The Tenth Cycle of TinTay

Imperial Audience Chamber
Sarek Castle


High General TinTay has gone to the Imperial capital of Bearrstok on the plant Orkon to meet with Emperor HerbHusk IV.  HerbHusk is 20 cycles old and has been Emperor for less than a cycle.  HerbHusk is a head taller than the High General, has coal black hair, pointed ears, and a slight greenish tinge to his skin coloring.  TinTay and HerbHusk have never met before this hurriedly scheduled meeting.  The meeting is being held in HerbHusk’s public office in the Imperial capital building.

“Sire I hope that you understand the gravity of this situation.”

“I may be young, Lord General, but I certainly am able to figure out when the existence of the Empire, as we know it, is at stake. 

The High General of Legion doesn’t leave the planet the Legion is on for a lark.   My advisors and I had no problem figuring out how dangerous an enemy capable of fighting in space is to the way the Empire operates. 

Have you found out anything more about the situation?”

“Yes Sire I have.  I interrogated the prisoner after his translator device was fluent in Galachh.  

The most important information came from his mere existence.  We’ve an enemy that not only developed Inner Space drive on their own, have ships capable of fighting in space, and most importantly feel they’ve a grievance with The Legion and the Empire.”

“They’ve knowledge of the Empire?  How can this be?”

“Simple Sire; they come from the zygote planet of the second rebirth of Gkolath.  

Evidently in the Raid for the rebirth the Horab lost many fighters and a capital ship, the Dirters were able to learn much about Inner Space drive from those captured ships.  

They learned of the Empire and The Legion from the memories implanted into the minds of the translators that the Horab used.  According to the prisoner the Horab returned to raid Dirt 2 of their years ago and were totally destroyed in the attack.  We need to find out why the Horab were raiding an Unknown World when a rebirth hadn‘t been sanctioned.”

“What’s the grievance of these people from Dirt?”

“They objected to the Horab stealing young men from them and selling them to The Legion as sexual slaves.”

The Emperor looks at TinTay with disbelief on his face.

“What?  The Legion doesn’t buy sexual slaves.  The Legion brings in new Legionarys during a rebirth.”

TinTay grants the Emperor one of his stellar smiles.

“True Sire but somehow that little bit of information didn’t translate well.  

They’ve spent over 60 cycles preparing to wage war on us.  They call it Operation Revenge and from what the prisoner told me they’ll do everything in their power to hurt us.  

I don’t think they realize how big the Empire is or they would know that they can’t win a war with us.  They can cause tremendous disruptions in our way of moving between the planets of the Empire though.  

I suppose it’s possible that they could capture some of our smaller populated planets as well but I’m not really worried about that.  The Navy is going to have to go on a crash course of arming and armoring the ships they have now but they really will need to build new and better warships from scratch.”

My Lord General I just remembered that you are of the second rebirth of Gkolath.”

“Yes Sire, I’m of that rebirth.”

“That means we’ve been attacked by your birth planet.”

“Yes Sire it does.”

“Maybe for the best of the Empire I should have you executed and have the new High General run this war.”

The silence in the room becomes overpowering.  The two men  look at the other without any emotion visible on their faces.

“That’s certainly within your rights Sire.  

It would do you little good though since the next five on the High General list are also of the second rebirth of Gkolath.  While The Legion might stand for you having 6 High Generals executed I’m reasonably sure that the levy Generals on the Imperial planets would probably take it as a sign of Imperial weakness and there would be some rebellions.  Some of the newer planets still resent being conquered and would considering revolting if they felt they had a chance.  They would view The Legion in turmoil as a chance.”

The Emperor gives the High General an impish grin.

“Don’t worry Lord General it was just an idea, I would never really consider something like that since my father would come out of his grave and wring my neck if I had his favorite Legionary executed.  He spoke of you often High General.  

Do I have to worry about the loyalty of The Legion or any part of The Legion?”

“No sire, The Legion is loyal to the Empire.  The second rebirth of Gkolath is loyal to the Legion.  

I met with every surviving member of the rebirth before I left Hakim.  None of us, even for a second, thought of forswearing The Legion.  Dirt may be our birth planet but most of us only have the slightest memories of it.  We are of The Legion and we’ll fight and die for The Legion if necessary.”

“While I really had no fear that The Legion would fail in its duty I had to ask High General.”

“I understand Sire, it’s going to cause trouble in the Empire when the knowledge that we’re being attacked by the zygote planet of the second rebirth of Gkolath.  

I came to Orkon for several reasons Sire, first to inform you of what we’ve found out.  

The second reason is to ask for your help in spreading word to the Empire.  

Third to ask for the authority to wage the war and hopefully the peace.”

“Don’t worry Lord General you’ll have all of the help and authority I can give you.  The Royal House of Orkon has had the loyalty of The Legion for over a thousand cycles and The Legion has the trust of the House of Nebraa.  What help do you need immediately?”

“You need to use the Imperial bureaucracy to send word to all planets of the Empire of what to expect.  I don’t know whether these Dirters will attack any ship they find or only ones they feel are attached to The Legion.  

Until the Navy can get some ships capable of fighting then the goal of every ship will have to be to flee any Dirter ship they encounter.  The civilian ships should probably try to go in convoys since it’s harder to hunt down a bunch of ships that scatter than single ships.  Every ship must make sure that they have plenty of jumping fuel so that they can make multiple jumps in and out of Inner Space if necessary.  If they can’t jump to safety then they are sitting quallcks.”

