by Saxon Andrew
The Sensor Male raised two legs and a picture of the system appeared on the Ship’s Male’s display. “That is the picture taken by the transport the first investigation. Notice there is no planet at that distance from the star in that picture. Now we find a planet that was not here before burning.”
“Do you have an answer as to how this could happen?”
“First Fang, I have looked at all the data we’ve collected for anything similar and nothing matches. I have no answer to this situation.”
The Sensor Male looked at his display and said, “You should tell the children to slow down. We have had four collisions between attack craft and one of them was damaged.”
“Issue the order please. I understand their concern.”
Six hours later one of the huge transports heard a loud ping. The pilot looked at his instruments and looked around his ship to see what could have possibly hit them and make that noise. The small brown marble was moving at fifty miles per second but upon hitting the transport it accelerated to more than five hundred miles per second and was outside the scan being used by the pilot. By the time the pilot extended the scan, the ball was lost among the other ships moving around the system. Seven ships briefly saw it but decided that it was just a small meteorite moving through the system. After tracking it’s trajectory they could see it was moving in system and at its current speed there was no way it could have been in the system when the ships went missing. They did not consider that when the marble hit the transport it had reversed direction. It was reported to the Sensor Male but after tracking it, he ignored it.
The Ship’s Male watched his display and said, “Those children, we’ve had another collision!”
The Sensor Male listened to his board and said, “They both thought they detected something and they both rushed without looking.”
“Did they find anything?”
“No, they report small pieces of armor but it’s probably from their collision.”
“Are you sure?”
The Sensor male looked at the reported scan from the attack craft and said, “The pieces are very small and appear to be scattered from their contact. There is nowhere near enough to account for even a fin much less a ship. It’s also located at the spot they collided. If it’s from the two missing ships, there’s not near enough. You know that the surface of those ships cannot be destroyed. If I had to decide I would lean toward it being from the collision.”
“I agree but I’m probably just looking for anything that would tell us what happened. Those ships have to be here but they’re not. This is not a disappearance we can ignore.”
“What are your orders?”
“Assign a section of this system for every ship to investigate. Stop this rushing around the system by all of our attack craft and let’s take this systematically. I want some transports sent to the planet and scan the remains to see if our ships are buried in it.”
“Do you think they hit the planet and caused the destruction?”
“They would have had to be moving at top speed but if that happened they might have found themselves buried in the planets core.”
“That theory begs the question as to why they were in such a hurry.”
The Ship’s Male thought a moment and then said, “Is it possible to hide a planet so that it wouldn’t be seen until you were on top of it?”
“That would suggest a very high level of technology, First Fang.”
“Perhaps, but it would explain why we did not see a planet on our initial scan. Our children were probably in a hurry to return to take part in our next harvest and were rushing just like they are now. They might still be alive but buried in the remains of the planet.”
“If that were the case, we should be able to hear them?”
“I suppose you’re right; do you have another idea about what happened to them?”
“No, First Fang; we will have to scan the remains closely to eliminate the possibility of what you suggest.”
“Please bring some order out of this chaos and issue the orders, Sensor Male.”
“I am going to recall all of the attack craft and send them out in small groups to their assigned areas. I’ve already given the transports their locations.”
The Ship’s Male turned on his communication device and moved to the bed where the probe entered his abdomen. The Supreme Male didn’t say anything; he just down loaded what the Ship’s Male had seen. After a long pause the Supreme Male said, “I think I agree with your Sensor Male about the few pieces. There is nothing that can damage our hulls except another vessel made from the same material hitting it. I am moving up the schedule for the full family’s arrival. You will remain in that system and find those missing ships.”
“Your orders will be obeyed.”
The Sensor Male did not look at the Ship’s Male and let him see his disappointment. He suspected that they were not going to find those ships and remaining in one location, particularly a lifeless location, was going to cause hunger among the children. He also worried about what existed in this universe that could cause the disappearances. He knew that his race was indestructible but something had happened. He turned back to his displays and tried to hide his fears.
The Ship’s Male also felt what the Sensor Male was thinking and feared that once again his ship was going to go hungry. “We have to find those ships.”
Stem, Sprig, Twig, Matt, and Melanie watched the feed from the probe. “What are they doing,” Melanie asked?
“They aren’t leaving. The transports are moving out into the system in an organized fashion. I suspect that the small craft are being recalled because they are literally out of control. I’ve counted five collisions and one of them was near the site of the attack.”
“They went right through that area and it appears that they aren’t acting any different,” Stem commented.
Matt thought a moment, “That collision near the site may have caused them to thing that any residual pieces were the result of that collision. If that’s the case, we may have bought some time.”
“Why are those transports moving so close to the planet,” Al asked? Everyone watched as the transports selected a large piece of the planets debris and stopped above it.
