Solbidyum Wars Saga 6: Defeat of the Tottalax Page 2

  “Tibby, I warned you that someone would pay for your actions against me at Spelhes, Kendrop, and Gochian, and now I have kept that promise. For every one of my troops you killed or captured, I have killed thousands here in return. Thwart me again and more will pay elsewhere, I promise you.

  “You may believe you have crippled us at the battles of Spelhes, Kendrop, and Gochian, but those were only minor setbacks. Now we have newer and stronger ships. We are more powerful than ever. We know about your star doors, or whatever you call them, but even they cannot help you against the armada we have prepared. You do not have enough ships or gate contraptions to save you. Next time we meet I will have a surprise for you, Tibby, one you will not find so easy to defeat. However, I don’t want to tell you too much, after all, I want it to be a surprise for you.” The screen darkened.

  “By the stars, the man is insane,” Admiral Kophious declared.

  “Yes, and all the more dangerous because of it,” I said.

  “What do you think he meant by a surprise for you, Tibby?” Admiral Regeny asked.

  “Admiral, “I began, “I have no idea. A new weapon possibly. Knowing Ming it could be anything.”

  “I think I may be able to shed some light on that,” Admiral Wabussie began. “Our FSO agents have been picking up rumors that the Brotherhood has been building a new ship that is nearly twice the size of our largest starship. It is said to have five times the hangar areas of a ship like the DUSTEN, and it can carry over 30,000 troopers. It is heavily armed with just about every type of weapon imaginable. The rumor is that the Brotherhood have taken one of the solbidyum reactors, from a Federation planet or ship they captured, and are using it to power the ship. It’s alleged to have a functioning RMFF and cloaking as well.”

  “Let’s just hope they don’t have Cantolla Gates and the new communication systems we have now,” I replied.

  “We have no reports along those lines at this time.” Wabussie volunteered.”

  “This is bad,” Regeny said, “really bad. Caldemic was a pacifist world, the citizens did not believe in war and had no defenses. If the Brotherhood went there and destroyed innocent and helpless people like this, it will be terribly demoralizing to the other pacifist planets in the Federation. They may simply decide to surrender to the Brotherhood and face their fates as slaves rather than face annihilation.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “or they will see that while there is nothing wrong with wanting peace and striving for peace, that you cannot stand idly by thinking tyrants won’t bother or touch you simply because you are a pacifist. I hope they will see that sometimes the only way to stop a bully or tyrant is to stand up against them and fight.”

  “I hope you are correct, Tibby,” Regeny said, “the Federation military has been up against the opposition of these pacifists for years, and if they had their way, well, we’d all be under the control of the Brotherhood right now, because there would have been no one to stop them.”

  “Exactly, Admiral,” and that’s the message we need to convey now. Hopefully, the pacifist planets in the Federation will see that.”

  “So what actions do you think we should be taking at this time?” Stonbersa’s voice came from across the table.

  “As soon as we get reports back from our recon teams after they have scouted out Windsor, I want an armada ready to attack and take the planet. I want it done with stealth, negligible collateral damage, and minimal casualties. Let’s capture the planet and use it as a Federation outpost. We’ll show the Brotherhood that we can take their worlds, too.”

  There was a look of shock on the faces of almost everyone in the room except for Captain Slater, who said, “You do realize that Ming will be totally outraged by this?”

  “I’m counting on it,” I said.

  “Ming won’t stand for it. He'll come back fully resolved to destroy the planet rather than let the Federation claim it,” Slater stated.

  “Precisely! And when he does we’ll be waiting for him. Instead of us running around hunting for Ming and the Brotherhood, we’re going to set the battlefield and make them come to us.”

  “Tibby, I don’t mean to ruin your plans here,” Regeny began, “but Ming could wait a year or more before he decides to come back and destroy Windsor. We can’t afford to have a fleet of ships tied up there waiting for him to return while he is elsewhere attacking other Federation planets.”

  “I don’t plan for us to have an entire armada sitting there waiting for him," I replied. My idea is to have a number of patrol ships set up further out, just beyond Windsor’s solar system, with gravitation detecting equipment that will spot the Brotherhood ships arriving. As soon as they are detected, we will rush ships through Cantolla Gates to Windsor from wherever they are, and have them waiting when Ming gets there. We won’t need to have more than one or two frigates, a few hundred fighters, and patrol ships in place, plus whatever troops we have on the ground. We can have a fleet there in a few hours, if and when they are needed.”

  “But what are you going to do once the Brotherhood arrives?” Admiral Regeny asked. “It’s a stalemate. We have cloaked and shielded ships, and now the Brotherhood does also. You don’t think Ming will attack us with unprotected ships again, do you? True, neither side has RMFF capabilities for fighters and patrol ships, and we may, I repeat, MAY, still have the advantage of the gravitational detectors which allow us to target their smaller ships. However, we don’t know that the Brotherhood hasn’t figured that out, and even so, if they keep their smaller ships aboard their starships, it’s only a stalemate at best.”

