John Ringo: Claws That Catch

“And so we are gathered,” the President said as a steward served coffee. “General Wang, would you care to lay out your initial statement?”

“The People’s Government finds it unacceptable that the United States has concealed the ability to not only defy gravity but fly into space from the peoples of the world,” the general said, gruffly. “This is a direct insult to the People’s government and all governments who believe in sovereignty and respect between nations.”

“If you truly believed in sovereignty then you would not raise an issue with another country concealing such a thing,” the Indian said in an Oxford accent. “So your response seems somewhat hypocritical. What you really mean is you want it and you’re trying to pressure the Americans to give it to you.”

“I have a point of order,” the Russian general said in a thick accent. “The Motherland’s government has had knowledge, for some time, that our dear neighbors to the south were aware of the dastardly experiments on the part of the Americans. However, I am wondering why my esteemed colleague from the sub-continent is present.”

“In other words, our subs weren’t chasing the Americans so how could we know?” the Sikh asked. “At the insistence of their British ‘colleagues,’ the Americans brought us in on the secret some two months ago. And it’s a bit broader than you’re aware. So I would suggest you hold all your bluster and opening arguments for a later time, because, in the Adar vernacular, we are seriously grapped .”

“Captain Weaver?” the President said. “I understand you prepared a briefing?”

“Actually, an overworked lieutenant commander in AstroOps prepared it, sir,” Bill said, standing up. “I’m just giving it. Gentlemen, I give you the Alliance Space Ship Vorpal Blade Mod One,” Weaver said, keying on the screen.

“One?” the Russian asked, sitting up.

“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the changes,” Bill said. “Your intel corps is better than that. The Vorpal Blade One was designed around the former USS Nebraska . The engine, which I’m sure you’re all itching to study, was an artifact the Adar found and we Americans got tinkered into a drive. Were we actually to release it for study, which we’re not, trust me and my professional background when I say that you would find it as baffling and enigmatic as we have. It is so far ahead of our technology, it is not even funny. Magic is a better description. It is not only capable of normal space flight, but of warp flight.”

He stared at the Chinese delegate as he said that and couldn’t get anything from him. If the Chinese knew about the warp capability, the general wasn’t letting on.

“Using it, we have accomplished two separate deep-space missions,” Bill continued. “The first was a local area survey during which we encountered several astronomical issues, landed on a few planets, got ourselves beaten up thoroughly, encountered another friendly alien race and got ourselves beaten up even more thoroughly by a biological planetary defense system.”

“Was this Dreen?” the Chinese delegate asked. The Chinese had not had any Dreen gates in their country. Since the war, however, there had been reports of occasional Dreen outbreaks. As with many countries, they had looked upon the Dreen as a potential biological weapon of enormous ability. And like every country that had tinkered with them, save the U.S. and Britain as far as Weaver knew, they’d lost control of the infestation.

Dreen spread-fungus was nasty. It actively tried to escape and would produce enzymes and acids until it found a combination that got it out of its holding vessel. Keeping the result from spreading was nearly impossible.

“No,” Bill said, switching to the next slide. “The system was either designed by the Cheerick, this chinchillalike species, or some older race. However, it was determined during the mission that the Cheerick could control it. It produces various ground and air combat systems as well as a space combat system termed dragonflies. They are capable of normal space operations and fire laser beams from their compound eyes.”

“Oh, very good,” the Russian said, starting to stand up. “This is some joke you play on us, yes?”

“General, this joke blew the hell out of our ship,” Bill said tightly. “We were slag when we got back to Earth and that was after we did repairs on Cheerick. The dragonflies are no joke, especially with a couple of hundred coming at you.”

“You were there?” the Chinese general said. “You were on this mission?”

“I was the astrogator, General,” Bill replied. “We lost all but five of our forty-one Marines and about half of our Navy crew as well as numerous civilian scientists and all of our Special Forces scientific assistants. May I continue?”

“Please,” the Asian said.

“The second mission was an emergency mission to determine why we’d lost contact with a colony,” Bill said, bringing up another slide. It was of a standard harsh-world science station, bubble tents and rocky soil. “The planet was HD 36951 Gamma Five. It was an archaeological station that had been attacked by an unknown force. We determined that it had been destroyed by the Dreen and rescued one survivor. Then we found remnants of a battle in the Tycho 714-1046-1 system. Following the trail of one of the ships, we encountered another race, the Hexosehr.

“The Hexosehr had recently battled the Dreen and lost. The ship was the last major battle platform that defended a refugee fleet of handpicked survivors. Most of them were in cold-sleep and the Hexosehr had fled with over a million of them. Of course, that was out of a total population, on six worlds, of just over two billion.”

“Barely your country and mine combined,” the Indian said, smiling and looking at the Chinese delegate.

“If bodies was all that was going to help, the mujahideen would have won in Lebanon,” the President pointed out. “Continue, Captain.”

“We assisted their battleship in repairs,” Weaver said. “And then went ahead to inform their refugee fleet that it had survived. The fleet had to refuel and was stopped in the HD 37355 system. The Blade assisted the Hexosehr in holding the system and, in fact, in stopping the Dreen task force. However, she was virtually scrap by the end of the battle. The Hexosehr roused their workforce and between the scrap metal from the Blade and their factory ships created a new ship from the ground up. Thus the A.S.S. Vorpal Blade Two. The rest of the briefing will be handled by Mr. Ascher.”

“Information from the Hexosehr and a Dreen dreadnought we captured during the battle indicates that the Dreen are spreading rapidly,” the national security advisor said. “They are spreading in every direction through what are called ‘local bubbles.’ In our direction, they are currently in the Orion local bubble, where most of the action the captain just described took place. There are two local bubbles between ours and that one. Hexosehr estimates, and our own, place the arrival of overwelming Dreen normal space forces at between twelve and twenty years. Best estimate is fifteen.”

“ Bozhe moi ,” the Russian muttered. “This is… not well news.”

“That estimate assumes two things. That they do not find out the location of Earth and that even if they do they do not want to jump ahead.”

“If I may add one note,” Bill said diffidently.

The NSA nodded. “Go ahead, Captain.”

“The Dreen, and the Hexosehr, use a warp technology that is similar to wormhole jumping,” Bill said. “We’re still studying it. But they jump, rather slowly compared to the Blade , from star to star. In normal space, the Hexosehr fleet will not reach our region for at least two years. The majority of the Dreen are farther out. If they found out where Earth was today, they would take at least two years to reach here, more like three, in any force. This is part of the full briefing documents we are turning over to your governments, as I understand it.”