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

  Dorial said to the other three foreigners that were left, all from Ramos, “It looks like the Terrans have more advanced drives than they have let on. We need to remember that, if we get through this. Again, give me options. Now!”

  No one said anything for a short while, then Rheana said, “The situation is not good at all. I estimate that Grecian will have the children in his ship in six minutes. However, by that time the first of the unarmed ships are going to be upon us. We can dodge some of them, but our own weapons have broken up many of the ships and they will act as shrapnel and can cause real damage to our ships. The amount of damage is dependent upon the size of the debris that hits us. I probably don’t need to tell you that a straight-on hit by a full cargo-sized ship will cause extensive damage to any one of our ships, and may totally destroy it. Also, moving away from the shielding of the unarmed ships and the children’s ships would also be expected to cause extensive damage to our ships. This is because we are outnumbered by ten to one in the front and in the back. If we stay, we lose. If we move, we lose. This was a terrific strategy on their part. I would love to meet their battle commander.”

  Markus remarked, “Sure, why don’t you ask to have a quick meeting where you can talk about past and future strategies. I’m sure they’ll be happy to stop their attack while the two of you meet.”

  Everyone ignored Markus’ statement, since it wasn’t helpful in the least.

  Not getting any reaction, Markus continued, “If we can’t think of a better strategy, how about we just use theirs. I doubt that they’ll charge us anything if we do.”

  Again, there was silence. However, Markus’ statement did get Rheana thinking. “You know, there might be a way out of this. All we have to do is to get three day’s distance out from the Torval 2 and then we’re home free. How about if we use three out of four of our ships as cover for the last ship, which would contain the four of us and all the children we’ve collected from the Periphery, the ‘Kingdoms’ and from the two children’s ships? It can be Grecian’s ship since he already has the majority of the children on his ship. We can launch shuttles with ourselves and the children we already have to Grecian’s ship.”

  Dorial continued, “Yes, that could work. We could also lock on the two empty children’s ships to our ships to provide additional cover for Grecian’s ship. Are there any issues that anyone can think of?”

  Grecian said, “I’m good with that. I should be ready with the last of the children from the second of the children’s ships’ in about two minutes. If you lock on the two empty children’s ships to mine and get yourselves and the children you have on shuttles to my ship while I’m getting the last of the children on-board, that should allow us to get out of here in the least amount of time.”

  Dorial asked, “Any questions or issues?” He waited for several seconds and said, “Time is of the essence people, let’s move.”

  Dorial asked Rheana to wipe the location of Ramos from all of the ships, in case they were lost. He didn’t want to give away the location of Ramos and give the Torvalians any information that could come back to haunt them later. He knew that Rheana was extremely proficient in cybersecurity, so he knew that she would do an excellent job.

  Everything came together quickly. They were able to get everyone on board Grecian’s ship within five minutes, right before the unarmed ships and debris started to stream by the foreigner’s ships. They were actually given more of a reprieve than they were expecting, since the first unarmed ships locked onto the two remaining children ships and moved them out of harm’s way.

  As soon as the Ramos fleet move out from the shield’s protection, the armed Torvalian ships from both front and back opened fire on the them.

  In past battles, the Ramos fleet was far more on the offensive. In this battle, however, the Ramos fleet was purely on defense, attempting to minimize the damage from incoming projectiles weapons. Dorial felt they were doing a reasonable job, in that only minor damage had been inflicted upon Markus’ ship. Dorial gave the order to spread out to give the opposition more trouble in hitting a target. However as soon as the order was given, the enemy started targeting nuclear weapons towards the ships that had separated. They were able to stop most of the nukes, but with their overwhelming numbers advantage and their ability to hit from front or rear, eventually the enemy scored a hit, disabling Dorial’s old ship. The enemy continued using nuclear weapons until Dorial realize that he had made a strategic mistake.

  He quickly ordered the ships into a tight cluster again, with Grecian’s ship in the center. Immediately the nuclear weapon launches ceased, although the projectile barrage continued unabated. Dorial realized that they were holding off on any nuclear weapons close to Grecian’s ship, which contained the children. They were happy to use projectile weapons to try to disable all the ships, including the one with the children, but they didn’t want to blow it up and guarantee the loss of their children’s lives.

  It became a war of wills at that point. The two Torvalian attack fleets had pursued the foreigner’s ships for more than two days, inflicting more and more damage. Dorial spoke the same words he had uncounted times during their flight to safety: “Status reports please.”

  Rheana responded, “We have three ships left, two of them have the old children’s ships attached.” Just then another of the shield ships received a major hit from a projectile weapon, Rheana’s old ship this time. Unfortunately, it hit the propulsion unit, totally disabling the ship.

  She continued, “That was my old ship, it has been disabled and will fall further back. We can continue to use it as a partial shield, but that benefit gets smaller and smaller as we outdistance it. We now have two ships left. One is Markus’ ship, with an old children’s ship attached. This is the only one shielding us from the projectiles.

