'Maybe.' Tommy knelt beside the sergeant and looked at it also. He had always been infatuated with the engineering of his armored suits, so he had read a lot of technical literature on them and had taught himself a good bit about modern circuitry. But this was different. 'LT, you ought to see this.'
'What have you got?' Noonez clanked over to them.
'Hey, look here.' Pagoolas was studying a control box with two buttons in the middle of it. One button was directly above the other. The bottom one was lit. 'Looks like elevator controls.' He reached out and depressed the top one.
'No wait!'
Chapter 19
October 31, 2388 AD
Sol System
Oort Cloud
Saturday, 7:39 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
'Come on Fish, we need to do what we can to stop this battle cruiser.' DeathRay bobbed and weaved his fighter-mode Ares-T fighter at top speed across the surface of the enemy ship, firing missiles at anything that his QMs suggested might be a vital system. His only hopes were that they could hit a major power system that would cause secondary explosions, which in turn would hopefully debilitate the ship.
'Two fighters against a battle cruiser sounds a bit epic to me, DeathRay.' Fish dropped to bot mode, clanking into the hull of the ship to avoid the AA fire stations on the aft section near the hangar bay. She ran up behind a cannon, tearing the barrel out of its mount, and then she kicked the power supply with her mechanized foot. When that didn't work, she went to her DEG. The box spewed vaporized hull plating and then burned through to the next layer of armor. 'DeathRay! Our weapons are too small. We need a nuke.'
'Fresh out,' Jack replied. He decided that the best way to do damage would have to be from the inside and that they needed to change their approach.
'We need to make a hole, Fish.'
The ship shuddered, and out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see an eruption of orange and blue plasma spewing from the starboard side of the ship. Debris spun out from the opening into space, and then the plasma dissipated.
'What was that?' Fish asked.
'Boland, this is Penzington, copy?'
'Roger that, Penzington. What's up?'
'I just flew a Lorda through two bulkheads into the hyperdrive jaunt projector. Did you happen to notice an explosion out there?' Penzington asked.
'Uh, yeah. It blew out of the hull on the starboard side. I thought that might have been you. We're coming in. Where are you now?'
'I'm about four decks below the center of that blast trying to make my way to the aux prop control room.'
'Understood. We'll make for the sublight prop power through the doorway you made for us.' Jack banked his snub-nosed fighter over a communications dish and throttled toward the blast area.
'You with me, Fish?'
'Got your wing, DeathRay.'
'What the hell was that!' Elle Ahmi stormed onto the bridge of the
'The jaunt drive power plant just blew out, General,' the man replied reluctantly.
'Did we take a hit?'
'No, we didn't. We are protected fairly well.' The captain seemed flummoxed.
'Captain, I've got a report from the maintence deck.'
'Go, XO.'
'Seems that one of the Lorda troop lifters went nuts and flew through several bulkheads at max thrust and crashed into the jaunt containment cylinder,' the XO explained.
'No!' Ahmi screamed. Then she toggled her DTM communications channel open. 'Doctor, this is Ahmi. Where is the prisoner?' There was no response.
'General?'
'I should have killed her myself!' Ahmi had her AIC open the ship's 1MC and then announced, 'All hands, this is General Ahmi. There is an intruder aboard, a young-looking female with long, black hair. She is to be killed on sight! Find her, now!'
'Captain! Two marine FM-12s have penetrated into the hull breach.'
'No! Goddamnit, no!' Ahmi pounded her leather-gloved fist into her hand.
'Normal space, Captain!' the
