Astra Pt. 04

Dragon Lady smiled, "No getting rid of you."

Jack laughed, "Until we take off for Tau Ceti."

She looked at him, "When will you do that?"

Jack shrugged, "We got more work to do first. The first expedition is scheduled for 12 years from now but we are talking months away at most. With the FTL drives, we can get there in 2.5 years. Back in 5-6 years if we push the return."

Everyone was headed back toward the scout ship, except for Death Blossom who looked a little nervous. Jack stopped and looked at them, "Wing Commander, you put Wildcard and Crazy Eights on paint clean-up. Leave Death Blossom out of it. She did her job to learn and helped to get these fighters approved. I will leave her the fighter she used, and Crazy Eights Lancer-3. He can learn a few things about what I taught her."

Dragon Lady laughed, "What are you doing with the one you flew?"

Jack smiled, "Leaving it for Wing Commander Pink Lady. I heard pink was her color. If she shows. Have fun cleaning up you 2."

Dragon Lady looked at Jack, "You expect me to change my callsign?"

Jack shook his head, "If you do as I requested for the clean-up and aircraft assignments. I will leave your callsign as Dragon Lady. A Dragon Lady who now knows what it is like to be at the pointy end of a lance. As Death Blossom has one to fly in full-time now, her wingman would need one to keep up. You will get more in the coming weeks."

Dragon Lady nodded and then shook his hand, "You are a piece of work. You got a deal, Merlin."

Jack smiled, "I have been told that once or twice."

Dragon Lady looked at him, "You cost me one rookie. Bug went back to flying air breathers."

Jack nodded, "Then I saved his life."

Jack looked over at Crazy Eights and Wildcard, "That is what you get for throwing your wingmen at Merlin. You got a new fighter Crazy Eights because Death Blossom needs someone to fly with regularly. Those 3 units also have tractor beams. Not on the original designs or in what is being manufactured. They are special one-off configurations. Death Blossom can teach you about those."

The commander stopped to talk with her pilots as Jack's team boarded King Arthur. Jack looked over as he took the pilot seat, "Tower TAR-2 King Arthur departing from military docks."

They launched out, "Astra, Open the barn door for us."

They landed a moment later and Carol was back. They all got out and were met by the group. Jack shook Tim's hand and nodded, "We kicked ass everyone. Grace has some patents to send out. Use the Lancer blueprint without the tractor beam I gave you. Update the Scout blueprint with that last round of changes we tested."

Grace nodded, "What are you going to do?"

He sighed, "Bridge and check out the news. Then we will have to contact Tera News and set up an interview."

She nodded. Sprits handed him a mead, "You earned it. Trounced my course record even by 5 whole seconds! Carol said some were complaining about your ship shooting up Tera-5. She told them that would be the battleship. She watched it from the deck of the Excalibur."

He went to the bridge to see what each of the stations was saying. He finally had enough and contacted Tera News. He saw the editor Ron, "Man you have everyone talking about you going rogue on the military."

Jack laughed, "How soon can you get me on the air."

He smiled, "Give me 2 seconds." He saw them break into the newscast holovid as breaking news. They showed blue lights blowing off pieces of the station and he shook his head when Bill came on. Bill looked across, "Jack, everyone is talking about you."

Jack sighed, "No everyone is getting a lot of things wrong. Which is why I called in. Let us start with the images you showed of the weapons firing into Tera-5."

Bill nodded, "Alright."

Jack pointed, "Tera -5 docks at that same timestamp and wait for my scout ship. There on Pylon 9. Now watch it fire." It fired off. "This was a live-fire exercise between 2 fighters I designed for the military. It was supposed to be an approved exercise against 12 fighters from Tera-4 and Tera-5 with the older fighter permitted to live fire as my ships all had shields. We used metallic pink paint to disable the other craft.

Again this was to be a proof of concept fly-off on a new fighter craft and overseen by Admiral Stiller. Admiral Stiller was relieved of his command, by President Grendal who watched from the various camera angles as our camera footage was sent live to the Capitol. It was supposed to be 2 new vs 12 old fighter craft. The 2 battleships were not a part of this equation but Admiral Stiller decided 55 fighters and 2 battleships versus my 2, non-lethal at this point, fighters were a 'real test.'

