[Saturday, August 14]

The next morning, I’m in my office drinking some coffee and chatting with Erica on a video call when Akari taps on the door, pokes her head in, and says, “They’re here.”

I wave to the loveseat, and she leaves, returning momentarily with Cal, Walter, and Jason in tow. They take a seat beside each other, and she serves each of them a cup of coffee while I finish up with Erica. Once I have, I move to the chair across from them, sit down and cross my legs.

“Good morning, gentlemen. Well, you asked to see me. You have my undivided attention for an hour until my next appointment.”

“Good morning, Your Majesty,” Jason says. “After the fleet returned from Tau Ceti, Walter brought some shortcomings about the Crown Army to my attention. Basically, it’s our lack of tanks. We forewent them because we believed they were outdated and merely made for large targets. On the moon of Juliet 1, Walter realized the mistake we made when we were confronted by enemy tanks. They were taken out, but it cost us a lot of good men and women to do it. If we’d had tanks with our forces, I don’t believe we’d have had as many casualties.”

I nod. “Believe it or not, I’ve already come up with a solution to the problem. They won’t be tanks in the classic sense, but they will be equivalent in the sense that they’ll be able to take on and defeat tanks without the heavy losses to do so. In fact, I’ve planned upgrades to the fleet, new ship classes, armor for the fleet, armor for the Army, and weapons to go along with them.” I pause for a moment. “Freya?”

“Yes, Sora?”

“Would you project the designs and specifications of what we developed on the coffee table, please?”

“Certainly, Sora.”

A moment later, the hologram appears over the table with a list of ships, diagrams of each, and various other equipment. The three of them spend several long minutes looking through the designs and specifications.

Jason whistles. “Jesus Christ, Sora. These ship designs are a sailor’s dream. Add the armor and weapons? One phrase comes to mind when I see this. ‘They’re fucked.’ You designed all of this?”

I shrug. “I’m not a genius for nothing, Jason, but Freya helped too. Gentlemen, you’re welcome to add your input if you see something Freya or I missed, or anything you think might add to their survivability. We put in a lot of effort to balance offensive and defensive capabilities against construction or upgrade times, power costs, and the like.”

Jason looks at Walter and Cal for a moment. They shake their heads, and he turns back to me. “None of us have any suggestions. In my opinion, this isn’t just a new generation of ships, armor, and weapons. It looks like you’ve managed to skip over several evolutions. Replacing the titanium composite armor with a duraminium composite armor? I’ve seen the reports on it, and it far exceeds what the titanium composite was able to protect against for the same thickness, and it’s far lighter. If these weapons have anywhere near the power they seem to be designed for, then these aliens are in for a rude awakening. The Goliath? I don’t have the words to describe it.” He shakes his head and grins. “Basically, an extremely large, mobile base. It’s far more than I originally proposed.”

I uncross my legs, set down my cup, and lean forward to look at them intently. “Gentlemen, they have us beat hands down in numbers. Both in manpower and numbers of ships, fighters, whatever you want to name… We can’t hope to match them that way, and we can’t absorb the losses that they can.” I lean back and spread my arms for a moment to indicate everything around us. “2.1 billion souls. That’s it. That’s every man, woman, and child in the Sol system. I have no intention of fighting these… people on an even footing. I intend for us to use the one advantage we do seem to have, technology, to tip the balance of power in our favor.

“We can not afford to lose many of our citizens in this war, or it’ll end up being a pyrrhic victory. We’ve barely begun to climb out of the population hole we found ourselves in. Gentlemen, we need you to win this war for us. I’ll push our scientists and engineers to give you the tools to do it, but it’s up to you to use them properly. We’ll still lose ships and soldiers. It’s a war, and that can’t be avoided. I’d simply like to keep the losses to an absolute minimum. I’m not telling you to never take risks, I’m just saying that I’d prefer it if you can avoid taking unnecessary risks. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying here.”

All three of them nod, and Jason replies, “Of course, Your Majesty.”

“If that’s all.” They stand up, salute, and move to leave. “Cal, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay for a few minutes.” He sits back down as Jason and Walter leave, closing the door softly behind them.

He looks at me quizzically, and I smile at him. “I’m not going to jump all over you, I promise… I need you to do something for me, and I’m reluctant to order you to do it.” He merely waits for me to continue. “Cal, listen, what we’re going to discuss is a secret of the highest level. You can’t tell anyone, not even your wife.”

He nods, looking intrigued. “Of course, Sora.”

“Good. We’re building a colony ship on the other side of the sun. I had you send the HMS Magellan to Beta Hydri because the astronomers have strong evidence for a planet in the habitable zone there. If that turns out to be the case, I’m going to send 300,000 colonists to it in secret. That way, if something catastrophic happens, humanity will still have a chance to survive. I plan to send a large fleet along with them, and I want you in command of it. Cal, I need you to do this because I can’t think of a better person for the job of protecting the colonists.”

“I… umm, what about my wife and family?”

