Alicia Jones 3: New Frontier (10 page)

“This is… perfect.”

I smiled but didn’t open my eyes, “Glad you think so.”

My body was too relaxed in the hot tub to move even my
eyelids.  The water was up to my chin as I slouched down and leaned back
my head.  I hadn’t heard much about what was going on, but the talks about
what to do about the Seltan, and our newest enemy, have been a large matter of
speculation on the news programs.  I knew how I hoped they’d go, I found
the Seltan to be honorable, if a bit too stuck on it.

They’d only been enemies of Leira, because Leira had
submitted to the virtual slavery of the Knomen empire, in other words they’d
dishonored themselves.  It was something I could at least understand, even
if it was a bit harsh.  I was pretty sure the Leiran’s wouldn’t even get
that mindset at all.  Admittedly, I only understood it because of certain
fiction television shows although I knew some of Earth’s past societies were
very similar.

Joe said, “I’m glad you are both here for a while, I worry
about you both.  Especially when you go off to fight a battle, or tour
enemy space.”

I was happy my best friend got to have her boyfriend around,
but it made me miss Nathan that much more.  It was all my fault though,
since I was the idiot that fell in love with a soldier.

“I still haven’t decided if I’ll go when the swarm comes
back, if Earth goes I mean.  I guess it isn’t my problem anymore.”

Al said, “Incoming call from Admiral Sergei.”

“Answer audio only.”

The admiral didn’t really need to see us in a hot tub and
bikinis.

Sergei said, “Alicia, the board wants you and Kristi
available to give some answers, apparently Anthony told them you’d gone along
to give a scientist’s point of view, and they have some questions.”

Well, crap.  I guess it was my problem after all. 
Then again, I was a civilian again.  I could say no, but the truth is I
wouldn’t.

“When do they want us?”

He replied, “Tomorrow morning.”

I held back a groan, “Where do I need to be?”

“Usual place in the U.N. complex at nine eastern.”

I wanted to ask why I couldn’t do it from here, but held my
tongue.  Obviously it was politics.  Plus, in person was always
better for me anyway, since I could read people.  I just didn’t want to
move right this moment and it was leaking into my thoughts of tomorrow morning.

“I’ll be there.”

He disconnected.  This should be fun, or so I told
myself.

I was only half awake, since it was only five minutes to
seven, mountain time, as I made my way into the building with my travel mug of
coffee.  I took a sip, that I almost spit out in shock as I walked into
the room, but I somehow managed to swallow it down.  It wasn’t the members
of the USFS board that had shocked me, it was the screen showing several world
leaders on it.

People I’d never needed to talk to before.

Nadia said, “Good morning, take a seat.”

I nodded respectfully at the screen, and then I smiled
gratefully at Nadia as I slid into one of the chairs.  I was wide awake
now, but I still sipped on my coffee as we waited.  A few more people
joined remotely, including Admiral Abramov.  I wanted to complain, why did
Sergei get to not be here?  I had a feeling it would just be Earth people
in this meeting, and not all the treaty holders.

Gerald asked, “Before we get to our questions, I’m
interested on your take on things, what did you think of the Seltan, and the
new enemy?”

I considered that for a moment.

“I believe that for them, honor is paramount above all other
considerations including death.  For what it’s worth, I believe they would
make an excellent ally, as long as we never mislead or deceive them.  As
for the new enemy, I would say we need to help take care of the next group of
attack waves, and then scout them out to determine what we need to attack them
successfully.”

Jonas asked, “Why not just attack, doesn’t fighting them off
tell us what we need to know?”

I shrugged, “Maybe?  But I doubt it.  If we stick
to the bug description, a swarm of insects comes from a hive.  Who knows
how many millions, perhaps billions of ships they have, and do those ships dock
to something?  We know very little.  Do they swarm to establish a new
home because of overcrowding, or do they have a holy mission to eradicate any
life in the universe that isn’t theirs, or are they just having a bad hair day
every nine years?  We don’t know enough.

“We do know they already live in half the galaxy, there are
only four galactic arms, and they own two of them.  Suppose we don’t scan,
and we do attack them, and that drives them crazy enough to break their normal
operation, and they follow us across the void straight back to Earth. 
It’s too great a risk, when we can build a thousand stealth vessels and seed
the galaxy with sensors within a few years.  We have superior technology,
but we need more information to know how much we’ll need to win.”

