Blue Star Enterprises

Alexander looked over the three people standing in front of him. Damien had just finished filling him in on the new Council changes.

"When I first asked you to look into the growing discontent issue I thought you would try and find a solution to the problem. That's kind of the whole point of the Council, you focus on the people's issues so I can focus on my work. Instead, you went ahead and invited someone who you know is antagonistic toward me and my goals onto the Council along with three of his lackeys. You can't have possibly thought that was a good idea or that I would simply allow it to happen. Kick them out of the Council."

"We can't do that," Damien ground his teeth.

"If you can't then I will," Alexander stated.

"They were legally accepted based on the rules you established for us, Alex. If you decide to change that because you don't like it, you will show the drifters that you are no different than any other government and will lose any support you might have earned from the drifer populace. There is nothing else that unifies us more than someone in power overreaching," Gabriella responded before the conversation could go any further.

Alexander gave the woman a scathing look. "So what, just leave him be and hope for the best? You three wouldn't have come to speak with me unless Sorin's inclusion to the Council was a problem. A problem that you knowingly let have equal control."

He turned to face his Head of Security. "How much of a concern is he?"

The entire Council, minus Nancy – or who he had assumed to be the entire Council as of only a few minutes ago – had barged into his workshop to drop a steaming pile of shit right at his feet. To say he was upset would be an understatement and that was impressive considering his issues feeling emotions.

"I don't know," the man admitted. "Most of his followers are people who haven't taken you up on your work offers. My concern is that their new positions will legitimize them and others will flock toward their cause."

"And you all voted for this? Why? Help me understand the reasoning behind that. I can't fathom why you would do something so stupid; I know you three aren't stupid."

Damien bristled at the accusation. "I was opposed from the beginning."

"We didn't tell Damien what we were planning to do," Gabriella cut in.

Damien turned to his girlfriend, looking surprised and hurt that the woman had kept anything from him. The woman patted her boyfriend's arm in consolation. "Honey, you're an awful actor. If you had known what we had decided on, it would have been a dead giveaway to Sorin and we would be back to playing on his terms."

The words didn't seem to calm the man as he silently stewed.

"Why all the subterfuge?" Alexander asked his Head of Medical Services.

"When you first came to us with your concerns, I spoke with a few people to find out who or what was behind this wave of discontent. Everything pointed to a few people, with Sorin being the main culprit. I didn't know the man well, so I went to someone who did. Luckily Sheila was one of those people," Gabriella stated.

"The man is a snake," Sheila added. "He and his family have been known to use underhanded methods to ensure they always remain at the top of the drifter's loose hierarchy. The problem is, nobody has ever cared much to look into what his family has been up to, but I've known Sorin for years. If you call him out on something, he simply buries it harder next time or turns to even more underhanded methods. Acting dumb by allowing him to get his way was the only real way to ensure he didn't do something truly awful."

"Everyone else I spoke to said the same thing, not to trust the man," Gabriella continued. "I knew if we left him to his own devices, he would continue to stir resentment behind the scenes or worse until he got what he wanted."

"This man sounds like someone who should be tossed outside without a breathing mask," Alexander stated, making the group shift uncomfortably. "Oh don't pretend you three haven't thought the same thing. Your decisions have really boxed me into a corner here. If I take the easy path out and remove him and his idiot compatriots, I risk losing the support of ninety percent of my current workforce planetside. Obviously, I could replace them eventually, but losing them now would severely hamper efforts to prepare against Harlow or whatever he sends our way next. If I wait until he does something dumb, I am forced to clean up the mess. How is this acceptable?"

"If we had left him to his own devices, the problems would have just continued to grow even worse. This way we can keep an eye on him," Gabriella said defensively, reiterating what she had said before.

Alexander wasn't sold on the woman's flawed logic there.

He sighed. "So, what? This whole plan was to pull him into the spotlight and give him enough rope to hang himself with. Can you even say what he wants? I assume it's nothing good if he went to this much trouble to try and get council seats."

The silence from the trio was confirmation enough.

He shook his avatar in disgust. "Fine. I'll go along with this idiotic plan for now, not because I want to but because you have left me little choice. I am extremely disappointed in all of you. This should have been brought to my attention the moment it became a concern, not after the fact. I am holding the three of you responsible if anyone gets hurt. Even if nobody gets hurt in Sorin's attempt at taking over, which is obviously what he's after, even a blind man can see that, I will be disbanding the Council once this is done. And depending on who gets involved, either sending people packing or making arrests."

The group didn't look all that surprised by his statement, meaning they already knew he was going to be angry when they told him what they had been up to, which meant they considered his anger before deciding that their actions were the best possible approach to the problem instead of coming to him first. He gave himself a mental shake of disgust before focusing on them again. "And where is Nancy? Is she not in on this nonsense?"

