by Rodney Smith
When they were half a day out, they could pick up terrestrial communications. The translators hooked up a special box to the sensor position and it listened to the communications, trying to devise a dictionary and grammar guide. Kelly listened in and began hearing familiar patterns in the communications.
Kelly started to gain an image of the A’Ngarii as non-warlike, more mercantile than xenophobic. He thought maybe they could convince these A’Ngarii to help them against the K’Rang. He listened to the music and the communications and got an impression of friendliness. He hoped it was more than wishful thinking.
As the system appeared on the long-range sensors, Kelly started wondering if they would see a welcoming party of warships coming their way. There was nothing, no reaction at all.
He ordered the Orion to enter the system slowly, at battle stations, and had all sensor positions fully manned. There was still no reaction, not even a call for registration and entry fee. Sensors reported no active or passive sensor scans from the planet.
Kelly ordered the Orion into a high orbit and secured from battle stations. He kept the sensor section at full manning, but put everyone else on normal watches. He called his A team, plus Alistair and the ambassador, to his conference room.
Kelly looked around the table and said, “Okay, this is not what I expected. Does anyone have any ideas?”
The Ambassador said, “Captain, I know I asked you to try and make the first contact with a planet and not a warship, but I didn’t expect it to be this easy.”
The room broke into laughter.
“Captain, I recommend we just hang here for a few days and collect as much as we can until someone notices us or we figure the language out. My translators tell me the language is not that difficult to understand and in a few days they may be able to speak it at basic level. It won’t be oratory, but at least not K’Rang standard.”
One of the sensor technicians knocked on the door and stuck her head in. “Sir, I think you should see this.”
She fiddled with the monitor and an image from the surface appeared. It was of a group of creatures, probably A’Ngarii enjoying what looked like some sort of amusement park ride. The creatures had grey skin and a long beak with sharp inward pointing teeth. They appeared to be bipedal and of two sexes. It was not possible to tell their height, but they appeared to be approximately 1.5 to 1.7 meters tall.
Kelly looked at the video and an idea struck him, but it was Alistair who spoke first, “They look sort of like Earth dolphins.”
Kelly nodded and several around the table agreed.
Kelly thanked the technician and turned the monitor off for now. He returned to the subject at hand. After an hour of back and forth, Kelly agreed to hold in high orbit and collect more information on the A’Ngarii.
* * * * *
After the scout ships’ initial success, the K’Rang wised up and started running security pickets around their marshaling areas. The picket ships were always the oldest K’Rang fleet ships and thus not likely to be used in an attack on the Fleets. It hardly made it worth their while to waste precious missiles on them, so the scouts started fulfilling their secondary mission of locating FTL shipyards and facilities for destruction.
Rather than recording targets for destruction, they destroyed them. With the K’Rang Fleet off in marshaling areas, they were able to go in unopposed and destroy shipyards, spaceports, space docks, and FTL commercial ships. The scouts created such a turmoil that the K’Rang Fleet had to pull forces back from the marshaling areas to protect the main worlds.
The forces that guarded the main worlds were easy targets for the nimble scout ships, and many of them were destroyed in full view of the night sky over the main worlds. Fiery debris rained down over many a K’Rang world.
Two scout ships, the Vindicator and Vanguard, pushed through to G’Durin, the K’Rang home world. They destroyed two space docks and were coming back for the defenders when a swarm of small torpedo-shaped drones pursued them and drove them off. Only their superior speed saved them as a dozen angry drones chased them away from G’Durin. Apparently the drones had a limited range away from their controllers, for they turned around at 1,000,000km and returned to their mothership.
The two scouts circled around G’Durin in search of the ship controlling the drones. They found some odd looking ships, roughly tubular, with a bridge/crew compartments forward, engines astern, and a middle of ten stacked segments divided longitudinally into thirds like pie wedges. Each pie segment had a port for launching a drone. The Vindicator transmitted the data they collected to the 1st Combined Fleet and the two scouts went hunting.
The Vanguard went in first and drew the attention of one of the drone ships. When the drones launched to attack the Vanguard, the Vindicator waited for them to get out of range then ran in to rake the ship with their guns. Secondary explosions wracked the ship. The drones chasing the Vindicator slowed and self-destructed. The Vindicator and Vanguard killed three more drone ships before fleet ships showed up to provide more security than they could handle.
* * * * *
Candy received a surprise message from Kelly. He told her not to ask how it came to her, just accept it. He told her he missed her, he loved her, and not to worry about him, that he would be home soon and they would be together again. He gave her a message address and told her she could get a message through to him. He might not get it for a while, but he would get it. That night she slept much easier.
* * * * *
Kelly met with his A team again. He had them bring him up to date on their situation.
Ops led off and briefed, “We have mapped the A’Ngarii communications system. We have also analyzed the local government and have determined that a governor is in charge of this world. We could, if desired, contact this individual through linking into the local communication system.”
Ambassador Thorson spoke next. “My translators feel competent enough that they could communicate accurately in the A’Ngarii language. I recommend that we attempt to communicate by linking into the local communications system to the A’Ngarii central communications system and making first contact.”
