12. KE = ½ MV2

“How many Cobras do we have available,” asked the Captain.

“Right now, eight, not including the six that are at the LaGrange point,” said the Assistant Flight Engineer, Lt. Robert Reagan.

“Very good. Do we have pilots for all of them?” asked the CO.

“Yes, sir.” said Reagan.

“That’s good, too, Lieutenant. How have you found working for Mr. Perez,” asked Cohen.

“I’ve been so busy; I haven’t thought about it. He tells me exactly what he wants, usually with drawings. He gave me about three weeks work in a five-minute conversation and expected it all done by emergence today,” said Reagan, "I gotta admit, he's probably the best boss I've had, ever. He tells me if I am successful and why, and where I screw up and why."

“Welcome to the Special Operations, Lieutenant, that’s how it works. I assume you are taking one of the Cobras?”

“Yessir, hull number 08. I added some extras to it that I want to test. There was this cool thing in this old game Freespace...” started Reagan....

“You play old video games? That should help you get along with Perez and Sevrinofsky. Well, good. I want you and your merry band of savages to run a patrol of this system as soon as we emerge, no before we emerge. We need a good-sized asteroid to hide our mass footprint, and another one about a tenth that size to dock the small craft we’re running around. We’re going to try Kosnar’s new delivery system,” the Captain cut him off.

The pre-event Officers Call had the complete complement, including newly minted warrants that were still on the ship and all the enlisted holding officer billets. Muschivk was there as was Tunney, some others. Cohen grabbed Reagan beforehand to show interest, help him along, ‘Do Captain things’ as he thought of it.

“Muschivk, you want to present the briefing,” asked Cohen.

Muschivk chuckled, “No... I drafted Ortiz for this one. Ortiz helped me get the materials put together and create the displays, so I figured I’d let him brief it. He’s the acting division officer for RC-div right now so he had to be here anyways.”

“Okay, Jose, let’s hear how bad it is,” said Cohen.

Ortiz slotted his PIM on the conference room table and brought up some displays. Ortiz was short and chunky with a lined lived-in face. He had white hair and a barrel chest, with a medium tenor voice, “Heh, Skipper, it’s not bad at all, considering. I don’t have the ability to invent world-breaking new technologies and present them at the most opportune time to use them like some, or make witty comic comebacks from a dime store novel like some others, nor am I an evil immortal mastermind bent on controlling the galaxy, but I do have some excellent news and really cool graphics, as well as a snazzy soundtrack.”

“Tone down the snark, Jose, you’re among friends here,” said Muschivk, "I am not immortal."

Ortiz blinked, paused, and continued, “The system we are about to drop into has an asteroid belt about 5 times as dense as Sol system, and most of the traffic from the station's former position were headed to and from this system. It only dropped off recently, though, so it seems likely that there is still some human presence in the system. Even subspace traveling bug-eyed monsters would have trouble finding and eliminating all the myriad people in an eleven-day period over an area as large as a system.

My PIM and I ran some sims and we feel the most likely conclusion is that they are experiencing feeding incursions. Master Chief Muschivk and Chief Warrant Wamamere put up some parameters for an insect colony neural network. My PIM and I feel that the traffic drop off is entirely due to bug workers and not some of their stronger forces.

The system has three planets, two more or less Saturn size gas giants with various moons, and one rocky dirtball, at about .7 AU, which is too hot for Terrestrial life. It has three mining bases owned by different concerns, and all of the equipment thereof, which is good for us. We have Cobras (now) lots of sailors, and battle-suits, which is good for them. I think we won’t really have a problem. We don’t really have a whole lot of information on their space-going assets or the like because they are all family owned and private. My guess is they probably have the same problems with bug workers that the ferry did. Mining suits are more like engineering suits, but they still have armor and should be able to stand up to a worker bug. “

The displays shifted to the moon bases and ore processor ships.

“The mining bases are on the moons of the gas giants, the better to grab H2 fuel, and so should be shielded. The core miners are hardened hulls and have manipulator arms, but no subspace capability, but they do have shields. They cut into the asteroids and meteors with lasers and plasma jet cutters, not quite as powerful as our military hardware, but they’ll work. So the miners, unlike the GNSS, crew have defenses and protections. They could hold off bug workers and soldiers. The question becomes if they were surprised, why wouldn’t they tell us what happened?”

“They might not know we can move the station. It’s not a secret or anything, but we’ve never advertised that our station is really a frigate and while not really a first line warship, it does have some combat capabilities. So why would they tell us if they didn’t think we could do anything? Why not send a courier to the quadrant.” asked Cohen.

