by Aer-ki Jyr
“What money are they making from their warships?” David asked.
Harold raised an eyebrow at his wife. “He has a point. Where’s the angle there?”
“I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later,” she scoffed.
“You’re hopelessly negative, darling.”
“Thank you, dear,” she said with equal sarcasm.
“Anyway,” he said, going back to the newsfeeds and pulling up another related story. “Looks like Star Force is going to be keeping its ships around the neighborhood to keep an eye on things from now on, which our Secretary of Deficiency also doesn’t seem to like.”
“Where were they keeping them anyway?” his daughter asked.
David looked over his shoulder at her. “Space is huge. There’s a lot of room to hide...” he cut off with his eyes going wide. “Holy shit!”
“David!” his Mom scolded.
“Son, we had a talk about using that word earlier…”
“No, look,” he said, pointing to the wall-sized screen displaying a camera image of the docking side of the starport.
Harold followed the line of his finger and did a double take. “Jesus Christ! What the hell is that thing?”
“Harold!”
He ignored his wife, something he’d gotten used to doing over the years, and stared at the slowly moving mass of gray blotting out nearly the entire image of the Earth and stars as it passed from off screen left and into view.
“That is freaking huge,” David said, his jaw dropping as more and more of the mass came into view. “It’s even bigger than the starport!”
“No, son, can’t be,” Harold said, squinting at the image.
“He’s right, Dad,” his daughter said. “It’s farther away than it looks. See that other ship down there,” she said, pointing to a Cougar approaching from the bottom right of the screen on a docking approach, looking for all the world like it was going to run into the behemoth.
When it passed in front and his eyes finally gauged the real size of the object his jaw dropped as well. “Are we passing another station in orbit?”
“Use the transponder app,” she suggested.
“The what?” David asked.
“Ugh,” she said, leaning forward and activating the touch screen in the table allotted for her seat. She dove into the menu system and quickly brought up a Star Force app allowing access to all of the station’s exterior cameras. She selected one view of the object and clicked on it, with the app locking onto the transponder signal and pulling up the relevant data.
With a slide of her finger she sent the app and the data over to her brother’s terminal. “There.”
“Sweet,” he said, barely prying his eyes away from the wall screen to read through the short profile. “It’s not a station, it’s a Star Force ship called the Orion.”
“Does it say what kind of ship it is? What it’s used for?” Harold asked.
“It should,” his daughter said, gloating over her brother’s unfamiliarity with the common app.
David sorted down through the various numerical designations that he didn’t recognize until he came to the ship’s class.
“It’s labeled as a ‘Command Ship’…warship class,” he read with a huge smile spreading across his face. “That is so freaking awesome.”
“Dear God,” his wife said, an expression of fear on her face.
“I imagine the pirates said the same thing,” Harold said, a mixture of awe and pride in his voice. “Does your information say how big it is?”
“Yeah, wait a sec…here it is. 2,200 meters wide.”
“What’s that in miles?”
His daughter reached over and tapped the conversion button, reaching across her brother’s arms.
“I can do that,” he scoffed. “It’s 1.3 miles.”
Harold whistled. “Honey, that’s further than it is to the Jackson’s house.”
She shook her head. “Why on Earth would you want a ship that big?”
“So nobody messes with you,” David answered.
Harold nodded his agreement. “I think that’s exactly the message they’re sending.”
“So much for national security with that in your backyard,” David offered.
Harold laughed. “No wonder the Secretary of Defense is pissed. We’ve got nothing that can go up against that. Lucky for us they’re on our side.”
“Are they?” his wife asked.
Harold nodded. “I’d bet my bottom dollar on it.”
“Please don’t,” she joked, referencing a previously humiliating bet with a coworker.
“All I’m saying,” he said rigidly, “is I’d trust Star Force over any of the countries out there, ours included.
“Dad!” his daughter scoffed at his lack of patriotism.
“Isn’t Davis and most of his people American?” he defended. “They’re doing the job the politicians won’t, and I’d trust our national security to them any day. At the very least they’re showing up our military, and if I know our boys they’re not going to stand for that. Healthy competition makes everyone stronger, and if that isn’t motivation to make some changes then I don’t know what is,” he said, pointing to the Orion as it now completely stretched across the screen as it continued to pass by.
David’s eyes remained glued to the screen as he lightly jabbed his sister in the arm. “Best vacation ever.”
On the bridge of the Orion Captain Minsk watched as his pilot expertly maneuvered his whale of a ship past the starport and into a parking orbit a few kilometers off, stationing the ship within easy sight of every dropship and starship coming to and from the station. Once there the ship would make necessary station keeping thrusts, but otherwise would become a stationary orbital headquarters for Star Force’s military fleet.
With the remote pilots he had onboard, Minsk had already reclaimed possession of his support ships and positioned them at strategic positions around the system, as well as taking control of most of the others from the Turok and Mjolnir, leaving those battleships free to maneuver about with a handful of escorts while the Orion handled the ‘show the flag’ operations, deployed as much for rapid response to potential crises as they were for intimidation purposes.
The Archons wanted Minsk to leave no doubt in everyone’s minds as to who was in control of Earth orbit and that was what he was going to deliver, buying time for the size of their fleet to grow before anyone realized that their ship count was too low to protect against a coordinated assault across multiple targets, as well as giving Star Force’s army of engineers a chance to install weapons mods on all their stations.
Minsk doubted that anyone had the potential to exploit their weakness, but he and the Archons both felt that they needed to plug the holes in their orbital defense sooner rather than later, feeling that some form of trouble was inevitably on its way. They’d succeeded in thwarting the Chinese attacks because they’d held their fleet away in secret…but from now on their potential enemies would be forewarned and forced to prepare accordingly before they tried to cause any more trouble, which in the short term meant a period of stability.
The long term, however, was anyone’s guess, and if Star Force wanted to maintain control of orbit they were going to have to stay a step ahead of everyone else, for soon the big five, seeing as how they no longer possessed military superiority in space, would begin rushing to catch up in an arms race that would dwarf that seen during the Cold War, rewriting previous allegiances and shifting the geopolitic as every nation began to reposition itself with Star Force becoming the standard-bearer, setting the stage for the next major shift in Earth’s history.
www.aerkijyr.com
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