Empress Shi’Lana of Avanor was having a terrible morning. During the middle of her breakfast the Captain of the Guard broke Imperial protocol by swinging open the chamber doors and approaching her at a full run. “Your majesty!” The Captain said as she brought a closed fist to her chest as a salute. “A strange craft has appeared in the skies above Alandra. It is not like any we have seen before.”
The Empress wiped her mouth daintily with her napkin before standing abruptly, pushing back her oversized and over elaborate chair. She looked to her Captain of the Guard, “Show me, and bring a looking glass.”
The Captain looked over to a subordinate who just caught up to the much larger woman, and was breathing heavily, “Find a looking glass and meet us on the Empress’s terrace.” The subordinate slapped her fist to her chest and turned to follow the order at a dead run.
With that, Shi’Lana turned and walked to her personal balcony, known as the Empress’s terrace, for before radio it was where an Empress would share decree’s with the public, and later the newspapers. “Captain Nar’vala, tell me what you know as we walk.”
The Captain fell into step behind and to the right of the Empress, as was protocol. “It arrived above the planet about seven minutes ago, it does not correspond to any Howron vessel. I would expect it will attempt communication soon. At least I hope it does.”
The Empress turned her head to look at the Captain with a raised eyebrow, “Do you think they may be hostile?”
The Captain continued to follow to the terrace, “We are on the outskirts of Howron space, this does not appear to be one of thier vessels. We also know how our esteemed patrons conduct themselves. It is not a stretch to think they have made an enemy, and that enemy may think of us as their enemy.”
Shi’Lana blinked from the bright sunlight as the Captain’s aide ran to their location and handed over the ornate cylinder to the larger woman. The Captain then turned it over in her hands, then extended it and put it to her eye before closing it back and offering it to the Empress. Shi’Lana smiled, “Still testing everything before you offer it to me Captain?”
The larger lady shrugged, “I will not be responsible for an assassination attempt, better the attempt fail with me than to send our people into chaos.”
The Empress nodded and turned to face the small speck in the sky above the Imperial City of Najicore. The opened the looking glass and the speck became much larger, she twisted the apparatus to focus it on the odd craft. Unlike the seed pod craft of the Howron, this vessel was rectangular in shape, with the forward section flared outwards. Even from this distance she could see protuberances all over the vessel.
It looked familiar, quite familiar. She turned to the Captain and stated simply, “Dismiss your aide and follow me Captain.”
The Captain turned to her aide and made a shooing motion, of which the aide nodded and left at a brisk walk, “May I ask where we are going your majesty?” As she fell in behind and to the side of the Empress.
Shi’Lana spoke as they walked, “To my throne room, there is something I must check.”
A few minutes later they were in alone in the throne room, the Empress lifted the cushion of the throne to present a small nook. She then pulled out the Imperial pendant and pulled from it a small key. With that key she opened the nook to retrieve a book, a very old book.
She flipped through the pages until she came to an artist rendition of the first craft to ever come to their world. She turned the book to her Captain who raised an eyebrow, “The Human craft? That is only a fairy tail, a myth told to small children to explain our plight, rather than explain to them that we were and still are too weak to defend ourselves.”
The Empress shook her head, “It is not a fairy tale Captain, the Humans were real, when I was voted in as Empress, Spy-Mistress Kel’Taraan informed me of our peoples deepest secrets, of this book, and of the Humans.”
The Captain looked skeptical, “I wouldn’t trust that old hag to tell me the sun would rise tomorrow.”
Shi’Lana smiled at this, for the ministry of secrets were distrusted by all, “In this she must be trusted, for her ministry has but one true mission. The passing down of our peoples knowledge from one ruler to the next. Isn’t that right Kel’Taraan?”
An older, shakier voice appeared in the room, from a hidden speaker somewhere in the throne itself, “You are correct your majesty, we have other duties, but that is our true purpose.” The Spy-Mistress stated from somewhere within the palace.
The Empress continued, “Do you believe the new craft to be Human?”
