Kelly Blake 3: Where the Stars Are Few and Far Between

by Rodney Smith

  * * * * *

  Governor (Baron) H’Topa watched the Humans load out and depart from his vantage point on the rocky outcrop. When he could no longer detect activity he formed up half his force and went to investigate. They cautiously climbed over the berm, spread out, and searched the area. They came to the building that had served as the base HQ and went in, where H’Topa found a human video system with a K’Rang standard message saying push the red button. H’Topa, suspecting a trap, had a junior warrior push the button while the rest took cover. Nothing happened when the warrior pushed the button, but soon a picture formed on the screen. H’Topa came in to view the video.

  The video was of a Human female warrior. She spoke directly to the screen in Galactic standard with K’Rang text underneath. H’Topa understood her without the need for the text.

  “This message is for the commander of the K’Rang forces on this planet. I am Major Mary Chen, Operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 15th Marine Division. As you have found this video, you may assume that we have completed our mission here and have been called to combat elsewhere. Your armada has been defeated and has abandoned you. They were most likely called back to help in the defense of your home world. Unfortunately, they will arrive about 48 hours behind our two fleets currently enroute to your home world.”

  “Returning to your situation: A warning satellite notifying all ships of your presence here and prohibiting landing on the planet will keep any Human ships away. A picket line of scout ships will prevent any K’Rang ships from coming to your rescue. You have two choices: you may live here as long as your supplies hold out and then die from starvation, or you may hit the green button on this machine. The panel will transmit a signal to Fleet HQ and transport will be sent to repatriate you to a K’Rang world as soon as hostilities are ended. The choice is yours, Commander.”

  The video ended and the green button started to blink. What were his choices beyond those offered on the video: none. The Major pretty much summarized his options. He sent runners to bring in the rest of the K‘Rang from the cavern. Over the next few weeks, they moved all the supplies from the cavern into the encampment. There was no use being uncomfortable in the dank, dark cavern, when the Humans left such warm, dry quarters. He had three months of supplies, so there would be no rush to push the green button. The Humans may be sure of victory, but the war wasn’t over yet.

  * * * * *

  There were celebrations all over the Angaerry home world when the Angaerry fleet and the Orion returned. Huge cannon-like devices fired giant plugs of confetti in the air. These confetti projectiles were like fireworks on Earth, but for daylight use. Kelly was much impressed with the varied patterns of confetti that could be formed: flowers, waterfalls, Angaerry clan symbols, and others Kelly could not make out.

  Kelly and the Ambassador were summoned again to the Military Ministry to see Minister Jakah Burin. As usual, they were led through his office into his conference room. The minister rose to greet them and directed them to sit.

  He called up the table’s holographic viewer and highlighted several points.

  “If I may call your attention to the current situation in K’Rang space. The yellow world is G’Durin. The two red dots are your fleets. The large blue dot is the K’Rang Grand Armada. The small blue dot is the K’Rang armada which has recently left your Eridanus sector. If we move forward in time, we can see your two fleets getting to G’Durin almost simultaneously. The K’Rang have spotted your scouts around G’Durin, so they know your destination. Unfortunately, the lunar defensive facilities destroyed one of your scouts yesterday. The Eridanus Armada will be next to arrive, two days after your fleets, and the Grand Armada a day later. There is some chatter among the K’Rang that the Grand Armada is not properly organized for combat and they are contemplating halting to reorganize before assaulting your fleets. This green world is Gronir. As you can see, it is just under a week’s travel time to G’Durin. That is our current knowledge of and assessment of the situation.”

  Kelly said, “Thank you minister, that matches our assessment, too. We received much the same information from our HQ when we landed.”

  “Captain Blake, I would like the opportunity to meet with your Admiral Chang, to offer him the ships of the Angaerry fleet under his command.”

  That announcement almost took Kelly’s breath away. He thanked the Minister and said he would set up the meeting immediately.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kelly felt the bitter cold and inky blackness of the transport process, as he led the Angaerry Minister and his translator through to the Command Ship Montpelier. A Marine colonel met them this time, in his dress uniform. Asking the Minister and Kelly to please follow, he led them through the various passageways to the Admiral’s conference room. He knocked on the door, heard, “Enter,” and opened the door for the Minister’s entourage and Kelly to enter.

  They walked in to find the commanders of both combined fleets and the two battle fleets. Admiral Chang escorted Minister Jakah Burin to a seat beside his. The minister's translator sat immediately behind the minister and beside Admiral Chang’s translator. Kelly moved to a seat along the wall and was told to take a seat next to Admiral Thomas. He sat next to his former boss, his translator in the seat behind.

  Admiral Chang said, “I would like to welcome our new ally and introduce him to our command conference attendees.”

  Admiral Chang looked to his immediate left and introduced the four admirals commanding the Galactic Republic’s combat forces. Kelly had not met Admirals Levi of the 2nd Combined Fleet and Pappas of the 18th Battle Group.

  Admiral Chang then officiated over the integration of the Angaerry Fleet into the impending battle of G’Durin. Minister Jakah Burin provided his Fleet numbers: 16 battle cruisers, 26 cruisers, 112 destroyers, 113 frigates, and 57 support ships, 326 ships total. He requested that they be broken down into no more than four commands or he would run out of admirals. This elicited laughter from around the table, in which the minister joined.

