A Change in Momentum

By Mike Adams

“Except for the ones we rescued, most these Rangers have no clue what we’ve been through and what we’ve done and what we can do! If they try sneak into New Cancun’s landing field in the middle of the night, they will get stomped. They should let us do that. The aliens will never know what hit them! Besides, I’d like to add at least one more notch on my crossbow before I retire.”
-Montana Hernandez, age 16, squad 4, archer, Jacks Company

The colonial capital, New Hope Town, has been abandoned and now West Hills is the last major settlement in the West still held by the human colonists and the aliens intend to change that very soon. The problem for the Rift and their army of Andoval mercenaries now though is that they failed to capture any of the humans, their last hope to gain some leverage before the next starship arrives with reinforcements for the Colonial Rangers. They know they have lost but they have no choice but to continue, the Andoval won’t let them quit.
Even with the aliens closing in on the last of the human settlements, things are beginning to shift in the human colonists and Colonial Rangers' favor. While the Battle of New Hope Town was going on, Commander Rick Cassidy, Gunnery Sergeant Molly Pickford and their Jacks Company plus the other units comprising 'Sixth Battalion' have re-taken the abandoned settlement of New St Louis from the aliens who had moved all their troops from there to the west for their campaign to take New Hope Town. The time for the girls of Jacks Company to be reunited with their families might be coming sooner than later and opportunities for taking back other lost towns are shifting the initiative away from the aliens.

The Vitus Bering is just days away from reaching the colony but how they will send their cargo and passengers, including 1800 Colonial Rangers, down from orbit is very much in question now that the main landing field in New Hope Town has been lost. The Antarctica with the AREF, the Advance Relief Expeditionary Force, is just weeks away and they are bringing much more powerful weapons to use against the aliens, exactly what the Rift fear the most.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Adams
• Release date: Nov 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215675564

Mike Adams

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, NY. Mike has a BS in Business Admin from Wagner College and an MBA from SDSU. A retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander, Supply Corps (Logistics), a former small business owner, and part-time substitute teacher. he's visited 6 continents and 36 countries, speak Spanish, some German, a little Italian and a little less French. He currently lives in Chula Vista, CA with his wife Chris.

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Prologue

Monica Keller

Mountain valley 500 miles north of Southport, New Hope Colony, Tau Ceti 4

1930 September 12, 2126

It had been nearly 12 hours since the 850-foot-long, anti-grav powered cargo transport lander Cairo crashed in a 4-mile-long mountain river valley 500 miles north of where they’d started that morning in Southport on the southern coast in the eastern part of the Alpha continent. The attempt to fly the transport to Winter Haven, 1200 miles north of where they’d been hit repeatedly by powerful bolts of plasma fired by a fleet of alien ships the transport had inadvertently flown over just after dawn, had failed. They’d lost too much altitude to get past the mountains ahead and the flight crew had been forced to find a place to land but the badly wounded aircraft was moving too fast when it hit the granite floor of the mountain valley and they’d skidded almost a mile before crashing into a wall of granite. The sudden stop had killed 20 of the Cairo’s 27-man crew and four of its passengers.

Emotionally and physically exhausted, 14-year-old student Monica Keller sat on the floor next to with her friends Ruby McCarthy, Gabriella Mendez and River Jacobs trying to scrub the blood off her hands and arms using the package of camp wipes each had been given that afternoon. There was little water available for washing. Tears were running down her face and Monica grabbed a fresh wipe and started cleaning her face with it.

You’ve got blood on your neck, too, said River.

Ja, ja, ich weiss, I know, I can feel it, the young German girl replied sadly. It’s inside my shirt too. I was helping Emilie and Luka put Miss Marona’s body in a sack, uh, a body bag they said. You couldn’t tell it was her anymore, her face was smashed. Part of her head bone…

Her skull? offered Ruby quietly.

Ja, her skull, it was split open. All her bones were broken. I tried to lift her head but my hands slipped and her blood splashed my face, in my mouth and down my neck. I got most of it off, I had to take a little break, you know?

I saw that happen, said Gaby. I think I would have screamed if that had happened to me. I saw you spit some blood out. I almost threw up.

