Pray for the Prey

by Saxon Andrew

  After thirty minutes Jillian announced, “I’ve got it all.”

  RV looked at his board and saw that the field that was preventing them from jumping had disappeared as the huge globe of ships surrounding them expanded. He looked at Chris and Jillian and said, “Strap in. The ships in the globe around us are allowing us to leave.”

  Chris looked stunned and Jillian jerked her head around to look at the giant ships surrounding them just as RV jumped away. RV looked at his board and hit Dolly’s activating switch, “We have chasers, Dolly. You handle weapons and I’ll fly the ship.”

  The Jukebox jumped six times and every time it emerged into normal space there were thousands of ships right behind them. RV had the Jukebox weightless but the ships chasing them were very close in speed. RV shouted, “How many are still chasing us?”

  Dolly said, “There were a hundred thousand initially but the number is now down to eighteen thousand.”

  “How many different ship types?”

  “Ten.”

  After four more jumps the chasing ships had moved closer. “It appears these ships have technology that we are not going to defeat by running. Cyanna, are you listening in.”

  “I am, Sir.”

  RV thought she sounded calm and was impressed with her professional tone. “I’m going to jump to your location in two more jumps. There are ten thousand ships chasing us and we can’t shake them. They have fired missiles and beams at us, but we have managed to avoid being hit so far. Make sure the Havana is ready for our arrival.”

  “Already on it, Admiral, bring them to us.”

  “Here we go.” RV jumped and the chasers appeared right behind him. He jumped again and shot forward through the ranks of sixty thousand main battleships. RV smiled and knew Cyanna had been busy. The ten thousand chasers emerged into normal space and were hit with more than a hundred main strikers and main guns. Some of the ships had to be hit a hundred more times but all ten thousand were destroyed. One of the chasers activated its star drive but a main battleship crashed into it amid ships and broke it in half. RV shook his head; Kate really liked to hit things. The bow of the Scotland was damaged but not penetrated. Kate jumped her ship back to Sierra-Garcia and began evacuating the crew. All crew members were wearing space suits so very few hands were lost in the collision.

  RV yelled, “Get the fleet out of here now.”

  The mass of small ships and battleships disappeared leaving nothing but burning and dead starships.

  • • •

  “I see you were successful.”

  “It was a close thing.”

  “All we could do was give them a chance.”

  “We and they were fortunate. It was really too close to going all wrong.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “No, it did not. What do we do now?”

  “We wait for the next event.”

  “Will they continue to avoid us?”

  “Only if they’re smart; I think they know better.”

  “They didn’t before.”

  “That was then; this is a new now.”

  “We’ll see.”

  • • •

  The Command Center was crowded. All of the Fleet Admirals were in chairs facing the front table where the Command Team waited for George to arrive. Cyanna sat in the front row with Kenny and Bob and waited for the proceedings to start. She looked at the Moet Admiral sitting next to Bob and decided she was going to have to learn to pronounce his name.

  Everyone just called him Admiral and he appeared fine with it, but it just didn’t seem right to not be able to say his name. Of course, last time she attempted she almost had a lip spasm. She looked at RV on the front stage and saw something was bothering him. He hadn’t been himself since his run in with that fleet in M-87. Something was on his mind and he wasn’t saying what it was. Everyone stood when George walked in and she saw that George’s expression was also different. Something was bothering him as well. He called this conference for a reason. Maybe he would tell them what was on his mind.

  “Please be seated. I know most of you Admirals are wondering why I have you here at this conference. You are here as observers and we will answer any of your questions at the conclusion of our discussion. I think it is important that you know what our future plans look like so you can prepare your fleets.”

  George turned to the slim light green colored being at the end of the table and said, “I’ve also invited Boden from the Harmony Federation to participate in this discussion. I thank you for coming and we all thank you for the construction of our fleet.”

  Boden lowered his head and nodded.

  George looked at Bender and Admiral and asked, “Have you viewed the recording of our trip?”

  They both nodded and George sat down. He turned to Chris and said, “I initially thought you were over dramatizing the need of a scan of that region in M-87 but in hindsight, it appears you were right.” George paused and said, “What conclusions can you draw from what happened?”

  “I’ve discussed this with Jillian at great length and we keep coming back to the same answer; they knew in advance that we were coming.”

  “Now that you’ve had time to study the scans you made, what have you learned?”

  “There is a stalemate taking place in that sector. It appears that all the civilizations located close to the core on that side of the galaxy have reached equilibrium and are locked into peace.”

  “Tell our Admirals what you mean.”

