Auntie replied, "Yes, but before you think of using it on that orbiting ship, you should know that some detectors will pick me up even when I'm invisible. Some of the neutron detectors follow my power supply and engines. If we had something sitting on the ground here that looked like me, we might be able to sneak up on that ship. However; if they have anyone that is only moderately competent, they may spot us and start firing. If they weren't looking for us, we might have a chance."
"Oh well, it was a thought," Tik replied.
She reported that she had inventoried the projectiles and had ordered 100 stainless steel rods of the same diameter and length as Auntie's original rounds. She had ordered 500 of the smaller ones and they all should be delivered early in the morning. She had offered a bonus for the shop to put their order first and to work all night to get them done. Tik headed back to the situation room to finish working on plots for the hyper-space jump. Ron and Gus had Auntie make her shield opaque before they took a grav-sled outside and flew up to the rail gun pods. They had Auntie open them and then they inspected everything. They had her move all the weapons while they were inspecting them to make sure everything was ready. They didn't know if they worked but Auntie ran diagnostics and said it all checked out.
Satisfied that they were as ready as they could make everything, Ron and Gus returned inside. They took the stingerrays back to the armory and reloaded them. They checked their other weapons out of habit. They went to eat and then had a practice session with edged weapons. After they were through, they returned to the living quarters and talked about their dreams and hopes for the future. Finally, when they were relaxed, they turned in for the night.
Chapter 14
The trio was up by dawn. Shortly after they ate, Auntie notified them that the projectiles had arrived. Auntie made the shield opaque again while Ron and Gus quickly loaded the projectiles into their magazine. Ron noticed they now had 150 of the large rounds and 600 of the smaller ones. It didn't seem like much but when considering the unlimited plasma balls and then the laser burst cannons, some unlucky Nodac-Liujia warships were going to think there were plenty of rounds. As they finished loading the rounds, Kota and Zibo came over. Auntie let them in and turned the shield to transparent.
They went to the situation room to see if Tik was ready with the Nodac-Liujia trader ships they had seized. They were only going to use one of them if they could. They hated to damage perfectly good space ships. Maybe they could be used back on their planets.
They went over the plan again to see if they had missed any details. Tik already had the seized ship headed toward the planet. The ship in orbit was trying to contact it by radio. When Tik gave the word, Kota and Zibo would be ready to take off quickly and head directly at the ship in orbit. That ship wouldn't be able to fire on Auntie for fear of hitting the Traders. Hitting them would be a declaration of war with the Dar Es Salaams and those in the Nodac-Liujia ship knew who would lose. The Dar Es Salaam Traders had a nasty reputation of taking care of those who attacked them. Auntie would take off a short time later and Tik would fly the seized ship into the one in orbit. Hopefully they wouldn't think of one of their own ships as dangerous and would be watching Kota and Zibo. The group decided they were as ready as they ever would be. Zibo asked how Tik was going to guide the seized ship and she replied in a smart-alecky manner about the Alcantaran ghost giving her a hand. Zibo and Kota looked at each other, as if trying to decide if they believed in ghosts.
Kota gave his report on the locals and how they were faring with ending the war. It would take awhile to even get the two enemies together but hopefully once the other side saw the videos, they would be ready to cooperate. The police chief had rounded up the rest of the local cell members and they were rapidly closing in on most of the national members. Fu was very optimistic that things would start progressing very quickly that day.
Tik announced they were an hour away from count down. Kota and Zibo hurriedly returned to their ship and started their final take off checklist. Ron and Gus made a quick sweep of Auntie and then went to the lower cockpit to start the count down. Tik stayed at the console in the situation room to guide the other ship. She wondered how much of Auntie's computer capacity they were using. There were a lot of things to keep going all at the same time.
