Alicia Jones 3: New Frontier by D. L. Harrison Page A

structure,
no more morning orders, reports, and all that.  But you won’t be cut out
of any systems.  Much like a security company has access to the buildings
they protect, you will have access to upgrade the ships, access to maintain the
new stealth sensor net, etc.  So I suppose if you get curious, you still
have access to raw data.  So consider yourself at this moment, a top
secret contractor to all the countries involved in the USFS.
    “Of course, you may tell us to shove it, and go work in
Denver, and sell your ship.  But we all hope you won’t, or at least,
you’ll continue doing both.”
    Sell my ship?  Not happening.  I would take care
of my company, but I wasn’t giving up space just because I wasn’t an admiral
anymore.  In fact, running a company, being an inventor, exploring new
things and ideas was all I wanted to do.  I never cared about the power I
had as admiral of fleet, it was a responsibility to protect the Earth.
    I was so worried I would be fired, but now that it happened
I felt lighter, free in a way, like someone took a great weight off of my
shoulders.  Not all of it, I still felt a need to keep pushing the edge of
technology, just in case Earth did run into an enemy.
    After all, the phrase pinnacle of technology was a
lie.  Nothing was unbeatable, and there was always more to learn, always
another impossibility to overcome.  I just hoped my best work wasn’t
behind me, most scientists didn’t get more than one or two breakthroughs a
lifetime, never mind as big as the two I had have been.
    “Well, I won’t tell you no.  And yes, taking my ship
would have pissed me off.”
    Nadia snickered.
    “Anything else, or was that everything?”
    Nadia shook her head, “Wasn’t that enough?”
    I sighed, “I suppose it is.  I’ll wait for the orders
before I start the upgrade on the ships.  You want to get a peek at the
new planet?” I asked with a teasing lilt.
    Nadia shook her head, “I can’t take off for the day, too busy. 
I need to be back down in an hour.”
    I smiled, “But… I can have you there in five minutes. 
My wormhole generator came on line early this morning.  That’s a whole
fifty minutes of peeking.”
    Nadia grinned, and this time, it reached her eyes. 
Somehow not losing her as a friend seemed like the best thing that happened to
me this morning.
    “If you insist Alicia.”
    So, we went to take a quick look, maybe getting back to just
the science was for the best anyway…
     

Chapter
12
    When the orders came through, I initiated the upgrade for
the fleet.  The upgrade was designed to not impact operations at
all.  For instance, in the case of the battle cruisers the eight new
plasma cannons would be in place and active, before the old eight were touched
at all, just in case we were attacked during the upgrade.  There were
other similar things going on to prevent any ship downtime.
    However, I was aware that where humans are involved,
mistakes are possible, so I was doing half the fleet at a time, and of course,
all new ships would be built to the new specifications.  As I suspected,
the missiles wouldn’t be getting the triple shielding, but the attack shuttles
would.  Even on the older power sources, it would still triple the shield
power, so it was worth doing, and would make them more effective in battle.
    Al reported, “A hundred ships, and admiral Sergei’s command
ship, just went to light speed.”
    I frowned, “See if you can figure out what’s going on.”
    I felt suddenly nervous, it wasn’t my problem anymore, but
it wasn’t easy to shut off.
    Al said, “According to scanning data from the probes, three
of the systems in the old Knomen empire, all separate species, just sent a
combined six hundred ships toward the Knomen home world.”
    I frowned, “ETA on enemy ships?” 
    I knew our ships would get there in a day.  Half a day,
or immediately, when the upgrades were complete.
    Al replied, “Thirty-two hours.”
    I frowned,