Atk. Butterfly - Rust Bucket

I wrote a second treatise, much shorter than the first and not as well documented. Still, it was complete enough for an experienced military mind to comprehend. I finished it in one month’s time and sent several copies to the Sarge. When he received it, he called me immediately and asked for more. The title caught his attention and he read it immediately. He agreed with my reasoning and knew that it was hot material that needed to get out into the field immediately.

I also took a copy of it to my father-in-law and sat in front of him as he read it in his disk reader. The looks on his face told almost the whole story as he stopped once or twice to look at some fact sheets he received from Supreme Headquarters. Not a word passed from his lips until he finished reading. Then he finally set it down with shaking hands and looked at me.

He said, “Son, you better get me some more copies of this disk soon. There’s some people whom I want to have a copy of this. I’m going to take your advice as far as Beulah is concerned if only because my daughter and grandchildren are here. We’ll not be caught napping. If you have any more ideas like this, I want to see them, too. By the way, that other treatise you wrote was one fine piece of writing. I hope it gets adopted before hostilities break out. Yes, I think they will, too.”

I answered, “Yes sir. I’ll get you more copies. All you want. Just let me know how many.”

He said, “For now, get me twenty copies. No, you better make that forty. That will do for my purposes. Keep at it, son. You’re going to go far when this war breaks out.”

I replied, “Yes sir. By the way, have you seen Annie’s Cavern?”

“No. First I ever heard of it. What is it?” he asked.

I said, “Annie found a tunnel behind the waterfall across from the house. It leads to a deep cavern on our property. I’m going to instruct Annie to head there in the event of an attack. I’m going to have part of it reinforced and supplied with everything she and the children might need.”

He replied, “Good for you. I’ll remember that in case I go looking for her in your absence.”

I said, “I know you would. That’s why I’m telling you about it now.”

Bill’s word was good. He took steps at his base to make sure that his people weren’t going to be surprised. Training was stepped up. It wasn’t unusual for patrols to be out under the guise of training in the near sectors of space to Beulah. Because of my job, I was able to notice the stepped up activity from the base. That alone sufficed to make me feel easier about Annie and our children being on Beulah. It was our home. I wasn’t interested in giving up it or any other part of the Union to some alien-come-lately who thought he could bully his way about and have what he wanted without a fight.

For my own part, I suggested to Penny in the head office of the company that the gunships perform some practice when not on runs. She saw what I was actually after since she was the Sarge’s wife and had seen both of my treatises. She gave me the go ahead to conduct practice with all three gunships. That was all I needed to further develop and practice the wingman concept as it might be used later in war, especially when I required my ship and the wingman ship to go at a slower speed than the gunship pretending to be the enemy. We practiced at least once every two weeks for a few hours until we learned how the wingman concept worked and could defeat the faster ship in our mock battles with regularity.

Despite the fact that the politicians were beginning to run the military once more to the advantage of the rich families, there were enough combat veterans inside the military from the recent war at all levels of rank who saw what was happening or were reading my treatises. Some of them were practicing with the techniques I re-introduced during the last war. Others were trying to make other things happen in research and in the development of better ships and weapons. They were all racing against time since none of us knew with any certainty when the war would break out. We did have a definite idea of where and how it would break out since we were on ground zero, so to speak.

The Ape-oids continued to transgress at almost regular intervals into our government’s spacial territory, moving their ships close to our ships, threatening commercial ships, and shadowing military ships, taunting them to do something. More and more the military was disgusted with not being allowed to blast apart the transgressing ships.

I should have realized that the practice I was doing with the wingman concept and not being as fast as the enemy would pay off in my job. After all, part of my pitch to Penny was that we might someday run into a pirate with a faster ship. That someday also came a lot sooner than I thought it would.

We were on the Gabriel run when we spotted the first pirate in months. Because we were taking out to Gabriel a shipment not worth a pirate’s efforts to steal it, we weren’t bothered. The pirate moved away from us at high speed, giving up valuable information inadvertently.

“Did you see how fast he moved?” asked Ed at the sensors.

“He did appear to have legs. How fast was he going?” I asked.

Ed said, “Better than we can do at top speed. He’s an entire factor faster from what I’m reading on the sensors.”

I said, “I wonder how much firepower he has?”

Ed replied, “I couldn’t determine anything about that.”

I said, “Communications, call the office. Advise them that I’d like one of the other two gunships to meet us on the way back from Gabriel. Tell them the circumstances and that I believe we’re going to be in for a rough one.”

The rest of the trip to Gabriel was uneventful. At Gabriel, we picked up a flash message from the home office advising us that the Theodore would be joining us and was already on its way. Our freighters were unloaded. A day later, they were loaded with a cargo a pirate would definitely consider worth the risk. Meanwhile, I kept my ship in orbit and conducted drills with the crew. There was no way that I intended to give up my convoy without a fight.

We left after two days at Gabriel and spotted the pirate a day out from the planet. He stayed on the edge of our sensor area where he seemed to be trying to decide if he was going to take us on or not. Despite his clear advantage in speed and unknown firepower, I was looking forward to the engagement. If nothing else, that was my job to do and, though it was a dangerous job, I liked doing it and the pirate was giving me job security. He shadowed us for almost a day when the Theodore joined us.

That must have convinced him that we were worried about being able to take him. He moved in at high speed on an attack run towards us. I pulled out to meet him with the other gunship taking position on my wing, so to speak. As soon as we neared extreme weapons range for the Mark IV quads, both ships opened fire on the pirate. It took the gunners a while before they were able to pick up on the pirate with his better speed. By then, he had closed enough distance on us that his weapons were vibrating the ship. I could tell that he considered my larger ship the more dangerous if only because we had more powerful weapons.

It wasn’t much of a fight as he twisted out of the gunners’ sights and tried to get behind us. We jinked about to keep him from getting a clear shot on our engines to disable us. The other gunship weaved about behind us spoiling his shots as we maneuvered into a position where we could again defend ourselves. Finally, we caught him in a maneuver where we were able to disable him.