“Just one Black Ship killed eighty of our newest Ship Killers. We were still losing until those four ships intervened. What do you think will happen when thousands of those Black Ships arrive and make no mistake in assuming they are not coming back? When that ship fails to report, they will investigate in large numbers. They will arrive on the same path that ship took to get here and they will find us.” The First sat back and the silence was deafening. The Admiral said, “I gave the four ships a coordinate to go and open a dialogue with you.”
“WHAT?!”
“I have a ship there waiting to send any conversation straight to your communication panel. I’m hoping they will open a dialogue.” The Council and the First stared at the Admiral and he said, “We need to work with them to fight the Black Ships. We must find a way to get them to fight with us.”
“Just how are we going to do that?”
The Admiral looked around the room and then looked at the First, “We must convince them that we are no longer a danger to them and we’ve got to mean it.”
The First pushed a button on his panel, “Hub Computer, have you thought about this?”
“I have.”
“And?’
“I must confess that I was against releasing those four ships initially, but after following the Admiral’s suggestion, I must say that I’ve changed my opinion.”
“Why?”
“If we take on the Black Ships alone, we will be completely destroyed. No one will survive and that includes all of the planets we’ve enslaved as well.”
“Why is that?”
“The Black Ship Civilization has already destroyed most intelligent life on the planets in their galaxy that were close to their star cluster. They will continue that process here. We cannot stop them.”
“Have you determined anything we can do to survive?”
“I have but you aren’t going to like it.”
“Tell us.”
The Hub Computer did and it was right; they didn’t like it.
• • •
Drey announced, “We have arrived at the coordinates and there is one ship there.”
Doc looked up, “What kind of ship?”
“A standard Slaver Warship. It’s not one of their Ship Killers and its force field is down.”
Doc said, “We’re coming to the bridge.” He looked at Dee in his arms and said, “I’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll take a shower and join you shortly.” Doc kissed her and left for the bridge.
Ian looked at the ship and said, “It appears they aren’t setting up a trap.”
Violet shrugged, “They could have killed us and chose not to do it.”
Ian drew a breath and blew it out, “E, take us into normal space. Tell Doc to remain in other space until we determine what’s going on.” E emerged into normal space and Ian pressed the frequency used by the Slaver ships, “We were asked to come and open a dialogue with your leadership.”
“Please stand by just a moment while I transfer this conversation to him.”
Ian waited and after three minutes looked at Violet and began shaking his head. The speaker on the wall activated and they heard, “I must say that I’m somewhat bothered by opening a conversation with you.”
“Don’t think you’re alone in that sentiment.”
There was a pause, “I guess I can understand your reluctance.”
“One needs to look no further than your conquests to understand that.”
“We have not destroyed any of your planets.”
Ian smiled, “It’s not because you haven’t tried to find them to do just that.”
“I’ve been told that you destroyed those planets to prevent us from searching for your home worlds.”
“That is correct.”
“You were right that we wanted to destroy you. Our structure absolutely demanded that you be conquered.”
“We determined that as soon as we saw you main planets. You would not negotiate with anyone.”
“I’ve also been told that by my subordinates, although I want to disagree with that assessment.” Ian started to respond but the speaker continued, “However, my main computer has shown me that I was wrong to even think that we wouldn’t have attacked you. Without your attacks, my predecessor would still be in power and he wouldn’t have hesitated. It was your destruction of our two planets that led to my becoming our leader. Now I’m faced with a dilemma.”
“What’s that?”
“I have been convinced that we cannot survive an attack by the Black Ships. The only chance of survival is to enlist your help in taking them on and even then it’s going to be uncertain if we survive.”
Ian thought a moment and said, “Why should we help you? You are just as big a danger as the Black Civilization.”
“You, like us, have a better chance of survival if we fight together and I suspect you know that and that’s why you’re here.”
Ian shook his head, “I think that’s obvious but the current situation is not that simple.”
• • •
Doc looked at Dee, “Are you sending this to Moe?”
“I am and he is sending it to the King and Cole.”
Doc looked back at the speaker.
• • •
“My Admiral has told me that the only way to get you to assist us is to prove to you that we are no longer a danger to you and make sure you see it.”
Ian looked at Violet and then said, “Your entire civilization will collapse without conquests to feed your main planets. You cannot exist in peace with any others.”
“We have changed our structure.”
“In what way?”
“We are moving all populations off our main planets to other worlds. More than fifty percent have already been moved to our farming worlds due to your attacks on our planets. However, the remaining populations on our main planets are being moved to planets that do not have intelligent life and a huge number of our former slaves have chosen to go with our citizens to those new worlds to help them build them.”
Ian stared at Violet shocked at the revelation.
“We did this initially to free up enough ships to go and attack your civilization, but it has become clear that we no longer need to conquer any other civilizations. We can make each planet self-supporting. It’s the overcrowded main planets that cause us to have to go out and conquer other worlds. We are going to move all the populations off those planets and leave everything running to deceive the Black Ships into thinking that is where they need to attack. We will fight them at those planets. The new planets will not be sending any electronic waves into space and that should make them difficult to find.”
“We have also started that process.”
There was a pause and Ian heard, “I would recommend that you speed it up. We estimate that in about a year, the Black Ships will be returning.”
Suddenly Ian’s console said, “I’ll take it from here.” The King on Euclid said, “How can we be sure you will not attack us in the future?”
“We will give you the plans for the high intensity beams we used to attack you as well as the location of all our ship building facilities.”
Everyone listening in on the conversation from the Union was stunned at the statement. The King said, “Why did you decide to do this?”
