Book 4: Chapter 11: The War in Meatspace
Will
July 2334
UFS Council Session
I read the message in my heads-up twice, hoping that I’d misunderstood. Nope. The Romulus WorldGov had just preemptively nuked the local space-based autofactories. I supposed, after the Newholme and Pangea experiences, they kind of had a point.
I sighed and ordered the roamers to begin cleaning up my work area. I wasn’t going to be getting more work done on this water filter design anytime soon. The roamers would take care of putting everything away, so I walked over to a convenient Adirondack chair and made myself comfortable, then exited my manny.
I immediately connected to the UFS council channel and signed in. As expected, discussion of the nuking was in process at full volume. Representative Ella Cranston, the granddaughter of my old nemesis, had the floor.
“… And no, we will not be compensating the Bobiverse for the loss of their assets. Let’s not forget where the threat is coming from. In fact, if this becomes an ongoing issue, I will move to demand compensation from the Bobiverse for our losses, both equipment and productivity. We’ve lost billions because of the economic volatility, never mind direct costs. At this time, we are negotiating with our neighbors on Vulcan to pass legislation mandating only human-owned-and-operated autofactories in the Omicron2 Eridani system …”
She went on for considerable time, but the upshot was that all Bobiverse equipment in their system would be deactivated or nuked forthwith. They would be replacing the relay station with their own unit, which we were welcome to use as paying customers, just like everyone else.
Well, that was something. The Pangea colony was talking about cutting us off completely and treating us like an untrusted foreign power. To be fair, they’d had the worst experience with Starfleet’s strategies, so I couldn’t blame them.