He hesitated, noticeably. “We’ve also had literally thousands of requests for server space,” he continued. “As the alien servers are capable of holding billions upon billions of terabytes, this isn’t a problem. But it’s raised a whole new problem — two of them, in fact.”
Kevin smirked. “How many of those requests come from pornographic sites?”
“I’m shocked you could imagine using the internet for porn,” Wilhelm said. He looked down at the deck, irked. “Half of them, as it happens.”
Kevin’s smirk grew wider. “We could have some fun sampling it.”
Steve had a more practical concern. “Is this likely to prove a problem?”
“We have become, to all intents and purposes, a data haven,” Wilhelm said. “Quite apart from the porn, what happens when someone stores criminal or terrorist information on our servers?”
He shrugged. “I’ve copied the user guidelines from the servers I used to run in Switzerland,” he added. “Child pornography is completely banned. All other pornographic material is to be stored in one particular subset of the servers, so they can be excluded from search results fairly easily. Some of what we’ve been offered is… sickening.”
Steve wasn’t surprised. He’d served in Iraq and seen Iraqi businessmen offering American and British soldiers pornography that would have been shocking in America, let alone in what was meant to be a strictly Islamic country. There hadn’t been anything remotely tasteful about it, insofar as porn could ever be tasteful. He’d never been sure if the Iraqis genuinely did like watching men having sex with animals or if someone was trying to sneer at the outsiders by selling them disgusting porn.
“Criminal operations — and I include mass spamming in this — and terrorist operations are completely banned,” Wilhelm added. “I’d prefer not to get into a legal tussle over what defines a criminal act, particularly as we don’t have a working legal code yet, so everyone who sets up a website on one of our servers has to accept the user guidelines. Anyone who breaks them afterwards can get a hammer dropped on him.”
“Good work,” Steve said. “What else do we need to know?”
“There are millions of requests for lunar accommodation, if not citizenship,” Wilhelm said. “I’ve had to hire new staff just to work my way through them. So far, anyone who might be useful to help build the colony has been forwarded to Charles, while everyone else is being examined on a case-by-case basis. We’ve got several hundred requests from authors who wish to live on the moon and work there — and they can, as long as they have access to the internet. Once we have the accommodation blocks up and running…”
“Quarters won’t be very nice, at least for a few years,” Kevin commented.
Wilhelm shrugged. “I don’t think that matters,” he countered. “They want to be part of something great. And they also want to get their foot in on the ground floor.”
He smiled. “Speaking of which, we have several hundred thousand requests for tours of the Apollo landing sites,” he added. “If we charged them each ten thousand dollars, we’d have much more cash to spend on Earth. Hell, give us a few months and we would probably drag the world economy back out of the dumps.”
Steve understood. He hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to go take a look at where Neil Armstrong had set foot on the lunar surface either. The human tech looked primitive, compared to the technology they’d captured from the Horde, but it had been built without alien assistance. That, according to the databanks, wasn’t entirely common in the galaxy. A large number of races had bought or stolen spacefaring technology from other races. Not all of them had mastered it for themselves.
Us too, I suppose, he thought. But we will figure out how the technology works and how to improve it.
“Keep working on it,” he said. “Maybe we can detail a shuttle to transporting tourists to the moon.”
“We should,” Wilhelm said. “We need ready cash, Steve. Right now, we don’t have as much as we will need in the future.”
Steve rolled his eyes. By any standards, his government was the most powerful one in the entire solar system. But they were also among the poorest, at least for the moment.
“Kevin, I want you to work on Captain Perry,” he said. They’d renamed one of the captured starships, as its original name sounded thoroughly absurd to human ears. “Ideally, I want you ready to depart within the week.”
“I understand,” Kevin said. He sounded both excited and terrified. Steve couldn’t blame him. Neil Armstrong had stepped onto the moon, but Kevin would be flying well outside the edges of the solar system. “I won’t let you down.”
“Just remember that you’re representing humanity,” Steve warned. “Don’t let any of us down.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Captain Perry, Earth Orbit
“You don’t look a bit like Captain Kirk,” Carolyn Harper said.
Kevin rolled his eyes. A week of hard labour had cleaned out most of the starship and allowed the human crew to move in, leaving them all tired and irritable. Edward Romford and his men would provide a security team, but Carolyn and her fellow scientists had their own role to play. If they were lucky, they might be able to understand the theoretical basis of the alien FTL drive and then start working out how to duplicate it.
“That’s good to hear,” he said. “Who do I look like?”
Carolyn considered him for a long moment. “Truthfully, I’d be hard put to say just who you looked like,” she said, finally. “That fake Native American from Voyager?”
“Thank you,” Kevin said, crossly. He’d only watched a handful of Voyager episodes, the ones that had featured the Borg. Discovering that alien technology could easily create something like the Borg Collective had led to a few sleepless nights. “I don’t want to act like him.”
He snorted, then pretended to examine Carolyn. “You look like…”
“Shut up,” Carolyn said, without heat. “I’m not the one playing starship commander.”
Kevin had to smile. Carolyn looked, in no particular order, young, pretty and nerdy. Her blonde hair was tied up in a shapeless bun, but he had the distinct impression that she would clean up nicely if she ever let her hair down. But from what he’d read of her file, she’d probably deliberately cultivated the nerdy look to ensure she was taken seriously at her former company. Like most of the others, she’d had one look at the alien technology and practically begged to join the team. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.
“I suppose,” he said. Perhaps, during the month they would be spending in transit, he would make a pass at her, just to see how she responded. Or maybe it would be unprofessional. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have plenty of other entertainments. “But you’re playing Mr. Spock.”
The banter came to an end as Commander Rodney Jackson entered the bridge. He was a Royal Navy submarine commander, recently retired after thirty years in the navy. Kevin, looking for someone with experience of long voyages in completely isolated ships, had snapped him up like a shot. Once Jackson had checked with the British Government, he’d accepted the post of XO without hesitation. It too was the opportunity of a lifetime.
“We have everything stowed onboard, sir,” he said. If he resented reporting to someone who wasn’t even a naval officer he kept it to himself. Like most submariners Kevin had met, he was short, stocky and permanently calm. “And the starship appears ready for departure.”