Saxon Andrew - A rose grows in weeds

Rose smiled, “Ok, Daddy, I will.”

Danielle picked Rose up and hugged her tightly. “Next time don’t wait to be noticed either. Come straight to me and get my attention.”

“I will, Mommy.” Rose felt better and now knew she could exercise some of her talents against the weeds without worrying about doing anything wrong.

Tag pressed his command frequency and got Dorg, Mikado, and Chen on his display. “Change of plans, gentlemen.”

Dorg looked at Tag like he was crazy, “It’s too late to change our plans this late.”

“Admiral, the Plants are going to jump two million ships in on our fleet as soon as we emerge from null space.”

The three Stars Realm Officers looked stunned. Then Dorg said, “Ok, what do we do?”

Tag looked at the three and said, “We still need to try our new jump system and we should at least use the ships we’ve gathered. We will jump to the system going thru each of the five jumps we’ve left penetrators and drop off enough of our stores to supplement them so that there are 300,000 in each system. Then we will jump into the harvesting system and upon emergence fire every penetrator we have left. We will also fire all of our hornets at that shell of missiles around the bulge the harvesters will be attempting to jump from. We’ll time our jump with the harvesters getting close to the jump limit; as soon as we fire our weapons, we will immediately begin jumping thru the five exit systems as quickly as possible. Impress on your ship commanders that they will only have ten seconds to empty their magazines before Ron-Dar jumps us all away, so make it good. Tresk will time his jump into the system three seconds after we jump. Mikado, how long is it before those harvesters reach the bulge?”

“Forty five minutes sir.”

“Notify all ships we will be jumping to system five in one minute; also notify them to eject the appropriate number of penetrators. It won’t be a long party, gentlemen, but it should be a loud one.”

Chen and Mikado got on their coms and began issuing orders. Tag sat back in his chair and noticed that the bad feeling had disappeared. Thank God for my daughter, she’s the strongest weapon we have and she’s not even seven yet. He smiled and thought, “Love will find a way.”

Rose thought back to him, “And I love you, too, Daddy.”

Tag smiled and watched the countdown.

The Leader of the New Half Fleet watched as the harvesters approached the bulge of the power missiles. His sensor officer looked up and said, “There are no Stranger ships on my screen, leader.”

“Are the two whole fleets ready to jump as soon as we detect them?”

“Yes they are, Leader. Do you think the Strangers will come?”

“Oh, they’ll come. When they do all our ships in this system and the two whole fleets will jump in on top of them and hit them with beams so they can’t escape. We need to capture one of their ships to see how they are able to do the things we’ve seen.”

“Why don’t we have the two whole fleets here waiting on them?”

‘Because then they wouldn’t come. Somehow they are able to see us and I want to make sure they come.”

“Well, if they are coming, they should be arriving now; the harvesting ships are only moments from the jump limit.”

The Half Fleet Leader started to respond but his sensor tool said, “Thousands of ships breaking into normal space just outside the null band.”

“Order the two whole fleets to jump,” the Half fleet Leader ordered and then looked at the screen where he saw thousands of the Stranger’s ships break into normal space and fire millions of those energy missiles. Then as soon as they appeared they jumped away.”

Right behind the Strangers disappearance, the two whole fleets emerged from null space. “Order them to follow the jump tracks.”

“They all left on the same track, Leader.”

“All the better, maybe we can get them in a group, go after them now.”

Two hundred thousand ships read the jump track of the Stars Realm fleet and jumped after them. They broke into normal space and were immediately hit by thousands of penetrators waiting on them. The next jump track was read and the ships jumped to the new coordinates but not before losing more than 35,000 ships. The Plant fleet once more emerged into normal space and once more was barraged by 300,000 penetrators. These penetrators were programmed to hit with five per target and the Algean ships jumped right into the middle of them. The Ship Leader hurried his sensor tool to quickly read the jump track and follow but it took four seconds to read and then transmit it to the other ships. This time the number of ships chasing the Strangers was reduced another 50,000 ships. Once more they emerged into normal space in the middle of another 300,000 penetrators and again the fleet was reduced another 47,000 ships. This process was repeated a fourth time and the original 200,000 ships were down to 60,000 ships. The Ship leader ordered his surviving ships to jump back to the main fleet and discontinue the chase. He had no idea how many more traps were set but it was foolish to continue the loss of his fleet. He reported to the Half Fleet Leader and sent a video of what had happened. The Half Fleet Leader slammed his arm on his console breaking his new display screen. It was just not worth the price to pursue the Stranger’s ships. The Algeans were no closer to finding out where the Strangers were coming from.

The Stars Realm Ship Short Sword broke into normal space and Tresk looked at his jump officer and said, “Do you detect any Plant ships?”

“No Sir, the screen is clear.”

Tresk, looked over at Cade McAllister and said, “The ship is in your control.”

Cade set the two screens and announced, “We will be jumping 10,000 miles into the jump limit on my mark; ready, execute.” The short sword disappeared and broke back into normal space 10,000 miles inside the jump limit. “Jumping back out on my mark, execute.”

Short Sword emerged back outside the jump limit. Cade then said, “This time we are going to jump in system next to the planet closest to the sun and then jump out of the system to the Gamma Galaxy and begin our trip home. On my mark, execute.” Short sword broke into normal space next to the inner planet, released two stealth sensor buoys, and then jumped out of the system.

Tresk looked at Cade and asked, “Were the plants using their dampening frequency?”

“Yes they were and the system appears to have operated flawlessly. We need to look at our data but we’ll do that when we get back to our labs.

Tresk looked at his jump officer, “Ok, you know the drill. Jump thru four galaxies to erase any jump tracks. Let’s go home.”

At the jump limit, the four million penetrators that were launched by the Stars Realm fleet before jumping away began locking on Algean ships that were just inside the limit and those that were breaking out into normal space. Everywhere ships were being hit by the penetrators as they accelerated to full speed after acquiring a target. As the two fleets began maneuvering to avoid the penetrators, more than a million hornets homed in on the anti-matter missiles that were in the bulge that was formed for the harvesters to escape. As the hornets began hitting the missiles, a huge chain reaction of explosions began and the blast zone expanded instantly to more than 4,000 miles wide and engulfed the harvesters, which had not quite made it to the jump limit with 20,000 of the new Algean ships that were escorting them out of the system. There was nothing left of those ships after the blast wave passed them and the explosions continued as the hornets continued to chase and hit the missiles trying to escape the wave front. The Half fleet Leader watched as his ships were being destroyed by the thousands but even more serious than that was the loss of the second group of harvesters to the strangers. In hindsight, using the missiles was not a good decision and he worried that the loss would cost him his command.