“This one is hard,” thought Cohen, because normally mission parameters were fairly simple: accomplish this objective; grab this planetoid; eliminate that person; restore peace to sector, kill those pirates. While the level of danger varied, normally the mission brief is simple; but in this case, the mission parameters were unknown, his toolkit was pretty much empty, and he was whining way too much for the Captain of a ship. When Sevrinofsky and Perez returned from their extermination mission they’d brought a whole new level of problems in the shape of the mothership recordings. It’s been about 60 hours since this whole thing started and Cohen knew little more than he did three days ago. He knew that the losses in shipping and missed comms were due to alien interactions and not piracy or any other shenanigans, he knew the aliens responded very much like colony ants, and he knew they could travel in subspace, and they had two classes of ships with similar technology to Terrans. Not a whole lot.

The fighters were amazing in action,incredible, especially the first time ever used, and both Reagan and Perez said they had a bunch of ideas to make them better. Sevrinofsky was in her closet cabin the Navy called a ‘stateroom’ working on doctrine and tactics, and Eagles of all people believed she had some insights into training. He thought of them as first squadron, first wing in his head and labeled them as 1-1. Individual ships would get a colon, i.e. 1-1:5. He chuckled to himself, he bet the that the subspace launching system those two sadists came up with felt like a whole other colon.

Second squadron performed admirably well in their first drop, as well as dealing with a destroyed and empty system infrastructure. Now if only he could get those surveillance craft going. He’d made some suggestions to Perez and to Ortiz to try and get living quarters into the two-module version and use the three-module version to try and build a ‘gunboat’ kind of flying mass driver cannon. He expected they would never get away with the crazy maneuver that the First had pulled off twelve hours ago... notwithstanding; he put all of the First in for the Republic’s Thanks and recommended resurrecting the old Distinguished Flying Cross. He fully expected Seconds turn to come in about eighteen hours, when they returned to the Lagrange point. He’d set up rotating responsibilities, and currently Sevrinofsky and Perez were trying to get a third squadron up and running. Sevrinofsky, anyway, he reflected. Perez is too wrapped up in hardware to notice another squadron. The periodic relays now went through two subspace beacons but were otherwise unchanged.

“PIM: time estimates on refitting that ore carrier over there as a combat fighter carrier with the new armament,” asked Cohen.

“Query is not specific: Parameters unknown, too many assumptions to catalog. First describe base capabilities. Example, number of fighters, main armament, crew,” said the PIM.

“Sorry, PIM. Silly question,” said Cohen.

“Excuse me, Captain, the question itself is not silly, as it gives rise to discussion about these topics. It is obvious that such a ship is necessary, however, does it need to be that big? Will a smaller recovery craft give more flexibility that could offset the striking power difference? Perez and Sevrinofsky destroyed a mother ship with that mass driver. It is unlikely that will happen again, but perhaps the aliens do not learn things as fast as primates, insects have a much higher level of instinctual programming,” said the PIM, “With a homo sapiens opponent, that trick would never work twice, but insects will crawl into a sugar bottle every time.”

“Currently Master Chief Muschivk is on Antamina Base, trying to arrange manpower and materiel loans, and Master Chief, sorry Chief Warrant Officer Wamamere is on Grasberg doing the same,” said Cohen.

“Captain, you are currently acting as Terran Force Commander for this sector, with no real forces. This unit ‘feels’ you are doing admirably,” said the PIM.

“When we are alone, you can address me as David,” said the Captain.

“Directive accepted, David,” said the PIM, “There are six ore miners within sensor range of this ship. Would these not make acceptable gunboats? They are not large enough for fighter transport, but they are certainly large enough to hold and power those mass-driver cannon that Han and Rhodes and Eagles built.”

“They might, assuming their AI is still alive. It might take longer than we have to get them up and running,” said Cohen.

“So far, David, that’s been the trend, but it seems to get done regardless,” said the PIM.

Captain David Cohen leaned back in his chair and reflected. The last twelve hours went reasonably smoothly once Reagan’s Cobra squadron reported no life signs in any ships or outposts except for the two moon bases. The hypothesis that the bugs presence in subspace inspired terror in humans seemed valid, and if those humans were DNI linked to civvie AI systems, then in the AI systems as well. He expected they would discover in about 10 days if it had merit, when the earliest reinforcements showed up. Another problem, manpower and flexibility was constantly on his mind, regardless of Muschivk’s attempt to do something about it. It seemed like every time he turned around; he was losing the best part of his crew.

Captain Cohen walked into control at 1300 and looked at the status boards and wandered around watching ordinary routine. His standing instructions were that he was to be ignored unless something momentous happened, or he took the watch. Kosnar currently held OOD, and was standing behind the ships control station, or in general parlance, the Helm. The way Control was laid out, the Bridge stood in the center, with Helm right in front of the main view screen. This harkened back to the days of old sailing ships, where the helmsman stood in a wheelhouse. The Bridge had status and detector repeaters, and somebody fixed up a new screen status screen in the last twenty-four hours. He stepped up on the Conn and looked around. The new screen showed remote ship status and location in a table and globe graphic setup.

“Good idea,” he said to Kosnar.

