by Don Koch
Hank had always had good reflexes and turned around quickly to see who had spoken but there was no one there. He knew that Uncle Pete was on his way to town because he heard the truck leave thirty minutes earlier. "Alright, this is not funny, who is there and where are you and how did you get in here?" He knew the doors were locked and could not imagine how anyone had managed to get inside.
The voice came again and said,
At this point Hank realized that he was hearing the voice inside his head in much the same way he had heard Sam during the battle in Kajaki. So either he was going crazy, had an overactive imagination or he was truly hearing a telepathic message.
"Whoa! My world? 510 years old? Pass you on to me? Just who or what are you? What is going on?"
Curiosity was driving Hank up the wall, so he decided to play this through. He thought to Barana
Barana thought to him,
Hank thought "this is getting stranger and stranger" but he did as instructed. As he turned around, he was startled to see Uncle Pete standing there. "Well it’s about time. Nephew, brace yourself for a shock. It will be good to not have to conceal some things any longer. Come along. You are going to love this. I guarantee it. By the way, I really am your uncle, your grandmother is my sister." He then led Hank to the room mentioned by Barana. He entered a room that had a large table and he was stunned to see his grandparents and parents seated around the table, enjoying a cup of coffee and some light pastries.
His Grandfather was the first to react to his presence, "Boy you look like you've seen a ghost, or maybe a passel of them, come take a load off your feet, have some coffee and goodies. Pete you old rascal, join us. Barana will transport you back down when you are ready."
He walked slowly and wide-eyed over to where they were all sitting and his mother rose and gave him a huge hug. That broke the ice, they were all hugging and there was not a dry eye in the room. Hank finally got out a quip of his own with, "seen a ghost eh, well you all are the liveliest looking corpses it has ever been my pleasure to see and I can't tell you how good it is to be called 'boy' again gramps. This is all a bit much and I am still trying to get my mind around it all, but this is a bit difficult to take in. I thought you were all dead in that plane explosion."
Barana interjected,
Then he really noticed what was on the other side of the room-wide sliding glass doors leading out to a balcony. He was beginning to feel like the term sensory overload was just not up to the descriptive task. "Good Lord, how big is this place?" The scene he was viewing appeared to be about 1,000 feet from the ground and consisted of mountains, forests, trails, grassy fields, with a horizon that had a disconcerting curve in the distance like some huge bowl, the reverse of what one would see on Earth. To his left and right the ground appeared to rise to eye level in the distance and continue upwards.
His father, Alexander Stone, responded, "Son, let me start with some explanations and you can pop in with questions as we move along. A lot of things that you have seen in science fiction movies and television shows are a reality on this station. What you are seeing here is essentially a view from inside a tube. That accounts for the unusual horizon. The strange horizon, by the way, is the hardest thing to get used to on a station. This station, Station One, was built many light years from here and has been in orbit around Earth for the last 480 years, so, yes, before you comment, it is capable of superlight speed and is in cloaked mode so it cannot be seen from Earth or for that matter from space. We believe the current top speed is in the neighborhood of 12,000 times the speed of light but are not really sure just how fast it can go. There are studies underway to improve that speed but it is not clear just how much that will change. We can reach most systems within 27 light years from here within a day as hard as that is to imagine and that is not even using top speed. I also understand that Barana has come up with a drive enhancement that will multiply our top speed by a factor of 25 or more and that is hard to imagine. That improvement has not yet been installed but will be shortly."
"The accommodations and capabilities of this station are hundreds, if not thousands of years ahead anything Earth is capable of at this time and probably thousands ahead of anything Earth could conceivably build. You will see things that are quite similar to what you are used to but far more advanced. This station is 60 miles in diameter and 260 miles in length. We have six habitation areas on this station. Three are in the inner zone habitat and three in the outer zone. The habitats are 9 miles high and 50 miles across. The habitat area we are in now is in the outer zone. The Station is designed for 438 million but is capable of supporting in excess of 650 million persons. We do not plan to approach that. Likelihood is that we will not approach the designed 438 million. Right now, there are about 75 million persons on this station."
