Confederation -- 2

We walked up the long flight of stairs, and I shook hands with Jake. He looked at me, still holding my hand, and asked, "Did you get him?"

"Of course. Kasm captured him, but he took cyanide before I could get too much out of him. He was a member of the leftover federal government, a member of what he called 'The Motherland Army,'" I answered.

Jake's eyes shadowed, "I've heard a word of those guys. They're setting up all across the eastern half of the country. They dominate everything east of the Mississippi now and are moving through Missouri and eastern Kansas. I'm going to have to fight them, I think." He shook his head and continued, "Let's discuss it later. I've set up a party for us. Let's eat and recover ourselves. We've got a lot of topics to discuss later."

That was true. We had tentatively agreed to set up a working arrangement to exist as close neighbors without conflict. The second issue was what we would do about a possible third attack by the Pug-bears. Now, we were presented with the undeniable presence of a hostile group of humans with eyes on our territory. I nodded and moved to shake hands with his Lieutenant, a large and hairy mountain of a man.

Jake took his time, greeting everyone as if we were all equal, although, if the truth be told, he controlled far more territory and men than were in our little community over the mountains at Grand Lake.

I guessed that we more than made up for our lack of manpower with our alliance with the Sunnys and Kasm's people, not to mention the captured FTL spaceships that we controlled. My armed FTL carried three anti-matter weapons that could easily devastate any part of the Earth. It was apparent that Jake knew and respected that power and, I suspected, was trying hard to figure out a way to gain control of it.

We'd only seen the one EMP burst over Kansas, but the Pugs had set off several others over the face of the globe. The electromagnetic pulses generated had successfully destroyed almost all of mankind's electronics and the electrical grid. One moment, things were much as normal, and the next, there were no working automobiles, trucks, or airplanes, and our communication networks had failed.

It had been a hard five years after that. Many of the original invaders were dead or were killed shortly after the bursts, but millions of people had starved or died of medical problems in the first month. The death toll gradually declined and leveled out, but we'd estimated that nine out of every ten humans had died before we figured out how to survive. The average human now lived a life on the level of a seventeenth-century man. Nearly everything that we'd taken for granted existed no longer.

There were still some Pug-bears surviving on Earth. The alien monsters mainly were in remote areas where they didn't encounter many humans, but they were usually killed whenever they did. Defeating an intelligent Pug-bear would typically be difficult for a human; the feral, non-intelligent ones were hard enough to kill. Fortunately, they had almost uniformly suffered from some unknown pathogen-induced loss of intelligence, making them easier to destroy. No one had taken the time to figure out what was sickening them, though.

Jake, a retired marine, had somehow taken over the Denver area and now ruled the entire front range from Pueblo to Fort Collins. He had no interest in coming over the mountains since there were not enough resources to make the effort worthwhile in the Grand Lake area. That made us neighbors, although the initial relationship was uneasy. We'd worried that he might attack us until the second Pug-bear invasion was underway.

Three of his people and I had gone through the new matter transporter that the Pugs had sent to Earth and had freed some of the Sunnys and captured an FTL spaceship. We'd used the ship to help liberate one Sunny planet from the Pug-bears, and then we'd flown to Kasm's planet in search of allies. It had been difficult, but the decision was a good one. The Sim-tigers were fierce fighters, easily capable of defeating a Pug-bear, and together, we'd formed a rough alliance that allowed us to defeat the second Earth invasion in the early winter of last year.

We'd spent the rest of the winter consolidating our forces and relationships. Now, I'd determined that we absolutely had to carry the attack to the Pug-bears. It was apparent that they wouldn't leave us alone unless we rendered them incapable of further aggression.

They were a primitive race and had no real civilization. Their ability to telepathically attack and capture prey, paired with the symbiont-induced intelligence of some of them, had allowed them to capture a Sunny exploration group and their spaceship. The acquired ability to travel in space had hit the Pug-bears like a bolt of lightning. They read the Sunnys' minds and quickly realized that an untold number of planets were available for them to attack. Since their genetically programmed ambition was to dominate as much territory as possible for each individual, they quickly captured the Sunnys' six planets and then the planet occupied by the Pugs.

Using the iron-age Pugs as troopers and menials, the Pug-bears forced the Sunnys to build more spaceships that they used to attack and dominate many other planets. They'd destroyed five alien civilizations that I'd heard of, only being stopped by Kasm's people and now, humans. I suspected that they'd come back in more force and continue to try to capture the Earth unless we took direct action against them.

