Total Betrayal (Deep Space Endeavor) (29 page)

             
After another hour of planning and questions, the meeting finally broke up. Jesse asked Serge, Manny and Josiah to come to lunch with him. As they sat in Serge's house, enjoying their lunch, Josiah asked, "What did you want to talk to us about, Jess?"

             
"What, I can't have lunch with my friends?" He replied playfully, putting his hands up in a defensive manner.

             
"Not right after an intense military briefing you can't, spill it." Manny added.

             
Jesse laughed, his friends had him pegged and he couldn't get around it. "Alright, I wanted to discuss our other contingencies with you guys. These will be the key to the whole battle and I wanted to keep the loop as tight as possible, because if these details got out, it would kill our plan."

             
"I knew you had more up your sleeve," Josiah laughed.

             
"Well, you can thank Serge, too, he made a lot of it possible." Jesse replied.

             
"No, it was you're distrust of Admiral Natora that made it possible. Tell them the plan." Serge flashed a predatory grin that would have looked evil on anyone else.

             
"The Enclave is in possession of almost two hundred of our SSE warships. I have no doubt Lucien will use them as the tip of the spear to crush us. His ego and personality won't be able to resist the symbolic irony. What he doesn't know, what no one in the galaxy except Serge and I know, is that we installed remote access technology into every one of our ships and planetary defense systems because I didn't trust Admiral Natora to do the right thing with our technology. As it turns out, I should have been worried about Bliney, and the only reason he doesn't know is because I wanted him to have plausible deniability should I ever have needed to use that tech. Bottom line is we can remotely control every SSE vessel in his fleet."

             
Manny let out a low whistle as the implications of what Jesse had just said became clear to him. "So, during the attack, you'll take control of your ships in their possession and turn them against the rest of their ships. That's genius; we might just stand a chance."

             
"Not just stand a chance; we could win this without even losing too many ships of our own." Jesse excitedly replied. "We also have an extra fifty plasma cannons ready to go and we found almost four thousand smart mines in one of the Cargo ships we liberated from Telos.
Endeavor
and our three cloaked shuttles will plant them around the enemy fleet while I talk terms with Bliney and Lucien. We'll put the mines everywhere except the SSE ships. We have complete home field advantage, and they may be walking into a massacre. The four of us are the only ones that know any of this, so it should stay secret."

             
"This is exciting, and it's a great plan," Josiah nervously started.

             
"But?" Jesse prodded.

             
"But, they know
Endeavor
can cloak, we had to de-cloak in front of them to rescue you on Earth." Josiah finished sadly.

             
"Well, that was unexpected," Jesse mused. "But I don't think it really hinders us. In fact, let's use it, flaunt it. While our three cloaked shuttles spread the further mines,
Endeavor
will de-cloak right in front of them, then cloak again and appear on the other side of the planet, dropping mines as she goes. Then she de-cloaks elsewhere, and cloaks again. Always reappearing quickly, and always in front of them. They will think you are taunting them and hopefully be distracted from the mines."

             
"Really?" Manny asked, not thinking the plan would work.

             
"I know it's not ideal, but it's all we got for now. I hadn't planned on them knowing about the cloak. That would have been helpful information to have a few weeks ago. No worries, though, if they come here looking for trouble, very few of them will be leaving.

______

              The following night, Jesse had called together his family and close friends. He felt like he should thank them all for helping him through his difficult time and apologize for his attitude through a lot of it. He was keenly aware that he had hurt Suzy and Kimi during the process, and even though things were going well now, he wanted to publicly thank them.
Endeavor's
crew was there, along with the military council. Nina, Serge, Ariel, Lana, Jason, Raina and Sun, even Carmine and Maria were there along with Captain Snyder and a few of the soldiers Jesse had known for a long time. He stood up in front of the informal gathering as a caterer was putting out a mouthwatering meal of steak, chicken and ribs sitting in a slightly sweet barbeque sauce along with the traditional sides of potato salad, baked beans, corn on the cob, salad and cornbread. He called for everyone's attention and began.

             
"As all of you know, a few months ago, we were betrayed," he paused as a lump formed in his throat before continuing. "I ...was betrayed by my longtime friend Admiral Bliney. At least I thought he was my friend. His betrayal actually began many years ago. As a result of his betrayal, I found myself to be in bad shape both physically and emotionally." He paused, gathering himself. This was the first time and hopefully the last time he would be addressing this publicly. "It's been a hard road for me, made even more difficult by the total betrayal of our own people. The very people we saved from the Jarlevian invasion just a couple years ago have turned against us. This was difficult for me to accept and along with some other things I found out, made my recovery that much harder." He paused again and everyone knew he was thinking about Rebecca.

             
"It's alright, Jess, we forgive you." Ariel interrupted.