I was recording that when it happened. I don’t want to see that again, said Ruby, cringing at the memory.

Ruby had broken her wrist when the transport had turned on its side at 20,000 feet and she’d been saved at the last moment by Commander Rick Cassidy who’d picked her up and pushed her into an open crash couch then jumped in on top of her, activating it just before the transport hit the ground. Cassidy had drafted Ruby and two other girls who had not been too badly injured but couldn’t use both hands to document everything that had happened since the crash with video cameras provided by Corporal Nakamura. Monica, Gaby and River had been uninjured and they, like all the other students healthy enough to work, had been asked to volunteer for the grisly cleanup. Some of the older, stronger girls had helped bring the bodies of the 7 Rangers and 4 teachers from the forward main deck passenger cabin and from the flight deck down to the cargo bay where they were put into a special refrigerated compartment on the port side designed as a temporary morgue for anyone who died and their body needed to be transported back to the colonial capital for burial, cremation or shipment back to Earth.

The heroic efforts of the ship’s seven-person detachment of Colonial Security officers, Commander Cassidy, Gunnery Sergeant Molly Pickford and a handful of teachers from the school to get all of the students and injured into their crash couches before it was too late had saved the lives of all the students but at great cost. Four security officers and four teachers from the New Hope Academy had died in the forward passenger compartment when the sudden stop flung them forward into the armored bulkhead. Down in the cargo bay 13 of the ship’s 14-man cargo crew had been killed at the same moment, flung far forward into cargo containers and bulkheads or crushed by some of the 50 vehicles that were now little more than twisted wrecks. Of the six-man flight crew only the navigator and assistant engineer Captain Gabriella Tomei, comm tech Corporal Miruku Nakamura and Master Sergeant Guy Gilbert, the ship’s senior engineering tech had survived. They had all been ordered by Cairo’s commander to seal their crash couches as the transport descended into the valley.

Monica, Gaby and River had spent much of the afternoon cleaning up the blood and bits of skull and brain matter left behind when the bodies were removed from the passenger cabin and the flight deck. Things were even worse in the cargo bay where others had volunteered to clean up the horrific mess. Before the gruesome task began Commander Cassidy had called everyone still on their feet together in the ship’s second deck passenger lounge and let them know that he needed their help. No one knew where they were and with the communications satellites blocked or destroyed, they could not call for assistance so no one was coming for them; they were on their own. Of the 19 adults who had survived the crash 7 of them, along with two of the students, were in serious to critical condition in the transport’s sick bay, all their medical personnel were dedicated to taking care of the injured, Master Sergeant Gilbert needed to try to get the ship’s power functioning as soon as possible, and Corporal Nakamura needed to try to get their comms working, if that was possible. Every one of the girls had volunteered to help with the horrific work and not one had quit no matter how awful it had been for them.

When they’d left Southport before dawn, the Cairo was carrying just 66 passengers, all seated in the forward passenger compartment. The vast majority, 61 of the 66, had been part of an all-girl internship tour group of the eastern settlements, sent from the New Hope Academy in New Hope Town to visit New St. Louis, Southport, New Cancun, and Winter Haven. The boys had a separate internship group that traveled to the western settlements while the girls were in the east. The students would get a chance to see how the colony was run behind the scenes, spending time in government and company offices in the various settlements. Their performance group of dancers, gymnasts and musicians put on concerts at each stop for the entertainment-starved colonists. There were 46 students aged 14 to 18, plus four young women aged 18 or 19 who had graduated and were working as interns at the school while they waited for younger siblings to finish so they could return to Earth together, or just to spend more time with their families before leaving them for an extended period while attending University. These young people were escorted by 6 male and 5 female members of the school’s staff including eight teachers, the school’s senior counselor and its senior nurse. In charge of the group was the school’s Assistant Director of Student Travel and Transportation Veronika Tchachenko.

The other five passengers included a medical officer, Major Maya Scott, and two medics, Staff Sergeant Ian Ferguson and Sergeant Heidi Kampf, who were on their way to New Cancun to join Second Battalion. The last two passengers were Commander Rick Cassidy and Gunnery Sergeant Molly Pickford, the senior logistics officer for the colony and his deputy, who were escorting a large shipment of weapons and ammunition and other Ranger gear to the east.

