Chapter 9

Elleron was what the Earthers considered to be a "normal" fluorine planet. It had the usual relatively flat terrain with few, if any, mountains. There was one continent with one large "ocean." The ocean was made up of an organo-fluorine compound, but they could not tell exactly which one without taking a sample for analysis. This was too dangerous, so the Earthers just skipped it.

There were only two detected cities on the planet, but both appeared to cover approximately one-third the land mass. There were no very tall buildings, but there might be extensive structures below ground. Again, there was no way to be sure at this distance.

The FB spaceship docked at a synchronous satellite and stayed there for some time. It appeared that physical communication with the ground was accomplished with a space elevator pretty much as described by Arthur C. Clarke.

The Earthers stayed out of easy detection range, so they were not bothered by an FB attack. They could see all they needed or wanted to see with the TV augmented FTL radar. Jacob and his staff decided to bypass Elleron for now and investigate what they assumed to be the FB's home planet.

The planet they looked at certainly looked like it would be an appropriate candidate for the job. There were two continents, and both were completely covered with structures of some sort. The planet was about the size of Earth and had a single moon that was slightly larger than Luna.

This moon orbited the planet at approximately 400,000 klicks. It, too, appeared to be covered with structures, but there was no discernible atmosphere. It was impossible to get an exact count at this stage, but there appeared to be at least 20 of the massive motherships in various stages of construction orbiting the moon.

There were a multitude of the gigantic motherships orbiting the planet, with a considerable number coming and going. Even if these were the only spaceships belonging to the FBs, they had a vast armada and looked to be building more as fast as they could turn them out.

OK, time for the big confrontation. Jacob sent a message via FTL radio to the planet asking for a meeting to discuss the situation. He pointed out that he had 16 ships with his fleet, but just one of them could reduce the FB planet to rubble. However, he much preferred to talk. Without much hope, he asked the FBs to be reasonable.

He was not surprised when he had to send the message five times before he got a reply. In essence, the reply said that the FBs did not negotiate with the scum rejected by the Great Spirit (you could hear the capital letters) and there was nothing to talk about.

In only a few minutes, a stirring began in the swarm of motherships around the planet. However, that's all it was, because the FBs could not spot where the Earther fleet was "hiding." Jacob said that he was dispatching a ship to their planet, anyway, and he hoped that they would be willing to talk by the time it got there in approximately 14 hours.

Jacob had planned to take 'Michael', his own ship, to do the hoped for negotiating, but he faced a near mutiny when the others found out about it. After some discussion, 'Honey' was sent in place of 'Michael.' Randy was in command and known to have a good hold on his temper.

Just a shade over 13 hours passed before 'Honey' came to a relative stop approximately 100,000 klicks from the home planet. Now, the FBs knew where there was somebody to fight, and they swarmed in on 'Honey.' Randy never had a chance to send even his first message to the FBs before he was in a unwinable situation. Under those circumstances, Randy had been ordered to use a combination of the transporter and the space drive to escape.

Randy used the transporter to jump around so much that the FBs were completely confused and never got close enough to land a mortal blow. One mothership that got too close was transported into the heart of the moon. That caused a number of quakes, but they were not enough to destroy the moon. Having made his point, Randy accelerated away from the FBs until he was fast enough to jump with the Lurie Effect, and he returned to the fleet.

The staff met, and the decision was made to destroy the planet and moon. Once that was done, they would try their luck at Elleron. They jumped toward the FB planet and set their arrival so that they could come into equilibrium with the planet and its moon with the Green squadron over the planet's North pole and the Gold squadron over the moon's South pole. The Gold squadron was to knock off the moon as quickly as possible and to act as a reserve backup for the Green squadron.

Abner used the larger motherships under construction as his ammunition for the attack on the moon. It took five of the partially completed hulls before the moon broke into pieces, but the overall operation took only about three minutes with so many ships to transport the hulls where they wanted them.

Meanwhile, the FB motherships made a run at Green squadron and disgorged a massive quantity of fighters. All of the ships seemed to be packed to the gills with fighters, so this was probably why the mother planet broke up after only four motherships were transported to the planet's core.

This destruction of the planet seemed to excite the fighters to even more daring activities. The Gatling Guns were pushed to the maximum to beat off the incoming fighters. The shield against the laser beams was totally effective, as usual, but there was no defense against a fighter if it could get passed the guns and impact the hull of the Earther's ship.

It wasn't long before Gold squadron was called in to help, but even these added guns didn't seem enough to stop the onslaught. As a result, Jacob ordered the whole fleet to abandon the attack and jump back to Earth. A better defense against the fighters had to be found! So far, transporter jumping by an Earther ship seemed to be the only effective defense if more than eight fighters attacked at once.

Eevar was instructed to follow as many of the escaping FB motherships as she could to see if she could identify more of the FB's planets. There were too damned many of the enemy ships to follow by herself, so she locked on the computer to record the images returned by the radar. Hopefully, that would provide enough useful information.

Back on Earth, a meeting was called of the heads of all the technical departments, and the situation was explained. They were asked to drop anything else they might be doing if at all possible to look at the problem. The biological departments were not expected to contribute much, but they had been invited to the meeting out of courtesy.

Two days later, the computer department came back to Jacob with a possible solution. Their idea was for the ship's main computer to select a random jump course while in combat. This course would be selected well ahead of need, approximately 100 milliseconds, so that a second computer would have the information to work with. Meanwhile, an incoming fighter would be tracked by FTL radar, and its path would be calculated by a third computer. The first computer and the third computer would feed their data into the second computer which would calculate the time and place for a 500 gram mass to be transported inside a fighter.

The computers for the Gatling Guns would also receive the jump information so that they could make the necessary corrections. The guns would be saved for destroying fighters that overloaded the system or otherwise escaped destruction.