full stop when we arrived at our target.

  With the door open, we could see the hologram above the flight table, which showed where we were in relation to the solar system, and our projected course.

  “It seems wrong not to have windows.”

  Jemma snorted.

  The general just grunted.

  I could set up wall displays of our surroundings that would look and act like windows, but I decided to just leave it alone. It was going to be a long flight.

  “The plan?”

  The general said, “You’re here if the shit hits the fan, otherwise I’ll do all the talking.”

  Right, of course. Sit down and shut up. Not that he was wrong, I was a college graduate who’d managed to get in up to my neck in illegal shit under coercion, and I hadn’t even managed to find a starting job in my area of study. Still, he didn’t have to be such a dick about it.

  The general added, as if thinking the same thing, “It depends on what they do and what their long-term intentions are. The last thing we want to do is start trouble with this civilization. I’m prepared for several scenarios.”

  I got up and headed for the kitchenette, it looked like they’d installed one right out of a commercial airplane, possibly the same one they’d stolen the first-class seats from, “Anyone else want a coffee?”

  Ten hours was a long flight with a taciturn general and a sorceress head of security. Even Cassie didn’t chat with the general around, and like I’d said earlier, no windows to stare out of. So I worked on my own contingency plans, just in case it really did hit the fan. Our chances would be shit against millions of ships, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight. Still, most of those were scouts, their warships just numbered in the thousands, which was still quite overwhelming.

  Chances were though, they wouldn’t leave their worlds undefended, we might even survive the first wave if we were ready for it.

  The largest bottleneck to building fast was power. It occurred to me the largest massed mile-long warship took three months to build, but that was with just with the sixteen reactors that powered it. Sixty-four reactors would build one in three weeks, four times as quickly. Double that, and it’d take ten to eleven days. Then it could fly off with its sixteen reactors, and the others could be used to speed build the next ship.

  Of course, that added the second bottleneck, fuel for that many reactors.

  Shielding was pretty consistent across the board, the only real advantage to the biggest ship was all the ordinance it could hold, which meant it could fight a lot longer before exhausting it’s pre-made supplies. Granted, the sixteen-reactor ship could also support sixty energy beams at once, so that was an advantage too. A reactor could build five missiles at a time when idle every two hours but replacing missiles in battle wasn’t really a viable thing. Too much power would be in use on a fighting ship, and it simply took too long.

  Still, at rest, a mile-long warship could build just under a thousand missiles a day, and it could store hundreds of thousands in its mile-long hull. It was safe enough, the anti-matter in an anti-matter missile was created in transit to the target, once it was far enough away from the launching ship where it being destroyed prematurely wouldn’t harm the ship in the explosion.

  Even a warship didn’t require all that many people, twenty command crew for three shifts,
and half that to monitor engineering and the ship. The ship repaired itself, there was no need for huge crews, it could also move stuff around inside it, and all that. Point being, very little of the mile-long ship would be used for a bridge, engineering, quarters, and mess hall.

  If worse came to worse, the mile-long warships could also cannibalize its own hull to create missiles in an emergency, so the largest ship won on that score as well. The nanites could be repurposed for anything. Although, that was limited, the whole ship couldn’t turn into millions of missiles at once for instance.

  A missile was ninety percent supercapacitor, which was the power source for both the small impulse drive that accelerated it at six hundred gravities. The only other systems on it was the targeting sensors, and of course a very small unit to create a few grams of anti-matter, and to keep it in a containment field until it hit the target.

  So, in short, the sixteen reactors wouldn’t be able to fill that many supercapacitors at one time.

  It took me a few hours to come up with a viable plan, one that was still probably doomed to failure. If they turned out to be aggressive, we just didn’t have enough time.

  The alien scout ship we went out to meet wasn’t in the shape of a tube, but it was about the same mass, maybe a little more, no doubt for food, beds, and all that. It looked more like a wider rectangle, and a little shorter than sixteen feet. I guessed that it was a scout ship, it had just been modified once they’d arrived to accommodate separate quarters for the crew to make it somewhat livable for a six-and-a-half-month tour.

  No doubt, it’d reform into a cigar tube once they were ready to leave and moved far enough out from the sun to open a wormhole.

  We all moved to the conference table, save Cassie who was flying, which I noticed had a holographic display on it.

  As soon as we came to a stop, a hundred miles away from the scout, Cassie said, “They’re hailing us.”

  The general said, “Answer it.”

  The hologram turned on, and the first thing my eyes were drawn to was their large inset black eyes. They were hairless, their faces thin up to their eyes, above that they had bulbous heads. They were also rail thin, and they had gray tinged skin. They didn’t look exactly like the grays of alien conspiracy legend, but they were damned close.

  One of them smiled, and he, she, or it, revealed razor sharp teeth. The voice sounded far too human for comfort, if that made sense.

  “I’d hoped you’d make it out here before I was recalled. Welcome to the wider galaxy. We have some information for you, call it a welcome gift of sorts, then we’ll leave.”

  The general looked out of his element for a moment, maybe none of his scenarios included the alien’s approach.

  “A gift?”

  The alien nodded, “Of sorts. A gift of information. Call it… the rules. It will also have a list of inter-stellar societies, as well as those willing to trade and what they have to offer.”

  He frowned, “Rules? Is there a society, or empire, or…” he trailed off.

