“Any news from the judicator?” Jacob asked Barry.
It had been a few hours since their meeting with the President, and the entire group had returned to the ship. For now, they remained dirt side to avoid any potential conflict with the t’uk vessel if it was still hanging about, but the ship was primed to transition at a moment’s notice.
“No. And his people are giving me the runaround. I believe the judicator has ordered us to be cut out of any further information on his investigation,” Barry admitted.
Jacob shook his head. “So he used us.”
“It would seem so.”
Jacob would like to say he was surprised, but he wasn’t. He was against working with the judicator from the start. The only reason he had agreed was for the mutual benefit it provided.
“Did you at least learn anything of use?” Jacob added.
“Most certainly. We now know the t’uk are planning something, when before it was only speculation. It’s not much, but it does allow us to plan.”
Jacob turned to Xing’che, who had been quiet since leaving the White House. “Care to add your opinion?”
She sighed, rubbing at the rough coveralls she was back to wearing since her dress wasn’t very practical, and she didn’t have a huge selection of clothes to choose from. “I’m afraid my opinion wouldn’t mean much. The only t’uk I was familiar with was representative Naal. If the judicator has cut us out of the loop, it’s because he doesn’t need us to find him anymore.”
“That was my thought as well,” Barry confirmed.
Jacob tapped his metallic finger on the table as he thought. “So what do we do? Sitting around on the sidelines and waiting for the t’uk to do whatever it is they are planning to do feels like a recipe for disaster.”
“We could help prepare Earth,” Barry suggested. “I know you don’t want to give them weapon tech, but the station is more than capable of churning out hundreds, if not thousands, of those FTL blocker satellites. We could also add sensors to them, giving Earth advanced warning.”
Barry wasn’t wrong about that. The materials that the satellites were made from were easy to produce aboard the station. They didn’t have any gravitics or specialized alloys to slow the process down.
In fact, he had already produced a dozen of the devices, shoving them into existing maintenance drone ships that already flew around the station.
Jacob had also figured out how to bypass the devices without blowing up the ship. While rapid switching was a possibility, the stress to the vessel was too much to overcome. The alternate solution turned out to be using the old Concord phase coils, which worked on an entirely different layer of space-time than the more modern ones.
Now that he had access to the research of Earth’s scientists, Jacob realized those older coils ran along a more energetic layer of space-time, which is why they burned out so much more often and why it was so rough on a vessel.
He didn’t want to switch back to using those full-time because the risk outweighed the benefit, but having redundant phase coils was something no Astryx vessels had. At least none that he had been able to scan.
The Abyss Pearl was already set up to swap between modules if one ever started to fail. Tweaking the simulation to allow manual swapping wasn’t all that hard. Jumping from one layer to the next was a different story. Doing so mid-transition was hard on a vessel, but doing a short transition beyond the satellite’s reach using the older phase coils, then returning to this layer of space-time to run the new coil, reduced the stress. The rest of the trip could be done with the newer coils.
As a bonus, the more energetic layers were harder to push away from normal space-time, which made blocking them much harder. Their energetic nature was probably why they were the first to be discovered and utilized.
“Let’s say we do help,” Jacob replied as he turned his attention back to the conversation. “How do we get those satellites here? The Abyss Pearl can hold maybe twenty, and that’s if the hold is empty. Which means no biologicals aboard. It’s also a two-month round trip, meaning we might get two loads if the t’uk delay their plans. I have a feeling they might speed things up once they realize Naal’s been caught.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“You’re probably right about that,” Barry admitted. “I do have an answer, but I doubt you’ll like it.”
Jacob groaned. “You want me to use Melody to haul the satellites.”
“Assuming your vessel is capable of FTL travel, it would be the best option. You could also build more of the FTL blockers while in transit.”
“I would hardly call the ship operational,” Jacob added. “It’s still missing ninety percent of its internal systems.”
“Does it have active phase coils?” Barry asked.
“Yes,” Jacob admitted grudgingly.
Melody also had weapons, shields, and a small complement of combat drone ships, but he didn’t need to mention that because Barry already knew.
Jacob didn’t want to take the ship because that put him at risk, even if the vessel was probably more heavily defended than the station by this point.
