Beyond?

“Why maintain an old building if you could build a new one?

Don't repair stuff if you can make something new instead.

Ever looked up to the sky and wondered what's up there?”

-The Creator.

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Azir***

I got my workforce and got started right away. Project number one was to invade the capital's national observatory and throw everyone out. After a few days of spending my evenings on the helmet I decided that it's much too dangerous to use the Light of the Emperor myself.

That thing has a few magical circuits which are able to fry the user's brain. I fear that they are a safety mechanism. It's not like I am unable to meddle with the helmet, but after I had a thorough look at the whole thing I decided that it isn't worth to bother wasting time with it.

Ensuring that the thing is safe to use would require me to take it apart and put it back together piece by piece, magical circuit for magical circuit.

And there are a lot of them in there. The creator of the helmet used a technique of layering the runes in multiple layers on the inside of the helmet. Nothing new to me, but bothersome to analyse. It's like taking a modern computer apart and putting it back together in working order. A single person might achieve a task like that, but it requires a huge amount of time.

So I decided on doing the next logical thing and that's to evaluate the threat. I rebuilt only the part of the helmet which connects it to somewhere else and tuned my new communication device to the right wavelength. The rest was easy. After I got a good signal I deciphered it and had my very own uplink to the supposed satellite. From that point onwards all the credit has to go to Ivy. She is freakishly good at interacting with other machines, I doubt that I can compete with her by now.

It has to be said that she is a cheater. Machine language and codes are her native language, so to speak. I am not thinking in zeroes and ones like her. She didn't fail to bask in her moment of glory when she hacked the satellite network above our heads. We also downloaded a very detailed map of the world.

There are twenty satellites circling around the planet. The Emperor was a busy guy. Unfortunately the satellites are hardcoded. That means that neither I, nor Ivy can change their programming. Bad luck for us, good luck for anyone who might know the right frequencies to access the network.

At least I could find out that the satellites are using magic to create a strong magnetic field. They use that field to channel a stream of polarized ions into a thin beam. The resulting blast of focused radiation and matter is released at a target of your choice.

It's a really fancy trick, but also wasteful. There are much easier ways of striking a target from orbit, though I guess the Emperor chose this method because it was the shinier one. I like that; using a blast of radiation to scorch your enemies is shiny.

I gained that knowledge by the approach of learning by doing. I sent one of my drones out to the north, then I fired one of the satellites repeatedly until I had enough data to determine the used method. The barbarian army's camp was a very welcome - and most importantly, a very big - target. Chuck was very happy that the plague in front of his doorstep turned into dust. Though most of the barbarians fled into all directions. The satellites can fire every ten minutes and each shot burns an area of about two hundred metres. It's effective against a target of high value, but roasting a big army doesn't work. As soon as a soldier sees his comrades pop like popcorn, he runs. They spread into all directions and your shiny radiation beams become more and more ineffective.

One interesting point that came up is that the network of satellites is covering almost the entire planet. Almost. There are no satellites in an orbit which leads them above Quinn's airspace. The continent across the northern ocean is also not covered by the network.

Of course the Emperor could have done that on purpose, but from what I heard about him he was a control freak. There is no way that he would willingly ignore certain countries. So the most likely answer is that Quinn has or had a way to deal with the satellites. The question which comes up next is who is living on the second continent?

There is a big central landmass on this world. It's running along the temperate climate zone and partly stretching up to the north pole. Nict is taking up a huge part of the western coastline.

The southern nations control a small part of the western coast and stretch out along the southern coast. The area under their control is huge. If you would go purely by size, then Nict should have lost the wars against them long ago. But I guess the geographical advantage of Nict can't be ignored.

The centre of the continent is taken up by what we call the eastern plains. It's a huge steppe which stretches over several time zones, at least twenty times as large as Nict. I suppose the cleared airspace above the eastern coast belongs to Quinn and if it is an indicator for Quinn's size, then Quinn controls an area about three times as large as Nict.

Dwem controls the northern mountain range which stretches above Nict and reaches further to the eastern plains. Beyond Dwem is a scanty badland which turns into an ice tundra the further north you go. I guess that's the reason why the barbarians don't want to live there.