###

Lindau, Germany 2124-2125

It had been a week before Christmas in 2124 and two weeks before Monica Keller’s 13th birthday on New Year’s Day when her parents, Wolfgang and Lara Keller, received the long hoped-for news that they had both been selected for positions they’d applied for at the New Hope Colony. They were both research biologists specializing in ocean life and would be working at the colony’s Monterey Oceanographic Research facility on the Norwegian Peninsula. They had finally made it through all the required screening exams, interviews and had met all the desired professional qualifications, and had been chosen from a group of highly qualified candidates. Getting the dual posting was a dream come true.

The only obstacle remaining now was whether or not their children, Leo, age 15, and Monica, 12, would also qualify. Both children were excited by the idea of living on another planet and were confident that they could pass all the screening requirements which were as rigorous as those the adults had to go through. In fact, Leo had already passed all of his requirements except the final medical checks which wouldn’t happen until a few months before departure. All of the students at the New Hope Academy were in the top 10 percent of their classes with more than half of them in the top 1 percent. Leo and Monica were both at the tops of their classes in their respective schools.

Candidates for specialized postings at the colony were generally chosen as much as two years before they had to arrive there. This leeway was because the candidates often had dependents who needed time to pass their own required pre-screening qualifications so they could go as well plus there was a 6-month trip to get there and the starships carrying people and cargo to the colony didn’t leave Earth every month; there was sometimes as much as four months between departures although that was expected to change once the new starships under construction joined the fleet. One common problem for candidates with younger kids planning to attend the New Hope Academy, the colony’s only school, was that the youngsters had to turn 14, the minimum age allowed at the colony, before the starship they were traveling on jumped out of Earth’s solar system. Leo wanted to go right away; he knew he would probably be a third-year student by the time he got there which meant he would get just two years at the colony, maybe even less, before returning to Earth to attend University. Monica however, couldn’t leave for at least another nine months in order to meet the age requirement.

Fortunately, their parents were able to work out a compromise approved by colony authorities. Wolfgang and Leo would leave for the colony on the cargo supply ship Australia in May of 2125, the soonest they could leave. Lara and Monica would follow on the Antarctica in late October which would be just late enough for Monica to turn 14 before entering jump space. The Australia would arrive at the colony in December of 2125 while the Antarctica would get there in late April 2126. When the Antarctica departed on its 6-month voyage to the colony there were about a dozen kids aboard including Monica, Ruby McCarthy and Gabriella Mendez who all turned 14 after leaving Earth’s solar system.

The three girls became close friends and they would complete enough of their academic requirements during the voyage that by the end of August 2126 all three had completed their first-year requirements making them eligible for the internship tour in September. Only three other girls from their class were chosen; selection was based on both academic achievement and athletic accomplishment. Gaby had been a professional dancer as a child in Brazil and had already become one of the stars of the school’s performance group. Ruby was an excellent long-distance runner and had finished among the top five finishers in four 10-kilometer races in New Hope Town that were open to everyone including the Colonial Rangers stationed there. Monica was a good but not great soccer player, but where she had really stood out was when she tried out for the school’s archery team. The archery coach Peter Hagerman was so impressed with her that she was immediately put on the school’s junior varsity squad, then soon after to the varsity team when she won every competition using the crossbow. She was by far the youngest girl or boy to ever make the varsity team.

Monica had gotten into archery in her hometown of Lindau, Germany after joining an under-18 beginners club soon after the family got the news about their selection for the colony postings. She’d read that archery was a new sport at the colony’s school and wanted to try it out. She was a natural with the crossbow and quite good with the compound bow. No one could have predicted that her skill with the crossbow would become critical to the ability of Jacks Company, the company composed of the survivors of the Cairo’s crash who were trained by Gunnery Sergeant Pickford and led by Commander Cassidy, to defeat superior numbers of aliens on more than one occasion after leaving the mountain valley where they’d crashed.