Instead, I showed him what one fully armed Stingray class scout ship I built could handle his 2 battleships. I sent a third Lancer that was fully armed to bait and run the battleships. She was under orders not to fire once shields were down. The PD weapons from her fighter destroyed the missile launchers when they fired at her ship. The scout pilot was Ash Travus, my wife. I gave her the call-sign Phoenix. My tactical officer, and fiancé, Danyelle Cortez is an eagle-eyed sharpshooter tactical officer, former Military.

She handled all the weapons on King Arthur. She later flew Merlin through the Death Valley course. All the weapons fired were color-coded. My scout was dark-purple. My 3 prototype fighters were red for lasers. Even the PD lasers. For the initial fly-off of the 2 fighters, I was in Lancer-1 and used the rail guns loaded with pink metallic paint as our only forward-firing weapons. All Terran forces were blue lasers. What you saw was a battleship that hit Tera-5 as it shot toward and missed the scout.

Astra is sending you the footage from Excalibur that supports that fact. The scout had to destroy the rail guns, retro thrusters, and countless lasers to get them to stop firing. Even after being ordered to stand down by President Grendal. In the images you observed at the docks; King Arthur destroyed 2 engines on each ship. Now we did not do this without talking to people. President Grendal who authorized the start of this exercise gave us the go-ahead and did not call off the exercise.

Even after Admiral Stiller attempted to cheat the test and others paid the price. We had informed the President beforehand, that if other ships were brought in, we had a contingency in place to deal with the issues. What he wanted was to discredit my scout because I told him it would eat battleships for breakfast. That craft only fired on the battleships once they fired upon my craft. Now let me talk about the Lancers. That is the name of the fighters I designed.

I did so because there was a shortage of fighters and pilots are limited on flying hours after the coup attempt that happened in my absence. The existing fighters are tied in with the same contractor as the Ravager contract. All work was suspended with this contractor last I heard. I brought in Vincent Martina to build my scout and had him stick around long enough to build 3 Lancers. President Grendal is working with him and the Defense Department to build more Lancers.

The design for the fighter was done out of respect for the fighter pilots. All of whom were behind the times in being a relevant deterrent. Not because of skill but because of technology and military politics. I took point in Lancer-1. The Callsign I use is Merlin. Lancer-2 was piloted by a rookie Tera Military fighter pilot, Callsign Death Blossom. I spent 2 weeks training her on that airframe. I taught Ash and Danyelle on King Arthur how to engage if a destroyer, cruiser, or battleship came into the picture.

All of the craft were using 5x system drives. Once a fighter's canopy was covered in paint, the best they could do was an instrumentation landing. Going through the atmospheric barrier built into all Starbase docks. Once that evaluation was done, we gave ourselves 30 minutes to remove all 4 rail guns, 2 on each fighter, and rearm them with live ammo. Activate the 6 Gatling Pulse laser cannons on each of them, go in, and tweak the software to the point defense systems to run at 100%.

Instead of leaving black spots on the fighters' paint when they got hit during the exercise. This was for Lancers 1 and 2, not Lancer 3 or King Arthur who all ran fully armed in case Admiral Stiller happened to try and do a double-cross. We went right to the Death Valley course and then Lancer 1 and 2 took on the Mojave range with live fire testing from guns on both sides. There was not much, if anything, left of the weapon systems at the range after those 2 fighters ripped it apart."

Bill shook his head, "Wow. We heard Doctor Druthers went over and helped at Tera-5?"

Jack nodded, "Yes she helped where she could. That situation was unfortunate and nothing would have happened if the Battleships had not broken the rules of engagement as directed by the Admiral. The 2 Lancers neutralized 55 fighters. Correction 54 fighters. The third Lancer returned a damaged fighter who tried to enter the Battleship fight and was nearly destroyed by the point defense weapons that were set to automatic fire on hostile targets."

Bill called out, "Now here we have images from Death Valley and they show your 3 fighters, your shuttle called Merlin, and your new scout on the course?!"

Jack nodded, "The 3 Lancers followed by Danyelle Cortez flying Merlin, and Ash Travus flying my scout. Danyelle wanted to stretch her wings."

He nodded, "But the course manager said you set a new course record."

