Astra Pt. 03

He heard a voice, "We surrender."

He called back, "Who are you and why did you attack me and my crew."

The guy responded, "Orders."

He asked, "From whom?"

He laughed, "The President."

Jack started shooting again and blew out another engine, "Want to try again?"

Another guy growled, "You know who."

He smiled, "Admiral! Is that you?"

He growled, "You've won nothing here. You kill me and you despoiled your reputation. I live and my men will free me."

He laughed, "The dead ones in the rocks? Merlin to Excalibur." He heard a sigh, "Jack you had us worried."

He nodded, "Fly under that battleship inverted and use the tractor beam and pull them back up the corridor. I know the Admiral is an idiot. Was the captain stupid enough to follow him?"

He heard a man sigh, "Apparently I am. He said with you dead he could make the military great again and get rid of this weak president who follows aliens."

He nodded, "You're Xenophobic correct?"

The man sighed, "Never met an alien I did not want to kill. Then again I never met one until you."

He laughed into the comms, "I am human I just have some alien DNA. As far as making the military great again, we are working on that. We are going to do that. Not load the Admirals pockets with money. How long until you can get life support operational?"

The guy hissed, out, "You killed everyone in engineering. Probably a week without help."

Jack nodded, "You got a week head start we will pull you clear of the asteroids. Then I will destroy all of your guns. At which point we are going to go back to engine testing."

The guy yelled, "We will be dead before then." Jack sighed, "You were dead as soon as you followed the Admiral. Get your repair crews working. You can reroute power by pulling the power core from central guns and rail guns. They consume a lot of power. Those cores will keep you alive while you attempt to effect repairs.

I know those ships better than you do apparently. Did he forget to tell you I was an engineer on military vessels? I know you got a crew in EVA suits already trying to get to engineering and I know you did not have all of your engineers in engineering. You got enough time to get your life support on, but you won't outrun us.

Astra, please be sure to put six locator beacons around the ship once it is clear of the asteroids." She laughed, "I already placed 12." Jack went up and shot out the barrels on the rail guns, all of the cannons, the missile launcher below the ship, and then went to find the hangar bay doors. "I am blowing off your Hager bay doors in thirty seconds. Then all of the craft in the bay.

No reason for you to get any idea that an escape craft is going to work."

He gave it a minute before punching the doors in. Then he shot up all the remaining craft in the bay. "Now to the asshole captain who followed the shit of an Admiral, "You have a pleasant week."

He went back to the ship and docked. He looked at the ravager, "Ravager, what a black body you have."

Ash looked at him, "I kind of crashed ours and got us this one." He nodded, "Get working everyone. Astria, we need to find those asteroids all over again."

---

They spent the next 14 days repairing Merlin, the Mining rig and setting the materials together to complete the reinforcements. Every few days the ravager went over to check on the status of the battleship. They had lights but still lacked engines after 2 weeks. Jack and his crew got the engines out and mounted into the Excalibur.

Mounted the second set for a Ravager into the captured ship. Mounted the support bracing. Then he replaced the inertial dampener in that craft. Jack pulled Merlins 2 weapons and scanned the one in and fabricated an exact replacement and put it back into Merlin. He looked at Astra, "Just putting it back the way it was."

She nodded, "I know."

He went through the shields on the ships and asked Astra, "Are the shields, regular shields, more powerful than those in this era. If so, by what factor?" She looked at him, "They are by a factor of 16."

He nodded, "Then I can increase their effectiveness. By downgrading the design to 25%. What of the weapons. They are from your era. I never saw anything like some of them."

She nodded, "Significantly more powerful. He looked at her, "Compared to the shields." She sighed, "4 times more powerful than the shields."

He nodded, "I need to just cut them in 10-15% effectiveness." He went and tested the ravager with the reinforced hull new power core, heat syncs, and power relays. It held together. He then used it to test the FLT drive and punched it out the gate. It functioned as expected.

He went back and designed the baffles for the air engines and then went through and modified the schematics he would file to include the greatly reduced air engines to keep them in check without the baffles. They had what they needed.

