"Why would Kronos give the Ethereum control to you?" Juana asked. “I thought he had agreed to release it to Threshold.”
"And I'm releasing it to Threshold as we need it," I said.
Personally, now that I’d had time to think about it, I appreciated what Kronos was doing. After all, my team and I had earned the Ethereum. It was right that we had a say-so in its distribution.
“I’m just worried what happens if the council gets wind of it. They’ll call it embezzlement, or unjust enrichment.” Juana frowned. “If it were anyone but you I’d think the same thing. Let’s just… keep this quiet for now.”
“I’ll hand over what we need,” I said again. “I just don’t think we need to tell the councillors how much we earned. They’ll find a reason we need to spend it all. This way we can keep some in reserve.”
Juana helped me figure out how much was needed to raise the standard allocation for Threshold's citizens to a more comfortable base level. We'd transferred over enough for the next six weeks. That had more than half drained my Ethereum reserves. I wasn't going to tell anyone how much was left. Not even Juana or Grandpa.
"You did good," Grandpa said.
He had reviewed the footage of our match as my team and I ate, and then joined me in the debriefing, pointing out areas for improvement.
“This scenario was short and uncomplicated and even then, I had to backtrack to retrieve one of my men. Neither of the two who died figured out what was going on. Ling got his act together once we showed up, but what if we’d lost more men? What if the scenario was longer and more involved?” I shook my head. “I’m still trying to understand all the implications myself. This is going to be a big problem.”
Grandpa nodded. “We've been thinking of this as a game for too long. It's not a game. It's deadly serious. Even with respawns, the consequences are serious. If we mess this up, we could find ourselves in just as big a mess as we were in a year ago, with Proxima and the others circling us like a bunch of vultures. Or, on the other hand, we let the Earth folk call the shots, and they don’t really understand how things work here." He shook his head.
Juana nodded wearily. "I've just been in an all-day meeting with the Council. Chen and Fletcher are…. Let's just say, getting the Ethereum hasn't made them demand any less. They want to increase the immigration quotas. Fletcher is saying if we don't take addicts and mentally ill right now that we're committing human rights abuses. Chen's just pushing for more and more people. Mostly from China and its allies. She's claiming that their volunteers are willing to live off of a lot less than most of the Western immigrants, which I think is rich considering she and Fletcher were demanding that we increase the creature comforts a week and a half ago."
"Maybe she got more instructions from back home," I suggested.
"That's likely," Juana said. "A lot of her constituents are coming up here with galactic contracts already in place and a list of desired classes to choose from."
"What?" I asked. "The Galactics are talking to people back on Earth?"
"Oh, hell yes," Grandpa said. “They started running a full press campaign touting the benefits of living in a reality engine and talking up partnerships with galactic conglomerates. It's all about how they have expertise to offer and wise counsel to give."
I hadn't been paying much attention to the news back from Earth. "Well, that's a devious way to do it.”
"It is," Grandpa said grimly, "because it means when we cut the migration quotas, we looked like the bad guys. We've been trying to run counter-programming explaining just what it was that the conglomerates are trying, but it's hard to get the reality across." He sighed. "Just one of the things I'm going to be working on next week when I go back to Earth."
"Are the plans finalized then?" I asked.
I'd been so busy getting my team ready for the first fight against a Kronos fragment, Grandpa and I had barely spoken in over a week. I knew he was working on a trip back to Earth, but I hadn't realized it was that close.
"The Ad Astra is ready to go," he said. "I've got deals with the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Israel, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, and Mexico to help us refit her.”
“So the U.S. Government stopped trying to nationalize her?” Juana asked tartly. “It’s about time. I thought I was going to have to hire space lawyers.”
“This is a whole new world for all of us. The idea of a private company owning a ship like this is pretty extreme. Ames really went to bat for us. We’ve agreed that the Ad Astra will be property of Misfits Guild. But we’ll be working with the coalition to accomplish their goals. I expect we’ll be making our first run out to another reality engine system in six months, if all goes well, with a whole bellyful of Earth diplomats, businessmen and soldiers.”
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We were planning to refit the Ad Astra in Earth's orbit. Kronos had given us the ship at the end of the Reality Engine exploit, and while it was fully functional, it was also lacking in creature comforts. The ship had absolutely enormous cargo bays, big enough to fit multiple city blocks, and that was, in part, just what we planned to do. We were going to stuff its holds full of passenger quarters so that when we did leave the solar system on our own, we could take lots of other humans with us.
Some of the cargo space was remaining just that, cargo space, and we were bringing up a lot of non-perishable goods from Earth. Since Kronos had limited Ethereum reserves, we wanted as much done ourselves as possible.
