Astra Pt. 09

The Drakor looked up, * I do find you an anomaly but in a good way. This explains why we have had such trouble with your race. They were denied the choice to even be given the choice. You overcame it because you felt you had to save humanity. You also did it differently.

You focused on the hand to choose the blade that best described you. We might see more justices if we went that way. Some would not end up mischaracterized. Things to consider. You are graduated here as well. I now understand why they waited. They wanted to see if you got that treaty signed before you left. You succeeded in that goal.

I hope you find your success here as well. I know nothing of this other Drakor, but giving you a chance to get humanity to graduate here seems like a fair approach, to the unfair situation you found yourself in. *

Jack bowed to him and returned to his scout. He sealed it up.

Jack returned to being John in his mind. He got the ship powered up and the shields on as he took it up. He pointed the ship for Geos. He got into orbit and located the remains of a single settlement on the planet. No human life. He took them down as Astra came to. He brought it down a few hundred feet from the settlement. He found the journal for the original settlers.

'Crop ships blew from micro-meteors and ore miners destroyed in the asteroid belt. 3 colony ships arrived with no food. Cannibalism kicked in almost immediately as we had a hard time discerning what was and was not edible. The few seeds brought that remain, failed to produce enough to satisfy the population.'

The last survivor took his own life after writing an entry cursing the Federation for forcing them here. He looked at Astra, "They did not come here on their own. They were sent here in this timeline. Sent and died. The dead were eaten first."

He held the charter and the name changes for the colony in his hands.

He went to Meos and found nothing. He landed and looked around, "Those plants are edible We are 2 years away from Terra with 5 years of food. Only one option. He pulled out the geared and started fabricating up a 4 pylon Wormhole Engine. Astra looked at him, "Your building a Wormhole Engine?"

He nodded, "Yes, too much crap can go wrong for a ship this small to travel that far alone and through that asteroid field. We cannot go with more pylons because we need to be able to land. We will go bigger and add a three-core multiplexer for the Wormhole Engine. That means we need to stretch the length by another 10 meters for both decks and the exterior frame. That means building a land-based drydock to support that effort. We are talking years for just the 2 of us."

---

Over the next 4 years, he went without sleep. He refused to talk, using only the telekinetic interface to his chip. He told her it was the only method he had to exercise telepathy and he needed it to be as strong as possible for the trip. She felt there was more to it but did not push the issue.

Most of the first year was spent building equipment and modifying the scout to do the mining needed. He had to build an external workshop in order to set up a work area large enough to create the power cores, the dry-dock, and setup the beam press. He had to build a smelter as the engines had to be the titanium-H alloy as did the framing and plating for the extension.

He worked mostly alone on that task initially; when he took the time to work. Astra got used to calling him John during this time. She fucked him 14 times a day on average and worked to ensure he ate which was an ever-increasing challenge as time passed.

He got the mining rig working first as they needed titanium, and hydrogen for fuel initially. He set it up under the shuttle. It took 6 months to build that modification. He took out 6 seats from the front center of the design; to avoid going through the half-deck that was all power cores, shield generators, and computers. Astra helped immensely with that project as he was gone half the time drinking near the river during that time. He was not drinking heavily but he was drinking alone and missing meals.

He recycled those seats into the fabricators. He made the pylons out of straight stable Metallic Hydrogen. He also hoped it would increase performance and he had no plans to coat them. That avoided the curing process needed in space for the alloy for those pieces.

He could get away with it for that, but not for everything. The pieces he had to cure required hours in orbit to cure the framing, plating, and engine components.

The process to make metallic hydrogen as a stable component typically required molds to generate each metallic hydrogen brick with the right amount of Vironidite. He bypassed that by using high pressured telekinesis, 2,000 liters at a time funneling in the Vironidite until the mix was right and then dropping it out into bars on the ground which Astra pick-up and stacked.

It would wipe him out to do it that way. While Astra begged him to do smaller batches, he simply refused. 'He had to exercise his talents.' Each one produced 2,000 bars with exactly the right mix that way.

