“Thank you, Sir.”
Michael walked through the port and Jan closed it. She saw her reflection in the stainless steel covering over the port and stared at it. She shook her head. What had she become? She was less than plain when she dyed her hair and put on the oversize uniforms six years earlier. What she saw looking back at her was…was…someone else. She reached around to untie her braid and stopped. She was a living, breathing, walking lie. She could see the Commander’s expression when he saw her and he was amazed. Heck, she didn’t even have any makeup on. She released her braid and sighed. Should she come out of her cocoon slowly? She continued to stare at the reflection and she turned around and looked at her back. Oh my! She had curves she didn’t remember either. She took a deep breath and said, “Today is the first day of freedom. I will hide no more.”
She went to the bridge and activated her monitor. She often turned it off when flying with Jay and Josey so she could do it wearing little or nothing. They were used to it. Jay appeared on her monitor and said, “This new system is…”
Jan saw him staring at her and she said, “Issssss?”
“Who are you?”
“Come on, Jay. It’s me.”
“Josey you need to see this!”
“See what?”
“Link with me.”
Jan saw Josey appear beside Jay on her monitor and Josey’s mouth fell open. “Who are you?”
Jan blew out a breath, “IT’S ME!”
Josey stared at her and said, “Oh…my…God!”
“WHAT?!?”
Jay said, “Jan, I never suspected you were this gorgeous. But I should have known.”
Jan softly said, “Why?”
“Because someone with the gentle and beautiful spirit you possess would have to be beautiful.” Josey sighed, “There’s goes my attentive audiences.”
“Josey, you know you’re prettier than me.”
“Oh, if that were only true. However, I am so proud of who and what you are. Why did you…”
“Come out of my disguise?”
“Yeah.”
“The Commander pointed out to me that he saw I was hiding. I wanted to see what I looked like. When I started hiding, I didn’t look anything like this.”
“What did you look like?”
“You know the too large uniforms I’ve been wearing?”
“Yes.”
“They were a snug fit. My hair was frizzy and wouldn’t hold any kind of shape. My eyes were constantly red from allergies. I guess I…I don’t know…changed.”
Jay laughed out loud, “Boy, have you ever! I’m going to personally thank the Commander for pointing it out to you.”
“Why?”
“Do you have any idea how much jealousy Josey causes from hanging out with me? Now with you, I’ll be insufferable.”
Jan laughed out loud. Josey smiled, “I’ll tie a rope to you at the next dance and throw you out on the dance floor. I’ll grab those that fall off.” The three went back and forth and laughed for an hour. Jan was indeed free.
Chapter Eight
Michael listened to the scouts reporting in to Hengel and so far nothing out of the ordinary had happened. A conversation was intercepted between two scientists and Michael focused on it. “It appears that the new space is too small for any of the Director’s ships to enter.”
“Fifty feet is not much room to work with.”
“The new probe with its disruptor beam barely fits. So far, we have not detected anything near our galaxy.”
“Do you think that the attackers use this space?”
“We’ve been given the recordings of the last battle and the ships the enemy used were only forty five feet in diameter. They could fit inside it.”
“But the least little wobble and they would be thrown out.”
“Then where do they go?”
“I have no idea. Could there be another space we don’t know about. Some kind of no space of something?”
“Your imagination is running wild. No space would be no distance. If there’s no space, there isn’t anything.”
“I know. This new space we’ve found must be what they use to disappear.”
“If that’s the case, firing a disruptor in it will cause a major disruption of it.”
“How major?”
“About a third of a light year.”
“Would it affect the void or normal space?”
“No, at least it hasn’t in the experiments we’ve done.”
“So if they attack again, we fire a disruptor in that space and they can’t use it to avoid our weapons.”
“That’s how I see it.”
“We need to contact the Director and see if he wants us to start building those probes.”
“Has the Director approved building a small ship to go into that space?”
“He has not! He doesn’t see any benefit a small ship would give him.”
“Those small ships that attacked were pretty deadly.”
“I know, I know! But the Director is of the opinion that they were only successful because they could use that space to avoid our weapons. If that space is removed, the enemy’s ships won’t stand up against our larger battleships.”
“Angelo, send a transcript of that conversation to Amanda and Trevor’s attention. I want a copy also sent to Budge asking if he knows of any way to prevent the Barrier from being disrupted.”
Jan listened to the two Scientists and shook her head. The only way their attacks were successful was due to their being able to go into the barrier when too many beams or missiles hit them. And this new Monster had planet-sized disruptors. Langley had linked the conversation to Josey and Jay and they were just as concerned as Jan. “Does this end our previous tactics?”
Jay slowly nodded, “We can’t avoid being hit. The barrier allows us to control the number of times we’re hit before we are damaged.”
They looked at Jan and saw her resting her head on her hand. Jay said, “What are you thinking?”
“The real issue is time.”
“What do you mean?”
“We skip in among the enemy formations and open fire with our DE Beams and missiles. While we’re firing at them, they fire back at us, right?”
“Your observation is impeccable.”
Jan looked at Jay, “Don’t get cute. I was just thinking that one of the things our new ships can do, well, even the old ones could do it too, is fly faster than the speed of light in normal space.”
“How do you fire a weapon at a target moving that fast? I’m good but I don’t have near the reflexes to pull that off.”
“Why would you have to fire?”
“Excuse me? But WHAT?”
“What would happen if you locked the disruptors down to constant fire and flew through their formations at light speed?”
Jay stared at Jan on the monitor and then he looked at Josey who could only shake her head. “Jan, I don’t know if something like that is possible.”
“I don’t, either.”
“Then why in a drunken barmaid’s apron would you suggest it!?”
“I was just thinking that if most of the reactor’s power was sent to the disruptors, and the rest to the thrusters, we would blow by them too fast to be targeted. If the DE Beams are at close to full power, they should slice a ship in half as we passed. If all three of us were stacked on top of each other…”
“If a DE Beam can be fired with any focus at that speed, you might have something. But trust me on this, avoiding anything in your direct path might be a problem.”
“I keep thinking about a little fact that was in Boy’s Life fifty years ago.”
“Boy’s what?”
“It was a magazine that was written for Boy Scouts.”
“Where in seven hells would you see a magazine written for Boy Scouts that is fifty years old?”