Alicia Jones 3: New Frontier (8 page)

“Al, has anyone tried talking to the ships heading for
Knomen?”

Maybe they could be talked out of it?  Probably not,
but I thought it might be worth an effort.

Al replied, “No.”

I wavered in my decision.  Perhaps talking would be
better, but if they were after revenge on the Knomen, perhaps I wasn’t the best
person to talk to them, despite the fact I was a big part of the reason they
were free right now.

Sergei was probably busy, so I had Al send him a message
with the suggestion.  There was still over a day before that battle
happened, so there was no real rush.  It felt odd to be relegated to the
sidelines again though. 

I took some time to go over the projects in my
company.  There weren’t any new breakthroughs on replacing the fabricators
with nanites for all building.  The other projects were similarly
slow.  I also had no idea what I should work on next.  I took a deep
breath and blew it out. 

To kill some time, I started designing a behemoth of a ship,
nothing the size of a moon, but about four times the length and width of the
current ship.  That would fit over two hundred and fifty plasma turrets
easily.  Of course, I had no practical reason to want to actually build
it, and it would take just over twenty days to build, whereas we could build
almost seven battle cruisers at the same time, which had almost the same amount
of cannons between them.  It seemed to be a wash really.

Al said, “Call from Sergei.”

“Answer it.”

His face came up in my view, “Alicia.  I got your
message.  Not sure if I see the point, they clearly want revenge, and
those worlds haven’t contacted anyone in a while.”

Hearing my first name from him was odd, but the message was
clear, I was no longer in command and he was humoring me with this call. 
It could have been worse, at least he wasn’t angry I’d stuck my nose in.

I shrugged, “Call it politically covering your ass.  It
probably is a waste of time, but it isn’t like you don’t have some before the
fight starts, and at least we can say we tried.”

He raised an eyebrow, “We?”

I suppressed rolling my eyes, that wouldn’t go over
well.  Did he really think I was trying to take credit or something?

“I mean Earth.  Protecting the Knomen we are keeping on
their world, essentially jailed and quarantined, has nothing to do with the
treaty.  However, it will reflect on us, and inform the other worlds
involved in the treaty how we conduct ourselves.  It will be especially
important to those worlds still on the fence about joining us.”

He grunted, “I’ll consider it.”

Then he nodded before I could respond and hung up. 
Well, it was the best I could do…

It had been a very long twenty-four hours, or so it
seemed.  Kristi found me on the bridge, she was wearing nothing except the
skin suit which hugged every curve.  I obviously wasn’t in uniform
anymore, but I had a pair of dark jeans and a light blue shirt on over mine.

“It’s too damned quiet on this ship,” Kristi complained.

I happened to agree with her.  It also explained her
clothing choices, it was just the two of us up here.  We got to keep the
ship, but of course all the pilots, marines, and our staff had to go, they were
all part of the USFS.  I didn’t mind the solitude, or rather, sharing it
with only one other person and my best friend, but I knew Kristi was more
social than I was.

“Yeah, we’ll get some people soon.  I imagine it won’t
be too hard to hire some people, although the ship pretty much runs itself, all
we have to do is point and tell it where to go.”

Kristi grunted, “At the very least we need a cook.”

I laughed, neither of us were very good at that. 

“Well, outside of this jaunt, we don’t have any driving
reasons to stay on the ship all the time anymore, and we can start to actually
use our home.”

She looked around, her eyes narrowing.

“What is it?”

She sighed, “No wood to knock on anywhere on the bridge, now
that you said that, something is sure to come up.  I love being out in
space, but yeah, going to go nuts up here.”

Curiously I asked, “Are you working on anything?”

She shook her head, “Not really, I’ve been running a few
tests for a new weapon idea, but even with the crazy amount of power we have
available it doesn’t look good.”

