answered the door and said, “May I help you?”
“Are you Maria Singh?”
“Yes I am.”
“I have something for you,” Jeremy said and handed her the letter from Alonso. The young woman took the letter, looked at the handwriting on it, and started crying. Jeremy continued, “I promised Al on Ross that if anything happened I would deliver this letter to you personally. He was my partner in the squad and he saved my life.”
“Come in please, sit down,” Maria said through her tears. Then she opened the letter and began reading it. Tears rolled down her face and finally she clutched the letter to her chest when she finished. Three young children were looking from around a corner and saw their mother crying. She saw them and motioned them to come in, and all three ran over and held onto her. She wiped her eyes and said, “It’s alright, children. This is a good friend of your father who has come to visit. He was there when your father died.”
The children looked at Jeremy with wide eyes and he said to them, “I’ll come back and tell you about your father if you like,” and then he looked at Maria and said, “if it’s alright with you.” She nodded her consent.
“Will you stay and have dinner with us, Mr. Watson?”
“Please call me Jer. Are you sure it’s okay?”
“Certainly. I’d like to hear what happened from you.”
After dinner, when the children had been put to bed, Jeremy told Maria about how Al had died while saving his life. He told her that if Al would have just left him, Al might still be alive, and that he felt responsible for his death. Maria looked Jeremy straight in the eye and asked, “Jer, if Al had fallen first, would you have run and left him behind?”
“No possible way!”
“Then how can you blame yourself for Al doing only what you would have done yourself?”
Jeremy looked into Maria’s eyes, and suddenly it was like the weight of the world was lifted from his shoulders. “There’s something else, Maria. I have received an award that I would have never had the chance to receive if it weren’t for Al saving me, and I think it belongs to you and your children.” Jeremy opened a small case and there inside was the Solar Star. Jeremy was the second marine recipient. Maria was deeply touched. “I’ve also requested that any benefits received by me for this award should be given to you and your children immediately. I told the Director that otherwise I would not accept it.” He then handed Maria a document signed by the Director of the Directorate, giving Maria full active wages of a general for life and full medical benefits for her family. It also awarded full scholarships for all her children to the learning institutions of their choice. Maria broke down and started crying in earnest. Jeremy took her in his good arm and held her until the tears stopped.
“Jer, will you come to see us and tell the children about their father?”
“I would be honored.”
“Maybe whenever you have the time you might take them out to play.”
“I look forward to it, Maria.”
Jeremy left and Maria re-read Al’s letter. At the end he wrote, “Maria, I love you with all my heart, and if you’re reading this, then I didn’t make it. The price I paid to protect you and the children was worth it. I need you to do something for me, my love. My squad partner Jeremy Watson will be bringing you this letter. He is one of the finest men I have ever known, and he’s alone now. His family died when he was young and he’s never had a serious relationship other than my friendship. I’m the closest thing he has to a family and if I’m gone, well, I’m worried about him making it. Maria, take care of him. I know that he will do all in his power to make sure you and the children are okay because he’s that kind of man. Open your heart to him. He deserves it, and so do you. I love you.”
Maria began crying again. Al was always so much wiser than anyone she ever knew. When she first read the letter she was angry at what Al suggested. Then she really looked at Jeremy and saw his love for her husband. She also saw that he and she shared that love and loss. In her heart, she knew Al would be smiling, and she knew that she had nothing to fear for herself or her children. One of the two bravest men in the galaxy was going to make sure she was taken care of, and she knew he would always be there. She began crying in earnest, but now they were tears of thankfulness. Perhaps she and Jeremy could heal together.
The Alliance main fleet arrived at Ross and began organizing into its units. The additional four hundred ships from Cainth were already present, waiting for the main fleet to arrive. Terl had notified Dorg that the Glod ships would arrive in twelve rotations and to wait until they got there. Dorg began having his fleet go through maneuvers to improve their ability at working together. He sent three dreadnoughts to the planet and had them drop a team of investigators to the surface to see what they could find out.
The Cleveland had already notified Earth command of the arrival of the four hundred Cainth ships. When the 1,200 ships of the main fleet arrived, Cleveland started a live feed of what it was seeing. On Earth in command headquarters, Kosiev, the general staff, the director, and the members of the special forces team, including Tag, watched the Alliance fleet go through its paces. Colonel Salerio said, “That is an awfully big fleet out there.”
Tag nodded, “There are more ships coming.”
Everyone in the room looked at him and the Director said, “How do you know that?”
“They haven’t left to attack us. They’re going through maneuvers to get the new units from Cainth worked into their structure. The four hundred Cainth ships have to be reinforcements, and that means they are waiting for more ships to arrive. I suspect that the Cainth are matching the ships coming from another source, so it will probably be four hundred more ships.”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Kosiev said. “How do you know it will only be four hundred more?”
Tag smiled and said, “I might be wrong, but in your first battle wasn’t there one Cainth Cruiser and one-what was that race called? — Glod, yeah, that’s it, Glod cruiser. And in the second battle, weren’t there two Cainth dreadnoughts and two Glod dreadnoughts? If nothing else, the Cainth are consistent.”
Kosiev smiled, looked at the screen, and said, “You surprise me with your observation skills; you’re probably right. That means we will be facing two thousand war ships. How do we go about handling them this time?”
We have six thousand plus ships; why should we even worry?” Colonel Salerio asked.
“Colonel,” Tag said, “what would be the response of the Alliance if we attacked with seven thousand ships and destroyed those two thousand ships?” Colonel Salerio just looked and Tag and said nothing. “Would anyone like to answer that question?” Tag asked.
There was silence, and then the spokesman for the Special Forces Team said, “The Alliance will mobilize every available ship and attack in force.”
“Does the general staff have an estimate of how many ships that might be?”
“Over twenty-five thousand within thirty days and another twenty-five thousand within sixty days,” Misty said.
“To destroy our planet, the Alliance would only need to get ten dreadnoughts through our defense to effectively bomb our civilization back into the Stone Age,” Tag said. “Our only chance of survival is to fight with a much smaller force than our attackers. That way they will always send a little bit larger force. How do you eat a two-thousand-pound sandwich? One bite at a time? We have to wear down the Alliance numbers in a series of battles until we have the chance to survive. We will probably take the war to the Alliance after this upcoming battle to move it away from Earth. We learned a lot in our first battle and we’ll be more effective in the upcoming conflict. Now that we know the smaller ships can help the larger ships with removing a load from their screens, Admiral Kosiev has developed a weave with five ships that has them constantly going through each other’s screen, spreading out the load. Our losses last time were because we didn’t know how we could help each other.”
General Masseem interjected, “But look at that fleet. There are five hundred dreadnoughts. Most of our fleet is composed of destroyer class ships. We don’t have enough empire class ships to handle that kind of fire power.”
Admiral Kosiev looked around the room and could see the fear on their faces, because the numbers appeared to be overwhelming. Then he stood up and addressed the assembled leaders of humanity. “I know that the force we’re facing seems overwhelming, but in our first battle, we lost eleven ships to our enemy’s two hundred. That’s almost twenty to one odds. Using that as a barometer, we’d still only need one hundred ships for those two thousand. I know, I know. This is a different order of magnitude than that first battle. I was skeptical before our first conflict that one hundred ships could handle two hundred. Now I believe we can handle those two thousand ships with five hundred or less, and let me tell you why. We learn and adapt and do it faster than the Alliance could ever hope to match. We have developed a weapon for our destroyer class ship that we believe will allow them to
