The shuttle flipped and slowed further, then docked.

  Gates said, “Please follow me,” as he stood up and headed for the back of the shuttle and the airlock door.

  Evangelina said, “This is exciting, thank you for taking me, my lord,” her slight emphasis on the words taking me, made me stir below. I swear Fiona earned a million spankings for this plan, Evangelina has been keeping my mind on sex far more often than it usually is. I know she was enjoying it, anyway. Not fully her kink without the debasement, but I’d lost count of how often I’d used her sweet mouth the last few days.

  It also made me wonder if we were underestimating the councilor, since our act was very much what we thought his reality was. He was a womanizing pig, and Carmen an opportunistic slut. But were they really, or was it just a game like the two of us were running. I mean, I was enjoying it but wouldn’t if it was real, and while she was a slut it was private bedroom kink, not a way to earn her way through life and to attach herself to a powerful man.

  Maybe I was just thinking too hard, it was likely our intel section was correct about them.

  “You’re a pleasure to have around me, Eva.”

  She giggled playfully with a hint of naughtiness, and I blushed when I realized what I’d just said. Clearly that sentence shouldn’t have had the me in it. Fortunately, our guide didn’t even seem to be paying attention to us, and I was sure my pride could survive the spies seeing my misspoke innuendo.

  Yeah, I was going to spank the hell out of both of them, when this mission was over.

  As I suspected, the first room was less than twenty feet from the airlock, and it was just a round room about twenty feet across with holographic projectors.

  Evangelina jumped and gripped me harder, as the station disappeared and it looked like we were hovering in space. I doubted she was really startled, but it fit her role.

  “What are we looking at, Dr. Gates?”

  He pointed at a bristling ship, “This is one of our dreadnoughts,” his finger moved, “These two are scouts which have the upgraded weapons, shields, and tri-space drive. And the large object near the dreadnought is a nickel-iron asteroid of similar mass. We won’t actually be destroying our dreadnought, but it will be doing its best to destroy our scouts. The asteroid has been equipped with shields, which you’ll see for yourself shortly.”

  I nodded, that’s about what I’d intuited, but I’d wanted to be sure. Plus, it was never a good idea to appear too sharp to our potential enemies.

  The dreadnought opened fire and launched missiles, and the scouts didn’t do anything but sit there for almost ten minutes. The smaller ship’s shields simply ate anything thrown at it, their shields crackling like a subspace storm. Proving our old weapons were worthless against such a shielded vessel.

  “The shields look a little… unstable.”

  Gates replied, “They do fluctuate, but we can ensure those fluctuations act outward of the ship. It’s not pretty, but it’s effective. As you can see it’s been defending from twenty-four eighteen-inch lasers, twenty-four of the twenty-four-inch lasers, and sixteen missiles every thirty seconds, without breaking a sweat.”

  The two scouts split up at that point, and then fired a single beam at the asteroid. The asteroid didn’t so much blow up as it was cut into four quarters that started to spin apart, which was consistent with subspace energy. It ate matter and mostly ignored other forms of energy, at least that we currently knew about. It was almost peaceful. The shields were obvious, but they’d only lasted a split second. About as long as a ship flying into a subspace storm.

  Then both scouts launched two missiles each, and the explosion at impact erased the quarters they hit from space, while also eating into the other two behind them, at least a little bit.

  “How do you launch missiles through your shields without them being eaten?”

  Gates said, “The missile launchers have small shield projectors, and they protect the missiles as they pass through the subspace shield.”

  I frowned, “So a missile with a shield could walk right through a ship’s subspace shields?”

  Gates nodded slowly, “In theory, but your missile would have to be the size of a large cargo shuttle, and you’d have to have the exact frequency of the defending ship’s shields. Otherwise it wouldn’t go through.”

  “So, missiles aren’t really useful in engagements, until the shields are taken offline?”

  Gates shook his head, “They’ll proximity explode when they’ve closed with an enemy ship shielded by subspace technology. You’re right, if it tried to reach the hull the shields would eat the missiles, as it did the missiles from our dreadnought. But exploding right outside of them will wash the defending shields with an explosive amount of subspace energy equal to ten beams.”

  I nodded, “Which brings up my last concern, point defense to prevent those subspace energy missiles from arriving outside the shields. With only one beam on the forward and aft section it will greatly limit the number of missiles it can take out.”

  Gates nodded at the simulation, as if to say watch this.

  The ships had repositioned, the scouts much further away. Too far away for the main drive, so they must’ve used their tri-space drive while I wasn’t paying attention and had been asking too many questions that should’ve waited. Well, I could watch it later, my implant was recording it all.

  The dreadnought started shooting missiles again, and this time the objective was to show their point defense, rather than show how futile normal missiles were against the new shields.

  Out of sixteen missiles, the single subspace beam rapid fired and took out ten of them. Six missiles made it through and hit the shields. Which was reasonable, a scout with the newer tech shouldn’t be able to take on a dreadnought.

  “They don’t have overheating issues like lasers, needing a cooldown?”

