Astra Pt. 08

Jack sighed, "Sprits with my lawyers from Australia. All of them. I want you to attend the Judiciary Committee. Grace and Aiko at the sedition charges. Screw Ways and Means as they are about how we are going to pay for this. They can reschedule. They are not paying for it. They have nothing to do with the Home Guard or how we are financed. I will go to the Science Space and Technology. Better yet, the President can call Ways and Means.

Find out what in the hell they need to see me for? I finance everything I am doing. I have given breaks left and right and helped your defense budgets by identifying overcharges. Maybe they want to give me a big fat voucher for 10 Trillion TCs."

President Grendal laughed, "I am curious about that one."

Jack looked at him, "If I am to make 5 committees at the same time I will have to be punctual; now won't I?"

Jack rolled his eyes while President Grendal chuckled.

President Grendal nodded "Good luck, there."

Jack looked back, "Swords, can you do anything about that?"

He nodded and sent them all letters with executive orders.

Jack nodded and walked out and they got in the shuttle. They fired it up, "Tera-1 this is Merlin in Daniele I am en route to Congress."

He heard, "Merlin, what happened to your transponder?"

He called out, "Tower bottom corner yellow button. Sync. Learn to use the damned consoles. Traveling port speed, I can clear my way while you all sync up with Tau Ceti. All stations should do that. All stations owned by me will do that as this is Home Guard Command Admiral Jack Travus."

They entered the atmosphere and then took it to a straight 90-degree nose angle, Congressional tower this HGSH-1 en route to you. I need a glide path to a landing pad."

Jack heard, "HGSH-1 I do not see you in our system."

Jack sighed, "Because Congress does not wish to upgrade your system. Contact Starbase towers 7-12 and they will tell you, This is Jack Travus Home Guard, aka Merlin. I am 20 km out on a direct approach to all your landing pads as I am 90 degrees above you. Guidance tower."

Jack arrested the fall and had the front of the ship's shields a meter off the tower Glass. "You can explain to 5 committees why you did not allow me to land."

He heard back, "This is Senior Controller Rebecca Fresca. I wanted to say take pad 5 and welcome back. Congratulations on that brilliant piece of technology."

Jack smiled. Rebecca called out, "All guns away from the building."

Jack replied "Half the guns are on 360 Degree turrets. Just be glad I did not bring in King Arthur. You don't have a lot of room for a scout. Tower be advised. All point device systems will be active. After 5 bombing attempts on me, I am taking no chances."

Jack opened the ramp and heard from Rebecca, "Merlin, those systems should remain off."

Jack asked, "Are you putting 6 guards around my shuttle to keep would-be bombers away?"

She sighed, "I cannot do that."

Jack walked out and contacted Rebecca, "That is my line. I am tired of being fucked with every time I land. Astra arm PD weapons at 25% power."

He walked past a guard, "That shuttle had Point Defense weapons armed. Keep people away."

He looked at Jack, "You cannot do that." Jack turned and walked inside. They got to security. He showed them the executive order. He shook his head, "I cannot accept this."

Jack nodded, "Then find the person in charge who can accept this."

He shook his head, "Sorry."

Jack shrugged, "You can go and tell the 5 committees that want to see me today that we are leaving then."

The guard held up his hand, "That would put you in contempt of Congress."

Jack looked at him, "This activity is illegal. You cannot schedule 5 committee reviews with the same person at the same time." Jack pulled up his vid and got the operator. She patched him through. "Mr. President, what does it take to get a congressional guard fired for wanting to refuse an executive order?"

President Grendal shook his head, "Guard, If you give me a reason to call congress you will find it hard getting a job as a traffic cop."

The cop let him pass but he heard, "Why?" Jack looked over and saw their open safe. He sent his sword into it and brought it out through the side ethereal and made it materialize and fly to his hand, "That is why. Pointless."

Jack walked down the hall and 5 congressional aides were waiting, "Mr. Travus I am with..."

He waved his hand, "Who is with Space, Science, and Technology."

A girl in the back, "I am."

He pointed, "I will go with her. The rest of my team will deal with the others."

