Serina — Snake in the Grass

The culture Lance and I was visiting was utterly innocent. Take that custom of swapping that Lance got steamed up about. I dug a bit and found that the reason had to do with spreading the gene pool wider. That is species survival, not from some X-rated motivation.

Based on the customs and fashion that I had encountered so far, I had no question that this species, strange eye color or not, peculiar langue or not, was human compatible. When I adopted their fashions during our stay, except for eye color and height, you could not tell that I was not a native.

I hated the thought of introducing them to Imperial society as it was sure to damage their feeling of innocence. But it was our job to be that snake in the grass. Giant talked to the men and found us thousands of volunteers. Imp had ported in hundreds of teaching machines and had reprogrammed them to speak in the bird-like trill language. The base could handle ten thousand Marines at a time, and it was full. Lance and I had recruited men from Beauty's tree first, and they were now teaching the new arrivals. Luckily those teaching machines bypassed the normal senses and directly input knowledge into the brain. Otherwise, there is no way we could bring this many 'savages' for lack of a better word, into the modern world—although given what I had experienced in living with them I'd trade cultures in a heartbeat.

Dad had pushed through expedited orders for custom heavy armor to fit these men's large frames. My job was to train them in how to use the armor to their advantage. Even the strongest was no match for me physically. But aided by armor, they would be a force to reckon with.

Yes, it was a ton of work, but if the Xiǎo Māo where to be stopped, drastic measures were required. They had penetrated our world with infiltrators in every stage of our society; from upper-level statesmen to an ordinary citizen. We had an edge by using Beauty's people—kind of like the American's did against the Japanse during the so-called World War Two. The American's used native American Indians, a tribe called Navaho's, to communicate. By using this language that was unknown by the Japanse military forces, it gave the American troops an edge in communications. That was Lance, and I's hope. Not only did the world not know their language, no one except Simp and Bit could speak it.

In spite of the war and preparations to win it. Lance and I did have time for some personal time. As much as I loved my sisters and as much as they returned that love. I wanted one on one time with Lance. That they were willing to give me that time made me love them even more.

***

The Imperial Palace and the area around it was not the most romantic place in the Imperium. Dad was the first to acknowledge that. "Serina, why don't you and Lance go back to Caribia? I've got a private island that is even more highly protected than the palace. And I've got a secure port right here in my suite. Everything you need is already there, or the staff will get it for you. Plus the staff knows my habits. They are experts at keeping out of sight until they are needed."

"But…" Lance tried to interject.

There is a reason my Dad is the Emperor. "No, buts! I want you somewhere safe so you can relax. It is not that I don't love all the grandchildren that you brought back from the past, but still, I'd love to have a few grandkids that I can enjoy from infant on up."

I was thinking things along the same line. However, Lance was worried about the war. I won. We were on Caribia with the hour.

***

Both Lance and I have talked about what it is like to be on Caribia. It's perfect weather, perfect white sand beaches, Amazing flowers, and plants. Let alone the marine life. Now that all that add in, and all the luxury the Emperor of the known universe is capable of incorporating in a private island, plus staff that was able to pamper us at the same time as they managed to be elusive and invisible. Now combine this with the fact that Simp was able to analyze Beauty's longevity concoction and optimize it so that our body's looked and felt like we were around twenty years old, well is it any wonder that I became pregnant. The details of how that happened, well I'm not going to tell you…

We did visit the main island. Michelle, Lance's old secretary, who had married Jack, Lance's assistant, entered her attack pattern at around Mach 2, before her final run. Closing onto Lance's lips with laser precision. Lance was kissed about as thoroughly as any man has ever been kissed.

Jack knew me and that Lance and I were going to get married. I received a much more sedate welcome hug from him. But when Michelle finished molesting Lance, I received almost as strong of a welcome from her. Most of the embassy gathered round to greet us. Apparently, the story that I was an Imperial Princess had not reached here yet. When Lance reached that part of the story pandemonium reigned for a moment.

