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Warringer

Chapter 11

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Yosho sighed as he leaned into the branches of Fuhano and sighed. For the first time in his life he didn't really know what he should do. A part of him wanted to stay here and out of the way, but another part of him wanted to actively help the UN and the hopefully forming Earth Defense Force.

Earth was his home, more than Jurai ever was. He had lived here for the last seven hundred years and seen how mankind advanced from the surely primitive civilization to landing people on their moon. And they had done so faster than any other race. It made him proud to be at least partly Earthern, or Terran as the numerous news stations started to call it.

The last three days had been very interesting to say at least. Washuu had literally jumped the gun to help Tenchi out and had helped to set up a rapid schooling center at Edwards in California. But she hadn't only done that. She had also changed most of the space ship designs with more effective reactors, additional shields and slipstream engines.

Ryoko had surprised him. She had kept away from Tenchi, even through she knew that she had taken his disappearance the worst. Part of it was because Ryo-Ohki was still in the coma induced by the Vogon poetry. Who would have thought that Douglas Adams had been right about that...

He sighed. Maybe Ryoko just showed that she lived him, by giving him enough space to do his job. Maybe it was something different. He honestly couldn't say.

Ayeka was the opposite. He had to manhandle her to get her aboard of Yagami and back to Earth. She would have stayed on Dark Knight and tried to get Tenchi to fly to Jurai and give his ship to the Empire. Was she really still that naive after all those years? He couldn't really believe that she was.

But the her whole behavior showed that Ayeka didn't really love Tenchi. It was as if she tried to get back at Ryoko by getting him to chose her. Yosho had seen similar things several times her on Earth before.

Sasami was her normal self, through she seemed to be very supportive towards Tenchi. He was like a big brother to her and she loved him that way. It was normal for her to support him in this, but Yosho knew that there was more behind her decision. Maybe Tsunami-sama was influencing her.

Mihoshi had surprised him more than Ryoko had. Everyone saw her as a diz and air head and he knew that she was, but she showed that she knew more of the current political situation in the galaxy than everyone thought she did. Heck, she knew more than Yosho. To make it more interesting was the fact that her thoughts about the situation pretty much matched his own.

And she also said that she would support Tenchi. She hadn't said how, but she would do, it was just her character.

Mihoshi pretty much showed that she was more intelligent than her air-headedness let everyone think about her. If she wasn't, she wouldn't have been able to get this far in Galaxy Police, even with her family ties.

Yosho sighed again as Fuhanos branches rustled. She would support Yosho any way she could.

"Hello?" a male voice suddenly called out.

Yosho raised an eyebrow and looked down. An elder man was standing below. He was Caucasian in appearance and looked to be about about 60 years old.

Yosho silently dropped from the tree, assuming his disguise as he fell down behind the unknown man. Standing up he cleared his throat, which caused the man to turn startled.

"I'm looking for a Yosho," the man said in English with a Russian accent.

Yosho raised an eyebrow and scratched his chin.

"And why are you looking for him, Mr...?"

"My name is Marco Ramius," the man introduced himself." Someone called Dark Knight said that I would find someone named Yosho here to contact the commander of the ship in orbit."

Yosho raised his eyebrow again.

"I am Yosho," he said and bowed slightly." And I guess you are at the right place."

Yes, he thought, maybe it is time to take an active role in this.

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Captain Miles Kantor couldn't help but chuckle as he listened to the conversations all around him. He was in one of the large hangars of Edwards AFB, surrounded by intensely chatting engineers, physicists, SciFi authors and a good number of 'geeks'/known SciFi fans of all branches of the US Armed Forces.

Most of them were standing together in smaller groups, intensely chatting over concepts, ideas and designs. This had more the feel of a SciFi convention than a meeting that would, hopefully, end in the creation of a Space Naval Doctrine and several ideas that would help Earth to survive in the future, especially in the next few years. At least no one was wearing a Klingon costume...

At the moment the whole thing going on was a massive brainstorming of about five hundred people. Some were standing around desks and scribbling something on sheets of paper, while others were just standing around, cans of soft drinks or cubs of coffee in their hands.

Not to far away he could hear two engineers talking with David Weber about the possibility of missile pods. He still knew Weber's reaction to learning about Nathan.

