"I believe a similar timeline to be possible. More bots would help to ensure that."
"We're turning out close to three thousand a day now on Midelon. The hope is to double that in two weeks, and again two weeks after. So in about five weeks we should be passing that ten thousand processor a day target."
"I'm thinking we may want to continue our ramp-up of production of those. Supporting a billion people is a daunting task. The more bot workers we have, the better equipped we'll be should we run into trouble."
Tawn leaned back in her chair. "I still can't believe we're heading back to Earth. Have you seen the images from the scout? Stunning."
Alex smirked. "Unless you've forgotten, Miss Freely. I was born there."
"Hard to believe still. I do believe you were... it's just... whatever."
Harris chuckled. "When's the last time you took a rest?"
"Same time as you."
"No, as I recall, you were futzing about the cabin when I went to sleep, and then again when I woke."
"Oh yeah. Had too much on my mind to sleep."
Harris pointed. "Go hit the ship. We need the Hero of Humanity sharp when the time comes for another epiphany."
Tawn slowly stood and trudged out the door.
Alex followed her with his eyes. "The drive the two of you exhibit is remarkable."
"Says the scientist who works twenty-hour days. When's the last time you rested?"
Alex tilted his head back in thought. "Hmm, I believe I was fourteen at the time. I woke up from a dream thinking I was late for the school bus."
Harris chuckled. "Not sure what you're talking about, but I'll take the fourteen-year-old part of that as being the most important clue. You might think of taking a break yourself."
"My work is too important, Mr. Gruberg. Besides, my work is my rest."
Harris' mind came to a stop. "You just had a comm with Idiot. I thought we lost all those comms out there?"
"From the Midelon facility itself, yes. We've had to drop five thousand advanced probes in stationary positions between there and here. We have a constant link up and running. Now go get your rest."
Harris nodded. "I guess it's a good time for that right now anyway. Talk to you in a bit, Doc. And good luck with the updates. We all need them."
Harris stepped up through the hatch and walked slowly to the quarters where his bunk was waiting. He stopped in the doorway for several seconds as he stared at a slumbering Tawn, snoring and grumbling as she slept. Harris chuckled while walking to his bunk and lying back. Tawnish Freely was more than the sister he never had, she was his best friend.
He smiled as he reached for a light switch. "Goodnight, hero."
A full month of production passed by with all levels of defense climbing toward goals. Gamma missiles had passed twelve thousand. Banshees numbered forty thousand. Chicago Port Station now had half its shielding applied and operational. The first of the laser cannons had been added to a turret on her outer hull. Everything was sailing along smoothly... until...
A scout came in from the direction of the Burrell with a report. "Ships with the same identification markers as those seen at Bonalee are heading in this direction. An additional twenty-five thousand ships have joined them. Estimated arrival is in nineteen days."
Harris rubbed the back of his neck. "Let's go round up the colonel and his staff. See what they have to say."
The Bangor made a run out to the Retreat. The colonel was waiting in his office.
"Sixty-five thousand ships this time, Colonel," Harris said.
"And Burrell... thought we had them managed."
"The report has them spread out too. Not gonna knock them out with a handful of gammas this time."
"Is our plan still to meet them out there? Before their arrival here?"
Tawn said, "That's why we're here, Colonel. To get a plan. You interested in helping?"
"Have a seat. I'll call in the staff and we'll go meet them in the conference room when ready."
Tawn took her chair with Harris sitting beside her. "This will be like a showdown of Frizoid tech versus Burrell tech. Let's hope the Frizoid have the edge."
"Morgan said he's only had a chance to add the Crissen shield tech to about fifteen hundred of our ships. Looks like we'll have a good understanding of whether or not that tech is worth all the effort. Any thoughts on making use of Chicago Port? Even if only as a distraction?"
"They would rip that place apart. Besides, we're moving Idiot and the archives in there today. When that fleet arrives, we'll be moving it to Gianus to pick up Alex and his stuff. I want him to pick out a space on there for his lab so we can get him off that planet and mobile."
The colonel entered the room with his team. Ideas were passed around, bashed, or promoted. The end result was nothing more than a head-on strike using the entire fleet. The battle would be fought in deep space, far from any worlds or bases.
After a wrap, Tawn and Harris walked back to the Bangor. "We have our recommendation for the President."
Tawn nodded. "That we do. It's the logical choice. Fully commit and see where it takes us."
The part that bugs me most is even if we win this fight, we'll be vulnerable to the Frizoid. We're probably talking six months of uninhibited production to get back to the numbers we'll need for a decent defense."
Tawn chuckled. "Too bad we can't convince the Frizoid to make their move against the Burrell now. That many ships has got to leave their defenses strained."
Harris began to smile, but the smile quickly faded. "I was just about to call you a genius again."
"Well, go ahead. You can still do that."
"I was thinking about contacting the Frizoid to make a deal with them. My brain suddenly stopped on this thought. If we let the Frizoid know the Burrell are coming here, they might just follow them in, hoping to take the spoils themselves. We would essentially be telling the Frizoid we would soon have little or no defense. They would come pouring in after, knowing they could follow through with the Burrell later if they wanted."
