Mr. T shook his head a little and smiled. “Did you hear that general?”
The general had heard. He had heard it all. “5,000 pounds. They will have to strip it down. You don’t need a full casing, do you? You’re not going to drop it from an aircraft?”
Mr. T shook his head. “No. The outer casing should be stripped, if you don’t mind. We need the best yield to weight ratio we can manage.”
The line was quiet for a minute and then the general came back. “Okay. I have a friend who was involved in that ... special project. You remember our discussion. I’ll call back shortly.”
I assume that special project was the bomb on the rover near the Mars base. Break time. I’m not going to miss this opportunity for a nap.
The general is already on the line. It’s only been a few minutes. So much for my nap.
Mr. T said hello and put the general on speaker. “A friend has your device in stock. I would like you to meet Alexei. Alexei is on the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and adjunct officer in the Earth Defense Force Cabinet.”
Mr. T seemed to recognize the name. “It’s good to know you Alexei.”
Alexei had a kind sounding voice. “Is good to know you. Alexei is prefer drop bomb on bug, not bug drop bomb on Alexei. How you receive bomb?
Mr. T had a suggestion. “Could we come and pick it up in an hour or so?”
Alexei didn’t sound surprised at the short time interval. “Is excellent. We provide location coordinates. You provide transportation. Yes?”
Mr. T sealed the deal. “Yes. We’ll be there ... uhhh ... we’ll have someone there to pick up the package in exactly one hour. Thanks.”
The general passed along the location coordinates for a storage facility. A warehouse. The bomb would be there, somewhere near Vladivostok, in Russia. Our general obviously knew Shockwave had a special mode of transportation.
Mr. T used the “p” word, porting, with the general on the line. But it wasn’t time yet to disseminate that information broadly. So, Mr. T brought along a little distraction, just in case anyone was observing. We popped into the bomb warehouse under invisibility cloak. No human guards. They were probably in the area, just outside the warehouse.
Mr. T triggered his little distraction. He said it was a miniaturized EMP generator. As on the bug ships, the pulse messes up any electronics, like cameras and what have you. This one was a lot smaller than the devices used on the bug ships. No sense doing too much damage.
Rock and Roll took one look and shook their heads. We popped back to the lab. New plan. I needed to go, so we could be cloaked. Rock, Roll, and I made the round trip in seconds flat.
I wonder how much a big bomb like that weighs. Oops, I wonder how much mass a big bomb like that has. The twins said it maxed out their lift capability. Good incentive to practice with more massive objects, right guys? I still suspect the Russians were able to watch what happened, despite the EMP. If so, it would have looked like a flash from the EMP, a short pause, and then the bomb just disappeared. Poof. We ported the bomb to the desert location where we handled the other nukes for Operation BrightLight.
All this cloak and dagger stuff probably won’t be necessary much longer. It is apparent, as we move closer to the final objectives, the EDF leadership is circling in closer. You can almost feel it. A bright spotlight is shining on Shockwave. We just have to hope our autonomy will continue. At least until we end this bug invasion.
***
MISSION TO MARS
Along with the coordinates, the government sent hours and hours of scanning data. We took our time looking at the grainy video and the scans. The military techs had already “cleaned” the data as much as they could. The result allowed a general impression of the base layout.
Those scans helped pinpoint areas of high and low activity, especially the thermal and electromagnetic data. We decided Communal was correct with their suggested bomb placement location. Much of the base is, apparently, underground. Perhaps there is a ship hanger there. Ideally, we should place the bomb near the center of the base but in an area with low bug traffic. No sense in adding to the risk of getting blasted by a bug.
With that, we were almost ready to go to Mars. Well, some of us were almost ready. Mr. T was able to obtain only three Mars exploration suits in the short time frame we decided was necessary. There was nothing around like a spacesuit store. These particular suits were specialty made for the upcoming Mars manned mission. They even had name tags. Two of the suits were rather large. One was a medium size, too small for any of the guys, too large for Para or me.
That left Mr. T and one of the twins for the Mars bug mission. Oh, and Muncle. The Mars team had planned to bring a smallish monkey along. I’m sure the plan was to send the monkey out first and make sure the new suits worked on Mars as they were designed. I wondered out loud about the reason for the Mars team bringing a monkey along. That almost developed into a big ethics argument. Then someone said something about some of us needing a nap. That didn’t help the situation at all. Really, we had all been working very hard with little sleep.
It was time to defuse the situation. “A nap is a great idea,” I said.
Seriously. There had to be enough time for some shut eye before the next wave of bug ships left Mars. It was getting difficult to function. That was inviting disaster. We took a 3-hour break. It went way too fast. Ring-ring; cock-a-doodle-doo. It was time to get moving.
***
*COMMUNAL: We recommend
