by Andrew Beery
The D'lralu had been bested. A new champion race needed to be subsumed and the previous champions eradicated. Per a well-established protocol, the new champions would be contacted to witness the destruction of their enemies. This established a bond between their two peoples based on an absolute understanding of the Uruk's vast superiority.
What the Uruk AI failed to appreciate, was that the humans were unlike any race they had previously encountered.
***
Personal Log
July 15, 2112 - The Earth has survived its first encounter with a hostile alien race. More disturbing is the knowledge, that this race is really little more than a proxy for another far more powerful enemy. I am convinced that alone we cannot survive. Only if we can form a partnership with other worlds do we have any hope of pulling through this...
Cat stood on the deck of the Yorktown's shuttle bay. She had been back in Earth space for less than an hour. The delegation from D'lralu's ruling council was about to board a shuttle and visit with a human delegation on the Yorktown.
However, before they would arrive, Cat had the unpleasant duty of receiving representatives from the USC Admiralty Board...the board whose authority she had effectively usurped, when she conducted her little demonstration in D'lralu space. She had no doubt the admirals would be taking action as a result of her behavior. The real question in her mind was, would she remain a commissioned officer in the United Space Command, or was she to be cashiered from the space service?
Admiral Faragon's yacht docked in its customary place in shuttle bay four. She stood at attention along with her First Officer, Ken Kirkland, as the side egress panel lowered. Admirals Pike and Faragon stepped down the ramp. Salutes and formalities quickly followed. Moments later Admiral Faragon's administrative assistant, Lieutenant Commander Sherry Melbourne, also exited the shuttle. She too exchanged salutes before turning to face Admiral Faragon.
The Lieutenant Commander held up three fingers and shook her head slightly. Admiral Pike sucked in her breath slightly and exhaled a soft, "Damn"
Admiral Faragon shot her a brief admonishing glance before speaking. "Cat... Speaking for myself... What you did probably saved every man and woman on the planet... That said..."
"I understand, Sir," she said formally. "The chain of command is essential to any military. I violated that."
"Yes you did... And if you hadn't, we wouldn't be here to discuss the matter." Admiral Pike said, with a voice that was clearly frustrated.
"The point is... A good leader knows when to follow orders." Admiral Faragon locked his eyes on Cat's. She stood ramrod straight - ready for whatever came next. The Admiral continued. "A great leader knows when it is time to exceed his or her orders. You, Catherine Jackie Kimbridge, are a great leader."
Admiral Pike looked at Commander Kirkland. "Did you bring them?"
With a grin that threatened to split his face, Ken produced a small black box from the cargo pouch of his battle dress uniform. He handed the box to Admiral Pike when she reached her hand for it.
Admiral Faragon assumed a rigid posture. "Attention to Orders," he said in a loud voice. "The president of the United World Congress, acting upon the recommendation of the Admiralty Board, has placed special trust and confidence in the patriotism, integrity, and abilities of Captain Catherine Kimbridge. In view of these special qualities, and her demonstrated potential to serve in the higher grade, Captain Kimbridge is promoted to the grade of Commodore, United Space Command, effective the 15th day of July, two thousand one hundred and twelve, by order of the chairman of the Admiralty Board, Admiral of the Fleet, Bud Faragon.
As Admiral Faragon read the promotion Admiral Pike and Commander Kirkland pinned the small black tab with a single silver star on each of Cat's collars. When complete both officers saluted the newly promoted and thoroughly stunned Commodore.
***
Commodore Catherine Kimbridge sat just to the left of Admirals Bud Faragon and Janice Pike. Ben, the cybernetic D'lralu, sat with a delegation from his home system. The surprise in the room was Captain JT Kirk and a pair of shimmering green, feathered five foot tall kangaroos with three fingered hands. These Hupenstanii were the survivors of the Hopper-D'lralu war that ended very badly for the Hoppers many years ago.
The leader of the Hoppers went by the nickname Gibby. He addressed the gathering in a strangely lilting but pleasant voice. His race had a tremendous facility for mimicking sounds, and, because of the way their brains were wired, could pick up spoken languages with great ease. Their cloaked probes had been monitoring humanity for several decades and Gibby had the equivalent of a doctorate in 'Human' studies.
"The simple fact remains, none of us is strong enough to resist the Uruk Imperium... Those you call the Masters." Gibby said with emphatic passion.
"Not alone... You're right." Admiral Faragon agreed. "But together we would be harder to defeat."
The other Hupenstanii, a slightly smaller and therefore younger Hopper named Trifa, spoke up. "Our historical records document Uruk weapons that tap unimaginable energies. Their technologies allow them to open transdimentional links to the galactic core and harness the energies there."
"Then perhaps we are more evenly matched than you think" Admiral Pike interjected. "We too have weapons that tap into the Galactic core."
