March 21, 1956 was a typical first day of Spring.  It was warm in some places and snowing in others.  In Newgate, there was still snow on the ground and most people traveled underground or by transporter so they wouldn’t have to be outside. 

Out in the Kuyper Belt, transdimensional sensors picked up some intruders that were constantly shifting dimensions to try and elude detection.  But they were discovered anyways.  A hyperlight speed warning signal was transmitted to Newgate to prepare for an alien invasion.  Most of the starships were too far away to come back to fight the fleet of nearly 1500 heavy cruisers and shock destroyers.  It looked like the Alliance wanted to wage KBW 3. 

The scientists and ACE personnel in Newgate sprang into action.  A detachment was sent to the moon bases and from the back side, a small fleet of 300 cruisers left over from KBW 2 shifted into other dimensions to replicate into 3000 more ships by using material from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to make the cruisers.  All of them were manned by synthetics. 

Other men and synthetics were sent to Mars to activate another small fleet of cruisers.  There were another 500 slightly larger cruisers removed from underground hangars that had been there since before the pyramids of Egypt were built.  So they had older hyperlight reactors and both beam and discharge weapons that had to be handled carefully.  Since the language was barely translatable, the people and synthetics had to guess what the writing meant.  But with the future of Earth on the line, there wasn’t much time for trial and error. 

The 500 that had no replication ability joined the 300 primary cruisers and 3000 replicated ones to take on the Alliance.  They constantly shifted to try and hide their numbers and to try and get an advantage over the enemy. 

While the cruisers were getting ready to engage the enemy between Mars and Jupiter, millions of space mines were launched from the moon and Newgate via transporters.  They were launched three layers deep.  The first layer was positioned between Mars and the moon.  The second was about a million miles closer to the moon.  And the third was another million miles closer.  As long as the Alliance was coming in from the Yukon Station region of the belt, the mines would hopefully catch and destroy a number of Alliance ships.  But another million were scattered within a million mile radius of Earth and the moon just in case. 

A satellite defense grid was established in geosynchronous orbit that consisted of 14 power ray battle stations that had a dozen power rays each.  They were spaced so that no section of earth would be vulnerable to attack as long as none of the stations were overwhelmed.  With each station using a hyperlight reactor, the radiation belts that surrounded the earth were tapped into to provide even more energy for the weapons.  So instead of sending a beam into various dimensions that was 10 gigawatts.  The beams were over 200 gigawatts. 

The ships out beyond Mars put up fierce resistance and managed to disable or destroy about 40% of the Alliance ships while losing mainly replicates.  The older cruisers from Mars took a lot of damage but inflicted a lot too.  The attrition rate was 70% with 1820 humans losing their lives.  The newer cruisers from the moon had a 30% attrition rate with 795 humans losing their lives.  The 2800 replicates that were lost were all manned by synthetics. 

The mines would detect intruders, lock them into the dimension they were detected in, and fire power rays and energy projectiles at the ships that were trapped inside energy boxes.  As hard as they tried to shift, they couldn’t.  About another 40% were disabled or destroyed. 

The final 20% of the fleet had to be handled by the defenders from Newgate and the moon.  The remaining space mines took care of a quarter of the fleet that remained and the battle stations took care of another half of the fleet.  The remaining ships were engaged by ray fire from Newgate and the moon.  Also, some small robot attack crafts were shifted from other dimensions and transported up into space to take on the much larger cruisers and shock destroyers. 

For nearly half an hour, the defenders of earth kept the Alliance ships from firing down upon earth in this dimension.  This gave ACE enough time to send starships to earth to destroy the Alliance ships before they could transport down troops that would have fought with the militaries of this planet.  The attack crafts were also handled by attack crafts from the starships, from the moon, and from other dimensions. 

No Alliance ship managed to make it back to their home planets.  Those that tried were picked off by ACE crafts and mines mainly.  What could have been the first strike in KBW 3 proved to be just a major battle and not the start of a war. 

Later that day, a baby boy was born in Warsaw, Indiana that would prove to be one of the most important recruits of ACE during the 21st century.  But if it hadn’t been for Newgate and ACE, the life of that baby might have ended before it could have started.