Corebound Chapter 3-27 (Patreon)

Jacob popped into a virtual void space and glanced around. Of course, there was nothing to see, but it was good to verify that with his own eyes.

“Junior, is this space secure from our new friends?”

“Yes, Captain. My infrastructure lacks the Concord Imperium communication protocols, and I have disabled all other avenues of connection to my core or storage archives outside of the high-bandwidth link for you.”

“Could the High Chancellor use that link to listen in?”

“Given what I know about communication protocols, no, Captain, but I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty.”

It would have to suffice.

“What do you make of the High Chancellor and his people? Do you think they can be trusted?”

“Based on your interaction, I believe the High Chancellor can be trusted to work toward his own goals. Right now those goals align with ours; in the future, who can say.”

“Yeah…,” Jacob said, dragging out the word. “That’s what I thought too.”

He would have reached out to Barry, Katherine, and others to get their opinion, but the chancellor was able to listen in and enter Concord systems without detection, so anything he said to them would likely be known to the ark AI, and he didn’t want it thinking he was working against it.

Jacob wasn’t dumb. The AI never would have approached him unless he had something to offer, but it was clear it had a wide network of spies and data-gathering apparatus. There was no way a thousand-year-old AI didn’t know exactly where the t’uk fleet was hiding. It would also know that Jacob and others were looking for them. Since it hadn’t mentioned anything about them, Jacob had to assume it was hiding the information for a reason.

He couldn’t rule out the possibility that the AI was working with the t’uk splinter group, despite what it and the other two had said.

“I want you to keep all data associated with the miniaturization project inside your archives. Don’t send anything to the High Chancellor until I’ve reviewed it.”

“I will need more storage, Captain.”

“With the Astryx fleets destroyed, we can shift some of the production toward that. Make sure your storage stays well ahead of your needs.”

“I have adjusted the production queues, Captain…”

“You have something to add?” Jacob asked.

“Why are we being friendly with the High Chancellor if everything points to it being untrustworthy?”

“A few reasons,” Jacob replied. “The first is that we don’t know what the AI is capable of. A thousand years of unchecked AI development could mean anything. We can’t afford to piss it off, or it might just view us as an obstacle in its path. The second reason is that we are also benefiting from this alliance. Tech parity with the Astryx’s most powerful species is a huge boon. When their fleets fail to return or even communicate, the Astryx will send a judicator with an actual war fleet to see what happened.”

“Could that be one of the chancellor’s goals?” Junior asked.

Jacob considered the question. The Astryx was weakened, but not weak enough that the High Chancellor was willing to attack them directly. If a large chunk of their remaining military power were sent out to look for their lost ships, that could keep them from reinforcing the Astryx until the High Chancellor and his forces took control. It would gain Astryx space, at the cost of Earth. In that scenario, it wouldn’t matter if humanity survived a war fleet. “It’s a possibility,” Jacob concluded.

If Jacob had been planning a comeback for a thousand years, his plans would contain many layers to prevent failure. Jacob and humanity were just another cog in that process.

He would need to do something to ensure the AI didn’t decide he had outgrown that role when everything was said and done.

“Captain, I am receiving a data packet from the High Chancellor.”

“Quarantine the data in a sandbox.” The Concord AI wasn’t wasting any time. That was both good and bad. Jacob hadn’t even had time to think of countermeasures. That could be another plan. Keep everything moving too fast to react or plan against it. For now, he was forced to play along.

Jacob pulled up a virtual window to the data. It was read-only, so that should prevent any shenanigans, if there were any.

“As far as I can tell, the data is benign,” Junior reassured him.

“Thank you, Junior. Anything that sticks out?”

Multiple screens appeared. “I have not done a deep dive into the data, but these are the technology specifications you requested.”

Jacob understood only about a third of the data, and only because it resembled the Concord systems he knew. It looked like he was going to have to find some Astryx resource to learn from. Online forums and available data sheets weren’t going to cut it this time around. He would have to find an actual school that taught the subject.

That was going to take time, which is why he avoided it when he first learned engineering outside of the information Melody crammed into his head.

Jacob put a mental pin in that problem as he looked at the other screen. “And this?”

“They appear to be specifications for androids.”

“Appears to be?” Jacob had never heard the AI sound unsure about a technical matter before.

“Yes, Captain. There is a lot of data there, and I don’t understand some of the underlying principles used.”

That was less than ideal. “We’ll figure it out,” he said more confidently than he felt.

Luckily, they didn’t have to wait long to get an answer. An eiraxin android appeared outside of Junior’s storage facility a few minutes later without anyone seeing or hearing it get dropped off. The shell was hollow, but it matched the schematics that were given to them.

The High Chancellor had just shown that it could bypass FTL blockers and shields without issue. That was either a warning or a demonstration. Probably both.

