After we passed it, he spoke. "We've just traveled farther than any Earth humans. At least the ones that weren't kidnapped by aliens."
"Yeah," I replied. "Weird. I hope this is going to be the way it goes from now on. I want humans to be spacefaring. I always have, ever since I was a kid. I wanted to be out here. If we can save the Union, or maybe just ourselves, maybe that has a chance of happening.”
"I believe in us,” Marty said. “We can do it—humans that is. Look what you've already done. You saved Pax. You rescued Regar and Kiril. Hell, I'd still be working for my uncle if it wasn't for you. If I haven't said it already—thanks, man."
"You're welcome. Honestly, I'm really glad you're here. Brick's great and all, but it's not the same. When I was on that station all by myself, it was lonely. I wish I'd had a buddy there. Hell, it's been a while since I had one. It's good to have friends again."
"Speaking of which, when we get back let's get some more of my guys involved. Theoden and a couple of the other True Believers could really help us."
I thought about what he was asking. It made sense, honestly. It was still a small group of us, but it couldn't remain so forever. I thought of all the science fiction books I'd read, where a small group of plucky friends defends the Earth from alien invaders. Even in those novels, eventually they had to get the normal people of Earth involved. We'd have to do that too. There was no way we could do all this on our own.
"You're right. We'll bring him in, and anybody else who's trustworthy, when we get back. We need the help."
"What are we going to do about the Greys?" Marty asked. "We just got our asses kicked."
"Listen, I had some plans before today but they didn't involve having to deal with a different faction of hostile aliens. But really, it doesn't change that much. We just won't be able to bully them like we could have done with the US government."
"Let's hear this plan, then."
"You've seen the movies, same as me. We're not superheroes. Or, maybe we are, but there needs to be more of us. We need to get humans fighting for their own existence."
"And the Greys?" Marty asked.
"They're just another faction we have to deal with. Think about it like this—when we go public the US government is going to come down on us hard. They'll try to take our tech, capture us, send us an endless parade of Feds looking to infiltrate our organization, right?"
"That, and maybe they'll send tanks and troops. Attack helicopters. Cruise missiles."
I shook my head. "I'm not worried about any of that. If we have time to set up our defenses the government can't touch us. We can actually bully them, since they can't hurt us, and we can do whatever we want to them. It might take a while but they'll back off when they realize they can't fuck with us. Infiltration is a separate problem."
"And the Greys?"
"They're another group of people with different resources. They're not monsters like the Ferals; they've got goals. We just don't know what they are. We've got a common enemy, and we can use that. We'll need to make them take us seriously enough to back off. Maybe their losses on that raid will have done that."
"For the sake of argument, let's say you get everybody to back off. Then what?" Marty asked, leaning forward in his chair.
"We need to get Pax fully up and running. Get it cranking out weapons and ships for the defense of Earth."
"That's not going to work," Marty replied.
"What do you mean?"
"We can bootstrap with Pax, but really what we need to do is get a Union tech manufacturing base here in Sol. Massive orbital factories, mining operations out in the asteroid belt, that sort of thing. Pax is great and all but it's on the other side of a gate. We can't supply all of Earth through that gate, and we don't even have one right now."
It was obvious to me once Marty had said it. Of course we couldn't supply Earth solely with Pax. Even if we could it would be dumb to do so. It would take way too long to get up to speed.
"You're right. I don't know why I didn't think of that. We need a plan. We need to figure out the most efficient way to get Earth up and running with Union tech and manufacturing."
"About that," Marty said. "If we bring the seeds of a Union manufacturing base through the gate and set it up, what happens if we lose control of it? The Greys take it from us, or our government does? I can only imagine the stupid shit those idiots in DC would do if it suddenly had an insurmountable tech advantage over the rest of the world. If the aliens take it all bets are off."
I admitted to myself that he sounded correct. Politicians were a vile lot, and my experience with the Greys hadn't been that positive so far either.
"What can we do though? We are going to need to Induct people," I said.
"I'm remembering a science fiction book series I read once. It wasn't anything like what's happening now, but the gist of it was the heroes got ahold of alien tech and they didn't trust the government. So they set up their own space-based government and essentially cut Earth's governments out completely. They'd recruit people from Earth, but they wouldn't give any of the tech to the governments of Earth. I can't remember what the series was called, but it was great."
It itched at my brain for a moment, the plot sounding familiar. "Yeah, I think I've read those. They called the new government the solar union, something like that?"
Marty nodded. "Anyway, if we go