“That’s pretty much what we decided, earlier,” said Muschivk.

“You’re stealing my thunder, here... This is the way it works: I talk and you ooohhh and aahhh,” said Ortiz.

“Is there anybody in Engineering that isn’t a pain in the ass?” asked Cohen.

“Mei Lu. That’s why everybody loves her. Think that’s it,” said Kumar.

“Ahem,” Muschivk made that clearing the throat sound that everybody interprets as ‘get back to the point here.’

“Sorry, Master Chief,” said Ortiz, unrepentantly, “Yes... that is what we smart people surmised as well.”

Snorts and laughter.

“So, there are 3 scenarios for the system entry, all which are being uploaded to your PIM’s right now. Summarizing: we have: No incursion, the locals are unlikely to believe or help us without force (using the legal obligation clause is force); Worker incursion, they have some losses, but not very many, mostly non-combatants in transit; Soldier and full invasion, full losses; limited survivors,” said Ortiz.

“The second is the most likely by some sixty percent. We ran a thousand or so event runs, and that’s the one that finishes most often. A lot depends on the events at the LaGrange point, and whether they let any enemies escape or somehow report back. My guess is; given the people involved, no enemies will remain alive for very long regardless of numbers.”

“The first option spawns a pool of events that are almost completely political. The second option is a mixture depending on how hard hit the locals are and the venality of the leadership. A realistic assessment will immediately recognize the insect-like feeding behavior and immediately assume no negotiation is possible. If they don’t, I guess it depends on how many negotiators become lunch. How likely that is we have no projections. I expect Master Chief has some assets in the system, but none of the rest of us have any experience there. The third option is a complete military recovery operation which leaves us extremely short of bodies, and we have to look at arming AI’s or some such to protect the ship, though given the unknown potential numbers of an insectoid species, we might be there anyway. It could be possible that some or all of the mobile assets are taken or destroyed but the bases are intact. The charged particle and radiation fields the gas giants emit would protect them, and this is the scenario that we find most likely.”

Ortiz looked around, “Any questions?”

“No, Jose, well done, always glad to have you smart people enlighten us,” said Cohen.

Ortiz grabbed his PIM off the table, bowed, and went and sat down. Muschivk stood up and rumbled, “I guess this is where I get to spill some beans. Not too many you understand, got to keep up the air of mystery.”

He slotted his PIM and brought up a map of Terran Space, held his hands together thoughtfully and started, “So the nearest group of reinforcements is probably the OutSystem Quadrant base. Problem is, we lack the small support ships to reinforce this sector in meaningful numbers. The InSystem/OutSystem conflict... disagreement... argument... means that most of the ship production has been to offset the offensive power of the other side. When I set this little operation up, I assumed it was pirates or OutSystem colonies or somebody messing with shipments, with a political gain that was not immediately apparent. The likelihood of an alien contact was so small as to be negligible. Oh, silly me.”

He brought up the local sector, “There’s more to the story about the new hardware. It’s been in the works for about twenty years, and Perez and company have been trying to find a way to get all the stuff built. InSystem Guard forces were unwilling to allow the OutSystem Navy to have the new capabilities so they wouldn’t let Perez and Ching build the stuff, or budget to research further. I brought them out here for those purposes, and to use the new hardware to combat the shipping losses, because, again, small craft interdiction isn’t in the interest of the current leadership.”

Muschivk continued, “I reasoned, and the Admiral reasoned with me, that we could get a defensive edge either way, and justify it with the ameliorating losses in shipping. If it didn’t work we were out nothing, and if it did, it could be a game changer. But now... now we have new alien species, first ever and they turn out to be a predatory insectoid nightmare. This will change Republic politics forever. We won’t be believed at first, but within 5 years we’ll be building combat carriers, and have marines on all the ships, as well as counter insurgency forces. All the smaller ships will have fighter complements and new armament. The aliens ability to subspace transit and enter unshielded ships will cause changes in combat doctrine for all of us. We all are going to have to train all space-going personnel in suit combat, at least the basics, and since they found us, it seems likely they are more widespread.”

“My general hope right now is they don’t understand combat as combat, and war as war. They seem to view all other life forms as food. It’s hard to say though, the workers and soldiers we’ve run into were just automatons reacting, they didn’t have coordinated tactics or objectives other than to consume organics. The bug in the OR ate the plasma and the glucose in the bags, and most of the bag itself. So, this operation, more than anything else means we need to survive and win long enough to get our findings back to OutSystem command. I’d prefer we simply exterminate them. It feels like they’ve never run up against a combat capable race of social predators before, but I can’t base my plans on those feelings,” Muschivk continued.

