Captain's Log, Stardate Almost there

So as part of the peace treaty with the Klingons, we pulled our fleets and bases out of their territory.

Most of our ships, plus our mobile bases, are headed down towards the Lyran border, since there is still fighting there.

The Lyrans, as I said, never do peace treaties with the Hydrans - their version of peace is to settle down to mere sporadic raiding.

Well, we hope to help with that too - not just by defending, but by a more active policy.

We've announced to them a policy we are calling the Peace of Trader Joe's.

It amounts to this - every time they raid, they can expect at least one raid in return.

And they have experience with our raids.

So we hope they will find it motivational.

We'll have to wait and see though - they don't respond to announcements of that type.

Anyway Oz is back on its way to Area 1, and will be there soon.

In preparation for our arrival, we've set up both of our Mobile Bases next to where we plan to set Oz. That gives us some security for our arrival, and also gets trade going.

Now Hydran commercial ships don't want to go into Lyran territory, and vice-versa.

It wouldn't be safe for them.

But they are both willing to go into the Neutral zone and trade with us. So we become a middle-man and make it all work.

And both sides, plus the LDR and the Klingons, who will do the same kind of trading, have lots of potential to trade with each-other.

So things are looking good there.

Now we are taking precautions against sneakiness, such as the sneakiness we did with Bleriot taking the Lyran Starbase, or of other kinds, like docking a robot ship filled with explosives and detonating them.

So, for example, nobody docks with a base of ours without first docking with a shuttle.

That shuttle has inspectors, to make sure there are no nasty surprises, and also a pilot to steer the ship in the last little way.

That used to be common in ancient times when ships traveled on water. The local pilot knew the local conditions, sandbars, currents and so forth, and could get the ship docked safely where someone without that local familiarity might not.

And in our case, we know our traffic patterns and other things that will keep traffic moving quickly and safely.

And we also know that our pilots are reliable - for instance, none of them will get angry and ram another ship.

We don't necessarily know that about, say, Lyran or Klingon ship captains.

Now after our tugs set up the Mobile Bases, we had them try something.

All of them went into the nearby dust cloud which hides a star system. I've mentioned it before - the dust damages your shields as you pass through, but more importantly it hides the whole star system, which could therefore become a nest of pirates.

So we want at least some Defense Satellites there, to keep any pirates from setting up in the first place.

Well, our Habs - Apple, Orange, Concorde and Muscadine, also need some place to go.

So maybe that system would be a good place - it is very near Oz, and in the Neutral Zone so it's fair game.

But it isn't on the front lines if fighting starts again - mainly due to that dust cloud and the fact that everybody knows it is a worthless system.

Now both the Lyrans and Hydrans are aware of that star system - they've long since checked it out and noted it has no habitable planets.

But we had an idea that maybe we could make a planet habitable.

See, an orbit is just a combination of two vectors (a vector is just speed plus direction) - the vector of the planet going sideways, and the vector of its star pulling it in.

When those 2 vectors balance, the planet always falls towards the star, as demanded by gravity, but also moves sideways fast enough that it never hits the star - just circles it.

That's the simple form anyway.

So we thought if one Tug can tow an asteroid, and do it very quickly, even if it's a fairly big asteroid, maybe a bunch of tugs could tow a planet.

I don't mean drag it around casually like a little red wagon.

I mean can they pull on it hard enough to change one of those vectors a little, even if it takes months of continuous pulling.

See, if you slow down the sideways vector, then the planet will 'fall' in towards the star a little until a new equilibrium is achieved.

And if you speed up the sideways vector a little, then the planet will behave similarly and enter a new orbit further from the sun.

Now the star system I'm talking about, which we've named Switzerland, has no planets in the habitable zones.

For Humans and most other races, that's the ring around the star where water is liquid, rather than frozen or steam.

For Hydrans, it's the zone where Methane is a gas, but the system doesn't have any planets in that zone either.

But it has several planets in the wrong orbits, including a couple planets of about the right sizes in orbits that are close to what they need to be - only an AU (Astrononical Unit - about 93 million miles) off from where we need them to be.

So it's all nice theory and stuff, but you never really know until you try.

We have a dozen tugs online & only kept back one to keep towing Oz to the finish line, so to speak.

