Chapter 5

The fact that I had the most boring job in the Federation hit me in the face as soon as I got home. I knew it was necessary, but that didn't mean I had to like it. The few disputes that arrived at my desk were easily solved. The only reason I had to deal with them, was that they were between planets. I had yet to see one that couldn't be dealt with in a speedy manner. All of the resolutions seemed to be satisfactory to both parties.

For the most part, I wasn't needed at all. The result, was that I had a lot of free time. This would have been nice, if all of my mates were in the same situation. Unfortunately, some were heads of state, and others had more time consuming positions. I did get to spend quite a bit of time with Star, Angeni, Connie, and Kalia. The retired Queen was with me often. Kalia had no duties at all.

I tried to keep up with all the new technology, but sometimes, it came to me. Such was the case one day, as a few of us were soaking up some rays at the beach. Beth joined us, and she had a friend with her. She was introduced as Andrea, and was lovely. She was very intelligent, as well as beautiful. After a while, Beth couldn't stand it any more, and cracked up.

"I didn't mention Andrea's last name, did I?", she chuckled. "It's Droid. Andrea is the first humanoid AI Android. I've been working on her for over a year. What do you think?"

It took a while for us to wrap our minds around this. None of us had even suspected Andrea was anything but human. Not only was she 'Anatomically correct', her speech patterns and mannerisms were undeniably human.

The fact that she was a construct didn't cause us to treat her that way. She was so much like us, that it would have been unthinkable. We continued to include her in our conversation, and she was an eager participant. I even asked her to describe how she did it, instead of Beth.

"It's quite easy", she explained. "I am an AI, and as such, can learn like a human. In addition, I can communicate with the larger artificial intelligences to get data I do not presently contain. I'm afraid I just don't have the data storage capabilities of the larger units."

"She's amazing!", Beth gushed. "Andrea is now my chief assistant researcher. Since she became functional, she has saved me from wasting countless hours chasing bad ideas. A lot of them had been tried before, and failed. She was able to point this out, and in many cases, suggest alternatives."

"Why did you decide to make her a pretty girl, instead of a man?", I asked.

"I wouldn't want you to get jealous, dear", she retorted with a grin. "I almost made the first as a copy of you, but I changed my mind. I have to get SOME work done, after all. As you can see, Andrea has all the parts. What you may not realize, is that they all work, too. If I had made a Matt Junior, I'd have to test it out to see if he was as durable as you."

While the girls discussed the implications of this, my mind was on another track. Finally, they wound down, and I passed on my thoughts.

"I know how dangerous you ladies believe it is, but I've been thinking. I'd like to take all of my mates on a little trip in the new ship. The problem is that it takes more than seventeen people to crew it. Is there any way we could make up the additional members by adding Andrea, and more like her?"

"What makes you think anyone would let us go wandering off on our own?", Connie asked. "As nice as that sounds, they'd have a coronary. If I recall correctly, it was your orders that every vessel had to have an escort. The Halim are still out there, you know."

"And that means what, to me?", I retorted. "You've seen the new stuff in action, do you think those little gray fuckers pose a serious threat? Besides, there aren't many advantages to having my position. Making my own rules is the best one there is. Technically, I don't have a boss."

"He has a point", agreed Beth. "I know I wouldn't mind getting out of the lab for a while. Besides, it would be a great test of our new friend's capabilities. Kind of a field trial. Count me in!"

Kalia, Connie, and Sharon all signed on, as well. I was pretty sure everyone else would, too. The problem was, that Rhonda, Joan, Tina, Angel, and Angeni, were still on Earth. Since we didn't have anything better to do, we decided to pitch in and help Beth and Andrea make some additional crew members. When we were done, we'd go pick up our other mates.

The construction was amazing, even if I was relegated to a glorified 'gopher'. I did get to install a few components, eventually. I had to remind Beth of how our adventure all began a few times, though. Our first real weapon had been my laser, after all. I wasn't completely inept!

Things got easier as we went along. As each unit was brought on line, we gained two more hands. In three weeks, twenty-four new androids were created. Another week was spent in testing, and then we were ready to go.

We joined the rest of our mates in Stockholm, and performed one last time. I couldn't resist a few changes in the song list. All of my mates were on stage with the Fluffernutters, wearing leather outfits. The final three songs had the crowd going nuts.

The first one was 'Angel is a Centerfold'. As we hit the opening chords, Angel ripped her leathers off, revealing a very brief bikini. Her dancing caused every male tongue in the audience to hit the floor.

That was followed with 'Simply Irresistible', and the rest of my wives revealed identical outfits. It was intended as a parody of the old Robert Palmer video, but the reaction wasn't laughter!

The last one did get a chuckle or two. I was the target of 'Backfield in Motion'. Joan did the lead, with a large chorus of lovely backup singers. After the first few words, the crowd was singing along. I just hammed it up, by acting like I was flirting with them.

We might have been the opening act, but we had to do three encores. Joan finally told the crowd that we would join 'Heat' on the stage, as backup singers.

After the concert, we spent the evening catching the Bards up on the latest activities. They were intrigued about the 'Droids, and had a question. Could they sing?

Beth told them that she was sure that they could, provided they were programmed accordingly. The next concert was scheduled for Oslo, four days from then. Those four days were spent on the ship, programming. When we were done, the Bards were satisfied, and the rest of us were amazed. Perfect harmony was a rare accomplishment, and the three 'droids were the best we had ever heard. After delivering the new, improved, group to their next gig, we departed.

