Lucky 13 (NaNoWriMo 2017)

Chapter 19: Congress... (In progress)

I turn a chair sideways and sit down next to them. I don't say anything, I just sit there in silence trying to support them emotionally as they dissolve into tears. I apparently don't do a good job of it though, because they continue to let out heart racking sobs. Connor rests a hand on their shoulder. I tear slowly rolls down his face.

"Thank you," Nyan wheezes.

"We will save your planet," I assure them.

"We have to, my parents are there. My siblings and their mates, their children. Do you know that we have a fixed population, it's not enforced, it's just ingrained into our culture. Each family unit only ever has three children, one for each adult. I'm not having any children though so my sibling has a fourth. They are essentially my child, and now they will die."

"We will save them," I reassure.

"Now! You saw what their ships are like!" they yell.

"And you saw what we did to them the first time around."

"With nukes," they growl.

"Do you want to save your homeworld or not."

This silences them. "Yes," they eventually mumbles.

"You are bound by your laws, I'm bound by mine."

"Captain," Mark speaks up. "Are you volunteering us to fight a whole war on our own."

I stand up, my ears pull flat and my tail bristles in aggression. "And what if I am? We have an almost a full payload of nukes and one dreadnought already under our belt. We can do this, easily."

\\And that is why you are not a tactician,// Jennifer tells me. \\I have referenced with the memories of the admirals outside about naval technology and Marcus about the Shike fleet. That is not going to work for a variety of reasons. The point defence lasers carried by those dreadnought will pick off most missiles before they get into range. No, let me change that. They will pick you off before you get into range. Each dreadnaught will be loaded with enough long range lasers and railgun batteries that they will turn you into small pieces of plastic and aluminium before you can even lock your first missile.//

\\Not enough for you. I've reviewed your previous fight against the Shikes, you spent a nuclear missile taking out a target half your size. Experts have given us their analysis of the images of the dreadnought. They estimate anywhere from eight to twenty of those thing. Per ship.// She glares at me closely. \\Do you really think you can handle that.//

My ears slack and my tail droops. "Ok, we can't do it alone," I admit. "We'll need some help, some big help."

"And once again," sighs Nyan. "We have nothing to fight them with."

"First off, what ships do you have?" I ask.

"Casitra'll, they are smaller than the Shike warships and rely on small fighters. A few of them might be able to take on a Shike ship, but we do not have many."

\\The Shike have on wards of fifty ships, all that size. They will not invest many of them, but it will be more than you can handle.//

"Lets leave this up to the admirals," suggests Connor. "The people that are trained to do this."

"Why," Nyan says. "The Shikes have more firepower than you and us combined."

"They have bigger ships than us," Ron says. "Not more firepower. We have seven Neptune class battleships, each one could easily take one of them in a fight."

"They would be crushed," Marcus mumbles. "And only the Neptune, Intrepid, and Arc Royal, are available. The rest are being refitted for antimatter power plant, except the Wasp, that one's till tied up in the conflict with Dionysus."