We have 2 more, but they are still being repaired, having their security interlocks broken, and new crews trained.

Anyway, the 11 tugs went and tried it, carefully at first, then at full power when they could see it was working.

It turns out it is better to push than to pull.

When you're pulling a planet, the tractor beam tends to tear off chunks of rock and send your ship flying away temporarily out of control.

We didn't have any losses from that, but it was a wild ride, briefly.

But when pushing the planet, at worst, the place where the tractor beam touches, compacts pretty tightly, but you can still push just fine.

So we're actually changing the orbit of a planet, slowly.

Calculations show it will take all 11 tugs 24.2 days, using continuous pushing at maximum power to put it in the right orbit.

Then we'll have the tugs move comets to intercept the planet and give it a new atmosphere and hydrosphere.

While they are there towing comets, the Tugs can make sure the planet's orbit stays stable, and correct any wobbles that may develop.

Then, assuming that works, we'll do 2 more in the same system - one for us the Hydrans, and one more for us.

In some systems we could possibly do even more, but that's how many look good for towing in this system.

That'll tie up our tugs for a while, but is a good long-term investment.

For a while at least, we'll have other ships take on the convoy and patrol duties the tugs were going to do.

And we're building more tugs, in addition to the 2 we're repairing.

This could even be a new business for us - towing planets around to make more habitable worlds. There's always demand for more living space, and while our Habitation Spheres are nice, not everybody wants to live like that - some just prefer planets.

Though we will limit this to the empires we trust - there is no point in making 'bad guy' empires stronger by giving them more habitable planets - that'd just cause trouble for us sooner or later.

If they want our help in making more habitable planets, they can shape up and be respectable.

Most will probably copy our method instead, when they eventually learn about it.

Nothing can be kept secret forever.

It's hard to believe nobody ever tried this before, given how valuable the result is.

Typical navy short-sightedness, I guess - they see Tugs as valuable naval units & so keep them ready to support military actions.

And only tugs have the raw oomph needed for this.

Anyway, we're happy about the prospects.

To protect our new planet, we're putting down defenses now - mines, both captor and explosive types, plus Defense Satelites, and Planetary Ground Defense Batteries both on the planet and on asteroids around the system.

It will also have remote sensors around the system, and just outside the dust cloud, so it will know if anything is coming.

When the comets are done hitting it is when we'll actually install those Planetary Ground Defense Batteries, plus some Habitation domes, and pods for mining and manufacturing, as well as ground bases for fighters and PF's.

We can't make it too tough to beat, but we can make it too tough to be worth beating.

Captain's Log, Stardate more Andromedans

So it's been a while since Admiral Connors has managed to bring any Andromedans to battle.

He's made them run away several times as they tried to set up for something, but for some reason they don't seem to want to fight him.

Anyway, they apparently finally got the setup they wanted, and attacked a major LDR planet.

This was unexpected, so First Fleet wasn't there.

So they sped to the site, and while on the way, they called ahead and got as much information about the Andromedan attack plan as possible.

Their attack was fairly straight forward - they would use Displacement Devices to hop in, shoot a few Defense Satellites or mines, then hop out again to get ready to repeat the process.

When they hopped out, they'd drain out the energy which their power absorber panels had soaked up from incoming fire. So when they hopped back in, they were as good as new and ready to fight some more.

So they were steadily chipping away at the planet's defenses.

But those defenses are more or less static - they don't change once the battle starts, so the Andromedans had become predictable in their attack runs.

And one thing you most definitely do not want to do when facing Admiral Connors is be predictable.

He made it look easy.

He arrived while cloaked, and positioned his ships. Then when the Andromedans hopped in and fired at some mines, he de-cloaked, attacked tractor beams, and captured them - all 6 support ships at once.

When he de-cloaked, the Andromedan Dominator Dreadnought displaced away, but given the locations of the planet, and uncleared minefields, there were only 4 places they could go.

Admiral Connors had ships waiting at each of those 4 places and took the Dreadnought too. We couldn't be exactly in the right spot in advance, but it was easy to be close enough so we could travel the remaining distance and dock before either his weapons or his Displacement Device recharged.

So now we have 7 more Andromedan ships we can't use: a Dominator class Dreadnought, 4 Cobra class Destroyers, and 2 Terminator class Maulers.

