by Paul Phipps
Admiral Caparelli was still chuckling as he turned around and looked at Ansel.
“He says that you are a Bad man for kidnapping me and forcing me to enjoy myself while the poor Captain I left behind has to cover my tracks.” and then laughed again.
“I’m terribly sorry sir. Would you like me to take you back?” Ansel said in mock penitence.
“No not all, although if we have time could you give me a look at your new ship, Companion I believe she is called.” He asked Ansel
“Certainly Sir, Let me tell Captain Johansson that we are going down for a look-see.” And then, proceeded to do so.
* * *
They were drifting slowly around the Companion as she floated in the waters of the Pacific. She was only a few miles away from the Epiphany and task Force 14. Yet to their sight and sensor equipment she wasn’t there. Yes, the Epiphany knew that the Companion was there but also knew that she was to ignore her presence and edit out that information out of her sensor data streams before they were made available to the Watchstanders in CIC and on the Bridge.
Admiral Caparelli was in awe of what he was seeing. To his knowledgeable eyes everything was too big, too overwhelming. But as he grew accustomed to what he was seeing it started to make sense. What he was examining wasn’t just a single vessel, it was all the vessels of the United States and possibly one or two other nations merged into one ship.
“Why so big? I thought the Epiphany was overly large, But this is just overwhelming. Why?” He finally asked.
“We discussed that while in orbit if you remember. This ship is making several statements at one time.
In no particular order they are:
We’re serious in what we say and do and in this case what we are demanding from the IUR.
We’re here for the long run. Once we put up our blockade there will be no way in or out unless we agree to it. And that means the United States too Sir. Don’t have any assets inside that country, neither in the air, on the sea, under the sea or on the land. Once the Blockade goes up, that country is sequestered and in total quarantine.
We’re also the only thing that they can attack and once they do so and when we swat their forces out of existence, it’ll reinforce to their populace that their leadership is not what they had believed.”
“What if they do turn over the Doctors and the Bio-Warfare agent” The Admiral asked.
“I’m not sure really what we’ll do. We may have to keep the blockade in place for some time, if only to protect the rest of the Human race. And that might not be a bad thing either. They would make a good example of what happens to those who won’t play nice with other nations. Once we get a few of the other Earth Analogues as going concerns then they might be far enough along the road to rehabilitation to permit re-integration in an orderly fashion.”
“Actually I meant what would you do if they turned over the Physician’s and the Bio-Warfare agent before the time-limit was up.” The Admiral pressed.
“We will trust but verify in the words of one of America’s greatest presidents. If they do come clean completely then at that point we also back off completely. I’ll continue to work with the Navy to select and train people to become qualified to be TSN Recruits.”
“Thank you, if it becomes necessary I will convey your words as accurately as possible to our political masters and elected officials.” Admiral Caparelli said sincerely.
“Thank you, I and the TSN won’t ask for anything more than that.” Ansel replied back just as sincerely.
They continued to look over the Companion and then did the same thing to the Epiphany. Once they saw that the crew was starting to assemble on the Flight Deck of the Epiphany, Ansel and Captain Johansson unmasked and brought their ‘Scalp-hunters’ down on the after flight deck.
After they disembarked they escorted Admiral Caparelli and General Owens up to the line of chairs for honored guests. Where they made a minor scene just by being there, Admiral Crane and Captain Welles were totally surprised as well as Captain Keppler and his new executive officer.
Admiral Caparelli made a big show of meeting and congratulations Captain Keppler on his being selected for command of the Epiphany. And then he lamented that now he had to find a replacement instructor for the Academy. He shook hands with Admiral Crane and Captain Welles and congratulated them also for handling a very tricky situation.
The Actual Ceremony was as smooth as any that had ever been done over the years as one commanding officer was relieved by his replacement in an unbroken chain.
Ansel made his personal congratulation to Captain Keppler once again and then went among the crew and said goodbye to those who wanted to say the same to him. Soon though it was time to go; as he walked toward Admiral Caparelli and General Owens he had a pleasant surprise.
Evana and Gunnar were wearing the TSN style Shipsuit design.
“Decided to join up?” He said with a huge smile to the two of them.
“Yes, we did,” Gunnar replied for the two of them. “Ariadne convinced Admiral Crane and Admiral Caparelli to bow down to her perfect logic. So we have resigned our commissions in the Navy and she accepted our enlistments in the Terran Space Navy.”
“Congratulations and thank you. I and Ariadne are going to need all the help we can get.” Ansel said with feeling.