Melanie watched the display, “They’re looking for the ships in those pieces of the planet.”
Twig thought, “I think you’re right. They must think that the ships collided with the planet and caused its destruction.”
“If they believe that, then they suspect that someone can hide a planet.” Matt paused, “That must be what they’re thinking. They think their ships hit it because they didn’t see it. That means we are going to have to be careful when the full invasion starts. They’ll look back at their data from the last invasion and select those systems that should have a developed civilization; if they see no life; they’ll investigate closely.”
Melanie looked at Sprig, “I hope we learned enough from the attack to make it worth the risk.”
“We have learned a lot. We know that only the outer hull of their ships are made from the green substance; the interior is made from normal alloys and building materials.”
“Are you sure about that,” Matt asked?
“It stands to reason. The easiest ship to make using a hundred percent of the substance would be their smallest ships. If they aren’t built that way then the larger ships shouldn’t be either.”
“How does that help us?”
“I’m not sure, but I know that normal weapons will destroy the interior which will probably stop them. We also learned how they penetrate ships. They fire their lower deck into the surface of the ship and penetrate it so that they can enter through the resulting hole. It didn’t work on the iron tree coating and actually bounced them away. That deck must hit powerfully to bounce them as far as they moved.”
“What about the Red Warrior’s weapons,” Fly Girl inquired?
“Mixed results; the swords were very effective, especially when swung using the
power of their armor. The guns fired right through them and didn’t slow them down fast enough. We recorded Team Leader Brez’s results when he fired the marbles slower and the results were better.” Sprig pushed a button and replayed the results of the slower velocity projectile.
Everyone watched and Matt asked, “Why is that Eight Leg moving in so many directions?”
Twig thought, “Evidently that marble is bouncing around inside the green armor it’s wearing.”
“Uh, I have a question,” Al thought.
“What is that, Al,” Twig responded?
“I thought there was a universal law that said that anything that moves and meets resistance will be slowed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I just ran an analysis of that marble that hit that Eight Leg and after bouncing around inside it at least five times it left five times faster than the velocity it entered. Shouldn’t it have slowed down?”
Sprig said, “Show me what you’ve seen.” Al downloaded the analysis to Sprig’s display and the Plant’s limbs started to fall.”
Mat said, “Uh oh, are we going to crash again?”
Sprig looked up and said, “No, but I need to run an experiment.” He jumped up and ran from the room. Everyone followed and he entered his lab and pulled out a piece of the ships they had brought back and placed it on the floor. He opened another container and pulled out a stone tree marble and held it above the green substance and dropped it. It hit and bounced a foot. “This doesn’t make sense.” He spent the next two hours hitting the green metal with stone tree balls at various velocities but nothing happened remotely resembling what had happened to the Eight Leg.”
“Sprig, maybe some of the stone tree marbles were manufactured in a different manner from the others,” Melanie suggested.
Sprig hit his com and went directly to the weapons labs on Earth. William Rankduty came on the display and said, “Good day Sprig, how can I help you?”
“Will you get all of the people in your lab on this channel that manufactured the stone tree projectiles for the arm guns?”
Billy looked away from the display and then six faces appeared on the screen with his. “They’re all present, Sprig.”
Sprig looked at the display and commed, “Did any of you make a stone tree projectile different from the others?”
Melanie said, “This one did.” She pointed to the one on the bottom right hand corner of the display. “His expression gave him away.”
Sprig looked at the display and said, “Mr. Stevens, did you do something different?”
It was clear that the engineer was in distress. “I only did it with one projectile; we ran out of stone tree material and I was one projectile short for the guns.”
“What did you do?”
“I made the last one out of the Glod Iron Tree.”
Melanie jumped up, “That explains it.”
Sprig looked at her, “Explains what?”
“Why their ships bounced so far when they hit the Searcher’s hulls. They flew away so fast that it was hard to track them visually. I wondered how they could have used a system that powerful on a ship; it would have to have crushed the hull if it hit as hard as that bounce took them.”
Matt saw it, “Mr. Stevens, do you have any of those projectiles in your possession?”
“I have six here in my desk.”
Sprig said, “I’ve just sent you some coordinates. Teleport those balls immediately.”
“Right away; I wasn’t trying to cause trouble or hurt anyone.”
“Mr. Stevens, you might get a medal out of this; send them now.”
The box appeared on Sprigs work bench and Sprig took one out and held it waist high and dropped it on the green metal. The ball shot up and blew a hole in the ceiling. Matt looked at Sprig and said, “We have our projectile.”
Twig looked at Matt and thought, “Can you imagine one of these bouncing around inside one of their ships. Every time it hits a wall it picks up speed. If it hits an Eight Leg, it bounces around inside their green covering picking up speed until it blows through and continues. This is a devastating weapon.”
