Alexander spent the remaining few weeks before the Seahorses were done trying to crack the issues with his field stabilization idea. That wasn't the only thing he focused on, however. Yulia's birthday had also come and gone. It was a much more subdued affair, with only half a dozen kids attending.

Yulia was barely speaking to him, but he still gave her a gift. Her gift wasn't anything tangible this year. Instead, it came in the form of a promise that he would work with her to design a ship over the next few years, so long as she agreed to never build something dangerous behind his back again.

The gift wasn't as well-received as he had hoped it would be, but she still accepted it. Then she studiously ignored him for the rest of the party.

It was hard to believe his daughter was fourteen now. In another year, she would likely go to the academy. He doubted he could convince her to wait until she was sixteen after Markus was given an exception to go early. Her friends, Sarah and Claire, were already sixteen, and Markus turned eighteen only a few weeks ago, when Alexander finally provided the boy with the activation crystal for his long-overdue ship.

The one he had given him on his fourteenth birthday had been a valid fusion activation crystal, but the ship and the reactor that it belonged to had long since been recycled. And instead of giving the boy a retrofitted piece of pirate garbage, Alexander decided to do one better. Markus was now the very first private owner of a Stingray gunship. And from everything Alexander had seen of the boy, he deserved it.

The kid had gone from a very skeptical, very suspicious boy to one of the Lund Academy's finest cadets. Eva told him that Markus was well on his way to earning his captaincy. He was apparently also dating a girl by the name of Cho. That wasn't the sort of information Alexander had asked for, but Eva had been so proud of the boy that she had gone on at length about how his life was going during the party.

Mostly, Alexander was worried about Yulia. He knew his daughter had a childhood crush on Markus, but during his party, she seemed happy for him. She even invited Markus and his girlfriend to her party, so it seemed like she held no ill will there. It made sense, considering all three had grown up in the same orphanage.

Alexander smiled as he replayed a recording of the party while he watched the final components come off the printer and get installed onto the Seahorses.

The Stingrays were already being loaded onto the carriers, and the fleet was halfway to the border to engage with Xin's forces to draw them away from their target. There were no half measures with this operation. The entirety of Unokane's fleet was en route toward the border, minus the four Swordfish corvettes that defended the jump point from the Varlen direction. Katalynn would be joining Admiral Krieger with her fleet and her new heavy battle cruiser, Grimnir's Fang, which had been completed during their trip to Earth.

Alexander had sold some of his printers, bots, and control ships to Katalynn before they left. He wanted to help speed up the Asgardians' production of ships, mostly as a way to thank them for helping defeat Harlow. Some of the Jarls had also purchased the printers, but they hadn't seen the bots in action, so they weren't interested in them. The only Jarl who had been was Jarl Ylva Bergson. The woman had turned into one of Alexander's staunchest allies and trading partners after their battle against Harlow, if he didn't include Katalynn.

Unfortunately, Ylva's fleet had also been decimated during the Harlow conflict, and her fleet yard was only capable of producing civilian vessels and corvettes. That hadn't stopped the woman from spending the last year or so retrofitting and upgrading her yards with Alexander's tech so she could start producing her own destroyers domestically. Ylva may not have as large a shipyard as Yggdrasil's Eye, but she now has more ships than Katalynn, thanks to her focus on smaller vessels.

Not that Katalynn's choices were wrong, just different. She had decided to focus on building two heavy cruisers based on Valkyrie's updated design and three destroyers. She was also building frigates and smaller vessels, but after the run-in with the Shican, it was clear that smaller ships simply weren't going to cut it once the real fighting started. At least not when it came to manned ships. Unmanned ones definitely had a place in the upcoming war.

Alexander had worked extensively with the Jarls as a consultant to improve their ship designs after he joined the Union. Because of that, Katalynn and Ylva's ships were nearly on par with his own, at least as of what his own were before the trip to Earth. Well… That wasn't entirely true. He would put Katalynn's flagship above any of his current vessels in terms of combat ability, simply because of its size and additional firepower.

Honestly, they were closing in on battleship territory with how large her new heavy battle cruiser was getting. He could understand the reasons for wanting larger, stronger ships, but if one fell, the cost and time needed to replace one were staggering.

Despite how he felt about their choices, he was glad he had the foresight to license the technology to those two. It ensured the Asgardians would have something to fight back against the more modern Shican vessels. He suspected the other Jarls would see how effective the new ships were and desire similar deals. Whether or not Alexander agreed to further deals would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

In a perfect world, he could trust everyone, but he didn't. He trusted Katalynn and Ylva because they had fought by his side to defend Eden's End. The other Jarls needed to earn that trust before he turned over anything more advanced than his ring printers.

Alexander refocused on the loading operations.

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The system was quite empty with the fleet gone. The four Swordfish were the only ships left to maintain their silent watch, and only because Krieger forced Alexander to keep something in the system. He appreciated the man's concern, but it wasn't necessary; four Stingrays had already come out of the printers to add to the ships already available for defense. Even if they weren't, he wasn't worried about the lack of ships.

His lasers and defensive measures had grown significantly since Harlow's attack. If that man's fleet couldn't crack them, nobody else was going to any time soon. Sure, they could be picked off at a distance, but there wasn't an inch of space inside Unokane that wasn't being monitored by some satellite. He would know well in advance of any attack, and be able to move the lasers behind the deflection array that his static field satellites could produce.

