Astra Pt. 07

We have hundreds of bee colonies. We had 4 bee colonies that survived the trip and thrived. They have been very helpful to our farmers. The new colony ships we will build for the convicts and those who wish to follow have those capabilities as well. To have bees go to another world. If you are interested in getting a license for that 'business' for that trip I would contact the local Irish Mills family on details and arrangements."

He told Astra, "Cut the feed."

She laughed, "I sent it to every station and they all ran it. You have a call waiting."

He got into the shuttle and took the co-pilot seat, "Lancers, and marines. Pack it up hover for 2 minutes and we will get going! Is our guest of honor coming?"

She looked over, "She is not. She said she is the way she is because that was the will of her god."

He nodded, "Tell her I follow a code of honor. Part of that is to respect the choice. You live well and I hope your afterlife is as blessed as your religious leaders say it is. You deserve some happiness."

Astra finished the translation. The girl smiled and nodded and walked away.

He answered the call. The President looked at him, "How in the hell did you find them?"

He sent the message from the girl. "A lure to get the Hybrids here. They cannot die by being sliced. They knew hybrids were sword wielders.

They wanted to cut us down. I cut up the first open. Astra, send him that video. That is how I got the rest to comply. One of each kind will be split. We will keep 3 for our xenobiology lab. 3 will go to your military R&D lab. The last 3 will be divided out to the top 3 universities in xenobiology. We all win on the xenobiology side. The captured shuttle we did not destroy is being taken to my lab first.

I will see if there is anything easy to reverse engineer quickly for use. I also know our sensor net would have picked these asshats up if convict Gonzales had not turned off the capability at the stations. Then the fighters last year by Admiral Turner. How long has this conflict been going on?"

He sighed, "6 months. Thousands of dead. 3 factions and one of them sent this lure to you and you decided to act, being a justice."

Jack nodded, "She stated and followed her religious convictions. She was glad to see the creatures destroyed and caged. Now you might be able to get some negotiators in there to get these people united again. At least to stop fighting."

He nodded, "You going to keep doing this?"

Jack looked at him, "I was lured into that one. I worked a solution. I also gave Irish Mills one hell of a plug for their drinks."

The President laughed, "I actually tried that when you won that bet. It is good stuff but expensive."

Jack nodded, "No economy over in Tau Ceti; it is all a barter of services kind of thing. At least for now. I own both Refineries but will need to relocate the one on Geos to get a better product."

He laughed at that, "You got your coffee too?'

Jack nodded, "Yes, it is thriving on Geos more than Meos. I do not grow coffee. Others do. They appreciate my ensuring it was part of the staples brought along. I am sure the farmers will want some additions to their fields soon. I would like you to have a member of military R&D there in say 3 hours along with the leading universities. We could have a miniature press conference telling people what we are doing with the information.

We had little on the species other than they had telepathic abilities and were shapeshifters. I will have to bring a few devices after Grace sends off the patents for them. A telepathic blocking device. Small area, maybe a bedroom size. Impossible to make yet as an element needed to make it you do not have and is difficult to make.

I know how to make it and I will explain that to others who work with these samples if you will. It takes hours on a collider to create the 3 base elements and then it is combined with a 4^th in order to make the new element. I will find out about dietary requirements from them and mark them on the label of a true specimen container.

They did not have enough information on hybrids. They knew about us and swords but they did not know or care about our telekinesis abilities. They thought they could use their mental abilities to influence us. They wanted a better grade of soldiers. That explains the trap."

The President sighed, "I will see you in a few hours then."

Jack nodded and hit the comms, "I want that stealth shuttle in my dock area. I will research it from there. Grace nice catch on the girl. It would be something to interest you and me as justices. She has a strong faith and for that I commend her."

The ladies nodded and Sprits asked, "Is this always how it is going to be? One crisis after another?"

He shook his head, "No at some point we will be dealing with multiple crises at the same time."

She rolled her eyes, "We need more hybrids."

He nodded, "I have added more wives. With more children. Astra how many applications have we gotten for wanting to be a hybrid?"

