Alexander watched the Talon slide into orbit around the p, followed shortly after by the vessels frht. The Zephyr was the only ship capable of dog with the refueli as the other dog arms were already in use.

  As for the Arklight transport, it was waiting for clearao nd on the phe heavy lift transport was rather rge for a pary nding craft, but it had additional thrusters to assist in takeoff and nding operations.

  He just o make sure they used the correding location. A new crete pad had been poured specifically to house the Q. Ohe very expensive piece of equipment was ihe prefabricated halves of the dome could be slid in pce, and the requisite crete poured over the structure to seal it against the corrosive atmosphere.

  This was the only stru project Alexander had personally overseen since appointing Yi Na as the stru foreman. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the man, it was just that he was keeping the location of the Q a secret. And sinobody ever went outside uhey had to, nobody eve had been built in the first pce. Automation was wonderful for projects like that.

  Alexander had learned his lesson from designing the on empts as well, so a tunnel had already been mostly structed that led back to the facility. In this case, it exited in his workshop, which allowed him to trol all access to the actual Q array. Those with patible devices would be able to access the work from anywhere on the p and even in orbit. He would o speak with the Q engio see if that feature could be turned on or off. As for everyone else, they would be setting up some terminals across the facility that lio the Q.

  It would be a nightmare to trol the information that was going out from Eden’s End if he couldn’t disable remote access. Thankfully, very few people on Eden’s End owned Q-linked devices.

  He had a momentary thought about removing those devices and fisg them from any new arrivals, but restrig unications was a slippery slope he didn’t wish to go down. That being said, he wasn’t fortable letting unfiltered unications go out. He had an idea of how to go about this, but he needed access to the Q to see if it would work or not. That would o wait until the teis left though.

  With the nding site he stru zone cleared Alexander sent the Arklight ship the coordinates and the authorization to nd. It would take a few trips around the p before they deorbited. Unlike most ships, the Arklight transport o take a very shallow dest path. A pair ht shuttles came down ahead of the transport ship and nded he nding pad. They disged ten heavily armed and armored security people each. Those people surrouhe pad, ensuring nobody tried to approach or harm the workers.

  It felt a bit like overkill to Alexander, but then again, a Q array was worth half a billios, so maybe not.

  A few of the other security people were enting on the Arklight personnel and w who would win in a csh. As much as Alexander admired the improvements Damien’s people had implemehus far, in a csh of equal forces, he would probably put his money on the Arklight troopers. All of the Arklight augment gear looked top-of-the-line. Maybe not as high quality as the suit that pirate leader was wearing, but closer than any of the gear Damien and his people had at hand, which could generously be sidered light augment gear.

  Alexander had been hands-off on most of the local defeech that Damien and the ineers had produced. He mainly gave ideas, and in a few cases, helped implement their designs when asked for input. This was because Damien seemed to get upset anytime he stuck his nose in on their work.

  He could uand the man’s desire to separate themselves from him, but that didn’t mean Alexander wasn’t ready to step in and improve their gear at a moment's notice. He had aire folder filled with design schematics that might rival, if not exceed Arklight’s gear. When Damien finally relented and asked for Alexander’s help, he would gdly give it to the man. Until then, the designs sat unused, only being updated as Alexander added minor improvements when he learned better ways to implement designs.

  Fog ba the task at hand, Alexander made a flig motion to ge the main holo dispy feed to the camera ihe station’s hangar. He could see Jasper and his crew already unloading crates from the Zephyr and transferring them to the shuttle. He even saw the Captain having a lively versation with Branston while they waited off to the side and out of the way of the crew as they worked.

  Alexander had already spoken to Jasper a few ho so he wouldn’t be b him while they were transferring cargo. It would take some time to ferry everything to the surface, but Ju Na was handling that. He looked over to the woman who was sitting at one of the soles in the aer. She was unig with Naomi from Jasper’s crew and seemed to be getting along just fine. He couldn’t be happier that he didn’t have to deal with the logistics of that process anymore.

