Blue Star Enterprises-Chapter 220 - 4-36

"What is that?" Ezekiel gestured to the ring.

"I believe that is a printer, Vice Admiral Willard."

Ezekiel never bothered learning much about production as that was beneath his station, but he had seen corporate production yards and the ones at Varlen. They looked nothing like what he saw now. "Send me a full copy of everything we have recorded since we arrived."

Rhys nodded.

If Ezekiel was stuck out here, he might as well gather information. He could at least sell it to Omni to recoup some of his expenses. "And what about that ship? It looks nearly as large as the Blueridge."

"It's hard to tell until it's completed, sir. It could just be a larger-than-average frigate for additional creature comforts." The captain hesitated a moment before continuing. "It is armed, though."

Ezekiel's expression soured. Of course, it was. Ezekiel had looked into what the leader of a sovereign nation was allowed to do, and the information pertaining to his current situation was vague at best. The closest documentation he could come by was an old law that stated foreign dignitaries were to be treated like VIPs.

If that was the same VIP laws that covered corporate higher-ups and royalty, it meant Kane was perfectly within his rights to have and fly armed ships within STO space. While it galled Ezekiel that Kane would do something so provocative, he had no basis to stop him.

With an annoyed huff, he handed the tablet back to Rhys. "Leave me, and make sure those logs are on my terminal within the hour."

The captain nodded and left.

True to his orders, the captain delivered the logs within the hour. Ezekiel didn't bother wading through them; he simply packaged them up with a note and sent them through the Qcomm to his contact within Omni. They could figure out if any of the data was important or not.

***

Alexander got a ping from his Qcomm monitoring program. It seemed Willard had tried to send a data packet to an unknown address, or at least it would have remained unknown if Pembrooke hadn't clued him in about Willard's ties to Omni.

He had put a block and review on any data or connections going out from the man or the STO ship.

Alexander opened the packet and snorted at what it contained. It was visual and sensor logs from the Blueridge. Most were useless, but a few showed clear enough evidence of Alexander's activities that Omni might be able to figure some things out.

He had the research core wipe any reliable information from the recordings and obscure other parts to make the printers look like the normal kind contained within massive structures. Then he pinged the node bot hidden within the Blueridge. It was left behind to monitor the ship's security to ensure the saboteur hadn't lingered behind. With it being connected to the Blueridge's data network, having it alter the recordings stored aboard the ship to match his own wasn't much of an issue. Alexander already cracked the ship's security during his retrofit.

Some of the vessel's older systems were hard-coded, but security and sensors fed directly into data storage, making them easy to access. The rest of the systems he didn't care about.

Alexander would need to retrieve or dispose of that bot at some point, but he already had an exit strategy for that when that time came.

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Once the data was altered, he released Willard's packet to its original recipient.

"Sorry about that," Alexander stated as he set the tablet down. "A small emergency I needed to handle. Where were we?"

"You just mentioned you had some new kit for the assault teams," Sergeant Galloway said.

"Right. They won't be ready for some time, but we have enough for you and the team coming with. Lucas will be able to manage manufacturing more while we're gone. Anyway, take a look at some of the test footage." Alexander played the recording from the test that Krieger assisted with. He excluded the portion with the necklace and dress, which was labeled 'Top Secret'. Not that the former Marine seemed to care, as he was glued to both the cannon and rifle tests.

Galloway waited for the entire video to finish before speaking. "I was wondering why you chose to shoot at a perfectly good suit with a ship cannon, but seeing the rest, I understand. It was a reminder that despite whatever gizmo you came up with to stop bullets, it can't stop everything."

That wasn't exactly what Alexander had in mind, but the Sergeant's take on the armor presentation worked just as well.

"Pretty much," Alexander admitted. "As you saw, there is also a time limit to how long the fields can hold out. The first iteration of the suits will have six seconds of operational time before the field drains, then it takes up to fifteen minutes to recharge. I expect to make improvements on that in the future, but don't rely on that."

"Hell!" Galloway stated. "Six seconds during a fight might as well be a lifetime. I would have been happy with one."

"That's because you're a Marine and easily entertained," Krieger cut in, earning chuckles from the small group in attendance, which included Lucas, Archie, and even Damien for a change.

All of them laughed at the joke, including Galloway. The only one who hadn't was Damien, but that wasn't surprising. Alexander was pretty sure the man's sense of humor had been surgically removed at some point in his life.

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"Are you planning on handing out these new suits to the security people?" Damien asked.