That was assuming anyone was even on their way. There were no corporations or pirates anywhere near Unokane. Minus Chairman Rush and his fleet, but the man only had two armed vessels as protection, and those were gunships. Considering Gravitational Solution's reputation and the scene Alexander witnessed in Varlen, Rush probably didn't even need those. Just his words had been enough to chase off the Qcomm blockade.

Rush would be arriving in a few days, and Alexander wanted the carriers gone before they showed up. Alexander still didn't know what the man's intentions were or why he would come in person, but hiding the carriers and their ability to form the jump bridge was priority number one.

The last Stingray was moved into its launch rails by the tug bots, and they retreated into the hangars of the Seahorse's. Each ship had twenty of the robots and an onboard printer to make more in the event of loss. It was overkill for loading the launch bays, but they had a secondary purpose. Alexander had included one for positioning each laser pod.

He did that because he needed to maximize space and power inside the pods for the lasers. That meant removing most of the ion thrusters, especially the main rear thruster. Now the bots would move the lasers into place and act as the aiming mechanism. He left each pod with four thrusters, which were just enough to make micro adjustments as needed.

The tests on the new laser pods went okay, but he wasn't sure how practical they would be going forward.

A single-shot weapon just wasn't efficient for static defenses. The only advantage that the lasers gave was their range. If that wasn't the case, he would have been better off outfitting the pods with FE cannons. Unfortunately, those came with their own issues. He had tested a pod version of an FE cannon, but since the pods were so light, the cannon caused it to recoil, knocking it off target, despite the recoil absorbers he included in the design. Until he worked out that problem, the laser pods were still the best option to give the carriers a bit more protection.

Once the bots were secured inside the hangar, the ships departed Eden's End's orbit. They were heading for the same gas giant that he used during his prototype jump tests. The gravitational eddies from the jumps had finally settled down enough that Eden's sensors couldn't pick them up anymore. He hoped the same was the case for the subspace environment where the bridge formed. Unfortunately, Alexander didn't have any sensors capable of detecting subspace distortions. Even if they had settled completely, the ships were going to need to jump from opposite poles to arrive at their destination at the same time.

Alexander watched from the satellite feed as the ships oriented themselves. Then they fired up the drive. For twenty minutes, the ships fed power into the drive generator to widen the bridge and compensate for the remaining instability left behind by his earlier tests. Once they were ready, they slipped through.

The image blanked out for safety, and when it came back, his holo switched to a split view, showing a view from both ships.

"I don't think there's any chance of them coming back that way," Lucas said. "The gravity is so turbulent near the planet that the weak sensors aboard some of the farther-out satellites in Unokane are picking it up now."

Alexander nodded his avatar. That was one of the major downsides to this form of FTL. Another was the roundabout method needed to get to their destination. Instead of sending the ships closer to the Xin border, they were actually traveling away. The first jump was deep into Asgardian space, then three normal jumps to another gas giant, where they would bridge jump to a system outside of Asgardian space, in the buffer area between the former Anazi territory and the Asgardian border. Following that, they would make two more normal jumps to arrive at the system where they found a gas giant that would allow them to bridge jump into Xin territory.

That final jump would land them three systems out from Xin Prime, according to the data Captain Voss had managed to acquire. Even with having to go so far out of the way, it was still faster than traveling straight there. There was a closer system that would allow them to jump to within one system of Xin Prime, but that system held a Xin fleet yard near the gas giant they would need to use, so it was removed as an option.

Alexander turned to the technicians monitoring fleet activity in the operations center. "Keep an active comm connection to the carriers until they jump into Xin space. They will be on their own after that."

"As you wish, sir," the technicians responded.

Alexander nodded in thanks, and both he and Lucas left the room. There was no point hovering. He just wanted to see the ships off.

"You regret not going?" Lucas asked quietly, once they were clear of the room.

"No," Alexander replied sincerely. "I might have the title of a captain, but I am not a commander. It's better if Krieger is leading the fight, while not having to worry about me. I do regret not being able to do more in the time we had, though, but, as I'm aptly aware, I can't control the flow of time."

"Maybe someday," Lucas chuckled. "Speaking of time. Do you have some available to look over the new test results for the ships' defensive field? We're making headway, but I think the bottleneck is power. The field comes up, but it's weak. Barely able to stop a flechette from a rifle, let alone a railgun round."

"Weak defensive field, story of my month," Alexander sighed. "I'm having a similar issue with the project I'm working on."

Lucas glanced around conspiratorially before leaning toward him in an exaggerated manner and stage whispering. "You mean the inertial dampener?"

Alexander couldn't help but laugh at the man's poor attempt at a joke. "I told you before, it isn't an inertial dampener. It doesn't dampen inertia."

"Could've fooled me," the man responded with a chuckle. "Besides, you've been taking the whole project way too seriously lately. Doesn't it feel good to have a laugh about it?"

"I guess so," Alexander admitted. "Although I think you're just trying to butter me up to help you with your project."

"Me?" the man replied in mock outrage. "Never."

There was an awkward pause before they both broke out in laughter.

"Fine," Alexander said in amusement. "I'll take a look at the test results. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something that will help me with my own research."

Lucas gave him a salute before walking off. "Data's already in your workshop."

"Of course it is," Alexander chuckled softly.