Annihilation: Book 05 - Searcher (31 page)

“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.”

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.”

Everyone turned quickly and looked at them. “Who,” Matt asked?

Tommy looked at Cassandra and said, “The ones who gave us our red screens. They fired a ball of energy at the Earth that was bigger than the planet.”

Sprig twitched, “I remember that. We barely moved the planet in time before it struck.”

Stem raised his branches and asked, “They’re gone now; how would you contact them in another universe?”

Cassandra shook her head, “I don’t know if we can. We can try.”

Matt looked at Melanie and said,, “I would like to go with you when you make the attempt and Melanie should also be present.”

“We might as well go now.”

Matt shrugged and the four of them disappeared. “Al, tell fly Girl we’ll be back.”

“I heard that, Matt. We’ll be waiting.”

“F
irst Fang, we have not found any evidence of the two ships. Our transports have scanned the planet thoroughly and none of our ships have uncovered anything that suggests they were ever in this system.”

The Ship’s Male looked at his Sensor Male and felt his frustration rise. “Where could they be?”

The Sensor Male saw the leader’s frustration “Is it possible their jump drives failed while they were coming here?”

“Both of them at the same moment; I don’t think so.”

“That leaves only two possibilities; they were destroyed by a natural event or they were killed by an outside force.”

“Those crystal creatures could have done it but they have never left their planet during all of the previous harvestings.”

“Should we go to their system and send some ships to the planet to see if they are now aggressive toward us?”

The Ship’s Male thought about the suggestion and decided to ask what should be done. He turned on his communicator and moved to the bed, “Supreme Male, I have been given a suggestion by my Sensor Male and need to know if you think it worth of action.”

The Supreme Male downloaded all that had happened since the last communication and pondered for a moment, “Perhaps, but I notice that small fragments were discovered.”

“Yes, but they were at the site where two of our attack craft collided.”

“Before you leave the system, have two of your attack craft hit each other and see if fragments are produced; then compare the size of the two to see if they are similar in size.”

The Sensor Male contacted two attack craft and issued the order. The two craft turned and hit each other. A nearby transport moved in and scanned the area of impact.

The Ship’s male read the results and was surprised, “Supreme Male, the fragments from the collision are slightly smaller than the ones originally scanned.”

“Go back through the system and scan those fragments again. See if there are two that are similar in size.”

“It will be done and I will contact you when we have the information.”

The Ship’s Male’s display went dark and he looked at the Sensor Male, “Scan for those fragments and let me know what you discover.”

After four days the Sensor Male turned to the Ship’s Male, “First Fang, we had six collisions in the system prior to our organization of the search. In one of the collision sites there were larger fragments mixed in with the smaller ones. We have found a seventh site where no collision occurred and the larger fragments were found.”