Except that maybe this will be the big break we've needed in studying Andromedan ships.

Their technology is so different from ours that nobody has ever made any progress in studying it. But this could be the crack we need to open things up.

See, In the Terminator class Mauler they combined our technology with theirs.

They reportedly saw a Romulan Mauler in action, realized it was a good fit with their Power Absorber panels, captured one, figured it out and built their Terminator class destroyer-sized Maulers from that.

So the hardest part has already been done by the Andromedans - they already figured out how to interface technology from our galaxy with technology from theirs.

And our WhizKids say that should give us all the start we'll need.

We'll see.

The captured ships are being hauled to Oz for investigation.

Either way, this was a big victory that could become a major breakthrough, so Bill Connors gets to be a Grand Admiral now too.

In other news, we've started trading in Klingon space, though very very carefully.

See, they have a lot of aggressive arrogant captains who have a good chance of going rogue and attacking, if it looks like a good idea to them at the time.

So we're working on making it look like a very bad idea.

The first trader to enter their territory was escorted by 3 warships, all cloaked. But the Battlecruiser we captured from the Lyrans would uncloak anytime any Klingon ship was sighted, just to let them know our ship was both escorted and that they couldn't be sure just how escorted it was.

Then sometimes, when more than one Klingon ship was sighted, one or the other of the 2 escorting Light Carriers would de-cloak.

Apparently, since we didn't get attacked, that was enough force, especially coupled with the uncertainly that there may be even more cloaked ships, to keep any Klingon captains from going rogue.

The extra cost of the escorts cut into our profits a bit, but we plan to keep on in a similar fashion until it becomes a widely known and accepted fact among the Klingons that our ships are escorted and you can never be sure just how strong that escort is.

Once that idea settles in, it will be our best protection against rogue captains attacking us.

We'll vary the types and numbers of escorts just to keep them guessing, and keep up the practice longer than we think necessary, just in case.

Captain's Log, Stardate, now we throw rocks.

So apparently the Lyrans are still feeling feisty. They raided a Hydran planet near their border and destroyed some defense installations and a large factory.

So, according to the Peace of Trader Joe's, we raided them back.

It seems they thought they were ready for that, but we have some really creative people working here.

So the base the Lyrans ran to, was covered by a very thick minefield, liberally seeded with captor mines.

Apparently they'd heard from the Klingons how effective that can be.

Well, as I mentioned, we did something creative.

We briefly took our 11 tugs off planet-moving detail and had them tow 11 large asteroids onto a collision course with that Lyran Battlestation.

The Tugs got those asteroids going as fast as they could, pulled a couple tricks I'll mention in a minute, then went back to towing the planet.

As an aside, I'll mention that this turned out to be a good test - the planet remained stable while the tugs were away.

Anyway, the first couple asteroids, being ship sized, set off some automatic mines, then set off some more, since the first explosions had not been enough to completely destroy them.

The next couple asteroids got shot by captor mines armed with Disruptors.

That is when most of our Second Fleet de-cloaked just beyond Phaser 4 range, and fired drones at the captor mines which had been revealed by firing.

Well, those drones got shot down by captor mines armed with Phaser 2's.

But we'd been expecting that and just fired more drones at all the captor mines we could see, including the Phaser mines that had just been revealed.

About this time the Lyrans decided that our asteroids were just there to detonate mines and get captor mines to reveal themselves, so they stopped shooting them and just used Tractor Beams from the base to halt them.

They could have pushed them so they'd miss the base and continue on, but if they deflected the asteroids like that, then those asteroids would have set off any automatic mines on the other side of the base.

The Lyrans didn't want the minefield weakened while our fleet was there, so they just halted the asteroids.

So we kept up our drone battle versus their captor mines, while more and more of those got revealed by shooting down drones.

And in the meantime asteroids kept piling up near their Battlestation.

The Lyrans only realized that the drone action versus their captor mines was a sideshow, when some of those asteroids exploded, taking out the base and the flotilla of heavy cruisers which were docked to it.

We could have stayed and swept the rest of the mines, but our point was made - raid us, and we'll raid you back more.

With what the recent war has cost them, it seems likely they will slow down for a while, or maybe even stop raiding for a while, so they can rebuild for another big new attack sometime.