  “We have been traveling for almost three days, so we are getting close to where we can jump. The pace of the projectiles had been slowing, so it is reasonable to assume that their supply of projectile weapons is running somewhat low. But now they are starting up their projectile firing rate again with a vengeance since we are getting closer to where we can jump. I believe the Torvalians are making a last-ditch effort to disable the ship with the children on it before we can make the jump. This renewed firing rate was why they got my old ship. We can expect this higher firing rate to continue until we jump, if we make it that far. The two attack fleets have merged and they have fanned out somewhat to get better firing angles, even though that means that they are further back.

  “Our ship has taken a few minor hits, but nothing too serious. We can either repair it now or defer fixing it until later. Markus’ ship has taken quite a few more hits, but since we are using it as a shield, that is to be expected. I suspect that in the end we will need to write it off as a total loss.”

  Dorial interjected, “We just have a few minutes before we can jump. Is there anything that we should do differently? Or is there anything differently that we can expect the Torvalian fleet to do?”

  Rheana considered for many seconds. No, there isn’t anything else that I can think of that we can do. Barring the use of nuclear weapons, which they have been reticent to use, I can’t think of anything else ...”

  She was interrupted by several warnings going off simultaneously.

  Rheana stated, “We have a problem. They have focused many lasers on us. As you know, using lasers against us has never been successful, since we just turn our ships into pure reflective mode and rotate so any residual energy can’t heat up any single spot.”

  Dorial interrupted, “So what is the issue?”

  Rheana said, “I am coming to that. The Torvalian ship that is locked to Markus’ old ship is susceptible to the laser. It is heating up fast. They are too far away for a single laser to do any damage, but they are focusing all of their ships’ lasers on to their old ship. If we don’t jettison it quickly, it will overheat and explode. We permanently disabled the propulsion and navigation, so the only way to get i
t away from us before it explodes is to push it away with the autonomous vehicles.”

  Grecian said, “I thought we ensured that there weren’t any weapons on board to explode. Why is there a threat?”

  Markus jumped in quickly, “Superheated plasma. I studied that in school. If the ship gets too hot, from the focused lasers, it will turn into superheated plasma. If that hits our ship, it would be just like the ship trying to go through a planet’s atmosphere. We would burn up. I agree, we don’t want to be too close to that.”

  Dorial snapped quickly, “Are there any other options?”

  Rheana quickly responded, “The only other option is to jettison both ships, but then we would be giving up our shield and we would be very vulnerable to the projectile weapons. As it is, we will lose half of our shielding if we separate and send off the Torvalian ship.”

  Dorial thought about it and finally said, “If there are no other inputs, then I agree – we should disconnect the two ships and send the Torvalian ship away.”

  When no one said anything, he continued, “OK, let’s get the autonomous vehicles going. Is there anything that has to be done manually?”

  Markus said, “Yes, we need to get the airlock breached. I’ll head over there right away.”

  Rheana said, “No, we can have an automaton do that.”

  Markus, sounding offended, said “OK, then I’ll control that automaton.”

  They all watched in fascination as the Torvalian ship was starting to glow a deep red.

  After several minutes Markus said, “I cannot get the airlock to disconnect. The temperature differential between the outsides of the two ships is too great. The automaton has done everything it can do.”

  Rheana said, “Break the lock on the two ships, and we will have to force the two ships apart.”

  The four autonomous vehicles all started pushing against the red-hot hull of the Torvalian ship. Meanwhile, the Ramos ship was using its propulsion system to push it in the other direction. As the autonomous vehicles pushed harder and harder, their exoskeletons started merging with the red-hot ship’s hull.

  Finally, with a burst of molten metal the ship’s airlock was ripped from the Torvalian ship. The ship, along with the melting remains of all four autonomous vehicles fell slowly away. When it was sufficiently far away to ensure it was no longer a menace, Dorial breathed a sigh of relief. He looked at the time and noted that they had less than five minutes to go before the jump. If they could avoid the projectile weapons for a little longer, they would be safe. Dorial thought that perhaps they had overreacted in quickly disconnecting the Torvalian ship when suddenly the sensors showed a tremendous plasma explosion.

  The Torvalian ship exploded in a spectacular display, showering molten plasma in all directions. Well, Dorial thought, it turned out that it had been important to separate the two ships after all. Fortunately, the Torvalian ship was far enough away and had caused no additional damage.

  Dorial watched intently as the time slowly crawled on. They had to avoid a disabling hit for less than two more minutes. Each minor hit sent shudders through the ship, with accompanying sound effects. Finally, they were at ten seconds left, then five, then four, then three, then two, then one.

  Dorial sighed with relief as they jumped. They had done it: they had lost all but one ship, but they had enabled a future for their society, with no loss of their own lives.

  CHAPTER 13 – BATTLE REACTION

  Dorial and Rheana were deep in conversation.