  Gates replied, “They do when firing at full power to overwhelm an enemy ship’s shields, the firing cycle is similar. However, when targeting missiles they automatically fire at five percent capacity, which is more than enough to take down an object that small which is unshielded. So they can literally fire twenty times per cooling cycle without overheating.”

  “That makes sense.”

  With lasers that wouldn’t work, but subspace energy was far more damaging to matter.

  The simulation continued for another few minutes. Both ships crossed light seconds in a snap of the fingers, dropping into tri-space and popping back out after moving just a few feet in that space.

  “The FTL line?”

  Gates said, “Tri-space does require a greater distance from the sun due to its more compact nature, but the drive can also access subspace. Just a half minute in subspace and the ship can drop into tri-space from there and travel to another planet in hours instead of days. That may soon be a moot point, but we’re not quite there yet.”

  “Not where yet?”

  Gates blinked, then said, “I misspoke, but I suppose it won’t hurt to enlighten you on the layman level. With our greater control of subspace and its energies, we’ve been playing around with the idea of skipping across subspace, like a stone skipping across a pond’s surface. That would make it much faster to reach a planet from the FTL line. But so far half our experimental unmanned ships have exploded, and we’re not sure why.”

  Damn, that was an even bigger tactical advantage then moving quickly between planets, if not quite on the same scale of shields and weapons.

  “The demonstration was impressive, Colonel.”

  Gates smiled, “This way, if you please.”

  Evangelina took my hand and circled her thumb in my palm, an intimate gesture that was also a signal she’d been unable to penetrate the network. Which really left us with Plan C or D. Download the nanites so we could create and reverse engineer them, or take aggressive military action in an attempt to seize it all.

  Honestly, I really hoped the queen came to her senses.

  The second room was one door down, and it had a shielded chamber. Gates just had me hold an object made of several different types material, to verify it was real. Then he put it in the chamber, and he destroyed it with a subspace pulse. The object didn’t explode, burn, heat up, or even appear to be impacted, it was merely torn apart at the subatomic level proving they could harness subspace energies safely.

  When we got back to the suite, I did what I always did after Evangelina worked me up for hours in public. I took her hard over the couch arm from behind, while my other ladies looked on amused and somewhat aroused. Evangelina clearly enjoyed it as well.

  Then I walked Fiona through the tour and demonstrations, delivering our partial mission success with a few well-chosen words and communication through our bond.

  Fiona replied, “I don’t think any of us doubted the reports or that this was real. We’ll see how the negotiations go tomorrow.”

  I agreed with her assessment, her last statement saying we’d hold off on any measures that would put us in a state of war with New Australia. At the very least, we should wait for one of the others to do it first, and to see exactly what our hosts brought to the table. Even if we forcefully stole the data, the two scout ships could be at Patience and have destroyed all our defenses before we could put it to use to protect ourselves.

  It’d take us fourteen days to get home, and while we could transmit the data ahead of us, the scouts could be there in just fourteen hours, and in orbit of patience six to eight hours after that.

  Which I suspected was the point of the demonstration and tour, a warning to get in line and give in to the unreasonable demands.

  Even if we could get all we wanted, the new arms race would be a nightmare, as all our worlds’ scientists worked to further develop the new science and associated technologies, most of which weren’t even theories yet I’d imagine. Even that sounded like maneuvering a ship through an active mine field, but doing it on the queen’s terms would be even worse. War was almost inevitable if things continued the way they were going.

  We all got ready for our dinner with the queen, though with the others coming I suspected we wouldn’t be sitting with her. Likely we’d be at a nearby table.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fiona was irritable as we returned to the room that night. We all had our separate tables as I’d assumed, but the dinner was the queen raising the ante again. She’d invited the other five independent worlds, and their ambassadors had sat with her at the main table.

  The message clear. Back down and accept it, or you’ll not only risk facing one single independent world with the technology to conquer you if the queen of New Australia wished to, but also the other five independent worlds as well.

  The crazy bitch was trying to power play the whole known human sphere, and damned if it wasn’t working. Our only choices was to bankrupt ourselves in a cold war, or fight an actual war now which we’d probably lose to a single scout ship.

  So yeah, I could understand why Fiona was irritable and angry. Her poise was still firm, she acted like herself and wasn’t snapping at anyone, but her emotions were in turmoil.

  There was no way to finesse the data we needed either, which meant if we took it we were instantly at war. As I’d implied earlier, it’d take us months even just to upgrade as single ship or two at all nineteen worlds. Short of taking the queen hostage to guarantee the behavior of the two scouts, or something equally precipitous, I didn’t see a way to gain control of the situation.

  If we did that, the other two interstellar governments would go to war with us to take and control our leverage, and new Australia would become the battleground for control.

  We could steal the data and disappear, build an infrastructure and upgrade the fleets in a dead star system where it’d be hard to find us. Then in six months to a year go back and reclaim our worlds. That plan had perhaps the highest chance of success, but it would also be the worst plan. Abandoning our worlds to whatever happened in the meantime.

