SciFi Emperor (Temp Name) - Ch1

Note: As mentioned in the recent Messenger update, I've been distracted by a scifi harem idea. I'll post the first four chapters to get feedback and gauge interest. The general hook is that a human gets given a slice of the galaxy (that he has to reclaim) in a monstergirl-alien dominated galaxy. I wouldn't call it hard scifi, but it's not space fantasy.

Anyway, enjoy. Commentary will be at the end of Chapter 4.

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A klaxon whined in Ethan’s cockpit, right as an alien battlecruiser blinked into existence far too close for comfort. Every monitor bank flashed red and orange. The whirring sound of his ship’s tiny shields automatically activating in response to detecting a foreign weapon activation nearly deafened him.

But he still heard the loud alien screech over his comms system. The translation module implanted in his brain helpfully translated it into English.

“The Sol system is under uplifting restrictions, by order of the Interstellar Union of Cooperation’s Office of Interstellar Cooperative Management,” the female alien voice said. “All access is denied. Deactivate all systems and surrender, or be obliterated.”

Ethan cursed, spinning in his chair. He switched off the shields, as useless as they were. The Union battlecruiser was ancient by modern standards, as the member nations weren’t going to send state-of-the-art stuff for peacekeeping on a backwater, but its guns could obliterate his tiny mining ship. Its main particle accelerator alone was larger than his vessel.

The klaxon continued to whir, warning him of imminent destruction. He ignored it as he hit a button on the communications panel to respond to the most recent hail.

“UPW Fraerium, this is Zandar Mining Boat…” Ethan paused as he tripled-checked his ship’s name. It took years to change it, thanks to interstellar bureaucracy being the mess it was, so he’d been stuck with the generic name used by the corporation he’d bought it from. “Zandar Mining Boat 1409. I have clearance from both the Union and the Twin Moons Mining Syndicate to be here and I’m a native Earthling. I’m from Sol, not visiting.”

That was a half-truth. Ethan had left Earth years ago for the bright stars that awaited him. But his paperwork should be in order, even if the Taer wolf aliens on the battlecruiser had been too damn lazy to check it.

The Union made the most stringent bureaucrats in human history look like anarchists, but soldiers remained soldiers. Paperwork terrified them.

It terrified Ethan, too. He’d ended up back in Sol purely because he’d been offered a simple mining job with no strings attached, no days of paperwork in five languages, and the chance to sit back and control mining drones for a few weeks without strange jabs about being the only human within a thousand light-years.

Finally, the klaxon switched off and his cockpit returned to normal. The panels returned to their normal functions. He saw that his mining drones had switched themselves to survival mode but appeared to be recoverable, along with the tools and installations they carried.

Yet the Union ship remained silent and unmoving. Ethan was too far out to see much in the void of space, other than the island-sized asteroid he’d been hired to set up an autonomous mining operation on. Jupiter and Mars were the closest planets, but neither appeared to be close enough in orbit at the moment for him to see them. That might be Uranus or Saturn in the distance.

The Taer battlecruiser certainly held his attention as he looked at his electronic “windscreen.” His ship’s bridge sat deep behind layers of steel and ceramic, protected from impacts and radiation. He relied on cameras, thermal imaging, radar scanners, and similar to see into space. Small ships like his gave the illusion of driving a flying car through space, albeit with 360-degree cockpit of fancy computer panels.

As he’d expected, the main gun of the battlecruiser dominated the vessel, almost as if it had been built around the gargantuan barrel. From what he understood, older Taer ships like this dated back to the civil war they’d had back when humanity still sailed the oceans with sails. The wolf aliens had slapped together ships that were little more than engines attached to the biggest guns they could power, then thrown hordes of them at each other across the galaxy.

It was telling that the Taer’s relics still outmatched anything humanity manufactured under its own power. Ethan’s mining ship sure as hell didn’t come from Sol.

“Received, Zandar Mining Boat 1409,” came the eventual reply. Then another long pause. “Are you actually a male pi—”

Alien curses interrupted the transmissions, which Ethan’s translation module left as incomprehensible gibberish. He’d heard them enough to understand the meaning.

After a few seconds, another voice, also female, took over the comms.

