by D. R. Rosier
He nodded. “Of course. Olivia’s parents are probably stuck on the idea she’s dating her younger rich hot boss. I’m sure it will come out eventually, but it’s better if no one figures it out too soon.”
She nodded.
He asked, “Did you send out the message? The Alion are almost here.”
Aide replied, “Yes, but I doubt they will listen. It will come down to a fight. The only way to stop this foolishness without even more death is to hope Kiara does a good job spreading the nanites. Even that won’t be completely peaceful.”
He frowned, “You expect problems?”
She sighed, “I expect about ninety five percent of the Alion to work out their emotions and make sure things change for the better. The other five percent will be the fringe groups. One will get angry at having emotions forced on them and will let their own ambition rule them while taking their anger out on their fellow Alions. The second group of Alion will probably suicide out of guilt.
“Still, it will be a lot less death than if we need to quarantine them. Assuming we could.”
He asked, “How much longer?”
She shrugged, “If we hold our forces here, it will be a little over thirty minutes.”
He sighed, “And you’re okay with this?”
She shook her head, “Sometimes life doesn’t give you right or wrong. It gives you wrong or more wrong. Of course I’m not okay with killing close to fifty thousand Alions, but the only other choice is to lie down and die, and let trillions die on Earth for the Alion’s evil. So no, but I will be okay, eventually.”
He nodded soberly. There was a comfortable silence between them as they waited. Stacey and Olivia joined them on the bridge a few minutes before the battle started bearing some bottles of water and sandwiches. He wasn’t really hungry because of the upcoming battle, but he ate to make them all happy, he knew it was foolish not to give his body the energy it needed for directing a battle.
He managed to get the sandwich down, not really even paying attention what kind it was before he gulped down the water. This battle would be such a waste and stupid besides. Aide was right though, it was the lesser of two evils to destroy them. On top of that, it was self defense. It was just hard to disregard the idea there were around fifty individuals in each of the ten thousand ships.
It almost felt like cheating, he wasn’t risking anyone unless the enemy got past the ships controlled by Aide. Even then… there were only six of them.
The enemy was coming at them in ten formations of a thousand. The groups were staggered and all wouldn’t be in range at the same time unlike the Sthellan’s rush to attack. Maybe if they destroy a couple of groups the rest will run.
He broke up his ships as well, into groups of one thousand eighty and sent them off. The new improved beam weapons were ready and as soon as the first group was in range they fired. He frowned as the beams hit the ship. The beams seemed to curl around the ship and then harmlessly off into space.
He barked, “Change to plasma balls!”
The enemy ships fired back ten to one and destroyed a hundred of their ships in one volley. He wondered how the enemy knew their capabilities so well, and how to adjust the shields, but dismissed the thought. He could worry about that after the battle.
His ships fired again, triple plasma balls that weren’t as blue as the beam, but were still much more powerful than the yellow plasma being shot at his ships. Nine hundred and eighty of the thousand ships went up. They lost another two ships when the last twenty got another shot off before they were taken out.
The enemy had made a mistake, they should have attacked all at once. He’d have lost ten times more ships that way. Then next group met, and although he lost another hundred ships in the enemy volley, they didn’t get a second as their light blue triple shots took out every ship. The third and fourth wave went similarly, he waiting for the enemy to break…
“Why aren’t they retreating? They have to know the odds aren’t going to change.”
Aide frowned, “It’s the other side of their emotionally sterilized evil. I don’t think they even have a sense of self preservation, all they have are bad orders. Probably one of the reasons the Sthellan have been able to match them.”
He blurted, “But that’s stupid!”
Aide replied, “Yes, it is. But for them it’s a simple equation, if they need to throw away ten ships for every one of ours to beat you, that’s what they’ll do. Next time they’ll come back with ten times as many.”
He shook his head, “Hopefully Kiara will have them sorted before that happens. Any idea how they knew about the beams and how to defeat them?”
She replied, “There is a seventy point three percent chance they have a stealth probe in the system. I can only guess of course, but we know they can hide from us and they must have seen our last battle with the Sthellans. Perhaps they tried beams in the past and already knew a counter for them when they saw ours. I’ll keep trying different ways to scan for it, no cloak is completely perfect.”
He cringed as another hundred ships were lost and a thousand enemy ships were destroyed. It was… an insane trade.
He asked, “Has there been a pattern to which ships they target?”
She answered, “Yes, they haven’t deviated at all.”
He pondered that a moment, “Could you route most of the shield power to those hundred ships? I know we can just rebuild them but…” he trailed off.
She didn’t answer, but a few seconds later when the next group traded fire, only four ships were lost to their thousand. On the next wave they lost fifty ships when the enemy started going twenty to one. This wasn’t much of a battle, why wouldn’t they pull back?
He was tempted to get up and walk off the bridge, but despite the apparent stupid actions of his enemy he wouldn’t chance it. So he stayed and watched as the last few waves of the enemy were slaughtered.
