Chapter 16: Solidifying

“Ladies and Gentlemen.” Simon began.

The President and entourage had been safely transported to Blazing Star and shown to Simon’s quarters. They had gone through all the introductions and most were now sipping some sort of beverage of their choice as they mingled. Present were the five Americans, the five Canadians plus Simon, Grant, James, Bill, Mike, Thomas and, of course, Blaze.

The four ladies were trying to engage Blaze in conversation, but she was having none of it. She was all business. At that point only two of the ladies knew that Blaze was an android and they didn’t want to spoil the surprise. That was about to change.

“Before we have lunch, we are going to do a ‘presentation.’ There will be two short projections that will bring you all up to date, almost, with events surrounding this ship.” said Simon. “Blaze has added a few important details to the original ones created several months ago, so for even those who have seen them before, there will be some new information. Please save your comments and questions till after the presentations. Blaze, please show Discovery, then Invitation.”

As before, the holographic projections held everyone’s attention throughout the playing. At the end, there was mainly silence.

It was broken by Admiral Ben Guarant who walked over to Simon and said “Captain Gordon, I am sorry. I was a complete ass. I hope I can find a way to repay you for the way I have responded to you.”

Simon said, so that everyone could hear. “Everyone in here, myself included, has expressed a similar feeling when they finally realize that this is not a joke or some contrived fiction. It is real and it is our future. The problems will come when we start to live it. Let’s have some lunch, and after lunch I will attempt to explain a lot more of the current information. Please feel free to ask questions but, once again, please remain in my quarters. There will be tours this afternoon, in case you were curious. You can watch the main viewer on the wall there as it is displaying the view out the front of Blazing Star.”

Lunch was a lot of casual banter. Dan was trying to get his attention as there was something he wanted to clarify.

“What is it Dan?” asked Simon.

“I just wanted to mention to you that I did not tell Ben to apologize to you. I thought you should know. I was going to tell him sometime today that he was to be your ‘facilitator’ and to help you out any way he could. That was to be his new job. He doesn’t know anything about it, yet.” replied Dan.

“That is a very good idea and ties in with part of the afternoon discussions I had planned.” said Simon.

Josh strolled over and said to Simon. “ I feel the same way Ben does. I confess I have doubted you all along, but have come to the conclusion that there is no way you could be faking all of this!”

“It gets better this afternoon!”, replied Simon with a smile. “You won’t believe the tour I have in store for you.”

After everyone settled into comfy chairs for the afternoon meetings, Simon, once more, addressed the small crowd. “As you can see on the viewer, we have been heading towards the moon for the last hour or so. We are now approaching the far side of the moon where we have been constructing a base. Hopefully, you will not be able to see it, as we have designed it to be virtually invisible to detection. I feel that now is the time, as we approach this base, which we call Star Base Moon or SBM for short, to discuss the reason we are all gathered here. You five people from the United States and you five people from Canada, and three others, currently, are the only people who have become fully aware of some of the capabilities and history of this ship, who are not members of my crew. That is placing you all in a position of great trust and great risk. Any knowledge of this ship or her capabilities must not reach the general populations of the Earth. Can you imagine what your own people would demand of you to gain information about her? I am going to recommend several things to you. You should create an ultra top secret security level called Galactic and you ten people are the only ones with that clearance so far. You are the only ones who will be able to contact Star Force Galactic. If you add new members, we must know who the trusted members are. We must interview all new prospective members of this new and unique clearance level. They must be trusted. Believe me, we have already evaluated each of you and you have cleared the first hurdle to acceptance. This is not to ask you to go against your country, only to support us. We are the first and only line of defense from invasion from the stars. The fact, and yes it is a fact, that other races exist is simply enough reason to be vigilant. The fact that at least two or three known races are aggressive was proven to us just recently. Blaze, hold position above SBM and show the presentation ‘First Contact’.”

“Holding, Captain.” said Blaze as the front view screen visually displayed.

It then switched into a replay mode and started to display the video that Simon and Blaze had somehow found time to throw together.

“Video replay running.” she said.

The guests were treated visually to the approach of Blazing Star to the remains of the years old battle, the approach of the first unknown Scout, then the arrival of the two additional Daandrusian warships, and finally the battle with the Destroyer.

