by Jason Bourn
Garth pointed out, “I have almost one hundred ships at my disposal across all my controlled worlds, but it would take years to get them here to Torval 2. If there were any kind of an attack on Torval 2, there really isn’t much we, nor any of the other planets, can do to help. If we are attacked, we will fight back, but realistically there really isn’t much that we would be able to do.”
Nadia responded, “We have over four hundred ships of our own, but only a small handful of them are armed and many of our ships are spread throughout the planets on many star systems, as you know since many of these planets are under your control. We have recalled them all, but it will take some time to get them back here. We have perhaps one hundred available here now at Torval 2, with maybe fifty more coming back every six months for the next several years. We have now started the process of arming those that are here, but it will take weeks to get them outfitted, if not longer. And they were never built to withstand any kind of damage. I’m afraid that we will be very unprepared if they really do come that quickly. This fast of a turnaround was never remotely contemplated. We will start the design of a true battle cruiser fleet, but that will take many years to come to fruition.”
Nadia was interrupted again as everyone’s persas went off at the same time, indicating another high priority message for each of them. Everyone monitored their messages, then sat, each looking dazed in disbelief, looking glumly at the others, but not saying anything.
Garth, looking stunned, was the first to speak. “I can’t believe they destroyed Torval 1. It appears we need to prepare for war.”
Kadar added, “Did anyone see how one of their ships was destroyed? One minute it was there and the next it had exploded. It was like it was totally annihilated, not like someone hit it with any type of projectile-like or laser weapon. It was either a perfect hit with a fusion bomb, or its core blew up.”
Nadia, not wanting to believe what she just saw, finally said, “I’ll see if there is anything we can do to speed up the armament of the ships. If there is anything that any of the rest of you can do, please let me know.”
Both Garth and Kadar pledged to start arming their ships as well.
Saul was silent, not wanting to commit to anything. He received various input from many of the independent leaders on various Periphery worlds. Finally, he said, “We will remain independent and neutral. We will not take sides and we hope that these foreign ships will likewise honor our neutrality and not attack us. Arming ships shows aggression, so we will not arm our ships.”
Nadia had much to think about and even more things to do. She abruptly adjourned the meeting so she could get to her growing list of obligations and hoped that they had enough time to mount the defense that she prayed they wouldn’t need.
CHAPTER 6 – WAR
So far it had been unbelievably easy.
The five ships had jumped as one, arriving at one of the furthest worlds from the main planet of Torval 2, in the Periphery, as they called it. As they began their three-day journey in towards the planet, two indigenous ships lifted off from the planet and came out to meet them.
Dorial took in the sensory data showing the two ships coming at them. “They appear to be unarmed. Please confirm.”
Grecian quickly responded, “Yes, they have nothing that could even be called an offensive weapon. These ships are not going to be any kind of a match for us, as we expected.”
Markus added sarcastically, “I guess they’re really not all that interested in protecting their little ones. It’s almost as if they’re coming out to invite us to take them.”
Markus’ cynicism did not merit a response from anyone, so they all ignored him.
Rheana finally said, “Let’s give away the least information possible. Information, for them, is power. Therefore, I recommend that we not engage them at all. Keep strict radio silence with them. At some point we may need to change that strategy, but for now I firmly believe it is in our best interests.”
Markus said, “I volunteer to go down to get the children. It is unlikely that they have any weaponry that can hurt me, and if they do have something, then I can always use my weaponry and/or make a hasty exit.”
Dorial hesitated, then concurred. “I agree. I really don’t think that they can cause you any problems. Does anyone have any issues with this?”
There were no issues, so onward they went.
The five foreign battle ships remained mute as the local ships swarmed around them. The local ships sent query after query to the foreign ships, but even though there was no response, the two indigenous ships never offered any resistance. All the battle ships’ sensors confirmed the two ships had no real weaponry, so the foreign ships just ignored their two pesky followers.
Markus set his shuttle to land, with the remaining foreign ships staying in orbit, alert in case they were needed. Markus was not overly concerned: not only was he the strongest, but he had by far the most armor – making him far less vulnerable to any kind of small arms fire.
As Markus descended, he used his sensors and found the only town – small, with a population of less than one hundred. As he landed at the space port, one of the two local ships landed next to him.
Markus disembarked, walking unimpeded through the small town.
No one challenged him, so he kept searching for children. The place looked deserted. They had evidently decided to hide instead of fight. He finally found a sign that he had been looking for: “School.” As he walked around the school, he saw signs entitled: “Emergency Evacuation Center.”
He followed the signs until he reached the Evacuation Center. There before him were huge twelve-inch steel doors, sealed tightly shut. Smiling, he grasped one of the doors with his augmented arms and sharply pulled up and out. The door wrenched completely off its anchor. Peering inside, Markus saw huddled in the opening beyond what looked like the entire human occupants of the town.