They went out once every 6 months and restocked fuel and metallic Hydrogen alone. That was a 3-day job which they did together. The smelter for creating the titanium pieces was the true pain in the ass he had to deal with, as he could not use telekinesis to create the titanium alloy pieces and he had to find all the individual elements to make those bricks for the alloy.

He went from mining to creating those bricks and then manufacturing parts in space. He ensured he had everything he needed before disabling his functional ship. Then the components to make the onyx to coat the new section of the ship.

He spent almost 2 years preparing the ship for dissected and to ensure he had everything needed to put it back together again. Sometimes he would do the metallic hydrogen bars while out and extend the trip a couple of days; if they mined Vironidite and other material first or needed more time to find some of the rare elements.

They spent the day fucking non-stop while the mining machines ran. Those were days she could get him to eat more regularly. Astra looked forward to those trips; except when he extended it to make bars because it wiped out a lot of his energy and that took a toll on his depression.

The wormhole engine and most of the power core components he needed required the alloy. That meant going out and finding asteroids to find and mine the other components from the titanium to Vironidite. They got to where they placed tracer tags on good mining sites as they orbited inside the system.

He had to build the pylons in layers and then merge them together once he had them all together and aligned. It took 100 layers to build one pylon and each layer took 16 hours to create and shape right. A year of labor to create those pylons alone. Sprits could have gotten it done in half the time but he was not the structural engineer she was in working the beam press. He did get better over time.

He had to build the Wormhole engine components, new heatsinks, and power relays to go with the 3 500-terawatt power cores and 2 spares. That included a multiplexer to replace the existing power cores to handle the Wormhole Engine. In short, he was not just the manufactured but the miner for every element he needed for the fabricators for every piece of hardware he had to stage for the assembly.

He had to smelt the bars he needed for the alloy and then take them in groups of 1,000 bars at a time into orbit. Then exposed them to space to cure the alloy in its form. Then he could use them in the fabricators but with only two fabricators it was still time-consuming.

At the 3-year mark, he built up 2 more fabricators and recycled the old ones as they neared their end-of-life. One had already started showing signs of instability. Astra could not spend the long hours away from the gravity plating that recharged her. Once he got the new cores installed, he used the old ones in the workshop and had gravity plating inside of it so Astra could assist.

Occasionally she went mining without him while he worked engine assembly, power core assembly or the 16 hour stretches at the beam press. She had to time it to always be back on time. She failed that only once and the argument they had from that left them both feeling worse for wear.

He lost a days' worth of work as it left him worried, he was stranded and alone. She promised to come back even if she was not filed up at that point after that exchange. She placed tracer tags on the asteroids she used most often to know which ones were closest.

He would spend 8 hours working one project then work the beam press until she returned. John had decided against maintenance bots on this ship because of the limited space and construction time and material they would need.

He drank more than he ate for the first two years. Until he ran out of mead two years in. He stretched the coffee for two years because of his mead consumption. He spent many hours some distance away at a river and drank alone in his depression; especially that first year. Far enough away that Astra could not traverse it alone and the ship had command codes that kept her from mining trips as well as coming after him.

He wanted the privacy and he warned her about nagging him through the implant or he'd pull it. Astra tried to console him but she felt it as well. She felt him pulling away from life in general. She had to kick him in the ass every now and then to get him working again.

Astra had filled the refrigeration unit a long time ago; cycling out the bad and installing fresh samples along the way; even after creating two more units to store them; which was an argument she only had once with John.

He let her have the time and went off drinking as this was less than a year in when she asked to make them. It kept her busy. In a way, it made him happy for her to have something to do besides be his taskmaster.

He got the 4 pylons set. The length of the ship stretched out how he wanted it, including rewiring just about everything in the ship to accommodate the extra length. Then the new engine wormhole engine built which had a simple single crystal to crystal design as he would be the only one powering it.

A risk unto itself that he had not discussed with Astra at all. She suspected but never questioned him on the matter. He stacked about every free space available on the ship with another 30,000 standard bards of stable Metallic Hydrogen when they were getting close.