“Scatora. He got tired of updating fighter positions and said he wanted to go back to being a pilot now; then he asked why we didn’t have a CIC repeater in Control. I replied it was probably because we didn’t have a Combat Information Center on this ship.”

“So... why the repeater,” asked Cohen.

“Scatora called down and got with Oscar and Ortiz and we set up the beginnings of one in Aux Control,” said Kosnar.

“Scatora did this?” asked Cohen.

“Perez is rubbing off on people. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing. It’s good now, but what about when we want them to go back to being drones? I mean, how are we supposed to look important and all knowing when all these enlisted guys are doing their own problem solving and strategizing?” asked Kosnar.

“I know. It really hits you in your Academy instilled sense of superiority, doesn’t it,” said Cohen.

“You didn’t go to the Academy, did you?” asked Kosnar.

“Nope, Sevrinofsky did, but I have a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and had it when I entered the service looking for fun and profit,” said Cohen, “I went to knife and fork school. What’s really interesting is the situation is dire enough that the enlisted folks aren’t playing the usual hint dropping, credit sharing game, but are just getting shit done. I feel honored they are taking time to inform us of their intentions.”

“Are they allowed to do that?” asked Kosnar.

“Normally, no; however, an interspecies interstellar war seems to justify this dire chain of events,” said Cohen.

“In that case, I guess I should tell you that Han and Eagles and Rhodes grabbed one of those ore miners and took it with them on their LaGrange patrol. They said they were going to build a gunship and get that ‘ugly piece of crap’ of her SAR,” said Kosnar.

“I suppose I should ask if anybody got the serial number, should the company ask for reimbursement, but what the hell. What are Perez, Sevrinofsky and Reagan doing?”

“The First is running CAP by 2’s, Perez is off right now and decided that a fuel scooping ship would be a perfect fighter and bomb delivery vehicle. He’s also posted three designs for a combination bomber and missile platform launcher. He calls it a Light Attack Craft. And he’s working the ore carrier. Some of the Second is at the Point keeping things alive there.”

“Did we print another construction printer while I wasn’t looking?”

“Yes, and we found another on the Ore Carrier,” said Kosnar.

“Oh, we sent people out there? Why wasn’t I informed? Am I the Captain?” asked Cohen, petulantly.

“Sir, we all talked about it, but it wasn’t that important or risky, so we figured we needed you rested for this next bug wave in about six hours. We have them plotted for eighteen hour cycles, Tunney says she has no clue why, but throws a WAG that it could be the rotational period of their home planet. Sevrinofsky has the kitchen cooking up about a ton of sugar and she’s going to put it into two spreaders so you can set them up for a lunch cookout,” said Kosnar.

“You are all so clever you make me sick,” Cohen said sourly, then started to laugh, “Perez wants to build an escort carrier out of the ore ship, right? Already designed?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?” said Kosnar.

“Known Perez for 30 plus years. What does the doc say? Tiger Claw design?” said Cohen.

“No, it’s got some pretentious sounding name, Gal something,” said Kosnar.

“Galactica?”

“That’s it.”

Cohen doubled over in laughter, taking several minutes to stop. He wiped his face, “That was the dumbest 2D TV show I ever sat through.”

Seeing Kosnar total lack of comprehension he said, “Never mind. It’s not that important, what is important is how short we are on manpower for all these little projects. We are running out of people to do all the jobs that are so important like cook, clean, fix, stand watch.”

“Sir, Muschivk said that he was recommending going to Protocol One on manpower, recruiting where we can and building up some slaved expert systems, something two or three per fighter. He sent a file to your PIM about 3 hours ago before he left. He’ll be screening you in about an hour,” said Kosnar.

“Do you know what Protocol One entails, Mr. Kosnar?” asked Cohen.

“No sir, no clue,” said Kosnar, “Oh, yeah, Reagan has this thing he calls Operation Hot Wheels, and it allows the fighters and small craft to return to the ship unpowered to avoid giving our location away. Other than braking fields and docking lines, you’d have to be really close to detect the ship.

“That’s good. Did he implement it before he took off for the LaGrange point?”

“No, he handed it over to Ortiz,” said Kosnar, “Who has implemented a prototype and is waiting for Samurai and Valkryie to come off CAP to test it.”

“I bet Reagan didn’t think that one through, Sevrinofsky will have 4 or 5 uses for that thing when she sees it.”

“You mean vector changes without using internal power in the field,” said Kosnar.

“Yeah. Remember what happened when we dampened the neutron and neutrino flux in our plants?” asked Cohen.

“That was 3 days ago. Man. Seems like a year,” said Kosnar, “But it increased our detector range by almost double.”

“Mr. Kosnar, Protocol One turns us into a single section crew, like a merchie. All the rules about watchstanders being at their stations, etc. are removed, the stations are severely limited, crew eat and sleep at their stations when necessary, the stations are unmanned when nothing is going on. It allows Captains of smaller ships to come up with boarding parties, prize crews, that sort of thing. It’s not necessary after battle damage, because there usually isn’t enough of a ship to work after a battle, but it makes regular Damage Control much more difficult.”

