by Charles Lamb
While being rocked about quite a bit, both destroyers were holding their own against the cruiser. KoHac knew that with both sides equally matched in firepower and defensive capabilities, his two ships could eventually wear the cruiser down. Watching his tactical display for signs of deterioration, it didn’t look as if the cruiser was wearing down at all.
----*----
Brian had his forward batteries pounding both destroyers. They actually seemed to be absorbing it better than he expected. He could see, though, where they were starting to degrade in both firepower and shielding as the engagement progressed. He knew they were trying to wear him down.
However, he knew something they didn’t. With the forward stasis shields up, they weren’t even reaching his hull with most shots. The only hits they achieved on Revenge were the small number that passed as he fired in return.
The fire control was like the old World War 1 and 2 fighter planes that fired through the propeller. The guns were stopped, just at the time the propeller was in front of the barrel, and then allowed to continue firing once it passed. In this case, the shields dropped for the split second, allowing the guns to fire.
----*----
KoHac was not at all pleased with what his tactical display was reporting. Even with both destroyers firing at maximum rate, the cruiser was holding strong. At this rate, he would lose this exchange in a matter of micro cycles. He needed to disrupt this trend before he couldn’t fire at all.
“Planet side guns, fire on the ships in the yard!” he ordered.
With that, the few guns unable to be brought to bear on the cruiser, started shooting at the ships in the space docks. Their fire was not discriminating between civilian or military ships, all targets were fair game.
----*----
“NO!” Jake shouted as the ships in the yard started to explode. He darted to the communications console and slapped the transmit button.
“Brian, launch the Rogers!” he ordered.
As everyone watched from the planet side video feed, the hangar bay door opened on Revenge and four fighters emerged at break neck speed. Flying in pairs, they split and circled around the ends of the line created by the destroyers, positioned end to end. As they closed on the NeHaw ships from front and rear, they opened fire, raking both destroyers with their rail guns.
----*----
With damage reports coming in from all over the ship, KoHac never heard his tactical officer’s last words. All he saw were the two small craft streaming fire at his ship. As the projectiles split the bridge windows, he took several chunks of shrapnel in the chest. Within seconds of his passing, the ship exploded around him.
----*----
As Jake watched, both NeHaw destroyers exploded in bright masses of flying debris, one after the other. Someone gasped as one of the fighters nearly collided with a large piece of ship, it cascading off into space. He and the staff observed as the four Jolly Rogers fighters returned to Revenge, its hangar closing behind the last one. The entire room was dead quiet.
“Jake, what just happened?” Sara asked after a minute, “Why did they explode?”
“If I didn’t know any better I’d say we were played. Those ships were wired to blow if we won.”
“Why would they do that?” someone asked.
“ALICE, could you tell from Revenge’s sensors if the standard NeHaw death dump was sent?”
“It is confirmed, Jake, both destroyers transmitted their entire status to the NeHaw network. I was even able to capture one of the transmissions. Now that I know what to look for it’s a simple matter, if you’d like to see it I can replay now,” ALICE replied.
“Maybe later, but yeah we got played. They wanted us to tip our hand. They now know we can leave earth, travel in support of other planets and can still out shoot them when we get there.”
“OK,” Patti said, having stayed to watch the fight, “but how did you do that? We can’t have ferrous ships in faster than light fields.”
“They weren’t in a faster than light fields, they were in a stasis fields,” Jake said smugly.
“I don’t understand,” Sara replied.
“I had ALICE install a stasis field system that enclosed the entire hangar in a stasis bubble. It was similar to what they did for me in the first fight with the cruiser. Just before going to faster than light, they evacuate the hangar of personnel and turn on the stasis field. The ferrous materials in the hangar don’t disrupt the faster than light field in stasis and it functions as normal. Once back on repulser, the stasis field is shut down and they are good to go.”
“Why don’t the NeHaw do that?” someone in the room asked.
“It’s like Patti said before, we invented it. They don’t have it.”
At this point ALICE interrupted, “Jake, the Wawobash are calling again.”
Without caring whom they saw Jake ordered, “On main display please.”
“President Thomas, you do not disappoint,” The same figure as before declared, in what Jake interpreted to be a happy mood.
“I am glad you approve,” Jake replied with a smile of his own, and then added, “I am sorry there was some damage to your ship yard. I had hoped to prevent such.”
“Oh, it was far worse the last time the NeHaw chose to teach us a lesson. There was a revolt here due to working conditions and compensation for our production. It took us years to recover on the commercial side. They never touch the military docks as it’s exclusively their ships there.”
“On that subject, may I inquire as to why there are so many ships there of a combat nature, was there a large order placed prior to our emergence on the scene?”
“Oh no, those ships were ordered ages ago. The NeHaw have a nasty habit of ordering things they don’t have an immediate need for and then require you to hold them until they decide to pay. Some of those vessels have been in storage for over 10 years.”
“Might any be for sale, to a new paying customer? Say a cruiser, like the one we have there now,” Jake asked cautiously.
