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“That’s good,” Park nodded. “Am I
correct to assume their weapons have been maintained?”

“If they haven’t,” Relaviss
replied, “I guarantee there are some engineers suffering from sleep deprivation
even as we speak.”

“So, how many ships will we have
to spare to take against the Dark Ships?” Park asked. “A couple hundred, I
hope.”

“A couple thousand is closer,”
Relaviss told him. “We’re calling in all the reserves for this, McArrgh. We
have to beat those Dark Ships soundly and still have something to take against
the Holy Premm Empire when the time comes.”

“Have we been cleared to attack
the Premm?” Marisea asked a moment before Park could.

“Not yet,” Relaviss shook his
head, “but this will not be over until we come to terms with the Premm. They
will either rejoin the Alliance, which is unlikely, or we shall have to pacify
them. If it does not happen now it will in a few years. Mark my words. I
seriously doubt the Dark Ships are attacking us simply because we are here.
They almost have to be allied with the Premm; there’s just too much
circumstantial evidence pointing that way and now with those Premm suicide
attacks active at the same time. Well, I can’t believe it is coincidence, can
you?”

“No,” Park admitted, “I have
always believed they were in league with each other. Sooner or later we shall
have to deal with the Premm.”

“Sadly, not now,” Relaviss told
him. “The Diet is all for our seeking out and destroying the Dark Ships, but
the politicians still hold out hope for a peaceful settlement with the Premm.”

“One enemy at a time if we can
manage it,” Park replied, “but two thousand ships? Have you ever organized such
a fleet? I certainly have not.”

“I don’t believe anyone alive has
ever commanded such a force,” Admiral Relaviss admitted. “The Alliance has been
at peace for very long time. We have only had to deal with minor skirmishes
once in a while with our neighbors, and more frequently we have settled
misunderstandings with only a show of power.”

“Two thousand ships is one heck
of a show of power,” Park pointed out. “And organizing them is going to be a monumental
headache.”

“Will it?” Marisea asked, looking
at what was left on the table. She spotted a small, dark fruit that must have
been descended from an orange or a lemon and started peeling it. “That may be a
lot of ships, but it’s small compared to an army, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Park agreed, “but I
have never commanded an army either.”

“No, really?” Marisea laughed as
she popped a piece of fruit in her mouth. “Have you tried this fruit? Very
sweet and tart. I like it. Anyway, I’ve never commanded any army or navy that
didn’t fit in my bath tub either, but from what I’ve read, all armed forces are
made up of small units. In this case, the smallest unit is a ship, not a
soldier or a marine or whatever and that actually makes the job of organization
easier. You don’t have to worry about the individual crewmen and women; that is
the concern of their captains, right?”

“True,” Park agreed, “That still
leaves me two thousand captains to deal with.”

“More like twenty-one hundred,”
Relaviss told him.

“Thanks,” Park replied sourly.
“Marisea, you’re my communications officer. How do you view the process of
relaying my orders to twenty-one hundred captains at once and then fielding
their questions which will all come in at once, of course.”

“Armies are divided up into
brigades, divisions, battalions, squads and other terms I constantly confuse
with each other,” Marisea told him. “Fleets are divided up similarly. Actually,
from what I read back in Van Winkletown, we’re using the term fleet
incorrectly, at least as the ancients saw them, but if you’ve not normally
dealt with more than a few hundred ships, maybe that’s understandable.”

“Actually the number of ships in
the United States Navy was frequently below three hundred,” Park pointed out,
“and they were divided into several fleets. You have a good point there, but
how many fleets are we talking about with two thous… twenty-one hundred ships?
A dozen? One hundred?”

“One hundred fleets?” Marisea
laughed. “That wouldn’t work. Besides we need to keep our fleets strong. The
Dark Ships are faster and have some new tricks… Well they have at least one new
trick that we haven’t seen before. We need to be able to overwhelm them when we
do encounter them.”

“That will also risk greater
losses on our parts,” Admiral Relaviss told her.

