Starship Engineer

While human-controlled space was engaged in endless battles for resources and control of strategic systems, the RIM worlds had a lull of peace. Millions of humans fled and scattered to the RIM worlds and beyond. The Brotherhood had checked human expansion, controlling how far they reached out into the universe so as not to draw attention to humanity. That was now broken.

In communication with Admiral LaRoche, I learned colony ships were passing through their Federation space and planned to head far deeper into unknown space. Admiral LaRoche even helped them by directing them to the depopulated systems Desdemona had created in quadruped space when she obliterated resistance in dozens of desirable systems.

Desdemona's Fateweavers and the Sylvan city ships had cleared dozens of ideal systems. Some planets had sustained heavy orbital bombardment, and the atmosphere had dust, forcing it into an ice age that would take centuries to clear. Still, some machines could accelerate the restoration process. As humanity's second expansion to the stars occurred, I decided the Bradbury System and Arcadian Collective would not be part of extending its influence. We went into a phase of semi-isolation.

Our Intelligence Network was being run by a man called Hyperion in the absence of Edmund. Shortly after returning on the Void Phoenix, my twin daughters, Nova and Venus, who had achieved the rank of lieutenant, started working for Hyperion. They were just sixteen when they started but extremely bright, and both were advancing their Sylvan mental powers. Hyperion eagerly took them on and started to show them all the workings of espionage and anti-espionage.

Nova and Venus took on larger and larger responsibilities, with one focusing on espionage and the other focused on anti-espionage within the Arcadian's Shadow. It was a silly name that Hyperion gave the organization that was responsible for collecting intelligence across all of known space and identifying threats before they occurred.

The only assets they were allotted were the Leopard-class spy ships, deep space stations, and specially trained and vetted personnel. Stygian Station, the deepspace construction yard, constantly expanded and took on the role of training. The Leopard spy ships had their own R&D teams to constantly improve their capabilities. Stealth, range, and operations time greatly improved with the secretive research. I checked in on Stygian Station every six months, and the engineers and scientists never failed to impress me with their advancements on a visit.

Nova and Venus spent most of their time on Stygian Station filtering data and vetting new candidates for the Arcadian's Shadow. Both had become extremely serious as the weight of their responsibilities piled on them. Eventually, I would have them take over complete control of the operations from Hyperion. During my visits, we always found a few nights to revisit the Sword and Sorcery VR game on the secured network. It was the only time the pair smiled and laughed.

Amos joined the Terraforming Corps. He was fascinated with xeno botany and wanted to preserve as much of the unique flora in the universe as he could. His lifelong pursuit was to create something similar to Galaxy's Eye museum, which Surchi was building for both extinct and existing sentient species but for plant life. Amos' plan was to find a planet and set up massive domes, each with its unique biome to preserve. Together, we found a desolate system just seven light years from the Bradbury system with a stable star and multiple barren planets of varying masses.

The system was renamed Wellspring and had minimal resources. Terraforming the multiple planets and building biodomes on the planets would take many lifetimes, but Amos was prepared to devote himself to the endeavor. I gave Amos a twenty percent share of the purple grass revenue from the Tirani and let him develop his passion.

Dartanion, my daredevil son, had become an instructor at the Naval Academy after the Void Phoenix returned. He started by mentoring Slipstream pilots and overseeing their training. He was very effective in increasing the graduation rate of qualified pilots. He eventually moved on to being an instructor for fleet engagement strategy.

Some nepotism was involved when I moved Dartanion to the top of the Fateweaver captain's list when he was currently seventh. He was assigned to our 25th Fateweaver built, the Prometheus' Fire. Once our production and crew training caught up, our Fateweavers operated in groups of three with nine screening ships and three supply transports. We had six such task force groups outside of our Bradbury defense force.

The six task force groups were Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta. It took Dartanion seven years to be named a Senior Captain and in charge of Bravo Group, who patrolled our space lanes from Bradbury to the Tirani systems we traded heavily with. We also had twelve Fateweavers on loan to the Human Federation. These ships did not have Armageddon missiles and were the original design without the advances we made over the years.

The Bradbury home system fleet was composed of nine Fateweavers and nine Matadors. We had stopped production of the Matador battle cruisers after we reached nine since one cost three times as much as a Fateweaver to build and almost four times as much to maintain. Also, in all simulations and fleet war games, a single Fateweaver was able to outmaneuver and defeat a Matador. But when the Matadors operated with Fateweavers, they were deadly in a supporting role. They had their uses for extreme-range combat, but maintaining more than nine of the heavy ships along with thirty Fateweaver's put a strain on our budget.

