As much as Alexander liked to give people the be of the doubt, his predis about Sorin turned out to be spot on. He didn’t even have to wait a full week to see the first ge.

  When he had first agreed to the cil as the political entity, Alexander had enforced a few rules. The first was that votes they passed or failed, o be made public to everyone and oerminal inside Eden’s End for transparency's sake.

  Most of the people didn’t care, but it did allow Alexao monitor what was being passed without his input. Most of the time, it was something innocuous or something the cil had discussed with him beforehand. Not that they o. He had agreed to let them govern themselves so long as everything was kept fair. Only twice had he been required to vote on a tie to help pass or dee a w and until now hadn’t seen any w he thought needed overturning when it was brought to his attention before they voted on it.

  Fair had nothing to do with the new act he saw in the registry. With it not being an actual w that affected everyone on Eden’s End, Alexander was led to weigh in based on the agreement he made with the inal cil. Sorin must have gotten a majority vote to pass it somehow. Alexander knew Damien, Gabriel, and Shei wouldn’t have agreed to something Sorin and his people had proposed without running it by him, so he assumed Sorin had somehow vinancy to go along with the new cil measure.

  Alexander couldn’t bme the woman. She was a teacher first and foremost and having worked with her quite a bit, he knew she had very few skills beyond that. Even in the few cil meetings he had attended, she had simply gone along with the group. It wasn’t that Nancy was dumb, she was far from that. She was just easily swayed so long as the e eaceful one or helped prevent possible violence. Anyone who knew her was likely aware of her stan that issue. And the new act that had just beeered looked like it urposefully o garner sympathy from the Head of Learning.

  At first ghe Emergency Orders Act looked like a simple thi to help expedite cil rulings in case of an emergency. It even had the officious-sounding title to help sell that fa?ade.

  Alexander had studied enough STO ws to see past the thin veneer of the Emergency Orders Act to what it was actually meant to be used for.

  In simple terms, it allowed the assembled cilors to hold a vote, even when not all of the cil resent. Not a bad thing, in and of itself, until you get to the sed part. The cilors who were not present automatically ted as abstaining from the vote. In an emergency situation, sure, it made sehe problem was, that there was n around what stituted an emergency situation allowing the use of the Emergency Orders Act.

  That still wouldn’t be that bad, except abstained votes had a specific definition under Eden’s End’s cil mandates. Abstaini that any cilor who did so was removed from the cil roster for that vote, shifting the number of cilors o have a successful vote. Adding the restris to abstained votes ut io prevent members of the cil from stalling votes by refusing to pick a side.

  At the time Alexander had thought it a good idea and even supported its implementation. Of course, this was ba the beginning when he didn’t want to get bogged down in local politics if disagreements couldn’t be settled. Now that he had a vested i in Eden’s End and a better uanding of gactic w and ws in general, he saw how rife that definition was for misuse.

  It seemed Sorin had figured it out as well because this emergency measure was designed specifically to take advantage of that definition.

  Now that this measure had been passed, Sorin and his ies could hold emergency cil meetings as they saw fit, denying the other members time to weigh in. The other cilors could do the same, but Alexander was sure he would soon see something else e through that limited that freedom.

  He just gave a big mental shake and wished he could wash his hands of all this nonse was taking him away from more important matters and quickly turning into a shit show, but he had agreed to let the man hang himself with as much rope as possible. That being said, he looked over at Yulia. She was studying a diagram Alexander had provided her. Her job was to find the errors and correct them.

  They weren’t at home though. He had taken Yulia out of csses for some ‘personal tut’ until this problem resolved itself. There was not going to be a repeat of the st i, or the one before that, or even the one orov Station, he would make sure of that.

  Knowing that Yulia was as safe as he could make her, Alexaurned his attention back to Sorin. The man seemed way too crafty to just be some random drifter, but he khe man was at least a third-geion drifter thanks to information gathered from other residents. With a devious mind like his, Alexander was surprised the man hadn’t tried his hand at the political arena in STO space.

  Normally, he didn’t stick his nose in people’s pasts. Everyone had skeletons, hell, even he did, but this man was making too many waves to simply stay ignorant. He pinged Lucas and asked him to retrieve four specifiA ss from the core to cheto all the new cilors. He didn’t actually he DNA ss, but it would greatly speed up the process of digging into these new cil member’s pasts. Alexander would have gotten them himself, but he didn’t want to leave Yulia alone while Sorin lotting.

  His overprotectiveness was kig in again, but he couldn’t help it. He would have preferred to allow Yulia to live a normal life, but he couldn’t provide any further security for her without alienating her from her friends and cssmates. It was bad enough Dog followed her around everywhere now, even in css.

  A little while ter, Lucas strolled into the workshop. The man’s usual chipper attitude was gone, although he did give Yulia a friendly wave that she returned before he stopped o Alexander.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing with this. It’s a slippery slope digging into people’s backgrounds.”

