by S. H. Jucha
“Gotlian shuttles are moving between one of the fleet’s ships and the repaired one,” Cordelia reported to Alex.
“One down, and five to go,” Alex said from the bridge command chair, while he sipped a cup of hot thé. “Tell Mickey to get started on the next ship, when the transfer appears complete. Also, please coordinate relief teams for the repair crews. Change them out every ship.”
“Understood, Alex,” Cordelia replied. She watched Alex ease into the command chair. He wore a satisfied smile.
Over the course of the next month, the Omnians restored every battleship to the best operational condition they could manage. The SADEs spent time broadcasting critical maintenance procedures to the Gotlian engineers.
Di-Orsoo’s ship was the last to be repaired. After he, his officers, and crew transferred to a newly restored ship, he was anxious to test a pool. Crew emptied his cabin’s pool, scrubbed it, and refilled it for him. When he climbed into the pool, he reveled in the fresh bracing smell of home world waters. It amazed him that aliens could recondition what his crews, who were trained on these ships, couldn’t, but then again, battleship operations and maintenance were new to his race.
After reclaiming his original ship, Di-Orsoo received a message that Alex Racine requested his attention, and the leader hurried his muscular bulk to the bridge.
“I’m here, Leader Alex Racine,” Di-Orsoo announced, when he gained the bridge. He noticed the writhing tentacles on Sa-Foosee’s face, as the captain looked up from the comm panel. “My captain is perturbed, Leader Racine,” Di-Orsoo added. “Would you know why?”
“Yes,” Julien replied for Alex, “we’re communicating from the Freedom, our great ship. We’ve identified your comm protocols and ship IDs and have mimicked them.”
Sa-Foosee’s tentacles relaxed, and he tipped his head in apology to Di-Orsoo.
“Leader Di-Orsoo, we’ve a final item for you,” Julien said. “A traveler is approaching your ship. Please clear a bay and open its doors.”
“What are we receiving?” Di-Orsoo asked.
“It’s a special comm device. The traveler’s crew will set it up in a corner of the bay. Please don’t tamper with it or attempt to move it,” Julien requested.
“What are we to do with it?” Di-Orsoo asked. His curiosity was piqued.
“When your ship returns from Gotl, with citizens and supplies, depress the large button on the top of the device. The light will flash and send a signal to us,” Julien explained. “When we receive the signal, we’ll acknowledge it, and the light will stop flashing and remain lit.”
“Then what will you do?” Di-Orsoo asked. He had the same confused expression on his face as did the commander and the captain.
“It might take us some time, but we’ll sail the fleet here to help you assemble and install your first domes,” Julien replied. “We, your new neighbors, don’t want to see you lose your citizens to the creatures below, as you establish your presence on this planet.”
The Omnians on the Freedom’s bridge were perplexed by the gurgling sounds they heard. It continued for a while, and Julien was loath to interrupt what might be an important cultural moment.
“You’ll forgive us, Julien,” Di-Orsoo said, after he’d composed himself. “We’ve had to trade for everything we’ve ever needed. Never have we been offered something with no expectation of return. First you helped with our ships, and now you offer to help build our domes. We’re overcome.”
Sa-Foosee signaled that the Omnian ship had entered the bay and already departed.
“We’ve received your gift, Julien,” Di-Orsoo said. “May the waters forever cradle you,” he added, bestowing the Gotlian blessing.
Cordelia ended the connection, and the bridge audience regarded Alex.
“Our good deed is done,” Alex said. “We follow the scout ships. Sail the fleet for the Dutterites’ vector, Cordelia, if you will.”
-23-
Rootogs
Hector received the imagery from the scout ship. He stored the telemetry on the city-ship’s data banks, and he sent a link to the admirals. Immediately afterwards, he created a conference link with the Omnian admirals.
When Ellie received a clear image of the inbound ships, she linked to the sister aboard Taralum’s battleship and requested she show the commander the scout ship’s imagery. The sister transferred the data to a portable holo-vid that was positioned on the bridge.
Taralum examined the ship design, and said, “Rootogs,” which the sister relayed.
When Sargut arrived on the Our People’s bridge, he was told a Rootog fleet had arrived.
“Is this good news, Sargut?” Ellie asked. “I guess not,” she remarked, when she saw the president’s pained expression.
“It was only a matter of time,” Sargut lamented. “We were the first race to be ordered to discipline other races. Our governors carried out Artifice’s directives on many home worlds and colonies.”
“And the Rootogs were one of them?” Hector queried, seeking confirmation.
“One of the earliest,” Sargut replied. “They’re an elder race who was decimated by Durgat’s predecessor.”
“I’m surprised they have a fleet at all,” Sargut replied, as Hector integrated the vocal, implant, and comm originations. “Their home world and colonies were drastically reduced. I would have expected the race to die out. They’ve probably strained their resources to build this single fleet.”
“We must assume that the Rootogs have arrived at the Toralian home world to collect on an old debt,” Sargut replied.
Ellie coordinated with Hector and her commanders. Crews were recalled from their worksites, and they hurried to board more than a hundred travelers that launched for their ships.
Toralian battleships had been integrated with squadrons of Tridents. It was Ellie’s idea to blend the offensive and defensive capabilities of the two warship designs, and the newly combined groups were thought of as augmented squadrons by the crews.
Commodore Descartes and his forces were assigned to guard the orbital platform, which was crucial to the system’s recovery.
Ellie requested an extra Talus battleship act as a blocking force for the platform, and Taralum chose to take up that dangerous task.
The other augmented commands, each one led by a commodore, sailed toward the Rootog fleet. They would form a defensive blockade against the incoming battleships.
Within three days, the Omnian defenders were in position. They waited within the most outward planet’s orbit.
