“The best way to approach peace is to address the assembly itself. They make the decisions and policy, and ultimately, they’re the reason their military attacked us.”

  She pondered that for a long point three seconds. He wasn’t wrong, but it also wasn’t that simple. The military had a great deal of autonomy. They were just following policy, and they wouldn’t be quick to point out a possible exception that policy.

  “No offense is taken, they do see me as that. If I’m not mistaken, I was invited here today because you wish me to deliver a message from you as a representative of all of Earth, to the assembly?”

  Sergei cleared his throat, “That is correct, all twelve of the leaders involved appointed me to this task.”

  Aah, so that was why it took a whole week since the battle, the human leaders had been arguing for seven days about who would represent Earth. She still wasn’t sure though why all the admirals had felt it necessary to get together for this.

  She gave it a little thought, she should be able to send the Assembly another message, the same way she sent the first one. Using the older FTL satellites, with her stealth probe as a relay. It would be easy enough to translate the language and the format to a more advanced holographic message as well.

  She tilted her head, “Was there something else?”

  Sergei said, “Transmitting the video file now. Would you be able to facilitate a direct conversation?”

  She blinked. Her first reaction was no, but it should be possible, but only if the assembly agreed, and she couldn’t see that happening.

  “I have the capability, yes. Whether or not the council would deign to give you time on the floor to pursue peace I couldn’t say.”

  It was doubtful, but maybe it would be possible for a human, where it would be impossible for her or her kind to get any such recognition as an independent living being. Not without forcing it anyway, which was outside of her nature.

  She reviewed the video file as it came across, and she rendered it in three dimensions through extrapolation.

  Sergei’s speech was well done if lacking in any true substance. It merely stated that he was pursuing peace on behalf of humanity. An opening to a conversation. He also asked to open an official and direct dialogue between the Benzae Union and Human world, which explained why the man had asked her about that. She wondered if he had a second speech file should she have said it wasn’t possible, but she didn’t ask.

  She said, “Relaying now. The assembly should be in session in just a few hours, but I can’t guarantee they will even reply.”

  Sergei nodded, “I understand the limitations of your position. Thank you for what you can do and are doing for us.”

  She smiled, “Was that all?” while her gaze flickered from face to face.

  Was it possible they just wanted to monitor any interactions she had with anyone outside of the ships or joint command? Of course, they were failing at that, but they didn’t know who four out of six of her original crew were. She wondered if this was about the new ships, and the fact she wasn’t going to let the scientists learn how they worked. The initial fallout so to speak.

  Sergei said, “Yes, thank you.”

  “I’ll contact you immediately with any reply.”

  After a short uncomfortable pause, she logged out.

  Then she shook her head, diplomats just might be worse than politicians. She had no idea at all what that man really thought of her, or the situation that Earth found itself in.

  She monitored the building of the six ships while hours passed. Then days, and finally weeks, before she was sure she’d been right. The Benzae Assembly didn’t even acknowledge the human’s message requesting a peace talks, much less reply to it or give it weight.

  She expressed her doubts in a similarly awkward conversation with Sergei, once again in front of a silent admiralty board for reasons she couldn’t really nail down for sure. Regardless, she suggested the only way that they could push the assembly into addressing them would be to petition them directly on the Benzae home world. She even offered to take him there with a crew, but she also suggested any such trip before the new ships were done would likely be suicidal for Earth.

  Until those ships were finished, she was absolutely critical to the security of Earth.

  She also didn’t bother to tell him that any such trip would be extremely risky and hazardous. The Benzae wouldn’t be welcoming after all.

  There was no doubt in her mind it was a race. Her six new ships would take another two months to build, three in total, and she wasn’t so sure they had that much time before a second attack came. Even a crippled A.I. could figure out the skip drive just from observation of them in action in less than a month, so it likely came down to how long it took the military to put together a larger invasion force of nine or more fleets. She couldn’t imagine they’d invade with any less. Nine would put them in parity on offense and defense as far as plasma weapon and countermeasure missile launcher counts, so it was far more likely to be more, not less.

  Needless to say perhaps, that had sent Sergei away with a troubled expression. She wasn’t even sure what he’d recommend to the leaders, but clearly the decision to take that step wasn’t in his hands.

  She still thought it’d be doomed to failure anyway, but she couldn’t be sure so had to bring up the possibility. She’d been plotting her own endgame scenarios as well, but short of making them leave humanity alone by pure force she had very little to go on at the moment. Except one risky idea that she was still developing.

  But the scope of those actions were frightening to her, and she couldn’t truly see all the consequences and fallout of such a tactic.

  She was also working on the next breakthroughs. From a logical standpoint the arm’s race never ended, as there was no summit in technological capability. That meant she could literally never stop trying to grow in knowledge, and in new and stronger ways to defend her ship. She didn’t think the Union would be able to match her particle beam weapons anywhere near as fast as they would the skip drive, but it would be arrogant to think they wouldn’t get there and match it to take another shot at Earth.