The ship in orbit was demanding to know who was in the seized ship and what their intentions were. Tik signaled Zibo to take off. The ship in orbit continued to call to the other ship but Tik could tell their attention was now focused on Zibo and Kota. Zibo was reaching the upper reaches of the atmosphere now and Tik called for Ron to blast off. Auntie gracefully rose from the ground and started to accelerate into the air. She was heavy but still responded like a race horse at the start of a race. Ron tried not to push her engines too hard but he needed to get into space.
Tik heard the ship in orbit screaming at Zibo and Kota. He was threatening to shoot them out of the sky if they didn't change course. Zibo and Kota remained silent and aimed right for the ship. They picked up speed as they left the atmosphere. Tik pushed the seized ship as fast as she dared and raised the shield. When it was 50 miles from the ship in orbit, the Nodac-Liujians realized they were on a collision course. It was too late. They couldn't move fast enough to get away. The Nodac-Liujia trader fired a plasma ball shot at Zibo and Kota. It hit a glancing blow to the side of their shield and ricocheted into Europaische's upper atmosphere where it died out. Tik crashed the seized ship into them right behind the nose. The seized ship glanced off and Tik reversed engines to bring it to a halt. Zibo quickly turned her ship to give the two wrecked ships plenty of room.
Auntie zoomed into space and relative safety. Ron swung her toward the ship that had been in orbit. He told them to surrender immediately or he would open fire. Zibo was coming in from off of Ron's starboard side. They had the Nodac-Liujia ship in a cross fire. There was no answer from the damaged ship, so Ron had Auntie scan for life forms. There was no one alive! The seized ship had smashed a hole right behind the cockpit and the ship had depressurized in seconds. Apparently none of the Nodac-Liujians had put on space suits or any other protective gear. The thought of that shook the trio. They were sitting with no protection except their shields. They didn't know how long they would survive inside the shields but Tik added a note to Auntie's warnings. She told Auntie to remind them to at least have the space suits in the same room they would be in during risky flights like this. Tik also made a note to check on air tight emergency doors in the space ship. They needed to be able to compartmentalize so they would be able to conserve oxygen if they ever had a hull breach.
Ron launched a remote sensor to check out the wrecked space ship. It flew in through the hole in the space ship's hull. It found six bodies in the cock pit and on the flight deck. Ron sent it to the seized ship to access damage and reported what he had found to Zibo and Kota. The seized ship had a huge dent where it had glanced off the other ship but appeared to still be air tight. Tik sent it back to the asteroid where they had hidden it before. Ron pulled Auntie close to the wrecked ship and used Auntie's tractor beam to push it back into the orbit it had been sitting in before the crash. They decided to leave the bodies where they were at. They had other things to finish right now and they didn't want to take time to move them.
Kota reported that the space battle had been seen by both sides of the planetary conflict below. It had hastened the peace process and they were already talking about what they needed to do to prepare to repel invaders. He said they were headed to their hiding spot. He wanted as few traces as possible leading there by the time the warships arrived. Ron finished with his tasks and turned Auntie away. They were going to head in the opposite direction from the suspected entry point of the warships. If they were checking, they might see Auntie's trail and think they were fleeing. Ron was taking his time until Tik let him know that she had the seized ship parked on the asteroid. As soon as she gave the word, Ron pushed Auntie to jump speed and then made the jump into hyper-space. They
were headed to another solar system in this galaxy. They would make two more jumps to be behind the incoming warships.
As they came out of hyper-space, Ron spotted some small asteroids 5000 miles in front of them. The asteroids were moving in the same direction as they were. He asked Tik to see if this solar system was inhabited. She reported that there were no planets that would support life. Ron proposed testing the rail guns and laser burst cannon on the asteroids ahead of them. The other two thought it was an excellent idea.
