Alexander and Four were nearly done making the changes when Yulia and Serina walked in.

  His daughter hopped up on the far side of the workbench to use it as a seat while Serina came over to work with Four.

  “Can you finish the rest?” Alexander asked.

  Four nodded.

  He thanked her and walked over to speak to Yulia. Before he did, he cleared his throat and gave her a pointed look. She seemed to realize what she was doing wrong and hopped off the workbench.

  “Sorry,” she said in embarrassment.

  He nodded, glad she still remembered his rules about safety while in the workshop.

  “How did your talk go?” he asked quietly.

  Four and Serina would still be able to hear the conversation if they were listening, but he was counting on them ignoring it to give him and his daughter some privacy.

  “I’m still mad at her,” Yulia quietly admitted after a moment. “She knows what she did was wrong, but she still went along with it.”

  Alexander nodded at that. “If it’s a problem, I can tell her not to see you anymore.”

  Yulia shook her head so fast, her hair whipped back and forth. “Don’t do that…she still owes me.”

  Alexander quirked an eyebrow at that, and his daughter quickly realized her mistake.

  Yulia sighed. “Before she left, she agreed to help me design a spaceship for the Stellar Sprints. We were going to build it together after I got your approval.”

  She said that last part rather quietly, making Alexander think that his daughter had planned on convincing her new friend and their family to help her instead of running anything past him.

  Instead of being angry, Alexander thought about it, then chuckled, which Yulia obviously wasn’t expecting.

  “You’re not mad?”

  “I’m annoyed,” he admitted, deflating her newfound enthusiasm a bit, “but not mad. At least not with what I know now. Had this occurred before I was aware that your friend was an AI, you would be grounded for a long time. Perhaps until you turned eighteen, just for good measure.”

  He let those words sink in a bit before continuing. “Now, however, I can’t think of anyone more qualified to help you with your ship. And since Serina now owes me, I can also be assured that she will keep you from doing anything reckless.”

  It was amusing watching Yulia’s mood rise and fall as he spoke. She eventually settled on a resigned happiness, then she hugged him.

  “It’s nice being able to wrap my arms around you—not that I didn’t like your old form, just this is easier,” she quickly added.

  Alexander chuckled. “It’s fine. I get it. Now, how’s your schooling going?”

  “I graduated early,” she declared proudly. “But Lucas wouldn’t let me join the academy until I turned sixteen.”

  Alexander made a mental note to thank everyone who took part in caring for Yulia while he was gone. He had already gotten a report from Theo on the specifics. Damien, Gabriella, and Lucas all had a hand in making sure she kept on schedule, as well as Yulia’s friends' parents.

  There was a rumor that the gruff Head of Security was considering having a child of his own after watching over Yulia. Alexander knew Damien didn’t want or even like children all that much, so his view on that matter must have shifted drastically over the last eight months.

  He focused back on Yulia, who was waiting for an answer to the unspoken question in her last statement. He made her wait a bit longer. Deciding on whether his daughter was ready to go to the Lund Academy a year early was not one of the challenges he thought he would have to face when he first returned.

  Markus had been admitted early based on academic excellence, and he was excelling. He did not doubt that Yulia was equally qualified in that regard, but he worried for his daughter and what people might think if he just agreed to let her attend.

  “I’ll speak with Headmaster Matthews. It’s ultimately up to him who attends,” he eventually replied.

  She beamed brightly at that and hugged him once more. “Thank you…dad.”

  Alexander grunted quietly and hugged his daughter in return. “Now, if you aren’t here to help, you’ll need to hang out someplace else.”

  Yulia’s jaw went slack. “You want me to help?”

  “I can’t have you idling about doing nothing…apprentice.”

  Yulia choked off a squeal of joy and put on her serious face as she followed him over to the others.

  He walked Yulia through what they were building and what he wanted her to design. Scaffolding to hold the machines in place wasn’t the most glamorous of duties, but Yulia didn’t complain for a moment as she pulled off a secondary holo display and began designing the components.

  Alexander was pleasantly surprised with what she came up with. Her design wasn’t the most efficient, but it would work, so he chose not to correct her. Later, he would help her understand the deficiencies in her methods so she could work to improve.

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  They finished up the design, and Alexander sent most of the work to the bot swarm. The more delicate components, which required the nano-assembler to produce, would take the majority of the two weeks they had estimated for the build.

  There was simply no way around that limitation with his current technology base.

  “Thank you all for your assistance. I need to speak with Krieger before he departs. I—I’m not sure what you would like to do while you wait. You have free access to all public spaces if you wish to look around.”

  “That’s kind of you to offer,” Four said, “but I would prefer to remain here and work if that’s all the same to you.”

  Alexander nodded. “If you would like something to work on, I need a design to implement the carbon build process.”

  “I could do that. Do you have a scale in mind?”

  “Let’s shoot for something large enough to build a Swordfish.”

  Four nodded and got to work, quickly pulling Serina and Yulia into the project, which was a happy surprise for him.

  Alexander would love to shoot for the moon and build a facility large enough to grow a battleship, but that would be a multi-year project. It didn’t just involve digging a large pit. He would have to start from scratch, which meant finding suitable microorganisms to cultivate and use to turn into purified carbon. The second part, he could shortcut with already existing carbon, but he suspected that avenue wasn’t going to provide nearly enough material in the long run.

