| |
Bob, Ignatius and their new Mookookie buddy, Chortle finished their rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” with gusto. “Please don’t take my sunshine from meeee!” Even Fidget had joined in on the chorus, a new skill for him.
Chortle’s real name was Choto, but he had this funny chuckling thing he did whenever he was amused, which was often. Bob dubbed him Chortle and, he liked it and now answered only to his new name. Chortle was one of BaaGah’s buds, which Burt had insisted he take. “I think you’ll find him more than useful. I’ve been having this idea...”
Those words were always like magic to Bob. Burt had outlined his thoughts on the matter and Bob hadn’t been able to sleep three nights in a row adding it to his newest project. It was a perfect fit.
He was celebrating the completion of his “total tech attack package”, TTAP for short, with the “t” or at least one of them, silent. The packs were now being manufactured and assembled by one of the Dimensional Alliance partners known for their fast, accurate, and quality workmanship where tech was concerned. He had loved demonstrating the parts that had to be manufactured to the insectoids who would be building the tech parts needed for his strategy to work. They had chittered excitedly to one another, only occasionally mind speaking to Bob to clarify a point or so. The prototypes they had produced based on his designs had been flawless.
Chortle was so proud to be of assistance in the lab. “Chortle helps buddy Bob. Chortle is good assistant. Buddies Ignatius and Chortle rock!”
He had picked up slang words such as “rock” with glee. He liked imitating Bob’s mindspeech and favorite sayings. Bob had not considered how each Mookookie would be unique individuals, even though they basically broke off of their parent with the same DNA. They had race memory, for sure, but their personalities differed as much from one to another as any humanoid.
His highly dexterous hands were extremely useful when an extra pair was needed. He discovered that Chortle could actually alter the thickness of his fingers at will, which could be helpful in tight spaces that Bob couldn’t get to.
Chortle was a delight to have around and careful to not eat those things he was told were off limits. He participated gleefully in the experiments Bob was running with the MDPs, and the others on the Science and Technology Team enjoyed him so much that they soon asked the Alliance to supply them each with one.
The request was granted but not before Jenny made sure that each of them understood they weren’t to reproduce on Earth. When they were ready to bud, they would be transported to Krim where the new Mookookie were happily absorbed into their native culture.
Jenny had lifted the moratorium on Mookookie budding when Bob had explained to her the strategy he had come up with. He had met with the Mookookie “old ones” and explained what he wanted to do, and they had been ecstatic.
They wanted so much to repay the Alliance for the return of their planet to them. They and the former slaves were getting on well together, so much so that they had discovered many ways they could be of assistance to one another and it was becoming a common practice for a new Mookookie to bond with another being on Krim as a lifelong partnership.
New traditions were being formed from day to day and Bob looked forward to looking in on their culture years from now if he lived that long.
But for now, he had enough to be going on with. He had Fidget dial Lizziebot to tell her to get Jenny on the line if she was available. It often worried Bob that they were using up Jenny’s youth with the huge burden that had been placed squarely on her shoulders.
He knew she was willing, or he would have been furious about the situation. Nevertheless, she was at a time in her life when she would have normally been socializing with her friends and exploring life options.
He sighed, nothing to be done about it, however. And he needed her help as much as everyone else. Her mental abilities had made her a lynchpin in this entire war. His one consolation was that she was being actively guarded by more layers than she knew about. Lizziebot had a new upgrade. She could come out of the MDP at will or whenever accessed by Liliath, Bob, Burt, Elizabeth or Tarafau.
He had taken great pride in showing off this feature to Jenny the last time they had talked. She had been suitably impressed. He now knew more about the MDPs than any of the Alliance scientists, and they made much over him.
Merv had practically strutted when he had presented Bob’s finished prototype of the TTAP system in Bob’s absence, via the Alliance Network, which had finally been reestablished with Earth after the incident in Puerto Rico. Merv considered Bob his personal protégé, as well he might. Without Merv’s nudges in the right direction, he would still have been twiddling with his robots.
Not that he wasn’t continually improving their programming as he went along. The same factory that had taken over his new project had also manufactured thousands of his bots, to his great delight. One of his daily duties was to upload software updates to the secured tech center in the science lab at Alliance headquarters, and from there to all robots that had access to the network.
With the addition of mindspeech to his robotics, thanks to Cornelium, they were much more useful and each of them was programmed with the most current information regarding the MDP research. For his plan to work, all the bots had to be up to date with the latest about the various parts and pieces that made the plan work. Both Cornelium and Merv had approved the plan as sound and after they had also gotten approval from the High Council, it was time to roll it out.