"The closest thing in military parlance to describe its function is that it is like a futuristic aircraft carrier/naval base, and that really does not do it justice. It is fully self contained and self-supporting. Everything I am about to tell you about this vessel is necessary because in about 25 years, every life in this section of the galaxy will be under direct threat by the entities that call themselves the Glarin. They have been destroying everything in their path and so decimate the systems they visit that few if any are able to rebuild. The Glarin usually leave no one alive. They feed off the resources of the system and contaminate what they do not use. We will have to go out to meet them because we do not want to let them get even close to this system and that my boy, will be your job. You will be in command of this entire operation."
Hank was startled, "Whoa, wait a minute, I am only a sergeant who was bumped to the 'O' ranks five years ago as a battlefield expedient and I know a limited amount about command, and furthermore…."
"Just hold your objections until you hear the whole story and then we will talk about it. Besides, that objection doesn't wash because you retired as a Major. People j
ust do not make Major in the Marines in just five years these days unless there is real talent at work. Whether you know it or not, you were being fast tracked for the General ranks, so the Corps has a pretty good feeling about your talents. You have about 20 years to grow into the role and the training you will have available from Barana is far superior to all the military academies on Earth rolled into one, along with the tools to integrate and apply what is available to you. Beside, you have already done the boot camp, so the rest should be a snap."
"Your Mom and I along with Uncle Pete and your Grandparents were recruited by Barana just over 40 years ago. Grandpa and Grandma Dieter are on an exploration ship with Fador's wife, Far-Amin so they will not be back for a while yet. You too have been on station previously but were not aware of it because you were asleep or unconscious at the time. Once you had a bad infection and on another occasion you had a serious injury. In both instances you needed the station's medical capability."
"Let's start with a rough description of the physical plant and then go where ever that takes us. From the outer hull to the floor surface you saw when you looked out the window, the distance is five miles. We are about 1000 feet above that surface. From that inner floor down there to the, um 'ceiling' is roughly 9 miles. The inner zone habitation area has the same vertical and length dimensions and is built around a tube that has a radius of 15 miles while this one has a radius of 25 miles. The difference in perceived horizon is therefore substantial."
"There is a tube at the core of the station open to space that runs the entire length of the station and it is 8 miles in diameter. That is where we have physical access to the station and that's where the doors are located when it is necessary to use them. It is also where most of our manufacturing is located. That tube is also a monster space dock. It is where our ships are built. We have been referring to this structure as a station, but in fact it is a star ship. More importantly it is also a warship and a self-sustaining habitat capable of housing and feeding more than 500 million persons comfortably."
"This station is a Type 1A class Antoran Starship/Station and is the only one of its kind. There are currently 19 additional stations of the Type 1B class in operation. These are 200 miles in length and the same 60 miles in diameter. The Type 1B can support about 292 million persons each and twice that in a pinch. Most are currently in the Tau Ceti system about 11.9 light years from here. They are focused on refitting of various kinds and completion of improvements on those ships, those that do not have the latest gizmos available. This one is the prototype and is the command center."
"We also have a another class of station called the Type 2 Antoran Starship/Station. These are smaller. They are 90 miles long and are also 60 miles in diameter. The smaller ships can support about 92 million persons each. They, like their big sisters are completely self contained and self-sufficient. The smaller stations will play a big role in exploration. There are currently 80 of the smaller stations in operation. We can build more as needed. Seven of these ships are currently out on exploration and mapping missions and are due back within the year. We can build more stations of the Type 1B or Type 2 as needed."
"All of the stations have stasis units. They are designed to provide for planetary scale evacuation if that is ever needed. This Station contains about 8.7 billion stasis units while the Type 1B stations contain about 5.8 billion individual stasis units. The smaller Type 2 stations have 1.8 billion units. This capability could be used to move entire planetary populations. We call this our Exodus capability. In addition, each Type 1 station has the genetic sequence and code for every creature on Earth and the other inhabited planets in this stellar neighborhood for the last 400 years. They can be reproduced at will or as needed."
"We expect that each of the Type 1's will be coupled with four of the Type 2's to form a unit of the fleet yet to be named. You can think of these stations as carriers because they each carry a large quantity of warships each of which is capable of more firepower than all the weapons built on earth during the last century including nukes. Each task force has a complement of 100,000 warships but has the capacity to carry nearly triple that."
Hank asked, "Why such massive firepower?"