Nadia asked, “Why would it matter why they’re attacking?”

I held in a sigh, “Because it speaks to how they would react
to an attack.  If they think this is some kind of holy war or mission, not
much will change if we attack them.  However, if this is just a normal
migration when the hive gets too large, and we attack the hive, their response
in that case would be drastically different, they would attack us with
everything.  Perhaps they’d even call for help, and we’d be attacked by
all hives, all at once, from all over the galaxy.

“Obviously this is all speculation, and that last example
was a worst case scenario, but without scouting them with stealth ships to
expand our stealth sensor web first, speculation is all we have, and that’s
ultimately the problem.  We need to define the issue to create a viable
solution, if we try to make the problem what we want it to be, we’ll get
ourselves killed.  I for one would rather not depend on luck.  After
we help destroy the waves we’ll have nine years to prepare and take the war to
them, why hurry when we have time to do it right?”

After that, they asked me what I was doing with my building
capacity.  I explained my thoughts about the platforms, and how I could use
them now, and then sell them later to colonies, and how that would avoid any
issues of payment for the moment.  I could probably sell all the extra
fabricators too.  I didn’t make a similar offer for the stealth ships.

I also illustrated how many swarm ships one of ours could
safely take fire from, and basically all the rest of the ideas and statistics
I’d talked over with Kristi when we were on the Seltan tour.  At that
point I was dismissed so they could rejoin the inter-world discussion about admitting
the Seltan to the treaty.  While it was true anyone was supposed to be
able to join, an old enemy needed to be an exception to that rule.  They
were going to have a vote.

I finally discovered the answer two weeks later from a news
release of all things.  The Seltan were now a part of our treaty, and we
now had a new enemy we’d still be fighting.  The question of course was,
if we’d have enough platforms made.  I didn’t want to discount the other
twenty-three members, but they didn’t have the technological edge we did, and
it wasn’t something we wanted to give up.  Besides, we only had around a
thousand ships, the Seltan had hundreds of times the number we had, and the
rest of our allies had nowhere near what we did.  Selfish?  Perhaps,
but it also put the onus on Earth to really step up and make a big difference
in the coming battle.

It was just a matter of time. 

The fabricators were finished duplicating themselves and
could start making platforms now.  Each fabricator could make one every
two days, so that would be fifteen a month, times a hundred fabricators was
fifteen hundred a month.  If we really had three and a half months left,
we’d have in excess of five thousand platforms.  I believed that would be
a huge difference in lives and ship losses for us and our allies because of our
weapon and shield superiority, they would count more than ten times that many
allied ships.

Murphy’s law struck of course.  It wasn’t Al’s fault
his estimate was off, it probably wasn’t the fault of fickle fate either. 
Regardless, it was only sixteen days later when we received word that the first
swarm wave was approaching the Seltan’s colony system.  Earth sent what we
could, but had to keep some back to protect our solar system, and the Knomen home
system.

It would be despicable for any of the twenty-seven systems
that stayed out of the treaty to attack during such a time, but it would be
shame on us if we didn’t leave anything to defend.  In all, Earth sent a
thousand battle cruisers, and the eight hundred platforms I built were mine to
command, so I sent them all.

That left plenty to defend Earth, all the carriers, the
platforms that Earth bought before I started my enhanced build plan, and the
emplacements.

As for what else had gone on in the interim?  The
colony was getting built by the Americans, and we had twenty ships there as
well, though so far there were no threats rimward, and they were just five
thousand light years away. 

So far we’d mapped out about twelve thousand light years
which was halfway to the rim from Earth, and found a couple of more pre-FTL
societies.  We also found one more planet that would support life with
some terraforming.

That wasn’t bad, with time, we already had three potential
colonies, although two would have to wait for now.

As for the FTL society we ran into, they’d taken in the
probe, but hadn’t called us yet on the communicator.  Who knew when or if
they would.

As far as my own research, it was obvious to me the
limitations were what we were powering.  In other words, our power source
was incredibly powerful, but our shields and weapons although very strong, were
limited by their inability to use more power.  If I tried to pump more
energy into the shields, I would blow the devices that generated them. 
Same with the weapons.

I had to admit so far I hadn’t done more than a halfhearted
effort to design systems that could take the power that we now had
available.  I also had to admit I was a little guilty of what I’d accused
others of, we were so far ahead in those areas it was hard to find a reason to
push that envelope right now.  Nothing else had caught my eye
either.  I did want to understand dark energy better, for I knew that
would make the ultimate in weapons and shields, if dark energy could ever be
manipulated for those purposes.

