Talosian Alliance: Talosian Chronicles, #3

By Ben Winston

Ian and friends believe that the Talosian Ruling council is sending a delegation to negotiate the Terran inclusion into the Talosian Alliance. After the delegates arrive from New Talos, they uncover a plot to overthrow the Talosian Council, and take control of the Terran Facilities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Space Publications, LLC.
• Release date: Jun 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513010991

Ben Winston

Ben Winston (1965 - ?) was born in Iowa and grew up in Minnesota on the family dairy farm. Upon reaching adulthood, he joined the United States Army as a communications technician. Before getting out of the military, he decided to go to school for computer electronics. Shortly after getting out of the military, and after getting a new job with an over-seas company, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. A month after beginning the new job, he was laid off due to budget over-runs on the project he was hired for. Upon returning to the United States, he had difficulty maintaining employment because of the chronic illness. He began writing as a form of stress release, from being home bound and not being able to work, and found he liked writing erotica. Ben wrote a trilogy called the Talosian Chronicles (Currently in rewrite to remove the graphic sex and finalized his vision of the story). The first book, Star Dancer, won awards and was nominated for many others by the online communities where it was posted. Ben Winston returned to school for literature, after completion, he began writing professionally. Being an avid fan of science fiction he focused on this genre. He was, and still is, influenced and inspired by Gene Roddenberry, Anne McCaffery, David Weber, Isaac Asimov, and Ray Bradbury. Some of his favorite movies and TV shows are; Battlestar Galactica (both versions), Andromeda, Star Trek, Firefly, Star Wars, and many of the B-rated movies that were actually box-office bombs.

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Disclaimer

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Dedication

This work is humbly dedicated to Mr. Leonard Nimoy. (1931-2015)

He greatly inspired me to always look ahead, and dream.

Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most....Human.

- William Shatner, as Captain Kirk. Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan

The story so far...

Roughly forty-five hundred years ago, a Talosian Federation warship, the Heavy Cruiser, F.S.S. Olympus, crashed on Earth’s moon as the result of an attack. Faced with almost irreparable damage to the ship, the loss of ninety percent of its crew, and the total destruction of their ‘race’, Commander Zeus came up with a radical plan to try and save his race.

His plan was to leave the Olympus on the moon, go down to the beautiful blue planet, and breed with as many of the inhabitants as possible. The Olympus, under the control of the AI, would remain on the moon, make repairs, and then begin searching for someone with the correct genetic markers to assume command of the great ship.

A young pilot trainee that was orphaned in the attack asked the Commander for permission to take her own life since she no longer wished to continue without her mother and girlfriend. Zeus didn’t have the heart to grant her request, so he asked her instead to go into cryogenic suspension and assist the new Commander, once one was found. Believing that she would never wake-up, Talena agreed.

After watching the last of the crew depart, the ship’s AI had his hologram walk young Talena to the Cryogenics bay. He told her he would be there when she awoke. She just smiled sadly at him and said good-bye.

With Talena safely in cryo-sleep, the AI set about his first task of repairing and decontaminating the ship; it took far longer than it had estimated. Nine hundred years later it had finally completed all the repairs it could. However, it remained on the moon for the simple reason that since she was never intended to land; the ship had no means of lifting its large, multi-megaton mass off the surface.

Hoping its new Commander would have an idea, it turned his full attention to the planet its crew had emigrated to. After an exhaustive (even for him) survey, he was dismayed. It appeared that only a few of the natives showed traces of his former crew. Fearing that the Commander’s plan had failed, but bound by his final commands, the old computer resigned himself to monitoring the small planet and awaiting his eventual core systems failure.

In an effort to occupy his time, Olympus rechecked for the proper genetic sequences once every fifty or so years. Realizing that the planet needed help, but knowing that interference could very well make things worse, he avoided politics and religion. He began to influence man in small subtle ways that, while not correcting major issues, kept mankind from killing themselves long enough to learn how to fix it themselves.

