BSE Chapter 4-19

Theo stood in the middle of a storm of reactions as all four STO Marines leveled weapons at him and into the room – which Willard was now standing in front of – while Alexander’s guards did the same, only their weapons were pointed squarely at the Marines.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Willard demanded as he cleared the doorway and glared at Theo.

“This is no joke,” Alexander stated in annoyance, answering the man’s question before Theo could. “Tell the Marines to put down their weapons. You wished to meet with me, here I am. It isn’t exactly a secret that I utilize a robot body, or did you not do the slightest bit of research before you came here to interrupt my work?”

The rebuke from Alex had Willard going red in the face, but it had the desired effect. “At ease,” the man stated before turning back toward Alexander’s office and shutting the door behind him.

Theo would have lowered his arms as the Marines lowered their weapons, but he never had time to raise them in the first place, and it seemed foolish to move a muscle with weapons trained on him. However, he did release the tension in his body as the guns were lowered.

This is why he preferred to work from the shadows.

***

Alexander watched the red-faced Vice Admiral as he stormed into the room.

“You are Kane?” Willard asked.

Is this really who the STO thought would be an acceptable replacement for Fletcher?

It was clear from his reaction that the man hadn’t done a lick of research before flying out here to throw his weight around.

“Who else would I be?” Alexander responded tersely. “Now what do you want? I’m a rather busy man.”

Instead of showing further annoyance, Willard seemed to finally catch himself and calm.

The man straightened his uniform and stood stiff-backed as he finally announced the reason for his visit. “You are hereby requested to appear at Naval Headquarters in Sol for an inquiry at your earliest convenience.” Willard then pulled out a data chip and set it on the desk. “The details are on this chip. Please review it immediately,” the man added, sounding annoyed at having to ask nicely.

Alexander took the chip and looked it over. It was an encrypted data chip. He pulled out a disconnected tablet and plugged the chip into it. He would recycle this tablet after he was done. No reason to allow any possible corporate or STO trojans into the Eden’s End systems.

He parsed the data from the data chip as soon as it was on the tablet, but he made it seem like he was slowly reading the document. As this was happening, Alexander got to see Willard’s growing annoyance bubble up once again.

The man had stated the truth but had done so in a way that made it seem like it was an urgent request. It wasn't. The document had no date for this meeting. It simply stated they had questions for Alexander Kane and BSE about an accident that had occurred in Varlen.

They had to be referring to Fletcher’s death, but why would they think he or BSE, as the document listed, had any involvement in that?

It was pretty clear someone was feeding the STO false information or trying to drag BSE’s name through the mud.

After taking an unseemly amount of time to peruse the document, Alexander placed the tablet back on his desk. “Is that all?” he asked in a bored tone, once again getting a slight rise of agitation from Willard.

“No,” the man ground out. “I am prepared to give you a full day to make preparations to leave.”

“Leave?” Alexander asked.

“I have been ordered to escort you to Sol personally. You can either fly aboard my ship or bring a civilian vessel.”

More agitation.

Maybe the man wasn’t annoyed with Alexander so much as the time that he was wasting by having to be out here. If that was the case, he wasn’t going to like Alexander’s response.

If they had been expecting Alexander to capitulate and fly back with Willard, the whole assassination plot made a whole lot more sense. The STO probably thought he only had a few frigates and some armed transports. The document did specify a civilian or diplomatic vessel.

It seems they overlooked the fact that Mingyu’s ship, Moonlit Destiny was registered as such a vessel. Not that Alexander would force the man and his crew into whatever nonsense the corporations had cooked up for him.

“No,” was Alexander’s clipped response before he turned back to some other documents he had been going through. He still watched Willard’s response though.

“Wha- What do you mean no?” the man demanded.

Alexander gave an exaggerated sigh and put his tablet back down to look at the man. “Captain Willard, nowhere in this request is there any specification on when I am to attend this inquiry, other than at my earliest convenience. And that is not now or in a day.”

“It’s Vice Admiral Willard,” the man corrected in annoyance. “When can you be ready to leave then?”

Alexander shrugged. “A few months from now, a year, who knows.”

The Vice Admiral’s eyes widened as his face drained of color. “That is not acceptable. I will not be stuck out here for months on end until you choose to humor me.”

“Then feel free to leave, I do not care.”

“I can’t,” he reiterated. “I was ordered to escort you, which means I must remain until you are ready to leave.”

“That seems like an issue for you and your commander to discuss. You are free to use the Qcomm but my answer remains the same. I will be ready when I’m ready.” Alexander gave a dismissive wave toward the door. “Now If you’ll excuse me, I have work to get back to.”

Willard looked about ready to have a stroke, but instead of blowing up at Alexander, he turned crisply and strode out of the room without a further word.

Once the man was gone, Alexander put the tablet back down and sighed. He hoped he had bought Lucas enough time to deploy the bot. The last thing they needed was the idiot Willard dying in Unokane space.

A while later, Pembrooke entered the office once more.

“I saw all of our guests back to the shuttle,” he stated upon entering.

“How were the other guests?” Alexander asked.

