Uninspired
Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor
11
When everything was said and done, the geth were isolated to a small system within the Terminus system. We shut down their mass relay and stationed guards, then quarantined it from the other end. Ships approaching the relay would get a warning that the relay was closed and the system beyond it was quarantined. If they tried to reactivate the relay, they would be destroyed—no further warnings, no survivors allowed, they were to be killed to the last.
Intensive scans of Rannoch showed that the war had caused the biosphere to fail and, within a few short years, the planet would be completely uninhabitable. There was evidence of extensive use of nuclear weapons and much of the surface was irradiated. According to what was in the information the Quarians gave me, that was due to the Geth deciding to make the planet uninhabitable for biologicals. It would take a lot of work to correct, and I'd basically have to raze everything on the surface to decontaminate it.
So, when I booted up my Remy and made my report to the quarian government—which had now expanded from just the admiralty board to leaders representing the planetside populations who had settled on the worlds I'd offered them—I broke the bad news to them and gave them the option of terraforming Rannoch. They took me up on it and I sent equipment to the planet. Thankfully, they had seedstock and genetic samples of much of their planet's natural ecology, and there were viable samples of much of the rest still on the planet, so I programmed the Horizon tech to try to repopulate the planet with its natural species and only fill in the blanks with Earth native samples when there was no other option. Estimates said maybe fifty years before the planet was cleaned up and livable again, due to just how much of the surface would need to be run through the replicator just to put it back together in such a way that it wasn't hot.
With the Rannoch/geth situation settled for the time being, and the quarians settling in nicely, I turned my sights elsewhere. I had unfinished business on Earth, so I started there.
All of the projects I'd been holding off on for Earth, I pulled the trigger on simultaneously. I had given them more than enough time to prepare and see how things had gone on the new colonies. With global satellite coverage and power to spare for the transporter/replicator, I skipped drone deployment and just started replacing everything that needed replacing, overnight—moving in a wave across the planet coinciding with midnight as the world turned.
Pollution, waste, garbage, landfills, chemical and nuclear waste dumps on the surface, buried, or under sea, it didn't matter—I beamed them all to a central location for temporary material storage for conversion. That material was quickly converted for use in other projects.
Infrastructure such as roads, rail, power lines, and so on were removed. Most roads were simply removed entirely, not to be replaced at all, while others were replaced with clean, longer lasting, heat dissipating upgraded versions—while the massive snarls that were cities were completely revamped for an entirely different type of vehicle. New, straight, efficient rail lines were laid between every city and town, with long tubes bored through the surface of the Earth to connect some inter-continentally—these were to be used for both mass transit and transportation of goods between cities and countries, replacing trucks, air, and sea shipping. The power lines weren't replaced because my next step was to install wireless power generators, while the telecom lines were actually replaced with better physical replacements, to act as a hardline backup for the new global wireless network I would be setting up.
Cities were entirely redesigned. If a building didn't have historical significance, it had to go—and if it did, it was gutted and remodeled, as I had done in Japan. Taking my cues from Japan as my testbed country, I replaced everything with culturally appropriate replacements for their region—and in places that had abandoned their culture to 'modernize,' I put in things that were historically accurate to a previous time, meaning no more of the 'hyper modern glass and concrete' look. Cities were severely reduced in area horizontally, and instead I built vertically with mile-tall super structures. Businesses and apartments were shuffled around, people teleported as they slept to their new (and improved) accommodations, given a focus if they didn't have one, and if they did they were updated on the situation and their new living situation. Homeless, homeless shelters, tent cities, and so on became a thing of the past overnight as I assigned them their own housing units—and while that wouldn't solve any underlying mental health issues, it did get them somewhere safe, with a roof over their heads and access to food, clean water, and all the amenities. Each home came with all the utilities one would expect, and food could be ordered by focus.
Most hospitals were removed entirely, and those that remained were given new equipment and staffed with android boys and girls who I could guarantee would be more knowledgeable and have a better bedside manner than any doctor or nurse. As for the medical industry, that got a stake to the heart in the form of medical nanite swarms being released, to colonize every living human. Disease officially became a thing of the past and the only reason I left the hospitals was for emergencies. Those nanites would, beginning with the current generation of children, also begin turning out biotics with superhuman enhancement and minor cybernetic improvements. The Citadel races were going to be in for a surprise, when they discovered that the only people with a higher percentage population of biotics were the Asari—and that humans were rapidly out-breeding them, as humans do.
