Christopher Nuttall - Chosen of the Valkyries

“What about the friendly race you met? The Sila?” Terran President Katrina Nehru asked, happy to be headed back in a positive direction.

“Yes, ma’am,” Calvin replied. “We have had contact with the Sila on a couple of occasions. They all left a common planet when its star went nova, and they now inhabit several planets we know of, but they don’t have contact with each other. Most of their planets have been conquered by the Efreet and ruled by them ever since. We helped one planet throw off the Efreeti yoke; I’m sure they would help us against the Efreet.”

“How big is the Sila Navy, exactly?” the Russian representative asked.

“Almost nonexistent,” Calvin admitted. “The Sila only have a single destroyer; however, they have been artificially held back in their technological development by the Efreet. If we give them a boost, I think they’d make great allies.”

“Oh, so now you are qualified to give us treaty advice?” the French representative asked. “After involving us in a war with two previously unknown star nations, you are going to tell us who we should have as our allies too?” He spread his arms as he looked across the entire auditorium. “Honestly, I don’t see the need for this body to exist since we already have you to determine who our allies and enemies should be.”

With that, many of the representatives began shouting their own comments and criticisms. As the moderator struggled to regain control of the meeting, Calvin opened up his in-head calendar display and began cancelling his other appointments for the day. This wasn’t going to end any time soon.

The Situation Room, Fleet Command HQ, Lake Pedam, Nigeria, September 29, 2021

“That concludes my report,” Calvin said for the second time in three days. “Are there any questions?”

Unlike the chaos that followed this question in the governmental headquarters building, the mood in Fleet Command was somber. Everyone in the room could see the magnitude of what the fleet had been tasked with. How could you defend an entire planet, much less its individual cities, when aliens could emerge anywhere, at any time, and attack? What did they have that could stop an Efreeti ship from appearing and conducting an orbital bombardment of Earth before any of the Terran forces could stop it?

Nothing.

It could happen in the next five minutes, and the military would be completely unable to prevent it. Everyone knew it, and no one had a solution. All the eyes in the room turned to Fleet Admiral James Wright, the head of the Terran Navy, who sat at the head of the table.

For his part, the admiral looked out the window at the Terran Governmental Headquarters, visible across the lake, deep in thought. Finally, nodding to himself, he returned his gaze to the podium. “So Calvin,” he said, “you’ve had the longest to think about it, what are your recommendations?”

Although the question might have seemed out of place to some of the non-American members of the staff, Admiral Wright had a long, personal relationship with Calvin, going back to the Sino-American War of 2018. Although their working relationship had been strained at first, the admiral had come to count on Calvin’s decision making. That trust was rewarded with a string of Terran victories across a number of systems in two universes. And, more to the point, Calvin had more off-world fighting experience than any other Terran officer.

“I don’t think we have a lot of choices,” Calvin said. “We have to take care of Terra first. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to help the Aesir, and they need all the help they can get. Even with the information we gave them, they are going to be overwhelmed by the combined forces of the Efreet and Jotunn if they don’t get any help. Still, we have to take care of Earth first.”

“I’m sorry,” Admiral Ackermann said. “Who were the Jotunn again?”

“The Jotunn are frost giants allied with the Efreet,” Calvin said. “They stand about 16 feet high and weigh over a ton. Not only does their size make them difficult to stop on an individual basis, their ships are similarly oversized. For example, their battle cruisers are about the size of a Mrowry dreadnought.”

“That is about 1.5 of your miles in length,” Captain Andowwn, the Mrowry attache to the Terran military, replied. A felinoid race, the Mrowry were the Terrans’ closest allies on the galactic stage, with the elven Aesir close behind.

“That is… quite large,” the German admiral said. “We will need more ships if we are to meet them in combat.”

“That’s the problem,” Calvin said. “Well half of it, anyway. As much as I’d like to help the Aesir, I don’t think we can. Unless something changed while we were gone, we barely have enough ships to defend our own planets in the face of this new threat; if we send some to aid the Aesir, we are leaving ourselves perilously open to attack.”

Admiral Wright’s eyes found the only civilian in the room. Not surprisingly, he was tapping on a data pad. “Mr. Brown, could we get a status on ship production?”

Andrew Brown jumped as his name was called. Brown ran the Fleet Material Management Network, or ‘Replicator Command,’ whose sole purpose was to ensure the Republic of Terra’s replicators ran as efficiently as possible. Products of advanced alien technology, the replicators could take raw materials and turn them into any finished product for which they had a blueprint. The biggest replicators could even produce super dreadnoughts, the largest class of ships.

Calvin had first met Andrew Brown when he was the plant manager for Boeing’s Airplane Programs Manufacturing Site in Renton, Washington, during the war with China. Brown’s experience managing aircraft production facilities had been instrumental in his success with Replicator Command… although it looked to Calvin like Brown’s hairline was rapidly receding, probably due to the stress involved.

“Ah, yes,” Mr. Brown replied. He tapped the pad two more times. “Our fleet remains at three ships, the cruiser Vella Gulf and the battleships Terra and Domus . We also have the former Efreeti cargo ship Spark that Lieutenant Commander Hobbs brought back, if you count it. Although we do not have many active ships, our ship building facilities are just beginning to hit their stride.”

He looked at his pad. “The republic is up to five replicators—”

“Excuse me,” Calvin interrupted. “Did you say five? You’ve been busy.”

“Yes, we have,” Brown replied with a smile. He looked around the room and saw questions on several of the faces. “For those of you outside of Replicator Command, replicators range in size from Class 1, which can only make minor items, up to Class 8, which is capable of producing a super dreadnought. Class 1 replicators are found on some of the medium-size and larger ship classes where they are used to replace equipment that breaks. Class 8s are enormous in size, and are relatively static.”

Brown’s focus returned to Calvin. “In addition to the Class 2 replicator on the moon and the Class 6 we got from the Mrowry, we also towed the Class 8 you captured back to our asteroid belt. I knew that wouldn’t be enough, so we made a Class 5 replicator with the Class 6, and another Class 6 with the Class 8. We sent the Class 5 to Domus so they could begin shipbuilding, and we stationed the new Class 6 in the asteroid belt with the Class 8. It took some time to do all of this, as well as to create the infrastructure required to operate them effectively.”

He smiled. “I’ll tell you what, though,” Brown said, pausing for effect; “once you get a Class 8 set up, it can generate infrastructure fast . The amount of material it consumes in a day is nothing short of staggering… but you wanted to know about our ship status. All five replicators are now in operation making ships, and you will see a number of new ships very soon.”