Alexander would've loved to say he was making headway with the ship shielding, but that wasn't the case. He was already aware that it was going to be an uphill battle thanks to his research on the personal defense field generators.

The problem was always going to be getting the static field to deploy the same way in a vacuum as his defensive field did in an atmosphere. Even a ship's static field wasn't able to do that; it simply generated a charged area in front of the ship, which only ever came into being when an oppositely charged field came into the same area.

Having a way to deploy chaff would work for a very short amount of time, but as soon as the fields interacted, the chaff would be ejected. Even if they didn't interact like that, a ship maneuvering would leave the chaff field behind very quickly, rendering it useless.

The Shican certainly didn't deploy a chaff to form their defensive field. It would have been clear if they had. No, whatever they were doing, it was internal. Alexander really wished he had access to their field generator to see how they did it.

He pondered the problem for a bit, and his mind drifted to the Shican's weapons. "What if the field was a byproduct of their weapon's research?"

Going by the militaristic and tech-focused nature of the felinids, that could be possible. If that were the case, then the field might not be only internally generated, like he had first thought. A very low-level plasma field could be enough to give a defensive field the structure it needed to remain intact in a vacuum.

If that was true, he was looking at the protrusions in the armor incorrectly. He thought they were originally emitters for the static field, but what if they were meant for something else? They were made from an extremely hard, thermally stable, and conductive alloy that Alexander was already planning on employing in some of his projects. Channels designed to emit large amounts of energy could provide a path for the ionization to take place. Even space wasn't completely free of particles. A defensive field wouldn't need much to bridge that gap.

He updated his design schematics, integrating a small fusion reactor specifically to power the field and the emitters. Lucas could get away with using facility power for the tests, but a ship would require a dedicated reactor to keep the emitters running constantly.

If his new hypothesis turned out to be correct, Alexander saw a few flaws with the Shican's design. The first was the fact that the field needed time to establish itself. It probably wasn't much time, but jumping would leave them temporarily vulnerable. He made a note to test that, assuming Lucas could get the field working.

The next issue was that the field would stop anything from leaving it as well. It was the same issue he ran into when testing the shuttle's defensive field. It had to be off for the ship's cannon to fire properly. That wasn't an issue most of the time since the field wasn't constantly on. He just added an override that prevented the cannon from operating when the shield was engaged, much like old fighter planes did, so they didn't shoot their own propellers off. Alexander didn't run into that issue with the personal fields because they only extended a foot or so from the body when they were active, which allowed weapons to poke through the field.

He didn't see anything like that on the Shican's ships, which meant they had to be turning off the field, or sections of it, to fire any projectiles. It would need to be turned off to deploy fighters, too, but the field there could be tied to the hangar doors.

That was a huge weakness to exploit if it were true, but he wouldn't know until they actually got into another fight with the Shican.

Alexander pulled up the design schematics for his fleet. He feared he might have to redesign the ships completely, but the newest designs already incorporated the carbon nanotube pathways under the armor for the scan inhibitor. They could also act as a power delivery system. Tapping into those was easy, and soon he had an array of metal spikes sticking out from the pathway.

Those would need to be incorporated directly into the armor before production, but for the design phase, it was fine. Especially since he wasn't sure if the design was functional yet. Alexander knew he was putting the cart before the horse, since Lucas was still working on the tests. Hell, the components probably hadn't finished printing yet, but Alexander felt confident that he was on the right path. Even if he wasn't, the emitters would need to be tested anyway, so getting started on them wasn't a waste of time.

Unfortunately, Alexander could not implement the Shican's thermal solution into his own armor. As it turned out, the Shican's armor was rather soft, for lack of a better term. It was still made from a very advanced alloy that put twenty-first-century armor to shame, but the composite armor Alexander's ships were sporting made it look weak in comparison.

It seemed the aliens relied on a two-tiered approach to defense. The energy field would stop any and all projectiles, while the armor was designed with energy weapons in mind. He saw a third layer of defense as well, which had not been displayed during the battle, simply because they hadn't been able to get past the enemy's defenses to trigger it. It had only come to light when his bots began to try and cut apart the wreckage.

Cutting through the armor would cause the molten salt to react, which it was designed to do, but if the area got overloaded with heat, the panel would blow out, releasing a stream of reflective chaff that was stored behind it in a small compartment filled with nitrogen. It wouldn't work against something like a plasma bolt, but it was highly effective against lasers.

The first time a blowout happened, it sent the poor bot, which had been working on that section, tumbling into space. Alexander was forced to call another bot to retrieve the damaged one for recycling. Working around those pockets was difficult and slowed his efforts down even further, but he managed to make it work. It also contributed to why he had so few intact samples to study.

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

The Shican's backup in case their armor failed showed that the aliens knew about their armor's potential vulnerability. That wasn't ideal, since it meant lasers, even the ones aboard Vanguard and Tempest, wouldn't be as effective as he first hoped.

Honestly, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the FE cannons might be his best bet in terms of fighting the aliens. At least until he learned how to produce his own plasma bolts or figured out how the sphere did what it did.

Alexander already knew that if he turned the cannons up to full power, they would punch through his defensive field. Would they also punch through a ship's field?

His musings were interrupted as his comm beeped.

Katalynn's voice came through the speaker. "Kane, can you come to the bridge? We may have a problem."

"On my way," he replied before quickly sending off his updates to Lucas.

The man was probably sick of getting design changes by now.

It took him a bit to make his way from the workshop to the bridge. When he arrived, he found Katalynn speaking quietly to her people.