  Seeing that Mingyu’s sister had everything well in hand, he switched the camera feed to focus oalon. It didn’t take long for the massive ship to start disg its drop ships. It was a much different experieg this happen from a groundside perspective. It would have been horrifying to see if he didn’t know they were friendly.

  The ships sooered the atmosphere, leaving trails in their wake. He watched for only a few more seds before ging to one of the farther-out cameras. The new view showed just a small glimmering dot in the ter of the image, showing just how far out the ships of the voy still were. For some reason, they had slowed their approach after jumping into the system a little over an hour behind Captain Matthews.

  All of their transponders were active, so Alexander knew who each ship beloo. Not a single captain had reached out yet. That didn’t mean the facility’s sensors hadn’t picked up unicatioween the ships. Everyone of Lucas’ camera probes could pick up stray radio unications and there lenty of open radio traffic going bad forth between the vessels. It seemed the captairying to decide on the best course of a to reach out and request asylum.

  They had to know their unications were being intercepted, right?

  If they did or not it didn’t really ge anything. Alexander had decided to wait to address them until he had the other people settled.

  He hoped everyone who came out here adapted as quickly as those first troublemakers did. He hadn’t heard any peep about them from Damien, so they must be fitting in or they were sitting in lockup. He hadn’t seen anyone else in lockup when he went to speak with Shall, so he assumed it was the former.

  Things were going to ge again ohe Q was avaible, and that reminded Alexahat his meeting with the cil was in a few minutes. He thahe trol ter people for allowing him to take over for a bit before handing access back to them and heading off to the cil Chamber. The very officiously named space was a slightly rger room with no embellishments and a half-moon table made from metal where the cil sat.

  The ow sisted of Damien as the Head of Security, Nancy as the Head of Learning, Gabriel as the Head of Medical Services, and the member, Shei, the farmer he had spoken to quite some time ago. Her willio embrace the ges Alexander was implementing had propelled her far past the other farmers, especially the one she had made the bet with. Now she was the Head of Agriculture for Eden’s End.

  The group quieted as he entered. “Sorry for being te, I was just making sure everything was going smoothly with our new arrivals.”

  “As should we all,” Damien grunted. “I assume you have something important to say and that you didn’t take us all away from our other duties for no reason?”

  Alexander rolled his avatar’s eyes at the man’s grumbling. “I did. There are two reasons I called this meeting. The first is to discuss the Q that is arriving and will be installed soon.”

  The group all looked surprised by the admission.

  “You purchased a Q array?” Gabriel was the first to ask.

  “I did. It will be installed in the few days and open to ah a linked devitil I get some soles set up with access to it.”

  “Yoing to just let anyone use it?” Damien asked in suspi.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he replied with a bit of annoyan return.

  “I could cite a few reasons,” Damien responded, ign Alexander’s tohe first and most major is what if we have araitor? With so many new people, how we stop them from giving out our location as away to pirates or roups who might be ied? This seems like a huge security risk.”

  Alexander’s tone softened. He thought the man was questioning his motives, not the actual security issues involved with having open unications to STO space. “You are correct, there is some risk and I have sidered those issues. I believe I have a way to limit them but there is some additional research I must do before I say for sure. Until then, the only people who will have access to the array are those with linked s. I assume you know how many locals have those?”

  Damien snorted. “None of the drifters have Q-linked devices. It would be rather wasteful sihe whole point of ing out here was to get away from the STO. I ’t say if any of those people who arrived along with your stist friend have them. However, I would hazard to guess that at least one of them does. Your friend and her grandson probably do. I ask them if you wish?”

  Alexander shook his avatar’s head. “I’m sure Dr. Lund has one, but she doesn’t really unicate with anyone iO and most of her former co-workers were co-opted by the Navy so I doubt she will want to speak with them either. She will probably have a few people she talks with, but not many. You ask her grandson, I admit I’m not really familiar with the boy. As for the rest, that’s really up to you.”

  The man grunted. “Fair enough. You said you had other news?”

