Chapter 33

It took three more days to return to our neighbourhood and as soon as possible Oaxaca began to transmit the high points of what she had found. This torpedo had come searching for one or more of our research ships.

The torpedo had a wealth of information including some warnings of three additional races in our galaxy that were very vicious. All were very powerful and occupied a large areas of space and took exception to others leaving their own planets or wandering through what they considered their private territory. The Seffra had actually lost a ship and I felt only mildly relieved when it wasn't Soldoy. If the Seffra had our dark crystal then it would be doubtful if they would have died.

There was more information than could be imagined. It listed all the systems encountered by all the ships that had fed back data. The data was not as comprehensive as the original ship had gathered but it was sufficient to travel blind through this area of the galaxy. It was also out of date for travel time was very long.

It listed all the races found along with a description. It tabulated what their current status was and the long term prognosis. Many races died off or killed themselves if another group didn't do that for them. An accompanying map of the galaxy showed where each group was along with strong enemies that we should attempt to avoid. It looked like the Seffra were on schedule to finish this galaxy in just a hundred and seventeen thousand years.

Improvements in technology were tabulated and even detailed instructions to make the parts themselves. This included engines, computers, compensators, reactors and almost any part that could be bettered. I was proud to see that we were far ahead of the Seffra in some fields.

The information also listed all the Seffra ships and where they were projected to be from their last information transfer. Soldoy was quite a distance away and on the other side of a race that would take exception to me taking a shortcut through their area.

The data was still being transmitted as the Sardif docked inside our construction dome and right beside Pat'uch. The information was taken again but much more quickly this time. There was a great deal to go over and all of us were eager to see what we could find of benefit to us.

There had been many small advances in technology. Most of the advances were in the many fields we were unable to explore very well. Where we worked in computers, engines, and our small missile we were far ahead. Even our combined inertial and temporal compensator was just as good as what the Seffra currently used. I felt proud that they would be using my idea and trying to further it. We had made even more improvements since then but that was almost three centuries ago.

Production suffered and everybody wanted to see what information was available. The main computers were pressed into action to search for details that each person thought important.

Tom said to me, "Leif, did you see that the Mossa will be coming this way in less than nine cycles? All Seffra ships wander on their proposed course and there is a sixty three percent chance that they will find us or our outlying pickets."

"I did notice. The Seffra will treat us a lot differently if we had the ship closer to completion. We need at least twenty three more years to get there. Perhaps we can make some diversion that will lure them to an area that will allow them to miss us completely. There was another ship coming in six and a half years but from another direction. There is no way we can predict its course with any accuracy in that amount of time."

Tom said, "I can think of quite a few ways of getting them to follow other interesting avenues but they will one day come just to complete this area for their survey. If they do come then we will have to deal with them. I noticed that their stories and even plays have a recurrent theme of keeping the race pure. That means that you and Consti are going to be questioned and they may bring some disciplinary charges against both of you.

"We on the other hand will not be seen much better but they cannot do much to us. All this depends on the families on the ship. If they see you as a threat they will take you in and change you back to what you were when you first came here. They may also say that all the equipment had been made with their supplies and thus not ours. I would fight before I gave up what we worked so hard on."

"I don't want to fight the Seffra Tom. They were my people and they are hardheads in some ways but they mean well. They help races in trouble and take out many of the predators."

"I agree with you Leif but in doing so they make sure the race knows who did the work and I think they take more credit than they deserve. I am not a little boy any longer that needs an overprotective mother to watch over me. Our laws are modelled after the Seffra. It says specifically in the naval regulations that we have to arm ourselves in this matter even if it is just a threat."

Two of my wives and three of Tom's had been listening in and voiced their own views and they all sided with Tom. I knew a meeting would have to be convened but I also knew the outcome. Humans still had not lost their war like tendencies even after being elevated but I had to see that they were also right.

I continued, "Let's work on the premise that they will find us and plan accordingly. We have almost nine cycles to prepare and who knows, we may get an additional five to twenty years before they do come this way. A battle now will kill our race or many innocent Seffra."

The wives and the rest of the community were soon drawn into this discussion. There were a great many ideas put forth and all had some merit. Being a logical community we came up with many plans that would work on many different contingencies. Some plans were mutually exclusive. We had to find the best possible solutions on our stage without having the Seffra see the articles as props.

