M.J. Markgraf

BSE Chapter 3-38

Alexander had hoped to build a bit more rapport with the woman before discussing this subject, but it seemed that Katalynn was done humoring him.

He steeled himself before responding to her question. “As I said in my radio reply, this is about Harlow.”

“I’m aware of that bottom feeder, get to the point.”

“I believe he’s coming to attack Eden’s End. To do that, he needs to come through Char territory.”

That got her attention. “What makes you think he...

BSE Chapter 3-37

If Alexander was honest with himself, he found Loki to be a bit creepy. The person’s mannerisms seemed a bit off from normal and while he wasn’t completely still, he was eerily still for a human.

He wasn’t sure if it was just this Loki, part of their training, or a complete act to throw him off. While it was an interesting question to help him pass the time on the train, he supposed it didn’t much matter.

Alexander glanced out the window of the train, watching stops whiz b...

BSE Chapter 3-36

Alexander wasn’t really sure what he was looking at. The two blobs on the scanners seemed to grow closer before one left. By now he had pretty much guessed that those blobs were fleets of ships.

Were they running through some sort of training exercise?

Then again, that didn’t really explain why the one group left shortly after they should have discovered his fleet's arrival.

It wasn’t until Krieger contacted him that he learned what was going on.

“It s...

BSE Chapter 3-35

Alexander was surprisingly nervous as the fleet neared their destination. The month and a half in space didn’t really bother him, but he certainly could see the toll it was taking on everyone else. It probably didn’t help that most of his crew were made up of members of the Hawks, and they had been deployed for nearly a year by this point.

He was sure they would appreciate some downtime, but Alexander wasn’t sure that would be in the cards until he reached an agreement with Kataly...

BSE Chapter 3-34

“Ungrateful little shits!” Harlow cursed as he stared at the view of the smoke-filled skies of Haven as his ship orbited the burning world.

He had been forced to pull back from his campaign of expansion to deal with a damn uprising and when he arrived, he had been attacked.

The attackers had quickly fallen to his fleet, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that his power was being tested. Harlow did not have the ground forces necessary to retake the surface, and he didn�...

Announcement

As I get ready to start posting again tomorrow, I decided now would be a good time to announce changes to my Patreon tiers. Don't worry, the prices will stay the same, but the $10 tier will now receive 5 additional chapters, bringing them up to 25 ahead of RR. They should be up shortly.

Also with this new year, I will now be setting up a yearly tier for those who want to save a bit and plan on sticking around long term.

BSE Chapter 3-33

Alexander stepped into his workshop. Even though everyone was extremely busy restocking supplies aboard the ships and preparing for the next mission in two weeks, most of his work was monitoring the ongoing construction and waiting for the printers to finish.

It's why he had time to go to the training classes and watch over the kids for a bit. He didn’t regret the time spent, but there were probably other tasks he could be working on.

There were no additional improvements or twe...

BSE Chapter 3-32

Yulia grumbled under her breath as Charlie passed her on the track yet again. The older boy had been spending all of his free time with the go-carts since what happened with his father, Sorin.

She knew about the incident, but not what the man had actually done. It had to be something really bad though or Alex wouldn’t have punished him like he did.

The boy sneered at her and she was forced to brake hard when he cut over, blocking her path and almost sending her into one of the b...

BSE Chapter 3-31

Most of the civilians had been flown down to Eden’s End, but a few of the engineers had wanted to meet Alexander and thank him in person for their rescue as well as show him around the ships.

To say they were surprised to see him might be an understatement.

One man even reflexively reached toward his side to grab where a weapon might have hung but came up empty. Alexander thought that was an odd reaction for a civilian and quickly reevaluated these people.

That man’s nam...

BSE Chapter 3-30

A quick update before the chapter. I will still be posting my normal schedule this entire week, but after the chapter on 12/27, I will be taking off next week from the 30th through the 5th to celebrate the holidays. Chapters will resume on January 6th.

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Alexander’s haste wasn’t brought on by any immediate sense of fear or concern, however, that was always in ...

BSE Chapter 3-29

Alexander inspected the tests he had running to replicate the armor the Dawn was composed of. Early results were promising, but he still had a ways to go before he could shift the tests into a production capacity. He was halfway through inspecting the previous night's work when his radio beeped and one of the people in security spoke.