“Ethan Coorlim, we’ve processed your record,” the voice said. “The forms for your current work order aren’t completed. You’ll need to cease commercial activities and return to Space Station Renewal on Earth until they are finalized.”

Ethan closed his eyes and bit back a swear. Of course somebody had fucked up the paperwork. Story of his life.

“Who needs to do the paperwork?” he asked.

“You need to check in with the IUC staff on the station. It’s beyond our remit. We’re just peacekeepers.”

A click came across the comms, and the panel showed that they’d sent a stop message along the frequency. Technically, that didn’t do anything, but it was a strong signal the soldiers didn’t want to talk with him anymore. They’d realized Ethan wasn’t target practice, but was instead a bundle of paperwork, and lost interest.

He saw the engines of the battlecruiser flare, lighting up the dark void with brilliant blue plumes of flames. An instant later, the ship blinked away.

Sighing, Ethan began the slow process of gathering up the drones and ensuring everything he’d installed would survive a week or two. The paperwork might take that long to get sorted. If he was lucky.

For that matter, getting back to Earth would take him the better part of the day. He lacked true faster than light capability—or FTL as it usually called—as he didn’t have a psychic Pathbuilder copped up in a shield compartment below deck. That was how the battlecruiser got the jump on him.

Instead, Ethan needed to rely on the limited space-folding technology built into his sub-light fusion drive. Through a mechanism he didn’t pretend to understand, his engine reproduced a very limited effect of the space-folding ability of psychics at a constant rate. His engine technically only propelled him at a fairly low speed—slow enough it might take him a day or two to reach Earth normally, but hours thanks to the invisible “skips” through space it produced.

He liked to imagine he’d eventually earn the cash to buy a bigger ship, take on better jobs, and hire his own Pathfinder. Except he couldn’t imagine the risk required for a privateer like himself. Companies paid him to take on jobs for less than it took them to do it, forcing him to cut corners and stare down the barrel of Union battlecruisers due to mishandled paperwork, just to struggle to stay ahead of the debt payments on his ship.

The hours passed with little of interest, besides Ethan’s own thoughts. He studied for a Union-backed financial certification he needed to take on certain jobs. Not his favorite thing to do, but he’d made it through college years ago to become an engineer. Although he’d preferred the hands-on work the Union made him do on the space station.

Speaking of which, his old workplace came into sight. Space Station Renewal, floating above Dallas, Texas. A gargantuan metal spine arched up from the blue planet to the station, connecting the city to the heavens by means of a space elevator. The space station had been the first major project built by humanity and their alien invaders-turned-patrons after the Union first reared its head in the system.

Fifty years ago, humanity learned it wasn’t alone in the universe. A spaceship the size of New York appeared in orbit. It did nothing, responded to no messages, and hovered menacingly for nearly a week. Ethan’s parents spoke of the utter panic that overtook the world.

But what came next eclipsed it. Overnight, the alien battleship launched rockets and artillery strikes that obliterated multiple governments, mountain ranges, military installations, and then-mysterious targets. Humanity ran for the hills, believing a book from the 1890s had been prophetic.

Only for humanity to strike back with technology it shouldn’t possess. Drones, clone soldiers, forcefields, and powerful rocketry capable of matching the invaders poured forth from the very countries that had been bombed. To no avail, as the battleship utterly crushed all resistance. The casualties were immense, particularly as nobody understood why the aliens were attacking and they didn’t care about civilian casualties.

Amid the flaming wreckage of almost every developed country, the Interstellar Union of Cooperation introduced itself and its mission.

Other aliens had attempted to uplift humanity in the first half of the 21st century, changing the world order. The Union flatly banned interference in the lives of sapient races that had yet to achieve space travel. Their “invasion” was a law enforcement action in their eyes, and the many humans killed collateral damage.

Since then, humanity found itself the target of a permanent peacekeeping action by the Union. The genie had been let out of the bottle, so the Union at least helped humanity rebuild, if not grant them technology to become their equals.

Humanity had emerged on to the galactic stage, only to find itself on the short end of the stick. Everyone else possessed thousands or hundreds of years of technological advancement, and had learned harsh lessons they weren’t eager to share with “lesser” races.