In a half of a cycle Ronny and seventeen more of our recruits left in Sardif. They had their holds full of our probes as well as a few highspeed craft designed to look like automated sentries. They were designed to clandestinely watch a certain area then report to those that placed them if a strange craft entered the protected area.

The competition to get these positions was high and it just happened that Ronny was among the best. She was also able to focus the crew as a captain should.

Another of their missions was to map out the area the Mossa would come to, if approaching us. This would let them know the terrain much better than the approaching Seffra. Basically it was just enlarging the area monitored by our probes.

Those of us staying worked to build and crew as many ships of Borin's class as possible. They would look impressive and give the Seffra pause, at least for a while. Tommy's small missiles were our main armament. They were of little use if we could not program them to the various engines and here I did for the standard Seffra variety. This took a lot of soul searching but the missiles could do little against the approaching vessel, only its engines. Because of the possibility of new enemies and their unknown engines, we made the missiles programmable.

Tommy and his wives worked together as a team again and even made more improvements as the deadline approached. A ship that took five and a half cycles to build was now down to that many days. All the precision fabricators made parts and one was big enough to make our hull and parts in one pass. Only the components had to be added.

To do all this work a great mass of material had to be converted to ceramic then processed further into what we needed. Much larger machines were built that would scoop and transport regolith. Not all of this came from the moon.

Large diameter tunnels were built through the mountains on Earth. This was intended for pollution free electric vehicles. The material removed was processed on the site and the ingots were sent to the construction site on the moon. We purposely left North America and those countries not wanting our help alone. There were many long tunnels through the Pyrenees linking France and Spain. A full dozen were drilled through the Alps linking all the surrounding countries. Four tunnels went through the Carpathian Mountains. In just a half cycle we had tunnels through the Himalayas, Pamir Mountains, Karakoram and the Atlas Mountains. At least now Afghanistan would not be as isolated as it was before. They had not wanted our help but there would be little they could do about it now other than dynamite their end of the tunnels. Now their religion or American money would not allow them to stay as isolated as they were.

We had stopped taking recruits for immediate use but those suitable or too sick to wait were put into stasis as we had done before.

Ronny had laid out her probes with care and worked with us through a long line of repeaters. The Mossa should not come directly but stop at various systems along the way to add the information to their store of data.

Ronny did detect a very large fly in our proposed soup. The area she was patrolling was actually thirty light years in diameter and encompassed 106 medium range stars, 14 hot blue stars and the vast majority of 315 red dwarfs. Most of the latter were in pairs as is the custom. She only just started when she found dead systems that had held living creatures. Some had died less than a century ago though most the Seffra found were much older. This made her very cautious now. She found ship wreckage from many different battles in some areas. Some worlds had a very low tech civilisations and thus no destroyed vessels. There was enough information in our recent torpedo data to place the race responsible for all this.

When sixty percent of this area was mapped she found the Soplasia civilisation. This group were named by the Seffra and they lived in smaller colonies comprised of thirty to fifty systems. The bipedal males were only a metre tall but the females were double that size. They outweighed the males by four times too. The females ran things though. They liked the gravity the same as the Seffra which was a third as much again as what Humans had.

These beings communicated with their mind but none of the Seffra had been able to communicate with them. There was just too many differences.

The Soplasia had an advanced civilisation but like humans, we were at a loss how their irrationality allowed them to function. Not only were the planets heavily populated but the females seemed to be trying to outdo each other in producing young.

They did have one form of population control. They had regular war games but usually they had no living enemies. The planets themselves would put out a team and the winner was the team that returned alive.

It was thought that the males were just pawns in this for they just did as they were told. There was very little data on them for they were usually dead when we found them. Their technology was about mid way between the Suma and the Graskor. This meant that they could defeat the approaching Seffra ship easily with their shear numbers.

Usually the Seffra would send out probes far ahead of their advance hoping to find any concentrations of belligerents before they entered that area. This didn't always work for the last Seffra ship to be destroyed was done by another colony of the Soplasia. The only reason we thought that Ronny was not attacked was the small size of her ship and her very cautious approach.

The entire area was scouted but now all communications were through the repeaters. We didn't want any energy to be detected from Sardif. Ronny was at the periphery of the Soplasia territory assessing all the data coming to her and sending it back to us through a short range torpedo to our grid.