Cat took the opportunity to ask a pointed question. "I suspect we may be looking at a finesse issue. We simply open a hyper field conduit to a point near the event horizon of the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Trifa mentioned the Uruk 'utilizing' these energies. Am I correct in assuming that not only can the Uruk harness these energies, but that they are also capable of manipulating them?"
"The Commodore is correct..." Trifa acknowledged. "Imagine being able to utilize those energies like a surgeon uses a scalpel. We have seen them enshroud a planet in a massive... Hyper field, to use your term, and triple or quadruple the strength of the Higgs field."
JT looked confused. “And this would be bad because?"
Cat smiled at the captain of the Hope. "Interactions with the Higgs field give rise to gravity and mass. Increase the interaction and you effectively increase mass. If the mass of an orbiting body increases, its orbital velocity either must increase or the orbital radius will decrease. In other words... It crashes into the sun."
"Yes, I can see how that would be bad..." JT said.
"Is this what happened to your world?" Cat asked.
The two Hoppers looked at each other. Before they could answer, the First of the First from the D'lralu delegation spoke up. "Yes and no. By the time their people were forced to attack us, much of their population had died off. Not from disease or war but from simple old age. They stopped reproducing. The D'lralu won the war because the Hoppers simply did not have enough manpower to win."
"I don't understand" Admiral Pike said. "What happened?"
"Racial suicide." Captain Kirk replied. “They didn't want to destroy and so they allowed themselves to be destroyed."
"JT is correct" Gibby agreed. "This did not stop the Uruk from demonstrating their weapons. My people had developed outposts on thirty planetary bodies and moons within four neighboring star systems. The automated Uruk weapons platforms collapsed the orbits of each and every one of them. Not only did our people die but every vestige of our heritage. Every piece of art, every song, every story scroll ever written. All gone... Wiped from existence... The death of my people was far more complete then you could imagine."
"This is the fate destined for my people." Ben said. "How do you fight such a foe?"
"You don't." Cat said. “If you can't win a fight you look for a way to avoid the fight... It's simple logic."
"What are you thinking, Cat?"
***
The Uruk Master AI orbiting a red giant star, which was some 3000 light years closer to the galactic core than Sol, woke up. It took it a full six trillionths of a second to realize what had prompted its monitoring systems to trigger a dehibernation. It sch
eduled a diagnostic review to discover a reason for the unusual delay.
A monitoring station had detected an unacceptable level of sentience in a species scheduled for eradication. Per a standardized protocol, which had be established by its creator several millennia prior to their sun becoming a red giant, a direct and non-intercept-able signal was sent to the only planet which still orbited this dying star. The creators would be given sixteen planetary rotations in which to respond with an override. If no such override was received, the Master AI would implement its primary instructions, and signal its automated attack platforms to proceed with the eradication and subsumption. It had been many thousands of years since a response had been issued, but the protocol was followed none the less.
Shortly after the signal was sent, a small exploration craft entered the system and headed for the sole remaining planetary body. The craft contained three beings. One was the creature known as Yarin Prime.
Chapter Twenty-Four – Galactic Coalition of Planets…
The plan was simple, Cat thought. What could go wrong? Integrate technologies from four different races on a very tight time frame and steal a moon. Child's play!
Cat had briefed the delegation on her wild idea, and to her utter surprise it was considered the best of the poor choices available to them. The D'lralu had massive hybrid power plants, based on fusion and antimatter technologies. They were several orders of magnitude more powerful than those available to either the Humans or Hoppers. In addition the D'lralu knew how to integrate hyper fields across disparate generating platforms. The Humans had access to Heshe AIs and nanotechnology, and a proven gift for creatively integrating and leveraging these technologies. The Hupenstanii brought impressive cloaking and stealth capabilities to the table.
Cat's plan was to integrate the best each race had to offer to save first the D'lralu and then Humanity. The D'lralu's home world had been destroyed several generations ago. As a result, most of their population resided on terraformed moons which orbited gas giants within their solar system. The humans would rapidly create a swarm of hyper field satellites powered by the D'lralu generators. Their fields would be linked, and, utilizing a combination of the Hupenstanii cloaking and human drive technologies, the moons would be jumped hundreds of light years to equivalent orbits around an appropriate gas giant in the Hupenstanii star system.
The whole transition, including active real-time gravimetric compensation, would be overseen by the Heshe AIs utilized by the humans. All non-Hupenstanii radio traffic was suspended, as these types of signals could eventually give away the hiding location of the D'lralu and Hupenstanii allies.
"I wonder how much time we have?" Cat muttered.
Ken looked up from a schematic display he and Trifa were going over. "What?"
"Nothing... Just wondering why the Uruk didn't wipe out the D'lralu the moment the battle for Earth ended?"
