Eve sighed, “You’ve made your point. What would you suggest?”
He handed Eve the chronometer, “Time me.” She held up the chronometer and he immediately gripped his thumb with four fingers.
“Wait, I wasn’t ready.” Nudge held up his arms like he was holding a heavy blaster. He looked at her and she nodded. Nudge dropped his thumb into his four fingers, without releasing the trigger finger. Eve shook her head. “It’s faster than I can press the timer.”
Everyone looked at each other and Nudge said, “This barrier button is the one thing that will save your lives and you have to do it without thinking. It must almost be trained into a reflex.” Nudge held out his hand and gripped his thumb. “All of you give it a try.” All of the warriors in the room did it and Gene said, “I apologize. But can this motion be made to activate the barrier?”
“We use similar motions to launch your missiles. This one can also be programmed into your software.”
It was at that precise moment that Eve fell in love. She was very attracted to Nudge before but she saw his brilliance in that moment and knew there wouldn’t be anyone else for her. She looked at her Officers as they continued to grip their thumbs. She looked at him and smiled, “How long will it take to change the software?”
“I’ll write the program and transmit it over your general frequency to all of your command. You need to tell everyone about the change before I send it so they’ll know to be careful.” Eve nodded. “I’ll have it ready for transmission within an hour. Just let me know when to send it.”
“Thank you Mr. Bennett.”
“Sure, I’m glad I could help. Is there anything else?”
“No, I think that about does it.” Nudge nodded and left the meeting.
General Thompson shook his head, “I’ve heard about the things he and his brother have done developing our ships. I have to say I am impressed.” Robby looked at Gene, “What do you say, Gene?”
Gene shook his head, “Next time, someone slap me before I put both feet in my mouth!” Everyone laughed as Eve watched Nudge walk out of the room. His ego wasn’t so large that he had to rub it in to the one that insulted him. After the coming fight, she was going to talk to him about his future plans. She was going to inform him that she wanted to be a part of them.
Eve saw the shock wave roll away and released her thumb. She left the barrier and saw green ground to her left. She sprinted right and then zigged left as the ground turned green in front of her. The ground under her turned green and she instantly gripped her thumb again as four disruptor beams blasted the ground she was standing on. She waited and saw the ground change to normal color and she came out of the barrier, leaped the large holes in the ground made by the disruptors, and finished her run to the next tower. These disruptors were nothing like what she faced on the Goran Planet. They were a hundred feet taller and the blasts from the destroyed disruptor towers did not penetrate the force fields of the towers around them. Each one of them had to be taken out individually. She looked at her visor quickly. Eight hundred casualties so far. It would have been a disaster without the tools Nudge had developed.
Robby Thompson rushed toward his next target and saw the ground turn green under him. He gripped his thumb and the disruptor beam exploded the ground he had been standing on. He waited for the color to change and it didn’t. He looked at his target and the beam continued to point at the place he entered the barrier. As long as it had its giant barrel pointed at him, he was trapped. Suddenly, the tower went up in a giant blast and he was out of the barrier in an instant and sprinting toward another tower.
Eve was trapped in the barrier by a disruptor that refused to turn away from where she entered. She looked at her tactical and saw all of her warriors were in the same predicament. The Legends must have changed the targeting commands. She sighed and started to call in the pods to pull them out and then had a thought. If all the towers were locked on one of her warriors…She activated her communicator, “Attention all pods. You will move in to the area my forces have cleared and enter normal space and sweep the area around you with your DE Beams. Make the sweep quick and get back into the barrier. Spread out and prepare to fire on my command.”
Leader, the attacks on our disruptors have stopped.”
“Where do those attackers go?”
“They must go into the void. They’ve managed to put a small stardrive in their armor.”
“But a stardrive will not activate inside a planet’s gravity well!”
“There is no other explanation. They must be…” Suddenly, thousands of disruptor towers started collapsing to the ground. All of them had been cut through their bases and they collapsed like a row of cut trees.
“FIRE!” The pods entered normal space above the ground and opened fire with all four disruptors. The beams swept around them and then the pods disappeared and Eve’s command reappeared. Eve sprinted toward a disruptor tower half a mile away and marveled at how much ground the pods had cleared. Her tactical began beeping and she looked up in the corner of her visor. A long column of heavily armored vehicles were moving into the field of disruptors. Eve continued to run watching the ground around her. She raised her right arm and extended four fingers, she heard the instant ping and made a fist. The missile shot out of her back magazine and flew at blinding speed toward the armor convoy. It arrived over them and exploded in a blast that rolled forty of the armored vehicles and set the rest on fire. Eve never looked toward the convoy, she continued her sprint toward the next tower.
The Legends looked out of their gigantic armored residence and saw all the disruptors around the residence were dropping in a huge circle. All of them within twenty miles were burning or toppled to the ground and still the towers continued to fall. They would pause, then hundreds of them would collapse and then the steady destruction continued as the giant circle grew larger. “They are removing our ground defenses.”
“Why?”
The Leader looked at the others, “Once they’re clear, I believe they will be coming here.”
The Second’s thought was filled with rage, “Let them. They’ve not see what we can do.”
The Leader looked at him, “Would you like to go show them now?”
The Second’s rage evaporated in an instant, “We should do it together.”
The Leader showed his disgust for the Second and looked out at the towers as they continued to fall. “Set the disruptors to fire continuously around them.”
“Leader, they’ll run out of power if we do that.”
The Leader’s outer aura pointed out the window, “We’ll run out of towers if we don’t.”
Every Assault Warrior went into the barrier as every disruptor began firing around its base and sweeping outward. The beams would then move back to the base to sweep outward again. Eve watched the horrific beams and kept her thumb gripped. The firing continued for an hour and she glanced at her tactical status in her visor.
Her eyes narrowed and she pressed her communicator, “My scanner indicates the beams are no longer powerful enough to penetrate our force fields. We will wait ten more minutes and then we are going to go after them at full speed.” She waited and then counted it down. She came out of the barrier and sprinted toward the closest tower and used her heavy blaster to cut it down. Her armor was being hit repetitively but she ignored it until her force field failure warning buzzer went off. She went into the barrier and waited until the force field had recharged and then she rushed out again. She glanced at her status square and saw 4,458 casualties. Sixty percent of her force was still operational. The destruction of the towers took on a new frenzy. The remaining warriors had learned how to survive in the deadly climate they inhabited. They learned the most important lesson: barrier first, think second.