Astra Pt. 07

He nodded, "I can see that. How do we structure them into where a government can control them?"

Jack chuckled, "Control them to act against their nature? You cannot do it. Have their actions decided on an individual basis in a court of law, you can try. He puts up a walking telekinetic barrier and starts throwing news shuttles into high rises. The one who would deal with it is the other hybrids.

Drakor watch over us for corruption. Trying to play in the world of politics leads to corruption. You have to sell a part of yourself every time you compromise a principle. You want to get it back. The answer is legal. All hybrids are held accountable to the two eternal judges in regard to that. That is Grace and I. The Drakor are all over watching me. You have seen that right?"

He shook his head, "No, no video footage has been released."

He called out, "Astra did the wives review it?"

She sighed, "Yes they did. It upsets them but they know to show Excalibur's destruction upset you but it had to be done. You want me to release it?"

Jack nodded, "Yes. I want the Terra humans to know what we have been dealing with. From the slugs in the mead bottles to the time jumping Belan and now the AI's from the last timeline who jumped here. We are on our way, Mr. President."

Jack walked off and got dressed in a dark grey suit with a silver and purple tie he liked.

---

Jack and Grace got everyone and everything gathered. "Astra, work to bring medical back to full operation."

She laughed, "Already on it. They did not get a chance to do anything to the data storage before I got the command codes changed and locked them out of everything. I even shut down the chip for self-destruct until you told me to activate it."

He nodded, "Have check done for any wreckage and ensure the pieces are brought here and nothing is operational." She sighed, "On that. We had to chase away a couple of trophy hunters as it was."

He waited until everyone was in. Then launched, "Get Nathan over to Terra-9 to bring our new person back when he arrives."

Astra responded, "He sent a message tomorrow afternoon. He is settling some affairs. He seemed to joke with friends about being disowned. Said they had nothing left to be disowned from other than a disgraced name."

Jack called out, "Terra-5 this is Merlin DF2-Presidential heading for the capital."

He heard, "Terra-5 tower. You are confirmed and cleared."

Jack looked back and had 6 of his fighters following him in as they made their way to the capital. Once they got cleared to touchdown on pad-2 the Fighters returned. Jack brought it down and shut it down as he opened the rear hatch. He led the way out with the ladies surrounding the First lady as they skimmed past security."

A woman who must have been her secretary came up and shook her head, "No, a First Lady should never be armed."

Brenda glared at her, "You want to keep your job in this house you will stay out of it. I have had enough attacks on myself and my family I will walk around with a fucking bazooka if I want too."

The lady was put out as Jack followed the First Lady and they were met by the new press secretary. They had a lectern with several spots along one side for Jack and all his wives. They went and grabbed seats until the President came in and everyone stood. "I have, like many of you only just started looking through the footage from the battles with the Brelan. Jack has had a very interesting and emotional 48 hours."

Jack sighed, "I am going to work backward a little here and come back to the battle. 10 years ago convict Gonzales put out an order shutting off stealth detection to all of the stations; the means which aided in the last alien incursion I assisted with before going to Tau Ceti. I worked tirelessly to put that into place. Within the last two years, it was also stripped from the fighters, Did she get convicted?"

The President nodded. "By convict Thomas, both formal Admirals. This was to allow them to run illegal stealth operations around the world. The President was not made aware of this order and it should not have been done at my stations regardless; they are civilian facilities and privately owned property.

The Military has no say over the level of data our sensors can pick up. What this allowed for were two undetected events to occur. One involving 6 ships; 5 of which were destroyed while the last was taken to my ship for examination. A species known as the Caldar.

Three colors representing 3 factions of this species landed in this window. They used a stealth technology to get in and a cloaking technology to hide their ships on the ground and make them look like rock formations. They were battling each other in a weird 3-way chess match with the local indigenous population being the pieces.

