by Robert Boren
“Not exactly,” Nolan said. “We were talking in the context of taking on fighters in a dog fight. This is something completely different.”
“Okay, it is what it is,” Vermillion said, still pacing the conference room. “How much delay do we need before we pull the trigger on the main event?”
“We don’t need to build any in,” Nolan said. “We’ve got to pick up the flight suits, jump to our position in the Oollanders system, then launch the fighters and the flight suits. That’s at least twelve hours.”
“Thank you. This is going to work. I can feel it.”
“Scares the crap out of me,” JJ said.
“Nolan is right,” I said. “We’ll pull this off. I wish we had the Zephyrus in place for the attack on the Clan Zone, but we’ll get to that soon enough.”
{ 17 }
Surprise Attack
T he final planning for the mission was finished, and we were minutes away from the end of the jump, the New Jersey crew already on alert and in place for battle. The flight suits going to Devonia Axxiom were two hours away from their destination.
“Captain, we’ve arrived,” Sondra said. We felt the static as we dropped out of the jump.
“Sound the alert,” I said.
“You got it,” Skip said, the buzzer sounding a moment later.
“Battle pilots ready,” Sondra said, looking at her screen. “Damage control teams in place. Bay two is ready to receive flight suits. Scanning the area now for enemy vessels.”
I shot a glance at JJ. She locked eyes with me, looking more confident than before.
“We’ve got this, Captain.”
I nodded, looking at the display on the side of the Captain’s seat.
“Put him on screen.”
The middle screen lit up, Este’s smiling face filling it.
“Welcome to the Earth system. Are you ready?”
“Bay two is ready to receive flight suits. You may proceed.”
“Launching them now,” Estes said. “It’s a short jump, as you know, so I’d get the doors open.”
“Heard that, Captain,” Sondra said. “The bay two crew is standing by.”
“Watching with the sensors,” Nolan said. “I see them. Wow, these things are fast.”
“Damn straight,” Estes said.
“Maybe we should’ve just let them all fly to their targets themselves,” Skip said.
I shook my head. “Oollanders is too far, plus we need to coordinate with the fighters.”
“Yes, better to ferry them closer in this case,” Estes said.
Sondra glanced at me. “They’re almost here, Captain. The entire bunch.”
“Thanks, hon,” Sondra said. “Please put bay two on the left screen.”
The screen showed the bay door open, flight suits appearing, arranged next to each other, taking about a third of the floor.
“Wow, look at that!” Nolan said. “Beautiful.”
“They are, aren’t they?” Estes asked. “Thanks for the video feed.”
“Looks like that’s all of them,” JJ said.
“Look, they’re all collapsing to disks,” Skip said.
“Better way to travel,” Estes said. “I’ll let you go, and continue working the batch for the Zephyrus. We’ll talk soon.”
“That he is,” I said. “Are we ready to jump to the Oollanders system?”
“We are, Captain,” Nolan said, not looking away from his screen. “You have the coordinates, Sondra.”
“On your mark, Captain,” she said.
“Proceed.”
“Aye, sir.” We felt the dizziness as we jumped out of the Earth system.
“This is good,” I said. “I want to make sure it goes off without a hitch. How much more time?”
“We won’t be able to watch that video feed because of the jump,” Skip said.
“You’re sure that’s safe?” Sondra asked. “We can’t lose our fuel source.”
“Enough, children,” I said. “These thirteen hours are gonna be long enough as it is.”
Nolan snickered. “Don’t join in with the others, Dojo. It’s beneath you.”
JJ caught my eye, and nodded towards the door.
“Sondra, you’ve got the bridge. I’ll be back later.”
“Aye, sir.”
We walked out into the hallway.
“What?”
JJ looked at me. “You need to blow off a little steam. Let’s walk down to the ice cream stand. I’ve got a craving.”
“Nervous eater, huh?”
“No, I just like ice cream. C’mon.”
We walked to the stand, which was twenty minutes away, the movement doing a good job of relieving my stress. There wasn’t a big line at the stand this time, so we got our ice cream quickly and sat at one of the small round tables on the side of the corridor.
“This ice cream is excellent,” JJ said.
“Can’t beat real dairy. Are you nervous?”
JJ shook her head. “Not nearly as much as I expected to be.”
“Good. I’m more excited than nervous. It’ll be interesting to see how the Clan reacts when we take their PA stun capability away.”
“Hopefully they don’t have any redundancy,” JJ said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Sucks to be them,” I said.
JJ eyed me. “What if they decide to attack Earth?”
I chuckled. “They’ll think Simone did this, and she’s from Devonia Axxiom. Kinda cancels them out.”
JJ smiled. “You’re right. This is hilarious.”
“Well, except for her operatives,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. That wasn’t very sensitive. Sorry. I hope they survive.”
“Me too. Still worries me how the Clan found out. Hope they haven’t been listening in to our conversations with Simone.”
“Glad we didn’t discuss this mission, or any of our capabilities,” JJ said. “You’re done already. Want to go back?”
“Finish,” I said. “We’ll ride back. No problem.”
We were silent for a few minutes, JJ savoring her treat, my mind going over the main event over and over.
“Don’t fret,” JJ said, watching my face. I snapped out of it.
“You’re right. Got to watch that stress level.”
just weird. They worry constantly about things that don’t matter, and have no problem when things are going crazy.
JJ finished her ice cream, getting up to toss the cup into the trash. “Let’s get going.”
We headed for the transport station and grabbed a tin can. After it closed around us and took off, JJ kissed me tenderly.
“I’m so proud to be your woman, Trey.”
“I’m proud to be your man,” I said. “What brought that on now?”