He worked the new shields on the ship and checked out the Excalibur for both the system and FTL drives. They headed back to the corridor and could make out the rear of the battleships 2 remaining engines moving at half speed. They got past the debris, "Astra, what happens if we use the FTL drive here?"

She looked at him, "There is no gravity well but this passage would become...I see what you are saying. Ten seconds only."

He nodded, "Pitch up angle 20 degrees. Forward at full." Ten seconds in. "Level us off, "Then punch the FLT for 10 seconds."

Ash smiled, "Engaging FLT."

They shot past the carrier and it got pulled end over end from the drive's inverted wake. Then it was slammed by several asteroids before going dark again. They dropped out, "15 days out here 4 to get back with Terra moving toward us."

They spent 2 days fucking around and celebrating. Jack was dressed in his office and brought up his messages and sent out all the responses he had queued and then pulled in the new messages. He had one from the president and he transmitted.

The operator smiled, "Good! You are alive. The president will be with you in a moment." Not 2 minutes later and the President smiled, "You missed a failed military coup from your friend the Admiral."

Jack shook his head, "He destroyed my Ravager, my people commandeered one of his black-op ravagers. We retrofitted it so we could complete our testing. Once we put on our demonstrations, we will return it to its normal configuration and work to return it to your military. It is a crap design for what I need it to do; It will do us no good going forward. When I arrive, I would like to get with your air-frame designers. I will file a new scout ship design. I am going to build it. They will be suitably upset."

The president laughed, "What happened?"

Jack chuckled, "Stress fractures, broken supports and plating buckling. It formed hull breaches. It could not take the stress. Who builds your inertial dampeners for your fleet?"

The President looked it up, "Brima Electronics why?"

Jack pulled up the information, "I do not plan to sell the new ones to them. They are six months out from a major scandal that will bring down most of their board. They will get bought by Driskal Electronics. I will sell the patents to them. Your sensors?"

He looked it up, "Pratson Scanners."

He nodded, "We will work with them on sensor changes. Weapons I am still going over but I spent enough time on the outer rim being shot at by black-ops and having to restart some testing because of them. If I were in one of your ships, I would be 10 days out."

The president laughed, "So you will be here in 5?"

Jack shook his head, "In 2 days."

The president sat back, "That is a major jump forward."

He nodded, "Yes, can you secure this call?"

He went secure, "Just myself and my wives."

Jack laughed, "I know how that goes. I wanted to tell you we did some investigating. When we question Astra about who was leading the Tau Citi mission, she had a hole in her memory. We knew with all the other data like that, we had to investigate. We had her disassembled the backup server to the Core and found the direction given to us and the last ship that went through."

He nodded, "What did you find out?"

He looked at him, "That AI was ordered to self-destruct once it reached Tau Ceti. Assassinate me and self-destruct. Once the file was opened. We removed it from the backup which we had offline and then off of the primary system before reattaching the backup. While running a tracer program and finding the process which would restore the file. In short, that direction no longer exists. There was no failed trip by terraforms to Tau Ceti.

That was a lie told to us. It was more than a message. It was a copy of the AI who ordered the ship launch. The Excalibur was launched based on a contingency order. They launched after humanity was wiped out and they were only attacked by the Drakor. We know how to keep them from doing that. The AI had no chance of talking with them being mechanical.

The next time we leave we will be gone for at least 5 years as we head to Tau Ceti on a scouting and reconnaissance mission. It will take just under 2.5 years to get to Tau Ceti." The president looked at Jack, "They say 12 years to get there."

Jack nodded, "With the FLT drives you are using. Not the new ones. When we get back, we will blow the skirt up again. I have a single-seater rocket with one of the new drives and a small inertial dampener to augment the flight suit. A two-seater called Red Mouser belonging to Carol with an inertial dampener it did not have before, Merlin, and the Black op Ravager with an upgrade inertial dampener.

Followed by the Excalibur flying through at 5x your normal speed. We increase sensors ranges on the one and two-seater. Range and fidelity for the rest. We had to build new inertial dampeners for the Excalibur even. We are running at what would normally be 465% on the Excalibur so 930% more powerful than your battleships on down. New ID devices are required; especially for FTL.

