ok, I got my popcorn ready.

You will give me the rights to this story for future publication ressistance is futile.

ie. "keep up the good work"

February 2226

I was furious!  I remember during that sweltering summer in New Tokyo that I had literally simmered with frustration and resentment: I had chafed like a schoolboy as the terms of my new command became clear.  At 43 I was now the youngest Lieutenant General in the TADF, I had the ear of our talismanic new President so why was I being sidelined?

As Military Attache to Dr Amponsah for the last 11 years and a Graduate of Honour from the gleaming TADF Staff College in Sandhurst, England, it was widely expected when my boss became President that I would leapfrog my older colleagues and be appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: it would certainly be one in the eye of men I considered well beneath me.  Instead I had been summonsed to the Department of Defence and been told that my new Command was-well-no command at all!  I was to head the Stellar Navy a force that consisted of....1 Flagship (TASS Mayflower), 1 Scout ship (TASS Gnat) and a creaking old space miner (renamed TASS Alchemist).  Was this some sort of joke I had demanded of some hapless DOD Official at the time? I was one of the most decorated Officers in the Forces and this was my reward? Noone wanted to head up the Navy that was not a Navy with the Politicians deadlocked on whether to release the necessary funds and research to create it.

I often reflect (or rather my partner does) that it is amazing that my hot temper has not got me into more trouble during my career-I tell him that it's my anger that has driven me to reach the place I am now and that keeps me going. He smiles his enigmatic Altarian smile that I find at once so soothing, so arousing and so enfuriating....I digress. An Assistant bearing the seal and Insignia of the Office of the President had interrupted my empassioned ranting to request that I visit the Oval office presently.  Angered I may have been but this was not a request-it was very much a command.

My anger had abated nothing when I had entered the palatial New Oval Office.  It was apparently modelled on the famous American White House Oval Office that had been destroyed in the last pan-global War (the 3rd of it's kind)that had raged at the end of the 21st Century-the difference was that this modern version was three times as large.

The President had risen to greet me-even at this time we had become close: I had been his Military advisor for his Presidential campaign and his Attache for many years before that when he was plying the corridors of the Senate as the Senior Representative for The EU. We were to become much closer during the testing times of the years ahead.

'General-you are well met' he had beamed-he had a way and a warmth that could disarm the most aggressive foe and I had quickly felt my rage receding.

'Sit sit Mike.' he had said 'You are angry at me? You wonder how your old friend could humiliate you like this no?'

I had nodded mutely.

The President, his dark skin glistening in the soft light had pressed a button on the coffee table: lights lowered and a 3d holograph appeared in front of us-a strange craft-no larger than our Scout was spinning at the centre of the table.

'What do you think that is my old friend?' Amponsah had enquired. I was baffled.

'It is a Drengin Scout Ship Mike'

My blood had run cold at the time.  We had all learnt of the Drengin menace and had almost been at the sharp end of their rapacious brutality at around the time I was born. Luckily for us our forbears had had the good sense to end all communications with this reptilian race when we had so foolishly shared the secrets of Hyper Drive-it had been the so-called start of the 'Great Race' but it was many years before we were ready to send out our 1st Colony Ship (The 1st of its kind: the TASS Columbus).  That had been almost 50 years ago-we had only just managed to build another one...

'You wanna know what their message was?' The President had asked with a half smile playing across his features-he hadn't looked too amused I remember noting.

'There was lots of talk of Apes and enslavement-you know the drill.'

'Charming'

'Anyway General I didnt get you here to muse with you on the vagaries of interstellar diplomacy.  I brought you here to let you know that I am about to sign a new Act into being.  We now, as you know, have the technology to start to build a Star Navy-it will be modest at first-fighter wings and the like but what we most need now is defence: there is something about the attitude and stance of these Drengin that I like not.  In the meantime I have authorised the commission of 3 new Medium Scouts-they can see further and travel faster and further than the one you have in your inventory-we have 6 new Starports, Mike-let's get them cranked up!'

Or something like that (it was many years ago and even my near photographic memory is being tested to the limit by the onset of old age)

He had been smiling broadly now  and I couldnt help but join in: this was why he had entrusted me the job of looking after the new Navy-it was to become, in very short order, the 1st Line of Defence for the whole of the Terran Alliance, Earth and all its Colonies....

