Tgon-Gee chuckled and said, “Those Humans have some very descriptive sayings. I’ve thought about it but like you said, we don’t have an invitation. That’s odd, what’s the Alliance fleet doing?”
Dorg looked at his feed and said, “I don’t know. I wonder what they’re up to now.”
After two days of scanning the solar system the Alliance fleet had finally reached the orbit of Earth’s moon. The planet was totally surrounded by the Alliance fleet and then suddenly, half the fleet turned and accelerated away from the planet toward the Star drive limit. The Vgrig Warleader issued his instructions over the main Alliance frequency. “Half the fleet will now go to the Star drive limit to make sure no ships from outside the system jumps in to trap us. Start the Dreadnaughts draining of the screen and no ships get closer than 50,000 trigs. Keep me informed of your progress.” One hundred dreadnaughts moved in position to start draining each of the eight asteroids circling the planet. They established their orbit to stay even with the Asteroid they were assigned to drain. The Lead dreadnaught commander Brantu ordered his ships to start draining the Human’s screen. Eight hundred beams shot out simultaneously and struck the eight asteroids.
Tag and Taz had watched the Alliance fleet advance closer and closer over the two day period and waited for them to arrive at earth orbit. When they finally did and half the Alliance fleet turned and ran to the star drive limit it genuinely surprised both of them. “Well, that’s something I hadn’t planned on,” Tag said. “It seems our Alliance neighbors are suspicious of our intentions. I guess this changes the number of invitations we send out.”
Taz laughed at Tag’s humor and said, “So what is the plan now?”
“Colonel, I’m not sure that we can trick them in close. If they are so worried that half their fleet leaves, I just don’t see anyone getting close to the planet unless the screen just goes completely down. Even then I suspect they will fire a few nuclear missiles at some of our population centers to make sure we’re not bluffing. Do you think differently?”
“You think they’ll stay away even if we let a few shots get through?”
“Put yourself in their place. Their commander has seen firsthand how powerful your weapons are on these asteroids. Would you get close under any circumstances?”
They watched their monitors and the ships surrounding Earth moved no closer than 70,000 miles. “You’re probably right. What do you want to do?”
“How are the dreadnaughts affecting your screens?”
“They are actually draining a huge amount. If they could stay at it for a year they could probably get us down to dangerous levels. I would have thought we could hold our own with solar energy but whatever system they designed really takes energy.”
“Is there anything you can do about it?”
“We can send them more energy than they can handle. They are outside our beam range but they give us a perfect conduit to fire a needle thru their beams into their ships. It will give us a chance to try the new larger needle. With the oversized Coronado Cells, the size of the circle got much bigger with nine foot cells. We can fire more than 3000 hornets in each of those beams and not even worry about them touching the sides of the beam.”
“Hold off on that, we need to decide what to do about this divided fleet.” Tag touched his control panel and commed Kosiev, “What do you think about the Alliance tactics, Admiral?”
“It does present a problem with preventing their escape. Half their fleet could just jump out of trouble any time they chose. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that the Vgrig Warleader had a little fear in him. I notice he placed his ship in the middle of the fleet out near Jupiter. I’d say we got his full attention on his last visit. Kosiev paused and said, “If he’s that afraid, I don’t think you could trick them in close. You would have to be willing to lose some population centers before any of them approached the planet.”
“Colonel Taz and I have reached the same conclusion. Do we just destroy those ships around the planet? I don’t see the outer ships coming in to support the ones in close. Do you?”
“No, once they see we have more than the ninety or so ships they think we have, I expect Chicken Little out there to make a run for it.” Kosiev paused and said, “We could cut their numbers down, though.”
“How?” Tag asked.
“We have the ultra ships. Where do you think they will try to escape to if they run?”
“Probably back to the Alliance main government planet where they jumped in from.”
Kosiev reached into a bag of popcorn and munched a few kernels then said, “We could jump all the Ultra ships to the Alliance system and be waiting for them to jump in. As they enter normal space we could hit them with needles. I could have the ships running full speed crisscrossing thru their arrival location so we could catch a large number of them before they realize what’s happening.”
Tag thought about the idea and said, “We’d be giving away the existence our new ship.”
“We would probably do that anyway. There’s not a realistic probability that we could destroy all 17,000 Alliance ships. Some would escape with recordings to share with their leadership. I see no good reason not to use them in this battle.”
“Well, I don’t have another plan to use, so we might as,” “Tag!” He suddenly heard in his mind.
“Hold on just a minute, Admiral. Danielle, what’s wrong. I notice your thought has levels of distress.”
“Tag, I was talking with Tgon-Gee a few minutes ago and he mentioned that if you were successful in defeating this Alliance fleet that it was a good thing that the Asteroids were in place. When I asked him why; he told me that there were at least fifty other races that would jump at the chance to attack his home world if the Alliance wasn’t there to stop them. I didn’t give it much thought then but it has been bothering me. I called Terl and asked how many of the Alliance members had feuds with each other. Tag, he said more than 90 % would attack another member if they could get away with it. If you go thru with the destruction of this Alliance fleet, will the Alliance collapse? If they do, how many lives will be lost because of our actions?”
Tag was stunned. He saw the truth in her words. “It would be like the Grendap and Procians on a massive scale.” Tag could visualize the nuclear holocaust that would ensue.
“Tag, we can’t let that happen,” Danielle thought. “We would lose our souls if we caused that much loss of innocent life.”
“Let me think about this, Danielle. I’ll let you know what we plan to do but we may have no choice but to defend ourselves.”
“Admiral, what do you think will happen to the Alliance if we destroy their fleet?” Tag asked Kosiev.
Kosiev was bewildered. “Did you just come up with that thought? You change directions too fast for me to keep up. To answer your question; I have no idea. Quite frankly, I don’t really care. They chose to attack us and they are responsible for their actions.”
“Admiral, what did we do after we defeated the last Alliance fleet?”
“We went to get revenge on the Cainth.”
“Now I want you to consider your next few answers carefully, Admiral. How do you feel about the Cainth now?”
Kosiev was silent for a long time. “We came very close to destroying another race that is now our friend and Ally. If they had fired one shot, they would have been wiped out.”
“What stopped us from doing it before?”
“The Alliance.” Kosiev said. “Tag what are you trying to say?”
“Admiral, Tgon-Gee and Terl both have confirmed that more than 90 % of the Alliance members would attack another member but for fear of the Alliance. Do you want the blood of billions of innocent lives on your hands if we bring the Alliance down?”
Kosiev just looked at Tag on his monitor. He could see cities burning and planets disrupted by heavy space weapons. He could visualize it in small part because he had almost gone thru with the destruction of the Cainth. “No,” he finally said. “I don’t want to cause that; however, I’m a military man and I’ve sworn to protect our world. I don’t see a way out of avoiding battle with this fleet.”
“Then I think I have a plan.” Admiral Kosiev and Colonel Taz listened to Tags ideas and they started nodding their heads after questioning him for thirty minutes. Kosiev thought that perhaps they could make it work.
Chapter 14
