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 for something to happen.

  It started out innocuous enough. A group of people started protesting outside the council chambers. That wasn’t against any rules, but it did slow down any council business.

  Sorin did a good job of keeping his involvement in the protests hidden, but the man was always the first to address the crowd, telling them that he was working with the rest of the council to address their concerns, which just so happened to be exactly what Sorin had been demanding when he first got his council position.

  Even a blind man would have been able to see the connection there.

  When the vote came back as three against and two for the proposed change, the disruptions grew to work stoppages as the troublemakers went around to gain support for their cause.

  Most sane people didn’t want to get involved with the politics, but it was clear that Sorin and his people had done some planning. Support for their inclusion in council affairs quickly grew among the traditionalists, which spread concern among those working with Alexander.

  Alexander couldn’t even fault them, equal representation was a noble goal. The only problem was that the person pushing that agenda had zero noble intentions.

  “You sure it’ll work?” Alexander asked Lucas.

  The man shrugged. “In theory, it’s not much different than how a parabolic dish picks up sound. The only difference is that instead of amplifying the waves, we are collecting the resonance and rebuilding it using the computronics. It’ll be a whole lot more processor-intensive, and the quality probably won’t be great, but the facility’s sensors and the supercomputer should be able to make it a reality.”

  As much as Alexander would have liked to deploy the theory to stop Sorin and the protests right away, they needed to ensure it worked first.

  He sent Lucas to a separate room, where he would read out loud. They would use that as the base to calibrate the computers.

  The facility sensors were designed to pick up stuff like earthquakes and other geologic phenomena caused by the star, not audio. They were able to slowly filter out the noise, which was caused by all the machinery, people, and minor geological shifting, until they finally managed to focus on the minuscule vibrations caused by someone talking. Even then, it took over a week for the computer to process the test data and give a result that was less than ideal.

  After some more tweaking and figuring out how to triangulate the audio source, giving three separate vibrational samples instead of one, which they were able to compare and contrast against each other, they finally got a result that was clear enough to understand.

  It still sounded like someone speaking through a radio on the verge of disconnecting. A second pass through the computer with a set of instructions to clear up the sound and fill in the missing parts with a best-guess estimate helped immensely.

  Lucas also added a visual conversion that showed him speaking the words. The Lucas in the holo image had a much more rugged appearance than the man beside him. Alexander glanced over at the smugly smiling man.

  “What?” Lucas asked innocently.

  Alexander just shook his head. “Let’s just start looking for Sorin. We need to figure out what he’s up to before the problems escalate.”

  As powerful as the new program was, it wasn’t infallible. Locating Sorin, let alone recording the man discussing his plans, was like finding a needle in a haystack. At first, they focused on the man’s residence, but Sorin never talked business there as far as they could tell.

  Each attempt cost a full day, leading to more outrage from the public as the council refused to budge. Sorin pretended to alleviate the crowd’s concerns, but it was clear he was just stoking their anger. It was only a matter of time until hostilities broke out.

  That’s why Alexander had a backup plan. It wasn’t ideal, but they started running the sensor logs from the past month through the computer core. If they couldn’t detect Sorin talking about his plan now, maybe they could from the past.

  ***

  A week quickly passed, but the computer was still digging through the data, unfortunately, they hadn’t come up with any evidence as of yet.

  He just gave a mental shake and wished he could wash his hands of all this nonsense. Sorin’s machinations and the unrest were taking him away from more important matters and quickly turning into a shit show, but he agreed with Damien, he needed evidence of wrongdoings before prosecuting the man. It was annoying, since he was effectively in charge and made the rules, but the councilors that he had agreed to had a point. If he just ignored the rules that were set in place and agreed upon by him and the council, why would they trust him to keep his word in the future?

  That being said, there were limits to his patience. He looked over at Yulia. She was studying a diagram Alexander had provided for her. Her job was to find the errors in the design and correct them.

  With the unrest reaching heightened levels, he had taken Yulia out of classes for some ‘personal tutoring,’ at least until the 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.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Knowing that Yulia was as safe as he could make her, Alexander turned his attention back to Sorin. Alexander admitted he had underestimated the man. He seemed way too crafty to 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 Sorin hadn’t tried his hand at the political arena in STO space.

  Normally, he didn’t stick his nose in people’s pasts. Everyone had skeletons, hell, even he did, but Sorin was making too many waves for Alexander to stay ignorant. He pinged Lucas and asked him to retrieve a few specific DNA scans from the core to check into Sorin and his main cohorts, which Damien had identified. He didn’t actually need the DNA scans, but it would greatly speed up the process of digging into their backgrounds. Alexander would have gotten them himself, but he didn’t want to leave Yulia alone while Sorin was plotting.

  His overprotectiveness was 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 pasts.”

  Alexander wasn’t surprised that the computer expert had figured out what he wanted the DNA signatures 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 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. The whole ‘turn seismic readings into audio’ was interesting for a day or two, but that got old quick. When are you going to have some cool new tech for me to play with and test?”

  Alexander chuckled lightly. “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 Lucas’ excitement, but designing and building a warship would be a long way off; however, 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!”

  Lucas 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. If he was pushing on the alien angle, it made more sense.

  “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 laugh 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 were 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 standing 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 he 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 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.

  As always, thanks for reading! And thanks for the support! If you enjoy the story, please rate it and comment below!