The last trip out they filled 7 tanks with Metallic Hydrogen before packing up and departing; the last tank was hydrogen for fuel. He installed the crystals. One into the Wormhole Engine. The other he had in a large necklace with the sword and shield crest. He wore it under his shirt every day since he created it on the first day.

John went to check on the other colony. Nobody had returned to that rock. He checked the interior of the solar system and found no other ships. He nodded and pushed the power up slowly to maximum on the Wormhole Engine. He had talked it over with Astra, "Best to return where I left from."

She nodded. He had started talking again as he had finished the project.

---

As they pushed through. They had to take evasive action as a battleship almost ran into them. Two destroyers moved back and took aim at his black ship with the silvery-white pylons.

He sighed, "So much for low key."

He was hailed and he decided to answer it. He looked at the angry man on the screen, "Where in the hell did you come from?"

John smiled, "I spent my formative years in Japan."

The guy looked miffed, "You just appeared in front of us!"

John nodded, "I felt the same way when trying to dodge you!"

The man sighed, "You are running no transponder."

John had shut it off for fear of pirates and had not thought to put it back on. He had wiped out the name and the designation on the shuttle knowing it would cause more trouble than it was worth. He looked at the man. "Last survivor of Tau Ceti. John Travus."

He nodded, "Get that thing properly registered."

He nodded, "Plan to do just that when I get to Terra." He headed toward Terra as the destroyers backed off.

As they neared, he heard, "Unidentified craft, you have no transponder signal." John replied, "Transponders were a luxury in Tau Ceti. The colony destroyed by starvation and pirates."

He saw the same old antiquated fighters. One looked at the ship, "About the size of a scout and a half in length. Maybe larger."

John smiled, "Affirmative."

The other fighter asked, "What is with the pylons?"

John replied, "Research equipment."

They saw him slow down. "Everything alright scout?"

John smiled, "Just taking it to port speed."

The Terran pilot responded, "You got another couple of hours yet."

John replied, "That is fine by me. What station would I be coming into?"

He heard, "Terra-7, the newest one."

John asked, "Who is President?"

He heard a laugh, "Trudy Winthrop from England."

John sighed, "Did they ever get Jupiter to work?"

He heard another laugh, "Only in swallowing another rig. The company went bankrupt last month."

John asked, "Nothing left of it huh?"

He laughed, "Only a small space station high up and out of danger. Why looking to waste some money?"

John asked, "What is the going rate for liquid metallic hydrogen?"

The guy laughed, "I think it is at an all-time high of 10,000TC per ml after the Jupiter failure. He looked back at the 7 filled containers. Astra smiled, "Like starting over."

He nodded. He connected comm to Terra-7, "Can you tell me who holds the paperwork on the failed Jupiter project?"

The lady laughed, "Believe it or not it was a subsidiary of GS systems. Lost them a ton of credits. They returned the lease over to the government mineral department."

John nodded, "Connect me please." He got a pleasant-looking woman, "How can I help you?"

John smiled, "I heard the lease for Jupiter was returned to you?"

She nodded, "The hydrogen is for any use the Liquid-Metallic hydrogen is another matter, 500 million TC's for a 50-year lease."

John asked, "What about Saturn?"

She looked, "Available and the same."

He nodded, "I have some cargo to unload as soon as I get that taken care of, I will be by to see you. Does the Jupiter lease include the space station?"

She looked, "Yes, it is not much probably a few hundred people at best."

He nodded, "How much for just the station out at Jupiter?"

She looked, "You want to buy a small used space station outside there; If you are wanting a space station around Jupiter it would cost 5 Billion. For a permeant lease. That station cannot be sold separately as it is tied into the lease."

He sighed, "I wanted to move it away from a planetary body. Did they build a station out at Titan? I have been out of the system."

She looked, "Not yet. Are you wanting the right to build there too?"

He smiled, "How much and is it exclusive?"

She laughed, "Yes, it is exclusive and that is 5 Billion credits. Not as high of a risk and a permanent lease. It does not count building it which will be a few billion more.

