The next few weeks passed in awkward silence, with Yulia still giving Alexander the silent treatment, even though her punishment was over. It was extra awkward considering her birthday was coming up soon. The thought made him melancholic.

An entire year, gone in the blink of an eye, and yet so much had transpired in such a short time. Alexander should be looking back on that time with happiness. He spent time with his daughter, trying his best to be a better father, which had been going well. There was also his study of Lund's research, which had expanded his knowledge a great deal, but the time was marred with more than one tragedy.

First, the attack on Earth, which had scarred Yulia, even if she refused to acknowledge it. Then the Shican attack followed less than a month later. That was the point when her behavior changed. Anger, fear, frustration, he couldn't be sure, perhaps it was all three or even more emotions. The two events, so close together, had irreversibly changed his little girl. And his overprotective nature hadn't helped matters; he could see that now.

The lashing out, the mood swings, they couldn't all be attributed to adolescence. It was too much, too fast for someone who had been so stoic in the past. The innocence of Yulia's youth was shattered, and Alexander couldn't do anything to put that back together again. All he could do now was try to help her process the emotional baggage as she transitioned into adulthood.

It was a job he was ill-equipped to handle, and he knew it. He also knew he couldn't ask someone to take on the burden for him. It wasn't some ill-conceived notion of pride that stopped him from seeking outside help. It was fear. He feared what Yulia might think of him if he pawned off his responsibilities as a parent to someone else.

Alexander felt like his relationship with his daughter balanced on the edge of a knife. If he failed, she would hate or despise him forever. Whether that was true or not didn't matter because he felt that it was true, and it gripped his metaphorical heart in a vice.

Logically, he knew it was dumb to try and predict how Yulia would turn out as an adult, but logic and reason fled in the face of emotion. And he was struggling with a lot of emotions, even two weeks after Yulia's angry declaration toward him.

Normally, when he felt conflicted, he dove headfirst into work to help dull the feelings and allow him to process them, but even that wasn't enough to free his mind from the hurt three words had caused. Alexander sighed and locked his workstation.

He needed time to think, and it wasn't happening here. He removed his comm band and set it on the desk before heading to the shuttle pad. There he boarded Grace's shuttle and flew up to orbit, glad he didn't have to announce what he was doing, since most everything on or around the planet belonged to him.

Alexander docked at the storage facility and headed inside. He made his way to the back and slid a card behind a structural bulkhead. There was a beep, and the wall slid open, revealing a short corridor. He waited for the wall behind him to close up before going through the second door, and into the cavernous space that held the broken remains of the alien spaceship that Fletcher had sent him.

Only a handful of people were even aware of the ship's existence. If the corporations ever discovered Alexander had it, there was no doubt they would try to claim it for themselves. He came up here to be alone, because it was the only place in the entire system where he might go undisturbed.

He climbed the metal ramp that had been built to allow easy entry into the ship. Then he just wandered until he entered an area marked as the bridge by a helpful STO Navy placard. The ship still bore the wounds it had taken during its last moments, and Alexander stood between two such points. One on the ceiling, and one on the floor.

He just stood there, visualizing the round that had torn through the tough vessel, then through him, and into the floor. The angle was an exact match of the damage his body had once sported. That wasn't a new revelation on his part. He had figured that out shortly after realizing he and the ship had been connected somehow.

Fear had kept him from picking at that memory, though, so he hadn't set foot on the bridge since seeing the damage. Now, that fear felt laughable compared to what three simple words had done to him.

Alexander stood there, letting his mind drift. Flashes of insight came to him. The ship shaking, weapons firing, and he standing calmly amongst it all. It was all fabricated, he knew. There were no memories to go along with his vision, just the analysis of what might have happened.

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Disappointment flooded through him, and he lay down on the ground, looking up through the hole in the ceiling until he felt a vibration in the ship, and someone calling his name.

"Alex! Are you in here?" Lucas called in concern.

Alexander glanced at his clock and blinked in surprise. Over thirty hours had passed while he just lay there, unmoving. To him, it had only felt like a moment.

Utter disbelief, anger, and annoyance assaulted him at the same time. He didn't have the time or luxury to be sitting around doing nothing. The Shican needed to be dealt with.