Many of the girls on the internship tour had participated in multiple sports at the Academy which had a rigorous and mandatory physical fitness program. Over two-thirds of the girls on the Cairo played soccer at the school at some level and nearly half were on the varsity, junior varsity or club archery teams. Twelve of the best with the crossbow were chosen for the company’s archery squad. The first time they were used against the aliens was during a night rescue of a dozen Rangers and civilians captured by the aliens at Winter Haven. They also came in extremely useful when the company took the ferry terminal over the Clearwater River. In both cases Monica served as the lead archer in her section.

The crossbow wasn’t the only skill Monica was proficient in. The 5-foot, 9-inch tall blonde had become an excellent climber, as well as a very good marksman with the rifle. When the aliens invaded the valley near the end of summer Monica and the rest of squad Five manned a sniper post on the ridge 200 feet above the valley floor and she accounted for nearly a dozen of the 7-foot tall, 450-pound aliens the Rangers called Raagaas after the war cry the giants shouted whenever they attacked. After that battle the company took the name ‘Jacks Company’, short for Jacks the Giant Killers. The name had been suggested by 15-year-old River Sleight before the aliens came. River was killed fighting on the Cairo’s main deck a few feet from where dance and gymnastics teacher Meifeng Li was killed moments later. A second student, Luda Bukharin, had been killed while fighting in the makeshift container fort they’d built next to the transport. Monica also fought with the rifle during the rescue of the Australian Rangers who would soon become part of Jacks Company, and during the Battle for Winter Cove when the Jacks had taken the facility in the middle of a blizzard. She’d used her crossbow again during the rescue of the people on the embattled transport Moscow which had crashed about 200 miles southeast of Winter Cove.

For nearly ten Earth months, almost two New Hope years, the girls of Jacks Company had not been able to talk to their families and just had to have faith that they were okay somewhere; they’d all had to evacuate at some point as the aliens approached, sometimes more than once. Monica’s parents and the other people at the Monterey facility were evacuated when the aliens launched an all-out attack on Winter Haven, Castillo and nearby Rocky Point. The attacks on Winter Haven and Castillo had been thwarted but Rocky Point and its subsidiary facility at Monterey had been lost. Wolfgang and Lara Keller ended up going to the research facility at Canoe Bay on the west coast with the research ship Boomerang and Leo moved with the school to volcano bastion number 3, 150 miles northeast of New Hope Town. After the company moved to New St Louis and the Seeker arrived with the colony’s senior leadership everyone including Monica was finally able to make video calls to their families. Everyone hoped that they’d be reunited soon.

Chapter 1

The North America Outbound

June 28, 2127

Day 268

CSS North America

"Captain, signal from General Jamison via the Australia," said the duty communications officer Lieutenant Danica Sivak to her commanding officer, Captain Nina Gould. The cargo supply ship North America had departed the New Hope Colony 61 days earlier and would be making its jump out of the Tau Ceti system in 14 days. They would spend 14 days in jump space before coming out in Earth’s solar system then have a 2 to 3-month trip through normal space back to Earth.

Let’s see it. The message appeared on the CO’s monitor as she and her First Officer Commander Jamie Kane read it together.

Gould frowned, "They’re doing the final evacuation of New Hope Town. Looks like the Vitus Bering won’t get there in time."

Apparently not, agree Kane. Looks like they’ve retaken New St. Louis though. I didn’t know they’d planned to do that.

"Read a little further down. It says that Commander Rick Cassidy and three companies of Rangers flew there from Winter Cove in a captured alien airship! Mein Gott, that’s incredible! They found New St. Louis abandoned by the aliens and now the Seeker is there on the ground."

Kane sat up in surprise, "Wait! Commander Cassidy? Oh, my Lord, that has to be Rick Cassidy and Gunnery Sergeant Pickford’s group that was on the Cairo. The report we received two weeks ago said they sent a recon mission that had discovered a couple of shuttles and some memory chips with recordings of what his group had been doing since they disappeared on the first day of the invasion. They’ve sent the recordings on to us now as well to forward to Earth Command."

Gould sat back and pursed her lips, I guess we should watch the recordings ourselves. They did say the last recording was about three months old. And now they are flying to New St. Louis from Winter Cove in a captured alien airship! I wonder how that came about?