Alistair spoke next, “The world below them is the playground for the A’Ngarii, equivalent to Las Vegas on Earth or the current pleasure enclave on the southern continent of Cooper. This is probably not the best place to make first contact and negotiate a mutual defense treaty. I’ve discovered the A’Ngarii home world is only ten light years away. I recommend holding off on first contact until we arrive at the home world.”
Kelly thought for a few moments and agreed with Alistair.
“Let’s see first if we can pass a message to the leaders of the A’Ngarii through the local comms system. It may save us a hostile greeting when we arrive at the home world. Ambassador Thorson, please draft a message introducing us to the A’Ngarii, asking for permission to meet with them at their home world, and our willingness to give them all assurances of our good intentions and help against the K’Rang.”
Kelly then turned to Ops and directed, “Ops, have the Crypto techs determine if we can route a message to the head of government on the home world.”
The ambassador said, “We’ll get right to work on the message, but as this is a diplomatic matter, I hold final approval on the message.”
Ops said, “I’ll check, but I‘m sure we can get the message through, but I’m not sure that we could get it to the leader of the A’Ngarii directly. We might have to send the message to several addresses to get it to the right party. One other thing, we need to stop using the K’Rang spelling for the Angaerry. My linguists tell me the Angaerry don’t really appreciate how the K’Rang refer to them. It has to do with a similar K’Rang word describing a creature not even worthy of the status of prey.”
Kelly brought the meeting to a close. “Thank you Ambassador, we’ll meet again in 24 hours.”
* * * * *
Candy’s boss came in to see her. One of the contractors, a man named Dargon Elbry
, did not like Candy’s legal opinion that his company did not meet the requirements for the Earth-Native set aside contract provision. Candy said to send him in and she would put his mind at ease.
The next day, the company CEO appeared at Candy’s office with a look of righteous indignation. He spent the first fifteen minutes questioning Candy’s competence to question his qualifications, and another fifteen minutes laying out the consequences if her legal opinion was not rewritten in his favor.
Candy sat through his diatribe patiently, allowing him to have his say. Then it was her turn.
“Mr. Elbry, allow me to paraphrase your position that you just presented. You believe I am incompetent and you are threatening me with a number of sanctions if I do not accede to your demands to reinstate you as an Earth-Native Corporation. Am I correct?”
She remained cool, calm, and dispassionate, picking up a folder from the corner of her desk and casually flipping it open. She pulled two pages from the folder and laid them on her desk facing Mr. Elbry. Both were birth certificates. Both were Mr. Elbry’s birth certificates.
“Mr. Elbry, I have two birth certificates here. Both have your name and birth date on them but they are from different planets. How do you explain this?”
Elbry sputtered a bit and rose up to his full five foot eight inch height in righteous indignation.
“What nonsense is this? I was born on Earth. Where did you get this obviously fake birth certificate?”
“I got this one from the Glenn office of official records. The other you provided with your contract proposal. Earth Central Records doesn’t appear to have any record of your birth. In addition, I have the following news clips announcing your birth on Glenn in the Lincoln Daily Mirror. Your selection for higher education at Lincoln State University 18 years later was also covered in the same newspaper. Oh, and I see at 15 you were charged with vandalism as a minor by the Lincoln City Police. I also have a record of all your travel from your entry on your parent’s passport at age one to your current passport. You first traveled to Earth at age 17 as an exchange student from Glenn. How do you explain these inconsistencies, Mr. Elbry?”
“Don’t answer and dig yourself in any deeper. As it stands, you have submitted a fraudulent contract proposal to prepare airlock modules for Fleet ships. While your company has never before manufactured anything more complicated than cable raceways for ships, I won’t judge your capability to produce the modules. I can and have judged your proposal to be fraudulent. In accordance with Fleet and Galactic Republic Contract Law, I am now providing you with notice of a show cause hearing to answer why you should not be barred from competing for government contracts for two years.”
She handed him a blue folded document from the folder and closed the folder. He read it, turned almost purple, and released a torrent of invective at Candy. Threatening her personally with a lawsuit, he said he would go to her boss and the base commander on this.
“Young woman, you have no idea who you are dealing with. I have friends in the highest levels of government. I can have your little operation here shut down with a simple communicator call.”
Candy sat unfazed by this further diatribe.
“Mr. Elbry, our meeting is over, but just so you won’t think that I am impressed by anything you have said, you should know that I was married some weeks ago. The President of the Galactic Republic and the First Lady attended my wedding, as did my uncle, the Senate Majority Leader. You bring on your friends in high places and see if they impress mine. Now get out!”
A contrite Dagon Elbry, native citizen of Glenn, did not oppose the ruling against him by the District Court of Armstrong. His business filed for bankruptcy two weeks later and was reformed under another name two weeks beyond that.
