Squad Leader Meyers got down his knees and looked at them.
“Introduce yourselves.” Adrian said to the cubs. They looked up at him, then at the Squad Leader and back again, then finally they stood up and walked up to the Squad Leader, then they stopped and looked at him intensely. Squad Leader tentatively reached a hand out and stopped a breath away from Akash. Then Sora and Akash moved closer to the hand, sniffed and then after a moment of deciding to shove their heads into the Squad Leader’s hand. He then proceeded to pet them, reaching out with his other hand.
“Amazing.” SL Meyers said, “I didn’t know that anyone managed to catch a wolion.”
“They didn’t.” Adrian said. “I found these two in the woods, their mother died after giving birth to them.”
“Really? Well, they look harmless enough.” As he said that both Sora and Akash let out a small growl. Squad Leader immediately pulled his hands back.
Adrian let out a laugh, “They might be tame and small, but I would hardly call them harmless. Also, they appear to be able to understand us, or at least what we intended to say if not the actual words.”
The Squad Leader nodded tightly, with his companions laughing with Adrian.
“Did you plan to exercise with them here?” Squad Leader asked.
“Yes, they need a bigger space to play than my quarters.” Adrian said, then looked at the cubs and pointed his hand at the small running track, “Go play.”
Immediately the two ran off and started chasing each other all over the room, running around the people training already, as if they didn’t want to disturb them. Although their presence alone did that.
“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you sir. And them.” Squad Leader said, saluting again.
“Likewise Squad Leader.” Adrian said, returning the salute.
As the soldiers left back to their corner of the room, Adrian approached one of the weight lifting machines. Since he was here already he might as well get some training done, he doubted he would have much time for it after they arrived.
Nuva
Retsar Isani sat in the ready room aboard his battleship Valor, he was reviewing the data provided by the humans. The more he spent in the company of humans, or reading data they provided, the more he realized just how different they really are. Of course we are different, we are not the same species, Isani thought to himself. But they looked similar enough to each other that he questioned everything he knew. Could have the Order been right all along? Isani thought, and immediately shook himself. No, there is no point in questioning the actions of his ancestors. That was the darkest moment in his peoples history, he shuddered to think what would happen if it turned out that the Order was right. It was better to remain ignorant. Some things are better left unknown.
Isani continued reading, the projected time for the arrival of the human fleet in the system was two days. The location was deep inside the system’s gravity well, which had baffled Isani. But he chose to trust the humans, they haven’t lied to them yet. They had concealed things, but they had just met them. After arriving it would take the human fleet another sixteen days to reach Nuva, just two days before the Nel arrive. There were no plans for a joint strategy, they didn’t know each other that well. They would do their best to protect Nuva. Isani didn’t know if they will be able to fight them off. The humans were sending 10 ships, with Isani’s 13 ships their force will outnumber the Sowir force of 20. But still it might not be enough, Sowir force had 6 battleships, all of newer make and more powerful than Valor. And Isani didn’t know whether the Humans had any battleships in their force, he knew nothing about Human warships. There was nothing for him to do but wait and hope that it would be enough to defend Nuva. They would meet the Sowir ship close to the planet. They simply didn’t have enough forces to split them, and meeting them out, away from Nuva would mean leaving the planet undefended. All it would take is for one ship to slip past them, the planet had no other defenses. The Sowir practice of taking over a world was to destroy any defenses, and then land troops to take care of the population. They usually killed everyone, but in a few instances they did leave a small part of the population alive, to serve as a work force. Each world they conquered was then populated by their people. Nuva would be no different. Isani believed that Sowir would try to land their troop ships on the ground, each ship held 1500 Sowir soldiers, their best. With two transport ships, that meant 3000 Sowir soldiers. Nuva had very few weapons for ground combat, and even less people capable of using them, in the last few months they did form a militia of sorts, but Isani knew that they wouldn’t stand a chance against the elite Sowir soldiers. So their only choice was to protect the planet, keep their ships close and make sure that the transports don’t get through. The population will in the next few days be going to the underground shelters, that they built over the course of the past two years. Only those in the militia will stay above to protect their homes.
Looking through the reports, he saw that his ships were all as ready as they would ever be. The ships under his command were mostly older models, with the exception of his light cruisers, but even they couldn’t stand up to a Sowir battleship alone. Only his Valor could, and it was an old ship, she was there in the opening of battles of the war. And she had served Isani well, but he knew that at most she could take out two Sowir battleships, if he was lucky. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t find a way to take out all of the Sowir battleships, he just didn’t have enough firepower. The only hope Nuva had were the humans, and he still didn’t know what kind of ships they were brining, nor what their capabilities were. Isani sighed, in two days the human ships would arrive, and then he would know whether there is any chance for Nuva.
Chapter Twenty Five
Sanctuary – Olympus city
Tomas Klein sat in the palace meeting room alongside the other leaders of Olympus. The last few days they had spent planning for the future. Now, they were trying to figure out how to allocate their resources.
“We need more ships.” Laura said firmly.
“I understand what you are saying Laura, but we can’t build more, not as fast as you want.” Nadia retorted tiredly.
“And how did we build the First and Second Fleets?” Laura asked, her voice rising slightly.
“For the one hundredth time Laura, we built them by drawing on our extra supplies and by halting progress of everything else.” Nadia said, her voice rising also.
“So do it again! We need those ships!” Laura said, almost yelling.
“We can’t! We spent all our reserves to build those ships, it will take months for our mining operation to replenish them. The fabricators we used for the shipbuilding were those designated for the mining operations, if we use them for building ships it will cut into our mining operations, which will in turn cut into our resources, which means no ships later!” Nadia yelled back.
Seeing another screaming match coming, Tomas slammed his hand on the table. “Enough!” He said. “This is not helping anything.” He turned to Laura, “I agree with you that we need more ships.” Laura started to say something, but Tomas cut her off, “But I also agree with Nadia. If building another ten ships now, will cut into our ability to expand and build much more ships later, then it is not worth it.” Then he turned to Nadia. “How about expanding our mining operations? How long will it take for us to reach a point where we can bring all our shipbuilding operations online permanently?” Tomas asked.