It was going to be a damn long day. He knew that, but together, they would get through it.
Somehow.
THIRTY-SEVEN
GAGE AND ANGIE spent two hours letting Star Mist catch them up on all the new data coming in about the fleet, about the original creators of this race, and about the fight to stop the expansion.
As they had clearly realized yesterday, the Exterminators and the fleet of Creator ships were fighting a losing battle. They had started too late and they just couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with the expansion.
And they didn’t have enough ships.
Nothing had changed. Angie had so hoped it would have.
After the two hours, all eight chairmen met again in the Star Mist conference room and made sure all data were clear between all of them.
Then Angie suggested her idea that if the decision was to help in this fight, anyone who didn’t want to remain should be allowed to board a Seeding vessel and return home.
Everyone agreed to that, but once again Gage said, “There has to be another way.”
“Any way,” Gina said.
“Star Mist,” Gage said, “would you please show the edge of expansion of the alien race?”
The image came up showing the expansion and how the two other fleets were trying to stop it by wiping out galaxies, but clearly the galaxy they had just destroyed would have destroyed itself given time.
Suddenly Angie had an idea.
“If we stop the expansion,” Angie said, “this race will collapse on itself and die. Correct?”
Everyone nodded and beside her Gage looked puzzled. “What are you thinking?”
“Star Mist,” Angie said, “please show the direction in arrows of the expansion from each galaxy that is still able to produce ships.”
“Of course,” Benny said as the arrows appeared. “We don’t destroy the galaxy home worlds, we just stop their ships.”
“The alien built ships have no defenses, do they?” Matt asked.
“None,” Gage said. “They are just transports.”
Angie was starting to get excited. She stared at the hologram of the galaxies around them.
“I can only extrapolate from the inexact data we have at the moment,” Star Mist said.
“We understand,” Angie said. “Please try.”
The arrows appeared coming from the leading edge galaxies and also the secondary edge galaxy. Behind that, the older occupied galaxies seemed to have no arrows.
“We are talking about millions and millions of alien ships in transit at any given time,” Carrie said. “And we can’t miss one ship or this all starts over again.”
Matt nodded, then said, “Possibly. But we may have the time and the speed to get ahead of all this.”
“Maybe,” Gina said.
“Star Mist,” Gage said, “from the information you have at the moment, could you give us an approximation of numbers of alien ships leaving galaxies over the next six months.”
“I would need a lot more data,” Star Mist said, “but with the data I have and the number of alien galaxies we know of, in six months over sixty million alien ships will leave the alien galaxies. That number, will, of course, increase rapidly if the ships reach their destinations and build more ships.”
Angie didn’t want to think about that number. Not until she had more information.
“Star Mist,” Gage said, would you estimate the average transit time of an alien ship to a new galaxy?”
“Two years on average,” Star Mist said. “These numbers are simply estimates from the best data, you understand.
“Yes, we understand,” Gage said. “Thank you.”
Angie looked directly at Ray and Tacita. “How many armed ships could we get here from human galaxies willing to help in this fight and how fast could we have them here?”
“We would have to convert ships to the new drive,” Ray said, clearly thinking. “Then it would take nine to ten years at full new drive.”
“Ten thousand ships would be a conservative number within twelve years and thousands more per year after that,” Tacita said.
Ray nodded agreement.
Angie looked around. All of the chairmen were in deep thought.
“Star Mist,” Angie said, “how many fighter ships are in The Exterminator and The Creator fleets combined?”
“Two thousand and ten confirmed,” Star Mist said. “All with only standard trans-tunnel drive.”
“Star Mist, how many ships do we have on board the three mother ships,” Angie asked, “that are armed and capable of destroying an alien ship?”
“Nineteen hundred and sixty,” Star Mist said.
Angie nodded.
“How many small fighting ships could the three mother ships build,” Bennie asked, “and at what pace.”
“Combined,” Star Mist said, “the three mother ships are capable of building two military fighters a week each.”
“Could that be increased if other resources were given to the task?” Gina asked. “And the fighters made much smaller?”
“Yes,” Star Mist said. “If the fighters were small craft only capable of carrying ten crew members, each mother ship could produce upwards of twenty per week.”
Angie could feel the excitement growing around the room.
“So if we stop the ships from leaving a galaxy,” Benny said, “we then don’t have to worry about the aliens left teeming in the galaxy. They will follow their own natural course of events.”
“Exactly,” Angie said. “We contain each galaxy and stay back and don’t interfere, just as Seeders are supposed to do with alien galaxies.”
Ray and Tacita were nodding in agreement.
“Damn,” Benny said. “We need to find out if this will work because I am not at all up for destroying billions of lives and entire galaxies full of beings.”
All of them agreed to that.