In short, I was waiting for my interest to strike upon
something new to research, and try to understand.  There was still so much
to learn.

When the time came, at Sergei’s insistence, the fleet went
through first, and I followed with my platforms to the Seltan system.  We
were powerful, but our numbers were few in comparison to the Seltan
fleet.  The other treaty systems managed to send just over four thousand
ships.  It seemed an unimpressive number, but it was also four times more
than they’d ever sent before, with only twenty-three worlds instead of the
original fifty, which was notable.

Ironically, one of my worries would be when our allies saw
just how much more powerful our ships were, this would be the first time they’d
really see the difference in battle.  Would they try to demand we share
our technology for the greater good? 

Our deployment was interesting, we were all on the front,
rows of ships stacked on top of each other like a wall as the swarm came toward
us. 

We were close enough to the system for their emplacements to
support us, and all sixty thousand shield missiles and twenty thousand attack
shuttles were launched.  The missiles and shuttles couldn’t take them out
in one shot, but they could if they doubled and tripled up, and there were
enough of them that it would make a decent impact to the enemy’s numbers.

The enemy dropped out of FTL almost thirty hours away by sub
light speeds.

“On screen please Al, let’s take a look.”

Al brought up the screen, and I heard Kristi gasp.  It
was a true swarm, there was no regimented lines of ships, they twisted among
each other in a cloud of randomness as they moved toward us.  There was so
many we had to rely on sensors to get an idea of the numbers.

“Al how many?”

Al replied, “One million, fifteen thousand, two hundred, and
three.”

Kristi’s voice was tense, “And this is just the first, six
to eight waves like this?”

My voice was a bit tense as well, “Yes, that’s the theory.”

She laughed a little nervously.

Al reported, “Signal coming in from Dral.”

“Open it.”

Dral looked almost cheerful but wasn’t quite smiling, “It is
good to see you friends.  Their tactics are pretty straight forward as
you’ve seen in the sensor data we gave you.  They’ll swarm our fleet until
no more stand against them before moving on into the system.  That is our
job, to stay alive so that doesn’t happen.  This is only the first battle
of several.  Keep an eye on your sensors, when the enemy gets below a
hundred thousand or so, they will start suicide runs, turning their ships into
manned missiles.

“We’ll be starting our missile barrages soon.  Good
luck, Dral out.”

Kristi snorted.

I laughed, “Yeah, that wasn’t much of a pep speech was
it?  More of a good day to die speech.”

Kristi sighed, “Is this really the best tactic?  Can’t
we do anything different than be a wall for them to bang their head against?”

I shook my head, “I considered a few things, but the swarms
target is the system.  If we try to flank them and drag some of them off,
it won’t work.  Our best hope is to destroy as many as we can before they
reach our lines.  I imagine even though they’re hours off, we’ll be
launching missiles soon.”

As if the Dral heard me, thousands of missiles were launched
from the Seltan ships and the emplacements behind us.  It made me a bit
nervous as they streaked through our lines, but I realized they were used to
doing so.  We started our barrage as well, of course it was only from the
ships, the platforms I built only had energy weapons.

“War is such an odd pursuit.”

Kristi nodded, “Coffee break?”

I almost laughed, although Al could toss missiles by
himself, the enemy wouldn’t be in range of our energy weapons for almost
twenty-nine hours, and only about fifteen minutes before we were in their
range, and our allies were in range.  Regardless, until they closed we
would be eating and sleeping, so a coffee break was sounding very
reasonable.  It was just really hard to get out of the command chair when
over a million ships were coming to kill us.

“Fine, let’s go.”

A few hours later, and we’d shot every missile the fleet
had.  I had to assume the Seltan had more held back in storage for the
next wave.  With the fleet we had at ten to one odds, plus the
emplacements, we’d launched around a million missiles with each volley, a
staggering number.  However, the enemy though incomprehensible in some
ways, were not caught off guard, and with over a million ships they were able
to fend the waves of missiles off rather successfully.

We had some impact, they lost almost a full third of their
ships, all before they even came close to firing a shot at our ships.  But
they still faced us at almost seven to one odds.  I had no doubts this
first battle would go to us.  I just wasn’t sure how ugly it would be.

