After returning to the ship, Alexander needed something to take his mind off what happened in Arizona. At least that was his plan before his comm beeped.

He looked at it and grimaced. The STO finally called back and was waiting for a response. With a sigh, he headed for the bridge. He could take the call in his quarters, but Yulia was in there studying, and he didn't wish to disturb her.

"Alex, I'm glad you're back," Vigbrand said as Alexander entered the bridge. "I would have notified you when they called after you first left the ship, but the last call was more of a demand to know why you were causing such a scene as you descended. I told them it was none of their business, and they didn't take too kindly to that. The station has issued us a pretty significant fine as a result."

It was within the STO's purview to do so, but Alexander had expected it with his actions. He nodded his avatar at Vigbrand. "Thank you. Send it to my terminal, I'll take care of it."

His XO nodded and walked toward the XO's console while Alexander seated himself in the command console. Normally, the two were one and the same, but he had modified the seating to accommodate his larger body.

Once seated, he tapped on the console, and the holo screen came to life, with a video window showing an annoyed-looking Admiral on the other side of it.

"Admiral…" Alexander paused to read the man's nametag, "Util, what can I do for you?"

"You can start by explaining why you didn't notify traffic control of your descent path. We already have a dozen complaints thanks to your reckless actions."

"I had an important issue to attend to," Alexander responded flatly, refusing to elaborate any further.

The man did not appear too happy with that response, but Alexander didn't particularly care.

Instead of poking deeper, Util changed the subject. "Are you done with your ridiculous delaying tactics? You act like this inquiry is a death sentence. We simply have a few questions to clarify, and we would like to get that completed sooner rather than later. I don't know if you are aware, but there are other matters we must attend to, which are being delayed due to the inquiry being put on hold."

"I assume you are referring to Grand Admiral Xin's declaration of war?" Alexander asked.

"Among others," the man stated vaguely.

The STO's need to move on to other matters wasn't really Alexander's concern, and he would be happy to drag out the start date of the inquiry even longer if it weren't for a few other concerns. The first was Yulia's time away from her friends. They had been in Sol for almost a month by now, and he didn't want to keep her away from home any longer than he had to. The other reason was that he didn't want to be stuck in STO space if Xin managed to push deeper into the region. Going by the STO's ineptitude during the pirate conflict, that was a real possibility.

Alexander didn't have a good map of STO planets and populations, but he knew the area around Varlen was sparsely populated. If that stayed true with all the space along that border, it could be an issue. If Xin couldn't push toward the core planets, he was likely to come up through those border systems, which may cut off Eden's End unless he wanted to do void jumps to reach Unokane.

He didn't want to risk doing that and have something fail with Yulia aboard. With the onboard manufacturing, he might be able to fix any issues, but it was never a guarantee without access to external minerals.

That reminded him that he needed to speak with Lucas as soon as possible to get him up to speed with what was happening. He was certain Katalynn was already talking with her people back on Asgard. A glance at his internal timer told him it was early morning on Eden's End, so maybe he would call Lucas after he got off the comm with Util.

"You'll be happy to know that the rest of my business on Earth is completed. When would you like to meet?"

Util looked slightly taken aback by Alexander's agreement, and it took him a moment to respond.

"We can meet in two days at the STO headquarters. Prepare to spend most of the day, as there may be follow-up questions."

Alexander nodded his avatar slightly, and the comm cut off.

"What a jackass," Alexander stated, earning a chuckle from Vigbrand who had been standing off to the side silently.

"Now you know what I've been dealing with," his XO stated in amusement.

Alexander nodded in agreement before sending a message to Eden's End. The Loki picked up.

"Mr. Kane, what can I do for you this morning?"

Alexander never liked speaking with the man because he knew the persona wasn't real and would be thrown away when it suited Loki, but the man was good at his job. "I need to speak with Lucas. Is he up yet?"

"He should be. Let me ping his comm."

After waking the man up in the middle of the night more than once, Alexander had decided to stop sending direct comms until he returned to Unokane.

The video cut out, and Lucas spoke. "Alex, what's up?"

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"War," Alexander stated without preamble.

"What's new?" Lucas snorted.

The man probably assumed Alexander was referring to their war with the Xin, and he wasn't technically wrong.

"The Xin declared war on the STO," Alexander clarified a moment later.

"…Huh…," was the only response Lucas gave for a moment. "I guess we now know why their efforts to break through the Asgardian lines were letting up. I assume you're telling me because you think their war might negatively affect us?"

That was why Alexander loved working with Lucas so much, the man was sharp. "I do. Any chance you can ramp up production?"

Even though he couldn't see Lucas, he could picture the man doing the math.

"I don't see why not, all the infrastructure is in place. The only real concern is cost. Last time I checked, the BSE coffers were looking a bit bare."

Alexander winced at that. While most of their manufacturing was automated, there was still a price to be paid now that BSE had actual employees and customers, and Alexander had been spending it as fast as the money came in. Either he cut back on producing the few items that made money until additional production was in place, or he dipped into the shrinking savings of BSE to keep the current level of output or boost it. His overhead was still far below what a company of his size would normally require, but so was his income level.

