M.J. Markgraf
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BSE Chapter 5-54
🕑 Added 2025-08-07 12:00:14 +0000 UTCAlexander finished up some documents that Theo had sent him and set down the tablet. Hiring the man had been the right choice, and made managing his duties as Jarl and owner of BSE much more bearable.
Theo filtered out all the bullshit, so all that was left were items he needed to personally approve. If the man hadn’t been around, Alexander wasn’t sure he could have taken a year off to fly to Earth, even with the comm node. Even though the trip had turned into a mess that nearly got Yulia and everyone else killed, it hadn’t been without its benefits.
Establishing a relationship with the STO Navy had been paramount among those benefits. One that had paid dividends when the Navy attacked the Xin fleet to keep them from reinforcing the other fleets under the Shican’s command. It hadn’t been entirely successful, and Alexander still wasn’t sure how invested the STO was in a long-term relationship, but with the war already here, any help was better than none.
In fact, he had a meeting with the admirals in a few hours to discuss extending their working relationship. That wasn’t something Alexander had considered until he saw just how many ships were lost during the battles with Xin’s forces.
His biggest fear was that the Shican could improve the Xin’s existing shipyards to produce ships at a speed exceeding BSE’s. It wasn’t an unbelievable option considering intel on Xin’s ship-building capacities was nearly non-existent. They could already have the capacity to build ships faster than he could. Captain Voss had discovered at least three worlds dedicated to producing ships; there could be more.
Alexander tapped his fingers on his desk in thought. Then he sent a comm request to Katalynn. He knew the Asgardian fleet was well clear of the border by now, because he had gotten updates from Krieger mentioning the BSE fleet was on their way home.
A minute later, his holo came to life with a tired-looking Lagertha. “Kane, this better be important. I was sleeping.”
Alexander winced internally. He forgot to check Asgard’s local time, which is what Katalynn used in her fleet. “I’m sorry for waking you. I can call back later.”
“I’m already up,” she grumbled. “No point wasting both our time twice, just spit it out.”
“Right,” he said apologetically. “My people managed to reverse engineer the Shican defensive field.”
Katalynn perked up at that. “Hearing that almost makes up for getting woken up in the middle of the night. I assume you are telling me this because it can be deployed on my ships?”
“It can be, but it’s going to take a full armor retrofit to make it happen.”
She frowned at that. “It’ll take months to upgrade a heavy cruiser, let alone my battle cruiser, even with the printers and bots you gave me.”
“I’m aware,” Alexander replied. “I have a solution that should speed that process up. I’ve already sent the changes to the mobile construction yards. The upgrades will be ready by the time you arrive home. You just need to make sure you have plenty of material to feed to the new bots.”
As soon as the bots had been tested and the bugs worked out, he had forwarded the design to the mobile construction yards, with orders to replace eighty percent of their existing units with the new ones.
“Vague,” she grunted in annoyance. “But we don’t know if the Shican can intercept these communications, so I approve. I assume you are going to send a top-secret encrypted file for me to look over?”
Alexander nodded his avatar. Since they learned of the Shican’s ability to detect comm node traffic, it had been decided to create three tiers of encryption. The base communication encryption, a tactical level of encryption, and a top-secret level, which was not stored on a ship’s computer. That last level of encryption was only accessible via a biological encryption key that was given to Lagertha Char and the other Jarls. Alexander also added Admiral Krieger to that list, but not himself, since the key would not function for a non-biological lifeform, or one that was cybernetically enhanced.
Lucas and Wei Na, Mingyu’s middle sister, got credit for coming up with that little bit of code/biology. It would break down as soon as the recipient died, rendering it useless. You could theoretically recreate the key or force the person who had it to unlock the file for you, but that meant you had to know about the code ahead of time and that you could get the person to cooperate. Alexander was also pretty sure that the Asgardians would go down fighting before ever bowing to an enemy, especially the Shican.
“You will be able to look over the planned changes to the bots and the ships. There are estimated timelines for the upgrades as well. They may look wrong, but I can assure you they are mostly accurate.”
Katalynn sighed. “More changes. In normal times, I would ask you to slow down so my people have time to process and understand all of these new technologies, but war waits for no one. And the Shican’s assault clearly shows just how far behind we are.”
Alexander gave the woman an apologetic look. He understood. When he first moved to Eden’s End, he felt like he was cobbling together existing technologies with a hope and a prayer, barely understanding the mechanics behind what he was doing. He had a better grasp on the engineering behind most of his projects now, but he still felt that way on certain things like the reactor improvements and the new ripple drive.
Sure, he made them work, but they would probably work a whole lot better if he had a more in-depth grasp of the mechanics behind them.
“Hopefully, these upgrades will narrow that gap. The upgrades take care of one issue, but I think we need more capital ships.”
