Chapter 10: My name is Jefferson.
Mom requested that I continue the family journal because I qualified and joined the observers. Both of my sisters also have a copy and promised to update theirs and mine whenever we met. That might be hard to do since we are now on 3 different habitats.
We met up with one of the observers groups last year. I had just graduated as a weapons specialist when they arrived. One of the young ladies that came over was an observer. We fell in love at first glance and are now married. Half the training I had was complementary to observer training and I'm now a junior observer.
The habitat I'm on has been ordered to the Dirt system. We leave in a week. We have over a thousand mining spacecraft and a fully staffed ship manufacturing plant as part of the habitat. The warrior council designed it and of course left room for two gravity drive torch warships.
We've arrived at the star system where the kidnapped humans were settled by the aliens from the Alliance. An old warrior named Mooney told us that under no circumstances would we be allowed to make contact with the planet. He's from Saturn and arrived on one of the their gravity drive ships. He's leaving a ship captain called Sissy Medina in charge of the system. We've got women in command positions, but Sissy, what a name.
Well he's gone and Captain Sissy Medina is one tough nut. She came over to our habitat and reamed out the whole command because of one little incident. She then told us that we would be a backup manufacturing asset for items invented on the planet as she kicked them into the industrial age.
She wasn't off the planet for a day when we detected an alien ship. It didn't match the database for any of the ones the Alliance had. When it destroyed our mining outpost we knew for sure it wasn't friendly. Then it started on the mapping satellites. Only one of our torch ships was in position to repel their attack. It's gravity drive blew just after it got within weapons range, but they launched every missile they had. I watched the battle for almost an hour on the remotes. Sissy's ship came from the asteroid belt like a rocket. No one mentioned that the Saturn warships carried small fighters that they could launch under full acceleration. They put our warrior class to shame in the aggressive way they attacked the alien.
After briefing our warrior council she put one of her lieutenants in charge of the star system while she took her ship after the alien and to warn Saturn system. Our manufacturing database is now flooded with weapons systems plans and she said she'd be back in 3 weeks. She expects us to have several of them built including more of our antimatter missiles. She wouldn't listen when one of the senior observer council members told her that he would personally contact the Saturn system and inform them of the attack.
It's been a week and the gravity drives on our three warships have been upgraded. Missiles and something called a belt laser are being manufactured as fast as ore can be hauled in.
Our warships have been assigned belt and planet defense. I know that burns their captains.
An alien ship dropped into the system this morning. It is commanded by an alien, a female Kerth. She looks like a lioness. She said one of her clan members would be arriving soon with another ship like hers.
A ship dropped into the system and will not answer any hails. The Kerth ship identified it as Gobbler and took her ship to make direct contact. She identified it as a Gobbler warship, but it was damaged and hauled to our main belt station.
Something totally unprecedented has happened. Captain Sissy Medina put an alien in charge of her ship and took control of the first Kerth warship. The alien captain called Dame Club is to take the injured Gobblers to their home world in the Cyclopes.
They haven't been gone 1 shift and we've been alerted that another alien spacecraft is in the system. It's been identified as a Gobbler warship, but damaged. The alert just sounded, this Gobbler warship has launched missiles targeting the Kerth ships.
After this latest battle something was detected entering the system targeting the vicinity of the Saturn ship and the two Kerth ships. They managed to avoid it but it exploded in the asteroid belt.
It's been eight months and the our inner system warships are still picking off asteroids and putting them either back in the asteroid belt or giving them a trajectory that won't be a hazard to the inner system.
Well most all the warships have left the system. We now have weapons platforms orbiting the outer system. Our detection system goes out to 10 light hours.
Scout Expedition Page 11