She obviously didn’t want my help, so I let it go
there.  She kind of had a point too, I didn’t want to give up the ship,
and some testing and ideas would be better off in space.  But did I really
need to be on my ship all the time?  I also had the idea to keep up on
what came in on the stealth sensor net as it expanded toward the rim, but
really, even if I saw something it wasn’t like I could do anything with it.

It would just be me being nosy, not that I wouldn’t do it,
but I needed to be more productive than that.

I also had the feeling that it was all just another way for
me to try to be a hermit.  Also, without the military job I could relax a
bit more, maybe even take another vacation?

Relaxation, why did the idea of that bother me so
much?  Maybe I should stay on the ground when we got back, at least until
I had a real reason to come back out here.  New idea to experiment with,
or a visit to one of the other treaty worlds… something.

I changed the subject, “We’re almost to the rendezvous
point.  You’re okay with doing this right?”

Kristi shrugged, “Yup.  It’s all our inventions they’ll
be fighting with, and I’m not letting you do it alone.”

I nodded, “This should be it for a while, it took me being
bored to realize we don’t really belong out in orbit all the damned time
anymore, not without a fleet to look over.”

Kristi looked relieved, “I thought I was going to have to
fight you on that.”

I laughed, “No, not much anyhow.  I’m sure we’ll want
to visit another planet at some point, and we have a ship for that, and maybe
the next time we have an experiment that could blow up Earth.  Other than
that,” I shrugged helplessly.

Kristi snickered, “You know, we could run the lab ship just
as well from our office in Colorado as we can on this ship.”

I glared at her, “A true friend wouldn’t have pointed that
out.”

She giggled, but held her hands up in a peaceful gesture.

Al said, “We’ve arrived at the rendezvous point.”

“Open a wormhole to Leira, and launch all our Shield
missiles.  Just in case the Seltan attack when they see us bringing a few
hundred ships through.”

Al asked, “Should I recommend it to the fleet?”

I shook my head, “No, Sergei has eyes, he’s in
command.  Just me doing it is hint enough, I’d rather not step on his toes
any more than I have already.”

Al was silent for a few seconds, “Understood.  Shield
missiles launching.  The fleet is following suit, and heading into the
wormhole, missiles first.”

“Put it up on the screen.”

We watched as the fleet moved through, and then the other
fleets followed.  I wondered if they were reluctant, and what they thought
about the fact we could do this at all.  It wasn’t the first time that
thought had crossed my mind.  We went through last, because we needed to
continue to feed the wormhole energy to keep it open, even as we travelled
through it…

“Report,” I ordered.

Kristi rolled her eyes at me playfully.  Damnit, habits
to break, and I wasn’t even military all that long.

Al replied, “We are two light years from Leira, the fleets
are already moving off.  The Seltan are still holding and haven’t
attacked, they have nineteen hundred and twenty-three ships.  As far as I
can tell the last one arrived hours ago, no more have trickled in since then.”

I shook my head and whispered, “Why haven’t they attacked
yet?”

It didn’t make sense, which meant I was probably missing
something.  Waiting until we were all gathered and ready was stupid.

Al replied, “Unknown at this time.”

I smiled, at least the AI wasn’t perfect.  I didn’t
bother to tell him I hadn’t expected an answer.

“Move us alongside the Earth fleet, and launch our anti-FTL
gravity missiles.”

Kristi shrugged, “I guess now all we can do is wait.”

We waited for hours, and no other ships came on the Seltan
side.  It was tense, and horribly boring at the same time.  It was
hard to stay alert for hours at a time, but I could control my body and
reactions pretty well.  When something happened it would take but a moment
to regain my sharpness, but right now I wouldn’t bother.

Kristi and I kept an eye on the status of the fleet at
Knomen, and it looked like that battle was going to happen.  The three
attacking fleets were well informed, they dropped out of FTL before any could
be destroyed by the small gravity missiles.  After that, the battle was
almost painful to watch.