The Wawobash had a distinct change of posture, which suggested to Jake he might have overstepped his boundaries. He seemed to be doing something, however, and in a few seconds, the Wawobash replied.
“That would be possible, however please understand, these ships are configured for the NeHaw, so alterations would be necessary for your occupation. Considering both the storage, build costs and then alterations, I would expect each cruiser to require, say 200 pounds of gold or platinum based on your planets gravitational standards. Moreover, I must say we are not making a huge return at that price. Smaller ships, like destroyers, would be slightly less but we still have to pay our suppliers.”
Jake had to swallow his excitement, at that price they could buy 20 cruisers with just what Bonnie had in her storeroom.
“OK, we find that to be a reasonable price, let me have our people here put together a shopping list and we will see what we can do to place the order properly. In the meantime do you wish us to maintain a ship there for your protection or would you prefer we weren’t hovering over you?”
“The NeHaw have never harassed us a second time so soon, you may recall your ship. I assume we can alert you should the need arise again? I look forward to hearing from your people about the orders.”
With that the connection dropped.
Jake turned to look at Patti, clearly speechless. She in turn, had a look of astonishment of her own. Finally, Jake was able to utter, “We need to train more crew!”
----*----
That evening Jake had a casual little celebratory dinner in the living room portion of his quarters. With news of the day’s events spreading throughout all the facilities, it was one of many. Between the victories over the NeHaw destroyers, the success of Jake’s nested vessel theory and the new opportunities opening with the Wawobash, there was a lot to celebrate.
For this gathering though, he had limited the guest list to what he considered local family. Patti, Sara, Sandy, were all in attendance,
with Linda and Kathy toting the babies. He asked ALICE via the “bots” to set up a buffet and made sure there was comfortable seating for all attendees.
With everyone fed and seated, the mood was light and the conversation flowing.
“So Patti,” Jake said while taking advantage of a lull in the conversation, “What did we learn from Sandy today?”
At the question, Sandy started to turn bright red. While everyone was well aware of Sandy’s misunderstandings during the alien negotiating, not everyone knew what Patti was about to divulge.
Suppressing a giggle of her own, Patti offered, “Well, first of all we all now know the Wawobash don’t build boats. They run the premier spaceship manufacturing facility in the NeHaw Empire. Apparently, with the help of the Kortisht, the three-legged humanoids, they construct all the top combat NeHaw vessels. Our battleship was built by them and released just prior to its engagement here.”
“Kortisht?” Jake asked.
“Oh they produce all the repulser and faster than light drive systems for the ships. Apparently, they are some kind of wizards when it comes to fields generating systems. They can actually see the various gravitational fields they work with,” Patti answered.
Picking up his display pad, Jake started flipping through his notes until he found what he was looking for.
“So Sandy, reading from your negotiation notes, I quote, “The dog people build boats, not helpful to us” and then, “The tripods make stuff for the boats the dog people make.” Does that sound familiar?”
“Maybe,” was all she could muster in a very quiet tone.
After a few seconds of silence, Jake let loose with a belly laugh that soon had the entire room engaged.
“Honey, I am so sorry,” Jake offered after a moment, “I should have never put that all on you. You have such a great natural talent for negotiating. I never gave it a second thought about the need for a technical backup to assess the replies. I was so focused on everything else that I should have assigned a resource to help you understand what was being said.”
With a look of relief, Sandy shrugged and smiled, glad for the absolution.
“Jake, you know that does open up the question of the battleship? If the Wawobash did all the original work, maybe they can fix it up for us faster?” Sara asked.
“The idea had crossed my mind, ALICE what’s your thoughts?” Jake asked.
“With the amount of repair and rework required, it may be a more expedient solution to our current needs. In addition, we may want to consider some design changes in keeping with the successful experiments in nested vessel configurations,” ALICE offered.
“I would still want us to do the final installation of any stasis field equipment. Like ALICE, that’s a national treasure! It’s what gives us an edge against their superior numbers,” Jake added.
“What are we doing about the fact that we can’t drive it yet,” Sandy asked.
ALICE responded, “I believe I can pre-program it for an automated trip from here to the Wawobash Space Docks. Once in their space, it’s a normal function for them to pilot the ships to the appropriate locations with tugs. As much as we might like to think otherwise, we didn’t inflict as much damage as we might have wanted to on the battleship itself. The real strategy was to attack the NeHaw inside the ship. Our extended timeline for readiness is around the necessary conversions for human occupation, not battle damage repair.”
Jake turned to Linda, “Who do we have working on the shopping list?”
“After the emissary agreed to sell, I pulled a team together to go over all the recorded imagery, plus the NeHaw reference materials. I instructed them to create a pick list with a description of each ship type and its capabilities. I figured you would want to review it all and do a little shopping yourself,” she finished with a smile, and then sipped her wine.
Both Linda and Kathy seemed to be enjoying themselves and were very relaxed this evening, listening to everyone talk. They had put both babies to bed in Jake’s bedroom earlier, with bassinettes thoughtfully requested by Jake and Nanny ALICE on constant watch. He wasn’t sure if their behavior lately, of affectionate but distant, was a post-partum thing or had its roots elsewhere. He was starting to think that maybe the whole “rotation” thing really was all about doing their part to save the future, nothing more.