“We don’t have the fire power,
not on all our ships, to battle with them one-on-one,” Marisea pointed out.
Their weapons tear the heck out of most Alliance ships, the only weakness is
that they can only fire it at one enemy at a time, so the more ships we have
shooting at them, the more likely we’ll be to win. Of course that new
power-draining weapon of theirs is nasty. I just hope Ronnie or someone can
come up with a defense against it.”

“Doesn’t your vaunted stasis
plating stop it?” Relaviss asked.

“Only if it is active,” Park told
him. “The first time we encountered it, we were left sitting helplessly. The
second time, they made the mistake of using that metal-screech weapon of
theirs. It activated the plating so the power drain effect was severely
diminished. We got lucky.”

“We were probably attacked by two
different ships at the same time,” Marisea commented. “They did not coordinate
their attacks well enough, then. Maybe they just don’t think that way. If so,
good for us. If not, there’s probably a Dark Ship alien cleaning the head on
that ship right now.”

“No, we destroyed that ship,”
Park reminded her. “I think he paid for that mistake, but I would rather he
hadn’t.”

“No?” Relaviss asked.

“We have yet to take any of the
Dark Ships or their crew people alive,” Park replied. “I would really like to
know who we are dealing with and why. So far the closest I have had to
communications from them is to be called an abomination. The Premm call me that
too.”

“Actually they call
me
that,” Marisea corrected him. There
was a harsh edge to her voice. “You’re merely unclean because you consort with
abominations. I was born this way.”

“Either way, they want me dead
and consigned to whatever vision of Hell they cherish for their enemies,” Park
told her. “Come to think about it, I’m surprised they’ve only tried to
assassinate me once.”

“They don’t really know you,
Park,” Marisea told him, “They know McArrgh, but he’s much harder to find. But
we’ve gone aground in the middle of the river here.”

“An interesting expression,”
Relaviss noted.

“The Mer are an aquatic
intelligence,” Park explained, “although their civilization is only
semi-aquatic. Consequently, the trails they follow tend to be waterways. So
instead of being off the track, they are stuck on a sand bar. In any case, she
is correct. We’re off topic. The real question here is how we are going to make
a navy with twenty-one hundred ships into something we can manage and still
have each fleet within it strong enough to handle any group of Dark Ships we
have observed to date?”

“I think it is going to depend on
several factors,” Relaviss replied. “First of all, how many ships can we expect
from Earth? I’ve read the reports from Dennsee and the main reason the Dark
Ships did not get through to the planet is that there were Pirate ships in the
lead of your formations.”

“We did sort of break the ice,”
Park admitted. “We were the only ones with missiles in that fight, but don’t
other Alliance ships have missiles now? I know we’ve been selling them all over
the Alliance.”

“Many of our ships have a rack of
your missiles,” the admiral confirmed, “but not all. Not all our members trust
your missiles. They are afraid they might blow up while still in the racks or
that they might get out of control and fly back at them.”

“I won’t say that’s impossible,”
Park told him, “but we haven’t had that happen to us yet.”

“There were those out of control
missiles in the last couple fights, Park,” Marisea reminded him.

“I spoke to Ronnie about them,”
Park told her. “She thinks they got hit by the energy drainer. That would have
stopped the gyros and any of the electronics, really. In that condition the ones
with proximity fuses would not have blown up at all.”

“Did she have an explanation for
the way missiles could go through some Dark Ships?” Marisea asked.

“We already know the Dark Ships
can change shape,” Park pointed out. “She thinks that some of them have an
improved version of that ability, but to use your own metaphor, we’re still
stuck on a sand bar. How are we going to divide the fleet?”

“Line the ships up and choose
sides?” Marisea suggested impishly.

Admiral Relaviss tried,
unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh before pointing out, “We do have traditional
divisions within the fleet, you know, most of the regular fleet will be stationed
in their usual territories, however.”

