ALTERNATE TALES OF THE STAR FORCE
STAR BLAZERS—THE ENTROPY WARS
By: Frederick P. Kopetz
With the Cooperation and Assistance of Derek A.C. Wakefield
CHAPTER THREE: POLITICS
I. A FLEET BRIEFING…
Planet Earth
The Tokyo Megalopolis
Earth Defense Headquarters
Fleet Briefing Room 101
Thursday: May 26, 2231
1442 Hours: Local Time
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Admiral Derek Wildstar stood at
attention behind a podium in Earth Defense Headquarters.
In the
room were three hundred assorted lower-ranking Admirals, Commodores, Captains,
Commanders, and even Lieutenant Commanders, commanding a cross-section of what
were now nearly the 1300 active vessels of the expanded Earth Defense Fleet.
They all sat down below Derek in a vast assembly of officers. Off to one table
sat some officers from the worlds of the Galactic Alliance and the Pellian
Commonwealth, a growing body of worlds, of which Earth was now an associate
member, as well as officers from some of Earth’s own colony worlds, which had
recently become known as the Solar Federation.
Derek
looked down at the assembly of Terrans, Gamilons, Iscandarians, Pellians,
Rahlkens, Rikashans, Leptil, and Beemirans and even a very few Cometines from
Houses Gatlantis and Dezarium who were present as observers.
Derek
looked at his notes, and he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President and
Prime Minister extend to all of you their greetings, and I am empowered to say that
I also extend to all of you the greetings of Leader Desslok of Gamilon, Queen
Starsha of Iscandar, Ruling Queen Astrena of the Pellian Commonwealth, as well
as the blessing of Lord Cha’rif of the Rikashan Federation.”
Derek
paused as, suddenly, as if they were all one, all of the assorted fur-covered
Rahlkens stood to their feet. Anchyar, a tall, old grizzled male with white fur
nodded to Derek, and Derek said. “The Rahlken Matriarch, Mother Miarahl, sends
us her blessing and her greetings. Derek then gathered himself as he stood very stiffly
and said, “Almost last of all, to this assembly, Trelaina of Telezart sends her
love and greetings…”
What the hell? Admiral Mark Venture thought as he
looked aghast at his wife, Holly Venture as the Council was filled with a
hubbub and the Cometines looked shocked. “Derek, are you hearing from the dead
again?” Mark muttered.
“Hearing
from the dead?” said Holly.
“Trelaina’s
passed on…” said Mark with his head bowed. “How could Derek have heard from her?”
“I don’t
believe she is in the regular habit of giving pronouncements to Councils, is
she?” Holly said.
“No, I
don’t think so,” said Admiral Venture.
Finally,
Derek said. “Last of all, but not least, you heard me refer for the first time
to Queen Astrena of Pellias as the ‘Ruling Queen’. The reason why she says so
is that, at this time, for the first time in decades, she recognizes the
existence and authority of the Pellians’ spiritual personage, a woman known as
the “High Queen of Pellias.’ Pellias has not had a High Queen for many
decades,” Derek said. “I am empowered to say that today,
the High Queen lives, and sends this Council her greetings…and her blessings
from her place of exile.”
The
Rahlkens all bowed their heads. Then, they sat.
The first
EDF Commander to speak up was an old Admiral known as Miklos Flexner, the 22nd
Fleet Commander from Hungary. Derek saw him raising his hand, and he said,
“Admiral Flexner?”
“Young
man,” said the old Admiral. “You’ll pardon me for addressing you as such, I
hope….but….this is the first time we’ve had Aliens sitting here in front of us.
Aliens! In Room 101! In front of the
Big Board, Damnit!” he said as he gestured at the holographic board behind
Derek. “And why did you pull in about a quarter of the Fleet?” he asked. “And
why are we acknowledgin’ alien personages…including some kinda High Queen we
never heard of until today?”
Some of
the Rahlkens began to hiss, but Derek calmed them down with a rap of his gavel.
Derek looked at the group and said,
“All of these explanations are coming, Admiral.” Derek then recognized a
younger Commodore sitting to Admiral Flexner’s right, with Captain Hiro Minagi,
the skipper of the space battleship Musashi,
sitting between him and Flexner. Derek said, “Commodore Marrable of Eighth
Fleet. How’s life on the Shangri-La,
Commodore?”
