Once A Warrior King

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I own neither Farscape or Hammer's Slammers, but you already knew that, didn't you? Rating: Pretty much K, or K+. I'll let you know if it changes. Time: Not too long after A Matter of Intelligence.

Frederic de Gautier.

"Lieutenant de Gautier, reporting as ordered, sir." I halted and saluted my commander as I crossed the threshold into his office. He waved at me vaguely, acknowledging my salute and continued to stare at the viewscreen on the far wall.

I sighed inwardly. Our commander, who had recently promoted himself to Rear Admiral, was busy, busy looking at his command. The screen covered nearly the entire wall, some four meters by four. The center of the screen showed the Delvian planet Forests of Bazil and the twenty-four terra-formed moons that were the source of the planets wealth, and indeed, our wealth.

Surrounding the main image were twelve smaller images, all showing the ships of our small task force. At top right was the Imperial French Navy Ship Austerlitz, the flagship. She was the newest and best light cruiser of what had once been a proud navy. She mounted thirty two long range ship-killing missile tubes, eight twelve-gigawatt directed energy weapon mounts, and anti-missile defenses, including missile systems and directed energy weapons.

The next screen showed the only other warship that had originally accompanied us into this New Universe, the destroyer Chacal. Chacal mounted twelve missile tubes and four smaller directed energy weapons, plus the usual complement of anti-missile systems.

Then there was the ship I was standing on, Wessex Lady. The Lady was a two million ton freighter that had been converted to an auxiliary. She carried enough spare missiles and other supplies to maintain a task force for a year or more. Her capacious hull also contained all manner of workshops to keep a task force operational. From the angle the screen showed, we were seeing Wessex Lady from Chacal.

Once these two warships had chased off an Ilanic predator that was extorting "taxes" from the Delvians, we had begun escorting convoys taking the valuable pharmaceuticals the Delvians grew on their moons. We did this for a price. This both made us money and proved to the New Universe that we were not pirates. There was no shortage of them in this New Universe.

Being found to be good, law abiding fellows who had their finances in order, we had recently been joined by four missile frigates of the now defunct Navy of the Republic of Cymru: RCN Ships Saint Brannoc, Saint Gildas, Saint Cadoc, and Saint Daffyd. Missile frigates were half the size of destroyers, but still carried twelve ship-killer missile tubes. Of course, the carried fewer missile reloads and other weapons.

They were shortly followed by RCN Bethesda, a destroyer. As the Republic had been our allies in the Old Universe, their ships were Imperial French designs built in their own shipyards. Accordingly, they could be easily supported by us. Bethesda was, in fact, a slightly older model of the Chacal class.

Our best acquisition was the light cruiser IFNS Solferino, 28. Her commander, Captain Botella, had come to this New Universe for much the same reasons we had and with much the same idea in mind. He had under his command the destroyer l'Insurgente, 12, but he had no ship such as our Lady. As we did, he began escorting convoys of merchant ships in the more dangerous areas of the New Universe. There was no shortage of dangerous areas, either.

He was escorting a convoy of seven Hynerian cargo ships through an uninhabited solar system when a Charrid-manned dreadnaught had lumbered out from behind a gas giant and headed for the convoy. Botella had ordered the convoy to scatter and turned his ships towards the Charrid. One merchant was too slow and clumsy to avoid the Charrid. Botella took his ships in too close to draw the Charrid off.

Human ships are faster than their local counterparts and our anti-ship missiles have twice the range of their frag cannons. But if you have to go in close…Well, it's not at all advised.

Botella poured missile salvo after missile salvo into the Charrid, the detonation laser warheads doing great damage. But the Charrid hit l'Insurgente with a blast from her frag cannon destroying the ship's computers. Both sides disengaged.

Botella found that l'Insurgente could barely maneuver and couldn't fight. They managed to get deep into interstellar space where Botella took l'Insurgente's crew off and left her. Botella came to us. He had expended twenty five percent of his long range missiles in that one action, lost his only escort, and couldn't afford another such fight. We managed to get l'Insurgente back to the Forests of Bazil solar system, but there was no possibility we could repair her. We stripped her of all her missiles and removed any usable parts. She now orbited the planet until we could get her into a real shipyard and repair her or until we had to destroy her.