“So we make up new fleets,” Park
decided. “Twenty-one hundred ships, though. That would be seven fleets by your
usual standards, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe only six,” Relaviss
shrugged. “That’s still a lot more organization than we have had to deal with
before. “

“Consider it a sort of
‘Superfleet,’” Marisea told them. She glance at the plate in front of her and
selected a second of the dark citrus fruits. “Within the superfleet, establish
six fleets and further divide them up into Task Forces, Squadrons and so forth.
Put Park in charge of the superfleet with the six admirals commanding each of
the fleets reporting to him.”

“Our captains are used to
conferring directly with the admiral in charge of an operation,” Relaviss informed
her.

“And so they shall,” Marisea shot
back. She started peeling the second fruit. “I really like these. Park, can we
get them on Earth?”

“I suppose you could save the
seeds and plant them,” he suggested, “or we can
 
buy a few established seedlings to plant.”

“Or just have a case or two
delivered from time to time,” Marisea added. “Anyway, you tell the captains to
report to the admiral commanding their fleet. The Admirals will report to Park.
Frankly, I think you would do better in a group this size to establish a longer
chain of command. Have the captains report to their squadron leaders and so
forth, but I suppose this is not the time to make that great a change.”

“I will take your advice to
heart,” Relaviss told her, sounding slightly bemused, “but you are correct that
not letting every captain talk directly to Admiral McArrgh will be great enough
change in operations for the time being. I will have my staff organize the
incoming ships into units that have worked together before, if possible. How many
ships can we expect from Earth?” he asked again.

Park found himself unable to give
much of an answer.

“Twenty-three ships from Earth,
Park,” Iris reported a few days later.

“Oh good,” Park relaxed. “I’ve
been worried that Arn and the Primes might be stingy on sending help. Any
carriers?”

“Only two and they are the old
sort,” Iris replied. “
Tawatir
is
still the only ship of her class, you know, but their cargo holds are filled to
the brim with missiles, so
Tawatir
and her fighters will be fully armed with at least one reload. Ronnie’s fitting
in proximity fuses where she can and showing the other engineers how to do the
same. We probably won’t have more than a quarter of the missiles converted though.”

“Every little bit helps,” Park
commented, “And I suppose the ratio will be better with the reloads. Now all we
need is an enemy to shoot at.”

“Be careful what you wish for,
dear,” Iris warned him. Park held up a hand and looked around the apartment they
had been allowed in the Pakha Montz’s home. “What?” Iris asked.

“Oh, nothing, I guess,” he
chuckled, “Normally that’s when someone storms in to tell us all hell has
broken loose.”

More ships continued to arrive
over the next week and there was still no word of Dark Ship attacks, although
there were scattered incidents on some worlds of Premm suicide bombers,
although most proved to be of decreasing effectiveness. The greatest concentration
of such bombers was on Earth where all were caught by the detectors as they
tried to land on the planet.

Park worked with Admiral Relaviss
on organizing the six fleets, but while the job sounded easy to them, with so
many captains and admirals trying to work together, there were tensions that
had to be resolved within each fleet. Any time they tried to move one or two
ships around in the fleet structure they got several new problems in response.
Finally, it was Marisea who did the actual work of arranging the fleets.

“I just put all the ships into a
data base and started sorting by ship type, weapons type and planet of origin,”
she explained to them late one evening. “I compared that to factions within the
Diet, but that was a disaster. I should have realized that inter-world politics
would not determine compatibility within the military of the Alliance, although
it seemed like a good idea not to have Felinans answering to Tzantzans or vice
versa. Sartena told me, though, that I should ignore all but the most extreme
cultural differences and instead work on career records.

“In the end,” she continued, “it
seemed like the best way to group our captains was by where they had served and
what had happened during their service. It gave them something in common to
bond over. Then I assigned them to admirals who had the same sort of service,
but even more so. The idea was that they should be able to respect the man even
though they should already respect his rank. I followed up by speaking to a
number of captains about their preferences. Most of them claimed at first that
they had no such preferences; it would be an honor to serve regardless of their
commanding officer, but little by little they admitted more respect for some
admirals than others. The reasons for that turned out to be mostly along the
lines I had already been looking.