  Admiral Chang called on Kelly to provide his assessment of the Angaerry weapons, technology, fighting spirit, and supply.

  Kelly spoke carefully. “Sir, I cannot speak directly for supply, but I don’t believe that to be a problem. We provided the technology for a missile upgrade and reports I saw showed them at over 10,000 missiles upgraded. I saw those missiles used to great affect on a K’Rang task force yesterday. As for fighting spirit, I would rate them on a par with ours. Their technology has some unique capabilities, but is 95% compatible with ours. Translation will be the biggest challenge. Going from Galactic Standard to K’Rang to Angaerry will introduce lag into the command system. However, I would fight alongside the Angaerry anytime.”

  Admiral Chang asked, “Minister, could you form your fleet into two reasonably equal commands and integrate a GR battle fleet? If you can, and we would provide liaison officers to reinforce your staffs, I will assign the 15th and 18th Battle Fleets to your two commands.”

  The Minister weighed this over in his mind, then said he was sure it could be made to work. He asked when the battle fleets would meet up with his two fleets and was told they were trailing the two combined fleets and would be at G’Durin in under a week.

  The minister answered that his two fleets would be there in a week also. He stood up and asked permission to make a short speech. Admiral Chang said yes and the minister asked permission to borrow Kelly’s translator. Kelly nodded to her and she went to stand next to the Minister’s translator.

  “Honored allies against the K’Rang, it has been 20 years since we made contact with the K’Rang. Since that day we have not known a day of peace. They constantly impose unequal trade agreements, confiscate our worlds for their own use, and randomly destroy our ships, claiming they are in K’Rang space when it is obvious they were in our own space. It is past time for these injustices to be put to an end. While we have every confidence in your ultimate victory over the K’Rang, we wish to shoulder part of our own
burden and proudly join you in what we hope to be the final battle of this war. We place our fleet under your command and pledge they will not leave the battle space until the K’Rang are defeated or they are destroyed. Let us go forth together to victory!”

  The admirals stood and applauded the Minister’s speech. The meeting then became a strategy session, in which Minister Jakah Burin was an equal and active participant. Admiral Chang at one point broke away and asked Kelly to follow him. They went into Admiral Chang’s private office and the admiral asked, “Kelly, when you get back you need to lean on this ambassador to introduce the idea of what do we do with the K’Rang after we are victorious. That is a political decision and we need to get our State people and their Ministry of Diplomacy together to work out a common plan to present to our President and their High Minister. I would really not like the solution to devolve to me, if possible.”

  “Sir, I will discuss this with Ambassador Thorson immediately upon my return. He’s a pragmatic fellow and I’d bet he’s already working this angle. For discussion’s sake, what would you like to see the end state be?”

  Admiral Chang paused for only a moment before saying, “I would like the K’Rang to lose the capability to be a spacefaring people. This doesn’t have to be a permanent situation, but for enough time to make the point that their past behavior was unacceptable.”

  Kelly nodded his head and said, “I’ll carry that message to the ambassador, sir. I’m sure his thoughts on the matter are similar.”

  Admiral Chang walked Kelly back to the conference room. The combined brainpower had worked out a strategic plan and chose Admiral Thomas to brief it.

  Admiral Chang liked it and so did the Minister. The plan was approved and turned over to the operations staff to turn into an order. Kelly escorted the minister back to Gronir and had him home in time for dinner.

  * * * * *

  Angie had her pilots in the ready room going over K’Rang fighter identification. There wasn’t more for them to do because with the fleet at max speed, the fighters could not patrol. When your basic F-53 could only do a little over 0,9c, you can’t patrol around a fleet making FTL power 4 or 5. Physics is a hard master.

  Other squadrons had their pilots running laps around the hangar deck. Angie chose to work on her pilots’ combat recognition skills and added in instruction on how to attack each type of planetary defense fighter. She also covered other larger ships her fighters may face in the attack on G’Durin. Basically, anything smaller than a frigate was fair game. Her fighters would be carrying two medium missiles under their winglets, just in case something big came into their sights.

  After two hours, Angie had enough. She dismissed them and retired to her quarters. She was about to rest for a bit, when she changed her mind and went into Flight Ops. The CFW was using the holographic projector.

  Angie said, “Hey boss, what are you working up?”

  “I’m looking for places where the K’Rang can hide ships. I looked at some recent photos of the moons’ facilities and those could hold a few fighters. There’s an asteroid belt inside the orbit of the third and fourth planet that would be a good hiding place, as well. I’ve had the intel section scouring surface photos of G’Durin for a military facility. With the exception of the Imperial Guard barracks, not another military facility exists on the planet. I’d heard that the K’Rang nobility were kind of snobby, but I believe it now.”

  “What are you still doing up? I heard you drilling your pilots on threat ID when I walked by. That’s a lot more useful than running a marathon relay in the hangar deck.”