“Going
pretty good,” said Commodore Jere Marrable, still known to his friends as
‘Brew’. “Admiral, I’d like to echo, if you don’t mind, old Admiral Flexner’s
sentiment….who is this High Queen? Is
she on Earth? Or is she hiding in some Palace on New Pellias?”
“I can
neither confirm nor deny that,” Derek said, as a familiar voice sounded in his
mind and whispered, Good job, Mophead. Sealed with a kiss. “As
for who she is, when the day comes when
she is ready to pop out from the cupboard and say ‘hi’, I think you’ll be
pleasantly surprised….”
Derek
smiled to himself, thinking, If I told
the lot of you the New High Queen of Pellias, who just received her Ring by
Messenger from Astrena last night with instructions demanding that she put it
on at last with a note saying, “Thy Hour Draws Near at Last”, is sitting twelve
city blocks away from here in her faculty office at the Federal School of
Medicine consulting with patients and students and that I am to eat lunch with
her today, none of you would believe it! None of you would believe that some of
the Regalia of the Pellian High Queen now lies in
secret in a closet in our bedroom.
Derek
said, “Enough, for now, about the High Queen and Trelaina. Some of you may have
heard that the Argo encountered
something odd before we came home. We encountered a Beemiran flying a very old
ship. He was dying. He told us that a…”Darkness” was
rising again…before he died.”
“It can’t
be Ekogaru, sir,” said Admiral Flexner. “Now, granted, Earth Defense never gave
us all the details, and to this day much of the business that happened around
the time that New Pellias was founded in 2209 is still classified and it is said a lot of files on this have been
closed for the next hundred years. Those tabloid-paper-rumors that your spouse
had received some special powers were pretty much disproved after that
religious zealot tried to kill her back in 2209, right before General Stone of
Intelligence lost his post as Chief of Staff with that Aptitude Board they ran on
her that got quashed after she collapsed and went into a coma and almost died,
right?”
“That’s
right, Admiral,” said Derek, tensely. “President Mendelssohn closed those files
under executive order when I was Chief of Staff for about a year. To this day, they
have never been re-opened. There is a security matter about this that is so
crucial that it is only for the eyes of the President, Prime Minister,
Commanding General or Admiral of the Earth Defense Forces, Commander of the EDF
Combined Fleet, or the Federal Surgeon General of Earth, or the other few
persons involved, who must remain secret to this day. This matter is not even
discussed in the Earth Defense Council. I cannot comment on this matter, and
the seal can only be lifted under the Executive Order of another Earth
President, and it will take the clearance of three other Planetary Governments
to do that.” Derek said. “Thus, the matter, ladies and gentlemen, is closed and
sealed!”
“Do you
ever foresee a new President opening those files, at least to the High
Command?” said Flexner.
“No,” said
Derek. Many of those there had never seen him look this angry before. Something
was really bothering Wildstar about this line of questioning.
“Well, can
you tell us if the matter of Ekogaru was ever formally ended, sir?” said
Admiral Kyle Egan of the Fifteenth Fleet. “We heard rumors that he died in 2209
after some psychic battle, or series of battles. He certainly has not been
heard from again.”
“No. But
we have heard odd rumors. That is why I have some of our allies here as
Observers,” said Derek. “And that is why I called all of you commanders back
home for debriefing. Many of you are our best Fleet Commanders. We need to form
a strategy in case we are attacked again.”
“By whom,
sir?” said Flexner. He was pressing the issue because he had been Derek’s
predecessor as Commander of the Combined Fleet up to two years ago, when
Wildstar had been promoted from Vice-Admiral (three-star) to Full Admiral
(four-star) and given command of the Defense Fleet, the youngest man, at the
time, to ever become Fleet Commander. “Sir, let’s review what happened in
recent history. In 2215, the Bolar Federation’s incursions ended at the huge
victory at the Arcturus Gap, after which the Bolars signed the Arcturus Accord
with us. That was around the time that the Sun finally went back to normal, and
those weird storms, weather, and all-year round summer finally disappeared, and all those beaches and parks finally
restricted things again, and that weird nude sunbathing reverted back again to
the Planetary Recreation Areas and private property again under President Frank
Seymour…that man was not someone who
messed around!”
He was also a bigot, Derek thought, but that’s beside the point.
“Then,
after that, we had that last war with Spectra in 2222, the thing that ended
those creepy little incursions…and the first time we ever flexed our muscles as
a real space power, when we destroyed Spectra’s Moon and put that whole
business to an end and made them surrender and occupied the damned place! You
were there, sir. I’m sure that raises a lot of pride in your heart.”
