Chapter 13; Sashi LXII’s New Ships
Though they had searched, no Royal Jewelry was found. Rulo had agreed to wear only replicas into battle. Another house servant was fried trying to puncture the electric field around the Jeweled Throne wearing the bogus rings found on Rulo’s fingers.
The losses to the Admiralty were nearly one hundred thousand of their best trained Fleet Marines. Training was stepped up after this as it was realized that the mutineers must get more of his people into fighting shape. Analyzing the viddys of the battle showed the Admiralty that it had only been the overwhelming numbers that had won the day, not the quality of their troops.
As soon as the scepter could be smuggled to her, Sashi became the 62nd Empress in their line. It took more than the title to make her ble to rule. Still, she attempted to rule even though she had neither training nor desire to do it. She had grown up as the sixth in line to succeed. Thus, she had never paid any attention to needs or skills required to run of the government. She had lived and loved her life of shopping, primping, and occasionally accompanying her mother as she visited schools and hospitals. The showmanship of the Royal life had filled her useless time and empty head.
She had been convinced that her contribution would never be more taxing than to sit on the boards of major charity organizations. Her entire life style had been poor training for an Empress. To make things worse, she was an even poorer candidate to be an empress of an empire at war.
She became a rubber stamp empress. She had always admired General Z, so she made no decisions without his complete approval. Within weeks of her ascension, her grand father and her younger brother Baraz were running the government. Her contribution was to review troops on parade or visiting troops in the hospitals. She was the figurehead that she had been trained to be.
The luckiest turn was that the Tech-Body had been moved to a new secret base in a Far off place called Hazey Point only weeks before. Two weeks before that fateful day, Lea and General Z had gone out to Hazey Point on news of a break through event at Pedra’s lab.
When they landed at the space dock deep in the shadowed center of a dead volcano, Pedra rushed to hug them.“I did it, I did it!”
Lea had her usual dead pan face in light of her sister’s exuberance, “Really… Great… Glad to hear it…”
Ignoring her sister and pulling her father to an inner jump tube, “Come on…You have to see this to believe it!!!” Lea ran to keep up.
On the outer edge of an exit ramp out to a dock were seventeen shiny silver ships in various stages of completion. “Aint he beautiful?” Pedra petted the one that appeared to be complete. “I have five more of these bays in full production…by next week we’ll have two hundred of them flying.”
Lea crossed her arm, “And…just why do we need two hundred ten man flitters?”
“No, no, no…my arrogant, disbelieving sister. These little babies are four thousand man flitters. They have the full armament of a battle wagon (newly designed and miniaturized by me…). All of these ships have all the stealth capabilities (stolen from the captured ships and redesigned by me) that the Admiralty ever developed.
“Care to take her for a spin?”
Lea was ecstatic, but, she held tight for another moment, “Ummm… which glove box holds the four thousand troops?”
“Very fuuunny, sis. She took them inside to a black wall with lots of blinking lights. As you recognize from your own design drawings, this is the verisimulator for a jump circuit.”
“Biggest one I ever saw.”
“True, true. It has a buffer capacity to hold the intermediate veri-forms of at least four thousand jumpers at half jump.”
Lea is no longer able to pretend disinterest. She and their father were now truly impressed. Pedra continued, “Creating a null balanced weight of zero tons per ton!”
“Precisely…”
Their dad jumped in, “Tested?”
“Yes, sir, we just finished testing it on every cat and dog in the colony. No damage…no difference.”
“Loading time?”
“Yes… Here is a truly excellent part. My next invention is a virtual loading field. Jump tubes wont need gates any more. In the last three days, we have created stable virtual loading fields as large as several hundred square meters.”
Her sister’s mathematical brain chipped in, “That calculates out to loading perhaps we could load a thousand Marines at a time that way.”
“In less time than it would take them to snap to full attention,” piped in their dad.
The girls laughed. Pedra said, “Exactly…”
“Side effects?”
“Human subjects claim no affects to buffering over three hours in mid stasis.”
“Okay…”
“That’s not the best part. They had no jump sickness. I made fifty jumps, one parsec at a time. I was pukin, but, once they were rematerialized on the flight deck, they was no grogginess.”
Her father grabbed her and hugged her, “By the Bells of Westor, this is the best news we have had in years. The three of them took the ship for a spin and were impressed with its capabilities.
But, before they could get back, the roof fell in. One bright summer morning, explosions began all over the base. Naval destroyers were flying low firing all guns. Landing craft disgorged Admiralty Fleet Marines by the thousands. With no one to lead them the base fell almost without a shot. Many people escaped into the thick forests of the game preserve areas. These people were hunted down for sport over the next few days.
Because of the slaughter orders from the last battle, smaller children had already been dispersed to other hide out bases through out the galaxy. Also, in another stroke of luck, the older children in the Junior Guard were on maneuvers off planet. Thus, most of the children were saved.
Watching the attack live on the News, General Z knew that it would only be a short while before the locations of any hide outs would be located under the diabolical hands of the torture-techs. Only the people currently at Hazey Point knew about the brand new underground facility. Once anyone was assigned there, they never left.
As more and more people had been smuggled into Hazey Point, they were immediately assigned to dig more tunnels and make more living space. Deep, cool living space doubled in short order. This stroke of genius or luck made plenty of space to move all the children into brand new living spaces in the tunnels that had been dug into and through the granite caves far under the scorching sands for their last stand.
Now, they had to get the survivors to safety as quickly as possible. In some cases, the path that the transports must take while heading for Hazey Point, entailed flying directly past Arth, across the center of the Admiralty’s controlled portion of the Empire. Knowing that Keeth had committed all of his remaining troops to his latest assault, General Z had figured the space lanes would be empty.
Using the new ships, the children were mid simulated into the jump buffers. Using the cloaking device, they snuck quietly across the galaxy in four bone jarring jumps instead of the usual six. Lea spoke to her sister as she was dropping down into the volcano. “Next, you have to create something for space sickness for the crew.”
Pedra gave her sister a wry smile as she deftly manipulated the controls to reconstruct six thousand children on the pad of the launch bay.
Lea looked at her wryly, “Not a safe test, but a successful one. How many ships are done?”
“Nearly two hundred…I’m running out of scrap.”
“Two hundred will have to be enough, for now.”
The General used one of the secret ships for his own mission. He had seen what the Fleet Marine searchers had not. In a viddy shot of the bombed out shell of her favorite spa, was the very dead form of the Empress, Sashi. Since it was supposed to be a quiet day at a spa for her, she had worn no jewelry. Keeth did not know who had ascended to the throne, so, her body was ignored as they searched the ruins of the palace for those Crown Jewels.
For her part,
she had not noticed that her grandfather had taken the Crown Jewels along on his inspection tour. As the Exchequer of the Crown Jewels, they went where he went. Who ever ruled wore copies except on parade days. The true Crown Jewels must now be delivered into the heir’s hands as soon as possible.
As soon as the children were being checked in to Hazey Point, he headed for Zia’s home. It was half way back toward Arth. He arrived at Zia’s Warrion base to find her saddened but composed. General Z was ushered into her chambers aboard her flagship “Zia II”. “Your Majesty, please accept our humblest apologies for being absent during the attack.”
“Don’t be silly. You would have been killed and the Crown would never have recovered.”
“But I did not protect your niece, I feel responsible. Her protection was my sworn duty.”
“Put that out of your mind. There was nothing more that anyone could have done.”
“It is my sad duty to tell you that I have seen the body of your niece. She seems to have died in the bombing of the spa next to the hospital. I know it was a favorite place for her to go.”
“Yes, I saw her, too.”