Annihilation: A Rose Grows In Weeds (34 page)

“Here it comes,” She thought.

“You kept track of me because you are responsible for the safety of your system. Keeping track of me was also done for my safety.” Bridget was startled that he would know that. “If anything happened to me on your watch, you like I, would have difficulty forgiving yourself.”

“I’m genuinely surprised you see that, Admiral.”

“Now, letting Director Nicole know was more than what was needed but I’m forced to admit that if you reported to me and didn’t notify me if someone of my stature came in the system, then I would be greatly upset.”

“Exactly, Sir; she deserved to know.”

“So, why are you here, Captain?”

“I thought you were going to bust me and send me home; now I honestly don’t know.”

“How did you find your way here?”

“My sensor officer spends his spare time developing programs that will get the coordinates of any place in the Stars Realm. He fed your directions into his program and it said that I was expected here.”

Dorg lifted his com and said, “How long will it take you to get here.”

“I’m actually right behind you waiting for you to call me.”

Bridget turned around and there walking toward them was Prince Thomas Gardner and his daughter. She jumped up and came to rigid attention and saluted.

“At ease Captain,” Tag said. There was a crowd of people being held back more than a hundred yards away by a company of marines. “It’s hard for us to go out in public but I think this situation is worth the effort.” He then turned to Dorg and said, “Well, what’s your decision?”

Dorg looked at Bridget and said, “Captain O’Donald, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Commodore. You will turn you ship over to a crew graduating from the academy and move your crew to the transport waiting for you in orbit.” Bridget was stunned but Dorg continued, “Your current Megaship is one of the first generation and is only used for system defense. You and your crew will be taken to Sten’s planet to take possession of a new megaship that incorporates a number of new designs. You and your crew will learn how to fight that ship and once you master its systems, it will be brought back here to Ross and will become Prince Gardner’s Flag Ship. I expect you to perform admirably, Commodore.”

Bridget could not stop grinning. This was more than she could have ever hoped for and Prince Gardner was signing her promotion as she stood there. Then he turned and said, “My last ship’s commander is now a fleet admiral, but I’ll make sure he takes time to bring you up to speed on the systems he used in Retribution.”

Bridget saluted both Dorg and Tag and then asked, “What is our new ships name, Sir?”

Tag looked at Dorg and said, “She is named The Stars Realm Ship Alexander Kosiev.”

The emotion that washed over Dorg and Bridget O’Donald could be seen by anyone looking at them. The pride the new commodore felt was clear to all. “Dismissed, Commodore; you need to go get you crew ready to transfer to the transport.

Bridget ran to her shuttle and took off at a speed that was excessive, but she didn’t care; her crew was going to be excited beyond belief about their new assignment and ship.

Dorg watched her leave and looked at Tag and said, “Was I ever that young?”

Rose laughed and said, “No Admiral, you were born old.”

Dorg scowled, “Not you, too.”

Rose laughed then ran and jumped into Dorg’s four arms. “No uncle, you know I love you.”

Dorg held her and remembered her sensing him as she was being born and sending him her feelings of good will; what a remarkable family these Gardners are. Then he stood and swung Rose in circles.

The conference room was full and Tag looked around at everyone. He reflected for a moment and then thought, “Atlas, we are at a critical point of this conflict and I’m worried about the upcoming conflict.”

“Tag, I’ve visited the Plants and I don’t think they will be attacking soon. They are changing a whole class of ships. I think you have some time.”

“He’s right, Daddy,” Rose thought. “The Plants are going to get ready for the battle and it’s going to take some time.”

Tag took a deep breath and said, “How much time?”

Rose said, “Hard to tell; probably more than a year.”

Tag stood and said to the group, “I hoped that by using fewer ships that the Plants would attack the Dremels planet with the bulk of their fleets. I think I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. My daughter tells me that they are redesigning a class of ships and I don’t think it takes a genius to figure that the ships will be used to ram. That means that the hornets being used to stop their anti-matter missiles are no longer an effective weapon; which also means that the rammers will be screened and fast. I don’t know how many ships they will bring but I’m certain that the number will be staggering.” The room was silent. Tag then looked at Cade McAllister and said, “The delay in attacking us is actually a blessing. We don’t have nearly enough of the jump penetrators to win this fight. The delay will give us an opportunity to manufacture enough to make a difference.”

“How many do you think we’ll need?” Terl asked.

Tag looked at Rose and said, “Millions.” He noticed that Rose nodded.

Misty Nicole stood and asked, “How do we use the new weapons?”

Tag looked at Cade and said, “Why don’t you handle this one.” Cade stood up and looked at the large group and hesitated. Then he turned on the wall display which had a diagram of the Dremels system. The Dremels planet had 16 asteroids circling it and the 32,000 SR ships were in orbit around the planet.

“I’m not going to try to tell you that when the battle starts for this planet that it is going to be easy. Matter of fact, being on board a ship will be a very dangerous place to be. I have looked at this situation and unfortunately I’ve only come up with one plan that maximizes the jump penetrators.’ H e looked directly at Tag and said, “All of our ships will have to be at the planet.”

Tag said, “You know that there will not be an escape through their ranks once they arrive at the planet.”

“Yes Your Majesty, but if there were ships attacking from outside the planets orbit, they will be in the path of the penetrators. There will literally be millions of penetrators jumping in and moving at their incredible velocity into the Plant Fleet. If ships are between them and the Plants, there will be gaps for them to escape. The ships and the forts will be launching the normal penetrator and we will be jumping in the jump penetrators so that the Plants can’t retreat from the system. The forts will have a huge number of the penetrators and each ship will have more than 400 mounted on their hulls. If the Plants begin to get close to our ships then the forts will launch all their penetrators and then fly out into the middle of their fleets and release all their energy. The ships will not fire their penetrators until the forts have exhausted their stores and have self-destructed.”

