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Brendan watched the screen on the bridge of his ship. Sure enough, the scouts had been accurate. Three ships, slightly larger than his had entered their visual range. They had been tracking them for an hour or so when they had entered the Groga solar system. Turns out there must be a space portal in this system, which was how they had discovered the planet they had relocated the Groga to a few hundred years before. It wasn’t close, but it was reasonable to assume that one of the reasons they located the Groga on this particular planet was that it also had some natural portals. Only two as far as the Groga commanders were aware.
There were no Groga on his ship. He received all of his intel from Jenny and her Mookookie agents via her amazing ability. That girl was fair dinkum in his opinion. When he was her age, he was flying for the Australian air corps, but he hadn’t had a tenth of the responsibility that circumstances had put on her. She stood up to it, even when she was not confident that she could. Like the rest of the team, he worried about her, but they had been given instructions to not coddle her.
In his humble opinion, the girl hadn’t had a moment of coddling from the beginning, but what did he know? He was just a space jockey. A SPACE jockey! He knew that a grin at this time would seem out of place, but he still couldn’t believe this opportunity had come his way.
And now he had an enemy fleet bearing down on their position, or at least near their position. Their fleet had been completely shielded by one of the moons that orbited the planet so far. He would have given a lot to see the enemy commander’s face when they realized that this wasn’t just going to be some destroy and run mission. The fleet commander’s voice came over the intercom. “Ready all ships; like we planned.”
“Battle stations!” Brendan sent to his crew. He could visualize each of them in their respective places. “This is not a drill! Repeat: This is NOT a drill!”
As the enemy fleet came into view, he noted that they didn’t seem as sleek as the Alliance ships, so perhaps their technology wasn’t quite as advanced as they had feared. Of course, you couldn’t judge a book, or a ship, by its cover. The outside of the ship wasn’t nearly as important as the inside. They knew little to nothing about the construction or weapons of the ships they would soon be facing, but he was hoping that Bob’s contribution would make the difference, regardless.
As his pilot maneuvered them into position, he knew that on the flight deck his crew was arming their dastardly little surprises, a huge fleet of them, by the time they combined with those on the other ships in the fleet. Bob’s research into the full capabilities of the MDPs had made it possible and Brendan was glad to have him on the team as it was important not to have a major gun battle with the enemy if they could help it.
Rather, Bob had created a three stage system based on their earlier exploits in the Amazon jungle, fighting the Groga. If it worked, they would be saved a lot of potential casualties and damage to their fleet.
It required two sets of specialized drones camouflaged for use in the darkness of space equipped with some dastardly alien tech that would extend the amount of damage they could do. Add to that Bob’s clever little flying bots, and this should be interesting to say the least. Bob had combined his own ideas with the tech the Alliance already had available, and Brendan expected the results to be impressive.
Mix that Yankee ingenuity with the devious minds of the tactical team and they had more than a few nasty surprises for the incoming fleet.
As the Inseni fleet neared, he considered all of the drills they had done while waiting behind this little moon. His crew was well trained, and they had cut their response time significantly along with the other ships in the fleet. They had one more ship than the Inseni fleet that now approached, but the Commander of the Alliance fleet had told them not to judge the situation by numbers, but to stick to the agreed upon strategy.
Burt would have called the strategy “prestidigitation”, “Now you see it now you don’t.”
The first ship moved into place, directly in the path of the oncoming fleet. “Hailing alien fleet. Stand down and we won’t fire upon you,” the ship broadcast on all known frequencies.
They knew full and well that the Insenium would find this humorous, if not insulting. One puny ship against their noble fleet? How ludicrous. The enemy ship fired some sort of energy weapon, but the little ship was well prepared for this. They energized the hull, and the blast was repelled, although Brendan was sure it probably shook the ship, stabilizers or not. It was all he could do to be still, but for this to work the fleet had to come a bit closer.
The ships moved closer and the ship at the front of the formation fired again. Again, the shields held, but that was his signal. “NOW!”
At first it didn’t seem like anything happened, but Brendan knew better. The first wave of nearly invisible drones had been released from all four ships. They did better than they had expected, actually making contact with the ships’ hulls. The hulls were shielded similarly to their own ships and it looked as if the weak little attack had failed. The drones that had struck the hulls of the ships floated away, seemingly disabled.
They released the second wave. This wave didn’t attempt to touch the hulls. The ships were now targeting them with an energy weapon that looked like it was a lower frequency than the one they had fired at the ship that had been left out for bait. However, these little drones were fast and agile. Only a computer programmed to follow them at high speed and anticipate their multiple dives and turns could have hit many of them.
They fired constantly, strafing the outsides of the enemy ships, doing their job to weaken the hull and draw enemy fire.
While the enemy had been distracted by the first two waves, what they didn’t see were the flying attack robots that had been sneaking up from behind. They targeted the weapons that were firing nearly uselessly at the little drones. Too late, the enemy ships’ captains realized their dilemma.
The first wave had not intended to dent their ships at all like the little nuisances they seemed to be. They had actually deposited nanobots on the hull, which had two functions, to weaken the metal of the hull with microscopic holes drilled by miniscule lasers. Secondly, like the nanobots they called “Burt’s bugs”, these burrowed into the hull to track the ships and to continue to do small amounts of damage to the hull and the equipment inside the ships over time.
As their plan had anticipated, when their enemy realized their weapons were being destroyed by the robots, they attempted to turn and run, only to be confronted by Brendan’s ship and the two other ships of their fleet.
“Stand fast! Prepare to be boarded!” was broadcast on all frequencies. There was no answer from the enemy ships, but they suddenly spun vertically and shot away at high speed, assuming the fleet which was larger than their own and undamaged would chase them and destroy them.
And they did follow them for a time and then slowly let them put more and more distance between them. They had accomplished two objectives. The Groga planet was defended and they now could track the ships back to their main base, collecting data the whole time while making it necessary for the enemy ships to take time for repairs.
The success of this strategy would mean that the Norgoth would likely now pursue their attack via the portals on the planet, and only one of them was working. Mission accomplished.