At the beginning, most of the guests were quiet, but soon gasps and shocked expressions became normal.

Simon summarized the important points. “This is what we encountered on our first expedition outside this solar system. We are not alone. They will come here. We must be ready. Hopefully, we will have allies. We have already started to build a fleet. We, no, the Earth, needs your help. Now I want to show you some of the things we have been doing. Blaze re-activate front view. Take us into SBM.”

Blaze neatly guided Blazing Star down towards the surface of the moon. When it appeared as if she was about to crash, she slowed down and huge doors opened up in the crater. When they were fully opened, Blazing Star entered the massive construction facility. There wasn’t too much to see, but there was the two new warship keels and considerable construction going on all around them. The guests were impressed.

Simon explained that this was the new construction and maintenance base. They were currently building two Destroyer type craft that were about half the size of Blazing star. He also mentioned that this base will have the ability to build four Aurora Class Battle Cruisers simultaneously. It was also being designed with shields and defensive weapon capabilities to rival or exceed Blazing Star. The Admiral whistled.

Dan commented “That was a pretty impressive battle with that Destroyer. You survived almost a hundred and fifty missiles and lasers yet suffered virtually NO damage. I see what you meant when you mentioned firepower. You unleashed what looked like over a hundred and fifty yourself over about two minutes. That was impressive.”

“We didn’t even begin to use our capabilities there. That Destroyer was way over matched. We got really lucky.” replied Simon. “That is not likely to happen all the time and that was only one ship. Some of these races have massive fleets. If Blazing Star goes down, the Earth will be destroyed shortly after that. From what we heard, some of the races are of the take-no-prisoners type, while others are the enslave-them-all type. In either case, Earth loses.”

“So, what do you need from us?” asked Josh. He had been quiet most of the meeting but was usually to the point when he spoke.

“We need three things that I can think of at the moment. The food we have under control now, but we will need more and more as we grow. Manpower is really important. We are slow to enlist new personnel because of all the precautions we have to take. We are going to need a LOT of humans to help crew our fleet. The final requirement is obscurity. We need to be able to acquire the first two requirements unhindered and undiscovered. That, more than the other two is where, hopefully, you can provide the most help. I had politely asked Allan here to back off the missing person searches and investigations on a certain property in Alberta. Do you understand now why I asked you for that, Allan?” asked Simon.

“Yes, I do. With Josh’s permission, I will take care of that problem.” said Allan.

“You have it, Allan.” said Josh.

“Dan had a really good idea earlier. Do you want to mention it here now?” asked Simon.

“Yes, that would fit in right about now.” said Dan. “I have decided to create a small task force of a sort to help SFG with anything they need. I would like to place Ben, here, at the top of that force. I originally thought it would be poetic justice, but now I feel he would be really good at the job. Ben can be a little blunt, but he gets the job done and his loyalty to the cause is unquestioned. I would also be prepared to put him back into the Joint Chiefs even though I will have some explaining to do. I may have to redefine a few roles. Would you be interested in that Ben?”

“You bet I would Dan. I meant what I said when I apologized for being an ass.” said Ben.

“I think I can set something up similar to that as well.” said Josh, smiling. “I’m not sure how I’m going to allocate funding for it, though. We are not quite as good as you Americans are at burying clandestine funding.”

“Gentlemen, all funding will be taken care of by SFG. Keep it off your books. That would be a lot less hassle for both of you.” said Simon. “If you people leave our Corporations alone, then we can easily handle the funding. I will have George get in touch with each of you to let you know which Corporations to bill your expenses to. We probably shouldn’t have registered them based out of Calgary, anyways. We have re-registered them offshore. Well, actually, off world. All our Corporations are now registered to this base, Star Base Moon.”

That got a few snickers. “Going to be fun trying to tax them now!” said Allan smiling. “I’ll make sure there is no hassle at our end.”

“Okay, everyone.” said Simon. “If you follow Blaze and I, we will give you a tour of Blazing Star and Star Base Moon.”

Simon’s tour was pretty impressive. He started by showing them all Command Conference then Command. In Command, they got a brief look at the consoles. Some of them noticed the weapons arrays and defensive options on those consoles. Simon showed them various crew areas and Medical. They had the tour through one of the fighter launch bays and saw almost one hundred craft of various types, Stingers, Arrows, APEs and the two standard shuttle types. Then he took them to Command Bay where they boarded TS-2 for the next part of the tour.

