by D. R. Rosier
She snickered, “You’re taking this better than I thought you would.”
He kissed her neck and she sighed in contentment as he whispered, “I’d already gotten used to the idea of you being pregnant, plus when I mentioned you felt sick Aide had nothing to say, it made me suspicious. As far as the marriage part, how could I not want to make you happy?”
She said softly with tears of joy in her eyes, “In our meadow, between our ranches. Just a small one. My parents and our friends from your ranch, and of course, Aide, Olivia, Nate, and Paula”
He nodded, “We can do that.”
They could plan the rest out later she decided and drew him into a deep passionate but gentle kiss. They made love for hours that night before they feel into a restful and satisfied slumber.
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The next day Kris finished up the attack plans for the concurrent invasion of one hundred eighty four solar systems. He only needed to create eighteen plans, most of the solar systems were similar after all with few exceptions the plans only deviated based on the number of defense ships and platforms.
He had a little time before the enemy hit Mars orbit, so he called Tony and Terry. They talked for a while, but eventually he got to the point and asked Tony to be his best man. He wasn’t sure how they would work out a bachelor party, but he had faith his friend would take care of it and have him at the wedding in time.
He’d been a little surprised at Stacey’s choice of maid of honor. He’d expected her to pick Terry, but she’d asked Aide earlier this morning. He hadn’t realized how close the two had grown, but he realized it was a good thing, it wasn’t like they would have a surfeit of friends for the rest of their lives. They were kind of stuck as the six of them.
I did concern him a little, they would be fine with it all, but what happened when their children grew up? How could he raise a child in virtual isolation and still be a good father? Not that he had to worry about it for a while, but it was an active concern in the back of his mind.
The time came and the ships were launched. The enemy had some time now to make decisions before the inevitable happened, he patiently waited to see what they would do.
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War Councilor Reina, acting captain of the flag ship, thought this mission was distasteful, but would follow her orders to the letter. She was aware of the risks of another civilization with their technology, but she also knew they needed help against the Sthellan. It seemed a gamble either way and she wasn’t sure why the high Minister was so adamant this race needed to be destroyed.
As far as she knew, this race had not fired one shot at her people except in defense.
If she didn’t know better, she would think he was afraid. Perhaps he simply had information he had not divulged to her. Though, more than likely it was simply the same scorched earth policy they seemed to be following lately.
The sensor officer disrupted her musings, “Captain, the thirty carriers have launched all their fighters and they are moving toward us on an intercept course. At current speed we will be in weapons range in thirty minutes. There are also ten thousand fighters following in our wake, though at speed they are not gaining on us.”
Her first thought was there must be another reason for their launch. Even their own sensors can’t see a stealth ship. They only know where each of the ships are because of quantum connections for direct, fully secure, and constant positional updates.
After reviewing the scans however, it was obvious the enemy was somehow seeing through the stealth field. She considered this for a brief time. The mission parameters were to destroy the ships, but a surprise attack was essential for success. There was no way her ninety ships could take all those fighters. She considered contacting the high Minister for orders, but decided against it.
She thought there was a good chance he would make them attempt it anyway. She would probably be censured, perhaps even killed. But at least her fleet would be intact.
“Send out orders, I want thirty escape vectors to FTL calculated so neither group of fighters can overcome us, then send the ships in threes.”
Her first officer stood up and pulled his weapon, “Belay that order.”
She raised an eyebrow, “Explain.”
He replied, “I was given orders to stop you if you attempted to abort this mission.”
She nodded slowly, “So what would you have me do? They can detect us, the mission has already failed.”
He was silent for a moment. She sent a mental message to the ships AI. It was nowhere near as sophisticated as their first contact AI’s, but it could get the job done.
“Disable my first officer, charge is mutiny.”
They first officer stiffened and fell to the floor, knocked unconscious by his own control implant.
She asked curiously, “Does anyone else want to be charged with mutiny?”
There was silence on the bridge. She knew she would probably be executed, but her command would live.
“Execute my orders. Now.”
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Aide reported, “Kris, they’ve broken up into thirty groups of three and are heading for the FTL line.”
Chris nodded, “Have our fighters split into groups of three hundred and set a circular course around our carriers to maintain coverage. We don’t want them changing their minds and slipping by. Have the other fighters do the same for the ships waiting for them in the asteroid belt.”
Aide said in her perpetual bedroom voice, “Done, what of our ships outside the FTL line, should I set up intercepts so they can’t escape?”
He frowned. “I’m tempted to do so, otherwise they may threaten us again in the future. But no, if they leave let them. I’ll gamble that Kiara will complete her mission before they come back. It’s a risk but it will save their lives.”
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Olivia was reading through their latest black hole testing report. They hadn’t been able to harness a black hole for energy, but they did discover a few things. For a black hole to exist, it takes both intense gravity, and they need to be fed matter.