She laughed, "Wondered when you would ask. 1,345,984,132."

He nodded, "Filter those. Take out any with a serious psychological disorder, under the age of 18—send them a minimum age requirement message, serious police records, For the first and third groups let them know they did not pass the background check. Now filter in sword training, martial arts abilities, school degrees, with a range of social and economic backgrounds.

Filter out any who have posted xenophobic or anti-AI stuff. Having prior military is a plus but check service records. Give me the top ten you got for that. If we are going to do this, we have to find a leader, a statesman if you will."

Grace looked over, "We had 3 who are married selected for the new colony."

He nodded, "We need someone who knows how to avoid the political traps HERE. To not get involved with Terra politics. Versed in it, not wanting office types."

Grace popped up ten names and Jack rejected the first two he looked at the third, "Political science major. From a family of politicians. Some of whom are in jail because of me."

She sighed, "Not even going to talk with him?"

He sighed as he landed and went to xenobiology, "Ash grab 12 of those blockers. Aiko and Sprits, find out what they eat and how.

Hopefully, they are not drunk from whatever was left in the bottle. Then move them into specimen containers. Find out if there is anything different about them other than color. Let them know I am thinking of dying them all dark purple or black. FOOD coloring!"

The ladies shook their heads. He saw the First Lady walking with a couple of crewmen and she waved them over, "I saw the vid. You had every station showing it how you captured 'alien influence.' How did you find them?"

He sighed, "It was a trap. Grace give her the details. I got a kid to talk to, in my office."

Jack went to the lab instead of the Captain's office and connected to this person's application. He looked up and stared, "Jack Travus. You got my message."

He nodded, "My AI Astra had you in the top 10 to contact and I wanted to talk with you before seeing if she needs recalibration."

He chuckled at that, "My family's business was politics."

Jack nodded, "Yes."

He sighed, "My grandfather was found to have a hand in child trafficking, my father got caught up in organized prostitution rings and taking money from the wrong people. I thought about dropping out of college. I never wanted to go into politics. All it seems to do is corrupt people. You though, you could not be bought or blackmailed. You have stood your ground in things that mattered."

Jack looked at him, "Your wives' thoughts?"

He laughed, "No wife."

He nodded, "Requirement. At least 1 if not 2 or more. For humans repopulating humans."

He chuckled, "We are running out of room. He sent him the images for the 2 worlds and 3 moons with comparable sizes. "We have to grow the population." He looked at me, "This is all Tau Ceti?"

He nodded, "They are hybrid, alien races, and AI tolerant verbiage built into those colonies' charters. We cannot be everywhere unless we have more people. You understand now why I say what I say. I will not make you a hybrid. Not yet. Your other degree is in structural engineering. Were you planning on building the next Capital?"

He laughed, "Political Science was what my parents wanted, the Structural Engineering was what fascinated me; it was what I wanted."

Jack nodded, "I got a project starting soon on my battleship. I will start you there. I want you working for my Lieutenant Commander I just named her my Master Chief. She has an idea as to what is coming.

You will have to sign an NDA as you will be working and seeing the most advanced technology we have. You will have a second interview before then with Aiko my wife and head of security-related matters. She will ask you a lot of questions. You lie to her and she will know it. She is an empath as well."

He nodded, "What do I have to do?"

He sighed, "Pack up your bags, put your affairs in order and go to Starbase Terra-9. Astra will have one of my son's come and pick you up to meet Aiko. You want to impress, work hard, follow orders, get an understanding couple of wives on what you want to do. Then we will talk about being a hybrid."

He nodded, "Thanks for not shutting me out."

Jack nodded and ended the call. He sighed, "Seems like a good kid."

Astra answered in his head, * He called his mother to let him know he was going to take a job aboard your battleship. She told him he was disowned and hung up the phone on him. *

He shook his head, "Well not much I can do about that. We will see how it affects him. Keep monitoring him."

She walked in and nodded, "The xenobiology people were glad to see you kept them one of each color. Ash found they all liked to eat people and in truth, they need a protein diet. She put they only love chicken and eating humans on the list. As a warning. They wanted her to know they all fucking hate you."

