Cold War
by Warringer
Chapter Six
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Ramius couldn't help but shoot a glare at his Political Officer. He was a pain in the ass, but that was the job of a Political Officer. Now he had 'washed' Ramius' head, because he had failed to make a real contact with the aliens and now it seemed as if the NATO was more successful. The connection between the Iowa and the alien lead vessel was online for about ten minutes and there wasn't a sign that the connection would go offline any time soon. The fact that he could understand what Admiral Danniels said and that the commander of the alien ship seemed to answer was enough.
Ramius' Political Officer watched the devided holographic screen with interest.
"The man next to the capitalistic Admiral is a telepath," the Political Officer said," It seems that they are using the telepath to talk to each other."
Ramius frowned. Why hadn't he thought about that. Especially since his Political Officer was a telepath.
In fact all Political Officers were telepaths, identical clones that were produced to give every ship a telepathic Political Officer that would do a permanent surface scan of all crew members. Political Officers were identical P11 class telepaths with cybernetic modifications that allowed them to constantly scan up to 600 crewmembers. A ship like the Red October with 1100 crewmembers had four Political Officers, or rather one Political Officer with four different bodies, as the cybernetic implants linked the bodies togethe to one person, through Ramius wasn't sure if they were people at all.
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A few hours later
"I want to protest," Ambassador Kirjakow as he stormed into the Oval Office.
NATO President William Clyton groaned internally at the Ambassador. All Kirjakow did was protesting. About everthing NATO did in space. And it didn't really help that he was always escorted by one of the Political Officer clones Stalin was so fond of. At times like these Clyton was glad that the whole city of Washington D.C. was protected by several anti telepathic fields.
"What is it this time, Iljitsch?"
"Four alien spaceships entered the system two hours ago. You intercepted them with a whole Destroyer Task Force and dared to contact them with one of your capitalistic telepaths."
Clyton groaned again. All the Soviets did was raving against the 'bad capitalistic NATO that prevented everyone to see that true enlightenment was found in communism', as they liked to put it.
"They are a communistic people as all advanced civilizations have to be. And you are trying to pull them from the true path."
Clyton wanted to shake his head. Sometimes he wondered exactly how Stalin had managed to make every citizen of the USSR into fanatics. They were worse than some of those rednecks in the South of the former USA. For them communism was the only way of life.
"From what I know, you did contact them first, but you didn't manage to talk to them. We on the other side did. And we are willing to share our information with the USSR in this case. All information we got during first contact and the translation matrix that is currently programmed."
Kirjakow blinked. He hadn't dreamed that the NATO would share their information woth the USSR. He smelled a rat in this one.
"Information you will manipulate, no doubt."
Clyton sighed.
"This information falls under the Omega Protocol. We are not going to manipulate it."
That shut Kirjakow up. He knew what the Omega Protocol was as he had been one of the people who had designed it. He finally nodded.
"In that case I will leave now, Comrade Clyton."
Clyton grunted as the Sovier Ambassador left the Oval Office. He hated it to be called Comrade.
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Commander Molari sighed, the long contact with that telepath had given him a headache and it wasn't something he would want to try again. He looked at one of the screens. He had put all available data and everything the telepath had told him into a crystal and transfered it to one of the ships of his little fleet.
On the screen he could see that the ship was in position, ready to jump into hyperspace and get the crystal back to Centauri Prime, while the rest docked with one of the NATOs giant stations and made a more intense first contact. It would prove to be interesting indeed.
The ship jumped into hyperspace and Molari sighed again. He needed to get something against this damned headache.
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Frank sighed nearly at the same time as Molari had done so and shook his head. It was time to write that little report on the slightly deeper scan he had been ordered to do while acting as a babelfish.
It had been against his ethics, but Admiral Danniels had poked the fear of the Shadows and Vorlons everyone of Earth and the rest of the system shared, be it Soviets or NATOs. He hadn't found anything about Shadows or Vorlons, but he had found out that the orders of Commander Molari had been to either make contact or prepare an invasion.
Another part of his orders had been to scan some of the people next to Molari. Their minds had given him further informations, mostly about this Centauri Republic. From the minds and what little memories Frank had from his history lessons, he had to compare the Republic with Ancient Rome. Future would tell how similar those two nations were.