The first two volleys the enemy sent at FTL, and all the
missiles were destroyed before they could get close.  After that, the
battle was fought at sub light speed in its entirety.  The enemy ships had
a throw weight advantage at five major ships to one, but with all the Shield
missiles and attack shuttles, those attacks were held off.  The enemy had
no problems keeping up with Sergei’s missile strikes either, though both sides
lost a few in the first eight volleys.

For the Earth fleet, we lost fifty-two shield missiles, and
four battle cruisers before Sergei could adjust to their concentrated
fire.  The enemy lost fourteen ships in return fire.  Considering the
attrition rate of both sides, it would have been a close battle.

But then the two sides came within range of the Earth ships’
plasma cannons.  Even before the new ship design, the old ones packed
quite a punch.  Every battle cruiser, carrier, attack shuttle, and even
the shield missiles, all opened fire at once.  The enemy fleet was torn
apart.

I bit my lip, I was happy we’d won of course, but it was a
slaughter.  And that was before the upgrade, the new plasma cannons would
put the old ones to shame in both destructive power, and range, and there would
be twice as many on each ship.  I loved the Earth, and believed in
humanity, I just hoped they would be worthy guardians of the weapons I had
built them, and would not abuse that power.

“Status?”

I don’t know why I asked, I was looking at the screen which
showed me we were having some kind of weird standoff.  Neither our fleet,
nor the Seltans, had moved since we got here.

Al replied, “No change.”

Kristi stretched, and yawned, “I’m hungry.”

I nodded, there was only so much time I could wait.  Of
course, as soon as I stood the Seltan fleet started to move.  My mouth
dropped open when the fleet turned around, and went to FTL, disappearing back
to Seltan space and out of sensor range.  All of them, except for one that
stayed behind.  Then that one started our way, at a slow speed,
relatively, he was still going several hundred times the speed of light, but he
was ten light years away, so it would take a while for him to arrive.  At
least an hour if he didn’t speed up.

“Al, transfer bridge status views to my overlay.”

I figured we had time to eat…

Kristi asked, “What do you suppose they want?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know, they’ve never tried to communicate
before as far as I know.  They must want something.”

The Seltan ship had slowed down gradually until they dropped
out of FTL at thirty light minutes almost a half hour ago.  I was hoping
we’d find out soon, without quantum communications it would take about a half
an hour for us to receive a message.

Kristi sighed, “Well, hopefully they want to talk, because
this is a really bizarre battle tactic.”

Al replied, “I’m receiving a wide area laser communication,
the whole fleet should be picking it up.  It isn’t sound or video, just
some data.  Stand by a moment.”

A few seconds later he continued, “It’s a quantum signature,
along with a translation matrix, shall I program it in?”

“Go for it,” I said softly, “And retrieve all our missiles
and shuttles, I don’t think we’ll be fighting today.”

I was surprised to have rather mixed feelings about
that.  Mostly relief, but there was some disappointment in there as
well.  I guess with the adrenaline build up I’d turned a little savage.

“Incoming message ma’am.”

“Put it on Al, and call me Alicia please,” I replied.

I heard Kristi gasp, and had to admit the Seltan had an
intimidating appearance.  He looked at least seven feet tall, and had dark
black hair, and brown eyes sunken into a craggy and angular green face. 
His ears were rather larger than human, and the nose was bulbous.  He
looked more built than a linebacker without an ounce of fat on his bulging
muscles.

What really stood out however, was his two sets of
arms.  The bottom set were huge and defined by large muscles, and he had
them crossed over his chest.  The upper set were rested on his sides and
were even more muscular.  I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley,
that was for sure.

“I am Dral, force leader of the Seltan empire.  I
apologize for the subterfuge that brought you here, but I had reason. 
One, I wanted to see if this new treaty I have heard about was worth anything,
or just a piece of paper.  Two, I wanted to talk to all of you, and
honestly this was the easiest way to get you all here.”

He smiled disturbingly, “I wish to broker a peace, and
perhaps more, there is much you don’t know.”

What the hell could he mean by that?

