Annihilation: The Power of a Queen

by Andrew, Saxon;Chiodo, Derek

  My own people have 7,876 at last count and the Cainth will soon have 2,000. That’s a total of almost 10,000. How many ships do you have in your fleet Prince?”

  “We have 3,600.”

  “We should have all your ships converted within ninety rotations. Could you get the first 500 there quickly? I suspect that we might need your help after the next battle.”

  Misty Nicole looked at Danielle and said, “You will be the first human queen whose realm will not only rule earth but will span the stars.”

  Danielle looked at Misty and said, “Perhaps we should name our new alliance the Stars Realm.”

  Everyone was silent for a moment and Tgon-Gee said, “I agree; that sounds like a good name for our new relationship.”

  Terl said, “Then Stars Realm it is. A great name for a great new entity.”

  Tgon-Gee looked at the Human Female and for the first time in his life respected and trusted someone completely. His new government will possess more than 13,000 of those demon ships. He knew he had chosen the right course for his people. It wouldn’t take much contact with these Humans to shame his more violent subjects into seeing how stupid they were and they will get the message in a manner that they will find acceptable. For the first time since the Glod and Cainth lost that initial battle, he felt secure that his races future looked more promising than he had ever suspected.

  “Tag, I can’t be queen. I just can’t. I’m not qualified, it’s too much responsibility.”

  Tag took her in his arms and said, “Yes you can. You have to accept. Don’t you see the Clan suggestion is just a stopgap? We won’t allow the Cainth to pass laws that we have to obey and neither will they accept ours. We have to have someone that we all can trust to look out for the welfare of everyone equally; someone that will see the truth in every situation. You are the perfect choice. If it doesn’t work, then abdicate after some time has passed and our races have become more comfortable with each other. Until then you must accept this decision. You are also going to need someone to help you schedule your time. You better start thinking about that now.”

  I already know who I want for that slot.”

  “Who?” tag asked.

  “Leila McAnn is perfect for those responsibilities. I’ve already asked the Director to reassign her to my staff. Eric is also going to have a post in my staff. I won’t separate them.”

  “Good choice, Darling. Now I have some news you’re not going to like.”

  “What?” she said quickly.

  “You can’t go with me on the ship to the battle.”

  You’re out of your mind if you think I’ll let you go alone. Sung Lea says it’s critical.”

  “Darling, the possible futures changed when you were made Queen. Sung Lea commed me a message that says the new relationships will fail if you go. How would you feel if you just promised loyalty to a queen and she then goes into the middle of a space battle? You now have a responsibility to three races that outweigh your own wishes.”

  Danielle started to protest but then stopped. Her ability to see the truth allowed her to see the wisdom of what he was saying. “Atlas.” She said.

  “Yes Your Majesty,” He answered.

  “Not you, too,” she said. “Will you promise to protect my husband?”

  “I’ll do my best Danielle. Congratulations on your promotion. I guess that makes your child the crown prince, right?”

  “I don’t know, Atlas. We haven’t discussed any form of succession.” Then her eyes got big and she jumped straight up and said, “What do you mean my child!”

  “I thought you knew; you’re expecting a child in about 8 months.”

  Tag stood there speechless. She looked at him and rushed into his arms tears pouring from her eyes and said, “He’ll be our crown prince. I love you, Tag.”

  Tag just stood there dazed and held his wife close and swore they were going to win this war. His child was going to have a future no matter who had to pay the price.

  Kosiev sat on the Washington’s bridge looking at the feed from Alliance Central. Tag walked in eating a bag of popcorn and humming. “I’m glad someone’s happy,” Kosiev said.

  “Why, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m afraid that the Alliance may be forming up at another location. It’s been two weeks since the last battle and there are not a large number of ships in the system.”

  Tag looked at the feed and asked, “What are all those dreadnaughts doing around the planet?”

  Kosiev said, “I’ve noticed them and they appear to be in the process of being refitted or something.”

  “Refitted for what? How many are there?”

  Kosiev looked at the sensor readout and said, “Around 800 or so.”

  “Can you get a closer view?”

  Kosiev turned a dial and one of the dreadnaughts filled the screen. Tag said, “It looks like they are removing the weapons from the surface. Can you rewind the feed?”

  Kosiev turned another dial and they watched as missiles were off loaded from the dreadnaught. “Go back and find one of the dreadnaughts that have left and let’s see what they did after the weapons were removed.” Kosiev turned the dial and found one of the dreadnaughts moving away from the planet to a parking area away from the shipping lanes. He then came in close and rewound the feed until the ship was back in the docks and the weapons removed. Then he started the feed at 10 times normal speed and they watched as machinery was installed in the dreadnaught. “What do you think that is?” Tag asked.