Cohen took a long breath and said, "Implement Protocol One, Mr. Kosnar, and get the Yeoman, because we need to figure out who is going to be ships company, and who is released. Tell the COB, whoever the hell he is right now to unlock the onsite watchstander berthing and facilities. I relieve you and get your ass to Engineering. Start slaving secondary systems to AI.”

Kosnar murmured to his AI, and started tapping on the Bridge access terminal, then said, “I stand relieved, Sir.”

Cohen slotted his PIM in the Bridge socket and said, “Shipwide announcement: Implement Protocol One. The Captain has the Bridge, engagement is expected within about 6 hours. All suit qualified members do your checks, and let’s get everything shipshape and ready. Station masters under Protocol One, check in as you relieve. We don’t want to disappoint our buggy guests.”

Cohen absolutely hated the phrase, ‘Attention all Hands’. Seriously, if one is announcing over the shipwide systems, what else could it mean?

“PIM, grab one of these status screens and let’s create a battle board. Add stations to account for the fighters and the new gunships as they come on line, if they come on line. Grab another screen and update it with the known status of the Lagrange point group. Eliminate all information about docking and trading, we will farm out those function to permanent bases on this rock as it comes online. Oh. I dub thee Daniel. Do you accept?”

“Daniel as in the lion’s den Daniel?” asked the PIM.

“No. Daniel the son of David,” said Cohen.

“Negative. Abigail is preferable,” said the PIM.

“Oh, sorry, you are female. Abigail is fine. Try and stay alive, please. I hate losing AI’s,” said Cohen, “What are the odds of getting a holo tactical display up here, Abigail? And implement the female persona of your choice.”

Cohen went on to say, ”Comms, tell Perez and Sevrinofsky to quit playing and bring that tub over here. We need to link them up and move parts. Weapons, I want three of those anti-mass driver cannons on this ship by 1800. Put them on turrets. We have four 3D construction printers plus any number of small parts replicators by now.”

“Processing. Right; then, excellent, just not in time for today’s festivities,” said Abigail in a slightly foreign sounding accent.

Cohen looked around and the screens functions were changing rapidly. He looked over at the helm and said, “Helm, I have the Conn. Comms, clear the ship for maneuvering. Control, where is that carrier? We are going to link up, transfer the launching tubes, put the carrier and Cobras in subspace and launch them all at once. If the bugs follow the same pattern, they will go after all the organics, if not, things could get interesting. All hands sync your comms and PIM’s to the command circuit in accordance with Protocol One, report to Control as your stations come on line.”

He leaned back and watched the organized chaos his words triggered. After about fifteen minutes and watching the status board, he said, “Abigail, I’m going to use you as the Executive Officer, because everybody else competent is working their ass off elsewhere.”

“Understood, sir, I am standing in as Executive Officer, note that in case of damage to my organic component I cannot command this ship,” said Abigail.

“I know. Exec, let me know when the ship is ready to maneuver, and allow them to bring up the new fighter control and gunship controls as they figure them out. Tell Takaeshi that he needs make this happen ASAP. Last time the mothership appeared about fifteen minutes after the workers, and I expect nothing to happen to change that. I don’t like surprises, so I want a reserve.”

“Yes, sir,” said Abigail.

A new line item came up on the ship’s station readout, then another. First line said Squadron status, second said Flotilla status, both yellow. The status readouts everywhere else slowly became green.

“Captain, Aux Control is online and reporting. Fusion One and Two are online, Fusion Three is in standby, as the nano-shielding coating is only 1/5th done. Crew’s Mess reports green and asks if you would like a cup of coffee,” said Abigail.

“I would, thank you,” said the Captain.

“Takaeshi says he installed two new systems and boards in Aux, and he is using some expert systems and AI to handle status uplinks to the fighters and the gunboats. The carrier is the long pole. She doesn’t have a commander either. The Flight Engineer and Wing Commander have implemented a set of standard orders that require them ‘flying’ as they call it. Everybody launches, everybody fights,” said Abigail

“Sevrinofsky loves Heinlein. Who do I have that could command that carrier for me?”

“Honestly? Nobody, I can think of. You’ve used everybody and anybody that’s had any space experience at all,” said Abigail.

“What about Morgan? Get her up here,” said Cohen, “She has her SAR certificate, and various other stuff for small craft, right.”

“Sorry, David, I assumed Department Heads were off limits. Adjusting selection criteria for tasking,” said Abigail.

“That’s fine, Abigail, thank you,” said Cohen.

“Morgan here, Captain, your PIM said you wanted me?” the slightly metallic sound of the comm startled Cohen a bit.

The Captain adjusted and asked, “Who’s your second?”

“QMCS Vala, sir.”

“Turn all your crap over to her and get your butt over to that carrier thing. She’s yours. Don’t get killed and don’t blow her up and you get to keep her. Get an armored engineering suit from Ortiz and about thirty minutes of training so you don’t kill yourself,” said Cohen.

“What?” asked Morgan.

“Well, now. There’s just a load of deaf people around me today. Get your butt over to Ortiz and get a suit. Then get your armored butt over to the carrier and take command. And give her a goddamned name,” said Cohen, “I can’t slave her to this ship because you’ll be in subspace.”