  Alexander wasn’t at all surprised that the puter expert had figured out what he wahe DNA signature for.

  “Let's hope this is a oime need,” he replied as he accepted the data chip from the man. “How’s everything going for you? We haven’t spoken much tely.”

  Sihe man was here, he might as well chat with him to get his mind off of the Sorin issue for a little bit.

  Lucas snorted. “Oh, you know. My boss is a real sve driver. He barely lets us get up to eat, drink, and relieve ourselves.”

  Alexander made his avatar roll its eyes but chuckled. “What are you even w on at the moment?”

  “Nothing,” Lucas admitted. “I’m bored out of my mind. When are you going to have some cool ee to py with a?”

  “It’s funny you should mention that. I assume you’ve been drooling over the new prihat’s going up in orbit?”

  “I drooled oime,” the man pined weakly. “Ahat’s a rather rge unit. I assume you got something equally as rge ing from it? You finally decide to design and build your own warship from scratstead of pying around with those old pirate derelicts? Or, ooh! Is the printer so you start building the massive assembly pos for your space station that you’ve been going on about for over a year?”

  “Not the station,” Alexander admitted. “At least not yet. However, the printer will probably be instrumental when it es time to build it. And not a warship either,” Alexander quickly added, as the man looked ready to burst with glee.

  He felt bad about defting the maement, but designing and building a warship would be a long way off, but this should at least give him some experieoward that goal.

  “It will be easier if I just show you,” he said, reigniting a small spark of excitement in the young man. “Behold, the fishbone css utility ship!”

  The man stared at the rotating image in silence for a bit. He blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes before squinting them.

  Alexander was about to say something but Lucas held his hand up. “Give me a bit, I’m trying to decide if I’m seeing things or not.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Alexander huffed.

  “Not that bad? Alex, this has got to be the single ugliest ship I have ever id my eyes on. And I’ve seen all of those pirate ships that got fed to the smelter. Why would you build something so…” The maicuted toward the hologram, seemingly at a loss for words.

  “It was the most effit design.”

  “From one friend to another, just no. Efficy is ohing, but this ship is the most soulless stru I have ever seen.” Lucas turo look at Yulia, who was pletely focused on her project, before turning ba and l his voice. “People are already whispering about what you told us. Seeing something like this will only ihose rumors.”

  Alexander had not fotten that the cat was out of the bag on what he was, but he had pushed those worries off to the side to deal with the more pressing problems currently pguing him. It seemed not everyone was willing to let those rumo. Maybe that was another reason for Sorin’s quick rise. Alexander had wondered why the man had garnered so much support so quickly.

  “Fine, how would you suggest I improve the ship? I don’t want to go overboard, because this is a work ship and we are limited on resources.”

  “Hey, I uand pletely, I do. And while I’m not a designer or artist, a few more curves and smooth lines will probably do wonders for the ship’s aesthetics. Hell, lean into the whole fishbohing and make the crew se look like a fish's head. At least people would get a kick out of that.”

  He made the man wait while he modified the design. He didn’t go quite so far as to make the front look like a fish’s head, but he did round things out so the front didn’t look like an ‘ugly box glued to some scaffolding’ acc to Lucas.

  At a certain ahe front did sort of look fish-shaped now and he had to admit, it looked better.

  If only it was as simple as adjusting the hull shape and sending it to the printer hoping everything iill worked as he had intehat was not the case.

  After getting the thumbs up from Lucas after the ges, he waited for the man to leave before he focused on fixing all the internal systems that no longer fit properly.

  He noticed Yulia stand up and he paused his work. “Have you finished?”

  She nodded. “What are you w on?” she asked.

  She really must have been engrossed in her work if she hadn’t overheard anything Lucas and him had been talking about. “It’s a new ship I’m designing. It will be used for hauling ore and other transportation tasks. Would you like to take a look while I go over your assig?”

  Yulia nodded enthusiastically. Alexander smiled and locked the edit fun before letting her explore the ship.

  It didn’t take Alexander long to verify her assig was correct, but he let her py with the main holo dispy while he quickly whipped up another assig for her.

  While he felt bad about keeping her from her friends and all the new children who had just arrived, he had to admit that he missed the days they just hung out together like back at Petrov Station. Life was so much simpler back when she worked on her little puzzles a him pany while he fixed broken junk.

  This definitely felt like a throwback to that time.

  Alexander khis time together wouldn’t st, he couldn’t seclude her from csses and the other kids forever. Part of growing up was learning how to i with your peers. And she would not get that experience by sitting with him every day or by being coddled like a pampered rich kid. He o find a bance where she could grow up normally without having to worry about another kidnapping i.

  He also couldn’t go back to that simple existence because thousands of people’s lives now relied on him.