"Do what you can without dipping into the finances too much. I'll talk with Pembrooke in a bit, but I have a plan that might inject some much-needed income into BSE shortly."

"You're the boss," Lucas replied. "Anything in particular you want me to focus on?"

"Do you know if Krieger has enough people to field another Orca yet?" Three of the vessels had already been constructed since his departure, and they were all operating in or near Unokane to allow the crews to get a feel for the ships.

"I don't know for sure, but I can speak with him and find out."

"Please do. If he has enough people, prioritize an additional Orca, then start building Swordfish."

"You certain?" Lucas asked with surprise. "I know we have some of the corvettes deployed as picket ships already, but it sounds like you have something else in mind for these."

"I'm sure," Alexander responded. "BSE needs a home fleet to deal with outside threats. I know we have the Vanguard, Tempest, the three Orca heavy frigates, and the three surviving Eden frigates, but that's paltry in comparison to what the other Jarls can field. It would be nice to be on an equal playing field with manned ships, but we will have to make do with automated ships." The canonical source for this content: M|V|L2EMPYR.

"If you count all of the Stingrays and Sharks we produced, I think we are well past that point," Lucas responded.

"Once the war is over, I plan on selling the automated ships that are currently defending the border to the other Jarls at a steep discount. That should offset any hard feelings they might have when they learn that the ships are unmanned and that we risked practically nothing by sending them."

Lucas chuckled at that. "Yeah, I can see the Asgardians getting pretty bent out of shape about that. Alright, so talk with Admiral Krieger to see if he's got a crew ready for a fourth Orca, then produce Swordfish. Do you want me to produce any Sharks or Stingrays?"

"Hmm, I mostly want the Swordfish to act as the fleet's shadow in case they get into trouble, but if Krieger thinks having Sharks and Stingrays as part of the fleet is a good idea, that's fine with me. Just tell him that it isn't a priority."

"Anything else?" Lucas asked as he let out a yawn.

"Nope, I think that's enough for… Oh, actually, produce another two dozen stealth satellites and ask Krieger to send Captain Farthing back through Varlen and down toward the Xin border with the STO. If they do come up that way, I want to know."

Lucas confirmed the instructions and ended the call.

With Lucas being awake, Alexander knew Theo would probably be as well, so he directly called the man despite his self-imposed rule not to do so.

Theo quickly picked up with a full video window appearing. "Alex, I've been expecting your call."

"You have?" Alexander asked in surprise.

"I just received a report from the comm node technicians, who just got off the line with Asgard. So the Xin just declared war on the STO, eh?"

"That is the current situation," Alexander said. "I wanted to give you a heads up that I plan on starting a satellite office on Earth. Do you have anyone you can recommend to run it?"

The man paused to rub his chin in thought. "After we spoke about expanding our information gathering, I did manage to cultivate a few contacts on Earth. I wouldn't trust them not to stick a knife in my back for a few extra credits, but they are competent, and they don't know who I am or that I work for BSE. If you want, I can simply tell them I have a way for them to be placed into key positions within BSE to spy on the company. That will both ensure we know who they are spying for and allow us to learn what is going on within the satellite office."

That was diabolical. They were bound to get spies at some point, especially with the location on Earth. Placing their own people ensured they controlled both the spying and the information being stolen at the top level.

It wouldn't stop all of the information from getting out, but that was fine. The tech Alexander was planning on selling on Earth consisted of the comm nodes and the pseudo-computronics. He would be modifying the latter to not allow for the linking of multiple cubes, though, at least not right away. That should hopefully keep QuantumLogic from getting too big a stick up their butt about him selling them.

Qcomm was another matter. He fully expected them to disable the Qcomm on Eden's End as soon as they got word about his new product. Losing the half-billion credit investment was going to hurt, but BSE would bounce back.

As for losing network access, that wasn't a concern. Alexander had been planning contingencies in case they ever disabled the device. He could connect through Asgard or the Talon as long as it was in orbit of a planet with a Qcomm, but those were band-aid solutions. Alexander's main backup was the Fletcher persona's stealth comm satellite in Varlen.

With the Varlen decommissioning, it had been easy for Captain Farthing to get into the system undetected, locate the satellite thanks to the data dump Fletcher left him, and attach one of Alexander's comm nodes.

The Fletcher persona must have been prophetic or just really paranoid because the satellite still connected to Qcomm even after the Varlen device had been removed from the system. That was Alexander's backup plan until his comm nodes started to spread. Once that happened, the STO would probably connect a node directly to their network, no longer necessitating the workaround.

Qcomm would make a huge stink about it and try their best to stop the spread of the new devices, but Alexander planned on offering them to the STO Navy to both sweeten their disposition toward him as well as act as a counter to Qcomm trying to get the devices removed. The war, while awful, was actually the best thing that could have happened to ensure his devices spread as fast as possible. The Navy wouldn't turn away instant communications between ships.

The next thing to do would be to ensure production ramped up as quickly as possible. The more devices he flooded the market with, the faster Qcomm lost its hold on FTL communications. It would also ensure Alexander could make the most amount of money possible before a competing product entered the market. Since he had no intention of locking the device behind draconian protection methods like Qcomm, he was sure someone would come along soon enough to compete with him, and that's exactly what he wanted.