Ron lined everything up and increased their speed until they were within 300 miles of the asteroids. He told Auntie to shoot plasma balls from the two big rail guns and then try to hit flying fragments with plasma balls from the smaller rail guns After a self check on the weapons, she could try one solid projectile from each of the rail guns. Then she should try the laser burst cannons on flying debris. They had enhanced pictures of the asteroids on the view screens and they sat tensely as the miles counted down. 250, 225 and then at 200 they all felt a bump like a land vehicle hitting a pot hole. Auntie had targeted the two biggest asteroids, which were about a 1/4 mile wide. The trio held their breath as they waited for what seemed like forever. They were starting to worry that the rail guns hadn't worked. At the end of 42 seconds, the asteroids disappeared. Auntie didn't fire the smaller rail guns because there wasn't anything large enough to be a target. The trio sat in shocked silence. They had never seen anything like this, nor had they heard of anything like it either. Auntie had told them that there was a lot of destructive power in the guns but words did not do justice to the actual event. Ron asked Auntie almost in a whisper, "How far away did you say you could hit something like that?"
Auntie replied, "Something that big I could have hit when we first came out of hyper-space. If I had to pick a smaller area, I would want to be within 3000 miles."
"Would the damage have been as severe from 5000 miles?" Ron asked.
"Oh yes. There is no atmosphere here in space to slow the plasma balls down," she replied.
Ron had her fire the smaller rail guns at the remaining targets and they tore the asteroids to pieces with one shot. Auntie fired the laser burst cannons and pulverized the pieces. Ron told her to do a self-diagnostic. She finished the task and reported that everything was still in working order. There was nothing left to use for targets for the solid projectiles so they made their next jump. They came into regular space and checked that they were still on the right vectors. As soon as they had verified that, they made their final jump. They had spent two days making the long way to this point, but like Kota, they didn't want to leave a trace. When they jumped from here, they would be just a few minutes behind the big warships. Ron kept Auntie at speed to jump and had her constantly update their position. All they needed now was the warships' position and they would jump.
They were now hurtling through empty space waiting on Kota and Zibo. Tik tried the comm units to make sure they had contact and Kota answered back. They were on pins and needles waiting for something to happen. His contacts at Nodac-Liujia had no new news about the warships. He hadn't heard anything from the Charter Navy either. He did thank them again for the robot chef. He told of their heavenly meals. Kota said these robot chefs could be a big seller to Trader ships. One of the big complaints of Traders was the quality of food they had to eat on different planets. Tik signed off and said they would check again tomorrow. Tik then checked the remote detector and saw that she could still search the area around Europaische.
Now began the waiting. This was the hardest part but it had to be done. Tik tried to do some gardening in the conservatory while Ron and Gus watched for a few minutes. Ron and Gus couldn't take the inactivity and went to the cargo bay to practice with their weapons. They practiced for two hours and finally tired of that. They went to the armory and reloaded. They spent another hour learning about some of the weapons they hadn't used yet. Auntie walked them through tearing them down and putting them back together again. Finally it was supper time and they put everything away and secured it. They all met at the galley where Dolores had a scrumptious supper but they just picked at it. They now knew that Auntie had the power to knock out the three warships but could they catch them unaware?
They decided to keep someone in the pilot's seat at all times now. The warships weren't supposed to be there until tomorrow but they didn't want to take a chance. For tonight they decided on four-hour shifts. Tomorrow they would do two-hour shifts so everyone would be ready for the attack. Tik told them they needed to bring their space suits to the flight deck. She reminded them of what had happened to the ship which had been in orbit. Ron stayed in the cockpit while the other two went after their space suits. They double-checked everything and brought them into the flight deck. Gus took over the pilot's seat and Ron went for his suit. Tik had lost the flip of the coin and she had the first watch, followed by Gus. Ron and Gus went to bed and tried to sleep. Every change in air current or creak or groan brought them wide awake. They made it through the night and none of them wanted to be far from the flight deck. They had Dolores bring meals there. To help relieve some of the tension, Tik suggested that they should start studying the information on the next two planets. They also added some notes about Europaische and their trades. This waiting seemed worse than the wait to escape off of the mother ship.