  “Hold on now,” Nancy cut in. “Before we switch topics, how is this going to affect the schooling?”

  “What do you mean?” Alexander asked.

  “All of those learning modules will unicate back to the panies who created them. If they do, they’ll know we’ve been using them in an unauthorized fashion. I’ve seen what happens to people who tried that in the past, it’s not pretty when a squad of corporate security goons es by and arrests everyone involved as well as fiscates all of their assets.”

  “The work with the learning modules will remain unected from the soles that allow access to the Q and the STO work.”

  “Until someone slips and tells a family across the work. The Qight be secure, but the end user terminals certainly aren’t,” she tered.

  What she said was true, and Nancy’s words were close to something Alexander suspected about the Q work. If he was right, it would allow him to monitor all ining and outgoing messages. “That issue should be handled if my research bears fruit. If not, it’s an issue we will address if and when the corporations respond. In the meantime, I pn on transcribing all of the information from the learning modules into a tral library. If they do demaution or take away our access to those modules, we will already be prepared. I have Lucas w on a program to allow this transfer. Your s are a good transition to my opic though, and another ohat should give us additional prote against the corporations.”

  “Alex, we know, yood at building things, but do you really think anything will stop the corporations from taking what they want when they want?” Shei asked.

  “I do. I pn on g Y6X-3H2 as a sn nation.”

  They all just stared at him in dumbfounded shock.

  It was Gabriel once again who was the first to speak up. “What!?”

  “Hear me out. The STO has never made a cim on this system. Why would they? There is nothing here but a barely habitable world and a few gas giants. The same is true for the inal owners of this facility. They simply built it to study the star, and ohey satisfied that goal, they left. It was sold a few more times until the STO pulled its borders back due to the Shi War. A few groups tried to make this facility profitable until it was abandoned and drifters took over. Then I purchased it whe owner passed away.”

  Shei held her hands up to stop him. “Yes, we get that much. I think what Gabriel is w is how is it even possible that the STO would allow this?” Gabriel that.

  He told them about the requirements and ws built directly into the STO’s charter. Damien was the first to uand and the man actually burst out ughing. “The corporations didn’t bother plugging the loophole because they didn’t think anyone could ever use it.”

  “Precisely,” Alexander smiled. “And we now have a fleet of three ships.”

  “I thought you only had tw ships?” Damien asked in fusion.

  “Their only stipution of what stitutes a ship is that it must belong to or work directly for the ruling party and be capable of both defending the system and having FTL capabilities. Captain Na’s ship now qualifies uhe STO’s own rules.”

  “Have you mentiohis to him?” Damien asked skeptically. “It seems like his current work for you is more of a tractual basis than what you are referring to.”

  “I pn on speaking with him right after our meeting. I think he will agree to ge the parameters of our tract. If he does, I desighe Destiny as an Envoy vessel allowing his ship and his crew to receive diplomatic immunity. This would nullify the idiotic ruling the STO had pced upon it.”

  The group all chuckled at that.

  “Well,” Damien stated, looking far more enthusiastic than Alexander had ever seen him. “Far be it for us to stop you. Since yoing to go ahead with this crazy pn, how will this ge our roles?”

  Alexander had put a lot of thought into this pn, so this was an easy question to answer. “In the short term, nothing will ge. Eventually, as more people arrive and the facility is expanded, more roles will get added to the cil.”

  “And your role?” Gabriel asked.

  This was a bit of a tougher question, but once again, he had spent a long time deg on this course of a. “I think Overseer would be the best description and title for what I pn on doing. Essentially the same as I am doing now. So once again, nothing will ge in the short term.”

  They all seemed to accept this ge aified them that they would o attend the formation ceremony. He wasn’t surprised by their acceptance. Ever since Alexander had arrived on Eden’s End, their lives had improved by leaps and bounds. The only persohought might grumble was Damien, but the man seemed just as enthusiastic about this ge as everyone else. Probably because it meant stig it to the STO. If that was the case, Alexander would take what he could get.