If you’d have asked me before I joined the Navy what I thought of girls that fainted all the time, I would have said that now that people have access to nourishing food and can breathe in their clothing, that it is a modern fiction. Now though, I pass out like once a month. Luckily I’m very durable.
“Penny, this is not the time or a nap, hon.” Robo-asshole snickers at me.
“Tessa,” I sigh as I push myself to my feet. “You know what? If you pushed the order button so I don’t have to look at the cost again, I’ll forgive the insult.”
“I did, but there are some issues that might come up with the parts that were ordered.” I watch her shuffle her hands, a very human nervous action. I gesture for her to get on with it. “None of the costs were for enchanting or engraving.”
“Let me guess, the Gateway wasn’t delivered.”
“I’m actually unsure. I dove into the delivery schedule and the roads and the first ring of each borough will be delivered by tomorrow morning. We can check Penbroke Pavillion then to confirm.”
I tap through some menus in my mind and see that a finished, small Gateway costs 100k CE and three effing weeks to build. “I sure hope something is there, because otherwise our ‘plan’ stops before we even get started.” I tap my chin for a minute to get my brain back into gear. “Captain, how long do you think mobilization and transit is going to take?”
“Two to three days for recall and start-up, three to five for transit and supply en-route depending on how prepared we want to be to return in a hurry. Alaris is a lot more versatile that Galilei, but we’ll want to go slower so we don’t have to burn money just to keep the gateway open.” She doesn’t look up from her screens.
“Admiral, the aether generators onboard won’t be able to keep up and the portal technology for rapid recharge should not be operated for more than twenty minutes a day. We’ll need three days to recharge for every two weeks of operation.”
“Ugh, thanks Alaris. Proof that magic can only do so much. You know what? As long as we can get them medical attention, I don’t suppose it matters how long it takes as long as it looks like we’re working on helping people. Maybe we schedule the Galilei to fill up when Alaris needs to charge. This probably more than doubles our transfer time and does not account for the extra people that will come out of the woodwork when they see we’re actually helping people.”
What the hell am I getting myself into? I’ve been fighting with my people all week about laws and shit, considering banishing people to Earth, but as soon as I hear about suffering, I drop ten trillion dollars to help them. I know fighting for rules and laws that keep people safe is important, but it doesn’t feel near as good as rescuing people.
“That seems like a reasonable assumption, but the Earthside Navy seems to be ready to continue ferrying people to these aggregation points. You can apparently walk from one end of your Atoll to the other on a flotilla of personal craft strapped together. You’re going to have your hands full, Ma’am, just like the rest of us. It’ll be good to do more than police work and coast guard actions though. Most of the crew will appreciate this.”
“I have mixed feelings about that, but I’m glad you folks are here. I’ll be honest, I’m surprised we even got ten thousand to come to Astoria, let alone having people serve in the military.”
“Admiral, we can have drinks and discuss the novelties of what you’ve put together after this crisis is averted. Until then, there is much to be done.” She’s locking eyes with me now, and I can feel the years of experienced command in her words.
“Copy, Captain. We’ll be onboard for at least a few hours in the Fab bay.”
“Your boat, Admiral, I just drive it.”
“Bullshit, Kendal, You know Alaris is a friend as well as a ship.”
“I appreciate the sentiment Admiral, but social hour is canceled for the foreseeable future.” Alaris tells me, with some seriousness in her voice.
“Point taken ladies.” I take a deep breath, walk over to Tessa, put an arm around her waist and turn to her, “Then it’s time for my favorite hobby.
“Blowing yourself up?” My cheeky AI responds.
“Close enough. Lets go hon.” We take the lift teleport to the fabrication and shuttle bay.
>/Please don’t blow me up, Admiral./<
>/Chill Allie, you’re pretty durable, and I do all of my antimatter experiments on the moon./<
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>/I have been told that Nicknames are an attempt to build a personal rapport. Are you interested in being friends, Empress?/<
I snort at that. >/Yes, Alaris. I am trying to be friends with you. I am fond of my Symbiont and AI personality, so it makes sense to me to attempt to befriend a ship personality./<
>/That is not necessary at this time, thank you for the interest Empress./<
Well, shit, rebuffed by my own ship.
I should hope so. Alaris basically thinks you asked her out. She has a crush on Captain Jessup.
Oh? What would that relationship even look like? With you, I could have snuggles, but does Alaris even snuggle?
