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Finally the Chancellor—a Julrieten of unusual height, even for his kind—spoke. “Admiral Preyl, Colonel Kelby, your accompanying advisors, welcome to Julrieta. Due to the emergency nature of this meeting, I will forgo most of the usual formalities. Now, if you would, please inform the Council as to the situation we find ourselves in.”
“Thank you Chancellor.” The Admiral said. “I’ll be direct, we have reason to believe that The Hegemony is positioning themselves for a large-scale attack, one which, if unprepared for, will extinguish The Collective.”
“And The Council is to understand that you and your advisors believe the current preparations insufficient for this predicted attack?”
“That is the short of it, Chancellor.”
The Chancellor nodded as he tapped his wrist tablet, the other Representatives seated about the Grand Hall did the same—at least those with wrists did. For the amorphous, blob-like Bloorkäm, the comm tablets merely adhered haphazardly to their iridescent skins.
We stood in silence for a brief while as they all conferred, discussing the preliminary report that The Admiral had rushed to prepare for their review prior to today’s meeting.
The Chancellor spoke again.
“Indeed your report does indicate some cause for concern. For one thing, the size of the Hegemony Armada you encountered suggests that The Hegemony’s production capabilities have increased by a non-trivial degree. And the technological advancement in gravity manipulation weaponry that we saw during the attack on The Benevolent Hands Of Friendship Clasped Firm is not to be taken lightly. The significance of those developments are acknowledged by all. However, several on The Council remain unconvinced that the current Collective-wide militarization of industry will prove inadequate. You yourself even state in the report that, with exception of the JumpDrives, all of the Hegemony’s weapon technology can be reproduced by us now, which, I might add, began the moment we received your transmission. Our top strategists estimate that at the current rate of output, it would take no more than half a Cycle to produce an Armada surpassing even the one your Warfleet encountered en route back. And that’s not to mention that most think we should be emphasizing our defensive capabilities instead. Every projection indicates that if the current resource allocation for your fleet were directed solely towards fortifying our defensive infrastructure, within 300 MilliCycles we would be capable of repelling 10 such Hegemony fleets simultaneously.”
“How about 10 thousand?” Kel cut in abruptly.
“Excuse me?” The Chancellor said, clearly wrongfooted. “Colonel, are you saying that The Hegemony possesses such force projection capability? Are you claiming that they have 10,000 such fleets?”
“No.”
“Colonel, I fail to understand the point you are ma—“
“They have more than that.”
The Chamber went silent, even the gentle murmur of the crowds had ceased. After a moment The Chancellor spoke again, voice edging on disbelief.
“Colonel, you must excuse my incredulity, but surely you must see that what you are claiming borders on the ludicrous.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Yeah, that was the reaction I was expecting.” Kel said, seemingly indifferent as he swiped his wrist tablet, sending the heretofore classified and no-doubt astounding intel to the Council.
The Chancellor reached again to his comm tablet, slowly and deliberately, though I sensed alarm beneath his calm demeanor. The other Council-Members were too distant to see clearly, though I thought I could just make out the look of panic on a few of the nearer ones.
“Colonel,” The Chancellor said slowly. “Exactly how large was the Hegemony force that you encountered beyond the rift, before your rendezvous with Admiral Preyl?”
“Conservative estimate?” Kel sighed. “Five orders of magnitude greater than the Armada that my fleet followed to the encounter with Admiral Preyl’s Warfleet.”
This time there wasn’t silence in the crowds. The frantic murmurs from the public had followed their collective gasp almost immediately.
The Council-Members had immediately began discussing the details amongst themselves.
“Colonel!” One of the Julrieten Representatives blurted out through the public comms. “That is simply preposterous! That would be almost half a billion warships!”
“Yes.”
“But—but that’s—that’s—impossible, Colonel!“
“No, that’s the lower bound.” Kel replied plainly.
“But a fleet—a fleet of that size—” The representative stammered out. “—we would have detected such a thing!”
“It would take an appreciable portion of The Galaxy’s resources to construct a force of that size!” Another Representative yelled.
“Council-Members please!” The Chancellor shouted. “Please let us remain calm! We are here to listen to our fellows first, and to judge second. We must not dismiss anything out of hand, we will let those gathered before us finish before we make any determination.”
Then, turning to Kel.
“Colonel, these doubts raised just now by my esteemed Council-Members are ones that I, too, share. Surely The Hegemony could not have amassed a force of the size you claim to have seen without it having been discovered long ago. Yes, it is true that we have surveyed 10,000 LightCycles in every direction of our boarders and found no trace of Hegemony presence, save for installations abandoned long ago, but the energy discharge and mass displacement from a construction undertaking of that size could not be so simply obfuscated. The Hegemony could not have constructed a half billion warship Armada under our noses.”
“And yet I tell you they have.” Kel said dryly as he wiped a stowaway crumb from his pants.
“Colonel, with due respect, I know your people, more than any other, has suffered at the hands of The Hegemony, but I think this is clouding your vision. You must be mistaken.”
“Unfortunately, the only mistake might be we’ve underestimated the size of their fleet.”
“Colonel, I—I—“ The Chancellor paused again, this time, rather than conferring with others, he seemed to be doing so with himself. “I simply cannot believe what you are saying, none of us can. No one here will deny that The Hegemony poses a grave threat, and no one would deny that you have encountered our enemy in a vastly increased proportion. But the numbers you’re talking about, they just can’t be true. A force of that size would span the majority of a Galaxy!”
“It would indeed.”
“Then—then you agree?” The Chancellor said, wrongfooted again. “You agree that such a fleet would be appear in every scope we pointed, whether we looked out to the arms or into the galactic core?”
“Yes.”
“Yet we don’t seen this supposed super fleet when we look to the skies.”
“That’s right.”
The Chancellor let out an exasperated sigh. “Colonel, I must say that I have failed to follow the logic to the same destination that you have. You say The Hegemony possesses a super fleet of heretofore unseen size.”
“Yes, Chancellor.”
“One that would span the galaxy.”
“That’s correct.”
“One that we somehow have not seen?”
“That about sums it up, yeah”
“Well Colonel, if you wouldn’t mind telling us,” The Chancellor said, crossing his spindly limbs across his chest. “where is it exactly that The Hegemony has found to hide this new fleet of theirs?”
The words Kel said next, though delivered calmly, thundered through the chamber.
“Andromeda.”