“But... “

“Lieutenant Commander Hedwig Morgan, we know where we are and the bugs are coming to eat us,” said Cohen, “I don’t need a Navigation Officer, I need a commander of that carrier. Get your ass over there and do what I need. And getting some sand in your attitude might help in the long run. I’m not taking no for an answer, Captain.”

“Okay, right sir, I understand. Thank you, I think? Sort of,” said Morgan, sounding very flustered, “On the way.”

“Abigail, get on the horn to Vala and tell her she’s the NAV. I need stationkeeping services, docking with the carrier and other easy stuff like that.”

“Yes sir,” said Abigail and paused for a moment, “She acknowledges and reports that she has Navigation services on line. Senior Chief Vala has a degree in geospatial analysis, were you aware?”

“Excellent. No I wasn't, but that's fortunate. Get going.”

* * *

Perez and Rhodes just finished installing two more launchers in their new shiny carrier, rust and dents and all, right after flushing the collected ore cargo into a big ol’ bag made of Mylar and putting it outside. The robotic assemblers he grabbed from the Wanderlust were converting the empty forward cargo holds into makeshift fighter bays, using a similar design to the tank rack setup over at the LaGrange point. He did a little calculation and decided that two of his Light Attack Craft could fit in the aft hold, as soon as he could turn one out. Time was climbing all over him. Barbara kept telling him, “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. We’ll go with what we’ve got.”

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The ore carrier itself and the hold was completely unshielded, and that would never work. Perez just didn’t have enough hands to get everything done. “Randy, the Captain just directed the ship and associates to go to Protocol One,” said Sally

“Good. I need some hands. Can you put us on the list for a couple of techs?” said Randy.

“Done. Joe Muschivk is on his way back with about forty prospective crew and two officers. Those mining suits aren’t quite as good as Engineering suits but they will work for a few days. The real cool part is they have laser drills that are almost military grade,” said Sally.

Rhodes said, ”Good. We’ll get the launchers done, and maybe some other cool stuff. Perez, you think that fighter delivery design thing you worked out can spread the bait?”

“Yeah. I can set it up to spray out. The Hall effect drives will kick the organics into a big cloud.”

He commed Sevrinofsky, who was up on the flight deck of the ore carrier and working on turning it into a real bridge and control. The whole thing was designed to be run by one person, which was fine for a slow ponderous ore carrier, but for a fighter transport ship was unacceptable.

“Barb, I got a suggestion for the name of this hunk of junk,” said Perez.

“What’s that, Randy,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Langley, the United States’ first carrier was converted from a coal carrier, exactly the way we are doing this thing,” said Perez.

“Good choice, I’ll suggest it to Morgan, she’s coming over to be CO,” said Sevrinofsky.

“I thought that was you?”

“No, wouldn’t work. I have to fly, and direct small craft operations. I couldn’t run the ship as well.”

“I guess that makes sense,” said Perez and he paused then said, “Barb, I’m not going to get enough done. I’ve got two launchers installed, but we need shields, we need two extra propulsion modules, cannon, the LAC’s, software… this is crazy.”

“Randy, it’ll be fine. We have 6 more fighters and we can launch them from here, for that matter we can push them out if we have to. The subspace trap thing will be great, but it’s not necessary for the projected numbers, and I have Jones building another fighter rack to attach to a SAR’s so we can reinforce Reagan and Han,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Ortiz is sending over a bunch of techs to get the shields up, and Kumar is sending over a propulsion spare, so we get three motors today, and another two off a miner tomorrow. We’re pulling a subspace drive module off a freight ferry right now. It’s not going to be pretty at first, but it will work. You can’t do everything yourself,” continuedSevrinofsky, “You are the Flight Engineer. You concentrate on the new SAR fighter carrier, the launchers and fighter storage and the LAC. Get done what you can get done by 1700. By 1730, we need to be in our Cobra’s and launching the bait. You hear me?”

“Okay. Can do,” said Perez, “Barb this stuff is so new we can’t even agree on names for it!”

“This is going to take weeks to sort out, so we’re going to be flying blind and crazy till then. There’s no protocols for any of this, so don’t panic.”

“I forgot my towel, anyway,” said Perez.

“Perez, let’s get this launcher done, then start on the other side. I think we only need six for today’s fracas. My guess is the bugs leave the Lagrange point alone and concentrate here. They got their butts kicked yesterday over there,” said Rhodes.

The next couple hours were a complete blur. Reagan commed him twice to ask questions about the fighter delivery surprise they were cooking up, over the subspace link yet, and he didn’t even remember the answers he gave, the three launch tubes got switched over without a problem and they opened up the aft hold for the two LAC’s, the off shift of the Wanderlust swarmed over the flight deck putting in gear to recover fighter with cables and move them to the racks. Sevrinofsky told him they had two of the three propulsion modules in place and Reagan retrofitted two hydrogen scoopers to carry a squadron each. Ortiz commed him and told him the shielding around the fighter bay was complete and they had 6 more mines ready, and a bunch of mass driver cannon ready to go.

