“Ahh, I’m glad you could make it, Miss…?” The grey-haired admiral gestures towards her, inclining an eyebrow inquisitively, as she enters the dining room.
She sighs. It is true, she hasn’t exactly told anyone her name. Not that she plans to; she rather enjoys the privacy that her ship’s energy transporters and disguise matrices offer her.
She hasn’t told anyone about either of those, either.
“Athena,” she answers his question. “Call me Athena.”
He tilts his head. “Isn’t that the name of your ship?” he asks.
She nods once.
He blinks. “Ahh, okay then. Please, be seated.” He gestures towards one of the many seats at the table, even as he takes the one opposite it.
She accepts the seat, and a steward promptly appears to deliver food and pour wine.
“Dig in,” the Admiral invites.
Some time later, at the end of the meal, the Admiral looks back up at her, swirling his wine. “So,” he begins.
She samples her wine, and raises an eyebrow at him.
“Me and my captains have been reviewing the records from the Battle of South Amsterdam,” he continues.
“You know what I said about awards.”
He sighs. She’d made that plenty clear already at the press conference; neither her nor her ship would be accepting any awards or accolades. “As much as we would like to award you for that, you’ve made it clear you won’t be accepting any, so there won’t be any. It’s gonna be a bear to get that through to Congress, but that’s just the way it is. But anyways.
“The question came up: Where did she come from, and why?”
She tilts her head. “How do you mean?”
He blinks. “Well… When the Tel'Rasi scouts showed up, we had thirty superdreadnoughts in system.” He sighs. “By the time their main force started arriving, we had twenty superdreadnoughts in system. Then, suddenly, Athena was there, dishing out death and destruction in equal measure across the Tel'Rasi.”
She winces. “Actually, no. That was an unmanned fleet- while the Tel'Rasi lost two thousand sixty-nine ships, they suffered only ninety-three deaths.”
He blinks. “Uh… I take it your ship’s sensors saw straight through them?”
She nods. “Most of the manned vessels, and only two unmanned, were permitted to escape.”
“Why were they permitted to escape…?”
“So they can warn the rest of their kind not to attack our systems. The Tel'Rasi may have powerful ships, but they lack a long-range communications system like ours.”
“... Ahh. So, we get to the question: Where did the Athena come from?”
“She launched from her parking space, just inside the chromosphere of our sun.”
“... Your ship can stand the temperatures of the sun?”
She nods. “So long as her shields stay up, there is no naturally occurring temperature in the known universe that she cannot tolerate indefinitely.”
“Um, okay. So… why did she come to South Amsterdam to fight?”
“Because the Tel'Rasi fleet failed to heed the warnings they were sent and attacked the system.”
“They were sent warnings?”
She nods. “As soon as the fleet entered n-space with the intent to attack, Athena sent them a warning, by local n-space transmission, that any attempt to follow through with the attack would result in the destruction of their fleet.”
“The scouts weren’t stopped?”
“No. My ship was operating autonomously during that portion of the battle; I arrived aboard in time to order the main fleet warned. She calculated that your superdreadnoughts could hold off and defeat the scouts with minimal losses; however, it would seem the commander on the spot was unaware both of that fact… and of how to do so.” She glances up at him. “Tel'Rasi tracking systems are nearly unshakable, but any single Tel'Rasi ship can only track six objects at once- and their tracking priority is the nearest enemy objects to their ships, regardless of type. By firing early with his missiles, he could have saturated the Tel'Rasi ships’ tracking capability with missiles – even ballistic missiles fill up those tracking slots – and effectively prevented the Tel'Rasi from firing against his ships. His missiles may not have the power to penetrate the Tel'Rasi shields, but by keeping up the saturation like that, he would have a free ticket to get his energy batteries – which are powerful enough – into range.” She sighs. “Unfortunately, by not firing early, he allowed the Tel'Rasi tracking systems to acquire a lock on twelve of his ships.”
“Twelve? He only lost ten.”
She nods. “The Tel'Rasi missed two of them, and he got into energy range of the vessel that was tracking them before they could rectify that.”
He looks up towards the ceiling. “They had three ships.”
She nods. “He opened fire before the third one entered tracking range; it was focused on his missiles.”
“... Oh. And that massive fleet…?”
She nods. “That’s how the Tel'Rasi storm so many places: They bring so many ships that their individual tracking limits are moot.” She shrugs. “Which brings us to how Athena kept them from returning fire: She filled space with packeted sublight energy fire – or, ‘plasma rounds’ – before the energy discharge from her arrival dissipated far enough for them to see through it.” She shrugs. “She’s a multi-purpose ship. She’s got the big, anti-capital-ship weapons, but she’s also designed for crowd control, with hundreds of thousands of smaller weapons carpeting every excess inch of hull space.”