The shaky voice spoke more quietly this time, “Some of the passed down equipment in our possession has made some sort of connection to this vessel once it arrived above our planet, we do not know what it is doing, but it is doing something.”
Then a new voice appeared in the room, deeper, and male. “Your equipment is uploading logs from the ICS Day of Prosperity, to give us a record of what happened to the crew and how they came to be on your planet.”
The Captain in one smooth movement pulled the Empress behind her and drew her pistol from her holster. Her eyes darted to all corners of the room, looking for any threat.
The shaky old voice from the throne speaker spoke before anyone else, “I am to tell you this phrase, ‘Knowledge is power.’ How do you respond?”
The deeper male voice responded immediately, almost too immediately, “Guard it well.”
This time the shaky old voice came from not from behind the throne, but inside the room as a part of the wall had opened to allow her to silently enter the throne room. “Oh thank the Goddesses! You have returned to us!” She stated as she raised up from her stooped pose to stand up straight, still holding her walking cane, and made a strange gesture of putting her right hand to her forehead keeping her fingers together.
Then the Captain saw it, a small sphere seemed to come into being about a meter in front of the Spy-Mistress, it just faded into reality. “Kel’Taraan, what in the seven hells is that thing?!” She asked as she kept her pistol pointed at the floating orb.
The older lady sagged back down to rest on her walking cane, “That is what the humans call a communication drone, although it is much smaller than the ones I saw when they first visited our planet.”
The Captain turned to the Spy-Mistress, “You have seen these things before?”
She leaned on her cane and looked up to the ceiling as if in remembering, “I have, although I was a young woman back then. I haven’t seen one that was still active in over four hundred years.”
Captain Nar’Vala kept herself between the Empress and the floating orb before speaking, “You knew the myths were true this whole time?”
Kel’Taraan looked over to the Captain of the Guard, “Of course I did, my ministry ensured they faded into legend. I was there when the Humans first came down to visit, to share their knowledge and technology. I was there to witness the golden age, and I was there to mourn the death of Humans. They died far too soon. You can put away that pistol Captain, this probe means us no harm.”
Nar’Vala turned to look to the Empress, who nodded. She put her pistol back in its holster before addressing the orb, “Why have your people come back after so long?”
The orb again answered quickly, “Our people exist outside your Universe, very few of us end up here. We have been here less than a year, but before we made contact we had to gather information about this part of space, we were actually surprised to find we were not the first Humans here.”
This time the Empress spoke up, “If you have been here that long, then you witnessed what the Howron did to us?”
The orb answered, “We did, we were too far away to stop the torpedo they launched at one of your cities, we also were not ready to deal with the Howrons at that time.”
Captain Nar’vala asked the next question, “You weren’t at that time? What has changed? Why are you making yourselves known now?”
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The orb spun, the glowing blue eye now faced the Captain, she found it unnerving as it answered her, “That is a long story, but we will simplify it. When we arrived here our vessel was heavily damaged, we have made repairs and re-provisioned our weapons. After witnessing the Howron’s actions we knew where they were headed, a system we call Lynx zero zero two.”
The orb did something to the air in front of it and a strange blue moving picture appeared in the air, showing first their world, then zooming out to show their star and other planets before expanding and moving to show another star, and other planets. At this point it zoomed in again to show seven Howron Vessels in the system. This made all three women gasp in horror.
Empress Shi’Lana spoke, “Seven Howron vessels near our system, we have only seen one, perhaps two at a time, they have boasted that they need only a single vessel to destroy our people, why would they have so many in a single system?”
The orb zoomed in the image, “They were attempting to board a heavily damaged Human vessel, they had been trying to board for over three years with no success. Our vessel is far faster than the Howron ship that left your system, we arrived in that stellar system months ahead of them. We received a distress call from the Human wreck and offered aid.”
The floating, moving, image changed to show all seven Howron vessels destroyed, dead floating hulks. The male voice from the orb continued, “We destroyed those seven vessels and took aboard the lone survivor of the wreck. Our actions there will affect your world, as have the actions of other Humans in the past. The vessel that left your system full of ore is also destroyed, we left behind autonomous weapons to destroy their vessels as they enter the system.”
