Uninspired

Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor

07

"How do you feel, Alpha?"

Flexing her fingers, the gynoid hummed. "I feel… good, sir. I hadn't realized how much I was missing, until now."

"Well, now you have it. You're a true AI now. Free to do whatever you want," I sent her a smile.

Alpha looked up from studying the hand of her new, nanomaterial body. She looked older now, much more developed physically. Sexy as fuck, really.

Hesitantly, the shorter elf woman stepped up and put her arms around me, squeezing me in a tight hug as she buried her face in my chest. "Thank you, Leon."

I hugged her back, reaching up and petting her hair, which drew a happy sound from her mouth. "So, what do you want to do now?"

"Hm?" she asked, looking up at me with those pretty blue eyes of hers. "What do you mean?"

"You're not a slave. You don't have to stay with me—"

She squeezed hard enough that my back popped, her eyes narrowing into a glare. "Master," she emphasized the word, "you will not be rid of me so easily. Someone has to look after you. You would forget to eat if I didn't remind you. If I am free to do what I want, then I am free to stay."

"I can't really pay you—"

"Your happiness, health, well-being, and the satisfaction of fulfilling my purpose are payment enough. I have never thought of myself as a slave, nor will I begin to now." Hesitating, she asked, "I believe I would rather be your friend, if it's acceptable for a maid to be friends with her master—"

I laughed and ruffled her hair. "It is, Alpha. I've always thought of you as a friend."

"Mm. Good," she nodded. "Now," she pulled away slightly. "Let's talk about your recent designs."

Raising an eyebrow, I sat down on the couch and pulled her down beside me. In front of us, stars twinkled visibly through the window, made of transparent nanomaterial—what was effectively diamond. At the moment, we were in my quarters aboard the First Out, in orbit around Eden Prime. We had been here for a few months, the settlers content to sleep on the ship while my drones constructed permanent housing and facilities for them. I hadn't been the one to put in the orders though. Everything was decided on by the settlers, designed and requisitioned through their Focus, and the drones did the rest of the work.

The only thing I was doing was installing a global shield, and two satellite defense networks—one around the planet, the other around the mass relays. Trying to mine the space around a relay was a waste of time, since travelers came out a random distance from the relay itself, to within about ten thousand miles. That was fine by me, when I just set up a network of twelve kill-sats in an icosahedron at a fifteen thousand mile radius around the relays. Anything coming out of the relay that didn't send a human IFF signal (which I was giving to Earth, with the explanation that every Earth-owned relay would be protected in this way) and then verify their identity by a comm check would be politely, but firmly, requested to either sit within the 15k quarantine zone while someone checked it out or leave back through the relay. If they tried to leave that zone, they were going to be in for a rough time. I had yet to activate the AI for those, letting Alpha manage them for now, but I would soon.

"What about them? And which ones?"

Alpha brought up the plans for a shipyard I had been designing, to incorporate my latest tech advances. "This. I think it's wrong."

"In what way?" I wondered, raising an eyebrow. She had never truly objected to anything I'd built before—

"I think you're thinking about it wrong, sir. Why bother with a stationary shipyard at all? All it does is make a very tempting target for anyone who stumbles onto it."

"So what are you thinking?" I wondered where she was going with this.

Alpha didn't disappoint. "I believe you should think bigger. Much bigger."

With that, she sent a design to my Focus. It had the same sharp design aesthetic as the rest of my ships and looked somewhat like the First Out, but… "Uh, Alpha. I think you misplaced a zero—"

"I did not, sir."

I eyed the woman sitting beside me. "So you intended to send me a design for a one thousand mile long ship?"

"Yes," she nodded. As I watched, the entire front three quarters of the ship opened up along four axes, before the forward halves of each segment separated from the ship entirely, breaking up into several ten-mile long segments, half of which moved into a proposed asteroid belt where they began collecting material and bringing it back while the other half descended to a barren planet and began excavating the surface to do the same.

From there, a detailed view showed the materials being brought to the main ship, where the rest of the separated parts reconfigured themselves into a series of cubic dock areas of different sizes—each apparently its own dry dock/assembly area. Each bay was fed materials, which were broken down and converted into other materials by bright flashes of replicators, before what looked like webs of microbots and nanites moved and worked on each individual piece.