The new ship was great, but a bit disconcerting. I couldn't tell if it should be described as a warship, or a yacht. The capabilities it had, included both. A full weapons suite was included, but it had all the amenities of home. Not many staterooms on a military class vessel had hot tubs and a pool, along with a gourmet kitchen. We had replicators as well, but seldom used them.

We set out to 'see what we could see', heading for parts of the universe that we hadn't visited yet. We were confident in our new ship, but not foolhardy. We traveled with our shields up, and fully cloaked. The trick to surviving most battles is seeing trouble, before it sees you. This, once again, proved to be true.

A week after entering uncharted space, we stumbled upon a one-sided battle. It was obvious that the aggressors were the Halim. They had three ships surrounding what appeared to be a freighter. I say appeared, because the design was strange to us. The configuration had even the AI stumped. Since the Halim were involved, we decided to choose a side. The choice was obvious, and so was the weapon to use.

I had Connie target the engines of two Halim ships, and use the new 'Needle Gun'. Powered by Dark Matter, it would easily penetrate any shield but one composed of the same substance. Two shots put those out of the fight, or so we thought. The Halim proved their stupidity once more, and continued to fire on the freighter. Left with no choice, we targeted the bridges next. That seemed to do the trick.

We had left the other Halim ship alone for a reason. They had no idea where the shots had come from, and bolted. They were easy to follow, up to a point. That was when they disappeared into something I had only heard of in science fiction stories.

Wormholes had been talked about, and some even agreed that they might exist. This was the first encounter we had experienced, though. There wasn't any discussion involved on following any further. We just didn't know enough about this situation. If it was a natural phenomenon, we would probably be OK, but if the Halim somehow could create the things, we could be screwed very quickly. We needed to do some research.

The first step was to contact our old friend, professor Hawking. He immediately arranged to join us in his research vessel. This one was equipped much as ours had been, albeit with a fully humanoid crew. During the week it took him to arrive, we stayed on station. We didn't just relax, however. By the time he arrived, we had taken every reading we could imagine.

That made his trip a waste of time, since that had been his objective. We had even sent a cloaked probe through the wormhole. This obtained data about the trip, as well as what lay on the other side. We had theories about it, but they seemed too strange to believe. At least until Stephen agreed with them.

"It has to be", he explained. "What is on the other side of this wormhole, is a completely different universe! None of the data conforms to anything we know about ours. This is amazing! If we can somehow contrive a way to create these artificially, travel to any known location would be almost instantaneous! I have to get back to my lab, and get to work on this, right away.

We discussed returning with him, but decided against it. The freighter that had been attacked weighed on our minds. It had been pretty beat up, but functional, when we had left it. We figured that they would be alright, but were curious. There was another space-capable species in the neighborhood, and we wanted to find out what they were like.

When we got to the site of the skirmish, we discovered that they were not into accepting Halim surrender. Either that, or the Halim had used the self-destruct. The debris field made the attackers fate obvious, in either case.

Tracking them wasn't very difficult. The propulsion system they used was either leaking, or left a clear trail. We did have to reduce our speed considerably, to follow them. This meant we had a lot of free time, and I began to almost appreciate the fact that all of my mates weren't usually in the same place at the same time.

Sixteen horny women was more than any being can handle, no matter how enhanced they were. By the time we reached our destination, my dick was in severe need of some rest. It was almost worse than that.

For some reason, Beth had gotten the idea that Andrea should experience sex. "We programmed them to be naturally curious", she had explained, "and they're wondering what all the excitement is about. They want one of them to learn, and share the data."

I hadn't realized just how 'anatomically correct' she had designed them. They had all the same equipment, and it was all functional. She had even included pleasure sensors! I managed to put it off, for now. The idea of having sex with an android was just too weird, even for me!

We knew that simply barging in with some 'Take me to your leader' shit wouldn't be a good idea, especially since the Halim had made such a bad impression on them. We parked in orbit around the planet, sent a message to Vanir, and began to gather data.

I was initially worried about them. The first thing we discovered was that they had television. Hopefully, it hadn't degraded their intelligence too much, yet. It gave us some benefit, so it wasn't all bad. Their programming covered a broad spectrum, from mindless to educational. The language was different, of course, but the AI was able to provide translation after studying the problem for a couple of days.

Appearance wise, they weren't too much of a shock. They were relatively humanoid, and were all amazingly similar. They all were a golden tan in color, and on average, stood about six foot-four. They were mostly thin, as well as tall. The fact that their gravity was roughly three-fourths of Earth's probably accounted for this.

Their atmosphere was very similar to that of Vanir, and we would have no trouble breathing on the surface. A search of common diseases and maladies was also done. We weren't worried on our side, but certainly didn't wish to inflict anything on them. We made a startling discovery in that area. In medicine, at least, they were just as advanced as we were.

One fact stood out among all others. They had one world government, and seemed to be at peace. Their planet was named 'Forthan', and they had been space capable for over a hundred Earth years. We found out much more, when the AI discovered their version of the internet. Geography, history, and customs, were studied. We hoped to deduce the best way to approach them, by doing this.

The drive systems on the ships at their orbiting stations seemed to be powered by some sort of nuclear energy. From the data we gathered, it was crude (by our standards), but effective. They could only manage sub-light speeds, which explained us not discovering them until our visit to the system. We could have found out more by hacking into their system, but that seemed to be rude. We didn't want to piss them off.