The last ship in our little task force was IFNS Amarillo, formerly the People's Revolutionary Democratic Socialist Republic of Texas Ship Amarillo. She was a half million ton fast transport built to military specifications rather than merchant ship specs. She mounted eight missile tubes as well as anti-missile systems. Captain Chenel had been a prisoner of war aboard her when the Tamarisk Alliance had collapsed at the end of The Wars back in our Old Universe. In the confusion, he had seized command of her and eventually managed to bring her back home. He found our home planet, France, in chaos. We had lost The Wars, and had all of our extra-system colonies stripped away. Millions of ex-military and former colonists flooded back to their home world. Many at home blamed them for the state the planet was in. The government, befuddled as it had been throughout the decades of war, at once tried to suppress dissent and cater to it. The result was chaos, riots, strikes, assassinations, and endless hardships. Chenel sensibly decided to head for the New Universe.

We used Amarillo to transport the products of our Delvian friends and so make more money.

Admiral Darlan finally swung his chair around to face me. "Come in, Frederic. Sit down, boy. What happened in my absence? Tell me, how did your first mission as a diplomat go? "

I sat. "It didn't go well at all, sir." I admitted. "First Guide Civa will not make any kind of a formal agreement with us. We can come to this solar system, we can buy their products and we can escort merchant ships from here to the markets at Garden of Galil, but that's all. She made a point of mentioning that the Seek is a pacifist religion."

"Some pacifists!" Darlan growled. "They don't mind having those Luxans around to do their fighting for them."

I shrugged. "First Guide Civa says that the Luxans have been guests on Forests of Bazil for a century. If their guests wish to fortify the planet's moons with frag cannon batteries that is the Luxan's concern. We, on the other hand, were not invited here. They have no objection to our remaining in orbit here, no objection to our organizing convoys to take their goods to market and no objection to our making money from our efforts."

"As if they could stop us from doing this!" said the admiral.

"Actually, I can quite understand Pa'u Civa's point of view, sir. Now, they get nothing but benefits from our being here. If our presence were regularized, if we had a treaty or if we became their official navy, things would be different. If we offend some powerful local star nation or some human force, they can claim to be uninvolved with us and possibly escape being attacked. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain by signing a treaty with us, sir."

Darlan sighed. Then he smiled. "I hadn't really expected we'd get one anyway, Frederic. But, tell me how you have done as my intelligence officer?"

"I have good news and bad news, sir."

"Ah, give me the good news first. There's always enough bad news."

"Captain Cheka and the Okrana are no longer a problem, sir."

"Good! Our efforts to assassinate the bastard paid off? Or your plan with the Cho-Sens?"

I shook my head. Cheka was the renegade Ilanic navy officer who had been extorting so-called taxes from our Delvian friends. While we might have been able to destroy him in a stand up fight, that was too dangerous. When we first got to Forests of Bazil with only two warships, we couldn't take the chance of a fight. So, we bought him off with thirty percent of our profits. Since we were taking whole merchantmen loaded with pharmaceuticals to Garden of Galil, that thirty percent was worth far more than the pharmaceuticals he could pack into his cruiser. We had even staged a fake space battle with the Okrana to impress Pa'u Civa and her Luxan guests. Later, we'd had a real fight with a Luxan assault piercer and destroyed him. However, sooner or later, Captain Cheka and the Okrana would have to go. He felt the same way about us, of course. "Captain Cheka is now on his way to a nice, pleasant pleasure planet with his funds. He left his ship in orbit over Karraid and went down to the moon with four officers. The officers were eventually found dead except for an Ilanic female. An attractive one by their standards, I'm told."

"That still leaves that damned cruiser to worry about, Frederic, even if it is a damned obsolete pile of junk."

