Preserving Perfection: Self-obsessing with body augmentation has left the entire planet of Ramos without children. But to acquire children means interstellar war! (Veiled Destiny Book 2)

by Jason Bourn

  All the other automaton controllers echoed their praise to Edgar.

  Edgar remained quiet – only nodding to acknowledge Dorial’s praise. He was thinking that the Ramos humans had taken to the technology that he had provided far too quickly and easily. He would have to be very careful in the future what tech he provided them.

  Dorial, for his part, was fairly confident that if they were careful, they could repeat this success at each of the worlds they visited. He knew that the local inhabitants would put up more of a fight, but with care he knew that their objective was now within sight.

  CHAPTER 10 – ESCALATION

  Dorial had been right. The assaults on the next kingdom worlds had progressively been harder and harder as the inhabitants tried new techniques and new weapons against the automatons.

  On the next world, the second of Kadar Rahib’s “Kingdom”, everything had gone smoothly until the four automatons had exited their vehicles. Suddenly the sensors on all four automatons picked up the tell-tale signature of incoming mortar fire.

  Without stopping to pick up any of their passengers, the autonomous vehicles were quickly dispatched. Dorial commanded his vehicle to trace where the mortar fire was coming from. Grecian and Markus commanded their vehicles to intercept the incoming rounds with their own anti-mortar ordinance. Rheana, meanwhile, commanded her vehicle to disrupt the inhabitant’s communications.

  Once Dorial had located the origins of the mortar fire, he sent several disruptive ordinances of his own. This caused the kingdom’s mortar fire to stop immediately. With Rheana’s vehicle still disrupting all of the kingdom’s communications, the automatons were free to perform their jobs. Much like the first kingdom world, they were able to acquire two children of the proper age range from a not-nearly-fortified-enough shelter and safely returned to their ships.

  The last of Kadar Rahib’s “Kingdom’s” worlds had another unique twist.

  After landing and disembarking, the four automatons started walking to find the reinforced bunker where they were sure the inhabitants could be found. As they walked carefully towards the center of the small town, their sensors suddenly detected a swarm of drones coming at them.

  “There must be hundreds, if not thousands of them,” Dorial astutely said. Rheana nodded, “Yes, I estimate there are well over two thousand of them. I will attempt to disrupt their communications.”

  With that, her vehicle rose into the air, sending broadband interference.

  The drones, no longer able to communicate among each other or with their controllers, automatically chose one of the automatons or vehicles to attack. Each drone only had a small amount of offensive weaponry, but what they lacked in power they made up for in numbers.

  Fortunately, the defensive capabilities of the vehicles were extensive. Dorial chose an electromagnetic pulse weapon. Setting the weapon to pulse at a point high above the battlefield, he launched the EMP weapon. The purpose of the weapon was to create a huge pulse of energy that caused any circuitry to literally overload and burn itself up, unless it had circuits especially designed to handle such a pulse. As none of the drones had this special circuitry, and all of the autonomous vehicles as well as the automatons did, the results were spectacular. As soon as the EMP weapon went off, every one of the drones simply fell from the sky. As for the vehicles and automatons, there were no effects at all, save for a warning that sensors had detected an EMP pulse.

  Dorial had to hand it to Edgar, the tech that he supplied had come through again. He felt more misgivings that if they had indeed attacked Earth, the Ramos ships would have found themselves in for more than a match. This just reinforced his feelings that they would have to be careful in future dealings with Earth.

  Garth Nolan’s “Kingdom” worlds threw even more, mostly guerrilla-style, techniques at them.

  When the foreign fleet arrive at the first of Garth’s worlds, Dorial made sure that each of their ships was prepared. They were in full defensive posture when they performed the quantum jump, this time at a randomly selected spot that would be impossible to predetermine, but there were no ships lying in wait. This only made Dorial more suspicious, so he made the ships stay in full battle posture until they reached the planet.

  It was a world much like Earth, but terraforming had begun only in the last three hundred years, so life hadn’t had time to evolve at all. Everything, however, was growing like gangbusters, since there was no real competition from the simplistic organic life. As the ships orbited around the planet, they could see several larger cities. They chose the largest, since it made sense that it would have the most children.

  The ships scanned the entire area, but could not find any opposition. After a brief discussion, the foreigners all agreed to proceed with caution.

  The autonomous vehicles started their decent down to the planet’s surface. As they neared the ground, suddenly there was a burst of activity and twenty ships burst from underground launch pads. The autonomous vehicles were technological wonders, but they were no match for twenty armed, full-sized space ships.

  Dorial realized immediately that there was a huge problem, as did the other foreigners. Dorial shouted, “Options anyone?”

  Rheana responded first, “We are at a severe disadvantage. We could destroy the planet, but that would not accomplish anything. Our own ships are too far to prevent the local ships from getting a volley in first. And unfortunately, their ships appear to have plenty of fire power against the autonomous vehicles. If we can hold them off for approximately thirty minutes, we should be able to get our ships in position to destroy their ships.”

  Edgar added, “The autonomous vehicles were never designed to go up against a full-size space ship. I suggest that you attempt to get away, because you will lose any battle you engage those ships in.”