Jack followed her as she spoke, "When this happens, we are usually the last committee to get a shot."

Jack nodded, "You're with the hottest committee in town. We have major problems."

Jack walked into the room and had a seat. They seemed just as surprised that he was there. "Hello, your subpoena did not say what you wished to discuss."

She looked at him, "You are supposed to be at another meeting."

Jack shook his head, "I got representatives in there who are telepathic like I am. Except for Ways and Means; that is 'just a means to get in the way.'"

A few in the gallery chuckled, "You had nothing you wished to talk about? Wormhole drives, System to system communication, alien contact, or how about the next 6-12 travel events that will happen around Jupiter. I think you know the spot. Before it goes back to Tau Ceti. Based on 3 previous events."

The lady at the end, "I represent the Midwest region of North America. What happened inside that spacecraft?"

Jack looked across and sent her the entire encounter. The first time he had pushed memories like this. He emphasized humanity as a whole was not ready. He looked over, "Does that answer your question?"

She nodded sheepishly.

The recorder asked, "What do I type in?"

Jack sent it all to her in the same manner. She looked up, "That is weird."

Jack shook his head, "Is this committee telling me they wasted my time by subpoenaing me to end up in contempt of Congress charge with the other 4 committees?"

---

Grace sat down with Aiko and looked across, "I am Grace Travus, Jack Travus's wife and lawyer. This is another of his wives Aiko Travus. I would like to see the list of charges?"

He looked, "We are investigating if we should file charges."

She looked at him, "Then a list of the evidence you are looking at so we can prepare a proper response. That would work."

The man shook his head, "That is not the way we work."

Grace sighed, "Then as his lawyer, I am advising my client not to get involved in a political witch hunt."

He looked at her, "You are getting close to contempt of Congress."

Grace stood, "As his lawyer, you are to direct your questions to me if he is unavailable. Your political stunts to have him in 5 meetings at the same time ensured he is not here."

The man looked at Grace, "Where is he?"

Grace looked at him, "In one of the other 4 meetings you scheduled for him at the same time. Ask away. I am telepathic. I can get answers from him."

He looked, "That is not the way we work."

Akio looked at Grace, "He is not trying to get to the truth."

He looked at her, "That is a serious charge, young lady."

Akio smiled, "I am a hybrid who is 39 years old. Older than you young man. I am also an empath. I can tell when people are trying to be deceptive or flat-out lying. You want to find him in contempt but we have yet to see from what?"

Grace got up and walked toward the door. Aiko followed her. The congressman called out, "Detain them." They could not touch either of them. The guard looked over, "They have some sort of force field up."

Grace looked over at him, "I have tried to play nice but I am a justice hybrid on top of being a lawyer and we do not play politics. Speak plainly or not at all."

He looked across "They can and will arrest you!"

Grace looked at him, "You think for one second that they would try and board a dreadnought for contempt of Congress charges? You need to realize we do not have to be here. We came back to help Tera. That is all we have done. You won't even tell me one question and I am his lawyer. That is against Tera law! I know you are a lawyer and I will take this matter up with the Planetary Bar Association for failure to follow the law in this matter.

I should also warn you that all proceedings are recorded and will be made available to the public. Do you wish to charge me with contempt, ask a question pertinent to this fictitious claim? He could be standing right here and it would not matter."

Jack walked in, "That was one committee that had nothing to ask me. I got it all recorded. What did you wish to ask me? As she told me you would not give her a list of charges or evidence. Is this a simple fishing expedition?"

He looked at Jack, "Please sit." Jack walked forward and stood there, "I prefer to stand. I have a right to that simple choice."

The man did not argue with him, "What were you doing in kidnapping the President?"

Jack shook his head, "I did not kidnap him. I took him to sign a treaty aboard my ship. The technology behind the drive I told him months ago when it was being installed. He was only surprised that I got it working that fast. Next question."

He looked up, "What about this announcement that Tera News broadcast from you speaking with the masses?"

Jack looked at him, "I purposefully ensured I did not send it over the connection to the masses of Tera. As to it getting here. That would be a reporter who traveled with us and sent it back to her people. Jenni Landreth would be your target of inquiry for that question. I wish she had not done so, and that is a matter for congress with her news agency. Does not change the facts of the matter."

