Blue Star Enterprises

Alexander hurried into the meeting room. "Sorry, I'm late. I was speaking with Damien about another matter."

"Nothing serious, I hope?" Archie inquired.

"Just teenagers being teenagers," Lucas said with a snort. "Damien's got his panties in a twist over these unauthorized parties. They aren't even doing drugs or alcohol, though, so I don't know why he's so gung-ho about stopping them. He should just let them be and monitor them. Cracking down too much is what brought them about in the first place."

"Normally, I would agree," Alexander replied, "but they are taking place in the under-construction areas where kids can get hurt." He chose not to mention that he also had video proof of Yulia and her friends attending one such party. They got home okay, but he wasn't sure how, since the facility cameras hadn't picked them up leaving the party.

"That's easy then," Lucas clapped his hands. "Give them a safe space to host these parties. They are going to continue whether you like it or not. Might as well control at least one variable."

Alexander sighed. "I assume you are speaking from experience, Lucas?"

The man smiled and nodded.

"Fine," Alexander said with a huff. "I'll speak with the ringleader and see if I can talk some sense into the boy."

"Out of curiosity, who was it?" Lucas asked.

"Thomas Lund."

Lucas's smile fell. "Good luck with that. That boy has a larger chip on his shoulder than my brother did at his age. Especially towards authority figures."

"Luck won't have anything to do with it. He will either agree to my terms, or we're shipping him back to STO space."

The two men winced slightly at that. Alexander knew it was a harsh punishment, especially since Thomas didn't have any family other than his father, who had abandoned him, but he couldn't stick around Eden's End, causing trouble. People like that were never happy with the status quo, and eventually, Thomas would grow into an actual problem instead of a nuisance.

"Enough about that. I brought you two here to discuss a new ship project. Krieger already weighed in on it during our last check-in."

Lucas sat up in his chair, his eyes wide with anticipation. "Is it finally time?" he asked excitedly as he drummed his hands on the table.

Alexander rolled his avatar's eyes at the man's antics. "Yes. The fusion reactors are stable enough that I'm willing to put them in production."

"Woohoo!" Lucas shouted. "Now I can complete the defensive field tests."

"Is that the announcement?" Archie asked skeptically.

The man knew Alexander all too well. "Nope, but it does make the announcement possible. He flipped on the holo, and a new ship floated above."

"A new stealth ship?" Archie asked as he looked over the design.

"Only as a side effect of the armor," Alexander clarified. "This is the Barracuda-class battleship."

Alexander had run out of catchy deep-sea names for even larger ships. He should have reserved the Leviathan designation for a warship instead of using it for the mobile construction yard, but he had never expected to make anything larger than a cruiser. It was fine. A barracuda may be a relatively small fish, but its aggressive nature and name were memorable. It was perfect for his new class of battleships.

"I see ten laser turrets. Are those the new heavy lasers like Char received?" Archie inquired.

Alexander nodded his avatar. "I wanted to install them on Vanguard and Tempest as well, but their reactors were too small to charge the capacitors fast enough to make it work. An upgrade to their reactors should fix that issue once they have time to come in for maintenance."

Both men nodded gravely at that. The Union fleet had returned to the border, but they had already skirmished once with the Xin forces sent to cut off their retreat since destroying the enemy's hypergate. Krieger expected that the Xin vessels would continue to harass them, and he was making plans to set a trap. That wasn't the only enemy fleet to consider, either. They still didn't know where the larger force that had been in Xin Prime had gone.

The enemy had not appeared on any of the sensor reports from the stealth satellites. It was assumed that the Shican had taken charge of the remaining Xin forces and were jumping outside of systems, and beyond the small satellites' ability to detect. It was a worrying development because it meant the Shican suspected surveillance efforts were in place.

The capital ship's effectiveness against the Xin fleet had been one of the reasons Alexander had gone ahead with the design of the battleship. That design process had stalled out, however, until they sorted out the power issue, which was now resolved.

"Alex, if those small lumps are laser turrets, what's that big one?"

Alexander stared at Lucas. "Really, lumps?"

Lucas shrugged. "They look like lumps on such a massive ship."

Alexander sighed and enlarged the image to show the lumps of the turrets in closer detail. The tiny holo projector wasn't able to display the entire ship at that scale; however. That's how massive it was. "That big lump," he said, emphasizing the word as he stared at the unrepentant Lucas, who smiled back, "is an enhanced FE cannon."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Before Lucas could ask, Alexander cut him off. "You might be wondering what an enhanced FE cannon is. Well, I'll tell you. It's an FE cannon, with ten additional acceleration rings."

Both men were well acquainted with the FE cannons and their power by now, so they could sort of understand what adding an additional ten rings might do. They would be wildly incorrect in their guesses, however. How was Alexander so certain of that? Because he had been wildly incorrect before doing the math using the actual data from his original tests with the weapons.

"Why is it so much longer? And how fast are the projectiles going?" Lucas asked, stars in his eyes at the thought of firing such a weapon.

"The answers are not mutually exclusive. The rounds are accelerating so fast, the additional rings had to be spaced farther and farther apart to make them have any impact on further acceleration."

Alexander had tried his best to place the accelerator rings as close together as possible, but they were already as close as he could get them without sacrificing most of their efficiency. The main issue was activating the ring as the projectile started to pass through it. After a certain point, the field simply couldn't form quickly enough, which is why the rings had to be slowly placed farther and farther apart.

