Blue Star Enterprises

LOCATION: UNITED EARTH COUNCIL HEADQUARTERS

SYSTEM: SOL

DATE: 2403

"Do you know what this emergency session is about?" Frank Young asked in concern as he grabbed his suit jacket from his Vice Councilor and threw it on before hurrying toward the door. He was new to the council position for the North American Alliance, but hardly new to politics. Still, in his decade of work within the ten-nation alliance that included the entirety of North America down through Panama, the UEC had only ever called one emergency session, and that had come a few years ago after Harlow's initial attack.

The pair left his office and headed down the hallway.

"The Chairman from Gravitation Solutions arrived a few days ago. He apparently wants to discuss some things," Nayzeth spoke as he walked beside him.

"Now?" Frank asked in surprise. "The Council, STO, and even the corporations have been leaning on them since before I can remember, and they never budged. What changed?"

Vice Councilor Coronado shrugged. "Perhaps they finally realize their insistence on remaining neutral hurts humanity as a whole."

Frank couldn't help but snort at his compatriot's joke. "We both know that isn't true, or they would have picked a planet much more suitable to that goal. Earth might be the cradle of humanity, but our prestige isn't nearly what it once was, not since the vast majority of the rich and powerful people ran off with our best and brightest to populate the stars."

Nayzeth sighed. "You should let that grudge go, my friend. That happened long before either of us was born. Be happy that they left instead. It allowed those who remained to finally claw back some freedoms and repair the damage left behind by centuries of greed and neglect."

"Greed and neglect, which are still rampant among the STO even now," Frank responded acidly. "The whole point of the STO's creation was to try and curb that, but the corporations found a way to twist even that venerable institution to their ends."

It was Nayzeth's time to snort in amusement. "To pretend that the STO was anything other than a control mechanism is to deny history, my friend. While I agree that the corporations and nobility have far too much sway, the STO isn't lost quite yet. If Chairman Rush truly is here to discuss opening a branch, it might just be the leverage Earth needs to finally regain some control within the STO."

The pair paused outside a thick mahogany door. "I hope you are right, Nayzeth, but I will not believe it until I see it."

Frank pushed open the door only to be assaulted by a clamor of shouts and bickering as the other councilors tried to get their points across. He sighed internally. Some things never changed.

The pair took their seats only moments before a gavel struck down multiple times from the speaker's podium. "Order!" the European Union delegate, and current Speaker of the House, said in her heavily French-accented English.

The room took time to settle, and Frank used the opportunity to glance at the other groups. The EU was not the largest by population, but it still had more people than the NAA. The NAA's lack of population had to do in part with his previous disagreement with Nayzeth, as well as a series of very violent resource wars that had broken out between the old United States and Mexico, which had resulted in tens of millions being killed in each conflict.

The EU wasn't spared from those pre-FTL resource wars, but they had come to a ceasefire with India long before their conflict escalated to the level of the North American one. It helped that they had a mutual enemy to wage war against. China and Russia had been the instigating factor for the creation of the Sino-Russian Coalition back then, and their alliance frightened the local powers into cooperation.

No nuclear weapons had been exchanged thanks to a global nuclear disarmament agreement in 2060, but the fighting had been bloody nonetheless and had left a lot of old grudges behind.

That was part of the reason that the Coalition formed in opposition to the STO once humanity expanded into the stars. They weren't linked to the still-existing Sino-Russian Coalition in any way, but some people still blamed those countries for the war a few decades ago.

Frank glanced over at the SRC representatives. They had been part of the group shouting when he arrived. A few members from Africa were also shouting, but that was nothing new for them. Africa had the most council members out of any country within the EUC because even now, none of those countries could come together to form a voting bloc, which always set those member nations off.

When order was finally restored to the room, the translators got to work. While most could probably speak Solarian English well enough thanks to the STO mandate to use that as the primary language for all space travel, not everyone was a fan of the perceived Western imperialism. As far as Frank knew, the reason it had been chosen was simply because more people spoke it than any other language at the time, even though the majority of the STO's founding populace was Indian in origin.

"Now that everyone is settled, we can begin," the Speaker, Liora Vaillant, stated. "I understand an emergency council meeting is unorthodox, but we needed to meet to discuss an important matter."

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"Quit beating around the bush," the councilor from Australia demanded. "What does Chairman Rush want?"

A chorus of agreement rose from the gathered members, Frank was among those.

You could practically see the annoyance on the woman's face as her big reveal had been ruined.

"Chairman Rush has flown to Earth to discuss the possibility of setting up a secondary headquarters somewhere on the planet."

If the room had been chaotic before Frank arrived, it exploded into mayhem at those words. He heard councilors shouting all sorts of ridiculous concessions to try and get Rush to agree to set up shop within their country.

It was ridiculous because the man wasn't even there to hear any of their proposals. He doubted the Speaker would be inclined to forward them either, considering she would want the EU to benefit from such an arrangement.

