Back Home – The Dual War
by Warringer
Chapter 43 (Partly written by BrainCaster over at the Maximum Addventure)
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He'd lost California…
All had gone according to plan. North America was firmly in his iron grip. The UK would fall soon and the last enemy units were being wiped from the face of Brazil by his armies right now. Then… the disaster. Jack Ryan was fuming with anger.
"Damm you, you backstabbing slit eye. We had an alliance!"
The Japanese prime minister just smiled. He'd every reason to. With his former enemy and new ally Schroeder holding Europe and Africa, and most of Ryan's troops in South America and Iceland, the USA were ripe for the picking. Under the table, two bottles of German beer changed ownership. The chancellor was not above bribery.
Ryan was desperately searching for a way out of this mess (he hadn't lost a game of risk since more than three years, and he'd damn sure keep it that way), when the three players and the rest of the present politicians in the room were interrupted by the sound of knocking at the door.
Multiple decks of cards vanished in inconspicuous pockets and briefcases, and various board games were hidden behind speaker's desks and under strategically placed flags. Even a highly trained unit of soldiers couldn't have reacted more efficient and professional. Within moments the world leader's secret regular's table turned into the respectable-boring assembly it was supposed to be.
The doors opened. Grushayov entered the room.
"Phew… You almost gave me a heart attack. Use the side entrance next ti – What happened?" Ryan asked when he noticed the Russian's serious face.
"You remember the salvaged Jurain treeships in the Nomad fleet?"
"Yes. What's about them… ohh, heck no!"
"I'm afraid, yes. The tree-hugging imperial idiot demands that they be returned immediately. And he wants us to make sure that the Nomads don't disappear from his sight with the ships again. Or he will "express his royal displeasedness about the behaviour of his subjects" ".
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They all agreed. This time the Jurain would-be gardener had gone too far. Such a direct pretension of sovereignty over Terra's internal affairs could not be tolerated. Not without some kind of response. Two hours and one extensive conversation with High Sideryt Catall later Ryan was finally able to continue his game of risk.
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40.000 lightyears to the galactic northeast, Emperor Azusa Jurai, imperial highness, monarch of Jurai, protector of the Galactic union (etc, etc, ) suddenly startled from his exalted royal sleep. He felt as if somebody had taken all his dear titles and his royal reputation, squeezed them trough a shredder, and fed the remains to a Minbar snow leopard. His heart was beating fast and he just couldn't fall asleep anymore, regardless of how hard he tried.
Searching for some diversion he picked up the wooden remote for his holovision. He switched it on, not remembering that it was still set to CNN intergalactical, the new public Terran news channel.
He looked right into the tear-filled eyes of a little Nomad girl who was forced to leave her home because "Fuhano's furry furmonster" couldn't do without a few wooden hulks, which were worthless to him anyway.
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"I am to... WHAT?"
Tenchi stared at the holographic display in front of him, currently showing Admiral Jacson, who had been dumped to being the head of the GDI naval command by the combined vote of the GDI heads of government.
"I know that you are not going to like it and that you have read her dossier," Jackson answered with a sigh." The thing is that she insisted to come to Dark Knight and the big guys in GDI don't want to strain the diplomatic relations with Jurai any more as they already are, concerning our support of the Nomad with their 'treeships'."
Tenchi groaned. He knew that it could have been a problem of officially joining and putting himself under the command authority of the GDI. He now had to follow their orders again, but at least they still listened to him.
Than there was the Nomad situation and the exclusive news coverage of CNN about it. Especially on the new CNN Intergalactic. He could remember how Jurai had complained that GDI hadn't put a leash on the media. He also quite remembered the smug smile of President Ryan when he given his answer of the Press being the fourth power on Earth and that they wouldn't do anything to censor it. And that answer had been broadcast on CNN Intergalactic.
And the GDI was very supportive to the Nomads about the salvaged Jurian Treeships and fact that they had pointed out that even the Galactic Union had a law concerning salvage rights and that it was very close to Earth salvage rights.
Still he didn't like that he would have to host a Jurian noble on his ship, especially not his great-great-grandmother Seto Jurai, who happened to be the real power behind the Jurian throne, at least according to the CIA dossier of her. No did he like it that two of her close servants would be accompanying her.