Penny, you are painfully oblivious some times. But since the Empire needs you to be productive instead of an emotional mess, let’s talk projects.
Okay, Tessa, the friend shaming hurts coming from you. Please don’t okay? You’re like the last rock I have to lean on.
Penny, I’m sorry, and I know you’re still recovering from this terrible week, but we need go-get-‘em Penny, Empress of Humanity to accomplish with authority. Use your dusky command voice if you have to.
I growl at her, can’t help it. Pushing things aside is what makes people completely fall apart down the line. My life did just blow up from un-resolved issues, and yes it still hurts after only a week of uber drama. What the hell should I be doing now, though? We don’t know what issues might be happening with the gateway until morning, and I’ve got people doing much of the other prep work.
I inform Petra that we’re headed to Earth in a few days for a refugee response and she expresses her interest in helping. Ivanka is much less interested, still holding a grudge against Earth in general it seems. Considering that two women don’t seem to be getting any support from Svetlana and the other Russian troublemakers, I shouldn’t be surprised.
Since that took absolutely no time, let us look at the parts of the problem I can help with. Transportation is largely based on the gate working or we’re down to ferrying 10k a week with Alaris setting up in Astoria orbit for the working gateway. Nothing I can do about either of those until tomorrow. I can’t speed up our readiness, I’ve already spent the money on getting a town built to house them, and rations are still available to feed people.
It’s all about the gateways right now. Maybe it’s time to actually read a module, maybe search for a tome about gateway magic. I see a research paper on creating and tailoring keys for private gates on public networks and spend the 1k AE to unlock it without flinching. I also do a quick search amongst my modules for power requirements on similar technologies and stack them into a tablet for reading once I look at what Tessa has been working on.
Sure I’m a little mad at her, and am quite aware that she’s still listening to me, but it’s no excuse to be a shitty friend. She leads us to a bench and work area that has been highly customized with a project left out on the bench. Wow, she even works like me. That’s kind of flattering.
“Is that an arm?”
“It is! I’ve been working on putting synthetic musculature based on your biology over printed titanium carbide structures.” The frown on her face fades as she talks about her experiment.
“Can I?” I reach for the limb and pause to get permission. When she nods, I pick it up to move the joints and look at the structure of the muscles adjust. “This is fine Enchanting work. Did you post a job for it?” She nods again. “Could use an engraving or an enchantment to lighten the bones, but this is really excellent work. How do you intend to trigger impulses?”
“I could technically just use electrical signals, but the power limitations aren’t very attractive. So, I took what we did with the shuttles and designed a smaller network with a miniaturized aether distilling unit to recharge. I will likely need your assistance for that stage as it is heavy with engraving and enchanting.”
“Have you ever thought about doing the engraving yourself and just using my ink?”
“Yes, of course. However, from what I’ve experienced your aether control and innate tools give your strokes more elegance than I can duplicate mechanically.”
Well, at least she needs me for something besides just being a host.
Penny . . .
“Don’t, I know it’s a stupid worry, it’s just that I wish I could do more right now and I’m feeling useless.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m going to study for a few hours, then head back for dinner. You want to come with?”
“I would Penny, but I would like to continue working. Also, watching you eat makes me envious.”
“Okay, yeah. I guess I’ll leave you to it then.” I teleport back to my shuttle before tears could well up in my eyes. The vibes of telling me to leave people to their work feels a little personal, especially from Tessa. This is what I collected smart people around me for yeah? Free time and project time? Good work Penny. Now you’re just fucking lonely.
I pick a bowl of berries and study in my private garden, ordering a bottle of Francesca’s Hooch in prep of my marathon study session. I dig into the encoding research paper first, and I start to see some benefits right away.
Linking two gateways point to point is secure. As soon as you connect a third, you introduce the ability to select a gateway in a network, where the default network is any gateway within range of the local Host. For Astoria, that’s anywhere within 3k light years, ostensibly only my gates anyway. One of the ways around this is redirecting travel to a “Master” gateway. The downside of this, is that once someone has access to the master gateway, they can travel to any connected portal with no additional safety checks. The other way is to encode an aether key into the gateway, which consequently allows each side of the gateway to be used independently as long as the encoding sequences of the gateway faces are different. Of course, the “Master” re-direct does not play well with the aether key coding in a potentially lethal way. Flagged for future research opportunities.
Okay, this is good news. It addresses one of my throughput questions about having the Bikini gateway and the Alaris gateway operating at the same time. Now, to see how I can power the whole thing.