John smiled, "About 10 billion."

She shook her head, "You could build a space dock for that."

He smiled, "Two actually. What is the going tax rate."

She smiled, "37% These days. Better than a couple of centuries ago." He ended the call.

Astra took over while John shaved and showered. He put on his one suit which hung loose on him these days. He was down to around 80kg from his normal 100 kg frame. What he had was all muscle even though he had not been eating as well as he should have, he still worked out. He had little in the way of body fat doing all that work as well. Astra gave a disapproving look. He nodded, "I know we get a few steaks in me and I will feel better."

He got back in his seat as he heard, "Unidentified scout, pylon 3."

He pulled it in as they pulled back the privacy area for Astra. He stepped out to a man with three guards on the dock. They looked, "Some kind of laser sword?"

John nodded, "Something like that."

The guy looked, "250TC's an hour."

John nodded, "12 hours." He handed him a cred stick and it went through and deducted that. He sealed it up. He went over to identification. "Need an ID for myself, John Travus."

She looked, "No ID?"

He shook his head, "Came in from Tau Ceti. Last-survivor."

She nodded, "That is 2,000 TC. He filled out his certifications and passed it back to her. She looked up, "You can do all of this?"

He nodded, "Child Genius passed my flight exam when I was 8."

She sighed and gave him the test pad to check for qualifications. He filled it out in record time. She looked up, "Another, 8.000TC."

He paid it, "Commodities broker?"

She pointed, "The second floor." He nodded and walked inside. He looked at the board at it changed, 10,654 TCs per ml.

He walked away and went to ship registration. "I need to register my ship. Scout size about 50% larger, research vessel."

She shook her head, "Research vessel, scouts are not research vessels." He shrugged, "What would you call a researcher scout ship yet that could get you several Billion TCs?"

She sighed, TSM, Scout Multipurpose. Name?"

John chuckled, "Descriptive. Name it, The Survivor."

She nodded, "50,000TCs and 10,000TCs for the transponder." He shook his head, "I got a programmable transponder Just give me the ID number."

She sighed, "Programmable transponder?"

He nodded, "Researcher, remember. I forgot. Multipurpose-er."

She finally chuckled and gave him the number. He went to a restaurant and ate 4 steak meals in one go and spent 3,000TC's on a bottle of Irish Mills Mead. He paid for everything.

He went back to the ship and programmed in the transponder. He looked at Astra, "We will sell off what we get this time but we won't set up for mining it here."

She looked over, "This is a change."

He nodded, "We need to decide on what our goals are going to be. I am going to need a larger ship for a family. Else a place to live away from the ship. I put together all these bars to build the larger ship, we could finance a space station out at Titan or IO.

If we want to start with a lower-key presence than last time then we need to decide on how we are going to proceed. Do we take GS out again; they are more powerful now."

She nodded, "You could build a station in earth orbit. Terra-8 will come up for bid soon."

He nodded, "I want privacy. Too close to Terra, same for the moon. The choices are Jupiter, Saturn, or Tau Ceti. But if we want to build a station or a home then we will need to do it here because I cannot jump the ships we would need."

She nodded, "Why IO?" He smiled, "Tourist attraction eventually. That is what we can 'advertise' the appeal is for. Once we have our base then we can build out our ship."

She checked, "There is the small Starbase at Jupiter with the failed attempt."

He nodded, "But that would be linked to mining she said they would not separate it. That gets too much attention. Gaining these resources from Tau Ceti and the mining rig used there got swallowed is an easy sell and harder for them to disprove. We collect once and we use it as a foundation until we are ready to compete with GS directly."

She nodded, "Provided we get you some wives to go with it."

He sighed, "I will not rule it out but I am a bit gun shy after my last 3 attempts at having a family."

She rubbed his cheek, "I may not have the ship but we have to get you some wives. We also will have to deal with the children."

He sighed, "Then we collect, tell them the rig went down. Then we talk of the run-in with the Drakor and what has been done to me. What we know will happen."