Jack nodded, "He told me the same. He told me all 5 of them beat the previous course record held by the one-man rocket flown by Sprits 'Martina' Travus. Daughter of the shipbuilder for the Lancers. She also flew Lancer-3 against the battleships and in the Death Valley course. It was my first time on that course. Death Blossom, as I stated, was a rookie Terran military pilot I got reassigned for this fly-off. The Stingray Scout is TAR-2 King Arthur, Flown by Ash Travus, callsign Phoenix.

My shuttle is TPS-497042 Merlin. TAR-1 is my home and research center, The Excalibur. The TAR designation is new and stands for Terran Armed Research Facility. They had nothing to describe Space-Based research facilities with weapons. I needed them armed like a Starbase or ground-based Research Facility. I have explained to several fighter pilots, I get interdicted a lot up here, that my pilot's license lists me as a Certified Fighter Pilot Instructor.

I obtained that when I was 16 years old; I am 26 now. Today I got to show them exactly what that meant. All the engines on all 3 models have the same limiter. 2.5 or half of the system drives in the atmosphere. You push it to 3 and you will risk setting the atmosphere on fire. This is from my history and we did not want to tempt fate by making it go any faster."

Bill shook his head, "When can we expect this scout to hit production?"

Jack laughed, "I built a scout for my travels that also has a 5x FTL drive as well. We could not demonstrate that today. It was designed for my personal use to test weapon systems. I am not an airframe designer by trade. I did test everything with the latest modeling tools I provided to the Air Frame designers after our engine testing. I built it the way I wanted it and not necessarily the way the military would want it. The Military had a scout contractor already.

While I did the fighter out of a need at the planetary border. I will leave it to the President to decide where they want to go with the scout of tomorrow. I am not geared for the mass production of airframes. I will say after the live-fire tests we conducted that the weapon systems patents are being filed. Then the bidding and jockeying process started on who develops those. I did ensure the fighters and the scouts used technology that is or is becoming available.

For example, all the computer systems were from Hitchi Computers using the TC-1400 Series with the triple cobalt processor blade servers they just released. They handled sensors, navigation, and automated point defense systems software. Though I did rewrite the underlying algorithm to be a bit more aggressive for the Point Defense Software.

I am giving that upgrade to the Military for free. That was how the point defense lasers took missiles out when they came out of the tubes. Both new platforms had inertial dampener systems designed to ensure the operator of the craft did not have to fight the effects of G-forces."

Bill nodded, "Well we for one hope President Grendal talks you into bringing that scout design out for production. What do you think it would take?"

Jack shook his head, "That is a long discussion with President Grendal. As I said I am not geared for manufacturing a spacecraft production line. At least currently. I would be interested in hearing his ideas on the matter first. As to the fighters, I delivered the 3 fighters to the unit I went up against. I stipulated that Lancer-2 remains in the hands of Death Blossom.

She is checked out on the platform. Lancer-1 I gave to her wing commander, Dragon Lady. Lancer-3 went to Death Blossom's wingman Crazy Eights. Crazy Eights and his cohort in crime Wildcard will be cleaning off a lot of pink paint. Those 2 liked to throw rookies at me to see what I would do to them. You might say I paid the pair of them back for that."

Bill nodded and laughed, "Thank you, Jack, for contacting us to set the record straight on what happened on Tera-5."

Jack nodded to Bill and ended the call.

Jack sat back, "Any calls?"

Astra laughed, "Putting him through now."

Jack nodded to President Grendal, "You saw me tell Bill 3 times that I was not building scouts for the military."

He laughed. "True but have you thought of selling the design?"

Jack groaned, "Who wants to buy it? The patent is out there and nobody has approached me directly about buying the design. You would not be asking if someone didn't inquire, through you instead."

President Grendal smiled, "You remember him as Gregory."

Jack sighed, "Anyone else? Preferably someone who is not afraid of space travel."

President Grendal laughed, "You're joking, right?"

Jack shook his head, "According to Astra, he fears space travel. I find it ironic that he chose that line of work. Is he the one you are giving the scout contract?"

He sighed, "I have some dealmakers in the wings who think it is a good idea."

Jack nodded, "Tell him I would like to know how much he is offering and what is his mark-up? Is he building it as outlined or is he going to strip it to the core and then say it does not work the same? Does he state that the cost as outlined is too high? Have them contact me directly. We will take it from there."

