Blue Star Enterprises

"So we just wait and see?" Krieger asked. "I don't like it. For all we know, she's contacted more of her people and they could jump in and surround us. I also haven't forgotten about that other fleet. They may come back as well and Char may just decide to put their differences aside and that taking us out would be better for them in the long run."

"What do you suggest?" Alexander asked, not having the first clue how to handle a tactical situation of this scope.

"Sitting here and waiting to be ambushed is a non-starter. I know you want us to hang around as a deterrent, but the longer we sit here, the weaker our positioning becomes. I suggest we set up a series of random jumps no closer than this to their planet. That should keep them guessing while ensuring they can't jump in on top of us."

"It's probably also going to anger them," Alexander added. Then he sighed. "The fleet is the priority, do it. I'll be in touch when I hear more."

Krieger nodded and the screen went blank. Alexander had placed the man in charge so he needed to trust his judgment, especially in tactical matters such as this.

It wasn't long after the ships jumped that he got an angry message from Katalynn. "Why are your ships jumping? You agreed that they would remain there."

"No," he said, correcting her. "I agreed that they would not approach the planet any closer than they already were. I have kept that promise, but I wasn't going to have them sit there for an indeterminate amount of time until you made up your mind. Does that sound like a wise tactical decision to you?"

The woman narrowed her eyes at him through the grainy video signal. "No. It does not. Fine, I will forgive this misunderstanding. So long as they do not approach any closer, our temporary truce is still in place."

The line cut abruptly after that, giving him no chance to respond. He sighed internally. Politics sucked, he really wished he could just be back home in his workshop or spending time with Yulia.

He couldn't leave the bridge until he got an answer because nobody else was qualified to communicate with the woman. Pembrooke was the closest, but the man's allegiances were too suspect to trust yet.

It was possible the man had already made a deal with Loki, but it wasn't like Alexander had any option back on the ground but to leave the man behind. This did result in some information that he didn't have before, so it was a net gain as far as he was concerned.

Waiting for a response was annoying, but he wasn't completely at the woman's whims. All they had to do was leave and it would force her hand one way or the other. She may even respect the move.

This was a big decision for both parties though, so Alexander decided to wait and set a deadline of five days. If she dragged her feet any longer than that, he would order Wayward Soul's pilot to rejoin the fleet and they would head back to Eden's End.

***

Katalynn looked at her advisors, who also happened to be her Sub-Commander, her Chief Engineer, and her Tactician aboard Valkyrie. She never understood why the STO would allow people without combat experience to lead or even give advice. What could they possibly know about warfare or even protecting their people if they hadn't experienced battle themselves?

She knew the STO had actual military people who were supposedly in charge of this, but she also knew that most of those hadn't seen combat in their entire careers. Even if someone did have some experience with real combat, they were beholden to civilian leadership who had no clue.

Without that knowledge, they never considered the cost of their actions. They pushed people around like pieces on a game board, without a thought for the lives they spent. She could even imagine them patting themselves on the back for a battle well won, even if it had been a pyrrhic victory.

Katalynn couldn't afford that, Asgard couldn't afford that. And even if she could, she wouldn't spend her people's lives in needless combat if it could be avoided. That was why she sought out her advisors' opinions on this matter.

Throwing her fleet into helping Eden's End on Kane's claims alone might seem like needless bloodshed since she could stay out of the fight and not lose anyone, but she knew enough about Harlow Anazi to know the man wouldn't simply travel through her space peacefully or leave with his prize, not after pushing so deeply into Asgardian territory. If he didn't at least come for Asgard, he would certainly pillage and plunder other worlds and stations within their space on the way to Kane.

If it wasn't for the war with Xin, she would have more than enough ships to repel even Harlow's current fleet, but she could not pull the Jarls back from the front to deal with this new issue.

The question was, could Kane and his people be trusted? She had gotten a small measure of the man while they fought in the ring, but one-on-one combat did little to tell you the character of an individual. That changed when he ordered his fleet to do continuous jumps so they couldn't be boxed in if Katalynn changed her mind and attacked. It was that act and the fact that he didn't immediately join them that told her that he did care what happened to his people. The question was, what did her advisors think?

"What are your thoughts on Kane?" she asked the group.

Vyrik, her tactician was the first to speak up. "Either he is monumentally brave or monumentally stupid for leaving his single cruiser within striking distance of our fleet and orbital defenses. I'm leaning toward the latter," the man stated.

"Please explain," Katalynn asked.

The man glanced over at their other visitor but grunted and continued. "His whole appearance here seems poorly planned. We now know his fleet jumped in well outside the system before micro-jumping to a safe distance. It means they had no tactical intelligence on Yggdrasil's Eye before arriving. It was also only after he returned to his ship that the other ships in his fleet acted to minimize their tactical disadvantage. I'm going to assume that Kane is in charge, but my gut says that Krieger is in overall command. A wise choice if Kane has no tactical experience, but it leads to slow responses such as this. If we do need to fight them, we should lean on that."

"Noted," Katalynn said before turning to the other two advisors. "You both seem reluctant to speak. Out with it."

Haldric, her Sub-Commander cleared his throat and spoke first. "If we pull some of our forces from the front to take on Harlow's fleet, Xin's going to realize right away and his bastard progeny are going to make an actual push into our space instead of these probing attacks. If the reports on Xin's fleet size are accurate, we would be hard-pressed to hold out for long with reduced defenders along that border. That means relying on the local defense fleets the other Jarls left behind to help reinforce our border with Anazi. Even with Kane's fleet, I don't think we can match Harlow's numbers. I believe our best option is to harass Harlow's forces into and out of Asgardian space without relying on the unknown quantity that Kane represents. Yes, it'll mean losing Eden's End and a lot of assets in Harlow's path, but it preserves our forces and resolves the issue of Kane's illegal claim on an Asgardian system."

