One of the issues Alexander had been beating his mind against the proverbial wall over for the last three weeks was getting sufficient power to the emitters. The delivery of that power wasn't a problem. The alien carbon nanotube pathways were arguably far superior to the Shican's power delivery system. At least the parts he had recovered for study.

The issue was output. He had been struggling with the new reactor design and had tried over forty different combinations of the three most common reactors humanity had available.

The ball reactor was the oldest, but most stable design, which is why it was still in common use. It was also the least efficient and provided the lowest output in terms of raw power. Still, he had made five improved variants on the design, making it significantly better than its predecessors, to see if he could overcome the power problem. Despite his improvements, the older design still lagged behind a ring reactor.

The ring reactor was the newest fusion reactor design, and the one Alexander employed across most of his fleet of ships. With the improvements he made on the ball reactor, the ring wasn't quite as big a leap in efficiency and output as it had once been. That being said, even if the older reactor caught up, the newer reactor design still had something the ball reactor wouldn't be able to claim, and that was fusion redundancy with its multiple rings.

The laser compression reactor wasn't even in the same playing field as the other two, being relegated to older fuels and shuttles only, so Alexander hadn't bothered much with that design. The only reason it even maintained any relevance was that the ball and ring reactors were much bulkier.

In another year, even that might not be the case. Alexander had already miniaturized the ball reactor once so it would fit aboard a Stingray. He suspected that by the time he found a solution to his current issue, he would be able to produce a ball reactor small enough to replace the outdated laser compression reactor designs that shuttles relied on. He could do it now with his current reactors, but it would require a redesign of the shuttles, and that wasn't a priority.

From his initial tests, he was able to determine that the current reactor designs would not be sufficient to meet his goals. Not unless he scaled them up, which defeated the whole point of having a direct replacement for current reactors.

He thought about toying with antimatter, but that sounded like a monumentally bad idea considering he knew next to nothing about the subject. Not to mention the fact that he didn't have any antimatter collected. If he wanted to go that route, he would need to design and build an entire industry to support such a reactor, instead of relying on existing infrastructure.

There was no time to learn about, develop, and then kickstart an entire new industry, so Alexander put a pin in that idea for later.

What he needed was a way to force more plasma, and thus more power, into the same space, increasing the output of a reactor. If he could control gravity, it would have been easy, but he didn't know how to do that. The gravity plating wouldn't work because it would have to be the center of the reactor, and the gravity produced by the plates simply wasn't strong enough to make an appreciable effect.

Alexander paused to think about the problem for a bit. His defensive field had a marginal effect on the surrounding gravity. He had also played with using static fields to try and improve fuel flow a long time ago, but he had never thought about using the technology to directly contain the plasma. It wouldn't have been possible with the normal static fields anyway, but with his defensive field, it should be. More than should be, he realized, it had to be possible. The Shican had proven that with their plasma weapons.

"What if their weapon research wasn't the catalyst for their defensive field?" he asked himself as he quickly mocked up a reactor that would contain and compress the plasma using a field that was facing inward.

If the Shican had been designing a new generation of reactors and found other uses for the containment field, such as weapons and shielding, of course, they would use it on other technologies.

Using the static field wasn't exactly the breakthrough he had been aiming for, but a stronger containment field just might be able to compress the plasma enough to allow reactors to run over their designed limit. It was a half step toward a new generation of reactors, but all he needed was a boost in power.

As the design started to come together, he felt like he was on the right path. It didn't get him any closer to understanding how the Shican kept the defensive field active to contain their plasma bolts, but he didn't particularly care about that problem at the moment.

Once he was done, he stepped back and looked at the new ball reactor design. Given what he knew about reactors, it would probably pass the simulation tests. Alexander frowned as he studied the design. It felt like a step back. Why was he trying to bring old technology into a new era when there were already better options available?

He stored that file and opened another containing the ring reactor schematics. He studied the design for a long time before making any changes.

