“Were all their missiles destroyed in the blast?”
“No sir, there are still twenty coming at us and one of them is Anti-matter.”
Mikado thought for a long moment and then picked up his com and said over the ships intercom. “Gentlemen serving on the Zeus; our mission is to determine the capability of the Plant weapons. It appears that they have a missile with an antimatter warhead. We have to know if our screens can handle it. We are going to pick up speed to stay ahead of it until our screen recovers and we are then going to allow it to impact us. We will destroy all the standard missiles with our needles and just leave the anti-matter missile. All of our power will be directed into our screen but we have to know if our ships can survive in an environment with these weapons. I am ordering the Boston to record what happens and to then jump the remaining ships away. Brace yourselves and God Bless.” The Zeus picked up speed and and increase the distance from the Algean ships and stayed ahead of the faster incoming missile until its screen went from red to white. Zeus destroyed the standard missiles with needles and continued to run from the anti-matter missile. She fired her primary beam twenty times to bleed of excess energy and finally, Mikado said, “Slow the ship and prepare for impact.”
The display showed the missile seeming to pick up speed as the Zeus slowed and then it struck the screen of the Ultraship. On board the Boston they saw a tremendous flash in which everything disappeared. All the display screens overloaded but then came back on line. There in the middle of the screen was the Zeus with her screen almost blue in color. “Prepare to jump, Execute.” Mikado ordered. The four remaining SR ships disappeared into Star Drive.
On board one of the Algean battleships, the fleet leader asked his ship commander. “Who were those ships? I’ve never seen ships so fast that could survive our most powerful missile.”
“I’ve never seen any design like that and there is nothing in our records that is remotely close to them. It looks like they jumped out toward a galaxy away from the central arm.”
“Perhaps they come from a different galaxy and will stay away now,” the fleet leader said. “In the future, we should launch fewer of our power missiles further away from the food source so that our ships will not be endangered. They have some sort of energy beam that can be targeted on individual missiles. They hit one of the power missiles which led to a chain reaction of destruction. Only one of our power missiles got thru.”
“Fleet Leader, the ship it hit was easily outrunning the missile until it lost speed and was hit. Perhaps they can only go that fast for short periods or they could have been trying to avoid the explosion if they hit it with one of those small beams.”
“That beam weapon they used concerns me. It killed one of our Battleships. See what our scientists can determine about it. In the meantime harvest the dead from the damaged ships for food stores. It’s a shame we didn’t get to harvest those ships that escaped.” The Fleet Leader leaned back in his chair feeling his hunger.
“You did what!” Kosiev yelled at Mikado.
“Calm down,” Dorg said. “I’m sure he had a reason for endangering his ship and crew.”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Mikado answered.
“Then explain yourself Commodore,” Kosiev ordered, “and it had better be good or I’ll have you in front of a board of inquiry so fast you’ll see your grump pass your face.”
“Admiral, when we fired a needle into one of those antimatter missiles and set off a chain reaction that detonated most of them we lost the Tarpon Springs. We could not determine if we lost her because of the multiple blasts since she was closest to the Plant fleet or if one missile destroyed her. I determined that we had to know before we confronted this weapon in actual combat. If I had waited then we would have found out at the expense of hundreds of ships instead of just one. We have to know how strong their missile is in order to plan effective strategy to counter them. When 10, 000 Plant ships fire 50,000 missiles at our ships, it’s too late then to hope we can survive the hit. My task was to determine the plants weapon capability. To leave without discovering the power of those missiles would have wasted an opportunity we may not have again.”
Kosiev and Dorg looked at Mikado and said nothing.
Mikado then said, “Sir, it was just like when you took on two ships both of which were ten times your size in order to save the next ship that might be attacked.”
Dorg looked at Kosiev and said, “That was you? You have got to tell me what you did. We never did find out the whole story.”
Kosiev looked at Dorg then looked at Commodore Mikado, his former sensor officer, and said, “It would have been a terrible waste of talent if your ship had been destroyed, not only you but Captain Kelly as well. You did survive and that is in your favor. Did you even think you had a chance to survive that blast?”
“Yes sir, I did. The Ultra’s screen is ten times stronger than the Empire’s but if we didn’t, then all of our ships would be in danger except for the Megaships. Now we know that any missile that reads anti-matter will have to be detonated long before they impact. I think that if they don’t directly impact our screens, then our ships should survive in a hostile environment. I found it interesting that they fired 1,500 missiles with 300 of them anti-matter at our five ships. If 300 ships will launch 1,500 then how many will a thousand ships launch; five thousand with 1,000 anti-matter warheads? We also know that there were 100,000 ships that attacked the Pydres. Sir, we had to know. We also had to learn if the screen around the planet was going to be strong enough to handle anti-matter hits.”
Kosiev leaned back in his chair and said, “Grab a bag of popcorn Commodore and tell me what you think will work against these kind of numbers.”
“Sir, the best tool in our tool box is the pulse penetrator. We can outrun them. We stayed ahead of their missiles at 1/3 speed. We need to see if the penetrator can actually penetrate their screens. It seems that their screen is tremendously strong against an initial hit but does not recover quickly. I doubt that one penetrator will break thru but two will. We will need to program them in pairs to lock on to any ship without a Coronado screen and to also prioritize a ship that already has one lock on. Shoot and let the Pulse Penetrators select their targets as we move away from their main fleet faster than their missiles can fly. Once they do their work we take out the missiles with our needles and then launch our penetrators again. Admiral, how many penetrators are on the Megaships and can the Ultras be modified to accept them?”
Dorg looked at Mikado with open admiration and said, “Kosiev, you have done an excellent job training this officer. I suggest you promote him immediately and put him in charge of the training of our new crews. To answer your question, the ultras can launch 300 penetrators if we modify their needle ports to accept them and the Megas can salvo 800.”
Kosiev looked at Dorg and then stood up and said, “Commodore Mikado, you are hereby promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral over the 190 Megaships here and you will select the other commander of the older ships in our fleet. Come up with tactics that will give us the best probability of surviving a fleet action against the Plants here in the Dremels’ system. Be prepared to cover us on your plans within ten days. I want your fleet ready for a possible Plant invasion here within ninety days. Plan to use five hundred megaships in the defense; we should have that many by then. I would suggest you train the ships commanding officers now and give them their ships as they arrive. Crews will begin arriving immediately from current Stars Realm members and their training will be ongoing.”
Mikado couldn’t believe his ears. “Thank you sir; I’ll do my best.”