Captain's Log, Stardate A new home

So, amid much cheering and celebrating, Oz arrived at her new home today - the place we've been calling Area 1, right by Switzerland, in the Hydran Neutral zone by the Lyrans and the LDR, not far from the Klingon border.

Arriving at almost the same time, elements of First Fleet towed the captured Andromedans to Oz for study.

The WhizKids quickly confirmed our hopes - the Mauler in their Terminator ships will be, what they called a Rosetta Stone - a key for deciphering everything.

The Andromedans indeed did the hard part already, of figuring out how to interface the different technologies used by our two galaxies.

And now we have a familiar well-understood thing (the Mauler) to use as a starting point & give us traction in figuring out their technology.

Since the Mauler ties to all their power systems, and those tie to everything else, we will be able to unravel it all over time.

But they warned us it could take years, and likely will.

So we made an offer, which was accepted very very rapidly, to the Hydrans and to the Federation.

The offer is they can send scientists to help work on figuring out the Andromedan ships, and to the degree they help, they can share in the resulting discoveries.

The first team of Hydrans is already here and the Federation are on the way.

The studies will be done on our terms, and at Oz, so we maintain control.

And we expect the two teams to balance each-other - if either team starts getting pressure from their government to steal more than their fair share, the self-interest of the other government should counterbalance that.

And as an extra bonus, both governments now have an incentive to protect us from anybody else - if someone else should raid us successfully, then the Hydrans and Federation would likely lose access, and miss out on the technological boon that will eventually be realized when we discover how the Andromedan technology works.

Even if they don't protect us, their mere presence offers some implicit protection - if anybody attacks us, they will risk hurting Federation and Hydran personnel, possibly bringing retaliation from them.

Not that we intend to depend on that - as usual, we're doing everything we can to make our base way too tough to be worth attacking. It's all the usual stuff - explosive mines, captor mines, Defense Satellites, Planetary defense batteries on nearby asteroids, plenty of fighters and PF's and so on.

We also like having a couple Mobile Bases set up next to us and in use.

They not only provide extra trading capacity, they also significantly complicate any enemy's problems in how to attack us successfully.

We like that a lot.

When the tugs get time, we will still move a couple new Mobile Bases to other sites we've been looking at in neutral zones where we have trade, then upgrade them to Battlestations if the local trade warrants it.

In the meantime, these two Mobile Bases, which we've named Neverland and Wonderland, are staying right here.

And the Sightseers Club has expanded quickly, as other Habitation Spheres and similar places have decided that a mutual association sounds like a good idea to them.

We will be contracting with them to provide protection, and also to represent them when they need to interact with the various empires.

And several minor planets, independent mining operations, and similar have asked to join. Though since they are not Sightseeing, we're calling them the Trader Joe's Association for now.

All of them want independence, but they also need trade and protection.

We will be sort of welding them together, though loosely.

Well, that potentially gives us the resources of a real nation, if needed.

There's a large population, mining, manufacturing etc base there. And while tapping that inappropriately would make it evaporate, the potential to tap it if attacked will make just about anyone think twice about attacking us.

Well, that plus the reputation our fleets have earned, which is significant.

When the Romulans first drove us out of their Neutral Zone, and for a good while thereafter, I feared that Trader Joe's would wither and die as a company.

But we managed to find new and different ways to make money, and eventually started prospering and growing again, even while Oz was still on the move and unable to do it's original kinds of business.

Now that we've settled Oz in a new spot and our original kinds of business are starting up again, the future looks really bright

I'll close this Log there, unless anything really unusual comes up.

end

notes:

If you liked this story, be advised I'm working on another, based on the original BattleStar Galactica tv show from 1978.

I'm going to call it BattleStar Galactica Unchained and post it on this site, probably about July 2017, maybe earlier if all goes well.

And I've previously written a novel (Titled the War of the Tree) and self-published it on the amazon and lulu websites.

If you're interested in that, browse to amazon and look for item number B0071TJO2I (the kindle edition) or 1469988755 (paperback), or to lulu and search for item number 18848789.

I know my writing style has quirks and is not the standard approach, nor is it going to appeal to everyone (not by a long shot). That's fine. But it is consistent. If you've read this far, I expect you will enjoy the others.

Thanks for listening.