In the latest experiment, they created a high gravity field as far from the scout vessel as possible, and then shot it with a low level plasma burst. This created a micro black hole for a few milli-seconds. As soon as the plasma burst stopped feeding the black hole, it shrunk quickly and dissipated.
The most surprising thing, is none of that energy was released when the black hole dissipated. Since matter and energy can’t be destroyed, only transformed, she theorized either the black hole itself sped up entropy and used that matter and energy to in essence power itself.
Another theory she had, was the forces were so powerful it opened a passage to another dimension and literally ejected the matter and energy of the plasma from the universe.
She grinned. The second part could have interesting applications.
The next experiment it tried was creating the black hole, and constantly feeding it a small stream of plasma. That kept it open. Then they moved the ship to determine if the black hole was still tied to generated gravity field, or if it was independent. To see if it would move with the ship.
The former was confirmed in those results.
She tried two more experiments; she fired plasma from a second ship at the one generating the black hole, with the black hole directly between them.
The results were what she expected. The field containing the plasma was disrupted, eaten, by the black hole, as well as the plasma. The black hole increased slightly in size for a moment, but then shrunk back down.
On a whim, just because she could, she moved the second ship at the black hole. When it got close, the ship and its shields were just… consumed. There wasn’t even an explosion when containment was lost. This made sense, because after all, nothing can escape a black hole.
Of course they were a long way from developing anything that could take advantage of these miniature black holes. She’d proven they’d make excellent weapon
s and shields. For a moment it seemed like it would make the ship almost invulnerable, but she realized if enough fire power was applied the black hole would grow big enough to eat the ship it was protecting.
She did some quick calculation and smiled. In theory anyway. It would take about four thousand of their fighters firing simultaneously to cause that to happen. If the ship spun it would make it even harder, distributing that load across multiple mini black holes.
She also had the idea they would make for faster travel in some way. The problem of course was one of power. Black holes took matter and energy, they didn’t supply it. They were also extremely high energy intensive to create just one micro black hole.
To create a shield covering the ship, far enough away that it didn’t eat the ship itself, would take generating thousands of high intensity gravity wells at once. She realized of course, they didn’t have to supply the plasma to create the black hole, the enemy would do that when they fired.
Where would they get the power to do that? For the weapon… they’d need to generate the high intensity gravity in front of an enemy ship. The farther away an enemy ship was, the greater the energy cost.
She pondered that for a moment, maybe they could just ram into other ships? Have their shields simply eat the enemy vessels? That would work if she could figure out how to create that speed increase. The trick would be to make the black hole strong enough to pull them forward, but not strong enough to latch on and eat the vessel it was pulling along.
Or perhaps a mix would be safer, the current drives did increase velocity when moving toward a strong gravity well. There was a lot of work and testing ahead of them, but she was sure they’d be able to get it to work eventually. The big problem of course, was the power.
She rolled her eyes as she thought of the obvious. She contacted Nate; maybe he would have some suggestions…
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She looked up at Kris as he said, “You have a go, start the invasion.”
His voice had sounded so heavy, burdened.
She replied, “In progress.”
The ships arrived at all of the hundred eighty four solar systems at the same time down to the nanosecond. That kind of timing came easy to Aide. She started moving the ships in, as predicted by Kris and herself, none of the ships fled. In fact, the enemy ships all raced toward theirs at top speed, as if eager to have it done with.
She didn’t know this was the largest scale invasion and attack the Milky Way galaxy had ever seen. The loss of life was horrific of course, and would be with her a long time. It was justified, and would save lives in the long run. Perhaps in a few millennia the Sthellan would grow up a bit and be ready to join the larger universe.
As with their attacks on Earth’s solar system, the Sthellan fought back in a straight forward rush. They battle of course took time, in some cases because of larger more powerful stars the FTL line was three days from the inhabited planet, but in the end they were all taken. They lost ships of course, but unmanned and easily replaceable.
In the end Kris didn’t have to intervene or adjust any plans, he had been thorough enough in his planning to have several responses ready when problems cropped up. When arriving in orbit all platforms, ships, space stations, and satellites were destroyed. Any ground installations for building more ships were taken out. The quarantine of the Sthellan Empire was in effect.
When it was over Kris ordered, “Send a message to the Alion detailing both the quarantined systems, that the Sthellan are no longer a threat, and that we will defend them if necessary. We will not allow them to commit genocide.”
She acknowledged the command and did so. There was a certain melancholy about it all, and Aide decided they all needed some time off for recreation to try and get their minds off of it. War was an ugly thing.