"Not so, sir." I said with a smile. "Before he left, Cheka left a logic bomb in his ship's computer. After he was gone a few hours, the Okrana automatically began shooting at the other ships in orbit around Karraid. That was two Luxans, somewhat larger than the assault piercer we fought, a large Charrid corsair and a human privateer. Okrana was destroyed before the crew could get the computer shut down."

Admiral Darlan chuckled. "And his thirty percent now goes to us. What else?"

"The Emperor of Cho-Sen has relocated, sir, somewhere in the area of the Luxan worlds. Apparently he found out that Marshal O'Donnell had him on his list and left before the Marshal sent forces to destroy him."

The Emperor was a megalomaniac but a damned smart one. His heavy cruisers could have pounded our task force to scrap. I was glad we wouldn't have to face his fanatical warriors.

"What else?"

"That's the end of the good news, I'm afraid, sir. Captain O'Hara came in three days ago. She was hauling rare earths from Gondarr when she was attacked by a Luxan ship. The attacker was smaller than an assault piercer, and not as fast. Not quite as fast as Whistling Dixie, anyway. The important thing is that the Luxan fired two missiles at her. Her electronic warfare systems were able to jam their guidance systems and they never exploded." This was important. One of the advantages we humans had over the locals was our use of missiles which had at least twice the range of the plasma weapons the locals used. If that advantage disappeared…

Darlan shrugged. "We've always known that our technological superiority was a wasting asset, Frederic. The Peacekeepers are known to be working on missiles based on their Prowler manned space craft. We assume that others are doing the same."

"I downloaded her records of the attack, sir. They'll be useful in coming up with counter measures to any new missiles. In exchange, I promised Captain O'Hara that we'd escort her ship to Garden of Galil, no charge, sir. I hope that was all right."

He nodded. "Perfectly, Frederic. What else has happened in my absence?"

"A tramp freighter belonging to a race called the P'Alai came in also, sir. They were hit by what appears to be a human pirate operating between here and the Ordanium Rift. They were stopped, boarded and the pirate looted their ship of everything of value then damaged their engine so that it took two weeks for them to get here. One of the crewmembers managed to take some videos of the pirates and their ships. The pirates are Russian speaking. They have one warship that looks like it might be a heavy destroyer. It definitely has sixteen missile mounts rather than the usual twelve on most destroyers."

"As long as we have cruisers to escort our convoys, that'll be no problem, Frederic."

"Yes, sir. But it is worrisome if we ever have to send a lone destroyer or missile frigate on a mission, as we sometimes do, sir. In addition, the pirates had a large, human built merchant ship in company, a three million tonner, at least, sir."

"Damn!" Darlan barked. "The bastards are planning to be here for while then. It could take years to load up a merchant ship of that size."

"Yes, sir. The P'Alai seem to be rather technologically backwards. Their engine was badly overworked getting them here. I had some of the engineers from the Lady look her over. They doubt it can ever be fixed."

"So?"

"Hearts and minds, sir."

"What do you want us to do, Frederic?" Darlan said wearily.

"Just transport them to Garden of Galil, sir."

He nodded. "What else?"

"I've saved the worst news for last, sir." I took a deep breath. "France, our home world, is now a republic. Emperor Charles was deposed and sent into exile in the English Commonwealth."

"You're positive?"

"A courier ship from Human Forces Command brought the news, sir. It's true."

"Who's in charge there, then?"

"Pierre Poujade, sir." I said slowly. I expected an eruption from Admiral Darlan.

But, he just sat and stared over my head. He stared for a long time. "Frederic, the good God knows that our emperor, Charles, was a poor advertisement for a hereditary monarchy. His government was a poor advertisement for…anything."

"But, once the Empire meant something! Do you recall when we first met? I was commanding the destroyer-transport Cignone? You were helping the paramilitaries on that planet…"

"Massai, sir." I reminded him.

"Yes, yes, it was Massai." The Admiral smiled slightly, recalling those times. "So you recall how the slaves poured out of the mines to attack their oppressors? Hardly one in ten had a modern weapon. Half had no weapon at all. But they knew that the Empire stood with them and that the Empire stood for liberty, equality and fraternity. And with our help, they won."