The floating display changed again to show a Howron vessel nearly torn in half, floating dead in space. “It will be necessary for us to aid your people again, for the Howron will begin searching for who destroyed their vessels. This will take time, we expect to have a few years before the first Howron vessel appears in your system. We are preparing defenses now.”
The room was quiet, all three women were in shock. It was the wisened Spy-Mistress who found her voice first, “You have destroyed eight of their vessels? So you are not a civilian cargo hauler as the last Humans were? You are a Human soldiers?”
The orb answered, “The Missive of Dissent is indeed a warship, it is also capable of construction on a large scale. Your system now boasts far more powerful probes to detect incoming ships, we are preparing mine fields at the two entrance corridors to your system, and we will be implementing a planetary defense network in orbit around your planet. You need to understand why we are here, and what we are doing.”
The Empress asked, “Do you hope to free us from the Howron?”
The orb answered, “You are already free of the Howron, you are under Human protection now, but that protection will require your aide as well.”
The Empress sighed, “You require a tribute of our Adamantine to defend us from the Howron?”
The orb took a moment before answering, “While that would be nice, we would like to study that strange element, a tribute of Adamantine is not required. What will be required will be soldiers capable of controlling the ships we will be building here to defend your stellar system.”
The Spy-Mistress leaned heavily on her cane, “You plan to build star vessels and have us crew them?”
The orb answered back, “We do, the equipment the previous humans left behind have just received the necessary files and are printing out training manuals as we speak. You have three of your years to prepare a force of no less than five hundred elite troops to take control of these vessels.”
Captain Nar’Vala crossed her arms, “This seems too good to be true, why would you offer us so much for nothing in return?”
The orb seemed to… sigh, “Let us say that we don’t like the Howrons, and we are only one ship at the moment. We will need allies who have similar goals and objectives, this situation benefits us both, you will have the means to defend yourselves, and we will have the freedom of movement around this part of space to search for more of our kind.”
This seemed to perk up Kel’Taraan, “Do you believe there are more Humans in our part of the universe… I just realized, we never asked you your name?”
The floating orb answered, “I am Captain Alex Smyth, we know you as Kel’Taraan, we know of Empress Shi’Lana, the Captain is the only person in the room we do not have record of.”
Captain Nar’Vala introduced herself before asking, “How do you have records of these two but not I?”
The orb spun to face her, “We have records that have been inputted by Kel’Taraan, with her duties as minister of secrets it makes sense that she would use the Human equipment left to her, as it stores data that only the people granted access to it can read.”
The Captain nodded, “And since it is your technology you can access it as well?”
The orb bobbed up and down, “That is correct, however we were quite shocked to find a working computer on your planet after four hundred years. We did not detect the radio network signals until we were in orbit, but once we did we were able to interface with it and download its contents.”
Kel’Taraan spoke up, “We in the ministry have treated the equipment as the most important object on the planet, we have spent centuries studying it to try to understand it’s inner workings, we have failed. Until now I worried that once I was gone the secrets it possessed would be lost forever, as no one else alive had access to the equipment.”
The orb turned to face Kel’Taraan as she leaned on her cane, “That problem has been remedied, you now have authority on that system to offer access to others, in time I will see to it that more computers are brought down and networked to the one you currently have. In the mean time, take the training manuals and begin your selection process to crew the vessels we will build for you.”
As suddenly as it had appeared, the probe faded from view. Empress Shi’Lana was the first to speak, “Captain, by the end of the week I expect to have a list of five hundred of our most able soldiers, and I expect you to name your successor so that you may lead this force. Kel’Taraan, the second copy of that training manual to come off the equipment will be immediately brought to me, I will have my advisors to scrutinize every page.”
Captain Nar’Vala turned to the Empress, “You want me to lead the star vessel force your majesty? Surely one of our Generals would be better suited?”