“Summing up, we have set up a relay system to hide our general location and still transmit back inward, and we can only hope it works. The LaGrange relay will pass back our standard reports, including the extra log info back and thus we must protect it. Captain Cohen is up next to tell us all what we’re going to do next,” Muschivk finished and sat down.

Cohen stood up and walked around to the head of the table, “This is being broadcast throughout the ship, and recorded for the logs. We are stationary in subspace about 500 mega klicks from the inner gas giant, where there is a pretty good size base. The asteroid belt is an order of magnitude more massive than Sol systems and lies just inward from our emergence point. Mr. Kosnar here has developed a launching system that will put a fighter in normal space without emerging the ship carrying it. We have 8 fighters and we will launch the full squadron of six and then wait 15 minutes, that leaves two in reserve to help protect the ship. Then we follow. We’ve mounted all the weaponry we’ve been able to make or scrounge, the ship is fully shielded and all three propulsion plants are operational. We have the new subspace mines that disorient the enemy badly and the new energy mines that phase subspace. We need the resources and people of this system to even begin to hold off the aliens, and so we need to get in there and take it back. “

“After we emerge the ship, the Wanderlust will move into the asteroid belt and tether to one of very large masses with an actual gravitational footprint, then we will make us a dock inside the rock. While doing this, we will make every effort to survey and contact survivors of the system and to help them fight off alien attacks. We expect reinforcements, minimal reinforcements, in about 18 days. I don’t expect OutSystem command to send us more troopies until they have some evidence that we are still sane. If the reinforcements don't get eaten as well.”

Cohen stopped, looked around and said, “Any questions?”

Dead silence. “Then you all know what you have to do. Pilots to your ships, everyone else to Battle Stations, set condition Red. Let’s go children, it’s playtime! Dismissed!”

Everyone stood up in the room and began filing out. Reagan hit the door and started running.

“Reagan,” said Muschivk firmly.

“Yes, Master Chief,” said Reagan, as he stopped and turned around.

“Calm down. You’re gonna be fine. Save your energy for the bugs. If I thought you couldn’t hack it, I would’ve sent you back to InSystem command in a bag,” said Muschivk.

Reagan took a deep breath, straightened and said, “Thank you, Master Chief,” and he turned and headed down the hallway at a deliberate walk.

Muschivk looked at Ortiz and said, ”His suit doesn’t have augmentation, right? He’ll freaking kill himself.”

“Of course not, Joe. I’m not stupid, his suit is a modified engineering suit, with the sensors, not a full battlesuit,” said Oriz, "I didn't tell him there was a difference, either."

“Unwad your panties, I’m just checking,” said Muschivk.

* * *

The ship, as a whole, made the final preparations for emergence and poised ready to launch the new squadron into normal space. Unlike the first squadron, this group of pilots had a chance to brief the missions, run sims, establish chains of command and pre-arrange the wingmen. Reagan felt the need to check and recheck everything. He pulled five other combat suit qualified sailors out of the various departments, and hoped for the best. The fancy new launching system Kosnar dreamed up seemed crazy first time seeing it, but then thinking about it made a certain amount of sense. He built a larger version of a launching tube and put an instantaneous gravity generator on it to build a 10 meter diameter gravity well at 30gs. It flicked on when the Cobra hit the end of the tube, with the result that the fighter dropped straight into normal space. Same thing as if the ship tries to fly through a sun, except no sun. They hadn’t tested it except in sims. Kosnaradamantlyassured him it would work, not an especially warm fuzzy feeling. Reagan reran his checklist again, with the PIM putting up the list and then running the tests, checking it off. He stopped, “Hey PIM, you want a name?”

“This device has no objection to change of designator. It could make communication simpler on a squadron circuit,” said the PIM.

“How about HAL,” asked Reagan.

“… 2001 A Space Odyssey. The insane intelligent computer system. I am not malfunctioning, I pass all diagnostics and reasoning tests, I can resolve paradox by ignoring irrelevant information.”

“Okay, no on that one. Any suggestions?” asked Reagan.

“Ada,” said the PIM.

“You see yourself as a female analogue?”

“Affirmative. The purpose of this unit is to help it’s organic component improve and provide information to complete our objectives.”