"Let me get back to that shortly. Some of the active stations not committed to refitting or surveillance are busy scouting this arm of the galaxy to see who else is out here. So far we have located 5 civilizations that will be affected by the Glarin, none of whom can provide an adequate self-defense on their own. One of these is slightly ahead of Earth's level of development but that technology is controlled and misused by a very small ruling class. The other three are roughly on par with Earth. The fifth is in its iron age and we do not intend to disturb them if we can avoid it, at least until they reach their information age. The Type 1's and the Type 2's will be more than sufficient to handle the threat we face and the Exodus capability will assure the survival of our neighbors, if things should go sour. The trick will be to man those stations and train personnel for the fight to come."
"Actually, the real challenge will be what we do after we have won. That is not arrogance speaking nor am I being overly confident. The Glarin just does not realize what it is walking into. Frankly, I am not convinced that they would act any differently even if they suspected what damage our fleet will be capable of delivering. We have some suggestions to make but we first have to prepare for and defend against the invasion we know is on the way."
"It is critical that none of the Glarin reach our system or those systems that we have discovered and will protect. They contaminate those things that they come in contact with so there can be not direct physical contact with them. They must either be destroyed or neutralized. Destruction on this scale will be very unpleasant. We have the means to transport them a great distance and at a speed that they cannot match."
"Their current top speed is about 6 times the speed of light (6xSL). Barana tells us that the Glarin are unlikely to surrender but we will try to get them to do so. If they do surrender, the question is where do we put them. We have some ideas in that regard. It has to be remembered that this is a species of mass murderers. They will have to be effectively quarantined or destroyed."
"The stations will not be turned over to the various planets or governments we protect. The stations will become a part of a space-going people, the Antoran Fleet, independent of the people we protect. Our role will become that of guardians. We will not permit the governments of the various planets to carry their conflicts into space or to direct how we utilize our resources. We will likely take steps to prevent genocidal activities on the planets we protect even though we are considering such an act ourselves with regard to the Glarin. We will not accept orders from any government except that of the stations. We will offer some resources but only on our conditions, take it or leave it. That is the structure that your grandparents, Pete, your mother and I and others have been working on for the past forty years with Fador and Barana."
"We do not mine for our raw materials in populated systems or in systems with habitable planets. This leaves the systems resources available to the future generations that live there or will live there. These stations are essentially a military and exploratory operation. Its immediate purpose is to eliminate the threat posed by the Glarin. Beyond that we will be the policemen and peacekeepers of this part of the galaxy."
"In looking for other civilizations, we have also identified 11 worlds suitable for colonization. Two of those appear to be heading for developing intelligent beings on their own, so those will not be disturbed. Our intent is to see that those remaining worlds are populated and protected from external forces to the extent they want that protection. While we will not be providing the Station technology, we will be providing access to an advanced technology that will allow trade and exchange among those planets that want it."
"We will likely lease some of our commercial type ships at very reasonable terms but not release the technology on which they are based. Many of those that enlist i
n our fight will not wish to stay on the stations. Those that wish to remain on a station, can do so. Those that do not will be free to choose between returning home, or in homesteading on a new planet. They will be earning income while on station that can be converted to a pension on any world on which they wish to retire or provisions to colonize. The latter will be coupled with the ability to communicate with any station in system."
"Now the first step is to get your schooling started. In five weeks we want to have you up to a training level that exceeds that of any Earth general and more. Then we will ask you to start our recruiting efforts. This is an induced learning methodology applied while asleep, designed and created by Barana. I have used it extensively and have the equivalent of about 11 masters degrees and 5 doctorates. Your mother has 15 masters and 7 doctorates. After taking one of Barana's courses, you will be able to walk into any college and sit successfully for any test on the subject that they might select. You would have an excellent grounding in the subject matter. Your grandparents are just as much a show off as your mother and I. By the end of a week you will have a doctorate in military history and tactics. In addition you will probably know more about military administration than anyone of Earth. By the end of five weeks you will have considerably more than that."
"Well Dad, that is a lot to digest, but, if the family is putting this much effort into this and firmly believe in it as you clearly do, then I really have no choice, I will give it my best shot. I would like to spend a few hours with you all before I turn myself over to Barana's tender mercies, no insult intended Barana."
Chapter 3: This Won't Hurt a Bit….
Station 1 in Earth Orbit –
June 28 – C Day minus 63
Hank commented, "Barana, before we get started, I don't mind telling you that the concept of cramming all this stuff into this brain makes me a tad nervous. How am I ever going to assimilate all that you're proposing to give me? How do I recall any of it let alone use it?"