January 2251

“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world are so formidable as the will and moral and courage of free men and women. It is a weapon adversaries in today’s world do not have”. 

– Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, 1981-1989

Grugell, the Imperial Palace

Emperor Ignostak XI was enjoying the attentions of his five favored wives when the door to his private apartments crashed open.  Eyes narrowed in rage, he looked up to see his chief military advisor, Admiral Apportamattid XIII.  The Admiral was flanked by two armed soldiers, and in his right hand, the silver tube of a blaster was leveled at the Emperor’s head.

“What’s the meaning of this?” the Emperor demanded as his wives scattered. 

“Meaning, Your Highness?  The meaning of the twenty years I’ve spent working so carefully to become at last your most trusted advisor?”  Apportamattid’s voice was conversational, but the aimed blaster belied his calm tone.  “The meaning of my action, Your Highness, is obvious.  Indeed, our soon-to-be late Emperor, I might well be the one to ask the meaning of your actions.  Those actions include, of course, your orders to hold only a weak status quo against the human encroachments on our space.  Your orders to leave unsettled the dispute over the planet Forest, where my younger brother died in payment for a lost battle over nothing.  Nothing, Emperor!”

“Forest?  What planet is that?”

“You don’t even remember, do you?  Well, it matters not a bit.  The Empire needs a stronger hand at the helm in this time of crisis, Highness, and since you’ve no son to contest a claim of succession, and since I control the loyalty of the Navy…” Without further ado, Apportamattid fired his blaster.

“Remove that,” the former Admiral, now claimant to the throne, pointed at the smoking corpse of Ignostak XI.  The two soldiers hurried to obey.

“You wives of the former Emperor, executed traitor to the Grugell Empire, you must choose.  Join the Estate of the new Emperor or join the former Emperor in death.”  He leveled his blaster again at the huddled forms of Ignostak’s five wives.

The oldest of the five stood up slowly, her hands shaking as she extended them to the new Emperor.  “Your weapon is not necessary, Lord.  Our allegiance is to the Empire.  You are the Empire.  Your Estate is ours now.”

“You have chosen wisely,” Apportamattid assured them as he holstered his weapon.

Tarbos, the Confederate Senate Office Building

The gleaming red time/date readout gleamed softly from mid-air, above the polished black desktop.

2058:31/12/2250

Senator Michael Crider Jr. pressed a stud, and the display faded away.  He rubbed his eyes and yawned.

Another year gone, he thought.  Another year.

Two minutes until midnight on Tarbos’ twenty-one-hour clock, and Tarbos Standard would tick over to Standard Year 2251.  New Year’s Eve was about to tick over to New Year’s Day.  Outside, in the streets of the Confederate capital city of Mountain View, the citizens were shouting, drinking, and embracing each other in a typically balmy Mountain View summer night.

Two terms, he reminded himself.  Twelve years away from Forest.  Twelve years away from home.  

At thirty-seven, the Senator was still tall and straight as he had been when he first saw Tarbos as a twenty-year old boy accompanying his father to the Constitutional Convention that had established the Confederacy.  His eyes still glittered ice blue, but he wore his straw-blonde hair close-cropped now in the fashion popular on Tarbos.  Dressed in his habitual conservative dark, tailored suit, he passed among the denizens of Mountain View with little notice.

Michael Crider Jr, Senator to the Confederacy from the Sovereign World of Forest, was no ordinary man.  And the year to come, the fateful Standard Year of 2251 C.E., was to be no ordinary year.

He picked up a printout from his office hyperphone terminal.  His sister Andrea had ‘phoned with two pieces of good news – her promotion to Lieutenant Commander, and her long-awaited assignment to VS-66, a strike fighter wing assigned to the new fighter carrier CSS Mountain View.  The first in its class, the Mountain View would be departing the orbital shipyards on Earth in another six weeks to join up with a task group forming to secure the Grugell frontier.  Senator Crider had co-sponsored the legislation that had funded the ship and named it after the capital of a growing Confederacy.