On board TS-2, Blaze took them out of Blazing Star and showed them what she looked like from outside. Then, and only then, did they really understand just how big Blazing Star really was. They all were informed that this base was completed to this point in less than five weeks. Josh paled when Simon explained to them that they could turn out more than five fighters a day. He was thinking of the years long wait for a mere sixty-five new F-35 Fighters.

The final part of the tour was over to Research and Development (R&D). This area was in the actual base itself. It was full Earth gravity and atmosphere. They had to go through several doors before they were within the base.

Tonya was working on some new designs with her group. General Ray Torence happened to notice a set of plans that caught his eye.

“What is that?” he asked, his voice cracking.

Tonya, noticing the plans he was pointing at, glanced at Simon, who nodded. Tonya then explained that those were the first ‘concept’ set of plans for a new class of ship. She said it was to be an ‘Assault Carrier’ and approximately four times the size of Blazing Star. She had been puttering around with the concept for a while after talking to Bill. He had suggested that it might be worth thinking about building a ship big enough to carry its own fleet. This ship, not only carried them, it built them too.

She had decided that a new class of attack ship called a Corvette would be perfect for it to carry. She wanted the Corvette to be fast, stealthy, deadly and armed to the teeth. She wanted them multi-role and flexibly armed, meaning that they could be converted to perform other functions with minimum effort.

She also mentioned that a third new ship, called a Harvester was being constructed as well. It was designed to travel throughout a star system and gather resources wherever they could be found. She said that it would most likely harvest in the asteroid belts and unoccupied planets or moons. It would have sub-light drives and would be lightly manned and armed. No sense in arming a ship with weapons unless you also provided some defense as well, so it also had basic shields and extra armour.

“Simon, it looks to me like you have nailed the problems right on the head.” said Josh. “How are you going to accomplish all this with Earth’s limited resources?”

“That is the first multi-billion dollar question.” said Simon. “Fortunately, we are utilizing the mineral resources of the moon at the moment for construction requirements. We are constructing several large greenhouse type rooms here to grow food as well. The food and human resources we will have to increase dramatically. I just hope we figure out how in time.”

“How much time do you think we have?” asked Dan.

“And that is the second multi-billion dollar question.” replied Simon. “Our best guess is weeks to months, likely not as long as a year. Keep in mind we can accomplish a lot out here faster than we could on Earth. We are using the technology to build itself and we are designing in improvements along the way. So far it has been a good concept. We have quite a few hurdles to overcome but we have very dedicated people working on all aspects. We need a lot more people simply to crew all the ships we are planning on building. The training we can handle. We cannot raid your assets for this, but if you have any people you are aware of that could possibly join, then let’s get them on board.”

“That sounds like a part of the mandate we need to give to our ‘Galactic’ teams. Find you people.” said Josh.

“Dan has already helped somewhat in that respect, but any additional help would be greatly appreciated.” replied Simon.

The ladies in the group had been quietly talking to Blaze as well as listening to the other conversations. By now they had figured out that Blaze was an Android and were a bit more reserved in their discussions with her. Joanne had come up with a couple of questions.

“Simon, pardon me for asking, but what is the male/female ratio of personnel in SFG?” asked Joanne.

Simon replied “I believe it is over 85% male at the moment.”

“And how many children are there at present?” Joanne asked.

“None.” replied Simon “Why do you ask?”

“It occurred to me that if you had facilities for families, you would likely get more women to apply. I appreciate that a large number of roles are combat and may not be entirely suitable, but if women and their families were part of your crew, then that may help.” replied Joanne.

“That is good thinking. We had thought of providing more of a family situation, but initially we were more concerned with getting Blazing Star into space. It may be time to factor in families as well. Keep that in mind when you are looking for people. We tended to exclude them in the past primarily to keep them and their children out of direct combat situations.” said Simon. “After all, children probably shouldn’t be on combat vessels. We could, however, have children at the bases. At least on the bases, there would be less chance of them being directly in harms way. That is of course assuming that SBE remains secure and SBM remains undetected.”