Then one day, one of his probes reported finding two young people that were almost exact genetic matches for Commander Zeus and Colonel Hera, the ship’s second in command and bond mate to Zeus. Taken somewhat by surprise, the old computer shifted his full attention to the young couple. The fact that they lived only four blocks apart and were best friends amazed him. Excited and full of anticipation, he continued to monitor them as they grew and directed his remotes to continue to check the entire populace – this time with far more optimism. Shortly before Ian Williams graduated from high school, Olympus convinced him of his heritage, and Ian accepted the responsibility. He immediately began recruiting a crew after taking his best friend as bond mate. Suspecting that the ship had sustained further, possibly undetectable damage, Ian ordered diagnostics run on the ship. After rescuing young Talena from her impossibly long four-thousand-year stasis, the small group found out how badly damaged the ship actually was, and even Olympus was surprised by how close to killing his new crew they had come.

Not letting the unwelcome report deter him, Ian ordered major sections of the ship to undergo emergency repairs, to include the total destruction and replacement of its primary power reactor. While waiting for the ship to become safe for occupancy once again, Ian and crew set up a corporate township in New Mexico as a cover for recruiting new crew members, as well as forcing the introduction of suppressed technologies and ‘green’ research.

The ship repairs finally were finished and a method to lift off the lunar surface was devised. Shortly after officially assuming command of the newly rechristened Star Dancer, Ian and crew launched the old warship back into the heavens where she belonged. 

Once back in space, Ian and his people focused on preparing for the arrival of a Caldarian ship and whoever else may be planning on showing up. After months of preparation and worry, the Caldarian ship arrives and immediately begins searching the system for Ian and his people.

Seeing the opportunity to play it safe and possibly save some of the lives of his people, Ian keeps a low profile and begins a guerrilla warfare against the Caldarians. During the attacks, it becomes impossible for Ian to keep his existence from the government of the United States and the rest of the world. However, that wasn’t the only government to notice Ian and his people; just as the Caldarian Super Nova hadn’t been the only ship to make the jump to Sol System.

In the aftermath of the final battle, other ships that had jumped to Sol were revealed to be Talosian Heavy Cruisers, the same model as Star Dancer herself.

Once the shock of discovering that all the Talosian people hadn’t been killed had worn off, Ian and the two newly arrived Commanders sit down to discuss the battle and what would likely happen now that the Talosians knew Ian had one of their ships.

While the Talosian High Council debated their official status, a kind of treaty between the Talosian people and Ian’s people at Sol Sector was observed. Our story resumes six months after the Caldarian battle and the arrival of the Talosian ships.

Chapter One

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Station Pleiades One

High Geosynchronous orbit

Planet Atlas,

Alpha Centauri A IV

Sol Sector

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Ian and Serena were walking along the long main corridor of the new dry dock that was still being built. They were inspecting the facility as it was nearing completion.

Your people are simply amazing, Ian, Serena said. A project this size would have taken years to build anywhere else, and here we are walking inside of it already.

Well, to be fair, we already had the design and the plans for these stations finished. The drones are actually doing most of the real work. Remember though, that the AI won’t be finished and ready for installation until the second station, Pleiades Two, is about half finished, Ian replied. But I have to agree with you, these folks impress the hell out of me on an almost daily basis.

Has your Council decided on the first project yet? Serena asked.

Not officially, no. Luke tells me that the Prometheus will be the most likely project though. Once she’s finished, then Star Dancer will go in for refit, Ian replied. Have you heard from High Command yet?

Serena nodded. "As I said, Admiral Goya is all in favor of it. However, because of the way the Council works, he has to receive permission to take the Prometheus out of service long enough for the upgrades to be done. He told me that half of the councilors are worried that doing so will leave this sector under protected, and the other half believe that you’ll only succeed in destroying one of our warships.

Houses Heracin and Bjorin are trying to convince the rest of the Council that the proposed upgrades you will be making are impossible and will not work. They have even hinted that such modifications will leave the ship defenseless during battle.

Ian shook his head. So far, no one has taken us up on our offer to send their technicians or engineers so we can show them what we’re planning. Every offer has been met with silence.

Heracin and Bjorin are the two main houses responsible for building new ships and keeping the ones we have working. They are failing miserably, and even before they lost all but one of the ship building facilities to the Empire, they had no plans for new systems or any upgrades of any type. In fact, I don’t think they were even planning on building any new ships, Serena said. If it hadn’t been for the other races helping to keep us repaired, we would have already lost most of our fleet.