  Grecian quickly added, “Maybe if we performed a kamikaze-type maneuver, we could destroy the ships.” He hesitated, then said, “It might work.”

  Markus added, “I will place odds on the space ships, my friend.” Then, noting the seriousness of the situation, added, “I really think that we should get out of here. I really don’t like our odds.”

  Just then the ships attacked, before the foreigner’s ships could do anything. Like the attack near Kadar’s first world, the ten forward ships launched nuclear weapons and electromagnetically launched projectiles. Meanwhile, the rear ten ships initiated laser fire, using the first ten ships as protection.

  The autonomous vehicles put up as much fight as they could. Grecian used his kamikaze maneuver, which actually caused one space ship to crash-land. However, in the end the local ships were too much for the autonomous vehicles and each of them were in turn destroyed. The entire battle had lasted only about four minutes.

  The Ramos ship commanders sat in each of their ships, stunned that their high-tech automatons and vehicles had been destroyed. They each felt the loss even more acutely, since their embedded systems had “bonded” so closely with the Earth tech.

  Dorial was the first to speak, “Edgar, could you create another set of automatons and autonomous vehicles?”

  Edgar paused and said, “I can create another set with the equipment I have on-board. However, you should know that this is the last set that I can make. I don’t have an infinite supply of equipment and I can only locally replicate so much of the hardware, so please make sure you take better care of this set that I’ll provide you. They should be ready in twenty-four hours.”

  Rheana interrupted with a status update, “Our ships should be closing in on the twenty local armed ships within five minutes. Is there any objection to destroying them?”

  Dorial sighed and said, “No, no objection. If we let them survive, they would just attempt to destroy our new ground equipment.”

  With that, the foreigners watched as their ships finally made contact with the twenty local armed ships. It was not a fair fight, as all twenty of the ships were quickly destroyed, with no damage to the foreign fleet.

  Dorial sa
t thinking after the last of the local ships were destroyed. It was unclear whether the “Kingdom” worlds and Torval 2 would take solace in the fact that they had destroyed the foreigner’s ground equipment and continue to ramp up their efforts to stop the taking of their children, or whether they would lose hope and give up their obstruction efforts with all their armed ships destroyed and their children taken anyway. Only time would tell. Unfortunately, Dorial thought that the former was more likely, especially when they arrived at the home world of Torval 2.

  When the new automatons and autonomous vehicles were ready, they were deployed down to the planet, this time with their space ships in position to immediately halt any aggressive local activity. As always, none of the kingdom’s earlier tactics that had failed were repeated. Dorial had instructed everyone to be on their guard, since new tactics would inevitably be used.

  As expected, once they settled down on the planet, the first thing that the locals tried was to use their own vehicles to run down the autonomous vehicles and the automatons. Since the foreigners were prepared, they were able to nimbly jump (or fly in the case of the vehicles) out of the way, destroying the local vehicle at their leisure. The locals tried this tactic several times, but the foreigner’s sensors were too good and easily detected each instance. After all the local vehicles attempting this maneuver were destroyed, with no damage to the foreigners, these attacks stopped. Some good had come of this, from Dorial’s point of view, in that this had kept himself and his shipmates from getting complacent.

  They had been successful in extracting four children on this world, their most successful endeavor to this point. However, on successive planets they found fewer and fewer children. On the last planet in Garth’s “Kingdom”, the locals finally hit upon their most successful tactic.

  Part of the success lay in its simplicity. What they did was to simply move their children to separate locations. If they waited until the foreigners arrived, then their movements could have been tracked. However, by moving all the young children before the foreigners arrived, there was no feasible way for the foreigners to find them. Sensors were not good enough to detect where a child was anywhere on the planet. After searching for several days on the last planet, and not finding any children of the right age, they had finally given up without taking any children.

  The last planet on their course was Torval 2. It was estimated that they had thousands of children of the right age group. The foreigners needed at least fifty more children, although one hundred more would be better. However, with their latest tactic, it was doubtful they could find the necessary numbers of children, even if they searched for weeks or months. It appeared that a new strategy was needed.

  CHAPTER 11 – TORVAL 2 WAR PREPARATIONS

  Garth wanted to gloat, but the loss of so many of his “Kingdom’s” children would not allow him to. “We finally got them so they could not get any of our children. Our biggest world too. You can do the same. I’m sure of it.”

  Nadia nodded her head. “Yes, that was by far the most successful tactic so far. It is unfortunate that you lost all your armed ships, with so little to show for it.”

  Garth agreed saying, “You live and you learn. We thought that by destroying them on the ground that they might be forced to change their plans, but no such luck. It appears that they have some sort of semi-automatic tech, both vehicular and robotic. Not like any robots I would ever dream up, in fact they looked for all the world like metal horses, but I have to admit they are effective. The problem is that they were able to generate new vehicles and robots within twenty-four hours, so just destroying the ground equipment is probably not going to be effective. We need to get their ships.”

  Kadar quickly interjected, “You saw yourself what happens when our ships take on their ships. We lose and they win – ours are destroyed and theirs are unscathed. End of story.”