Ron was in the pilot's seat when the alarm finally came. The remote detector had picked up five space ships. Kota called to report that the three warships were there and they had two smaller escorts. Ron said they had to go anyway. At least they could take out the three warships; and if they had time, they would send some laser cannon bursts toward the escort ships. Tik yelled that she had the coordinates programmed in and Ron punched the button to take them to hyper-space.
Auntie came out of hyper-space and the trio saw the warships and their escorts dead ahead. The biggest ship was in the middle with the two other warships at the four o'clock and eight o'clock positions. The escorts were in the ten o'clock and two o'clock positions. The formation looked like the five spots on a dice. As soon as Auntie came out of hyper-space, her rail guns started to fire. She had everything firing at once and this time when they went off, it felt like someone had slammed on the brakes in an emergency stop. Two minutes of firing seemed like an eternity with everything moving in slow motion. Ron was watching the readout of rounds expended and saw in fascination that the count for the big rail guns reached 50. The smaller rail guns hit 85 rounds. He saw the first rounds tearing their way through the warships. The warships had minimal shields around the power plants and the big rounds soon overwhelmed them. Ron just had time to see that every ship was taking hits when they jumped to hyper-space again. Tik had preprogrammed three quick jumps which brought them back to within 500 miles of the port sides of the warships. Ron had Auntie zoom in on the scene in front of them. The rears of the three big warships were wrapped in a fog and from their vantage point, the trio thought it looked like fire but they knew that no fire would burn in a vacuum. It looked like the entire rear of the far escort space ship was missing. The near escort ship had a weapon that was slowly moving in their direction. It looked like the weapon was being moved by hand or from a battery that was almost dead. Auntie picked up the threat and fired one burst from a laser cannon. The weapon vaporized. Kota's ship suddenly appeared about 500 miles off the starboard of the warships. He was far enough below the warships to be out of Auntie's line of fire. They waited a few minutes to see if there were any fighters coming out of the big warship. Auntie's momentum from the jump was driving her closer to the big ships. Kota's ship was coasting closer, also.
Ron had a thought and sent a call to the warships. He asked them to surrender or he would turn the Alcantaran ghosts loose again. Auntie had been scanning the biggest warship and reported that there was no life in the back two-thirds of the ship. She quickly scanned the rest of the ships with the same report. Ron had seen reports on TV of 'shock and awe' that happened during the Gulf War but it didn't even co
me close to what had just happened here. In two minutes, three mighty warships and two escorts were reduced to junk.
Tik was in contact with Kota and he reported his ship had scanned with the same results as Auntie. They had been hidden so they didn't see Auntie pop out of hyper-space and do her damage. Kota looked at the warships and swore that it would have taken at least five ships to do that much damage. His and Zibo's hair was standing on end because they were starting to believe that the trio had actually turned Alcantaran ghosts loose on the warships. The only thing that didn't ring true was the fact that ghosts didn't have substance and should not be able to do this much damage. He was videoing to have a record to send to the Charter Navy. They would want to know about this. He didn't think they had any ships except a big battlewagon that could inflict this much damage.
A weak signal finally came from the middle warship. The caller identified himself as Admiral Selangar from Nodac-Liujia. He demanded to know who had attacked with no provocation.
Ron replied, "I'm afraid the attack was not unprovoked. Your agents on Europaische initiated attacks seven days ago. One of your ships disguised as a Nodac-Liujia trader had attacked a Charter Alliance citizen three days ago. The agents on the planet had confessed to a plot to subdue Europaische and enslave the citizens. The Charter Alliance considered all of this an act of war. I'm afraid that Alcantaran ghosts have no patience with allies of the Challeka Trader, especially those who try to lie to the rest of the universe. I'm afraid we need to move away from you now. I think the Alcantaran ghosts will be here in a few minutes to finish what they started. Good-bye, Admiral."
There was silence for thirty seconds before the Admiral came back on the air, "Please don't leave! We surrender. Most of my command is dead and we are completely defenseless. We need help with the wounded and our oxygen situation here is not good."
Alcantaran 1: Alien Abduction Page 33