I expected him to ask about this. I smile, “Assuming they want to go with you, then, of course, they’re going, too,” I tell him. Reaching across the coffee table, I gently place my hand on his arm. “This is going to be rough, there’s no denying that, but it has to be done, and I need you to do it.”

“Sora, I’m not a governor. I’m a sailor.”

“I’m not asking you to be. Anne and George will be the governors, you merely have to keep them safe.”

He laughs for a few moments, and grins as he says, “Merely? Sora, my dear, you certainly have a way with words. Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“I’ll take command for you, but only if my wife and family agree to go with me, so that means me telling them.”

Smiling brilliantly, in a sweet tone, I tell him, “I thought you’d say that. Would you mind bringing the people in the outer office in to join the discussion?”

He looks confused, but nods and stands up to go to the door. After he opens it, he whirls around with an astounded expression, quickly replaces it with a neutral expression, and murmurs, “You knew?”

I shrug, then raise my arms in a helpless gesture as I smile. “I’m not a genius and Queen for nothing. I know my people.”

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

In no time at all, relatively speaking that is, the new ship, armor, and weapons factories are built with the help of nanites. Immediately, they begin churning out our new generation of military tech at a rate that is unheard of as humanity readies itself for a do or die war.

The ranks of the Crown military have already swollen from 5.8 million to over 100 million, most of whom are waiting for their turn to begin training.

[Friday, September 3]

HMS Magellan arrives above the plane of the ecliptic in Beta Hydri at 0418 hrs UDT. Immediately, she reports her safe arrival to Earth Central and begins her survey of the system.

Captain Jessica Alden knows exactly how important this mission is since she was briefed by none other than Her Majesty, Queen Sora.

52 interminable hours later, Lcdr. Caroline Ryan, Magellan’s survey officer, calls the bridge. “Captain?”

“What’s up, Carol?”

“May I see you in private?”

“In my ready room. Aki, you have the conn.”

Getting up, she heads to her ready room. A minute later, a slightly out of breath and tired-looking woman knocks and enters after Jess calls out, “Enter.”

Jess gestures to the seat in front of her desk. Taking the offered seat, she sighs dramatically and says, “Captain, we’ve found two planets in the habitable zone. and I didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up by announcing it over the comm. We need to move,” she looks at her datapad, “to 92 by 124 by -14, so that we can get better readings. We’re too far out to be sure from here.”

Jess taps her wrist comm. “Kaira, take us to 92 by 124 by -14.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Returning her attention to Carol, she asks, “How likely?”

“Fortuna estimates 71% on target one and 88% on target two. The gas giant near the outer edge of the habitable zone seems to have several very large moons that might be marginally habitable as well. FYI, the habitable zone is rather large thanks to Beta Hydri being slightly larger and hotter than Sol since it’s a G2IV star. So, it’s between 1.6 to 2.1 AU from the star. Target 1 is 1.81 AU out and the other is at 1.77 AU and leads target 1 by 720 million kilometers or so. Both planets are larger than Earth as well, and spectrography shows abundant O2/N atmospheres. We may very well have hit the super jackpot, Captain.”

[Sunday, September 12]

[Captain’s Log]

It’s taken more than a week to survey the inner system, but the results are far more than we ever hoped for; two habitable planets, both of which have large moons, and three moons around the gas giant. All of them have O2/N atmospheres. Target 1, which we refer to as Rocky, and target 2, which is referred to as Bullwinkle are more than livable for humans. Lots of plants, but nothing more than insects and bacteria for lifeforms. Rocky is in the middle of spring with a daytime temperature of 18.4℃ while Bullwinkle is in summer with a daytime temperature of 27.1℃.

Rocky has an atmospheric makeup of 74.2% nitrogen, 22.6% oxygen, and 3.2% various other gases. It has a circumference of 50,600 kilometers, 62% water, 38% land, and a comfortable 1.14 g.

Bullwinkle has an atmospheric makeup of 75.9% nitrogen, 20.3% oxygen, and 3.8% various other gases. It has a circumference of 49,800 kilometers, 67% water, 33% land, and slightly higher gravity at 1.22 g.

The three moons have similar atmospheric makeups, although the aeroformers will have to deploy solar reflectors to warm them up, just as they did with Mars.

Carol is right, we did hit the super jackpot here. I’ve sent a heavily encrypted report back to Admiral Jessup at Earth Central while we continue to map out and explore the system.

There’s a planet at 1.46 AU that looks so much like Mercury that it’s eerie, which we’re referring to as Boris. The nanite probes we sent down to it show massive metal deposits, some of which we can’t classify. I imagine that metallurgists are going to have a collective conniption fit over them.

The asteroid belt is far larger and denser than the Sol system’s, along with having an uncountable number of comets and icy bodies

The universe sure is an amazing place.

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Teresa wakes me up before dawn, and I glance at the clock. “Good lord, Teresa. I’ve only been asleep for two hours. I hope it’s important,” I whisper.

“It is. Calvin Jessup is here, and he said to tell you that the HMS Magellan reported back a half-hour ago.”

I’m instantly awake because if Cal is here, that means that they found a habitable planet!