             
Jesse smiled at his cousin, "Thanks Ariel, but I need to say it." He took a deep breath and continued. "I want to apologize for my behavior during my recovery. I was hurt, angry and scared, but that does not excuse some of the things I said or did to people that so obviously care about me. I also want to thank everyone for putting up with me and hanging in there. It's still gonna be a long road, so please, keep hanging in there with me. I want to specifically thank Suzy for everything she has done to not only help me recover, but help me cope as well. I want to thank Kimi for not pulling away from me when I pulled away from her, and of course, I want to thank my precious daughter for being able to make me smile. She is the best thing that ever happened to me." He winked at Lana and noticed she could barely keep her smile to herself. "I've begun designing my new leg, and I'm looking forward to eventually getting back to full strength. In the meantime, I have one announcement to make." He paused again for dramatic effect. "I am going to be turning over command of
Endeavor
to my best friend, Lieutenant Josiah Jackson, permanently. Captain Jackson now has command and if I ever find myself back on
Endeavor
, it will be as a guest." His announcement was met with stunned silence.

             
Suzy smiled, it was a longtime wish of hers for her friend to step back from dangerous missions and field work, and even though it was the loss of his leg that no doubt prompted this, she knew having him in a command role would be better for him in the long term. "That's great news, Jesse, and Josiah is gonna do a great job."

             
"Thanks Suzy, I'm finished with my monologue, so let's eat." Everyone clapped as Jesse sat down. Several people went over to the serving lines to get some food while several more people went over to congratulate a clearly surprised Josiah. While they were eating, Jason received a disturbing message from a contact on Earth.

             
"Are you sure?" Jason said, unable to fathom what he was hearing.

             
"Yes, we are positive, and it's going down in twelve days." The tinny voice responded.

             
"What have we done that everyone hates us so much?"

             
"I don't..."

             
"It's okay," Jason interrupted. “I was just wondering out loud. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Payment will be in your account by morning." As the transmission faded, Jason made his way over to Jesse. He was smiling and laughing with Lana, Kim, and Sun. Right next to him, Ariel and Suzy were congratulating Josiah on his promotion and his command of
Endeavor
. Jason almost hated to give Jesse the news because it had been too long since he had seen his friend this relaxed and happy, but he had to.

             
"Jess, I hate to interrupt, but I just received intel from a reliable source on Earth. We need to discuss this now."

             
Jesse was suddenly all business. He called the military council as well as Serge, Nina, Ariel and Josiah off to the side. He took a seat and looked up at them. "Jason has just received some intel that we need to hear. You may all want to sit down for this; I can hardly believe it myself."

             
"It comes from a trusted and reliable source in the government," Jason assured them.

             
"Apparently, Lucien and Bliney were somehow able to make a treaty with the aliens for the express purpose of destroying us. They will partner up on this and then immediately go back to being enemies when we are destroyed." The murmur going around the room told Jesse that his people were having a hard time swallowing this new development. "The aliens have committed nine hundred ships, while the Enclave and the Coalition will be sending a combined eleven hundred, including all two hundred SSE ships still in their possession."

             
"There's no way we can defeat an armada of that size," General Solomon complained. Jesse could see the fear in her eyes.

             
"It would seem that the entire galaxy has allied themselves against us, what are we going to do?" Admiral Collingsworth asked in nearly a panic.

             
"What can we do? At this point, surrender isn't even an option. It's win or die," Ariel surmised while sadly shaking her head.

             
"We have twelve days to come up with a defense," Jesse began. "I don't know how it's gonna play out, but I do know we will give them all they can handle. Let's get back to dinner, but we'll continue in a briefing tomorrow morning. I think it would be prudent if Councilor Dana was made aware before then and invited to the briefing. I can tell you this, my initial impulse is to figure out a way to convince the aliens that Lucien has betrayed them and led them into a trap. They cannot possibly trust each other. Be thinking about that tonight, and we'll talk more tomorrow. Nina will speak to Councilor Dana; now let's get back to dinner." They broke up and went back to the meal and the rest of their friends, but the atmosphere had become much more somber as they thought about if Polisia was going to survive.

______

              Early the next morning, Jesse was getting ready to leave the house for a day of meetings when he heard a stern voice from the kitchen. "Sit" the voice called. "Duke, I said sit," then he heard the sound of a pup getting swatted. Then he heard the voice soften, "Go eat," followed by happy not so little feet running across the floor. He walked into the kitchen and smiled at the sight. Two snow wolf pups eating their breakfast, and one pup, Soldier, nuzzling up to Lana's hand.

             
"You're doing such a great job with them, Lana. In a few weeks, they'll be fully trained. Have you decided who you would like to give Lady to yet?"

             
"Not yet, I guess I want to wait and see who comes with us when we leave because I don't want to leave her here where I would never see her again."

             
"That's not a bad idea." Soldier playfully ran over to Jesse and put his paw in Jesse's hand. "You really are doing an outstanding job with them, Lana." He gave his daughter a hug.

             
"Thanks, Dad, but it was your instruction that taught them, I just followed through like you told me. Even with everything going on, I didn't want to let up because I knew we would have to either kill them or release them back into the wild if I didn't, and I couldn't bear to let that happen."

             
"We would have had to kill them, because they lived with us too long. If they couldn't be trained and we put them back in the mountains, they would have felt abandoned by humans. They also would have been way too familiar with humans and that wouldn't be good because they wouldn't be scared of us. They would have had to have been put down, but you made sure that didn't happen. I'm so proud of you."

             
"Thanks, Dad, I'm proud of you, too. You're getting better, you're gonna build a new leg, and you're gonna save all of us."

             
He looked at his daughter and warily replied. "I hope you're right, because right now, I'm freaking out a little."