Chapter 3-8

As much as Alexander liked to give people the benefit of the doubt, his predictions about Sorin turned out to be spot on. He didn't even have to wait a full week to see the first change.When he had first agreed to the Council as the political entity, Alexander had enforced a few rules. The first was that any laws they passed, needed to be made public to everyone and on every terminal inside Eden's End for transparency's sake.

Most of the people didn't care, but it did allow Alexander to monitor what laws were being passed without his input. Most of the time, it was something innocuous or something the Council had discussed with him beforehand. Not that they needed to. He had agreed to let them govern themselves so long as the laws and rules were fair. Only twice had he been required to vote on a tie to help pass or decline a law and until now hadn't seen any law he thought needed overturning.

Fair had nothing to do with the new law he saw in the registry. Sorin must have gotten a majority vote. Alexander knew Damien, Gabriella, and Sheila wouldn't have agreed to something so silly a second time without running it by him, so he assumed Sorin had somehow convinced Nancy to go along with the new measure.

Alexander couldn't blame 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 council 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 end result didn't result in violence or helped prevent possible violence. Anyone who knew her was likely aware of her stance on that issue. And the law that had just been entered looked like it was purposefully named just to trick her.

At first glance, the new law looked like a simple thing meant to help expedite Council rulings in case of an emergency. It even had the officious-sounding title of 'Emergency Orders Act' which is probably what helped sell it to the Head of Learning.

Alexander had studied enough STO laws to see past the thin veneer of the law's wording to what the law was actually meant to be used for.

In simple terms, it allowed the assembled Councilors to hold a vote, even when not all of the Council was present. Not a bad thing, in and of itself, until you get to the second part. The Councilors who were not present automatically counted as abstaining from the vote. In an emergency situation, sure, it made sense. The problem was, that there was no wording around what constituted an emergency situation that would allow 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 laws. Abstaining meant that any Councilor who did so was removed from the Council roster for that vote, shifting the number of councilors needed to have a successful vote. Adding the restrictions to abstained votes was put in place to prevent members of the Council 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 back in the beginning when he didn't want to get bogged down in the local politics. Now that he had a vested interest in Eden's End and a better understanding of galactic law and laws in general, he saw how rife that definition was for misuse.

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

Now that this law had been passed, Sorin and his cronies could hold emergency council meetings as they saw fit, denying the other members time to weigh in. The other councilors could do the same, but Alexander was sure he would soon see another law that limited that freedom.

He just gave a big mental shake and wished he could wash his hands of all this nonsense. It was taking him away from more important matters and quickly going to turn 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 classes for some 'personal tutoring' until this problem resolved itself. There was not going to be a repeat of the last incident, or the one before that, or even the one on Petrov Station, he would make sure of that.

Knowing that Yulia was as safe as he could make her, Alexander turned his attention back to Sorin. The man seemed way too crafty to just be some random drifter, but he knew the man was at least a third-generation 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. seaʀᴄh thё nôᴠel Fire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

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 a specific DNA scan from the core. Alexander would have gotten it himself, but he didn't want to leave Yulia alone while Sorin was plotting.

It was his overprotectiveness kicking 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 classmates. It was bad enough Dog followed her around everywhere now, even in class.

A little while later, 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 next to 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 computer expert had figured out what he wanted the DNA signature for.

"Let's hope this is a one-time need," he replied as he accepted the data chip from the man. "How's everything going for you? We haven't spoken much lately."

Since the 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 slave 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 working on at the moment?"

"Nothing," Lucas admitted. "I'm bored out of my mind. When are you going to have some cool new tech for me to play with and test?"

"It's funny you should mention that. I assume you've been drooling over the new printer that's going up in orbit?"

"I drooled one time," the man complained weakly. "And yes. That's a rather large unit. I assume you got something equally as large coming from it? You finally decide to design and build your own warship from scratch instead of playing around with those old pirate derelicts? Or, ooh! Is the printer so you can start building the massive assembly components 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 comes 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 deflating the man's excitement, but designing and building a warship would be a long way off, but this should at least give him some experience toward 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 class 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 laid 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 man gesticulated toward the hologram, seemingly at a loss for words.

"It was the most efficient design."

"From one friend to another, just no. Efficiency is one thing, but this ship is the most soulless construction I have ever seen." Lucas turned to look at Yulia, who was completely focused on her project, before turning back to him and lowering his voice. "People are already whispering about what you told us. Seeing something like this will only inflame those rumors."

Alexander had not forgotten 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 plaguing him. It seemed not everyone was willing to let those rumors go. 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 understand completely, 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 fishbone thing and make the crew section 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' according to Lucas.

At a certain angle, the 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 inside still worked as he had intended. That was not the case.

After getting the thumbs up from Lucas after the changes, 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 working 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 assignment?"

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

It didn't take Alexander long to verify her assignment was correct, but he let her play with the main holo display while he quickly whipped up another assignment 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 and kept him company while he fixed broken junk.

This definitely felt like like a throwback to that time.

Alexander knew this time together wouldn't last, he couldn't seclude her from classes and the other kids forever. Part of growing up was learning how to interact 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 needed to find a balance where she could grow up normally without having to worry about another kidnapping incident.

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