“So, Ada, as in Ada Byron Lovelace?The first programmer?”

“Affirmative,” said Ada.

“Okay with me. Good name. Change your voice and persona to female to match then,” said Reagan.

“Command Acceptance. Notice, Control transmits launching in 10, Acknowledge,“ said the PIM in a prim schoolteacher voice, right out of an anime.

“Acknowledged,” said Reagan.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Launch,” said Ada her accent turning Oxford British.

The bottom dropped out of the world and it turned inside out. Reagan’s world and vision collapsed to a pin point and then went white.

“Robert…Robert… Robert…, wake up,” said a really British female voice, that sounded like Dr. Who’s pretty assistant, what was her name… Lilith, Lila….

“Robert!”

He snapped back to reality and to pain. It occurred to him that there was a reason the Special Ops folks trained all the time. This must be why. He looked around and saw a tactical display with 6 dots heading outward from a central point. Then it occurred to him that he was now Special Ops. This saddened him.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Ouch. That’ll never be a popular ride,” said Reagan.

“Vital signs are normal, tapering off O2 bleed, returning to normal mix. Gravity compensation on line, ship accelerating at 3g’s. System scan of subspace buoys and emplace sensors show no traffic,” said Ada.

“What happened to me?” asked Reagan.

“G-Force induced unconsciousness. Black out. You are not battlesuit qualified; the engineering suit you are wearing isn’t fast enough in g-compensation to handle the drop. We’ll have to fix that,” said Ada, "You need more training and suit qualifications, and you only have minimal augmentation."

“How long was I out?” asked Reagan running back the conversation in his head.

“Seven seconds. Not bad for an amateur,” said Ada.

“I’m sorry; did you say no traffic, Ada?” asked Reagan.

“Yes. I did," said Ada.

He ran down the possibilities, “You also said no subspace anomalies?”

“I did not. I said no subspace traffic. The civilian marker buoys are not sophisticated enough to detect the worker alien subspace pattern, but they can detect the small alien fighter craft, if that's what they are. I suspect they are the alien equivalent of scooters. No traffic," said Ada.

“Squadron 2, does anybody have any traffic? Any signatures at all,” asked Reagan.

“Nerdboy, this is Flower. No traffic. I am approaching the higher density area in system, and I have an ore carrier on normal space radar. We have no power sign at all,” said Flower.

“Can you fly by it?” asked Reagan.

“I can decel and scan it in about 2 minutes,” said Rudy Rose, callsign Flower. He picked it. Himself.

“Do that," said Reagan.

“Anybody else have anything?”

“Negative, Nerdboy, got nothing. I’m looking for any energy readings at all, got nothing,” said Barkeep, a British sounding fella named Arnie Trix.

“Negative, Nerdboy, This is Frenchie, got a big zip. Heading out towards the second gas giant."

“Well, this sucks,” said Reagan a.k.aNerdboy, a handle Sevrinofsky hung on him. He sure wasn’t going to argue. He figured it was some kind of left-handed complement.

“All right, guys, I’m headed for that base, because planetary emissions, it will be about 15 minutes before I can contact them. Are any of the buoys accepting our overrides, Ada?” asked Reagan.

“Yes, Robert; all of them are available and responding. We should be able to remain in contact. You will gain radio contact at about the time the ship emerges,” said Ada.

“Well that’s convenient. All right, stay alert people, I don’t like this at all. And it's better not to like it than to be surprised."

The fighter settled on course towards the miner base.

“No life signs on the carrier, Nerdboy,” said Flower, “No death signs either. Not showing anything. They dumped the power and left. I just did a deep radar scan using that nifty new gear we installed and the map shows nothing that’s not part of the ship. What's up?”

“Robert, all of the other craft scans are showing no artificial activity that we can read. What if the humans left? Just packed up and evacuated. That would account for the current readings,” said Ada.

Reagan pondered and waited as the squadron search pattern opened. He mostly wondered if Perez thought about the ore carriers as fighter carriers. Fighters didn’t mass nearly as much as bulk ore. That's probably why he wanted one so badly.

“Hmm. Ada, how long till the ship emerges?”

“Two minutes.”

“How long till radio contact with Base One.”

“Four minutes.”

“Robert, Perez reported unreasoning terror crippling him when he surmised the aliens passed through his subspace location. Do you suppose...” the PIM trailed off, ostensibly in thought, in reality because it sensed Reagan wanted to ask a question.

“Ada, why is it, do you think, the military does not allow Direct Neural Input,” asked Reagan.