“Now I need to get our honored guests back to the Pentagon. Care to ride with me Evana? You’ll have to share seat space with Admiral Caparelli though…”
“I already asked Ariadne about that. She said there was an extra seat. So there will be no sharing.” She replied with direct look, and then grinned in glee. “Now I finally get to fly in one. This will be a blast.”
“Fine with me, excuse me please, I need to go collect our honored guests.”
Ansel made his way back through the assembled crew to the podium area and waited patiently until the Admiral and General were available.
“Admiral Caparelli, General Owens, if you are ready to get back to the Pentagon?” Ansel asked with a grin.
They looked at each other and sort of sighed in unison then General Owens spoke for them both. “I suppose so, we don’t get out of the office very much and this has been very much like a holiday for us. But duty calls, if you don’t mind though I would like to ride with you. I have a few questions I need to ask you.”
“Do you want to speak in private? I had planned on bringing Evana along in Comanche but she can ride with Gunnar if you do.” Ansel said seriously to him.
“No, that’s fine with me. Besides I think I have a few questions for her too.”
“All right then. We will be over by Shoshone and Comanche when you are ready to leave.” Ansel then saluted the two General Officers and walked back to his ‘Scalp-Hunter’. He joined Evana and Gunnar there.
“Gunnar, Admiral Caparelli will be riding with you. General Owens will be riding with Evana and myself.
I do have a question of my own though. Do you know how to let the Pentagon Helipad people know we will be arriving with two of their General Officers?” He asked sheepishly.
Gunnar and Evana stared at him bemusedly then Gunnar said, “You know, this is a different experience for us. You always seem to know everything. We have just started to take that for granted and now you destroy that assumption.
And yes, I’ll take care of that little chore right now.” He said with a smile and headed for the ready room to put in their flight plan to the Pentagon through the flight controllers on duty.
* * *
Ansel and Gunnar Johansson are flying side by side at 50,000 feet doing Mach 6. The masking generators were off and the two ‘Scalp-Hunters’ were shining brightly. The news media had received calls from concerned citizens about the two UFO’s and camera trucks were all looking for the two as they would fly through their areas on the way to Washington D.C. and the Pentagon.
“Commander, I am going to be passing on my experiences in this lovely craft to all of my Air Force Officers and Enlisted men and wom
en. I expect an onslaught of applications for a training tour on board the Epiphany. Do you see any problem if that comes about?” General Owens asked.
“If we run out of room we’ll just build another for you to train on.” Ansel assured him.
“And along those lines, can you build us some aircraft if we give you the specifications?” The General continued.
“If the Congress and the President approve of our working arrangement with the Navy, then I think that would be a logical next step. I might be persuaded to ‘loan’ you a dozen or so for examination purposes first though. Sort of, as a down payment on our seriousness about a working relationship between you and the TSN.” Ansel replied.
The time passed by as quick as the ground below them did. Gunnar announced that they were now 10 minutes out and to follow him on in. Swiftly, quietly they moved through the sky and below them the News media was ramping up their coverage of the two ‘mysterious’ UFO’s heading to Washington D.C.
Then they were there and Gunnar had them dropping like a rock for the Pentagon’s Helipad. There were hundreds of people looking out the windows and Hundreds more on the ground watching the two TSN fighters arrive and settle over the Helipad with an eerie silence.
Admiral Caparelli and General Owens were on the ground and shaking Ansel’s and Gunnar’s hands and thanking them for the interesting day. Then they turned and walked off the pad toward the group of Officer’s and security police who were holding back the large group of people.
Ansel and Gunnar once again boarded their fighters and lifted straight up and disappeared into the overcast sky.
“Did you notice all of the Media Trucks and reporters out along the fence line?” Evana asked.
“Yes I did. We’re just doing our part to keep the TSN in the News you know.” Gunnar said facetiously from Shoshone.
“Actually we are doing our parts you know.” Ansel said seriously to the other two. “Now it’s time that we go to Companion. Then we leave immediately for the Persian Gulf. We need to be in position as soon as we can.
Admiral Webster has informed me that as of 0900 EST or 1200 GMT tomorrow he will deliver a declaration of War to the Secretary General of the United Nations. We will do the same to same to the IUR. As soon as they receive the declaration the Blockade will go up.”
“You keep saying blockade,” Evana said, “what you mean by the word and what I think the word means appears to be two different things. How is the TSN going to blockade an entire nation the size of the IUR with one vessel, no matter how big or capable it is?”
“I’ve been wondering when someone will ask that very question.” Ansel said in a melodramatic voice, he then continued on in a normal tone. “Once the Companion is in the location we’ve decided will give the Maximum psychological impact she will release several thousand shield generator drones. These drones will position themselves along the border of the IUR.