"Yes." I said glumly. "And their mines gave them enough wealth to buy a reasonable position with the Great Powers, as they call themselves. Unlike us."

Darlan waved his hands dismissively. "What can this republic stand for under a man like Poujade? Corruption? Incompetence? Cowardice? Nepotism?"

The Imperial government that had fallen had stood, in the final analysis, for much the same things. I wisely said nothing.

Admiral Darlan reached into his desk and removed a bottle and two glasses. I groaned inwardly, but allowed a slight smile to reach my lips. The Admiral did not drink wine like civilized men did, but drank an apple brandy from the moon Normandie. I thought it was more suitable for removing paint. He filled both glasses and handed one to me.

He raised his glass. "Vive l'Empereur!" He downed the brandy in one gulp.

"Vive l'Empereur." I replied and did the same.

He put the bottle and glasses away and then smiled broadly at me. "Let me give you my good news, young lieutenant. While we were at Garden of Galil, Commodore Graham, Field Marshal O'Donnell's representative called on me. There'll be a representative from the Marshal there in four weeks. He wants to negotiate an agreement with us. What do you think of that good news?"

I smiled. This was the best news we'd had since we'd arrived in the New Universe and I told the admiral so.

"Frederic, this means a treaty of friendship at least. Perhaps even an alliance. At a stroke of the pen, ninety percent of our problems are gone." I nodded, starting to imagine the possibilities. Darlan kept talking. "We should seek to expand our convoy system. We'll use Forests of Bazil as a base. Those damned Luxans and their frag cannons can hold this system well enough. We can start with the mines at Gondarr. A few merchant ships full of rare earths, yttrium, lanthanum, holmium, and the like will be worth enough to buy us a nice heavy cruiser eventually."

While our two light cruisers were more powerful individually than the average raider in these parts, a heavy cruiser would be nice. A division of battleships would be better, but that would be dreaming.

"The sub-Jovian world, Moree-Puth, isn't it? They extract valuable gasses. Being hydrogen breathers it's easy for them. They could also use our help. There are others, I'm sure."

Admiral Darlan was beginning to plan his future. He waved me away. "Give me an intelligence appreciation on this in a few days, Frederic."

I saluted and headed for the door.

"One other thing, Frederic. Pa'u Zhaan will be accompanying us as a representative for Forests of Bazil. Please brief her as soon as possible on our impending treaty with Human Forces Command and the proposed expansion of our convoy system. I'm sure she'll be interested in the latter. I believe she's in her quarters."

I nodded and headed for Pa'u Zhaan's quarters, not happily, but I went.

Seeing a beautiful woman was not unpleasant for me, of course. And Pa'u Zhaan was beautiful. She had blue skin with golden freckles, was an intelligent vegetable and was a bit over one hundred years old, quite young for her race. But she was beautiful, and extremely sexy. No, my problem with her was that she represented her race to our task force. She was some sort of diplomat and to me that meant she was a spy. As an intelligence officer the first thing I did each morning was say to myself, "I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?"

I stopped before the door to her quarters, adjusted my uniform and knocked. "Pa'u Zhaan, it's Frederic de Gautier."

She opened the door at once and pulled me inside. She threw her arms around me and rubbed her very full breasts against my chest. "Frederic! How good to see you. I missed you when you were down on Forests of Bazil. Please, sit. Would you like some wine?"

I sat, but declined the wine. "No wine, Pa'u Zhaan. I'm on duty."

She frowned at me and then smiled mischievously. "Please, Frederic, call me Zufir, won't you?" She sat next to me and her hand promptly headed for my thigh. I managed to put my hand under hers. She smiled and rested her head on my shoulder. I quickly told her of our offer of a treaty with Human Forces Command.

Zufir lifted herself up so that her breasts were almost under my nose. "But I don't understand why this treaty should be so important, Frederic."