  “I don’t know. Whatever it is, it doesn’t look like a weapon.”

  “Send a copy of this to our engineers and see if they can figure it out,” Tag said. “There are 800 of them being fitted for this and I’ve got to believe it’s not a good thing.”

  Five days later Kosiev commed Tag and asked him to come see him aboard the Washington. Tag arrived and said, “What’s up?”

  “Our engineers have looked at the machinery going on those dreadnaughts and it’s their opinion that its purpose is to drain the screen around the Planet. I asked them if it would work and they didn’t know but agreed that the Alliance would not be building it if they thought it wouldn’t. They did say, however, that the ships used to drain the screen would have to be outside the range of the asteroids beams. That means at least 800 miles out. They also are of the opinion that the Alliance has no idea just how much energy those forts have stored.”

  “What’s the significance of that?” Tag asked.

  “Well, to coin a phrase, think about it.” Tag smiled at that. “They design a system to drain a screen that they think is a normal storage system. As you know, one those nine foot power cells can store enough power to run the entire planet for five days. Each one of those forts has more than 25,000 on each. The screen right now is at its full charge level of 110 feet. Our engineers think they can drain power indefinitely and the sun will replace it as fast as they drain it.”

  “How can we use this to our advantage?” Tag asked.

  Kosiev thought for a few minutes and said, “If their fleet is going to come to the planet, can we decoy them in closer?”

  “Can the forts vary the amount of power going into the screen?”

  Kosiev thought a minute and said, “Let’s get Colonel Taz on the line and ask; communications, open a channel to the main fort and get Colonel Taz.”

  While they waited Tag asked, “What do you have in mind?”

  “Well I was thinking,” and Ensign Kelly interrupted him saying, “Colonel Taz is on the com, Admiral.”

  Kosiev and Tag looked at the com screen and Kosiev said, “Colonel Taz, do you have a moment to discuss your forts?”

  “Certainly Admiral, what do you need to know?”

  “Can your forts control the amount of power in the screen?”

  “That is something we can do but what would you do with that capability?”

  Kosiev then filled him in on what he suspected the Alliance was going to Attempt. “I was thinking that if we c
ould convince the Alliance that their ships were draining our screen, they might move in closer.”

  “Admiral, you know that most of the time the screen is not even employed. We allow direct sunlight in to the planet. Usually when we turn the screen on we just turn it on at full power.”

  “Colonel Taz, do you have a record of how thick the screen was at the end of the last battle?” Tag asked. Colonel Taz looked away from the screen and manipulated his console and requested one of his aides to send the information to his console.

  “Admiral, it was 67 feet thick at the conclusion of the last battle. Its maximum thickness was over 100 feet during the energy bombardment. We had to use some of our storage to fire our beams last time but now the weapons cells are fully charged and we should be able to fire them constantly for 10 hours and not have to draw on the screens power reserve.”

  “Could you maybe start the screen at 75 feet and as they start to drain the power reduce the thickness rapidly to maybe, Colonel, how thick would it have to be to stop missiles and beams?”

  “Actually, missiles would be exploded at 2 foot thickness and energy weapons would still be absorbed into the power grid.”

  “Could a window be opened in the screen over places where an energy strike would do no damage?” Tag looked at Kosiev with a gleam in his eye. “And could you fire a greatly attenuated beam that would have little power?”

  “Sure, what do you have in mind?”

  “Think about it,” and Tag winked at Kosiev. “If they are draining the screen and you fire your beams at them with maximum power at first and then as you shrink the screen you lower the intensity of the beams, it would look like your system is about to fail. Maybe when the screen gets down to two feet thick, you turn it on and off over various sections of the planet and then you quit firing your beams all together. If they move in closer to penetrate the screen, you fire greatly weakened beams at them that their screens will have no problem handling. I think we will then have them within 40 miles of the screen. That’s when we bring the fleet in. We have a cavern carved out on the moon that will hold three thousand of our ships and it has 800 launch tubes that can launch five ships each in less than five minutes. The remainder of our ships will be parked unpowered on the opposite side of the planet from the route the Alliance fleet enters our system. At that point we englobe their fleet and pick off the ones that escape your beams.”

  “All of this depends on them thinking they have destroyed our fleet,” Kosiev said. “They won’t come close if they think we still have ships to threaten them.”

  “Well, as soon as the last dreadnaught is refitted, I believe the fleet will be arriving. Let’s hope they form up outside the star drive limit; it shouldn’t take long now to find out.”

  Chapter 9

  Tgon-Gee was talking with Admiral Dorg and discussing what the Cainth were going to do if the Alliance discovered their new relationship with the humans. Dorg said, “It’s only a matter of time until the Alliance sends a representative to visit.”

