It didn’t take Alexander long to meet up with the Arklight technicians outside the facility. Even though they had been briefed about how he would appear, the guards tightened their hands on their weapons as he approached.


    He ignored them as he moved through their cordon around the concrete pad. Only one technician was near the device. It seemed the others had retreated to thefort and safety of their ship. Alexander couldn’t me them. Spending too much time on the surface wasn’t good for anyone.


    "Greetings," he said as he neared the man.


    The technician looked up, seeming more startled that someone had addressed him than he did at Alexander’s appearance. The man’s eyes looked over the robotic body with some interest beforending on his avatar’s face.


    "I assume you are Alexander Kane? Normally we would confirm this with a bioprint, but I can’t exactly do that now can I."


    "I can provide you with my corporate ID to prove it was my purchase. Will that suffice?"


    That man seemed to mull the option over before squinting at the harsh light from the star. He grunted in acknowledgment. "It’ll have to do."


    Alexander presented the man with the information. After verifying it on his end, the man seemed content that it matched.


    "Very well, Mr. Kane. My name is Senior Technician Randolf."


    Alexander wanted to ask if that was the man’s first name orst name, but considering Randolf’s curt tone, he probably wouldn’t appreciate the question.


    "I am here to discuss the operational parameters of the m array with you. First off, m arrays are all wholly owned by the manufacturer, m. You are simply renting this unit from them. As such, this array is armored and has a multitude of sensors to prevent tampering. If you trip one of these sensors, the array will notify the head office, and go offline. Then a crew will be sent out to retrieve the unit."


    He had suspected ms were handled slightly differently within STOw but he hadn’t known the specifics until now. They must have been grandfathered in under an oldw, or an exception was made for them because of how important their technology was to interstermunications.


    "I assume I would not bepensated for the rental fee in that case?" Calling half a billion credits a rental fee seemed ridiculous to him, especially since every message still cost money to send.


    "No," the man said inly before continuing. "We have configured the device for a hardwired-only connection as you requested. You will only be able to attach four terminals to the terminal on the array though, so I suggest switching it to global receive mode as soon as possible. To do that, you just need to go to this menu." The man blitzed through the menus and anyone who wasn’t enhanced probably would have gotten lost. Alexander simply recorded the whole thing to y backter.


    "If you mess up some of the settings, you will need to contact m to send out a tech. Our rates start at fifty million, with ten million for each day of travel and work."


    Alexander frowned. "That seems excessive."


    Randalf just shrugged. "I don’t make the rules, I just notify you of them. Normally ms are ced on worlds with arge enough popce that m would create a satellite office for any repair needs. Even if Eden’s End had a muchrger poption, you wouldn’t qualify for that."


    "Because we are outside STO space," Alexander guessed.


    "Precisely," the man continued without an ounce ofpassion. "There is always the option of hiring Arklight on in a permanent capacity to maintain and monitor your m."


    He knew he was going to regret asking but he did anyway. "How much would that cost?"


    "One team of five techs would cost you fifty million per standard year. That doesn’t include the cost of anchoring one of our frigates as well as providing it with fuel and necessities. We would also need separate housing built for our techs that meet our specifications."


    Alexanderughed. "You’re joking right?"


    The man looked puzzled. "No, why would I joke about that? I can assure you that our rates areparable to ourpetitors. They might even be lower since we are one of the smaller installers for m. We were also the only installer that epted this instation request, so you are likely to work with us in the future anyway."


    Either get shafted upfront or get shafted over time, Alexander wasn’t a fan of either option. "I’ll pass," he said. He had no ns to keep the nosy Arklight employees around. They would probably throw a fit if they knew what he nned to do with the m.


    Randolf shrugged again and went over some more settings and options. There weren’t that many, certainly not enough to justify the convoluted menus you needed to work through to change them. Alexander suspected it was done deliberately to make it impossible for anyone outside m’s support bubble from being able to properly calibrate or fix the devices.


    Once the man’s spiel wasplete, he added onest set of parting words. "Wee to the gcticmunity."


    That seemed rather presumptuous to Alexander considering the device only connected them to the STO but he kept that thought to himself.


    Once the annoying tech was gone, he contacted the robots to start moving the shell into ce. Onceplete it would look just like one of the smaller domes that dotted the massive structure of Eden’s End.


    The bots made quick work of it, even though they weren’t linked. The process was a rather basic one so it wasn’t any trouble. Concrete was pumped into a tube that would fill in the gaps at the bottom as well as connect the two halves into a whole.


    That was enough to seal the room so it could be pressurized, but there were additional steps Alexander had nned to ensure this room was well protected. Those would take time to set up, but he had what he desired at the moment, privacy.


    He walked over to the terminal and inspected the interface. He thought the mpany mighte up with their own terminal design, just to be difficult, but it was a bog standard STO terminal. Alexander supposed that made sense if you wanted to ensurepatibility across thergest area. The coding was probably proprietary, but that was to be expected.