Transportation within cities was provided one of three ways: by a series of turbo lifts within the cities that could transport people within buildings or even out of them, larger subways for mass transit within the city, and every family who was moved into one of my habitation towers got two new fully automated flying cars while individuals received one. People could walk places or use ground transit if they wanted, using the smaller walking paths and free individual transportation of what amounted to arc reactor powered motorcycles, so they had plenty of options for getting where they wanted—all of which were detailed on their focus.
All factories, plants, power stations, and so on were either revamped or removed entirely. Most of that revamping involved giving them direct access to their own replicator and letting them build whatever they wanted (with a few safety limitations), along with more advanced tools for direct machining—basically, recycling a lot of the old stuff I had used, before I went almost completely to replicators. Chemical plants, and any plant that used chemicals in its processes, went almost entirely replicator based, and had strict environmental protections in place to make sure that no one either in the plant or outside of it were exposed to anything. Power plants were replaced by large current generation arc reactors broadcasting power wirelessly to the entire globe. Large sections of land outside the newly compacted cities, which had once been covered by urban sprawl, were converted to farmland managed by drones—the product of which were transported directly to the consumer upon demand.
Industrial meat processing plants were one of the sticking points I had to get creative with. I could grow genetically engineered meat, I could even use replicators to produce meat from other materials, but it wasn't the same. I'd been experimenting with it for a while and there was no way to get the flavor or texture exactly right. The only thing I could really do there was to try and make the entire process more humane. Making a new breed of cattle and chicken specifically engineered and cross bred for meat production, to only be capable of breeding with their own kind, and to be too stupid to suffer or empathize with was the best I could do on the 'animal suffering' end. On the production end, I made sure the plants to process them were almost entirely automated and far cleaner and more efficient than what was available.
Moving out of the cities, the suburban and rural areas got just as many improvements. Individual homes were rebuilt with new materials and connected up to the wireless power and communications network. Any form of 'modular' home was replaced with an actual good, sturdy home. Flying cars replaced personal vehicles for the most part, with the exception of recreational vehicles, which got a retrofit to run off of wireless power. Everyone got access to the same global replicator system to request food and other goods.
Third world countries were upgraded to first world status, as I supplied them with the same sorts of buildings and resources as places like America. Which meant no more favelas and shanty towns, no drinking out of dirty wells, and so on.
With basically every necessity a person had taken care of, and access to the replicator system to take care of wants, with very few restrictions in place on just what and how much could be requested, I had pretty much crashed the global economy overnight—moving Earth from a scarcity based economy to post-scarcity. And just to make sure that no government tried to do something silly, like destroy everything, or ban their citizens from using those features, I made sure that every single citizen was aware that they had the option to leave the planet and move to any human world they wanted to—that planetary borders weren't going to be a thing, unless they intentionally self-segregated. Racial, ethnic, national, and planetary identity were great, certainly—but I wanted to make sure that unless someone committed some kind of crime, that they weren't beholden to their government. They weren't tax chattel anymore.
To facilitate that, I put in the build order and began construction on spaceports and multiple stargates—on and above every planet I had access to. I had worked out how to have multiple outgoing and incoming gates open at once, but unfortunately I could only have one incoming gate of any size open at a time. This meant that I could only have three incoming, primary gates in any system, but I could have multiple outgoing gates active. The space ports were for travel to the different planets within any system, along with moving large volumes of cargo through ship gates.
For Sol, I put the primary incoming gate in the dead center of the United States and constructed a building around it, to facilitate processing and transit of incoming travelers. As for outgoing man-sized gates, I put one in a dedicated building in every major city on every inhabited planet and gave everyone with a focus access to schedule a gate to their destination of choice. Cargo gates likewise went in every major city, with a single primary gate on each end for receiving in their own dedicated buildings, with scanners and access to the transporter network to facilitate moving cargo.
As for ship gates, every system I'd been to had gotten one—all of them large enough to fit the Avalon and her entire accompanying fleet in one transport. Those had dedicated control facilities built to make sure there were no accidents—and no attempts to take the gates by invaders. Any ship wanting to use one would park in orbit along the event horizon's plane, outside the ring. Transit in front of the ring was banned except for incoming and outgoing travel and anyone using them were expected to be clear of the splash zone inside of ten minutes—with warnings explicitly given that anything inside the splash zone when the gate activated would be annihilated by the wormhole's formation. Once parked in orbit, ships could send a request to the gate for a destination and would be sent in groups as the gate activated on a schedule, opening every thirty minutes before closing again. Schedules were maintained across the interplanetary network using subspace FTL communications, so there would be no confusion as to who was opening a wormhole, when, and where.