Since my group didn't have enough people, I wanted to come to a working agreement with Jake that would allow us to use his men. It could be beneficial to both sides. My concept was to build a confederation of independent states, including the Sunny civilization and the Sim-tigers. The Sunnys had technology that was far advanced over that of humans, and I believed that with the proper organization, we could benefit from it.

They would benefit by our providing protection for them. They were congenitally unable to engage in violence, even to protect themselves.

On the other hand, Kasm's people were highly intelligent telepaths who lived as roving hunters on their own planet. They had no technology but were so flexible in outlook that they could quickly adopt it. Of the two friendly aliens, the Sunnys and the Sim-tigers, the Sim-tigers were the closest in worldview to humans. We had a lot in common, considering that we were vastly different in physiology.

Kasm initially looked familiar. He was shaped like a large, stocky tiger with no tail, six limbs, and green stripes. His middle limbs were manipulative appendages with hands that allowed him to use some of our technology. However, his people had never seen the need for weapons since they were heavily armed naturally, with razor-sharp claws and fangs.

He and I had discussed our differences, and I'd concluded that at least part of human advancement directly resulted from our lack of natural weapons. Probably the first tool used by primitive man was a stick or rock pressed into service as an improvised weapon. One thing led to another, and we progressed; weapons technology often leading the way. For example, the transistor, which led to integrated circuits and the digital age, was an outgrowth of the nuclear missile program. Vacuum tubes could not stand up to the launch stresses placed on them by early rockets.

Jake led us through the hotel and out onto the back patio where the Eastern Slope people had built an enormous fire and were barbecuing two hogs and what looked like the rear quarters of a mule deer. I looked at Jake, and he smiled, saying, "We'll talk as we eat. I'm not one for formality, and this cool air makes me hungry."

"Okay," I answered, "sounds good to me. Do you have any of that deer leftover that hasn't been cooked? Kasm doesn't believe in applying fire to his food."

That was a significant understatement. The Sim-tigers only ate raw meat, and Kasm had initially been horrified that humans preferred to burn their food before consumption. His people had discovered that they loved mule deer and elk. That meant they could spread out over the mountains and hunt, an activity that fit well with their traditional lifestyle.

We lined up by the fire and loaded up on food. The cooks had reserved the rest of the deer for any Sim-tigers that would show up, so that was no problem. Once we'd helped ourselves, we sat at some of the tables that had been cleaned up and arranged across the patio.

The last time I'd seen those tables was before the EMP bursts. A large group of Pugs had been using them as shields during the pitched battle against my group. It hadn't helped them. I'd used an anti-matter rifle to dissolve a lot of them, and Rudy's people had killed the rest.

Jake was paying particular attention to my wife, Liz. They had not previously met, and he was making every effort to be charming. We sat down at a table, and she moved her chair close to me, letting him know with a smile that his effort was not unappreciated but showing that he didn't have a chance.

We began to discuss the situation as we ate. Two hours later, we were still talking. The main issue finally came down to whether or not Jake would get his own spaceship. We agreed on the confederation idea, and having Jake's men help us as fighters was not an issue, but he was holding out for one of our two FTLs. I didn't want to give them up, seeing the need for the transportation and fighting ability of the two, even though one was as yet unarmed.

Jake had been very impressed with the spaceships' capability after he'd seen the results of the single, low-orbit pass while firing the anti-matter cannon on burst mode. It had wiped out the majority of Pugs and Pug-bears, along with a vast swath of real estate, neatly dividing the city of Boulder into two parts.

He was worried about the Motherland

Army horde that was heading our way. Apparently, there were thousands of men in their army, and they were burning villages and killing anyone who showed any signs of resistance. On hearing some of the tales, any residual loyalty to the prior order that I still held faded quickly away.

We were doing all we could, maintaining our way of life and gradually working back towards a civilization of sorts. There was no way an invasion by a bunch of rapacious semi-barbarians would contribute to our survival.

I agreed to provide orbital support for any military action he would be forced to take against the remnants of the old government, should they attack. That led to him agreeing that I'd keep our spaceships as long as he had dibs on the next one we captured. I didn't speak my mind, but inside, I wondered if a spaceship might not lead him to think of becoming some sort of glorified space Viking or pirate. His reputation was good among his men, but he had conquered a lot of territory and showed no qualms about conquering more.

The meeting went on into the night hours as we worked out details of creating what was to be the Earth's first space force.