As he stood, he realized he had finally gotten control over his other emotions. At least enough to function properly again.

"There you are," Lucas said in relief as he rounded the corner to the bridge. "We've been looking everywhere for you."

"I needed some time to think," Alexander admitted.

"Did something happen?" Lucas asked with concern.

"Yulia said she hated me."

Lucas winced at that. "So she's at that age. Sorry to hear that, but it could have been worse."

"Worse?" Alexander asked. "How could it be worse? My daughter hates me and refuses to talk to me now."

Lucas snorted. "She doesn't hate you, Alex. She might be upset with you, but she doesn't hate you. If she hated you, you would know it. If she truly hated you, she would have run away."

"How would you know?" Alexander asked in annoyance. "You don't have kids."

"I'm hurt that you would question my judgment like that, but I'll forgive you since you are upset and probably aren't thinking straight. I know Yulia doesn't really mean what she said because of personal experience. I despised my father, and to get away from him, I ran away. To be fair, he was a huge piece of shit. You just need to look at how Damien turned out to see that."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to question your judgment."

"Eh," Lucas shrugged. "I already said I forgive you. So what exactly led to this friction between you and Yulia?"

Alexander sighed. "She built a reactor chamber."

Lucas' eyes went wide, and he waved his hands. "I had nothing to do with her getting access to something like that, I swear."

"I know. It was Dog. She somehow convinced her companion to help her build the damn thing. I wouldn't have even known about it, but all the printers are linked to the security computer, and it flagged the print as suspicious."

Lucas relaxed at that. "What the hell was she trying to build that needed a reactor? And how did she think she was going to get her hands on the fuel?"

"She was trying to build a ship for that damn racing league, the Stellar Sprints. As for the other issue, I'm not sure. None of the BSE facilities produce fuel cores on the ground anymore, which leaves only the fuel used in shuttles. I don't think she thought that far ahead, though, but enough about that. I assume you came looking for me for a reason?"

"Right. I tried to reach you by comm to let you know we have a working defensive field."

Alexander perked up. "That's the best news I've heard all week. And it's stable?"

"Ish," Lucas said, waggling his hand back and forth. "We can keep tweaking it until we get better results, but I think the testing chamber might be causing interference. We need to test it in space to know for sure if the design is operating properly, or figure out a way to remove the interference from inside the chamber."

Having a sterile environment for testing seemed like a good thing. Alexander found it hard to believe it would affect the tests, but Lucas had been working on the development of the fields longer than he had. If the man thought the chamber was causing issues, it probably was.

"Alright, let's do that. The testing in space bit. It would be much faster to lift the test rig into orbit than it would be to fine-tune the vacuum chamber."

"That's what I figured as well, but I wanted to give you both options. My people are already disassembling the rig so we can load the parts aboard a shuttle. Oh, before I forget. Pembrooke told me to let you know that Chairman Rush is on his way. Apparently, the man is already in Varlen, and he's got an entire fleet of support ships with him."

"That man wastes no time. Theo only gave him the thumbs up a few weeks ago. Hopefully, Qcomm doesn't give him shit."

Lucas laughed at that. "I don't think Qcomm's blockade is going to be an issue anymore. Our satellites picked up the conversation between Rush's fleet and the Qcomm one. Rush told them in no uncertain terms that if he found them blocking the way ever again, he was going to refuse to do business with them or their affiliates. I don't think I've seen ships scatter so fast before."

Alexander tilted his avatar in confusion. "Why would Qcomm care about artificial gravity plating? They don't manufacture any ships or stations."

"That's what I said to Pembrooke. He explained it to me. While it's true that Qcomm doesn't build its own ships, they have affiliate relationships with a few companies that do. Theo said they probably wouldn't care about losing those companies. They would care about losing their long-standing agreements with some of humanity's largest station-building companies, though. Qcomm's main source of income comes from the lucrative contracts they have with those companies."

Alexander chuckled. "Serves the bastards right. I kind of wish they had called Rush's bluff. Taking away Qcomm's main source of income would have helped tremendously. Either way, I don't think we need to worry about them for the time being. If they start trying to pirate ships in the corridor from Varlen to Unokane, they'll quickly learn that we aren't playing around."