"At least it's not Dahak."

Next to them was an Army Major, a representative of Kraus-Maffei, some physicists, 'geeks' and John Ringo arguing if it would be better to build a BOLO or an OGRE. Ringo had commented that someone should build a Tiger III and put an AI named 'Bun-Bun' into it.

He wondered what the Joint Chiefs would think how the future of mankind in space was beginning with a huge bunch of 'geeks'. Hell, he even had seen Forry Ackerman and Sir Arthur.

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Washuu shook her head. She had just seen how the first group of new crew men were getting to Dark Knight as the HMMWV she was in stopped in front of a large open hangar, filled with a great number of people. She knew that this was the 'Future Space Meeting' as the peoples high in the command chain of the US Armed Forces had called it.

She had thought that she would have to deal with military people, but this was quite the opposite. Only about a third of the people were in military uniforms, the rest was wearing normal clothes. And she was surprised that they weren't just listening to someone standing in front of the room, but standing around and freely chatting.

This sparked her interest and she walked up to one of the groups standing around a table. She could see several sheets of paper on the table as she listened to the ongoing conversation.

"Lets see," one of them said and scribbled something down." Lets say the laser beam got a diameter of a meter and an energy of 1 megaton. On that area we got a energy of..."

He grabbed a calculator from the table and made a few calculations.

"...of about 1.27 kilotons per square centimeter."

The other people around the table nodded.

"Now lets take the figures and try to get the same energy density using a kinetic impact. Lets assume a projectile with a mass of a kilogram and a impact area of a square centimeter. To get 1.27 kilotons impact power, we need..."

Again he took the calculator.

"...we need a speed of about 3259 kilometers per second. That is about a percent of the speed of light."

The people looked at another man on the table.

"Well, Jeff, I don't exactly know how fast the projectiles from one of these rail guns are, but I don't think they are as fast as a tenth the speed of light to deliver the same power as a 1 Megaton laser beam."

"But with a heavier projectile and the right geometry of the projectile we get lower speeds. Lets just assume a ten kilo projectile. About 900 kilometers per second. About a third percent c. Sounds more reasonable, eh?"

"A SABOT," someone else said." We could build a heavy projectile with a thin head, where most of the mass is concentrated in the rear of the projectile."

"I still don't think that a KEW would be better than a laser."

Washuu shook her head as she stopped listening to the conversation to try and find another interesting conversation going on.

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Eduard Petrovich Grushavoy, President of the Russian Republic, looked out of the window of his Kremlin window and frowned slightly. Far away he could still see the thick black cloud that was rising over the east of the city, where Reutov had to be. The town just outside of Moscow had been hit by one of the Kinetic Impacts three days ago and the area was still burning. Even the entire fire departments of Moscow, the surrounding towns and the army were still trying to get the fires under control.

He sighed. Not just Reutow had been hit. Vladivostok and Saint Petersburg had also been hit, burning down because the firefighters and the army weren't able to handle the fires.

Grushavoy was glad that prospectors had found large oil and gold deposits in Sibiria some time ago and that the resources were already starting to flow, bringing money into the country and letting the Russian economy recover. Now the money would be needed to rebuild the three destroyed cities.

And for something else.

It was strange that Russia, or rather the entire world, had to be attacked by aliens to get the citizens to stop complaining and to get them to start working for a better future. Just a day after the hits, the opinion polls had gone from only little government support to overwhelming government support.

Grushavoy supposed that the United States went through something similar, when the 747 hit the Capitol and killed nearly the entire US government.

He looked over to the TV, where CNN was repeating the speech of this Tenchi Masaki at the United Nations.

Earth needed a powerful defense, he was sure of it. But this wouldn't be an American only thing. Masaki had given the technology needed to defend Earth to the entire world, via Internet. The SVR had downloaded the entire database and were busy to analyze the information. It was only a matter of time until Golovko brought him some hard information about the situation out there.

But until than, Grushavoy had to make sure that Russia would be an integral part of the new Earth defense. His pride as a Russian wouldn't allow the US and the Europeans to dominate the defense of Earth. And the massive industrial cities in Sibiria, relics of the Cold War were perfect to do just that.