“Honestly, I didn’t want to do it. My Councilors were also against it, but the Admiral and Computer showed us what would happen if we didn’t convince you that we would never attack you again. I am also willing to enter into an agreement that we will come to your defense in the future if you are ever faced with another enemy. We will also agree to never search for your location and will allow you to put destructive devices at our ship building planets to insure we keep that promise.”
The King thought about the agreement and said, “Doc, you will decide.”
Doc fell back in his chair. “WHY ME!?!”
“You are the one that does whatever is necessary to defend us. You can make the hard choices.”
Dee looked at Doc and saw him shaking his head. She grabbed his face and looked in his eyes and he saw her smiling. “Are you sure?”
“That place in my mind is.”
Doc pressed his communicator and said, “You can’t start an agreement with distrust. This current agreement you suggested won’t work.”
The King and the First said at the same time. “Why not?”
“Because they are making all the concessions; there will always be distrust unless you choose to enter into this agreement fully. The Union will give them the location of our planets and open our worlds to them.” The First and the High Council were stunned at Doc’s statement. “It’s easy to agree to anything when your life is on the line. The only way for this to work is for both civilizations in the long term, is to trust each other to be a friend and ally no matter what happens. If we’re going to do this, we’ve got to do it without fear and distrust.”
Dee’s smile was beautiful. She nodded and reached over and hugged Doc.
The King looked at Cole and said, “He’s right.”
The First said, “I did not expect you to offer this and he is right. We have a high level of fear concerning what you have done.”
The King said, “We will give you our beam technology and we’ll both go to work to build the ships we’re going to need to defend our galaxy. No matter how you look at this; this boils down to us against them. They are the outsiders and we have to build the means of defending us against outside aggression.”
The First looked out at the High Council, “I am calling for a Prime Vote on this agreement with the understanding that anyone that does anything that violates the spirit of this agreement is committing treason and will face a death sentence. This vote will be binding on me and all future Councils. You will vote now.”
The Union members heard the shouts of the High Council and the King said, “This will also be a law in our Union and will be binding on all our members.”
The First said, “I request permission to come and sign this agreement with you.”
“The coordinates are being sent. I will see you one week from today and we’ll work out how we’re going to do this.”
Doc said, “Your Majesty and First Councilor.”
“Yes.”
“We shouldn’t wait for them to come here.”
The First said, “What do you mean?”
“We need to take the fight to them and attempt to slow them down.”
The King said, “How do you suggest we do that?”
“Ian and I should meet with their Admiral and put together a task force to visit our aggressive neighbors. We’ll start operations the moment we see them starting to gather ships.”
Cole said, “You’re going to need some other space scanners.”
“Yes we are. You should get moving on that now.”
The First said, “I’ll give you the Admiral’s communication frequency. I’ll give him the authority to do whatever you determine is necessary.”
The King said, “I look forward to seeing you.”
The First looked at the Admiral and said, “I will as well.” The Admiral smiled and the High Council rose and cheered him.
I
an sat on E and looked out at the Milky Way. The fleet was scattered along the edge of the giant galaxy closest to the Andromeda Galaxy. If the Black Ships managed to organize without being detected, they would jump here first before they entered. Organizing without being detected was not going to be easy.
Three months after the agreement was ratified by all the planets in both civilizations, Cole took eight thousand unmanned vessels to the edge of Andromeda and released them to jump into the Black Civilization’s star cluster. The vessels began jumping throughout the star cluster, releasing space scanners throughout the cluster. More than a million scanners were released and they detected high electronic activity and began jumping into the planetary systems inhabited by the Black Civilization. More than four thousand of the vessels were detected and chased by the Black Ships and were eventually destroyed, but not before hundreds of thousands of their scanners were released. The scanners began processing the communications of the Black Civilization and after two months began sending intercepted communications. The Black Civilization knew that they were being watched but they didn’t know who was doing it. Even the Black Ships couldn’t find the tiny scanners that would shut down anytime one of them came close. So far, nothing was observed that appeared to be plans for an attack. If a Black Ships started to gather, the fleet would jump to Andromeda to face them in their own space before they jumped away.
• • •
E said, “A hundred new Ship Killers have arrived.”
Ian nodded and said, “Notify the Admiral to send a hundred back to be updated.”
“Done.”
“How many still need updating?”
“Of the ten thousand on station, only eight hundred need modification.”
“Have you heard from the other Sigmas?”
“They should arrive shortly.”
Ian looked out of his viewport at the three hundred new Sigmas holding station around his ship and was amazed at the changes that had taken place. The Sigmas were now twelve hundred feet long and were shaped like a long pointed prism. The bow was pointed and moved back with ten square sides that grew wider as they moved toward the rear of the ship. Each of those sides had a deflection force field that would deflect any beam fired at it. However, there was a limit as to how many beams it could deflect. Multiple hits of the Black Ship’s massive beams would break through to the main force field. Once that field was hit, the ship would have to jump away or face being penetrated by the next beam. It could survive for a short period of intense warfare but there was a limit to what it could handle.
“The scanners have been collecting information on how many Black Ships are in that star cluster.”
Ian looked away from the viewport and said, “What’s the count, E?”
“More than eight million.”
Violet saw him sigh as she entered the bridge and said, “A lot has changed since we landed on that planet.”
Ian nodded, “Yes it has, my Love. I long for that time again.”
She came over and sat down in his lap, “This is a big bag of wam pam we should have avoided.”
Ian nodded, “We made a mistake. We never should have suggested we were in a different galaxy.”
Violet nodded and leaned against his chest.
• • •
“We are being scouted.”
“Have you determined who is doing it?”