Talosian Chronicles 3: Talosian Alliance (14 page)

The Admiral looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel. “You’ve boarded us? Impossible! The Marines would have repelled any boarders, and we would have detected the hull breach!”

“Call the Admiral, Sir. See if he has met any new people lately,” Ian suggested. “In the meantime, I will have my navigator send you coordinates where you can park and make any repairs you may need,” Ian said.

Belirus nodded and disconnected the channel.

“Yep, real friendly.” Ian said getting a chuckle out of those that had overheard him. “Navigation, please send the coordinates for Pleiades One to the Adonis, then set our own course for the station. We’ll escort her in, and greet the delegates. Comms, please notify the Council that the delegates have arrived, and we will be escorting them to the station. Recall our fighters, and prepare to jump to the Pleiades station. Have the Raptors Damocles and Gemini return to the barn. Good work everyone.”

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I
an and the group he was with all bowed to the Talosian officials as they entered. “Councilors, Admirals, Welcome to the Sol Sector. I am Ian Williams, Commander of the Terran Defense Ship, Star Dancer, and the head of the military forces in this sector.

“It is my honor to introduce to you, Colonel Jennifer Williams, my bond mate and second in command aboard the
Star Dancer
. I believe most of you know Commander Serena of the Talosian Defense Ship,
Prometheus
. She is also my acting second in command for the sector.”

He indicated Luke Belden. “This is the head of our local Ruling Council, and my direct superior, Councilor Luke Belden of Earth.”

All but one of the new group bowed. The one that didn’t had a sneer on his face. Ian immediately identified the man as the Council Representative from House Haracin. Ian took an instant dislike to him, but realized that was exactly what the man had intended if he wanted to get Ian to strike him.

“Commander Williams, I am Admiral of the Fleet, Goya, Commander of the Talosian Defense Forces. This is Rear Admiral Pan, my Chief of Operations. It is also my honor to introduce, Councilor Noren Cree, Chair of our Ruling Council and my immediate Civilian Commander.” Goya said, smiling. He lost his smile and indicated the rude man. “That is Councilor Aramaliss of House Haracin, he sits on the Ruling Council as well.” Although the introduction was formally proper, it was clear that Goya would have been much happier introducing the Emperor of hell.

“Come now, Goya!” the man said, “We’re all friends here; there is no need for such animosity. I’m sure this whole issue can be resolved without any hard feelings on anyone’s part.”

“What issue would you be referring to, Councilor?” Ian asked, thinking of three or four right off the top of his head.

“Why the issue of your rebellion against your governing authority, of course! I’m sure it’s just a simple misunderstanding," Aramaliss said smoothly.

“Our rebellion, huh?” Ian asked. “Councilor, I think you might be the one that has misunderstood. My governing authority is represented by the man standing right there." Ian pointed to the listening Luke. “There simply is no other existing authority. I think the only misunderstanding that might have taken place here is that you have not acknowledged that fact. I am not a politician, Councilor, but I am the person that started all of this. What we have built here, by ourselves, will only be controlled by our people. The only reason you have been allowed to come here is to tour our facilities and perhaps lay the foundation for a treaty. Simply put, Sir, neither the Talosian High Council, nor the Talosian High Command, have any authority here except for that which we give you. As long as you understand and accept that, there will be no issues.”

Councilor Noren cleared her throat. “Commander, I’m sure the Councilor didn’t mean to offend any of you. He often speaks before he thinks. Please do not let his rudeness color your impressions of the rest of us.” The diminutive woman glared at the man in warning. He just smiled and ignored her. “Either way, this is neither the time nor the place for this discussion. In turn, we would like to extend to you the greetings of the Talosian people. I must say this station is certainly impressive looking. We had thought that Commander Serena’s reports had been somewhat exaggerated. Clearly we were wrong in that belief.” She winked at Serena to take the sting out of her words.

