Chapter 9

The brains back at Auburn had finally doped out how to make an antigravity belt, and they built a couple of prototypes to test their theories. It turned out that the secret of the system was not all that exotic, after all. Given a few more years and Earth scientists would have come up with the principals, so they had little trouble modifying the design to fit human tastes and idiosyncrasies.

All of the fighter-jockey types wanted a single-seater fighter where they could strut their stuff. Such a fighter was not really needed at this point, but it was a good way to prove the concept, so such a tub was fashioned. It turned out to look like a bathtub modified to hold a Lazy-Boy recliner. The pilot could lean back and enjoy the ride, even sleep if there was time, for the humans had eliminated that automatic cut-off "feature" found in the original units. A lap top computer functioned as an autopilot, and a long flight profile could be programmed into the system, so it would be possible for one pilot to fly around the world, unassisted, if there was a reason to do so.

With the joystick control, it was now possible to cover a speed range between hover and approximately Mach 3.7, flying any sort of pattern, because of the inertial dampening inherent within the lifting device. The tub was now equipped with a plastic bubble canopy so that the pilot was not subjected to the wind shear, and he was completely protected from the stings of the Wasps by the tub on the bottom and the canopy on top.

Armament consisted of recently developed machine guns firing a new bullet, .303 caliber, but still with a hollow point to hold the poison. The bullet was not a high velocity type, because it was desirable for the bullet to remain within the body of the Wasp, and a high velocity bullet would simply pass on through the Wasp without dropping its poison. The reason for going to a slightly larger bullet was to cut down on deflection from stray wind currents and to give them a little more punch at longer range. Not a big change, but a helpful one.

Two banks of rocket launchers were added to give a means of attacking the Wasps' nests. Two rocket warhead types could be used, one was a poison reservoir and the other was a combination explosion and fire system that was designed to ignite the "paper" used to line the nest. The new fighter was called a "bathtub", and each one carried two of the new machine guns and six rockets.

The bathtub was easy to control for anyone with video game experience, so there was no problem training pilots. The older, multi-gunner tubs were still necessary for close ground support, but the bathtub was released to try to sweep the world clear of Wasps' nests. Thousands were turned out in the replicators, along with the new weapon systems.

As the bathtubs made their mark on the war, there was less and less need for ground troops, since there was no need for an occupying force. The Army was not conquering, it was liberating. The Army spent most of its time substituting for a civilian government until one could be set up. Mostly, the Army's only combat duty was against individual Wasps or very small nests that had escaped the notice of the flying hotshots.

It was not much longer before the entire USA was cleared of Wasps. Immediately, a move was made into Canada, but there turned out to be very few Wasp infestations in Canada because the Wasps could not tolerate cool, much less cold, weather. The Canadians had been in trouble mostly because of their relatively small population, but they were happy for all of the help that they could get. As soon as they could, they started turning out their own bathtubs and associated weapons and joined in the "invasion" of Mexico.

Mexico was badly troubled by the Wasps. They probably would have resented the Anglo "invasion," except there were not many Mexicans left to object. The Wasps appeared to bask in the warmer temperatures as compared to farther north, so that the Wasps settled themselves in a relatively high population density. The 20 million, plus, people in Mexico City, DF, alone were a great boon to the Wasps. Almost every major building in the city was taken over for a nest. Unfortunately, it was necessary to destroy most of the city before the humans could be sure that the Wasps had been eliminated.

The humans had a good handle on exterminating the Wasps, now, but there were so many in Mexico that it took almost five months before they could declare the country clear of the Wasps. There had been so many Wasps to fight that it had been necessary to use a couple of the local pyramid replicators to manufacture enough ammunition for the bathtubs. The humans needed to produce 1,213 more bathtubs just for the fight in Mexico, and nobody knew how much ammunition was produced.

Once the fight was pushed into the rain forests and jungles of Central and South America, there were fewer Wasps to fight. The Wasps had found that the plant growth in that area had so restricted their operations, because of their large size, that the Wasps did not try to do much colonizing around the equator, except in the relatively few places where the trees were not so dense or so tall. Of course, the major cities were taken over by the Wasps and the invaders had to be rooted out, but many of the people living in the hinterland did not even know how close they were to disaster.

As the fight moved farther south, the conditions the humans had faced in Mexico reappeared, and the fighting was fierce along here. The plains of Brazil and Argentina were truly infested with Wasps. By now, the way the war was waged against the Wasps had become somewhat routine. The Wasps continued to put up a good fight, but they were no match for the veteran human pilots of the bathtubs. Some of the pilots got so good at spotting hidden nests that they were teased and accused of being psychic in the way they could find the nests.

Still, the Wasps did not make any effort to cooperate in the war against the humans. It was as if they simply could not conceive of an effective defense against their attack, so they saw no reason to unite. Every day that went by, the humans became stronger and the Wasps became weaker, but the Wasps just did not recognize that fact. It was uncanny in the way that two nests very close together did not cooperate in their defense. If the humans were careful to attack only one nest at a time, the unattacked nest simply ignored the humans until it was too late.

It took nearly a year to clear the Wasps from Central and South America, even though many people from the area joined the fight. For one thing, there was not the pool of experienced video gamers there, so it took almost twice as long to train pilots. Nevertheless, once the pilots were trained, they were as good as any of those from North America.

About the time the war had settled down to a mop-up situation, the American pilots and troops were called home: an emergency had developed! A bunch of renegade humans had taken over a pyramid from the token guarding force put there to be caretakers. Somehow, nobody ever was able to track down all of the details, a bunch of organized crime-types had been able to get hold of the reports giving the details of what was known about how to control a pyramid. They had also been able to steal a bathtub fighter and duplicate a large number of them in the pyramid's replicator. Now they were armed as well as the regular Army and Air Force.

Their intent was to set up a fiefdom of their own in southern Wyoming and use the armament of the pyramid to keep others away. The Wasps had no idea of the full offensive and defensive capabilities of a pyramid. It was armed with everything up to nuclear bombs and laser rays of all types. The Wasps had just never learned to use them.

The criminals had threatened to drop nuclear bombs on population centers if they were not left alone, and they had used their lasers to shoot down several bathtubs that had gotten too close. The Auburn-Opelika area had become the de facto capital of North America, so a meeting was held there to try to figure out what to do.