It does not, especially not when my
original orders were to just destroy Spectra and kill six billion people, Derek thought. Admiral Wildstar
simply said, “I did what I could there to end that war and save lives. My
feelings on that war…well, they’re still classified. What is your point,
Admiral?”
Admiral
Flexner said, “Sir, to be candid…I think we need to establish that Base on
Planet Garian, by any means possible.”
Admiral Mark
Venture then asked, “Admiral Wildstar, sir, I have not heard of this planet.
Where is it?”
Derek made
a graphic appear. “The Garian System is a star system about five thousand
lightyears away from Earth. We discovered it on a mission the Argo went out on two years ago. I
returned there with some Earth diplomats on a mission on the Argo over a year ago, before the Aquarius, our current flagship, was
finished. That was during the period of time that I had reassigned the Argo to serve as the Combined Fleet
flagship. We began negotiations with the people of Garian last year to place an
Earth Base on the planet. Those negotiations are still ongoing, along with
negotiations for a trade treaty. Some feel that we should take action to
establish a base there by force. I do not feel this action is warranted, and
this course of action will not be brought up as long as I continue as
Commanding Officer of the Combined Fleet!” Derek snapped. “Are we clear?”
Nods and
murmurs of assent went through the assembly hall as Admiral Flexner thought, You damned young idiot. Many of us feel that we
need to force the Garians to allow us to establish that Base there. Since
negotiations are not working…we need to establish that base by force! Which
means…we have to start a Terran invasion of Planet Garian and take it as a
colony by force. We have the power to do that. We can and should do that. If we
could incite a war with them…make it look as if they attacked first with their
primitive sub-light vessels…we can start to build an Empire that will someday
be a worthy rival to Gamilon! Damn young punk! We can easily crush and enslave
those bastards! Then we can keep an occupation force there indefinitely, unlike
the force we are withdrawing from Spectra bit by bit…
Another Admiral
said, “The Gariander Crisis aside, sir, why have you called in our forces?”
“Yessir,”
said Admiral Deke Wakefield, the commander of the California and the Sixth Fleet. “Why have we been pulled in without
warning?”
Derek
snapped his fingers. IQ-9 nodded and another graphic came up. “I’m sure you
people recognize these.”
A hubbub
filled the hall as three massive Technomugar Goraizu Fortresses appeared on the
screen. “We fought ships like those twenty-nine years ago,” Derek said. “They
were spotted by us, in deep space, near Beemira. They pulled back when we sent
in the Black Tigers, but we think they had orders to pull back. Also, that
warning about a gathering darkness from a dying Beemiran seems to make it
clear; we may be facing another invasion. An invasion by a resuscitated
Technomugar Empire…possibly led by a Lord Ekogaru, who may be out there,
somewhere in the depths of space….I am taking this case to the Defense Council
and asking for permission to send the Argo
out again to gather more intelligence…while we prepare, gentlemen for a
possible invasion. We will be meeting again in six days. Until that time, the
Home Fleet units; that is, the first five Defense Fleets; will be on high alert
in the solar system under Defense Plan Omega One. The Sixth through the Eighth
Fleets will reinforce them in the Pluto Area,” said Derek as he made a complex
map appear on the screen. Twentieth through Twenty-Second Fleets will be moved
to the Centaurus Region temporarily to take up patrols there, and Twenty-Sixth
Fleet is reassigned to aid Twenty-Seventh Fleet in being available to escort
vessels to Beemira, New Pellias, Gamilon, and Iscandar. Finally, Twenty-Eighth
Fleet is reassigned to aid Twenty-Ninth Fleet in the Occupation Zone around
Spectra in the Crab Nebula. All forces are to be on the alert for anything like
known Technomugar, R’Khell, or other hostile activity. Are we clear?”
There was
some grumbling as the commanders realized that thirteen of the thirty Earth
Defense Fleets had just been reassigned to new locations by Admiral Wildstar.
But, Derek tapped his gavel and said, “Gentlemen and ladies, this session is
now adjourned. You have your orders; go out and fulfill them.”
When the
meeting ended, Brew and Deke Wakefield came up to Derek, saluted, and assured
him that he would have their support.
“That’s
great,” replied Derek. “I could use your support.”
They
hugged him, and then Derek left.
He had to
go to lunch.