She nodded at him before finishing her conversation. Once she was done, she walked over and handed him a tablet.

The holo on the bridge was completely shot, and they were relying on the replacement terminals and handheld tablets to keep track of the space around Grace. He kicked himself mentally for overlooking that issue. He had been so focused on getting the ship to a safe operating condition and the alien research that he had not considered the tactical limitations of their current predicament. That wouldn't do. He sent a command to the printers aboard to start manufacturing replacement components for the tactical holo. While he couldn't get the wrap-around up and running without major work, he could replace the tactical display in a few hours.

"I first noticed their arrival a few hours ago," Katalynn said as Alexander inspected the two-dimensional map.

She had zoomed in on a group of transponder IDs that belonged to Qcomm.

"I thought they were posturing like the previous corporations had done, but four more gunships joined them a few minutes ago, and they haven't made a move even though they have eight ships now."

"You're worried that they are waiting for reinforcements?" Alexander asked.

Katalynn nodded in confirmation. "It seems likely, given that they haven't attacked so far. The fact that they are even here suggests your secret is out. Qcomm likely has an office in the system somewhere. They probably saw what you did to those other gunships. If I were commanding their forces, I would wait for two frigates or a destroyer before I engaged. I don't know if Qcomm has access to destroyers, but you told me they had frigates, so that's likely what we'll see."

That wasn't good. It had only been eight days since the attack, and Alexander's reinforcements weren't slated to arrive for another five to thirteen.

They were repaired enough that they could jump if it came down to it, but if they left now, it would mean abandoning the smelter and printer, which were in the process of producing the first Stingray. It would also mean leaving behind the rest of Valkyrie, which hadn't been recycled. Letting the corporations have access to his tech felt wrong on an instinctual level, and he was having an internal debate on whether to cut and run to protect Grace and everyone aboard, or stay and hope that he could complete the cleanup operations and final repairs before Qcomm made their move.

He would have cut and run already, but Grace wasn't in very good shape. Even if all the repairs were complete, the ship would not be at one hundred percent. At best, he might put it at sixty percent once the repairs were done. He wanted those two gunships to serve as an additional deterrent as he made his way back home. Qcomm might be the first mega-corporation to show up, but he doubted they were the only ones who knew what he had scavenged from the battle.

Alexander didn't need to decide right away, though. "Please keep an eye on them. I'll see what I can do to speed up the production of the ships."

"Very well," Katelynn replied, "but I need to know something before you rush off."

"What's that?" Alexander asked.

"If it comes to a fight, who's in charge? If it's you, you need to be on the bridge, but if you want me to take command, I need to know that you will not counteract my orders. That could get us killed."

Alexander wanted to argue that he would never do such a thing, but he stopped himself. He had just been weighing his options and was conflicted on what to do. If he truly didn't agree with Katalynn's orders, would he step in?

He knew battles were extremely fast and fluid, leaving little time for second-guessing or confusion. If Qcomm was bringing a fleet large enough to ensure victory, they wouldn't hesitate to fire on them.

Alexander sighed and nodded his avatar. "As long as you are on the bridge, you are in command. I will defer to your orders and not weigh in. I only ask that if we are forced to flee, you consider destroying anything of mine that we leave behind."

Katalynn smiled. "I'm glad you understand the problem, Jarl Kane. Not everyone does. I can't guarantee that I can accommodate your request during an actual fight, but," she added, holding up her hand to stop any response, "we aren't in a fight right now. Weapons, how many missiles do we have aboard?"

"Thirty-six, Lagertha," the man responded.

Katalynn looked at Alexander in confusion. "How many did you fire at the Shican?" Vis^i@t. My V#ir*tu+a&l L-i+br*ar!y E-m*pi$re (-M%_+VL#EM@P^Y+R) for more.

"Grace has a full complement of fifty missiles, so fourteen." Alexander would have refilled his missile stores with dumb variants; he had the materials and manufacturing to create the explosives and casing, but he just didn't have the production capacity to make it happen.

"Can your bots move the missiles without them detonating?" Katalynn asked as she moved back to her console.

Alexander followed. "Yeah, the onboard computers have a friend or foe system. Why?"

"You want to ensure your technology can't be captured, and we have enough missiles to make it happen. Simply have your bots position the missiles near those sites, and if we have to run, I can detonate them all."

Alexander hadn't considered that. It was a much more elegant solution than the one he had cooked up to deal with the remains of the Shican ship. Then again, his goal had been to ensure nothing remained. If a few bits and pieces of his tech were left behind, that was fine. Most of it was based on tech easily accessible within the STO anyway.

"I can do that," he admitted.

"Weapons, eject half of our missiles, but do it slowly enough for the bots to grab them and haul them away from the ship."

The ejection procedure gave the missiles just enough oomph to leave the tubes, and Alexander controlled the bots to grab the weapons and position them around the smelter, printer, and specific sections of Valkyrie's wreck to ensure any important bits were eliminated.

That last part did necessitate the bots maneuvering through the tight corridors of Valkyrie while carrying the missiles. Those were moved near the computer core, which had already been stripped and moved aboard Grace, but he didn't want anyone to know what the room had been used for. The other weapons were moved to the turret rooms, the remains of the bridge, and the engine section.

He would have loved to destroy the entire ship, but Grace didn't have enough missiles to make that happen, even if they used all of the remaining thirty-six; that's just how tough the Asgardian ship was. Hell, even the Shican had given up on pounding away at Katalynn's flagship after it was rendered inoperable, even though they had completely obliterated the STO vessels.