"That depends, do you think the security people plan on getting into many gunfights?" Alexander asked.

The new suits were fully armored in a similar material to what was used by the two corporate pilots. Their suits only contained a thin layer of the same composite material as the ship, which was good because if he used that material to armor the entire suits, they would have been too heavy to fight in after their batteries were quickly drained by the excess weight of the material.

Instead, Alexander created a new hybrid material based on that, which was both stronger and thinner than what the corporate pilots had. The carbon nano-tube weave was sandwiched between two thin plates of corporate composite armor, which covered areas where the body needed the most protection.

With that change, along with the increased power pack size thanks to his newest advancements in power storage and delivery, he now had suits capable of running for nearly three days before the power draw overcame the self-charging systems built into the suits, which absorbed movement, as well as light to trickle charge the systems.

That wasn't anything new; most spacesuits had similar recharging features, but those were meant to power emergency features only, whereas Alexander's were designed to function at all times.

The augmentation gear on the suits also got a complete overhaul. They weren't quite incorporated into the suits, but the augmentation gear was much less bulky, making the joints and servos less of a target.

"Hard to say," Damien finally replied after mulling over Alexander's last question for far longer than seemed necessary. "Then again, we could use additional protection for the people in the intake area. With so many new people coming, it's bound to happen that some idiot pulls a gun before they reach the scanner."

Alexander thought about the man's scenario for a moment before nodding. "Fair enough. I will issue you four of the new suits for the security team. They will have the same built-in override as the other suits, though."

Damien nodded. The man knew what happened the last time people had unfettered access to heavy armor and weapons, he wasn't about to take that chance again.

"What about these rifles?" Galloway asked.

Alexander changed the holo to a close-up view of the new FE rifle. They looked like a slightly longer version of the CQB rifles that the Hawks had used. Alexander knew that the Hawks' weapons were a civilian derivative of the military close-quarters battle rifles, so they should be familiar to everyone present.

"This is the FE rifle. It stands for field enhanced, but the meaning behind the name doesn't matter much. Just know that it can hit slightly harder than a railgun."

Everyone but Krieger and Lucas looked shocked by that statement, which had been the whole point.

"That seems excessive," Archie responded.

"It is," Alexander admitted. "That's why the weapon has three modes. Mode one will make it fire with a little more oomph than a normal flechette rifle. The next mode is supersonic. That should be enough for the darts to penetrate most light armor. The civilian model will only have those two modes, and the second mode will be locked out unless an authorization signal is sent from the Security Center."

Damien nodded in approval at that.

"What about the military variant?"

Alexander wasn't surprised by Galloway's question.

"The military variant will be the same," Galloway seemed annoyed by that, but Alexander continued. "The assault team variant, however, will have the third mode unlocked to punch through even the heaviest of augment suits. There will be no lockout because I trust you will train your people to know when to use what mode and when not to."

Galloway smiled. "If I have to beat it into their heads not to use that unless they encounter stiff resistance, I'll do just that."

Alexander gave the man a slight nod. "There are other uses for that third mode. With Lucas' help, we have upgraded the suit computers slightly. They can now project a foe's estimated location through walls."

Galloway immediately understood how that could come in handy. "Switch the FE rifle to the third mode and shoot straight through the wall. That should keep our teams much safer."

"As I stated earlier, train your teams to know when a situation calls for excessive force. We don't need them firing through a wall and hitting a missile magazine by accident. The defensive field isn't going to save them if the ship explodes."

"Noted," Galloway stated, his mirth from before replaced by a serious expression.

"That reminds me to bring up another issue with the defensive field. While we shouldn't encounter them too often, the field cannot stop a laser. The armor weave should dissipate the energy much more effectively than the old suits, but it won't hold out long without cooking the person inside."

"Nothing new there," Galloway said in distaste. "I always hated going up against lasers for that very reason. The only upside to facing an idiot waving a laser around is the fact that the pistols tend to burn themselves out after a shot or two, and the rifles get only three or four shots per charge pack."

Alexander overcame those issues with a prototype laser rifle he had designed, but to do it and maintain a damage output similar to the FE rifle, the weapon came in at nearly four times the weight of an FE rifle. Not exactly something easily portable or usable by an unaugmented person, so he had only made one stripped-down module that would suffer the same drawbacks as Galloway spoke of, but packed a lot more punch. He had outfitted Dog with the new module.

He was keeping Dog's new upgrade to himself, though.