“This is Alnot, leader of Leira.  What do you mean by
that, and why would we ever trust you?”

Dral nodded, “Because those cowardly Knomen no longer pull
your strings, we have hope that you will deal with us honorably.”

Alnot replied, “What do you want of us?”

Dral was silent for a moment, “I would have at least peace
between us, perhaps even join you in your treaty, there is much to
explain.  Much that has been hidden from you by the Knomen in times
past.  I ask that you hear my words, and spread them to the worlds and
their leaders that you’re allied with.”

Alnot frowned, “We will listen, beyond that I cannot
say.  There is much blood between us.”

Dral bowed his head, “Yes, that is regrettable, and part of
my words to come.  Yet, we have never threatened your world itself, when
we could have.  Our actions were…  I get ahead of myself, let me
start from the beginning.”

I was fascinated, and despite the translation his words… now
he had me doing it, his speech was a little odd.  I told Al to bring us
some coffee, one of the maintenance droids could handle it, with the repair
nanites all over the ship they no longer had a job anyway.

Dral started talking, his tone of voice oratory, as if
teaching us, “Long ago, when we first discovered FTL, when most of your worlds’
populations lived in caves, we joined the Knomen empire.  They came to us,
much like many of you, and we fell for their good sounding words and
lies.  Yet, when their dishonor became apparent, we had no choice but to
break off, and go on our way.

“It was a large war, the largest the Seltan had ever seen or
been a part of at that time.  Eventually, we beat them back, and they
started to fear our border, if not respect our honor.  We hold all the
stars between the Orion arm, and the Core.  Next to us, we were surrounded
by two other races.  On one side we had the
Drenil
. 
The
Drenil
are a peaceful species, and quite strange.

“They have no true shape, and are amorphous. 
Thankfully, they are as peaceful as they are powerful.”

I frowned when Alnot interrupted him, “Amorphous, all life
is like we are, what tales do you spin?”

Dral growled, “Be patient, listen to my words, but hear
this.  Implicate me as a liar again and I will burn your world to
ash.  We have honor, something you dogs perhaps wouldn’t understand. 
If the situation wasn’t what it was, I probably wouldn’t even bother trying.”

When Alnot didn’t answer, he went up in my estimation a bit.

Dral continued, “To the other side of the core were the
Reilan.  The Reilan were peaceful as well, and hard to describe. 
They weren’t humanoid either.”

The fact he was describing them in the past tense made me
pay even more attention to his words, and it gave me a sense of foreboding.

Dral nodded, “So in short, we were alone.  We had two
peaceful neighbors, but they weren’t humanoid, and were hard to speak to and
understand.  Up the arm we had the Knomen empire, an empire without
honor.  Many millennia passed, and then the Reilan were invaded from the
other side.  Many millions of small ships, the size of what we would
consider a shuttle or troop transport, invaded their space.

“We watched, and waited, thinking we were next.  But
when the Reilan were destroyed, the swarm of ships headed up the arm. 
We’d escaped a nasty war, but only for a time, and we never forgot, we built up
our ship numbers knowing that they would be back someday.  Five hundred
years later, they swarmed back down the arm, and attacked us.”

He paused for a moment, and I wondered if they were so
different after all.  He clearly had a good handle on the theatric.

“We have been fighting them off ever since.  We tried
once again to get the Knomen to see true honor, and join us in defending our
arm of the galaxy, but that wasn’t to be.  More than once, the Knomen saw
us as a threat and considered attacking us.  We have the ability to find
out such things.  Whenever that happened, we invaded Leira with a small
force, made up of older ships, and old warriors that wished to die in battle.

“We regret the loss of life, but true to form, the Knomen
are cowards, every time we invaded they would change their mind, until the next
time they remembered us.”

Alnot replied, “So you want to join the treaty, and have us
fight with you against these invaders, is that it?  Why should we?”