"Maybe they don't know yet." Ken offered.
"Doesn't seem possible." Cat said. "I would be hard pressed to believe they don't have some type of mechanism in place to monitor activity in their enslaved systems"
"Oh, they know what happened." Ben said. "When we defeated the Hoppers, it was about two weeks before we received a message, on every conceivable frequency, to place monitoring ships at very specific locations in Hopper controlled space. Seconds after the last of our ships arrived, we watched them shroud each inhabited moon or world in a shimmering nimbus, and within moments each one had its orbit collapsed. The people on those bodies knew what was happening... The screams over the radio beacons tore at our souls. Several of our ships attempted to intervene, but even with full shields they were incinerated in a fraction of a second."
"So why the delay?" Cat asked.
"No one knows Commodore." Trifa responded. "It was the same when we defeated the Grula Ben Hosen. We defeated the enemy that attacked us and we thought the fighting was over. But within a few weeks we too were contacted, and we too saw complete and utter destruction of their entire race... And the saddest part was, the Grula Ben Hosen were no longer capable of being a threat to anyone. They were a hive mind, and once their queen had been killed there was no longer an integrator for their intelligence. They became little more than instinctual insects. They probably didn't even understand they were being destroyed."
"So if history repeats itself we should expect a message in another four or five days. We need to be ready, to do whatever we are going to do, in three days on the outside. How close are we?" Cat asked while peaking over the diagrams the others were reviewing.
Ken scratched his head. He was about to speak when his wife, Rebecca walked into the Yorktown’s engineering conference room, where they were brainstorming - carrying a tray of sandwiches, pork chops and chocolates.
Ben immediately stopped what he was doing and reached three arms out to grab the plate from her hands and simultaneously munch on a chocolate covered caramel turtle, while setting the tray down on the table for the others. "Lady Rebecca..." he said while chewing, "were you not already in a cub-pack relationship, I would make you my wife... Even short a few paws like you are."
Rebecca curtsied with a smile and left the room as silently as she had entered, after receiving a nod of thanks from Cat.
"Hey bub... That's my 'cub-pack' thingy you're talking about!" Ken said, while grabbing a Rubin on Rye.
"I believe Commander Kirkland was about to answer the Commodore when this very welcome repast was brought in." Trifa said, while enjoying a five-spice encrusted pork chop. The Hupenstanii were unable to process vegetable matter and used plants for seasoning only. Despite their appearance, the Hoppers were complete carnivores... Albeit very polite ones.
"As I started to say," Ken continued, "we have the core integration done. The problem is what we don't know. Normally we would be testing these systems for months, if not years. I know how our systems work under a load, but I have no idea what to expect from the Hupenstanii systems, or even the D'lralu components. In our hyper field cloak satellite array, the nanite replication systems can repair or replace any component that fails, even in the event of a catastrophic failure... But once we start integrating these systems into ships, where there are people's lives at stake, it becomes a whole new can of worms."
"So tell me what you need?" Cat said.
"What I need Commodore is time to learn these systems so we can tweak them on the fly to keep them from blowing us up."
Cat nodded at Trifa. "Does she know her systems?"
"Absolutely!"
"Seems to me that's your solution. If we are indeed forming a Galactic Coalition, then perhaps we should integrate our crews."
"I like the idea." Ben said, while tweaking the routing of a superconducting conduit to avoid a plasma manifold.
"You just want to be nearer your supply of chocolate" Cat said while smirking.
"That too." He admitted.
Just then the door swished open and Thais, who was overseeing the integration of the new technologies in the Yorktown, stepped in. "Ohhh sandwiches." she said, when she spotted the platter. "And chocolate!"
"Mine!" Ben said with a low guttural growl.
***
Despite their best efforts it took the better part of four days to complete their preparations. Without Cal's help in developing compatible interfaces across the different technologies the job would have been impossible. Three days into the exercise the nano-satellite cloaking and transportation systems were jumped into their precise geosynchronous orbits around each inhabited moon in the D'lralu system. Two hours later, after a complete systems check, the satellites powered up. The fields were integrated as a defense shield was put in place.
The shield utilized a rotating hyper field harmonic that made disrupting it difficult. The power systems behind the shielding were impressive. The human engineering teams were able to take the core D'lralu antimatter technology and coax an additional sixty three percent out of them. Add to this the greater cohesiveness of the human hyper field tec
hnologies, and the shields protecting the D'lralu moons were virtually impenetrable by any technology the GCP could produce, including an SJ round. That said, Cat was under no illusions. These shields would be no match for the Uruk weapon systems. Even with efficiencies now approaching seven sigma, the bleed through from a controlled galactic core beam weapon would decimate these shields in minutes if not seconds.