Blue Star Enterprises

Why did the STO and corporations have to bring their nonsense to his doorstep?

If Pembrooke was correct, Alexander knew why. It was just aggravating to have to deal with a delicate matter such as this so soon after finally getting rid of Harlow. Their method of approach surprised him as well. He thought for sure the corporations would simply dispatch a fleet to get rid of him.

That was one of the main reasons he had established his early warning satellites.

Instead, they sent a puppet. Were they afraid of him? It was possible, but he couldn’t quite picture that as their motive for going this whole cloak-and-dagger route. The only other possibility Alexander could think of was some political reason that tied their hands. He thought that the STO was at the beck and call of the corporations, maybe they weren’t quite that far gone yet.

The speculation could wait for some other time.

Alexander set the radio down and hurried back over to his workshop. He could have just accessed his modeling program from his tablet, but it was much faster and more efficient to use it at the source.

His workshop was its usual buzz of activity and noise. All of his production capacity was currently dedicated to producing parts for the static field satellites to help with planetary defense, the nano-scale fabricator to bolster his chip manufacturing, or a dozen other tasks to build components for different items.

He had learned that manufacturing the components instead of printing some of them allowed him to produce ten percent more parts in the same amount of time. That time was lost in the assembly process, but there were now dozens of happily employed engineers: who had been rescued from the pirate station: hard at work on his assembly teams.

Not all of those engineers had chosen to stay, but a large majority had, along with their families. Alexander couldn’t blame them for sticking around, especially since they had been sold and traded like commodities instead of people. He didn’t relish the thought of what might happen to the ones who chose to return to the STO, but that was their choice to make.

Even if Alexander was manufacturing and assembling parts, that didn’t mean he wasn’t still printing parts or whole units. He was, but the added labor significantly increased his production speed without having to expand his output at the current time. If he kept growing at this rate, he was going to have to do that sooner or later, but there were more important priorities at the moment.

Alexander wasn’t in his workshop to check on the production of those parts though. He accessed the program and brought up his print file for the smaller robot he had created when he was on his way back from Asgard.

Technically it was the same file he used to make the original Dog. The one-foot-tall robot turned out to be rather useful in certain situations. He moved over to the material selection window and changed the exterior composite: which had been updated to use the same corporate armor material as the Stingray utilized: to a base steel alloy. Armored steel alloys would work too, but that would be complete overkill and add time to the print. They also weren’t necessary for what he had in mind.

The extra weight of the steel alloy would make the robot too heavy if it was forced to operate under gravity, but that wasn’t a concern for what he had planned. He could have modified the exterior to add a much thinner layer to the existing carapace using material melding, but he had other design changes to make and not a whole lot of time to complete them. Instead of getting fancy with this one-off robot, he kept things as simple as possible.

Trying to fit the requisite amount of cold gas thrusters on such a small robot was proving to be enough of a challenge. After struggling for a bit, Alexander decided to reduce them down to only four directional thrusters instead of the eight he had been trying to add to the robot, which didn’t include the thrust nozzles for both the front and rear.

From his experience designing the larger construction bots, he knew the change would make the smaller robot wobble quite a bit, but that couldn’t be helped.

A small laser cutting module went on next. Considering the cutter lacked the power of a weaponized variant, the robot would need to clamp itself to whatever surface it wished to burn through and spend considerable time and energy doing it. The damage didn’t need to be significant, the small bot just needed to punch through one of the coolant passages on the engine cones, and it would be noticed by the crew in short order. He doubted they were equipped to deal with a full-on coolant breach. Lucky for them, they had Alexander and BSE here to assist.

Even if they could deal with the breach, it would delay them by days. Alexander knew patching engine cones was not an easy task. It’s why most ships simply replaced them if they got damaged.

Alexander looked for an ongoing, but nearly finished orbital print and slotted in the robot toward the end.