Full report to follow, it says here.

That should be interesting.

Kane nodded, "You know, when we jump back into Earth’s system, these reports are going to create quite a stir. The reports that Marco Polo carried back are two months old now. Losing New Hope Town will shock a lot of people but getting them all out of there and now taking New St Louis back should cheer them up a bit at the same time."

A reasonable assumption but people are not always reasonable, Jamie, Gould said with a shake of her head. You know that. Some will see the loss of New Hope Town as an unmitigated disaster and say we have to evacuate the colony as soon as possible. Others will say that the Colonial Rangers are useless and ought to be disbanded once the relief force rescues them from the aliens. On the other hand, there will be others calling for the aliens’ home planet to be found and attacked so they can’t threaten us again, especially here.

I suppose that’s true. Look at this note, Lili. Jamison says that some of his staff are of the opinion that while the aliens won the Battle for New Hope Town, it may also have cost them the war. They’re running out of ways to move their troops around and now that they are all, most of them anyway, in the West, taking back the Eastern settlements may be possible now.

"And now they’ve got New St Louis, so his people may be right about that. I expect we’ll find out before we jump out whether or not they are able to take back any of the other settlements before the Antarctica gets there."

Kane raised an eyebrow, "You don’t think they’ll wait for Antarctica?"

"They might not wait for the Vitus Bering to arrive if there’s an opportunity to strike somewhere. They need New Cancun now that the Bering won’t be able to send their cargo barges down to New Hope Town. The Rangers on the Bering won’t have any weapons or ammunition until they can get them off the barges so they won’t be able to help taking back New Cancun."

Are you going to discuss this with Major Rousseau before releasing it to the passengers and crew? Major Matthius Rousseau was the senior Ranger returning from the colony. Rousseau had been Rocky Point’s Officer-in–Charge before the settlement was evacuated. A medical officer, he had also been in charge of the small clinic at the settlement’s terminal. Now he led the medical team augmenting the starship’s small medical staff taking care of the 125 injured Rangers and volunteers sent back to Earth among the ship’s 500 passengers.

I guess I should but let’s have Lieutenant Conklyn join us. I’d like to hear her thoughts on this. Matthius really has no operational experience and Vera fought at both Battles of Winter Haven and at Castillo. When we had her up for dinner, I was surprised just how much knowledge and understanding of the overall picture she had. Vera Conklyn was a platoon leader from the Irish detachment of Cobra Company. Hit in the left shoulder by a Raagaa spiked iron ball she’d suffered a broken shoulder, a broken arm, three broken ribs and a punctured lung at the Battle of the Mountain in Castillo three months earlier and was sent out on the North America with the other wounded three weeks later.

Almost completely healed now, she’d been invited to dinner in the captain’s private mess with Gould, Kane and Lieutenant Commander Elizabeth Badham, the ship’s Personnel officer and she had recounted how the day-long Battle of Castillo had progressed from the moment the alien airships landed just outside the settlement that morning until the Raagaas had scaled the mountain to attack the Rangers defending the landing field up there and had nearly overrun them before they were finally defeated. She had also chafed at the fact that she was going home while the rest of her detachment, her friends and countrymen, continued to face the aliens in battle.

Yes, indeed, said the New Zealander. She’s a smart one alright and what she told us about the ‘Brain Trust’ at the female officers’ residence in New Hope Town was quite fascinating, rather entertaining too, if you know what I mean."

Gould chuckled, Ja, quite funny, and that part is not to be mentioned to anyone; we promised, remember?

Oh, yes, no worries there, although she did tell Elizabeth she could share the Hot Tub part with our other female officers as long as they kept it to themselves. It will come out someday I’m sure, but it’s not for us to make public.

I’m sure you’re right about that. All those women will be famous one day. Some of them might not want to go back to Earth when they start to realize what’s going to happen to them.

They may not have a choice if their home countries order them to return. Vera said she was never in on any of the planning sessions, Cobra Company didn’t spend much time in New Hope Town. They spent a lot of time in Winter Haven though and she was lucky she and most of her detachment survived the Second Battle of Winter Haven. Just being involved in that as well as the Battle of the Mountain will have the newsies clamoring to talk to her and put her face on half the public programs in Ireland.

