Chapter 67

Dear Willow and family,

Greetings from the haunted system. Yeah I say haunted because so far we have found no evidence of the makers of the system defense system nor have we found the platforms that must be out here in the outer solar system. We of course will continue to place observation equipment in a vain attempt to spot them. There will be all sorts of super sensitive 'listening' equipment out here to see if we can hear the emissions of the defense platforms. I must say that so far it seems that however they are made, they are very hard to spot.

I'm sure we'll spend lots of time pursuing the solution to this mystery. So telling you about the minutia that is involved in it will probably get boring. I see that you've reached the conclusion that if the Sa'arm cannot be bottled up in a place where they can't tunnel and where they're essentially starved to death that you're not sure that we can defeat them with the tactics that you've used. That I think is very bad. As I understand it in more stable places where they can tunnel they will simply tunnel under a hard point and come up under it. I suspect that would include your tank, no matter how fast it can move.

I've seen a lot of relationship essentially crash and burn in the diaspora. Sometimes if a man takes his wife as one of his concubines, she simply cannot accept that she is not the only female in his life. I think (if I had to guess) that the ones who had realized that their spouse had wandering eyes and accepted that usually are quicker to come to terms with adding another woman or more than one woman to the relationship. I've tried to figure out whether or not the AI's that the Darjee have lent us have done something to encourage bisexuality in women or if it is something that had been latent since in our society polygamy has been discouraged for a long time. Yet historically the 'harem' has been used in almost every human society.

Very few however allowed more than the 'owner' of the harem to be a whole male in contact with the females. Yet I cannot imagine how a man could consistently satisfy more than a couple of women, and they would have to (at least I think they would... ) be willing to help each other get pleasure from the sex or pretty soon they'd simply be being forced to have sex by a man who could force them to it by his strength. I suppose some men would get off on that ... certainly there are any number of sponsors here who do seem to get excited about the idea of forcing their concubines to do things that they don't want to do.

Let me tell you that if you managed to keep Jennifer from taking a swim in the open ocean that you have a most special and unusual family. Most of the time, I know from experience, you aren't exactly sure what you're doing right. If that is the case with you then I suggest that you do what Marissa and I have had to do, which is to sit down together after all the concubines in the house (or our cospouses) and figure out what we've done correctly so that we can continue to do the things that make our house one where love and laughter live.

You said you don't need muzzle velocity per se in your particular application of the tank, yet you do need stand off ability that is greater than my current drone design? I've been experimenting with your main gun and a design program that someone gave me. What I've come up with is to essentially turn your tank into a MLRS carrier. You won't have a bank or rockets so much as that they'll be stacked vertically (or rather inline with the launch tube) in a magazine similar to what you might imagine a large (very large) rifle might have. The launch tube is quite a bit shorter and I think it could be reduced to a 'rail' of sorts, just a place for the rocket to rest for a few seconds before it is lit off. Anyway I'm sending you the design for this. The missiles will fly NOTE (nap of the Earth) so they should be hard to knock down as well as hard for the Sa'arm to use effective counter battery artillery on. The reason for that is that unless something sees you launch them they may be more than a few degrees off from your launch point by the time they hit the targets you designate for them. Also I've included software for the missiles that will allow someone other than yourself to 'paint' the target, so that you don't necessarily have to see the target to hit it. If you don't think that you can use this design be sure to have your CO forward it to the ARTY for your command. I'm fairly sure that the various rounds I've included will help make life very uncomfortable for the Sa'arm on Wadi. What they'll do is something I'm very interested in learning.