BSE Chapter 6-49: Epilogue

SYSTEM: SOL

DATE: 2406

Benning grunted in annoyance. His trip to Sol had been delayed because he was denied access to the new gate network, and he didn’t have a pass to travel through the new provincial corridor, as it was being called. The corridor was an area of space that ran directly through the center of STO space. Anyone with half a brain could see it was a deliberate attempt to divide the STO, but there was nothing anyone could do about it.

The STO Navy was completely worthless and hadn’t recovered hardly at all in the following years, thanks to sweeping budget cuts as the STO lost trade and systems to this new political entity.

He wasn’t the only one excluded from using the new travel option, but it still irked him. Now, instead of being one of the first people to arrive for the 2406 Stellar Sprints, he was one of the last.

For a company that advertised itself as having some of the fastest, most efficient engines on the market, it was an embarrassment. If it weren’t for the fact that people still needed sub-light engines to move around systems, Omni might have fallen on hard times.

It still might if he wasn’t already investing heavily in trying to reproduce gravity plating. The secret of how it worked might be out, but the actual method of manufacturing it in a financially viable way was still in the works. The Union knew how; they had over a dozen manufacturers filling the void left behind by Gravitational Solutions, but his AIs assured him that a viable strategy would be available by the time he returned.

So far, his people had only been able to reproduce small samples to prove that the information was genuine. He hoped to show off another secret Omni learned about the technology at today’s race, which was the only reason he had deigned to come in the first place.

Benning sat down in his VIP box as the large window displayed the competition. He recognized most of the smaller companies from previous years, but there was one that caught his eye. He reached out and made a pinching motion, pulling the image to the holo next to him.

Instead of the two-dimensional view of the ship, he was left with a 3D model that floated and rotated in front of him. The vessel was larger than all the ships in the competition, but it didn’t lack any of the sleekness. What set it apart was the blue and white livery along with the large lettering on the side that read ‘BSE Sleipnir.’

Benning ground his teeth in annoyance at seeing the company here. Since the end of the Second Shican War, they had become a major disruption to not only the STO but to his efforts to combine the entire STO under his rule. He would have dispatched the Omni fleet to deal with them once and for all, but that wasn’t an option.

Even if he wanted to, he had received a recording of what happened when someone messed with their gates. The BSE fleet had appeared as if by magic, destroying the corporation that had driven away anyone from the gate in an attempt to figure out how it functioned. They had been tricked into doing so by Omni assets, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that BSE not only had the gates, but also another method of FTL travel.

Not very many people would have noticed that the BSE ships hadn’t come through the active gate, but he was sure a few other companies, along with the STO Navy, had.

He suspected the STO Navy knew about that capability before Ganos left the STO. It would certainly help explain their passivity toward the BSE’s efforts to undermine their rule, despite the STO Chairman braying for something to be done to stop them.

Benning was still considering his position, but he was leaning toward finally leaving STO space after he returned home. There just wasn’t anything worth defending in STO space anymore when he had a new government already being set up far from all this nonsense that was already loyal to Omni and him.

“Who’s the pilot?” he asked the empty room.

The system recognized the request and produced an image of a young girl standing next to a man in a lab coat.

“The pilot is Yulia Kane,” the computer voice replied.

“And who’s that?” Benning asked, tapping on the second individual.

“Records indicate that the person you have selected is Alex Kane.”

“Alex Kane, not Alexander Kane?” he asked in confusion.

The rudimentary AI in his VIP suite didn’t respond, which was fine. Benning zoomed in on the smiling man’s face. “So, you’ve finally decided to show yourself after so long?”

Benning had heard all the rumors of Kane being an alien, of having some sickness that kept him in a stasis pod, etc. He never believed any of it, and here was proof that he was right. Alex Kane’s face was a near-perfect match for the previous images his people had captured of the avatar used by his robot form.

A light ding announced the first round, and Benning waved away the holo image to focus on the ships. Because of his late arrival, Omni was near the end of the lineup, which was honestly fine. It just meant that when his racer won, it would overshadow more people.

He smiled in anticipation as the first racers blasted out of the gates one at a time. It was hard to believe that three years had passed since the last Stellar Sprints was hosted. Quite a bit had changed since then.

Some of the ships were impressively fast and would have given his company a challenge three years ago. Speed wasn’t the only criterion to win, however. The whole point of the races was to find the fastest, most efficient drives. Accelerating the entire way would burn through your limited fuel before you could reach the finish line.

Having a smaller ship was usually better, because it meant less mass to accelerate, but not always if extra space was needed for systems. Omni’s ship for this year was a bit larger than normal to fit the new systems, but they should give a much-needed assist without drawing on the reactor fuel.

He turned his attention back to the starting line as the BSE vessel coasted into the start box. He was curious to see what sort of strategy BSE was using for such a large ship.

As the lights flashed down the start, Benning expected a slower acceleration out of the gate; instead, the ship practically vanished as its massive rear thruster lit off, accelerating the vessel much faster than any racer before.

Benning could hear the excited uproar from below, even through the soundproofing in his suite.

The chase vessel tried to match the pace with the BSE ship, but it was quickly left behind as the ship just kept accelerating at a ridiculous speed.

The BSE vessel blasted past the previous race participant, that ship’s chase vessel catching it briefly, then the next, and the next, before finally slowing to a normal pace. Benning was left mouth agape.

Not only had the BSE ship done something that no other ship had ever done in the entire history of the Stellar Sprints, but it had also just hit a new velocity record before even reaching the halfway point. He knew it would have to slow at an equally insane rate, but he had to assume that the ship had enough reaction mass to manage such a stunt. He was proven correct a few hours later as the BSE vessel violently decelerated to slingshot around Jupiter.