"All true," Katalynn agreed. "If I do decide to work with Kane, we will need to consider that."

Seeing that she was done talking, Elrik, her Chief Engineer spoke up. "I'm always up for knocking the Anazis down a peg or two after their people attacked my father's ship and killed the crew, but what is in this deal for us, Lagertha? So far all we know is what Kane wants."

"Right now, only promises that he would sell to us after Harlow is defeated, but those promises came with stipulations. What those stipulations might be, he didn't say," she said in response to Elrik's question.

"That makes things clear to me," Elrik slammed his fist on the table. "If he has nothing to offer, then neither do we!"

"Calm yourself, Elrik. I don't want to get an earful from your wife that I got you all riled up again."

The man huffed through his beard before sitting back in his seat.

Once he was calm, Katalynn spoke again. "I didn't say he had nothing to offer. That's why our friend Johan is here. Most of you probably never met the man, but Johan was my father's head of research and development before I thought he had fallen in battle. Kane returned him to us along with his entire team of engineers. Johan here was personally responsible for the original design of the Valkyrie as well as the new frigates."

All eyes turned to the rail-thin man, who seemed to puff up at the praise.

Katalynn motioned for the man to speak. "Johan, tell them what you told me."

The man cleared his throat. "Those two cruisers and destroyers in Kane's fleet are Asgardian in origin. At least the substructure is. The rest of it was all subpar garbage that Arkonis forced us to plaster on just to get them up and running. That was until Kane got his hands on them. I didn't get to see much while I was aboard, but I saw enough, and I was shown images of the cruiser after I was debriefed. I can't speculate on the other ships, but Kane's cruiser was heavily upgraded in only a month. I could tell that the environmental systems were changed out simply due to the better air quality inside the ship. Then there were large sections cut out and welded back in place where other systems must have been removed or replaced. That's just what I noticed on the inside. The video taken of the outside of the ship showed far more changes."

"How so?" Elrik asked.

Katalynn wanted to reprimand the guy for cutting off Johan, but she was curious as well. She hadn't gotten the full rundown from the man before the meeting. She only heard the first part and decided to bring him with her so he could tell them the same thing.

"When we left that captured station, the cruisers only had one frigate cannon each, and a few PDCs from captured frigates. I don't know where Kane got them, or how he installed them in such a short amount of time but that cruiser of his now has six capital ship railgun turrets on it. And they are odd. I could tell that the turrets had three barrels each, but there was something else off about them."

Katalynn cursed internally. Valkyrie only had dual-barrel Gauss turrets. That gave Kane's cruiser a distinct advantage in a slugging match. Her larger ship still had the advantage of thicker armor and twelve launchers over Kane's eight, but missiles weren't all that effective unless you could overwhelm your enemy's point defense and EW systems.

Johan continued. "He's changed out the PDCs for PDLs as well. I don't know where Kane got ahold of information to build weapons-grade lasers, but I have to assume they are weapons-grade if he stuck them on the ship."

This time Katalynn cursed out loud and everyone stopped to look at her. "He already had laser technology when we first encountered him, but I bet he also recovered that damn STO stealth ship. Who knows what secrets he pulled from it."

The faces in the room fell when they realized this, except Johan, who looked more interested in learning more.

"Stealth ship?"

She waved off the man's question. "Is that all you had to tell us?"

"Oh, not at all," the man said, sounding even more excited than he had during the previous retelling. "I saved the best for last. The engines."

"What about them?" Katalynn asked, feeling a headache coming on.

"I can tell you without a doubt that those are not the same ones we installed on the cruiser. They may be the same size, but I suspect that was more due to time constraints than Kane's lack of ability to upgrade them properly."

"Are you telling us he's producing his own engines?" Elrik cut in.

"I don't recognize the design. It could be a new Omni model I'm unaware of but I somehow doubt it. The design differs too much from any Omni models I've ever seen. I couldn't tell you if they are up to the same standards as Omni, but producing his own engines is pretty important even if they are worse than Sinorus. It's been a decade, but if I recall correctly, your father's biggest issue for building new ships was always sourcing engines from the STO."

"It was," Katalynn admitted, "but we have come a long way in ten years. We have Asgardian thrusters now. However, they are still mostly untested in battle. The ones on the frigate seemed to perform ok, but we didn't push it that hard. From the test data, it should perform slightly worse than the previous generation of Sinorus thrusters. We'll need to keep that in mind if the ship remains with my fleet."

Vyrik cleared his throat to get their attention. Read new chapters at empire

"You have something to add?" Katalynn asked.

"I do," Vyrik stated. "Haldric brought this up earlier, but I think it deserves to be mentioned again. What do we do about Kane's claim on Y6X-3H2 or Unokane as they have renamed it?"

Katalynn nodded. "It wasn't pertinent at the time of the initial meeting because I only wanted to see what Kane had come to discuss and what he was willing to offer for it. Now that I know, I plan on bringing that up in our next round of discussions."

Vyrik seemed happy with that.

Katalynn turned to the rest of her advisors. "So, now that you've all heard Johan's information, what are your opinions of Kane's proposal?"