Alcantaran 1: Alien Abduction (53 page)

Auntie replied, "Something that big I could have hit when we first came out of hyper-space.
 
If I had to pick a smaller area, I would want to be within 3000 miles."

"Would the damage have been as severe from 5000 miles?" Ron asked.

"Oh yes.
 
There is no atmosphere here in space to slow the plasma balls down," she replied.

Ron had her fire the smaller rail guns at the remaining targets and they tore the asteroids to pieces with one shot.
 
Auntie fired the laser burst cannons and pulverized the pieces.
 
Ron told her to do a self-diagnostic.
 
She finished the task and reported that everything was still in working order.
 
There was nothing left to use for targets for the solid projectiles so they made their next jump.
 
They came into regular space and checked that they were still on the right vectors.
 
As soon as they had verified that, they made their final jump.
 
They had spent two days making the long way to this point, but like
Kota
, they didn't want to leave a trace.
 
When they jumped from here, they would be just a few minutes behind the big warships.
 
Ron kept Auntie at speed to jump and had her constantly update their position.
 
All they needed now was the warships' position and they would jump.

They were now hurtling through empty space waiting on
Kota
and
Zibo
.
 
Tik tried the comm units to make sure they had contact and
Kota
answered back.
 
They were on pins and needles waiting for something to happen.
 
His contacts at Nodac-Liujia had no new news about the warships.
 
He hadn't heard anything from the Charter Navy either.
 
He did thank them again for the robot chef.
 
He told of their heavenly meals.
 
Kota
said these robot chefs could be a big seller to Trader ships.
 
One of the big complaints of Traders was the quality of food they had to eat on different planets.
 
Tik signed off and said they would check again tomorrow.
 
Tik then checked the remote detector and saw that she could still search the area around Europaische.

Now began the waiting.
 
This was the hardest part but it had to be done.
 
Tik tried to do some gardening in the conservatory while Ron and Gus watched for a few minutes.
 
Ron and Gus couldn't take the inactivity and went to the cargo bay to practice with their weapons.
 
They practiced for two hours and finally tired of that.
 
They went to the armory and reloaded.
 
They spent another hour learning about some of the weapons they hadn't used yet.
 
Auntie walked them through tearing them down and putting them back together again.
 
Finally it was supper time and they put everything away and secured it.
 
They all met at the galley where Dolores had a scrumptious supper but they just picked at it.
 
They now knew that Auntie had the power to knock out the three warships but could they catch them unaware?

They decided to keep someone in the pilot's seat at all times now.
 
The warships weren't supposed to be there until tomorrow but they didn't want to take a chance.
 
For tonight they decided on four-hour shifts.
 
Tomorrow they would do two-hour shifts so everyone would be ready for the attack.
 
Tik told them they needed to bring their space suits to the flight deck.
 
She reminded them of what had happened to the ship which had been in orbit.
 
Ron stayed in the cockpit while the other two went after their space suits.
 
They double-checked everything and brought them into the flight deck.
 
Gus took over the pilot's seat and Ron went for his suit.
 
Tik had lost the flip of the coin and she had the first watch, followed by Gus.
 
Ron and Gus went to bed and tried to sleep.
 
Every change in air current or creak or groan brought them wide awake.
 
They made it through the night and none of them wanted to be far from the flight deck.
 
They had Dolores bring meals there.
 
To help relieve some of the tension, Tik suggested that they should start studying the information on the next two planets.
 
They also added some notes about Europaische and their trades.
 
This waiting seemed worse than the wait to escape off of the mother ship.

Ron was in the pilot's seat when the alarm finally came.
 
The remote detector had picked up five space ships.
 
Kota
called to report that the three warships were there and they had two smaller escorts.
 
Ron said they had to go anyway.
 
At least they could take out the three warships; and if they had time, they would send some laser cannon bursts toward the escort ships.
 
Tik yelled that she had the coordinates programmed in and Ron punched the button to take them to hyper-space.

Auntie came out of hyper-space and the trio saw the warships and their escorts dead ahead.
 
The biggest ship was in the middle with the two other warships at the four o'clock and eight o'clock positions.
 
The escorts were in the ten o'clock and two o'clock positions.
 
The formation looked like the five spots on a dice.
 
As soon as Auntie came out of hyper-space, her rail guns started to fire.
 
She had everything firing at once and this time when they went off, it felt like someone had slammed on the brakes in an emergency stop.
 
Two minutes of firing seemed like an eternity with everything moving in slow motion.
 
Ron was watching the readout of rounds expended and saw in fascination that the count for the big rail guns reached 50.
 
The smaller rail guns hit 85 rounds.
 
He saw the first rounds tearing their way through the warships.
 
The warships had minimal shields around the power plants and the big rounds soon overwhelmed them.
 
Ron just had time to see that every ship was taking hits when they jumped to hyper-space again.
 
Tik had preprogrammed three quick jumps which brought them back to within 500 miles of the port sides of the warships.
 
Ron had Auntie zoom in on the scene in front of them.
 
The rears of the three big warships were wrapped in a fog and from their vantage point, the trio thought it looked like fire but they knew that no fire would burn in a vacuum.
 
It looked like the entire rear of the far escort space ship was missing.
 
The near escort ship had a weapon that was slowly moving in their direction.
 
It looked like the weapon was being moved by hand or from a battery that was almost dead.
 
Auntie picked up the threat and fired one burst from a laser cannon.
 
