BSE Chapter 3-50

Alexander was aboard Vanguard overseeing the replacement of the ship’s reactor and thruster assembly so he could upgrade them from the underpowered pulsed fusion drives to the newer more powerful compressed plasma ejection system when his radio buzzed to life.

“Alex, this is traffic control, the Asgardian fleet has arrived.”

“What!” he said in surprise, getting looks of concern from the other engineers who were assembling and testing the reactor.

He waved them back to their work and picked up his radio. “Thanks for notifying me. Have you already contacted the other captains?” With the possibility of Harlow arriving at any time, he had the fleet on half standby with crews rotating out to stay fresh. This had come as a recommendation from both Captain Krieger and Sub-Commander Vynnson.

“The ships on standby are alerted, I wanted to alert you before communicating to the other captains.”

He thanked the traffic control operator and hurried out of the reactor section of the Vanguard.

It was too soon. He needed at least another week and a half to finish the work he had started on both ships. Knowing time was probably short, he headed toward the bridge to use the long-range radio. If this was time, he wanted everyone to be prepared.

Despite the crew being on downtime, the ship was fully powered up and the weapons were operational. Those had been the first things to get installed, and because of his foresight to remove them en route, he had shaved off more time than even he thought possible.

The massive new laser cannons went in with little trouble. The wiring was a mess but it was functional, that was all he cared about for now.

All six laser turrets on Vanguard were currently slaved to the planetary defense grid. Alexander hadn’t done the math, but if he had to guess, he would say those six turrets were probably worth a quarter of the planetary defense grid’s laser platforms in output. The additional power also gave them increased range, but he wouldn’t know how much more until they were tested in combat.

With so much extra time, he had decided to upgrade both ships with a supercomputer and tac-display. Vanguard also got the new reactor and engines. Those last two were nearly complete with testing. It was the supercomputer integration that was taking the most time.

Running the fiber optic cable to handle the data load was extremely time-consuming. Unlike the power cabling which ran through sealable tunnels, he had been forced to hang the data cables through the corridors because the rat’s nest of power cabling was making it impossible to fit the new data cables through and there wasn’t time to pull the power cabling back out to clean it up.

Holes had to be cut in bulkheads and sealed so they could still open and close those hatches in an emergency, which further increased the time it took to run the cabling.

He really wished he could have his larger bots assist, but he had about as many people on the ship as he could without people stepping on each other’s toes. His smaller bots were helping with some of the workload and were ahead of the workers laying the cables as they cut neat little holes in the bulkheads.

The bridge was the first to get the new access, so it was fully integrated already. A slightly cobbled-together tac-display greeted him when he arrived.

The system wasn’t as nice as the purpose-built ones on the Eden ships, but it was exponentially better than the crappy terminal displays that the ship had before. Even the Sub-Command had been impressed by the tac-display that he installed on Valkyrie. The man had refused to allow him to remove the Asgardian version in the tactical command room until he was sure the new one worked during combat operations.

That was fine with Alexander. He wasn’t all that happy with the temporary placements either. If he had his way, he would have stripped both ships to bare skeletons and built from the ground up.

He made his way over to the captain’s seat and opened up the communication line.

“Mingyu, It’s time to bring everyone in. I’ve already sent the return command to the control ships. You should see them pulling back around the same time you receive this message. I’m going to have them collect their bots and push hard toward Eden’s End since I need a few more to help speed up the construction efforts. You shouldn’t need to rush, but keep your sensors at full blast, we may have unwanted company sooner than we would like. Kane out.”

Alexander could have pulled those thirty mining bots back when he first arrived and they might have helped to finish construction by now, but too many bots could get in each other's way. He also needed to ensure a steady supply of material for the ship upgrades. Lucas had done a good job of keeping the construction projects going in his absence, but that meant there was very little material stockpiled when they arrived.

That was one of the reasons he had sent the Qcomm message to him before they left Asgard. He needed to make sure the man shifted production priority to the guns, which he had.

The other reason Alexander had left the bots out there to mine was that he would have been tempted to try and upgrade another ship with the time he had left if the construction capacity was available to him. That would have been bad. If he had started another ship when he wanted to, it would likely still be down its weapons at this point with at least another month before the new ones could have been installed and wired in.

He was glad he left the bots out there to keep producing material because it kept the station progress moving forward with the unused bots.

