Free Solbidyum Wars Saga Book 1: Battle of the New Orleans by Dale C. Musser Page A

same gesture, but from a more relaxed posture. 
    “Captain ,” Kala said in acknowledgement of his presence.
    The Captain repeated with “Major” as he averted his eyes from her to me.  There was no verbal acknowledgement between any of the others and I had the impression when two parties met that only the senior members of each group acknowledged each other verbally as a sign of recognition of leadership for each group.
    ”So Tibby, we get to meet face to face at last.” The Captain began with a warm smile “I am sure you are eager to get some answers from us, just as we are from you.  Please, sit down.  Everyone please sit.” 
    Everyone took a chair at the table except for the guard who remained inside the room stationary by the door, and the steward who was busy placing beverages in front of everyone before leaving the room.  Captain Maxette took the chair at the head of the table, his two officers sat on the right side from him, Kala sat next to him on his left and motioned for me to take the seat next to her.
    Captain Maxette began to speak “Before we begin, I would like to introduce you to Commander Thimas,”  Thimas nodded in my direction, “ And Lieutenant Commander Wanoll, ” Wanoll too nodded.
                  I acknowledge them with “Gentlemen” all the while wondering about the ranking system,.  All the ranks I was being introduced to were translating in my brain from Federation language to their English equivalents or close equals.  But in the United States military rankings from one branch of the service to another are not the same.   The Navy has no Major whereas the Army and Air Force do.  In the Air Force, a major is higher ranking than a Captain, but here it seemed that the Captain is higher than a Major, so I was somewhat confuse by the system. I had noted though that all uniforms had stripes that ran around the chest and torso area, and that the more stripes one had the lower in rank.   The Captain had the least in the room followed by the Commander and Lieutenant Commander, with Major Kalana having the same number of stripes as the Lieutenant Commander though all of Kala’s stripes were one color the bottom stripe of the Lieutenant Commander was gold.  It was all a bit confusing at the moment and I made a mental note to get Kala to explain it to me later.
                  Captain Maxette continued “I’m sure by now that Major Kalana has explained to you that she is a military attaché in our diplomatic service and her functions.  She is on full assignment to you at the moment to help you integrate with the Federation and also to help us learn more about you and your culture.  Commander Thimas is my second in command and is here to learn as much of this event as possible in case something should happen to me that he will be fully apprised of the situation.  Lieutenant Commander Wanoll is representing the defense and security elements of this operation and to assess dangers and to provide security and offer suggestions on security procedures.
    “Let me begin with a bit of history that will set the stage for where we are today.  A little over seven hundred years ago (this is translated from federation time to Earth years) our scientists discovered an asteroid cluster on the edge galaxy that was believed to have been ejected from a black hole trillions of years ago.  The scientists were interested in looking for new elements that might have been created in the black hole, and indeed they found several. One element, which was extremely rare and dense showed remarkable properties and when brought into proximity of another very common element produced tremendous amounts of energy.  Oddly neither of these two elements seems to be altered in any way and precisely how this energy is generated is still a mystery even today.  To give you a hint at the energy potential for this new element, which is extremely rare and called Solbidyum, if you were to take a