During my spare time, I kept current on military tactics and strategy, partly because of the war I expected and partly for the enjoyment as a hobby. When I was at home I spent time with my wife and son, enjoying their company, and laughter filled our house. Our son was nearing his first birthday when one of the first incidents occurred. Annie was almost frantic at the thought of war as the politicians rattled sabers. Still, it worried me because she was about to give birth. The incident wasn’t all that large, but it was something which had riled governments and people before throughout mankind’s history. Ours didn’t take kindly, either, to having its citizens harassed while in its territory.
The Ape-oids deliberately sent a ship into one of the Union’s sectors of space and bumped a commercial space ship carrying passengers. The damage to the ship was minor, but there was no immediate damage to the truce. Despite the saber rattling, the politicians did nothing after a few well-placed bribes from rich families convinced them that it was merely an accident when the alien vessel came into our space and bumped into one of our vessels.
Had the military retaliated then, there might not have been a war for several more years or longer. Instead, the Ape-oids were emboldened to try larger indiscretions to see how far they could go. At the same time, the Ape-oids complained diplomatically that the terms of the truce were unfair and limited them to too little territory. Almost immediately, groups sprang up demanding that the government give up space territory as an appeasement. Other more radical groups claimed that the Ape-oids were right in their demands. At the same time, some of the traditional hard line organizations warned of impending disaster should we give in.
I kept on looking through old history texts for similar behavior and was again rewarded with several examples that coincided with the actions of the Ape-oids. It was like seeing history repeat itself, only in space rather than on Earth. The more I read, the more I worried when not in Annie and our children’s presence. While with my family, I always tried to make the threat of war seem less severe which was probably wrong on my part. I should have been preparing Annie for what I was seeing as a likely occurrence.
As the holidays came along, I watched each one carefully to see how the Ape-oids were behaving. If they followed historical examples, then their behavior would soon fall into one of several patterns, all easily distinguishable and identifiable. If nothing else, I was glad that our home was distant from the military base on Beulah. It wasn’t a large base, but it was on the outer fringes of Union territory. That made it important. Even more important was Echo. It was a veritable nest of military bases, each one important.
I wrote a second treatise, much shorter than the first and not as well documented. Still, it was complete enough for an experienced military mind to comprehend. I finished it in one month’s time and sent several copies to the Sarge. When he received it, he called me immediately and asked for more. The title caught his attention and he read it immediately. He agreed with my reasoning and knew that it was hot material that needed to get out into the field immediately.
I also took a copy of it to my father-in-law and sat in front of him as he read it in his disk reader. The looks on his face told almost the whole story as he stopped once or twice to look at some fact sheets he received from Supreme Headquarters. Not a word passed from his lips until he finished reading. Then he finally set it down with shaking hands and looked at me.
He said, “Son, you better get me some more copies of this disk soon. There’s some people whom I want to have a copy of this. I’m going to take your advice as far as Beulah is concerned if only because my daughter and grandchildren are here. We’ll not be caught napping. If you have any more ideas like this, I want to see them, too. By the way, that other treatise you wrote was one fine piece of writing. I hope it gets adopted before hostilities break out. Yes, I think they will, too.”
I answered, “Yes sir. I’ll get you more copies. All you want. Just let me know how many.”
He said, “For now, get me twenty copies. No, you better make that forty. That will do for my purposes. Keep at it, son. You’re going to go far when this war breaks out.”
I replied, “Yes sir. By the way, have you seen Annie’s Cavern?”
“No. First I ever heard of it. What is it?” he asked.
I said, “Annie found a tunnel behind the waterfall across from the house. It leads to a deep cavern on our property. I’m going to instruct Annie to head there in the event of an attack. I’m going to have part of it reinforced and supplied with everything she and the children might need.”
He replied, “Good for you. I’ll remember that in case I go looking for her in your absence.”
I said, “I know you would. That’s why I’m telling you about it now.”
Bill’s word was good. He took steps at his base to make sure that his people weren’t going to be surprised. Training was stepped up. It wasn’t unusual for patrols to be out under the guise of training in the near sectors of space to Beulah. Because of my job, I was able to notice the stepped up activity from the base. That alone sufficed to make me feel easier about Annie and our children being on Beulah. It was our home. I wasn’t interested in giving up it or any other part of the Union to some alien-come-lately who thought he could bully his way about and have what he wanted without a fight.
For my own part, I suggested to Penny in the head office of the company that the gunships perform some practice when not on runs. She saw what I was actually after since she was the Sarge’s wife and had seen both of my treatises. She gave me the go ahead to conduct practice with all three gunships. That was all I needed to further develop and practice the wingman concept as it might be used later in war, especially when I required my ship and the wingman ship to go at a slower speed than the gunship pretending to be the enemy. We practiced at least once every two weeks for a few hours until we learned how the wingman concept worked and could defeat the faster ship in our mock battles with regularity.
Despite the fact that the politicians were beginning to run the military once more to the advantage of the rich families, there were enough combat veterans inside the military from the recent war at all levels of rank who saw what was happening or were reading my treatises. Some of them were practicing with the techniques I re-introduced during the last war. Others were trying to make other things happen in research and in the development of better ships and weapons. They were all racing against time since none of us knew with any certainty when the war would break out. We did have a definite idea of where and how it would break out since we were on ground zero, so to speak.
The Ape-oids continued to transgress at almost regular intervals into our government’s spacial territory, moving their ships close to our ships, threatening commercial ships, and shadowing military ships, taunting them to do something. More and more the military was disgusted with not being allowed to blast apart the transgressing ships.
I should have realized that the practice I was doing with the wingman concept and not being as fast as the enemy would pay off in my job. After all, part of my pitch to Penny was that we might someday run into a pirate with a faster ship. That someday also came a lot sooner than I thought it would.
We were on the Gabriel run when we spotted the first pirate in months. Because we were taking out to Gabriel a shipment not worth a pirate’s efforts to steal it, we weren’t bothered. The pirate moved away from us at high speed, giving up valuable information inadvertently.