“Alex, the fleet’s back, and all of the ships sent out are accounted for.”

He sighed in relief and pulled the radio off his belt. “Thanks fo...

BSE Chapter 3-4.5

After feedback from readers on RR I have decided to add this foreshadowing chapter for Sorin as well as to give better reasoning for the Council to vote the way it did. There will also be changes to 3-6, 3-7, 3-9 to align those chapters with the changes in this one. I think those are the only chapters that need to be modified. If not, I will let you all know. The overall outcome of Sorin's actions won't change, so it's not necessary to go back and read those other chapters unless you want to....

BSE Chapter 3-28

Alexander stood next to Lucas, inspecting the hardware interface the man had put together. It was-

“Don’t give me that look,” Lucas said before Alexander could finish his thought.

“I wasn’t giving a look,” he stated, surprised that the man had called him out.

Lucas snorted. “Yes, you were. You may think you do a good job of hiding your feelings Alex, but anyone who really knows you can see the minor changes in your body or even the pauses in your avata...

BSE Chapter 3-27

Alexander carried the very delicate instrument down to Nova’s office. He learned his lesson about not allowing his auto carts or bots to do it for him after they jostled a few of the previous devices so much that it rendered them inoperable.

It's not a huge deal when you can recycle the entire device and reproduce it, but Alexander was a big proponent of not wasting time. That was especially important with this newest iteration, which took three days to assemble at the tightest tolera...

BSE Chapter 3-26

A nomenclature change. The processor dies have been renamed to nanoform lattices. I think that sounds more futuristic while also giving a nod to the lithography masks that are used in current computer chip manufacturing methods.

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“That’s quite something,” Lucas admitted as he stood up after examining Alexander’s nano-printer. “Don’t get me wrong, Alex, I thin...

BSE Chapter 3-25

LOCATION: HRAFNHEIM STATION

SYSTEM: BJORN’S REACH

DATE: 2401

The Valkyrie pounded the straggling Xin destroyer with its guns, eventually causing the ship’s reactor to breach containment. A bubble of molten material floated away into space, leaving a large chunk scooped out of the ship.

Katalynn would have preferred to take the ship for herself, but the zealots loyal to the Grand Admiral had made it impossible. She only wished her fleet could have arrived before the...

BSE Chapter 3-24

Vitor stepped out of the airlock and was greeted by a group of mercenaries which included Marine Galloway. “Team Leader Jallen,” Vitor said as he accepted the man’s outstretched hand and shook it. “I take it you’ll be my guide?”

“Yes, Captain. If you’d follow me I can show you what we’ve discovered so far.”

“There are indeed five ships under construction or there were. Something happened to the third destroyer and its parts were scrapped or used on the other ...

BSE Chapter 3-23

LOCATION: BA’EED STATION

SYSTEM: ZORFON’S GAP

DATE: 2400

Sienna would be damned if she lost this station to a handful of frigates and an old assault ship. “Fire up the station defenses!” she ordered as she ran into the command room.

“But-,” that was the only word the man got out before she shot him.

“Does anyone else feel like second-guessing my orders?” She knew what the man was going to say, ‘What about the fleet?’ She didn’t give a rat's ...

BSE Chapter 3-22

“So all of them were indentured corporate slaves?” Vitor asked.

“It appears so,” Captain Bloomright replied.

“Stars above. Just when you think the corporations can’t sink any lower, they prove you wrong. Has anyone broached the subject of their families?” Vitor would have preferred to keep these people in stasis but they needed intel on their target and any intel was better than none. The problem was that none of these people's stories matched up. Either some of the ...

BSE Chapter 3-21

“Any casualties?” Vitor asked Captain Ramirez.

“Three people injured, nothing severe though. They should be back in action in a couple of days. If it wasn’t for Mr. Kane triple-armoring the crew areas, it would have been much worse.”

“How much damage did you suffer?” Vitor asked with his next question.

“All things considered, we only suffered minor damage. We do have a dozen spots open to vacuum, but the bot is quickly patching the exterior holes while my peo...

