Love conquers all a-1

by Saxon Andrew

  Jeremy Watson was also in the hospital. He had been shot in the leg after he had joined the headquarters staff in support of Charlie Company. He continued to fire his weapon until he lost consciousness. He, like Richard, had been rushed back to Earth for special care. He had regained consciousness three days ago and was beginning to walk on his repaired leg. Getting his repaired shoulder to work properly was not going as well, but he knew it was only a matter of time until he was, if not 100 percent, at least ninety. He looked in his personnel pack and saw the letter Alonso had charged him to deliver, and he vowed to finish that promise quickly. Alonso deserved his best effort. He never considered having anyone else deliver it. It was his duty, his solemn duty. He missed Alonso tremendously and felt a huge weight on his heart because Alonso was killed saving him. “I’ve got to deliver this letter,” he thought.

  Two days later, Richard woke to see Tag, Danielle, Maggie, and his children surrounding his bed. He smiled and said, “What’s the matter? Am I going to die or something?”

  Tag took his friend’s hand and said, “Richard, we have been worried that you just might, but now we know you’re going to be fine. This is the first day your doctors would allow us to move you out of this room, and we have some visitors that will not leave until they have the opportunity to say hello. So, are you ready for a little trip?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Richard said.

  Tag took the bed Richard was lying in and started rolling it out of the room and into the hall. The hospital staff lined both sides of the hall, and as soon as they saw him they started clapping. It continued and grew in volume as they rolled him through the front entrance and out to the grassy area directly in front of the hospital.

  Richard heard, “Attention!” There, lined in perfect ranks, were the survivors of his battalion. The veterans of the Ross conflict saluted and then cheered their leader. Even the wounded that were unable to walk sat in their chairs and cheered. Richard felt a big lump in his throat and returned their salute. Then he saw, directly to the side of the entrance, the large crowd that covered the hospital grounds and extended out into the streets in both directions. The director of the government of Earth was approaching him with all the members of the general staff behind her. She came to Richard’s bed and he saluted her. “I’m sorry I can’t stand, Madam Director.”

  Misty Nicole took a microphone and said, “It is I that should be saluting you, Colonel Wiseman. All of Earth wants to thank you for the sacrifice and bravery you and your men demonstrated during the relief of the Ross population. When confronted by a force more than six times your number, you and your brave comrades held out until relief could arrive. You fought even though your leg was broken in four places and you had shrapnel in your arm. Even thought your armor’s screen no longer functioned, you refused to leave the battle and continued to fight to save your men from being overrun through a weak point in your lines. We have not fought a battle in more than four hundred years,” she said to the assembled crowds. “Colonel Wiseman and his men have set a standard for all of our armed forces to follow that should inspire us all. It is with a grateful and loving heart that I have the pleasure of awarding Colonel Richard Wiseman the Solar Star, which is mankind’s highest award for bravery. He is the first marine recipient of this award. We also have changed his battalion’s numbers to First Battalion, First Division Naval Marines. His unit will be awarded the Golden Transport Medal, which is the highest award for bravery a unit may receive. Colonel Richard Wiseman is also hereby promoted to the rank of general and will command the newly constituted First Division. General Wiseman, all mankind thanks you and your men for the sacrifice and job you’ve done in freeing our brothers from the Alliance concentration camps on Ross.”

  The crowd went crazy with a roar, and Richard could barely keep control of himself. He was crying for the men he lost and the memory of their sacrifice. His men were chanting over and over, “Wise-man, Wise-man, Wise-man.”

  Tag leaned down and whispered in his ear, “Richard, your ghosts should rest easy now. You’ve atoned for your sins.”

  Richard looked at Tag and said, “I can’t thank you enough for giving me a chance.” Then Maggie and the children were all over him with kisses, and he finally found peace and knew his heart was free.

  Jeremy Watson rang the tone on the door of Alonso’s family’s living quarters. A pretty young woman answered the door and said, “May I help you?”

  “Are you Maria Singh?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “I have something for you,” Jeremy said and handed her the letter from Alonso. The young woman took the letter, looked at the handwriting on it, and started crying. Jeremy continued, “I promised Al on Ross that if anything happened I would deliver this letter to you personally. He was my partner in the squad and he saved my life.”

  “Come in please, sit down,” Maria said through her tears. Then she opened the letter and began reading it. Tears rolled down her face and finally she clutched the letter to her chest when she finished. Three young children were looking from around a corner and saw their mother crying. She saw them and motioned them to come in, and all three ran over and held onto her. She wiped her eyes and said, “It’s alright, children. This is a good friend of your father who has come to visit. He was there when your father died.”

  The children looked at Jeremy with wide eyes and he said to them, “I’ll come back and tell you about your father if you like,” and then he looked at Maria and said, “if it’s alright with you.” She nodded her consent.

  “Will you stay and have dinner with us, Mr. Watson?”

  “Please call me Jer. Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “Certainly. I’d like to hear what happened from you.”

