The Khruellian Encounter Read online

  Jon glanced at his aunt to gauge her reaction to what he was saying. She was the Ambassador, and Jon was treading into her territory, but then he reminded himself that Admiral Dexter had sent him and Annika here to represent the military, a military that desperately needed Earth’s full cooperation. He had a responsibility to speak up.

  He zeroed in on what he wanted to propose. “Earth’s population is far too large for her resources. I saw the effects of that first-hand when my wife and I visited her parents yesterday. Fortunately, Earth has managed to achieve zero population growth for the last one hundred years, but that is not reducing the problem, it is only deferring it to the future.”

  Gavito said, “That is all too true, but how does that relate to our current situation?”

  Jon said, “Earth needs to start on a long-term migration to suitable planets, but that will not be possible if the Khruellian Hegemony rules this part of the galaxy. They do not permit their conquered people to expand their presence.”

  It was evident from Hector Gavito’s expression he had been unaware of that fact. The possibility of not being able to reduce Earth’s population by migration was not something he wanted to consider. It shed new light on the situation. “What are you proposing, Captain McKinnah?”

  Jon reached over and took Annika’s hand. She had watched her husband with fascination as he had carefully maneuvered the minister around to the point where Gavito asked that critical question. She had no idea what Jon was going to say next and one look at his aunt, the ambassador showed that she had no idea either.

  Jon continued, “My wife and I have every reason to dislike you personally, but we understand you better today than we did last year. We are only mid-level officers in the CSF today, but that will not always be the case. Mrs. McKinnah and I, along with Talor will pledge our fullest support to work with you to see that earth’s population can be responsibly eased by migration.”

  In spite of himself, the minister was intrigued by Jon’s proposal. He recognized the truth in the young man’s statement about their future in the Confederation. These two were destined to become powerful individuals in the CSF, perhaps even in the political hierarchy of the CIP. He understood the implied quid-pro-quo exchange for their future help; stop fighting the Chen-Warren appointment and release the weapons. He realized it was probably the best deal he was going to get.

  He stood up unexpectedly and reached across the table and offered his hand. “It’s a deal, Group Captain McKinnah.” He turned his gaze to Annika and said, “I hope you’ll forgive my pettishness the last time we met.”

  Annika was too stunned to speak, but she accepted the man’s offered handshake.

  Chapter 37

  Aboard the Super Dreadnaught CSF Andromeda

  Admiral Barbara Chen-Warren looked around the crowded wardroom. Assembled were her direct subordinates except for Group Captain McKinnah. He was here because of his firsthand experience with the Khruellians, having led the only raid on a Khruellian military installation. The Alien commanders from the five alien forces were also present. When Adalan-Kyfor, Commander of the Hylox Empire forces saw Jon enter the room, she immediately moved around the central table to stand next to him. Jon greeted her warily and felt the tingle of her mental presence. Talor leaned forward and said, “The commander wishes you to know she wants to fight by your side.”

  Jon looked at the commander, acutely aware of her femininity and said, “Tell the commander I am honored by her desire to fight our mutual enemy alongside me.”

  Adalan-Kyfor made a small noise akin to a purr and smiled, baring her teeth. Her pink tongue briefly caressed two, pronounced incisor fangs. Jon wondered if she intended to eat any Khruellians she captured. “We have lots to learn if we are going to be members of an interstellar community,” Jon thought.

  Admiral Chen-Warren called the meeting to order. Jon noted that Cleric-General Bradley-Kinsley was standing by the admiral’s side, supposedly to assist her with any problems she might have with her multi-species force. Talo, Talia, and Talor were all present to help with translations. It was as strange a congregation as Jon good imagine. “It’s a good thing she didn’t ask the chaplain to say an opening prayer,” Jon thought. “It probably would have stared an inter-species religious war right here on her ship.”

