“Valerie, I’ll be back for your birthday.”
“Go, my love. The Realm needs you.”
“Junior, we need to go.”
“If you tell me I’m wasting time again, I’ll scream.” Jake disappeared from the map room and Valerie could still feel his embrace.
Mord and two hundred of his fellow survivors watched the Keepers’ ship facility. They tried to get a feel for the pattern of incoming and outgoing ships. He also passively scanned the planet and saw a huge population of Keepers on the surface. Fifteen of the construction planets had been targeted by the Cainth and two hundred ships had been assigned each facility. The Stars Realm had put them in Gamma ships and coated their heads with the thought-blocking material. Mord knew that unless he teleported in close enough to block out the light from distant stars that he was invisible to the Keepers.
He used a communication device that was on the same frequency as cosmic rays that permeated the universe, and not much stronger than those small bits of energy. “We will hit the hundred and fifty facilities above the planet with our main beams first. The remaining fifty ships will then hit the planet with their main beams. One should do the trick, but I want to make a point here. We believe that the coating on our ships should protect us for just a few moments so don’t waste time; fire and get out. We still can’t hurt those ships, but surprise is on our side. Any questions?”
Silence greeted him and he said, “This is for Brayent. Teleport in five sems from now.”
The two hundred ships counted it down and disappeared… then reappeared at the ship building planet. The hundred and fifty docks in obit were hit with the massive main beam of the Gamma ships and burned into slag. The Keepers’ ships targeted the small ships, but they were gone before they could tune their thoughts to their beams. Then the Keepers’ ships watched as the planet below them exploded into hundreds of pieces and blew away, taking the wreckage of the facilities with them. Where once a planet with more than twenty billion Keepers existed, only dust and burning chunks of the core remained. The other fourteen planets were carbon copies of the first planet’s destruction. More than half a trillion Keepers died in less than five seconds.
The Collective and Quadrants were analyzing the progress of modifying the fleet when suddenly they were stunned. The Collective felt a severe pain, then began receiving reports. Science immediately reported, “I have lost five percent of my stored data on shipbuilding.”
The Collective and all the Quadrants entered the minds of Keepers at the sites of the attacks and saw the destruction. The being was shocked beyond belief. The former planets were blown into small burning pieces flying away from the explosion of the planets’ cores. The Collective Intelligence could feel the loss of those billions, and also sensed their capability was diminished slightly.
“How many of their ships did we kill?” Military asked.
“None; they were gone before we could focus our beams.”
“How many attacked?”
“Two hundred.”
The Collective turned its attention to Statistics, “How many of those ships did we scan in their universe?”
“More than twenty million.”
“How many ships do we have in our inventory?”
“More than a hundred million.”
“How many are converted with the new upgrades?”
“Less than 200,000.”
“Science, how can we protect our planets from these attacks?”
“We need to look at this together.”
The Collective Intelligence combined and began analyzing the attacks. After ten minutes the Quadrants separated and Science said, “It appears that the ships must be just above a planet’s atmosphere to use that beam weapon. If we space our ships with thousand-mile separation ten miles above the atmosphere, we should be able to overlap our beams such that they could not attack.”
“How many ships would be needed to provide that coverage, and how many of our home worlds are there to defend?”
“It would take three hundred ships to cover a planet, and we have forty six thousand planets that have the majority of our population.”
Production interjected, “We don’t have enough ships to cover them all. We can only defend 35,000 planets. If we use our ships for this planetary coverage, there are millions of planets with our garrisons that would be left defenseless. It also begs the question of how we will feed ourselves if we can’t go and collect the food we need.”
“Are you saying we will lose this war?”
“I only state facts, you can see them as well as I can. We have no choice but to defend our home worlds; any other choice would lead to catastrophe.”
Military asked Science, “Why do you say that?”
“Because if they destroy more than sixty percent of our home worlds, we will cease to exist; the population necessary to give us existence will be too small. It will then become a war against our individual planets.”
The Collective thought about this and began to feel something foreign: fear. “What if we release all of our ships to attack their universe? Could we kill them fast enough to survive?”
“Our measurement of their beam’s strength was such that just one of their ships could have destroyed the planet. They fired fifty beams to make a point. They could kill us much faster than we could damage them. Remember, they have millions of those ships and we only have 46,000 home worlds.
Distribution asked, “Why do we have so few home worlds?”
Statistics answered, “Because when we decided to conquer our universe and use the vanquished to feed us, we no longer needed to expand and we could grow our populations to extreme levels. Our decisions have led to this current situation. Without the food we depend on from our farms, starvation is not far from our species.”
The Collective asked, “How do you feel about attacking that universe now? Values, what do you think about this situation?”
“It will not matter whether you attack or not. Our structure is an abomination to creation and cannot survive those that have followed the principles of life. You forget that you have already attacked that universe and killed their planets. Do you seriously expect them to say they’ll just forget your slaughter? Would you?”
“That’s something I will have to ponder; however, send the fleet out to cover our home worlds immediately. That will give us time to decide what to do. Make sure they pick up enough stores from the garrisons to feed us for a quarter.”
Military began issuing the orders.
Sprig looked at the recording of the destruction of the Keepers’ ship building planets. Twig felt his unease and thought, “Would you have preferred those ships be completed and come here?”
“No, but did we have to destroy the planets?”
“Did they have to destroy our populations? You, more than anyone, should understand consequences to actions.”
Sprig sighed and thought, “I just wish there was another way.”
“Well, the recordings that just came in should make you feel better.”
“Why is that?”
“It appears the entire inventory of Keepers’ ships are being used to screen their home worlds. They can’t come here and protect them there. I suspect those attacks will end up saving more lives than were lost.”
Sprig’s leaves turned greener. “That is good news. What is our next step?”
“Since their fleets are being used to defend their planets, we are going to start liberating some of the populations they’ve enslaved.”
Sprig’s leaves turned bright green, “Now that is a lovely thought.”
Junior was parked over the garrison on the planet where he had found the beings that so impressed him with their gentle spirit. Jake sat on board and watched the scans, “Junior, what do you think will happen if we attack this garrison and free these cities?”
“They will no longer have to fear being eaten.”