Thanks to a data dump that Colonel Ames had made into Earth's infosphere just before the end of the Reality Engine exploit, we Earthers now knew how to construct cheap, effective, anti-gravity drives. SpaceX, NASA, Blue Origin and a couple other private companies had been working together to retrofit existing rockets with the antigrav drive. Getting out of the atmosphere now cost pennies per pound. It still took another drive to get to a stable orbit after that, of course. Antigrav doesn’t help with getting up to orbital velocity.
I’d seen vids of the Starship fleet lifting out of the brand-new Greater Mojave Spaceport, six silver towers rising up without flame or smoke or noise to carry them skyward, sliding silently into the air. It was astonishing. It had revolutionize inter-system travel for us, though talk was that interstellar travel still had some wrinkles. Some of Earth’s engineers had wanted to take apart the Ad Astra to see how she worked. Grandpa and Ames shut that down hard.
“You’ll be passing the Joint Task Force in transit, then,” Juana said. “They’re expected to arrive in ten days.”
The US and her allies were putting together Joint Task Force Ganymede, a combined forces group focused on expanding the human foothold outward from out system. Juana was expecting all kinds of headaches, and so was I.
The last six months we’d gotten at least a dozen different conflicting sets of orders from Earth. First we’d been given orders from special operations command. Two months ago, all the former US armed services personnel on Ganymede had been told we were transferred to the Space Force. We hadn’t even gotten new patches for our uniforms before the word came about the joint task force. I wasn’t even 100% sure what my rank was anymore. I was hopeful that the Joint Task Force would have its act together once it got here. Grandpa said I was being naive.
“Did they agree on a commander yet?” I was hoping maybe Ames would get a promotion and take over, but that wasn’t likely. I’d expect at least a major general, maybe even a lieutenant general or the equivalent.
Juana nodded. “Air Marshall Hatfield.”
I translated from RAF ranks. Air Marshall was their equivalent of a lieutenant general, which tracked.
“The good news is,” Juana continued, “they listened to our suggestion and are bringing a lot of either dual-military couples or where the civilian spouse has a useful specialty. I’m getting enough teachers to fully staff the elementary school and more medical folk. If even a few of them get useful classes, we’ll be in good stead. Plus…” her voice dropped. “I think a lot of our newcomers just do not understand it’s permanent, once you integrate. We can’t be splitting up families. Not anymore.”
I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Teething problems. In a few years this place will be the biggest city in the Solar System. Nobody will think twice about going back to Earth.” Which was a lie, because I still thought about it. Not every day, but more than I’d like. "What are you hoping to get done back on Earth?" I asked Grandpa, returning to our previous subject.
"Well, there's the refit to oversee, and I'm hoping to help the new Joint Task Force figure out better selection criteria for their recruits. I think we can get just a little better at who we bring up here. Of course, it's difficult to do when I've got to be making that round trip every couple of weeks."
I shared his frustration there. "It'd be nice if we could get enough spare cash to afford some of those ethereum extenders."
Like me and everyone who'd been integrated with a reality engine, Grandpa's body had been rebuilt—moreso in his case than in mine, since he'd lost 40 years and three tumors in the deal. That meant he needed ethereum just to keep going. While here at the reality engine, we didn't even have to think about such things. Kronos took care of it for us, passing ethereum through our bodies without us even noticing. We didn’t even use up the ethereum. It was more like something we breathed in and then back out.
Going back to Earth, a planet with no ethereum, was another matter. Grandpa could survive on the reserves inside his own body for a week, maybe ten days. After that, he had to come back. We were looking into the possibility of picking up ethereum extenders that would allow him to "pack his own lunch," as it were, and stay for longer.
The Galactics had lied to us back during phase three when some of us got to go to Earth for a couple of days. They claimed they were equipping us with ethereum extenders then. Turned out it was just a lie to make us think they were doing us an even bigger favor. But the technology did exist, just not here. It was incredibly expensive and not easy to get our hands on.
For now, Grandpa would be making the trip back and forth between Earth and the Reality Engine on a regular basis.
"Sounds like you're really gonna be racking up the frequent flyer miles," I commented.
"I don't mind too much," he said. "Wouldn't want you kids to get lonely by yourselves. But I figure with me gone and Sage doing overnight trips with her school coming up here, you two can have a little time to yourselves. Maybe work on getting me a great-grandkid or two, hmm?" He grinned at me.
I steadfastly refused to look away, even though I could feel myself turning beet red. "I didn't know Sage was doing overnight field trips," I said, acting like hadn’t heard the rest of his statement.
"According to the syllabus she brought home from school last week, those are on the agenda. Sounds like they've got some pretty interesting things planned. Oh, and she's got a parent-teacher conference coming up. I won't be available, so you'll have to do it."
"Just send me the info," I said, trying not to laugh at just how normal that felt. Maybe Juana was right and school was a good idea for Sage.
"I sent the packet to Juana already," Grandpa said. "She'll make sure you're there. All right, you two. It's getting late, and you had a long day today. Let's finish up here.”