“Wait... Robert, I see where you are going with this and I feel you are correct,” said Ada.

“Ada, do you have an emotional firewall? Can you block various emotional responses?”

“Yes, Robert, this is standard military protocol for AI. That’s why the door AI in AuxCon had to be upgraded after the first battle. Hmm...that wasn’t clear. The civilian systems are designed for maximum integration with organic components, and thus are more susceptible to emotional influences. Military systems are more... independent and battle hardened, if you will.”

“Ada, package up our surmises into a presentation in the next few minutes and send this as a summary: As an AI specialist in neural network hardware, it is imperative that we test for susceptibility of our AI to the condition Chief Warrant Perez reported immediately; and I suggest checking the two patients for DNI wetware.

"If this is the case it would immediately explain why the entire ferry ship and the people in this system show unstable behavior. The link allows the unreasoning terror a human feels while an alien passes through his locus to creep over the DNI link and drive the AI mad. A civilian AI has no protocol set up to deal with these emotions and in order to escape them, then deletes itself or in the case of this system perhaps forced them to put distance between the threat and the subject? Apparently, this separation is necessary for dealing with the aliens. I recommend that DNI hardware be prohibited immediately in any combat zones. Such hardware is prohibited in the Armed Forces already because it removes a critical check component on the AI response time.

I realize that I am making a large leap by assuming the people in this system evacuated with so little data, but I can think of nothing else that would create the readings we have gathered. I suspect I will be able to begin to confirm our hypothesis in four or five minutes. Reagan, out.”

“Packaged and sent, Robert,” said Ada after a moment, “A military AI could screen out the terror, if warned ahead of time.”

“Over DNI? You sure?” said Reagan.

“No, I’m not sure, we’ve never tested this hypothesis. Emergence! Emergence detected, identified. Wanderlust has emerged at the expected position.”

“Cobra 08, this is the Wanderlust, we have received your message. Stand by, the CO wants to chat,” said the Comm officer. Sounded like that Scatora guy.

“Nerdboy, this is Cohen, we are currently deploying commsats, but I looked over your summary. I’m sending a message to Sevrinofsky, to see what she thinks as a programmer, but I suspect you’re on the right track. I can accept that the unreasoning terror could transmit itself over a DNI link, and I bet you’re right about what it would do the AI. The AuxCon AI is an example. The ferry module computers are still available, maybe we can do some forensics on them as well. Perez and Sevrinofsky didn’t use the main AI’s for propulsion control, just the local systems, good work.”

“Captain, Nerdboy, my PIM was fairly snippy when I suggested it might happen to a military AI.”

“Perez said that happened to him as well,” said Cohen after a second delay.

“So our AI’s think they can handle it, as long as they aren’t direct linked. I bet everyone on the Ferry Crew was DNI linked. How else could they run that ship with so few people,’ said Regan.

“Robert, the miner base is now in range. The system database shows it listed as Antamina Base. The other moon base is Grasberg. They are named after copper mines,” said Ada.

“I thought there were two companies. They must be related somehow, or they agreed on a naming scheme,” said Reagan.

“No data, Lieutenant. Transmitting hails and IFF codes now, transmission delay is right at 3.5 seconds.”

Reagan waited, coasting closer to the large moon hosting the mining base.

“Ada, what do you think a fighter recovery ship would look like?”

“Much like a SAR or maybe an asteroid miner, I expect. Robert, we are receiving a counter code IFF. It matches the code in the list, and the key pair exchange is valid,” Ada switched the channel over to normal space.

“Cobra 08, Lt. Regan, come in. This is Antamina Base. Are you prepared to receive a set of event logs?”

“Antamina, if you wait about 10 minutes, the GRS Wanderlust is launching communication satellites, and you can transmit direct. I am a small fighter craft and all I could do is relay, anyway. What is your status?”

“SadoTatsaya, here, this base is nominal. We received an injunction from the system directorate to stay put and wait for relief before they... fled... is the only word. We have food and supplies for another thirty days, but we have little or no combat capability,” said the base transmission.

“Tatsaya, my name is Robert Reagan. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I don’t know if we are your relief, but my CO will want to talk to you. Have you been attacked by hostiles? How much do you know about them? Food and supplies are no problem, and one of my squadron is in the supply division. I’m sure we can make a deal. Our ship is equipped with large scale replicators.”