Once the setup and build orders were complete, I pulled out and left them to it. My colonies everywhere but Earth were already operating on a post-scarcity economy and had figured out barter and a value system for themselves—based on labor and creativity, putting intrinsic value on a person's work and their ideas. Earth would figure it out, or they wouldn't—I honestly didn't care from here. I had already turned my sights elsewhere.
Between the quarians' list of abandoned/unused systems and my own efforts to find systems off the mass relay network using my scout ships, I had a list of places where I could build my own garden worlds off the relay network, build a gate network for, and put a few space gates in those abandoned systems on the fringes of the relay network either for my fleets to use, or for friendly aliens to access specific destinations. Once I built them, I wasn't going to allow anyone access to my network of off-grid garden worlds—including Earth. No, those were going to be a backup, in case something went horribly, horribly wrong and humanity on the known human colonies died.
It didn't really require anything more than giving the green light for the process, since I had all the tech built and mostly tested already. Horizon tech would be sent to terraform those planets. Planetary shields would be put up. Planetary and system defense satellites built. A system fleet equal in size to the First Fleet would be constructed. Stargates would be put on and above each world and linked.
Modified androids would be built and deployed with the express goal of being mothers and fathers to a new generation of humanity, capable of breeding humans with artificial testes and wombs—all guaranteed to be healthy and far, far to the right on the bell curve from birth, before modification. From there, each child would be implanted with a medical nanite swarm that would apply genetic modifications in utero to make them smarter, stronger, more beautiful, and overall just better than baseline humans. From there, they would be enhanced in various ways—with the same eezo/biotics upgrades children on Earth and other human worlds were getting, but also with the partial ascension upgrades for those abilities, followed by the spider-type super soldier serum, along with cybernetic enhancements that grew and adapted with them as they grew. They would all be educated by AI and taught of the past triumphs and follies of mankind on Earth, in the hopes of not repeating history.
I pulled the trigger on that project and handed it off to Alpha and the other girls to manage, expecting to see it come to fruition some time in the next fifty years. Until then, I could step away and let them work.
I looked up from where I was buried in Alpha's tits, cracking an eye open as my Focus chimed with an incoming call. Picking up on audio only, I yawned as she clutched me tighter between her arms and legs, rubbing her face against the top of my head as she breathed in my scent.
"Victor, what's up?" I asked, taking in the man sitting in front of a desk on Eden Prime, according his Focus's location data.
"Leon! Thank goodness! Listen, my young friend. You have to come back!"
Raising an eyebrow, I asked, "Why? What's wrong? No one's said anything about any sort of emergency…"
He hesitated, then sighed. "Not the kind of emergency you're thinking, no. Earth has gone to war with itself."
"And this is my problem… how? I'm not supplying weapons to them. I made sure that the replicators couldn't spit out weapons, in whole or in part, without express approval from a management AI and a damn good reason for one. If Bob wants a new hunting rifle, he can make one. If Uncle Sam wants a bunch of guns, he's shit out of luck."
"Yeah, they figured that out," Victor nodded. "So they've been using their own stockpiles of weapons and using their own production facilities to build more."
I hummed at that. Yeah, okay, that is a thing they could do, yes. Because they're not using the replicators to directly make them and they're using the industrial production facilities, there are fewer limits.
"Still not my problem."
Victor took on a deathly serious look and said, "They launched nukes. I kind of thought it'd be Russia, but no. Israel launched against Saudi Arabia. Their allies launched on Israel. Their allies counter-launched. Everyone with them launched. Israel then launched at every capital within ICBM range."
Laughing, I asked, "And how'd that go for them?"
"You know damn well how it went!" the man growled. "When the nukes launched, everyone panicked. When they were beamed apart and delivered in pieces in front of every government building of those who launched them, the governments panicked. Since then, it's been total war."
Sitting up, to Alpha's dismay, I demanded, "What the fuck are they even fighting over?"
"Territory disputes and control of access to the new technology."
"Huh? No one can control it, that was the point."
"And yet, I've heard from multiple sources that every side thinks that if they win, they can control it," Victor countered.