Only half? Gould snorted. And not just in Ireland, I think. She’s very brave, very smart and quite pretty as well. She told me privately that she’d rather be facing an army of Raagaas than an army of newsies, she’d have a better chance of surviving. She also said she hopes to return to the colony before too long. She said she plans to transfer permanently to the Colonial Rangers.

Yes, I heard her say that. Or perhaps go back as a civilian in some capacity. Kane changed the subject abruptly, "Do you think the James Cook will jump in before we jump out?"

Nina Gould shrugged, "It will be close but I doubt it. Based on what we heard from the Antarctica, they should be in jump space when we jump out going the other way. It doesn’t matter, there’s nothing we can tell them that they won’t find out for themselves when they jump in."

True enough, but I’d like to hear what’s going on back on Earth a bit sooner, before we add our reports to the hullabaloo. I guess we’ll just have to wait until we jump out to get the latest.

You’d like to hear from your wife and daughters sooner, you mean.

Jamie Kane smiled, "Yes, them too. It’s been nearly three months since the Antarctica entered jump space on the way here with mail from home and even longer since the Marco Polo jumped out from this side."

Four more weeks, Jamie, and you’ll be able to talk to them directly, with a little two-hour time delay, of course.

Kane sighed, Right. Two hours for my message to get to them and two hours to get their answer, once they answer. Oh, the joy of it!

Gould laughed, You’ll survive, Jamie. And the time lag will be down to something more reasonable before you know it.

Yes, I know.

Chapter 2

Rift Predicament

Rift flagship Kafara’na

The Rift starship Kafara’na was the largest of the second group of three transports that had brought the main Rift attack force to Rih’ta. The Kafara’na was the flagship of the Rift commander, Supreme Force Commander General Miltcar. After nearly ten Earth months of fighting, the Rift and their Andoval mercenary troops had taken all of the major settlements except for the settlement called West Hills, located 200 miles northwest of the now-occupied colonial capital of New Hope Town. They had also captured all of the minor settlements and facilities except for Canoe Bay on the far west coast. Now Miltcar’s forces were moving on both West Hills and Canoe Bay.

As much as those victories should be satisfying, they were in fact anything but that. Miltcar and her closest advisors now realized that by taking New Hope Town but not capturing any of the human colonists or Rangers they had fallen into a trap from which there might be no way out.

The Miltcar clan survey ship Kenone’se, making a routine visit to Rih’ta, had found another star-faring race trespassing on their property. Rih’ta was a planet belonging to Clan Miltcar, one of the smallest of the thirteen great clans of the Rift race, but it had never been colonized because it was far away from their home world and had been a low priority resource planet since being claimed a thousand years earlier.

Kenone’se had remained undetected by the invaders, and its crew had observed the periodic arrival of alien ships delivering large numbers of a bipedal species that was rapidly expanding over the planet’s main continent. For trying to steal Rih’ta from its rightful owners, these aliens were declared enemies of the Rift people, and of Clan Miltcar in particular. Since Clan Miltcar considered the planet their property, they had not felt the need to consult with the other clans before sending an army to wipe out the thieves who were trying to take their property. It had never occurred to them to try to meet these creatures in peace and negotiate. Showing such a weakness might encourage one or more of the lesser clans to challenge them. They planned to take back their property before there was to be any consideration of peace with the invaders.

In the first stage of the campaign to retake the planet, Clan Miltcar had sent Expeditionary Force Commander General Osmu’a with 30,000 Andoval mercenaries in transit sleep to the planet on three transports. His orders were to capture all of the invaders’ settlements on the eastern end of the planet’s largest continent, referred to as Alpha by the humans. Four months after Osmu’a began his operation his commander, General Miltcar, arrived with another 50,000 Andoval. Two months later, the huge transport Kara’kar arrived with another 50,000 Andoval mercenaries.

