Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 17

Mark also got to visit one of the local universities. They were pretty much just like the large universities on Earth with massive campuses, but also had all the sporting facilities. What surprised Mark the most was that the universities were more like research and development think tanks. If a company had an idea or needed something designed, rather than hiring an engineering firm, they could approach the university and the students could take on the project, then if it was actually used and sold, the university would collect royalties for a period of time.

Almost everyone went to university to get a degree in something or other, university was kind of the gateway to adulthood. You left your parents home and got to live on campus (which was free by the way). Everything was still provided for you, but you had to take care of yourself.

When you got your first degree, you got 5,000 credits for each year of your program deposited into your account, which was enough to buy a decent lot and build your first home. For each degree after the first, you only got 500 credits per year, but you couldn't live on campus anymore and you didn't qualify to play for the university sports teams.

During the week spent at Angela's place and around her community, the shipyards were completed and began operation.

During their construction, Cricket and Mark had come up with an upgraded design for the Destroyers. It was a slightly larger version with a landing bay underneath that carried 2 shuttles, 1 medivac, 1 securivac and 10 fighters. They would carry 30 personnel, but they had a few more amenities than the old Destroyers since they were also going to be used for exploration, which could have longer patrols.

With all four shipyards operational near an asteroid belt, they were set to complete roughly 4 ships per week between the shipyards. Each shipyard almost 4 times faster than the shipyards in orbit, where the harvested asteroids had to be transported from the asteroid belt.

A week later, the first four ships were finished, General Marsbe assigned crews to the new ships and they were being distributed to the furthest planets first, one of which happened to be T'Soona, Laruun and Candy's planet, another was Rayven and Solara's planet, one to Earth and another to a remote planet, well moon really, called Marnot.

Since one ship was going to Earth, Elisha and Gerald asked if they could get a ride back, as they really needed to return to work and get what they had recorded edited and broadcast.

Their request made Mark realize, it was time to begin touring the other planets in the Federation, and hopefully get back to Earth to get more done, before any other emergency came up.

Mark and the General's plan was that once there were Destroyers around every planet, they also wanted one Destroyer patrolling around every non-federated planet. That would allow them to keep an eye on their development as well as to watch for other space-faring civilizations.

Eventually when the old models got rotated back, they were going to be upgraded and then re-deployed. The old model was going to be discontinued as Mark's thought was that you might as well have fighters on it to increase offensive or defensive capabilities as well as doing proper patrols and reconnaissance.

Using some of the confiscated credits for R&D grants and awards had paid off, with two new technologies already being developed.

The first development was a new scanning technology that increased the scanning range from around 25 million kilometres to roughly half a light year. The other technology was a new high speed encrypted sub space communications system allowing immediate communication to even the furthest limits of their exploration. It still didn't work while in light drive though, so the new protocol for ships was to drop out of light drive at least once every day on multi-day trips to link into the network and collect updates and communications.

Those technology advances enabled Cricket to design a new sensor network that was to be deployed throughout their explored universe and then expand outwards. To facilitate the deployment of the sensor network, Cricket designed a seeding ship.

They were small fully automated ships that could harvest their own asteroids and manufacture their own sensors. They travelled in light drive and would drop sensors every half a light year and then drop out of light drive to check for updates, harvest asteroids or change directions. They were mobile and did have shields, but they were also equipped with a self destruct, so if the hull was breached in any way the sensor would literally disintegrate.

Those developments prompted Mark and General Marsbe to change the production of the shipyards. It took 1 day to build each seeding ship so the build ratio was going to be 1 yard building fighters as it only took a couple of hours per fighter, 2 yards building seeding ships and 1 yard building a Destroyer. Then once the 12 seeding ships were built, those yards would switch to manufacturing Destroyers.

The faster communications would allow live updates to the star charts and immediate monitoring of anything moving at sub-light speeds. The way Cricket wanted the sensors being deployed it was very redundant. If one sensor wasn't reachable there was at least 5 others within half a light year that would still be communicating and monitoring to reduce the possibility of dead spots.

With the palace now converted into a resort hotel, it was almost immediately booked and busy. They had hired more staff and Jeff had designed his new menus for the restaurant, lounge and room service. They had also built a new larger boat shack and a large playground with water slides about 25 metres off shore.

With Mark's new plan of running the palace like a business, meant that the monarchy probably didn't actually cost the taxpayers anything, since there really wasn't much in the way of infrastructure or maintenance costs. In fact, if anything, the monarchy would now probably contribute to the tax pool.