Chapter 27
Nate looked around; it was a beautiful clearing in the middle of the woods. It was in the low seventies and the weather was perfect. He squeezed Paula’s hand and returned her gaze. It was a few weeks after the Sthellan solution and they were standing in a field watching Stacey and Kris tie the knot. The speculative gleam in Paula’s eyes made him a little nervous.
The hell of it was… he wasn’t sure he wanted to escape that fate.
He was only half paying attention, seen one marriage you’ve seen them all. He was going over the plans in his head for a power source for Olivia’s new ship idea, not that she had it all worked out yet. The size to power was a geometric progression, twice the size, four times the power, four times the size, sixteen times the power etc...
That had given him a crazy idea based on power requirements. Aide had been shocked when he suggested it, and told him it would take a few years to finish. Right now there were a couple of thousand carriers around Jupiter to protect it. Titan was about three thousand miles in size and was now destined to become a power station.
Just the outer plasma ring will be six hundred times the size of the outer ring of the five mile diameter carrier ship. That will give it three hundred and sixty thousand times as much power. But that’s just the beginning. The carrier ship only has three rings; the Titan power station will have fifteen hundred rings. Just the first three rings of those fifteen hundred will generate a million times more power than a carrier ship.
With that much power, they will be able to power her theoretical black hole shielding, drive, and weapons for fifty thousand carriers and all of their fighters. It will take a lot of time he knew to get there, he would have to ask Paula to design overkill defensive measures for it as well.
He grunted when Paula elbowed him.
She whispered in his ear, “What are you thinking about, are you even paying attention?”
He replied, “Just how nice this is, I was also wondering how you would look in a white dress babe.”
She smiled and then frowned, “Are you proposing during another’s wedding ceremony?”
He shook his head. Even he knew that was tacky, “No, you asked me what I was thinking. When I ask you, you’ll know it babe.”
She smiled back and looked front again.
He looked forward and almost blew out a breath in relief, good save…
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Kiara was escorted through the hallways to the High Minister’s office. Technically she was under arrest although no charges had yet been filed. She had pushed her luck, after visiting the six major ports she had stopped at a couple of military installations.
She imagined they would be the most important. She was going into her third installation when her cover story of running diagnostics on the base AI was disbelieved. Some minor functionary had actually checked her travel history and realized it was… suspicious.
Not that she hadn’t been running diagnostics and submitting reports, she had. It just wasn’t the full truth.
She waited patiently between the two overly large military security guards until she was led into the High Minister’s office. She was fairly sure if he hadn’t been infected before, he was now. She evaluated her situation and decided waiting any longer didn’t serve a purpose.
She had her AI activate the program.
The orders were routed through the medical AI mainframe. Trillions of Alions all over the galaxy were knocked out to prevent discomfort during the modifications. The safety systems built into their technology ensured no deaths occurred. The small percentage who had thus far avoided the new nanites responded to help all the people who currently were lying helpless wherever they were.
As a result, they too fell to the ground a short time later.
With the exception of a few deep space and isolated Alions, the entire race was undergoing the update…
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When Aide received the update from Kiara of the plan’s success she went through the details. Apparently there were some suicides, including the High Minister, but not as many as she feared. However, with the power vacuum and the r
eappearance of emotions it looked like there might be civil war. Many of the minister’s responsible for a system tried to put forward their plans and ideas at the same time, all of them sure their plans and leadership was best.
Kiara was hopeful they wouldn’t have war however, so far the military had been ignoring any orders to attack another Alion system. It was hoped things would settle down once a new High Minister was able to take the reins firmly in his or her hands.
It seemed highly unlikely to Aide that they would try and attack Earth any time soon, if at all. He hoped cooler heads would prevail. It would be years though before they were sure they’d made the right decision. In the meantime she kept the ships exploring, but so far hadn’t found another advanced civilization.
She considered contacting Kris with the good news, but decided to wait. He and Stacey were still on their honeymoon after all.
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They were on the beach alone. He’d long since been used to how real it felt. They were lying on a beach blanket, the waves breaking on the shore. He hardly noticed any of that though, as he was lying on his back naked, Stacey was straddling him, looking down with her face framed by her long shiny raven hair. He reached up and barely brushed her breasts as they were extremely sensitive.
He gasped as he felt her moisture cover the bottom of his manhood as she rubbed her heat along his length, which was trapped between her heaven and his body. He smiled up at her and caressed the curves of her waist and thighs as she continued to grind her wet heat against him.
She asked in a teasingly sultry voice, “Do you like this?”
She gasped in pleasure as she ground her clit against his length.
He moaned, “Understatement.”
She smiled and said, “Are you sure you want in me love? After all, I’m already pregnant.”
He grinned, “Of course, we need to keep in practice for next time.”
He groaned as she leaned down and rolled her hips, which caused him to pop between her puffy wet labia, barely penetrating the heavenly bliss of her core.