Well, once these stations are finished, each one should be able to handle two heavy cruiser class ships at once. While Prometheus is getting rebuilt, we will be starting a couple of other new projects on the other side, Ian said.

So you’ve mentioned, but you haven’t told me yet what you plan on building, the older Commander hinted, smiling.

Ian grinned back at her. The Council has approved the construction of two torpedo cruisers and one mobile repair ship.

I’ve seen the plans for the torpedo ships, but I’ve never heard of this repair ship you are talking about. What will it do? Serena asked.

I think it’s one of the designer’s better ideas, personally. It’ll be a medium cruiser class ship that is basically a portable shipyard. It has extendable gantries that can expand out far enough to accommodate a heavy cruiser, improved power generation, and redundant systems capable of taking the place of any and all systems aboard ship while the ship itself is repaired without the need to return to a base for repairs. We see it as being deployed with a fleet or a task force, remaining in the rear during a fight, and moving to help badly damaged ships even during combat. It will have armament, but nothing like a heavy cruiser. Mostly just defensive weaponry, like point defense and fighter suppression systems. It’ll also have almost twice the armor and shields of any existing heavy class ship, Ian explained.

How under the twin suns can you do that? It’ll have so much mass that the engines would have to be huge in order to move it! Serena countered.

Enigma armor and dual reactors. However, you are partially correct, the engines will be larger than a medium class ship, but not that much. It’ll have larger hyperspace engines in order to be able to jump with a ship docked. The major difference over that ship and one of these stations is that the ship will need to be resupplied with raw materials. It’ll carry enough for a lot of major repairs, but if it has to rebuild more than two ships, it’ll need more raw material, Ian explained. Once the torpedo boats are built, we will be building a freighter capable of resupplying the construction ship."

Are you still planning on moving your fighter production to the fourth planet? Serena asked.

Yes, in fact, there is already a crew there building that facility. Oh! The Council decided that once the crew here finishes the stations, they will be moving back to Mars to build yet another station for civilian use.

Your Council is wise to plan for the future. Having the ability to move freight and people without having to resort to the military is a valuable ability. Most of the other races still feel a little intimidated to have cargo delivered by warships. Escorts, they understand because those will stay outside the system and wait for the freighter, but they get nervous allowing other military vessels into their sovereign space, Serena said.

I’m not sure, but I think the Council will be approaching the other races to see if trade relations can be opened. Luke even mentioned the possibility of military aid as well, Ian said.

Serena looked thoughtful. The Alliance with the other races is a tenuous one. I do not know how the Talosian Council will react to letting the other members place warships here.

That might be a possibility, I suppose, but what he was speaking about was the possibility of expanding our facilities here and allowing them to come here for refit or rearming. The Council wants to be a productive member of the Alliance.

That I know they will oppose. The one thing that our Council has agreed on was that Sol Sector is a Talosian facility and will be protected by the Talosians, Serena said. They will not like that kind of treaty.

At this point, I think our Council really doesn’t care what the Talosian Council thinks. The reports of the debates taking place in the Talosian Council have pretty much put our local Council off. The local Council is fine with helping you as much as we can, but as far as accepting the Talosian Council as our authority, not so much. Simply put, High Command is welcome here, but the High Council is not, Ian explained.

I can certainly understand that. There are times I wish I could exclude the Council myself. Do I have your leave to report this? Serena asked.

Certainly, we haven’t tried to hide anything from you. In fact, I’d assumed that you had been reporting everything, Ian said. He wasn’t accusatory, simply stating a fact.

For the most part I do, but there are some things I have not reported. For example, even though you have given me the designs to your Shadow fighters, I have not sent them in. Admiral Goya is aware of this and approves. Those fighters are your invention and should stay with your people, as does the new armor. However, I have submitted the design for adding a redundant reactor to our ships since that is simply an upgrade to our existing ships. I reported the new equipment, but I did not submit the designs for them. Upgrades to our existing systems I have been sending in, and Admiral Goya makes sure the designs retain their original designer’s names.

Ian nodded. I understand, but all they would need to do to get the designs for the new stuff is come here to learn how we build them.