  “The single most important issue right now is to ensure that, when we wake up the children from suspended animation, they are kept happy and introduced to the benefits of body augmentation,” Rheana said.

  Dorial smiled wearily, “Yes, we need to make sure that everything is set up perfectly so they are well adapted. We couldn’t possibly provide all the face-time necessary if they were younger, but they should now be old enough now that they can enjoy playing by themselves, and with others their age. I am downright tired from our long “acquisition” journey, but it was successful. We just can’t afford any mistakes. We are not going to get the chance again – both Earth and Torval 2 will be ready for us this time, I’m sure.”

  They had been back on Ramos only one week, but already there was a large push from the entire council to get the children on a course towards full body augmentation and integrated into their society. Both Dorial and Rheana knew it was important to not push too hard nor too fast, but they were in the minority. With the focus of every member of Ramos’ society on personal body augmentation, there was a distinct lack of any real social science expertise. This meant that the “me-first” mentality was prominent, while looking out for others’ interests, including the children, was almost totally overlooked.

  Rheana said, “No one else seems to consider it important to have a good plan in place before we wake up the children. They just want everything in place and done. I’m nervous that we’ll mess up if we haven’t thought this all through.:

  “I agree, let’s go over the plan again to see how it holds up,” replied Dorial. “First we need to provide a pleasant environment for them to wake up in. This should include good food, regular, fun exercise, games with rewards and a sense of autonomy, but with enough guidance so it remains structured. This last, I’m afraid, will fall mostly on you and me. No one else is willing to put the time and effort into helping to “raise” the children. As you know, everyone is fully into getting them integrated into our society, but they aren’t willing to help at all. I’m not sure what will happen when you and I are no longer around. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else who is willing to take over.”

  Rheana responded, “Well, it’s a good thing that we are here then. Your ideas are all good, but we need specifics for all of them. What do you mean specifically by ‘a pleasant environment’ and what specifically do you mean by ‘good food, regular, fun exercise, and games with rewards’? I think we need to build an environment just for them. A school for learning. We haven’t had any young children in so long that this seems foreign to us, but it should be an isolated building with no view of any adults. If the children saw everyone with their full body augmentation now, it would only scare them. We should provide them with all sorts of playground equipment – we can determine the specifications from the old pictures of playgrounds on Earth. The food should be tasty to them – there are recipes from old books that say what children used to like.”

  Dorial nodded, “But we also need a plan on how we are going to introduce the body augmentation. Obviously, this needs to be a major focus.”

  Rheana said, “I agree. I recommend that we make playing games, especially video games and competitive physical games, a major emphasis. We want them to associate large rewards to good performance, so they will want to do well. Once they have this drive to do well, both personally and for their team, we will provide the first low level of body augmentation. For those that enjoy playing video games, we’ll insert a neural processor so their decision-making quality and speed will increase tremendously. Once they find that they can perform so much better with the augmentation, this will start them along the path that we’re trying to achieve. Similarly, for those that excel at sports, we will provide them muscular and exoskeleton enhancements, which will bolster their performance tremendously. In general, whatever they excel at, we will provide them body augmentation to make them that much better in that area. Again, when they see how much better they or their team are with these enhancements, there will be no looking back.”

  Dorial smiled. “Yes, I think it is all coming together. I will authorize the building of the school and the infrastructure for the food, sports and whatnot. As long as we keep the children always happy and wanting more of what we can provide them, they will not even think about what they used to have. I really think that this is going to work.”

  – – –

  Nadia was tired as well as being sick and tired of the same arguments being made over and over. “What are we g
oing to do to get our children back,” Saul had said for the twentieth time. Garth and Kadar had both said more times than she could recall, “We need to build real battle ships to get the children back.” Even her own Torval 2 delegation had sent numerous messages that essentially demanded that they do something about the stolen children.” On every planet there was talk about getting the children back and how disastrous what had become known as the “No Win War” had been. There was a lot of talk that something should be done, but no one had any specifics. When she had asked for recommendations, there were none.

  The fleet of ships that they had were never designed for war. And even if they left today, it would take them seventy years to get to Earth. They badly needed a plan and they had none.

  It had been just over a week since the ship carrying the children’s had jumped. The four of them had been meeting for almost two days, and nothing had been resolved. They hadn’t really even decided what their priorities were, much less how they were going to meet them. Finally, in frustration, Nadia called Giliad into the meeting. She didn’t know if he could help, but he had been instrumental in ridding them of the foreigner’s threat that she thought maybe with his strategic background he might be able to get this meeting moving. God knew that she had tried and failed.

  Giliad joined the meeting and humbly asked, “What can I do to help?”

  Nadia said, “We haven’t been able to get off the ‘Rescue our children’ topic. We don’t have a plan or priorities or anything. We need help to develop a reasonable plan going forward. Can you help?”

  Giliad thought about it and nodded. “I believe so. Your main objective is to get the children back, is that not so?”