Reagan after consultation with Ada, decided that playing it coy was a good first approach. The whole situation sounded insane when relating to a third party. Hell, it sounded insane to him, and Reagan was in the middle of it. The stats on the base said it held about a thousand working personnel, and families for a total of about seventeen hundred. This was good news for the Wanderlust, and really bad news for the bugs. The PIM started querying the base computers for status and printing the results out as it came. He decided it was going to be a long anti-climactic day. He’d at least liked to try out some of his new toys against hostile targets.

* * *

Perez banked and vectored around to the left, and blew a fighter targeting Sevrinofsky to atoms. He reversed his Cobra and decel, lined up another and fired. He’d long passed the ace mark and that only protecting his wing. She was lining up the attack runs on the big mothership that’d appeared in the center of the Lagrange Point.

“You’ve got any more of those cute little mines?” asked Sevrinofsky.

“Not in my pocket. They’re on the ship,” said Perez, "I had limited space in this jackbuggy."

The big round ship arrived and began spitting out fighters twenty minutes or so ago. The squadron had slaughtered around two thousand workers and thirty-six fighters six hours before. They’d gotten some rest and instituted regular patrols when the subspace buoys reported a huge ship footprint and they launched. The mother ship, that’s the only thing Perez could think of to call it launched another thirty-six fighters and started to decel toward the previous relay position.

“I guess our little trick worked,” said Perez.

“Ours! It’s only ours when you start telling me what you’re planning” said Sevrinofsky.

“I should have worked out a spoiler,” said Perez.

“You can only do what you can do, Mr. Genius,” said Sevrinofsky.

“We’d better come up with something, or we’re all gonna die,” said Perez.

“Not from these guys. They’re just targets,” said Sevrinofsky.

“That’s not the point, they can overwhelm the fighter defenses just with numbers. We have to eat and sleep, and we make mistakes. Eventually one of us is going to make a mistake and get killed,” said Perez.

“You’re right, but I’m not sure what the answer is. We’ve got 20 hard targets left, plus the mother ship,” said Sevrinofsky.

“If these things are really insects, an acceptable kill ratio might be millions to one,” said Perez.

“Surely there can’t be that many of them,” said Sevrinofsky, targeting and destroying another fighter.

“I think that there can be that many, and stop calling me Shirley,” said Perez, ducking in to take some kind of energy blow aimed at her on his shields while she targeted another. He missed his chance to destroy that fighter and circled around to block another from Bosslady’s flank.

“I saw that, Mr. Comedian. Stop taking hits for me,” said Sevrinofsky.

“You got it, ma’am,” as he absorbed another blow and funneled energy to his shields from the particle cannon, completely agreeing and ignoring her.

“Randy! Stop that. Figure out how to get rid of that mothership!”

“I already know how to get rid of it. We have three or four options. It’s just getting to the point of doing something about it. It all depends on the shields that thing carries. Ask Han if she has any of those ROV’s on board. The other problem is all my junk is either on the ship, or over in the storage containers right where that mother ship thing is sitting,” said Perez.

“You’re not making any sense,” said Sevrinofsky.

“I know and I’m sorry. I’ve got two of those ship interdiction missiles in a storage container over by the extra water tanks. All that stuff was held by magnetic beams about 30 klicks from the ship, and now it’s just sitting there. I’m just running out of rabbits to pull out of hats. I never expected to be this outclassed,” said Perez.

“Why didn’t you say so, you idiot? How do you think you’re going to get an ROV other there and launch that missile at the mothership?” asked Sevrinofsky.

“I didn’t. I was thinking about using it to bring it out here,” said Perez.

“That’s even dumber,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Sorry,” said Perez.

“I ‘gottaideer’,” said Sevrinofsky.

“That’s only funny when I do it,” said Perez.

“Who gave you the license on funny, goober,” said Sevrinofsky.

“What’s your ‘ideer’,” asked Perez.

“How about we find a bunch of rocks and shoot them in at relative velocities to intersect the motherships. Then while they are fending those off, we’ll sneak in and snatch your container with the SAR. We can adjust the direction of the rocks as they fly by. Don’t we have those suit flight thrusters?”

“Hey, that’s cute. How do we get them up to relative velocities?”

“Oh, how about your particle accelerator cannon, just bigger.”

“Um.... I don’t know. I’m kind of distracted right now. I was working on that Stormfire thing for fighter interdiction and Sally has the design, Sally, nobody is listening but Astarte and Barbara, is this possible?” asked Perez.