  Angie hid a smile at the CFW’s jibe. She asked if she could borrow the hologram projector for a minute. She wanted to get a close up view of the moon the A-76's, she would be escorting would attack. She searched out the gun emplacements that had made a scout ship disappear at long range. She would emphasize to her pilots to go in on the attack run in full evasive mode. She wanted them to dive, climb, and jink every five seconds. Ships would travel at twice the normal wingtip-to-wingtip distance, to allow for safe maneuvering. She zoomed in on the emplacements and saw steel and concrete foundations and armaments. She turned it over to the CFW and thanked him.

  He asked what concerned her about this mission.

  She said, “The K’Rang are going to be defending their home world. What wouldn’t we do to defend Earth?”

  The CFW saw her point and said, “I’m sure we would do anything and everything.”

  Angie replied, “Exactly my point.”

  She had seen what she wanted to see. She put the hologram back as it was, thanked the CFW, and turned in for the night.

  * * * * *

  Kelly put a bug in Thorson’s ear to start getting an end state position together to present to the Angaerry. He saw Admiral Chang’s point, to get the Angaerry to sign up for a post conflict treatment of the K’Rang. It would sour all the good will the war had created in the public’s mind if the Angaerry decided to execute the nobility as a condition of victory. It would be best to get an agreement on paper.

  Thorson worked between the Galactic Republic’s State Department and the Angaerry Ministry of Diplomacy. He got both parties to agree to a ten-year prohibition on FTL travel for the K’Rang after a one-year period where they could relocate people and material – except military materiel. Ambassador Thorson took the High Minister and Minister for Diplomacy through the Orion’s ring for a signing ceremony in Geneva. The two returned even more convinced they had chosen a good ally.

  * * * * *

  Tammy slept in for the first time in a long time. Their wing had been stationed on Sirius prime since the K’Rang left the Eridanus sector. Initially, she had maintained her up at dawn schedule, but after she supervised the maintenance crews fine tuning the ships for the third time and ran the pilots through the simulator twice, her senior chief came to her and politely told her she needed to spin down a bit. She was making the crews nervous. He recommended she go out, get rip-roaring drunk, come back to her quarters, and sleep it off.

  She had done just that with the two other squadron commanders. She never knew it, but two burly petty officers followed her, to ensure nothing bad happened to her. Her crews really liked her. She took care of them on the missions. It was only fair they took care of her on the ground.

  The senior chief made sure there was plenty of coffee on hand in the morning and kept the noise to a minimum. Commander Tanaka was warned she would be late for any meetings called before noon. It was noon before she was ready for polite company. Miraculously, her phone never rang before noon, either. Tammy knew they were taking care of her – she just never knew how much.

  Once she made it into the office, she felt marvelous. The old demons had been cut down to size. The squadron commanders were called to see the wing commander in the mid-afternoon. She was happy to see she was in better shape than they were. They dove for the coffee pot. She walked past it.

  Commander Tanaka said, “I’ve received the operations order for the Battle of G’Durin. We’ll be flying in support of the 2nd Combined Fleet. The 2nd will be initially responsible for security, in case of an early arrival of the K’Rang fleet. If that happens, which is unlikely, we will be on alert to launch within 30 minutes of notification. We have an on order mission to support the 1st Combined Fleet in reducing the K’Rang defensive positions on the three moons, if the A-76's are unable to accomplish their destruction. We’ll be loaded with hypervelocity bunker penetration missiles to get down inside the emplacements, if needed.”

  “Of course, that won’t happen for a week, so get some rest. Let your crews have some time off. The war will be back on us soon enough. That is all.”

  Tammy walked back to her HQ with the other two commanders. They couldn’t believe she could be so perky after consuming as much alcohol as she had last night. She just put it down to clean living.

  * * * * *

  Elder J’Tona’s funeral was both formal and moving. He was thanked for his 40-plus years ser
vice to the Empire with a somber and solemn tribute. The members of his family, dressed in the white lined capes of nobility, marched behind his hearse, pulled by six matching white J’Pilli’s. An honor guard of eight Shadow Warriors marched beside the hearse, their crimson capes billowing in the intermittent breeze. The 115 members of his F’Dor faction in the Council of Peers marched behind the family in their blue robes, signifying their faction. Elders J’Gon and G’Tol marched in front of the hearse in their azure robes of state. The infirm and elderly rode behind in ground cars.

  The cortege marched solemnly through the capital city, whose streets were six deep with public mourners and gawkers. They proceeded along the four miles from the palace to the Imperial Cemetery and the Imperial Tomb reserved for Elders of the Empire. The hearse stopped in front of the magnificent snow-white marble tomb with its soaring pillars topped with arches.

  The honor guard removed the casket from the hearse and carried it respectfully up the marble steps to the first landing, where it was placed on a bier. The honor guard paired up and positioned themselves at stiff attention on the four corners of the landing.

  G’Tol stepped up to a podium two steps up and immediately behind the bier. In accordance with K’Rang burial custom and eschewing embalming technology, the casket was sealed once the body had been lain in it. Evidence of J’Tona’s demise was securely hidden behind centuries of tradition. It was also customary for an Elder to speak at the funeral of an Elder, and J’Gon could not bring himself to do it.