"I think we all know Nancy's disposition," Gabriella spoke up. "She would vote for whatever option ensured a peaceful transition."

"It seems like she is the only sensible one on the Council at the moment then," he shot back. If Gabriella wanted to be angry or upset at someone, she should be upset at herself, not at him for calling them out on this lunacy. "Alright, I've heard enough from you three, get out of my sight. For your sake, I hope nobody gets hurt by your choices."

Gabriella stepped toward him and jabbed an angry finger into his avatar. "No, you don't just get to dismiss us, Alex. You can be angry and upset, that's understandable, but don't you dare be dismissive. Perhaps we could have thought this plan through more or brought you in, but we aren't politicians. I'm not even a licensed medical provider, I'm just a physical trainer doing her best to help everyone out. None of us ever wanted these positions, we took them because we thought it was best for the community and the decisions we made were always with that goal in mind. And before you take the high road here, you have made it pretty clear you wanted to be left out of our politics as much as possible, so don't go blaming us when something happens that doesn't align with whatever goals you have. Because you aren't exactly ever open with anyone on what those are."

With those words, the angry woman joined the rest of the group and stormed out.

After the group left, he didn't immediately go back to work. He was a bit too angry to concentrate. It didn't help that he thought their plan had some merit. Not much, mind you, but some. And if he thought about it, Gabriella's parting words were mostly spot on. It left him with a lot to think about.

If Sorin had been as shady and self-serving as they said, then he could have really done some damage if he had been left to his own devices. If the man gained enough supporters, he could have disrupted food supply, repairs, or any number of other services that the entire population of Eden's End relied on.

Alexander would have stepped in and dealt with the issue personally if that happened, but that would not garner him any favors. At worst, the people would see him as some heavy-handed dictator and simply leave at the earliest possible opportunity. Maybe that was Sorin's goal if the man hadn't gotten his way onto the Council.

Eden's End would survive even if every drifter left, but it would put a serious wrench in his current plans.

Letting Sorin prove to the rest of the population that he was just a jackass who thought he deserved to be in charge made it much easier to get rid of the man and his sympathizers, but letting it play out irked him.

Alexander was not the type of person to beat around the bush and while he could play politics if he needed to, he preferred to avoid them. And maybe that was the problem. When he first arrived, he had given the Council a lot of power and he simply acted as a check on that power. It had worked so far so Alexander had focused on his work instead. It seems that decision had finally come to bite him in the ass and these were the repercussions of it.

And who the hell was this Sorin person? He didn't sound like he understood politics any more than the other Councilors or Alexander, he was just more devious. This situation sounded like the start of a comedic movie villain's attempt at politics more than actual politics. Like a man with a working understanding of something but no experience with it. It made Alexander wonder where the man could have gotten this information from. It's not like political subterfuge was something you could purchase a learning module for.

Arresting Sorin after he did whatever nonsense he set out to do would still shake the drifter population, but the blame would fall squarely on Sorin in that case.

That was the only reason Alexander was allowing this stupid stunt to play out. Even then, he was only giving them two weeks to act. If Sorin and his goons hadn't done something drastic in that time, it was likely that Damien, Gabriella, and Sheila had misread the man. He didn't think that was the case, but he couldn't simply go around removing people who were following the rules. Even if nothing happened, Alexander was going to remove any sort of political power the council currently held after this was all said and done.

It was obvious from Sorin's maneuvering that the man had a better understanding of politics and the laws and rules of Eden's End than the four original councilors. That wasn't too much of a surprise since none of the four seemed all that enthusiastic about their positions, which is why Alexander had agreed to appoint them in the first place. The last thing he wanted was someone with delusions of leadership taking over during those early days. He should be glad that Sorin hadn't been nominated back then.

The man's timing was suspicious as well. Alexander had seen the growing resentment shortly after he had claimed the system. He found it hard to believe that was a coincidence.

There hadn't been any announcement about his claim, but someone must have spilled the beans and it got back to Sorin. Did the man really think this power play would somehow put him in charge? Did he think he could appeal to the STO to make that happen? If so, the man was delusional.

The STO's charter only specified what sort of civilian representatives he needed to have when they recognized his claim. The STO's rules didn't say he had to keep that government in place after that. Alexander wasn't sure what he would replace the Council with, but he knew he needed to take a more active role in whatever came after, even if it cut into his work time.

Two weeks. If nothing happened, he was going to remove the Council's authority anyway. They would still represent the people, but they would have no actual power. They would need to approach him or the representative he chose in their place. There would be no more of this jockeying for power on his watch.