It killed him to know everything he now knew and not to be able to use it for the benefit of Earth, but he had to agree with Ingot and Liliath about this. He had given his word, and that was that. However, although none of the DAT he had used in this project was allowed to be promulgated on Earth, many of the concepts of how he organized all of this would be applicable and would not compromise either his word or the natural development of Earth’s technologies.
Ignatius was starting on a second chorus of “You Are My Sunshine” when Jenny chimed in. Her natural alto voice harmonized well with the bird, even in mindspeech.
“Hello, Bob and company!” she said cheerfully. “I hear we have some breakthroughs.”
“Breakthroughs,” Ignatius agreed.
“Lots and lots,” put in Chortle.
“We all helped,” added Fidget.
“Indeed. The entire team has been working our collective tails off getting this together. With three separate teams each working on a separate part of the plan, and your wonderful help with the Mookookie, I think we are ready to roll it out. Could you perhaps get Elizabeth to bring you so we can discuss this? I would really like to tell you about it in person for security reasons. What do you think?”
Evidently, she thought it was a good idea. Standing in front of him, out of the blue, with Elizabeth’s hand on one shoulder, was his Jenny. She definitely looked different. Her hair was a short cap of honey-colored curls and her face was tanned. Her outfit was some kind of cottony material, a soft brown tunic and breeches and laced up boots. She was still beautiful, but he could see that her face had matured even in this short time. There was a more serious set to her face, and he could see her experiences reflected in those beautiful blue eyes.
She immediately reached out and hugged him enthusiastically, eliciting a squawk from Ignatius. She laughed and skritched the back of his neck in the best spot and he closed his eyes, one happy bird. Chortle had sprouted arms and legs and was doing the Mookookie happy dance and was soon joined by Noony and Jenny’s Mookookie.
“What did you name him?” Bob asked, laughing at the frolicking Mookookies.
“He’s Lolly. Or at least that’s what he told us when he came to be with us. But let’s mindspeak. Elizabeth’s English is coming along, but I don’t want her to be left out.”
“Gotcha. Hey, Elizabeth. Good to see you. I’m so glad you’re with Jenny again. I know she’s in good hands between you, the girls, and Burt. I understand Tarafau is with you all as well.”
“Father is leading the Daringi delegation to get agreements of how we will proceed going forward. The Groga are adamant they want this ‘victory’ for themselves, but they are willing to have Daringi consultants and to use Daringi tactically for moving about, that sort of thing. They are firm on the idea that no other being will fight this fight for them.
Of course, anything that happens in orbit around their planet is fair game for us, which means that we can at least hopefully prevent the Norgoth from just bombarding the planet from space with no need to shed Norgoth blood.”
“It’s a bit of a fine line, but they have no space fleet and have conceded the point,” Jenny put in, settling herself on a stool next to Bob’s worktable. “So, what do you have for us, Bob? You sounded pretty excited, you and your ‘lab assistants’.” And she laughed again at that. It was good to see her laugh.
The ‘assistants’ had settled down and Bob took a deep breath. “We can’t win this war,” he began and held up his hand to forestall argument. “We can’t; at least not yet. This is a long term commitment, as much as we would prefer it to be otherwise. Also, Earth is back in the mix until we can locate every last Inseni portal and disable them once and for all.
That being said, we can deal the Great Insenium a major blow if we do this right. We can disable them for many years to come and give help and protection to a lot of innocent and unsuspecting beings across the multiverse. But based on our most current intel, the numbers we are up against are more than I could have imagined possible. When the Insenium split up a few centuries ago, there were the little bug-eyed guys on Krim and a couple of other planets, but the Norgoth took a different tack.
They decided to colonize several planets that were conveniently connected by their alternate frequency portals. It appears they actually do occur naturally, as do the gates in the Alliance gate network, but their method of accessing the portals uses different technology than we do and, unlike the gateways, their portals actually occur on multiple planets.
Also, they haven’t known about this technology as long as the Alliance has been in existence. Evidently, they discovered they could do this not long before the Groga started raiding under the Fleistians. Turns out the Fleistian portals are part of the Inseni portal network, which is how they discovered the Fleistians and their Groga army.
They did what they do best. They acquired the Fleistians and their Groga slave army and began raiding in earnest after what had been a long hiatus by the Fleistians. Of course, that was why the Alliance thought the Groga threat was eradicated. The Fleistians had relocated them to a different dimension, also connected to their portal.