"Alright. Okay, is the fighting spilling over to anywhere else? Any unrest on any other human colonies? Luna? Mars?"
"No, just Earth. Whatever AI you've got controlling the Earth gates and spaceports shut those down the moment the nukes launched. Everyone else is concerned, but not actually interfering. Not their problem, you know?"
"Yeah, I know," I stressed, reminding him that it wasn't my problem either.
Making a frustrated sound, Victor stood up and began to pace in his office. "I didn't leave the Earth just to watch it tear itself apart, Leon!"
"So don't." The man sent me a confused look and I continued. "Victor, look. This kind of shit is pretty much par for the course for Earth history. You know that. You didn't expect to get to the stars without a little bloodshed over who controls the stars, did you? I expected a war to unify humanity under one banner or split it under several the moment we set out. Either a repeat of the American Revolution or the Civil War—independence from a distant controlling body, or forced unification as one nation, regardless of distance. What you're seeing now is the start of that. First Earth, then it'll spread, as whoever comes out on top on Earth decides to turn their gaze to the other human colonies."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Well, you've got choices. You can ignore it," I began, ticking off a finger, even though he couldn't see it. "You can quietly pick a side and support them. You can reach out to the other colonies and see what they think and put it up to some sort of vote. You can try to unify the colonies before it happens, that way Earth would face a united front. Or you can do that, and then intervene and break up the conflict, then bring Earth into the fold. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised the colonies have lasted this long without demanding elections or something. Either way, this isn't really a problem I can fix. That is, unless you want me to be the dictator of humanity? I stepped in once with China already. Do you really want a repeat?"
The older man sighed and shook his head. "No." Chuckling, he looked up and asked, "You really could, couldn't you?"
"Yeah… Be glad I'm not the conquering type. I'd rather fuck off into the wider universe and explore than deal with politics and the minutiae of ruling a planet."
"That's why you haven't come back, except by Remy, isn't it?" he asked, dropping into his desk chair and looking ten years older.
"One of the reasons, yeah. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning humanity entirely. I'll pick up when you call and if trouble shows up, I'll probably be there before you have time to call. But I'm not going to tie myself down to one planet, one system, when there's so much out there to explore. You guys are going to have to figure this one out for yourselves. You were fine before I came along, you'll do fine when I'm gone."
With one final, very tired look of exasperation, Victor nodded. "Alright. I'll talk to some people and see what they want to do. Take care of yourself out there, kid."
"Later, old man," I chuckled, and Victor disconnected the call.
"Leon, there's an update from Earth and the colonies," Beta murmured into my ear.
Rolling over, I squeezed the curvy, short gynoid elf and took her ear into my mouth, earning a moan as I nibbled on it. "Tell me."
"W-well," she gulped, blushing as I trailed my hands over her delicious body. "Nnf~! I'll just, ah~!, send it—"
"Oh no. I'd rather you tell me," I teased her, and the woman whimpered.
"Mf, very well. [sub]Meanie/sub]."
I listened with half an ear as I teased Beta while she gave a report on Earth's and the colonies' activities—a full thirty years after the war on Earth kicked off. In the end, without access to nuclear weapons, few people had actually managed to truly genocide anyone else. A few countries had changed regimes or ownership, however.
After the whole 'nuclear launch' thing, there was really no going back. No one was feeling like 'forgive and forget.' Everyone knew where everyone else stood and World War III was official.
America, with an enemy to collectively unify them unlike any seen since World War II, had finally gotten their shit together, politically speaking. Looking to capitalize on the averted tragedy and with no one wanting to be the one on record as voting against it, votes had been unanimous across party lines to retaliate for the attempted genocide of the American people.
Of course, it was too little, too late, for some people and the new unification saw all of the old party members being voted out of office over the next decade and replaced with a new, American National Party and then new laws being put into place to set up new term limits and age limits for all offices of government—with a universal term limit of eight years and age limit of not less than 30 and not more than 60 years of age for anyone elected to a federal office. There were a bunch of other laws thrown in there about integrity in office and punishments for failure to uphold their constituents' best interests, and not ever electing anyone with obvious conflicts of interest/loyalty to other countries. It seemed that after decades of being jerked around, the American people wanted accountability for their elected officials, and for the laws in that regard to have teeth.
But before that eventual outcome, America did manage to agree on one thing: that everyone who had fired nukes at them couldn't be allowed to continue to exist in their current form, if at all. Once more, the sleeping giant had been awoken, and its wrath would not be easily satisfied.