“We have prepared the station’s VIP quarters for you, if you would like to freshen up after your journey,” Ian said, smiling at the smaller woman. "If you would like we can give you a tour of the station before the evening meal. Tomorrow, we will tour the civilian settlement on the surface of the planet. My assistant will forward a copy of the itinerary to your assistants so you can see what we have planned for your visit here. But roughly, we will spend the rest of the week touring the facilities in the Sol System before returning here for our meetings. If you will follow me, I will take you to your quarters,” Ian said and led the group out of the lounge. While he walked, he continued talking.

“This station is brand new and is, as yet, not completely finished, although it will be very soon. As such, it does have recreational facilities available to the crew of the
Adonis
if the Admiral would like to grant some shore leave,” Ian said. “The colony on the planet is rather small and doesn’t really have the facilities available as yet for a visiting crew, but perhaps it will by the next visit of your ship.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Goya said. “Are this and the Colony below the only facilities you have in this system?”

“No, Sir. We do have more, but those are classified. We will be touring them, but the trip to them will be in a special ship we call a Raptor. I’ll be happy to explain more to you about them and their unique mission when the time comes for the tour of those facilities. There are also several unmanned defensive systems in operation here. We have plans for mining outposts and perhaps another colony or two if we grow large enough,” Ian explained.

“So what you’re telling us is this station is virtually undefended?” Aramaliss asked.

Ian laughed at that. “Not at all, Mr. Aramaliss. In fact, I’d wager that this station, and the colony below, are actually more heavily defended than Sol System, although that is a relative thing, as your arrival should have proved to you."

“That was a very interesting method of greeting dignitaries, Commander. Was it necessary to scare the hell out of the crew like that?” Aramaliss asked. The way he said 'commander’ implied that Ian didn’t actually hold that rank. Ian chose to ignore the slur.

“As I told Admiral Belirus, no one told us you were coming in a warship. Yes, we knew you were coming, which is why you actually were allowed to arrive here. If we hadn’t known you were coming, we would have destroyed the
Adonis
shortly after it entered the sector,” Ian explained.

“You have the ability to track and attack a ship in hyperspace?” Goya asked, surprised.

Ian nodded. “Yes we do, however, it only works when launched from stationary units. The sensors in question burnout upon entry to hyperspace.”

“Still, that is a very powerful ability to have. You could effectively destroy an entire fleet before they even got into attack range,” Goya said.

Ian nodded. “Pretty much, it does have some weaknesses and drawbacks, but we’re working on those.”

“Commander,” Admiral Pan said, the first he’d said since the greeting. “During our approach, I noticed that it looks like you are beginning construction on a new ship. It looks far larger than a heavy cruiser; may I ask what it is you’re building? Although Serena sent us reports on your achievements, it seems there are things she omitted in her reports.”

“That is my fault I’m afraid, Admiral. I asked her to omit certain things from her reports to you. Since she was still duty bound to you, I knew she had to make reports to you on what she discovered here, but because I asked her to help me with sector command, she had to be privy to most of our secrets. She tried to do her duty to both of us, and that was the compromise we agreed on,” Ian explained. “She really didn’t have much choice in the matter."

Pan nodded. “Totally understandable, and very commendable on her part. Thank you for explaining it to me.” Ian was watching him, and he seemed to be completely honest in his comment, he even smiled and nodded to Serena.

“As for the ship being built, it’s of a type we’ve designed ourselves. We’ve classified it as a ‘Battle Carrier’ in that it will have the fighter compliment of a carrier, while actually having more weapons than a Heavy Cruiser. When finished, she will become the flagship of the fleet we have plans to build. I can't actually tell you much more about it since, for the most part, her systems and abilities are classified, but suffice it to say, once built, she could take on a Super Nova without fear.”

“She sounds impressive, but what do you consider to be the compliment of a carrier?” Goya asked.

“She will carry the same amount of fighters as three Heavy Cruisers. She will also be home to a couple of new types of ships that should give anyone a surprise. Based on the frame of a Centurion, we’ve developed what we’re calling a Condor.

“There are three variants of the Condor so far; Type B, Type C and the ECWV. The Type B will function much like the existing Centurions do now, three man crew, capitol missiles, and a couple of other classified systems.

