Defying the Prophet: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 2) (19 page)

Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, flunked geography. 
— Robert Byrne

Fleet Admiral Roger Kalis arrived at Minnos in mid-November as estimated, with the Confederate 1
st
Fleet, including four more converted missile-battleships, and the yet unconverted battleship CSS
Defiant
.
Defiant
still bristled with her original armament of twin 5 and 3.5-gigawatt pulse-laser turrets, in addition to her three massive turrets containing nine 16-gigawatt pulse-lasers. Upon hearing that
Defiant
had arrived in-system, Admiral Stillman immediately requested she be assigned to his Confederate 2
nd
Fleet, so she could act as his flagship.  

Kalis quickly acquiesced to Stillman’s request, as he knew that Ben had been Chris Rawley’s exec when he had commanded
Defiant
back in the early 3850’s. Kalis fully understood Stillman’s desire to “go home again,” surrounding himself with the fond memories of Rawley that being back aboard the old girl would stimulate in Ben’s mind. Kalis suspected that when it came time to face down the alien kitties, the ghost of Christopher Rawley would do Ben Stillman more good than an entire hold of ship-killer missiles. — “Boobs” Fletcher, on the other hand, might come as a bit of a shock to him.

* * * *

Upon being notified of being named Supreme Allied Commander, Kalis assumed command with his usual confident aplomb, almost as if it was inevitable and expected nothing less. Melendez was startled when Bozo immediately responded to Kalis’ first interrogatory. It appeared that, during the entire war, no one had thought to rescind Kalis’ access authorization to the Federal Defense Command Master Computer, after his defection to the Confederacy. 

Kalis immediately reviewed the progress of preparations for the impending invasion first thing, and then personally viewed every frame of combat video retrieved from shipboard cameras that survived the self-destructs.  He drove himself relentlessly, taking little time for meals, sleep or anything else normally associated with healthy living. He read every report, and re-interviewed virtually every Alliance Fleet officer who had fought the aliens in space and survived to tell their tale. Kalis was not a young man, and people became concerned for his health as he worked himself past mere exhaustion.

Kalis felt that humanity’s retribution for the aliens’ attempted invasion of Minnos had been delayed by the search for their enemy beyond what the average man on the street could tolerate, and he wanted to hit back at them just as soon as physically possible. Normal missile loads had to be remixed, as anti-fighter missiles and heavy-yield ship-killers would be unnecessary against the destroyer-grade armor on the enemy warships, but medium-yield missiles were at a premium. Fortunately, Vice Admiral Turner had reached that the same decision earlier and had already placed emphasis on medium-yield missile production throughout the entire Alliance — just as Fleet Admiral Kalis had done throughout the Confederacy, after the Bozo Jr. on Ginia had given him a “heads-up.”

* * * *

Upon transferring his flag to
Defiant
, Admiral Ben Stillman conducted a through inspection to reminisce, ascertain her current battle readiness, and familiarize himself with her officers and crew. Captain Dorothy Fletcher gave him the guided tour, and Stillman was amazed at the amount of modernization they’d been able to accomplish to the old girl’s antiquated systems. All new state-of-the-art fire-control scanners found individual targets for each of the 61 pulse-lasers that made up her main and secondary armament. Each weapon now also had individual targeting computers locked into those dedicated new scanners to create 61 totally autonomous, automated fire control systems. These could also be slaved to the ship’s main fire-control computer, which in turn was interfaced to the ship’s new master artificial intelligence that had been designed and built by a German company based in Joja.

All new carrier-grade reactors provided 37% more power than her old ones. New electronics and modernizations were evident literally everywhere. Even the old bulkheads glistened with coats of fresh paint. Stillman’s aide had seen to his personals being moved into Christopher Rawley’s old stateroom, which now looked nothing like the room that he remembered Chris sleeping and working in. It had been totally redesigned to function as an admiral’s stateroom and it now reminded Ben of the one night he’d spent in the honeymoon suite at a five-star hotel on his wedding night — not that he’d really been paying
that
much attention to the accoutrements of the room at the time.
Defiant
might be the last remaining “all gun” battleship in existence, but she was totally awesome and Ben wouldn’t change a thing.
Except maybe…

Captain Fletcher stupefied Ben Stillman from the moment he was first piped aboard. She obviously ran a tight ship and had to be an extremely competent officer to have been given command of a battleship, but God… Dorothy Fletcher was without doubt the most physically perfect woman Ben could have never imagined. She radiated a raw sexual gravity that could turn grown men into quivering blobs of jelly. And she was obviously as smart as she was stunning. 

She appeared to be in her late 30’s to early 40’s… damned young to having achieved her captaincy, even during wartime. Trim with delicate china-doll features and shoulder length hair just a shade more yellow than pure white, Fletcher was also endowed with disconcertingly large… uh…
lungs
— a feature that very probably required double or triple stitching to prevent the buttons on her tortured uniform tunic from being classified as a flying debris hazard. Ben had had to pick up his eyes from where they had virtually fallen out of his head and were rolling around on the deck. He’d literally wrenched his head to lift his gaze by brute force of will, only to immediately be captured by her equally disconcerting, bright turquoise eyes. 

So this is what it feels like, to be struck by lightning!

How in the hell was he supposed to work around this woman without embarrassing himself? His tent pole was likely to go on full automatic at any given moment. Just the sound of her sweet, baby-doll voice made him twitch and looking at her… God… looking at her made his tongue thicken. The whole damned fleet was probably thinking he was a dirty old man, who requested
Defiant
as his flagship just to get close to the incredible Dorothy Fletcher. 