Alexander had been considering this option for some time. He knew it would have to happen eventually when BSE grew larger, but he figured the problem was years off. Not right now when he was dealing with a much more critical issue.

Finally calming down enough to focus, he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind so he could finish checking on the projects he had been working on when the three barged in.

The Talon's new engines were ready, and his bots were already starting to remove the old ones from the massive ship. In a few days, Alexander would need to go up and personally attach the new thrusters. He could have relegated this work to the linked bots, but he didn't have the time or patience to write the one-off program, especially now.

Jasper's ship was also in the dock, getting a brand new set of Alexander's Class 4 engines. These were the iterations after the ones he sold to the STO and were one step up on the model that Dr. Nova Lund had explained to him.

Alexander would have provided his friend the best of the best, but he wasn't capable of producing anything beyond that iteration yet, and it would have been a bad decision to make his friend's ship stand out too much. The engines he was getting would put him well above any competition for quite some time. It was the least he could do to thank Jasper and the crew of the Zephyr for all the work he had done for him.

The new printer was also coming together, looking like some weird unfinished gate ring in orbit.

He couldn't wait for that to be completed so the fishbone ship could begin being constructed. Having the dedicated ship would make his work so much more efficient.

The new control ships were already in the belt along with the Destiny. Mingyu was keeping tabs on the ships, and adjusting their work as needed. The other three ships were also out there, taking on ore as the mining bots quickly tore into the asteroids.

The one complaint Mingyu had was that the mining bots weren't durable enough. He was already seeing broken components on them. Alexander had provided a printer to replace these items as needed, but he was already designing more robust parts for the future.

Everything was on track with those projects and even Eden's Might was scheduled to be completed in a month. It would have been three weeks, but Alexander pulled the construction bots off the ship to help retrofit the Talon and Zephyr.

He hadn't received any response from Captain Krieger yet, even though he had read the news headline that clearly listed the man's discharge from the Navy. That was a week ago. Either the man had no interest in responding to Alexander or something else was going on with him.

Unfortunately, he couldn't sit by and wait for Krieger to respond, so his plans had to be changed to account for the former captain not being involved.

Alexander had a self-imposed deadline of three months to get the Hawks trained up and as many ships as possible ready to hit the pirate station to recover the five vessels. He hoped three frigates, an assault ship, and two gunships would be enough to take the station.

He knew all of the crews involved were already running drills and simulations. It wouldn't be the most accurate simulation since they had no information on this hidden station but it was the best he could do.

There was a way Alexander could improve their odds, but it required him to slave one of the frigate's supercomputers. If he decided to go down this route, whatever ship he chose would be very limited in its ability to run its more advanced systems while it was controlling the pod lasers. That meant it would need a larger crew if it was to be effective in combat.

It would provide the ship access to nearly sixty of the cheap laser weapons, giving it a hell of a lot more punch, but the trade-off was it would be much more vulnerable during a fight.

It was something he would need to think about and test before he decided if it was workable or not.

After finishing his checks, he tried to go into his design software and do some work, but it just wasn't happening.

With a sigh, he secured his terminal and went for a walk. There were too many things on his mind for him to focus on improvements right now. Sometimes he felt like he was standing on top of a house of cards, and if any of them fell over, the entire thing would collapse.

While he knew that wasn't true, he couldn't help feeling that way sometimes. There were just so many moving parts right now, and he needed all of them to work smoothly or he wasn't certain what the future would hold.

He couldn't even predict what Harlow, or Katalynn Char might be up to or how it would affect him going forward. If either one of those people dropped by again, all of his carefully laid plans would go up in smoke.

That was why he was pushing so damn hard. The one thing Alexander had going for himself was his ability to scale and build much faster than others. He had been told this enough times by so many different people that he had to believe it was true even though he felt like he was still well behind the curve. It really boiled down to avoiding assembly as much as possible by wholly printing things like entire engines and ships. Connections had to be checked and tightened after the fact, but that was infinitely faster than building each component separately and assembling it.

The problem was, that he was starting from so far behind the STO and other interested parties that he couldn't ease up. He needed to maximize all of his resources as much as possible or it felt like he was wasting his efforts. He also couldn't spend every waking moment designing and building new things. As a father and the owner of BSE, he had other responsibilities. Ones that he hadn't always done a good job of.

The Council's little talk today was a reminder of another responsibility he had neglected. He was sure whatever Sorin chose to do, was going to disrupt his work. It would not harm Yulia though. He had already sent Dog an updated report and combat program to help keep her safe and he was preparing additional measures already.

If anyone on Eden's End so much as laid a finger on Yulia, he wasn't sure what he would do, but he could be certain that the responsible party would not enjoy the consequences of their actions.

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