  “Perhaps that visit can be delayed.”

  “How can we make that happen?”

  “What do you think would happen if I notified the Alliance that we have scattered our ships beyond the star drive limit and were attacking as soon as any ship was detected breaking out of star drive. Further, I’ll tell them we launch high speed missiles at the breakout point immediately. Then I’ll tell them that that’s the only way we can defeat the Humans screens and that we have destroyed eight of their ships so far and they haven’t attempted to jump in the last 1ten rotations.”

  “That would at least make them warn us of their coming.” Dorg said.

  “That’s one benefit, but the other is that when they tell us where they are going to be breaking in, we’ll just destroy that ship and tell them they had the misfortune to jump in just as the Humans were attacking us.”

  Dorg smiled and said, “Excellency, what a great idea. You would be a formidable adversary.”

  Tgon-Gee smiled and said, “Admiral, I went to that meeting expecting to leave in support of the Alliance. Those Humans are remarkable aren’t they?”

  Dorg sat up in his chair and looked off in the distance at a beautiful 3rd quarter day and said, “I never expected to see another day like this again. If it had been either of our races we wouldn’t have hesitated to totally destroy the other. I think being in the Alliance as long as we have diminishes the value of other species. Their answer to any problem is total destruction. Now I sit here and look out at this beautiful day with the two suns shining and the pale blue rain falling from the condensation and thank the creator that we were given a second chance. Excellency, they will do the right thing even if it doesn’t support their best interests. Somehow they have ingrained into their culture, right things for right reasons. Of all the Humans I have met that couple named Gardner is the most remarkable. Their race follows their lead with very few exceptions. It seems their psychic leaders have selected them as the one’s most able to insure their future. I don’t understand how they come up with that but I can see that she is especially talented at seeing the truth.”

  Tgon-Gee got a far away look in his eyes, “Do you know how our Royalty is selected, Admiral?”

  Dorg looked quizzically at the Glod and said, “No I don’t.”

  “Our race has a group selected at birth for their psychic skills. Some of my people are able to see the aura that surrounds the ones that have psychic talents. I am one of those that have that ability. When they see a foundling with an aura, then the young Glod is taken to the schools that will develop their skills. The adults that graduate from this school can challenge one of the 50 members of the Guidance Peers for their position. They do this by predicting an outcome prior to it taking place. Only the most successful are chosen for this group.”

  “Are you a member of this group, Excellency?”

  “No. I wasn’t strong enough in my skills. There are seventeen royal families in our race that the ruler is selected from. When a ruler dies, the fifty members go into a conclave and select the next Crown Prince. They do this by looking as far into the future as possible and seeing which of the possible choices leads our race safely. This choice is made as soon as the current ruler dies. That way there is no gap in the succession.”

  “So you were selected by them to rule your race.”

  “Yes and I think it was because of my only psychic skill which allows me to see psychic auras that caused me to be selected. I think I was chosen because no one else would have been able to see what I saw in that meeting. Anyone else from my race would have left to inform the Alliance of your relationship with the Humans.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because as soon as I saw the Human Female Danielle and saw the aura surrounding her, I knew we were in the presence of true Royalty.”

  “I don’t understand?”

  “I was taught in our schools to recognize psychic auras for their strength. The strongest auras are violet the weakest green. Only ten of our fifty strongest psychics have a blue aura; none of them are anywhere close to violet. I saw that every one of their, what was it called, their SFT team, all had varying degrees of blue auras. That impressed me. Her aura stunned me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her aura was deep purple almost violet. There has only been one member of my race with that strong an aura in the entire history of my species.”

  Dorg looked at Tgon-Gee with wide eyes and finally said, “Does that mean something to our chosen path.”

  “The reason I swore loyalty to her was that she will take us where we need to go and won’t even know she’s doing it. We are safer following her than opposing her.”

  “Does your race know you’ve agreed to make her your sovereign?”

  “Our strongest psychic was watching the meeting thru my eyes and the others were getting it thru his view. When I saw her aura, the Guidance Peers called for me to bow down to her and ask her to be our sovereign.”
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  Dorg was speechless. He stared at the Crown prince of the Glod and had no words for what he had said. Now he understood Tgon-Gee’s behavior at the meeting. Tong-gee saw his amazement and commented, “Your race following my lead was the wisest thing you could have possibly done. However, her aura was not the most amazing thing in the meeting.”

  Dorg looked at him and said, “What could have possibly been more amazing that that?”

  “You remember her husband was standing off to the side out of sight while the meeting was taking place.”

  Dorg thought a minute and then saw in his mind that the Human named Tag had been to the right of the Clan Leaders in a wing that wasn’t visible from the Glods position. “I remember, he was off to the right of your group.”