“I agree,” she replied. “When I left Asgard, three more heavy cruisers were being constructed. How are your efforts proceeding?”
“I have two new classes of ships that will be produced shortly, but the bot changes should allow me to scale up my production to allow for some cruisers, maybe even heavy cruisers, to join that list. I haven’t looked at designing my own,” Alexander admitted.
“Even if you don’t have the fleet personnel to fill those ships, you might want to focus on the heavy cruisers. The surviving Jarls are going to need flagships that can hold up against the Shican. If you don’t have time to create your own design, you can use the Valkyrie design.”
“Seriously?” Alexander asked in shock. “Thank you.”
“Is it really such a surprise?” Katalynn asked. “Given time, I’m sure you would have created a ship far more capable than my old flagship.”
Alexander didn’t dispute that. He also didn’t bring up the Barracuda class battleship that he was currently producing. He would have sent the print plans for that along with the upgraded ones for her new flagship, the heavy cruiser, and the destroyer he helped Jarl Bergson create, but the battleship was an untested platform.
There was no point creating a bunch of them if the vessel turned out to be ineffective in the war against the Shican. Alexander didn’t think that was likely to be the case, but the ship required so much time and resources to create that it needed to be battle-tested before more got produced.
Katalynn did the same thing with the Valkyrie-class ships and her newest battle cruiser.
“Will your smaller ships sport these new upgrades?” Katalynn asked. “They were instrumental in saving some ships from certain death. I believe your Stingrays would also make a good countermeasure to the Shican’s waves of fighters.”
“I’m glad to know they were of some help. The Stingrays, corvettes, and frigates will have the upgrades, but they won’t be nearly as effective on anything smaller than a destroyer. The specifics of why are in the file I’m sending you.”
Alexander had played with the idea of turning the Stingrays into fighter interceptors by removing the anti-ship missile and replacing it with a rack of smaller missiles. They were faster and more heavily armed and armored than the Shican fighters, but he canned that idea. With the Shican’s heavy use of ECM, only a missile guided by a computronic would be able to reach a target.
He did have thoughts about removing the missile tube entirely and replacing it with more ammo storage for the FE cannons, but he liked the idea of keeping it as a multi-role interceptor. They could still focus on knocking down the enemy fighters, but they could also group up and launch salvos of missiles at an enemy ship. Enough missiles might be able to overwhelm or damage a section of armor.
Alexander’s comm beeped, and he glanced at it. The STO admirals were ready to meet. “That would be the STO Admirals. Are you sure you want me handling the exchange?”
Katalynn snorted. “Better you than me right now. Fleet sentiment for the STO isn’t very high after they failed to hold the enemy on their border, and I share their feelings.”
Alexnader nodded. “Alright. Let me know if anything goes wrong with the deployed upgrades.”
With that, he cut the call and connected to the new one.
Four holo screens popped up when he connected. It seemed that the Admirals were not all sitting in a meeting room back on Earth.
“Mr. Kane,” Admiral Dufresne greeted him. “First off, let me introduce you to the other admirals. He gestured to a man wearing what looked like a Sikh head wrap. “This is Admiral Patel.”
Patel nodded slightly.
The next person Dufresne gestured to was a severe-looking woman with a tightly controlled wry smirk. She reminded Alexander of a combination between Katalynn and Captain Voss, whom he had only seen pictures and video of.
“This is Admiral Thorne. The last member is Admiral Trelawney, who replaced the disgraced Admiral Util.”
Alexander greeted the admirals.
“Now that introductions are out of the way,” Dufresne continued. “I would like to apologize for our forces’ inability to hold all of Xin’s forces on the STO border. We weren’t ready for a full-scale offensive at the time you sent your data packet. Did this have any impact on the mission?”
That was a roundabout way of asking if they had managed to destroy the gate or not. Alexander could keep that information from the STO, but that would serve no purpose but spite, and he certainly didn’t have time for nonsense like that.
Alexander nodded his avatar toward the man. “I appreciate the apology, but it’s not necessary, Admiral Dufresne. We both know battle can be fluid, and I understand the STO is still mobilizing forces so soon after the previous conflict. That being said, the enemy reinforced the system with the gate, causing us to change plans and deploy additional forces. The mission was eventually successful, and the gate was destroyed.”
It was interesting watching the tension bleed out of the admirals. Too bad he was going to have to break some other bad news to them.
“Our change in plans did lead to some complications,” Alexander continued. “The enemy was able to activate the gate before we had forces in place to deal with it. Twenty-five additional Shican ships were waiting in the system when we arrived.”
“Were you able to deal with them?” Thorne asked.
“No,” Alexander replied. “We managed to score some minor damage on two of the ships we are calling dreadnoughts, but that took sacrificing two of our ships to make happen.”
“You ordered your people to commit suicide!” Trelawney said in outrage.