  Nadia broke in, “We’ve been over this before. We cannot attack them straight on. We’ve proven that two times now. Even with the element of surprise,” she glanced approvingly at Kadar, “we were not able to be successful with a direct attack. We need to figure out some other way that gives us the most advantage and takes away theirs.”

  Saul couldn’t help himself, so he blurted, “We need to do something to get our children back. As I’ve said many, many times, we can’t afford to lose those children from out in the Periphery.”

  Nadia glanced at both Garth and Kadar, who both raised their eyebrows in frustration. Kadar quickly broke in before Saul could go on, “Yes, we know that we need to do everything possible to get your children back. We’re working on it.”

  Stifling a smile, although there really wasn’t anything funny about it, Nadia did feel for Kadar. Saul was all talk and no action. Even this talk was better than the ambivalence that was the normal Periphery response to anything. This was the first time that they had ever been united in anything – normally each world was as independent as they could be, not wanting to do anything that was not in their direct interest. This was really the first time that the Periphery worlds had anything in common with each other and with the more populated inner worlds.

  Nadia continued, “Does anyone have any ideas that might give us the advantage that we need?” She looked around, but did not see anything but resigned faces.

  The silence continued for far too long. Finally, she said, “I need you to each consult with your best strategic military personnel, as I have been doing here on Torval 2. I’d like to meet again as soon as you have a chance to meet with them and then I’d like to brainstorm and develop a plan.”

  The others agreed and the meeting broke up. No one held much hope, but they would each try their best. After all, their children’s lives were at stake, and possibly much more.

  – – –

  Nadia tried to get the meeting order restored. Saul was going off on his typical “Save our children!” rant, while Garth and Kadar were both discussing the military tactics that had already been used. “OK, let’s bring the meeting back to order,” she said loudly.

  Everyone looked up, since Nadia rarely yelled.

  She shook her head. They could finally start the meeting. But where would this meeting lead? She had given them eight hours to come up with something. Time was of the essence, since the foreign ships had left Garth’s Kingdom’s last world and would be jumping to the Torval 2 system within the next fifty hours or so.

  She started out, “Certainly by now you have had a chance to talk with your military strategists. Do any of you have any ideas or recommendations?”

  She looked at both Garth and Kadar, but they remained silent, shaking their heads. They had already leaned hard on their experts, so it was not unexpected that they hadn’t come up with anything new. Glumly she sat, wishing that her own military had come up with something revolutionary – but they hadn’t. They had only recommended they try slight variations on what had already failed.

  Saul cleared his throat and Nadia tensed, waiting for another diatribe on saving Periphery children. “I have just received word that a military representative of one of our remote Periphery worlds has just arrived to Torval 2. I don’t know him or his world personally, there are hundreds of sparsely populated worlds in the Periphery, but he claims to have military expertise and claims to have a recommendation for you to consider. He is awaiting outside if you want to listen to him. His name is J. C. Giliad, from the small world of Ispian.

  Nadia looked around. No one spoke, so she nodded her head to Saul. She felt they really didn’t have that much to lose by placating Saul – and maybe this would have the much-desired effect of quieting Saul up.

  Saul left briefly and returned shortly with Giliad.

  Nadia, Garth and Kadar looked Giliad over. He seemed awfully young to be an expert in strategy. He could not be more than thirty-five years old. But he calmly sat down and waited for the inevitable questions from the group.

  Nadia started. “Can you give us some background of your qualifications an
d show us why we should entrust you with the lives of our children and possibly our cities?”

  Giliad responded smoothly, “I have studied military history since I was a young boy. I have always scored the highest in all my studies and have achieved a 99.7% on the Military Intelligence and Strategy test, which is a standard interactive test which gauges one’s strategic capability under progressively more challenging conditions. I should note for those that are not familiar with this test that this is the highest score ever recorded.”

  Garth and Kadar both nodded appreciatively, since both of them were familiar with the test. Garth added, “That really is impressive. We excel in strategy in our Kingdom and we have yet to get anyone over a 99% mark.”

  Nadia had to look to see what the best score on Torval 2 ever was. Her persa informed her that it was 99.3%. It also informed her that a score of 99.7% was not expected to be able to be achieved for another one hundred years, given the existing scoring on Torval 2 and the expected growth in capabilities due to ever more advanced training and experience. Giliad’s score did indeed merit them listening to his planning expertise.

  Giliad merely nodded and said, “Thank you for your kind words. I am a simple man and would be happy to help in any way I can. I do have some thoughts that you may want to consider as a course of action moving forward. It involves use of the armed and unarmed space craft, and, I want to tell you up front, the children as bait. I can’t say that all the children will be saved, but there is a good chance that the threat will be extinguished and we can continue with our society without any additional outside interference.

  “OK, here is a top-level overview of the plan. It starts by taking both the children in the four- to six-year-old range and the children slightly younger, say in the two- to three-year-old range and moving them to widely dispersed sites throughout Torval 2. This is in line with what worked on Garth’s last world, so this is what the foreigners are expecting, then ...”