  Regeny was right. I hated to admit it; he was right. In frustration I blurted out, “We’ll do something. Let me talk to A’Lappe and Cantolla about it.”

  “Tibby, A’Lappe and Cantolla have done incredible things the past five years, but you can’t expect them to keep pulling nasal hairs from the beaks of muhening birds all the time, you know.”

  “He’s right,” Stonbersa interjected. "A'Lappe and Cantolla have made huge scientific advancements, so much so that the Federation Science Committee wants to give them recognition as being two of the foremost scientists today. However, you can’t expect them to solve every problem every time.”

  I sighed and rubbed my eyes with my left hand. I realized I was feeling very tired. “All right, I concede, it’s asking a lot of them. However, let me try to see what they come up with. In the meantime, I want to see things moving forward as though we have a solution at hand. I still want us to take Windsor, even if Ming does come back and destroy it later. Does anyone object to that?” It was silent about the table. “Then we are agreed. We move forward with this and hope we can come up with a viable plan for defeating, not stalemating, the Brotherhood when they try and retake or destroy Windsor later.”

  “Wabussie,” I said as I turned to him, “Do you think you can get an operative or two down on Windsor? We could have the recon teams drop them off. I’d like to know what's going on down there before we make any attacks.”

  Wabussie replied, “Actually, I have two there already. They should have arrived last week, but I’ve not received any reports from either of them since before they arrived.”

  “Is that something we should be alarmed about?” I asked.

  “No, not really, at least not so far. They have orders not to make any reports, unless they have something major to report. The fewer times they contact us the safer their cover is and the less likelihood there is of them being discovered. I should be receiving a report soon. However, we’d like to get one about every four to five weeks, just so we know the operatives are still alive and doing well.”

  “So I’m taking it that the operatives have some access to a new instant communication system?” I said.

  “They are using the DSC communicators. The messages are instantaneous and impossible to intercept. The system is ideal for covert intelligence operations, except for the fact that we cannot convey visual data,” Wabussie replied.

  “I’ll want to kn
ow as soon as you hear from them anything that they have to report.”

  After our meeting had adjourned, I headed to my new office/headquarters area aboard the DUSTEN. This was something different as in the past Admirals aboard the flag ships had their suites with a small office, but they never had a full office headquarters/command area with staff, and they tended to conduct most of their meetings in any one of the large conference rooms aboard the starships. However, now with a war going on and all the activity associated with running not only the first fleet, but being in command of all three fleets, I needed a full-time staff and dedicated meeting rooms. I also needed these offices close so everything could be run efficiently.

  I had not been able to find a way to eliminate the need for a full complement of body guards where ever I went, but they were learning to be less obvious in most places, except the halls. By the stars, I hated going through the halls, two troopers preceding me and two following, stamping their feet in unison as they marched me through the halls from one destination to another. Secretly, I had been plotting in my mind to find some way to develop new silent foot gear that would be mandatory for Trooper bodyguards while aboard ship. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to find the time to work the idea out, so I still needed to endure the stomp, stomp, stomp that paraded me everywhere I went. After we were inside the confines of our shipboard headquarters area, two of the guards took up stations inside the main doors, and the other two took up stations at the doors of whatever room or office I was in.

  One of the new features within the ship's command area that I really liked was a gigantic War Room that had a huge holographic display capability. It was possible to produce 3D interactive holographic images of anything from a small area of just a few cubic meters to a scaled-down 3D image of the entire galaxy, complete with all the stars. You could walk into the field if you liked and look at planetary systems, superimpose ships and fleets into it and re-construct or simulate battle scenes. While most of the technology had existed for nearly a century, it was A’Lappe and Cantolla, working on ideas and recommendations from Captain Slater of the Mars colony, which led to the development of the War Room.

  The room could be tied into ship's sensors so it could display real time battle actions going on outside the ship within the confines of a solar system. The room was circular with three stepped seated rows of chairs for officers and observers. There was a fourth inner ring with consoles for the admirals, their captains, and others involved in the battle planning. The DUSTEN was the first Federation starship to be equipped with the new War Room, but once it had been seen by Admiral Regeny and the other admirals, it was decided that all the starships needed them. I convinced Regeny of the need for a War Room like this on the new carrier ships we were having built as well; the first of which was soon to be commissioned and would be named the MAXETTE, after First Citizen, Captain Maxette had died during the first battle to recover the DUSTEN after the Brotherhood began their attacks on the Federation.

  With the new system, it was possible to feed data into the ship's computer from intelligence reports of sightings of Brotherhood ships, and the locations of the sightings would be displayed within the 3D hologram by means of a symbolic 3D ship model, and displayed in a bright day-glow pink model. Federation ships and their locations were displayed by actual ship-scaled models of a day-glow green color. Fleets of ships usually were just displayed by a single ship of the largest type in that fleet; but if you zoomed in or scaled up, as the case may be, at a certain size the individual ships would appear in the appropriate ship design and scale. While all of this was extremely impressive, and most useful, the thing I could not comprehend was the immense amount of data storage and processing power the computer needed to produce all this in real time. As more data arrived and was put into the computer and displayed in the 3D model, a picture was emerging that was most frightening.