Given Earth’s history, Ethan felt there was a deep irony there. A lot of people felt hard done by, but there wasn’t much one could do when the aliens had entire fleets of ships like the one that had nearly erased humanity, and humanity didn’t have any. Que sera, sera.

He’d grown up in Dallas, rebuilt atop the bombed out ruins of the old city. Every night, he’d stared up at the monolithic space elevator and dreamed of a future that involved all the amazing technology the Union showed off. School became a demonstration of how humanity merely limped along, millennia behind spacefaring races that already controlled the galaxy. Human corporations bragged about colonizing Mars and Phobos, while alien battlecruisers capable of flitting across the galaxy floated in orbit.

So, like so many others, he’d left. Gotten a job with the Union on Space Station Renewal, then a transfer off-system. Figured he’d never be back here.

Yet here he was, pulling up to his old workplace in his own vessel, running through parking and docking procedures with control towers with old co-workers whose voices he still recognized, and staring down at the blue surface of a planet he still sometimes dreamed of on cold nights.

“Zandar Mining Boat 1409, you’re cleared for dock point 17A. Interface with station systems once you reach point Galay and we’ll bring you in,” a familiar voice said over the comms. “Welcome back, Ethan. Never thought I’d ever see somebody who went galaxy-side come back.”

“You’re telling me,” Ethan said.

Once he docked, which was largely a matter of automated systems, he threw on his helmet and prepared to cross the threshold between his ship and the space station. They’d deployed a space bridge between the docking hardpoint and his external door, but he’d learned that most deaths happened here. The tiniest thing went wrong, and the bridge depressurized. No spacesuit and Ethan was toast.

An armored woman with olive skin, red wolf ears, and a matching tail met him on the far side of the space bridge. She carried a bulky gun that looked like a large brick. It crackled with barely contained electricity. One of the long-range tasers the Union security officers used, because solid munitions could damage and depressurize sections of the station. He’d seen security tag people from a couple hundred feet away with them.

“Huh. You really are human,” the woman said, looking him up and down with a look of disbelief. She possessed red eyes and looked identical to every other wolfgirl Ethan had seen on Space Station Renewal.

That was because she was one of the Taer clone soldiers deployed for security here. The wolf ears and tails were the distinctive trait of the humanoid Taer aliens, along with their height and relatively high muscle mass. This clone, whose identifier was Kaylee-178B, stood over six feet and with noticeable muscles beneath the parts of her bodysuit not covered in armored plate.

“I’m guessing you’re a new clone?” he asked her. “You don’t recognize me.”

“We changed rotation last year,” Kaylee said, frowning at him. “You weren’t in the data chip installed in me when I took over my counterpart.”

“Because I left Earth a few years ago.” Ethan had been twenty-four when he’d taken the shuttle. “Guess I wasn’t important. You arresting me?”

“Nah. Just didn’t believe it when the girls called in that they’d encountered a male Earthling pilot in the asteroid belt.” Kaylee twirled a finger over her ear in a sure sign she’d become accustomed to humans. “Thought they were nuts. Now I’m wondering if you actually have a dick.”

“You can check the scanners when I go through security,” he drawled.

She grinned and her eyes lit up. Something told him that she probably would.

They walked along the empty station concourse. Their footsteps echoed along the empty corridors, and the pumping of gas and other minerals rumbled around them. The station was huge because it had to be, in order to accommodate such massive ships, but it mostly handled cargo. Mining cargo, namely. Gas and minerals mined off-world was brought back and shuttled down to Earth using the space elevator.

Security took longer than Ethan liked. He suspected this would prove to be a trend. The numerous scanners weren’t the issue. All Ethan had in his head was his translation module and an analytics chip that handled advanced calculations. And his prosthetic leg paled in comparison to almost every alien he’d met.

In a galaxy where people replaced their entire nervous systems with silicon, were bioengineered super-soldier clones, or had Ship of Theseus’d themselves over the course of centuries, transit security in the Union had bigger fish to fry.

“How’d you lose the leg?” Kaylee asked, while the apparatchiks tried to sort out whatever errors held Ethan up at the entry gate.

He glanced at the humans gathered around a terminal, all of whom wore confused and worried faces. Evidently the problem with his paperwork confused the border officials as well.