He realized that Sevrinofsky put him in charge of all the maintenance and refit of all the small craft attached to the entire little fleet they were building. He needed time to do this right, time he didn’t have. He had the LAC’s, the fighter delivery ships, the carrier and the flight deck, the recon ships, survey ships, the gunships, and maybe a million other responsibilities. As the clock timed down he’d had to shift from hands on to running from job to job and ensuring that they all went smoothly. He and the PIM created a database of ships and projects and completion status and he uploaded it to the command net every half hour or so. At least 2/3 of the ships complement was out working various projects when the alarm sounded. The Wanderlust crew vanished and the makeshift carrier crew ran to their newly assigned stations.

“Randy, get to your fighter. There’s no more to do here right now,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Gotta get my suit on first. Give me five minutes and I’ll be out,” said Perez, he’d been working in an engineering suit, because it carried complete toolkits.

“Better get a move on, Perez, you’re going to miss the party,” said Sevrinofsky.

“All hands, this is Hedwig Morgan. I’ve been designated the Captain of this ship and we decided to call her GRS Phoenix, her designator will be SFCV-01. If you’ve been assigned to this ship, you’ll have a watchstation and posted responsibility to look at, your AI should have the details in a couple of minutes. Right now, more AI systems will be handling the ship operations and the wing general launch and recovery. Please get to your stations and we will move the ship to the assigned trap location. We need volunteers for gunnery and the new rock cannon, thank you,” came over the shipwidecomm, “All hands prepare for subspace operations.”

Perez hightailed it over to his newly appropriated berth in the newly designated CPO quarters and zipped through the airlock. He changed suits quickly, leaving the engineering suit in the rack where his battle suit stood, and trotted back out the door. Having suits in berthing was just stupid, but with a subspace capable enemy, what else could he do? In not much longer than the designated five minutes he was in his fighter and two guys he didn’t know were pushing the little ship into the launching rack. The little fighter settled into the tube.

“Wing, this is Maverick, what about your bait?” asked Perez.

“Maverick, Wing here, Scatora is flying it out to the edge of the magnetic in his SAR. That might allow us to pin them against the system. The bases being unmolested speaks volumes to their ability to put workers and soldiers in that EM field,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Unless they are smarter than we realize and want us to think that,” said Perez.

“Umm, that kind of bizarre doublethink isn’t like you, normally you only worry about how many pieces to break them into,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Nerves. I don’t like it when I can’t get everything done,” said Perez.

“My considered opinion is you got enough done. Every time we increase our capabilities and they are increasing their numbers. We are going to run out of abilities to escalate, but hopefully reinforcements are going to get here before then. So far, we haven’t lost any fighters to the bug fighters, and I don’t feel that we will for a while,” said Sevrinofsky.

“You hunching? Or you got reasons? I believe you, I just want to hear why,” said Perez.

“Both. I think Joe and Ken are right, and these are insects. Insects change over generations, and they aren’t really individuals, so I think we have some time before we see changes in their behavior. I think we’ll see smarter, in-charge bugs come out and ‘take a look’. They act like they’ve never been opposed at all. It’s going to take them time to adjust, and time to figure out how to adjust. The only thing that bothers me is they never give up. And I’m hunching. I got a feeling they are sending out tendrils. I think we need to watch out for the fighters ramming us this time, but that's about it. Over the next several days they will increase their numbers.”

“I’ve been thinking about how to build a giant can of Raid,” said Perez.

“Attention all personnel, standby for immergence,” blared the all ship comm channel.

“Man, she talks a lot,” said Perez, “Hey, where the hell is Reagan?”

“He’s taking his squadron to the Lagrange. The SAR can make it in six hours, unburdened, and the Cobras don’t mass a whole lot. Open your ship’s sensor channel and let's get ready. We’ll be launching as soon as the first bug wave appears. Spoiler alert, I had Scatora leave all 6 of your anti-matter bombs in a sphere about 300 klicks across over the target area. If they cluster around to feed off the sugar like they did before, we won’t even have to waste mass to get rid of them.”

“I still think Langley is a better name,” said Perez

“We did too. But there is a GRS Langleyin commission. So, we chose Phoenix, instead.”

Perez turned on the outside video and started his pre-flight. He took his time with it, waiting a few and looking around between the steps. It wasn’t as mechanical as it should be anyway, Barb just wrote them yesterday, he thought. He tested the thrusters, EM drive, cannon and comms. By the time he finished the Phoenix had full emerged and moved towards the target area. Subspace in a system wasn’t flat and grey, it was full of large masses and dangerous discharges and kitchen chemical explosions. Distance in subspace was twisted, torn, maimed and if pressed, daemonic. Perez always liked it.

“Randy, they’re here,” said Sevrinofsky.

“I don’t feel it yet,” said Perez.

“Look to the east,” said Sevrinofsky.

Perez reoriented his scanners to east and saw somethings crawling through subspace. The terror feeling wasn’t there, but it was still creepy, “They’re early, a bit. I wonder why,”

“I don’t think they are. My guess is they will emerge at around the eighteen hour mark from the time after they didn’t hear back from the first two expeditions, or whatever you want to call them, and the ‘around’ is because we don’t know anything about their transit times.”

“Hey, Wing, I think we’re too close. Where did you put the subspace pulse device?” asked Perez on the open channel.

