In the meantime, Mr. T spent a couple of hours typing furiously. He didn’t want to forget anything he had learned from the queen bug and our other recent excursions. He was still typing away when we got back to the lab, uhhh, the command center. Mr. T told us some things, but I could tell, he didn’t tell us everything.
All the running around and especially that delving process, have been hard on him. I guess he’s getting old. He’s a grandad after all. But he never seemed old to me. That day he looked old.
What he had learned in the delving weighed heavily on him. I’m not frightened easily. Not really. But even though we had won this battle, I felt ... afraid. Thankfully the feeling didn’t last long. I had to believe good would triumph over evil. Eventually it would. Hopefully, that day would come soon.
Well, we managed to impress the military higher-ups with our capture of a complete bug nest ship. They said they would get down to the business of back-engineering all that wonderful technology. I wondered if they were being a tiny bit presumptuous when they said they would be ready to fly away with the next bug ship we captured. And I can only imagine the squabbles that would soon take place when the fly guys at McChord found out the navy had a bug nest ship. They would want to get their hands on a ship as well. There was even some negative feedback.
We all wanted to better understand bug psychology. With that, the military folk were upset that we had killed the queen bug. All we could say was, we’re sorry about that. Had to do it. They scolded us and told us to keep a queen for them next time. We promised to try. No one asked how a signals intelligence unit had managed to infiltrate a bug nest ship.
After that mission we were eager to move forward, even if a bit uneasy. Those feelings only increased as Mr. T slowly (and it seemed systematically) told us more about the plans of the evil bugs and their overlords. As the information flowed over to us, we all developed a deep sense of time sensitivity. Urgency.
The bugs had started transporting some people off-Earth. There was a base on the far side of the Moon, and the bugs were getting ready to open some sort of trans-dimension portal, a wormhole. We knew the time was short, but the nest queen didn’t seem to know a whole lot about that part of the invasion operation or when the wormhole would be opened.
***
*COMMUNAL: Creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or wormhole in the common vernacular, would require technological advances well beyond anything on the foreseeable human tech horizon. Working within the framework of Einstein’s field theory, much more knowledge would be needed with respect to gravitational fields and electromagnetics.
In addition, unique types of exotic matter, or energy, would have to be discovered or developed. Negative mass or energy would be needed to warp space-time and stabilize a teleportation bridge. At least that is the process which would be in line with the more standard model.
The framework of quantum mechanics could provide insight into the process. In fact, current theoretical attempts to merge general relativity with quantum physics have been highlighted by research into wormhole theory.
Sci-fi to sci-reality. You know what they say, reality is stranger than fiction.
Hey, who is “they” anyway? And we’re off to find out.
Hold on a minute. That statement was just plain stupid. Finding out who “they” are? Where did it come from? No, we know it wasn’t from Data Mining. Well, just take a wild guess. Emotive is outside of their sector again. Why is the gate wide open? Don’t just sit there! Oh, for goodness sakes.
***
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
September 2nd. Well, they did it. Earth Defense Forces hasn’t been able to crack the enemy’s communications, but they figured out a horrible way to kill them. Ever since the Battle for Los Angeles, labs have been working night and day to come up with a bio-weapon. The scientists working under military contract managed to create a weaponized solution which would produce a catastrophic reaction to portions of the bug exoskeletal frame. The connective tissue would basically foam and melt away. It sounds horrible.
Mr. T wasn’t in the need-to-know chain but a friend called to give an update on the bio-weapon and the intent to use it soon. He got on his s-loop right away. Despite his limited delving experience with bugs, Mr. T had reached a firm conclusion. Our enemy would not stand idly by in the face of this sort of threat. Bugs aren’t afraid of more conventional attacks. But this show of force would bring fear, as was likely the intent. The bug reaction to fear would not end well for us. Mr. T had provided a good deal of psychological data related to the bugs, even if he was careful not to divulge his delving ability. Don’t they read their signals intelligence reports?
Mr. T laid it out, pushing up-chain as high as he could reach. True, we are slowly but surely losing the war. Something has to give. But what response will something like this provoke? He made it clear, our team just needs a little more time to get some traction. Shockwave will be able to help turn the war effort around. That suggestion didn’t resound well.
How could one special operations team turn the war effort around? Hey, aren’t you guys SIGINT? Since when does SIGINT even have a special ops team? You’re not with ISA.
That started the bantering, back and forth. What about the bug ship we just captured? Don’t marginalize our capabilities!
Mr. T’s request to give our little squad more opportunity to prove our ability to impact the enemy didn’t exactly fall on deaf ears. The concept moved up through the ranks to the top brass. But those in charge were only partially convinced. They would