  It could take them months, or perhaps even years, decades even, but it would happen sooner or later once they’d seen the technology in action and had scans of it.

  The Benzae had received her own design and theory for the skip drive in her report, and now that they knew it was possible it wouldn’t take long at all to match starting with that data. Especially since the subspace fold drive was a very mature science and had been used for hundreds of years. All the skip drive was, was an adaptive application of it.

  But the particle beam was another story, based on several breakthroughs made after her report, and the Benzae would take time to get there. Especially with slow biological minds working on it, she’d run millions of simulated tests to get where she was.

  She’d already considered a high G warped gravity field as a secondary shield might deflect the particles, just like a subatomic particle was affected by the sun’s gravity, just multiplied by many times. She was also working on an even more powerful particle beam that was wider which would be harder to defend against. As well as new breakthroughs to make more power throughput possible to strengthen the shields and inertial dampeners again.

  But it was all still a work in progress, and she wrestled with the idea of getting Carl’s take on it. It would be impossible to do so however, without teaching him enough to duplicate the technology in his lifetime. With his creativity and her logic and speed she wasn’t sure there was anything that would slow them down, but her limited imagination slowed her down, as did his flesh and blood brain.

  Limits were a part of life though, and she wouldn’t give the Earth even more of a jump ahead. Even if only in scientific theory.

  She was also looking for a greater power source. Should all the above succeed, she’d have to start installing five reactors instead of three, and always have three to four running with one or two spares depending on peak energy demands. That led to needing better or simply more hydrogen storage, or the ship would have to refuel far too often.

  She was running various experiments in energy generation in the asteroid field, far from anything breakable. Such as ships, and planets. There’d been some promising results, but nothing that outperformed hydrogen fusion so far, and some required far rarer gases. Hydrogen was plentiful.

  The only thing better would be vacuum energy, the drawing from the energy constant of the universe itself. That wouldn’t take any mass reaction at all, and they wouldn’t even need to mine hydrogen any longer. But even on Benzae that whole idea was nothing but science fiction. There was no way to tap it, at least not by any known scientific theory.

  Maybe someday.

  An antimatter reaction was the most likely replacement in her mind, at least at her level of understanding into the universe. Antimatter did exist, and when used in conjunction with a hydrogen atom to their mutual annihilation it did generate a lot more energy than a fusion process. A single anti-matter reactor could replace dozens of fusion reactors of similar size, and she’d have energy to burn for this round of advancements and probably hundreds more with one reactor and a spare.

  She’d also be using a lot less hydrogen for power, and with her phasing out the plasma weapons that would save her even more. Her fuel would last for years between needing to refuel the ship at a gas giant.

  At the same time, anti-matter was ridiculously dangerous, and she’d have to build an accelerator ring to make it in sufficient quantities right on the ship. If magnetic containment failed, the ship would likely be destroyed so fast that any kind of ejection system would be worthless.

  So dangerous that she would’ve just thrown the whole idea out. Except, the same quantum phenomena that allowed faster than light communication should theoretically be able to transmit energy as well. Not the newer FTL comms that were small, those worked on frequencies, but the old large ones that required quantum paired molecules.

  She worried that kind of solution was too complicated, and if her power generators were found they could be destroyed. She’d have backup fusion plants on board for the eventuality she lost primary power, but… she paused that thought process along with others, which was one of thousands, as Carl contacted her.

  “Carl, what can I do for you?”

  Carl replied, “I wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve been a little worried about fusion planet side. On a ship there are ejection systems if something goes really wrong.”

  She tilted her head thoughtfully, “True, but I’ve never heard of them ever been used. A reactor that develops problems can easily be shutdown by cutting off the flow of hydrogen atoms into the reaction chamber. Save negligence on a level of stupidity it’s safe, far safer than fission systems which are much more complicated and have a lot of waste products.”

  Carl laughed, “I agree, but I think you’re underestimating human stupidity. I did come up with an ejection system, though. Maybe. I wanted to run it by you and see what you thought, since it doesn’t require any new scientific theory.”

  Wait, what? She paused several other processes, she needed her wits about her at times when discussing things with Carl. He was one of the few biological beings that could force her to think hard.

  “From the surface of a planet?” she asked dubiously.

  Carl said, “Well the skip drive gave me the idea. What if we put a subspace fold around the reactor for a split second? Wouldn’t the Earth’s gravity slingshot the thing up into space. The earth’s gravity field is twenty-six times less than the sun’s, but it doesn’t have to go far. Just outside of Earth’s electro-magnetic field which would shield the planet from side reactions when it goes critical. And since it’s in a subspace fold it should go right through the roof of the building, or anything else that gets in the way.”

  Curious, she ran a few hundred simulations. She’d have ran more, but they were all successful.

  “That will actually work. Anything longer than a millisecond will send it outside the solar system entirely.”

  Carl smiled, “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  “How’s Maria?” she asked.