He looked at Jack, "Unsubstantiated facts."

Jack laughed, "I tried to talk about the facts in your Space, Science and Technology subcommittee. They did not wish to discuss those facts. Do you want me to call up the President who was in that video to substantiate that fact? Or try to refute those facts. Do you have an expert in spatial mechanics you would like to call in to refute those facts? You don't know what you are messing with as humanity has only begun to explore time travel. You have no experts to call upon other than theoretical researchers."

Jack walked out of the room with Grace and Aiko unmolested.

---

Sprits sat down with her lawyers, all 15 of them. The panel looked over, "Where is Jack Travus?"

Sprits looked at him "I am Sprits Travis. We were told this was an issue with the patents. These are his patent attorneys from Australia. As I sit on the board of Hybrid Innovation Investments. All patents are registered to that business. I can speak to your question. You, unfortunately, booked him in 5 committees at the same time. I am a VP over Structural Engineering and Communication."

He shook his head, "No, we want Jack Travus."

Sprits asked him, "Is that an admission of guilt for aiding in him being booked at 5 committees at the same time?"

He looked over, "You are very close to contempt."

The lawyer stood up, "Congressman, by law you are required to speak with his legal counsel if for any reason he is unavailable. Your Congressional scheduling system ensured that he was unavailable. Is there a question concerning a specific patent or selection of patents? What are you wanting to know so we can get this resolved?"

He grumbled, "I want to know how he makes so many patents in a short amount of time?"

Sprits hit her comm device, "Astra find an appropriate monitor to show the interaction with Francine Treven on the capacitor patents."

She threw it up and watched what he did and was done in 20 minutes. Sprits looked up, "The man is a genius, the Drakor stuff kicked it up a notch. When he gets really bad, he will lock himself in the lab for a week at a time and invent left and right. He probably has 20,000 or more he has not submitted."

Sprits called up Astound Shields owner Hillary Zimmern. She answered, "Hello Sprits."

She looked over, "The panel for the patents wants to know how Jack makes patents so fast?"

Hillary laughed, "I was having a patent infringement issue with one of his patents. He had not seen the case or even knew which item it was. He sat down and told me his lawyers were right, but if I changed the base metal and the frequency on the item, I should see a 5-7% increase in performance. That would avoid the infringement issue. I did what he said, filed the new patent and we got an 8% increase in performance. He looked at one part of a larger system and did not know what it did. I cannot explain it. He is a genius."

Sprits asked, "Would you like me to call in more people who have seen him do this?"

He looked at her, "One of his crew."

Sprits called in the Master Chief who looked across, "Hello, Can I help you?"

He asked her, "You work for Jack Travus for a long time?"

She nodded, "Several years. I was an engineering student when he let me start working on systems being built at the dry dock in Tau Ceti. He looked after my well-being for years after the loss of my biological parents. I am currently his Master Chief on his flagship and Super-Dreadnought. When they are together, they are considered one vessel. I am a Lieutenant Commander equivalent in our rank structure who oversees 12 Chief Engineers and their crews."

He sighed, "You work in his research lab?"

She nodded, "On occasion, yes. I am under an NDA on his projects. Did you have a general question?"

He sighed, "Has he built any more weapons?"

Sprits looked up, "That is not a patent question."

He looked at Sprits, "Quiet. Has he?"

She smiled, "Lots of them for the Tera military, Tau Ceti defensive forces, and the Home Guard. In Tera, he is doing this while the new contracts still struggle to come up to speed."

The man asked, "Has he designed any?"

She smiled, "That would be an NDA question. I am not generally in the room when he works on weapon designs, I believe Astra is the only one he allows in when that occurs. I will tell you he upgraded to 4 keyboards with 24 screen workstations and every screen is a different product, concept, or idea. He models every ship at 10x speeds.

That is how we kept from snapping in half when he did those in system FTL drives to destroy 200 Brisen ships with 3 of our ships and one was a scout. They all came out alive. The Tera military was not ready for that yet. I told him if I was a Master Engineer, he is the Grandmaster of Engineering. He knows his systems and his ships."