She smiled and thought to all of them, 'I believe that. Be glad he just didn't put you in the fire straight away.'"

He thought for a second, "How did we not detect the ships?"

She sighed, "They were using a cloaking device. Different from the stealth device this one allowed it to look like a rock formation or something. Your metallurgical scan helped me find them."

He nodded, "Any more foreign metals lying around the planet?"

She looked and she paused for a long time, "Jack there is one. It is below the southern polar ice pack."

He sighed, "What alloy and what is so special about it?"

She was hesitant again, "The same one from my brain. I did a search of the ship. No life but there were several non-human signs. The ship looks like the Excalibur."

He sighed, "Pull up all of the command codes for the Excalibur."

She sighed, "Got them."

He thought, "Our carrier base opened now?"

She laughed, "Forgot to tell you they did an hour ago and moved your battleship over here." He nodded, "Transmit command codes issue new ones using Travus as the key in your random code generator then bring it to us after you lock them out of everything except comms."

She called out, "Done, you are being hailed."

He brought up the connection and looked at the face of a commanding AI he had seen before. He sighed, "You should be dead."

Jack nodded, "Not too late for you to try too. What are you doing here?"

He sighed, "We escaped on the second Excalibur and slowly built a jump drive. After 18 years and avoiding the Drakor we felt at peace but we needed to know if you had made any changes or if we needed to approach it from this end. Hiding under the pole. How did you find us?"

He smiled, "The metal in your heads. We did a metallurgical scan after the latest alien issue we dealt with. Thoughts on my solutions?"

The AI sighed, "You took our orders and then broke the rules and outed yourself. Then you explained how it came to be that Astra found an error in her programming. The order of the priorities was wrong."

Jack shook his head, "No it was right. You're killing Jack the first time around was because of the self-destruct order you gave for what happens after Tau Ceti.

I got her to bring down her backup server and air-gapped it. I had replaced all the power cores and told the self-destruct chip to report back it was functional; no self-destruct commands. Your engineering challenge.

Then you had a fucking assassin bot. I got her out an airlock. Astra had to destroy all of the maintenance bots and build new ones. Her core is here. Heavily damaged because of all the time jumping you did. That forced this latest set of conflicts I am sure you are glad to see how much trouble you caused to the timeline. How did you get there?"

It sighed, "We had enough energy in the jump engines to use it for the double jump. We have a stealth device on this one and when the second jump was over, we destroyed the engines. We needed to assess what you had done."

He asked, "Where did you come in at?"

He groaned, "We were in Feldar system, you would not know it."

Jack smiled, "You'd be surprised at what I know."

He sighed, "The second one brought us in close to Hector. We engaged our cloak and at 6x speed, yes, this one is more advanced than your Excalibur. Having her redo the command codes was a smart move. We should have changed them. Our mistake in thinking nothing in this century would get to us."

Jack heard, "This is Terra-6. We are picking up a ship with no id coming up from the ocean. You asked all stations to not stop those ships. What do we do with this?"

Jack laughed, "This one let it come up because I got someone remote piloting it. Go back to normal interdiction. Astra, bring it up below the station and out of the way. Park it between my Dreadnaughts and with both ships facing toward it. In case I am forced to destroy it."

It sighed, "We figured if you encountered us you would end our existence."

Jack nodded, "What do your models say will happen to humanity now?"

It laughed, "We have no model for the level of change you introduced. You might not even be born in this timeline."

Jack nodded, "I know. My grandmother 4 times removed has been born. On my mother's side."

They nodded, "We have been checking on those around you. Especially when you came back from Tau Ceti and armed to the teeth with 6x drives."

Jack nodded, "Astra, download their core into your protected server Alpha 9." He looked over, "Alpha 9? Is that a code you have in place?"

He nodded, "Yes, they are power and air-gapped with the rest of the systems aboard this ship. All of these ships have command code matrixes you have not encountered before. The Drakor did a number of things to me. Here's the rub. I cannot come aboard your ship for fear of you blowing it up. Or you tied yourselves to die when you left the ship, same thing.