Every ship that is refitted will have to have a structural frame reinforcement. We had to reinforce the frame on everything except Merlin and the Excalibur. I have modeling and simulation data, the video data for the Ravager, as well as the blueprints, and what they need to do to apply the fixes to the existing fleet.

I would like to get a meeting together with the airframe manufacturers, the engine and power core builders, the shield manufacture—the one I want. Also, the electronics experts to talk recalibrations, sensors, and shields. Who do you have doing the last one these days?"

The president looked, "We have three depending on the ship model. Not my idea. They all build the same shield just at different sizes. I will send you the list and you send me a message with who you want at this meeting. Sounds like you got just about everything except weapons."

Jack smiled, "We have atmospheric engine testing to do when we get back. We had to shrink them down as we did not want to burn up your atmosphere.

Running the engines at 5x your standard, we knew anything at 3x or above would do that. GS did that in my timeline; only once! They are about 2.5x current speed to be on the safe side. I nearly forgot, new retro thrusters to test particularly in the atmosphere at those speeds with gravity. Those fall under engines. I will have those weapons before I depart.

I just have to tone back what is on the Excalibur. One other thing. Route 3 through the belt is heavily damaged and they might find a ship in the middle of it with the Admiral on board. Possibly his crew and bodies. If it survived our FLT pass over them."

The president chuckled, "Just the one ship?"

He nodded, "It was just a black-op battleship seven other Ravagers destroyed in the battle before that. We lost ours but recovered one so a net gain of zero. I do not plan to keep it, but I will restore it back to the factory configuration before handing it back to the military. It has an FTL drive in it at the moment. I want to get my new scout frame built so we can arm and armor it.

I also want to build a space-based drydock. I have design plans already."

The president laughed, "You stuck an FTL drive in a scout? Can I ask why?"

Jack nodded, "We lose a ship, it falls back. We can drop out of FTL launch a scout back with a repair crew.

They can have an assessment or fix something minor while we don't have to leave the rest undefended. We could look at dropping a communication network with sensor data on our way back so you can, from the corridor, monitor what is going on. You will have to establish long-range communication as it is.

Major technical hurdles there to overcome. Do you plan to defend the colonies outside the system? It would be nice for those scouts to keep up with the cruisers and battleships. We cut it down to 8 seats to fit in the FTL drive. Our new scout won't have that problem. It will seat 14."

He laughed, "We have not discussed how to defend colonies in outer systems yet. So far, we have not done that. Anything else you need?"

He nodded, "I want to pull a couple of your fighter pilots. Crazy Eights and Wildcard. I gave Wildcard a flying lesson with Merlin. It took him 2 minutes to hit me once and I stayed in your speed range. Crazy Eights recorded it. I told them I used to train fighter pilots.

Which is true. Technically I just schooled them. I want them to check out the one man and two-man units and see what they think about flying that fast with fighters with an inertial dampener. You increase these other ships; your fighters are going to have to adjust.

Another airframe design will be required. Your airframe builders are going to hear from me about what they need to do. Especially about that Ravager!"

He laughed, "I will see if I can find those 2 for you. We look forward to your arrival."

He ended the call. Jack hit the button for Terra Global News and the Editor popped us and smiled, "There you are."

He nodded, "I am 2 days out."

He looked at Jack, "You're just now calling me?"

Jack laughed, "For one of your ships I am 10 days out."

He dropped his sandwich, "This new drive. We are going to see it in 2 days?"

Jack pulled up the information on planet rotation and Starbases. "Based on my calculations, 44 hours and 53 minutes from now. Parked between Terra-5 and Terra-6 and have a couple of cameras, at least. With one doing a wide-angle. I will we coming in hot with 5 ships traveling that fast including a heavily reinforced Ravager. You blink and you will miss them."

He smiled, "A lot of new technology?"

Jack nodded, "As soon as the patents are in place we will talk about the exclusive. I want to give these tech firms a few calls and see who I can get preliminary deals with."

He smiled, "I will see what I can whip up for cameras. Thanks for the call."

He let it end and hit the one for Treven Engines and a new lady answered the phone. She smiled "Hello, wait...your him. I will let him know you are on the line."