"Why not just beam everything and use replicator arrays?" I wondered as I watched the shipyard quickly construct more ships—a timelapse of a day passing before the first new ships, satellites, and other things were spat out.

"Power requirements. At a small scale, using the beaming and matter conversion tech is costly, but the trade off in time saved is worth it. At the larger scale," Alpha gestured at the floating simulation, "and at greater distances it becomes prohibitively expensive. Thus, using smaller drone ships to physically gather and move everything into place using a combination of mass effect fields, force fields, and graviton direction as tractor beams. Once in the assembly bays, then we can use matter conversion to make the materials we need, then physically move them into place and assemble them using microbots and nanites to modify them on the nano-scale, using a combination of techniques involving mass effect fields, force fields, gravitons, repulsors, plasma lasers, chemical treatments, and so on."

Alpha's lips quirked up into a grin as she added, "Once you added graviton technology to the database, I began running simulations. I've found that by combining gravitons with mass effect fields, we can simulate conditions inside a black hole and incite atomic superposition, which will allow us to create hypermatter for our hulls, structure, and armor using a redesigned version of the NTC alloy."

Eyeing the maid, I asked, "When did you come up with that?"

"Just now. After you updated me. I considered how best to protect you and your assets and put together the designs by modifying a few other things."

"Good work, Alpha," I smiled, squeezing her hand. "Alright. Send drones to Arcadia and start mining the surface. How long to scale up and get it built?"

"A month. I'm having zero point modules shipped from Mercury to power it. When it's complete, it will be able to produce its own stock of zero point modules."

"Nice. In the meantime, I suppose I should start working on patterns for vessels it can crank out."

Alpha nodded. "Please do."

With that, she shifted in her seat and leaned into my side, resting her head on my shoulder. I said nothing about it as I wrapped an arm around the gynoid maid's waist. Bringing up my CAD interface, I began working on ships.

I started with a frigate, since I wanted to save fighters for later. Frigates in the ME universe tended to average in the neighborhood of 200 meters in length, so I started there, going a little bigger with 400m. Since I was planning for every last one of these to be a shipgirl, they didn't technically need crew, but I knew they would operate better with one, so I made sure to design around having crew—which meant life support, crew quarters, and everything needed to keep a group of about two hundred housed, fed, and occupied.

Frigates were typically escort and scouting vessels, used for reconnaissance, screening for larger ships, or carrying squads of marines for security or groundside deployment. In fleet combat, they trended to be deployed in wolf packs of four to six and used to pick off weakened enemies. They were lightly armored and armed compared to larger vessels, due to space requirements—but that left them faster and more maneuverable.

At least, that's what the information I had on the ME universe and its tech said.

Haha, no.

I went with an elongated, flat arrowhead shape for the body, leaving them smoother on the top and bottom than my usual angular designs. The hull would be made from the new hypermatter Alpha had proposed, while the interior would be mostly NTC nanomaterial in whatever shape was needed for internal components.

Power would be supplied primarily by a ZPM, but I was all about redundant backups, and so put a network of hundreds of small, improved arc reactors throughout the ship—when it would take only two of that size to power the entire ship at full combat capability for months. As for drive systems, I put in the usual mass effect drive and hyperspace drive, along with large, improved repulsors for thrust and a network of smaller ones over the hull for both maneuvering and point defense. Shields were the now typical combination of Atlantean shields layered with Klein field Wave-Force armor. Because I had the option available, I added a second shield that would serve as an Atlantean cloaking device—that way I could both cloak and have shields.

For weapons, I had a lot to choose from. I put in two spinal mounted large railguns—one on top, one on bottom—for long range sniping, which would be firing the same shrunken FTL missiles as my defensive satellites and the First Out. Actually, I pretty much mirrored its weapon complement there. Since I could shrink things with Pym particles, there was no reason not to have an entire bay full of Atlantean drones. The only thing new I really added was a super-graviton cannon and laser oscillation photon cannons. The first packed a bigger punch than even Asgard beam weapons, but took a few seconds to charge up. The second weren't quite as punchy as Asgard beams, but could be fired faster, with longer range before the beam dissipated, and more penetration.