"Than you are going to proceed to Narn space with the rest of the 1st Expeditionary Fleet, while 2nd Expeditionary Fleet remains in Vega. You will meet up with the Nautilus at Narn and Captain Ramsey is going to brief you in depth on the current Narn situation."
Tenchi sighed. With the growing number of GOD satellites and Ghostrider Missile pods, most of them build on Earth, as well as several of the Ferron defense sats, Earth had been able to send out two additional larger fleets. One was guarding New Omelos together with a smaller Ferron fleet, while 2nd Expeditionary Fleet around the German Bismark under command of Admiral Thorsten Bergmann, was now at Vega to help control the Doranian situation there.
"As far as we know, are the Narn pushing to a counter attack on Kotok. They managed to pretty much hold of the Doranians for the last two weeks and we think that they might be able to push the Doranians back, with some help from us of cause."
Tenchi nodded.
"Anything else?"
Jackson smiled an evil smile.
"Nautilus has discovered most of the Doranian supply lines to the front. Its mostly Ramseys work that the Narn were able to hold of the Doranians over the last weeks. But I sure he is going to tell you more about it."
Tenchi sighed.
"When is Lady Seto going to arrive?"
Jackson shrugged.
"They didn't tell us, but as far as we know, there is going to be some sort of surprise. The CIA is very sure of that, according to the dossier on Seto."
Tenchi rolled his eyes.
"That could be just about anything..."
As if on cue, an alarm went through the ship.
"I'm picking up a high amount of EM radiation in the upper EM bands," Dark Knight notified Tenchi as the holographic connection with Jackson became static." A very powerful form of jamming."
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Battle Leader Len'dar looked at the being in front of him. He had heard of the species, the Nomads. Pariahs of the galaxy, not so much different from the status of the Dilgar at the moment. But while the Dilgar at least had a planet to live on, all the Nomads had was a giant asteroid they had converted into a generation ship.
The Nomad was a six limbed being, centauroid a human would have said. A four-limbed lower body, with the middle limbs looking like they could be used as hands, through that would only be secondary. An upper body with the head and two normal looking arms, and a head with a pronounced muzzle. The entire body was covered by white fur and it was hard to tell if the Nomad in front of him was male or female, as unlike most other races they didn't have any external primary sexual attributes that could have shown him. The lower body was about 156 centimeters in length, not counting about fifty centimeters of tail, while the top of the head was about 171 centimeters above the ground.
The Nomad in front of him also was the only Nomad that actually wore something that accounted at clothing, even through it was nothing more of a robe devoid of any decorations.
He sighed. In the old times he would have growled at the thought that a Nomad would want to talk to him, but now he wasn't in a much better position than the Nomads. The Nomads had arrived from the human system, Sol, with one of their ships, a salvaged and repaired Jashakar Scout of all things. Now he wasn't to do anything like this. Maybe it was because they were in the same situation.
"Welcome to the Omelos, High Sideryt Catall," he said.
Catall bowed her upper body slightly.
"Thank you, Battle Leader. I am pleased to be here."
Len'dar looked at Catall. The voice of the High Sideryt had sounded pretty female to him, so he thought that it might be appropriate to think of her as female.
"I have gotten a communique from Earth that announced that you would come," he said deciding not to beat around the bush for long." It said something about a proposal."
As far as he could tell, Catall looked surprised as she looked at him.
"I am surprised that they didn't tell you anything," she said and confirmed his thoughts." The proposal was in the end their idea."
Len'dar raised an eyebrow, but than thought back at the arrival of Zerreroff and the humanitarian ad that had helped them greatly. It seemed that the humans liked to surprise people.
"I would like to know what they suggested."
Catall hesitated for a moment, no doubt because the proposal was problematic and because she was used to be rejected. Len'dar chuckled internally as he thought about the news coverage from the human news channel CNN Intergalactic about thew Nomads. They had given him insight into some of the things the humans did and why they did it. And there was also the short series about the Nomads and how they had turned around some of the rumors about them, like the rumor that the Nomads ate their own babies, when they just had rather strict rules of birth control to keep their population in check.
"The humans have suggested that our people could help each other," she said after a while." We are looking for a home world for the last eight millennia, we also have about fifteen percent more industrial capacity then we really need. The Dilgar on the other hand have a planet that is to be terraformed, and has a large surface. And your people needs a large industrial capacity to get back to living instead of merely surviving."