The length of our line of relays produced a delay of almost a minute but we could see that Ronny was getting very nervous. She was currently hiding in a system composed of three red dwarfs and a dozen bands of asteroids. A flotilla of seven ships were coming her way. Within a minute another group was detected coming from behind her. It was not for us to give orders but Ronny settled into a cleft on a medium sized asteroid on the outer fringes.

In less than an hour the first group entered the system and patrolled the fringes. All of them released delivery systems that put their own probes into position. It was less than fifteen minutes later that the other group entered as well. This time they were even more cautious and released their own probes.

There was a jockeying for position that took almost two hours. One of the ships came very close to Ronny's but didn't detect her vessel. One ship from each group stayed away from the rest and the two groups attacked each other.

The level of viciousness was amazing. Even a destroyed craft was hit repeatedly though it could no longer fight. When only an hour had passed found that our view was being restricted. The energy weapons were able to take out our unprotected probes when they missed their intended targets. Moments later the main repeater in line to us was also destroyed and we saw no more of the battle.

We waited anxiously for three and a half more hours till a new image came to us. We were very relieved for the ship and crew could have been destroyed. Ronny said, "Captain, they used another weapon on the last ship. The energy level indicated something close to the dark crystal. None of our ships can stand up to that."

The view got cloudy then regained its clarity. I soon found out the reason why. The beam Ronny had talked about had struck every one of the larger masses of rock. One beam had severely damaged her ship.

I asked, "Were there any casualties?"

"Three captain but they're stable and will recover. One was a very close call."

"Can you make repairs?"

"The current estimate is at least a cycle. We have one engine that may be good for fifty percent thrust but our hull has been compromised and our compensator damaged."

More data came in and we saw first hand how destructive the Soplasia weapon really was. The asteroid was sliced in two very neatly. The Sardif was missing a large portion of its stern and there was no way she could make it back through the Soplasia territory without being detected. The actual tools used to repair the ship employed energies from the forth and fifth dimensions. This in itself would be like a beacon and draw any Soplasia to her position.

Ronny was given explicit orders to do what she could but keep the fabricator work to a minimum to avoid detection. It looked like she was going to argue but simply said, "Yes, Captain."

This contingency had not come up in our planning but one came close. It was if the Sardif were destroyed by some known enemy. Within minutes 413 ships left to recover their sister ship. The last twenty seven were not even complete but would be so when we all arrived. Vega supplied more than half of the ships.

I was aboard Borin once again but now I had some of my family. Sandra, Catrina, Alicea, Ana-Margarida, and Marina were my crew members but Mazotin came too. This was still dangerous to our son but it was also necessary for him to learn. The crew of a Seffra or a Sefmen ship had to include children or they would never learn what was necessary.

The other wives and some of our children rode in other ships and none of those raised to Sefmen stayed behind. The speed of the majority of the ships was kept low enough that the crews would have all their ships ready and the crews ready to use them effectively. What the Sardif travelled in eleven days they took three times that much. We came from a round about direction so as to not lead any enemy to our two homes.

Other units went much quicker to cover those areas Ronny was not able to monitor. Megan and eleven others took ships and some of our children to skirt the Soplasia territory and try to lure the Mossa in a different direction. She too had to be as careful as Ronny for we didn't know what she would run into. I hoped that twelve would be able to protect each other if needed.

Lead units of our flotilla came to Ronny's position and escorted the ship to an area further from the Soplasia worlds. Other units swarmed the wrecks that Ronny had kept monitoring. One unit was orbiting close to one of the stars. This one was very damaged but we coaxed it out of orbit with the least energy. The Soplasia could come back at any time and see what had happened to their craft. This time we hoped that they would think it had been drawn into the star itself. Our trail would not be that noticeable and hopefully disturbed by the solar winds.

The various Soplasia probes in system were hunted down. They each had a memory and would have information of our own ships if they were ever questioned. Pickets of our own covered the system and eight lights around it.

A portion of our group fled with Ronny and the damaged Soplasia craft the way we had come which was not in the direction of Vega or our home. Our ring of pickets was expanded while our people looked at the other damaged craft. There was very little to discover for when the shield went down the ship had still been hammered till it was usually scattered debris.

The exercise had taken a total of three cycles of time. We went over the artifacts trying to deduce any advances in physics but found none. It seemed that the black crystal device had only been on some of the ships. The rest with warships may be just stripped down units for their war games.