  After dinner, when the children had been put to bed, Jeremy told Maria about how Al had died while saving his life. He told her that if Al would have just left him, Al might still be alive, and that he felt responsible for his death. Maria looked Jeremy straight in the eye and asked, “Jer, if Al had fallen first, would you have run and left him behind?”

  “No possible way!”

  “Then how can you blame yourself for Al doing only what you would have done yourself?”

  Jeremy looked into Maria’s eyes, and suddenly it was like the weight of the world was lifted from his shoulders. “There’s something else, Maria. I have received an award that I would have never had the chance to receive if it weren’t for Al saving me, and I think it belongs to you and your children.” Jeremy opened a small case and there inside was the Solar Star. Jeremy was the second marine recipient. Maria was deeply touched. “I’ve also requested that any benefits received by me for this award should be given to you and your children immediately. I told the Director that otherwise I would not accept it.” He then handed Maria a document signed by the Director of the Directorate, giving Maria full active wages of a general for life and full medical benefits for her family. It also awarded full scholarships for all her children to the learning institutions of their choice. Maria broke down and started crying in earnest. Jeremy took her in his good arm and held her until the tears stopped.

  “Jer, will you come to see us and tell the children about their father?”

  “I would be honored.”

  “Maybe whenever you have the time you might take them out to play.”

  “I look forward to it, Maria.”

  Jeremy left and Maria re-read Al’s letter. At the end he wrote, “Maria, I love you with all my heart, and if you’re reading this, then I didn’t make it. The price I paid to protect you and the children was worth it. I need you to do something for me, my love. My squad partner Jeremy Watson will be bringing you this letter. He is one of the finest men I have ever known, and he’s alone now. His family died when he was young and he’s never had a serious relationship other than my friendship. I’m the closest thing he has to a family and if I’m gone, well, I’m worried about him making it. Maria, take care of him. I know that he will do all in his power t
o make sure you and the children are okay because he’s that kind of man. Open your heart to him. He deserves it, and so do you. I love you.”

  Maria began crying again. Al was always so much wiser than anyone she ever knew. When she first read the letter she was angry at what Al suggested. Then she really looked at Jeremy and saw his love for her husband. She also saw that he and she shared that love and loss. In her heart, she knew Al would be smiling, and she knew that she had nothing to fear for herself or her children. One of the two bravest men in the galaxy was going to make sure she was taken care of, and she knew he would always be there. She began crying in earnest, but now they were tears of thankfulness. Perhaps she and Jeremy could heal together.

  The Alliance main fleet arrived at Ross and began organizing into its units. The additional four hundred ships from Cainth were already present, waiting for the main fleet to arrive. Terl had notified Dorg that the Glod ships would arrive in twelve rotations and to wait until they got there. Dorg began having his fleet go through maneuvers to improve their ability at working together. He sent three dreadnoughts to the planet and had them drop a team of investigators to the surface to see what they could find out.

  The Cleveland had already notified Earth command of the arrival of the four hundred Cainth ships. When the 1,200 ships of the main fleet arrived, Cleveland started a live feed of what it was seeing. On Earth in command headquarters, Kosiev, the general staff, the director, and the members of the special forces team, including Tag, watched the Alliance fleet go through its paces. Colonel Salerio said, “That is an awfully big fleet out there.”

  Tag nodded, “There are more ships coming.”

  Everyone in the room looked at him and the Director said, “How do you know that?”

  “They haven’t left to attack us. They’re going through maneuvers to get the new units from Cainth worked into their structure. The four hundred Cainth ships have to be reinforcements, and that means they are waiting for more ships to arrive. I suspect that the Cainth are matching the ships coming from another source, so it will probably be four hundred more ships.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” Kosiev said. “How do you know it will only be four hundred more?”

  Tag smiled and said, “I might be wrong, but in your first battle wasn’t there one Cainth Cruiser and one-what was that race called? — Glod, yeah, that’s it, Glod cruiser. And in the second battle, weren’t there two Cainth dreadnoughts and two Glod dreadnoughts? If nothing else, the Cainth are consistent.”

  Kosiev smiled, looked at the screen, and said, “You surprise me with your observation skills; you’re probably right. That means we will be facing two thousand war ships. How do we go about handling them this time?”

  We have six thousand plus ships; why should we even worry?” Colonel Salerio asked.

  “Colonel,” Tag said, “what would be the response of the Alliance if we attacked with seven thousand ships and destroyed those two thousand ships?” Colonel Salerio just looked and Tag and said nothing. “Would anyone like to answer that question?” Tag asked.

  There was silence, and then the spokesman for the Special Forces Team said, “The Alliance will mobilize every available ship and attack in force.”

  “Does the general staff have an estimate of how many ships that might be?”

  “Over twenty-five thousand within thirty days and another twenty-five thousand within sixty days,” Misty said.