  Chris looked out at the hundred officers and said, “No single civilization is strong enough to defeat the others in their sector of that galaxy. After looking at millions of years of history, it appears that if one of them attacked another, the winner will then be attacked by other civilizations. The initial conflict will weaken them enough such that they could not stand up to several others teaming up on them. I counted more than two thousand instances where one civilization attacked another and was then destroyed in turn by a third civilization that pounced on the victor. What then followed was another would attack the third and then a fifth would attack, and so on. Millions of years ago a single attack would lead to a galaxy wide war that was a chain-reaction from the first attack. Now the civilizations have learned that to attack another is suicide.”

  Chris looked around the room and said, “However, things are changing. It appears that one civilization is more advanced than the others and some of them are beginning to combine against it. They are not attacking yet because, I am sure, they are fearful of the others that would pounce on them if they were weakened.”

  Jillian stood and said, “All of those civilizations are continuing to develop their fleets in the hope of discovering technology that would allow them to destroy the others. This is the way it has been for eight million years.”

  George said, “Without exception?”

  Jillian shook her head, “No; ten years ago seventy civilizations teamed up against the advanced civilization and were defeated. The advanced civilization lost two hundred thousand ships but still had a million in their reserve. The civilizations that didn’t participate in the attack decided it was still too strong to take on. Instead they attacked the seventy that attacked and destroyed them.”

  George asked, “How many civilizations remain in the sector?”

  “Between six and seven hundred.”

  George said, “We’ve also learned something about how they conduct war in that galaxy. No civilization may attack a planet without retribution. The only way a planet may be attacked is if all of that planet’s warships are destroyed. If that happens, a civilization may announce that they will destroy the planet and accept any consequences from the one being destroyed. If that planet’s ships are all destroyed, there will be no consequences. There won’t be any ships to do it. However, if they miss some, their planet is open for attack from the survivors.”

  Boden asked, “What happens if a planet is attacked without making a prior announcement?”

  “Th
en all their ships are immediately attacked by all the other civilizations and the ships from the attacked planet are allowed to go home peacefully and plan their retribution.”

  Boden said, “It appears that to attack a planet is not something to be done without careful planning.”

  George smiled, “You are right about that.”

  Bender said, “You destroyed a planet in their galaxy without prior approval.”

  George nodded, “Yes, we did; however, only the planets in that galaxy fall under their rules. They can attack as many as they desire in other galaxies.”

  “But can we do the same thing in theirs?”

  “That is the question we don’t have an answer to, yet.”

  “Are we going to attack them?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Bender stared at George and remained silent. The entire room became very still. RV said, “We’re going to give you enough time to move your populations before we do but we will not wait for them to come after us again. If we ignore them, they will come back in our future. Right now they don’t know where we are.”

  Boden asked, “How long do you think it would take them to find us if they decided to make us pay for our actions?”

  “Longer than you think. We know they’ll be looking for our ships. We’ll know when they start the search and we’ll remove every trace of our ships from this galaxy. You will stop manufacturing and remove any material from your worlds that was used to build them. This galaxy is a long way from them and they will have thousands to search before they ever come this far out.”

  “And if they decided to kill all intelligent life in the ones they are searching, what will we do?”

  “We will continue to develop our ships. If they attempted to do that, they may not arrive here for a million years. I’m sure they also know that taking the time to attack would not be worth the time spent doing it. They will not want to be away from their civilizations long. They don’t trust each other.”

  “You’re placing a lot of lives at risk by attacking them.”

  “Do you not think those lives are at risk anyway? That galaxy attacks others as a normal doctrine. We are not just going after revenge against the Violet Civilization. We intend to stop that galaxy from its predatory behavior.”

  Everyone looked at each other and finally Chris said, “Do you think we can do it? It took two hundred beams and strikers to kill some of those ships chasing us.”

  “But did you notice that half of them were destroyed with one. We have to also suppose that those ships that were able to keep contact with us are their most advanced civilizations. We just have to develop a better weapon to use against the strongest ships. It may boil down to avoiding the strongest until the end and eliminate the others first. We’ll feel our way around this and find the methods we’ll have to follow. I will not wait for them to come to me again.”

  “You might want to rethink that, Sir.”

  George looked at RV and said, “Why would I do that?”

  “That strategy should be used after the initial fight. After that we will go to them.”

  George thought a moment and said, “So you think we should make them come to us first?”

  RV tilted his head to the right and George thought a moment. He smiled and said, “You set it up for it to happen that way.”

  RV stood and bowed, “I did.”

  George said, “Clever; we’ll discuss this later.” George paused and said, “Admiral Arvolo, what do you think about the ships that were waiting on your arrival?”

  Cyanna saw RV flinch and knew he didn’t want to respond. This is what had him bothered.

  RV said, “You know what I think about that. Do we need to discuss it here?”

  “You and I haven’t discussed this?”

  “No, Sir, we haven’t; but you know.”

  “So you see it as well?”

  “I do.”

  “Without going into detail, what do you think happened?”

  “We lost big time.”

  George sighed and said, “See me in my office after this meeting.”

