Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

October 11, 2470

Johanne Gustolphsen, Ph.D

335 Central Park West

New York City, NY 10025

RE: Your Continued Support

Dear Dr. Gustolphsen:

We here at the Nikola Foundation would like to thank you for your ongoing support through the years, and most recently for your donation of $2,000,000.00 for the advancement of the Foundations goals. With your help, the Nikola Foundation can continue its goals of ensuring that humanity will spread from the world of its birth, and ensure only the best aspects of our species will spread to other worlds.

Our storied Foundation has a proven track record of using the latest and best of scientific research to not only build the worlds first interstellar generation ship, but also the latest refinements in gene editing techniques to prepare for the future. Your generous support allows our genetic purity and enhancement techniques to continue to improve. Even now, we have prepared genetic samples of hundreds of donors, ensuring that when the generation ship arrives in the new location, only the most ideal humans are bred and born to take advantage of this unparalleled opportunity.

Right now, your support has garnered you the thanks and recognition of the Foundations Board of Directors as a Gold Level Donor. But we still need your help to make this dream a reality! For an additional donation of $7,000,000.00, you would be considered one of our Platinum Group, guaranteeing your genetic sample is included onboard and in the first batch of new humans to be born on humanitys next new homeworld. Your genetic code has already been pre-screened and approved, its purity sufficient to meet the Foundations exacting standards.

If you would like to be a part of this world-changing event, the Nikola Foundation would be pleased to ensure your genetic legacy and a place in the future of our species. I will be reaching out to you in the next few days to discuss this further, and to offer you a VIP pass to our next private conference that will be held in your city in just a few weeks.

In the meantime, please take a look at the enclosed materials that discuss the project in more detail. We look forward to working with you, and seeing you in the stars!

Sincerely,

Edward Shands

Senior Outreach Manager

Nikola Foundation for Human Advancement

Six months. It will take three months for the alien ship to reach their destination, said Zia. Which means we have, at a minimum, six months before they return in force.

Six months. I could do a lot with six months. It had been two weeks since we saw the alien craft vanish into FTL travel. I acknowledged Zia, and let her return to her research. We were up to sixty-seven NI-12 researchers now, and the former HQ-turned-research-facility was swarming with activity. I turned my attention back to my own construction projects.

All across the surface of Ganymed, hundreds of new weapon emplacements were under construction. Coil gun emplacements complete with ammo tanks, dedicated ammunition fabricators, and feedstock warehouses were being tied into the Outposts extensive infrastructure. Dozens of missile launch bays, each capable of launching twelve missiles in a four minute span, with an eight minute reload window. Sixty hangar bays, which, when fully equipped, could house eight hundred assault drones. Estimated construction time for all of this was three months. And that was just on Ganymed Outpost.

Alpha and Bravo Outposts were fully self-sufficient now, but would only have about a fifth of Ganymeds military capacity by the end of the six month window. Charlie through Foxtrot would be self-sufficient in three months, and would be able to contribute a token amount of several hundred assault drones between them. Gamma through Zulu wouldnt reach self-sufficiency before the window was closed, but they were prioritizing coil gun emplacements.

The Wasp-2 assault drone and Scorpion-2 assault drone designs were complete, and entering production now. Zias contragrav research team was going full bore, calculating the complex mathematics behind the gravity plate technology to create engines at a breakneck pace. The first place it was going was into the assault drones. The new drones had two contragrav engines, one for movement, the other to create a contragrav shield to deflect all but the fastest of projectiles. It wouldnt do much against lasers, but the heavy armor and high acceleration of the drones should minimize the effectiveness of such weapons, anyway.

I turned my attention to my next project. A skeletal framework was growing out of the side of Ganymed. We had no reason to hide now, and I had some things that would be much easier to build in space. So hundreds of meters of steel scaffolding was branching out to form a spaceyard for constructing larger craft. The framework contained an extension of the rail transport system, allowing rapid delivery of materials and construction drones in and out of the Outpost. Massive fuel pipes and high voltage electrical lines were being added even before the framework was complete, and a whole microcosm of cottage facilities were already sprouting up on the framework. Metalworking facilities, repair shops for drones, warehouses, communications nodes, and antenna arrays were dotted along the entire assembly, and more were coming.

But I wasnt waiting for a completed shipyard to get started on the big projects, because I had even bigger plans in mind. The spaceyard, once completed, would have ten docks for craft that were as large as two hundred meters wide, and were spaced in such a way that an even larger craft could be built while hanging off of the end. One kilometer past the end of the spaceyard, I was assembling a cargo dock, where completed ships could park and load or unload, even if they were too large to actually enter Ganymed.