There is an archipelago of islands further across the western ocean, in size roughly comparable to Quinn. Beyond that archipelago and further to the south lies another continent at the equator. It's smaller than the main continent and shaped like a big fat blob of marmalade. Since I am the discoverer... since I rediscovered this continent I named it Blob.

Regarding my team and the observatory. The first thing on my list was to tear down the badly made telescope there, then I went on and had them build a proper one to map out the exact paths of the satellites.

Task number two was to build our own spying platforms and teleport them up into space. That wasn't very hard to do since I already had a very good basic unit in the form of my drones to work with. And teleporting something straight upwards into empty space is much easier than teleporting to a specific area on a planet's surface. All we had to do was to change the design of my drones. Forget about the wings, increase the whole blueprint in size and dimensions, add proper sensory equipment and get to work. In fact, teaching my team to build the needed telescopes and sensors gave me the most headaches. The devil is in the details.

Our satellites aren't nearly as fancy as the old ones from the Empire, but we can be sure that they are under our control. Keep it simple and stupid is the way to go here. The same applies to the weapon system we mounted onto my modified drones. I kept the options of focusing light and overloading their drives, though they don't help them much up there. Our satellites don't have a heat shield, so they wouldn't survive a re-entry into the atmosphere.

What we could do though was to equip them with a set of big metal slugs. They can use their gravitational drive to propel these projectiles to high speeds in order to shoot at a target.

Then we did something which most people in my old world would have called the destruction of a cultural heritage. Once we had enough makeshift satellites in place we destroyed the old Empire's satellites in a coordinated attack. As expected the Empire's satellites struck back at ours and for a few moments we had a real space battle going on. The real thing was very boring to watch since everything was over within seconds. We shot our slugs at them, they retaliated in a probably automated reaction and that was it. All we had to do was to replace our destroyed equipment. Though I admit that I feared that the satellites would be a little smarter than I anticipated. Everything worked out in the end.

Of course we also tried to send a satellite over Quinn, though that didn't work out so well. As it entered Quinn's airspace we simply lost contact and that's it; reason unknown. The satellite simply fell from the sky and burned in the atmosphere. It bugs me, but I have better things to do than to show interest in Quinn right now.

The next item on my list is enlarged versions of my drones to spy in greater detail on the other countries. The equipment in our satellites may be sufficient, but it's not nearly good enough. There is a limit to what you can do in a limited time-frame. I want to be able to read Quinn's newspaper by the end of next year... if they have one.

The fact that Louise joined my team was also a big help. She is a smart one and used my mana net as interface to control the satellites. Of course everything with proper protection from the public. Maybe I shouldn't have dropped the idea with the mana net onto this unsuspecting society. It gained a life of its own and Helen has real trouble with keeping certain knowledge out of the net and away from civilian eyes.

If you rule a country as something akin to a king, you rely on certain news spreading slowly and other information not at all. Keeping the flow of information under control is the key of ruling a country, though the mana net is spreading everything like a wildfire. Sorry, Helen. Maybe you'll have to put up some national laws for using the new technology.

In this manner the months went by and we waited and searched for new leads to our enemy. The southern nations didn't make a move, probably because they learned of what happened to their allies. I continued to train my ability with my mother and then there is spear practice with my father. University, tutoring, my research team, visits at Chuck's tower, Stella, Karsen and Talia, who announced their betrothal by the way, I can only say that my schedule is full.

I've even cut down my hobby of dabbling around in my laboratory. There is simply too much to do right now and I admit that I am not paying attention to everything. May it be lack of interest or bad information sharing.

But I should have become aware of something as grave as this! After a hard day I come home and find Stella sitting in our kitchen and shining like a mother-to-be, while polishing a huge egg in a basket. She is sitting on the bench at the kitchen table and Ivy is spraying the egg with some water. Talia is standing ready with a dry towel.

It can't be, I would have noticed if Stella had become fat. Though she didn't. Can females hide their pregnancy somehow? The egg looks awfully familiar to the one Valeria came out of.