She made a pause and looked Len'dar into the eyes.
"The proposal would be that we can land and build up our own colony on the surface of New Omelos. In return, we would be willing to help the Dilgar with our industrial capacity. We would be willing to build new environmental domes for your people as well as refitting and rebuilding the ships of your fleet."
Len'dar stared at her as she continued.
"We are also ready to defend the planet if it needs be. The Home is equipped with a large number of different weapons and we have a number of combat ready ships."
Len'dar didn't know what to think for a moment and fell back into his chair. The Nomads, the Pariahs of the galaxy were coming to the Dilgar to help them, while all they wanted was the right to build a colony on Ne Omelos.
He closed his eyes and breathed in deep. He saw a great number of things that were for the proposal, while only a few were against it. But he also had to think of the results when it came to the population.
"I need to think about this."
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Ramsey stood in the center of Nautilus' Command Center and looked at the plot in front of him, while holding a stopwatch in his hand. Next to him was Na'tot, the Narn observer that had been posted to his ship.
It was silent on the bridge as everyone was immersed in their jobs and because that even after month of warfare in space, none of the former submariner had lost the reflex of being as silent as possible while on mission.
Na'tot was still bewildered. She couldn't understand how the operation of the Nautilus could be as effective as it was, when all she did was being silent and keeping out of range of enemy sensors. And the missile weapons shouldn't be as effective as they were.
"Twenty seconds," Ramsey said.
Both set of eyes followed the blue lines that represented the Barracuda Antiship Attack Vehicles and went from the course of Nautilus towards the convoy of Doranian transports.
"Ten Sec..."
Ramsey couldn't continue as a scream echoed through the Command Center.
"Slipstream Event. Distance a thousand klicks. Its right on top of us."
The ship shook suddenly and the lights in the Command Center flickered.
"Two glancing hits. We lost the upper Railgun turret."
Ramsey stared on the plot. Three Doranian cruisers had left slipstream right on top of them and began to shoot.
"Shield!" he ordered without so much raising his voice, while his eyes narrowed." Get me a status of those Cruisers. Fire at will."
Even if Nautilus was primarily designed to be a sub in space, it didn't mean that she couldn't be used as assault ship. The fire control technicians worked over time as the turrets of Nautilus swung around to track the three cruisers.
Ramsey was glad that he had ordered to retract the EGAD array already, as it had to be pulled after the ship, like a tow sonar of submarines.
Informations began to pop up next to the symbols that represented the Doranian Cruisers and he cursed. All three Cruisers were emitting much as the same EM signals as Dreadnoughts and that meant that they were based on Quantum 2 technology rather than Quantum 1 tech as they should be. The fight would be much harder than he liked it to be.
Worse even was that the freighters were suddenly accelerating and disappeared into slipstream before the Barracudas had a chance to hit them.
"That was a freaking trap," he muttered and the ship shook again, this time from several hits into the shield." Ge us to slipstream."
The plot now zoomed in on the Nautilus and the three Cruisers and smaller icons speed from Nautilus towards the Doranian ships, as his ship opened fire with its Plasma cannons and the single remaining railgun.
"Get me a targeting solution for Tube one and two," he ordered, using the names of the two turrets that were used to fire the Barracudas." I want four Barracudas for each Cruiser."
"We got a targeting solution," he heard from the tactical officer." Tubes one and two ready."
"Fire."
Na'tot couldn't help but respecting Ramsey and the crew of the ship. Most other commanders and crews would have panicked and made wrong decisions, but not these humans.
Ramsey turned towards the helm.
"How long until slipstream?"
"Twenty seconds."
If he had to deal with Q1 Cruisers, he would have chosen to fight, but with Q2 Cruisers that were popping up everywhere he didn't want to risk his ship.
Again the ship shook.
"Shield Stress one hundred ten percent, we are losing it."
Ramsey grit his teeth. If her lost the shields, the enemy fire would tear into the armor. While the ship would survive it until the Shield was back up, it would still do damage.
"Spread one confirmed hit," he heard as the ship shook once again.
"We lost PP turrets Three and Twelve."
"Shields back up."
Ramsey glared at the plot.
"Slipstream Entry."
He continued to stare at the plot.- How the hell had the Doranians found him and his ship?