Alpha One - Chris Burton [40]
“Yes,” replied Koenig. “Admiral Clarke?”
“The Partacians are no threat to our fleet. They will roll over. We should just go in via Partacian space and enter Sentinel Space by the back door. It is a simple and effective plan which need not impact on Partacia one iota. We would only be in their territory for a matter of weeks.”
“Without the support of the majority of the Bench, we will be leaving ourselves open to a vote of confidence in our CIC. We could face the prospect of a challenge to your leadership, Admiral Koenig,” said Kohn. “I feel that we should try high-level diplomatic channels. How about using APF diplomats?”
“That would take too long and we would lose the element of surprise,” snapped Koenig.
“I see that we have only one choice, and since presenting this matter to the bench would be futile, then I propose that we order the task force to cross the Partacian border immediately.”
“I agree,” said Clarke.
Kohn nodded his head and said, “I will give the order to Rear Admiral Shenke. I believe they will be ready to commence in less than seven days.”
Koenig agreed, but, as a contingency, he asked Kohn to make contact with the APF diplomats to commence discussions with the Partacians, with a view to the use of their airspace. This would ensure that both the Bench and the Partacians believed that Alpha was going down the diplomatic route than the offensive one.
“Gentlemen, I want to move our discussions on to the wormholes. As you know, we have received a request from a commercial carrier to allow them to send a ship into each of the wormholes in the Tri-Star region—under protection of Alpha. I have agreed to this in principle, on the basis that this particular sponsor has offered us additional funding if we grant their request.”
“They will have to wait,” continued Koenig, “until we have cleared a path to the wormholes themselves. I assume this will take weeks rather than months. It is important, in the mean time, that we familiarize ourselves with the issues at stake here.”
Admiral Clarke headed up Alpha’s information division. His brief was wide but included the chairing of a committee which looked at off-world anomalies and, in particular, wormholes and ‘gateways’ to other galaxies.
The conventional wisdom was if you wanted to travel to distant galaxies, then you needed a high-velocity propulsion system to get you there. There was however a ‘cheat’ card. Wormholes were a means to propel a space craft thousands of light years in just a few seconds. From an exploration perspective, this was clearly a good thing, but in the real world—and especially in the commercial environment in which Alpha found itself—it was the availability of scarce natural resources that drove the exploration of space. A huge industry established itself over the last hundred years whose protagonists scoured the universe for new ‘gateways’ in the hope that they may pass through them and seek supplies of precious ores, metals compounds, etc.
The Tri-Star system had always been somewhat of a conundrum. The system lay between the Great Central Void, the Turan System and the Nouvarel System and, as such, was far from Sentinel space. It was new to Earth’s stellar cartography teams, having been hidden by the giant gas nebula of the Turan system. A star ship had first mapped its location some ten years ago and, within weeks, all manner of exploration vessels had set off to enter the system and enter the wormholes.
None were successful, as the Sentinels prevented them. Alpha also wanted to explore the system, and it was when an Alpha survey vessel entered the system that the Sentinels first attacked. War with the Sentinels started less than two weeks later.
The survey ship had also discovered a peculiarity in their findings.