Solbidyum Wars Saga 6: Defeat of the Tottalax (3 page)

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.”

“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.

“This is our latest tool for fighting the war,” I answered.  “We can display the entire galaxy as you see now, or we can zoom in on just a small sector, or a planetary system.”  While I was saying this, I was using a hand-held control to demonstrate my statements.  “We can also impose ships in simulated battle arrangements, or we can track real ships in combat scenarios.  We can replay real battle engagements as they happened.  Would you like to see a replay of the battle at Spelhes last year?”

“You can do that?” Nybidong asked.

I started the replay as I said, “Yes we can, all the red blips you see in the display are Brotherhood ships, the ones in blue are Federation.  The white dots you see in the centers of the Brotherhood ships and Federation ships indicate ones that are cloaked.”  By now I had the screen zoomed so the planet Spelhes filled most of the space within the room, and the ships could all be seen assembled around it.” I’ll speed the battle up so you can get a better idea of what happened.  As ships are destroyed or taken out of action you will see them turn grey.”  I sped the action up on the screen so the entire battle was compressed into 12 minutes.

“This is amazing,” Nybidong exclaimed, “do all your ships have this?”

“No, only the starships will have this, and the new carrier ships we are building,” I replied.

“You are building new ships?  What are carriers?”

I replaced the holographic display with one of the new carrier ships we were having built.  I scaled the ship so it filled half the display area within the room.  At this scale, you could see inside the hangar tubes and walk around the outside of the ship and see its detail.  Thousands of patrol ships and fighters could be seen inside the huge hangar tubes, on all four sides of the tubes.  Torpedo tubes, laser canons, rapid-fire rail-guns, and plasma guns were arrayed around the outer hull.  I raised the image, so we could walk under it, and Nybidong could look up into the hollow space in the middle to see two frigates and several corvettes docked inside.

“This ship is amazing!  But where do you manage to house all the crew for this ship?”

I smiled, “That’s part of the beauty of this ship.  While it does carry a large crew complement, there are not enough quarters for all that would be required for all the patrol ships and fighters aboard.  Nor is there sufficient space for all the troopers we may need for planet side operations.  That’s where Cantolla Gates come into play.  We only have about half the crew aboard that is needed, but in a combat situation, we can send thousands of troops through Cantolla Gates to the ships in just minutes to man the fighter and patrol ships, or to be transported to the ground.  The actual troopers will be located on other bases scattered about the Federation.  We can move troopers around from one area where there is no action going on to ones that are engaged in battle and all at a moment’s notice; with these carriers one ship can take the place of a small fleet.”

“I am truly amazed, but tell me, Admiral, why do you not share this Cantolla Gate technology with others; surely it would help everyone to have access to them.

I shook my head, “I wish that were so, but think for a moment what the Brotherhood would do if they had this technology.  No, I fear this technology must remain solely in the hands of the Federation military for the moment.  We do hope to make civilian gates available soon, but those will continue be under Federation control and people passing through them will go from a local station to a central hub located at a hidden location, from there they will route to their final destination.  All the hubs will be heavily fortified and manned with fully armed and ready troopers, and at the first sign of trouble, the gates would be shut down instantly, on both sides of the gates.  Larger gates, large enough for ships to pass through will be available in the future for civilian use as well, but it will probably be some time before we get all the problems solved regarding security for them.”  I could tell Nybidong wasn’t pleased with my answer, but he could see the logic of it.

“What about this holographic display system, Admiral?  Is there any possibility the Federation might be willing to share this with the Ruwallie Rasson mercenaries?”

“Do you have ships large enough to house such a system?”  I asked, knowing full well the Ruwallie Rasson did not.

“Hmm, yes I see there is a problem there.  This is quite large.” Nybidong said in a tone of disappointment.

“It may be possible for us to provide you with a scaled-down version of this system.  I know my scientists who created it had a smaller model of it they used while developing it.  It's possible they have the ability to make at about one-quarter of this scale. A system that size would fit on corvette-sized ships, and I believe that we may be able to provide the Ruwallie Rasson cloaking technology as well.”  I said this knowing that a year earlier I would not have made this offer. However, now that cloaking technology was out, and the Brotherhood was using it on at least some of their ships, we had nothing to lose by sharing it. We did have a lot to gain by sharing it with the Ruwallie Rasson mercenaries, who were now our allies in the fight against the Brotherhood.