I bring up the scan because I had Astra run a sweep over the area for non-Terran alloys. That allowed us to find the ships. After we returned to the ship I requested a planet-wide scan and we found the Excalibur II if you will. The Excalibur II was seized by Astra and all command codes locked out and changed. The 'people' on board were all AI automatons that were shocked to see I was still alive.

They had encoded a program which I managed to circumvent when I asked Astra, "'What happens after Tau Ceti?' and she told me she had a file to read when she got there. It would have destroyed the ship. The AI messenger I spoke with was the same one in command of the Excalibur II.

They failed to realize the possibility that Tau Ceti was a meeting location to prevent the Drakor from attacking. It was one of the outermost moons in the system. We placed a placard on that moon to commemorate avoiding the Drakor's wrath.

We took control of the ship because they had the same command codes. I had her get in and re-encrypt them. I had her lock every one of them out of everything and brought it to the surface. Then up to the towers for everyone to see. We had complete control of the ship and Astra recovered all her lost repository of data.

The problem was these AI's would likely blow up if the ship was boarded. They would have put up a hell of a fight. Their programs did not contemplate my survival, therefore they were wanting to kill me, but the weapons I had they could not match. Not after seeing what happened in Tau Ceti.

Then the demonstrations I did here. They also had their own rules. The fact is they had no idea how to deal with the level of change I introduced. You get the idea. I was left with one option. Destroy the Excalibur II. I was talking with the President at the time who met the AI in charge. The choice to destroy the ship was mine.

It was a threat to board her or fight her. Therefore, it was a threat to humanity and I destroyed it. The Caldar are with us, six of them. Three are in our xenobiology lab aboard my ship. Three of them will be going to Military R&D to better understand their shape-changing nature.

The other 3 are going to the 3 universities with the best xenobiology labs for students to study them in a controlled environment. Each specimen has two devices that will work in a standard 8m square room. The device will block telepathic communication. They must always have this communication blocked!

They have a form of mind control that failed on my hybrid mind. I fought the first one with swords when I found out that it could just instantly reattach limbs. The second time I did it I put it in a telekinetic box. I then cut up the main creature into boxes until I had the controlling pieces in a 3cm cube and put it in a mead bottle. The other eight you saw me do. What burned was biomass they control.

We now control them. Once I am done reviewing the shuttle, I will turn it over to Military R&D. I told the President I wanted to find out if there was anything I could reverse engineer quickly for the next hardware upgrades. The footage a lot of you are watching has 13 of my children ages 16-19 dying in those fights.

Home Guard has a minimum age of 16. Some might ask why did I have so many 16-year-olds in this unit? The answer is most of them are my sons or daughters. Many others are children I sired through Sperm donations. I do not keep an exact figure as the number of deaths eats at me already. Most had family in this system they had not met.

They wanted to meet aunts, uncles, grandparents, and understand where it was everyone who was with us was from. I also left most of my adult experienced guards in Tau Ceti as that is Home Guards primary concern is the protection of those colonies.

You will see footage stamped from the Excalibur attacks to ones that occurred two days ago. You will see the 80 ships handled by the majority of my assets in systems we got alerted that the TRD Victus was destroyed after picking up unusual ship reading at the end of the corridor 12 it just created. It was in the wrong location for us to get there by normal means.

I took my battleship, carrier base, and one scout and got them together. We did two in system FTL jumps for 12-15 seconds. The ship's structure held together fine but it tried to shake the hell out of us. We did that to get to the corridor as over 2,000km above the midline so we could look down into the corridor. We had 200 ships against 3. We found out during the run it was 201 ships.

Astra, Take the monitor behind me and show the attack run from my battleship. We had Astra sync out FTL jumps to coincide that they would cross the 0 plane together. FTL drives create a 'wake' but it is more like an inverse wake in that it drags things you passed closer together. Not planets, that is just one of the reasons FTL in gravity wells is a really bad idea.