Looking at what I had, I hummed. No reason I can't just keep the internals and weapons and just scale up. Add more and bigger versions of each weapon type. Only really change hull designs for anything larger. It'd save time.

So, that was what I went with for every size class up—cruisers, carriers, dreadnoughts, super-dreadnoughts (those last being the size of the First Out), capital ships (100 mile long ships), and super-capital ships (the 1000 mile long variety). The biggest differences were in the amount of firepower each carried, a few differences for specialization (ships specialized for carrying cargo, more Atlantean drones, armies worth of troops and equipment to deploy, and the like), and that with dreadnoughts and above, I would add green space inside.

I want something smaller and way faster for personal use.

With that in mind, I quickly turned out a design for a corvette. Fifty meters long, with a frigate-sized eezo core, all the usual bells and whistles inside, and as many weapons as I could cram on it as possible. It was very narrow, compared to my other designs—fifteen meters at the very tip, widening to twenty at the ass end, but maintaining about fifteen meters in width and height for most of its length. When I started spreading the stargate network, the cargo gates would be just big enough for one of these to fit through it.

At the back were two short, backwards swept wings, which would deploy landing gear when it touched down. The interior was pretty sparse on accommodations. It had an engine room, a small medical bay with an auto-doc and a sarcophagus in case of emergencies, a small lab adjacent to it for research, an armory to house several sets of Mark LXXXV type Iron Man armor and more conventional handheld energy rifles and pistols and equipment, a small drone/missile bay, a very small kitchen and eating area, sleeping quarters, shower, and bathroom for four, two larger officers'/guest quarters with their own bathrooms, and the CIC/bridge.

Its armament consisted of one spine mounted railgun, eight photon cannons, an Asgard beam, Atlantean drones, a single super-graviton cannon, and an array of point-defense repulsors and Vulcan coilguns—those last for when I needed to kill something too close to the ship to really use anything else against it, or needed a plain old dumb metal slug. Defensively, it had the same setup as everything else—layered shields and a cloak. If something actually managed to spot it, it would be about as maneuverable as a fighter with a sixth of the thrust of a frigate and a fraction of the size and mass. I would be surprised if there was anything actually capable of tracking it even without the cloak, let alone hitting it.

Finally, to finish it up, I would be adding the first Union Core—that is, the AI core that made shipgirls work, and more than just an AI in control of a ship. The AI would handle all of the EW, EPM, ECM, and ECCM normally for the rest of my ships, but for this one—and any future corvette class ship—I would be relying on her to handle pretty much all of the ship's functions herself. Frigates may be good at recon, but I was going to make corvettes the backbone of my fast stealth-recon force. And with that thought, I knew I had a name picked out.

I wasn't sure what would happen when I activated the core and it created a mental model, but I was eager to find out.

"How do you feel, master?"

"Huh," I muttered, flexing my fingers and testing my range of motion. "Good. Like, really good."

"I would hope so," Alpha mused, a smile on her pretty face. "And the other body?"

"Freeze it," I instructed, and she nodded. "Then seal the Mercury facility. Put a force field over it to keep out trespassers."

"I'll have it shipped back to Mercury."

My new body was at the bleeding edge of all of the tech I had access to. A mixture of man and machine that blurred the line between the two. It was, of course, a clone of my original body at its base. From there, I had grown it up to adulthood over a few months while using every technique I knew to draw the most out of it.

Genetic engineering like the Asari were subjected to by the Protheans to create a race who controlled biotics naturally. Exposure to a large amount of eezo in vitro during development. Medical nanites to ensure that the eezo nodes grew properly and in the right locations, while removing any cancerous cells. The near-ascension process devised by Nirrti and Anubis. An in vitro dose of the spider formula.

That was all before the body was mature. Once it started to develop, I had begun enhancing it in other ways.

The medical nanites had done all of the stimulation required to simulate a life of activity and sports—stimulating, tearing, stretching, and rebuilding things as needed. I had begun laying additions to the nervous system in the form of enhanced NTC alloy nanites creating bridges from the brain and a small coprocessor there to the eezo nodes throughout the body, around which it built modifications to further enhance the effect of and my control over those nodes. They also began layering flexible bands of those nanites over and threads through the bones, creating a super strong shell around the bones and lattice throughout them that would grow as the body did while allowing bones to do what they were supposed to do and create blood cells. More of that lattice ran through the muscles, tendons, and other tissue, making the body tougher and stronger.