When they reached the range of our plasma cannons, we opened
fire.  With eighteen hundred ships or platforms, we had twenty-eight
thousand turrets, all firing three times a second.  In a perfect world,
that was enough firepower to destroy the seven hundred thousand swarm ships in
a quick eight seconds, long before we were in range of their weapons.

Of course, real life isn’t that easy.  For one, they
were still light minutes away, which meant by the time our shots got there,
they’d had plenty of time to move out of the way.  With the way they
swarmed around each other randomly, it was extremely hard to estimate where
they would end up exactly.  The second issue of course, is it was
impossible to move the turret to aim at three ships every second which meant
larger delays between firing.

Still, a little luck and some very powerful AI’s, and just
the Earth ships cut their fleet in half again before everyone else was able to
open fire, including the enemy.  And not only the allies, the twenty
thousand attack shuttles, and sixty thousand Shield missiles added another
eighty thousand turrets to our numbers.

The rest of the fight was short and brief.  They were
no longer far enough away to dodge something at the speed of light, but then,
neither were we.  The good news, they never reached us to swarm past and
turn around for a second pass.  The bad news is they targeted twenty
thousand different ships with fifteen fighters each before they died.

Fifty of them were against Earth ships or platforms, and
nothing much happened thanks to the new stronger shields.  The other
nineteen thousand nine hundred and fifty however destroyed over a thousand
Shield missiles, six hundred and three attack shuttles, and eight thousand
allied ships, most of them Seltan.  There were also several thousand ships
that were damaged.  We started search and rescue operations right away,
none of us were sure exactly when the next wave would come.

The loss of life was ugly, nasty, and all things
considering, quite light in comparison to how bad it could have been.  I
felt the sadness of it, but I was glad I was no longer in charge.  Perhaps
that was selfish, but at least I didn’t feel like it was my fault. 
However, I did have an idea, better late than never.

“Al, contact Admiral Abramov please.”

“Standby,” he said shortly.

The admiral came on the screen, he looked busy.

“Sorry to bother you, but I had an idea if you have a
moment?”

Sergei frowned, “What is it?”

“Well, we have millions of those gravity missiles, and we know
where the last swarm dropped out of FTL.  Perhaps a trap laid a light year
past that?”

He frowned, “It’s not a bad idea, I’ll talk to Dral about it
and see what he thinks.  What if they monitor each other, it might work
once and not again, or it might backfire and cause the rest of the waves to
gather together.  Who knows how the aliens think.  I just want to
make sure Dral’s people never tried it before.  If the bugs are familiar
they may have systems in place to drop them out of FTL at the first sign of a
missile.  If it does work though, they won’t even get a shot off.”

I nodded, “Thanks Sergei, let me know if I can do anything.”

It wasn’t true that I didn’t feel any guilt, because if we’d
shared our tech no ships would have been destroyed, but then none of the races
have shared tech.  In fact, it’s been a sticking point, and the Knomen’s
forced scans were one of the things all the humanoid races found distasteful to
the extreme.  It would be up to the Earth’s leaders to share.

Still, even just the triple shielding without the dark
energy reactor would have been enough to resist sixteen simultaneous shots from
the enemy’s ships.  Nothing I could do about it, at least, not without
being thrown in jail for treason.

It was close to an hour later, when the Earth ships launched
two thousand gravity missiles each.
 
That
was less than half their inventory, but at two million it was overkill for a
wave with half those numbers.
 
If this
worked, they’d be able to do it over and over again.
 
I was happy the admiral had taken my advice,
it could save us a lot of pain for the rest of the enemy waves if it works.

Kristi looked over at me, “I know this probably isn’t the
best time, but the gravity balls are selling like crazy right now.
 
Apparently your little live demonstration
reached a lot of people.
 
Not only more
for the police, but for fire, search and rescue, special forces in the
military, even the secret service just ordered a bunch and the FBI is making
inquiries.”

I nodded, “I knew they were underutilizing it, and trying to
suppress it, I’m just not sure why.
 
Maybe some civilians will demand its release as well.”

Kristi jumped tracks, “Any idea when the next wave is?”

I shrugged, “Anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days
based on the past.”

Kristi sighed, “Let’s go eat, or something.
 
I’ll go crazy just sitting here waiting.”

I smiled, “Too late for that.”

Kristi glared, “Damn alien,” and got up and left the bridge
with false haughtier.

I giggled, and followed her out.