  A huge holographic display appeared in the middle of the table cutting off the murmur of conversations going on among the gathered officers. “This is our galaxy, as you have no doubt gathered,” the admiral said in her familiar, commanding voice. “These are the two major, galactic, spiral arms, Sagittarius, and Perseus. Please forgive me for telling you something you already know, but I want to make sure we all have the same picture of the situation.” She paused for a second before continuing. The low hum of the androids translating her words could be heard in the background. Satisfied the aliens were current, she continued, “All our allied planets lie within the Orion-Cygnus cluster, a minor spur located between the Perseus and the Sagittarius galactic arms. The Orion Spur is 10,000 light years in length and 3,500 light-years across. It extends between the two major galactic arms with the outer end coming close to the Perseus Arm. That proximity is our problem.” There was dead silence now. “Two of our allies, the Alphans, and the Hyloxians are in this area closest to the Perseus arm.”

  A low growl escaped from Adalan-Kyfor and Jon better understood her willingness to fight. Her homeworlds were likely to be the first targets of any Khruellian incursion into the Orion Cluster. Looking at Alpha-Tau-Alpha’s location, he also appreciated the Alphans’ planning over many millenniums to prepare for this event.

  Admiral Chen-Warren used her laser to point to an area in the Perseus Arm dominated by red stars. “This is the Khruellian Hegemony. It starts at the tip of the Perseus Arm and progresses along the arm to this area, less than five hundred light years from the beginning of the Orion Spur. It’s possible the Khruellians could ignore the Orion-Cygnus Spur and continue down the Perseus Arm until they run out of civilized empires to conquer, perhaps thirty thousand years from now. Given what the Alphans have told us about their civilization and their legend, which has been the motivating force behind their expansion, I doubt they would pass up conquering the Orion Spur.”

  This caused a general murmur of conversations, especially between the Alphans and some of the senior commanders standing around them. Adalan-Kyfor put a hand on Jon’s shoulder. He turned toward her, and she put her other hand on his other shoulder. She stared at him with her intense green eyes and vocalized what she wanted to say. Jon heard Talor’s translation in his mind as she spoke, “I can sense you have the heart of a warrior. Please help me save my people.”

  Jon responded by putting his hands on her shoulders. She was fifteen centimeters taller than him. He spoke aloud for the benefit of those around him, “I will fight until there is no more fight.”

  The slightly longer white hair/fur on Adalan-Kyfor’s head and neck stood up. She grinned widely, revealing her full set of feline-like teeth. “It is good to have a warrior-brother,” she said with obvious pleasure.

  Jon was gratified at her faith in him and relieved that she now thought of him as a “warrior-brother” instead of as a potential mating experiment.

  The admiral called the meeting back to order. An aide passed out data chips to each of the attendees. She explained, “These are your battle plans. Be careful, those chips will self-destruct if anyone but you opens your compads. When you return to your ships, download them into your ship’s computers.” The group spent a few seconds inserting the chips into their personal Compads. Admiral Chen-Warren continued, “Our basic strategy is to redirect the Khruellian military away from our direction long enough for us to develop the weapon technology we need to prevent them from conquering our worlds once they find out whom and where we are. We will attack the Khruellians where it will hurt them the most, the military concentration on their homeworlds, especially their capital world. Before and after each attack we want to leave clues
that give the impression we are from the Sagittarius arm, in the direction of the galactic center, far away from the Orion Spur.”

  At the mention of the Sagittarius Arm, a senior commander voiced what many in the room were thinking, “That’s fifteen thousand light years from the Hegemony, Admiral, Do you think they will actually believe we came all that distance to attack them specifically.”

  “Probably not,” she answered, “But it’s the only direction open to us plus we plan to leave them some very convincing evidence that will make it difficult for them not to believe the attack came from there.” She smiled ruefully and pointed to Commander Estes. “The Eagle Squadron will lead the strike against the planet, Khruelaka, which is the forward base of operation for their expansion fleet. The specific target will be the Khruellian’s spaceship base, which provides essential logistics for the expansion fleet. If we can cause severe damage to the base, it should have a significant impact on their ability to wage war. The admiral went on to describe additional attacks on Khruel, the home planet that Jon had attacked earlier. The plan was to disable or destroy their space-based orbital stations and destroy the fleet on the ground that Jon had attacked in his earlier mission. The third squadron would attack the Khruellian planet responsible for manufacturing most of the Khruellian spaceships.