When the Omni vessel finally started its run, Benning didn’t even bother watching. He knew that his little trick with the gravity plates, lightening the vessel’s mass, wouldn’t be nearly enough to overcome what BSE had just pulled off.

The BSE ship zipped through the finish line, setting a record that was two hours faster than any previous record. Benning stood and headed for his ship. It was clear from that display that Omni was finished within the STO.

***

Alexander smirked as he watched Benning get up and walk out of his VIP box. He didn’t get to savor that victory long as people rushed over to congratulate his team on winning. Honestly, he hadn’t done anything. The ship had been all Yulia and Serina’s design. Sure, it utilized the molecular locking technology to keep his daughter and the vessel in one piece, his newest generation of reactor, which was an upgrade from the one his previous self had designed and built, but that was about it.

He eventually extracted himself from the well-wishers and those trying to worm their way into his good graces as he made his way to the staging docks. He was proud of what his daughter had accomplished, even if he worried about her reckless speed obsession.

Now that she had graduated from the Lund Academy and was less than a year away from turning eighteen, he had to let her become the woman she was meant to be. Speaking of, he heard a squeal of joy and looked over to see his daughter racing across the docking area with her helmet in her hand. She ran into him, and he spun her around once before setting her back down.

“Did you see how fast I went?”

He chuckled. “Of course I did. I assume everything worked out aboard the ship?”

She nodded enthusiastically, sending her long ponytail bouncing. “Yup, no issues since our initial tests.”

“Well, that’s cause for celebration. Let’s go grab your trophy and head back home to celebrate with your friends.”

“But the race isn’t over,” Yulia replied as Alexander led her away.

He chuckled. “I’m pretty sure you’ve got the win locked down.”

She shrugged and followed him.

***

After a two-month trip back, Benning’s shuttle landed at the Omni headquarters. He stepped off and headed toward his workshop. He had plenty of time to reflect on his choice during the trip back home, and his decision hadn’t changed, but he had a few weeks of work to wrap up before leaving STO space behind.

The moment he stepped inside his workshop/office, he knew something was off. The first indicator was the lack of lights.

“AI, lights!” he shouted as he reached into his pocket for his personal laser pistol.

The lights came on, showing someone sitting at his desk with the chair turned away. He pressed his emergency button before addressing the individual. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The chair creaked as it turned back to face him, and Benning immediately recognized the person sitting there.

“Hello, Chief Benning,” Alexander Kane replied. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Activate defenses!” Benning shouted as he started to backpedal out of the room, only to run into the closed door.

Kane raised an eyebrow, but didn’t rise from the chair. “Oh, I took the liberty of disabling your AI so we could have this little chat. Don’t worry, your security won’t bother us either.”

“How did you get in here?” Benning demanded as he pulled out the laser pistol while trying to activate the door with his other hand. It was refusing to cooperate.

“You know,” Kane continued without answering the question. “When I first encountered Omni, I thought you were just some corporate assholes. And you were, let’s be honest, but I’ve learned a few things since then. Things that you probably wished had never reached the light of day.”

Kane pressed a button on the desk as the large holo popped to life, showing all of Omni’s top-secret projects, including the mental control ones.

“Now this,” Kane said, pulling that specific project to the forefront, “was a surprise. As I read through it, I actually thought you had done something good for once, then I got to one specific name. Can you guess who that person might be?” Kane asked before highlighting it himself.

Harlow Anazi’s name might as well have been the smoking gun.

“When I decided to confront you, I was only going to ensure you understood our positions, but this single name changes everything.”

Benning knew a threat when he heard one, and he fired the laser pistol until the thing grew hot in his hands and he had to toss it away before the battery exploded.

Kane looked down at the burn across his clothing before looking back at Benning. A silver color flashed across the burned area, and the fabric was whole again. Then Kane stood and walked through the desk.

The broken halves collapsed inward as Kane stalked forward. Benning twisted toward the door in a frantic attempt to open it.

“I am normally a forgiving man, but you were behind all of it, weren’t you? If you hadn’t tried to harm my daughter and the people I care about, I might have let you live.”

The last words were whispered into Benning’s ear, and he froze. Kane had crossed the long room in barely a moment, without making so much as a noise.

A hand gripped the top of his head and yanked him back around to face the furious Kane. “Your machinations end here.”

***

“You did the right thing,” Rush said.

Alexnader grunted in response. “And you didn’t know he had done any of this?”

Rush shook his head. “We suspected some of it after the corporations banded together to attack the Shican, but it went way beyond what we assumed.”

“And, you’re sure Benning didn’t have some sort of cloning or way to come back?”

“If he did, it wasn’t stored in his archives. The AI gave us a little trouble, but once we broke past their defenses, we found every dirty little secret they were trying to hide. Including their little ark and their FTL research into gravitational tunneling.”

That had been a minor surprise, but Alexander had suspected someone had discovered the technology within the STO.

“Thank you, and thank the others for helping me with this. Release it all to the net and let’s go home.”

Rush nodded, and the pair headed for the landing pad, where the optically camouflaged shuttle had been waiting for them the entire time. The vessel lifted off the surface silently on its new anti-gravs and activated its Nova drive the moment it left the atmosphere. The only sign that they had been there was the wrecked desk Alexander left in his wake. He chose to leave it as a message for whoever took over Omni, assuming the company wasn’t sued into the ground or torn apart when the STO Navy found out what they had truly been up to.

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And we've come full circle. Everyone got what was coming to them in the end.

Hard to believe we've been on this ride for a year and a half. I hope everyone enjoyed the story. It may not seem like it, but BSE is the longest story I've ever written by over 200k words.

I hope you will all stick around for Corebound, but I completely understand if you were just here for BSE. Alexander's story ends here, but I do plan on making a spinoff series starring Yulia. I don't know when I'll be starting that, but it won't be anytime soon.