by Don Koch
The second ship commenced firing at the planetary target when the first ship exploded. The Solarans then boarded the second ship and the same condition ensued. The Sorzans came on like a rabid horde. Again, there was no apparent Captain. The firing controls were destroyed and again someone triggered the self-destruct mechanism. This had the same result as the first ship.
The third ship commenced firing and appeared to be undisturbed by the destruction of the first two ships. So this time the Solarans boarded in invisible mode. They destroyed the firing control and the Sorzans acted as if this were an everyday occurrence. There was no apparent change in routine. The lead Solaran then tried an experiment. He had one Solaran turn visible. The crew went berserk trying to reach the Solaran. After 10 seconds, the Solaran went invisible and it took only two seconds for the crew to quiet down and resume normal activities even though the weapons would never again fire. The Solarans then destroyed the firing circuits to the ships cannons as well as the repair spares. The Solarans then copied the navigation files on the vessel. No communications systems were found on the ship. The Solorans anesthetized one of the crew members and took him back to the battleship for examination. After scanning the Sorzan, the doctor noted that the creature was non sentient. A circuit board was found attached to what little brain there was. The circuits were diagramed for further review and the creature was returned to its vessel. The Solarans then appeared on the vessel and predictably the self-destruct mechanism was activated and the ship destroyed.
Sider met with Fema, Ed and Janie.
They searched the entire system for more Sorzan vessels and found 20 more. The weapons systems on 17 of the ships were destroyed and action continued until each ship voluntarily self-destructed. The remaining three ships were entered invisibly, the weapons destroyed and the navigations systems were reprogrammed to return the ships home. Each of the three ships was tagged with a beacon so it could be tracked and later found as needed.
# Task Force A Flagship in Orbit at Grell #
# Monday, August 15 #
He then proceeded to provide Paulo with the descriptions he had earlier given to Nikolay.
When he was done, Estella turned to Nikolay and said,
The General was startled and said,
Nikolay, Anya, Paulo and Rosa were all grinning,
# Earth Orbit on the Solaran Ship Aston #
# Tuesday, August 16 #
# An hour later #
The Doctors were positively itching to get going on the project so Andy let them go before the meeting was complete.
Pat Clark offered,
# Task Force A Flagship in Orbit at Grell #
# Tuesday, August 16 #
The defeated Grell invasion fleet to Fair arrived in Grell Orbit. A super ship with sufficient stasis capacity had been moved to a similar orbit. Crews from the various ships were then placed in stasis aboard the super ship. When this was completed, the super ship was moved back to join its sister ships in the Grell Oort cloud.
Nikolay was considering the order in which he must proceed with addressing the issues at Grell when General Tosl asked if they could meet in his office. He invited whoever else he thought might be interested and suggested Paulo and family. A few minutes later Nikolay, Anya, Fass, Ela, Paulo, Rosa and Estella all appeared in the conference room of General Tosl. The General had two individuals with him who were engineers.
A short bit of testing found that it worked. A few others were included in the conference. Nikolay updated the additional persons on the net as to what had occurred to cause the conference.
Andy was startled.
Collum spoke up,
# Task Force B Flagship in orbit at Lota #
# Wednesday, August 17 #
The target of the three Sorzan ships was a cavern that was empty. At one time it had been a shelter but had not seen life in at least a year. The crews started looking for signs of stasis units and several shelters containing them were found. The number of units found totaled nearly 10 million persons. These were moved to a carrier in orbit and sent to Luna as soon as the carrier was loaded. No other survivors were found on the planet. They then started searching each of the planets with no success until they reached a huge man-made structure buried on a Pluto sized object at the inner section of the Oort cloud. It would have been missed but for the curiosity question posed by Janie as they were passing the object. She noted an unusual reflection and pulled up a telescope aided by her 25 x vision to check it out. The reflection was a surface that the builders either had missed or ran out of time to correct. There was a huge door on the surface with an entry hidden in part by natural features. A team of Solarans entered the structure with Janie and found about 200 million stasis units, all occupied, all viable. The structure was capable of self-propulsion but the question was where to take it. Lota had a pre-invasion population of 3.5 billion. The total of all survivors was 218,575,000 persons, roughly 6% of the pre-invasion population. The task force completed a more thorough scan of the Oort cloud bodies and found no additional survivors.
A battleship crewed entirely by Lotans with 60 teams of Solarans on board, all Lotan, volunteered to guard the structure while the rest determined what to do next. Crew on that battleship was reduced to what was needed to move and fight the ship. The real firepower was the Solarans. Sider promised that they would be relieved in three months time. The object that had caught Janie's eye was repaired so that unwanted attention would not be drawn to the site.
The Solarans had no place to take 200 million stasis units that was any safer than where it presently sat. The only real option remaining was to attempt restoration of Lota, but with the hoard of Sorza still out there, the priority had to be threat elimination. The first task would be to locate the entire Sorza fleet. This needed to be done in a way to assure that there were no Sorza running loose.
Sider had his ships do a complete scan and review of Lota. Some areas of the planet were relatively unscathed so it appeared that restoration of the planet was certainly a viable option. Atmosphere was surprisingly intact. Clean up would be a massive project, but with Solaran help it could be done in fairly short order. A second battleship was left in orbit with 40 teams of Solarans to deal with any additional Sorza that might show up.
# Earth Orbit on the Solaran Ship Aston #
When Andy received Sider Belst's report that survivors had been found, he asked
that Aston relay the word to all Solarans. He and Pat then teleported directly to visit with Collum and Menna to deliver the news personally.
# Task Force B Flagship in orbit at Lota #
# Saturday, August 20 #
When all of the Aquarii System scans were complete, there were no additional survivors to be found. Sider ordered the remainder of the Task Force back to the Luna base. Their reconnoiter of the Aquarii system had taken a full week and it posed more questions than it answered. It did not make much sense to expend more time there until the initial Sorzan invasion fleet was completely destroyed. Sider sent a report to Andy indicating their findings and that they were returning to Luna base. They expected to arrive on August 23. Sometimes expectations are subject to change.