Adrianna and Alphons had formed a fast friendship, when they discovered their complementary personality traits. That they were both New Terrans was part of it. However, each was a direct, plain-speaking individual, who cared for their crews’ welfare.
In addition, the pair brought out the witty side of each other. Putting them in the same room or on the same comm, resulted in verbal jousting. The Omnian fleet personnel began referring to them as the double A’s or the A’s, for short.
Ellie replied.
What Ellie was indicating suddenly occurred to Adrianna, and she sent,
Alphons caught on too, and he added,
The comm was quiet. Adrianna had revealed a hint of a dark past that the others hadn’t known.
Ellie tucked that piece of data away. As a friend, she wanted to offer Adrianna an opportunity to talk. As the fleet’s vice admiral, she’d just learned that at Adrianna’s core she would do what was necessary to defeat their enemies. However, it would be Ellie’s duty to ensure Adrianna didn’t unnecessarily risk her command.
The fleets sat in their stalemate for another two days, without a single ship moving. During this time, Hector, via the scout ships, had made continuous attempts to contact the Rootogs. It would have aided the SADEs if the battleships had communicated with each other on open frequencies, but they didn’t. Either the Rootogs used some other method of contact between ships or they weren’t bothering to speak with each other.
The admirals hurried to their bridge holo-vids. Imagery showed hundreds of ports opening on one side of every battleship.
Hector and Ellie watched as the projectiles plowed through the outer belt. Many struck rocks and ice chunks of all sizes. Their detonations threw debris into the path of following missiles, and telemetry data displayed hundreds of primary and secondary explosions.
“Ellie,” Hector said, “note the data parameters of the detonations.”
“Hector, we’re in a fight. Communicate plainly and bluntly,” Ellie stated firmly.
“Apologies, Ellie,” Hector replied. Within ticks of time, he reordered algorithms, descending those that stressed subtle conversational openings when speaking to humans. Then he continued. “The explosions are much less than the standard federacy missile detonations.”
“So, smaller missiles packing smaller warheads,” Ellie reasoned. She hadn’t an opportunity to enjoy the small reprieve before the next announcement.
Ellie linked to Hector. Then she reordered the positions of her augmented commands on the holo-vid. Hector immediately tasked the Trident controllers and the sisters aboard the Toralian battleships to relocate to the new coordinates.
Ellie was surprised that Adrianna used a term she thought only familiar to Alex’s fleet personnel. It was similar to Reiko’s, and she was an ex-Earther. It reminded her to have that conversation with Adrianna that she’d intended.
While the defenders’ ships sailed to their new positions, the scout SADEs reported a third and a fourth launch, each a repetition in number and vector.
“Their hatred of Toralians is disheartening,” Sargut said to Ellie. “The act against them was generations ago and was perpetrated by those long dead.” He was eyeing the holo-vid, which displayed the progress of the four successive launches.
Each wave of the Rootog projectiles had been partially devastated by passing through the belt, but a significant number had survived.
The first wave had already gone ballistic, saving reaction mass for the final correction to strike the intended target. The Omnians watched as the three remaining armament waves imitated the first one.
“They’ve delivered their rebuke for our past misdeed in the traditional manner,” Sargut said dejectedly. “The manner of their launch says they’ve honor, and we don’t. They resisted Artifice, when it overtook the federacy, and we didn’t.”
“That might have been the conclusion the Rootogs came to after sitting in the beyond for cycles,” Sargut replied. “The presence of Omnian ships might have swayed their decision too. As it is, they’ve satisfied their anger and their honor with a launch, but it wasn’t an effort designed to inflict maximum damage.”
Hector knew an accurate count was twenty-seven hundred and forty-three, but adhering to his reordered algorithms, it was an unnecessary point to make. he sent.
Ellie thanked her stars for having the foresight to position Descartes’s augmented command and Taralum’s battleship at Toral.
While the defenders waited for the Rootog weapons to arrive, Genoa sent,
Ellie was concerned about two things. The first was a missile’s effective blast radius from its energy. T
he belt had occluded telemetry, and the mixing of primary and secondary explosions combined to make a precise determination of a single missile’s power difficult to calculate. Her second concern was the danger from the amount of metal that would be sailing around the defenders from the detonations.
Hector’s information gave rise to Ellie’s plan. By spacing the squadrons far apart, within their lines, and placing the two lines at right angles to each other, she hoped to mitigate both dangers.
When the time arrived, the projectiles from the first launch entered Adrianna’s kill zone, but the Trident captains held their fire. They waited for the four launches to fill the long lines of the Omnian defenders.
Hector timed the attack to maximize the strike’s effectiveness. The plan was to initiate a single attack pass and get clear of the debris field.
The Trident controllers were signaled, and the Omnian warships dove on the strung-out field of Rootog weaponry in fast flybys. Their beams sprayed the lead missiles of each of the four groups, detonating them. The explosions destroyed some of the following armament, while the Tridents fled the debris that chased them.
When the Tridents attacked, the sisters aboard the Talus battleships targeted the tailing groups of missiles in the launches, and the crews fired their antimissile projectiles.
After the battleships’ missiles had struck, Ellie asked anxiously, “Hector, how effective were we?”
Hector halted his pronouncement of an effective missile elimination of seventy-eight point five percent. Instead, he replied, “Five hundred and ninety projectiles remain. They’re spread out over a period of zero point one five hours.”
“Can the city-ship handle that number?” Ellie asked.
“If we use the same approach as the Tridents, we won’t be effective,” Hector replied.
“And if we put the Our People in their path?” Ellie asked.
“You would maximize our effectiveness,” Hector replied. He was disturbed by the contradictions in his kernel. His respective responsibilities were clashing.
“At the distance our rail-beams reach, will the missiles create dangerous shrapnel for us?” Ellie asked.
