It didn’t take Alexander long to meet up with the Arklight teis outside the facility. Even though they had been briefed about how he would appear, the guards tighteheir hands on their ons as he approached.

  He ighem as he moved through their cordon around the crete pad. Only oei was he device. It seemed the others had retreated to the fort and safety of their ship. Alexander couldn’t bme them. Spending too much time on the surface wasn’t good for anyone.

  “Greetings,” he said as he he man.

  The tei looked up, seeming more startled that someone had addressed him than he did at Alexander’s appearahe man’s eyes looked over the robotic body with some i before nding on his avatar’s face.

  “I assume you are Alexander Kane? Normally we would firm this with a bioprint, but I ’t exactly do that now I.”

  “I provide you with my corporate ID to prove it was my purchase. Will that suffice?”

  That man seemed to mull the option over before squinting at the harsh light from the star. He grunted in aowledgment. “It’ll have to do.”

  Alexander presehe man with the information. After verifying it on his end, the man seemed tent that it matched.

  “Very well, Mr. Kane. My name is Senior Tei Randolf.”

  Alexander wao ask if that was the man’s first name or st name, but sidering Randolf’s curt tone, he probably wouldn’t appreciate the question.

  “I am here to discuss the operational parameters of the Q array with you. First off, Q arrays are all wholly owned by the manufacturer, Q. You are simply renting this unit from them. As such, this array is armored and has a multitude of sensors to prevent tampering. If you trip one of these sensors, the array will notify the head office, and go offlihen a crew will be sent out to retrieve the unit.”

  He had suspected Qs were handled slightly differently within STO w but he hadn’t known the specifitil now. They must have been grandfathered in under an old w, or an exception was made for them because of how important their teology was to ielr unications.

  “I assume I would not be pensated for the rental fee in that case?” Calling half a billios a rental fee seemed ridiculous to him, especially since every message still oo send.

  “No,” the man said pinly before tinuing. “We have figured the device for a hardwired-only e as you requested. You will only be able to attach four terminals to the terminal on the array though, so I suggest switg it to global receive mode as soon as possible. To do that, you just o go to this menu.” The man blitzed through the menus and anyone who wasn’t enhanced probably would have gotten lost. Alexander simply recorded the whole thing to py back ter.

  “If you mess up some of the settings, you will o tact Q to send out a tech. Our rates start at fifty million, with ten million for each day of travel and work.”

  Alexander frowned. “That seems excessive.”

  Randalf just shrugged. “I don’t make the rules, I just notify you of them. Normally Qs are pced on worlds with a rge enough popuce that Q would create a satellite office for any repair needs. Even if Eden’s End had a much rger popution, you wouldn’t qualify for that.”

  “Because we are outside STO space,” Alexander guessed.

  “Precisely,” the man tinued without an ounce of passion. “There is always the option of hiring Arklight on in a perma capacity to maintain and monitor your Q.”

  He knew he was going tret asking but he did anyway. “How much would that cost?”

  “Oeam of five techs would cost you fifty millioandard year. That doesn’t include the cost of anch one of our frigates as well as providing it with fuel and ies. We would also need separate housing built for our techs that meet our specifications.”

  Alexander ughed. “You’re joking right?”

  The man looked puzzled. “No, why would I joke about that? I assure you that our rates are parable to our petitors. They might even be lower since we are one of the smaller installers for Q. We were also the only installer that accepted this instaltion request, so you are likely to work with us iure anyway.”

  Either get shafted upfront et shafted over time, Alexander wasn’t a fan of either option. “I’ll pass,” he said. He had no pns to keep the nosy Arklight employees around. They would probably throw a fit if they knew what he po do with the Q.

  Randolf shrugged again a over some more settings and options. There weren’t that many, certainly not enough to justify the voluted menus you o work through to ge them. Alexander suspected it was done deliberately to make it impossible for aside Q’s support bubble from being able to properly calibrate or fix the devices.

  Ohe man’s spiel was plete, he added o set of parting words. “Wele to the gactiunity.”

  That seemed rather presumptuous to Alexander sidering the devily ected them to the STO but he kept that thought to himself.

  Ohe annoying tech was gone, he tacted the robots to start moving the shell into pce. Onplete it would look just like one of the smaller domes that dotted the massive structure of Eden’s End.

  The bots made quick work of it, even though they weren’t lihe process was a rather basie so it wasn’t any trouble. crete umped into a tube that would fill in the gaps at the bottom as well as ect the two halves into a whole.

  That was enough to seal the room so it could be pressurized, but there were additional steps Alexander had po ehis room was well protected. Those would take time to set up, but he had what he desired at the moment, privacy.

  He walked over to the terminal and ied the interface. He thought the Q pany might e up with their own terminal design, just to be difficult, but it was a bog standard STO terminal. Alexander supposed that made sense if you wao ensure patibility across the rgest area. The g robably proprietary, but that was to be expected.