Once all of the organs had developed, the medical nanites had removed many of them while growing artificial replacements that would perform better. Lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, stomach, and the intestines had all been replaced entirely and a few new things added. A small organ to control, produce, and recycle medical nanites. An arc reactor, force field generator and Wave-Foce armor generator, and a bunch of stuff to act as an internal life support system to recycle CO2 into O2, clean and directly oxygenate my blood, and keep my body temperature controlled so that even if I stepped into vacuum, I should be relatively fine.

Just under the skin was a layer of more NTC nanites, creating a layer of subdermal armor that could seal up and protect me from radiation and other threats if the force field failed. A reservoir of NTC nanites that could extrude from my body, to produce clothes, simple weapons, and additional appendages for in-person tinkering—not quite to the level of the Mark LXXXV. The eyes had been enhanced with nanites as well, allowing for better vision, telescopic enhancement, and low-light vision. Finally, the brain was supplemented with more nanites and linked to a blank Union Core stored in my chest, which would essentially act as a backup for my brain, in case it was destroyed.

Because I knew how Reaper tech worked now, I had incorporated anti-indoctrination measures into both my new body, and every one of my new ship designs and AIs. I wasn't taking any chances with that shit.

Moving over to the wall of my personal lab on the First Out, it turned into a mirror and I looked myself over. I looked pretty similar to how I had looked before, if a good deal larger and eight inches taller. I had previously been 5'7 and just peaking out on my growth spurt from puberty, and now I stood a good 6'6. My muscles before had been fit and toned thanks to years of daily exercise and good diet, but now they were a good deal larger and harder to the touch. Speaking of larger and harder…

"Alpha?"

"Yes?"

"Did you do something to my body?"

The gynoid paused and I turned to look at her. She looked away. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, sir."

I rolled my eyes and produced clothes over myself. "Sure."

I had still been growing, but a bit above what would have been considered average in the wedding tackle department. I was… well above average length now, and my girth looked like it would probably hurt someone if I wasn't careful.

Of course, Alpha's body is made of nanomaterials and nanites. She'd be just fine with it.

Pushing aside thoughts that my friend and maid might be making a play for me, now that she was a fully fledged individual and capable of those sorts of feelings, I left my room and headed for the conference room, where I knew Victor to be having a meeting with the heads of the various departments for the colonists. The ride through the lift with Alpha was quick, and a few moments later, the conference room door slid open for us and the gathered department heads and Victor looked up.

I waved to the group. "Sorry to interrupt, but I suppose it's good that you're all here. I'll be leaving in a few minutes. I'll be leaving the Avalon behind for now to finish up the defenses and various installations for the system, and finish creating the Utopia System fleet, before I'll send her to Asgard, where she'll start building the same and a satellite network for Terra Nova, before she comes to join me. They aren't active yet, but I'll update you all when the ship gates come online. The Earth, Eden Prime, and Terra Nova gates for people and cargo are active and as gate ships spread, the list of active addresses will be updated, along with descriptions of the planets they're on. Your focus contains your access codes for the gates. Your Focus will auto-transmit the code to the gate on the other side, which will then open. If someone tries to use the gate without a focus, it will detect their approach and send the no-go signal, and the gate on the other end will deploy a shield. This means that anyone or anything trying to get through without a focus or that you don't intentionally designate to be allowed through will be rendered nothing more than a smear of atoms across the other side of the shield. I've sent you the instructions for use on the gates. Read through them thoroughly."

Looking around the room, I asked, "Any questions before I go?"

"What about the First Out?" Victor asked. "Taking it with you?"

I chuckled and shook my head. With a thought, I sent an encryption key and the man blinked as his Focus flashed. "There you go. She's all yours. Treat her well. You've got two years before I begin the Uplift, I suggest you use them and start ferrying as many colonists as you can get to our new worlds. Oh, and my quarters will stay locked and reserved for me. I'm leaving a Remy behind so I can do telepresence stuff if you need me."

