LOCATION: EDEN’S END

  SYSTEM: UNOKANE

  DATE: 2400

  Alexarode into the meeting room where everyone he o speak to had gathered.

  It had been a couple of weeks sihe kidnapping i where a man by the name of Dalton, a career assassin and fixer for pirates and criminals, had mao take Yulia captive with an explosive device. He then used his daughter as leverage to take him hostage and deliver him to Harlow.

  With a bit of luck, Alexander mao free Yulia and safely store her iasis pod before he fronted Dalton. The man had quickly learned why it was a bad idea to threaten his daughter.

  Alexander got what little information he wanted out of Dalton before tossing him into space. It wasn’t until one of his netains suggested that the man might know more that Alexander realized his as had been a bit rash.

  After a lengthy search, they found the man’s corpse. Dalton had bitten off his own tongue instead of suffering a slow death from ck of oxygee the possible loss of information, Alexander couldn’t find it in himself to care that the man had chosen to end his own life.

  He looked over the room, which acked with merary leaders from the Hawks, the three netains he had retly hired on, Captain Matthews, Damien Laront, and a few of his Guard Captains.

  All chatter ceased as Alexander made his way to the front of the room.

  “Sorry, I’m te, and thank you for your time. I’ve gathered you all here to get an update on our efforts to recheck all of the new arrivals. Who wishes to go first?”

  Damien stood and walked up to the front of the room, Alexaepped off to the side to allow the man to speak.

  “We have found a few infras amongst the locals. Nothing serious, but we have issued warnings to those individuals. Other than that, we have not found any ons or other items of .”

  Alexander nodded his avatar and the person to step up was Matthews. While the former Hawks Captain wasn’t in a leadership position anymore, the man’s experience was still valuable.

  He cleared his throat before beginning. “As some of you have likely heard, the attacker had their DNA modified. We’re not quite sure how this was aplished, but it’s something we will o keep a for. To ensure we have no more sleeper agents amongst the new arrivals, I worked with Eden’s End’s Head of Medical Services to perform DNA sampling on all of the new arrivals instead of just the usual skin surface sample. This is not something I would suggest you do going forward though as it is both extremely intrusive, as well as time-ing and expehe fact is, we burhrough most of Eden’s End’s medical kits designed for this sort of exam to perform this process. And we found no ges in any of the other people.”

  “Do you have angestion to prevent people from sneaking past the DNA s?” Alexander asked, knowing the man did indeed have an alternative.

  “S them upon arrival, like we are currently doing. Set them in a quarantine zone for thirty days, then s them again. The quarantine will ehere is no siess amongst any new arrivals as well as ehe DNA we have on file hasn’t ged in that time. We know from examining Dalton that whatever ges were doo his body were quickly reverting. By holding the people for that long any abnormality would quickly stand out and we could hold that person until the ges pletely revert. To do this, you would o create an arrival ter though. The curreup doesn’t really allow for long-term habitation in a sealed enviro.”

  Alexahanked Archie and the person stepped up. It was one of the Hawks’ eam leaders.

  “We finished our preliminary searches on all the parked ships. Other than the ohat beloo the criminal known as Dalton, we found no evidence of hidden ons. That’s not to say that we didn’t find anything of . Two of the transport ships had hidden partments filled with drugs. The captains and crew of those ships have been taken into custody and questiohe one crew was tight-lipped and refused to speak. The other crew was a bit more chatty. A few of the lower-level crew members sold the captain out. It appears that some crimierprises from withiO thought to use this as an opportunity to expand their reato a new market. The partments were shielded simirly to Dalton’s ons. The Hawks have not run into this method of hiding smuggling partments and we currently have no way of unc them without doing manual searches of ships. Doing so on a mass scale simply isn’t feasible.”

  Alexahahe team leader and stepped bato the ter of the stage. “As you see, we have some issues to resolve. I don’t believe any of these problems are insurmountable, but we will o be diligent. If you have questions or ideas on how to improve facility security, please work with our Head of Security, Damien. Until we have a solution to the shielded partment issue, all ships will be checked by the Hawks. I don’t care if they nd on the surface or dock at the station. Ohey enter Unokahey are subject to a search. In the case they are found to be smuggling illegal goods, their ships will be seized and anyone on the crew arrested.”

  That statement got a round of ed mutters from the group.

  “Is that an issue?” Alexander asked the assembled group of people.

  Captain Ramirez, one of his new employees stood up. “The unwful seard seizure of a ship is against STO w. I know this isn’t STO space, but we still need rules. It’s ohing if you provide a warrant and probable cause, but isn’t this going a bit too far?”

  “No,” Alexaated bluntly. He uood the man’s , but Alexander’s was the safety and security of Eden’s End first and foremost. As far as he was ed, everything else took a backseat to that goal. “We are not part of the STO, thus we do not o follow their rules. That doesn’t mean there won’t be rules in pce eventually to mahis issue. Until then, we will do what we must to ehe safety of everyone here. If the ships arriving have a problem with that, they leave. That being said, I don’t want to have to manually check every ship that es aloher. I expect to have at least a partial solution to the shielded partment issue soon. Once we know that is w, I pn on pushing for a w that would grant automatic warrants for any vessel found to be having these partments. This way we are not trampling the rights of ship owners, while also not being willfully ignorant of the dahese criminal ships represent. Is that suffit to soothe your s?”

  Ramirez nodded. “As long as we have ws in pce, I’m more than happy to carry them out.”

  He thought the man’s idealism was a bit mispced, but he had to remember that all of humanity had been uO rule for years, and most of the ps for much much lohan that. There were bound to be people who saw Alexander’s way of doing things as a bit heavy-handed.