At that point Markus felt small caliber bullets hitting his exoskeleton, coming from both within the chamber and from behind him. Evidently the occupants from the ship that had landed had followed him and were none too happy that he had found and breached their shelter.
As the bullets only bounced harmlessly off him, Markus simply ignored them.
Markus searched for children of the right age group. Those crouching inside that were the most able-bodied, all adults, were in front. Behind them were the adults just past their prime. Next were the oldest adults and last, the furthest back, were the babies and small children.
Markus simply walked past the adults, quickly stepping around them when they tried to stop him. He finally found two children that appeared to be in the right age group at the very back. He walked up to them, picked them up and gently cradled one in each arm. They looked up at him in alarm, so he quickly sent soothing sounds from his oral processing systems.
Immediately the bullets came at a much higher frequency, although they did not try to hit his torso for fear of hitting the children, but instead they aimed for his head.
The bullets did not bother Markus at all, except for the loud pinging sounds. He merely adjusted the gain in that frequency band down on his audio processor and emanated noise canceling sounds so as not to disturb the children. With that, he sidestepped the wailing adults and casually walked out of the shelter, walked through the town, and then calmly walked onto his shuttle. The adults following him could not enter his shuttle, so he merely ignored them.
He placed each child into their own suspended animation chamber, initiated the sleep cycle and walked to the bridge. Smiling, he sat down and initiated the launch sequence. He was airborne and back in orbit and in his own ship in no time.
Markus tried not to gloat as he gave his status report, “That went even easier than I thought it would be. They put up almost no resistance. A little bit of small arms fire and that was it.”
Dorial sighed and warned, “It is not always going to be that easy. Please make sure you stay alert.
Grecian added,
“I’m sure that they are going to figure out how to make your life harder, so I agree, be prepared.”
Markus was still confident, even after their warnings. He had confidence in his abilities, and, smiling to himself, most of all he had confidence in his body augmentation.
With that the five ships started on their three-day journey away from the planet to perform this ridiculously simple feat again on another Periphery world.
CHAPTER 7 – NO RESISTANCE
Everyone listened attentively as the reports filtered in: on Torval 2, on the multi-planetary kingdom worlds, and on all of the Periphery worlds. The message from each of the impacted worlds was the same. The foreign ships would be first observed three days out, they would come in and take only young children, but not babies, then they would fly out for three days, then simply disappear. The three days’ travel was a definite indication that the technology that they used was the same as for the ubiquitous quantum communications, where the transmitter had to be at least three days’ journey away from the associated planet. This meant that they had made some kind of breakthrough where, similar to making electromagnetic energy be separable by many light years, they could now put matter through the same process to get their faster-than-light jump.
They had found that no matter how strong a barrier they put up to defend their children, the impediment was quickly torn down, circumvented or, worse yet, totally ignored. The reports were that this was accomplished by either a massively augmented person or a robot – reports were not all that clear on this. After finding out that shielding the children did not help, they took to hiding the children. This was marginally more successful, in that the more they separated their children, the longer it took to locate and take them. The foreigners appeared to have an array of sensors at their command: heat sensors, acoustic sensors, vibration sensors, and more. Separating and hiding the children made each foray take longer and longer – that was the only reason the number of children taken was not higher.
In the meeting on Torval 2, Saul was yelling. Where previously he had been soft spoken and never willing to commit to anything, now he was loud, insistent and almost militant-sounding. He had changed so much from the last meeting that Nadia, Garth and Kadar simply stared.
This made the Periphery representative yell all the louder, as if that would help any. “That was the third world that they have taken our children from. All in the four- to six-year-old range. Never any younger and never any older. Both boys and girls. We have to do something. They now have five of our children. That may not seem like much to you, with the large populations you have on each world, but for us it is catastrophic. This cannot go on.”
While Saul was catching his breath, Nadia thought about speaking, but decided to hold her tongue and not remind Saul of his “no-resistance” pledge.
Garth, however, did not hold his tongue. He felt that his kingdom was being personally threatened. “They have been making a more or less straight path through the Periphery to Torval 2. I suspect that they have been testing our collective defenses, which have been practically non-existent in the Periphery.” With that he glared at Saul and continued, “The problem is that their current path takes them directly through Kadar’s planets and then through my planets, before they get to Torval 2.
“This means that they undoubtedly intend on taking more children as they go. We must do something to stop them. Nadia, we have been trying to arm ourselves, like you have on Torval 2, but we simply don’t have the resources that you do. Is there anything you can do to help?”
Again, Nadia decided to hold her tongue. This entire problem would have been much more easily dealt with if they had a fleet of battle cruisers, as she had been lobbying for in their previous meeting. After several deep breaths to ensure she wouldn’t sound frustrated, she said, “At this point, there is nothing that we can do to help you. It would take us far too long to get any of our armed ships to any of your worlds. We have run many simulations of where we think they will go and how long it will take and the highest probability is that they will hit five more Periphery worlds, then three of Kadar’s worlds and four of your worlds, Garth, before they get to Torval 2. We believe they will have collected between twenty-five and fifty children, a smaller number from the Periphery, more from Kadar’s worlds and even more from Garth’s worlds. Obviously, those planets closer to Torval 2 are more heavily populated, with more children in that age range available and at risk. Who knows how many they will take from Torval 2?