“Yeah, but remember the inside of their ships are constructed of modern alloys; those will stop these on impact,” Al said.
Sprig raised his branches and thought, “Then we have to find a way to remove all of that from the interior.”
Al thought, “Now that should prove interesting; how do you clean out a ship bigger than the planet Earth?”
Everyone just looked at each other. Finally Matt said, “At least our warriors have a projectile that will stop them.”
Sprig thought, “Yes. There is that. We also have an idea about the thickness of their outer hulls.” Matt looked at him and he continued, “If we extrapolate from the thickness of the walls of their small craft we can estimate that the transports are about one mile thick.”
“Wow, that’s more than I thought.”
“The mother ships outer walls are more than forty miles thick.”
Silence filled the room. “Sprig, do we have anything that will penetrate a forty mile hull?”
“It’s not the distance that poses a problem; it’s velocity.”
“What do you mean,” Melanie asked.
“We have comprehensive evidence that a small straw can be driven through the trunk of a tree and not even leave a hole with winds blowing only two hundred and fifty miles per hour. They are travelling so fast that their molecules just pass through the surrounding matter. The problem with what we want is that we want the object that we use to penetrate their outer hull to leave a hole.”
“I’m not sure I’m following you, Sprig.”
Twig added, “We can sharpen a stone tree so sharp that it will cut through the green substance easily, however, to get it to penetrate the forty miles we have to have it hit at a tremendous speed. We’re not sure the material will hold up.”
“How can you find out?”
“Fire a splinter at one of the small ships and see if it breaks through,” Al quipped.
“What a great idea,” Sprig thought.
“Hey, I was just being funny.”
“Yes but the principle is the same. If the splinter can get through, then the full size penetrator should make it.”
“When are you going to try it,” Matt asked?
Sprig looked at Twig, “Can we fire one fast enough?”
“Sure, we stick it on the head of a high speed penetrator and fire it at the ship; everything will stop at the surface but that splinter.”
Sprig turned to matt and thought, “We will be ready in three hours.”
Matt thought, “Cassandra, you might want to come look at this.”
“Look at what, Matt?”
“We’re experimenting to see if we are going to be able to fire a stone tree projectile through a mother ship’s hull.”
“I’m on my way.”
Three hours later, Sprig had a high speed penetrator lined up on one of the captured Eight Legs ship. Everyone was on board the Kosiev watching to see if the experiment worked. Sprig adjusted his sites and said, “I think that does it; weapons free in ten seconds.”
The penetrator left the Kosiev so fast that it looked like a beam of light. The penetrator struck the green ship and stopped instantly. “I still don’t understand how objects that hit that substance aren’t destroyed,” Sprig said as he read the report. “They just stop with no apparent damage. Twig, what have you got?”
“It actually made it through. It’s sticking in the wall across cabin from its entry point.”
“Now we know we can penetrate the mother ship’s hull; however, what can we do with this information,” Melanie asked?
“Well, we have to find a way to eliminate all of the materials that are not made of that green substance to use the iron tree projectiles.”
Cassandra and Tommy looked at them and said, “Iron tree projectiles?”
“Yes, we’re about to try one on this ship.”<
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Sprig turned and began talking with the engineers at the captured ship. While he discussed the plan Matt and Melanie brought Tommy and Cassandra up to date on the properties of the Glod Iron Tree and how it reacted when it came into contact with the Green metal.”
“Stem, how is he going to test it,” Al asked?
“He’s just going to have one of our engineers throw an iron tree marble into that ship and close the door. We’ve removed all the non-green materials from inside.”
The group turned and watched the display of the ship three hundred yards away as an Algean engineer used a branch to throw a small, marble sized ball into the ship and then close the landing door. Nothing appeared to be happening suddenly the ball shot out of the hull of the ship. Sprig read his instruments and said, “That ball was moving at seventy miles per second when it broke through.” Sprig then said, “Try the next one.”
“What’s the next one,” Al asked?
“We made a ball four feet in diameter and we’re going to see what it does.”
Cassandra said, “This should be interesting.”
The engineer threw the large ball slowly into the open door and then closed it and teleported quickly away from the ship. Everyone watched as after a moment the small green ship started moving randomly in different directions. Then a huge hole appeared in the hull more than twenty feet across. The large ball flew out of the ship so fast that it wasn’t seen.”
“Wow!” Al said. “Looks like one of those could cause the invaders huge problems if we could get them inside their ships.”
Matt said, “Not really, Al. Remember that their ship’s interiors have modern alloys and walls that would stop the ball if it struck them.”
“It would be nice if we had a way to burn all of the normal materials out of existence,” Melanie said. “Then we just throw some of those balls inside and watch the fun. However, how could you burn something as big as a planet? We don’t have a weapon that could do that.”
Cassandra looked at Tommy and then said, “We know someone who does.”