He knew it was the right thing, but he was disgusted by it and left the bridge without a word. The universe was a strange place.
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The high minister Chorin stared at his scientists for a moment before asking, “Did you get what you needed?”
The scientist said dispassionately, “Yes, we believe we understand what the rogue AI has done. The concept is actually genius. I believe as long as they stick to thirty of their carriers, we can destroy them with sixty stealth cruisers on a sneak attack. Narwell had the right idea, he just lacked the firepower in his one ship, despite the human ships not having any active turrets. Two for each ship should suffice.”
The high minister replied, “Make ninety just in case. How long?”
The scientist replied, “A week for the ships. Once crewed it will take five days to reach Earth.”
Chorin ordered, “Do it, I’ll have the crews by then.”
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Kiara walked through the space station. She passed by every airlock and walked around the central area. This was the third place she had stopped in the last week. She imagined the nanites were spreading quickly in all directions by now, but she planned to stop at least three more times before approaching the high minister if she could help it.
She knew there would be major problems if most of the population was not exposed when the time came to activate the DNA update. She returned to the ship and started out for her next destination. So far she hadn’t been questioned at all, she believed the trend would continue but had a cover story prepared just in case.
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Over the next nine days another three thousand seventy two ships were added to those looking for Sthellan worlds. Aide believed the search was over as they had found one hundred and eighty four solar systems spanning approximately six thousand light years occupied by the aggressive race in one form or another.
Most of the worlds had between three and five thousand ships. Only their home world had more than that at twenty thousand. She already had enough ships to overwhelm their defenses simultaneously across the empire. At over s
ix thousand ships, that was thirty plus she could send to each world. Still, she considered sending five to the weakest planets, fifteen to the stronger ones, and sixty to their home world.
She had more than enough to continue the explorations and look for other civilizations. Once the enemy was grounded, most of those ships could be freed up to do the same. Though it wasn’t time to move yet, she was still searching for any she might have missed.
She heard the door open and turned. Olivia was practically skipping as she walked over and kissed Aide.
She asked, “What’s the good news?”
Olivia grinned, “I found the probe.”
She considered accessing the appropriate files, but didn’t want to ruin Olivia’s excitement and decided to check later, after.
“How?”
Olivia smiled, “The range is limited, maybe thirty light minutes. So we won’t be finding stealth ships or probes from far away, but in the same solar system they’re toast. I actually didn’t find a way to directly scan them. What I figured out is… One sec…”
Olivia brought up a scan of the solar system out to the ort cloud. Then she brought up a secondary blank scan.
Olivia continued, “What I did was send out a graviton pulse sphere. Basically just a bubble of gravity that expands in all directions. Then, I follow it with the normal sensors. The sensors detect the minute changes to the pulse as it passes through any mass.”
The second scan filled up slowly over several minutes, the gravity pulse did not exceed the speed of light which was probably the reason for its limited distance. The first and second scan looked pretty much the same. Aide managed to see the minute difference in the millions of objects, but waited patiently for Olivia to finish.
She didn’t want to steal the girl’s thunder after all.
Olivia smiled and said, “Then I ran a simple comparison and removed all the objects that are included in both scans,” she pointed at the one object left close to Pluto, “That’s the only thing different, our normal scans don’t pick that up, but there is mass there.”
She hugged Olivia and called for Kris to join them. She was impressed, she wouldn’t have thought to use a non-scanning wave and measure the changes to it with the sensors. It was a good approach. She built and initiated a program that would run every thirty seconds to scan for stealth objects.
When Kris came in they explained it all to him.
When they were done Aide asked, “Should we destroy the probe?”
He shook his head, “No, leave it. It might be an advantage if they don’t know we can see them yet. If we start doing anything new I’ll reevaluate that decision, but the damage is already done.”
She nodded and also filled him in on the stats for the currently known Sthellan systems.
He replied, “Good, search for another week? If it all looks good still we can remove their access to space and quarantine the planets.”
“Sounds good, that will give me enough time to be thorough, make sure I didn’t miss anything. Also, if we are going to simultaneously attack them all, you may want to take the time to create attack plans I can follow. Then during the action you’ll only have to worry about the unexpected.”
He blew out a breath, “I can do that. Thank you both, that stealth cruiser has been giving me nightmares.”
Olivia said, “My pleasure, we should do another beach night to celebrate.”
He smiled slightly, “I’d love to, but Stacey wasn’t feeling well this morning. So… maybe?”
Aide nodded politely but kept her lips zipped. She suppressed a smile, she knew what the problem was of course, but thought it would be better for them to figure it out for themselves…
Chapter 26
It wasn’t a week later, only a couple of days, but Aide was 97.2 percent sure they had found all the Sthellan worlds. She had found thirty two planets scattered around the Sthellan’s sphere of space that could support life, eight of which held intelligent life. None of these worlds were advanced, only one of those eight had approached a technological level comparable to Earth’s industrial revolution.