This was an example of why I didn't trust Pa'u Zhaan. I had explained our situation more than once to her. But what she was doing was a standard intelligence practice. Keep asking the same questions. If your subject is lying to you, you may catch him in a lie. Even if he's telling you the truth, he may let something slip that he'd prefer you didn't know. I smiled and began my explanation. Again. "There's an old saying among my people, Zufir. In war, amateurs speak of strategy, professionals speak of logistics."

"And what are these logistics, again, Frederic?" she asked prettily.

"The art and science of keeping the combat units supplied with all that they need, from warships to bandages."

"But you have this ship, the Lady, to supply you."

"The Lady can only provide us with so much." I said. Her hand disengaged from mine and headed for my chest. I was too late to stop her.

"And you need Marshal O'Donnell for these logistics? I don't understand."

I sighed inwardly. "Then I should begin at the beginning. As with many things, the story begins with the human John Crichton, his Sebacean wife and his three friends."

"Ka D'Argo, Chiana and Joolushko." Zufir added, smiling at me.

"Correct. Twenty plus years ago, they were fleeing from two Peacekeeper ships, a command carrier and a patrol cruiser, in what we now call the New Universe, this Universe of yours. Crichton attempted a slingshot maneuver around a dead planet to escape the Peacekeepers. Except it wasn't a planet."

"I know." She said happily. "It was an ancient, planet sized machine, powered by a black hole that allowed access between two different universes."

"Correct, Zufir. It was then called the Anomaly, but as we now know it to be a machine, we call in the Artifact."

"How old is it? How does it work? Are there other universes?"

I shrugged. "No one knows. No one has managed to land a probe on the Artifact and the data gleaned from drones that pass by it, is gibberish. I've heard that some scientists think it exists simultaneously in an infinite number of universes, but no one really knows."

I tried to get the conversation back on track. "Passing through the Artifact caused Crichton's ship's engines to cut out. But they caused the Peacekeeper's engines to explode, seriously damaging both ships and sending them off towards the local sun. Anyway, John Crichton landed on the planet K'hiff, an inhabitable and inhabited planet in that solar system, with the Peacekeepers using Prowlers, Marauders and other transports to evacuate their remaining crew to the planet.

"Neither group understood that they had entered a different universe, and a different time. John Crichton's time was over a thousand years in our past. Worse yet, from the Peacekeeper's perspective, the planet was occupied by a human army of ten first class mercenary regiments, commanded by Colonel Alois Hammer of Hammer's Slammers, the most feared mercenary armored regiment in human space."

I slid away from Pa'u Zhaan as her fingers dipped under my shirt. "What do you know of Peacekeeper tactics?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. We who follow the Seek find war abhorrent. We do not study it."

I had my doubts about that, but went on. "The Peacekeeper's tactics are to take control of the local space around a planet, then use their warships to batter the defenses from orbit. Then they use their Prowlers and Marauders to take out specific targets. When the planet's defenses are in shambles, they land relatively lightly armed commandos to mop up."

"Frederic, I wouldn't call a Peacekeeper commando lightly armed." As she swung her leg over mine, I inched away from her, causing her leg to drop back to the couch.

"Compared to a 170 ton fusion powered tank with iridium armor and a 20 centimeter power gun, they are lightly armed." I replied.

"But, what were left of the Peacekeeper's ships were quickly out of range or the planet, their frag cannons useless. Their smaller warcraft were facing an integrated, overlapping, planet-wide, aerospace defense system run by artificial intelligences. The Prowlers and Marauders never stood a chance. And the Peacekeeper ground troops, facing tanks, combat cars, infantry and artillery were slaughtered. Most of the warriors chose to fight to the death, although a few did not. Quite a few of the techs just changed masters."

"How terrible. But what happened then, Frederic?"

"Very little, for a long while. John Crichton and his friends returned through the Artifact. With all the problems they faced, they never made an issue of the odd artifact located deep in the Uncharted Territories."