And I was to be at its head....

sorted re the mistakes hehe

Your name is Ben too? Sweetness. I might try writing an AAR of my own when 2.0 comes out, but it all depends on whether or not i can get off my lazy rear and do it. Nice start by the way.

And you should definitely get writing Idunno-do it!

Hey thanks Eidolon-good to see you back writing by the way

Ahhh, the plot thickens.

March 2232

In the event it took us 28 months, so I had not quite been able to make good my promise to the President. It had been a period of unprecedented growth for our Colonies and for Earth during a time in which not one of our planets had been threatened by the Drengin menace.

One steamy Ugandan afternoon I found myself trying to explain some of the basics of all this to our son, Starla (my partner, being the Altarian Ambassador to Earth, was away in Tokyo so I had taken a couple of days out of my hectic schedule to both pay a visit to Starfleet HQ and our boisterous and inquisitive 11 year old son).

‘OK Daddy so why did the Torians also declare war against the Drengi when they were supposed to be our enemies too?’

‘Remember what I  said, son, about them being paid to attack us so we paid them not to’  He was such a bright good-looking boy-taking the best of both his father’s Altarian and human genes and merging them into an exceptional child of singular beauty.

‘Oh yes-sorry. Ok I  get why the Altarians kept attacking the Drengi, as they are our closest friends  and I suppose the Paulos wanted to protect themselves from the Drengi bullies and I can see why the Torians joined the war on our side but why would they also attack our neighbours the Drath? They weren’t bothering anyone were they?’

A very good question I remembered thinking. It had been in November of the previous year and despite the warnings of our IRM and the personal intervention of the President, the Drath, fearing annihilation at the hands of the most powerful race in the known galaxy, had abjectly surrendered all their colonies to the Arceans. It rankled that our influence was so easily dismissed by the over-mighty Torian Confederation but it meant little in the Grand Scheme of things since we had very good relations with the Arceans as well-it was just a shame that the Drath hadn’t seen fit to hand their worlds over to us. That was the President’s view anyway-it meant not a lot to me just as long as the Arceans were not a threat to the fleet or our colonies.

‘So was that like when the nasty Korath surrendered their 4 planets over to us then Dad?’

‘Yes son-the same situation exactly and even though many humans feel that we will not be able to assimilate the Korath into our culture we have made a good start over the last year.’

The boy was pondering this last-he had two Korath children whelps (their term not ours) in his class at The Naval School in Kampala and he had not taken to them at all-some of their habits were disgusting and they smelt!

‘Right so when the Altarian and Terran fleets forced a Drengin surrender Dad am I right in saying that you and the President were hoping that they would surrender to us?’

‘Well son that is a good question. My main hope is that by showing our enemies that we are strong we can deter further aggression against us-that is the hope of the President as well.’

And this much was true-the problem was that, when they surrendered, the Drengin did so to the one race that, if anything, had been even more aggressive than they had been-the hitherto peace-loving and gentle Torians. Yes the same Torians that had started aggressive wars against us, the Korath and then the Drath and had wiped out two minor races (the Snathi and the Dark Yor). This new found aggression on the part of the former slaves of the Drengi was occupying a great deal of analysis by the Civilo-Psychs at the IRM and in the Azure House and it was the subject of an order on my part to develop some complex plans to counter a Torian surprise strike. I had, at the same time, requested that Military Intel work closely with Makata’s Intelligence Operatives to find out what the Torians were working on and how their ships were armed. Maybe they had just been enslaved by the Drengin for so long that they had lost the essentials of what made them Torian-30,000 years of servitude to the Drengin has got to have some pernicious effects!

As if reading my thoughts Starla asked ‘so it’s the Torians that you are most worried about Dad and I can see why: they are the most powerful of the Great Races and they seem to be very aggressive. Would we be able to match up to them in a war?’

He looked worried, blue eyes searching mine earnestly-I had ruffled his blonde hair and touched that strange birth mark that all Altarians (and their half breeds it would seem) possessed.

‘Well we are building our Naval forces son-we will soon be the Pride of the Galaxy I  am sure-all of the races are on very good terms with us too so...’