The other Admirals looked disturbed by the accusation, but Alexander simply stared at the newest member of the STO Navy leadership. “Admiral Trelawney, I do hope you are less stupid than Util. Your outburst makes me think that you might just be his clone.”
The insult left the group stunned, and Alexander continued uninterrupted. “I am not some monster that would order my people to kill themselves. I would never even ask my people to do something like that. In fact, I would order them to retreat and leave that gate active before I even considered such a despicable act.”
“Perhaps we should let Mr. Kane explain what happened before jumping to conclusions,” Patel chimed in, chiding the new admiral.
Alexander nodded in thanks before continuing. “While I had no intention of disclosing this information, it’s relevant to the discussion, and it would have become known to you sooner or later. Most of BSE’s smaller ships are automated. It was two of those automated ships that rammed the enemy and damaged the gate slightly, which gave us the time and opportunity to make a second attack, which destroyed the gate.”
“You mean ships controlled by quantum processors and self learning?” Thorne asked, her slight smirk slipping to a frown. “That’s dangerous.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point,” Alexander replied. “But I didn’t request this meeting to discuss my policies on AI or self-learning computers. I came to give you a report, and alert you to some disturbing facts we learned.”
Dufresne motioned for Alexander to continue.
“We’ve learned that the Shican are able to pick up comm signals and pinpoint their origin. It nearly cost one of our scout ships to learn that secret.”
“That is less than ideal,” Patel said coldly. “That would essentially make your new kcomms a beacon, exposing our fleet rally points.”
“Yours and ours,” Alexander confirmed, not flinching away from the man’s tone. “It can also be used as a trap to lure the Shican in. We successfully deployed such a strategy as our fleets were withdrawing from Xin territory.”
The Admirals nodded thoughtfully as they considered the possibilities.
Alexnader continued. “That brings me to another point. Xin threw over a thousand ships at us. That was after we went through hundreds of others as we pushed deeper into their space. I’m not up to date with how many ships Xin deployed along your border, but it’s clear that the Shican have been preparing for this for a long time. With the newer Shican ships appearing, I fear that Xin’s production capabilities might be bolstered, leading to a two-front war for both the STO and Union.”
“Don’t you mean Xin has been preparing for this for some time?” Dufresne asked.
“No,” Alexander replied. “The data packet we sent you included information that the Shican were controlling things, but we recently learned exactly how much control they had.” Alexander had kept the existence of the human clones to himself, mostly because it was never verified, but it was pretty clear that was what the Shican had been doing to bolster Xin’s forces. “I’m sure this won’t come as much of a surprise, but most of the Shicans are clones.”
Alexander paused to see if that news got a reaction when it didn’t, he nodded and continued. “We believe they somehow captured Xin and his defectors and then started cloning them en masse. There are just too many inconsistencies in how Xin’s forces operate for there to be any other explanation.”
Once again, there was little reaction to that statement.
“You knew?” Alexander demanded.
“We had our suspicions,” Thorne replied. “But Xin’s people’s suicidal tendencies made confirming that difficult.”
“Anything else I should know?” Alexander asked in an annoyed tone.
The Admirals conferred amongst themselves before turning the audio back on.
Patel spoke up this time. “We suspect Xin has at least ten enrichment facilities for nuclear weapons. We have no idea why he would need so many since none of his ships have ever fired nuclear missiles during battles. We do know that the Shican used nukes quite frequently during the first war. With the information you provided, that leads us to believe they may try to deploy such weapons again.”
Alexander wasn’t sure he believed that. First off, human electronic countermeasures were much more robust than they had been during the first conflict or during the Coalition War. The Shican seemed to be relying on Coalition-era technology for their ships, so the missiles, if there were any, probably relied on the same tech. Secondly, why bother? The Shican had lasers, powerful railguns, and their plasma weapons. Missiles were mainly to cause a distraction and split the enemy’s focus. Alexander’s missiles were a bit better because of the stealth coating and computronics, but they still wouldn’t be all that effective against the Shican.
The only use for weapons of mass destruction was to bombard planets. Alexander had assumed the aliens were after viable worlds to colonize. That was the only thing that made a war of this scale make sense. If the Shican were after something else or wanted to wipe out humanity, then that changed things and made the stockpiling of nukes for over twenty years make far more sense.
The lack of information was hampering their ability to act instead of just react.
Comments
Random
Could bomb pumped laser warheads be viable for Alexander’s missiles? It would proably allow them to bypass defensive fields
Vlast
>meeting with the admirals in a few hours The timeline is a bit of a mess. It doesn't feel like the conversation with Katalynn took that long. But I think the Shican POV set us up for failure. For several chapters I'm anticipating the inevitable assault, yet apparently even Krieger not back home yet. It was a good POV to keep tension going, yet I'm left wondering if they even arrive within 10-or-so chapters remaining in the book.