"As for us humans, we had problems, too. What we came to call The Wars had already begun. A whole series of interlocking wars, involving constantly changing alliances that eventually involved all of human occupied space. After decades, some of the more powerful human star nations realized The Wars had to stop. As they said, "Either mankind ends The Wars, or The Wars end mankind." These nations banded together and forced an end to The Wars, sometimes by diplomacy, but more often by force. But end them they eventually did."

"I am glad they did, Frederic. Peace is always better than war. But I'm not sure you agree."

"Oh, I agree. I simply feel that there are things worse than war." Her hands began moving again. I spoke quickly. "When peace arrived, the Great Powers, as they call themselves, had a problem: Tens of millions of now unemployed soldiers and spacemen. Some could be used in the shrunken peacetime militaries, and others would happily go back to their civilian lives, but many could or would not."

"But why, Frederic?"

"Take the planet Apacheria. It was attacked by an enemy space fleet. Once the defending space ships were destroyed, the fleet bombarded Apacheria with thermonuclear weapons. All life on the planet was destroyed. At the end of The Wars there were still a hundred thousand or so Apaches who had been off planet who had nowhere to go."

"Consider our friends from the Republic of Cymru. Their planet was forcibly taken over by the Han Confederation. The Han decreed that anyone from Cymru that continued fighting against them was a traitor. The Han were one of the winners in The Wars, and the few Cymru who tried to go "home" were shot as traitors."

"But what of you, Frederic? You did go back to your home."

I nodded ruefully, thinking of my home world. "I did go home. The French Empire was one of the losers in The Wars and many people blamed those who fought for our loss. France was nearly bankrupt but had to absorb millions returning military personnel and ex-colonists. I can see why many hated us. I don't like it, but I can understand. " The situation was more complex than that, but I really didn't want to say more. "I decided I had no future on France and left with Admiral Darlan. I'm an intelligence officer and a good one. But what future would I have had if I'd stayed."

"How does this Marshal O'Donnell come into the story?"

"He had been a junior mercenary officer on K'hiff when the Peacekeepers came. He left to form his own small mercenary company. Along with him he took a surrendered Peacekeeper warrior, Aida Borzon. By the end of The Wars, he was the most powerful mercenary commander in human space. He commanded a whole field army and his own fleet. Most of his troops had no homes to return to, or none that would accept them. He refused to abandon his troops. He and his wife, now Aida Borzon O'Donnell, remembered the strange Artifact and the universe beyond it. They took a destroyer and found the secret of passing through the Artifact. Keep your ship completely unpowered, or else it'll blow up."

"They found this New Universe, Zufir, and decided to take their troops here to find a home. Hoping to attract others, they re-named themselves Human Forces Command."

"And so they brought their war here." She said sadly.

"You had wars before we ever arrived, centuries before, millennia before." She gave me an odd look, but I continued. "The Great Powers were thrilled to get rid of their excess soldiers so easily. To sweeten things, they opened their armories to Marshal O'Donnell and anyone who followed him. Those who went were never to return. The great Powers keep a sufficient fleet near the other side of the Artifact to insure that."

"But Human Forces Command didn't just get weaponry, either. They sent O'Donnell automated factories, orbital shipyards, asteroid mining ships, in short a whole industrial base. O'Donnell found an inhabitable planet not far from this terminal of the Artifact and made his base there: The planet Arsenal. Perhaps a quarter of the humans who entered the New Universe stayed with the Marshal. Those who followed Prince Paul of Parhoon number perhaps two thirds as many, and Paul's industrial base is far smaller. No one else is anywhere nearly as powerful as those two."

"I've heard of this Prince Paul." Zhaan sniffed. "He allied himself with some factions on Charrid worlds and then massacred his Charrid allies when they'd won."

"Price Paul was no better in our Old Universe. He's one human you should stay away from, Zufir."

"O'Donnell also made contact with Dominar Rygel. Rygel hired him to garrison the Hynerian planets bordering the many Charrid and Charrid occupied worlds. As their governor, O'Donnell has over one hundred and fifty worlds under his command, plus those who have sworn fealty to him personally as head of Human Forces Command. He's trying to garrison planets along trade networks and providing convoy escort groups and anti-raider task forces."