  With a bit of experience disassembling these terminals, Alexander was quickly able to remove the front panel. He was careful to check for sensors or other traps hidden on the devices as he worked, but there wasn’t anything like that.

  Even though there was no visible deterrent to disassembling the terminal, he was careful not to unplug any of the ectors. Soon he fouly what he was looking for. A bundle of wires led inte ector that sat flush with the armored exterior of the Q. The bulkhead e took a bit of finagling to get loosened up, but Alexander ma with a bit of patience. O was loose, he finally had access to the wiring passage.

  He ran his smallest finger fiments into the tightly packed tuo get a look ihe device.

  The inside held a puter interface, powered by what looked like an advanced putronic module in a thin pte-like figuration.

  Slipping past the interior sole was easy enough since wires snaked out from dozens of openings. Alexander wasn’t sure how far he could push his little tendrils, but they seemed to be doing just fine so far, so he kept going.

  The wires all ran into a sphere about a foot wide that was held aloft by tensioned cables. The rest of the space seemed to be ed by power systems and active sensors that ran to the outer walls of the armored cube. He gave a mental shake at the plete waste of space just to protect their product.

  Alexander was certain that toug the sphere would trigger something, so he pulled baside the internal terminal. He found the tacts that would allow him to interface with the device, and ected to it.

  The windows that popped up in his internal space were mostly diagnostidows. He found the security features as well but didn’t dig into them for now. He didn’t have any pns on mug about with any of the programs or features at the moment, he just o know how the system pulled in messages so he could intercept them before they went back out again.

  When he found the message buffer, he was a bit shocked. It was pletely unencrypted, meaning that the only thing that kept Qessages safe, was their inability to be intercepted betweeinations. There was an encryption sequeo accept messages from secure nodes like what the Hawks had used to transfer messages when they were here previously, but that was it.

  This ck of encryption made what Alexander wao do easy, but it pissed him off. It meant that anyone who could gain access to the interior of a Q could easily intercept and read messages.

  With disgust, Alexander pulled out of the system and started putting the terminal back together. As he did this, he mentally designed an interface that would intercept all unications from this devid ruhrough their superputer core for analysis before allowing them to be sent out.

  With Lucas and him both having a hand in designing the analysis program, Alexander had faith that it would catch most of the bad actors that ended up on Eden’s End.

  As he finished putting everything together, he messaged the cil. Then he used the Q for the first time to decre his snty.

  ***

  It took time for the cil to arrive, but they eventually met him in the newly dedicated unication room. The three private chambers weren’t pleted yet, but they would be soon enough. While he trusted the cil, he didn’t trust them enough to give them access to the Q. One errant scratch could cause the entire system to simply shut down and he would be out half a billios and be bcklisted from Q’s work. It was bad enough he was risking it himself, he didn’t need anyone else adding to that.

  This room also had the holo-array.

  “I assume you are ready to decre this system yours?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yes. I’ve already sent in the specified dotation. The STO clerks seemed rather fused at first and had to look up the relevant ws, but ohey verified everything was correct, they asked me to set a time for the meeting. I figured an hour was enough time to gather everyoogether.” Holy, Alexahought he was going to be forced to scramble as the STO tried to pull a fast ohe fact that they allowed him to pick the time was a wele surprise.

  Not long after the st cilor arrived, the holo began to glow. Three people quickly took form, looking around the room at the gathered party.

  “Is everyone in attendahe older woman of the group asked.

  “Yes,” Alexaated.

  “And which of you is Alexander Kane?”

  Alexander raised his hand to get the woman’s attention. She gnced over at him, looking him up and down, but otherwise not enting on his appearance.

  “The rest of you are part of this cil then? Please state your names for the record.”

  The four current members of the cil spoke in turn, listing both their names and roles. The woman tinued by asking other questions to ehe rules of the STO were followed. Once she was done questioning them, she made a quick decration. “Our records show no instances of piracy or illegal activities from Blue Star Enterprises. You are clear on that front. We only see twistered warships though. You hree to meet the criteria.”

  Alexander interrupted her. “You will notice that our third ship is also marked as the diplomatic vessel. There was no w preventing this.”

  The three uned amongst themselves for a bit before returning. “You are correct. We have amended our records to show the third ship as both a diplomatic vessel as well as a warship. With the st of the criteria met, we only he name designation for the system as well as how you wish to be beled in any form of diplomatiunications.”

  Alexander smiled and gave the woman the information. He swore he heard Damien groan, but it might have been a trick of his audio sensors.

  “Your new nation has beeered with the STO. We look forward t with you iure.” With that, the three clerks simply vanished, leaving the room quiet.

  “Is that it?” Nancy asked, sounding a bit surprised. “I somehow thought it would be more involved.”