I considered telling him how his power worked. I suspected his power was somehow reading the energy and entropy phases that all matter and energy left trails in, and interpreting it to give visions of the near future because it was clear in the pattern. But I wasn’t positive, and I saw no reason to share the truth about the universe being one whole without other subspace dimensions and other such theories. I trusted them all, but it wasn’t really information that they needed to know, and it would be dangerous for them to know it.

  The conversation moved on, and we got away from our jobs and just spent time having fun together. Including swimming in the pool, good food, and good friends. The small hiccup with Kaya’s presence smoothed out rather quickly.

  I only half paid attention as Thea worked with them all, save Alyssa, Bob, and Ashley who were already titans, and upgraded their power level to Titan class. I spent time with everyone including Kaya, although Tina, Sara, Kate, and Janice were all a little wary of me still. Those four had a general distrust of men, save Daniel for Tina, and Bill for the others. They were polite and distantly friendly though, and I didn’t take offense in it.

  It was a good day, and my ladies had a great time too.

  Chapter Two

  The sun felt good on my skin as I floated on the water. We only had the higher gravity inside the house and on the deck, with a gradual transition after walking down the stairs into the backyard. Point being, I was far more buoyant and floating higher in the water on Mars than I’d have been on Earth.

  It was our personal alone time, which I usually spent in a crowd of strangers, such as a beach or a park in one of the U.S. cities. That day I felt like truly being alone, as I tried to quiet my mind, so I was in my own backyard. As always, I was still playing catchup to Thea’s experiments, her mind and will being vaster than mine in ways I didn’t entirely understand, even if she did lack the full creative spark of a human, she was creative enough in my opinion.

  I wasn’t sure what my ladies were doing, I wasn’t the type to track their every move. I trusted them completely, and it didn’t hurt that I could see through them all either. I’d know immediately if they’d betrayed me, in a small or large way. But that wasn’t even a thing in my mind, I trusted them.

  I knew Alina was still adjusting to being a Mars citizen and enrolled in college, instead of a super. She would be a superhero again, when the population on Mars and in my domain called for it. My Faith was a generous light soul, and if I was forced I’d lay money on the idea that she was using her alone time to empty hospitals in and around Ottawa. Thea… I honestly had no idea, she was constantly doing a million little things for all of us, and maintaining all our homes, money, meals, and her own private experiments. I wasn’t sure her creation energy construct was capable of taking a break, but the part of her that lived in the human body as a meta-energy construct could. I was curious, but not curious enough to invade what little privacy she had as my servant, lover, and fiancé.

  I pushed thoughts of my partners in this life away, and I let my mind wander.

  Most of the phases of the universe held no practical application in our world, or if they did, they could be better accomplished using meta-energy, the really weak energy for small electronic devices, and the energy a hundred times more powerful than fusion, given an equal number of particles. Those three energies from separate universal phases pretty much covered everything, as far as powering everything from a watch to an interstellar starship, as well as combat and defense.

  Other phase resonances were completely useless in any practical way, yet they must have a function in the whole of the universe in some way we didn’t understand yet. I suspected most of those would only become clear once we had data on all phases and how they interacted.

  But every once in a while, there was a large breakthrough that had practical applications in the real world. The last one was that weak energy, which in conjunction with a small field to extract it to our near phase, could power the small passive stellar probes, cell phones, or televisions for that matter. Unfortunately, I couldn’t release it on Earth, not without others figuring out the true nature of the universe.

  That’s what I regretted most. I could solve the energy problem and make everything self-powered removing the need for a power grid entirely. Even buildings wouldn’t need power, since everything that used power inside the building would be discretely powered separately, including lights, heating, cooling, and everything else.

  But it was probably just as well, such sweeping changes would cause short term crises, as the power industries completely collapsed.

  The reason I couldn’t do it was obvious. I’d be putting power that could be turned against supers into the hand of governments. History showed that in most countries supers would be suppressed and there’d be no more heroes, and in some countries they would outright execute their small super population.

  Still, clean fusion power was already doing much to clean up that industry, but the delicate and spread-out infrastructure would still be required. That wasn’t entirely bad either, as it required a lot of jobs and workers to maintain.

  Thea interrupted my internal ramblings using our communication interface. She usually showed up in person to talk to me, if she wasn’t already there which was rare, but never when it was my personal time.

  “We might have a problem. Six people just teleported from the Earth to Mars, someone has a teleporter capable of sending them here. One of the six is Shock Bolt, that titan in America’s pocket. The other five are part of a Titan group in China, that won’t have anything to do with Rose. They’re headed this way now.”

  I frowned. Shock Bolt had hurt a lot of innocent bystanders while attempting to kill me the first time. As usual I’d refused to fight him, just like any other registered superhero, despite his lack of registration he’d clearly been a government stooge and idiot. But despite the backlash in the media and popular opinion, the government had stonewalled and protected their only pet titan.