“Scatora dropped it about 500 klicks inside the hard radiation zone. Last time the mothership dropped out of subspace about 15 minutes after we started annihilating the workers. I expect the same will happen today,” said Sevrinofsky, “So get ready.”

“I’m ready. Are you?” asked Perez.

“Yep,” said Sevrinofksy as she switched to the squadron comm link, ”First, report.”

“Rhodes, I mean Highlander, green,” said Rhodes.

“Raptor, green,” said Eagles.

“Samurai, green,” said Sado.

“Freya, green,” said Karnez.

“Maverick, green.” said Perez.

“Bosslady, green,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Guys, the timing is we drop right after the subspace distortion device goes off. Then we pair up and go kill them all. The new fighters in Third will be hanging around the target area, and when the workers appear, they start killing them. Once that happens, about 15 minutes later the motherships appear.This time we have six subspace mines and five anti-proton cannons available. This time, we wait till the mother ships appear, and drop out, then we expect the motherships will expel their fighters. At that point the gunships fire and we ‘bug’ out, so to speak. If a little luck is with us, the anti-proton warheads will do their job and that’s it. If not, there is the mines, and then we have a couple of anti-ship missiles,” said Sevrinofsky.

“I guess we stay flexible and try to stay out of the target area,” said Sado.

“I like this plan,” said Perez.

“You just like to blow things up, Perez,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Yep,” said Perez.

"Fighters, the bugs are emerging and the Third is engaging them around the edge of the combat designated area, prepare for your launch in 13 minutes," said the ships comm.

"Heddie, this is Barb, don't launch us till the motherships appear and the gunships fire.It's important, and don’t get excited when things don’t go as planned," said Sevrinofsky.

"Okay, Barb, I understand. I'm a little nervous," said Morgan.

"I know you are, and you're doing fine. This ship is going to get really, really, really nasty by the time we are done," said Sevrinofsky.

Some small amount of time passed, the bugs crawling through subspace redefined 'creepy' for Perez. He sort-of wondered how a species could pick that up as an attribute on a planet. They must be able to immerge in a gravity well. They probably couldn't climb the wall though, so it might give them an advantage to have no large entrances to a nest?He sort of wandered through the math involved. Dropping the subspace gradient in a gravity well would also be dangerous. Where would the energy go?

"Perez, this plan is a little complicated. I’m sorry, I know how you feel about that,” said Sevrinofsky on the private link.

“Nah, it’s not bad. There are no ifs. You already know there’s a 90% chance that 100% of the plan will go wrong, so I’m okay with it,” said Perez.

“We need the motherships in normal space when that subspace bomb goes off. What’s it going to do in a system anyway?” asked Sevrinofsky.

“It might move some stuff a couple of nanometers, might cause the gravity well on nearby planets to ripple, causing a volcano or some such, or nothing,” said Perez.

“Most likely?” asked Sevrinofsky.

“Nothing, it's not powerful enough.” said Perez.

Some more seconds crawled by, and Perez said, "Sally, play some music, pick something"

“Bad Company?” asked Sally.

“Perfect,” said Perez, and the strains of ancient rock music filled the cockpit.

Minutes crawled by, while they waited. The chatter on the tactical channel was positive, the bugs were chasing the sugar cloud, and getting swatted by the makeshift weaponry systems Cohen and Sevrinofsky placed around the kill zone. One of the engineering sweats decided to build a cannon with some spare printer time, on this cannon was carbon fiber and shot flechettes instead of grapeshot. The little explosive darts shredded the bugs armor and the bugs exploded when ruptured in vacuum. It seemed like it was all going a little too well. If they'd been unprepared, unarmored, the bugs would have swarmed them under, and still could if they had enough numbers. It shot something like two thousand rounds a second, and there were twenty of them pumping rounds into the target zone. The Third was hanging round the outside. Perez was grooving to Bad Company, the Bad Company album.

"Perez, east, focus," said Sevrinofsky.

"You're ruining my zone," said Perez, "Bad Company is playing."

"I'm regretting getting you hooked on the 20th and 21th century, you jackass, look east," said Sevrinofsky.

"I'm looking. I see big black blobs, six of them, they look like hexahedrons, or whatever you call a six sided solid, and a lot of bugs in subspace, I'm not sure how they are keeping an analogue position because my sensors aren't reading any output," said Perez.

"Thrusters, maybe? Either way that doesn't matter, what does matter is they have to emerge in order to help their workers, and once they do, we've got them," said Sevrinofsky.

"Heddie this is Barb, when the motherships emerge, launch us, move back about a thousand klicks and detonate the mine, you read me? The mine will mess up your sensors," said Sevrinofsky.

"I understand, Barb," said Morgan, "Will do."

"Sally, do you have data on the timing of the arrival? Keep track of the movements, my guess is they'll emerge about 18 minutes after they arrive."

"Okay, Randy," said the PIM, "that should be in about 3 minutes, or one track of the album."

Perez chuckled, and made sure the suit was anchored to the 'seat' frame. Movin' On was playing and he just hit the chorus when the comm crackled, "Motherships emerging, First, prepare for launch. 3... 2... 1... Launch!"

