Existential Threat: Chapter 4 Part 3 of 4 (Patreon)

“What about smaller hell-bores? Ones that use the smaller charges, if we could hit the railcannon rounds, and the laser burned off a bit of the rail-round, it could divert the weapon. A few degrees over a megameter is a pretty wide margin.”

“Which ships would you want them on?”

“Corvettes, keep them as our main defensive ships? Have a few on other ships?”

“Won’t take much power and would increase the weapon output of the corvettes, dart in and hit then run?”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Dana nodded.

“More training,” Minnie made a note.

“Always more training,” Dana smiled. “And Minnie?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t ever hold yourself back from building whatever you want. Never know when it might come into use.”

“I think that you need to talk to Luke, I can offer you all the advice, but talking to one another is the only thing that really helps.”

Dana tilted her head from side to side, taking in a hissing breath. “Fine, fine, alright,” She relented under Minnie’s glare.

***

A room formed around her, an ovaloid conference room in the middle of the room, windows on all four sides of the room, one of the longer sides showing Sphere World One, the other Sphere World Two, the Dreadnought Morir dominated a smaller wall and the last showed a hologram of the Orion System.

Kim Jung-Su’s avatar sported his faded hair that thickened at the top falling down his forehead on his damn near pudding like skin. Dana had been trying to pry out just what he did to get skin that good. He was on the thinner side, but like most people that played on the net, hours of high-g manuevers, long days, constant running and physical toll and trimmed him down. Added with the unlimited amount of food supplied by the Legion, he wasn’t as big as the ground troopers, but he was lithe and agile. That’s where the similarities split between his real-life and his avatar. Earrings ran up the side of his right ear, the head of a beautiful Ice Sphynx curling up the side of his neck and disappearing down into his uniform. His eyes an icy blue, same as the sphynx.

He made to rise with the other inhabitant of the room.

“There’s no one else to see us be all formal,” Dana waved him off, Diego half-way to shutting his mouth and standing too.

“He talking your ear off about the Morir again?” Dana moved to the table, opening her interface and resizing the table, to a third of the size so they were closer together.

“She’s a thing of beauty and its Prepárate Para Morir,” Diego emphasized the spanish name. He drew his fingers through his glossy black hair with a groan and eye roll, a gold chain peeking through his coveralls and a few rings on his fingers. Unlike in the real he had a well groomed and full beard upon his face instead of a constant scruff.

“Yes, he has,” Jung-Su said dryly. “Thank you for saving me.”

Dana shook her head, taking her seat.

“Dick.” Diego muttered.

Jung-Su chuckled.

“How are things looking?” Dana asked.

“Quiet, nothing out of the ordinary. Got crews working on the freighters to change things up, keep them focused, also been keeping them engaged with the fleet on fleet fights. Been doing some cross training for fun. They’re engaged and learning more every day. As we predicted we reached the end of the two sectors we control just a few hours ago. Scouts are laying down hyper-net nodes.”

“Freighters are still trying to catch up with laying down caches and defensive networks,” Diego added in a it’s-been-said-a-dozen-times voice. “What now?”

Jung-Su watched her closely as well.

“Scouts will continue as they have before, this time on a new heading,” Dana tapped on the table opening an interface and tossing up a star map.

“We know the position of two Sphere Worlds and we know that they had to be coming from roughly inward of the milky-way galaxy. Scouts should move along this cone of advance and continue as they have previously. They will not seed caches at this time, just hypernet nodes. The engineers are working to expand on what we have right now.”

“And ships?” Diego asked.

“We will continue to produce ships and fleets. We have dealt with the local Adraxi threat, but we know there are more Adraxi, more Sphere Worlds out there. The further our hypernet extends, the more time we have to act before the enemy does.” She pulled up the projections she’d talked to Minnie about. Building and outfitting timelines, tossing it to them.

She drew up a map of the known star systems, a network of points in three dimensions highlighted and outlined by clouds of the different occupied systems, pointing to yellow marked systems.

“Our priority is enhancing our current infrastructure, caches will build out nanite vats and operate on automatic. Miners, factories and then shipyards. We’ll focus on turning our six systems into impregnable fortresses. Warpgates are being shifted into lagrange points, Armadas will remain broken into their fleets, one per dark system.”

“What about problems closer to home?” Jung-Su asked, surfacing from the time-line reports, his icy eyes betraying nothing.

“We will defend the people of Orion’s Belt Eneterprises and humanity as best we can,” she turned her gaze from Jung-Su to Diego. “In that order.”

There was none of the playfulness in his eyes or face as he returned her gaze and nodded. “Federation brought up more ships to their jump points. We’ve got four complete fleets, one of which is hidden, about sixty other craft on patrol or part of scouting operations. They’ve now got six Federation standard fleets at lagrange points. By the news it looks like they’ve dealt with the last of the Adraxi infection but it took its toll.”

“And they’re using it as propaganda against us even though we were the one to give them command posts,” Dana tensed her jaw, breathing out through her nose.

“If they do attack, are we going to occupy them?”

“No, we’ll have to see what the situation brings, but we’re not going to be the ones to attack. If we do then it gives them the opening they want and can set others against us.”

“I can’t believe that we have to worry about them stabbing us in the back and just because we have some morals we’re hamstrung,” Diego muttered.

“Who would have thought that a bunch of gamers would have more restraint than a faction,” Jung-Su shook his head. “The Freighters for the fleets, are we going to keep them operating with the merchant fleets?”

“If we need to go out into a fight then the freight fleet will turn into our supply fleet as we’ve planned.”

“And we’re only going to have navy personnel using the freighters?” Jung-Su asked.

“That is why they’re cross-training on them, that and to keep them focused.”

“The freighter crews could do it,” Diego said.

“They could and most of them are trustworthy,” Dana stopped him talking with a look. “But there is a reason that all Legion members must go through security gates, that they get a randomly assigned net-room and have to be biometrically checked before they can enter a bot on a military ship or a military shipyard. There’s a reason we have only a limited number of blueprints in the factories that the Legion doesn’t have direct control over.”

“If one person gets an unlocked factory they could build a Dreadnought with enough time,” Diego said.

“And why we have every warship outfitted with their own hypernet node so that no one can break our connection,” Jung-Su sighed.

“Are we sure about selling the other systems factories and gear?” Diego looked around.

“The factories have been wiped of all blueprints but the ones we rent to them. Anything else they have to come up with. Sure they can build a railgun but they have to design it and put it through, that way we’re not liable,” Dana interlaced her fingers.

“Still all those factories in other people's hands.” Diego rubbed his face with a sigh.

“It’s the reality we live with. It’ll strengthen our allies, make them stronger quicker. It is also Brad and Stuart’s call. We went through their arguments and I believe them to be sound,” Dana shrugged. “Anything else?”

Diego shook his head, the argument over.

“No, everything is good, same old,” Jung-Su said.

“Very well, I take command, of the Legion fleets. Get some rest you two. Going to need it for the next battle,” Dana’s smile contained an edge.

“I don’t know, my boys and girls got a fire burning under them,” Diego’s grin was back in full force as his eyes slid from Dana to Jung-Su.

“We’ll see,” Jung-Su exuded confidence.