  This was the Khruellian’s Achilles heel, their decision to concentrate their military power on Khruellian native worlds only and not throughout their conquered empires. It gave the assembled officers a ray of hope that their ambitious plan to stop an enemy many times larger had a chance to succeed. The intelligence gathered by the Alphans over many millenniums was proving to be priceless. Underlying their optimism was the knowledge the Khruellian would utterly destroy their homeworlds if they discovered who was responsible for the attacks on the hegemony.

  As the officers began returning to their own ships, Vice Admiral Estes commented to Jon, “I’m pleased to have the only officer in the CSF who has actually seen the Khruellian worlds up close.”

  “It was a brief view, Sir,” Jon said recalling his thirty seconds over the vast space park.

  Vice Admiral Estes nodded and said with battlefield humor, “Perhaps this time we can stay a little longer and get better acquainted.” He turned to Adalan-Kyfor and shook the Hyloxs’ hand. It was a human gesture, but the aliens had picked up the habit quickly, especially when the origin of the custom had been explained. “Welcome, Commander Adalan-Kyfor, we look forward to having your units fight alongside us.”

  Talo translated as the commander spoke. Adalan-Kyfor looked back and forth between Jon and his boss while the commander spoke. Talo said, “She is pleased to meet warriors willing to fight for our cause.”

  Jon returned to his ship and transferred his copy of the battle plans to the ship’s Talo. He assembled his officers in the wardroom and started the meeting with a duplicate of Admiral Chen-Warren’s speech to the senior commanders. Jon felt it was equally important for his crew to know the big picture. His experience told him that a well-informed soldier was a better soldier.

  “Our raid will be similar to the last one,” he said, looking around at the only crew in the CSF Space Force that had encountered the enemy. “This time, however, we will have company and stay longer. Any questions?”

  Chief Petty Officer Andy Zuni, the ship’s defense systems officer, raised his hand.

  “Andy?” Jon said, knowing the defense of the ship was on everybody’s mind.

  The CPO was a twenty-year veteran and knew more about the CSF Space force than most officers. He had developed a grudging respect for his new boss in the short time they had served together. Jon’s coolness during the first Khruellian raid had impressed the older man and his respect was evident when he asked, “What can we expect by way of their defense systems, Boss?”

  Jon said, “As you know from our first raid, we didn’t see any of their defense forces in action, but that won’t be the case this time.” He watched the effect of his words on their faces. He continued in a softer tone, “The Alphans have provided us with detailed reports of the weapons the Khruellians use against any resisting forces in their expansion conquest.” Jon pulled up a file and displayed it on the central screen. Central command had taken the Alphan information and categorized it by type. Jon pointed to the top item, “This is a narrow beam PBW, a particle beam weapon. It is very effective at long distances. The tradeoff for the narrow focus is power. At a thousand kilometers, it cannot penetrate our ship’s hulls. The closer we get, the more effective it is. We will be very close.”

  Andy immediately asked a follow-up question, which Jon had expected him to do. “How do we defend ourselves against them at close range, Sir?”

  Jon shifted the display. “The Alphans tell us the Khruellian worlds have not been attacked in over twenty thousand years. Because of this, all of their weapons development has been skewed toward offense, not defense. Most of these PBWs are mounted on ships, not on land. We are not likely to encounter many of them, but those we do will be deadly. Our flight patterns on the deck will be fast and erratic. We want to be there and gone by the time their few PBWs can be aimed and fired. Vice Admiral Estes’ ship along with several destroyers will focus on any ground-based PBW’s detected. Hopefully, he’ll knock them out before they get any of our ships. The other members of the squadron and we will be on the deck leaving our calling cards.”