"Same occurred to me. We tell the Frizoid, they come after us. I think a straight in attack is all we have."
A meeting with the President had the team in a delay pattern. He insisted they wait for additional gamma missiles to be produced. Given the thousand a day that were coming off the line, his direction, while not an order, was heeded. With five days left before arrival, the automated fleet set out to meet the incoming Burrell warships.
Harris and Tawn jumped along with the bot pilots and crewmen. Eighteen hours in, the Burrell fleet was detected by a scout. The missiles, now eighteen thousand in number, were deployed and waiting.
Tawn watched the nav display with her finger over the button. "Sixty seconds."
"Sure wish they weren't scattered like that. Someone must have gotten the information back to them of what we did to the Frizoid."
"Yeah, I think we talk too much. If we're trying to appease the public, I think these things need to be handled more discreetly. Anything else and you might as well be sending the enemy a memo about what exactly you were doing."
Harris said, "Coming up…"
"On it in three... two... one."
Thousands of wormholes opened in front of the missile placements. For an instant, the blackness of open space was filled with light. Nearly sixteen thousand ships failed to make the next jump. A transport loaded with bots and shuttles moved in to collect the now derelict ships.
As the Burrell fleet came through the next set of wormholes, the captured Frizoid fleet was waiting for them. Lasers fired— blasts could be seen on vessels from both sides. The blink of laser cannons pulsing caused an eerie glow on the hulls of every ship in the field. Explosions spread debris outward where penetration had been made. The ordered field of fight soon turned to chaos as the warships mixed together.
Harris shook his head as he watched from the safety of the Bangor. "I know we're trained to hold our nerves, but what a fearful sight. So much destructio
n and death."
Tawn replied, "Not on our side. Those are bots we're losing. And they look to be doing a good job so far. We have a slight edge."
"Could just be from the surprise. We'll know in about twenty minutes how it's really going."
The chaotic fight continued with no strategies evident, no rhyme or reason for any move, countermove, attack, or defense. It was surely an every ship for itself fight. The partners watched quietly for the time Harris had suggested.
Tawn slowly shook her head. "You were right. Casualties have slowly turned in their favor since that initial assault. Graph says we still have the edge, but that will be changing."
Four hours into the fight, each side was down by half. Six hours had taken the Human fleet's numeric advantage. At eight hours, the superiority of the Burrell warships was beginning to show. Only the fifteen hundred cruisers with the newly installed Crissen shield tech were operating with little to no damage.
The remainder of the Human fleet in the fight was punched full of holes. Fires raged and quickly flamed out due to lack of oxygen. The bot pilots and crews of the Human ships did not care.
After half a standard day had passed, the Burrell fleet continued to dominate, with nearly twelve thousand warships remaining. The automated fleet's numbers had fallen to less than half that number. Again a multitude of wormholes opened. This time the Burrell ships taken offline with the gamma missiles streamed through, piloted by their newly-manned android crews. Within minutes, the Burrell fleet had lost another thousand ships.
The battle raged for another hour, with the Burrell-piloted ships once again gaining the upper hand. The four bot teams on the captured ships were proving to be undermanned and ineffective. In a surprise move, with only five thousand ships left per side, the Burrell commander lost confidence and ordered a full withdrawal. As wormholes opened, heading back toward their base, the attacking fleet retreated.
Tawn raised an eyebrow. "Wow. Didn't see that coming. They had us. We've got nothing left at Domicile."
"Fortunately they didn't know that. Let's take our hard-fought victory and go home."
Tawn shook her head as she looked over the nav display. "All those lives. All that debris. And for what, so they could try to rule over someone else?"
Harris nodded. "I would have to guess the Crissen and the Burrell have called a truce."
"Which leaves us with one nemesis remaining."
— Chapter 21 —
* * *
Harris sat directly in front to the President's desk, Tawn on one side and the colonel on the other.
The President leaned forward on his elbows. "Nicely done, although our loss total was excessive."
Harris shrugged. "The Burrell had the better ships."
"And when we had the same ships, only more of them?"
"Under-crewed. It's in the report. We burned sixty thousand bots on those Burrell ships alone. Counting our own ship and crew losses, that's close to four hundred thousand bots we just lost out there. We brought back sixteen Banshees out of forty-something thousand. Of the Frizoid ships, thirteen hundred of the fifteen hundred we modified the shields on came back. That's about fifty-four thousand that didn't. As to the captured Burrell ships, we brought back about thirty-five hundred."
The colonel said, "As we said, until we get those ship numbers back up, we're vulnerable here. The good news is we haven't detected any movement in this direction by the Frizoid or the others. That should give us almost two months of warning next time."
"Why was that limited to nineteen days with this notice?"
Tawn replied, "They caught us while we were switching out our scouts. It was a fluke. We've adjusted. It won't happen again."
The President leaned back in his chair. "Just so you know, this isn't an interrogation. I need to know the details of the encounter so I can explain it to Congress."