"Order!" she yelled, banging the gavel down again. "Rush hasn't agreed to anything concrete, he has only stated he is considering it. He did, however, mention a good friend of his will be visiting the Council in a few days and that we should show them the utmost respect."

Frank was glad he wasn't the only person with a confused look on his face at that news.

Thankfully, someone else asked the question that was on everyone's mind. "Who?"

***

"I look ridiculous," Alexander stated to nobody in particular.

In an effort to look less threatening and more businesslike when he went to meet the UEC, he had printed himself something to wear. It was essentially just a colored sheet at the moment.

Black on black would have looked a bit odd, so he went with a blue and white-colored outfit to match the BSE colors and added a holographic red tie around the neck of his avatar to make it look presentable.

The suit effectively covered most of his body, rendering a lot of his vision obscured, but not completely blocked. The material he had chosen was sheer enough to see through, allowing him to still see general shapes outside of the uncovered top portion.

Yulia entered their cabin and burst out laughing, confirming his fears.

"You keep that up and I'll make you sit in on these boring meetings with me while wearing a pink dress."

"You wouldn't dare," she gasped.

Alexander would never do that, but she didn't need to know that. "Instead of laughing, how about you help me improve my outfit so I don't look so stupid?"

Yulia nodded in agreement, and while she had no experience tailoring, she still helped him design something that didn't look awful. It still wasn't great, but it was infinitely better than what he had been planning on wearing. He doubted he would ever look great in clothes, no matter how much effort he put into them. He just didn't have the figure for them. Despite the fact that he had two arms and two legs, his body wasn't really designed with human dress in mind.

What they ended up with was a sort of tunic. He would have added armholes, but it was impossible to fit his arms through as he didn't have shoulder blades, and adding buttons to the front didn't really match the whole aesthetic without making his outline look weird.

It was already weird, but he was trying to reduce that, not highlight it.

The loose tunic was gathered at his waist and secured with his utility belt, along with the new pants he wore.

Alexander had stuck with the blue and white BSE colors, but the white was now in the trim for both the tunic and pants. He included his captain's insignia, similar to how the STO Navy did theirs. The last thing he included was an embroidered polearm in white over the area where a heart would normally be to represent his position within the Asgardian Union. He would have brought the weapon, which was hanging on the wall behind him, but he somehow doubted the UEC would allow him to carry it inside.

"Well, how do I look?" he asked Yulia.

She shrugged. "I don't understand why you can't just go like you normally do. Did you dress up when you visited Asgard?"

He hadn't, but that was mostly because he wanted to intimidate the Asgardians back then. It hadn't worked; if anything, it only encouraged Katalynn to test him. Now he needed to look professional. "Appearances mostly," he replied.

"Sounds annoying," Yulia stated. "Remind me never to take up politics."

Alexander smiled in response to her comment. He wished he were as unencumbered with responsibility as his teenage daughter.

His comm beeped a moment later with his XO's voice. "Captain, the Lagertha is ready to depart to the surface."

He picked up the comm and strapped it to his wrist before responding. "Let her know I'm heading to the shuttle now."

They were docked at NA-1, one of Earth's three orbital elevators. They could take that down to the surface, but that would take hours. Instead, he was going to take the shuttle.

Yulia wished him luck before he departed. Hopefully, he wouldn't need it.

It didn't take long to arrive at the Valkyrie's dock. The Earth-based orbital elevators didn't have hangars as they had been built long before anyone thought of making stations large enough to house entire ships inside.

As he flew past the lighted exterior, he could see signs pointing to the age of the structure. Welds that showed where docking airlocks were replaced to accommodate larger and more modern vessels. Patches on the exterior that had never been painted over, and other such repairs. The biggest tell was probably the lack of gravity plating aboard the space portion of the elevator.

The fact that it was still standing after hundreds of years was a testament to human ingenuity, though.

He soon docked on the opposite side of Valkyrie, and Katalynn stepped aboard the shuttle with her guards.

Much like Alexander's, hers were fully decked out in the new armor and with the new guns. It hadn't taken him long to get her and her people up to speed on the new gear or print it.

He was glad he brought extra field generators with him, as he didn't have the infrastructure to replicate those aboard the ship. He could build the machines to do so, but that would have meant stopping to collect the necessary materials, and they didn't have time for that.

The only difference between Alexander's guards, Fenrik and Rokar, and Katalynn's was the color of their armor. His people were wearing BSE colors, and Katalynn's were wearing the Asgardian ones.

The black with red highlights certainly left an impression.

Much like her people, Katalynn was wearing a black outfit with red piping. It didn't differ much from her standard clothing except it sported the Asgardian crest and a much more impressive-looking insignia to match his, only done in red.

They had agreed to have their uniforms look similar to show they were allied. Surprisingly, the request had been her idea.

She looked him over for a moment before stopping on his avatar. "It could be worse," she stated.

"Trust me, it was. Yulia helped me fix it."

Katalynn nodded. "I will have to thank her later." She made her way past him to the copilot seat and strapped herself in.

Taking the hint, Alexander took his seat and detached the shuttle from Valkyrie to decelerate toward the surface.