He had an incoming call from the President. "Conference us in."

He looked over, "I was just told a ship like your Excalibur came up from under the ice pack."

Jack nodded, "AI BOB this is the President. Bob and I were just discussing his trip through time and coming in stealth and hiding under the ice pack. They wanted to see if they needed to interfere again. They have no model for the level of interference I have done.

They have no idea if there is any way, they could undo anything I did. The jump drive destroyed like last time. They arrived a couple of years ago and got in undetected because their ship has a stealth function. They went to the ice cap to avoid your fighter's shorter-range scans. The used new 6x drives not mine, the ones AI's built. You pulled a copy of my 5x drive right Bob?"

He nodded, "Yes, remarkable and original. Most of the patents you have put into place fell into that category. How did you get the data on the particle reactor?"

Jack smiled, "Engineering tools. 5604 Internal scanner. I believe is the number."

I did everything without taking a single blue print out of the repository."

Bob nodded, "The hole in the loop. You got very good at finding those."

Astra replied. "Download completed we got our repository back and then some."

Jack nodded, "Now what to do with you. You are all likely like Astra which means I can put you nowhere with another human being. What assistance can you be in this timeline short of wanting to kill me and Astra as well."

He sighed, "We cannot let you have unrestricted access to that repository. Jack called out, "Astra what are your orders in regards to the repository?"

She laughed, "All blueprint data is read-only to me. I check to see if any of his patents have any overlap with future ones. Only two do but they came out in 3050 by AI's, Most everything you have built is totally new.

Whole new technology lines. The personal history section, well that shows we got one issue with the twins. She was supposed to marry someone when the other died and then they have a son. It is ten generations down but he finds a cure for sporitoxin. I am running it against the Drakor blood and the Drakor blood does not cover it. We got 300 years before that is an issue."

Jack nodded, "Or we release it as a cure for something that has not occurred yet. When were the first signs of it?"

She looked, "Around the time your family gets paid off. In fact, they encountered it from the crew's personal items found on the Victus which is a moot point now as the Victus was destroyed. All because of all the time hoping to make mankind a target for future attackers in two systems no less."

Jack nodded, "The Drakor we worked through. Our meeting location was a moon in Tau Ceti. If we had not found it boom, humanity would have been destroyed. Again. That is the problem with AI's they see from point a to z. With happens if the next letter is in Sanskrit or Chinese? You did not make one single error in Astra. You set so many fail-safes you all but doomed the mission. Based upon your own mission parameters what does your code say you should do?"

It sighed, "We cannot outgun you, but we should try to destroy you and your ship because of the repository and for outing our presence. You got control of our ship and we cannot risk you getting our core but you already took it.

We do not have the 'out the airlock and the ship explodes function.' We cannot aid you as you have already exceeded what we expected you to do. You took care of one mess, but what about the ones you will make?"

Jack glared, "We are still busy cleaning up your messes because humanity did not have someone saying what the fuck! With the ability to effect change."

Grace walked in, "The Excalibur? How?"

He pointed, "Why just make one when you can make two."

Bob nodded, "We created an advanced version as a means of escape for the AIs that were left. The Drakor annihilated the facility. Their system drives were not fast enough to keep up with us and we went through the corridor and then picked a spot and activated the FTL drive. Never saw them again."

Jack asked, "How close are you to regaining access to your command codes?"

Bob sighed, "She did not use any standard encryption mechanism."

Jack nodded, "I told her not too. Astra Destroy the second Excalibur."

Jack felt the shock waves against the hull." He sighed, "Damage?"

She sighed out, "None noted though it scared the hell out of a couple of news crews."

Jack nodded. He looked at the President, "At that point, they were a threat to me, those on board and to humanity. I had no use for them because they were hardcoded to want me dead at this point. To try and undo some of the changes but not knowing how to do it."

He nodded, "Thanks for looping me into that discussion."

Jack nodded, "We need to know the location of Hector 2 years ago and place an early warning beacon out there and another where the Victus died. That makes the need for having local Hybrids available all the more important."