President Grendal nodded, "At least that is not a no."

Jack laughed, "Not a no yet! Happy with how I set things straight with the fighters and the Tera-5 issue?"

He nodded, "Yes, the Wing Commander wants your scout. Not just the designs she wants, the one you tested."

Jack shook his head, "I gave her the fighters. She cannot afford the scout. The scout was framed and armored in Titanium-H. I spent 90 million on the builder to build those 4 ships. Another 2.7 million for the computers, then there are the engines, FTL drive, shields, weapons, sensors, and tractor beams. We can skip that for a moment.

I used 4,800 bricks of Titanium-H on that scout. Each brick has about half a liter of Metallic Hydrogen processed into the Titanium with other elements. The armor and frames on that ship alone are 3.75 Billion TCs in raw material at today's market rates. Then there are the labor and mark-ups associated with a production version.

The fact that I could harvest the materials from Jupiter for the metallic hydrogen made it an easy alternative for me. Currently, I am the only one who can do that with any consistency. I do not think she has that kind of money laying around for my scout ship."

President Grendal whistled out, "I saw the coloration on it but did not realize the material you used on the hull."

Jack nodded, "It is 10 times stronger than the best titanium alloy on your battleship; which was used on the 3 fighters she did get. All of the weapons on the scout were in Titanium-H as well."

He nodded, "I will let her know the government checkbook does not have enough zeros to buy one of your scouts let alone a fleet of them."

Jack heard the President's wives laughing. Jack smiled, "Have I got clearance to start building the space dry docks? That is the first Question. Second, are you going to ask me to design your cruisers, destroyers, and battleships as well? If so, I am going to need that dry dock even more to build the mockups for testing."

President Grendal laughed, "No, but I would like you to review the designs that are submitted for those ships."

Jack nodded, "I can do that but they will not like what I have to say I am sure."

He heard more laughter on the other end. Jack sighed, "The price you paid on the ravager units was outlandish. I was charged 153 million TCs for the one I bought. With them losing this work I have zero chance of recovering the lost funds from them. While I got you here, I have to ask the General when am I going to get my mead? I would say ask Admiral Stiller, but I think he will be busy collecting recycled material to make ends meet with his retirement pay. If you allowed him to retire and not go to prison."

President Grendal shook his head, "The ravagers cost us a 132 million fully armed, but we got the weapons for nothing due to the contract agreements. The new units were going to cost 180 million. I will get the General to visit and bring you that personally. Admiral Stiller is under arrest for disobeying a lawful order. He won't be retiring, not after the last coup attempt. I cannot let him off easily. That was one hell of a display you put on."

Jack nodded, "You are getting screwed over on your scout costs. I spent 100 million for my scout; not counting the fancy armor. 70 million was the builders' cost because I wanted it in a week with a 10-man crew. If you are getting one every two weeks, you are talking 80 million maximum.

That is giving them one heck of a profit margin. They have been gouging the hell out of you on the costs. Do you want to send the numbers and breakdowns of what it is costing? How much for each ship I can break it down for you on where they are padding their books."

President Grendal smiled, "I just might do that. That was why you asked those questions about Gregory?"

Jack nodded, "Now you are starting to understand me. I have nothing against them making money. I do disagree with gouging the eyes out of the public coffers. Especially if they are going to provide an inferior product. I will add price and spec points to the Stingray and wait for Gregory to contact me.

I won't sell the design until I know who is going to do it and they will do it right. I put my name to something, like cores and the engines, I want it to stand for something. I also find it ironic that these same vendors were asking how much of the market I wanted. Now they want to buy my designs as well to give me more market share if you would."

President Grendal laughed, "I will have him contact you and see if you can reach an agreement then before proceeding."

Jack nodded, "Thank you, Mr. President." He nodded and ended the call.

Jack looked over at Grace, "How goes things with the patents?"

She smiled, "They go, I am contacting the specific weapons manufacturers you outlined and letting them know when the patents hit. You had a lot of components added in that are not in any of the particular blueprints."

Jack nodded, "My safety valve on them trying to ramp up the weapons development. Those components are some of the keys needed to take weapons to the next 1-5 levels. In short, those patents are not for sale until I decide to release them. They can innovate, but they will have to choose another path to get around those components."