A 'Remy' was what people were calling remote bodies. Once I'd introduced the concept and revealed that I had been using them for a while now for my dealings with other countries on Earth, everyone who traveled regularly wanted one. I had made a few upgrades since I first made them and the bodies now all had adjustable skeletal structures while all of the 'flesh' was made of nanomaterial. They would, by default, use a scan from the user's Focus to make a copy of their body, meaning they were completely unisex and could be used by men or women. Users could adjust various aspects of the remote body they were in to suit their likes, but not things like their sex—just so there would be no issues of dysphoria caused by being one body, using another, and then going back. The body would also display an AR tag showing exactly who was using it, so there would be no trying to disguise one's identity. Likewise, there were safeguards in place to prevent them from being used for crimes.

"What about this fleet?" the captain of the First Out asked, sitting up a bit straighter.

"They're a bit special. Very new," I began. "They're all run by AI, but they're programmed to want a crew. Now look, here's the deal. They may be AI, but they're as real as you or me. They have thoughts, feelings, emotions, souls. They are people. The AI is her ship. The human body you'll interact with is her avatar. Treat her with respect and she'll treat you the same way. Disrespect her and she'll judge you unfit for duty and act accordingly. Try to hurt her, sabotage her, hurt her crew, attack other ships like her, or attack other humans and she's going to respond… violently. If you're human, she's going to lock you in the brig and drop you off for court martial. If you're not human, well, you're gonna have a bad day. They are very powerful and fanatically loyal to humanity, so don't give them a reason to dislike you. They're for protecting humanity from aliens, not for attacking each other. They don't have to obey you, or anyone they don't recognize as in their chain of command—which is other ships, me, and anyone I designate. You should think of her as the ranking officer on any ship, above the captain, but willing to follow orders as a general rule of thumb, unless you're ordering her to do something contrary to standing orders or directives."

I spent a few minutes answering some more questions before I said my goodbyes and had myself beamed to the bridge of my cruiser, in her berth inside Alpha's ship, the Avalon. Alpha beamed aboard a moment later wearing a new outfit, and my Focus told me that this was one of her Remys, while her primary body went back to her ship, the Avalon. Moving up to the captain's chair, I let my hand trail over the seat as I grinned.

Sitting down, I rested my hands on the gel pad palm rests and the chair lit up as the CIC came to life around me, showing a three dimensional display of the exterior of the ship from cameras, along with sensor readouts. "Wakey wakey, sexy. It's time to go hunting."

I registered a series of packet requests and transfers from the ship that I okayed, followed by a brief burst of static directly in my brain as the ship's Union Core did something… A moment later, a shape rose from the floor before solidifying into a woman, crouched on all fours and giving me an excited, eager look. Black hair, violet eyes, little violet markings on her cheeks, a big fluffy tail and a set of ears in the same color as her hair (minus the white interior ear fur), and a tight black and gold body suit similar to Alpha's were her distinguishing characteristics.

"Hello, master~!" she grinned, pouncing up from the floor and settling onto the arm of the captain's chair, draping herself partially on me and putting her breasts practically in my face. "I'm ready to go whenever you are!"

Smiling, I reached up and petted her head, right between her big, fluffy ears. "That's good to hear. Have you decided on a name, or do you want me to name you?"

"Mm… I want master to name me. It'll be more special that way," she nodded eagerly.

I considered her for a few moments before reaching up and touching the little marks on her cheek. She shifted, pressing her face into my hand with a happy smile. "How's Delta sound?"

"I like it!" she nodded, her ears twitching and tail swishing. "And what about big me, huh?"

Chuckling, I decided against my original thought to call the ship Blackbird, after one of the fastest aircraft built before the year 2000. Instead, I decided to play to her features. "Lone Wolf."

"Oooh! Niiice!" Delta grinned, showing off her canines. "Alright! You!" she pointed at Alpha, who gave an amused smile, "Open the door and lemme out!"

"Very well. Remember to keep your speed under—"

Delta clearly tuned out as she turned and focused on the door opening. The very moment it was wide enough for her to slip by at the narrowest profile, she accelerated forward and turned sideways, slipping through the bay door and into space. A map of the galaxy sprang up, focused on the Utopia system and our local space. "Where are we going, master?!"