  Up until this point, we had no idea how large the Brotherhood was, nor the extent of their range around the Federation. What we saw in the model was pockets all around the rim of the Federation of Brotherhood fleets, the size of each fleet unknown in most of the cases. There were thousands of them, far more than we had ever imagined. Had they all joined up into one massive fleet, they could have swept through the center of the Federation, mowing down every planetary system in their path. Instead, they had divided up, conducting raids on the outer planetary systems, drawing the Federation military to respond in given areas and then, when ships had been diverted from other areas, they would swoop in and attack those planets left poorly defended in another area. They were running the Federation ragged trying to respond to each attack. It reminded me of a documentary I had once seen about a predatory animal we had back on Earth called wolves and how they hunted. The other disheartening thing was that while the Federation continued to possessed stronger, and superior, warships, the Brotherhood had us heavily outnumbered in total ships. The only way we could hope to succeed would be to use more Cantolla Gates for deploying ships into trouble areas as quickly as possible, and to keep building ships and recruiting more troopers.

  “Admiral,” Marranalis spoke up from beside me, “The representative from the Ruwallie Rasson mercenary group is here to meet with you.”

  “Ah, good! Have him join me here. I think seeing this display may cause the mercenaries to feel even more confident about joining us in this fight,” I said.

  A year earlier, during a visit to the planet Goo’Waddle, when Jenira had faced the challenge of the Ruwallie Rasson for the right to bear swords, a number of them asked to serve as a mercenary military unit, allied with the Federation in the fight against the Brotherhood. Just how much of that was because of their hatred of the Brotherhood, and how much was because the Federation allowed them to keep the ships and goods of the Brotherhood they captured, I wasn’t sure of. Nevertheless, their help was appreciated. Up until this point, there had been no really organized efforts for the Federation forces and the Ruwallie Rasson to fight together, and the Ruwallie Rasson just attacked the Brotherhood wherever they found them. It was decided that it might be more beneficial if we coordinated our efforts to achieve better results, and today’s meeting was to be the first step in achieving that goal.

  When the leader of the mercenary group entered, I immediately felt there was something familiar about him. Like all the Ruwallie Rasson, he was very dark skinned to the point of almost being black. Most Ruwallie Rasson carried one sword, either on the side or on the back; recognized warriors wore two swords strapped to their back, and this one wore two. It was when I noted the two swords that I immediately recognized this Ruwallie Rasson warrior as Nybidong, the same swords master who had fought Jenira a year earlier.

  “Greetings, Nybidong,” I said as he approached.

  “Greetings First Citizen Admiral Tibby,” he replied, “I am surprised that you know who I am.”

  “I was at your fight last year on Goo’Waddle when Jenira faced you in her challenge in the right to bear swords,” I answered.

  “Ah,” he said with a slight let down tone, “Never have I seen anyone with such skill. I realized very quickly in the contest that she was merely playing with me, and when she allowed me to score a cut on her the first time I thought it but a mistake on her part, but when I scored the second, I realized it was deliberate, but I could not fathom why. But then, when she started to really fight, by the stars, if it had been a fight to the death, I would surely have been a dead man. From that moment on I was totally on the defensive; I could make no offensive strikes at all. Her catas were a blur of motion, and I was fighting harder than I ever have any time in my life. Even so she beat me with such ease that I was ashamed and embarrassed. I felt bad that I had let my Ruwallie Rasson brothers down. Not only was I beaten by a woman, but she was not even a Ruwallie Rasson. However, I do not feel so badly now, for we have learned that Jenira is of Ruwallie Rasson blood, even if her skin is white.”

  “Oh?” I responded, “I’d not heard that.”

&nbs
p; “Oh yes,” we have learned that her great, great, grandmother on her mother’s side was once a Ruwallie Rasson concubine slave, and her master was the greatest swordsman ever to have lived. Quite obviously his genes live on in her. We believe that Padaran is also of Ruwallie Rasson lineage, but so far we have not been able to prove that.” I had to suppress a grin at his comments as surely he was trying to justify the defeat of two Ruwallie Rasson warriors by outsiders of another race. Nevertheless, Jenira was from Goo’Waddle, and it was possible that in her past some Ruwallie Rasson trader had owned one of her ancestors as a slave and might actually be an ancestor. If the rationalization made it easier for the Ruwallie Rasson to accept Jenira and Padaran, so be it. I wasn’t going to try to change anyone’s mind on the matter.

  “So, Nybidong, you’re the leader of the Ruwallie Rasson mercenary forces?”

  “I am. After I was defeated by Jenira and after seeing Padaran become a leader of the Ruwallie Rasson, many of us have come to realize that it is the gods’ will for us to assist the Federation in this battle against the Brotherhood. Jenira and Padaran are the gods’ way of showing us this.” At this point, Nybidong noticed the holographic display filling the room and his eyes went wide. “What is this?” He said as he walked forward like he was being drawn to the display by a gigantic magnet.