The image came up the 2 men and Francine. Jack looked at her, "Make any improvements yet on those power cores?"

She laughed, "Not yet. We have been going through and cleaning house with our suppliers to gear up for the new engines when they arrive. That was a good suggestion by the way."

He smiled, "Less than 2 days now. I am 9 days out from your engine perspective."

James Senior looked at Jack, "You kicked it up that much?"

Jack smiled, "Totally new design, will have you scratching your heads for a few weeks. In 4-days, we want to do a meeting. The President will be setting it up. Get with your financial backers and let them know the next big engine breakthrough will hit the vid screens in less than 45 hours.

We had to build new inertial dampeners, heat sinks, power relays, retros, and a power core multiplexer. That lets you tie multiple cores together for running large engine arrays. New shields, new air-breathing engines and new FTL drives that will get us to Tau Ceti in under 3 years.

The air-breathers are built into the main engine designs. I had to scale them back to save you from frying the atmosphere. They were 5x what you had. 3 times is pushing that barrier for frying the atmosphere. My history. These engines will be 2.5x faster than your existing air-breathing engines. I have another 2,083 patents and I am still working on the weapon systems."

Francine asked, "Can I ask you how you do it?"

He smiled, "Why don't you come and visit my lab. You will know when we arrive. It will be all over the news. The one group I want to tear into is the airframe manufactures. I had to seriously reinforce the airframes with a new titanium alloy. I want to build a space-based dry-dock. Two of them at a minimum. Maybe 3 if I can reinforce one to be able to take it on an FTL drive journey. I will want to put one in Tau Ceti, One in earth orbit, and one near Luna-1. Technically, I would like 6 in earth orbit."

Francine looked at Jack, "It's a date. I will bring this guy along so he does not get jealous."

Jack laughed at that, "Francine with 7 ladies sharing my bed I think you would be surprised who gets jealous."

The men laughed at her and she smiled. James senior looked at Jack again, "How much are you looking to have us manufacture?"

He smiled, "Travus System engines 5 series with half power air-breathing engines. Again, for safety. Travus FTL Engines 5 series. Then a whole new line of retro-thrusters to turn at those speeds coming your way at 3x power. A power multiplexer I will incorporate an amendment into the existing power core designs contract for that piece. The alternative was to build much larger power cores.

What I will be putting to another company is the Travus inertial dampeners 6 series. The electronics manufacturer will use Travus Sensor arrays 4-Series and 6-series depending on the ship or station. I will have to talk about station upgrades for the future. Going to the shield manufacture is the Travus Shields 4-Series and Travus tractor beams 4-series.

I will set up non-exclusive licensing on the power relays and heat sinks. Those will be needed by the electronics, engines & power cores, shield manufacturers and the various assigned weapon manufacturers. Each one is going to have its own requirements potentially. Depending on the ship or station."

The owner just chuckled, "When will we see the designs?"

Jack looked over at Grace, "How long did your friend at the patent office say it would take to get through all of those?"

She smiled and sighed, "3 days, starting with all the individual components, then the big items. I asked her kindly to put the patents for the engines out in the system first. She is sorting through it.

She said about 12 hours of those pieces. She thanks you for listing which patents are in which blueprint as some overlap."

He nodded, "No sense in reinventing when I had a good item already."

He looked at the screen. "The Engine patents will be in place in the next 12 hours. It will take 3 days to get them all entered."

Grace yelled over, "They have to use the entire staff to get those done in 3 days as well."

They laughed at Jack. He sighed, "Regardless, we will be seeing you soon so get your bids together. I want them paired with the cores."

They smiled, "Thanks for giving us a heads up. We will contact our bankers." He ended that call.

He connected to Trikora Manufacturing CEO Jen Bo's office. He got his secretary and he spoke to her in Mandarin, "Greeting to you. I am Jack Travus and I was hoping Jen Bo had a few minutes to talk."

This was a new secretary, "He is meeting with his board of directors today."

He smiled, "Would you kindly let them know who is calling. I have an open contract with him to discuss."

She put Jack on hold and that lasted less than 30 seconds. Jack bowed to them. Jen Bo did not look happy, "Where have you been and when will you get here with that element we need?"