The aggressively warlike Andoval were the primitive but fairly intelligent war-loving inhabitants of one of the Rift’s subject worlds. They could use their massive strength to throw heavy spears, clubs, spiked-iron balls and war-hammers accurately while on the run as far as two hundred yards and hit a moving target. To command the 7-foot tall, 450-pound giants, man their plasma cannons and drive their seagoing ships, the Clan Miltcar had also sent nearly 2,500 Rift officers and engineers, many of them armed with shoulder fired high-energy plasma projectors.

Since arriving during the previous winter, Miltcar had taken the last of the humans’ major settlements but she had lost almost 30,000 Andoval and nearly 1,000 Rift while inflicting less than a tenth of that number on the human fighters. Osmu’a had already lost over 15,000 of the Andoval and most of his officers before Miltcar’s arrival. All but a few thousand Andoval, perhaps 7,000 altogether, and fewer than 100 Rift officers were left in the eastern settlements now, most of them in Southport on the south coast. The rest of her army, about 80,000 Andoval and 1000 Rift officers, engineers and shipmasters, was in the West, mostly in the New Hope Town area and now there were just four transports left to move them back to the East where Miltcar suspected the humans might be planning to reacquire some of the eastern settlements taken from them at great cost.

One of the greatest advantages the humans had were the 850-foot-long anti-gravity powered transports that had carried huge amounts of cargo and hundreds, even thousands of their people out of harms’ way. The orbit-to-ground transports the Rift had brought with them were much smaller and less well-protected, and while the humans had lost several to the Rift’s powerful plasma cannons, they still had eight operational transports while the Rift had just 4 left out of the 16 they’d brought with them. One of the Rift’s larger transports had crashed after one of the human transport purposely collided with it. The human transport had suffered almost no damage at all.

Just two of the twelve 300-foot-long Yaku transport airships, and two of the four 800-foot-long Hakus were left, and now the humans were making it very difficult to even get off the ground at New Hope Town where three of her transports were semi-trapped. There were several of the bigger, heavily armored human transports patrolling the area, just waiting to pounce on a Rift transport and knock it out of the air. Just one of the Hakus, Burning Comet, was able to operate outside the human net. Burning Comet had delivered troops and some air-cushioned vehicles to a staging point near West Hills and then was ordered to move 5,000 troops from Villa De La Montana to a staging area close to Canoe Bay. At the moment Burning Comet was docked with Kafara’na after picking up some of Miltcar’s remaining senior officers from Winter Haven, Novo Napoli and the eastern encampments several hundred miles southwest of Winter Haven.

The Rift had also brought fleet of nearly 300 seagoing vessels with them to be assembled after delivering them to the surface. Only about 120 of them were still able to carry troops but their capacity was limited and it would take days to reach any of the Eastern settlements, that is if the human Rangers allowed them to get there at all. Just a few days earlier the Rangers had destroyed nearly 80 of the 100 ships that comprised two fleets sent to attack New Hope Town within the space of just three hours. The survivors had retreated to Ryan’s Island 50 miles south of New Hope Town. The rest had been destroyed at Southport, Novo Napoli, New Cancun and Rocky Point,

After nearly ten Earth months of fighting General Miltcar had launched an all-out assault on New Hope Town which had ended with the evacuation of all of the humans to the Gamma continent 1200 miles south of Alpha. While taking the human settlements had been one of their two main objectives the Rift had been utterly unsuccessful in accomplishing the second. The humans had managed to keep the vast majority of their people from being killed or captured then consumed by the Andoval who had expected to feed on the humans as a major portion of their payment. The Colonial Rangers and hundreds of civilian volunteers had suffered heavy casualties fighting the Rift, but so far, they’d succeeded in keeping their people safe. That was the chief failure of the Rift and now they could not surrender or withdraw without the Andoval turning on them; their high chiefs had already warned them what would happen if they tried to stop the war.

Miltcar and Osmu’a had belatedly realized that they had begun their attack on the humans far less prepared than they had believed they’d been at the beginning. Over and over again the humans had out-thought them and outfought them, using projectile weapons the Rift had never encountered before. The human Rangers had taken explosives meant for mining and road construction and turned them into thousands of hidden mines, and they had destroyed or removed bridges hindering the advance of the Rift ground forces. They had also removed all food supplies from settlements soon to fall