There was just enough of the android to design a brain for it, without including all the other components that would let Junior, Jacob, or Barry reverse-engineer it easily.

They figured that out after running the android through every sort of scanner they could find to ensure it wasn’t trapped. The android husk was moved to a separate facility for further study.

Jacob was itching to dive into the data himself, but he had a mess in orbit to clean up. The t’uk had left a mess as well, but most of those vessels had crashed into Earth at some point over the last few months, which didn’t help with the damage on the ground, but didn’t really kill all that many, considering the t’uk had done a pretty thorough job of that before they left.

The few t’uk vessels still orbiting had drifted far from Earth, and weren’t worth the effort to recover quite yet. It wasn’t like there was much that was intact on them. Jacob had used void cannons liberally during the fighting.

The other Astryx vessels were another matter. Unfortunately, the veyrit ships were mostly clumps of slowly spreading nanites. The ivathian ships weren’t much better. They had flown directly into the nanite cloud to try and ram Earth. Now any vessel that Jacob hadn’t blown up was being converted into clouds of their own, destined to burn up during reentry.

That left the shalis fleet ships that scattered during the end of the fight. Jacob would recover those ships and melt them down for their raw resources, but that’s about all they were good for.

Recovering the rest of the nanites to use as raw material was going to be a chore, but Jacob had an idea for that.

He transitioned into the remains of the veyrit fleet and just waited. Sure enough, Melody’s gravity slowly drew the nanite clouds toward him instead of toward Earth. Jacob pumped extra power into the gravity systems aboard the massive vessel to eke out a bit more pull.

Estimates suggested he would have to wait in that spot for a few weeks to collect the majority of the nanites. That was going to be slow and boring, but it gave him time to repair the damage.

Jacob sped up the process of collecting all the nanites by using some of the science drones as little gravity sources to help everything along. The ships would need to be scoured clean of any dormant nanites after, but he didn’t need to worry about that for now. If there were any active nanites, they wouldn’t decompose the Concord materials.

The nanite dust actually made converting it down to raw elements much quicker, and Jacob made a mental note to look into seeing if it would be possible to include nanites in the raw ore processing.

Once Jacob had all the materials in their elemental form, he recombined them into the correct alloy mixtures that he required. It was a slow, laborious process with only the onboard fabricators, but he made do. He didn’t want to risk transferring any active nanites to Earth. He was pretty sure they wouldn’t cause issues, but pretty sure wasn’t the same as being certain.

Once he was certain the process was working as intended, he left it to run, with two avatars keeping an eye on it while he transferred himself back to the space station to update Barry on everything that had happened.

“You survived. I assume that means the defense was successful?” Barry asked.

“It was, but there’s a lot to discuss. First, I need you to recall any ships you have heading toward Earth. There’s a lot of nanites hanging around in orbit, and full cleanup efforts are going to take time.”

“Bob was on his way back with some more gear. Are you sure about recalling him? He’s still a few weeks out.”

“You sent my friend into an active warzone?”

“No. I assumed by the time he arrived, things would have been resolved, and if you didn’t check in, I would have told him to turn around.”

“Still,” Jacob grumbled. “A few weeks?” Jacob did some math. “Okay, it should be fine by then. The nanites don’t seem to stay active for more than a few days unless they reach some sort of criticality threshold.” At least that’s what he assumed happened with the veyrit ships that got hit with the diffuse attack. He would have to do some tests to make sure. “I’m cleaning up the largest collections of them now, and should have most before he arrives.” And there would be plenty of time to test his hypothesis and ensure it truly was safe for his friend.

“I’ll notify him that there are possible hazards, and to check with you before making his final approach.”

“Probably for the best.”

“Other than that, how did the battle go?”

Just then, Katherine appeared.

“Are we discussing the battle?” she asked.

They both nodded.

“First off, let me say those nanite missiles are terrifying. The veyrit were out of the fight almost instantly. Any idea how they got the ivathians to try and commit suicide on you?”

Barry looked shocked at Katherine’s words and turned toward Jacob.

“It wasn’t nearly as harrowing as Katherine makes it out to be,” Jacob replied. “And no. I assume they were just trying to hold my attention while the other ship tried to flee and report what happened.”

“By your tone, I’m going to assume it didn’t get away?” Barry inquired.

Katherine snorted at that. “Get away? The crazy bastard over there transitioned right in the bastard’s path and all the ship did was leave a slight dent in his armor.”

“To be fair,” Jacob added, “the shields took most of the impact.”

Barry just shook his head in exasperation. “And the shalis?”

“Not even a concern,” Katherine replied. “We are free and clear.”

“That’s gre—” Barry began to say before Jacob cut him off.

“Well, not quite.”