Warily I walk to the table and point at the egg. “Dinner?”

All three of them look with shocked expressions at me. Stella puts her arms protectively around the egg. “That's not food! That's my niece! Isn't she cute?” She places her cheek on the egg. “I think I can hear her inside the egg!”

I sigh in relief. Though, what's cute about an egg? “So it's Sola's! Why is it here? I didn't know that she was already at that stage with... Xander was his name?”

“It surprised me too. Apparently she used him right away to consolidate their union.” Talia rubs the egg dry with the towel.

I pull a grimace. The poor guy fell into the honey trap right away. Probably it happened the first time they did it. I can't imagine Sola as someone who takes contraceptives. She is a woman who knows what she wants.

Stella continues to pet the egg. “Sola had to go on a diplomatic mission to Dwem. It's regarding the ongoing war with the barbarians and how much help the Dwemer will need to keep the upper hand. The barbarians switched from open warfare to guerilla tactics. So the negotiations may take a while. Our ability to create materials may seem powerful, but if you put the few Gejene in relation to a country as big as Nict, you realize that you have to place priorities.”

I nod slowly, that sounds like this mission will take a while. “But she will be back before it hatches?” I can't imagine something worse than having to take care of someone else's offspring.

Stella's expression turns mournful. “You are right, it's a shame that it won't hatch in time! I would like to see her eyes when she takes her first look at the world. Unfortunately it's a tradition that only the parents are allowed to be present when it happens. Sola will surely come back in time.”

Whew! Seems like I dodged a bullet. “That's too bad. Well, see you later then, I'll go to rest.” It's better to make a tactical retreat before Stella asks me if she can have one too. I know exactly how the chain of events goes. First they get fooled by the cuteness of someone else's offspring, then they want one of their own and bam! The house is full of little annoying critters who rob you of your sleep.

“Hrgh...!”

Something wrapped around my neck and held me back. I reach up and feel a scaly tail while I am turning around to the owner. “Is there something you need, Stella?”

She pats on the bench and pulls me closer, this doesn't feel right. It's like being put on a leash!

“~Actually I wanted to ask you a question.~”

Oh, no! It's the dreaded question! How can I get out of this? “It depends?”

“Can you take care of the egg? It's just for five days. I've laboratories this week and they last for the whole day. I can't postpone those lessons.” Her expression is pleading and she even grabbed my hand while begging me.

I already imagined the worst, but it turned out to be only half as bad. What's the problem with taking care of an egg. Seriously, even I should be able to handle that. It's most likely only taking a look after the temperature and that's it. “Sure. Why not. I guess I can make a few free minutes in my table.”

“Great!” Stella hugs me from the side, pressing her chest onto me. This feels like a good decision, I can earn some bonus points with her and it doesn't even take that much work.

She pulls a sheet of paper out of her cleavage. “This is a list of the things you have to do. First, in the morning you control the temperature. It has to be exactly forty point three degrees. There is a heating circuit in the basket. Then you turn over the egg and spray it with some water so that it doesn't dry out.”

“Here is the dispenser.” Ivy places her dispenser in front of me.

“Then you spread this paste on the egg to keep the shell strong and sturdy, make sure to rub it until the paste is completely absorbed. It will take a while.” Talia pulls a tube out of a pocket and places it in front of me.

“Then you turn the egg every three hours and control the temperature. Don't forget to spray it with water. In the evening you wash the egg with lukewarm water and rub the remains of the paste off. When you are done you dry it with a towel and lay it to rest until next morning. Make sure to put it on the right side.” Stella kisses me on the cheek. “Thank you.”

Before I can voice my complaint all three of them are gone. Seriously? I am not some kind of wet nurse! And why did Ivy run too? What do I have a servant for if she doesn't do her job! I glare at the egg. I can't remember Valeria's egg being that much trouble. Are they setting me up? I have to go and confirm this with my medical books, I think I still have them in my laboratory.

Half an hour later I am back; the book confirmed the excessive care.

“You are troublesome!”

*Knock* *Knock*

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