Home of the Brave by J.N. Chaney & Rick Partlow

Author:J.N. Chaney & Rick Partlow [Chaney, J.N. & Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2024-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

“I have to say,” the Secretary of Defense said after Laranna and I had finished our initial presentation, “after hearing the situation, I guess my question is, what the hell can we do against that?”

He was a retired general, from what I understood, older than George, his face a granite mask carved by some ancient tribe, his voice a distant rumble of thunder, and I had the feeling he was a terror to the troops beneath him. But I could also tell he understood. He motioned at the holographic projection at the center of the table in the Situation Room. Laranna had brought it down with her from the Liberator, since Lenny had felt it would make a significant impression on the “primitives,” as he’d put it.

The that Secretary Mattheis referred to was an image of the Anguilar fleet that had come after us at Thalassia, massive daggers of metal streaking through space toward the planet. The image had been taken from the Liberator, so she wasn’t in the picture, but the point of it had been to show the US government what we were up against. Given the horrified look on Mattheis’s face, it might have worked too well.

“I mean,” he went on, fingers tapping against the table, “they have directed energy weapons that can reach us from orbit, and not only do we have no defense against that, we have nothing that can touch them.” I opened my mouth to try to explain, but he interrupted me. “I know, you say that you’ll help us out if you’re here when they come, but what if you’re not here? You can’t teach us to make your warships, you’ve already admitted that. Can you teach us how to build your shields?”

“No,” I said, though I would rather have avoided the question. “The shields are a part of the hyperdrive, and you can’t use the hyperdrive without power cells. We can get you some, but we’ll have to steal them from the Empire. Even then, you could only produce starships, not warships. There’s a difference. It’ll take decades to build the facilities required to construct warships, and that’s if we can even manage it.”

“You’ve talked about us building shuttles like the one you delivered to Andrews.” Madison Barrett was short and elfin, yet still she gave me the impression that people could underestimate her at their peril. She was, I recalled from our introductions before the meeting, the Secretary of State, which I figured initially would mean she’d be all about trying to figure out a diplomatic way through the situation, but she’d wound up asking more technical questions than any of the others, even the President’s science advisor. “Why do those not need power cells?”

“I’m not an engineer,” I reminded her, then motioned at Laranna, Dani, and Val. They’d all taken their seats, leaving me the only one standing, and I fought an urge to pace. “None of us are.”

“And why don’t we have your engineers here?” Barrett demanded. “Because you didn’t think we were smart enough to understand your physics?”

“No,” I sighed.

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