  The alien tilted his head, “We’re all winners out here general. After millions of years of evolution and struggle, every race in space are the most successful predators that nature and our planets could come up with. Humanity was… what do your people say? Humanity is the big fish in the little pond called Earth, now you’re surrounded by all the other big fish. Society, empire, those would be meaningless, and foolish.

  “Predators can respect each other general, warily keep our distance, even trade if the situation calls for it, but predators of different species cooperating past that? Never happen.”

  The alien paused, “The rules are something predators understand, and can live by. The reason the galaxy isn’t torn by constant war are the rules we all live by. Which are simple, you can do anything you want in your space, but don’t get caught preying in another’s.”

  The general grunted, “Don’t get caught?”

  The alien said, “We are the stewards of pre-FTL societies, none are to be approached or messed with. I’d recommend leaving them be. After they join us out here, we’re done protecting them. Included in the gift to you, is a fifty light year border of space around your planet, there are eight settleable worlds that belong to Earth within that border. It is all in the download we have for you.

  “To put it simply, if another race attacks you and tries to take the Earth, and you report that infraction of the rules to us in person, all other races in our little game will move to overwhelm and completely eradicate the ones that broke the rules.”

  The general said, “That’s insane, why would they all agree to do that?”

  The alien smiled, “Because afterwards we hold a raffle of sorts. All the participating civilizations in the chastisement get a chance to win the removed race’s home world and satellite worlds for their own. The species in space support the rules for that reason, and it’s why the gift of eight habitable worlds is a two-edged gift.

  “Of course, in your borders you can do anything you want, and won’t be attacked by all the civilizations for it. But, use common sense, if you start taking out traders, none of the worlds will do business with you.”

  The general asked, “If that’s what happens, then why would anyone ever attack us?”

  I suppressed an eyeroll. Don’t get caught. We were so screwed. On the other hand, at least it wouldn’t be the aliens with millions of ships attacking us.

  The alien smirked, “Don’t get caught hunting out of your territory, general. To report an infraction in person general, you’d need a ship, and there’d need to be humans alive to do so. There’s always a predator out there that’s stupidly greedy and willing to take a chance to expand their empire’s size and influence. New planets and additions are usually tested early, in the hopes they aren’t ready. In fact, there’s actually heavy gambling over these kinds of things, like in your Vegas. Good luck general, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, truly. You have a grace period of one month before we fully release your information to the other races.”

  The general said, “One month?”

  The alien shrugged, “Time to place the bets. Be well.”

  The hologram winked out.

  Cassie said, “They disconnected audio and video, but there’s a download in progress, and they’re moving off.”

  The general said, “We could destroy them, it’s in the rules.”

  I nodded, “It wouldn’t help, I’m sure their world was watching, and they’re taking bets already. Plus, we really don’t want the millions of ships owning aliens to take our territory, do you? It looks like they’re the gamemasters, which means they probably cheat.”

  The general growled, “Get us headed toward Earth. They’re crazy.”

  I wondered if they were. It was a brutal game, but it would also stop all-out war, constant shifting alliances and betrayals, and make it every predator for themselves. Unless it was a joint hunt with a fifty light year territory prize at the end. It almost made sense, in a brutal way. It would get all the species to focus on defense to defend their territory, while offering a horrific and unwinnable scenario in most cases for conquering species.

  It also explained why they protected pre-FTL societies, not out of some high mindedness, but to ensure there’d be new players in the game, which would keep all the other predators in the galaxy engaged with their game.

  It was sick and twisted no doubt, nothing like I’d expected, but it apparently worked.

  For those races like humanity that could cooperate in the short term, there was trade between worlds. It was also clever in another aspect, I bet no home world would risk sending out armed ships into the galaxy, in case their captain lost it and spelled the end of their whole race by even defending themselves in another’s territory.

  An armed freighter defending itself at another world, would be an infraction, an attack on another predator’s territory. That would make trading… dangerous as hell.

  Cassie said, “Sir, the download is complete.<
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  The general said, “We’ll be ready, we’re already in production. Jemma, we’re clear of the enemy, do it.”

  Do what?

  My mind exploded in agony a moment later, as every nerve in my body felt like it was set on fire. I was on fire, and I couldn’t even think past the agony much less summon my magic. So much pain, that I didn’t even feel it as her telekinesis lifted me from the ground and shoved me back into the wall hard enough to shatter bones. The hull of the ship melted around me, never breaking its atmospheric seal, as I was thrown into space.

  I breathed out my breath into the vacuum of space as my lungs collapsed. I’d be dead in seconds. My body felt like a raw nerve, a big third degree burn over all my skin, and I was going into shock, but doubted I’d live long enough to make it there. Still, the pain had lessened as the vacuum put out the fire and the shuttle raced away from me, enough that I could think again, and I summoned my magic.

  Nanites swirled around me and formed the suit of armor I’d hoped to never use. I took a gasping breath, as the life support systems turned on, and my whole body screamed at me as the nanites went to work repairing my burned flesh. I felt like I might pass out, and fought it with every ounce of my will, if I passed out my magic would go quiescent, and the armor would lose power. It wouldn’t fall apart, but it wouldn’t be creating atmosphere anymore either.

  I’d suffocate to death.

  I brought the flight systems on line, and I chased the shuttle. Fucking bastards. My own government just tried to kill me, for what? It’d be a while before I found out, if ever. I had suspicions of course, I was a national security nightmare. It was the whole government paranoia on capacity equals intent, they couldn’t stop me from being the best thief on the planet, or in creating or giving away the powerfully technology.