Tag looked out at the leaders of the Stars Realm and said, “This is not a place for the faint of heart and I believe that our Navy will carry out this plan. Admiral Dorg, I agree with Cade on this plan and we need to move the rest of our ships to the Dremels system. Transports will move the penetrators to be mounted to the hulls as they are produced. We will manufacture them as quickly as possible and maybe the Plants will give us enough time to manufacture the number we need to be successful. There is one more thing, Cade.” Cade looked at Tag with raised eyebrows, “You do have the penetrators that will seek out and destroy the frequency ships, don’t you?”

Cade nodded and said, “Yes, we do.”

Tag looked around the room and said, “Then if it gets to the point of the destruction of our fleet, we will jump away, however, I want to take a toll on the plants before we go.”

Danielle and Rose watched Tag lead the meeting and once more Danielle felt the fear of losing Tag. She looked at Rose and thought to her, “Will he be safe?”

Rose broke her gaze from Tag and looked at Danielle. She had never lied to her mother and she was tempted to tell her first lie; but she couldn’t. “Mom, no one will be safe. He knows it, too; but Mom, he wouldn’t be the man you love if he didn’t lead his sailors in this conflict. He has to go and you know it.”

Danielle looked into Rose’s eyes and was amazed at the maturity of her eleven year old. She kept her composure and then reached out and hugged her daughter. Rose held on to her mother and thought, “I would tell you that you’re expecting another child but I don’t think you could handle it at this moment. You don’t need to learn this happy news at this sad time. She felt the little embryo and sensed that it, like her, would be very talented. It would be good to have a brother to share her gifts with.” She let her mother go and turned her attention back to her father. Even this battle won’t solve the problem with the Algeans. It looked more and more like total extermination of the plants was the only solution. “I know how to do that,” she thought.

B
ridget O’Donald and Tag sat in a room with Planet Leader Sten looking at his new ship that was being completed at the Central Planet’s largest ship yard. Both Tag and Bridget were amazed at its size; it was at least two miles long. Sten let them stare and then said, “I suppose you’re wondering why it’s so big.”

Tag looked at him and said, “Yes, I am. How big are the power cells on its surface; I can’t see the seams where they come together.”

“That’s because there aren’t any.”

Tag and Bridget both looked at Sten with shocked expressions and Sten said, “Sit down and let me explain how this ship came about.” They sat down and Sten turned on the large display in front of their table. “This is a one of a kind ship; we will never be able to build another. Cade McAllister came to me more than two years ago with a video he wanted me to see; it was the destruction of Admiral Kosievs’ ship.” Sten immediately saw the pain in Tag’s expression and knew the loss he felt for Kosievs’ death. “McAllister saw something in the recording that he couldn’t explain and wanted me to help him understand it. I know the pain this video might cause you, Your Majesty, but I think it’s important for you to see it.”

Tag looked at Sten and said, “Go ahead, I see it in my mind at least once a day.”

Sten began the video at the point just before the fifty anti-matter missiles hit the Moscow. I want you to watch closely what happens during the explosion.”

Tag watched as the missiles hit the Moscow and the huge explosion that followed. He noticed that the explosion seemed to be bigger at the top of the doomed Megaship. “Why is the explosion bigger at the top?”

“Excellent, you saw the same thing McAllister did when he looked at it. I’m going to slow the explosion down to one ten thousandths of normal speed,” Sten said and then ran the recording again.

Tag watched and saw the ship blowing up but there was a piece of it that was blown away so fast that even at the slow speed of the video it left almost faster than he could follow. “A piece of the ship survived the blast.”

“Yes it did. Once McAllister made that determination he decided that there should have been no way any part of that ship should have survived that many anti-matter blasts and he decided that finding that piece of the Moscow that survived was important. If it could survive then maybe we would have armor that is anti-matter proof.”

“So what did he do?” Bridget asked.

“It wasn’t as easy as he thought it was going to be. The Plant fleet had left the planet after their missiles had destroyed it, so McAllister went to the last coordinates of Kosievs’ ship and oriented his sensor array on the line that the piece was blow away. He has one of Earth’s foremost engineers determine the velocity that it has left and calculated how far away it had to be. He knew that the slightest variation would put him off millions of miles so he brought fifty megaships to spread out to the limits of their sensors and then jumped to the vicinity of where the piece should be located; nothing showed up on their sensors. He called in a thousand megaships and began the process again and once more nothing showed up.”

“Could he have read the trajectory wrong?” Tag asked.

“He had five other scientists check the trajectory and they all independently agreed that he was right.” Sten leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “It took him four months of troubled thought to come up with a breakthrough; maybe it could not be read by the sensors.”

Bridget frowned and said, “How is that possible?”

Sten said, “He didn’t want to believe it either but he decided to try another way to find it. He ran his calculations again and used three thousand megaships spaced evenly in front of where the object should be traveling and set their visual sensors to alarm if anything caused a star to blink because an object crossed between it and a ship. In less than a day ten megaships had their sensors alarm. McAllister used their readings to triangulate where the object was and jumped to where it should be. He came out of his jump and the object barely missed hitting his ship as it sped by. Cade had his ship accelerate and catch up to the piece of the Moscow and match velocities. He called the other Megaships over and he shot a grappling hook into the object; the grappling hook disappeared and was cut off with the smoothest, cleanest, cut McAllister had ever seen.”