“Spacewalk accident,” he replied. “Second year working here. Drones malfunctioned hooking up a gas delivery, so I went out to fix it manually. Second I fixed them”—Ethan made a whooshing motion—“drone crunched my leg against the pipes, station, everything. Controller wasn’t paying attention. Got lucky I only lost my leg.”

“What a fuckup.” The clone shook her head. “That gas was probably worth more than the controller’s entire life. Expensive mistake.”

Ethan said nothing. He’d heard stuff like that enough from aliens.

Kaylee scowled at his silence. “Don’t give me the silent treatment. We’re all replaceable. Look, you can see two other clones from here. The carbon we’re made of is worth next to nothing, and they can melt us down for the precious metals. Every load of gas lost is one load of gas closer to an empty well, and that means we need to find more.”

“Or fight for it,” he said. “If life means so little, why haven’t you just taken over Sol?”

“Please.” She waved him off. “Humans have the biggest dick-to-pussy ratio of any <humanoid> race in the galaxy.”

A simulacrum of Kaylee’s voice played over the word “humanoid” when she spoke it, as Ethan’s translation module kicked in. She likely used her own translation module to speak English, but used a Taer-specific term for “humanoid” that she didn’t translate.

After all, “humanoid” implied that humans were the dominate race. The other alien races disagreed, as they’d been exploring the galaxy long before humans. The oldest of them had reached the stars around the time humanity discovered iron.

“Ignoring that?” Ethan pressed. “The Union’s policy to leave… less advanced races alone doesn’t take into account gender ratios.”

“Ask the Vaelix.” She frowned. “I don’t handle the politics, just enforce it. By the time the Taer joined the Union, a lot of the rules had been set in stone. No true AI, no uplifting, Union has priority access to precursor tech, leave savages alone, no enslaving races.” Kaylee scoffed at the last one. “Although the fox bitches get an exception there for their pet nulls.”

Ethan steered clear of that argument. He’d never even met a Vaelix, but didn’t want to start shittalking the most powerful species in the Union.

That ancient species that stalked the stars millennia ago? The Vaelix. A race of humanoid fox people with the same gender imbalance as every other humanoid race. They possessed immense psychic powers and the most advanced technology in the Union. For some reason, they’d started the Union and shepherded other species.

“Uh, Ethan, I think we finally sorted it,” one of the humans called out from in front of him.

Breathing a sigh of relief that he could escape the awkward conversation with Kaylee, he continued with his unplanned arrival to Earth.

The next few hours passed like molasses running downhill, as he was shuttled from area to area on the station. As much as he enjoyed saying hi to familiar faces, it got old fast when they couldn’t help him.

Nobody had ever processed a human returning to Earth. The paperwork appeared to be correct, yet the Union’s systems on the space station threw up error after error.

Ironic, given he’d been hired back here on a Union contract.

A very tired senior manager sighed as she went over the details once more. “I think I’m going to have to send this up the chain. I can see the work order from the Twin Moons, as well as the approval from the Union to bring in an external privateer. Congrats on getting your own ship, by the way.”

“Thanks. I’d appreciate being able to work so I can pay off her debt,” he said drily. “No offense.”

She winced, then sighed again. “Fortunately, this is technically a Union contract. Would have been nice to get warning we’re breaching the uplifting restrictions for a once-off. Do you even know why they needed you for this mining job?”

He shrugged. “Anyone could have taken it, although I got priority because I was a native Earthling. It would take humans months and tons more capital to do what I can in a few weeks. Guessing somebody really wants it set up. Did the Union accidentally blow up a mining facility?”

“Not that I’ve heard of.”

Strange. Ethan wondered how and why he’d landed this job. Let alone why nobody appeared to expect him or their systems were going haywire.

“Surely someone on the station processed the paperwork?” he asked.

“Gupta’s name is on it, but he denies doing it. The bulk of it was done back in Dominio Hyrium.”

“Ninety-nine percent of all Union processing is assigned to Dominio. It’s got almost all their staff.”

She nodded with strained eyes. “And even things not processed there often carry the label for simplicity. I’ll double-check with the peacekeepers to see if they’ll let you continue your work, given everything checks out. But you know that will take a day.”