  I also wasn’t sure it’d even work, I suspected the New Australian queen was holding back a trump card, and she wouldn’t be giving us the best technology they had. In short, we’d all be competing with each other at her feet, while she maintained true technical superiority over all of us.

  It seemed like whatever we did, the Fellowship was in for an extremely rough road ahead, and it was all on the shoulders of my sexy, poised, and regal wife. She was amazing, mature for her age and one of the smartest and intuitive people I knew, but she was still eighteen. Hell, I was twenty-six and didn’t feel even close to up to making the decisions she was facing.

  The queen seemed determined to drown us all in war to line her pockets and hold us under her thrall.

  So we did our best to comfort her that night, and for a nymph that meant a lot of sex. A whole lot of sex. I only coupled with the others once that night, focusing on Fiona otherwise, as did they. We quadruple teamed her into more orgasms than I could possibly remember. Then after they all turned in, even more sex when we were alone.

  It was honestly a little crazy, not that our sex lives weren’t already, crazy that is.

  The next morning neither Cora nor Traven looked happy, and Fiona certainly wasn’t smiling. Queen Allison looked perfectly composed and in a good mood as she opened up the second day of negotiations.

  “Good morning, I am pleased to see you all here, and I hope that means you took my words yesterday and the demonstration to heart. Shall we discuss the treaty and nail down the details?”

  Traven said, “You will regret your position one day, your majesty. Fate can be fickle, and nothing lasts forever. Our scientists, and we have a lot more than you do, will ensure we surpass you one day. For now the confederacy sees no other recourse than to bow to your demands. We offer to pay a royalty of three percent, on the accepted value of the materials consumed in fabricating a device. We will also offer a modest sum of fifty million credits a year for fabrication rights, due to the fact our fabrication rights will not be exclusive, we feel this amount is more than generous since it will yield no profits. We won’t have any buyers.”

  Allison said, “Three percent is acceptable for the royalty. While it’s true you won’t have anyone buying military weapons because the other worlds and governments will be able to make their own, you can subsidize the expense by selling the shields and tri-space drives to your private sector. Your merchants and cargo delivery services will no doubt pay through the nose for it, not to mention the rich among you buying yachts, commercial transport ships, as well as luxury space cruisers.

  “We would have to ask for at least twice that amount, at a minimum.”

  A hundred million credits a year plus three percent materials cost? Allison also hadn’t looked pleased at the threats, threats that were empty in this moment, but she’d apparently decided to let them pass for now. She also hadn’t looked happy with his description of her actions as demands.

  Traven grimaced, but he didn’t venture to reply. That was probably the biggest surprise of all, that the arrogant man and his corrupt government had caved so quickly. It was possible they didn’t intend to meet the terms, once they had the molecular patterns, they could build a fleet large enough to invade New Australia. It would be risky to do so before their scientists reverse engineered it and made strides to improve the technology, but they may gamble on the idea of overwhelming any incremental advantage the queen has with greater numbers.

  Cora said, “The alliance can’t afford that, your majesty. We’re the smallest interstellar government at twelve worlds, and our population is smallest as well. The confederacy has three times the number of worlds than we do. It would be an overwhelming burden at what was first offered by Councilor James. Surely you aren’t going to charge the independent worlds so much.”

  The queen waved her hand in dismissal, “The reason for their presence is a separate matter. They will be outright purchasing the devices, as we have enough infrastructure to support six worlds worth of ships. It also wouldn’t be fair to offer them the longer-term deal if they couldn’t match your purchasing capabilities.

  “I’d be willing to discuss a discounted price, but the royalty percentage would need to be adjusted upwards as a result.”

  Cora shook her head, “You would pauper us, and we’d only be able to field enough of them for our defenses, while the confederacy builds out upgraded offensive fleets. The councilor is correct, circumstances change, and nothing is forever, your majesty.”

  Allison grimaced, “I will not be threatened.”

  Cora countered, “Yet you threaten the whole human sphere with war and cold war with the rest of us cringing at your feet and bankrupting ourselves to eat the crumbs off your table. Not a threat, your majesty. Call it fair warning, your people will pay the cost of your arrogance this day.”

  Allison looked agitated, but said in relative calm, “I will have the treaties prepared under the understanding we all just reached within a couple of hours, with a sliding scale addendum so you have more options. The lower the yearly payment for fabrication rights, the higher the royalty. You will also get a chance to review the rest of the treaty, which we will discuss tomorrow.

  “There will be a state dinner tonight, those present here are invited and you will be at my table. I hope you can all attend,” she stood stiffly, and walked out of the room.

  Well, that could’ve gone better.

  Traven snorted, got up, and walked out with arrogant confidence. No doubt about it, they were going to cheat their way out of it, and hope they could build fast enough before the queen took them to task.

  Before we could leave, Cora nodded to Fiona, “I wonder your grace, if you’d like a tour of my diplomatic yacht?”

  Fiona replied, “I’d be delighted, admiral.”

  “Excellent, say three in the afternoon? That will give us enough time to go over the treaty, and still leave us with four hours before we need to join the queen’s table.”