“There’s another reason I think you should use the ship,” Barry continued. “If the t’uk do attack Earth with a fleet, having a floating fortress might be enough to get them to back off.”
“You’re asking a lot of me, when I’m not even sure it’s my problem.”
“That’s fair,” Barry admitted. “It’s not like Earth is your home anymore. Nor are we human. And they didn’t exactly treat you with kindness during your first visit until you actually flexed some of your power. But think about it this way. If you show up in a ship that dwarfs anything humanity has ever created and step in to save them, it’s going to earn you a ton of goodwill. It will also show those on Earth, especially those who still believe a single small ship and a few combat drones are the extent of your power, what true power looks like. That alone would be worth the risk.”
“I hate when you give logical arguments,” Jacob grumbled.
Barry gave a rare chuckle. “I actually studied to be a motivational speaker, but my blunt approach was too unpalatable for most. People prefer to hear pretty little lies and how to reach unattainable goals, no matter how unrealistic they are for the average person. Not many people like being told they have to buckle down and work hard to reach those goals. Now that I think about it, I’m no different. I gave up on the hard work it would have taken me to learn how to lie to people for the ease of streaming.”
Jacob was loath to admit it, but Barry made far too many good points. He was already aware of multiple nations coming up with contingency plans to deal with him and the Abyss Pearl. It wasn’t all that surprising. The United States had contingencies in place for a zombie apocalypse, for Pete’s sake. What annoyed him about their plans was that some of them were preemptive strikes.
Now, contingencies were just that, contingencies, but Jacob couldn’t help shake the feeling that the nations of Earth would love nothing more than to get rid of him once they had attained the technologies they desired.
It was honestly his own fault for being so passive during his previous visit. The only thing he had attacked was a satellite, a few Russian soldiers, and the Redline Dynamics complex. None of that screamed overwhelming might. It spoke of a rogue element that they needed plans to deal with.
All of the contingency plans he had managed to dig up revolved around tactical weapons; it was clear the nations involved all suspected nukes would work against the vessel. They were right. Jacob couldn’t exactly test that in a simulation. The one time he tried to see how the shields would hold against a nuke, the entire server cluster was fried trying to compute the results. It was the first time Jacob had encountered a limit to the realistic simulation. He was forced to run just the numbers, and those said the shield would overload from the strain of even some of the conventional weapons the US and other countries maintained.
Jacob had to admit that working with people who had plans to kill him was a weird position to be in. The fact that most of those nations also had plans to take out every other nation on Earth lessened the sting.
“Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll agree to haul the satellites to Earth, but we need better information on what the t’uk are up to. I don’t want to arrive only to find we were late. I assume you’ve been cultivating contacts outside of the judicator?”
Barry smiled slightly. “I have. I’ve even cultivated one inside his own command. I probably won’t be able to convince that person to tell us everything that’s going on, but I believe I can trick them into confirming that they captured Naal. I also learned of another t’uk. A Supervisor Sael. Apparently, he was in charge of Naal.”
“Who told you this?” Xing’che asked in surprise.
“Representative Chalto,” Barry admitted.
“You’re working with Chalto as well?” Jacob asked. “Who else are you working with?”
“Others,” Barry said vaguely. “And Chalto reached out to the station while you were on Earth. His people were concerned for our well-being after he relayed the Astryx’s actions to them and asked him to verify if we were still well. Apparently, they are not that happy with what transpired.”
“And here I thought he was still upset with us about his ship,” Jacob muttered.
“He was, but from what he told me, the sale was mostly forced upon him by the judicator and the council. Aside from that, he’s been doing a lot of the information gathering for me on his end. If anyone knows of something changing, he will.”
“Alright. We’ll have to loop Katherine in on what’s going on. She’s become rather protective of those on the station. If something threatens that safety, she’s going to want to know. I’ll try to get as many repairs done on Melody as possible if you want to keep an eye on the production of the satellites.”
“I can do that,” Barry replied. “I haven’t popped back to the station since we arrived on Earth. I assume you already have some in production?”
Jacob nodded.
What he didn’t mention was that he was also making a backup AI core. It was originally meant for rebuilding a copy of Melody, but if he was going to put himself and the planetary conditioning vessel at risk, maybe it would be better if he used it as a backup for himself.
It didn’t hurt to be prepared for every eventuality.