The colonel sat forward. "About that, we believe word has somehow been getting back to the enemy, Mr. President. It's nothing like spies inside your administration or anything, it's all of us. We're giving out too much information in our attempt to explain everything away and make the people feel safe. We believe it to be ill-advised to take the fight details to the people.
"It's costing us our advantages. Our enemies are quickly figuring out how we operate and what our capabilities are. If I were you, I'd put a cap on this briefing. Have your writers craft a victory speech that outlines a victory and not the victory. Keep everything to generalities. Keep the real data tight."
The President tapped his fingers on his desk for several seconds. "Thank you, Colonel. I'll take that under advisement."
When the meeting ended, Tawn and Harris flew the colonel back to the Retreat. The discussion circled around the President and his comments.
The colonel stopped in the hatch. "He means well. He's under a lot of pressure too. And if the three of us start thinking like dictators, we'll find our duties and responsibilities stripped away from us. He's trusted us thus far because we've worked with him on the aftermath of these fights. If he feels we're holding back, that trust goes away."
Harris nodded. "I know what you're saying, Colonel. We'll tread lightly, but not at the expense of our defense."
The colonel hopped to the tarmac with a grin. "Love this heavy gravity. Feels like home."
The hatch was closed and the Bangor headed for Domicile.
Tawn said, "He's right, you know. We start treating the President like he's a junior officer in all this and he's not gonna be happy with us."
"Yeah, well, with the dire situation facing us, I don't have time for his politics."
Tawn chuckled. "If you haven't noticed yet, every situation is a dire situation. Between those three species, they could have killed us, or at least owned us, ten times over. We've been lucky at just the right time, and they've made huge blunders."
"We've made a few of our own."
Tawn smiled as she slapped him on the shoulder. "Let's look at the bright side. The latest schedule predicts both housing and food will be ready on Earth. In a few months, we might even start moving the first people."
"The danger zone is still between now and six months from now."
"Why six months?"
"That's when we should have enough ships and missiles to have a shot at defending ourselves again. From there on, we should only get stronger."
"It's a conundrum, isn't it?"
"What's a conundrum?"
"You know, like a decision that has wins and losses on both sides."
Harris chuckled. "I know what a conundrum is, you idiot. What is this conundrum?"
"We can build defenses and hopefully defend ourselves later, or we can build transports and hopefully not have to defend ourselves later."
"The latter has more risk."
"How so?"
In six months we'll still be moving people. Probably for a full year. That means an entire year where we have no defense. If we continue to put our efforts into defense, our transporting might take another six months, but we're protected, hopefully, for that entire time. Now, tell me if you think the Frizoid will be here in the next twelve months."
"I get your point. Maybe Bannis, or Alex, or even Idiot, can figure out a way to speed things up."
"We lost half our bots out there in that fight. Those are key to our production rates. We'll be struggling until we can get those numbers back to where they were."
"At six thousand a day now, it shouldn't take long. Just over three months? We should have a hundred thousand gamma missiles by then."
Harris shook his head. "Did you miss that part of the briefing? We're starting to run short of fissionable materials."
"When did that happen?"
"The ore vein at the biggest mine has been exhausted. And the second biggest is close."
"How'd I miss that?"
"Doesn't matter. The remaining mines should see us through half the hundred thousand. Morgan has mining teams out scouting the old mines at New Earth. Those w
ill take time to bring online though.
Tawn sighed. "Always something…"
Several days after arrival back at Domicile, a visit was made with Trish, Garvis, Gandy and Sharvie for a double wedding. It was a small service, only immediate family and a few close friends. Alex, although happy for the couples, was eager to get back to his lab, which was in the process of being moved to Chicago Port Station. Morgan was anxious as well, but held back most evidence of such. Harris was given the privilege of being best man for both, with Tawn being the maid of honor.
Harris wore his tux proudly at the large reception afterward. "Do I really look like a penguin in this? I like penguins. I’ll be happy to see those when we get to Earth."
Tawn chuckled. "You look like a pig stuffed into a tuxedo. And there are no penguins on Earth, only what our ancestors brought here."
"I keep forgetting virtually every animal died there."
Alex came up behind them. "The re-population is continuing, but it will be some time before it stabilizes to natural levels. Expect animal plagues to be disruptive for most of the rest of your lives."
"Come on, Doc, don't sugarcoat it. Tell us what you really think."
"I think it will be a difficult road. But, if anything, Humans are adaptive. We're good fixers because we invariably don't give up."
Tawn sighed. "It's funny, I can't wait to get there because I keep thinking about that exploration ship I want to build. Does that make me slightly insane? Wanting to leave before we even get there?"
Harris smirked. "That's not what makes you slightly insane. But it might be the result of you being it. I've actually been thinking about that exploring too. You think the colonel might be up for that? He'll be losing the Retreat when we move."
"No he won't. A location on Earth has already been selected. They've already begun the process of deconstructing one of those domes to move over."
"How'd I miss that?"
"He's doing it with his own labor and ships. In our same six month timeframe he expects to have that first dome up and operational. The second will follow a few months after, and the third has been traded to a private party for the use of ships doing the moves. The Bios are handling their entire move on their own."
ARMS For Eternity: (Book 8) Page 19