“This is something the bureaucracy was built for.  The first information ships will be on their way by this evening.  It’s too bad that Inner Space doesn’t allow communication devices to work.  Having to send a ship to each and every planet takes so much time.  

As leader of The Legion you have the authority to wage the war as you see fit.”

“It never hurts to have the backing of the Royal House behind my orders to civilian authorities.  The Navy will do what I tell them to since they are levy and the levy obeys The Legion without question.  I also don’t think that the Admiral of the Navy is brave enough to tell ToPher anything he doesn’t want to hear. “

TinTay grins at the Emperor who returns the grin.

“I’ve never met the General but based solely on his reputation I doubt that I would tell him anything he didn’t want to hear either.”  

TinTay’s grin grows into a full out stellar smile.

“The problem waging this war will come with the costs of implementing our plans.”

“Don’t worry about that Lord General, the credit will be expended.  Survival of the Empire is the most important detail we have to worry about.  Have you plans on how to fight a war of this type?”

Just by shifting his stance TinTay become the epitome of a military expert.

“We started planning from the minute we learned of the attack on the convoy.  My officers are working on the plans as we speak; but I’m hoping the Dirters will realize that they can’t win and will be willing to negotiate a peace.  If this happens will you back me up on whatever I negotiate?”

“Anything short of dismantling the Empire Lord General.  Ideally bringing Dirt into the Empire would be best.  Do whatever is necessary to end the hostilities as soon as possible.  

If it comes to it; can we conquer this planet?”

“Of course we can conquer a single planet.  The problem is that it’ll cost a fortune in lives and money.  It’ll take many cycles and I doubt if the result will be worth the cost.  

I have Major Taylor Peterson under lock and key.  When I feel that the Dirters have had enough time to realize that they can’t really win or cause us more than discomfort then I’ll send him back to Dirt to start negotiations.   

Of course if they really do have the ability to control where they jump into normal space then all bets are off.   Even with that ability they can’t win a war with the Empire but our costs would go up tremendously.  

There is one fact that came up during the meeting of the second rebirth of Gkolath that might cause problems.”

“Well Lord General tell me the problem.”

“We all agreed that we remembered the population of our birth planet being somewhere between 5 and 6 billion people.  This was over 60 cycles ago you must remember, the numbers are probably higher today.”

HerbHusk gives TinTay a look of sheer disbelief.

“5 to 6 billion, what are they, reproductive machines?  The largest planetary population in the Empire is less than 500 million.  Still with over a thousand planets we’ll still out number them by a sizable amount.”

“Those numbers insure that we would have a very difficult time of conquering Dirt in our usual manner.  We would have to bring a tremendous number of troops to bear in order to have a chance.  Plus we would have to clear the skies of their ships since a transport unloading troops would be easier to destroy than a toy ship floating in a tub.”

“If I ordered you to conquer this planet how would you do it?”

“It would depend on how quickly and at what cost you would be willing to accept.”

“What do you mean High General?”

“To conquer Dirt without a horrific cost in lives would require at least 10 cycles, tremendous buildup in the Navy and the levy Armies.  The Legion and its offspring would have to spawn at least once and probably three times.  Even taking all of these steps the loss in life would be tremendous.  Or, as soon as we know where Dirt is located we could just overwhelm their defenses with massive attacks taking horrendous losses.”

“Spawn, what does that mean High General?”

“During a rebirth The Legion just replenishes its numbers.  If we were to seriously considering conquering Dirt the size of The Legion wouldn’t be enough.  There wouldn’t be enough Legionarys to do what would be necessary for conquering a planet with over 5 billion inhabitants and a functioning Inner Space navy.  

If we went ahead with this plan then I would order a spawning of The Legion.  To spawn, General ToPher would take half of The Legion to another planet then his half and my half would both authorize a rebirth.  Once both legions were up to full strength they would have to do it again.  This would leave the Empire with 4 fully staffed and trained legions.  I don’t think that this would be enough but it would be the minimum.  This would require at least 10 cycles and probably closer to 20 because it wouldn’t do any good to go to war with untrained Legionarys.  It would also require change in Imperial law regarding the numbers of Legionarys allowed.

 So if there’s any chance that we can come to an understanding with Dirt that would be the best choice for the Empire and The Legion.  When I think that they might be willing to listen then I will send Major Taylor Peterson back to Dirt to start the negotiations.”

“Do whatever you think is necessary High General.  I and the entire Empire will support whatever you decide to do.”

“Thank you Sire.  The Legion will do whatever needs to be done to save the Empire from this threat.”

There is a knock on the door and Colonel ThanMa enters the room.  He’s holding a communications pad in his right hand.

“Lord General, Sire, there is news about the Dirters.”

“What Colonel ThanMa?”

“A squadron of their fighters has been observed jumping in and out of this stellar system.  They seem to be trying to jump in close enough to be able to attack our shipping.”

“Send word to the ships that they should return to the planet or jump to Inner Space if the raiders get close enough to attack them.  Where are they now?”

“They are approaching the orbital factories just beyond the fourth planet of this system Lord General.”

“Well Sire we will soon know what kind of war we’re in.”

“What do you mean High General?”

“These factories are civilian aren’t they?”

“Yes they produce medicinal supplies using zero gravity production methods.”

“They are sitting quallcks, so if the Dirters destroy obvious non military targets then their search for revenge knows no bounds, if they don’t bother them then they are only interested in harming The Legion.”

“Colonel ThanMa, how long until they reach the factories?”

“Within a few minutes Sire.”

TBC