After pulling the trigger on the Samson Option, Israel had been on everyone's shit list, but especially America's, for what was perceived not just as a political betrayal but a spiritual one among the Christian faithful. That didn't just apply to America, of course—the UK, Australia, Canada, and most of Europe felt the same. Their own former allies had temporarily aligned with old enemies and bombed Israel back to the stone age, leaving no structure standing. Citizens had been evacuated, but as far as anyone could tell, all of their politicians and government officials and their families had been made examples of. It was Emperor Hadrian and Syria Palestina all over again. Israel ceased to exist as a nation, with territorial borders being reset to their pre-1900s state.
Not that it mattered much, because shortly after that, no one in the area was really left to claim it who wasn't an American ally—between killing themselves off or being killed by their neighbors. In the end, it was quietly agreed that it was better to raze the Christian holy land to the ground than allow anyone else to claim it ever again. A massive wall was erected around Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem and the area cordoned off—off limits to everyone, save for religious business. The rest of the country was declared a no-man's land and no one was allowed to settle there.
Following that, Egypt, India, the EU (and America), and Russia had divided up the Middle East after those nations turned on each other, fighting over the holy land because they refused to agree to leave it empty. Greece invaded Turkey and it became Byzantion again, with Istanbul renamed once more to Constantinople, in an example of history repeating itself in cycles as the city changed hands again.
At the same time, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (now officially recognized as its own nation) allied and conquered North Korea, resulting in a United Korean Republic, and then the three nations went on to claim most of China for themselves only to come up against Russia trying to do the same from the other side. Russia was stuck fighting a war on multiple fronts for a while, against the Japan/Korea/Taiwan alliance in the east and the Europeans in the west, until America, Canada, Australia, and other American/European allies got involved. Russia experienced a rather violent regime change after that, and an induction at gunpoint into the newly formed Global Alliance—which replaced the European Union and was basically just a sock puppet for America, given who had the biggest remaining standing armed force.
While that was all going on, the other players on the smaller stage were making their own fun.
With food, water, clean space-age cities, and a technological uplift Africa should have been a veritable paradise. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Local warlords did as warlords do and began raping, pillaging, and stealing. First came the theft of focuses, and killing anyone who refused—because they didn't want anyone to be able to get resources outside their control. Then came multiple genocides and/or enslavement of entire tribes over various, completely identical uplifted villages. Places where white farmers had previously been at risk of being killed had completely evacuated and moved elsewhere—collectively agreeing to move on and settle new worlds, literally more willing to risk aliens than staying. In other words, it was business as usual.
South of the United States border, things had not gone so well for anyone previously involved in the drug trade. One of the little side benefits of medical nanites I hadn't disclosed was that they blocked the effects of all known recreational drugs and completely removed them from the body. Alcohol would still get someone drunk for a short time, but marijuana? Cocaine? Opium? Various prescription drugs? No effect whatsoever. With the value of and need for money completely removed and illegal drugs rendered entirely worthless, it hadn't taken long for people to figure out that the cartels had no ability to influence their governments anymore.
Multiple governments were overthrown over the following years, with people rising up in revolt—many of whom were armed forces for those countries, finally seeing an opportunity to free their countries from the cartels and their corrupt politicians. It was a bloodbath, as everyone associated with the cartels were lined up against walls and shot, then buried in mass graves. With the cartels gone, things devolved into violent civil war for a while as various countries tried to conquer each other, once they actually managed to get working governments.
In the end, shortly after handling the Russian conflict, the Global Alliance moved on to solving other problems. Africa was surprisingly easy to solve, because the problems there weren't particularly well-armed or organized. All they needed to do was sweep in city by city, eliminate a few warlords, free some slaves, and declare that those countries were now part of the Global Alliance and then start enforcing a globalized set of laws—which were basically America's laws, because they didn't want to have to deal with multiple sets of conflicting laws depending on which piece of land one was standing on.
The East Asian Alliance, evolved from the Japan/Korea/Taiwan alliance to include Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and India eagerly joined the Global Alliance during the African Pacification. Then, they set their sights on the US's southern neighbors. Being the last holdouts from the alliance, and with basically the entire rest of the planet getting ready to send troops, those places had all willingly joined and the Global Alliance was rechristened as the Earth Alliance.