“Type C will have a five man crew, and function as a fighter controller and coordinator. Used primarily as a remote command post, it will have all the combat capability of the existing fighter control systems on the Cruisers.

“Finally, the ECEW. That stands for Electronic Countermeasures and Electronic Warfare vehicle. The five-man crew will have a lot of electronic tricks up their sleeve that can do anything from preventing an enemy from jumping to hyperspace, to jamming communications, to projecting a cloaking screen to hide larger ships. It can also track every known comm channel and electro-magnetic emission we could dream up, and a few other things, I don’t know if anyone has even heard of yet,” Ian said finishing.

“Commander, Major Green explained to us how he got on board without being detected, but he didn’t go into very much detail. If I add that to the comments I heard from Belirus about invisible fighter craft, then I assume you have adapted a cloaking device small enough to fit on a fighter craft. But what I don’t understand is how you covered the heat signatures,” Goya asked.

Ian nodded. “The exact explanation is classified, and I doubt you would understand it any better than I did, but while the Raptor is equipped with a cloaking device, it’s really redundant. The fighters don’t have one at all. It’s a new type of armor one of our brighter people developed. As for the heat signatures, the craft don’t use hot plasma systems. They are almost completely invisible the moment they are built, just because of the materials used in their construction.

"The fighter itself is completely different than a Hornet and has been classified as a medium fighter because of its mass and armament. We tried to build a retrofit kit for the existing Hornet fighters, but ended up having to completely rebuild the little ship in order to get it to work correctly. We call the new hybrid a ‘Wasp’.” Ian said. “We changed its base armament too.”

“Oh?” Pan asked. “What to?”

“Four pulse lasers and eight missiles. The techs think they could mount eight more missiles, but the fighter is designed for close combat; adding eight more missiles would give it too much mass to maneuver like it should, so we nixed it,” Ian explained."Mr. Aramaliss, your quarters are here.” Ian gestured to the left. “Councilor Noren, yours are to the right. The Admirals will be in the next two suites down the hall.” Ian indicated the doors down the hall. “Your belongings can be brought to you from the ship.”

Without comment, Aramaliss and his aide entered the quarters Ian had said were assigned to him. Ian saw him close the door and chuckled while shaking his head. "I was going to tell you all that the quarters for your aides are on the opposite sides. Could one of the other aides please relay that to Mr. Aramaliss’ aide?”

When one of them nodded to him, he smiled at them. “Thank you.”

“Commander,” the Aide replied. “His assistant is just as... uh, difficult, to work with as he is. Perhaps even more so, since he doesn’t have to be as tactful as his boss.”

Ian raised an eyebrow. “In that case, I really do appreciate you getting him that information, and I apologize for asking you to do it.”

Noren’s aide, who had been speaking, nodded her head to him, accepting his apology.

Councilor Noren grinned slightly. “She’s just upset because that ass he has working for him happens to be her former mate. She got rid of him as soon as she realized he saw her more as a slave than as a partner. For the most part, he still does."

Ian nodded. “Someone should remind him that we have the death penalty for forced sexual contact here. Although I think I’d be too tempted to make sure his boss was in the same airlock.”

“You do know he’s doing that on purpose to get you to strike him, don’t you?” Noren asked.

“Yeah, I do, but it wouldn’t matter if I did or not, we’re not under your current laws here. I’m completely free to kick the shit out of him if I want to, and there is nothing he can do about it. As it stands right at this moment, there is no treaty between us. Your laws have no weight here at all,” Ian explained.

“I think he was planning on using the situation to force your AI to remove you as the ship’s Commander,” Noren said.

Ian nodded. “Won’t work, Star is the one that pointed this fact out to me. If he tries to issue an order to my ship, he’s likely to find himself in a cell in the brig."

“Well, I do expect him to try to take your ship by using her index codes. She was originally designed and built at one of his shipyards,” Admiral Goya said. “I was going to warn you of that as soon as I could.”