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.“He’ll be able to provide most of what we need.We’ll be able to find out a lot more from him once we go over the data from your interrogation team.”“You aren’t mad about Colonel Stavros ordering the boarding of the Alien ship, are you Jake?” Corey asked quietly.“We crippled it so fast, he figured it could be a wealth of information.He gave the Marines free reign.We had Drop Ships ready to blow parts of the ship away, and the boarding force was equipped for decompression.”Jake nodded.“I have no problem with his initiative.If I wanted to second-guess you two, I wouldn’t have gone through the Gate.Did any of the ship survive?”“Anton’s towing it back to Omaha.Colonel Tokoru readied a special landing zone to set it down at, and assigned crews to strip it for study,” Corey replied, leading the way towards the Wardroom of the Intrepid.“Outstanding,” Jake said.“Let’s get something to eat while we talk.Jas here has the tapes of everything that went down.We’ll have to avoid seeing any of the prisoners though, because Mercer, the sadistic bastard, will want to rush over and zap them.He’s out of control, Sara.”Mercer came to a dead halt, as the rest of the group continued walking, laughing as the Chief of Staff stammered.Finally, he grinned, and shrugged, jogging a little to catch up.He put his arm around Sara’s shoulders.“I need to tell you about the near death of an Alien civilization, Sara; and the desperate battle, three level headed warriors put up against their monstrous leader, to save the creatures from extinction.”“How about it, Colonel Peters,” Corey laughed.“How did the mission go?”“It was the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on,” Peters deadpanned, setting off his comrades again.Two hours later, Jake, Mercer, Dougherty, Corey and Nick Richardson were drinking coffee, as Peters narrated the information they had gleaned from the mission.He used the vid records he had made, including the numerous scans of the planet, as a backdrop for his presentation.When he finished, Dougherty made some suppositions as to what happened with the shielding, and a few suggestions for improving it.“I should have realized a concentration of particle beam fire would be too much for the shields to dissipate,” Richardson sighed.“What a boneheaded error.”“Nick, if we would have thought to explain the way the Queen’s shielding dissipated the particle beam fire into the surrounding rocks, you would have been informed enough to see it,” Jake said quickly.“Hell, we were on a shakedown cruise.It would have been unusual for something not to have gone wrong.Man, those loads you came up with were devastating, and they had no idea we were there.”“We blew the shit out of them, Nick,” Mercer agreed.“You should have seen what happened to them when Colonel Peters fired a spread pattern on the three remaining ships.It was like they disintegrated.”“I’m just glad we hit them with all we had when the first Alien ships came through the Gate,” Richardson said.“We could have taken some big hits when the shielding crippled our systems.I.”“Never mind Nick, let’s stick with the future,” Jake interrupted.“What do you think of Tim’s idea about capacitive storage?”“I believe we can relay the energy in a way to reuse it in our weapons systems, refocusing the enemy fire back to its source,” Richardson answered.“We’ll still have to develop Tim’s idea of a temporary storage.It still amazes me how complex the material is.It literally reflects pulse weaponry, but absorbs the particle beam energy.It may even use the particle beam energy to reinforce its makeup.Now that we know the shielding really does have a full cloaking effect on the Aliens, we’ll go full bore on installing it on the Gallant and Intrepid.”“How soon can we go with the Intrepid?” Jake asked.“We’ll need to go back there as soon as possible to rescue those prisoners, and take out their hierarchy if we can.”“I’ll have it for you in three days,” Richardson assured him.“We have to find a way to rework the Command Wing Fighters with an upgraded shielding.They don’t have as much room as the Drop Ships and Force Cruisers.”Jake nodded.“That should also give us enough time to finish interrogating the prisoners, and find out if Binky knows where his leaders are.”“Binky?” Corey repeated.“Our Alien buddy, we brought back,” Colonel Peters answered her.“Jake and Mercer came up with pet names for the two they brought back on board.Wait till you see on the tapes how professional they were during the aftermath of the operation? You’ve only seen the stuff I have on the Alien planet.We have some real exciting stuff on boarding Alien vessels, Alien torture, and discussions of Alien extermination.”“I’m going to have to rethink my orders to record all phases of an operation,” Jake replied, as Corey laughed.“You’re starting to sound like those boobs who destroyed all traces of the first Omaha Bug War, Jake,” Mercer offered, grinning.“We could edit them,” Dougherty suggested.“I don’t think anyone needs to see the last part of the trip.”“Agreed,” Mercer said quickly, causing Jake to start laughing.“You guys are not touching those tapes until Byers and I get to see them while we have a couple of drinks,” Corey ordered.“See what you’ve done with all your goofing around, Charlie,” Jake said in exasperation.“Quit being such a wimp, you big sissy,” Mercer replied disgustedly.“Just edit the vids, and be done with it.”“You don’t know Sara like I do,” Jake sighed.“She’ll tell Adrian, and I’ll never hear the end of it.”“You better believe it, General,” Corey confirmed.“My God, Tim,” Mercer said in feigned shock.“I believe the General had his balls shot off while we were boarding the Alien craft, and we didn’t even know it.”Two days later, as Jake and Mercer scanned the data accumulated from the Alien prisoners, Dougherty came in with the Alien they called Binky.Dougherty removed the energy cuffs, and Jake indicated he take a seat across from the two men.Dougherty sat down next to the Alien.“We have a pretty fair picture of life on your planet,” Jake said.“I don’t pretend to understand it, but it seems as if you have almost a hive mentality to your societal structure [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]