“No, but I’ve seen too many of your hunches to know that you should listen to them.”
“Ok, I hope it’s not something too bad, but I don’t feel right calling off the attack simply because of a bad feeling.”
“I think that’s the most important reason to call it off. Remember, your psychic skills will protect you. Don’t try to analyze them, just trust them.”
Tag sat a moment in silence, and then he thought to Atlas, “I’ll contact Sung Lea and see if she sees anything. Beyond that, I have to think about what we should do.” He stood to leave but the feeling of wrongness would not go away and followed him out of the room.
Rose was sitting in her play room with her toys on the day of the fleet’s departure and could sense the bad feeling her father was experiencing as he sat on his ship getting ready to travel to the weed galaxy. She got up and walked out of her room and went to the library where the map of galaxies was located. She sat down surrounded by the ten bunnies that had followed her into the room and looked at the maps. She took the band out of her hair, let her pony tail fall to her shoulders, and closed her eyes. The cursor began moving by itself on the map; it stopped on the galaxy of the Algeans. The galaxy grew larger and soon filled the whole room. She closed her eyes again and let her mind move from planet to planet until she found what she was looking for; two huge plant fleets holding position with all the ships in formation. She looked closer and saw that they were loaded with anti-matter missiles already charged and ready for launch. She listened in on the transmissions between those two fleets and the fleet at the planet being harvested. They were planning a trap. She thought about what she should do and decided that this was information she needed to share with her father but first she was going to ask her mother if that was misusing her talents. She walked into her mother’s office carrying her favorite bunny where Danielle was meeting with Leila and Eric about expanding the west wing of the castle. She stood there and waited for them to finish their work. Leila was saying, “I think we can complete the plans within two months and, oh, hi, Rose. Is there something you need?”
“I need to ask Mommy a question.” Rose said softly.
Danielle looked at Rose and started to tell her to wait until later but noticed that Rose had her big girl look on her face. “Leila, will you and Eric excuse me for just a moment?”
“Certainly, Your Majesty.”
Danielle walked over to Rose and took her hand and then walked out of the office into the reading room. “What question do you have, darling?”
Rose looked uncomfortable and looked at the floor and said, “You know how you and Daddy say I should not use my talents to take advantage of others?”
“Yes, darling, why do you ask?”
“Does that include taking advantage of the bad weeds too?”
Danielle straightened up and said quickly, “Rose, what do you know?”
“The weeds are planning a trap for Daddy and his friends.”
Danielle turned pale and said, “What kind of trap?”
“”Are you sure it’s ok to use my talent if it hurts the weeds?”
“Absolutely, Rose, especially if your Father in danger.”
Rose smiled and said, “I thought so but I wanted to make sure. The weeds have two very big groups of ships waiting to attack Daddy when he goes to help those people.”
“Tag,” Danielle thought, “I need you right now,”
Tag was sitting in his command chair on board the Retribution talking with Sung Lea again to see if she had seen any new visions of the upcoming attack and he did not want to be interrupted. “Can it wait, Darling?”
“Absolutely not; stop what you’re doing, pay attention and stop your planned jump immediately.” Danielle said in a stern tone.
Tag looked at his com and said, “Sung Lea, I apologize but I have an emergency call I need to take. I’ll contact you in a few moments.” Sung Lea nodded and disappeared off his screen. He then turned to Ron-Dar and said, “Put the countdown on hold until I order otherwise.” Ron-Dar looked startled but turned and issued the order over the general fleet channel. “Danielle, what’s going on,” he thought at his wife.
“Tag, Rose sees two huge Algean fleets preparing to jump in and attack your ships when you jump to the harvesting system.”
Tag sat straight up in his chair and thought, “Rose, what do you see?”
“May I show you my mind picture, Daddy?”
“Show your Mother and me, Rose.”
Suddenly Tag and Danielle could see the two huge Plant Fleets waiting in formation. Danielle said, “Oh my god. How many ships are there in those fleets, Tag?”
Tag said, “It looks like more than a million ships in each fleet. With close to half a million ships at the planet being harvested, they total close to two and half million.”
“Tag, you can’t lead our fleet into that trap,” Danielle thought.
“Rose, how did you see those fleets?”
Rose looked guilty and said, “I could feel you feeling bad about your trip for the last three days and I thought about why you should feel bad; I could sense that it had something to do with the weeds. So I took a look around their home stars and my attention was taken to those ships.”
“I was feeling bad about this attack, Danielle, and I couldn’t explain why. Now I know. If that many ships spread out and then jumped in on top of us and hit our screens with energy beams to stop us from jumping; we would have lost our fleet. I expected a big response from the Algeans but I planned to launch our weapons at the ships jumping in anyway and try to cut down on their reserves. With that many ships jumping in on us, if we had hesitated to jump away as soon as a star drive was detected, well, we would lose our fleet. Rose, if you see anything that you think is important about the Plants, please tell me as soon as you know,’
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.”