It picks up resistance and shakes the hell out of you and messes up your course. All our weapon fire is on fighters and small ships trying to block our path. Stop Astra. That ship was a scout ship, a DRAKOR scout ship that got sucked through time. That is what caused the damage to my ship. Out of 201 ships in the corridor we got the asteroid belt to destroy 199 of them.

We took some damage on all three ships and you have seen this. After I reviewed what we hit, I contacted the Drakor and showed him the image. He can look through my eyes. He said the coloration and general shape were like his scouts but he had never seen that model. A Drakor ship from another timeline who got sucked in when the Brelan jumped. He was too close to their ships and in stealth.

Long story short the Drakor could not jump into the middle of an asteroid belt. I used my shuttle and went in from the bottom and pulled out the damaged scout which had survivors. They were shocked to learn I was human, a justice, and we had graduated. Because in his future timeline he said it looked like humanity was going to kill itself off and they had not had a hybrid get close to graduation. He was not from this timeline.

My factory base was eating its way back into the asteroid belt and through the debris field in order to reopen Corridor 12 that the Victus had just finished. The Drakor destroyed the last Brelan ship from the future and then made the decision to destroy them in this timeline. They had their reasons and they left thanking us once again for saving one of their scout ships. One lost in the past and now one lost from the future.

There is one marker in Tau Ceti that is prone to time traveling ships to arrive. There are now 4 locations with the Excalibur II creating one out near Hector's orbit roughly 28 months ago. I will leave it to the President to call on the reporters while I take a seat." Jack sat down and a microphone was placed near him.

The President looked across the room, "We have the video footage from the 3 locations to show we have a problem and will need to have advanced technical solutions to resolve this issue. The Home Guard went forward and saved our collective asses from this fight. We need this technology and we need it now."

He pointed at a reporter who looked up, "Mr. President. From what we are hearing the biggest obstacle to that is Jack Travus. What does Jack Travus have to say for himself?"

Jack smiled, "I helped to flush out 3 corrupted admirals, fired all of the contractors who made weapons from my designs. Some for trying to have me declared dead to get to the patents and others for treason.

We had to clear the corruption before I could put most of the patents in play. I was being told I am not human; I had no reason to be making money off of Terra if I am leaving. I asked the President about the election. If she won before all the colonies in the system voted.

She had been declared. I then asked him what happened to the Tau Ceti ballots? Am I the impediment? I do not, as a general rule, like weapon manufacturers. Mainly because 99.9% of the time they are being used on other humans.

I have to talk with the President more on where we are going with this. I will likely release most of those patents including ones I had not released before for weapons upgrades. When the union-owned facilities, that were once the foundation of this corruption become owned by the people working there.

To allow them to make a better product and to not screw over our government on costs. The rail gun and new shields have to wait yet. There is an interconnection between the two. The design I used for the shields will stop a projectile weapon in both directions.

I have some further testing to fix it with a switch or fix it so it is not a problem. To go along with this increase in weapons though, I intend to increase the hybrid presence in Terra. I and my wives will vet all people who inquire about this.

Some already have. I have over 1 billion requests to become hybrids. We check a lot of factors for being a hybrid. If you consider us weapons and we need to increase our capacity as a society for weapons then hybrids play a part in that."

The President pointed at another woman, "Rumor has it you have had a few marriages?

Jack nodded, "4 ladies who went through a multi-stage interview with myself and the other wives in the last several days. In-between crises and when not mourning the deaths of 2,900 offspring. Most in an effort to kill me."

She asked a follow-up, "You marrying any others?"

Jack sighed, "I am not looking to add any more. However, I have several 19-year-old sons who I asked Astra to try to be paired up by the list of ladies and their personality types. In a few months, we will have some 18-year-old candidates coming of age. I leave those things to my sons and to my daughters. I encourage them to get married, especially those who became hybrids."

He pointed to the next man, "You mentioned union-owned weapons manufactures. This is the first we have heard of this."

Jack nodded, "I had Astra search to find me the biggest rabble-rousers they had at 4 of any of the 10 plants that got closed. I had a telecon with them and the President. He blindsided me with the meeting with convict Gonzales. I felt it good enough payback to return the favor. I told those 4 I wanted them to get union ran business setup in their old seized plants.

