Free Riss Series 4: The Riss Accession by C. R. Daems Page B

decoration on Terril's uniform was a red rectangle with a black
scorpion patch on the sleeve.
    It was interesting that Stenberg didn't mention the rank or
position of the advisors. I suspect that except for Terril, he didn't know.
    "If there are no objections, I
would suggest Admiral Wattson begin by describing the SAS's encounters with the
Aliens." Stenberg looked at each person and receiving no objections,
nodded to Wattson.
    "When we noticed that
several solar systems were becoming black holes in a sense—ships going to
them never returned, ships weren't leaving, and the Comstats were no longer
operational—we suspected the problem was spreading like a disease. But the
normal causes did not appear to fit what was happening. The only explanation left was that
we were being invaded by some nation other than the four of us."
    "Why?" Zhu asked.
    "Because none of the logical
explanations fitted. Disease wouldn't stop the use of the Comstat, or ships from
coming and going. Likewise, raiders might destroy the Comstat and ships in the system to delay discovery,
but they would leave, and sooner or laterword would get out. And an invasion by the SAS, JPU,
or UFN made no sense. The SAS wouldn't attack Fools Landing or Fools Hope if we
wanted to expand into the JPU. Likewise, the JPU wouldn't attack Barak and Alborz
if they planned to expand into the SAS. And the UFN wouldn't attack systems so
far away from their space or want a war with the combined forces of SAS and
JPU. Hence, we knew we were being invaded by a new enemy, one who was powerful
enough to quarantine four systems." Wattson stopped and sipped his
kaffa. When no one said anything, he continued. "Since they were
quarantining systems in the SAS and the JPU, they didn't appear to have a star
map of either nation, but must have been following ships. In an attempt to test
our hypothesis, we sent one Riss Light and an SAS hunter to Kamboja to wait to
see what happened. They found the next merchant ship had an Alien scout ship
following. The Alien ship stayed several days collecting information. When we tried
to contact the ship, it attempted to flee the system. We lost two fighters and
sustained significant damage to two others trying to stop it. While the
scout ship supported no missiles, it had fifty-centimeter lasers and a very accurate automatic
defensive system. After it lost power, we sent a team to investigate. They
found only robots."
    "What do you mean, robots?" Salazan asked.
    "Metal robots. There was no organic
material in the robots or the ship."
    "Robots ran the ship?"
    "Yes. We concluded they were an
advanced civilization, judging by their technology, which is far beyond
anything the SAS could produce today or in the near future."
    Everyone seemed to agree , judging by
the whispered side conversations and looks on their faces.
    "We then decided to test the
capability of our ships against theirs. Again, we stationed ships at selective
systems to await one of the Aliens' scout ships. When one arrived at Zigzag, we
let it leave, anticipating the Aliens would return with a force to occupy the
system. They did. They sent three Light cruisers—not to be confused with
small. They are nasty ships with four missile tubes, which spit out missiles
every thirty seconds and have ten fighters, which they use as manned missiles.
We lost two Light cruisers. A third had significant damage, and a Hunter and a Heavy were
also damaged during the engagement. Again they were manned only with
robots."
    "You're telling us robots in Light
cruisers were a match for your task force?" Salazan sneered.
    "Yes, I am, and it gets
worse. We then decided to see the force they would send to occupy a solar
system after it had been neutralized. So we sent two Riss cruisers in stealth
mode to Fools Landing and an outdated Light cruiser as bait. We discovered a
mother ship, which we've named a Medusa because it has the capacity to
hold twelve of their Light cruisers, has thirty-six missile tubes,