***

While it might seem like this is an idle period with nothing happening, you would be wrong. Intelligence was being gathered. Simp was capturing infiltrated Xiǎo Māo daily. Troops were deployed based on a wartime scenario.

Bit and Simp were designing and building smaller attack craft based on the design of our interpretation of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-F of Star Trek fame. Almost as much power as Bit commanded, but designed to be handled by smaller crews, and massively faster than Bit, both in physical speed and computing speed. Using a new process of a virtual port. These ships could form a virtual port built out of fields which propagated at the speed of light ahead of it, then the destroyer would port to the location of the virtual port. This all happened in nanoseconds, thus enabling almost light speed maneuvering. As the ship was mostly made up of fields, and there was only a few dozen crew, the combined solid mass was small enough that this method of space drive worked. Even though the core of this craft was physically small, it took time to construct them as the core processors were assembled almost atom by atom and then even more time was required to transfer the data and programming to them.

Our best intelligence said that it would be between eight and ten years before an invading fleet that was already underway would arrive. Thus while haste was needed, we had time to plan and do things right.

***

Needless to say, my Dad was excited to hear that I was pregnant. But then his breasts were not swelling up like balloons, his tummy did not make him look like a hippo. Nor did he feel sick and draggy all the time. Still, I was almost as excited as he was, at least on those days when I did not feel ill and too tired to even move and if I didn't feel like I was going to fall over from being top heavy. Lance? He has gone through this so many times with my sisters; it was hard to get any sympathy from him.

As with all things in this existence, there is change. And I eventually after nine centuries or was it nine months? Anyway, finally, I delivered (in the usual way) a beautiful (to Lance and me) baby girl who we named Jane in honor of my Dad. Baby Jane was just like sleeping beauty as she grew in grace and beauty, loved by all who met her.

For now, she was a typical baby—short on speech but, all grins and smiles, with a voracious appetite on one end, and endless wiping on both ends. Even with all that, her grandpa and her other mommy's spoiled her.

Dad was insistent that Jane received a neural implant like Lance and I had. And as he was the Emperor, we had no choice but to listen. Our hundred-year voyage back to this time had yielded massive advancements in technology as what else were you going to do trapped in a spaceship for all that time. The top thing that never got old was loving one another. Still, no matter how full of energy you are, you can only do that for so long. Training and learning to work as a team were second. Not all of us on that voyage were martial arts masters. In fact, most of the crew were much more into research, and with Bit to simulate processes for them, they made rapid progress on many fronts.

In fact, but don't tell Simp this, over time Bit's computational ability far exceeded Simps. However, on the flip side, Simp's connections to the universe left Bit in the dust. The faster that Bit became, the faster that he could simulate and generations of improvements happened in days not years.

Jane's implant was based on the new processors that we were using on the new class of destroyers. The computational ability and storage capacity that as an adult she would end up with rivaled that of one of these destroyers. The three of us began living in what would eventually be a three-gee environment. Strength was not the goal so much as it forces you to develop fast reflexes.

***

Living in a palace, unlimited ability to travel. Unlimited ability to purchase. Like wow! Unlimited? I hear you asking? Well effectively. Think about the massive size of the Imperium with thousands of planets being members, each with billions of people. No matter how extravagant I might try to be, at most, it amounted to fractions of a cent per person per year. In fact, the issue was to put more cash back into circulation so that there was enough money to facilitate the trades that happen daily.

If you think about it all money is, is a way to facilitate trades. It might be a trade for your time, but still, you are trading. If there are not enough tokens of trade (money) in circulation, then trade is hindered. The economy can't function and sufferers. Too many symbols of trade create the same issue. The trick is to balance the number of transactions required with the number of trade tokens needed per person. This means that new tokens need to be put into circulation to support a growing population base. So all I was doing was facilitating this by putting tax dollars back into circulation. Oh, the trial and tribulations of an Imperial Princess…