  “To destroy our planet, the Alliance would only need to get ten dreadnoughts through our defense to effectively bomb our civilization back into the Stone Age,” Tag said. “Our only chance of survival is to fight with a much smaller force than our attackers. That way they will always send a little bit larger force. How do you eat a two-thousand-pound sandwich? One bite at a time? We have to wear down the Alliance numbers in a series of battles until we have the chance to survive. We will probably take the war to the Alliance after this upcoming battle to move it away from Earth. We learned a lot in our first battle and we’ll be more effective in the upcoming conflict. Now that we know the smaller ships can help the larger ships with removing a load from their screens, Admiral Kosiev has developed a weave with five ships that has them constantly going through each other’s screen, spreading out the load. Our losses last time were because we didn’t know how we could help each other.”

  General Masseem interjected, “But look at that fleet. There are five hundred dreadnoughts. Most of our fleet is composed of destroyer class ships. We don’t have enough empire class ships to handle that kind of fire power.”

  Admiral Kosiev looked around the room and could see the fear on their faces, because the numbers appeared to be overwhelming. Then he stood up and addressed the assembled leaders of humanity. “I know that the force we’re facing seems overwhelming, but in our first battle, we lost eleven ships to our enemy’s two hundred. That’s almost twenty to one odds. Using that as a barometer, we’d still only need one hundred ships for those two thousand. I know, I know. This is a different order of magnitude than that first battle. I was skeptical before our first conflict that one hundred ships could handle two hundred. Now I believe we can handle those two thousand ships with five hundred or less, and let me tell you why. We learn and adapt and do it faster than the Alliance could ever hope to match. We have developed a weapon for our destroyer class ship that we believe will allow them to defeat a dreadnought.” The entire room sat up straighter at that announcement. “We learned in the ground war just how dangerous and effective our hornet missiles were to the Alliance heavy weapons platforms. Each one of these missiles carries the equivalent of three primary lasers striking simultaneously in a four-inch circle. They are too small to penetrate the screens of even a small ship, much less the five screens of a dreadnought, but we have developed a new technique with our Coronado screens that should resolve that problem. We took a destroyer and programmed its Coronado screen to fire a hollow beam only twelve inches wide into the screen of one of our old battleships fitted with a Coronado screen. This is what we call the needle. The force of that needle is actually stronger on the twelve-inch surface it impacts than the primary beam of our empire class ships. It will penetrate the five screens of a dreadnought for less than one-tenth of a second. However, in the middle of that hollow tube four hundred hornets will be surrounded by a protective energy sheath, and they will be pushed through the screen that was penetrated in less than one-twentieth of a second. Our small destroyers will be giving the Alliance ship a four-hundred-hornet injection. Four hundred hornets are like 1,200 primary beams, and they’ll be swarming inside the protective screens of the Alliance ships. The only trade-off is that the destroyers must be within one thousand yards of their target for the needle to have full impact. Empire ships only have to be within ten miles for their needles to work. We have been modifying our ships since Ross, and most of the new software has already been installed in our screen’s control system. It was relatively simple to install the eight-inch missile ports on the surface of our ships; however, the auto load magazines for the hornets involved some clever packaging, especially on the destroyers. Most of the ships taking part in the upcoming battle have been upgraded, and the remainder should be ready in time. The rest of our fleets will be completed within ninety days. The Coronado screen has been programmed to fire the needle from the power cells that surround the hornet missile ports. The hornets will be contained in an energy field that will be pulled out with the needle. The hornets are so small that the magazine can be autoloaded in less than five seconds after firing. Each destroyer will have four ports on its surface. These will be formidable ships. Fire control will determine how many hornets will be fired in each needle. A dreadnought will get the full four hundred, a battleship two hundred, a cruiser one hundred, and small ships fifty. This is a weapon platform that will complement those we already have. We will be much more effective this time than our first battle, especially in close-in fighting where our ships are surrounded. The empire class battleships will be truly
formidable, especially when using the energy hitting their screen to supplement the needles’ penetrating power. Before when their screen was close to overload they had to use all their power to maintain the screen. The needles give an outlet to that energy and a powerful counter to the attacking ships.”

  “So,” Tag said, “how many ships do we use? Keep in mind that unlike the first time where we were able to keep the Alliance blind as to what was happening, it won’t likely happen again. They will have ships stationed in the star drive, one recording everything that happens, ready to jump at the first hint of danger. They will see what we can do. How few are needed to win but so few as to not draw a total response?”

  After forty minutes of debate, the leaders of humanity decided that 350 ships would face the Alliance fleet. The Earth fleet would be divided into seven squadrons of fifty ships each. They would be made up of ten empire class battle ships with twenty cruisers and twenty destroyers. The cruisers would be assigned above and below the empire ships and would take targets of opportunity. Their main functions were to help dump excess energy from the screens of the empire ships when the load got too high and to assist the destroyers in getting close enough to use their needles.

  The cruisers had the strongest screen of any Earth ship, and a destroyer in distress could fly into its screen and emerge with a decharged screen. The most lethal weapon the cruisers had were the twenty hornet missile ports. Since their screen was the strongest, they also had more penetrating power than any other Earth ships.