Chapter 18

After some long talks with Jake, Jeff and Chuck came to me with an outline of a plan. Basically, they wanted to visit Norfolk or another naval base and literally pick up a submarine. Jake claimed to be able to build a tractor beam that would fit on a flying boxcar and be strong enough to lift a submarine from the water.

Given that, they wanted to bring it to Worcester and put it in the water of the lake next to our home. They would convert the submarine to a spaceship complete with ray guns so that they could attack an alien spaceship in orbit. They would then have the captured spaceship make a one-way trip to the surface of the Earth. The grounded space ship would become the workshop for converting the submarine they had and others, as they could get them, into fullfledged spaceships to wipe out the alien spaceships currently orbiting the Earth.

The reason for using submarines as the backbone of the human space fleet was that the submarines were already air-tight and ruggedly built. Designing and building entirely new spaceships would be "reinventing the wheel." Once a submarine was fitted with its own lifting device, it could be removed from the lake and act as its own dry dock for work to be done on its underside.

The torpedoes could be replaced with kinetic missiles that would be a devastating weapon in space. With added ray guns, the relatively small submarine would become a super weapon.

Granted, rebuilding a submarine would be a labor-intensive undertaking; however, they would recruit aliens to do much of the manual work. As an example of the kind of help the aliens would be, just look at Jake and the other aliens that we had converted to friendship. Jake had assured them that most of the aliens would welcome the change in bosses. We could feel free to shoot the others.

Well, we had grown large enough now that we could to spare a few people to work on wild projects like this. The payoff of such a project would be so high that it was worth the investment. I told them to go ahead. They could use HAF-10 as their personal flying box, but they should try not to damage it beyond repair. They could have the next airmobile off the assembly line to act as their air cover. All I asked was that they try not to get hurt and to keep me informed of progress.

HAF-10 heavy lifter and airmobile A-5 were ready on almost the same day. Jeff was piloting HAF-10 and Chuck was piloting A-5. HAF-10 had no armament—the tractor beam device and its power supply took up almost all of the interior of the cargo bay. Jake was in HAF-10 with Jeff to operate the heavy lifter. A-5 was to supply any air cover that might be needed.

As soon as they flew over the Norfolk naval base, they knew which submarine they wanted. This was one of the larger versions of an attack submarine. Its selection was based on the fact that it was large enough to be used for testing prototype mechanisms and for carrying Jake and his alien friends. On the other hand, it was not so large that it would present a problem in converting it to a useful spaceship.

Jake was especially happy with the submarine because it was large enough to house Utorians, as the aliens wanted to be called. It took two days to convey the submarine to the lake in Worcester, and it was a major tourist attraction as it floated in the lake. The submarine was moored as close to shore as practical, and a wharf was run out to it. The wharf was mounted on pontoons made from small boats so that it could move with the submarine.

The working interior of the sub was stripped of everything not associated with handling the needs of the humans. Facilities for four Utorians were added; namely for Jake and the three other Utorians who were helping us. The rest of the space was devoted to the lifting device, the inertial compensator, two very large power supplies, and the control mechanisms for the flight of the sub.

The top of the sub's "sail" was modified to be the control station for the pilot, the captain, and the support people. In case you had not figured it out, I was going to be the captain, Jeff was to be the pilot, Jake was to be the engineering officer, and Chuck was to fly the A-5 as our companion. The other jobs were parceled out among interested people, both men and women, and the same was done for recruiting the assault team.

A lot of training went on during the winter while the sub was being converted. There were mock-ups of the subs controls so that everybody could practice his or her job, and a small reproduction of the inside of the Utor spaceship was build so that the assault team would have something to practice on.

Overall, we spent seven months with our conversions and training, and everybody was pretty sick of all that time spent on dummy units. Nevertheless, by the end of the seven months, everybody knew his or her job inside out, and everybody in the crew had a speaking acquaintance with all of the other things aboard ship. We did begrudge the time that we had to devote to construction and training and not to giving hell to the Utorians' property. Some of us wondered if the Utorians thought that we had given up on attacking the harvesters, but we didn't care when the sub was finally ready. It was christened "Avenger" and given the designation HAF S-1.

We were concerned that the Utorians would figure out what we were doing as they passed overhead so we covered the sub and our other stuff with huge tarpaulins. The idea was to hide what we were doing. There was no way that we could hide that we were doing something. Our friendly Utorians said that the Utorians aboard the spaceships would wonder at what we were doing. However, the average Utorian had so little imagination that it would soon forget us since we could not be seen to be doing anything that would harm them.

It was in April that we received another surprise. It turned out that Jake was female, and she came into heat. The other three Utorians were all male, and they took turns servicing Jake. It was a hectic three days, but Jake assured us that she would only lay one egg in about four months. She would not know who the father was, but none of the Utorians would care.

By then, we expected to have knocked down a spaceship and have more Utorians around who would be operating a creche for all of the eggs that hatched then. Jake would not be responsible for her egg or her hatchling, so we did not need to be concerned about her or it. Mostly, all that Jake was concerned about was that we would continue to call her Jake and not Jakess.

The first day of May was our launch date. We wanted to find out how many Utorian spaceships were orbiting Earth and which one would be the most convenient to attack. Jake had said that the commander of the ship was also the leader of the crime family that occupied the ship, and knocking him out was all that we needed to do. That would prove that we were stronger than the Utorians aboard the ship, and they would automatically accept us as their new boss. That was the way things were done on Utor, and it was the way things were done on the spaceships.

We planned to cut an entrance hole into the captain's quarters and land our assault troops there. We had 12 people equipped with air rifles and automatic pistols. Jake said that no one on the space ship had access to ray guns. All the boss' guards had for weapons were swords and knives. Thus, we should have no problem killing the boss and taking over the spaceship.

Jake was going along as interpreter, and I had pulled rank to make myself the leader of the assault troops. None of us were military types, but we had all seen enough war movies, TV shows, and video games to take out the Utorians. We already had experience fighting Utorians, and Jake said that the people we would be fighting would not be much better than those we had already met, unless we foolishly got into a hand-to-hand struggle with one. That we swore that we would never do, but I was a little concerned that someone would screw up.

Once we got safely into space, we did a radar scan to try to find spaceships. We found 37, and Jake thought that was the correct number. We found one spaceship which Jake identified as the Ankrock Xeron that seemed to be drifting and falling slowly out of orbit. That seemed to be the best candidate for us to hit, so we headed for it.