He was
hoping lunch would be far more pleasant.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
II. LATE LUNCH
Planet Earth
The Tokyo Megalopolis
Federal Central School of Medicine
Thursday: May 26, 2231
1523 Hours: Local Time
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Admiral
Derek Wildstar waited at the main front entrance of the Federal Central School
of Medicine, watching the doctors, nurses, walking wounded patients, and others
coming in and out of the stairs in front of the main building of Earth’s most
prestigious Medical School, which was at one end of a piazza near Central
Hospital.
Finally,
Derek smiled as a distinguished alum of the Class of 2212 came running down the
stairs at a quick pace, looking quite a few years younger than her fifty-three
years….the only sign of her age being the black horn-rimmed glasses she wore
due to age and slightly weakened eyesight.
Still,
Derek thought that his wife of nearly thirty years, Captain Nova Wildstar MD,
the hidden Pellian High Queen, looked ravishing and cute as she ran down the
stairs playing with her hair while carrying her lab coat.
Nova wore a black knee-length
peasant-style dress trimmed in white lace, with a light cream-colored sweater.
She carried a white purse, and on her feet were natural brown colored open-toed
sandals she had actually made herself by hand.
She
ran up to Derek, looking down at the stairs and piazza with her eyes
half-closed as she said, “Derek, by the Heavens above, I am so glad to see you
this afternoon!”
“How
was your 10 AM class, Doctor?” Derek said. Nova had volunteered to fill in for
the last few sessions of a faculty friend’s class, since her friend had been
summoned off on a trip to the Afro States in Africa, to treat one of the local
tribes who had returned to its old indigenous lifestyle some years after the
Gamilon War. Derek smiled as he remembered that Nova herself had made a few
such trips to the Afro States over the years to help treat the locals. On one
such trip, she had taken Alex, Ariel, and Anya off with her. The four of them
had come back to Tokyo in mid-summer from their trip to the savannah laughing
about the animals they had seen, telling stories about the tribe they had lived
with, and they had all come back with the darkest tans Derek had ever seen on
them.
Nova
looked up at Derek and said, “Class was fine, Derek. Mitsuo will be back from Uganda
on Tuesday, so she’ll be taking her students back for the last few classes. I
also saw someone with a terminal brain cancer today. Very sad. He has a wife
and three kids.”
“Is
he going to be terminal, anymore?” Derek whispered as he took Nova’s hand.
Nova
kissed him and said, “No, what do you think? Not after I got done with him. A
little Pellian-inspired psi-push on that tumor, nice and neat….and he’s going
to begin going into a nice, quiet remission. He consented to it under ‘experimental
therapy’, classified. All nice, neat and quiet like High Tea at 4, Derek. I am
being a good girl about it, because you know it exhausts me, anyhow when I use
it. I needed a half-hour nap in my office after I got finished. I’m not running
down the street tearing off all my clothes and gleaming like Aliscea did that
one time she showed up to raid the city.”
“Yeah…that
was a bit showy,” Derek remembered. “We took her down in the park later on, you
remember. I shot at her and used a little mental noodge to make her trip after
she had just nearly incinerated a little kid for no reason, and you psi-blasted
her in that knot of trees we always used to hide in when you had the kids and you
loved to nurse in your birthday suit.”
“At
which time she later escaped before we could get a psi-damper on her. Oh! I am
on the promotion list to make Commodore! Finally!” Nova said with a laugh.
“Congratulations,
Captain,” Derek said. “When did they say you’d be getting it?”
“Some
time in the early part of next month,” Nova said. “Oh. Did you hear from Anya?
I called her this morning, and she hasn’t returned my call yet. I’m getting
worried.”
“You
know her,” Derek sighed. “She doesn’t return half your calls. She’s so looking
forward to her summer cruise on the Argo
in a few weeks, that she barely has time for me.”
“Who’s
getting her for that training cruise?” Nova said.
“The
committee met yesterday. Jonathan’s got her again,” Derek said as they walked
down the street to an air-tube station. They boarded a train, and took the
train down four stops to another part of Midtown, where they got out and went
into a small Texas-style roadhouse where 23rd-century style country
music was playing over the speakers.
The
maître’d guided the Wildstars to their usual booth, where they ordered some
cold beers and some rather thick burgers with fries, both of them aware they’d
have to work the fat off later on in a good workout, probably a spar with boken on the beach near their home.
Derek
began to talk to Nova about how the briefing session went, including the
intransigence of Admiral Flexner. “I swear,” he said as he wiped his mouth. “It
felt more like a press conference than a usual briefing. He was shooting so
many questions at me about what we discussed the other day.”