Bringing this story up to date, the Norgoth half of the Insenium take up at least six planets and have been reproducing intentionally for all this time. Even with all the resources of the Dimensional Alliance, just getting the six main Insenium planets pacified will be Herculean. Add to that the planets already conquered throughout their network, which my sources say are several hundred, and you can see what we are up against.
Fortunately, the largest concentration of their military forces, according to what we have learned, are on just four of the planets inhabited by the Norgoth. There are others, but they are minor. If we can eliminate the threat from those four, things will be more manageable, and it will be a long time before they become as much of a threat.
So much for our reality check; now...what do we do about it?”
Jenny shook her head, her eyes large and her mouth set in a thin line. “Are you telling me that after all of this, we can’t hope to fix this?”
“No, Jenny. I’m telling you we can’t just go in and conquer, and we can’t expect to see immediate results from even the cleverest plans. However, we do stand a chance if we can spread enough chaos and weaken them in their most vulnerable areas. Between all of the members of the Science and Technology teams, we have come up with some solutions that will give the best results both short term and long term.
Our biggest problem is sheer numbers and fighting a war on multiple fronts which dilutes our own numbers and resources.
To that end, right now several high-tech factories on the planets of one of our Alliance scientists are running full bore, churning out the pieces of a highly unusual and hopefully unanticipated way of doing battle. We’ve been dropping some hints for them, unintentionally, but I doubt that they’ve been paying attention, especially since the Insenium didn’t have any on the ground witnesses of our previous escapades.”
“What are you up to, Bob? This sounds like another one of those brilliant brainstorms that has saved us in the past.” Jenny broke in excitedly.
Bob held up both hands. “OK, look. I can’t guarantee anything. There is still so much we don’t know about any tricks the Insenium might have up their own sleeves, but I believe this gives us our best chance. The thing is that I took a page out of some of the subversive groups in our own culture. The only ones who know the entire plan or the entire inventory of our TTAPs is me and Merv, so we are making a point of never being in the same place at the same time. Having told you that, you and Elizabeth are way too high profile to know the entire plan.
What I need from you right now is Mookookie. How many would you say there are right now, after your Mookookie replication program?”
“A few billion, I would guess. There could be more. What do you have in mind?”
“Every trooper commander has an MDP and most battalion commanders also have an MDP. In addition, certain entire brigades will each have an MDP issued to them. This is straining the MDP system to a certain extent, but I’m guessing I need a few thousand Mookookie willing to volunteer for a non-dangerous part of this plan. I only need them for about a week from now. It will be a short stint and I’m still working out the details of how to get them where they need to be, but Chortle has given me some good ideas about that. These are non-combatant roles, be clear about that. Can you get me the numbers I need?”
Jenny thought about it. “Let’s ask Lolly. Lolly, do you think the Mookookie will do this?”
Lolly screwed up the face that was also his tummy in an obvious look of concentration. “Older ones say, yes. We will do it. Ready now?”
Bob held up both hands. “Not yet, Lolly. I will tell you when and where and how, ok?”
“Yes. Older ones say yes. We wait. Needs more than for Jenny?”
“For Jenny?” Bob asked, his curiosity piqued. He looked at her, one eyebrow raised in question.
“Umm...well...Let’s just say I have a few things in the works myself where the Groga are concerned. And for all the reasons you just mentioned, I’m not at liberty to talk about it. Elizabeth and Tarafau are the only ones who know the whole plan besides me. As you said, sometimes we have to learn from the bad guys, if we want to win. Let’s just hope between your big plan and my smaller part of the plan all goes well.”
Bob grinned at her and shook one finger in front of her nose. “Not another surprise like last time, I hope,” he said aloud. Elizabeth caught the joke and laughed, mischief sparkling in her eyes. Her English must be getting better than Jenny realized, he thought.
“I promise this plan is Tarafau approved, but I do believe it will take a few people by surprise. I must say it did me.” Jenny retorted in mindspeech for Elizabeth’s benefit.
Elizabeth nodded smugly.
“One more thing, Jenny; I need some DNA samples from those Norgoths Juan and Luz captured yesterday to give to Xao Ting. He added a nice little wrinkle to our plan to ensure long-term benefits from our short-term plans. A devious little guy. I’m really glad he’s on our side. It always baffles me how so many nice people can come up with such downright scary ideas. You’d never know to look at him or listen to him that he had a talent for scheming. You’ve got to watch the quiet ones; that’s all I’m sayin’...
I’ll be in touch in about two weeks. Within a few days of my ‘special delivery’ of Mookookies, I will have a ‘special delivery’ of my own...and then we’ll see.”
