Alien Pest Control
Chapter 6

Copyright© 2009 by aubie56

"Oh, Shit! Abner, take your squadron after the fighters, and we'll go after the mother ship." Jacob's four ships started to jump almost before Jacob had completed his order. He didn't hear Abner's reply, but Jacob was sure that Abner would know what to do.

Jacob's squadron jumped in to help Obgor and Brund with the attack on the mother ship. Obgor and Brund didn't need any help. They had already dumped four nuclear warheads on the enemy and were raking the ship with torpedoes as fast as they could fire them. Meanwhile, they were also pouring bullets into the laser emplacements as each one came into line-of-sight. Their laser shields were working to perfection as evidenced by the complete lack of damage to either of their ships.

Obgor fired another nuclear warhead into the mother ship, and this time, he must have hit it at just the right place. There was a monstrous explosion deep within the mother ship, and the spaceship began to disintegrate. Uh-oh, Brund was too close and got clipped by a large piece of flying metal as it pealed off the doomed ship. The section of metal was large enough that it sheared off one of the Gatling Guns on the after top quarter of the 'Osphy.' The hull was not breached, but it was a close call!

That was the end of the enemy mother ship as a fighting entity. There might still be living beings within more or less intact portions of the hull, but there was not going to be any more fighting for it, ever again.

Everybody in Jacob's "Green Squadron" quickly shifted their attention to the fighters, but Abner's "Gold Squadron" had just about wiped them out. A few tried to escape, but they didn't stand a chance. They were quickly hunted down and blown out of the sky.

Jacob said to the whole fleet, "Good job, people, but we need to take a look at the ground. Everybody go into low orbit and see if there are any living beings left. Just make damned sure that you don't run into each other!"

"Capt. Jacob, I see a group of people running around trying to clear rubble. What should I do?"

"Dammit, just hang on a minute while we sample the atmosphere." A sample flask was transported down into the atmosphere and returned. It was run through the gas chromatograph and the sample showed 22% oxygen with nothing harmful. Jacob ordered, "Send down a small working crew to see if they can be of any help. Did you complete your circuit of the planet?"

"Yes, Sir. This was the only group of people that we could find."

"Has anybody else found anything?" He was greeted by silence. Jacob thought, "Damn! We may not have arrived in time to do any good."

"Jimmy, have any of your working party reported anything of interest?"

"Not yet, Sir. I'll keep you posted."

With the working party:

"Jenny, have you made contact yet?"

"No ... Oh, wait. Here comes somebody."

There was some meaningless chatter through the translator, then, " ... you help us? My mother is trapped under the rubble and we cannot move the stuff out of the way."

"Certainly, that's why we are here. Jack, I guess you heard that. Ed and I are following what I guess to be an adolescent female to try to help her mother. I expect that we will be busy for a few minutes, so you may not hear anything from me except grunts of exertion."

"OK, Jenny. I see another group. I'll see if I can help over there."

Aboard 'Michael':

"Capt. Jacob, Sir? The working party has found some survivors and is helping to dig others out of the rubble. I expect them to be too busy for a while to report much more. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything."

"Very well, Jacob out." Jacob switched to the command frequency and called Abner. "Abner, please take your squadron and see what you can learn from an examination of the fragments of the enemy ships. I have a suspicion that these were not FBs. I have a feeling that we have two separate empire builders or some such making waves, and they might not even know about each other."

"Yes, Sir, I'll see what we can find. Any word on survivors?"

"There are very few. I suspect that we may have to take them with us. Let me know what you find as soon as you have something, please. Jacob out."

A total of sixteen survivors were all that were found. The two squadrons did several more low orbit sweeps to try to spot anyone else. There was nothing to see but destruction everywhere. No more living beings could be detected, so they reluctantly gave up on the search.

These people were humanoid, but not so nearly like the humans as were the Wiffers. The only practical thing to do with these people was to send them back to Earth. Fortunately, that was no big deal. They were already aboard 'Angel, ' so Jimmy was instructed to take them to Earth. Meanwhile, Jacob warned the people at Houston that they were about to receive 16 refugees.

While that was being handled, Jacob asked Abner and Janet to come to his office to discuss their next move.


Jacob opened the meeting with the comment, "This search method certainly will work, but it is boring as hell. I'm afraid that our people are going to lose their edge if we stay with it much longer."

Abner commented, "You are absolutely correct. Frankly, I am surprised that our people have been able to stay with it as long as they have. The problem is, what else can we do?"

"Janet, do you know which of our radar operators is the best we have?"

"Yes, I think that Eevar on 'Jalo' is actually the best. She seems to see stuff long before anybody else spots it, and she has excellent judgment in interpreting what she sees."

"OK. Let's try an experiment. Have Eevar extend her range to the maximum that she thinks that she can make it work and have her start searching for activity. We've got around seven more hours before Jimmy gets back from Earth, so have her see what she can find. Please go get Eevar started and then come back."

Janet left and was gone about 15 minutes. While they waited, Jacob mentioned something that he had been considering. "Abner, as I understand it, the transporter checks to be sure that the volume of space where it is depositing something is clear because, if it isn't, there would be one hell of an explosion since there can't be two solid bodies occupying the same place at the same time. Is that your interpretation of the system?"

"Yes, that's what it looks like to me. Why?"

"Suppose we disable that check, or better yet, make sure that something is in the way before depositing a solid body. It seems to me that we would have a big explosion just where we want it, and no shield or armor could keep it out."

"Jacob, you are a devious bastard! Congratulations, I would never have thought of that. The idea would be easy to test. We have an empty planet down there, so let's give it a try."

"OK, lets run the idea passed Tom and see what he says. If he thinks that it can be done, we can try it out right away."

Jacob called Tom to his office and explained what he wanted to try. Tom agreed that he could do what Jacob wanted. It would take about 30 minutes to fix the transporter safeties so that they would allow it. He left as Janet was returning. "OK, I can see that look in the eyes of both of you. What kind of dirty trick have you cooked up this time?"

Jacob told her of his idea and she shuddered. "If that works, we will have a weapon so powerful that nothing can resist it."

Jacob's answer was, "That's exactly what I am hoping for."

They talked about Abner's search of the debris field from the battle. His report was that he found no sign of the polyethylene lining that the FBs used to protect their metal from the fluorine, so it was likely that this was a different group from the FBs. It looked like they had two enemies. Hopefully, the two would meet and fight each other.

They drank some coffee while they waited for Tom to return with word that he was ready for the test. Jacob picked up the microphone and broadcast by FTL radio to the fleet, "We are about to test a new weapon. We don't know for sure if it will work, but if it does, there should be one hell of an explosion on that derelict planet below us. If it doesn't work, we'll keep trying for something else. Anyway, don't let an explosion down there jar you into doing something foolish."

 
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