The next few weeks were hell for the Aldebaran family.
The reason being that Alex had officially taken up the post of researching the alien species about half a month after her return to the colonies.
Truthfully, Alex didn't even need to do anything to know about the aliens as she inherently had all of the information in her mind already. That was kind of the only reason Nile allowed her to work in the first place, with him visiting every half-an-hour or so despite his own busy schedule of taking over his post as a leader in the military.
Her process of "researching" was to simply use appropriate materials to pry open the armor and experiment the hardness levels. She also had to take samples of the acidic blood.
As for the living samples, she mainly gaged their intelligence and cognitive thinking skills. This was so that they as humans could experiment ways to control the alien race.
Well, since she was the Queen Mother, she didn't really need to do this but it was one of the requirements in the experimentation bullet list.
And since it was a task she had to complete, Alex just went with the flow.
The results of her experiments were fruitful in that she was able to formally ally herself with the Fomalhaut family to provide new materials for armor and mechs. Yes, the armor of the aliens were reproduced although with less quality but they were lighter than malunimium and much more durable as well. They also found ways to make use of the acidic blood for weaponry like bombs and a new method to smelt harder materials.
All in all, the whole process went so smoothly that Alex herself gained a lot of fame as a competent researcher along with her small team of nameless researchers.
Since Alex had always been kept in the dark, nobody knew of her until she took up the recent job so it was kind of an instant fame situation.
But, since she was married to Nile, her last name was known to be Betelgeuse so many people had speculations as their marriage hadn't been made public yet.
Many believed that she was a distant relative, while others thought she was a hidden daughter.
Of course, those who were more intelligent noticed she had the traits of the Aldebaran family, and she was even in the science profession like those in the family which only became more fuel for thought.
The fact that she held the Betelgeuse name was a confusing thing to almost everyone who wasn't aware of her relationship with Nile.
Only the upper-class society who were present at the funeral were aware of the relationship but feared the might of the Betelgeuse family too much to speak out.
But overall, her name was held in high esteem as the one who was responsible for all of the recently released gear and technology.
Even if it was a futuristic society, with the knowledge of the basic makeup of the technology, it was pretty easy for Alex to integrate the materials into the make.
It was even more of a shocker when she delved into space ring technology and created a mass quantity of space rings. It was only feasible because she had Nile, Zero, and 001 to help. Nile was responsible for somehow getting his hands on the wormholes, while Zero and 001 simulated various methods internally to find the most efficient one to create space rings for mass usage.
They even managed to separate the wormhole so that each space ring wouldn't have a shared space in order to avoid robbery.
Well, in the end, let's just say that Zero and 001 did most of the work, while Nile did the manual labor and Alex reaped all the benefits as always without having to do too much aside from proposing the idea in the first place.
Of course, she herself would have gladly gone to retrieve the wormholes as that seemed much more entertaining than holing up at home or in the lab waiting for Nile to return but the man refused to let her travel on the high-speed spacecraft because of the adverse effects it would undoubtedly have on the baby.
While Alex understood, it was still depressing that she couldn't have any fun on the mechs even though they were all around her.
Back to the Aldebaran family, the head was forced to watch as the daughter he discarded gained more and more fame while taking over his family business without relating it back to himself.
Compared with his other daughter who the job should have initially gone to, he only got more and more disappointed and upset at Alice's incompetence. In the end, he vented by ignoring both Alice and his old lover.
It didn't take long for the secretary to figure out that the seemingly romantic man was extremely fickle. As she had just given birth she couldn't keep him company so he instead openly played around with the maids and other female researchers under him at the company.
But unlike the mistress, the secretary didn't care as long as her son remained his priority.
The Aldebaran family would be the death of itself with the two opposing forces. Nature would play its course and eventually the family would collase.
Well, that's how it would have played out if there were no outside factors. Unfortunately, as Alex had so much free time while her man was busying about she took it up for herself to speed up the crazy family's demise.
Her own research facility was provided by the Betelgeuse parents and Nile some time ago as a form of dowry or whatever. In the end, she decided that it wasn't enough and proposed to take more from the Aldebaran family's own labs. After all, the Aldebarans weren't making any progress in their projects while she was very, very efficient.
Left with no room for objection or argument, over ninety-percent of the Aldebaran research labs went directly to Alex, leaving the head looking as if he had aged over twenty years in the past three weeks.
Alice was barely able to keep the remaining ten percent to herself. It was all through her own efforts, too, so honestly the head should have thanked her for being able to retain any of their land at all.
Actually, Alex deliberately left the Aldebaran some labs so that she could plant some evidence against them to officially end the glory of the Aldebaran family.
Sure enough, not even a month later military officials were knocking on their doors with a search warrant. Apparently they had stolen classified research materials from Alex's lab.
It was also then that Alex decided to reveal her connection with the family of scientists to the public, throwing out how much she had suffered in their hands and now they were trying to take the fruits of her efforts.
By using their connections, Alex and Nile were able to imprison the head, Alice, and the mistress for life while the secretary ended up jumping ship. She left the Aldebaran family along with her son to raise on her own and was actually never heard from again.
To the public and even high society, Nile was the one who had rescued Alex from the clutches of the evil family and she was probably the only one worthy of standing together with him with such a bright mind and harsh past. She also had the support of the Fomalhaut family and even the Betelgeuse parents so who could actually denounce her at that point?
Really, the people approved of their relationship because Nile had allegedly rescued Alex and it was only right that the beauty would end up with the hero after being saved by said hero.
Also, she brought them all such great gains like the space rings, new gear, armor, and she improved their holographic technology by leaps and bounds.
While Zero and 001 did help with the space rings, Alex was bored and ended up innovating the rest so she wasn't wrongly staking claim over others hard work.
The fall of the Aldebaran house took no longer than two and a half months and by the time they were all sent away to prison, Alex was already almost four months pregnant and her bump was finally starting to become more prominent.
Only after the business with that family was taken care of did Alex allow Nile to take her for her next checkup.
She was excited, since all of their obstacles and her tasks had been taken care of more or less, but she was also dreading that there was nothing else that could occupy her attention for the next few months as even her husband had to take care of his own tasks and responsibilities. Of course, they spent many nights together but those were only nights. She was so bored during the day ah!
But all of her attention was soon taken when the doctor came back with her ultrasound pictures.
"Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Betelgeuse! It's a boy!"