  Then he would need to alter the microorganism so it would work properly, which was going to take time. It wasn’t a project he expected to finish anytime soon, but he thought it was important to plan for the future.

  Alexander could have asked her to help design the gate upgrades, but he planned on working on that project with Lucas. As far as he was concerned, that was his friend’s baby now. Not that there was much to do since he already had a preliminary design ready to go, but it was the thought that mattered.

  It didn’t take him long to find Krieger. The man was in the war room with the other captains, going over possible battle plans.

  Alexander caught the tail end of their conversation.

  “—need to keep their breakaway fleets from rejoining the armada.”

  Krieger nodded at the suggestion, then looked up to see who had entered. “Alex! I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to speak with you before we leave.”

  “I got some of the story from Four, but I’m still surprised you changed your mind and decided to leave so soon.”

  Krieger nodded. “I wouldn’t have, but the information that the prisoners provided us gave me critical information that is time sensitive.”

  “About the breakaway fleets?” Alexander asked.

  The Admiral shook his head. “The Commander we captured provided Four with the exact date that the Grand Commander is expected to return. For our plan to work, we need to prevent the other Shican fleets from returning by giving them exactly what they are looking for: glory.”

  “You want to engage the Shican?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. We’ve been engaging with hit-and-run tactics and traps for the last six months. The other Asgardian fleets have more ships than most of the breakaway fleets, but only Char and Bergson’s have vessels capable of fighting head-to-head battles with the shielded Shican vessels. Thankfully, we’ve learned through our few exchanges that most of the Shican’s smaller vessels are not shielded, evening the odds significantly. I’m not after a prolonged battle, however. My goal is to have the Asgardian fleets draw the Shican breakaway fleets into meaningful engagements. To cut down on possible losses, we’ll utilize the many automated ships we have.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far,” Alexander admitted, “to what end?”

  Krieger put on a massive grin. “To make the rest of the Shican armada jealous.”

  “…To make them jealous?”

  “Okay, maybe not exactly jealous, but hear me out. The information you gave me about the Shican was eye-opening and helped explain a lot of their actions. Once the main fleet learns that lower caste clans are getting all the glory, how do you think they will react?”

  It didn’t take Alexander long to think on that. “Angry, annoyed, and jealous…but the temporary Commander of the armada will keep them from leaving to claim their own glory.”

  “Exactly, but what if we stoked that feeling, then took away their Commander?”

  Without a clear leader, present, Alexander could easily picture the armada fragmenting as the clans set off to claim glory for themselves. The emperor’s main fleet might stick together, but they were subject to the same instincts as other Shicans, which is why they required such an iron hand when it came to leadership.

  “You know which ship the current commander is on, don’t you?” Alexander asked in realization.

  “Not just him, but the four commanders who would take over in case he was removed. I plan on using Judgement’s main cannon to take down those vessels, but our timeline is tight. We need to fragment the enemy fleet before the Grand Commander returns.”

  The whole plan sounded insane and dangerous. Those commanders he so casually mentioned were tucked away in a fleet of nearly one thousand vessels, but if it worked, the Shican would be divided, and much easier to pick off. The Grand Commander would quickly reassert his dominance over them, but it would take time to gather those ships back. The Grand Commander could just push into Union space without those ships, but the Shican’s combat power would be significantly reduced.

  “It’s your call, Admiral,” Alexander replied.

  Krieger’s smile grew. “Thank you for trusting me on this.”

  Alexander spent the next few minutes filling the Admiral in on the gravity plating situation. They had spoken about it previously, but now that he knew it had already started, it was different.

  “I’ll alert the rest of the Asgardians and have our ships practice zero-G maneuvers and repairs while we head to the front. It’s the best I can do given our timeline. Once the Shican fleet fragments, things will get much more complicated. I think it will ultimately be to our advantage, however.”

  Alexander agreed, and he had already sent a mental command to the printer swarms to start producing some of the modified Swordfish corvettes, the ones with the spinal-mounted enhanced FE cannons, or EFEC, as the crew of Judgement had taken to calling the massive guns.

  He had originally not wanted to deploy such weapons on anything smaller than a battleship for security reasons unless the risk was great enough. One disabled vessel could give the Shican access to that design. After Krieger’s plan to use a single cannon to decapitate the Shican hierarchy, he realized the cat would be out of the bag, so to speak. With the secret exposed, keeping them in reserve as a first-strike planetary weapon was not as important. With enough of them, the entire Shican command structure would crumble.

  The EFEC Swordfish alone wouldn’t be enough to dissuade the Shican, but it might make them more hesitant to engage. To end the fighting once and for all, Alexander would be using that same platform in the near future for something far different. They were going to get the first Nova drives.

  He still believed that removing the Shican Emperor was the most efficient way to stop the war, but to do that, they needed to figure out where the Shican Emperor resided. The Collective might know, so he would ask them. He wouldn’t share his plans, however. Four was working with them, but she seemed a little too attached to the alien kitties for his liking.

  Speaking of. “What happened with the prisoners?”

  “Given the treatment they deserved,” Krieger said coldly.

  Alexander nodded. He understood the unspoken meaning, and he wasn’t about to shed a tear over their loss, not after all the deaths the Shican had caused humanity and every other race they had conquered so far. Once their entire leadership structure broke down, he hoped they would turn on each other. It would be a fitting end for such a violent species.

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