The oval-shaped reactor was a much more complex beast, but it was given the same treatment as the ball reactor. Emitters were placed at even intervals throughout the new design to compress the plasma away from the containment walls. Doing that also meant he had to counteract the compression along the rings. The same composite material that the Shican used for their emitters replaced the rings entirely, allowing him to push the plasma back away from the sensitive components.

During the design process, Alexander realized that if the material could stand up to the heat, why did he need the emitters at all? He created a second copy of the design that scrapped the containment portion with the embedded emitters. He redesigned it using the emitter material as an inner layer, leaving no gaps. Once he was done with the designs, he sent them to the simulation software.

They both failed, but for different reasons, which surprised him.

The first design caused an instability in the containment area. With the plasma being so compressed, the normal electromagnetic containment, which was still present, wasn't strong enough to keep the plasma from erupting out like a solar flare and damaging the inner lining. Had that happened aboard a ship, the entire reactor would have melted down.

The second design was much more stable in that capacity, although a few flare-ups did happen. He would need to find a way to monitor those events or prevent them altogether. The second reactor failed because the inner fields were slowly crushed by the outer field's strength, turning the rings into molten metal and then additional plasma in less than ten minutes after startup. The reactor overload from that design would have been far more energetic than the first one if that had happened aboard a real ship.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

It took Alexander the better part of a day to fine-tune the field strength to equalize the forces between the rings and the outer containment. He could have managed it much sooner if he had realized that each ring required different amounts of power to maintain equilibrium.

Once he did, it still wasn't an easy process. Each ring needed to be matched to the rest, because there was also an interaction between each of the rings. With him upgrading the reactor to have five rings instead of the three his old design had, that meant there were thousands of interactions to consider. Eventually, Alexander just passed the process off to the research core for optimization.

The computer could go through each interaction much quicker than he could.

While all reactors required automated monitoring, Alexander realized that if his new reactor design worked, it would have to be connected to a dedicated supercomputer to monitor for field-induced fluctuations. It was simply too complicated for current systems to monitor constantly or tweak on the fly. If he broke up the rings into dedicated sections for a computer to monitor, he could probably reduce the computing requirements, but he wanted to ensure the reactor worked at all before spending time improving the design.

The computer eventually returned the optimal power settings, and Alexander fed it to the simulation. It worked, but the flare-ups increased over time, showing that the plasma was becoming increasingly unstable. After an hour of simulated time, he shut down the test.

Once he was reasonably certain that the reactors could work, he wrote a program for the computer to monitor the plasma field. He also added an emergency purge that would vent all the plasma through a ship's maneuvering thrusters in case of a catastrophic failure.

He could have done it more easily through the main thrusters on a ship with compressed plasma ejection drives, but he didn't want to force a vessel to accelerate forward at unsafe speeds. If a ship had a damaged maneuvering thruster, it might send it careening out of control, but those thrusters were much weaker than the main thrusters. Eventually, he would redesign that process and add an emergency venting system to his ships.

Early human spaceships had systems like that, but as reactors got more stable, designers felt it wasn't necessary to include such measures anymore. Now that Alexander was toeing the line on reactor technology, he needed to bring the practice back.

He sent everything to a new printer that was dedicated to producing prototypes for his wild ideas and waited. The Stingray that the new reactor would be tested on wouldn't be complete before Rush arrived, so Alexander cleaned up his workshop a bit and went in search of Theo so he could prepare for the man's arrival.

Before he could even leave his workshop, the door opened and Theo stepped in.

"I was just about to come looking for you," Alexander said happily.

Pembrooke tilted his head slightly in confusion. "You were? Oh, right. To prepare for Rush's arrival. We can discuss that later. Gabriella is asking for you. Apparently, Dr. Nord has found something."

"The man isn't giving her any grief again, is he?" Alexander asked as he followed Theo to the medical wing.

"Not that I'm aware of, so I would assume your last discussion set him straight."

