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“I said an orbital shipyard would
be a tempting target. This is far more modest and less expensive to maintain as
well,” Ronnie maintained. “We needed the framework to assist in assembly anyway
and we can build another, if need be, but it’s not like the dock will be
permanently manned. We’ll only have crews there to assemble ships. We can’t
build more than two big carriers a year and the final assembly only takes a
couple of weeks. However, that reminds me, we should have her ready for flight
by this time tomorrow. Do you have a name for her yet?”

“Big Mama?” Park suggested.

Ronnie wrinkled her nose. “Try
again.”

“Hmm,” Park considered. “I was
supposed to think of something, wasn’t I? Well, how about we choose a theme?
 
There have been ship classes named after
cities and states, right?”

“You want this to be the
Cleveland Class of ships?” Ronnie asked, a crooked smile on her lips.

“I’ve heard worse ideas,” Park
replied, “but I don’t think we’ll name it after American cities or states.
That’s way in the past, we need something that is for now.”

“The Mers already have warships
named after all their major cities,” Ronnie pointed out. “All we have is Van
Winkletown.”

“I’ll pass on that name too,”
Park replied. “And we only have two continents, so that’s out.”

“Animals?” Ronnie suggested.

“Practically everything is neothis
or neothat,” Park shook his head.

“Not in the Mer language.”

“Good point,” Park allowed. “They
call neocrocodiles,
reshti.
The
Resht
might be a
 
fierce enough name. No. Call her
Tawatir
.”

“That’s a flying octopus,” Ronnie
pointed out.

“I know it doesn’t sound
impressive when you put it that way,” Park admitted, “but those floating
cephalopods can be pretty mean predators and they carry a nasty electric shock
as do their groundside cousins, the land squids.”

“You want to call the second one
Lanimi
then?” Ronnie asked. “I think
that’s Mer for land squid.”

“Save that for the third or forth
one,” Park decided, “but use
Kraneenta
,
that’s neolion, for the second. Other names can be
Haweeta, Gradit
and
Resht
.
That ought to keep us in names for the foreseeable future.”

“Aren’t
haweeta
those postmammalian neobats?” Ronnie asked. “That would be
a better name for a fighter.”

“Hmm,” Park considered. “You may
be right there. We have enough names even without that one. You say the
Tawatir
will be ready to launch tomorrow?
Good, Have her completely stocked. It may be a couple extra days, but I want
her on her shakedown cruise as soon as possible.”

“Who’s her captain?” Ronnie
asked.

“Me,” Park decided. “At least
I’ll take her on her first trip. I don’t currently have a command of my own.
Besides, I’m still the commander of the fleet, I’d better know how this new
ship handles before I try ordering her about.”

“And she’ll make a superb
flagship, Admiral,” Ronnie laughed.

“Commodore,” Park corrected her.

“Actually, you’re wrong,” she
informed him. That was one of the things the Mer primes and Arn agreed on while
you were on Owatino. Your title is Admiral of the Fleet. They felt it would
carry more weight for when you have to work with the admirals of the Alliance.
You do remember what happened when we arrived at Owatino, right? That Admiral
thought to order you around simply because you called yourself Captain.”

“Black Admiral McArrgh doesn’t
quite have the same ring to it,” Park pointed out.

“I can’t help that.”

Park’s torc chimed just then.
“Holman,” he answered.

The image of Arnsley Theoday
appeared in front of him. “Park,” Arn greeted him curtly. “Better get up here,
pronto. You too, Ronnie. A courier ship from the Alliance just entered the
system with bad news. There has been a series of attacks on the Alliance
capital world, Owatino.”

“They did not target just one or
two people this time,” Arn told them in his private conference room. Park and
Veronica had arrived to find Dannet and Sartena already there as were several
of Arn’s department heads. Iris and Marisea arrived a minute later and the rest
of Arn’s staff showed up over the next few minutes. On a large monitor
 
the attendees could also see the face of
 
Max Baines, the commandant of Collins Base on
the Moon and several of his staff. Noticeably missing were the members of Van
Winkletown’s new government. “A Premm suicide squad rushed in and bombed the
Diet Chamber. According to the report the courier sent us, they entered the
system undetected and in a coordinated attack, a small fleet of Dark Ships did
a number on the Alliance fleet stationed to guard the planet.”