Fleet Admiral Kalis really should have warned me.
The old fart is probably laughing his scrawny old ass off. 

* * * *

Alliance Press (AP): Nork – News Flash (11/30/64)

McAllister Wins Presidency!
  —  Admiral Arlene McAllister has won a landslide victory in this year’s presidential election, winning all but Io, home planet of rival Senator James Fairland. McAllister had been heavily favored in light of the current alien war. Her emergence from the recent War of Confederate Independence with her reputation untarnished led to her high popularity within the Fleet and obviously carried over to the public at large.

* * * *

With the robotic peripheral Bozo designed finally completed, Admiral Enrico Melendez had the Fleet techs hook it up to the main computer console in the lab, where he watched as the little mechanical beastie hummed and buzzed, as it examined the alien artifacts. It moved about on a tracked mechanism and utilized its manipulator arms, having multiple tool attachments, to disassemble some subassemblies as it probed the alien technology for clues to their inner workings. The peripheral not only possessed normal microscopic optics capabilities, but also viewed everything from infrared to ultraviolet. Eventually, Melendez got bored just watching and left Bozo to complete whatever it was doing on its own.

He initially intended to go back to his office, but became lost in thought as he walked, and found himself outside the facility where the captured aliens were housed. As military governor of the planet, Melendez had no difficulties getting past security to enter the containment area and was unsurprised to find Vice Admiral Bat Masterson standing in a darkened area, observing the aliens through a one-way mirror. Bat had been spending an inordinate amount of time doing that lately… just watching and absorbing
who-knows-what
through that weird
sixth-sense
of his. He hadn’t shared any of his patented insights as yet, but Melendez wasn’t too concerned. Bat’s revelations came when they came, and whatever Bat chose to do with his time, Melendez had no doubts that it would pay unique dividends for them all in the future. 

“Anything?” whispered Melendez.

“They’re predators, Admiral — pure, unadulterated predators,” said Bat. “It’s amazing enough that humanity managed to achieve interstellar capabilities before obliterating our home world, but how is it possible that a race of voracious, carnivorous predators could have advanced this far without decimating themselves back to the stone-age, long before that level of scientific achievement could be attained?”

“Good point. I hadn’t really thought about it like that,” said Melendez. 

“Predators normally develop a pecking order… a dominance structure within their family units through individual dominance combat, but that’s not really practical where millions and billions of predators are concerned,” mused Bat. “What is it that enforces obedience to a higher rank without their having been defeated in domination combat? How is it that the smaller ones with the manes have achieved and maintain dominance over the larger, more physically intimidating ones they use as ground troops? There has to be some kind of control methodology at work that makes a command structure possible. Something that supersedes their natural aggressive instincts.”

“Like what?” asked Melendez.

“I suspect it must have something to do with those stones and metallic buttons they have on their foreheads,” observed Bat. “They must hold some major significance besides merely distinguishing rank, as we understand it.”

“Hypnotics?”

Bat turned towards Melendez and smiled. “That’s the most logical explanation I’ve been able to formulate, Admiral.”

“But what mechanism could they possibly employ to ensure that their entire population undergoes the deep hypnosis process something like that would require?”

“Religion.”

“Oh, joy. An entire race of hypnotically controlled predators bent on destroying the human race for their god.”

* * * *

The most pressing issue that had been stalling humanity’s planned offensive against the alien’s forward base was the lack of a sufficient number of medium yield ship-killer missiles. Stockpiles had been severely depleted on both sides during the Confederate War of Independence and it simply took time to manufacture them in the tens-of-thousands necessary to destroy the mind-boggling numbers of small warships the cats had available to them. Confederate Intelligence reported an additional 15,000 warships and 25,000 more support ships had arrived at the alien base since their initial assessment, with more arriving almost daily. Kalis and his cadre of admirals came to fear the cats could bring in fresh warships faster than the Alliance and Confederacy combined could manufacture missiles to kill them with, and so an urgent request for a massively expanded manufacturing effort for these weapons had gone out to both nations, as well as an advisory to the other nations of humanity as well.

* * * *

Admiral Arlene McAllister was sworn in as the 17
th
president of the United Stellar Alliance in late March, 3865 and with particular relish, she immediately dismissed Jeannine Franks from her post as Secretary of Defense. She then called for Admiral Douglas Campbell’s resignation and retirement from active Fleet duty… so he could serve as
her
new Secretary of Defense. Admiral Simon Bradley was named to replace him as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
.
Under the approval of the new president and SecDef, Bradley immediately sent word recalling Admiral Enrico Melendez back to Waston, to assume the duties of Chief of Fleet Operations
.
Sent to relieve Melendez in his duties as Military Governor of Minnos was his hand-picked successor, the recently promoted Admiral Alphonse Ligurri.

Admiral Grant Loggins, once hailed as the
Hero of Tensee
, remained mothballed on the beach after his abrupt resignation from the Fleet to seek the presidential nomination, soon after Marrot’s announcement that he would not be running again. While initially a frontrunner, Loggins was shocked to learn how little support he was receiving from within Fleet, and his poll numbers faded abruptly when his political rivals successfully managed to re-label him as the
Butcher of Tensee
, after his horrific casualty numbers were declassified and made public. Loggins had counted his chickens before they hatched, and he now found himself locked out of the henhouse, just as the biggest egg-laying contest in history was about to kick off.