Kroekus, the Silean crime lord, had proved to be a very valuable asset for Adam and his Raiders. He had contacts throughout this side of The Expansion, and he would relay the news of any mass recruiting meetings he found to General Angar and his Fringe Pirates. The pirates would then send word to Adam’s base on Viemon-2, after which the teams would be dispatched.
Kroekus, for his part, had profited handsomely for this association with the Humans; most creatures like him usually did, able to capitalize on just about any situation.
His current fortunes had changed when the value of Juireans credits began to plummet at the onset of the conflict. With the impending war — and the loss of the Juirean Fleet off the distant planet of Earth — all the trillions upon trillions of beings within the Expansion began to wonder what would happen to their currency if the Humans did manage to win the war. This caused the value of the credits to crash to nearly half their original level in some of the outer Sectors, those closest to the Far Arm. And the Fringe was the first to fall.
Looking for a more stable asset to tie their economies to, the various planets in the Fringe — and elsewhere — began to resort back to their pre-Juirean currencies, which mainly revolved around precious metals of some sort. Seeing this early on, Kroekus began to buy up nearly all the gold supplies he could find. Once he controlled the market, the imaginative Silean began to issue his own gold certificates, which soon developed a thriving underground acceptance as legal tender across a hundred worlds.
The further the Humans advanced, the more his certificates began to supplant Juirean credits. Soon, Kroekus of Silea was the richest being in half the galaxy. And if the Humans did manage to topple the Expansion…Kroekus only hoped he lived to see the day.
Adam and Sherri had only been on Hyben for two days, which should have been just long enough for them to drop down to the surface, disrupt the recruiting meeting, and bolt back off the planet. At least that had been the plan.
The two Humans stepped outside of the shuttle and into the damp night air. Adam knew where the nearest spaceport was located, but he also knew that getting in and securing another spacecraft wouldn’t be easy. And then there would be the minutes-long transit from the surface and into space, which would leave them vulnerable to any number of assaults from either the Hyben or the Juireans.
He sighed deeply, an expression not lost on Sherri.
“Yeah, not lookin’ too good, is it?” she said.
“Let’s just hope that the invasion is going according to plan. If not, then we’re really screwed!”
Chapter 3
Even though Nate Allen had been in space for over four months already, he had yet to see anything like the Barrier. He stood on the command bridge of the huge Klin flying saucer and stared dumbfounded at the kaleidoscope of colors before him — just as all the rest of the bridge crew was so enthralled.
From his education and natural scientific curiosity, Nate was aware of the deadly turmoil that was taking place within the hot nebular gases of the Barrier, as stars were bursting into existence from forces of heat and gravity that defied imagination. But nonetheless, the scene before him was an awesome sight to behold.
But now it was time to get down to business. Fleet Admiral Nate Allen knew that the Barrier was the line of demarcation between the Far Arm and the Fringe. This was where they would first enter enemy territory, and the conflict that had been four months in the making, would now begin.
Allen’s fleet of Klin-built warships numbered one-thousand forty-three strong. Originally, the Klin fleet had consisted of well over eleven hundred, but then the Klin had inexplicably pulled seventy of them from the fleet, saying they were to return to the main Klin base for other assignments. The Klin refused — politely — to divulge the location of this base or say what these other assignments might entail, which only added to the suspicions most Humans now carried for the Klin and their surrogates, the so-called Saviors.
Klin-Human relations had become a complicated political dance of late, with each party suspecting what the other was doing, but just not willing to discuss it openly. By now, the powers back on Earth were convinced that it was the Klin who were ultimately responsible for the Juirean attack on the planet, and they were equally convinced that the Klin knew of the Human’s suspicions. But in light of the reconstruction and military assistance the Klin were providing, the leaders couldn’t come right out and accuse the aliens of setting up the entire Human-Juirean conflict.
And the Klin, for their part, were just as pragmatic. They needed the Humans to wage war against the Juireans, knowing full well that if they pulled their assistance, the Human race would be annihilated. If this occurred, then any hope the Klin had of ever exacting revenge against the Juireans for the destruction of their homeworld would be lost as well.
This strange, unspoken dynamic was not lost on the population in general. In whispered conversations around the world, more and more people were beginning to question the timing — and convenience — of it all. Once the initial shock of the devastation had passed, Humanity began to look at the events surrounding the Juirean attack, and questions began to be asked.
Nate’s reverie was interrupted by an ensign seated at the forward monitoring screen. “It’s Schwartz again, sir.”
Nate looked at the screen and saw an out-of-place contact light creating a corkscrew pattern far away from the static line of contacts, which signified the location of the main Human fleet.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Schwartz was one of the best pilots in the fleet — and his nephew — he would have long ago had the brash, young Navy Lieutenant-Commander thrown in the brig….
A Klin Fleet Vessel Series-A (KFV-A) was much smaller than the massive Juirean Class-5 warships the Human fleet would soon be up against, but it made up for its diminutive stature with remarkable speed and maneuverability. LCDR Lee Schwartz had found his dream machine in the KFV-A, and once out of the atmosphere of Earth, he had found he could do things in the Klin ship that he could only dream about in his F-35 Lightning II. It was a remarkable craft, yet only one in a series which the Klin provided.
The Klin ships were all divided into various grades, based upon their size and function. The KFV-A’s were the smallest with a crew of twenty-five. They were the fighters of the flight, outnumbering all other classes by a factor of ten. And even though the ‘A’ only referred to its size, the crews preferred to say it stood for ‘Attack,’ which more appropriately described its mission. It also tended to bring out the machismo in the crews. And whether the crewmember was male or female, it really didn’t matter. Fighters in this war came in every gender.
Next up the ladder were the KFV-B’s; larger and fewer in number and carrying a crew of forty. Then came the C’s with a crew of ninety, followed finally by the behemoth D-Class ships. The D’s could carry forty KFV-A’s in their holds, however they did not serve as carriers. These ships were used primarily for the three R’s — repair, refit and relaxation. They were literal floating cities in space, with large ship’s stores, a movie theater and even a two-lane bowling alley — all improvements added by the Humans, by the way. With travel through space often covering months at a time, the warriors of the Fleet needed their down time, too.
Lastly there were the supply and support vessels, the largest of which were the energy ships. These were flying nuclear power plants that supplied the power modules for all the other ships. Even though most KFV’s could cover hundreds of light years between rechargings, the vast distances required for interstellar travel made these ships critically important.
Yes, the KFV was a remarkable craft, yet its only downside, in Lee’s opinion, was the fact that it required a crew to operate. With his F-35, it was just him and plane, with no one else to consider. Now he had a crew….