The conversation continued on, until one by one, everyone wandered off to their own rooms for the night. While Jake was seeing Sara to the door, Linda headed into Jake’s room to collect Tracy. As he was doing a little cleaning up, he heard Linda call from his room.
“Jake can you come help me please.”
As he stepped into his room, he found Linda on his bed, completely naked, and with one arm up beckoning him to join her.
At that point, Jake thought to himself, “Then again, I could be wrong.”
Chapter 15
The next morning Jake and Linda headed to breakfast together after dropping Tracy off with one of the human nannies. Uniform of the day was casual, and as either Jake or Linda designated its requirements, they made sure it was so.
Jake was moving a little slowly, as he had taken the opportunity last night of relieving Linda of the midnight feeding. Besides giving her a break, it allowed him some much needed daddy time with his daughter. Given his recent travel schedule, it was a rare treat.
Using the smaller dining facility on the quarter’s level, they found it packed and noisy. After entering, Jake scanned the familiar room, looking for any recognizable faces. Finally, from the far side of the room they saw Patti and Sara waving to get their attention. Getting her order, he sent Linda off in their direction, while he headed to the service counters.
As he stood there waiting for their food, staring at the service door, he realized he had no idea what went on behind the scenes. While he wanted to conjure up images of gleaming stainless steel fixtures with ultra-sanitized processes, he kept coming back to a grubby overweight fry cook with a t-shirt and a cigarette hanging from his lips.
Finally, the tray appeared, and as he slid it to him, he caught a glimpse of several “bots” moving in the background before the door closed, cutting off his view. Grabbing the tray, he turned and started toward the table he sent Linda off to earlier. He had to weave his way through the room, nearly colliding with several people before finally arriving at his destination.
“That was quite a feat,” Sara said while laughing, “I thought you were going to lose your tray twice,” she finished by pointing to the open seat next to her.
Both she and Patti were only about half way done eating, so they had not arrived much before Jake and Linda. As Jake sat, he leaned into Sara, giving her a quick kiss.
“Jake, I’ve been thinking,” Patti said after he started eating, “even if we have the Wawobash refit the battleship, we won’t be able to man it properly for a long time. By the way, what are we going to name it?”
After swallowing what he had in his mouth, he replied, “Yeah, I was thinking about that as well, the refit, not the name. For the refit, we need to add as much automation as possible. Speaking of automation, I also want to pursue some automated mining equipment from our Alien trading partners. I would normally expect us to do better looking for gold stores stashed around the world, but with the detailed NeHaw survey reports, we have the precise location of naturally occurring precious metals deposits all over the world. They show China and Australia to be a particularly target rich area.”
At that Sara choked, “China and Australia? We haven’t even got the US under control yet!”
Jake laughed, “Once we get the transports completed and delivered from Jacob, we will be able to make runs between the continents as easily as we do between the ALICEs today. China is a good bet, but I have always wanted to visit Australia.”
Sara just shook her head and went back to her meal.
“Anyway, that’s in the future. For now, we should probably run over to Texas and check in with Robert, Bonnie, and their progress. Tha
t’s the main source of our funds at the moment,” Jake commented after another bite.
With the mention of Bonnie, Jake noted that look again between the women. It seemed everyone knew something but him, and he was getting irritated about it. He took a breath and let it pass.
Continuing, Jake said, “I was thinking we would try out the new jet conversion Seven recently completed and tested out of Alaska. There is supposed to be one here. She took one of the passenger jets, as you used for the Hawaii trip, and replaced the nacelles with repulsers. They don’t require rotating like the nacelles do, and it’s supposed to be Mach 1 fast.”
Seven was the name the ALICE facility in Alaska had chosen for herself.
“Why would someone want to mock one?” Sara asked in a confused tone.
----*----
After breakfast, everyone split off to go their separate ways, Sara sticking with Jake. Since they agreed a trip to Texas was the next adventure, Sara suggested it would be better to give Bonnie a call first. It was just courteous to call before appearing on someone’s doorstep, so to speak.
ALICE directed them to a small office, and they made the call. As they had maintained the differing time zones, Bonnie was well into her day when they reached her. She was delighted they were coming and updated Jake on their latest finds.
Apparently, Robert had located a precious metals' storage facility in New York and had spent the better part of two days breaching its physical defenses. That was a week ago, and they were still shipping regular loads to Dallas, the facility, not the city. Dallas was the name the Texas ALICE selected.
From the sounds of things, they would not need to worry about funds for quite a while. So with the call placed and the mornings goodbyes completed, they headed to the hangar and waiting aircraft. As part of a relaxed security policy, ALICE and Jake had come to an agreement with non-combat travel. So long as protective equipment and uniforms were available on transport craft for emergencies, standard clothing was acceptable for facility-to-facility travel. ALICE could hardly object as she was doing all the driving.