“Aren’t plasma rounds useless against their shields?”
She nods. “Yep- and she has a limited number of guns big enough to punch through those shields. But the plasma rounds served as tracking control – not one of them got a lock on her or any of her more dangerous munitions.”
He blinks. “Meaning, as far as they know, she blew up their fleet with a plasma storm.”
She nods. “Yep.”
“Ahh… and if the commander on the spot knew of that weakness, what would his best option have been against that fleet?”
“Run,” she answers simply. “It would take roughly two hundred superdreadnoughts to produce enough missiles to saturate their tracking capability all the way in. If he had at least seventy, he could have started firing as soon as he saw them and had the missiles pace his ships in a ring just a little closer to the Tel'Rasi fleet. Those missiles would have dwindled, but he would have enough of them to ablate away to get him into energy range… and last until after he’d shot down enough of their ships that he could keep the rest saturated with his available throw weight. With thirty doing that, he might have gotten into energy range – but only might, and only briefly at that.”
“... You do know the Tel'Rasi ships are faster than ours, right?”
She nods. “In n-space, yes, the Tel'Rasi can accelerate close to twice as fast, and have a thirty percent higher maximum speed. However, the Tel'Rasi lack our powerful warp drives, and would not have been able to catch him if he ran away at full tilt.”
He leans back, thinking, and takes a sip of his wine. “Alright,” he nods. Then he glances up at her. “As much as I’d like to say nobody knows about this meeting, that wouldn’t be true. I don’t know how the Presidential Cabinet got wind of it, but they did, and they asked me to ask a few more questions.”
She snorts. “More like ordered you to ask.”
“It was worded as a request.”
“Like their ‘requests’ are optional.”
He nods gravely. “In any case, are you ready?”
She nods. “I make no promises.”
He lets out a chuckle. “And I bet the first one is one of those. Here goes… Where was she built?”
She smiles. “That’s actually not one of those. She was built in central Kansas- but the construction hangar was destroyed in the Ultorn Bombing of Thirty Six Fifty Two.”
He winces. Just twenty years ago, the first alien race had encountered humanity, rather than the other way around. The Ultorn had bombed several continents with their disintegration bombs, taking ten-mile spherical chunks out of the ground with each one before the exploration fleet showed up and destroyed their ships from behind. With thirty percent of the planetary population up in smoke, the Navy of Humanity had been born that night.
“Was there… any remnant?”
She shakes her head. “The hangar was completely destroyed, along with all records- but the Athena was in the middle of her acceptance trials half a galaxy over.” She shrugs. “She arrived back at Earth, weapons charged, roughly fifteen minutes after the last Ultorn ship was destroyed.”
“Ahh. I suppose that renders the second question – if they could have access to it – moot.”
She snorts. “They’re welcome to access to the crater,” she shrugs, before taking the last sip of her wine, and holding it up to signal the steward for a refill.
He lets out a short chuckle as well, before sobering up. “The third, ah, question… They want her under military control.”
“Not happening.”
He blinks. “What?”
She nods. “You heard me. Not happening.” She takes a sip from her newly refilled glass. “Though… It’s not that I don’t trust you or your captains – no. If anything, you’d probably be able to use her more effectively than I can.
“It’s the democratic nature of your civilian support structure that I don’t trust. My ship is capable of committing genocide against a star-faring race in a matter of minutes – the level of power I don’t want within reach of some idiot that got elected into office because he played patriot.” She sighs. “It’s been a long time since this country has had a ‘military commander in chief’ – or ‘president’ – that I could trust not to pull the trigger. So, Athena operates independently, protecting humanity but not supporting them.” She sighs. “As such, she will not participate in any offensive, nor will she defend against an ‘attracted’ attack.”
“You know they’re going to hunt you for that.”
“Let them. That ship obeys my orders and my orders only.”
“Even if they pretend it was you?”
She shakes her head. “She can see through that.”
“What if they kill you?”
“Then she obeys no orders.”
He blinks. “No orders… meaning she’d do as she was most recently ordered to do for… forever?”
She shakes her head. “No. She’d divert to autonomous control – she may continue as previously ordered… or she may change her mind and do something else, up to and including making – or breaking – agreements with people, planets… or star nations.”
He nods slowly. “Meaning, if they kill you, she’s just as likely to abandon humanity.”
She nods. “If my death is attached to malicious intent by the nation, then yes, probably. Where she’d go after that is anyone’s guess.”
He tilts his head. “What if it’s accidental?”
She shrugs. “The chance that I’ll die of an accident is slim and none, but if I do, I don’t know. She’d probably factor in any relationships I may or may not have, and how various people or groups respond to my death, in her decision of what to do next.”
“Ahh… Would she tell us?”
She shrugs. “It’s possible. But she’s also capable of lying and breaking promises, so you can’t guarantee anything.”