[Captain Nathaniel Brand]
The Governor’s almost immediate response to my message was appreciated, but it still ended up cutting into my resting period. I wasn’t getting any younger without external influences and the recent few 30 hour working periods were completely packed with projects that needed to get done.
There was an argument to be made about getting some actual implants to lighten the burden, but the idea of having crap jabbed into my head and left there to steep just gave me the creeps. Pioneer Reynolds would probably tell me I’m just being old and grumpy, might even be true, but I’m not taking advice from a guy that couldn’t run away from his own skin fast enough.
…
Right, Avalon’s probably gone by now. I left the whole operation in his hands so he must’ve left as soon as he was done fixing up that ship, not even bothering to waste both our time and wake me up. I already missed him, he’d have a coffee ready as soon as I woke up, no need to even open my eyes. I could still contact him, of course, but his mind was now in the Pioneer ship, not that I understood how that really worked.
“Coffee”
There’s the whirring I wake up happy to.
Takes a few minutes for the caffeine to remind me that I have work to do. I start cycling through a terminal, checking reports and general progress on the colony. Residential area has met current demand, engineers are reinventing the supply warp network with the new FTL tech, we’ve started setting up on the gas giant. Seems like nothing needs my attention for the next five minutes, rare but welcomed.
Gave me time to think about how busy I’m about to get, even compared to this. I’m not a war wager unlike some of the oldies back home, but I can win my fair share of fights. That is, in simulations where everyone has a rulebook. Do these aliens even use rules of war? What if they would slaughter civilians just for the message, would I be able to perform with such heavy weight on each decision? Stoop down to their level? Or what if I’m the savage and peace becomes a pipe dream?
In the short time I’ve interacted with the real Avalon, he’s been a blessing for dilemmas like these, having thoughts way faster than any souped up human could handle. He was also freakishly human in behavior, showing boredom towards monotonous tasks and interest in new developments.
It makes me apprehensive when deciding how much work to dump on him. If he’s interest based, what if he loses interest in us and finds something better in the great beyond? He’s never questioned anything unless I explicitly asked him to, would he even let me know if he was unhappy without my prompting? He’s told me that I’m pretty much the only human interaction he’s ever had, he may as well be a secluded child in mentality. Could I teach him how to be social? …Do I really have the time to babysit a living computer?
Alright, that’s enough worrying about the future since I’m clearly not getting any answers at the moment. There’s nothing stopping me from just asking him about it when he gets back, though I won’t disturb him with it right now. The mission itself shouldn’t be too complicated for him, just get in, locate and extract Dominique, get out. I considered the chance that Dominique might be initially against being rescued by a sentient, but it’s not like they could hurt each other anyway. It’ll just take time.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
[Pioneer Dominique Reynolds]
“So your people sold the Moqango genome? Like it was an intellectual property?”
“Well, more like rented it out, and only the part that everyone wanted, but yeah, we sold off how to make it. That is, under the terms that it wouldn’t be shared to those that haven’t bought it, enforced by both parties of the deal. If someone was caught making it illegally, we even had the galactic ceasefire association to help enforce our law. Guess they eventually found more profit in selling the source…”
The communication center had only a couple armed guards, the rest being noncombatants. Dokchara was busy tying up and gagging the ones that didn’t fight back, likely due to lack of weaponry, while I started shutting and locking all of the doors in the building, buying us at least hours of time before anyone would reach here. The recent revelation of differences in how war is perceived had put us both in a talkative mood, though it couldn’t be any sensitive topics considering we weren’t alone in the room.
“So how do your people extend their lifespans? Aside from going full tin-can like you, that is.”
“...Well, we have our own genome editing, stuff like instructions for regenerating nerves and lost limbs, but they’re a lot less popular than going full chrome. Keep in mind it’s either one or the other for the same reason your people don’t do implants, and having a computer in your head pretty much became a staple of our society. You missed out big if you went the organic route.”
“And everyone had access to these cybernetics? Is the average person so well off in your home system? Or am I misjudging how expensive these things are perceived.”
“...In my, uh, light studying of how things work in this galaxy, I noticed that gas giants aren’t really touched, but back at home we use them for nuclear transmutation. It’s pretty much semi-post scarcity back there.”
I didn’t think that was all too crazy, maybe because I didn’t fully understand the whole process of how those things worked, but I didn’t expect not only Dokchara but also our Grahtonian captives to go slack jawed and wide-eyed at that.
“You use… gas giants… for transmutation? Instead of using the big balls of fuel for power? Like, pulling atoms apart and smashing them back together to make other elements? And where the hell would you even get the power for that?”
“Four gas giants, my friend. Also, we have a sun too, ya know?”
“Why the hell did you even bother leaving then?”
“Because no source of power is infinite, Dok. We initially calculated that our sun would last for about 5 billion years, but that wasn’t taking into account that we would eventually be sucking the juice directly out of it to power all the things we do.”
I’d just about finished up locking down the outpost and was now getting the message ready to send. I didn’t know the exact coordinates of the colony ship and this outpost sure as hell didn’t have it recorded, so I’d have to make do with relaying it off of the Meldren. Just gotta scan the airspace and make sure I’m not shooting it through a satellite…
“Holy shit, Dok… Dozens of warships above us!”
“What?! What do you mean?! Are you fucking with me again?!”
And before I could send a retort at Dokchara off for thinking I would make a joke in this situation, I got a contact directly to my head from a ship. My ship.