September 7th. Mr. T answered right away when his s-loop rang right at 01:00, 1:00 A.M. I don’t think he slept. None of us slept well. We were all a little groggy. Groggy, but excited at the same time. Think about it. What if this plan actually works?
“You are cleared to go,” said the general. “Brief me, post-op.”
Cleared to go! There was a lot of trust involved with that decision. Mr. T has a history working with the U.S. military. There is his DARPA work. And our team has accomplished some things. But this would be a worldwide operation. Yeah, a lot of trust involved, especially with nukes in the equation. I’m not sure how much coordination was required. It’s not as though all the people and military presence near a bug ship could pull out at the exact same time. That would definitely look suspicious.
What’s that Roll? Yeah, true. Civilians naturally moved out of the area soon after a ship landed near a population center. From what we heard no one could have stopped the exodus if they tried. Most military units are probably not all that close to the bugs ships either. They could just hunker down. The nukes have a very low yield.
It’s closing in on 02:00, our GO time. We’re getting regular intel reports. The latest update confirmed the bugs headed out to rampage as usual, at 01:00 PST. The bugs fulfilled the beer drops in the no-beer zones. We’re set. It’s chilly out here in the middle of Nevada. A lot of stars. Beautiful. A good send-off.
The bombs are all lined up and ready to go, timers are all set for 09:00. If one of the ships moves, we will receive an immediate update from the general. The twins know the exact location of each ship, coordinates mapped and saved on their s-loops. They can locate the storage bay on each ship. We are ready for this thing. We’ll hold off a few minutes to make sure the bugs have all moved off-ship. Quick bite to eat and it will be time to go.
We’ve got about seven hours to set 55 bombs. Make that 53 bombs. The brass has ordered two live queens and two intact ships. I guess they want to do some queen interrogating of their own. They also want more ships for their back-engineering project. They gave us 55 bombs as Mr. T asked. A couple of extra, just in case?
Yes Para, they’ll want any extra bombs back, I’m sure. Why would you want a nuclear bomb? Your map shows an abandoned gold mine, where? Just over that way? And you want to open it back up? Oh, for goodness sakes. Like you don’t have enough to do already, now you want to be a gold-miner? One of those little nukes sure would open up an old mine though.
We would have had 8 or 9 minutes per bomb. But we will need some extra time to capture the two ships and the queens. It wouldn’t be good if they got all uppity and left before we’re finished. A five-minute bomb placement pace per ship should provide the extra time we need to capture two.
Really, all this is just the warm-up. We still have to deal with Mars base. And the Moon. It feels like we are on a roll though. What can go wrong?
Roll gave me a nice pat on the shoulder. “Actually, there are way too many moving parts for this to go smoothly. Just saying.” Good old glass half-empty Roll.
***
OPERATION BRIGHTLIGHT
It’s finally 02:00 and we have our confirmation that the bugs have left the ships. We are about to bring some serious hurt to these evil invaders. Evil and all, I wish there was another way. It would make me feel better to understand the control method of the queens. Maybe not all bugs are evil. That’s possible, right? Try telling that to someone right now that’s going through the beer-rage. No choice anyway. They won’t cease their hostilities, so we will destroy them.
The mission doesn’t even have a name. Let’s have a vote. How about Operation BrightLight? 53 bug ships disappearing in a flash of light. If Mr. T lets that op name slip out when talking to the general it might catch on. You can’t blame a fledgling journalist for dropping some hints now and again, can you? Perhaps someday details of the operation will show up on the History Net or something.
Mr. T is rounding us up. It’s GO time. For this operation, I’m not going to even try to journal. I’ll be back. I hope.
***
And we’re back. Exhausted. I’ll try for a quick summary. The ships seemed so stripped down. No video cameras or other surveillance. No alarms sounded. Since we had taken that nest ship, I was expecting ... I don’t know ... more security.
It could be the High Queen kept the theft a secret from her underlings. I guess it would be embarrassing to lose a whole ship. It seems to all fit well with what Mr. T learned during his interview with the queen. There is no trust among the leaders of the invasion force. The soldiers are brutalized and manipulated. But the influence of the queens over their soldiers is intact.
Even as the bombs were being placed, we did some recon work, preparing for capture of the two ships. The only physical security was positioned near the queen throne rooms. No patrols walking the passageways. Sloppy. Not that I’m complaining.
The operation was mostly ... tedious. Tedious and boring. Mostly. There were some minor incidents. On one ship