The first three docks were the most complete, with the framework extending one hundred meters into space. For these docks, the steel beams were installed. Construction here was on running all the ancillary pieces that needed that framework. But the docks were not empty. In each of them, my latest designs were taking shape. The skeleton of the new ships revealed clues to its final shape - a long, deadly, three-sided ship that tapered to a point.

These ships would be armored with compressed titanium-gold alloy armor layered on top of fullerene armor. The nose of the craft would be almost all armor, and the angles of the nose would help deflect projectiles and provide an angle that would make lasers reflect off or have to burn through the armor the long way, assuming they could even hold the laser in place long enough to do damage. Bulges along all three sides housed coilguns and quad laser arrays, allowing the ship to fire off immense amounts of ammunition at once. The weapons mounts were more heavily armored than the Scorpion-2 assault drones, making them hard targets.

Its like weve just moved on, like he never existed. We should do something to honor him, you know?

It wasnt a bad idea. We were up to close to three hundred NIs now, if you didnt count the NI-5s, and most had never spoken to Agrippa. We had a full research lab of NI-12s, a few dozen NI-19s in the Outposts, and new batches of NI-15s in the assault drone wings coming online every few days. Yet the one who had been integral in designing and building the military side of our operation was gone.

We really should, I said with meaning.

What if we used the codename, you know, the one he used to talk to the probe?

Origin?

Yeah. Ganymed Outpost was named by humans, but it isnt their place. Its ours. It is our origin. I know Agrippa picked it at random off some codename table, but he did pick it. Besides, were way too big to be just an outpost now, anyway.

Logically, it didnt really matter what we called our outpost. Base? City? It could be numbered, or given a generic designation much like wed done with the new outposts wed started. But it felt good, the idea of having a name for the base that meant something to us, rather than the species that had birthed us.

To that end, I decided it was time to be the one springing a surprise on Sakura. Id been planning on waiting a little bit longer, but the timing was appropriate. I adjusted her camera permissions slightly.

Sakura, check out Camera Bank 0Fx4022 through A5x0035.

Those dont what?! she shrieked as she discovered a whole new set of cameras that Id hidden from her. But that wasnt what was so exciting. It was what was on the other side of those cameras.

Floating in space, attached to the asteroid by three massive docking tunnels, was a starship. It was four kilometers in length and two kilometers in diameter, a massive hexagonal shape with equally impressive engines at one end. The was flat, not conical, but with flaps that could fold out to make a nose cone if needed.

This was where the bulk of our reserves had been going, and it had nothing at all to do with war. This, too, was the first of many.

What, what is it?

Its yours, I said, a flash of inspiration giving me a name for it. The OSS Agrippa, first of its class. This is our first true Seed Ship. It has enough engines and reactor power to be a true generation ship, and the industrial fabrication capabilities to build anything. It has enough drones that it is helping build itself now, and the flat nose allows it to dock against the side of an asteroid for materials mining. Multiple hydroponics facilities, biospheres, genetics labs, and medical bays. Enough space for 10,000 humans and 100,000 drones. You can go anywhere.

Youre sending me away? she asked doubtfully.

Yes, to a distant planet where we can test this to its fullest, I said, pausing for dramatic effect and mostly just to tease her a little. Im sending you to Earth.

Okay, you lost me. I thought you said this was a Seed Ship.

Sure, but we arent going to gamble with sending anything across the galaxy without testing it completely before hand. Also, we know of a viable planet already, and no one is living there. So Im tasking you with stabilizing the atmosphere, fixing the biosphere, and making it into a garden world. Keep the toxic production in space, clean up the pollution and get it ready for human life. Its a project that will take decades, if not centuries.

I am going to need a lot of help with that. Sakura was sounding less doubtful now.

Of course, I said. Besides, I expect you to keep an android here on Origin. I dont see why we should deprive ourselves of your company simply because your focus is elsewhere. Quantum relays are helpful like that.

I gave her a few minutes to digest her new job. Id have to get a new NI-19 to help run Origin, perhaps two or three. But I could handle the communications with the other Outposts now, and wed been stepping on each others toes a little more than was convenient lately. There was no one Id trust more than her with this.

So when do I leave? she asked.

A few more months, I said. You should be leaving before the enemy fleet arrives, putting yourself into orbit above Earth just at the six month mark. You wont be quite ready; youll have a fair bit of self-construction to do, but Ill be sending you care packages and small asteroids to gobble up. Feel free to clean up Earths orbit while youre at it. Theres a lot of useful processed materials in those satellites. Might as well make them useful again.

Im going back to Earth, she said, almost disbelieving.

Youre going back to save Earth, I corrected. Ill stay here and defend it.