by D. R. Rosier
He wasn’t sure yet, but he sure as hell hoped so.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Thank you Mike.”
There was no question about it this time, Alyndra was clearly amused when he handed her a coffee. Not that she’d cracked a smile, but he could tell from her expressive and musical voice. He figured that was better than accidentally insulting her however, so he’d take it.
Chrystal said, “Dahlia called when you were busy, her and her people will be ready for pickup in thirty minutes, and she sent me a list of coordinates.”
Nadia blushed at that, but Chrystal gave her a welcoming type of smile to show it was alright.
He nodded, “Do you need help setting up the auto-pilots?”
Chrystal replied, “No, it’s already done. I just set up the security and the basic flight path once, and then sent it to the fifty troop shuttles at the same time. Then I just had to send the specific coordinates to each one separately. It will take two trips to get them all.”
Although the battleship could carry twenty thousand troops comfortably, and thirty thousand in a pinch, they didn’t have enough shuttles to fully load or deploy them at once. Still, five thousand at a time seemed like more than enough, and would only take two trips to accommodate the ten thousand warriors of Miroth.
He took a seat next to Chrystal, and was pleased when Nadia chose the seat right on the other side, instead of separating slightly like she had in the past. He’d worried she might regret her actions after the heat of the moment, but so far so good.
Nadia asked, “So what makes them the best ground troops in the empire? Their armor?”
Alyndra replied, “That’s part of it, their armor acts as an extension of their body through a mind interface, and is shielded from small scale kinetic, gravity, and energy based attacks. The built-in gravity device grants flight. It also gives the wearer full three hundred and sixty degree scanning coverage and can identify traps and explosives. Their weapon batons also react to their thoughts, and are capable of generating small scale plasma bolts, sonic waves, and gravity attacks. They can also sheath them in energy for close quarters combat, giving them a sword like appearance.
“But what really makes them deadly is their warrior culture. They are all warriors and train for the first third of their lives, and the second two thirds of their life they retire for other pursuits needed for a planet to thrive, but still may be called upon if necessary. They practice constantly to hone and maintain their edge. It takes great focus and ability to wield their armor and weapons to their fullest extent while avoiding collateral damage.”
Nadia asked, “So they’re aggressive?”
Alyndra looked at Nadia thoughtfully, and then replied, “Not in the way you’re thinking. They are death to those that prove themselves enemies, but for their friends, allies, and even with strangers, they’re quite open, generous, and social. They train and compete for rank within their society, and for the time when war might come, but they do not judge other cultures for not holding that same outlook. In short, they are content with what they have and feel no need to expand through war, just to be prepared to defend what is theirs.”
He’d already known some of that from the database, but not all of it. The cultural database they’d gotten from the Xarans was mostly concerned with the sociology and psychology of the many races, and not on their technology.
He took a sip of his coffee.
“Is anyone hungry?”
Alyndra said, “I’ve eaten.”
Nadia said, “I could use something, for some reason I skipped breakfast earlier.”
Chrystal giggled, “What do you want?”
Nadia shook her head, “I’ll go make something,” and got up and headed off the bridge.
After a moment, Alyndra got up and followed.
“Well, what do you think love? Nadia I mean.”
Chrystal sighed, “I don’t know yet, she’s hiding something, but she’s also clearly falling for you. I like her a lot though.”
“Hiding something?”
Chrystal nodded, “I caught several micro-expressions when she looked at you, of caring, longing, confusion, and guilt. She clearly wants what we’re offering, more for you than me, the confusion is because she can’t quite believe it because of her societal expectations. The guilt is probably because she either doesn’t think she deserves it, or it’s because she’s hiding information that she thinks would change your mind. Maybe a little of both.”
“I wonder what it could be, or why she’s hiding it.”
Chrystal shrugged, “Maybe she has to hide it if it’s part of work. You know, you could always ask Alyndra what it is, I get the feeling she followed Nadia to talk to her about it.”
He frowned, “I don’t like that idea, I won’t use Alyndra as a mental spy for my family and friends. Enemies are one thing, but that’s quite another. Why would she follow and talk to Nadia about it?”
Chrystal replied, “I agree using Alyndra in that way would be wrong by the way, I just thought I should mention the option. As for why follow Nadia? Because she is your protector, perhaps in her mind that extends to things outside of physical harm. In a way it makes sense, from the point of view of a telepath. I can’t imagine what would cause her to leave your presence, she never has before, except to protect you or when you wanted the privacy of our quarters.”
He nodded, “Nadia is a good woman, but I imagine she’s had to do some rather shady things in service to her government. Whatever it is we’ll figure it out, or she’ll pull away. Did you get Alyndra’s requirements?”
Chrystal replied, “Yes, they’re set up in the next two rooms next to hers, I removed the wall. She already used them, when you were with me.”
He wondered at that a second, “How close an eye are you keeping on them?”