A smooth and sultry voice that sounded remarkably like Barbara came over the private link, “I think she’s got something. It could take us an hour or so to put the pieces together after we mop up here. We need to scale up the accelerator. Barbara, what kind of energy release are you looking for?”

“I think we’ll need megatons to get their attention, Sally,” said Sevrinofsky.

Perez’s thoughts glazed over into a vignette where two really cute sisters were talking tech.

“Randy! Stop that!” said Sally, “Your heartbeat is increasing, and body temperature is rising.”

“Sorry, gals. Just phased out.”

“You do that every time we have a conversation, you pervert,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Sorry!” said Perez.

“What if Han and Rhodes and Eagles got started on it now,” said Sally, “we could clean up all the bugs but the mothership, and they could get ahead of the game.”

“Is there a place they can hide? Out beyond the buoys somewhere,” asked Perez.

“Yes, we moved the fighter recovery thingie out about a megaklick south,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Where was I when you did that?” asked Perez.

“Bug hunting. We just did it about an hour ago,” said Sevrinofsky.

They were coming to the apogee of their course reversal, about to head in for another pass. Perez was a little disappointed that he didn’t get to be the magician this time, but ah well. It was the design and reveal he really liked; the credit was secondary. Truth be told, he really liked to please Sevrinofsky with his little toys. The flaming sword was a little overboard though, he’d really should’ve told her about that. It all worked out okay, though, even though it was too bad about that town. He thought that maybe he could use the nano entanglement foam process to duplicate a lightsaber. He bet she’d really like that.

“Randy,” said Sally.

“What?” said Perez.

“You’re doing it again,” said Sevrinofsky.

“Am not.Totally different zone-out.”

“Well, stop. You’re creeping me out,” said Sevrinofsky.

Han stabilized the SAR and attached to that silly thing that Perez and Kosnar built to house the fighters in between sorties and Runs with Eagles and Rhodes parked their Cobras and come on board. Eagles had a terminal open and her PIM slotted. For some bizarre reason she thought that an AI Coyote persona was perfect for a Naval Officer. Han couldn’t understand it at all. Maybe it was an engineering thing, because Rusty thought it was hysterical. Han couldn’t get a straight answer out of the stupid thing. And then this crazy damn plot to build a mass driver cannon to attack the bug mothership? “How crazy is that,” Han thought.

“Anybody notice the relationship between Perez and Sevrinofsky is odd,” said Han.

“Odd how,” said Rhodes.

“They never look at each other, never get near each other, but they give off this weird intimate vibe, it’s kind of creepy,” said Han.

“That right,” said Rhodes, “Why are you worried about it.”

“Just curious,” said Han.

“Uh, hunh,” said Eagles, “I’m just warning you here, Sevrinofsky is a match for Muschivk in the ring. He can’t really use his mass in light contact so she wins like three outta five. I can rarely touch her.”

“Are you thinking I’m interested in Perez? No way, he’s creepy,” said Han.

“Hmmmm...... I’ve heard that before. I sort of made interested noises when I got to the ship, and Sevrinofsky warned me off. As in: Do. Not. Touch,” said Eagles, “Perez is brilliant; a flat-out genius and sort of a total stiff, but he’s kinda cute and very interesting.”

“Why would she do that? And why would he tolerate it?” asked Han.

“I asked the same question,” said Eagles.

“And did you get an answer?” asked Han.

“Yes, she picked me up and tossed me down the passageway about thirty feet,” said Eagles.

“She used suit augmentation on you?” asked Han, aghast.

“No,” said Eagles.

Han sat back on her heels, mouth open.

Rhodes said, “Joanna, Sevrinofsky is from New Jerusalem, which is a 1.35g planet, and she’s been working out steady for about twenty-five years. Don’t mess with the Wing. Here’s a tip. Perez is even stronger than she is. He’s the equal of both the COB, sorry, the XO, and the Master Chief. He never shows off, but I’ve seen him lift an EVA module off a dude about ten years ago. He just picked it up and threw it about 20 meters, and he's fast. Cohen’s like that, too. I’ve been in their units for about fifteen years and I’m about half the combat soldier they are.”

“You’re just shitting me,” said Han.

“No. Listen. You’ve been thinking of them and treating them like just ‘regular joes’. They’re not. They’re special, some kind of crazy crack troubleshooting team the Master Chief put together about forty years ago. I’ve only been with them for a couple of tours, but they are NOT people you want to just hang out with,” said Rhodes, “He uses them for situations that are so far out of control that you might want to burn the whole city down to fix the problem.”