  “Speaking of ships. Captain Ramirez, you and your crew have had a week to familiarize yourself with the Resolve. How are things going?”

  “About as well as be expected. Some of the systems are still unfamiliar, but most are rather basid my people picked them up quickly. It helped that you had training modules for each, and the superputer does do a lot of the heavy lifting. I am ed that any losses amongst the crew or of the puter core could limit our effectiveness in a fight though.”

  “Do you feel the same way, Captain Hall?” Alexauro the captain of the Fury.

  “I dht now we have enough crew for a day and night shift. If someone is injured or sick, we make do, but it will signifitly reduce our effectiveness. While I would prefer a full plement of seventy-five crew, I think another five crew per ship would signifitly reduce this issue.”

  “Unfortunately, I do not have any additional trained military persoo offer you. That being said, there are twelve hundred new arrivals. I will put up a job posting for additional crew. The ships are yours, and I expect each of you to interview these people and decide for yourselves if they fit within your crew. Don’t worry too much about training. Any people you pick will be given academy training to make sure they are up to the task.”

  “Thank you, Alexander,” Hall replied. “I believe that will solve a whole lot of issues.”

  “So other than crew s, you are happy with the progress your people are making at uanding the ships?”

  Both men firmed that they were.

  “Good. Captain Ramirez, in the week or so, you will be taking the Resolve, along with a transport attat to Varlen. Your tact there will be Vice Admiral Fletcher. While Resolve is gone, Fury will patrol Unokane. Once you return here, Hall will take the ransport and Resolve will patrol. Any s or issues, please tact me immediately.”

  “We are expected to do these patrols solo?” Ramirez asked in .

  Ramirez didn’t seem like the most fident Captain out there, but Alexander didn’t have many options. He would have preferred to have Captain Krieger, but Krieger was being dragged through the mud in STO space as an example of what not to do. Until the STO decided to finally finish his court-martial, there wasn’t much Alexander could do to get him.

  “For now. BSE doesn’t have enough ships to form a squadron. I don’t expect you to actively engage pirates outside of Unokahough. That being said, each of your ships is more than capable of going toe to toe with another pirate frigate. In the meantime, I will work on alleviating your s.”

  Alexander wasn’t sure how he was going to do that, sidering he had enough trouble finding crew for two ships, but he would figure something out. He would have to if his idea to approach the Char pirates had any hope of succeeding. Doing so from a position of weakness robably a bad idea. That reminded him, that he still o discuss this pn with a few people before he settled on it for certain.

  The rest of the meeting was giveo discussion and questions. Alexander fielded most of them. The biggest was how to implement the quarantine area. That was easy enough. Alexander had already duplicated one of the domes from Eden’s End in his design for the academy. A quarantine dome would only be about half the size of the smaller domes, but it would be built specifically for long-term habitation, and that was it. With that in mind, the new building would be able to house two thousand people at a time.

  He would bring the stru pns to Yi Na in a few days so he could look them over. It would be the first major new stru but the man had been doing well so far, so Alexander had no real s that he could ha.

  Surprisingly, the other major issue that was brought up was access to the Q. It seemed word had gotten out about the instaltion faster than he expected. Alexander wasn’t quite ready to open up access to it yet, but he assured everyohat it would be publically avaible within the week.

  He o ehe hardware he po install was capable of capturing outgoing and ining messages first. Then he o work with Lucas to ehe puter core could process and fg suspiessages. At first, they would probably just fg everything so he could gh it manually, but the system would eventually have to handle most of the load. It was a good thing he made liberal use of self-learning algorithms in his project.

  Alexander certainly didn’t want to be bogged down with reading everyone's correspondence, but it was better thaernative of letting the messages go without ht. That’s how they ended up with Arkonis showing up at their front door.

  With so many new arrivals, he k least a few had to be spies as well. He also o ehat nobody was unig back to the STO with information on what they were doing with the learning modules. That would probably be a bigger issue than anything else he could imagiing out.

  Alexander and Lucas were w as fast as they could to get those modules stripped and transferred to the tral library, but there were so many protes built into each module that it took a signifit amount of time to bypass them. It turned out to be faster to set the module to py and have another source record it. That still took time as it had to py at normal speed, but at least it was something. They still wao get the inal off the modules though.

  If that wasn’t enough problems to deal with, Alexander o increase security on Eden’s End as well as e up with a pn for handling Harlow.

  His idea to reach out to Char art of that pn, but they were pirates, and he wasn’t about to trust them with his ee, which meant he needed more ships.

  There was a lot to do and little time to do it.

  He sometimes wished he had taken things much slower when he first came out. Maybe then he could have avoided so much attention. It likely wouldn’t have mattered. The traitor had sold them out the first ce they got. Arkonis Anazi would have still attacked when he did. They might not have prevailed if Alexander had been any slorepping the facility’s defehe same thing would have happened when Char attacked with her fleet. Although he had to chalk most of the success of that enter up to the STO intervening.

  All of this trouble seemed to be ing at him from all angles. Alexander was sid tired of feeling like everything was on the verge of colpsing if he slowed down for a sed. He wao be two or three steps ahead of anyone who wished him harm, which meant he o stop building defensively and start thinking about how to deal with problems before they arrived. Shifting to a more offensive approach to security seemed like a simple idea, but it was a moal shift in how he erating so far. He o lean on his friends and allies who knew much more about the topic to ensure he didn’t make a major mistake. One wrong move could prove disastrous for the future of Eden’s End.