was followed by a full-scale assault, with the Varlon “H” and the “I” type of heavy or sometimes called super dreadnaughts.
Sheppard recalled that an earlier H-class was first encountered by one of the Earth-born captains of the Terran Space Exploration Council, or TERRASEC. That captain remarked that the ship resembled a giant letter H. That started the designation of the Varlon ships by letters. As the humans were one of the founding members of what was to become the Alliance of Worlds, the Earth letter designations were kept, even though some other races had their own designations. Over time as the Varlon names for their ships were not discovered the Alliance officially adopted the Terran alphabetic symbols for the Varlon ships’ names.
Sheppard recalled a battle during his time with Admiral Peregrine against three H-class ships, and he recalled his apprehension.
Today, Viess briefly showed a sector map, with miniaturized images of four hundred of those H-class dreadnaughts scattered throughout the region. The visuals showed only selected sections of the battle, with plasma weapons blasting matter.
The Betellians were a very advanced civilization, much more technologically advanced than the Alliance of Worlds. The Betellians had been using energy-dampening energy fields and space-warping technology to reduce the damage and neutralize the Varlon threat.
Sheppard realized that, evidently, now the Varlon were primed and in position to threaten even the Betellians.
Viess continued, “The Varlon did not know we had a contingent of our Starcruisers present within our sphere, and there was also a small Hegemony fleet composed of Karratin, Estrian, and Lyramenian starships that was close enough and came to our aid. We prevailed, but the Varlon antimatter torpedoes and plasma weapons had done moderate damage to one of our system spheres, and many of our ships were destroyed or damaged. From intelligence information, we ascertained the Varlon had hoped to do much better against us. We are presently rebuilding our dwelling sphere. Much of the Varlon fleet was destroyed or neutralized, although several of their starships retreated.”
As Viess continued to give his presentation, Sheppard could hear the distress in the animated voice from the crystalline translator. He knew the Betellians did not like to take life or destroy things, and this preference extended even to those considered to be hostile. For that matter, the Hegemony acted to some extent the same as the Betellians. Sheppard thought about this; if an adversary was attempting to kill them, all they would do was try to hold them off and show them the futility of attack. Well, this battle was different; it had not been as futile as so many previous assaults.
“I wanted to make this presentation to provide an update on the Varlon, as we believed you in the Alliance of Worlds could use this data,” stated Viess. He paused momentarily, and his trilaterally symmetric head rolled slightly, looking toward Prime Minister Desserix. “My people are willing to exchange intelligence on these matters, since it seems that the Varlon have increased their resources, and made at least one new ally.” He paused again. “I have been authorized to extend an option for an affiliation treaty to the Alliance of Worlds.”
At this note, Prime Minister Desserix became more animated; he had come to this meeting in hopes of hearing something along these lines. Desserix responded, “The Alliance of Worlds will happily consider this; I am myself pleased at the opportunity to go beyond the limited trade treaty we have at present.”
“This is not an offer of formal alliance, Prime Minister,” came the response from Viess. “We are interested in exchange of information on the Varlon so we can determine a defense for our dwellings. I have been allowed to mention that we rarely need to travel much from the spheres and are content with what we have. The Preceptors do not wish to directly confront the Varlon in an aggressive manner. I see, however, that many of the Preceptors of my government do not recognize the potential threat of the Varlon. Our hope for this affiliation is that more of my people will come to enlightenment about this problem as we begin to interact more with your peoples.”
“Of course, I will take this matter up with the council, and I hope we can all come to a mutual agreement,” Desserix said.
Viess nodded his large head and stepped away from the presentation control unit.
Grand Admiral Jeroloh stood briefly and introduced Fleet Admiral Peregrine.
Peregrine had been listening intently to the Betellian Admiral Viess. Now, he stepped over to the podium and the console that controlled the displays.
He began to speak. “I would like to notify the officers here that most of what I am going to show you was alpha-level classified now, but now has been dropped to level beta.
“About two months ago, I had a large portion of the Third Fleet with me, patrolling various areas of the Rhendal sector. There had been reports of missing freighter ships at first, and then we lost communication from three different colonies, both subspace and the COMNET. A task force under one of my fleet captains engaged the Varlon in defending a fourth colony they had taken in the space of two days. This task force was defeated, and a single ship notified Starbase 245 of the situation. I gathered several task forces of the Third Fleet to investigate and respond to this attack.”
Peregrine activated a display record of the tactical situation using his imbedded personal data interlink unit.
“The Varlon were in the process of an initial assault of Caltha Three, one of the larger Alliance of Worlds colonies in the Rhendal sector. The orbital defense stations, starfighters, and ground weapon bunkers and its moon’s planetary defenses were being overwhelmed. I initiated a flanking maneuver and a hammer assault against the Varlon cruisers. After an exchange, we had the upper hand, until several Varlon cruisers and some carriers arrived after moving stealthily into position with their chameleon cloaks. Some Varlon starships appeared to resemble some of my ships or were masquerading as damaged orbital defense batteries or debris of destroyed orbital stations.”
Peregrine’s tactical display continued to follow his presentation.
“They launched some Scorpion attack craft and Spider ships, which counter-assaulted our starfighters and then dropped planetward. At this point, we held the line.”
Peregrine moved the time index and then showed a large mixed fleet of Varlon starships moving in with H-class dreadnaughts and a few other unidentified, non-Varlon vessels. Peregrine pointed out these other ships.
“We did not pay a great deal of attention to them, until they fired. The larger ones were over twenty-three kilometers in length. I’d say they were some kind super dreadnaught or warbase ship class. These were not Varlon ships; they did not use the same kind of stealth technology, and these ships were not in our databases.”
Sections of the battle were displayed on the central 360-degree surround viewer, which Peregrine utilized. The Varlon cruisers and H-class heavy dreadnaughts ships were beginning to force back Peregrine’s gathered fleet with heavy plasma weapons; his own Constellation-class battlecarrier was in the midst of the battle. Eventually, the unidentified alien ships closed, and a knife-like bolt shot out toward a Legendary-class battlecruiser and shattered the hull—a hull composed of a titanium alloy reinforced with additional ablative armor.
Peregrine continued. “These new starcraft were using antimatter cannons. Shearing anti-protons and anti-neutrons destroyed several cruisers and shattered three dreadnaughts into pieces. At this point, several other Alliance of Worlds task forces of the third fleet arrived. I had to order a retreat, and the recently arrived starships volleyed their antimatter torpedoes at them to facilitate an orderly retreat. The other ships were fast like the Varlon, but even faster—almost fifty percent faster using sub-light speed engines —than our ships. They probably had some kind of norpic