That was good; if the man had continued to be belligerent, Alexander would have cut him loose and looked for someone else to assist.

As they arrived, Alexander heard Dr. Nord apologizing to Gabriella.

"Once again, I want to say how sorry I am for doubting your work. Decades as a trauma surgeon with people's lives on the line have caused me to develop a bad habit of lashing out at people who make mistakes. That's not a valid excuse for my actions, and for that I apologize."

Alexander and Theo stepped into the room just as Nord finished speaking.

Gabriella had her arms crossed and an unreadable expression on her face. She glanced in their direction and nodded, but didn't respond to Nord's apology.

"They're here," she said coldly.

Nord nodded, probably realizing the woman wasn't going to forgive his actions, but was at least professional enough to work with him. "Mr. Kane. I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, but the findings were so unbelievable that I had to verify them with some colleagues." Nord held up his hand. "I know, you asked me not to share the data with anyone, but I had to get a second opinion. Don't worry, my friends don't like the STO any more than I do. It was worth it as well. If I hadn't gotten their expertise, I couldn't have ever given you a definitive answer without access to a fully equipped lab."

Alexander suppressed the annoyance he felt. "I hope you understand that your breach of the NDA could be grounds for legal action. I'll overlook the infraction, but only if you agree to a third of the fee that we discussed for your services."

Nord nodded. "Agreed."

Alexander hadn't expected the man to flat-out agree, so he was stunned for a moment.

Theo was not, and he made a flicking motion on his tablet. "You should have a copy of the new contract."

An updated contract was quickly signed by both parties.

"So, doctor Nord, what did you discover?" Alexander asked, keeping the annoyance out of his voice.

"Those matching samples were from clones."

"Clones?" Alexander asked. "Are you saying the Shican clones their own people?"

Nord nodded enthusiastically. "Based on the samples you sent, I would say they rely quite heavily on cloning."

"How do you figure?" Alexander asked.

"The samples that I thought were duplicates, that your Head of Medical Services provided me, show extreme degradation from multiple generations of cloning. Each copy is worse than the last. It's why human cloning efforts were abandoned centuries ago. Even some of the non-duplicate samples are clones, just less damaged ones. The Shican haven't overcome the cloning issue either, considering what is in the samples. At least not entirely. I believe I have a theory as to how they haven't collapsed as a society, however."

"You do?" Alexander asked in confusion.

"The ones you marked as cyborgs, terrifying realization by the way, are not clones. They are, as far as I can tell, naturally born. That means they don't rely strictly on cloning."

"A worker caste!" Alexander exclaimed.

Nord shrugged. "You probably have more knowledge about the Shican than I do. I'm mainly interested in biology. Continuing along the lines of my previous theory, I also believe they may take their best and brightest minds and put them in stasis for their genetic material. The cloning of clones suggests that they have a limited supply of the original source material."

Offsetting genetic issues and the deterioration of clones by keeping a certain caste as natural-born individuals to refresh the stock made a whole lot of sense to Alexander. It was evil and deplorable, but it made sense.

A thought occurred to Alexander. "Could they clone humans as well?"

Nord scratched his head. "I don't know why they would want to, but if they are capable of this level of cloning, it probably wouldn't be hard for them to clone humans. The Shican's bodies aren't all that different from humans. They have similar brain structures, internal organs, and other bodily functions. Their DNA or the Shican equivalent is quite different, however, but not so far off that it's impossible to understand the structure. It's just another example that the mirrored evolution theory is correct."

Alexander was familiar with the theory thanks to his extensive studies over the years. It had become popular after humans discovered alien plants and animals that took on similar features to the plants and animals from Earth, even though they had wildly different genomes. The theory wasn't shared by everyone, however, and Alexander really didn't have an opinion one way or another on it since biology wasn't his forte.

Alexander thanked Nord for his efforts and ended the call. The conversation gave him a lot to think about. Going by how quiet Gabriella and Theo were during the discussion, they had a lot to process as well.