He didn’t know how much attention the STO ships were paying to his production operations in orbit, but adding it to an existing print should hide the production of the small robot until a larger bot could move it off to the coating process.

His radio beeped just as he was putting in the last changes. The voice that came through sounded far off.

“Enough of this nonsense. Take me to Kane this instant. We will wait outside his office until he’s ready to see me,” came the muted but unmistakably annoyed tone of Willard.

Pembrooke must have known the request was coming and managed to transmit it to let Alexander know.

It looked like Alexander was out of time. He sent a quick message to Lucas with what he wanted done.

Alexander expected the man to balk at the request, but all he got back in return was a snort of amusement and a short response.

“Consider it my pleasure,” Lucas stated before cutting the connection.

“Right,” Alexander muttered. He had almost forgotten that the drifters had no love for the STO.

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With that done, he made his way to his office.

When the new office was first completed, Pembrooke had tried getting him to stay there and sign documents all day. It was the most mind-numbing experience of his life. Even his time as Yuri Sokolov’s robot slave had been more engaging than sitting around doing paperwork.

How anyone could do that all day and remain sane escaped him. Using his powers as the owner and CEO, he had vetoed Pembrooke’s request. Alexander understood why the man requested it. Having him in one spot and being easy to reach at all times made Theo’s job easier. Unfortunately, they both had to make some compromises. Alexander agreed to remain in the office one hour a day unless they had a meeting such as the one he was heading to now.

Some of those concessions came in the form of decorations.

Unlike the sparse and utilitarian meeting room where he had greeted the Asgardians when they arrived for the battle with Harlow, his new office was rather nicely furnished.

He told Pembrooke not to go overboard though. Alexander didn’t go in for gaudy or over-the-top décor.

What greeted him when the door to the renovated space opened was a tastefully designed and rather warm-feeling space. The walls were lined in BSE-colored tapestries of the same blue and white used in all their ships. Those tapestries depicted exploded diagrams of certain early BSE designs in white embroidery.

Alexander loved that because it made the room feel more like his workshop rather than some dull office. They could have created the same effect with holo-projectors, but he had grown to enjoy the physical representation of his work.

He wasn’t concerned about anyone actually learning anything from the diagrams. There was no engineering info or design specs to go with the designs. They were just a wireframe of components.

The next item to catch people’s eyes was Alexander’s ‘degrees’. He had to use quotes for that word because the STO didn’t have degrees as such. He had chosen to add them as more a statement of his personal accomplishments in fields of learning than anything provided to him from some college or academy. They certainly looked fancy though.

Last but not least, was his Asgardian symbol of office, the spear sat prominently in a glass case on the wall behind his desk and was hung just high enough to be viewed by anyone sitting across from him.

Alexander made his way behind the composite desk, which was made to resemble wood. He would have gone with metal, but somehow wood or a facsimile of it felt more appropriate in the room.

The area behind the desk was sunken into the floor to allow him to sit without towering over everyone. Even so, he still sat taller than most people. Normally people in power would want the opposite, but Alexander didn’t need petty power projection like that when he had actual power.

He wasn’t blind to the fact that he was strong and had the military power to back that up, he simply didn’t enjoy or feel the need to lord that power over people. In most cases.

This meeting was an exception.

He was shaken from his thoughts when a knock came at the door. Theo poked his head in and sighed with relief before sliding through the opening and closing the door behind himself.

“I was afraid you might still be in your workshop, despite my warning.”

“Thank you for that. I just arrived,” Alexander admitted.

“Were you able to… you know?”

Alexander simply nodded his avatar. “You did well keeping Willard occupied. Was it any trouble?”

Theo snorted. “No. That man is so self-absorbed he didn’t even remember who I was. From there I just acted like an airheaded aide and dragged them around to see the sights. I was honestly surprised it took him as long as it did to get annoyed with my constant dithering.”

“Should we show him in then?” Alexander asked.

Theo shook his head. “No. He will expect to wait a bit more, so I say make him.”

