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Awakened from a deep sleep, Tina Forster activated the video screen of her bedstand intercom unit and saw the head and torso of Renée D’Argenteuil, her senior night watch officer, who also was her weapons officer.
‘’Yes, Renée?’
‘’We just received an urgent message from the Admiralty via courier drone: The Space Predators have shown in force in the Gliese 581 System, with a fleet of at least 26 warships and fifteen support ships being reported. The battle station MJOLNIR, on detecting their arrival in the system, retreated to the orbit of Hyanesu and is hiding behind the moon while observing the enemy fleet. The Navy is now assembling a combat fleet to go to the Gliese 581 System.’
Tina felt dread on hearing that: the Gliese 581 System, apart from being home to the Vorlaks, a race she couldn’t care much about, was also home to the Hoshis of Hyanesu and to the sentient and telepathic marine lifeforms living in the oceans of the aptly named planet Oceana. There were also a number of Koorivars living and working at a resort center on Hyanesu, plus a marine biology research ship plowing the oceans of Oceana.
‘’Is the Navy telling us to go join the fleet which will go to the Gliese 581 System, Renée?’
‘’Negative! Admiral Yamashiro stated that, due to the presence aboard our ship of thousands of ASEAN immigrants, he does not expect us to go fight the Space Predators today. His message to us was instead a warning message about the presence of the Predators in the Gliese 581 System.’
‘’Very well, I am going to dress and will be on the bridge in five minutes.’
Tina then closed the link on her intercom unit and swung her legs out of her bed, waking up with her movement her husband Michel, who looked at his watch before speaking to her.
‘’Uh, what’s up, Tina?’
‘’The Space Predators are invading the Gliese 581 System with a large fleet.
You better wake up as well: all of our security personnel will have a busy day today.’
Michel Koniev didn’t ask more on hearing that and got out of bed at once to start getting dressed. As he and Tina were putting on their ship interior service uniforms, Michel thought about something.
‘’The kids... What do we do with them right now?’
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‘’I will let you wake up Misha but let Janet sleep for the moment. Tell Misha to take care of his sister while we are busy.’
‘’Right! Damn! It has been nearly a year since the last time the Predators showed up somewhere? Why the Gliese 581 System?’
‘’That’s an easy question to answer, Michel.’ replied Tina in a sober tone. ‘’The maps of our star systems the Predators captured on Nordland indicated no major Spacers League presence in that system, but plenty of lifeforms available to be eaten.
The truth is that the Predators are starting to be scared of us, after all the stinging defeats we inflicted on them, and I’m not talking only about our ship. The Predators may have huge ships and powerful laser weapons but they don’t have either missiles or disintegrator weapons, something that is putting them at a severe disadvantage in any fight against our warships. I believe that the Predators are starting to realize that and are becoming more cautious about who they are attacking. They may be ferocious monsters but they are not stupid, especially in the case of their females, who run their society.’
Michel couldn’t help wince at those words.
‘’Ouch! Another barb at us male drones.’
That earned him a sarcastic smile from his wife.
‘’Don’t worry, Michel: I have you and the men of my crew in much higher esteem than the female Predators do for their males.’
On that, Tina completed her dressing by buckling a pistol belt around her waist, then grabbed the suitcase containing her personalized spacesuit and walked out of their bedroom.
As promised to Renée, Tina was in her bridge complex less than five minutes after being awakened and went directly to her senior watch officer, who was occupying Tina’s command chair. The weapons officer got out of the command chair at once on seeing Tina get to the top command platform and then stood next to it as Tina sat down in her command chair.
‘’Anything new, Renée?’
‘’Nothing, Tina. I did inform Senior Centurion De Domrémy and our security officer, Ahmed Jibril, about the invasion of Gliese 581, so that they could start prepare for any eventuality.’
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‘’Good move! While this ship will definitely stay in orbit of Asiana until all the unloading and disembarking is done, I am resolved to help our fleet chase the Predators from Gliese 581, and this before they could cause major damage there.’
‘’What do you have in mind, Tina?’
Tina thought for a moment, watched by Renée, before answering her.
‘’We will send eight of our heavy fighters, along with one command cutter and our fleet of assault shuttles carrying eight centuries of our security androids, to Gliese 581.
Has the courier drone from the Admiralty left to go back to Providence already or is it still here?’
‘’It is still aboard our ship, Tina.’
‘’Good! I will write a quick response to Admiral Yamashiro. Please refresh my memory about the number of mobile robotic gun systems we have in service and available aboard the NOSTROMO.’
Renée thought for a second before answering. These mobile robotic gun systems, or MRGS in short, were a fairly new addition to their android security force and could be considered the space-going equivalent of the main battle tanks of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Able to fly in both an atmosphere and in Space, as well as roll on the ground or even float or travel underwater, those combat vehicles were armored, had laser ablative prismatic armor and force shields, were armed with a heavy disintegrator cannon pointed via a number of sophisticated sensors, plus had four launch boxes for light surface-to-air and Space missiles armed with matter/anti-matter conversion warheads capable of shooting down spaceships orbiting a planet or moon. The MRGSs also had secondary light disintegrator guns and had the capacity to carry under armor a full squad of security androids. They were controlled by an onboard powerful artificial intelligence computer, yet were quite compact and agile, thus hard to hit. They also incorporated an anti-teleportation scrambling emitter, to help thwart any Space Predator assault. All in all, they were perfect to help defend a planet against any attack by the Space Predators. The first batch of fifty MRGS tanks had gone as a priority to New Haven, to ensure its defense, along with three centuries of security androids assigned in rotation to the colony.
‘’We presently have in our garages a hundred MRGS, which were due to go down on Asiana in order to provide ground protection for our new colony, along with three of our centuries of security androids and the light infantry regiment provided by the ASEAN.’
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Tina debated those numbers in her head for a moment, then took a decision.
‘’Sixty of those MRGSs, along with our designated three android centuries, will still go down as a defensive ground force for Asiana, to reinforce the First Vietnamese Light Infantry Regiment. The remaining forty MRGSs will accompany the 900 security androids which will go to the Gliese 581 System. They will land on Hyanesu and provide a ground defense force to support the Hoshis, who have little to no modern weapons.
With Hyanesu secured on the ground, our eight heavy fighters will then be free to engage the Space Predator warships. We will however have to temporarily divert a number of our cargo shuttles from carrying down on Asiana the supplies and equipment we are transporting for our new colony, so that they could carry our MRGS to Hyanesu.
Please alert our flight crews and security personnel to prepare for deployment to Hyanesu while I write a response message for Admiral Yamashiro. Once that message will be done and sent to Providence, I will go talk with Governor Minh Wa Hien and brief her on these developments. We will not sound the general call to battle stations for the time being, in order to avoid some possible panic among our 26,000 passengers, but have our crew discretely prepare for battle, just in case.’
‘’Got it!’ replied Renée, with Tina then leaving for her day cabin in order to write her message to the Admiralty.
04:31 (Universal Time)
Apartment # 569-630, Habitat Ring Complex