Alexander would have loved to arm the station, but that wasn’t possible quite yet. It was barely staying in orbit as it was and that was because he had placed the old reactor and thrusters from the Vanguard onto the back of the construction. There wasn’t even a dedicated space for a computer core yet. The computer core was a modified robot with three of his pseudo-computronics modules stuck into it and an armored shell over the unit to help protect it.

The extra bots weren’t coming to help finish the ships. They wouldn’t fit inside the tight confines of Valkyrie very easily and Vanguard had only wiring and some tests on the new engines to complete. The unfinished work on both of those vessels could be completed by the mini-bots and engineers.

Alexander needed the bots for another purpose.

The addition of the repair bots to the fleet had come in extremely helpful during the ship recovery mission. So helpful in fact that Krieger had asked him to outfit each ship with multiple bots.

Alexander loved the idea, but with resources being so short, he was sort of forced to hold off. Now that the mining was wrapping up to prepare for hostile activity, he might as well resync the bots to the ships with computer cores.

He would need to discuss this with the Sub Commander as it applied to Valkyrie, but he was sure he could talk the man into taking on some of the extremely helpful machines.

***

Time seemed to race by as Alexander helped the engineers finish the final installation and testing of the reactor and drive unit. Before he knew it, he was getting another message from traffic control.

“Alex, Wayward Soul is entering orbit along with another ship belonging to a Jarl Ylva Bergson. I figured you might want to know so you can get your ass down here and greet them,” Lucas said over the radio.

If Alexander could have flushed in embarrassment, he would have. He quickly excused himself from the work and hurried to the airlock. All of the ship-specific shuttles were busy moving crew back and forth, so he was forced to fly himself down on the one dedicated to the refueling station.

He landed well ahead of the Lagertha and the other Jarl, giving him time to meet with his own advisors to talk about what to expect.

At least he hadn’t forgotten to implement some sort of visiting dignitary clause so they could bypass the thirty-day waiting period.

The rest of the issues with the Asgardians had been hammered out by Theo over the last few months.

The man was every bit as good at dealing with people as Alexander had thought. There had been a conversation between just the two of them about what exactly his role was at Omni. When the man told him he wore whatever hat Omni wanted him to, that had been a bit of a surprise.

More surprising was the fact that Theo offered Alexander the same deal.

“Look,” Theo had stated. “Some day a problem is going to come along that you can’t deal with or be seen dealing with personally. In those sorts of cases, a man like me is needed. I probably won’t be able to ply my trade inside STO space, but you say the word and I’ll make it happen here or in Asgardian space.”

Alexander had asked Pembrooke to put that option on hold for now. He would prefer never to go down that route because that’s the route the corporations in STO space had taken, but he couldn’t say for sure if something like that would ever be needed. His life would have been a thousand times better if he had someone like Theo or even Dalton who could have simply killed Harlow for him.

“Is everything ready,” Alexander asked as he stepped into the meeting room.

There was no fancy office space or ritual areas for Alexander and thankfully Asgardian tradition only demanded such things on Asgard. That didn’t mean that Theo hadn’t improved the space though.

On the far wall, encased in the same transparent ceramic used in the dome and spaceships, was Alexander’s symbol of office. Below that was a flag of white and blue signifying BSE’s corporate colors. Pembrooke had asked him if he had those as well as a corporate logo, but Alexander had never even bothered with all that nonsense.

The man sighed at that and just used the ship colors.

He hadn’t seen any sort of Asgardian flag or colors so he assumed they just didn’t use one.

The rest of the room was rather sparse, with a circular table that could fit up to ten people or more like nine people and a large robot.

“Everything is ready,” Theo replied. “It’s been ready for weeks. You would know that if you just read the daily briefs I send you.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been a bit preoccupied if you haven’t noticed.”

“Uh-huh,” the man said, not sounding convinced. “Are you going to also tell me that a robot alien AI is incapable of multitasking?”

This time Alexander sighed. “I’m not an alien or an AI.” The man had hounded him about his inefficient schedule ever since Alexander had filled him in on his open secret.

“Oh, but you can multitask. Good, I was starting to think you had gone defective. Read the reports or I’ll stop wasting my time preparing them.”

Alexander had also noticed the man’s entire demeanor towards him had changed when he learned this. He didn’t know if this was Pembrooke’s true self or just another persona he used to get Alexander to do what he asked of him. Either way, it was working. Alexander felt bad about not looking at the reports now.

“I promise I will go over them tonight, assuming we aren’t getting attacked immediately.”

The man seemed mollified by that. “You should be there to greet the Lagertha as she arrives.”

He nodded his avatar in understanding and the two hurried to the arrival center.