Serena gave him a sardonic smile. And as you can see, this place is simply swarming with Talosian engineers. Admiral Pan, the head of our personnel and training department, passed out copies of your battle for our commanders to study and learn your tactics. Most watched it and deleted it, claiming it was dishonorable, and the only reason you succeeded was because of luck. Had you attacked when the ship first arrived, as standing doctrine dictates, you would have defeated your opponent and saved the lives of the people on the planet. Because of your dishonorable actions, innocent people were killed. They are using it as grounds to have you removed as Commander, stating you have no idea what you’re doing.

It sounds to me like they simply didn’t understand the entire situation. If I would have followed doctrine, that Super Nova would have destroyed my ship before it ever made it to the orbit of Venus, Ian said.

Serena nodded. Undoubtedly. However, since you used tactics they didn’t think of and did something none of them could have done on their own, you are dishonorable and criminally incompetent. She snorted. No one dares bring those stupid charges against you because they would have to face you in battle in order to bring you in to answer for them!

Why would we have to fight them? Surely your justice system... Ian began, but Serena interrupted him.

...is controlled by the same houses that appointed the Commanders that would bring the charges against you. If that happened, there is a good chance it would start a civil war in the Talosian Alliance, she explained. This problem is only the newest one, Ian. A good portion of the High Command admires you for what you’ve done, and they feel that there is a lot we can learn from you in order to defend our remaining planets. It wouldn’t surprise me if Admiral Goya has begun dreaming of taking some of our planets back because of you.

Ian and Serena stopped to watch a manned construction pod and two construction drones matching up a section of gantry and welding it into place. Off to one side, several more sections were waiting to be welded on.

I have one ship and a few thousand people here. I doubt we are strong enough to do much more than what we’re currently doing. As for the battle, I do agree that there was a large amount of luck in that. If that Caldarian Captain had been smarter, we could have been in serious shit, Ian explained. I only did what I had to do because I was the one in Command. I got lucky, and it worked for the most part. We still lost a lot of good people. Perhaps, if I had been a better Commander, I would have found a way to save them and still destroy the Caldarian.

Every night, in your dreams, you replay that battle and try different things. Have you managed to save any of them yet? Serena asked.

How did you know? Ian asked, surprised.

I am a Commander, the same as you are. I do the same thing after every battle where lives are lost, she explained. Nothing will ever change, Ian. You have to convince yourself that you did the best you could with the tools you had. Until you do, the nightmare will never stop.

You’ve reviewed the battle, have you seen anything I could have done better? Ian asked directly.

Yes, I have reviewed the battle. There are some things I would have done differently, but I doubt the result would have been any better. When the Caldarian first arrived, if you would have done anything other then what you did, I agree that you would not have survived long enough to fight the final battle. In that final battle, no Talosian trained commander would have thought to use the hypermissiles in the way you did, that single act is what sets you above the rest of us. You have the ability to think of things we cannot and act on your ideas in ways that take an enemy completely by surprise, Serena explained. Ian, you performed far and above what any of the rest of us could have in that situation. The fact that it was your first battle, and you had only sleep training to work with, is proof of just how good a Commander you are and how much better you are going to get.

Thank you for the praise, Serena, but I still think I could have done something better, Ian replied.

Ian, do any of the people from Talos blame you for not saving their loved ones? Serena asked.

Not that I know of, but I blame myself. I should have been able to protect them better, Ian said, he shook his head. I know you’re right, and I’m working on it. I just need to quit dwelling on it and move on.

It’s hard to move on when one of the ones that was lost was so important to you. Those losses are the hardest to put behind us, Serena said. Those losses will always be a part of us, but we cannot let them influence our actions to the detriment of others.

Ian’s comm beeped.

Williams, what’s up? Ian said, opening the channel.

Sir, you asked to be reminded when the next shuttle going back to Phoenix Base was getting ready to launch? a voice said. I'm sending a tram for you.

Yes, thank you, Ian replied, closing the link. He looked at Serena. It looks like play time is over for me. I need to get back. He was surprised when a small golf cart looking buggy came around a corner and stopped beside them. It was a hover craft type of vehicle, but instead of having its own drive system, it used the artificial gravity system of the station to move about.

I understand my friend. If you don’t mind, I would like to walk around some more. I find all of this extremely fascinating, Serena said.