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Celeste got what she wanted. I gave her the Void Phoenix's title. Neon joined her crew, and the two left the Bradbury system to run a passenger company between the Human Federation and the Alien Alliance. It was moderately successful, and they somehow always seemed to find interesting passengers and get themselves into interesting and dangerous situations. It felt like the Void Phoenix attracted trouble no matter who was in command.

My youngest son, Luca, initially joined Ezra and Emil as shipboard Marines. He quickly climbed to the rank of captain without any nepotism on my part. He was a charismatic leader. He spent one year as commandant of the Marine Academy before joining his sisters on Stygian Station to oversee covert operations training for teams on the Leopard-class ships. These operations teams worked on foreign stations and in the disrupted human core territory.

A proactive covert operations unit was exactly what Edmund had wanted, but he did not return to Bradbury to resume control. He told me he was heading up a deep cover team on Earth, and I did not hear from him again. I think he wanted to try to save the human race and play a role in its revival, but there was too much conflict among the human space nations.

That was not the only bad news I received. Desdemona disappeared with four Fateweavers after defeating the quadrupeds. It was a massive betrayal that Edmund saw coming, and I had known it was coming myself. Her husband and children disappeared from Arcadian City just before I received communication the fleet had disappeared.

Bel'fer told me three Sylvan city ships had defected with Desdemona after the final battle with quadrupeds. She did not know where they were going but knew they planned to establish their own defense against the coming Malevolent threat. Wherever they were; it was too far away for me to send an expedition. I also thought an expedition large enough to deal with Desdemona would take too many resources.

We were waiting for a report from the expeditionary force to the galaxy's center. The beacons that the quadrupeds had silenced eons ago had to have the key to the Malevolent motives. We might be able to stop them without having to fight them.

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Nearly fourteen years after the Void Phoenix obliterated the Brotherhood Council, we had established a firm footing in the Bradbury system and stabilized ourselves. The quadrupeds were eliminated, and only whispers of the Brotherhood remained. The Human Federation had become the new center of humanity while the core human systems had been ravaged and struggled to rebuild in the midst of ongoing conflict.

We had alliances with the Slyvan, Human Federation, Alien Alliance, and Godfather Organization. Most of this was based on a mutual pact to defend against the Malevolants when the planet ship arrived. So far, none of the probes or Sylvan city ships had reported seeing the Mavelovents.

My days mostly dealt with mind-numbing budget reports as I figured out how to pay everyone and maintain an our oversized fleet. We received almost a third of our budget from the Human Federation for the Fateweavers we were loaning them. The problem was their technology was catching up, and soon, they would no longer have use of them.

When that happened, I would be facing a major budget deficit. Even with the purple grass royalties, I was not going to be able to support an entire system and fleet myself. Taxes were nominal, but the population was barely over fifty million people, growing at 2.9% annually. I somewhat regretted not joining the second age of human expansion to claim valuable systems.

Part of the problem was we were constantly reducing our automation and reliance on bots—an effect of Eve's disappearance. There had been no word about Eve's whereabouts, which was disconcerting in itself. Eve was an evolved bot, and I knew her programming had to have an underlying purpose. What was it now if that purpose was no longer my protection and that of my children?

The Sylvan, although arrogant, were good partners. We had five of their city ships in the Bradbury system, sometimes as many as seven. It had taken some time, but eventually, they helped Suruchi form a multi-species cooperative government. Three of their city ships were no longer operating independently of the Arcadian Collective and were part of our government.

There were two million Sylvan on the planet, and over fifty thousand were part of the Navy. Many of them were Marines. I had considered their interest in the Marines a potential threat to the Arcadian Collective. Our Marines were 40.5% Tirani, 25.2% human, 15.5% Sylvan, 10.2% Squirrel, and 8.6% other species.

The diversity made for some very interesting war games. The battlesuit technology had evolved slower than our starship technology. We still had Gorilla, Badger, and Geko suits for our heavy, medium, and light armor. The secrets of the battle armor were one thing we did not share with our allies.

I was trying to figure out how to establish mining outposts in nearby systems to generate revenue when I received a communication from Bel'Fer. The First Citizen had been pivotal in getting the Sylvan to settle and cooperate with the Arcadian Collective. She had a unique ability to communicate over any distance with other First Citizens with a similar ability.

Her message was that after many delays, the expedition to the galaxy center had finally reached the beacon. We had sporadic updates on their progress as they encountered many delays due to aliens and refueling difficulties. As we thought, the beacon was the size of a small, dense moon encased in a shell built by the quadrupeds two hundred and fifty thousand years ago. They were in the process of gaining access to the secrets within. Soon, we would hopefully have some answers.

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