BSE Chapter 3-20

The single surviving pirate hadn’t been able to provide much in the way of information, but they were able to tell Vitor more about the strange crate.

Turns out it wasn’t some trap. They were simply meant to guard it until a transport came along to take it into STO space. The captured pirate wasn’t clear on why the ship that brought it out to this system hadn’t just taken it to its destination. He had been told to watch it until it was picked up, and that is what he did.

V...

BSE Chapter 3-19

LOCATION: OPEN SPACE

SYSTEM: ZK4-J92

DATE: 2400

Eden’s Might was the first ship to arrive in the unnamed system, but they were quickly followed by the others, with the Talon coming in a minute behind the rest of the fleet. It was better than their first jump where nearly fifteen minutes separated all of the ships, but it could be improved.

They still had a few more jumps to the first system where the pirate station might be, so there was time.

“All ships are ...

BSE Chapter 3-18

After an eventful evening involving a brain-teaser board game between Yulia and himself, Alexander put his daughter to bed and returned to his workshop down the hallway.

He didn’t run off the moment she fell asleep though. He made sure she wasn’t having any nightmares or other issues. Even though he itched to unravel the secrets of these processors, losing three or four hours was not going to make much difference in the long run compared to making sure his daughter was ok.

Onc...

BSE Chapter 3-17

As Alexander watched the last shuttle leave the planet and head for Eden’s Might, he couldn’t help thinking there was more he could have done.

It was an irrational thought because Alexander had been working nonstop to make this mission possible as soon as possible. Delaying it was really the only way he could improve their chances and he had already delayed it once to allow Eden’s Might to be completed. That turned out to be rather fortuitous since Captain Krieger showed up in tim...

BSE Chapter 3-16

In case you are wondering who the heck Sorin is, that's the new name I decided to replace Harper with since Harper sounded too much like Harlow.

Also, computronics is what I will be renaming the combined supercomputer and advanced chips that Alexander buys from the STO. They will now just be Advanced computronics modules and Supercomputer computronics modules. The module part of the name may or may not show up. I think this change better reflects the fact that these are entire computer ...

BSE Chapter 3-15

Having done this once already, Alexander quickly moved through the contract process and non-disclosure document. With no surprise, all of Krieger’s people signed the forms.

“Welcome to Blue Star Enterprises,” Alexander stated happily. “Now that you’re all employees I can tell you something that I’m sure your captain has already figured out. I’m partially alien.”

The group looked at him in confusion.

It was the engineer, Alexander recalled the man’s name was...

BSE Chapter 3-14

Enjoy this warm slice of Sci-fi Pi!

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Alexander was surprised when he got the call from traffic control. It wasn’t that a new ship had arrived that surprised him, new ships had been arriving every few days over the last month or so. No, it was the fact that Captain Krieger was the new arrival.

Since he hadn’t heard from the man for three months Alexander had kind of written him off. It wasn’t that he did...

BSE Chapter 3-13

After completing the deal with Paresh, Vitor knew going to the new ship alone would be a bad idea. He quickly returned to the Fox and filled Kaela and his crew in on what was going on.

“I told you it was a dumb idea to trust him,” Kaela commented.

“I’m aware,” Vitor sighed, “but I didn’t have any other choice. Not unless you were willing to give up half a year just to bring us to our destination.”

The woman laughed. “You can’t even cover the fee for me br...

BSE Chapter 3-12

SYSTEM: EPSILON INDI

DATE: 2400

The Fox popped out of FTL and glided into Epsilon Indi. When Vitor thought of a place where he could shake the corporate bloodhounds, he knew of only one system in STO space that fit the bill.

There would still be corporate spies here, there was no doubt of that, but their power was far less than any other system.

Unlike most systems that had habitable planets, which usually spawned a systemwide level of government to go with them, Epsil...

BSE Chapter 3-11

Instead of just showing Captain Krieger arriving at Eden's End, I wanted to show the actual effort he went through to get there. I hope you enjoy this small arc.

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LOCATION: AURION PRIME

SYSTEM: AURION

DATE: 2400

Vitor kept his head down and did his best to blend into the crowd as he moved through the busy transport terminal. Ever since the Navy cut him loose, his life had gotten much more compl...