    With a bit of experience disassembling these terminals, Alexander was quickly able to remove the front panel. He was careful to check for sensors or other traps hidden on the devices as he worked, but there wasn’t anything like that.


    Even though there was no visible deterrent to disassembling the terminal, he was careful not to unplug any of the connectors. Soon he found exactly what he was looking for. A bundle of wires led into arge connector that sat flush with the armored exterior of the m. The bulkhead connection took a bit of finagling to get loosened up, but Alexander managed it with a bit of patience. Once it was loose, he finally had ess to the wiring passage.


    He ran his smallest finger fments into the tightly packed tunnel to get a look inside the device.


    The inside held aputer interface, powered by what looked like an advancedputronic module in a thin te-like configuration.


    Slipping past the interior console was easy enough since wires snaked out from dozens of openings. Alexander wasn’t sure how far he could push his little tendrils, but they seemed to be doing just fine so far, so he kept going.


    The wires all ran into a sphere about a foot wide that was held aloft by tensioned cables. The rest of the space seemed to be consumed by power systems and active sensors that ran to the outer walls of the armored cube. He gave a mental shake at theplete waste of space just to protect their product.


    Alexander was certain that touching the sphere would trigger something, so he pulled back inside the internal terminal. He found the contacts that would allow him to interface with the device, and connected to it.


    The windows that popped up in his internal space were mostly diagnostic windows. He found the security features as well but didn’t dig into them for now. He didn’t have any ns on mucking about with any of the programs or features at the moment, he just needed to know how the system pulled in messages so he could intercept them before they went back out again.


    When he found the message buffer, he was a bit shocked. It waspletely unencrypted, meaning that the only thing that kept m messages safe, was their inability to be intercepted between destinations. There was an encryption sequence to ept messages from secure nodes like what the Hawks had used to transfer messages when they were here previously, but that was it.


    Thisck of encryption made what Alexander wanted to do easy, but it pissed him off. It meant that anyone who could gain ess to the interior of a m could easily intercept and read messages.


    With disgust, Alexander pulled out of the system and started putting the terminal back together. As he did this, he mentally designed an interface that would intercept allmunications from this device and run them through their supeputer core for analysis before allowing them to be sent out.


    With Lucas and him both having a hand in designing the analysis program, Alexander had faith that it would catch most of the bad actors that ended up on Eden’s End.


    As he finished putting everything together, he messaged the Council. Then he used the m for the first time to dere his sovereignty.


    ***


    It took time for the Council to arrive, but they eventually met him in the newly dedicatedmunication room. The three private chambers weren’tpleted yet, but they would be soon enough. While he trusted the Council, he didn’t trust them enough to give them ess to the m. One errant scratch could cause the entire system to simply shut down and he would be out half a billion credits and be cklisted from m’swork. It was bad enough he was risking it himself, he didn’t need anyone else adding to that.


    This room also had the holo-array.


    "I assume you are ready to dere this system yours?" Gabrie asked.


    "Yes. I’ve already sent in the specified documentation. The STO clerks seemed rather confused at first and had to look up the relevantws, but once they verified everything was correct, they asked me to set a time for the meeting. I figured an hour was enough time to gather everyone together." Honestly, Alexander thought he was going to be forced to scramble as the STO tried to pull a fast one. The fact that they allowed him to pick the time was a wee surprise.


    Not long after thest Councilor arrived, the holo began to glow. Three people quickly took form, looking around the room at the gathered party.


    "Is everyone in attendance?" the older woman of the group asked.


    "Yes," Alexander stated.


    "And which of you is Alexander Kane?"


    Alexander raised his hand to get the woman’s attention. She nced over at him, looking him up and down, but otherwise notmenting on his appearance.


    "The rest of you are part of this Council then? Please state your names for the record."


    The four current members of the council spoke in turn, listing both their names and roles. The woman continued by asking other questions to ensure the rules of the STO were followed. Once she was done questioning them, she made a quick deration. "Our records show no instances of piracy or illegal activities from Blue Star Enterprises. You are clear on that front. We only see two registered warships though. You need three to meet the criteria."


    Alexander interrupted her. "You will notice that our third ship is also marked as the diplomatic vessel. There was now preventing this."


    The threemuned amongst themselves for a bit before returning. "You are correct. We have amended our records to show the third ship as both a diplomatic vessel as well as a warship. With thest of the criteria met, we only need the name designation for the system as well as how you wish to bebeled in any form of diplomaticmunications."


    Alexander smiled and gave the woman the information. He swore he heard Damien groan, but it might have been a trick of his audio sensors.


    "Your new nation has been registered with the STO. We look forward to working with you in the future." With that, the three clerks simply vanished, leaving the room quiet.


    "Is that it?" Nancy asked, sounding a bit surprised. "I somehow thought it would be more involved."