He sighed, "I can see we are not going to get very far with this."

Jack's attorney looked at him, "There had to be more questions than how does he do it so fast?"

He looked, "Is he getting these blueprints from that archive?"

Sprits called up Astra who appeared on the screen. "I am the keeper of the archives. Shortly after we arrived within this solar system, Jack asked me to make the entire blueprint and technology section to be in a read-only state for me alone. He had not looked at that repository as he had no access to it from the beginning.

He gave me orders to destroy what was requested if he or another Command Admiral tried to countermand the orders in the future. Where his work has overlapped, he has taken funds from those projects and given them right back.

To free dermal regenerators for the poor, and in the case of the collider, he gave them oversight on the use of the patent to create very specific numbers on the smaller particle colliders. Providing the grant for them to add the colliders. He placed control over the facility to the President and his advisors. He not only earned nothing, but it also cost him giving those technologies to the masses."

She spat a number the man found hard to believe. He asked, "99.95% of his work is original?"

Astra nodded, "There were cases where he created something similar in effect to something else but the designs were not a match in any way. He cracked the 5x and 6x Internal Dampener problem which was not even available in 3080. Nobody could get it to work for humans but he did it alone. He is a very talented genius."

He looked at her, "Do you know if he has made any new weapons not known to this committee?"

Astra looked at him, "Could you tell me which ones you know about?"

He groaned, "Does he have any new weapon designs that you have seen? We were told you were the only one with direct access when he worked on weapons."

Astra looked at him, "Jack shuts down monitoring in his lab when he works on weapons. When Jack is working on projects like that and I am in the room, I am rather occupied. Sucking his cock repeatedly to collect sperm samples for the bank.

He encrypts his files and stores them on a private offline server until he is ready to send them out. The last items he sent out were the military battle armor and personal shield belts. The battle armor is equipped with a wide array of technical hardware. Are you alright?"

The chairman of the committee had a heart attack. The next person over, looked at them, "We will reconvene at another time. We have a medical emergency."

The head patent lawyer stood, "This meeting in its entirety will be made available to the people to show you had no interest in his patents but only where he gets all of these ideas! Also if he has created more that he has not released. Those are not patented. The next summons should list any patents of concern if this is to reconvene."

---

Jack, Aiko, and Grace walked into the Energy and Commerce Committee. The chair looked over, "You're late and in contempt."

Jack shook his head, "What is contemptible is a Congress that wants me to be in 5 separate meetings at the same time. Maybe that is a power I should focus on. Cloning myself. I will warn you as I have for the other meetings, that all events will be recorded and released to the people.

Now, as nobody put a reason for this summons and I had others that did, I figured I would start with the committees that were worried about the next time-travel event. What is this committee wanting to know?"

The man looked up, "Your business dealings with Treven engines to start with. Why did you select them?"

Jack looked at the man, "Covered in interviews and recorded already, how is that a commerce question?"

He looked across, "Because we say it is. Now answer the question."

Jack called out. "Astra, seize the monitor and play every interview that has asked that question."

He watched them repeatedly until it was finished. "Next question?"

The man grunted out, "You bought into Astounding Shields and have given significant money to them to expand. Why?"

Jack stood there, "It was a sound investment decision. I knew my previous contractor failed to deliver on the innovation clause and the new shields were going to a small company that just started up a few years ago but they were constantly throwing innovations into their products. I gave them money as I bought into the business now to the tune of 100 Billion TCs. I have released a couple of products for them to develop.

I have decided to invest more heavily in the business as it was 80 Billion TCs before. All to have them run with the products. I will have to work on putting out a book on my investment choices and strategies for the smart investor when I find time for such frivolous pursuits. Next question?"

He looked at Jack, "You are introducing a new reactor type for a shield belt, and then 500 terawatts with 8x multiplexers. What do you need with that much power?"

Jack sighed and shook his head, "People ask me about new weapons, new shields, engines, and power cores. Astra, give them the current view of the engine room power cores aboard my flagship."

Astra threw up the image and the committee chair looked across, "What do you need that much power for?"