She replied, “I monitor where they are on ship, and their health. I know she was in those rooms for several hours with an increased heart rate. I don’t listen to the audio pickups or watch video though.”
She grinned mischievously, “I was a little tempted earlier though.”
“I don’t remember programming in voyeuristic tendencies,” he teased.
She snorted, “You didn’t program me to love you either. I can wait until we’re all in the same room though. She’ll be joining us tonight?”
Despite what he’d said, he was looking forward to watching them together as well, if Nadia was willing. It was still a guessing game on how this would all turn out, even if it did go well.
“I told her that’s what we wanted, but she didn’t agree or disagree, so we’ll have to wait and see.”
He frowned at his unintentional rhyme.
She said, “Launching shuttles, they should arrive on planet a few minutes before the appointed time.”
He pulled her out of her chair, and onto his lap to steal a kiss.
“You still doing okay with all of this?”
She kissed him back with passion, and it was quite a while before she broke it, he didn’t mind in the least being devoured by his love.
“Yes. I would wish for peace so we could explore, and visit other worlds like we planned, but my conscience is clear. The only other option was to watch them kill others, which isn’t an option at all. How about you, all I really had to do was not object, you’re the one giving the orders love.”
“I feel the same way mostly, I have no compunctions about stopping this invasion. The question I’m struggling with is what do we do after we drive them off.”
“What do you mean,” she asked.
“Well, if we drive them off that’s clearly self-defense, but what if they go back to the drawing board and increase their gravity weapon capabilities to exceed ours instead of the other way around, and also find a way to increase their subspace weapons capability. I’m afraid if we drive them off, we’ll just be deferring the problem until later, and when later comes we may not have technical superiority. So… is it still self-defense if we go out l
ooking for them.
“If we do that, and find them, then what? Do we destroy them utterly, or knock them back to the stone age, or simply knock them out of space and turn their planets into prisons? The other option is to just keep developing our own science, and hope that we stay ahead of them.
“What’s the saying, you can’t win a war defensively? That’s all were doing right now, defending against their invasion.”
She bit her lip and took his hand. Her hand felt warm and he smiled and squeezed it.
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
He nodded, “And if I ordered us to find their worlds?”
She winced, “I’ll have to think about that, how would we do that anyway?”
He shrugged, “We’d have to find one of their ships, and capture it mostly intact. A few shuttles could rip holes in the hull, and the Mirosians can board and secure it, or even just a part of it. Locally on the ship via an android, I imagine we could hack their systems and figure out where they came from. Assuming they won’t self-destruct to prevent such a thing.”
She looked thoughtful.
He said, “It’s probably a moot point. Maybe we should try and get that information, but as far as going there that’s a decision for the empire and all its members. I wouldn’t feel comfortable making that decision on my own. At least, not without a whole lot more information.”
She said, “I could probably modify one of the fighters to do it, instead of carving up the ship when it went inside. That way if they self-destruct no one would need to die.”
Good point, no boarding party then.
The door slid open, and Nadia and Alyndra rejoined them as Chrystal slipped back into her chair.
Alyndra looked as mysterious and exotically beautiful as ever, he had trouble reading her as always, with her races muted body language.
Nadia looked thoughtful, and not upset at all.
He decided to take that as a good sign, but then he was rather an optimist that way.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dahlia had come up with the first group, and was with them on the bridge. They’d already gone through the introductions and polite greetings. She wore her armor, with the helmet off which allowed him to see the porcelain beauty of her face, and her vivid blue eyes. Since it was completely removed, not just the faceplate raised, he also got to see her curly golden blonde hair, which seemed to shine with its own light.
Much like Alyndra, she had an exotic kind of beauty, since both were definitely beautiful by human standards, but at the same time, also quite alien in appearance. Much like Alyndra’s purple eyes, thinner face, and sculpted ears were exotic, Dahlia’s bright vivid blue eyes, porcelain skin, and golden hair were shades not seen in humanity, outside of a Clairol box, makeup, and colored contacts anyway.
He wondered what the rest of her would look like, he was guessing her body was equally attractive since it was reasonable to believe she was very much in shape, but the bulky armor gave the bodies of both the Mirosian males and females a rather androgynous appearance.
He got over his curiosity though, she was the commander of a cohort of ten thousand warriors, not his eye candy for the day. Still, if his inclinations toward appreciating the beauty of the female form was something inherited from his father, he was starting to understand how his father had ended up with ten wives.
“Chrystal, bring up the scans of the surface on Feilia?”
Chrystal brought up a large three-dimensional image of a globe, with twenty red dots spread around the world.
“As you can see, they were able to get twenty of their landing craft in twenty cities around the world.”
She zoomed toward one of the cities.
“This is the standard layout at all the sites. The aliens have a powerful gravity shield protecting them from air or space assets. The shield is like a sheet over their fortified location, but at ground level their protected by normal energy shields and physical defenses, so they can move freely in and out to capture their… food.”