“We’re going into battle.”
“Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing. We’ll be fine.”
“I know.”
The tin can came to a stop, letting us out. We went back on the bridge.
“Good, I was afraid you’d miss the show,” Nolan said, turning towards us. “Dojo already has the link set. It’ll be on center screen when the units come out of the jump. We’ve got less than ten minutes now.”
I sat in the Captains chair. “Thanks, Nolan.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Sondra made eye contact with me. “What if the Clan attacks Earth after this?”
JJ and I shot each other a glance and laughed.
“What’d I say?” Sondra asked.
“They’ll think Simone did this, and she’s from Devonia Axxiom.”
Sondra smiled. “That’s right. Sorry. I feel stupid.”
“Don’t, I had the same concern until Trey reminded me,” JJ said.
“We don’t know where they’ll lash out,” Nolan said. “They might attack anywhere or anybody.”
“Are we gonna see five different views?” Skip asked.
The screen showed the feed, men in vacuum gear rushing the flight suits. Then they froze, their arms and legs stuck in motion.
“What the hell?” Skip asked.
Nolan snickered. “They got hit with Variant Three Nanos. The electronics aren’t inside the vacuum suit, they’re outside, exposed to attack. Those men are stuck in place.”
“Oh, geez, look at that!” Sondra said, watching as a suit came open, the Variant Four Nanos flooding into the commando, exploding him as other suits popped open.
“How are they doing that?” JJ asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“They probably have a manual emergency open capability,” Nolan said. “They should’ve had more patience.”
“What about the PA system?” I asked.
“Watching the Nano flow now, Captain,” Nolan said, not looking away from his screen. “It’s dead. Signal stopped.”
“The rest of those men are blowing up,” JJ said, looking away from the screen.
“What about the other worlds in the 6300?” JJ asked.
“They’ve got subnets to continue service, but we’ve killed the source of the stun messages,” Nolan said. “Uh oh, the Nanos are still alive. They’re chewing into surrounding infrastructure.”
“Dammit,” I said. “We can’t kill that whole planet. Is there anything we can do?”
“Good,” I said. “Should we get a message to Simone and Bryce that this was a success?”
“Perfect,” I said. “Well done, everybody. Butch, what’s our time to Oollanders?”
Vermillion came onto the bridge. “Great job, everybody.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Did you see the video feed from the flight suits?”
“Yeah. Next time they won’t be so quick to take the suits off. This is a good development, because it takes away one of the best defenses against the Nanos.”
“Any sign of Clan ship movement?” I asked.
“If the clan can alter the drive profiles and frequencies, can’t they also change them to something we haven’t seen before?”
“True,” Vermillion said.
“What?” I asked.
I laughed. “What, you used a gambling reference, Butch? Tisk tisk.”
“All right, stop it,” I said. “Now is when we need to watch. They might not have understood what we did at first.”
“What if Earth gets attacked?” JJ asked.
“We hadn’t mentioned those to everybody yet,” Vermillion said.
Vermillion sighed. “Okay, no problem. The Captain and JJ already know about them.”
“How about a description?” Nolan asked.
“I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this now, but I’ll give you a quick explanation, if the Chairman doesn’t mind.”
“Go ahead, Captain,” Vermillion said.
“They are similar to the Mark V and the newer Mark VI fighters.”
“Mark VI?” Nolan asked. “How’s it different than the Mark V?”
“They can cloak,” I said. “The LB version is a light bomber, made to go against battleships with torpedoes and enhanced plasma guns. They’re much faster than the Mark V and Mark VI basic version, but not as good in a dogfight.”
“How many do we have?” Skip asked.
“Enough,” Vermillion said. “I’ll leave it at that for now. They aren’t through with testing yet, so I’d rather not take them into combat if possible.”
“What are we doing after the next attack?” Sondra asked. “Are we still sending the Zephyrus to the Clan Zone?”
“We’ll make decisions on that after the battle,” I said. “If we do well enough, the Clan might cut and run. They’ll know they’ve lost the element of surprise, and they’ll also know that we have weapons they don’t have a defense against.”
“We have better technology,” Nolan said.
“And they have much larger numbers,” I said. “They could force us to defend our worlds, and the trick we’re about to pull on them won�
�t work more than once.”
Nolan nodded. “Okay Captain, point taken. I’d be surprised if they just pick up their ball and go home, but they might want us to think they did.”
“That’s a possibility,” Vermillion said. “And don’t forget that if they attack Earth and we respond with our weapons, they’ll know we still have bases there. It’ll be obvious, and they’ll find them eventually.”
“Unless we destroy all the Clan ships,” Skip said. “We’ve bested them more than once so far.”
“That’s been gnawing at me since I woke up from my coma,” Vermillion said. “We might eliminate the Clan, but find ourselves in a massive civil war.”
“Not liking the sound of that,” JJ said. “Do we have any word on the status of our new allies?”
“Last I talked to Simone, she had a large team working the weaknesses that we told her about. Tuning will be a little more difficult unless we all lower our defenses.”
“I have a working prototype of the module,” Nolan said, “but we’ll have to get it to them. Drake is building a sub-module that can stop un-authorized transmissions in the same way our AIs are doing.”
“Sounds like a longer-term solution,” I said. “Unless we can give them detailed plans and let them build the units themselves.”
“I wouldn’t have a problem with that,” Vermillion said.
“Exactly,” Nolan said. “Drake, you could send me instructions for your sub-module?”
I glanced at JJ, then at Vermillion. “We’ve got just over six hours until the next phase of the operation. I suggest we start getting rest in shifts.”
“Thank you,” JJ said.
“Breaking up the party, huh?” Skip asked.