“Receptive,” Pembrooke admitted. “Captain Rhys especially despises Willard, even if he didn’t state as much out loud. Once Willard was safely in the office, the Marines and guards hit it off quite well. Smart move having Galloway in that group. He bridged the gap between the former Hawks mercenaries and the STO Marines rather nicely.”

“Hmm. I thought he might,” Alexander admitted. “Any chance of bringing the Marines over?”

Pembrooke shook his head. “Not until their service has ended. So what did Willard want anyway?”

Instead of answering, Alexander slid the tablet with the data disk in it over to the man.

Pembrooke read through it and frowned. “An inquiry? That’s not good.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Alexander muttered. “I did as you suggested and told Willard that I may not be ready for a few months to a year. Seems the man is stuck here until I intend to leave.”

“That explains his sour demeanor when he left your office. You could just revoke his access to Unokane. That would prevent him from hanging around and there isn’t anything the STO could do about it.”

“That is a possibility,” Alexander admitted. “What are the chances of Willard making it back to Varlen alive in that case?”

“Slim to none,” Pembrooke stated. “Given enough free time, I can assure you the saboteur would find a way to pin the man’s death on you or someone from Eden’s End.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. If we were at full strength, I would simply ship the man off and let the pieces fall where they may, but we don’t need a war with the STO this soon after dealing with Harlow.”

“Does that mean you plan on heading to this inquiry? You know it's just an excuse to get you away from your power base so they can act, right?”

“That thought did cross my mind,” Alexander admitted. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to set all of this up to try and trap me between two possibilities. That being said, I don’t think they realized how little power they would have over me. While I would love to disappoint them and do nothing, I do have plans to head to Earth at some point. I might as well kill two birds with one stone. Only I’ll be doing it on my terms, not those of this inquiry board.”

Alexander had been planning a trip to Earth for some time so he could get a better picture of what his position allowed him to get away with under diplomatic immunity. It just hadn’t been a pressing concern so he put it off. He also planned to speak with some of the STO leaders to try and smooth out any ruffled feathers from his involvement with the Asgardians.

Pausing at that thought, Alexander made a mental note to reach out to Char. This could be a prime opportunity to have her come along to help clear the pirate stigma surrounding the Asgardian Union. Whether or not she was willing to do that remained to be seen, but she did owe him a favor, and this seemed like a good reason to call it in.

The plans would take time to set up, and Alexander needed an actual diplomatic vessel instead of a mining barge – no offense to the Destiny – to appear at least on the same level as the people he would be speaking with.

With all of that in mind, Alexander bumped up the priority of finishing the frigate design. A diplomatic vessel could be armed, so it was the perfect opportunity to flex his technology to the movers and shakers within the STO and maybe drum up some more business while he was at it.

That would mean more printers since he had a backlog of orders from Char, and Jarl Bergson. He expected to get even more from other Jarls soon as well.

Plans were coming together and Alexander smiled internally.

If his plans worked, he might even gain a small amount of market share over Omni and some of the other corporations. He would much prefer that sort of victory over a bloody conflict. The other option was a political victory. While he disliked the political arena, he had learned that political power had its place and he would be loathe to ignore it.

There was one other thing to consider for this eventual trip. Alexander had promised Yulia that she could come with him the next time he left for an extended time. He didn’t expect anyone to be stupid enough to attack an armed frigate in the heart of the STO, so taking her with him wasn’t an issue.

That didn’t mean it would be safe. He had to assume someone would try to assassinate him or try something else to harm him at some point.

Alexander tapped his fingers on the desk in thought. He already had multiple layers of security for Yulia, but the safest would be to leave her on Eden’s End. He didn’t want to consider that option because Sol was a long way off. Depending on how long discussions and this nonsense inquiry took, he could be gone for over a year.

If he managed to crack Nova’s research, he might be able to shorten that trip, but he was still getting up to speed on all of her work. It could be years before anything came of her research.

He didn’t want to be separated from his daughter for over a year. Call it selfish, but that is how he felt. He had already missed almost a year of her growing up and he regretted that because that missed time would never come again. It didn’t assuage his guilt that he had no other option but to leave her behind the previous time.

That wasn’t the case this time around and the trip to Sol was avoidable, sort of.

If it was just the inquiry, Alexander could have ignored it, but he had multiple reasons to go to the cradle of humanity. He just needed to ensure Yulia was as safe as possible when they did.

Guards, at all times, would be a must. He could also upgrade Dog with the new armor and make him slightly larger to fit both the pulse rifle and laser modules.

Maybe he could create some sort of protective clothing that looks like normal clothing?

That last one would be tricky to pull off, but Alexander did have another project that might be able to replace it. It was a project he had put on hold because he was unsure of how to approach the problem. It seemed like it was time to figure that out.

He made a mental note to reprioritize his research into the kinetic barrier also known as his defensive field. If he could figure out how the barrier worked to absorb all kinetic motion, it would provide far superior protection compared to some armored cloth.

There were other applications for that sort of technology as well that he was interested in testing out.

With his mind made up, he quickly finished his office work and went to his workshop, there was engineering to do.