Megan returned almost a year after Ronny first set out. She had her own adventures but thankfully all the ships returned. They had been in two fights but managed to escape with superior speed and some of Tommy's missiles. Those they fought were old enemies but seemed to be just guarding their territory like a junk yard dog. The probes she left, showed the Mossa changing course enough to miss both us and the Soplasia. After that they were on their own again.

Ever since Ronny came onto the Soplasia we had been on a war footing. Our research ship was given very little attention. More recruits swelled our ranks but they got less love and attention than they should. What we did show we hoped would be enough. The families broke up to form other units so we in a way had to suffer the most.

Weapons research went into high gear but then so did the engine development as well as ways of making our shield stronger. None of the latter could hope to stand up to the effects of the dark crystal Ronny had seen. Stealth was our only hope in this case.

The original three families met and decided that we needed more brain power and worked out ways to avoid the reasons for not raising our people to the Sefmen level. With a large number of recruits we were able to pick those individuals that were stable enough to continue what we had started. Seventy three new individuals joined us. They in turn formed the nucleus of families.

In three years we made great strides but the war footing was difficult on all of us.

The Pat'uch class AI was superceded by Glaxi'da another Gossna name and meaning all powerful. It wasn't though for it only ran the eighth size of precision fabricators and worked very well at this. In two cycles all of the Pat'uch class were upgraded without destroying the original identity.

A ninth class precision fabricator was finally made at the Vega base but nine of our new computers had to be made to run the unit.

Many thousands of people were working on engine development and weapons. Tommy had found some ways to harness some of the destructive power that his small missile liberated and made a much more powerful power sources. The harmful radiation emitted by the old units would be a thing of the past once we got all the ships retrofitted.

We had half of our fleet converted when a new engine design was found that could more effectively use all the power generated. This in turn required a much more robust hull and inertial compensator. These we didn't have.

It was a half a year later that I was happy to say that my own children found the inertial and temporal compensator that would handle all the new engines could put out.

New hulls were now what we needed and ships came in and crews moved over to the new units. It took only seventeen hours to make a new ship from scratch. The computers though took much longer and became our major bottleneck.

Tommy organised a large group and made small ships using what we had just made so they could be ultra fast missiles even if their destructive power was limited.

This was almost a minor point for a Suma force of sixteen ships were going to come within ten light years of Vega and would send crews to investigate. Marina's first daughter, Lyubov happened to be patrolling this area. She was not in Borin but did harass the enemy. More units joined her and performed a retreating action but some of our ships fled toward the Soplasia systems.

The Suma ships were much too slow but we kept our own speed down. All but Lyubov's ship eventually fled and then so did she. In hours we found the Suma and the Soplasia in an ever growing battle. Our own ships were close and we took out stragglers if we could but mainly assisted the Suma. Their ships were massive but I think ultimately doomed. I wanted the battle to continue for a long time though and ultimately destroy both fleets.

The Soplasia numbers grew till a ship was recognised as one like the one Ronny had seen use something like the dark crystal. It had come from one of the other systems with six escorts. And the battle eighteen lights away.

In a dangerous bid to learn more we rushed in and used our weapons on them. The six escorts took most of our fire and most were very heavily damaged. We then fled as if out of ammunition.

The fairly unscathed ship fired at us but we were constantly moving and very difficult to hit. It did take the bait though and we threw small salvos of missiles at it to keep them angry and think they had us on the run.

The ship stayed with us for almost five hours before breaking off. I was behind it in Borin but still in communication with those in the lead because of all the probes that had been dropped both recently and years ago.

The ship massed thirty times our size and I managed to hit it while I was hiding in the corona of a red star. Tom's new missiles hit it again and again but I wanted to keep enough of the ship so we could examine it.

Our own dark crystal came into play and we found we could shoot and hit while they couldn't. This ship was different but some things had to be similar and we avoided hitting any reactors.

A hundred pickets fanned out while the fight continued. Our own commando force went in when we were no longer shot at. We had not found any living Soplasia when we boarded and the main computer was severely damaged.

Tractors went out and pulled the ship to a halt then in the direction it had been going. Our ships at the battle still worked to assist the Suma but reported they were down to just two ships. There was more than one ship that had a dark crystal. When the Suma were finally defeated our own ships fled to lead the Soplasia on another wild chase.