The weapon vaporized.
 
Kota
's ship suddenly appeared about 500 miles off the starboard of the warships.
 
He was far enough below the warships to be out of Auntie's line of fire.
 
They waited a few minutes to see if there were any fighters coming out of the big warship.
 
Auntie's momentum from the jump was driving her closer to the big ships.
 
Kota
's ship was coasting closer, also.

Ron had a thought and sent a call to the warships.
 
He asked them to surrender or he would turn the Alcantaran ghosts loose again.
 
Auntie had been scanning the biggest warship and reported that there was no life in the back two-thirds of the ship.
 
She quickly scanned the rest of the ships with the same report.
 
Ron had seen reports on TV of 'shock and awe' that happened during the Gulf War but it didn't even come close to what had just happened here.
 
In two minutes, three mighty warships and two escorts were reduced to junk.

Tik was in contact with
Kota
and he reported his ship had scanned with the same results as Auntie.
 
They had been hidden so they didn't see Auntie pop out of hyper-space and do her damage.
 
Kota
looked at the warships and swore that it would have taken at least five ships to do that much damage. His and
Zibo
's hair was standing on end because they were starting to believe that the trio had actually turned Alcantaran ghosts loose on the warships.
 
The only thing that didn't ring true was the fact that ghosts didn't have substance and should not be able to do this much damage.
 
He was videoing to have a record to send to the Charter Navy.
 
They would want to know about this.
 
He didn't think they had any ships except a big battlewagon that could inflict this much damage.

A weak signal finally came from the middle warship.
 
The caller identified himself as Admiral Selangar from Nodac-Liujia.
 
He demanded to know who had attacked with no provocation.

Ron replied, "I'm afraid the attack was not unprovoked.
 
Your agents on Europaische initiated attacks seven days ago.
 
One of your ships disguised as a Nodac-Liujia trader had attacked a Charter Alliance citizen three days ago.
 
The agents on the planet had confessed to a plot to subdue Europaische and enslave the citizens.
 
The Charter Alliance considered all of this an act of war.
 
I'm afraid that Alcantaran ghosts have no patience with allies of the Challeka Trader, especially those who try to lie to the rest of the universe.
 
I'm afraid we need to move away from you now.
 
I think the Alcantaran ghosts will be here in a few minutes to finish what they started.
 
Good-bye, Admiral."

There was silence for thirty seconds before the Admiral came back on the air, "Please don't leave!
 
We surrender.
 
Most of my command is dead and we are completely defenseless.
 
We need help with the wounded and our oxygen situation here is not good."

"How many wounded men do you have?
 
How many men are left on all the ships?" Ron asked brusquely.

"I'll have to check.
 
It will take a few minutes," the Admiral said.

Ron, Gus and Tik discussed how to get a large group of wounded to the planet.
 
They all agreed, they didn't want any of the Nodac-Liujians on Auntie.
 
Besides, her cargo bays didn't have much room.
 
They decided they needed to use the seized ships; which hopefully, would be fairly empty.
 
It was decided that Ron would stay as pilot of Auntie and stay on station to make sure that there was no funny business from the warships.
 
They needed
Kota
and
Zibo
to pilot the good ship and Tik and Gus would fly the other one after they checked it out.
 
If it was too badly damaged, they would not use it.
 
One big concern was fuel.
 
They had no idea how much fuel was in the other ships.
 
Ron checked Auntie and she had used all the fuel in the rockets, except what they needed to burn for the next load.
 
Auntie's main tank was almost full, so they had no problem there.

Tik called
Kota
to see if he and
Zibo
could help with the other ships.
 
When she explained that she and Gus would fly the damaged ship,
Kota
would have none of it.
 
He reminded her that he and
Zibo
were much more experienced pilots.
 
They would fly the damaged ship or they wouldn't help.
 
Tik finally agreed.
 
Tik asked
Kota
if he knew how much room was on the two ships and he told her they usually had two cargo bays that were about 350 feet long by 140 feet wide.
 
There would be plenty of head room but no real way to utilize it.
 
Tik asked him to send a message to Fu to let him know there were a lot of wounded who would be arriving shortly as well as prisoners of war.
 
Zibo
moved their ship moving closer to Auntie.
 
Tik and Gus would transfer to their ship and then they would head towards the seized ships.
 
Tik said the Alcantaran ghosts could fly the seized ships towards them for the transfer.

Auntie had been monitoring the radio traffic from the big warship to all the others.
 
There was no answer from the last ship she had shot.
 
She reported that there was nothing suspicious about the radio messages.

The Admiral came back on the radio and told Ron that he had 4000 wounded and maybe another 4000 to 5000 troops left on the five ships.
 
He said they hadn't been able to raise the one ship, so he had no idea how many were left on it.

Ron asked where they needed to be to start transferring wounded.
 
The Admiral described an escape door, close to the nose of the warship.
 
He said they had a special tube that would seal over that door and to the door of his space ship.
 
Using a tractor beam to keep the tube taut would allow them to move personnel fairly rapidly.
 
Ron told him they only had two ships to transfer everybody, so it was going to take some time.
 
He also told him that if there were any tricks or anyone tried to approach the flight deck on either ship, the Alcantaran ghosts would dump the whole load of personnel into space and the rest of the crews would face an agonizing death that would take days or maybe even weeks.
 
The Admiral said they would cause no problems.
 
Ron knew if all the other crew members were as disheartened as the Admiral, they would be afraid to try anything.