“So we meet in three hours,” Angie said. “Dig in, find every detail we can and meet back here. Let’s figure out ways to make this plan work.”
All seven other chairmen nodded and a moment later she and Gage were back in their command chair letting Star Mist flow data at them as fast as possible.
THIRTY-EIGHT
GAGE WAITED WITH Angie in the conference room three hours later. Both of them were munching on sandwiches and Ray and Tacita were also eating at the other end of the table.
None of them spoke, mostly because there was nothing to say until all eight were in the room. Small talk just seemed way out of place at this point in time.
But Gage was feeling good about the chances Angie’s idea might work.
They had come up with a couple of details that needed to be worked out to make this entire plan even have a chance of working because it was something Carrie had said that haunted Gage’s mind.
We can’t miss a ship or all this starts over.
So he and Angie planned on bringing up some refinements that needed to be invented and invented quickly for this task at hand.
A few minutes later the other four arrived and all four went to a side table to take a sandwich and a bottle of water. None of them had even taken a few extra minutes to eat in the last three hours.
“Okay,” Angie said, addressing the chairmen, “can we do this?”
“Star Rain believes our window of having this succeed is closing quickly,” Gina said.
Gage nodded, as did everyone else. With this sort of exponential growth pattern, there was a point of no return that even faster ships and more ships would not be able to stop. And if that occurred, Gage had decided that the fallback plan was to set up a line of defense between the aliens and the human galaxies.
He doubted that would stop the flood for long, but it was better than having no secondary plan. But he had no intention of mentioning that plan to anyone at the moment.
“I see a few major problems,” Benny said. “We will be unable in short order to staff the smaller fighters.”
“We have
a solution for that,” Ray said. “Tacita and I can jump fighter crews from the Milky Way Galaxy here when that time comes.”
“Perfect,” Benny said, nodding.
“Thank you,” Angie said.
Ray nodded.
Gage looked at Carrie and said, “You said something earlier that scares me to death.”
Carrie nodded. “Can’t miss a ship.”
“Exactly,” Gage said. “So we need scientists to develop a new scanning system that is long range and can pick up any alien ship signature.”
“Extreme long range,” Benny said, nodding.
“We can get the two inventors of the new trans-tunnel drive working on it at once back home,” Tacita said.
“And many other scientists over thousands of planets as well,” Ray said.
“And all the qualified scientists on all three ships need to go after that as well,” Gage said. “That detail is critical.”
“So do we have any sort of plan?” Matt asked.
“I do,” Benny said after a moment. “Military thinking. Star Mist, would you show an image of the galaxies of the aliens, extrapolating from our current best information?”
Gage saw a light dome of galaxies. It was far more than he wanted to think about.
“This image is of the possible and likely alien galaxies in this area,” Star Mist said. “If the alien expansion is moving in other directions, that information is not available.”
Silence for a moment as everyone took in that detail. But Gage felt they had to focus on what they knew at the moment.
“Star Mist,” Benny said, “please show a green area between unoccupied galaxies and the alien occupied galaxies.”
The image expanded and a green dome appeared inside the arching mist of points of lights.
“First line of defense is along that green area,” Benny said. “We try to stop every alien ship we can crossing into that green area.”
“Star Mist,” Angie said, “how many alien ships does it take to settle a galaxy?”
“One,” Star Mist said.
Silence in the room again.
Gage just felt stunned.
“Star Mist, how long would that one ship take to populate the entire galaxy? Ray asked.
“One ship will take approximately ten thousand years to fill a Milky Way sized galaxy.”
Everyone around the table nodded slowly.
“That green line is our first line of defense,” Benny said. “We slow them down.”
Gage stared at the simple illustration that showed them how impossible this task was considering how much space that green dome covered.
“We won’t get them all,” Benny said, “so our second line of defense is scout ships that are monitoring all the galaxies in this area for any sign of construction. If we can, we stop them before they start filling a galaxy and building more ships. If we can’t, we isolate that galaxy and don’t let any ship out.”
Again more nodding.
Gage could see that this would work over a very long time. But did they have a long time was the question.
“Star Mist, would you please show a blue dome beyond all these galaxies illustrated?”
A blue dome, vast in size appeared beyond the hundreds of thousands of galaxies.
“Our third line of defense and why we need extreme long-range scanners. If any of their ships move past those galaxies or get out like that first ship that started all this, we need to have sensors out there that spot it.”
Gage felt that would work and so did everyone else. But they were talking hundreds and hundreds of years, if not thousands.
“We are assuming these aliens are all going in one general direction,” Angie said, bringing back up what Star Mist had mentioned. “We need to scout to see if there are more fronts on this battle besides this one.”
“Agreed,” Benny said.
Gage hated that, but he knew Angie was right and they didn’t have enough information to know if this alien plague was spreading in only one general direction or in a complete circle. They basically only had the data they had gotten from the other human groups.