If Alexander wanted to add an additional ring to the new cannon and have it impart any velocity to the projectile, the barrel length would need to extend the entire length of the battleship. That wasn't exactly a feasible option, not that he needed to add another ring. With his current level of technology and understanding, the current design was at the limit of what an FE cannon could produce and still be functionally fit to a ship, instead of having a ship fit around it.

"How fast?" Lucas prodded impatiently.

"A small fraction of lightspeed," Alexander finally admitted, earning a shocked look from Lucas and Archie.

When Lucas finally recovered from his shock, he whistled in approval. "I know the defensive field is a game-changer when it comes to defense, but no way in hell it's going to be able to absorb that much kinetic energy. I assume that is why you built the EFE?"

"Please don't call it that," Alexander sighed. "And yes. I ran the numbers, and the Shican would need to pump nearly five hundred times the energy into their defensive field to stop a single round. Something I'm nearly certain is impossible with the defensive field technology."

"It's a bit overkill, isn't it?" Archie asked. "Couldn't you shorten the weapon by removing a single accelerator ring?"

"I wish I could. That last ring imparts a massive amount of velocity to the projectile. Removing it would cause the velocity to drop enough that I couldn't guarantee it would do much after punching through the Shican's defensive field. Instead of relying on hope, I aimed for overkill and designated it as a tactical strike weapon. The battleship will have a limited supply of the specialized penetrators aboard, because I don't want the weapon to be used willy-nilly. A stray round hitting a planet could do incalculable damage."

That wasn't quite true. Alexander had calculated the amount of damage a projectile of that weight and speed could do. And while it wasn't nuclear levels of destruction, the localized impact of a strike from this new weapon would be equally devastating. He hadn't wanted to bring up the possibility, but if what he suspected of the Shican was true, they wouldn't stop until they were made to. He had discussed that possibility with Krieger at length before he left on the current assignment, and the man had agreed with him.

To finally stop the Shican, humanity would eventually need to bring the fight to their space. The weapon would see most of its use against the Shican dreadnoughts during the initial phase of the war, but Alexander was thinking toward the future. Other than nuclear strikes, which left widespread destruction, the enhanced FE cannon would likely be the cleanest option to take out the enemy leadership on their planets when the time came.

Alexander really hoped the aliens stopped at that point, because he really didn't want to produce further weapons of mass destruction. If they left him no choice, however, he wouldn't hesitate to do so, and he had ideas that would make nuclear weapons look tame in comparison. The battleships wouldn't be the only ships sporting such a weapon, either. He already had designs ready to go for automated stealth corvettes with spinal-mounted enhanced FE cannons. It was the smallest ship class he could fit the weapon to, and that was the only weapon those ships would have.

If the war started to turn against humanity, Alexander had plans to produce the vessels en masse. With each one taking a little under a month to create. At that rate, he could easily make enough to ensure the Shican shared whatever fate they had in mind for humanity.

One way or another, the war would end. It would be entirely up to the Shican whether or not they would still be around after the dust settled.

Alexander was pulled back to the present as Lucas asked another question. "How long is the vessel?"

"Around a thousand feet, so about the same length as the Talon."

Archie raised an eyebrow at that, which wasn't a surprise considering he had been the captain of the Hawks' assault ship. "That's going to take a lot of time to build and a lot of crew to run. As the head of the Academy, I know how many people we have in training, and I can say without a doubt that we don't have nearly enough recruits to crew such a large vessel, even with your automation. Wouldn't our efforts be better spent pumping out more automated vessels?"

"I've already spoken with Katalynn about getting more recruits from the Union. Those will go on our existing ships, while the best of the best within our current fleet will be moved to the new battleship once it's ready. As a flagship of the BSE Navy, Krieger will be in command of the new vessel. As for your question, we'll be doing both. The larger printers are now complete, and production of the substructure has already begun. I estimate it will take six months to complete the vessel, assuming Lucas's tests succeed. The armor layout cannot be put into place until we know if the new defensive field will work, so that's the only real holdup."

"Fingers crossed," Lucas said, holding up both his hands to mimic his words.

"One other thing to consider with a larger ship is its survivability," Alexander continued. "The Barracuda-class will have four layers of stealth armor instead of the standard three layers of corporate composite. That alone will make it one of the toughest ships within human space, but that's not the only upgrade it's getting. On top of the armor, it will be the first human-crewed vessel to sport an active defensive field. I can attest to how effective that is against incoming fire."

"That is certainly impressive, Alex," Archie replied.

"Oh, I'm not done," Alexander smiled. "There is one last feature that Lucas helped provide inspiration for, and that is the fifth and final layer of energized armor."

"Energized armor?" the old Hawks' captain asked.

"It came about as a byproduct of my other research. In practice, it's simple. A defensive field is superimposed on top of the outer layer of armor, giving it significantly more strength against impacts, but also energy weapons, which the defensive field can't do anything against."

Archie ran his hand through his hair and blew out a breath. "Alex, as your friend, I just want to say that your rate of technological progress is staggering. I remember as a cadet thinking that Gauss cannons and lasers were the peak of human ingenuity. Now I find myself floundering with all the new weapons and gadgets you come out with. If I were still a captain or were teaching the engineering classes, I don't think I could keep up. That being said, a teacher of mine once told me that there is no such thing as an invincible ship. Just keep that in mind."

Alexander smiled. "Not yet, anyway."