Interesting times, the Senator reminded himself.  The Mountain View would be joining another new ship, the battle cruiser CSS Orleans, to form the foundations of Task Force One, home-ported at Fleet Headquarters on Tarbos.

Sixteen years after the forming of the Confederacy, and the Navy had a grand total of twenty-six ships.  The Fleet consisted of the Orleans, the Mountain View, four light cruisers, ten destroyers, and ten frigates.  This was the genesis of the First Fleet of the newly birthed Confederate Navy.

It wasn’t much of a force to cover a border that spanned thousands of light years.  Senator Crider’s father had fought the Grugell first-hand almost forty years earlier, and the Criders knew the alien race for an implacable foe.  They needed more ships, and more than that, they needed the political will to finance and build them.

But the still-young Confederacy was having a crisis of political will.  While Tarbos and Halifax were quickly developing shipbuilding capacities, and Earth already had them, the balance of the sixteen Confederate Free Planets were balking at spending almost half of the Confederacy’s Gross Confederate Product on building a Navy.

Senator Crider tapped on the top of his desk twice, bringing up a query note on his desktop computer terminal.  “Replay Senate debate on Funding Bill 2250:125A, 1400-1415,” he announced.  The computer obediently replayed that portion of the debate, where the senior Senator for Corinthia, Lord James Galloway the Third, held the floor:

“Forty-five percent, my friends.  Forty-five percent of the output of sixteen settled worlds.  Forty-five percent of a tithe paid to the Confederate government on Tarbos by the hard-working people of the sixteen free planets.  And for what?” 

The usually bombastic Lord Galloway was in rare form.  He pounded the podium with his fist as he spoke. 

“Pretty new toys for the Navy.  And there are pretty new barges for a new Fleet Admiral to move about the skies, most expensive of all a shiny new battle cruiser.  And to build these pretty toys, there are now pretty new shipyards at Tarbos and Halifax.  And for what?  Where are these feared enemies, these ‘Grugell’ we hear so much about?”

A shout rose from the floor, but at the speaking microphone, Lord Galloway’s voice thundered out unchecked.

 “No!  Don’t answer!  I’ll tell you!  One of these feared aliens is living a comfortable retirement on Earth – and twelve others were returned peacefully to their own society twenty years ago from right here on Tarbos!  And only this year, the Grugell Empire has sent an envoy to open diplomatic relations.  Diplomatic relations!  Does an Empire bent on conquest open diplomatic relations, I ask you?  No!  Is this massive expenditure on a Navy required to defend us against this non-existent threat?  No!  Is there any evidence – even one scrap of empirical evidence that the Grugell pose a threat to this Confederacy?  No!”

“I’ll tell you, honored members of this Senate, what poses a threat.  The threat is to the livelihoods of the citizens of the free worlds who bear the financial burden for this…”

“Stop replay.”  He’d seen enough.

Every bit of the funding the Confederate House of Selectmen and Senate had been able to get for the Navy had come at the cost of endless bickering, endless debate on the floor, endless conference sessions in back rooms, endless testimony by a handful of new Admirals with no fleet to command.  Six years earlier the Confederate Congress had managed a funding package to build the basis of a fleet, a task group really, based on the wing carrier Mountain View.  Four years ago, the funding package for the Orleans and three more frigates had passed by a narrow margin.

And in the meantime, Senator Crider and a handful of others had funded a few other, smaller projects.  Black projects, projects intended to get more ‘bang for the buck’ than conventional forces.

A polite cough from the doorway drew the Senator’s eyes upwards from his desk to see his Chief of Staff, Anton Silva, standing there.

“It’s awfully late, Senator.  Why don’t you go out and catch a drink or something?  It is New Year’s Eve, you know.”

“I know.  It is late, isn’t it?”

Silva nodded.

“You know; I think I’ll pass on the festivities.  You go on ahead and bring in the New Year for me, Tony.  I think I’ll just head home.”

Home, he thought.  Not much of a home anymore.  Senator Crider’s wife, Maria, had taken their teenage son Nelson and left for Earth six months earlier, filing divorce proceedings by hyperphone from Denver. 

And she may have been right, he told himself.  I am too wrapped up in the job.  Maybe after this term, I’ll go to Earth, see if we can patch things up.