“Are we agreed on this plan in general?” Angie asked.
Every chairman in the room nodded.
“So what do we do about the other human groups?” Gage asked. He had no idea on this problem.
He looked around. Silence greeted him.
So Gage looked at Ray and Tacita directly. “Your suggestions? These two groups are clearly from your past and I would assume there is still bad blood.”
Ray nodded and Tacita said nothing.
“Would they be worth our time in bringing them into this plan,” Benny asked. “Their ships are no faster than the alien ships?”
Gage could see nothing but problems with even contacting them, but he said nothing.
“We let them do what they are doing,” Angie said.
“I agree,” Benny said.
“We don’t hide from them,” Carrie said.
“No hiding,” Matt said, nodding.
“Damn right no hiding,” Benny said. “We’re out here cleaning up their mess. They started all this. Screw them.”
Ray and Tacita both nodded and both looked slightly relieved.
“All right,” Angie said. “One more thing. How about we set up some major ship factories in galaxies on that third line of defense?”
She looked at Tacita and Ray. “How fast could a major ship factory be set up on a planet on that third line of defense and how many large military craft could be built that would carry a hundred of the small fighters?”
“In essence,” Gage said. “We are thinking small military mother ships to repair, transport, and so on.”
“We will have that answer for you in one day,” Ray said and Tacita nodded.
“That is a very good idea,” Tacita said.
“Not one ship can get through,” Carrie said. “We all need to remember that.”
“And we all need to brief our entire crews on what is happening,” Gage said.
“We do it at the same time twelve hours from now,” Gina said.
“They all agreed.
“Let’s get started,” Angie said.
Gage looked directly at Ray and Tacita as they stood. “We need that extreme long-range scanner and we need it quickly.”
Both nodded.
“And I have a hunch,” Gage said, “if we are going to save humanity from its stupid mistake this time, every resource we have, not only from the Milky Way, but already Seeded galaxies will be needed in the fight.”
Both again nodded.
“We will get every resource we can think of moving in this direction,” Ray said.
He took Tacita’s hand and they both vanished.
Gage glanced at Angie and she just nodded.
The decision had been made, but Gage knew it actually hadn’t been a decision. A group of humans had made a mistake and their creation had gotten lose. Now for the sake of the known human universe, that mistake had to be stopped.
Gage hated that, but he knew it had to be done, no matter how long it took.
And he had no doubt this coming fight was going to take a very, very long time.
Centuries. But at the moment, he just couldn’t think that far ahead.
THIRTY-NINE
FOR THREE SOLID days, the six chairmen worked and planned morning, noon and night, until it finally became clear to all of them that this fight was going to take years, decades, maybe even longer. Such a long time that Angie had a tough time even imagining.
And until someone invented a long-range scanner, they didn’t even have any idea if they were winning or losing the fight. And Ray had told them it might take a decade for that breakthrough.
She wasn’t sure if they had a decade, but they would do their best.
The weight of all this rested on the six of them. And Angie felt it every day. The image of how the aliens spread over the Milky Way galaxy haunted her night and day.
It wa
s after a long meeting of the eight chairmen that Gage suggested to Angie they go to their quarters. He had mentioned to her that they needed to start getting into regular eating and sleeping routines and she had agreed. But so far, it hadn’t been possible.
When they arrived, Angie was surprised to see that the table had been set with candles and dinner was staying warm in the oven. It smelled heavenly, like a fine Italian pasta and garlic bread.
“When did you have time to do this, mister?” she asked, turning to smile at Gage.
He laughed. “I asked for a little help from Soma and one of the ship’s chefs.”
Angie kissed him.
“We’re staying in here for the evening,” Gage said, smiling at her as he escorted her to her chair. “The known universe will have to get along without us for a short time.”
She smiled as he put the wonderful-smelling pasta on the table and the garlic bread and then took his spot across from her.
In the living room, Miss Star, one of their now four cats noticed the food and got down from the back of the couch and came over beside the table.
Angie just stared at Gage’s handsome beaming face and his wonderful green eyes. She never had gotten tired of doing that.
“So what’s the occasion?” she asked
He pointed to the food. “Already forgotten our first meal together?”
She laughed, the memory of that first evening together in Portland flooding back in as clear as if had happened yesterday.
They had eaten exactly this same meal.
“Happy fifteen years from that first date,” he said.
That surprised her. Had fifteen years really gone by? Wow, just wow.
He came around kissed her and she kissed him back.
No matter what was happening outside this apartment, they had each other and for that she couldn’t be more grateful and happy.
Finally, before either of them broke their resolve and headed for the bedroom, Gage went back to his chair and they both dug into the food.
It was heavenly.
And just like the first night, the conversation over the food was fun and light and about anything but the fight with the alien expansion.
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