She was sure the Sthellan wouldn’t have left any of these planets alone had they known of them.
She left eight of the carriers at all those worlds and informed Kris of her early findings. She knew he was still in the midst of creating all the generalized attack plans for her to follow. So far another Sthellan wave had not been launched, but there were indications of increased ship building efforts in four of their systems.
It was her, Kris, Olivia, and Stacey on the bridge.
When she finished her report Kris said, “I’ll try and have the plans done by tomorrow. Also I want at least three ships at the FTL line in all those systems, just in case they do the unexpected and run for it when we arrive.”
Aide replied thoughtfully, “I suppose that’s necessary, I’ll see to it.”
She didn’t really need him to explain, with ships outside the FTL line it would be easy to intercept any ships by using FTL to intercept their vector, no matter which way the enemy ran. She didn’t think they would run anyway, they were too aggressive.
A warning flag went off in the sensor computers and she took a look. What appeared to be ninety stealth ships just dropped out of FTL by Neptune and looked to be moving their way.
She reported, “Kris, we have ninety of those invisible cruisers coming our way. They should be here late tomorrow. If I had to guess, they sent three for every one of our carriers.”
He frowned, “Can we target them while they are in stealth mode?”
She shook her head, “We could estimate, but these aren’t FTL sensors, so the data would be suspect unless we were very close.”
He grunted thoughtfully, and then said, “But when they start charging weapons, we have half a second before they can fire right?”
She shrugged, “Yes, but we have to assume the instant beams won’t do us any good, we need that half a second as well, unless we tip our hand. They’ll see it if we charge weapons right before they get here.”
He asked, “How many of our fighters would have to attack at once to destroy one of the cruisers?”
She replied, “With the light blue plasma triple shot… fifteen to be sure.”
He nodded, “But we have twelve thousand fighters with thirty ships, that’s…”
She smiled, “One hundred thirty three.”
He grinned, “Thanks, so with that many per enemy ship…” he trailed off.
She waited patiently while he worked through it.
He shook his head, “It takes five seconds to launch the ships, too long to launch and charge weapons. It’s too dangerous to try and sucker them in. We have to assume they’ll open fire as soon as they get in weapons range. Are there any ships that will be completed before the battle?”
She shook her head, “No, I just started a new batch.”
He frowned, “What if you halted work on two thirds of them, we don’t need a thousand, just concentrate on building three hundred. You can have them done before they get here right?”
She blushed, “Of course.”
She was embarrassed for not thinking it through and just spitting out the data like a computer program. Then again, it was a very human mistake…
He nodded and looked satisfied, “Okay, once they get close to Mars, launch ten thousand fighters from thirty of the new ships and start following the ninety in, at the same time, we’ll launch our fighters and move out toward them. Also at the same time, send the additional two hundred seventy ships toward the FTL line.
“We can catch them between our fighters away from any of our carriers. If they cut a right angle and try to vector out and run, it will be too late anyway, our ships will reach the FTL line first and can intercept. Although I’m not sure about that last part yet. If they leave I might let them go.”
He asked, “Anyone see any flaws or have a suggestion?”
Olivia asked, “What if they don’t drop their stealth field wh
en they figure out they’re in a trap?”
He answered, “Well, they will do one of two things, panic and believe the stealth is not effective at all, and attack anyway in desperation, or they could figure out what we’re doing won’t give us a good target lock and try and make a run for it. In that case, we will wait until we are at point blank range, which for space I guess is within a few thousand miles, and then fire off the sensor data results. Light speed at that range should be good enough for a pinpoint accurate lock, especially if we are attacking from a hundred different vectors. Someone is bound to hit at that point even if they change direction fast enough, which is doubtful.”
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That night Stacey lay in bed thinking. She knew they couldn’t go back to the Earth and live there, it would be too dangerous. Not necessarily for them, with their internal shields, more for any friends and neighbors. Not to mention the U. S. Government when foreign agents are deployed on their soil. But she missed her family.
She was more happy than she’d ever dreamed being with Kris. She’d also been making great progress in gaining understanding to Alion science. Thanks to the implant and nanites, she never needed to relearn anything, so it went fast. She was sure she would have a satisfying and productive life, even if she couldn’t share her discoveries beyond a handful of people.
She was also pretty sure she was pregnant. She’d missed her period. She frowned, she’d told Kris it didn’t matter, but she wasn’t so sure of that now.
She blurted, “Love, I changed my mind.”
He looked up at her with a questioning look and she blushed.
She said, “I know we can’t live on Earth anymore, but I miss my family, and I do want to get married. I want to share that moment with my family and our friends, and have everyone know that we chose each other. Oh, and I’m pregnant.”
She looked unsure and asked, “What do you think?”
She sighed with relief and melted against him when he gathered her up in his arms.
He said softly, “Whatever you want love. Where do you want to get married? You’re pregnant? Tell your dad to leave the shotgun at home, I’ll marry you even if you’re reputation is sullied,” he added in a humorous voice.