Escape 2: Fight the Aliens Read Online Free Page B

you plan to stuff three people into each collector pod. Right?”
    “Right,” Bill said.
    The Air Force general looked aside to the JCS chair. “General McAuley, my OSI people report the saloon buddies of Chief MacCarthy include another retired SEAL, three Army Rangers, two Air Force Special Tactics folks, two Marine Special Operations people and a Coast Guard master chief. May I suggest we round up nine more folks from the Special Operations Command at MacDill? We can fly them to Denver in time to load onto this transport spaceship.”
    McAuley’s face had lost some redness as Jane moved to tactics and operational planning. The news that two retired Marines were some of Bill’s saloon buddies had earned Bill a positive look from the JCS chairman. McAuley nodded slowly. “Agreed. You run Space Command and this arrival of Alien spaceships fits your mission better than anyone else here. And infiltration of the enemy ships may result in America gaining its own space fleet.” The man did not repeat his demands to Jane, since he had now realized there were six spaceships in the bush that could be flushed into American hands.
    Poindexter kept her command manner intact even as Bill had a hard time keeping a grin off his face. “Good. I will contact MacDill and have them put out a call for volunteers.” She caught Bill’s attention. “XO MacCarthy, I will instruct the special ops folks we supply to follow your orders and those of Captain Yamaguchi. After all, you two have shown you know how to overcome Aliens inside their own ship! Is this acceptable?”
    Bill almost saluted the woman. “Very acceptable. Uh, our ship AI will send you the IFF transponder code for our transports and for Blue Sky so your pilots and ships won’t try to knock us down.”
    The black woman blinked. “Should have thought of that myself. Must admit that handling real space combat operations that involve thinking Aliens is a bit different than worrying about Hunter-Killer satellites.”
    Jane’s command manner had gotten stronger as tactical coordination was sorted out. “General, you have my sympathy,” she said bluntly. “Neither XO MacCarthy nor myself ever expected a weekend fishing trip in the Rocky Mountains to turn into a fight against slave-taking Aliens! It was . . . a shock to us. But our training got us through it.”
    Poindexter gave Jane a thumbs-up, an action that made all the chiefs smile. “Thank you, Captain Yamaguchi. I assume you and XO MacCarthy will take care of arming our infiltrators with those taser and laser tubes you captured in your takeover of the Blue Sky ?”
    “We will,” she said, nodding Bill’s way. “Once the boarding team folks arrive on board, XO MacCarthy will show them the vidcam records of our ship takeover and instruct them on how to relate to the AI ship mind of the ship they enter. Gaining the help of each ship’s AI is vital to success. We will provide vacsuits for our boarding crews. And General, please advise your people they must avoid killing any ship crew! Bill and I learned that disabling ship crew was tolerated by our ship’s AI, but killing ship crew might force the AI into self-defense behavior.”
    The Air Force general looked thoughtful. “This wearing of vacuum suits is intended to invoke the Emergency Operations protocols that each ship AI is required to obey?”
    “Exactly,” Jane said, sitting back in her command seat. “Each vacsuit contains a comlink for talking to other folks and to the AI. While our people can be overhead on the comlink, still, wearing them is vital to forcing the AI to follow Emergency Operations protocols. Those protocols force the AI to open hallway hatches for them and to treat our people as if they were ship crew.”
    The Air Force chief nodded slowly. “Understood. Tell me about permissible combat operations within each Collector ship. The Aliens will try to kill our people, right?”
    “They will try ,” Jane said, sitting back and looking