Chapter 30

As the Polnoye Resheniye passed over them, the breeching pods recognized the large magnetic object above them, and they oriented themselves into the proper position. For the past several days, Ed has studied every bit of information gleaned from the F-231’s pass over and under the Polnoye Resheniye and found the optimum points of entry. The pod that Alan was in waited for the Polnoye Resheniye to sweep over it, then the pod swung above the big dark ship and pointed toward the planned entry point.

On cue, the two breeching pods charged the Polnoye Resheniye and latched on to it, slicing an entry port into the flesh of the large ship, then sealing the pod to the ship so there was no telltale loss of atmosphere. Then the marines simply slid into the large ship.

It looked like they were in an engineering space as Alan’s team moved slowly through the ship. They entered a compartment and there was an Eastern Bloc spaceman at a computer terminal and the lead Marine told him to step away from the terminal and remain quiet, using the international sign to do that; he pointed two guns at the crewman. Alan and the second Marine grabbed the crewman’s arms and zip-tied them behind him and gagged the terrified looking crewman, then Alan took his place at the computer terminal.

He took a device out of his pocket; it was a disc with several cable connections, and he found one that matched a port on the computer terminal and plugged that connection into the computer terminal. A red light on the disk started flashing slowly.

On the MSDF Naha, Gunny Dunlop and her new favorite trainee were in her sonar room waiting for a specific signal. Her trainee, Spaceman second class Bran Dunsmore, watched and listened as she described how she preferred to set up her electronic listening post. He was strapped into the second chair and had Marcy’s artificial arm in his lap. There were a myriad of things wrong with it, and she let Dunsmore fiddle with it. There was no way he could make it worse.

Suddenly, there was a tone, and an alarm popped up on her screen. “An installation bridge is available ... what does that...”

As she pondered the alarm, Bran remembered something that Alan had said. “Ed! Ed needs that!”

“Ed, here’s where you get out of my main frame,” said Marcy and she hit the flashing ‘EXECUTE’ button.

“Thank you,” said Ed, speaking to someone who wasn’t Alan or Pandora for the first time.

They watched the indications on their screen and suddenly the Naha started pumping out tons of electronic noise. “What is it doing?” asked Bran as he turned the volume down on the speaker.

“He’s broadcasting himself,” said Marcy.

On the Polnoye Resheniye the bridge crew was stunned at the noise that the Naha was putting out. “Vat is zat?” shrieked Kapitan Kovalyov, his Georgian accent coming to the forefront for the first time in a long time.

“I don’t know,” said the radioman.

“Find out!” the Kaptain demanded.

The noise echoed through the ship, but the intended target, a small disk in the aft portion of the ship, responded with flashing lights. They began flashing red and green and the flashing grew faster and faster until it looked like both the red and the green light were on steady. Then, without warning, the transmission stopped, and the green light remained steady. “Are you here Ed?” asked Alan quietly.

“Yes Alan, I am here. I am now exploring my new home.”

“Ok, don’t let him do anything crazy before we get to the bridge,” said Alan as he and his marine guard left the tied up crewman behind them. “Ed, can you do something with these computers so we can read them?” The computer’s output was in a Slavic language that Alan and his Marines could not read. Ed’s response was not what Alan wanted to hear.

“It looks like the captain of this vessel is getting ready to launch a titanium rod at Perseverance.”

“We can’t let that happen.”

“It will not happen,” said Ed.

As Ed said that, in the Polnoye Resheniye command center, Kapitan Kovalyov ordered his ship to roll. It rolled 180 degrees onto its back and as it rolled, a small hatch on the belly of the ship between the engines’ thrust tubes popped open.

“I stand corrected,” said Ed. “The target is not Perseverance.”

Lake Jezero MSDF Base, April 6, 2163 Martian Self Defense Force Command Post

“Eris no!” shouted Alex Rodriguez, but it was too late. Eris and another pilot roared into the sky in the F-231 fighters, followed by the four remaining F-733Fs.