Chrystal shuddered.
“We don’t know what other defenses, or what their offensive capabilities are, we just know they’re well protected from a ship in space.”
Dahlia waved that away, “We already know, we dealt with them on our world. They’re armor is well protected from kinetic attacks, but no match for us on the energy side. Their weapons seem to have two settings, one to stun and knock out the inhabitants for food collection, the second is a highly charged plasma beam for those that truly threaten their lives.
“The base itself also has medium powered energy turrets, which can be a threat to our armor, or an armored and shielded vehicle. The ship itself in the center, is both what protects them from air based enemies, and is a processing center for not only beings, but other raw materials and resources.
“If you can set us down five miles out, we can then move in and attack all the sites simultaneously with groups of five hundred. I have enough Lt. commanders for that. If we’re lucky, we can get inside before they lock down the whole area with their gravity shields.”
He asked, “Locked down?”
Dahlia nodded, “After we removed the first few on my world, they turned that gravity sheet of theirs into a dome. It was difficult to remove them after that, hitting all of them at once is the best solution for that I think. They are very aggressive, and it takes a lot to get them to move defensively like that.”
“How did you get through the shield?”
Dahlia grinned, like she was reliving a fun memory.
“We dug tunnels. The gravity domes don’t, can’t, extend under the ground without destabilizing the whole area. Being the first one through was a hell of a rush, although we hit them from all sides simultaneously. It’s easier than it sounds, with our gravity tech built into our armor we could clear dirt out and compress the sides and ceiling to firm it up almost as fast as we could run.”
Chrystal said, “I’ll program the shuttles, ten by each site. The rest of your cohort is now on board. Do you need time to prepare? We can be at Feilia in under ten minutes.”
Dahlia shook her head, “Our people are ready, and looking forward to it. Do you have any plans for after? We would be willing to help with other worlds as well if necessary, especially with your generosity on leaving a ship here for defense.”
He replied, “Not solid ones yet, but we plan to coordinate with Xaran after this, and you and your warriors would be more than welcome to stick around until this invasion is turned away or eradicated.”
Dahlia grinned, “Eradicated. I like the way you think, you will join us for a victory drink after the battle?”
He wondered if the Mirosians were crazy, overconfident, or simply that good. Perhaps a mix of all three.
“We’d be honored to join you.”
Dahlia nodded in satisfaction, pulled on her helmet, and swaggered off the bridge to return to her people on the flight decks. There was no point in going to their assigned quarters, the battle wouldn’t be long in coming.
“Chrystal, take us to Feilia.”
They dropped out at the usual three light minutes out, and moved toward the planet at sub-light speed. The only thing in orbit were a few satellites, and the small scout ship they’d sent for defense in case the enemy came back.
Chrystal giggled.
He looked over at her questioningly.
She said, “Apparently the Mirosians are in a hurry, because they activated the flight plans and all fifty shuttles are launching now.”
He smiled, but it wouldn’t make a difference, the shuttles were capable of the same sub-light speed of point four that the battleship was.
“I feel a little nervous for some reason. More than the space battles I mean.”
Nadia said, “Because you don’t have to fight, you have to watch others fight, and there are ten thousand beings you feel responsible for heading in harm’s way. You aren’t by the way, responsible for them.”
He raised an eyebrow, “A
m I that transparent?”
Nadia shrugged, and took his hand.
“I’m getting better at reading you. Plus, it’s a typical human reaction, it’s much harder to stand by and watch others fight, while you sit in safety, than it is to step in harm’s way yourself. At least, typical of good leaders.”
He squeezed her hand, and startled her by pulling her toward him. He stole a fast but quite thorough kiss.
She blushed, and looked at Chrystal, who just winked at her. Apparently, she still didn’t quite believe it was okay yet. That was okay though, there was time for that, he hoped.
She turned back to him, “I really like what I see in you.”
He looked into her green eyes intently as he replied, “Me too,” he paused for a moment, and then added jokingly, “I am pretty great.”
She snickered, and slapped the hand she held with her other one.
He asked Chrystal, “Can we get a view of one of the sites, Dahlia’s maybe?”
Chrystal nodded, and the holographic display showed a large area with terrain and buildings which were rather small across the table, with red dots representing the enemy and blue dots representing the Mirosians as their shuttles landed to deploy them.
Above the big picture, was a view screen showing a much smaller area in detail around Dahlia who was centered in the picture, as if they were looking over her shoulder. Or so he assumed, commander or not, her armor looked the same as everyone else’s…
Commander Dahlia scanned the city in front of her and her troops, but hadn’t moved yet, and he realized she was waiting, they were all waiting, for the second shuttle run so they could attack in sync, which would just be a few minutes.
He looked at the board, and there was plenty of enemy activity, but it looked like they were preparing for incoming ground troops and had not closed up their shields. Based on what Alyndra had said about the ones she’d read, they were probably looking forward to the fight.