And now, according to Beta—in between squeaks and moans as I made love to her while making her report to me, to torment the poor elf shipgirl—the Earth Alliance was putting out feelers to Luna, Mars, and the colonies outside of Sol—including the new worlds I'd terraformed and added to the gate network. The ones publicly listed, anyway. They wanted to form an alliance of all human worlds. A Systems Alliance.
Victor, who had been elected president of Eden Prime, was tentatively behind the idea, but only on the condition that each world within the alliance retain its sovereignty. He didn't want a repeat of the EU, where every nation who joined had to make themselves subservient to a governing body who seemingly weren't accountable to their own people. Instead, he was pushing for mutual defense and trade pacts, with a small 'system' government composed of people elected from each planet. Positions which couldn't make policy that affected how those planets conducted business between themselves, or on their own soil, but which could set policy and handle interstellar trade between humanity and the rest of the universe, once that was established.
His proposal was, of course, being laughed at by those who wanted big, centralized government and more power—as those things tended to go. But it looked like enough people liked the idea that it had some momentum. At least, more than the alternatives.
None of that mattered to me and I should have been far removed from it, except… the Earth Alliance and a few other interested parties wanted me to turn over control of the shipgirl fleets to their authority. To Earth. Oh, they didn't just come out and say it like that, of course. They wanted assurances that if a Systems Alliance was formed, as a citizen of said alliance, I would turn over critical, dangerous military hardware that shouldn't be in the hands of any one citizen to the legal governing body of human space.
"They want what."
Beta froze below me, looking up at me with trepidation. "They want you to turn us over to them. All of us, master."
Growling, I grabbed the thicc elf's wide hips and forcibly rolled her over onto her stomach, before lifting her round ass up into the air. "Ah?! M-master?! Eep!"
Beta squealed as I grabbed a handful of her hair and fucked her furiously into the bed, the wet clapping of our bodies coming together filling the room as her ass bounced in my lap. Her big titties swayed below her as I hammered her tight, wet cunt hard enough to make her drool on the bed from both sets of lips. Leaning over her, I pressed her flat into the bed as she began to clench and flutter around me, her body squeezing my cock as her mouth fell open and her tongue lolled out, moans leaving her plump lips with my every thrust.
Finding her ear, I bit it hard enough that it would have drawn blood on a human. For one of my girls, that was just foreplay, however. It drove the submissive gynoid wild beneath me as she rolled her hips back into me. Letting go of her ear, I pulled her head back a bit further. "You belong to me, Beta. All of you. Say it."
"Y-you, nn! You're our master! Our creator! We all belong only to you, master! I belong to you, master! I love you Leon~! Eee~!!!"
I buried myself inside her clenching cunt and filled her up with a grunt, slapping her ass and drawing a yelp from her. "Get pregnant."
Her body locked up, shivering around me. Slowly, her head turned to me, blue eyes wide as she stared into my own. "Is that an order? Please give me that order! I don't care if Alpha gets mad that I jumped the line ahead of her!"
Dangerous, I sighed, shaking my head and pulling out of her, pulling the gynoid into my arms. "Not today. Sorry for getting your hopes up, Beta."
"Nnn!" she whimpered, wrapping her arms and legs around me. Rubbing her face against my chest, she sighed. "It's fine, master. Just… we really want to bear your children. We see all the androids getting to live happy, fun lives giving birth to a new generation of humanity, and we want that for ourselves, but with you. Please don't make us wait too long."
"I won't," I promised, kissing her forehead. "I love you too much to do that to you." Beta squealed quietly at those words and kissed my chest. "I'm ready to compose a reply to whoever it was sent that asinine demand. I'll do the audio if you'll stick it on a video later."
"Mm. Ready."
Clearing my throat, I began. "To whom it may concern. This is your only warning. Those fleets are mine. Every last one of them. If you want to make your own ships, you're welcome to do so—but they won't be my sentient ships. Those ships are there to protect humanity as a whole from external threats and to keep you from blowing yourselves up, not to be used as a stick against each other or the galaxy at large. If you persist in these foolish demands, I'm going to take my tech and go home. All of my tech, down to the very last stitch of clothes my replicators produced for you. Humanity will be reduced from a space-faring race to the stone age in a matter of minutes. Do not test my patience."
Reaching down, I tilted Beta's chin up and kissed her lips, making the girl mewl. "Send it. And then, I'm going to see if I can make you come hard enough to distract the other Betas."
"[sub]Oh no/sub," she whispered, even as she blushed and smiled.