Maybe.

In the meantime, though, several big jobs remained.  And Tony Silva was still standing there, watching him expectantly.

Slowly, Senator Crider of Forest got up, stretched, and put on his suit jacket.  “All right, Tony, you win.  I’ll see you in the morning.”

March 2251:  Earth, the International Space Station

Rear Admiral Isaac Gauss viewed his new charge with a quiet pride.

The Orleans was the Confederate Navy’s crowning achievement.  A kilometer and a half long and five hundred meters across, built around the newest revision of the standard Gellar Star Drive, the first space-going battle cruiser built by human hands. She was powerful enough to fight any three ships known to be run by the opposing Grugell, and fast enough to catch them if they ran.  And best of all, the Orleans was to be the flagship for Admiral Gauss’ new command, Task Force One.  The Confederate Navy Department, in love with long-winded titles, had gifted Rear Admiral Gauss with the official title of Commander, Task Force One, or COMTASKFORONE.

“She’s a beauty, Admiral.  She’s a fitting flagship for the first Task Force Commander in the Confederate Navy.” 

The newly appointed COMTASKFORONE turned away from the viewport to see his aide, Captain Jerry Jensen.  “Jerry.  Are we ready to move the flag aboard?”

“Two hours from your say-so, sir.”

“Good.  We’ll be moving to the new Fleet spacedock at Tarbos to meet up with the rest of the Task Force, and then…”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m thinking exercises around the New Albion system.”

“Right near the frontier, sir?”  Two systems lay uncomfortably close to the Confederacy’s border with the Grugell Empire, New Albion and Fortune.  New Albion was half a parsec closer to the red line than was Fortune.

“Might as well show the flag.  You know they’ll be watching.”

“Yes sir, I know they’ll see us.  It’s us seeing them that I’m worried about.”  Jensen was, obviously, referring the Grugell’s ability to conceal their smaller ships with cloaking fields.  So far, the Confederacy had been utterly unable to duplicate the technology.

Admiral Gauss grinned at his aide.  “Oh, come on, Jerry, you joined up for the excitement, right?  Remember Colorado Springs?”  Both men were graduates of the United States Air Force Academy; two years earlier, Rear Admiral Gauss had been Colonel Isaac Gauss, United States Air Force.

“First Flight, sir,” Captain Jensen answered, remembering an old class motto.  That same two years previously, he had been Lieutenant Colonel (Promotable) in the selfsame USAF.  A much larger gulf in rank now separated the two men, but they had worked together in the past, and each knew the other well.

“First Flight is right, Jerry.  We’re the first flight for this whole Navy.  There’s only so many inhabitable planets out there, Jerry, and the Grugell are going to try to take another one from us sooner or later.”

“Let’s hope for later.  We could use five or six more like the Orleans before that happens.  We’ve got a really thin green line, sir,” Jensen observed, referring to the newly designed Navy service uniform.

“We’ll just have to draw it in where it counts, Jerry,” Gauss answered.  “Remember old Napoleon.  If you can’t be strong everywhere, you have to pick one spot and be strong there, and just hope it’s the right spot.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s move aboard tomorrow morning, Jerry.  Oh-nine-hundred, I think.  I’ll inform Fleet Admiral Kosake that we’re going to put to space tomorrow.  Let the Orleans’ Captain know we’re coming, will you?  Oh, and send a hyperphone message to the Mountain View at Tarbos, let them know we’ll be jumping for Tarbos late tomorrow.  Give them our ETA; tell them to be ready for exercises.  Best get them in the gate early, right?”

“Roger that, sir.  If you don’t have anything else for me, sir, I’ll get going.”

“Go ahead, Jerry.  I’ll head back to that broom closet of a temporary office they gave us.  We’ve both got a lot to do before tomorrow.” At 0900 hours the next morning, the Orleans’ shipboard announcing system bellowed “COMTASKFORONE, arriving,” as Rear Admiral Gauss and his staff came aboard the new battle cruiser.  The Navy’s first operational Task Force was ready to get under way at last.

To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.