“Was the Diet in session at the
time?” Sartena asked.

“They were,” Arn confirmed.
“Eighteen delegates were killed in the attack and over one hundred were
wounded. I have the list and the actual report being printed up for all of you
and also for the city council. Damn! I’ll have to go over this with them later
today too and then the Council the Primes. Going to be a very long day.

“Among the dead, I fear, was Pahka
Grintz,” Arn went on. “I know he was a pain in the posterior when he was here
on Earth, but he proved to be a good and loyal friend.”

“I liked him,” Marisea remarked,
tears streaming down her face.

“My father?” Dannet asked
worriedly.

“He lives,” Arn replied, “but he
was badly wounded. According to the courier, he has returned to Dennsee.
Owatino is being abandoned for the duration.”

“I want to talk to that courier
when he gets here,” Dannet replied.

“He isn’t coming here,” Arn
replied. “He beamed his message to us from just outside Saturn’s orbit, waited
for our acknowledgement and then scooted off to the next system. I’m not sure
how many ships were sent off with the news but, they have a lot of territory to
cover, you know. Now the question is how to respond.”

“We send a fleet off to kick
those Dark Ships straight into their own sun,” Marisea responded. Tears were
still streaming from her eyes, but her voice was hard and unwavering.

“No arguments here,” Arn replied.
“Any idea of where they are, or their sun for that matter?”

“Marisea,” Park intervened, “we
will respond to this latest attack, but first we must see to our own defenses.”
He looked around the room and added, “Shouldn’t Taodore be here?”

“He flew up to Ghelati this
afternoon,” Marisea answered.

“I’ll make sure he’s online with
the rest of the Primes,” Arn promised.

“Dad’s not a Prime,” Marisea
pointed out.

“As ambassador to Van
Winkletown,” Arn corrected her, “your father’s status is the same as any city’s
prime with only Terrius superior to him. Didn’t you know that?”

“I suppose I did,” Marisea
admitted, “but it’s not like it comes up very often. I mean he’s just… uh, Dad,
a gentleman explorer.”

“Been a while since that was the
case,” Arn pointed out.

“That’s how he thinks of
himself,” Marisea insisted. “Nothing would make him happier than a chance to
get back to his explorations, you know.”

“We finished the initial survey
of the Zontisso River Basin two years ago,” Park commented, “but then he was
more interested in the plant life, wasn’t he?”

“That was just one of the points
of our survey that trip,” Marisea told him. “We were also surveying the animal
population of the river valley as best we could and looking for previously
unknown species, but were also trying to track the migration of a species of
motile grass.”

“Interesting as that may be,” Arn
cut in, “we do have a more important matter at hand.”

“I need to get to Dennsee,”
Dannet announced.

“You do, indeed,” Park agreed,
“and I shall be honored to take you there.”

“Park,” Arn argued, “you know
Earth is a primary target of the Dark Ships. We can’t afford to weaken our
defenses especially with all these Premm agents on Earth.”

“We cannot fail to support our
allies either, Arn,” Park shot back, “and I defy you to stop even one suicide
bomber with a fleet of ships. I won’t be so cocky as to claim we have found all
the agents, but their activity has been down to nothing in the last two days.
Just keep up the vigilance and we’ll find the stragglers eventually. If the
Dark Ships are attacking the Alliance again, though, we must send ships out to
meet them. We still have the best sensors and weapons to counter them.”

“We’ve been selling some of that
technology to our allies,” Arn told him.

“And we don’t know if we’re still
the best,” Ronnie pointed out. “I’ve been improving our technology in the last
few years, but I’m sure the Dark Ship aliens have been too. Three years ago
they would not have been able to sneak up on a world like they did on Owatino,
and, Park, you told me yourself that you had trouble picking up a clear image
of that Dark Ship you chased on your way back.”

“But we saw it,” Park maintained.
“That puts us one up on the Owatino defenses. At least we saw it and could
follow that ship from one system to the next.”