“…Okay. Since we have time, is there anything you would like to add or any observations you might have made during your time with the C-Vice Admiral?”

“I have plenty,” Pembrooke admitted. “The most important is that his people have no respect for the man. Not surprising considering Willard treats them like they are unworthy of being in his presence. The man’s disdain for those he thinks of as commoners or beneath him is clear for even a blind man to see. How he ever got to be a captain while showing that level of scorn for those beneath him is beyond me. Then again, I didn’t get that same sense of derision from the man when I met him in Varlen, so he could have been suppressing it back then, and now that he’s a Vice Admiral, he feels there is no more need to do that for anyone under him.”

Alexander shook his avatar at such a distorted worldview. It was completely disconnected from reality. “Any thoughts or suggestions on how I should handle this meeting?” he asked.

“That’s easy. Take control of any discussions. If this is some sort of request, don’t promise anything. That will annoy the man but that’s fine, he has no power here. The sooner he realizes that, the better. Once you better understand what he wants, you’ll have to take it from there.”

Alexander sighed, he hated all the song-and-dance nonsense that was involved in politics.

“Fine,” he finally stated. “While I’m meeting with Willard, I want you to speak with the other people who arrived with him. See if they are worth poaching or if that is something they are even interested in. I don’t expect you to offer them positions now, but we can plant the seeds in their minds and see who’s interested. They will need to be thoroughly vetted before they get access to anything of note though. That reminds me, do you still have contacts within the STO?”

“Some,” Theo admitted. “I wouldn’t trust any of them though. Why?”

“We need better information sources. I’m sick of having problems like this show up out of the blue. If I give you the budget, can you grow your contacts?”

Theo paused to think about it for a bit. “Sure, but it’s gonna be hard to keep them on the level without being able to step foot into STO space.”

“Will that be a problem?”

“Not really. I’ll just double or triple the number of contacts I make. We can verify data from different sources to confirm the truth from the lies. I would say cut the liars free, but keeping them on the payroll is probably better because it helps us know who and what not to trust.”

“I’ll leave the specifics to you. If the budget isn’t large enough, let me know. I want this to be a priority for you. Now, I think it’s time to speak with Willard.”

Theodore smiled and nodded. “I’ll get right on that task once the STO leaves. Good luck.”

***

Ezekiel grew increasingly annoyed with the waiting. Who was Kane to make him wait? He was a nobody, just like everyone on this planet. So what if they claimed some dead rock that nobody wanted? There couldn’t be more than ten thousand people here. An STO fleet boasted more personnel than that. Not his fleet, but a real one.

After some time, the liaison returned to the waiting room, which was nothing more than an emptied storage closet that stank of metal, rust, and chemicals. It was just another example of how small and insignificant Blue Star Enterprises was. Yet here he was, delivering a request directly from Navy Command.

“What a joke,” he muttered quietly.

“Did you say something?” the unnamed liaison asked.

Instead of answering the man’s question, he asked one of his own. “Is Kane ready to see me now?”

“He is,” the man admitted. “If you will follow me.”

Ezekiel did, happy to finally get this over with. His Marine guards followed, but the captain of the Blueridge remained behind with his two guards.

Ezekiel didn’t plan on taking the Marines into the office with him, but they would take up positions outside of it.

As they rounded the corner in the hallway, he saw four individuals wearing augmentation suits colored in the same blue and white from the waiting room. They were situated to either side of a doorway, right where his guards should position themselves. He had never seen suits like that before, but he could tell they were fully armored. The men were also carrying those weird rifles.

Instead of making a stink about it, Ezekiel pointed across the hallway. His guards would understand the gesture.

Ezekiel ignored the tension between the two groups. Once everyone was in position, he nodded to the liaison who knocked on the door.

“Enter!” came a commanding voice.

The door was pushed open and Ezekiel took a step to enter but froze when he saw the thing that waited inside. “What is the meaning of this!”