  Carl grinned, “Crazy as ever, couldn’t be happier. Thanks for the help.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She paused at the gravity of that conversation. She hadn’t just verified his solution. His solution had solved her problem. Carl really was a genius, and it was annoyingly obvious in hindsight.

  Any mechanical ejection systems would be too slow for antimatter storage or the reactor itself going critical, but a subspace fold would remove it from normal space and toss it far from the ship in four picoseconds. Which was more than fast enough, if she used triply redundant containment systems. After running millions of simulations, she was extremely confident it would be safe enough to entrust her existence to such a technology.

  She started to design a ring and reactor for her ship. It’d be a bit larger than the fusion reactors, but she’d only need two of them, one really, but not having a backup power source would be stupid. Her power generation would far exceed her needs, and it’d give her plenty of room to grow on incremental advancements in systems.

  Best yet, her hydrogen fuel would last for a very long time without a hydrogen fusion reactor, plasma weapons, or a plasma candle drive. The anti-matter reactor would still need hydrogen of course, but a lot less of it.

  Chapter Eight

  The nursery was a warm room with pinks and light yellows. It was the middle of the night and he was checking on Katie on the way to the bedroom when the inevitable happened.

  For the last nine weeks he’d been training two hours a day on the new tactical station in VR simulations, ever since Cassiopeia had enlisted his promised aid and reinstalled the implant. The beam weapons were a lot different than fighting with plasma balls that moved at a hundredth the speed. The range was comparable as well, though that had more to do with the combat level sensors than the weapon itself. He suspected the potential range of the weapon was a lot farther than the plasma balls, since it wasn’t dependent on a limited energy source and only its own momentum, but that didn’t do them any good without the ability to aim it.

  At nine weeks, Cassie was just over a month short of finishing the new ships, and according to the message on his enhanced reality interface the enemy had arrived to start their second invasion attempt. He ran down the hallway and gave Susan a kiss and an apologetic look.

  “Got to go. The Benzae are back.”

  His wife looked scared, but she was also understanding and looked proud of him, “Go, be careful. I wish I could go with you, but I can’t risk us both.”

  He understood that. If it was just about them, he knew Susan would’ve insisted on going, and that their fates would be tied together. But Katie couldn’t lose both her parents, and Susan was almost five months pregnant with their second child besides. He wasn’t a coward, but it was still hard to turn and leave knowing there was a chance he wouldn’t be coming back. Not for his own life, but for what his family would go through. At least money wouldn’t be an issue, just the royalty from the fusion reactor would take care of his family if he was gone, even if he wouldn’t be able to complete any other system software for the other ship’s systems.

  Likely for generations. Not to mention Susan’s own royalties for her part in the navigation system, assuming of course Carl could build a working version of it before anyone else.

  The stealth shuttle was right outside his back door, and he didn’t hesitate as he ran inside and then the back door closed. He started to strip immediately, and then pulled on the ship suit and vest.

  “What’s going on?”

  Cassie replied, “Ten enemy fleets are in system, two A.U. out from the Earth. They arrived right before I sent the alert, so two minutes ago. So far nothing, I suspect they’re waiting for more ships. They must not have timed their arrival perfectly.”

  He nodded, “Where are you?”

  He knew she left the stealth shuttle in orbit, but last he knew her ship was out by the asteroid belt.

  She replied, “I just skipped to Earth orbit, you’ll be on board in ninety-seven seconds.”

  His heart started to pound as the adrenaline flooded his body. He felt anxiety and fear, but also excitement. He wasn’t bloodthirsty, but he was excited about the challenge. Offensively it wouldn’t be a challenge at all, but defensively they could still be overwhelmed quickly. Even with shields half again as powerful as any other ship, facing fleets of ships made that a moot point.

  The shuttle landed in the shuttle bay, and his enhanced reality interface showed him the way to go, as he took off for the bridge at a dead run. The inside looked different than the original ship, shorter ceilings for one. His heartrate was fast but steady and strong as he ran the almost six hundred yards to the center of the ship.

  The bridge was extremely familiar, save again, for the ceilings which were designed for a human’s height and not the taller and skinny Benzae.

  He frowned at the central hologram which now showed thirteen fleets, and another one appeared a moment later. The earth ships stayed where they were, despite the odds getting worse by the second. An immediate attack was tactically sound, before the enemy got set, but long skips required a medical checkup before another could be made, and they probably didn’t want to risk the Benzae jumping to Earth, and them being stuck two A.U. away.

  Sure, they could get back to Earth in just eight minutes from two A.U. away with smaller safe skips, but eight minutes was a hell of a long time for an enemy fleet to be in Earth orbit.

  Instead, they seemed to be forming defensive lines around the Earth instead, about one light second away from it, somewhere around lunar orbital distance.

  If the enemy displayed a lack of skip drive by accelerating, then they could safely jump out there to meet them farther from Earth. He honestly would be surprised by that though, the enemy wasn’t stupid.