3.19.
The spaceship arrived with barely a whisper of a ripple in the hyperatomic plane, but it blared its presence on the IFF frequencies of the Earth Space Force. They compared the IFF to the one that they were expecting to arrive literally the second that this ship had appeared and relaxed.
It was registered to one Lisa Desmond. A spacecraft from the Acklatic Empire, it was large and elegant looking, with golds and whites highlighting its hull. It’s owner was already on the spacestation around Mars, and she was excited to view the object that her husbands former ‘literature’ had purchased.
But first, she had three ambassadors to confront.
Uno, as they were calling him, was not the leader, despite his name. Dos and Tres were very clear on this fact, although Uno claimed that they were being facetious and that Lisa needed look no further for the absolute authority on the Triumverant than him.
Until she explained her purpose, at which point she was instructed to speak with Dos and Tres.
Both of them directed her to the others immediately upon the subject of the war coming up.
None of them were willing to have a serious discussion on the matter with her, even when she offered to bribe them simply to talk about the possibility of providing aid to Earth in the conflict. Frustrated, she had contacted Tonom Genisi.
The flamboyant man had answered in a heartbeat with a “Hello Hello! Is nice spaceship, yes? You go inside her yet?”
“I will very soon. Tonom, you said that the Triumverant would support Earth. The ambassadors won’t even talk to me,” she told him.
“I say Triumverant best place to find privateers. Ambassadors are not privateers, Lisa Desmond. To find Triumverant privateers, you must go into Triumverant space and speak with them,” Tonom explained.
Her heart sank. “What about their government? How do I get them to provide official aid?” she asked.
“You do not. That is to your government to wrangle,” Tom explained. “They no speak war with private citizen. Not seemly to them.”
Lisa’s heart sank further, but she accepted the council. “I’ll call you again from the Defiant.”
“She is named Defiant? Yes yes, is good name.”
“He loved Deep Space Nine,” she said, and she ended the call.
~~~~~~
The Tumbaruna Toko dropped its stealth in the middle of the fleet and opened fire with all weapons. The ensuing battle lasted for thirty minutes as for the first time the ship went toe to toe with a force rather than simply engaging in hit and run tactics. For thirty minutes it exchanged Plasma Lances, Kirata beams, torpedoes, missiles, and more esoteric weapons fire with the ships that surrounded it.
It lost the battle.
But it slinked away to lick its wounds and fight again another day.
The fleet that it had tried to take on outnumbered it two hundred to one.
When the Toko retreated, they only outnumbered it one hundred twenty to one. Sixty of those remaining required significant repairs.
The Toko had been hurt.
The Rosanteans took their pyrrhic victory and declared it tasty, for it was the first real victory they’d gotten in this war they’d provoked.
The Toko watched in silence as the news program hailed their defeat, claiming their complete destruction.
That was fine. As the self-healing armor of the ship repaired itself, the first among peers calmly discussed with the others how they would take advantage of this to cause terror in the hearts of the enemy.
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While they were very deep inside.
~~~~~~
“I can see the pattern, I just can’t get the computer to model it right,” Gabriel explained. He was in his office, his ‘dungeon,’ with his six monitors set out and the data on display.
His companion, one Mathew Dewey, sat in his chair and examined the data, clicking the mouse occasionally.
They were reviewing the probe’s analysis from the Seeker of New Discoveries . Not the telescopic evidence. Not even the evidence of the other sensors, such as the gravitic instruments.
They were reviewing the data from the FTL drives. The ‘tunnel drive,’ which was inhospitable to human life, but had been the only method of faster than light travel that Earth had managed to discover.
“I see a pattern as well,” Mathew admitted. “I’ll be damned if I can make sense of it though.”
“But you see something , right?” Gabriel asked.
“Yes. It’s clear that something is causing distortions in the subspace foam, which is resonating with our drives and causing these readings,” Mathew agreed. “But I have no idea what it is.”
“Can you help me model it?” Gabriel inquired.
“I can try. But before I do, I have to ask. You can yell at me if you want, but I need to know. Have you asked the Yonohoans yet?”
Gabriel growled in frustration.
~~~~~~~
Towari smiled. He had been worried that the god would be angry with him and smite his village when he had broken into her hut and played with her magic. He had been so frightened that he had told nobody about the experience, dodging the questions that they asked about why he was so late in coming back to the village that night.
But the god hadn’t been angry with him. She had been happy. She had been so happy that she had sent Towari a wife.
He hadn’t been certain that was what the god intended at first, but when the strange girl who had shown up the next day had agreed to the elder’s arrangement, he had also agreed.
Married life agreed with him.
He had been worried; all of the other girls his age in the village were either already paired up with someone else or related to him. He had expected that he’d have to travel to one of the other Mokoari villages to find a wife, but instead one had come to him!
After their wedding night he had made every excuse to be around his new wife, attempting to teach her how to speak properly. Giving her gifts. Cooking her food. Trying to get her to let him kiss her.
He loved Enidi with all of his heart and couldn’t be happier.
~~~~~~
“So, yeah, that’s a thing,” Enidi told the campfire in High Yonohoan. The fire was powering a small rocktala, which she was using to issue her report to Trewali and the other higher-ranked scouts. “The little brat won’t leave me alone for five seconds. I swear to high-command I think that he’d offer to wipe my ass if I let him. He’s lucky he’s cute and that he’s my cover for fitting in with the Mokoari or else I’d have to strategic accident him for the sake of the mission.
“The infiltration proceeds as planned. I am welcome in the village and am presently being inducted fully into their society. Nobody seems to suspect a thing except that I came to the Mokoari from another tribe seeking a husband. Defensive measures for the basin are being put in place. I pity anyone who tries to take these people from me, because I, with my weapon emplacements, will not.”
Abruptly Towari, misinterpreting her report as an attempt to sing to him, began playing a flute.
Enidi’s eye twitched as she concluded the report with musical accompaniment. She sighed.
He meant well, she reminded herself. And at least he could actually play a flute.
She continued to ‘sing’ to her husband for a while as she detailed the steps that she had taken and the things that she had learned about the valley and its people. When she concluded the report, Towari continued playing for a moment, then lowered the flute, his eyes twinkling.
She sighed and graced him with a smile. He grinned mischievously and went in for a kiss.
She sighed. This was her husband, she reminded herself as she attempted to extricate herself from the situation.
~~~~~~