“And still managed to lose it in
the Iztapel system,” Ronnie pointed out.

“We were interrupted in our
pursuit,” Park argued, “but okay, they may have improved as well. We shouldn’t
be too surprised. If they’re smart enough to build tools of any sort, they must
be smart enough to improve on them from time to time, but that’s all the more
reason we need to send ships to the defense of our allies. Arn, I don’t propose
taking every ship in our fleet. But we should be able to spare some.”

“Perhaps,” Arn conceded
conditionally. “Let’s discuss this with the Primes and we’ll come to a
consensus as to how many will be sent.”

“I’ll take the
Tawatir
in any case,” Park told him.
“She’s Ronnie’s new carrier and more suited to an attack force than a defense,
the question is how many of our conventional ships I can shake loose.”

“Park, the
Tawaatir
hasn’t even had her shakedown cruise yet,” Ronnie
protested. “She’s not even fully stocked.”

“We’ll have her stocked up before
we can leave,” Park replied, “and this will be her maiden voyage.”

“I had better go with you then,”
Ronnie shook her head.

“What?” Arn protested. “We can’t
afford to risk losing you in battle.”

“That ship is just a prototype,”
Ronnie told him. “There are all sorts of things that can go wrong while tuning
the drive to the ship itself. In an established model, if we don’t get it right
on the first attempt, it generally only takes a few minor adjustments. The
prototype, though; it takes a lot of constant work. You send that untested ship
out without me and I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it to come back.”

“You aren’t the one who usually
tunes our drives,” Arn pointed out.

“We don’t normally send out a new
ship into a probable battle situation,” Ronnie told him.

“Good point,” Arn conceded. “That
settles it, Park. Pick another ship.”

“That’s the ship I need, Arn,”
Park told him stubbornly. “She carries five of the new fighter craft and
carries more armament in her own right than any other ship in the fleet. If we
are going into battle we need those weapons.”

“You’re going to fight in a
prototype ship?” Arn asked skeptically.

“I trust one of Ronnie’s
prototypes more than most other engineers’ time-tested ships,” Park replied.
“I’ll want at least another dozen of our other ships too, though. I’ve started
dividing the fleet into battle groups and that would be one such group.”

“Getting the Council of Primes to
agree is going to be tough,” Arn warned him, “but we’ll see how that goes.”

“Fair enough,” Park admitted.
“The fleet’s autonomy has always been somewhat fictitious. The Council of
Primes technically owns most of our ships even though the fleet is under the
jurisdiction of the Exploration Corps.”

“I remember that,” Arn agreed.
“It was part of our treaty with the Mer Nation, when we started arming our
ships. I’ve never actually wanted to test the matter. As I understand it, they
could remove their ships from the fleet at need. It was supposed to be in case
a Prime needed transport into space for some reason – a prerogative they always
had, but none had found a reason to use. The wording is so vague, however, that
the clause could be used to remove all Mer-owned ships from your command.”

“I’d prefer not to risk that,”
Park nodded, “but any Dark Ship we defeat outside Sol System is one less that
can come here. They have to be able to see that.”

“Terrius might,” Taodore put in,
“but the local primes are more likely to want to protect their perceived
dignity. Showing they have the power to control the fleet is an easy way for
them to do it.”

“They never have before,” Iris
pointed out.

“They never had more than a dozen
ships to squabble over,” Taodore shrugged. “I honestly don’t know what they’ll
do, but given how badly the fleet got shot up the last time the Dark Ships
came, I doubt they’ll be eager to
 
lessen
Earth’s defenses.”

“I’ll work out patrol schedules
before I go to sleep tonight,” Park promised. “We’ll want to keep all ships
aloft or else ready to lift on a moment’s notice. I don’t want any more caught
on the ground during a surprise attack. I should think, however, we can show
them the ships I want will not noticeably lessen our defenses.”

“All right,” Arn nodded, “now
let’s discuss our local preparations. When I address the City Council, I am
going to suggest we start holding air raid drills. I don’t want any of our
people not knowing what to do or where to go when we find ourselves under
attack.”