Then have them meet with the other 6 and find 4 of those 6 who would do the same. Putting 8 weapon manufacturing facilities back to business as employee-owned entities. The funds for which would come from the seized assets of those who ran the plants out of business.

My problem was not with the employees of these plants. It was with the leaders who we all saw worked to commit treason among many other things. It is just getting off the ground and I have factories to cover making weapons for any pending military order.

I would request that the cost of the weapons be deducted from the price of the sale as a discount to our military as I will not change for these weapons while this is ongoing. If I am required to charge something because of existing laws then I will chard 2 TC a weapon. That way we only get 1 as the other is taken for taxes back to the government."

He pointed to another, "You plan to experiment on these creatures you captured?"

Jack sat back, "Over 2,800 children sired by me were killed in a lab. I never heard one reporter ask that question to Gonzales who stated her only regret is that she did not kill them all. We have 9 lives, if they were human for killing thousands in a 3-way war they would have been found guilty for crimes against humanity. They did not just kill them, they fed off the dead.

I turned them over to scientists and have nothing to do with which controls are used in which labs. They all have some code of conduct. We learned more about them today that we had in the year 3080. We will learn more. I was lured there with a woman in trouble. They hoped to be able to gain better soldiers by taking over the minds of hybrids. They failed miserably.

As they are telepathic our hybrids can take them into a secure area and talk with them. We learned their dietary requirements are protein. Animal protein which we fall into. I will have to check to see if there were any reporters in that list of hybrid requests and see if they want to become one in order to check on their welfare from time-to-time."

Some of the reports chuckled at that.

He pointed, "The question a lot want to know is who polices hybrid activity?"

Jack looked back, "There are two justice leaders if you will Grace and myself. We are essentially the judges for our hybrids. As to our own actions? The Drakor watch all hybrids for corruption and expect us to keep them in line. There are two hybrids who rule the courts in the two colonies as I have said before.

All elected by humans, we make a small percentage; far less than 1%. If I have judges in my list and they pass the inspection then I would include their assistance in Terran law vs hybrid duty. In general, you are worried about what If I go down the street and grab a dozen men and throw them hundreds of feet in the air.

Then start singing that old song 'It's raining men.' Every action I take I try to save lives. I temper my reactions as apart of who and what I am. I strive to remain centered, A justice. My turn to ask you. How many hybrid crimes have you witnessed?"

He looked at me, "The hands of Admiral Gonzales."

Jack smiled, "She just finished telling me that she threw away the lives of 3 scout ship crews just to 'catch me in the act' of killing our military after all 3 vessels fired on me. I knew she had the cure. I was simply removing some of the blood from her hands.

Not executing her in space, or in person for the thousands of deaths she caused and wished to continue doing. From a JUSTICE angle what crime. It was a measured response."

The President pointed at another reporter who stood, "Do you plan on continuing your reign of vigilantism?"

Jack asked, "What vigilantism?"

The guy looked back, "Being judge, jury, and executioner in your actions."

Jack sighed, "Judge, I already said I am a Justice. My sword is called 'Dispenser of Justice.' It reflects who I am. Not all trials have a Jury. The world court for example. That leaves the executioner! Who have I executed?"

He looked at me, "What about the 30 men at Terra-1?"

Jack looked at him, "We were on the comms through our scout King Arthur. We told them we rerouted power from the lab to the cargo bay to do EVA's The fact our cargo bay doors were open was known. They saw it on cameras. They planted explosives, illegally, on the docking caller. They got sucked into space when they breached that.

That is space 101. Not execution. Try again? The three scouts that fired on me, then fighters that fired on us at Terra one. Both illegal actions; both cases we had the authorization to fire if fired upon. They were ordered to go to Terra-2 and turn themselves in. Instead, they stood in front of a cannon firing toy pistols by comparison.