And our Star Navy was good-very good indeed: we had lost only a handful of our prized Hornet Fighters in the War and now the Fleet numbered 35. They were grouped into 7 Flights each under a Flight Lieutenant-commanding the whole lot was Colonel Darcey De Franc-a superb ex Air Force flier and a good friend. Our plan was to replicate this structure as the Navy grew with the Flight Lieutenants moving into the Colonel positions. I also had a chief of Reconnaissance, Colonel Yevgeny Iliushov, who commanded the 7 medium Scouts who had done such a good job in the Drengin war-not only had they kept us closely informed of the enemy movements but they had also kept at their secondary role scouting anomalies and bringing in a considerable amount in cash for the sale of some of the old artefacts and junk floating around in space. Topping the whole lot off was Colonel Sheila Unsworth, a straight-talking Aussie, who was in charge of the Defenders and Thunder Home Defence Fighters based on each of our worlds. It was a small but dedicated group of Senior Officers who gave me great confidence for the future-whether we would be allowed to get to that future by the rapacious Torians was quite another matter of course...

‘Dad! Dad! Wake up!’ my son broke me out of my reverie ‘you owe me a game of Jet-Tennis remember?’

They were good days those-precious time with my son was soon to be an even more precious night spent with my husband, who unexpectedly arrived at the Starport later that day-he had wanted to surprise us he maintained innocently...they were good days to be enjoyed and savoured-days and months before the setting of the sun and the onslaught of the coming storm..........

lol, I picked up on it in the third post

Other than that, keep up the good work.

That is all.

Just remember that, genetic engineering would eliminate the need for gender!!!

I was wondering too mamabman, but I had assumed it was a typo.  Nice twist of the backstory.

Sentient species taste better...

There is a part of me that will always thrill and marvel at the sheer rush of piloting an Advance Interdiction Fighter like the Hornet. Designed by my very good friend Professor Andrew S Sharpe and the geniuses in the Shipbuilders Guild, it was fast-very fast indeed-it was agile, more than a match for the Drengin Super Dominator Corvettes that it almost invariably came up against. It was well-crafted, technically superior and utterly suited to the job for which it was built: advance at speed to the theatre of operation, mass in numbers (in this case the famous ‘Flight of five’) and overwhelm the opposition. Designed to take a beating its Armour plating ensured that we lost as few of our most precious commodity as possible, namely the pilots, Navigation and Weapons Officers that made up its crew of five.

Time after time, the Drengin threw everything they could at our frontier systems of Avignon, Marie and Wodan-each time we beat them back. At first, our losses were heavy as we were only able to muster the poorly protected Defenders but the advent of the Hornet was widely credited, afterwards, with turning the course of the war-the Drengin simply had no answer for this deadly little beauty.

I had remembered once asking Professor Sharp how it was he went about assembling this masterpiece (and many more besides). He had turned and told me that it was like composing music or painting a masterpiece-there was no ‘why’ there just was. It was as simple as me commanding troops into battle-I did not think about it-just had a gift for it-the same was true of him.

We had been at the Mitrosoft Shipyards in Nova Barcelona at the time and he had ushered me into his cluttered office more befitting some raggedy clerk than the auteur of so many technological marvels (Sharp was responsible for designing the Raptor Mk7 Air Superiority Fighter only a decade previously). 

‘See here Mike’ he had said throwing papers and designs onto the floor ‘see this design’

I had looked on in wonder at a thing of beauty-a little like the Hornet only much larger and sleeker (if that be possible-the Hornet was widely praised as one of the most comely craft ever to grace the stars).

‘What you are witnessing is my imagination General’ he had said ‘a flight of fancy if you will-I have put this together using materials that we have not yet discovered and employing principles of physics that we don’t yet know-but you have to dream think you not?’

I had chuckled at his strange use of English idiom ‘Indeed Andy-it is a wonderful looking ship-like everything you have a hand in-what will you call her’

And he had just laughed and told me that this was a question for me and the TASF HQ to ponder-what it was, though, was a Light Cruiser-it would require a crew of several hundred souls-we could call it what we willed.

He was a remarkable man-like so many that the President and I surrounded ourselves with-our inner circle-so few left now, so few left………