Chapter 9

The Earth cruiser had been gone about two weeks when we had another visit from the ogres. Apparently, their intent was to keep their technology out of the hands of the humans. It was a good thing that we had no further use for the base nor for the ogre spaceship, because the ogres had sent four ships to wipe out all traces of the ship and the humans. We watched in amazement as the ogres obliterated both the base and the grounded spaceship.

That was a wakeup call for us to get off our duff and protect ourselves from aliens. I immediately called a meeting of the original crew to get their feelings on what we should do. I said that I was going after the ogres if AI would provide me with the means to do it. Sue, Sharon, and Jim agreed that they wanted to join me. With that unanimous vote behind me, I called on AI.

"AI, please transport all four of us so that we can get a look at the available spaceship."

No sooner said than done. The next moment, we were standing beside a four-man space fighter that was beyond anything we knew of. The hatch was open so that we could get inside. Everything was very close to optimum size for our bodies, so the hard part was done.

The four action stations consisted of a pilot, a weapons supervisor, an engineer, and a vessel commander. I could see me as the commander, Sue as the pilot, Sharon as the weapons supervisor, and Jim as the engineer. Those jobs were good fits for our personalities.

The armament consisted of a forward firing X-ray laser and a torpedo tube. Also, there were lower power X-ray lasers in bubble turrets on top, on the bottom, and on the two sides of the craft. Each of those lasers could be controlled manually or by computer. Actually, the manual control of the weapons was not practical because of the speed at which everything took place.

No organic being could move fast enough to direct a weapon at an enemy ship that was moving at close to the speed of light, especially if we were doing the same thing in the opposite direction. That was why no effort was wasted on a manual control for the kinetic torpedo.

We practically jumped for joy when we finished our examination of the fighter. We had no trouble picking out a name for the fighter: The Gray Ghost. I contacted AI and told him to arrange training time for us as soon as possible. I told him which position each of us was to concentrate on, but I wanted enough cross training to cover us in case of trouble.

That was easily arranged and we finished our initial training that afternoon. We were now ready to get into space and to put our training to the test. Sue and I sat in the front of the ship so that we could look straight ahead. That was purely a psychological thing because most of our movements would be near light speed and faster, and it would be impossible to see anything out the view ports.

The weapons and engineering stations were back in the body of the ship without view ports, but all of us had computer generated images to help us to make decisions. We spent two weeks of intensive training at our new jobs, and we figured that was enough. Any more training had to be of the on-the-job type against real enemies.

Now, all we had to do was to find that ogre raiding party in the depths of space. Ha! If we really tried to do that, we would be wasting a lot of time. Instead, we had a scanner sort of FTL radio fixed so that it would rapidly check the emergency bands used by the various human colonies. As soon as we received an emergency signal, Ghost was programmed to jump to the source of the emergency call without waiting for human intervention.

Among the wonderful inventions of the ancient people of Wolf was a device that could generate a wormhole on demand. The entrance was directly in front of us and the exit was programmed to be approximately 400,000 kilometers (250,000 miles) above the surface of the planet. At that point, we would take over to do what we could to protect the planet.

Of course, it was too late to do anything for the recent raid on Wolf, but we hoped to catch the pirates in action this time. One day, we were in space, just cruising, and getting to know the Wolf-439 system. Suddenly, the alarm went off and we were jumping before the alarm actually registered in out ears.

Our computer screens gave us a picture of what was going on. Specifically, a ship that looked exactly like the one that had crashed on Wolf was busy firing laser and missile shots at a city on the ground. Frankly, that did not make any sense to me because there was too much chance of a miss at the 60,000 Km the ship was orbiting. A miss was going to do a lot of damage and could destroy what the pirates mainly wanted. Well, that was not my problem. My problem was to come up with a way to scare that pirate and send him scurrying home.

We had discussed a possible strategy that would let us find the ogres' home planet. If we knew that, we could be just merciless on them as they were on their victims. Sharon had suggested that we disable the ogres' fighting capability, but leave them with enough assets to let them get home. Hopefully, they would be foolish enough to try for that, and we could follow them. The Gray Ghost had the sensing equipment to follow beyond the range of the instruments on the ogres' ship.

I did not have any idea what kind of warning system the pirate might have to let him know that we had just entered the game, but I had to assume at this stage that their captain knew that we had arrived. Certainly, he would not know why we were there, but were I him, I would certainly expect to be fired upon at the first opportunity.

"Sharon, this is Andy. Fire the main laser as soon as you have a target on that raider."

"Jim, this is Andy. Be ready to give us the maximum thrust you can get from this tub when we set up to fire at the raider."

"Sue, this is Andy. Aim our ship for the center of the enemy to give our computers the best angle they can get for the lasers."

At the moment, that was all that I could do. The actual fighting was up to the crew. Already, I was wishing that I could have something to fire at the bastards, even if it were only a spitball. That was when I first appreciated what a general felt when he sat in his office and waited to hear how the troops were doing. I was ready to shit marbles by the time Sharon fired the first burst from the X-ray laser.

Sharon's first hit with the laser was dead center. She was good and our computers were good. A huge section of the belly of the ogre ship vanished in a cloud of dust. Gobs of stuff spilled from the hole, including some bodies. I hoped that they were ogres and not captives, but we couldn't worry about that now. Our main job was to stop the shooting at the planet.

Unfortunately, one hit did not mean that the enemy was going to give up. Sue maneuvered us in closer to the enemy and Sharon's voice was heard by all. "I'm almost ready to fire the laser again."

I contributed with, "Sharon, don't use the main laser. Remember, we want him to lead us to his planet. Just kill his offensive weapons."

"Right, I had not forgotten, but the temptation is damned strong to slice the bastard in half."

Sharon did restrain herself and only fired at the lasers. We saw no sign of a kinetic torpedo. We wound up making four passes at the pirate ship to kill all of its offensive capability, but that was finally enough to make them cut for home. I had Sue fake breaking away from the pirate and letting it "escape." They took off for another part of the galactic arm, and we let them get to the edge of our sensor range before we followed.

Apparently, the ogres aboard that spaceship had no idea that they were being followed. They flew in what was the space traveler's equivalent of a straight line for a part of the galactic arm for which we had no charts beyond some general photographs taken as part of a loose astronomical mapping effort. Just for the hell of it, we started calling their home system "Iago" after the villain in Othello.