Once they activate they will generate a two dimensional shield that will extend to the next drone in the series until the entire border has a shield wall 50 miles high and 3 miles deep into the ground. The Companion’s reactors will provide the power to maintain that wall as long as we desire.
Once the wall is in place nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Not even gaseous atmosphere. It’s the only method we have currently that will absolutely prevent ‘Shaitan’s Breath’ from leaving the IUR.
Then they were landing and entering the landing zone on the Companion. Once the two fighters were secured they used the Trans-Portal system to go the Bridge of the Companion. Ansel looked around in pride and asked out loud.
“Did you miss me Ariadne?”
“Yes Dear, I did. Are you done playing now? We need to get a move on.” She came back over the speakers with a motherly tone in her voice.
“Sounds good to me,” Ansel continued, “although I do want to have one more piece of fun. Please unmask the Companion. I want them to see us sailing away, especially our ‘friends’ on the Guangzhou. Hopefully they can get some good photos for their Admirals and the central committee.” He said with a chuckle in his voice.
Preview of the first two chapters of TSN: The Best Laid Plans
The Companion set down gently onto the surface of the Arabian Sea only one hundred miles from the entrance to the Gulf of Oman.
She had sailed away from Task Force 14 at a rate of 50 knots and maintained that speed for an hour or so to test her general behavior and water borne maneuvering. Once she had gone back into full masking, the Gravity/phase drive was brought on-line and she had lifted out of the ocean and stabilized at 5,000 feet and headed for her appointment with the IUR.
Evana Thomas and Gunnar Johansson were in the Medical section under-going their first TSN implants. They would be receiving their internal Comm implant. After that was integrated then they would get the enhanced computational implant that allowed the ‘Slowtime’ process to work.
Ansel sat on the bridge with a command helmet covering his head. He was integrating himself with the Companion and her Primary AI. Once full integration was done, he as her Captain would have near instantaneous access to any system. Currently he was testing out each of the sixty point defense Gundecks. Each of these had two of the same Gatling laser/Metal Storm gun platform that the Epiphany used. One eight inch rail gun and four twenty millimeter rail guns.
He was expecting to need each of these stations in the next few days. Hopefully the IUR will realize that attacking the Companion was fruitless endeavor. And once all of the Weapon Stations were neutralized in the Persian Gulf Coast line that the current Iranian Unified Republic had claimed, and then the Companion would probably move to the Caspian Sea and just sit off the Coast where the people of Tehran would see them every day. Knowing that there wasn’t a damn thing they could do to rid themselves of their jailers.
He mused for a moment at how the IUR had so skillfully manipulated first Pakistan, when they had been in the throes of Tribal versus Government conflicts and then when they managed to do the same to the nascent Iraqi Republic. They really did understand the psyche of the peoples of their region. But when it came to understanding the Western nations, it was as though there was a filter on their reasoning that they just couldn’t remove.
“Ariadne, that’s the last of them, status and performance statistics please.” Ansel asked.
“Three Metalstorms failed to operate. Diagnostics indicate that they need to be replaced. We are going to have Fabrication take the faulty units and disassemble them to find out why. All other weapon Systems functioned as designed.
“Thank you, now let’s check out the Big Guns, Load and unload sequences and variable ammunition loads. Full charge and then slow discharge tests.
On and on they went checking out each major system in an orderly but rapid sequence. It was 0800 local by the time they were done.
“What’s the status on Evana and Gunnar?” Ansel inquired
“They are both doing well; the implantation of the Comm modules is done. Full integration will be approximately four days. They will be awake in an estimated 27 minutes but not certified for duty until forty eight hours from now.” She reported.
“Too bad, I was holding off in the hope that they would be able to watch this next evolution. No matter…
Please engage Gravity Phase Generators. Our beginning location for the Blockade will be on the international three mile border off of Bandar Abbas. Full masking is in effect until we set down.” Ansel directed,
Companion lifted out of the water gently, but a passing Oil tanker saw a fall of water from the hull as she left the ocean. The third officer was so impressed that he called the First to witness the event. Unfortunately for both, Companion was long gone by the time the First officer showed up at the bridge and ended up reaming the Third for disturbing him at breakfast over ‘nothing’.
0820L off of Bandar Abbas – Friday, November 13, 2026
Six hours forty minutes until delivery of Declaration of War between Terran Space Navy and
Iranian Unified Republic.
“Okay let’s set down and turn off the Masking.” Ansel directed Ariadne.
“Masking generators now are being placed into stand-by.” Ariadne announced 10 minutes later as the giant ship set down carefully. Her draft was so deep that she was sitting on the Seabed of the Strait of Hormuz.
“Let’s see how long it takes before we are noticed.” Ansel said quietly.