“There’s barely enough non-clones on the peacekeeping ships to fill a meeting room. I get it,” he said.

The Taer had laws about clonism, but in his experience, someone like Kaylee who showed independent thought was few and far between. He suspected she’d been around for much longer than her sisters. Most he’d dealt with in his time here were fresh out of the cloning vats. When their base was a raised-from-birth super-soldier who never saw the outside world, young clones struggled to deviate from regimen.

The manager got him a temporary visa, although it was only valid for Coalition countries like the USA, New Europe, and Korea. Just in case he felt the travel bug. After that, a hotel for the night near the base of the space elevator, a ticket down, and even a special bank account.

“Uplifting restrictions mean you can’t use any of the galactic currencies here, and conversion is heavily restricted,” she explained. “Try not to spend too much.”

He nodded. The soldiers posted here faced similar problems, and most of their pay was secreted away in holding accounts to prevent them from shattering the economy.

With his immediate troubles sorted, and little optimism tomorrow would be better, Ethan settled in to a window seat on the space elevator. Few others joined him on the massive passenger car heading down to Dallas. The blue planet had long eclipsed the sun, plunging the world into darkness, illuminated by the many lights of human activity below. A clock with the times of major cities across the US and other Coalition countries told him it was close to midnight in Dallas.

The next half-hour passed slowly even if the elevator moved terrifyingly fast. It utilized the same space-folding technology as his ship’s sub-light drive in order to descend and ascend faster than the human body could otherwise withstand.

Hunger began to gnaw at him, and he regretted not grabbing something on the station. Then again, that would have been even more frustrating. Almost everyone on the station was a Union employee, so he would have had to deal with security again just to get food.

An automated fast food kiosk greeted him once he made planetfall. The familiar golden arches rose above the white and red image of a smiling old man. His parents told him that apparently these chains had been separate before the aliens, but times had changed. They also said the chicken was better before everything was factory-made.

The nostalgic taste of the food kept him in his seat for far longer than necessary. It didn’t taste great. The aliens made far better artificial meat.

But nothing beat the taste of home sometimes. He’d missed Earth, even as coming back here reminded him of all the frustrations and mundanity he’d fled.

An absentee employer. The overbearing Union who cared nothing about humanity. Backwards technology.

He stared out the ten-story high windows of the space elevator’s concourse and overlooked Dallas. The mundanity of a city that looked nearly identical to the last time he’d been here, in contrast to the awe-inspiring sights of the galaxy he’d seen in only a few short years. Moon-sized space stations, military fleets that stretched across a solar system, mining ships that swallowed entire asteroids for processing, and even a glimpse of precursor tech once.

Sometimes, one revisited the past just to be reminded of what the future still held for them.

His hotel was nothing fancy. It sat inside the Union-controlled district that surrounded the space elevator. Every sign came in a dozen languages, half of them alien and helpfully translated by his translation module. Ethan collapsed in the comfy bed and hoped tomorrow would be less of a mess. Or at least that he could do something interesting.

The echoing boom of hard knocking woke him. He jolted awake. The barest hint of sunlight crept beneath his curtains.

Another bout of knocking.

“IUC Peacekeeping,” a female voice called out, filtered through an artificial filter. Probably a helmet, although Ethan didn’t recall any of the peacekeeper’s modulating their voice like this.

He stumbled to the door, still half-asleep but aware enough to know his life rested on opening the door. The Union shot first, worried about smoking craters never. Two close encounters in two days was bad enough.

Cracking open the door, he froze as he saw a kill team of Taer soldiers, decked out in advanced armor well beyond anything the peacekeepers usually wore. Union logos shined from their white bodysuits, while personal forcefields rippled in the air around them. Every soldier wore a full helmet with an opaque visor. Even their wolf ears were covered by ceramic plate. He couldn’t see any tails, and guessed they were tied up somewhere.

All of them carried a long and nasty rifle he vaguely recognized as being capable of firing multiple types of smart munitions. Grenades and other tools rested on utility belts.

Through the floor-to-ceiling hallway windows that overlooked the city, he caught sight of multiple gunships. Each bristled with a variety of weaponry. Some matched the models the peacekeeper soldiers used, while others appeared vastly different. They looked like unmanned drone gunships. Not that they didn’t carry enough munitions to level a small army.