  “What role will the Hylox ships play?” His XO asked. The rumor mill had been filled with stories about the alien allies, especially the strange and beautiful, cat-like aliens from Hylox. The Hylox Commander’s interest in Jon had also been the subject of several ribald rumors.

  Jon was glad to get to the subject of their alien allies if only to dispel some of the rumors. “The Hylox ships are small and extremely agile and have been assigned to protect us against attacks from the air or space. The Alphans tell us they are fierce predators on their homeworld and are extremely tenacious when they are attacked or are on the hunt.”

  The crew asked one or two more questions, and Jon could sense their comfort level growing the more they understood what they were facing. He was not worried about his crew. They had worked and flown together on several deep space missions including the earlier raid on Khruel. They would do their job like the professionals they were. Jon, however, was deeply concerned about Annika’s ship. It was a new ship with a new crew without the experience of working together for more than the shakedown cruise they had just completed. As good a captain as Annika probably was, she would have to work with people who might need a millisecond longer to make a decision. That millisecond could get her and her crew killed.

  Chapter 38

  In deep space

  The jump to the deep space coordinates had been a herculean task of cooperation between the five species involved in the campaign against the Khruellians. The varying type of FTL drives and their different capabilities made a unified jump impossible. The only ships capable of covering the distance in a single jump were the CSF ships. The other allies’ ships suffered the same fate as most FTL drives, the power required increased exponentially as the distance increased. The Hylox ships would have needed one standard month, and two hundred jumps to travel the ten Thousand light years to the deep space rendezvous point. To varying degrees, the others would have had similar difficulties. The problem threatened to scuttle the first combined allied operation until the engineers at Gruenwald, and some of the engineers from the Holosager Confederation ships had figured out a way to tether a string of smaller ships to the CSF’s dreadnaughts. Altogether, one hundred and forty ships made the jump with the help of ten of the CSF’s biggest ships.

  The Armada was a strange collection of different concepts of space flight. The CSF ships were unique in that they were designed for both space and high-speed atmospheric flight. Their devilishly pointed crafts were envied by the other alien pilots except for the Alphans who had settled on a round disk as their basic design. The Hylox ships were round globes twenty
meters in diameter with two, torpedo-shaped pods on either side attached by a thin wing-like structure. Adalan-Kyfor had told Jon they were weapons pods. The small ships could spin on a central axis and change directions in an instant. The Hooshag and Brotoon Confederation ships, plus those from the Aardiam Empire were made to fly in space only. They resembled a collection of pods, struts, and tanks cobbled together into a very utilitarian assembly.

  The CSF Sparta lay ten kilometers from the Islandia. Jon wondered how Annika was doing getting her crew in shape. He knew several of Sparta’s senior non-coms as well as the XO, who had come from the CSF Enderson, Vice Admiral Estes’ ship. Those were good people, but they were not the ones running the machinery, arming the PBWs or taking care of the capacitors. Those unknowns were the people Jon worried about.

  Talor had been listening to Jon’s anguished concerns rattling around in his mind. Finally, he told Jon, “You must accept the fact that Captain McKinnah is capable and has put herself in harm’s way just as you have done by choice of careers. I suggest you concentrate on your own ship, lest your concerns for your wife interfere with your own ship’s safety.”

  Jon stared at his android who had spoken to him in the privacy of his wardroom. “You’re a smart-ass, Talor, but you’re correct. She can take care of herself.”

  Talor considered Jon’s retort and countered, “Does that mean my ass is smarter than yours, Jon?”

  Jon threw the book he was trying to read at him, which the android caught easily. He read the title and said, “Battle tactics in the eighteenth century. Interesting reading, but I think after this engagement you will be able to rewrite the book on space warfare.”

  Jon laughed ruefully, “I believe you are right on that score, brother.” He had a sudden thought, completely unrelated to what they had been experiencing for the last several months. He had no idea where it came from, but he asked Talor, “Do you or Talo or Talia still have any contact with the Ankh?”