Chapter 8

The Earther fleet returned to normal space south of the star's pole and far enough out that they had plenty of time to decelerate to a relative standstill vis a vie the star. The first step was to listen to the FTL radio to determine if these were the FBs. Indeed they were, so the next step was to contact them and try to put a stop to the senseless campaign of extermination the FBs were following. The Earthers did not want to exterminate the FBs, but they would if the FBs refused to stop their killing.

Jacob sent a message via FTL radio that he wanted to negotiate with the authorities. At first, he got totally ignored, so he sent the message a second time. Still he was ignored. The third time he sent the message, three of the giant mother ships appeared near the fleet and begin disgorging fighters.

There was not much that the fleet could do at this point but fight back. The nearest of the mother ships was locked onto by the transporter and shifted into the star. This was just about the size capacity of the transporter, but they were able to do the same with the other two massive spaceships.

Meanwhile, the fighters were attacking with all they could manage. As usual, this was not enough. The laser shield was working to perfection, so no beams were getting through to harm a ship. At the same time, the automatic Gatling Guns were doing their usual excellent job of destroying fighters.

Suddenly, the FB tactics changed. Ten fighters converged on 'Olla' and overloaded her guns. Of course, eight of the fighters were destroyed, but two rammed into 'Olla' and produced the same kind of damage that the Gatling Guns had been doing on the fighters. The 'Olla' was destroyed in a maelstrom of kinetic energy.

Two more times, the FBs tried this same tactic, but guns on other ships were able to help in the defense. Several of the Earther ships did receive some kinetic damage, but not enough to put them out of action. Nevertheless, the FBs now knew how to damage the Earther fleet, so more care would be needed in further attacks.

There was considerable sadness aboard the Earther fleet, but they could not spend much time grieving while the fight was going on. Everybody pushed their grief to the back of their minds while they were actively engaged in battle.

More of the giant motherships suddenly showed up, and this time the Earther fleet did not give them a chance to disgorge fighters. Every time a mothership showed up, it was dumped into the sun by an Earther transporter. "This is stupid!" Jacob thought as he madly tried to come up with a way to put a stop to the slaughter. No longer was he even slightly concerned with trying to preserve the FBs, Jacob was only interested in preventing any more of his ships from being destroyed. Then it came to him, and he mentally kicked himself in the ass for taking so long to find the solution he needed.

The fleet was barely close enough to the home planets to accomplish his scheme, but the next mothership that showed up was dumped into the core of the nearer FB planet. Nothing obvious happened, but by the time the third giant mother ship was transported into the planet's core, there was an explosion of momentous force. The planet broke into millions of small parts under the force of the explosion of its core.

The other planet was currently on the far side of its star, and nearly 100 million klicks farther away than was that first planet. Jacob ordered the fleet to transport as close to the planet as they could get in one jump and hold that position to wait for more of the giant motherships to show up.

Nothing happened for a few minutes, probably the time it took to realize that the Earthers had jumped to a different location. At that time, more of the monstrous ships headed for the fleet. As soon as they got close to the fleet, these ships were transported into the core of the planet. Nobody really knew why, but this time it took five ships to explode the planet. Three more of the motherships showed up after the planet had exploded, so they were transported into the star.

At his point, the FTL radar could not find anything worth fighting, so the fleet withdrew from battle stations. A short discussion with Abner caused Jacob to send a radio message to Earth reporting their victory and saying that they were coming home. In the message, he did report the loss of 'Olla'.

As usual, the jump took only 12 hours from initiation to completion, and they were in orbit around Earth. Almost every one of the ships needed some sort of maintenance or repair, so they transported to the ground near the NASA headquarters.

The fleet was welcomed home as conquering heroes, but there was a great sadness over the loss of 'Olla.' A suitable memorial service was held the next day. On the following day, a great celebration was held. One of the things being celebrated was that the "mixed marriages" between the humans and the Wiffers had proved fertile. Most of the women in every family were pregnant, so there was going to be a big jump in the population very soon.

There had been considerable discussion about whether or not they needed to repair the damaged space ships. Jacob made a strong argument in favor of keeping a powerful deterrent against future attack. Some others argued for a pacifistic attitude, but they were shouted down. Thus, all 11 spaceships were repaired and brought back to the original standards.

The real item of contention was whether or not they needed any more spaceships. This decision was a compromise, and five more ships were converted. In the process of repair of the old ships and the building of the new ships, an extra layer of thin armor was added around the hull of each ship. This shell was spaced an average if 160 cm away from the main hull. In theory, an incoming solid body would strike the outer hull and dissipate all of the energy of the hit before it ever got to the main pressure hull. The idea was great in theory, and the limited number of tests showed that it was valid, so they went with it. It made no difference in a ship's performance, so it was well worth the trial.

They now had 19 spaceships, and the question was how they were going to be divided. They decided to start out with two squadrons of eight ships in each. They might change later, but that was what they would start with. As before, three ships would be left behind to defend the Solar System.

A technical breakthrough had resulted in FTL radio and FTL radar now being functionally FTL TV. It was possible to have the FTL radar show a picture of what it was reflecting off of, and to magnify that picture several orders of magnitude, so they could see what the object reflecting the signal actually looked like, and in very close to true color.

The fleet left for the region of space where they had fought their last big battle with the FBs. They did not expect to find any of the original inhabitants of the fluorine planets still around, but they had left in such a hurry that they might have missed something. The problem there was that they had been gone for five months, so it was problematical what, if anything, they might find. In any case, it was a good place for them to begin their survey of the last part of this arm of the galaxy.

Truthfully, other than verifying that the FBs were no longer a problem, the Earthers were back in space out of curiosity. As the saying goes, monkey curiosity cannot be denied.

Eevar did another one of her special scans of the areas where she had previously seen activity, but this time the TV effect gave her a lot more information. It was almost like seeing what was happening lightyears away in real time on your home TV. It was mind boggling!

One of the fluorine planets showed itself to be surrounded by giant spaceships of the same apparent design as the motherships they had so recently fought. Now that they had more ships, Jacob changed tactics. Jacob directed his Green Squadron to position itself at 100 million klicks over the star's north pole, and Abner's Gold Squadron to position itself the same distance over the star's south pole. Hopefully, this would confuse the attackers, if there were any.