"Marshal O'Donnell is a wealthy and powerful man, and he is the only person who has a sufficient industrial base to provide large, expensive and difficult to make things like warships or high tech ship-killing missiles to his friends or allies."

"Ah! But you are wrong. You bought missiles from a human merchant. I know you did."

I nodded. "We bought fifty missiles from a human smuggler. They were SSM 28, Mod 0 missiles, almost obsolete in the Old Universe. They're worth perhaps 100,000 Imperial Francs apiece back home, we had to pay over five million apiece for them. Twenty five million all together, mostly in local pharmaceuticals. Then we had to upgrade them to Mod 4 missiles which cost us another twenty million or so. And what did we get for our forty five million? A bit more than a salvo worth of missiles for our four missile frigates. Even if we could make more deals like that, they would soon bankrupt us."

I smiled and allowed Zufir to slide onto my lap. "And so that is why we need to be Marshal O'Donnell's allies. We'll leave in less than four weeks."

Four weeks later I was standing on Austerlitz's bridge as we entered the Garden of Galil solar system. Before we had gotten much past the bleak, frozen outer planet we were intercepted by a patrolling warship. Once we identified ourselves, our little force was allowed to proceed. With us was our other cruiser, Solferino and the destroyer Bethesda. Chacal, the four missile frigates and our two auxiliaries had been left behind at Forests of Bazil.

This system was much busier than the one we had left. The Delvians on Garden of Galil had hired a human mercenary called Brother Saul to protect them from repeated Charrid raids. Another example of the pacifism of the Seek! We saw one of Brother Saul's cruisers lumbering through the system. It was heavily armed, heavily armored and incredibly slow. Garden of Galil was also a hub for the convoy system that Marshall O'Donnell was running throughout this area of the New Universe. He had escort groups here for protecting convoys and small task forces to hunt down any pirates or raiders in the area. Of course, dozens of merchantmen, both human manned and local swung in orbit around the planet.

"My God!" Darlan gasped. "Is that what I think it is? Frederic! Isn't that in our database?"

I ran the database but was positive what we were seeing. "Yes, sir, a Warspite class battle cruiser is in orbit."

"Not a Warspite, de Gautier, but two." Captain du Glatigny, now the chief of staff for Admiral Darlan, barked.

Sure enough, I could see another of the massive ships swinging around the planet and into our view.

"Battle cruiser? Battle cruiser my ass." said Darlan. "That's no battle cruiser."

Pa'u Zhaan was by my side in an instant. "Is it or is it not a battle cruiser, Frederic? And what is a battle cruiser?"

"A battle cruiser is a ship the size of a battleship and as well armed, but very lightly armored. Weight saved on armor allows more powerful engines so it is much faster than battleships. But they are not a very successful design. If they meet a battleship they can run away, but if they fight, they get destroyed far more often than not. A ship that can run but not fight is a problem as warships are supposed to fight. But the Warspites are different. They're as large, as well armed, and as well armored as a battleship, but as fast as a battle cruiser. It can fight and run and do both better than any other class of ship."

One of the sensor petty officers spoke. "We have their ID beacons. The nearest ship is Human Forces Command Ship Clontarf, and the other is HFCS Brian Boru."

"How in the hell did the Marshal get those?" Someone asked.

"By God!" said Commander Marchand. "Those two ships could destroy anything this New Universe has to offer."

The Admiral snorted. "Until they ran out of missiles. Remember, we humans number in the millions here. The Hynerian Empire alone numbers over six hundred billion beings. Six hundred billion."

We watched the two massive warships as they slowly swung around the planet. With them were a half a dozen cruisers and some twenty destroyers. Soon we got a call from Clontarf. We were advised that we would meet the Marshall's representative on the planet and were given a vector for our orbit.

"Too bad. I'd give my left one to get aboard a Warspite, just to look around." Darlan grumped.

"Left one what?" Pa'u Zhaan asked.