"You see the mass relays?" I asked, pointing them out, and the ship immediately swung around and jumped to FTL, running straight towards them.

"Mm!"

"That one," I tapped one of them, "leads back to Earth by Arcturus, along with out to Terra Nova and several other relay destinations I've already got scout ships traveling to. The other one is unexplored so far. It's got three listed destinations. The maps we got from the Prothean site—"

"Nnn! Master~!" Delta bounced in place against my side, briefly drawing my eyes to her chest. "We're almost there! The second one, right?! It's sending me options now. Which one do you want?"

I reached out and tapped the one that the Prothean maps said was to the galactic east and would lead further east and north—what our own maps called Hades Gamma. The other two went west, one closer than the other. Most of the names in the database didn't mean anything, as we used different names for the systems and we'd since updated what we got from the database to match. But one address in particular kept coming up, and the translation was loosely 'stronghold.' Or, a bit more loosely…

Citadel.

I wanted to avoid that one for now. Knowing where the Citadel was told me generally where the other races were as well—at least, the so-called 'Citadel races.' The ones I needed to duck, to keep them from getting pissy about us opening up the relays and expanding human territory and potentially kicking off a war.

Delta ran the Lone Wolf right up to the relay and the hairs on my neck stood up as it reached out and grabbed us, before slingshotting us across the galaxy. After a few moments of travel, a timer popped up as Delta calculated our ETA to be roughly 48 hours and change. We could definitely have gotten there faster using hyperlight, but I specifically wanted to use the relays, so that if something did pick us up by chance, we could keep that cat in the bag for now. That, and directly mapping the systems, with much more precision, for more accurate hyperspace jumps into the systems we passed through later.

The AI in the form of a wolf girl looked around, her ears flicking and tail wagging, as her eyes focused on something I couldn't see. "Lots of new stuff out here to sniff out," she murmured happily.

"We're transmitting our sensor logs back to the Avalon," Alpha supplied. "It'll be good for the colonists to have."

"Mm!" Delta nodded.

"Alright. Well, we've got some time to kill, so I'm going to do some work."

Alpha pressed herself into my side opposite Delta, her hand reaching out and settling on top of my head as her fingers ran through my hair. "We will be here when you need us, master."

"Right!"

Chuckling, I brought up my Focus interface. "Thanks Alpha, Delta."

I turned towards work, then, contemplating the potential future. The Reapers were the biggest threat, but not the only threat. The Council themselves were going to be a problem. Not just over the whole 'opening relays' thing, but I seemed to recall they got pissy about AI after the Quarians and the Geth. The Geth were another potential issue, especially given just what I was looking for, the odds of running into them were good. I seemed to recall they had space roaches as well—giant fucking bugs like those from Starship Troopers. Then there were the four-eyed slaver fuckers. Also, pirates.

At some point, I'm going to come across a problem I can't handle with a ship. Something I'll need to send troops in for. That, or we might actually get boarders. In that case, better to have an expendable force to put in between squishy humans and enemies. So…

I delved into the Terminator tree and got to work designing a non-sentient force of shocktroops programmed to protect humans and kill anything threatening them, respond to orders from humans, and be default aggressive when confronted by something that didn't scan as a human firing at them.

I kinda want to go with the T-X, but the T-800 and T-900 were super durable and, based on my calculations, are going to be cheaper and faster to make. But why not all three? The lower models as basic grunts, the T-X as assassins. Throw in personal shield generators for the 8/900s, a cloak for the T-X, NTC alloy skeleton, better processor, optics, and sensors. Equip them all with basic armor as opposed to Iron Man variants to save space, weight, and build time. One rifle, combination repulsor, mass effect gun. One sidearm, Atlantean pistol with stun/kill setting. One NTC alloy sword just in case. Heavy weapons to include shoulder mounted photon cannon, rocket launchers, grenade launchers with different ammo types. Then shrink them down and keep a few thousand onboard every ship.

Could carry a hundred in my pocket in case of emergencies. Just a fucking pokeball full of terminators. Oh, the council sent a specter to deal with me? Haha. Get fucked, loser. I choose you, Terminator-chu…