Free Alicia Jones 4: Enigma by D. L. Harrison Page B

have to turn off the entire anti-mass and EM shield. 
Still, it should be fun.”
    Kristi snickered, “Be good Princess.  Worse comes to
worse, just figure out that weapon.”
    Yeah, right.  Because a waveform of a stable field is a
piece of cake to throw together.  I held back the sarcasm, since if I
didn’t she’d just call me princess again anyway.  Time to change the
subject.
    “What are you working on?”
    Kristi shrugged, “Nothing really since the gravity pulse
weapon and shield.  I’ve been helping Carmine, and doing company
stuff.  My head’s still stuck on Dark Energy, but that’s a hard nut to
crack for any kind of weapon or shield.”
    “I can totally relate.  Lunch?”
    She smiled and girlishly clapped her hands as she squealed
in faux excitement, “Really?  Lunch with a princess?”
    I whapped her arm lightly, “Play nice blondie.”
    She asked with a wicked grin, “What fun is that,” as we
walked out of my office to get some lunch.
     

Chapter 13
    The rest of the week went by fairly quietly, outside of a
mounting number of failed experiments, and it was time to poke the Bug world. 
Kristi and I boarded our ship, and went straight to the Seltan world through a
wormhole.  There were a lot of ships here already from other worlds, and
over fifty thousand Seltan ships.  Wasn’t this supposed to be a quick
sortie?  The Seltan really hated the enemy, but to be fair the enemy has
been trying to annihilate the Seltan for a few thousand years now.
    There were fifty-one Earth ships, I was pretty sure Anthony
was here in the command ship, but I wasn’t positive as we hadn’t spoken in a
while.  There were also over two thousand ships from the other thirty-nine
races.  It wasn’t lost on me that I, as a private citizen, had the second
largest fleet present, even if they were unmanned platforms controlled by A.I. 
Still, even my numbers were dwarfed by the Seltan’s armada for the
sortie.  Of course, firepower was another story.
    It also occurred to me that we were about to attack a planet
with over three million ships and billions of life forms on the surface, so
this was definitely a hit and run to see what they do, and maybe more
importantly, exactly what the other hives would do as well. 
    Al said through the bridge speakers, “We’ve been sent
coordinates for the surface, for a planning meeting.”
    Kristi muttered, “This should be fun.”
    “How’d you figure that?”
    She shrugged, “Treaty of mutual defense, but no chain of
authority, who’s in charge?”
    I sighed, “Good point, there’ll probably be thirty-nine
different opinions on how we should do this.”
    She raised an eyebrow, “Forty, don’t forget yourself.”
    I made a face, “Unless they plan something really stupid I
don’t plan on pushing any strategies.  The Seltan have most of the ships,
and are kind of intimidating, maybe it won’t be that big of a problem.  I
certainly don’t want to argue with Dral.  Al, do we know if the Seltan have fab
technology yet?”
    Al replied, “No, although it’s certainly possible.”
    “Alright, let’s go.”
    We went down to the landing bay, and took a shuttle down to the
surface.  The nearby building looked very old, and was made of some gray
cement which was pitted and had seen better days.  The air was breathable,
but a little thin, close to Earth’s atmosphere at twenty thousand feet above
sea level.  There were two very large Seltan at the doors, who let us in
and gave us succinct directions to the large conference room.
    When we walked in I took a look around the room.  I
recognized Dral, and a few others I’d seen at other battles.  For the
human ships, it was Sergei with an upper admiral I didn’t recognize.  I
supposed I wasn’t all that surprised, when I was fleet admiral I’d have taken
this mission as well and left behind the vice admiral of exploratory fleet to
watch for a secondary issue away from Earth.  Still, I got along better
with