The world compressed to a little black dot, then expanded as a hammer hit Perez in the head, a mule kicked him in chest and a rope yanked him down a long tunnel into the light and he remembered the first time Muschivk punched him in the face...

"Ouch," said Perez.

"Normal space, you are out of position, Randy, pay attention," said Barbara's really sexy voice, only it wasn't Barbara, there was a little difference in the phrasing....

"Ouch," said Perez.

"Medicating, analgesics. Medicating, stimulants," said the PIM, "Battle mode activated."

The world came floating back and the haze and pain receded a bit. He looked around and pushed the pads forward and vectored toward his position marker, "That's a really crappy ride. Never gonna be popular, I should stop doing that."

"Funny, Perez, get in position," said Sevrinofsky.

"On it," said Perez.

The world was full of static and fuzz and leftover pieces of stuff, and three really large ships. Really large. It looked like they were double the size of the previous mothership, and they were launching fighters six at a time. He pushed forward on the controls and the little ship took off like a scared cat.

"All fighters, the subspace mine goes off in one minute, before they separate, stand by" said Sevrinofsky

Perez fell in behind Sevrinofsky on her wing, and by the time he did the world went white again and the mule kicked him in the chest again.

“Ouch,” said Perez, “Stop kicking me!”

“Randy, what the heck are you talking about?” asked Sevrinofsky.

“Nothing, I’m on it,” he said vaguely.

The suit shocked him. He blinked his eyes and looked around and realized where he was and saw his wing and a rapidly accelerating mothership coming right for them.

“Package delivery on target,” said Scatora’s voice.

“North, Maverick, max accel,” said Sevrinofsky and she change her vector and initiated a full fuel injection creating a 500 meter blowtorch out the back of her fighter. Perez went below her and did the same. He rotated his fighter and started blowing away random bug workers in their path.

“Are we going to make it?” Perez asked.

“No problem,” said Sevrinofsky.

His scanners showed four traces, the anti-matter warheads, then another four and another four after that. He muttered, ”Holy Shit, we’re too close.”

Perez turned the back of the ship towards the motherships to get the most cermoplast and carbon fiber and steel between him and the explosion then bounced his craft directly behind Sevrinofsky. The mule kicked him in the back again, and again, and then he didn’t remember anything more.

Sevrinofsky heard the first crunch over the comm and then nothing on the wingman channel. She spun her craft around and activated the radar and painted the whole area. There! Active sensors showed the little fighter about 50 klicks away and receding rapidly, and she yelled, “Scatora, Perez is Dutchman! Course transmitting now.”

“... Any hostiles in the area? This ship is unarmed and unarmored, but I have his course plotted, he’s not responding, and his suit isn’t responding. You sure he’s alive,” asked the SAR pilot shortly.

She looked around and sure enough there were bug fighters and workers all around. The motherships were flaming wrecks, disintegrating into rubble, the bug fighters wandered around drunkenly, shooting at anything, “Uh, yeah, he’s alive, his PIM is transmitting his vitals on her local channel, hang on. Give me five minutes to take care of this, and I’ll comm you again,” said Sevrinofsky, “First, Third, on me, let’s clear the area!”

Nine fighters bolted into the target area and started eliminating the hostiles. The fighters went first, though there were hundreds of them, it didn’t seem to matter. The little attack craft chewed them up and spit them out. Sevrinofsky joined up with Sado and Karnez, and they burned in behind a group of randomly wandering hexagonal fighters and annihilated them in seconds, then moved on to the next. The subspace mine affected their group mind, presence what have you and made them completely ineffective. The large motherships were smoldering hulks, and debris flew everywhere.

“Randy, wake up! Randy, pay attention,” said the suit’s PIM, and Perez crawled his way out of the little black hole and looked around. It was dark, as in no light. He figured that must mean he was unconscious still and he closed his eyes and fell into a dark tunnel.

Eagles and Rhodes came in from the other side of the target area, destroying anything moving or still. In about fifteen minutes the area was clear and Sevrinofsky felt confident the SAR would be able to make a pickup. She gave instructions for a final sweep through the target area and arrowed out after Perez and his little craft. It didn’t take her long to match velocities and what she saw chilled her to the bone. A metallic splinter had driven through the thruster and out the flight compartment, blowing out the viewport and cracking the fighter in half. She checked his suit vitals remotely and he was alive, appeared mostly intact and breathing steadily.

“Fireman, Bosslady, I have him, he has no power, no propulsion, but basic vitals, let’s pull him in.”

The SAR materialized behind her dropping out of subspace using her ship’s subspace communicator as an emergence beacon, a hulking tub of a ship, matching their velocities, “Get outta the way, Bosslady, I’ve got him. Tractors don’t work on your fighters, as soon as I get a line on it, dock with me and we’ll pry him out of there.”

Scatora left the cockpit and went down to the docking lock. It had a full set of controls so the SAR pilot could match exact vectors and manually connect to whatever protrusions available in any craft. He nudged the SAR right up to the small craft and extended what looked like an airhose and aligned it in the opposite direction of the slow tumble. It puffed a bunch of gas onto the craft that slowed the tumble to a crawl. Scatora then backed the SAR up and floated around the fighter into the direction of travel and he shot out a net looking thing attached to a rope. The net covered the nose of the craft and the little pilot attached his own tag line and jumped onto the fighter. He attached another tether and jumped back, zipping up his imitation retractable leash in the process.

