“What did we do with it?”
“We x-rayed and scanned it until we had an understanding of all the parts. Then we launched that glass globe out toward the edge of the universe at an oblique angle from us armed with a self-destruct command one thousand years in the future, or until someone stops it. Then we took the information we had gathered and had one of our Special Forces members work with a physicist to help him discover the new technology.”
“It’s the Coronado power cell, isn’t it?” Danielle asked.
The director shook her head and looked at Tag and said, “She is good! You’re right. Joe Coronado is given credit for inventing the power cell, and any Alliance investigation into the technology will show all the details of his research. We have been using this technology for ninety years now and have developed our warships using it. The Alliance was actually right to fear that technology.”
“Director, how many warships does the Earth have to defend it?”
“Tag, call me Misty. We’re being informal here. We have over six thousand that are armed with power cell technology. We have a class of battleships we have kept hidden that are quite powerful.”
Even Danielle was speechless. “How could we have built that many ships without anyone knowing?”
“That information is highly classified. Even the general staff doesn’t know the full number. We have only two spaceports on Earth, which is all we’re allowed on our planet. The Alliance never said anything about building construction facilities off planet. I think they assumed we would understand that we were only allowed two. But the actual written document says only two on Earth. So we have ship-building facilities carved out in the center of moons and large asteroids within our twenty light-year-limit. That’s why we patrol the limit; to ensure no one detects our shipyards. We have eighty-eight ship-building operations within ten light-years of Earth.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Tag asked.
“Because we’re about to have a meeting about our response to the Alliance’s occupation plans, and it’s important that you know what our capabilities are.”
“How do our ships match up with the best of the Alliance?” Danielle asked.
“We think we’re superior. We won’t know for certain until an actual battle is fought. One of our destroyer class ships destroyed two Alliance cruisers.”
“Wow,” said Tag.
“They even managed to use the cruisers’ own missiles to destroy each other. I think we are faster, our sensors are better, our weapons are stronger, and our screens are far ahead of them.”
“So why are you worried, Misty?” Danielle asked.
“The Alliance has more than twenty-five thousand ships among its 820 members ready for instant mobilization, and another twenty-five thousand if they’re needed. They could overwhelm us if they used them all to attack.”
“Then we’ll just have to take them on piece by piece until we get better odds,” Tag said. “By the way, I’ve noticed that the Directorate has relaxed the tight controls on Earth’s population.”
“Yes we have. They were put in place to prevent a close inspection by the Alliance. They had their place then, but now we need our people free to grow and develop naturally. The planet’s population has grown remarkably close and has a pride in our standing up to the Alliance threat.”
“Let’s hope we can protect them,” Tag said.
State Leader Sten had the Cainth ambassador in his office and was showing him the recording of the massacre at Ross’s star. “What do you think you were doing? This was to be peaceful occupation. My office assured the humans that they had six weeks to prepare for your arrival.”
“Sir, our military commander took it upon himself to take that action to make sure the humans would offer no resistance.”
“They didn’t offer any. They immediately surrendered.”
“I think it was for the benefit of the humans’ home world that it was done.”
“If there are any other mistakes like this, I will call for a censure of the Cainth Empire and will send an occupying force for your own worlds. Did you ever think that this might cause the humans to fight back?”
The Cainth ambassador was silent. Then Sten understood. Sten said, “That’s exactly what you hoped would happen. Now if they resist you have a reason to finally destroy the humans after your two hundred years of whining, and I can’t help them against a member of the Alliance. I also can’t in good conscience tell them that they will be treated fairly. Get out of my office. Your whole race sickens me.”
Chapter 25
A dmiral Kosiev looked around his bridge and thought, “My, how quickly things change. I’ve gone from captain to commodore to admiral in record time.” He was called into the general staff meeting by the Director and was told that he was being promoted to Grand Admiral over Fleet Operations. He was flabbergasted and asked why he was selected; there had to be other officers with more seniority.
The young man he had rescued from the moon spoke up and said, “Because you are the only Directorate naval officer to have actually had real combat experience against the Alliance. You also showed quick thinking and ingenuity when confronted by superior forces. You could have run but chose to fight because of the long-term consequences if you didn’t. Remember, Admiral, humans have been at peace for over four hundred years. We have to relearn how to defend ourselves, and we need to learn quickly. Our past has shown us that aggression only leads to destruction, so we have not had a naval rank higher than commodore, and this was deliberately done. We did not want anyone to know that we had enough ships to constitute a fleet. That’s why all your instructions were given through the general staff. I’m sure you assumed there were higher ranks, but there were not.”
“I have no experience in fleet exercises, or formations.”
“No one does, Admiral. That’s why I’m going to assist you in organizing your fleet units. I seem to have a certain flair for how things work together. We will begin training immediately for the retaking of Ross’s planet. You will have three hundred ships under your command for that mission, and I would suggest that you look at your duty roster from the ship that fought the Alliance ships, and I would recommend that a high percentage of your crew from the two Alliance attacks be spread out in command capacity in as many ships as possible. Plan to meet with me in two hours on board the Washington, which will be your flagship.”
Admiral Kosiev left the meeting almost in a daze and took a shuttle to the Washington. He had no idea what kind of ship it was, and he held his head in his hands all the way until docking. “Am I up to this responsibility?” he wondered silently.
“Sir,” Yeoman Lang said. “Do you want to see your new ship?”
“Yes,” he said. The view screen opened and there it was. He was amazed. It was seven hundred feet of pure white elegance hanging in space surrounded by a universe full of stars and shuttles unloading supplies. The clear armor shone brightly in the sun and he could see engine ducts at the rear of the ship that were enormous. “This ship will be fast,” he decided. He realized that if the engines match those ducts, it will fly faster than anything he had ever seen. He also noticed that the power cells on the surface were three times larger than the cells on his old destroyer, Moscow.
“Sir,” the yeoman interrupted his thoughts, “your new ship is powered by three new black hole reactors.”
“I didn’t think we had mastered that technology.”
“We did that over two years ago. We’ve been hiding these ships. A microscopic black hole sucks atoms into it, destroying them and generating power. The atoms then pass through the black holes’ back side and emerge in another part of the reactor as a different form of matter to repeat the process. These reactors have twenty times the power of the old fusion reactors. Your ship has three of them.”
“Do you know if the power cells can handle that much power?”
“You’ve probably already noticed how much larger the power cells are on your ship. They were originally designed to operate using a black hole reactor. Your ship can handle the full load of all three reactors and still have the capacity to absorb the energy of ninety primary lasers for storage. Your ship is, we believe, the fastest and deadliest ship in our arsenal. Your ship and its sister should be a handful for anyone to attack.”
“Who is her captain?”