* * * * *
Kelly reviewed the accumulated data file on the planet below, specifically looking at ships entering and exiting orbit. Most ships were large to medium passenger liners capable of landing on the planet surface. The few general cargo ships appeared to be similar to GR container ships that delivered luxury goods. No warships were anywhere within sensor range. No patrol ships left the surface to investigate the Orion floating in the planet’s orbit. It confounded him. On GR planets space ships were challenged before they enter orbit and made to pay an entry fee by many planets.
Kelly mentally shrugged his shoulders and switched to live feed of the planet passing under them. He focused on the major cities, and other than having a larger downtown area than equivalent GR cities, they were not that remarkable. It wasn’t until they came around to the night side that he saw the difference. The Angaerry cities were lit up with every color light in the rainbow, almost to the equivalent of daylight.
When they came back to the daylight side, he looked at their buildings. The Angaerry buildings would not be out of place on many GR worlds. They tended to use local building materials, wood in forested areas, rock in the mountains, and even earth-covered structures in the plains. Their social structure went from small settlements that would be hamlets on GR planets, to villages, towns, and cities. The larger cities were located adjacent to obvious tourist attractions: beaches, mountains, and islands. The A’Ngarii looked to be real party animals.
He next concentrated on the Angaerry’s physical appearance. They seemed to be slightly shorter than humans, bipedal, with two arms. They had the strange blunt long mouth with the sharp inward pointing teeth he’d seen in the first video. He brought up a 2D news program and listened to their language. It was melodic, with a peculiar cadence he couldn’t put his finger on. It was as if they needed to breath in twice as often as human speech. He suddenly realized how long he’d been up when Connie stood before him tapping her foot. He closed out the terminal, told her the ship was hers, and turned in.
* * * * *
Admiral Haddock-Halloway was the first to experience the effect of Scout Force’s rear area campaign. A small fleet of older K’Rang warships stood in his path as he approached the K’Rang main world, M’Kirg. He was considering offering them mercy if they would abandon their ships, when they launched all their missiles at his leading battle cruiser group. The cruisers launched enough defensive missiles to swat them down and then systematically destroyed all seven ships of the pitiful task force. He felt a momentary pang of guilt over such a lopsided victory, shook it off, and ordered the 14th Battle Fleet to destroy the space dock and planetside FTL ship construction or service facilities. This same scenario would play out at every subsequent planet. It was a terrible waste of K’Rang honor and courage.
* * * * *
Shadow Force Commander (Baron) G’Rof included more and more of the older ships in his Grand Armada. Desperate for ships, he conducted a test of each potential ship. He had them make a max speed run, then stop as quickly as they could past a point in space. If they stopped safely before a second line in space they were in. If not, they joined the planetary defense fleet.
News of the fate of several planetary defense task forces had reached his captains, so they had an incentive to ensure their ship stopped before the final line. Some captains pressed their ships and crews beyond their limits, and the ships suffered catastrophic failures in their stabilization and artificial gravity systems. Structural failure was the normal outcome, resulting in loss of crew and ship. Some ships lost their entire crew as the sudden inertial forces tore the crew apart. Those ships were never manned or served again. G’Rof ordered the ships that failed the test or were too slow to make best armada speed to an assembly area near G’Durin to add to the defense. He sent 30 ships.
G’Rof slowly built his Grand Armada. 270 ships were on his fleet list. His next task would be to practice the attack maneuver as a whole armada. His three high commanders had exercised their line fleets separately, but now he needed to practice with the combined force.
* * * * *
Angie led her squadron in a CAP mission in front of the fleet, which was travelling at just below FTL due to task forces out destroying K’Rang FTL cap
ability on several nearby systems. She briefly thought about what CAP stood for, even though they operated in a vacuum. Combat Air Patrol was one of those terms kept over from the days of terrestrial navies.
Shaking those thoughts out of her head, she concentrated on her mission of providing Battle Fleet advance security. She spread her two other flights to her left and right, so they covered as much frontage as possible, and scanned to the front as far as her sensors would reach.
She almost missed it when a target popped up on her screen and immediately disappeared. Her wingman saw it and reported it to her. They both left the rest of the squadron behind and went to investigate.
The squadron had standing orders to not fly out beyond the fleet missile engagement zone and she kept that in mind as she moved forward. Approaching the green line on her sensor screen signifying the edge of the engagement zone, she saw three squadrons of T’Pok fighters resolve. She immediately called a contact report back to the fleet and turned to return to her squadron at full speed.
She returned to the other two ships in her flight and called her two other four-ship flights to close up on her. They oriented on the incoming T’Pok wing of 54 fighters, and were about to engage when the Battle Fleet called and told them to stand aside as the fleet cruisers launched missiles. The missiles reached out and flamed 30 of the incoming ships, then the Fleet granted permission to engage.
Her squadron easily outmatched the heavily laden T’Poks. The last five ships fired their missile loads, in the vain hope they had the range to reach the fleet, although they were hopelessly out of range. This loss of mass made their ships faster and more maneuverable, but not as much as the F-53's, which made short work of them. One of the fighters in Angie’s third flight took some damage during the melee, but was able to make it back to the carrier without assistance.