Industry that had been build to make the Soviet Union a powerful country would now be used to make Russia a powerful member of the new Earth Force.

Grushavoy liked the sound of that. It was free of the notions of western dominance. Earth Force...

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Tenchi sighed. He had just talked to the UN Security Council. The ambassador of China had tried to talk down everything and sabotage just about every suggestion, but just about everyone else had ignored him. Or at least tried to. Until the German ambassador, temporal member of the Security Council, had had enough and flat out told the Chinese to shut up and that his country didn't really exist anymore.

That much was true. Especially considering some of the CNN news from Hong Kong. Hong Kong and Shanghai had gotten together. Hell, even Taiwan had been there. The news had talked about the foundation of the National Republic of China. But at the moment the NRC was little more than Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

And there were several others against the NRC, the remains of the PRC with the provinces around Beijing and most of northern China, and several smaller factions, lead by Generals in the rest of China. And Quinghai was one of the provinces that had a strong General leading them, Marshal Luo Cong. It was strange how fast some thing were going. Not even three days since the fall of the old government and the PRC had been reduced to six major and about ten minor factions. Two with a sort of democratic government of intellectuals, one with a government based in Taiwan and two communist factions and the rest being little more than military dictatorships in their beginning stages.

The Security Council had been shocked when they heard something Tenchi hadn't told the entire UN, that Earth was part of the Jurian Protected Planets Treaty and was considered a part of Jurai and that Jurai was listing Earth as Colony 0315. Of cause Nathan had given every proof that it wasn't the case. But still...

They also talked about the formation of the Earth Defense Force. Tenchi had told them that this Earth Force had to be out of direct control of the UN, as the Earth Force would need to be fast on their feet and couldn't have the 'luxury' of talking to the UN first, when someone openly attacked Earth.

Most of what Tenchi had told them was taken seriously and some of it was hard to swallow. But in the end it came down to several sentences he had already said in front of the entire UN.

"We need to defend ourselves. We need to fight for our freedom. We don't have time to waste with arguments. We need to act."

Now he just hoped that they would act fast.

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'Biggy' Bigston was still awed by Dark Knight. The whole ship was something straight out of a SciFi geeks wet dream. And he was still a little out of it, considering the rapid schooling.

For a moment he had stood in front of a terminal of the ship and suddenly, like a Deja Vu, he knew how to use it. It was surreal.

Even more so as he had looked at the hangar for the first time, seeing the orange armored Thunderbolts and shuttles. He had looked at a Thunderbolt and instantly knew the capabilities of the Starfury. Looking at the cockpit, he knew how to fly it. Or at least how it was done. There wasn't much that told him when to do what. He still would need to learn how to fly it.

It was strange to see the flight crews looking at unfamiliar equipment for several moments until they used it for the first time, just than remembering how to use them. About two thirds of the people that had gotten to Dark Knight in the first flight had been aviators, weapon officers and flight crews, enough to get at least about 12 Thunderbolts out into space, the first part of Knights CAW.

And now he was sitting in the cockpit of 'his' Thunderbolt, after staring at the Earth Force standard flight suit for moments until he knew how to get into it. And even that had needed about three minutes. Behind him, his weapon officer, Ensign Joice 'Radar' Mitchell, sat, like him still trying to familiarize herself with the cockpit.

Setsuna had gone back to Earth to get the next batch of volunteers, but the ship itself had started to help its new crew to get used to the ship. And she had ordered the aviators and weapon officers to familiarize themselves with the fighters and suggested to get some active flight time.

So here he was, getting ready to get thrown out into space for the first time in a fighter he knew and didn't knew how to fly.

"This is Zeta One, ready for drop," he said into the radio.

"Roger that, Zeta One," the voice of the catapult technician came back." May take a while through."

'Biggy' nodded, knowing that the catapult technician had to get used to his new stuff too. He had gone from controlling one catapult on the Big E to controlling about twelve catapults.

"Take you time," 'Radar's' voice came from behind him.

After a minute the hangar doors opened in front of the Thunderbolt and the two rails of the catapult charged up to throw the Starfury out into space.

"Kinda like the start from the Big E," Biggy muttered and sighed." Okay, how does this work..."