“Uh, wrong apartment?” he suggested, pulling the door open and making it clear he was unarmed.

At least one helmet pivoted downward to take in his state of undress. He wore only a shirt and a pair of tight briefs. Given Earth fashion differed from the rest of the galaxy, he had planned to pick up some new clothes if he needed to explore the city. He’d always struggled to find any clothes that provided modesty, given the rarity of males outside Earth.

A strange sensation rippled through Ethan’s mind, and he scowled. A psychic emanation. One of the soldiers was manipulating him.

The armored soldier closest to him stepped forward, appearance rippling like jelly. Her armor gave way to a vastly different bodysuit and dress. An additional logo appeared on her chest beneath the typical Union one, but he didn’t recognize it.

But he did recognize the white fox ears and voluminous fox tail nearly as large as she was. His eyes nearly popped out of his skull.

A Vaelix. One of the fox aliens who practically ran the Union.

This Vaelix held an almost bewitchingly beautiful appearance. She matched no human ethnicity, her skull was rounder, and her eyes further apart. Short white hair with long sidelocks bobbed along with each step, although her significant bust remained in place thanks to her bodysuit. Her blue eyes with golden slit pupils stared into Ethan’s eyes.

No signs of cybernetics or other enhancements, but he’d heard most Vaelix eventually replaced every part of their body with new organs, cybernetics, or other methods of life extending or improving methods.

“Ethan Coorlim. Former engineer aboard Space Station Renewal under IUC employment, now self-employed as a privateer. Twenty-seven Earth years of age, or thirty-seven standard galactic cycles. Currently undertaking a joint contract between the IUC and the Twin Moons Mining Syndicate,” the Vaelix said, clearly reading off an internal record from her modules. She smiled at him. “I assume that is you, and not your identical twin brother who owns the same ship, possesses the same visa, and even maintains the same… muscle mass.”

Her eyes scanned him up and down with a quick smirk as she ran over his crotch. Apparently even the Vaelix appreciated the male form. Then again, they struggled with the same gender imbalance as everyone else that all their technology hadn’t truly solved. Cloned males tended to cause genetic defects, apparently.

“That’s me,” Ethan said. He gritted his teeth and hoped he wasn’t about to be slammed in the ground after any word. “Is this because I came back to Earth?”

“Yes, we decided two battlecruisers wasn’t enough for you,” the Vaelix said, her eyes brimming with disdain. “No, Ethan, I’m here as a representative of the Office of Interstellar Cooperative Management.”

He blinked. That name was familiar, and he immediately realized why.

The peacekeepers reported to this mysterious office in the Union’s overcomplicated hierarchy. Even yesterday, when they’d ordered him to surrender, they’d brought up the office when mentioning the anti-uplifting decree.

“That doesn’t help me one bit,” he said. “Aren’t you in charge of stopping AIs? Or searching for precursor tech? Stuff like that? I think I sent you a report once years ago when I—”

“Stumbled on some very old precursor artifacts on an abandoned space station, yes. A fairly typical encounter for a privateer. Unusual only because you actually reported it instead of flipping them on the black market,” she said. “I’m here because you’ve won, Ethan.”

He stared at her, although he swore at least one of the soldiers sighed in exasperation. The Vaelix’s ears twitched.

The fox woman waved her hand in front of her, as if gesturing for Ethan to give the expected response. Like an animal in a zoo. A condescending smirk stretched across her too-pretty face.

Every bone in his body wanted him to tell her to fuck off. Then his brain reminded those bones they’d cease to exist if he did that, because the Vaelix commanded a team of the most dangerous people he’d been within six feet of.

“Won what?” he asked, voice utterly deadpan.

The Vaelix clapped her hands and tilted her head to the side, ears and tail following along. Although she smiled, her eyes remained cold and unchanging.

“You’ve been selected by the IUC to become the new Sovereign Administrator of the Folimai Rim and the Folimai Self-Determining Association,” she said. “As per the centuries-old agreement between the IUC and the Association when the Rim was granted as independent territory. Of course, I have extensive questions to ask about how a mere Earthling took control of their own slice of the galaxy. So why don’t you join me on the space station for a nice, simple chat.”