“I
know you had to do it,” said Nova. Then, she looked at Derek and said, very
seriously. “The nightmares are back.”
“They’re
about…?” Derek said.
Nova
just nodded as she said, “Yes, He who should not be named.”
Then, Nova switched
to quiet French (which Derek also spoke now) as she said, “Je
jure… vous dites que son nom et lui semble avoir une habitude de révéler…” (I swear…you say his name and he seems to have
a habit of showing up…)”
Derek
said (also in French) “Yeah…Ekogaru,” he said in a soft voice.
Nova
said (continuing to speak in French), “Didn’t I just say you shouldn’t say
that?”
“I
thought you were kidding.”
“Nothing
to kid about,” Nova said. “Goraizu Fortresses showing up again. Near our space.
He’s up to something,” Nova said quietly. “And he’s keeping himself hidden from
my probes, Sasha’s, Starsha’s, and Astrena’s. And Trelaina has not been heard
from at all lately.”
“Vous vous pensez le besoin de sonner
ouvertement la sonnette d'alarme ? Allez au premier ministre?” (You think
you need to openly ring the alarm bell? Go to the Prime Minister?)” Derek said, stroking Nova’s hand and sounding ‘romantic’
in French as people smiled at them, not knowing the deadly seriousness of what
they were discussing.
“I’d
love to. The thing is…with this crap in Parliament, we don’t know who the next
Prime Minister is going to be…we…”
Then,
Derek and Nova turned their heads up to the video screen above the bar, where
they saw a caption reading BREAKING NEWS in both Standard and Japanese.
“Nani moto da?” Derek barked in Japanese
(“What’s going on?”)
“I’m
getting a weird feeling about this,” Nova said as she shivered.
“Breaking
news from Parliament,” said the announcer on TNN (Terra News Network). “President
Harrison Kueller has emerged from a four-hour, closed-door Judiciary and Rules
Committee of Parliament, where, I am told, he was assisted by several members
of the Senate and Assembly in picking a new candidate for Prime Minister. We
now switch the camera over to the President.”
Then,
the camera zoomed in on President Kueller as he nervously played with his tie.
Derek
did not know what significance there was to this, but he noticed Colonel Gary
Maples in the background along with some other members of the military. His
eyebrows went up, and his opening remarks were barely heard as Nova hit Derek
on the shoulder and said, “Look, Derek! Isn’t that?”
“Foxy?” said Derek. “And…and…Katrina? What the heck were they up to
behind closed doors in the Judiciary Committee? I can’t even get in there…”
“And
the one time they had me in there, they had me in and out to testify in the
Junkers case in ten minutes flat,” Nova said, referring to a minor political
scandal that had tangentially involved Central Hospital. “I didn’t see the
inside of that room for very long. And it’s always guarded by Marines and SS
goons, Derek.”
“How
did Foxy and Katrina get in there, with that damn Maples?” said Derek.
“Hush,”
Nova said. “Listen!”
President
Kueller went on, saying, “Now that I have made it clear to you that this was a
consensus of Parliamentary leaders, I’d like to introduce to you the man I am
about to give the order to so that he can form a new Government in the next few
days. I will soon step down as Acting Prime Minister, and I hereby present,
with no small measure of pride, our new consensus candidate, the man we will
depend upon to bind us together again at last and give us a new, clean,
efficient, chrome-plated new Government of new blood, fresh from political
corruption. Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you, the next Prime
Minister of Earth, the man stepping down from the Senate who has long and
faithfully served Western North America for nine years as its voice in
Parliament…I present to you….senior Senator Karl Forrester, the next Prime
Minister of the Earth Federation!”
As
the group applauded, Nova stood up, aghast, as Foxy
walked up with a smile, with her father on his arm. Nova watched her father
waving to the crowd, arm-in-arm with the President as her mother stood behind
him, looking as if she had just been hit in the head with a big rubber mallet.
Then,
Derek’s cell phone rang.
“Yes?”
he said as he took the call.
“Admiral,”
said one of his staffers, namely, Captain Homer Glitchman. “I just got word
from one of his staffers. The…the new Prime Minister wants to meet with you in
a closed-door session in Earth Defense Headquarters in a week. You and Nova…together.”
“Understood. We will be there,” said Derek. “I
wonder what that is about?”
“And
I wonder how my father suddenly got to be Prime Minister,” Nova said. “Derek, I
do not like the sound of this…”
_______________________________________________________________
TO BE CONTINUED….