Sevrinofsky hit the reverse thrusters and said, ”I’ll meet you back at the ship when we’re done.”

“Roger that, Bosslady, me and Rescue One are outta here, Tunney is waiting for him in the docking bay,” said Scatora, and the not-so-little bathtub shaped ship jumped a little bit and then shimmered and disappeared as it rotated into subspace.

Sevrinofsky rolled her ship, spun it and headed back to the kill zone to join up with Eagles and Rhodes.

* * *

Reagan looked around as he sailed around on his second CAP. According to his figuring the aliens were late. He was wondering what was keeping them. Han spread the sugar at the exact same place as yesterday, and he figured it would at least attract worker bugs. Killing those would attract the soldiers and the fighters. They had three finished anti-proton cannons ready to go, two hard mounted on rocks and remote controlled and one in that ore miner thing. The SAR was well out of the away from where they’d hidden the relay. The little strategy of moving the relay when transmission times came around seemed to be working, the bugs never found it.

He shrugged. Assuming they were looking for it. The original operation of avoiding the station showed a high level of craftiness, while the current encounters were just reaction driven. He couldn’t reconcile the two. It’s like someone just let the bugs loose in the sector because we changed the situation a little bit. He figured that all the players in this group, Perez, Muschivk, Sevrinofsky, Cohen, Wamamere, knew it was a diversion, but knew until they stabilized their situation and protected the human presence, they couldn’t do damn all about it. He figured that’s what Perez was really doing with those Seekers or Wanderers scout ships he was working on.

“Emergence detected!! Emergence. No IFF, no identity, no scan. Aliens assumed,” said his PIM.

Reagan’s new HUD lit up with several hundred red dots and a round circle. The round circle expanded to a hexagonal shape, spewing out smaller hexagonal shapes.

“Looks like it’s time to go to work, folks,” said Reagan, “Drummer, you ready?”

“Yep. Let’s go kill stuff.”

“Joanna, you ready? Wait till that mothership plot settles then we’ll go with fire plan Alpha.”

“You got it,” said Han.

The mothership spun and headed for the center zone, spewing fighters all the while. Reagan held all the fighters on the periphery until the warheads were launched, taking out whatever alien targets he could, and the rest of the squadron ran around the perimeter doing the same, for another ten minutes or so.

“Hey, Drummer, “ said Reagan, “I want to name my ship Laurels.”

“Oh, and why is that?” asked Ogechi.

“So, I can turn off the power and coast on my Laurels,” said Reagan.

“Keep it up, funny man. I can ask Han to accidentally target your ship, humor like that has a severe penalty,” said Ogechi.

“Hey, that was funny!”

“All ships, launching on fire plan Alpha,” said Han, her AI telling her the fire plan criteria was met.

“Acknowledged,” said Reagan.

Fire plan Alpha was the simplest, launch three sets of three projectiles at every large ship around the center LaGrange Point. The plan pretty much guaranteed that everything around the center area got vaporized. Reagans plot showed three fast moving warheads headed in towards the center, and he reversed his drives and thrusters and tried to put as much distance from the center point as he could. This mothership had twice the mass of the last ones, but there was only the one. The shots were moving a lot faster than the last set, and he yelled for everyone to scatter.

The shock wave rocked the little ships at a couple of hundred klicks, but it looked like the mothership stayed intact. It took some damage from the explosion, but it started to move slowly towards the north. The next set of warheads nailed it dead center about twenty seconds later, staggering the huge mass, and the third set another twenty seconds after triggered a huge flare of light, and when the glare faded the huge craft was gone.

“Any bug fighters left?” Reagan asked.

“Yeah, about fifteen,” said Drummer.

“I think that falls in the Holy Shit category of explosions,” said Rose.

“Everybody intact?” asked Han.

Reagan replied, “Yeah, I think so, Second, report status.”

The squadron members all responded green, and Reagan relaxed a bit.

“Joanna, if you could assemble the data from all the AI’s and send it to the Wanderlust, I’d really appreciate it. We’re going to finish our CAP, and these bugs, then stand down for a little while."

“Do I look like your secretary?” said Han.

“No, you don’t, you look like a crazy good SAR pilot, but you have the only functional subspace client interface in the system right now until we finish the mods to the ore miner. So, please would you get with our AI’s and put together a report and squirt it to the Wanderlust?” asked Reagan, astonished at himself.

Maybe it was the combat or something, but Reagan didn’t feel the slightest bit angry when enlisted personnel talked back to him this time.

“Well, since you asked nicely, okay,” said Han.

“Hey, Nerdboy, she’s teasing you,” said Ogechi.

“She is?” asked Reagan.

“Total stiff,” said Ji-Hye.

“Yep, complete loser,” said Rose.

“Ummm, whoops? Can we kill the rest of these fighters, guys?” asked Reagan as he turned and led the squadron back into the center for cleanup.