  Which meant I’d had enough. I would not just send them packing again back to their countries, so they could once again use them to go after me, or worse, bully someone else. I still wouldn’t kill them though, which left me with one option as the first ruler of my own domain, technically I was a head of state, after all.

  I decided that this time there would be consequences. They were no longer bullying a citizen and trying to steal a citizen’s labor out of greed and fear. They were attacking another country’s leader.

  Information on the other five came up. The other five titans were from China as Thea had said, which told me the two countries were in cahoots in an attempt to get rid of me. Which was annoying, since China was one of my customers and had bought one of the territories. Worse, since Mars wasn’t really settled yet save a few places, the assholes wouldn’t have to hold back on their power while pursuing my death.

  Regardless, Shock Bolt was a lightning wielder, and the other five were energy wielders as well. For some reason there’d yet to be a titan of pure strength, speed and toughness, like a souped-up A-class brawler. Some S-Class supers were still brawlers, but usually with an absolute ability. One was a magician not unlike Alyssa, the White Witch. They could both cast spells that had quite diverse results, but it took him time to do so. The second and third both had pure energy attacks and defenses, and they could become energy. The type of energy was slightly different, but the results almost identical as they could knock someone out or choose to atomize them.

  The fourth was the only female on the team, and she could control metals on the macro level as well as turn her skin into an indestructible alloy. Save meta energy, of course. The fifth Titan from China had control of air. Not like Alina who could make devastating storms, but he could create twisters, or compact the air into solid weapons that would destroy a whole city. Which was bad enough.

  No matter their powers, they could all fly.

  I flew up out of the water and conjured my super suit, red robes with blue accents, and headed for the border. According to the status they were all five of them assaulting my shield, which was made out of pure meta-energy and was powered by the planet itself. It wouldn’t be dying anytime soon.

  The only reason I was bothering to confront them was because they’d destroyed twenty square miles of the planet and about a mile deep. The energy, air, magic, and electricity was devastating to Mars crust. I’d also decided you break it you buy it, because I wasn’t going to fill it in. Let America buy that territory, it was the only one I’d offer them if they ever swallowed their pride.

  There had to be consequences, and I was heartily tired of turning the other cheek.

  When I arrived, the other side of the shield looked like a never-ending explosion. I summoned a device and crossed the border right into that maelstrom, then activated it. My personal shields held easily, but I wasn’t showing off. The device wouldn’t have worked through the meta-energy field protecting my country and territory.

  A powerful phase field expanded out, and it phased all of the meta-energy back where it belonged, leaving just enough to keep them alive.

  In truth, that was the real reason I’d never be taking any powers. Supers couldn’t survive without meta-energy, if I collapsed their power construct they’d die. Supers just couldn’t go back to being normal humans. Of course, Thea could make their ability to hold power and channel it extremely small, so they wouldn’t be a threat to anyone, but I wouldn’t be doing that either.

  The five of them passed out, and then started to fall into the huge crater. Without energy, nothing stopped me from getting a sensor lock on them, and I teleported all of us back across my shield and to the ground. Then I conjured five suppression cuffs and put them on, and as an afterthought conjured a house without a door around them.

  “Thea, we need a supermax here, but one that’s escape proof. We’d have needed one eventually for our future citizens and the supervillains that are inevitable when people start quickening here. There will be consequences this time, China and the U.S. won’t be getting their people back.”

  Don’t get me wrong, people were people, and the United States had a lot of good people in it. Just… not the government.

  She replied, “Understood, Master. It’ll take me a few hours.”

  I nodded, “I can hold the constructs that long. You don’t mind becoming a warden too?”

  She laughed, “More for my creation energy matrix to do? She’ll… I’ll be thrilled with more responsibility. I’ll keep them contained, fed, and looked after. How long?”

  I shrugged, “How long would I go to jail, if I tried to kill the president of the U.S.? Well, and if they could keep me.”

  She replied, “Life sentence it is, sir. The U.S. and China have not declared war on you, which makes them terrorists and not prisoners of war.”

  “Come up with a suitable press release?”

  There was no need to give her details, she’d keep the woman safe from the men, and safe from each other, as a matter of course.

  She said, “I’ll take care of it, master.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m doing them a favor.”

  She giggled, “Because Shock Bolt is an idiot and a danger to the citizens. The five supervillains you took down were also technically supervillains who had taken over a province of China, so that province will come back under central government control now.”

  Right.

  “One more thing, beautiful. Come up with a law system and a list of laws, keep them as basic as you can. You’ll be the judge, I can trust you to be impartial and no one can lie to you. We don’t need courts, or worse, lawyers.”

  She said breathily, “Sure, give me half a minute on that one. See you soon, master.”

  I chuckled, and I took off for my pool.