  RV nodded and Cyanna and everyone else wondered what was going on. Something wasn’t being said and it was frightening. She looked at Chris and caught him nodding to Jillian who also nodded. They knew. She felt a touch on her shoulder and she heard Kenny say, “I’ve seen the scan and the civilizations with those hard to kill ships have millions of them.” Cyanna looked at Kenny and he continued, “It appears there’s something about those White Ships that has our two geniuses worried.”

  Cyanna looked back up at the stage and saw RV lost in thought. This was not good.

  Chapter Fifteen

  George, Chris, Jillian, Kenny, Bob, Cyanna, and RV remained in the Command Center after everyone had left and were having a drink and snacks that had been delivered from the commissary. George bit a pretzel and said, “I assume you and Jillian know what we were talking around in the meeting.”

  Chris said, “Someone else has time travel capability.”

  George tilted his head and said, “Score one for Chris.”

  George looked at RV, “How long did it take you to make that determination?”

  “As soon as we appeared in normal space, I knew it was a possibility.”

  George saw the confusion on the Vice Admiral’s faces and he said, “Why don’t you explain it to them.”

  RV looked at the three Fleet Admirals and said, “All of you saw the recording of that huge globe of White Ships, right?” They all nodded. RV asked, “If you had to form a globe of ships to contain a main battleship so it couldn’t escape in the spaces between the ships, how long would it take you to set that up and make sure every ship was in the proper place when your fleet jumped into that globe pattern?”

  They thought about the question and Kenny said, “I don’t know that we could make that happen. There are too many variances in emergence into normal space. To even get close would take months of practice.”

  RV smiled, “The real time is likely years. There is one thing that would make it easier.”

  “What is that?”

  “What if you knew the exact place you were going to be jumping to?”

  Kenny thought a moment and looked at Cyanna and Bob before he said, “Then I would assign the jump coordinates in advance and jump the entire formation together. They could then adjust their ranks on arrival.”

  “That is exactly what happened and they arrived less than one second before we did.”

  Cyanna said, “How do you know that?”

  “Those ships that were jumping out to that globe were not coming after us. They wouldn’t have been able to detect us inside that formation. They were jumping out to determine what those White Ships were doing.”

  Jillian added, “We saw them start jumping right after our arrival. If that globe had already been there waiting, they would have been there waiting as well.”

  Bob said, “That implies that they knew your exact arrival location and your exact moment of entry into normal space.”

  “It implies more than that. If I set the drive to jump one light year, how close would I be to that distance?”

  ‘You could be off as much as a million miles on either side of it.”

  “So even if they knew in advance that I was going to be jumping away one light year from that radiation stream, they would not know exactly where I would emerge into normal space.”

  The Admirals looked at each other and Kenny said, “You make a valid point. Our drives are not that precise.”

  George said, “So they knew the exact place and time of the Jukebox’s arrival.”

  Cyanna said, “They must have seen it happen before.”

  Chris said, “That’s the only way they could have done what they did.”

  Silence ruled the moment and after a minute Bob asked, “Why were they there?”

  RV said, “To make sure we made our scans.”

  Kenny slowly shook his head, “Are you sure about tha
t?”

  “The field that prevented our stardrive from working disappeared the moment Jillian announced she had completed the scan. If they were there for another reason, we would not have been released at that moment.”

  Jillian looked at RV and said, “How did you know we were only going to jump one light year from the stream? I asked Chris and he said he didn’t tell you.”

  RV signed and said, “I’ve been listening to the live feed from your ship every night at nine p.m. your ship’s time.”

  “What!?!”

  “I’ve been spying on you.”

  Chris started complaining but Jillian put her hand on his arm, “You should be thankful he did.” She turned to RV and said, “That’s what made you suggest we use you as a pilot, right.” RV nodded. “We would not have been able to escape those ships chasing us. Your intervention probably saved our lives.”

  Chris looked at Jillian and then slowly nodded, “She’s right. Let us know in the future if you’re listening in; we could use someone else’s opinion on many of the issues we struggled with.”

  “I will but I think you have done an excellent job so far. I might get you off track and hurt your processing.”

  “Even so.”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  RV looked at George and said, “I respect your intelligence. You need to help me process this event.”

  George shrugged and said, “I think you’ve got it right. This happened before and the Jukebox and all hands were destroyed. As a result of that, the civilization of the White Ships was destroyed. The scan you took of that galaxy was a critical point in that civilization’s timeline.”

  RV nodded, “But you’ve determined more than that?”

  George looked at RV and said, “Saving you this time around did not bring that civilization back to life. The universe we’re currently in is a branch off the one where the Jukebox was destroyed. Someone in that first universe came back and warned the White Ship civilization of the importance of your visit.”

  “That’s not all they did, George.”

  George looked at Chris and said, “What else did they do?”