We had lost three ships in this action. Two ships had survivors and were picked up but all three were converted to energetic particles. In each case none of our three main families lost members though two of Tom's children were hurt. Those killed had been recruits but the pain was not lessened. In all, eight people died.

The Seffra would call this a great victory but it still hurt. Being the captain meant that I had to make many of the calls and the responsibility rested on my shoulders. None of the others was displeased at the cost to us. The Seffra were that way and it had to be in the Sefman makeup too. That didn't mean I could just forgive myself that easily but the survivors did manage to cheer me up instead of the other way around.

The derelict was dragged till it was light years from any star. It was boarded now by probes and people to see what they could find. Bodies were recovered and all but one was a male.

It was weeks later that we pulled all the black crystal devices from the ship and found that it was not a black crystal at all. It was a novel way of using existing crystals in a cascading form. There were many such spare parts for the sixteen weapons. The power was so great that many crystals were burnt out under overload conditions and new crystals had to be put in place before another shot could be fired.

The size of the crystals though were all large and beyond what we could make. Tests were made on them and they were very crude and unsuitable for computers. The Soplasia still had secrets and this meant that we had to find out how these were made. Even with their poorly constructed nature they were beyond what we could do.

The ship was cut up after we found all we could. Those portions that we wanted to keep were shipped home while the hulk was dragged to a star for disposal. Instead of plunging in it went into a rapidly decaying orbit and melted and broke up far before it could cause a solar flare.

Humans never heard of our actions. Only a few of us tended the equipment on earth for it was heavily automated. Anything that would go wrong was assumed to be sabotage and the crews would go in wearily but as yet nothing could be damaged. That didn't mean attempts were not made for they were.

Nuclear plants could now run with little regard to the environment for they could dump all their wastes in our hoppers. Oil use had been cut back dramatically. We had donated better electric motor designs and larger accumulators and now an ocean vessel, trains, aircraft and trucks could work efficiently with electric power alone.

The accumulators had been deliberately been shorted but this had been foreseen. They had not exploded. I had allowed them to melt down and be destroyed though.

Recruiting accelerated for more than one reason. I wanted a sizable human population far from Earth. Over twenty two thousand of our population was now at the Sefmen stage. They were more aggressive than the Seffra but not anywhere near what a human would be. Families had been formed and adoptions made from those children in need on Earth. The United States and Canada tried to make deals for those that we could cure and educate.

We simply showed them how we got China, India and Africa to just help themselves and us at the same time. They would have much less representation now. Suddenly families with sick children in those areas would take up residence in other countries and their children could possibly get taken care of by us.

The prospects of getting our ship built sooner shot up as well. Not everybody was suited to research but still liked to tackle more of the engineering problems.

The way we had been developing things made me want to start over with our ship but many of the improvements would have to wait till the next one made. The new engines and power sources would put a sizable strain on the keel of the ship. We had not used the inertial compensator yet but it was already obsolete.

The Soplasia were monitored very well. A large portion of their combined fleet had been destroyed. The ships that used the special crystals were now made exclusively. I guess the fun and games time had ended and they were preparing for a better defence next time or take the fight to the Suma for their ships were not totally destroyed.

We monitored the weapons manufacturing as good as we could but couldn't find a hint of where the crystals came from. Our research on the Soplasia female body and those of the males found a great many differences. Programs were now formulated so a AI could try to find out what we couldn't. This of course required live subjects.

We worked on the Soplasia weapon with our own smaller crystals and found it would work but we had to use a great many more small crystals. With some tests we discovered that it was the actual size of the crystals that made the device so efficient of power.

A half a year after the battle, the Soplasia sent forces in all directions looking for aggressors. The Suma captives or computers must have revealed that we had lured them into the battle. This was seen as a certainty even when the battle was first formulated. Soplasia shipping travelling away from us was attacked now. We destroyed what we could but usually fled. The Soplasia took the bait but some units still came our way.

The Seffra would have done this too but only if they were hard pressed. We saw the necessity right away and still hoped we were not too late. The Soplasia were much too numerous. If they got our technology they would really be a force to contend with. Our own ships were rigged so we would deny their use to the enemy but eventually some would fall into their hands.

This was even more probable when we had to keep the Soplasia penned into their own area. Though we fought harder on the far side of the empire we had to keep our own area safe too. Usually we would attack a convoy and flee. They had many more ships but apart from their energy weapon, we were better armed and much faster.