“Don’t you need the trees to be made into weapons?”
“Actually, my ship tells me that it can do it. It wants some raw material so I’m going to listen to it and give it what it wants.”
“Why don’t you ask it if it wants some of those Captor energy weapons?”
Cassandra focused for a minute and then smiled, “You’re right; it will wait to get some transported to us; then we’ll go get the trees.”
“Al, you and Fly Girl come get us. We need to talk with Sprig.”
“On our way.”
Tag sat in the library at Castle Gardner thinking about what was happening. Danielle walked in and looked at him, “What’s bothering you?”
Tag looked at her and shook his head slowly, “The Eight Legs’ main fleet will arrive in less than sixty days.” Danielle covered her mouth with her hand and Tag continued, “I also sense that they will be looking for the Realm; I think they have deduced that hidden planets exist and they will probably ignore those they see and focus on finding systems with hidden planets.”
Danielle sat beside him and put her arms around his neck, “Are we going to be able to survive this?”
“I don’t know. It will be a war like no other in the scope and size of the forces arrayed against each other. I want you to stay close to me, Danielle.”
“I will my love. I’ll always stay close to you.”
Tag smiled at her but worried about what was coming.
Matt and Melanie arrived at the Algean testing lab and requested a meeting with Sprig.
“Come on down, I’m about to test a new device and I can use an extra set of limbs.”
Matt and Melanie teleported into the lab that the size of ten old airports. The structure was huge and Sprig was standing with Twig behind a device that was pointed at one of the small captured ships.
“What are you doing, Sprig.”
“I’m testing a new idea. We don’t have much time so I’m going to use some old technology with some new ideas.” Sprig pointed to a strange shaped missile that appeared to have a cross sticking out of the middle of its hull. “This is a smaller model of a penetrator that was originally used against my race by the Realm. It was, and probably still is, the fastest projectile ever made. It will accelerate to two thirds of light speed in less than fifty miles.”
“How are you going to use it?”
“First I want to see if it can be stopped by their green surface.”
“I thought the idea was to get through their surface?”
“It will be on the mother ships but the other ships will also need to be destroyed. Let’s see what happens.” Sprig sited at the small green ship more than seven hundred yards away and pushed a button. The missile left so fast that the sonic boom happened almost immediately and tag and Melanie felt it through the ear protection Twig had placed on them just before the launch. Sprig pushed a control and the display screen above the table came on, “This is at one ten thousandth speed.” They saw the missile rush across the field and hit the small ship in the middle and just stop. There was no explosion or transfer of energy; it just hit the ship at that high speed and stopped. Twig raised her branches and thought, “It didn’t suffer any damage; you’re a genius, Darling.”
Matt and Melanie looked at the two Algeans and shook their head, “Why are you happy if there was no damage to the green ship?”
Twig turned to them and said, “I wasn’t excited about no damage to the green ship. The missile suffered no damage.”
“Tell me what you’re trying to accomplish here,” Matt asked?
“This missile will have two parts; the first part will be a sharpened projectile made from the iron wood tree with a Coronado power cell fully charged in its tail. The projectile will be put in a sleeve just above the cross on the midsection. When the missile hits a ship, that sleeve will continue forward and penetrate the hull as the Coronado Power Cell explodes inside the ship burning everything not made of that green substance out of existence. That blast will be short and will move up the hole created by the projectile as it punctured the ship melting the heat seal on the rear part of the missile still on the surface. That will ignite a small motor on the rear of the missile to keep it against the hull as a fragile armor coated projectile fires through the hole into the ship that will blow apart once a meter detects the projectile has stopped releasing forty iron tree marbles inside the ship.”
“That sounds like an interesting missile. Will it work on the transports?”
“We won’t need one on them. We will use a full size penetrator on those ships that will be big enough to hold the energy ball device and the package with a thousand iron tree balls in it. The energy ball device is too big to use on their small ships; that’s why we’re developing this technique. On the transports we’ll have the energy ball inside the sharpened penetrator along with the balls encased in a sphere made from the structure of the Captors home. It will make it through the blast and when its sensors show a temperature where the iron balls won’t melt they will be blasted out of the case. They should bounce around inside those thick hulls of the transport for quite a while.”
“Sprig, are the Searcher Class Vessels large enough to fire those?”
“Yes and no, Matt; these devices can be teleported to the site where they will be fired. Each Searcher will have a battery of more than a thousand of these tuned in to their systems. The system will bring them to the firing point. This is going to be a difficult task trying to hit moving targets but hopefully there will be a learning curve where they will improve. They are equipped with optical sensors tuned to the green color of their ships and will follow the ship as long as it is illuminated. That’s why it is best if they are coming is system toward us so the sun will be shining on them.”
“What’s the no part?”
“We need ships big enough to take on the mother ships and the transports in huge numbers.”
“Can the Defender Class ships handle that?”
“Not really. They’re just not maneuverable enough in a combat environment. We’re going to bring some ships out of storage.”
“What kind of ships, Sprig?”
“I’ll show you.” Sprig raised his teleport device and suddenly Matt and Melanie were on a ship looking out at thousands of huge white ships.”
Matt and Melanie were stunned, “What are these?”
“These ships were originally used against my race in our conflict and then against the Captors. Their outer skins are like the Kosiev and can hold millions of the penetrators. They have teleportation ability and can stand toe to toe with the invaders. They’re only a mile long but they are deadly.”
“Can we train the crews in time?”
“No, we can’t. Matt we will not have the number of weapons we need in time to hold the invaders off. We watched the recording of their last invasion and we determined that the Captors actually time lapsed the recording. Evidently, the entry point into our universe will only allow ships through it in limited numbers. We have determined that in two months the invasion will start with single ships and then as the entry point is used it will allow multiple ships through. It will take us at least eight months to get the number of weapons needed to take them head on. We’re going to have to let them in before we try to close the door in their face. We suspect more than a hundred thousand or more of the mother ships will be in our universe when we are ready to start hitting them.”
“So what do we do in the mean time?”
“Well, we’re certainly going to be moving some planets around as the invaders uncover them. We will start hitting them once they come inside the screen of a hidden planet. We are disguising some of them to look like they’re inhabited so they will land their ships. Our warriors will be waiting for them on the surface and kill their ships on the ground and as many of their troops as possible. When reinforcements arrive the warriors and ships will teleport out.”
“Aren’t you afraid of showing them our teleportation ability?”
“Let them see it. Trust me; knowing it exists and coming up with the knowledge on how to develop it are two different things entirely. My mate and I nearly died from the overload. We just have to make sure they do not capture one of our ships.”
“Sprig, if they come close we’ll just teleport it away and they will be left behind,”
“Sprig raised his branches laughing and thought, “There is that.”
“Are we going to have enough time to build these weapons?”