Dral frowned, “Do you not understand?  I thought from
my words, this would be clear.  This… galaxy is some kind of experiment. 
Whoever seeded our galaxy with life, only gave one arm to humanoids.  On
one side we have amorphous forms that are peaceful but so alien we can’t have
meaningful contact, the other aliens that were destroyed are beyond my ability
to describe properly.  The enemy that attacks us came from the fourth arm,
the one opposite us.  We use words such as swarm to describe them because
they swarm like insects.

“The creatures themselves have exoskeletons like many
insects on our worlds, they even have an amalgam to mandibles, and the way they
feed.  Beyond that though they have no relation to us at all, they are
entirely alien in nature.  Even the insects on our worlds contain up to
sixty percent of the same DNA, not so for this race bent on destroying all life
in the galaxy that is unlike them.  They do not live in atmosphere like
us, they thrive on gases that would poison and kill us.  They do not
communicate at
all,
we are unable to even learn the
name of their race.

“To answer your question, why help, if we are destroyed,
they will swarm up the Orion arm with millions of ships, you will not have a
chance.  It is the way of honor, something we hope is possible between us
now that the grip of the Knomen has been broken.  If we join your treaty,
we will be allies, and you can help defend our lives along with your own. 
Or, you can say no, I’ll leave, and when my race dies, yours will surely
follow.  The truth that you have until now been unaware of, is we have
guarded you for millennia, against a brutal and merciless enemy.

“We are running out of resources, colonies, and
warriors.  The truth is, without allies we will not last much
longer.  When I say that, realize we have in excess of a million warships,
we could have invaded the arm long ago, and easily won, but we would see that
as dishonorable, and frankly we need these defenses to fight off the swarm
ships.  They come in waves every few years, and they are due soon.”

Millions of ships?  Holy crap.  I smiled, the
board had thought four thousand overkill.  Granted, we were the baby FTL
race, ironically we were also the most advanced.  Or were we?  It
made no sense.  I could understand the peaceful races, like Tressia and
Leira were limited in technology, especially as they had the Knomen breathing
down their neck until recently.  But the Seltan had been fighting in a war
for millennia, how the hell were they less advanced than Earth ships?

Granted, we got a boost in tech when I visited Tressia and
bought some.  But it only took me a few months to make all of that tech
obsolete.  Yes, I was smart and innovative, but I wasn’t arrogant enough
to think I was the smartest being in the galaxy.  Why were the Seltan
stuck.  War should drive innovation.  WW One brought the tank, WW two
brought fighter planes, and nuclear bombs.  Humanoids excelled at
advancement when under pressure.  Either it was something societal, or the
Seltan held back to older tech when attacking the Leirans, to prevent their
current stuff from being analyzed after the battle.

It was the only thing I could think of to make sense of
it.  Alnot disrupted my thoughts.

Alnot replied, “Can you send us data of the current
situation in your space, and of past battles.”

When Dral scowled Alnot clarified, “Not for proof, but for
us to understand the need, and the stakes.  We must talk to the other
world leaders, and make this decision fully informed with all the information,
your words are persuasive, yet they do not bring full comprehension.  For
instance, do you need a place to build ships, how many must we all build to
truly help hold the line, do they attack one world at a time, or do they swarm
over many at once.  It will also help us come up with plans, and a
fighting strategy, if we know how they fight.”

Dral nodded sharply, “Your words have reason in them. 
We will not allow you to send probes into our space until a treaty is signed,
yet we will allow some small amount of ships to visit our colonies, and where
we fight.  Perhaps two ships, from each fleet gathered here.  As for
the records of previous battles, I can send those to you now.  When you
have selected, contact me,” and he cut the signal.

I ordered, “Al, analyze the videos and data when you get
them, and show me samples of how they fight.  And have you scanned that
ship out there, is there anything that indicates more advanced tech?”

Al replied, “Scans came back as expected to what we know
about Seltan technology.  I would suggest the reason they haven’t advanced
is power limitations.  Without dark energy, none of the advancements you
made would be nearly as effective.”

I supposed that was possible.