With everything under control at the palace, Mark felt it was time for him and his crew to take to the stars, so they commandeered the palace shuttle as the new royal shuttle, since theirs got stolen, and flew up to the Poseidon.

When they disembarked, they were informed that Commander Topos wanted to see them on the bridge, so that was where they went immediately after landing.

Commander Topos greeted them and said, "The last shuttles would be docking within the hour and they would be underway shortly after."

Mark dismissed the delay, "We're not in a rush, so whenever you're ready is fine Commander."

The Commander smiled, "That's good to hear, let me show you to your quarters, and please call me Adam."

"Don't we get the same quarters as last time?" Mark asked, as everyone looked confused.

Adam laughed, "If you want to sleep in general quarters go right ahead, but now that you are officially the King, you might appreciate the royal quarters that General Marsbe had constructed after you indicated you would be staying on the Poseidon."

Mark looked flabbergasted, "Lead on good sir! My curiosity has been piqued!"

Adam smiled as he led the group to the area above the bridge at the top of the Battlestar. The royal quarters were a wide hallway above the bridge, there were five bedrooms on each side of the hallway and an extra large royal bedroom at the very front of the ship.

Entering the royal bedroom was a very large bed, but the big feature was the clear ceiling allowing them scenic view of the planet below and across the room from the bed was an office for Mark to use.

Adam then pointed out that all of the rooms were larger than normal and they all had desks, but the room for Solara was actually setup for her to design things. The Commander said there was actually a mass fabricator located at the front of the starboard landing bay that she could use.

Adam then left them to settle into their new quarters as he got the ship ready to depart for Savann.

Mark went to his office and sat down at his desk, which was just like his desk in the Senate, probably so he could participate in meetings from anywhere. It had the display, the buttons and even the drink dispensers.

He made an Internet call to the office and Beth answered.

Beth was all smiles when she saw it was Mark calling.

She thanked him again for giving all three of them jobs and that they were loving their work. There was a few new people in the office, but Henry was doing well at picking good people to come work there.

The security business was growing rapidly as they now had city hall and all the schools in Calgary and most of the surrounding towns enrolled and they were in talks with the universities, colleges and technical schools.

Then she added that they every mall was also now enrolled as well as many office buildings in the core. They had also just got the contract to secure the Stampede grounds, including the BMO Centre and Saddledome and they were also hoping to have contracts for McMahon Stadium, Spruce Meadows and even the airport by the end of the month.

She added that Henry had managed to setup a currency exchange and had negotiated an agreement with the Calgary airport to allow embassy arrivals and departures.

They currently had almost 300 people per day visiting the embassy, most with medical conditions doctors on Earth hadn't been able to cure. They had thousands of positive reviews about the embassy and only a few negative ones.

After Beth finished talking she asked Mark how things were going on Atlanterra?

Mark told her about the two assassination attempts and about the tour. Then she asked when he was returning home? He didn't know exactly when that would be, but he hoped it would be right after his visit to Savann and Atria.

As the call ended Mark felt relieved that everything had indeed been going well, despite his not being there.

Within the hour, there was an announcement that they were engaging the light drive and then Atlanterra disappeared.

A few minutes into light drive there was a series of announcements outlining their mission, which was to escort a new Destroyer, the King and his entourage, to the planet Savann and that the travel time was expected to be 8 days and 14 hours.

Not having worked out for a few weeks, Rayven suggested they go down to the gym for a workout, then they could grab something to eat. So they all agreed and went down to the gym area.

The group grabbed an open mat area and did their version of one of the 30-minute workouts they had remembered. After that Mark held a training class to teach all of the girls some self-defense and a bit of martial arts. During the span of his little impromptu class a number of other people joined in.

After a little more than an hour, they went to the shower area and then for a bite to eat in the cafeteria.

In all honesty the group fell in to a decent routine on the trip. Wake up, workout and/or sex, shower, breakfast, relax or attend other royal duties, lunch, sports and/or sex, supper, movie and/or sex, sleep. Then check-in with Cricket for his daily reports, whenever they dropped out of light drive.

With new protocols they had to stop at least once per day for communications check-in. All total the daily stops would add a few hours of time to the trip as each time you dropped out of light drive, you had to wait an hour for the drive to be ready to go again.

Sure enough 8 and a half days later there was an announcement that they would be arriving in Savann in a couple of hours.