Of course, Serena. Let me know if you see something you don’t understand or that you think isn’t right, Ian said. During their tour, they had come across two crewmen that were in a small altercation. It hadn’t come to blows yet, but from the sound of the yelling, it was close.

It turns out that the two men knew each other from Earth, having lived only a few blocks apart on the Gaza strip. One of them had been Palestinian and the other Israeli.

Ian had gotten between the two men and talked them down. It took almost a half hour, but by the time Ian had left, the men had shaken hands, and admitted that they had been holding on to former prejudices. He got them to agree to try to work on understanding each other, and to understand the other had a different point of view on a subject.

Serena had watched Ian handle the situation and nodded at how well he handled it. Since both men had been rather large, she wasn’t sure she would have gotten between them as Ian had, but his methods worked.

Serena didn’t know anything of their argument, since she wasn’t from Earth, but after Ian explained it to her, she had to admit it was very similar to arguments she had broken up between some of her new crewmembers from different houses.

As she watched Ian speed away, she returned his wave, then consulted her pad that had the map of the station on it. A group of engineers were building another power section somewhere at this end of the station, and she wanted to see how they were doing it. At Ian’s request, the Prometheus was here to support the construction efforts, as well as to provide security.

Although it split the two defending ships apart by four light years, it was the right thing to do, and it gave her and her crew something to do while they were here. Admiral Goya was overjoyed with the situation, since it gave him an excuse to assign the Prometheus to the sector. Serena had her Marines stationed throughout the large installation, and half her engineering team was aboard to learn as much as they could and assist wherever possible. Her fighters, after being brought back up to full operational strength by Ian, were patrolling the system, and her Centurions were doing a more detailed survey of the system for resources.

This binary system Ian had called Centauri was rich in minerals and had an arable planet and moon suitable for colonization. It also had dozens of moons and asteroids rich with ores for mining and five large gas giants, four of which could be mined for hydrogen and several other gasses used in modern industry.

She crossed to the other side of the main corridor, and her attention was immediately captured by the large planet below. Almost twice the size of Earth, the planet Atlas had nearly twice the volume of Earth and only slightly higher gravity.  It was so much like Earth and New Talos, that it was as if it had been terraformed specifically for their race.

She had yet to visit that planet, but she vowed to herself she would visit the surface before she left this sector. She surprised herself when she felt a sense of peace settling over her she hadn’t felt since the loss of her home planet years ago. Yes, this wasn’t a combat assignment, but she knew it was very important, and, in her mind, it was possibly of critical importance to the Talosians. These remarkable people had awakened something in her.

When she realized that, she stopped walking and simply stood looking out at the planet. One of the two stars, the distant one, was visible in the upper left, but it was hard to look at directly, even when looking through the shielded plasti-glass. The main star was currently ‘above’ the station and out of sight. Just peeking over the horizon, the green moon named Apollo was just becoming visible, and the other smaller moon named Hades was heading behind the planet.

She let herself get lost in her introspection, hoping to clarify what she was feeling. She knew it wasn’t just her either. She had seen an improvement in her crew as well. The Marines, once they returned from the planet, stood prouder. The crew of the ship went about their days with purpose, the over-all attitude of the ship felt different.

People, tired of fighting endless battles and knowing that only more battles awaited them, had her crew moving about their duties like automatons. But since arriving here and seeing what these people had done, and continued to do, had seemed to inspire them. They acted like they had been reminded of their reasons to fight; even the children that had been so subdued were playing and laughing again.

Meeting Ian and his people had given her people something they had not even known they had lost. This mission had given them back the one commodity that no supply ship ever built could deliver; hope.

She smiled now that she had identified the feeling, and continued on to the secondary power room.

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Terran Defense Ship TDF Star Dancer

Lunar Orbit

Selene (Earth’s Moon)

Sol System, Sol Sector

Commander Ian Williams, Commanding

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Since it wasn’t an automated ship, the jump back to the Sol System only took about fourteen hours. Ian arrived back home just in time for a late dinner with Jenny, Cindy, and the kids. Talena was on duty, and Beth had a medical emergency.

After dinner, Cindy winked at Jenny and took the kids back to their bedroom to play with them a little before bedtime. Ian grinned at