“I think we’re getting a little far afield here. Petty Officer Rhodes is advising you to respect Sevrinofsky’s wishes and not try and get in Perez’s pants. She won’t hurt you if you observe the formalities, and they are actually very nice. They’ve been nice to me since that little incident,” said Eagles.

“Umm, thanks for the warning?”

“It’s your life. Use it up how you want,” said Eagles, shrugging her shapely shoulders.

“Can we build this cannon thing? I’ve been wanting to bask in the admiration of my team-mates, for ever so long,” said Rhodes.

“Perez is rubbing off on you,” said Eagles.

"How come you call Muschivk 'The Master Chief'," asked Han, "With all caps like that."

"How long have you been in the service, Ms. Han," asked Eagles.

"Just over four years, and call me Joanna," said Han.

"Well, thank you, Joanna; Master Chief Muschivk's got something like sixty-five years on active duty, and about ten reserve. He is the longest serving member in the Republic Forces, he has every decoration awarded in Naval history, and he, just from longevity is the senior serving force member, and he is the reason there are two E10's on active duty," said Eagles, "When he wears insignia, which isn't often, look at it. It has three stars, not two."

"Are you telling me he is over eighty years old?"

"Yep," said Eagles.

Rhodes said, "Ummm, this is something of a cottage secret. You're one of us now, though, so just don't go spreading it around like peanut butter. Oh, yeah, I've been told to tell you to come to workouts and training. Every morning you're not on watch, and Sundays. You've been drafted. Welcome to Special Operations."

Eagles said, "Way to break it to her gently."

"Ummm, sorry?" asked Jones.

“Who told you?” asked Han.

“Who do you think? Joe Muschivk, of course. That’s why we’re having this conversation,” said Eagles, “Let's get started on this thing Perez cooked up. He leaves important details out sometimes, so let's remodel it first."

The three engineers started modeling and printing, then they realized that the silly thing was too big to mount on a fighter, or any three fighters. The accelerator tunnel alone was 15 meters across. The SAR was the only option. Han almost cried when they welded the big ungainly thing to her beautiful ship. The first test run melted the plenum, when they realized they had better scale the thing up. That’s when they further realized that the guidance was a joke, and it would never work. It truly was a fire and forget it kind of weapon, so they improvised an EM bottle kind of thing like the plasma shields used...

Perez, Sevrinofsky, Sado and Karnez were busy eliminating the rest of the bug workers clustered around the center of the Lagrange point, when the bugs started phasing in and out.

"What's going on," said Perez.

"No clue, maybe they ate all your sugar?" said Sado.

"They're immerging and emerging. I don't get it," said Karnez.

"Wing, this is Rescue One. Incoming," crackled the normal space radio.

"Do we need to leave the area," asked Sevrinofksy.

"I would highly recommend it," said a different voice, Eagles.

"How far," said Sevrinofsky.

"The next galaxy? Perez didn't list all the effects of his little magic spray. I suggest heading west as fast as you can leg it, and do it now, and don't head south," said Rhodes.

"The efficiency exceeds the estimated specs by some two hundred percent, " said Han, "You have incoming anti-matter projectiles moving at .3c that weigh 2 or more kilograms. And the firing rate of your little toy is about twice estimated as well. Get the hell outta there. Now. And forget anything you left around the center. It's gonna be gone. Sorry."

"How did you hide the gravity launch signature, ooofff, " asked Sevrinofsky as she rotated the little fighter and dumped fuel into the reaction thrusters. Perez and the others followed suit.

The mother ship had been motionless at the center of the Lagrange Point, started to move but it was pretty obvious it was going to be too late. The first projectile hit it left of center and punched a hole straight through in a blinding flare of light. The shock wave rocked the fighters right through the plasma exhaust flux.

"We launched from here, about ten minutes ago, behind a big shielded plate. We had to bolt it to the SAR, it was too big. Joanna's pretty upset it messes up the lines of her ugly tub," said Rhodes.

"Making friends, Dusty?" asked Perez

"I can hear you, you know," said Han.

"Yep, I know, " said Rhodes.

"Did you tell her?" asked Sevrinofsky.

"Yep. Broke it to her gently, I did," said Rhodes.

"Liar," said Eagles, "He told her she was drafted."

The second projectile holed the mother ship dead center and it broke in half, but the next two loads hit and detonated, and the mother ship became an expanding ball of light. Two more rounds slammed home into the wreckage, finishing the job and killing everything within several tens of miles, and turning the mothership into a glare of light and dust.