“There are two things that need to get done. The first is to engage them in conversation so we can attempt to figure out why they are doing this. However, thus far, all attempts at communications have failed. Next, we need to continue to arm ourselves so we can fight back. Up to now, we have provided no resistance.” Nadia look directly at Saul, but he refused to look back at her. “I’m afraid there is nothing that we can do to stop their rampage through the Periphery. Perhaps when they get to Kadar’s and Garth’s planets, they might respond to the few armed ships that we do have there.”
Kadar spoke slowly, wanting to get as much as he could from his audience, “We have been arming our ships as fast as possible. These are just add-ons; these ships were never built to survive the kinds of stresses that occur during battle. At any rate, we have assembled all our available ships at the point where we believe that they will jump to in order to attack our first planet – twenty ships total, with eight of them armed. There are four Periphery ships that are in the vicinity still that could join this force, as are six ships with Garth’s registry. In addition, there are twelve Torval 2-registered ships that are heading back to Torval 2, but they are in the vicinity and could be redirected to join our force. If we could get them all there, this would give us forty-two ships, with at least eight of them armed. This may be sufficient to deter their progress.”
Saul was the first to respond, “We need to make a stand before more of our Periphery worlds are robbed of their children. We in the Periphery cannot support any action that abandons our worlds.”
Nadia spoke next, “I really don’t know what an additional twelve unarmed ships are going to do to protect your worlds, Kadar. I’ve already gone on record many times saying we need actual battle ships, but that is now water under the bridge. We aren’t going to get any real battle ships for several years, and there is only so much that Torval 2 itself can do by itself. The best we can do is to arm what ships we can. Our twelve ships near your worlds are due back on Torval 2 to be armed. I’m afraid that risking them with a very small chance of them doing anything to stop the foreign invaders is not in anyone’s best interests.”
Kadar listened stonily as his plea for help went up in smoke.
Finally, Garth volunteered, “Kadar, we will allow our six ships to be used as a show of force, but they must be at the rear of all your ships. Further, if the foreign ships start destroying your ships, ours will be forced to leave before they are also destroyed. In this respect I agree with Nadia, we cannot afford to summarily throw away ships that might be better used later.”
Kadar knew it had been a long shot, but at least he had six more ships than if he hadn’t asked for help. He now wished that he had followed Nadia’s advice earlier and allowed even a small force of battleships to be built. But that was, as Nadia said, water under the bridge.
CHAPTER 8 – FIRST BATTLE
The first real battle was waged near the furthest out of Kadar’s planets.
Kadar’s force had timed it perfectly. The instant that the five foreign ships had appeared from their jump, Kadar’s ships were waiting in ambush and had opened fire. They had been expecting the five ships and had plotted precisely where they thought they would arrive. Since the foreigners had not changed their techniques, it had actually been relatively easy to determine where they would appear.
Kadar’s eight armed ships were deployed in two sets of four – four in the front and four directly behind them. The forward four ships launched nuclear weapons and electromagne
tically launched projectiles. Meanwhile, the rear four ships initiated laser fire, using the first four ships as protection.
Directly after the jump, alerts rang throughout each of the five foreign ships as sensors detected multiple incoming weapons fire. Faster than any mere human could take in the data and react, each of the four Ramos ships, fully integrated with their augmented human commander, reacted. The Terran ship reacted similarly, but using raw processing power and advanced electronic systems instead.
Each of the five foreign ships rapidly changed their surface to become highly reflective, where the incoming laser fire was primarily reflected off, instead of heating up and damaging or destroying the ships’ outer skins. Minor damage was sustained, but the time from sensing the laser fire to the change to high reflectivity took less than one second, so damage was kept to a minimum.
Next, the foreign ships sent flak to destroy the inbound nuclear weapons before they could get close enough to do any damage. At the same time the ships were each moved at maximum thrust to ensure the projectile weapons would not score direct hits.
Finally, the four Ramos ships opened fire on Kadar’s eight armed ships.
The attack might have been more effective, except, of course, Kadar’s attacking ships had never been designed to absorb any punishment. The instant one of these ships received any counter fire from the foreign ships, they either ceased functioning or ceased existing, depending upon the weapon used by the five ships.
While it was the first battle of the war, it was still very one-sided, with Kadar’s eight armed ships disabled or totally destroyed less than five seconds after the first shots were fired. The foreign ships had easily destroyed the ill-equipped ships from Kadar, even with the advantage of a full surprise attack, sustaining only minor damage.
Dorial, though, was furious. “We are getting sloppy. If they were better armed or if they had better ships and could have sustained their attack, we could have been wiped out. That is absolutely not acceptable.”