the fleet academy and the outright adoration of everyone he encountered only served to make him feel like he should have just stayed dead. How could he possibly live up to the legend that had been built around him? “Oh, well, I’ve never met a legend before. At least my actions saved the fleet.” He then thought about Tag and how he now looked as old as he did. According to what he had been told, he had died more than twenty six years ago but Tag did not look twenty six years older. As he thought about it, Danielle didn’t either. “I’ll have to ask him about that.”
Then he leaned back on the couch and Twig entered his mind and began the transfer of information. He closed his eyes and felt the rush of new knowledge. He stayed like that for two days which only seemed like a couple of hours.
Twig began the transfer and sorted the information into his memory centers and organized it so that it would make it seem like he had lived all of the time that he had been gone. She also looked into his mind and got a full account of the war between the Realm and her race. She was amazed that the humans had worked to prevent the destruction of her species after all the worlds that the Algeans had destroyed and harvested. “I’ve got to share this with Sprig,” she thought and then focused on the transfer.
Kosiev opened his eyes and blinked. “Wow, a lot has happened,” he looked at Twig and said, “Thank you. It’s like I’ve been here living all of this history. Now I know what I’ve missed. I also noticed that you’ve given me a full understanding of the new ships, weapons, and teleportation devices.”
“Admiral, how can you be an asset if you don’t know how everything works? I suspect you will be put to work shortly.”
“I really hope so, Twig. At least I won’t be lost now in the details. How did you do this?”
“We’ve learned how to download information in tremendous quantities and organize it. This transfer was really rather simple and I think that if you focus on a problem you’ll find what you need to know in your mind now.”
Kosiev smiled and stood up, “It’s time to go to work. I’m truly glad we came to be friends with your species. I would have never guessed that we would become friends during the time of our conflict.”
“You have Queen Rose and Admiral Dorg to thank for that.”
Kosiev frowned and said, “I wish he were still alive. I grew to have a tremendous respect for that Cainth. We could use him now.”
Twig lifted her limbs indicating a smile and said, “We feel the same way about you, Admiral.”
Kosiev smiled and, “Thank you again; I hope I can meet your expectations. Do you know if Cade McAllister is still around?”
“Yes he is; he’s retired and living on Ross.”
“Will you give me his com number; I need to talk with him about an idea I have.”
Twig put the number in Kosievs’ mind and he left the library to make a call.
Five days later Tag, Danielle, Rose, Tommy, Cassandra, Tgon-Gee, Admirals Mikado, O’Donald, and recently promoted McAnn were in the map room of Castle Gardner discussing the upcoming battle with the Captors. Tommy said, “We have to attack within twelve weeks. The places in space that the Captors use to see the universe will be cooled enough for them to find us in sixteen weeks. We have to prevent them from seeing the planets of the Realm. We’re only going to have 150,000 ships to fight more than four million of the Captors and if you look at their world you’ll see that they are staged in multiple layers expecting us to come.”
Danielle looked at Tommy and said, “Why can’t you heat those nerve centers again?”
Cassandra shook her head and said, “Last time I entered one of those centers, I almost exploded the energy particle in it. If I had, it would have created at new universe with a big bang. I’ve gotten a better feel for what is happening in that particle and I don’t think that it will endanger our universe but I also sense that now is not the time for it to happen. I don’t know for certain what the consequences would be if it happened too soon.”
Admiral Mikado frowned and said, “How are we going to do this? Are we just going to jump in and start shooting or do you have another plan?”
Tommy looked at Cassandra and saw that she was letting him come up with the strategy for the battle but Tommy was just not certain if what he was planning would work. “If we just jump in and start shooting, we will be barraged by millions of those energy balls that can destroy our ships. We have to come up with a strategy that allows our ships to escape those barrages.”
The door to the map room opened and Admiral Kosiev and Cade McAllister entered. “I hope you don’t mind if we join you,” Kosiev said. “I understand you are working on the battle plans for the upcoming campaign against the Captors.”
Rose stood and went to meet Kosiev and said, “We are and you’re certainly welcome to join us. We just thought that you needed some time to get up to speed.” She then hugged him and indicated two chairs at the end of the table. “Hello, Colonel McAllister, I thought you were retired.”
“I am your Majesty, but Admiral Kosiev contacted me and asked me some questions that generated my interest.”
Tag looked at his two old friends and said, “Uh oh, you have that look on your faces.”
Kosiev smiled and said, “Some things never change.” He then set a bag of popcorn on the table with a drink and said, “You’re stuck on how to attack without losing ships.”
Tommy did a double take and said, “As a matter of fact we are. How did you know that?”
“It’s obvious. However, I want to discuss an idea I have about getting the numbers even before we take them on ship to ship.”
Tommy cocked his head to the side and said, “I’m all ears.”
Kosiev looked at McAllister and he stepped out of the room and came back in holding a white ball about four feet in diameter. Kosiev leaned back and said, “This is a ball made of Coronado Power Cells. I learned that we are now able to mold the cells into any shape we need.”
Tommy looked at the ball and said, “Is this something significant?”
McAllister said, “What would happen if we pushed this ball into the skin of the Kosiev?”
Cassandra immediately said, “It would take on the characteristics of the skin.”
“Exactly, and if it were put in next to the dark matter inside that skin,” Kosiev asked?
Cassandra thought a moment and said, “It would probably absorb some of the dark matter into it and then float back to the surface.”
Kosiev smiled and said, “That’s what I thought. Right now you fire the penetrators through the skin of the Kosiev and send a piece of dark matter at the target. It’s similar to firing a projectile weapon in that the dark matter cannot change direction once it leaves the skin. If you fire it too far away, the Captors just move away which means you have to close to use it effectively.” Kosiev took a handful of popcorn and put it in his mouth and began chewing it.
Tommy watched him and said, “Is there a point here?”
Kosiev smiled and said, “I checked on the penetrators we used in our last battle with the Algeans and found out that we still have two million in our stockpile.”
Rose said, “Those weapons have no affect on the Captors. Their screens stop them with no damage.”
Kosiev said, “What would happen if each of those penetrators had one of these balls in it instead of hornets and that ball fired the dark matter into the Captor upon impact?”
The room was silent. Everyone thought about what Kosiev said and Tag said, “Then the dark matter would be pushed into the Captors screens,”
“Exactly,” said Kosiev. “You use the old two screen penetrators and jump them less than a mile from the Captor. The penetrator will accelerate before it jumps so it should come out of its jump at full speed and cover that distance in less than a hundredth of a second.”
Tommy thought furiously and said, “But you have to know the exact location of the ships you target in order to jump it in that close and there are millions of them that are constantly moving. It would be next to impossible to target them on individual ships.”
Kosiev looked at McAllister again and he went back to the door, opened it, and nodded. Twig and Sprig entered and Kosiev said, “Tell them what you’ve seen in the Captor’s system.”
Sprig looked around the room and said, “I guess you wonder how we would target the penetrators?” He looked around the room and saw everyone looking at him so he continued, “Normally the Captors are moving around their system but I’ve seen Cassandra’s view of their system and they have changed their tactics anticipating our