  It was a little later, and our official private time had ended, and I had a very distracting and affectionately sweet and naughty Thea in my lap. She’d just finished a report in a seducing whisper that the Supermax was finished, and our six new inmates settled in. I hated the necessity of it, but maybe now the idiots would back off, and I had to do something. I couldn’t just leave anymore, it was my country, and I had a responsibility to defend it, unlike my house in California.

  She nuzzled my neck breathily, “Check out the press release, master. There should be consequences, and I had an idea to start gaining citizens. Besides the dual citizenship of our superhero friends who’re building homes here.”

  I held her close as I read the press release. It was an effort of will to focus through the pleasurable sensations of her soft silken lips teasing my neck, or the distracting way she kept shifting and wiggling her generous yet supple and nubile bubbled ass on my cock through our clothes. As usual, my light brown haired and green-eyed beauty was driving me crazy, in a good way.

  “I like it, a lot. Send it out.”

  The press release not only said that we’d stopped and jailed terrorist assassins sent by the U.S. and China. It also went on to decry the treatment of supers in both countries, how they were limited and forced away from being superheroes and helping the public, if they wouldn’t reveal their faces and put their relatives in harm’s way.

  It went on to offer free relocation services to our country on Mars, to any U.S. or Chinese super that wanted it. Including their non-super families, immediate and extended. I doubted many would take us up on the offer, but even a small percentage of quickened individuals would be a fairly large number. In the tens of thousands, perhaps the hundreds of thousands when considering family.

  There would be colony support and rules as things were put into place, then business and responsibility would be turned over to the individual once the economy had been stabilized. Superheroes would still be screened, but the heinous requirement and control measure of revealing their true names to the public would be removed.

  More than that, supers did a lot more for society than just protect it or threaten it. The U.S. would be losing a lot of that kind of support, from healers to teleporters, to fast construction through powers and emergency rescue.

  Let the bastards do without, if they hated us so much.

  It would also be a good start, for a base population that would eventually grow.

  “This is good, love. Send it out. I also want you to petition the U.N. to be recognized as a sovereign nation.”

  She said softly, “We need a name to do that.”

  I pondered that. We were in the shadow of Olympus Mons, but calling our country Olympus would be… arrogant beyond belief.

  “How about… Thea-land.”

  She giggled, “No, master.”

  “We both know you’ll be the one really running it, and only taking important things to me.”

  She said, “No, Master.”

  I stopped teasing her, “How about… I got nothing.”

  Thea giggled, “How about Filii Martis.”

  “Children of Mars? I suppose that works as a description, and we’re not trying to make a grand political point with our name either. Our people will be free from oppression.”

  Thea grinned, “Trust me that much?”

  I nodded, “You’re incorruptible, and I can’t imagine ruling in more than name even if I do have the ultimate authority. I’m far more interested in investigating the Universe.”

  Thea nibbled my ear, then said sultrily, “A little corruption could be fun, master.”

  I spanked her harshly, just the way she liked it, then stole a sweet gentle kiss that turned her gasp into a sweet sigh of loving surrender. She drove me crazy, I’m sure I mentioned already.

  “Love you, baby.”

  The loving devotion and wicked lust in her eyes were both devastating and absolutely mesmerizing.

  It wasn’t much longer until I discovered the naughty minx was wearing sexy black lingerie under that conservative white lab coat that day… but not for long.

  Chapter Three

  The sun was shining above and there was a cool ocean breeze on the tropical island. It was in the low eighties, but comfortable with the breeze. We were in the hills and halfway up the side of a mountain, where I had a blanket and picnic basket laid out next to the small pool under and next to the waterfall. The scenery was stunning, and there were blue skies as far as the eye could see. The island itself was maybe a half a square mile, and undeveloped as well as deserted.

  I’d conjured a swimsuit on my body, and a light greenish blue bikini on Thea. It was our date time, I just wished it was all a surprise, but at least I’d made all the arrangements, food, and I’d found the spot. But there was no avoiding the fact she knew everything I did, but I supposed it was the effort that had a bemusedly loving and breathlessly joyful smile on her beautiful face.

  She looked incredible, as always. Her body had been created to be tempting to me in every way, including the beauty of her face. Her creation was her own design, by the way, otherwise that previous factoid would make me a shallow ass. Her beauty was pixyish, with a thin face, some freckles, and full lips. Her brown hair was extremely light and shone in the midday sun, even if it was after work hours and night on Mars. It was always noon somewhere on Earth or Mars. Her eyes were a bright gorgeous green.

  Her body was deliciously lush, ripe, and built for sex, from her overly-bountiful heart-shaped breasts far too proud for their size, to her tight waist, and back out to her sexy hips and juicy bubbled ass.

  It didn’t end at the visual, or the physical. Her pheromones themselves were designed to be seductive to me, and she’d also ramped up her own libido so that she’d always be breathlessly willing and always ready for me. As far as I could remember ever since the start when she’d become a Class Four A.I. and had created that body, she’d never not been in the mood to be seduced, and often did the seducing in subtle ways. And sometimes, not so subtle.