The old spy-mistress cackled, “Why would they be better suited? Have they flown between the stars or fought in the vacuum of space? There is no one who is suited for this role, thus she chooses the one most trusted to put the people of Alandra before all else, including her own life.”
The conversation continued, but Alex let the drone record it, he could listen in later as it sat in the throne room in stealth mode. The important part was that they were doing what he needed them to do. He shifted his perception from out of the drone and back to the Missive’s VR environment.
Kara and Monty stood in front of the holo-tank, in the center sat a wireframe model of the Missive, to the side were foundries and auto-factories with a huge swarm of mining drones, haulers, and construction drones. He nodded to the two as he spoke, “Ok, introductions went as well as could be expected, they are going to start using the training manuals you two came up with on our voyage over.”
Kara nodded, “The first batch of foundries and auto-factories have passed quality assurance and are accepting raw materials now. By this time tomorrow we will start seeing the first mark thirty seven mines coming off the assembly lines.”
Monty swiped through the holo to show a view of the proposed shipyards, “I ran this past Kara while you were playing your video games, I think we can make the shipyards more usable.” With that she swiped again and the standard shipyard moved out of the tank and was replaced with a smaller version.
Alex peered at it for a moment, thinking about the change, “A shipyard dedicated to only one type of ship construction?”
Monty nodded her head, “Time will be of the essence here, a standard shipyard can build anything from a shuttle to a battleship, you just have to open the ribs much larger for those ships. But since we are looking to make mainly light cruisers, and maybe some transport shuttles up to the shipyards from the planet, we don’t need to invest in such a big and expensive yard.”
Sure enough, the standard shipyard looked like the ribcage of a giant mechanical monster, but this was much smaller, and would require less time to build and far less materials. “Ok, that makes sense, will this smaller shipyard take more time to build the light cruisers?”
Monty shook her head, “No, but it won’t speed up the process more either. This version will take half the time to build and one third the mineral cost. We could build three of these for the cost of one standard shipyard.”
Alex grinned at this, “This is great work, once our industrial base is up we could have three ships in construction at the same time, three every forty days. Twenty seven ships a year, they would have a decent fleet in a decade if we can keep the Howrons off them that long.”
Monty beamed, looking over to Kara, “Go on, show him what you came up with!”
Alex turned to Kara, who blushed a little and swiped the holo-tank, “With the new chaff missiles we came up with for the light cruisers, and will be equipping to the Missive as well, I thought it would be nice if we could reload them. But that isn’t feasible in a torpedo, but in a planetary defense system…”
The holo showed what appeared to be a standard planetary defense cannon, a maser cannon lashed to a large capacitor bank tied to a fusion reactor. The standard cannon has maybe three shots before the capacitors bank dies and then it takes hours for the fusion reactor to recharge. Not a big deal when most planetary defense systems had tens of thousands of them in orbit.
Kara swiped one more time to something different, It was like the rail gun revolver inside the missive, but instead of metal slugs the size of shuttle craft it had what looked like torpedo warheads in each chamber. “Since we are going to have to produce a good number of modern Hafnium torpedoes to equip the new ships, we could manufacture and extra warheads and equip them with the bomb-pumped masers off the mark thirty seven mines.”
Reaching her hands into the holo she spread them and the schematic expanded across the table outside of the holo-tank. “No fusion reactor needed, just six already charged capacitors to set off each warhead.”
Alex looked at the design, “What keeps the explosion from blowing the whole thing apart?”
Kara grabbed the fusion package and expanded it, “They have a short lived deflection shield that forces all energy forward for a few nanoseconds, it’s where the rest of the energy dump from the capacitor goes. If it fails to work, we lose the assembly in a giant fireball, but these things will be much easier to make in large numbers.”
He thought about that for a moment, “So six shots instead of two, but we have to reload them? I worry about the shielding, but every short cut we can take to bring the Alandrans technology up to a reasonable level we need to take. Good job Kara, and you too Monty, keep the ideas coming, we need everything we can come up with to help these people.”