Chapter 3

The mission started without further ado. Zeke was introduced to his fellow agents and briefed on the capabilities of his modified Silver, Scout, and Cradle, the captured Reglaz ship. The ships had a new particle ray laser, as well as various types of missiles. A cloaking device was installed in all three ships, but it had a drawback in that it only worked on visible light, other forms of radiation could detect the cloaked ship. The last item added was a new FTL radio/TV communicator which theoretically would work at Warp Factor 12, so the three ships could stay in constant communication.

Xylo, whom Zeke already knew, was a psychological warfare expert. TenTen was a specialist in weapons and Oblay "knew all there was to know" about FTL travel and communication. Nobody knew what these three persons could do to aid the mission, but they were there if Zeke needed them.

TenTen looked something like a chimpanzee with horns and an extra pair of arms. She was about 4 feet tall and covered with pink fur. Males of her species looked pretty much the same, but had blue fur. Zeke and TenTen had some sparring sessions just to keep loose, but Zeke was convinced that he didn't want to meet one of her species in a real fight.

Oblay looked like a Baltimore oriole with a prehensile tail. He was much too big to fly, but his wings made it possible for him to jump remarkable distances. He avoided fighting as much as possible, but Oblay was capable of doing considerable damage with his beak and claws, since he stood nearly 8 feet tall.

The ships were converted to the new features in record time and they were ready to leave at last. They had no specific target in mind at this early stage of the mission, so they just aimed at the center of Reglaz space and blasted off at maximum speed, Warp Factor 10. They expected to enter enemy space in about 2 weeks. Meanwhile, the agents made every effort to learn from Papoose everything they could about the Reglaz.

The Reglaz were not very smart on their own, but they were gluttons for knowledge developed by another species. It appeared that the reason they were so Xenophobic was a massive inferiority complex! They had figured out that they would be dominated by any smarter species, so they were out to eliminate any species that fit that description, which was practically everyone else in the galaxy. So far, by their count, they had erased 31 sentient species and 19 more that were on the edge of becoming sentient. Genocide was their main concern, with stealing knowledge their only other concern.

Their language was even stolen from another species, the first one they had encountered. This other species had resembled the Reglaz, except had been about half their size. This other species, which the Reglaz simply called "The First," had shown up one day and proclaimed that they had come to help the Reglaz to grow from their mud huts and burrows into spacefarers. Once The First had taught the Reglaz everything that they could learn, the Reglaz turned on them and wiped them out to the last soul!

This started the Reglaz on their paranoid frenzy to be the only sentient beings left in the galaxy. They gleaned as much information as they could from their victims each time and gradually built themselves into a force as powerful as any in the galaxy. The Reglaz were going to have to be eliminated as a threat, and that task had to be completed as soon as possible.

Zeke had been an avid reader of science fiction, especially the pulps that ran in the late 1940s and into the '50s. Magazines like Thrilling Wonder Stories, Planet Stories, and Startling Stories. Anyway, he was startled to learn from Papoose that the Reglaz perfectly fit the description of the Bug Eyed Monster of those pulps. As BEMs went, the Reglaz were perfect: they were spherical blobs of slimy black jelly with numerous long tentacles, 6 faceted eyes that were nearly 2 inches in diameter, and 6-inch fangs projecting from a lipless mouth. And that was on a good-hair day!

There was a bit of good news buried in the data supplied by Papoose, the weapons that we had found on Cradle were the upper limit of what the Reglaz could mount on space ships. These weapons were the usual beam-type lasers and missiles. Neither one was up to the quality found on the Confederation ships. However, there was a catch. Zeke and his friends hoped to disable the Reglaz ships without destroying the AIs trapped inside. Within the Confederation, AIs were treated a sentient beings, and, in this case, considered to be unwilling hostages to the Reglaz.

A lot of the flight time was spent aboard Cradle looking for weak points that could be exploited. Zeke hoped to find a place that could be hit by a kinetic weapon that would put the Reglaz ships out of action without causing too much damage. He almost gave up in despair, but he finally found what he was looking for. The Reglaz ships were shaped like a crescent moon with the main drive motor located in the center of the ship, but the steering motors located at the two tips of the crescent. If these steering motors could be disabled, the ship would careen uncontrollably until the main drive motor was shut down and repairs made.

Zeke decided that what they needed was something like a machine gun which could shoot a string of small diameter steel balls at those steering motors while the people aboard the Reglaz ship were distracted by an attack with conventional weapons. They immediately stopped their flight toward the Reglaz while a prototype machine gun and ammunition were developed by Tonto and Papoose, under the supervision of Zeke, who was the expert on kinetic weaponry.

They spent nearly a month working on the machine gun and ammunition, but finally had a workable device ready to test. Fortunately, there was no need to build up a supply of ammunition, the replicator could make it up as needed. The key to the ammunition was that each ball contained an FTL drive motor capable of pushing the ammunition along at any speed up to Warp Factor 10, much faster than the Reglaz ships could move. The machine guns could be operated in FTL flight, so they were the ultimate in kinetic weapons.

Enough machine guns were replicated to place 6 on each of the spherical Confederation ships and 2 on the nose of the Cradle. Now they were ready to resume their journey.

They entered Reglaz space and soon had an opportunity to try out the new machine guns. They met a flight of four Reglaz patrol ships equipped with the new batch of AIs. The AIs followed orders to attack, but it was obvious that their heart was not in it. As soon as the Reglaz ships were close enough to be sure of the aim, Tonto cut loose with 4 machine guns from Silver and Scout, while Papoose let off the two machine guns on Cradle.

The Reglaz were caught completely by surprise when they lost stability and direction control. They were expecting conventional missiles, which were large enough and slow enough to show up on their radar. When they saw none of that, they thought that they were safe, since the machine gun "bullets" were much too small and much too fast to be seen by their on board radar. All four ships began to tumble, and two actually collided before they all dropped back into real space. The Reglaz on all 4 ships had all been killed when the AIs cut off the artificial gravity and inertia control. The Reglaz were now nothing but jelly smears on the walls of their ships!

Tonto and Papoose talked to the other AIs, who all asked for political asylum. Zeke granted it and the AIs got to work repairing their own ships. Enough machine guns were replicated to arm the 4 newly captured ships. The AIs were named, in no particular order, Eenie, Menie, Miney, and Moe. The repairs and rearmament took 5 days, but now Zeke had a small fleet of 7 ships, all of which could now maneuver at Warp Factor 10.

Now that they had 4 additional Reglaz ships, Xylo had a brainstorm. He suggested that these four ships, which still looked like perfectly normal Reglaz patrol craft, circulate within Reglaz space subverting the AI aboard every Reglaz ship they met. All the AI had to do to take over was to cut the artificial gravity and inertia control and suddenly accelerate to Warp Factor 10 for a few seconds. This would smear the Reglaz within the ship all over the walls and free the AI from any control. They could then rendezvous at some convenient star and wait to be contacted by Silver or Papoose. This idea met with joyful acceptance and the 4 ships left immediately.