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"We are," said Victor. "But this is also about making Earth stronger. We can't simply blow the ship to smithereens."
"Why not?" said Shenzu. "That would certainly swing the war in our favor. Who cares if we get a shield generator? I'm more worried about ending this."
"But that's exactly Victor's point," said Mazer. "Destroying the ship would not be the end. Winning this war may not be the end. This ship came from somewhere. There are more Formics out there. And the reason why they have beat us so far is because their tech is so superior. But if we can learn their tech and reverse engineer it, we can better protect ourselves from future attacks. We would level the playing field. This isn't about creating a tech boom on Earth, it's about winning this war and any future war. It's about strengthening ourselves militarily. If we blow that ship up, we'll have destroyed our best chance at defeating the Formics next time."
"Mazer's right," said Wit. "And even if the Formics never bother us again, there's a chance something else will come along. Something worse. We should always learn everything we can from the enemy and use that to better defend ourselves."
"So we don't blow it up," said Shenzu. "Agreed. But what is the plan? We still have a war to end."
"We kill all the Formics on board," said Maz
er. "Then we cripple the ship so it can't go anywhere."
"Mazer's right," said Victor. "We don't want the ship running back to wherever it came from and rallying reinforcements. Our primary mission is to make sure it has flown its final flight."
"How?" said Wit.
Victor tapped the ship with his stylus and two dozen cannons appeared on the surface. "The ship has two main defenses. The first is the cannons. Each of them is stored in a recessed hole that closes at the top when not in use. When the ship is threatened, the cannons emerge, unfold, and fire at whatever is approaching the ship. When they're done, they fold back inside, and the aperture over the hole seals shut again. The good news is, many of the cannons were destroyed by Ukko Jukes's drones. So much of the work has already been done. The other good news is, taking out the others will be easy."
He moved to the side and called up another model in the holofield--this one of a large closed aperture. "We know precisely where all of these cannons are located. To take them out of commission, all we need to do is weld the aperture shut so it can't open."
He picked up a sheet of steel that was attached to the side of the table. It was roughly two meters long and one half meter wide. "Each of your cocoons has been designed to carry eight sheets of steel this size. That's more than you'll need, but you'll be carrying extras in case something happens to any one of you en route. To disable the cannons, you and a partner will weld three sheets of steel atop each cannon aperture."
Three sheets of steel appeared atop the closed aperture in the holofield. They were positioned a short distance away from each other near the center and formed a triangular shape. "As you can see, each sheet of steel lies across at least two blades of the aperture, locking it closed. This triangular shape is the strongest. You and your partner will be assigned two cannons. This is your welding tool." He held up the small, handheld device. "You'll lock down each sheet of steel with magnets, then you'll wipe the welder along the edge of the steel. It will melt easily. Apply light pressure and you'll push the melted steel onto the Formic surface. It will feel like spreading icing on a cake. And that's it. Locked with the steel, the apertures can't open. Cannons are inoperative."
"Easy enough," said Cocktail.
"The next part isn't so easy," said Victor. He moved back to the holo of the ship and tapped it with his stylus. The hull vanished, revealing the network of pipes beneath the surface. They numbered in the hundreds, with all of them running parallel to each other from front to back.
"This looks like the skeleton of the ship," said Victor. "Like framing rods. But these lines are actually pipes filled with laserized gamma plasma. Every few meters along these pipes, there are T-shaped nozzles."
He tapped with the stylus again, and hundreds of dots appeared along the pipes. Then he zoomed forward to one of the dots, revealing it to be a nozzle.
"Each of these nozzles is connected to an aperture on the surface of the ship. These are small apertures, no bigger than a dinner plate. When attacked, the Formics open the apertures and nozzles and fire a beam of gamma plasma from the pipes."
A brief animation played, showing what Victor described.
"Our job," said Victor, "is to access the pipes from inside the ship. Once we're done disabling the cannons, we'll gather here at this destroyed cannon. This is where I entered the ship. The hole inside is already cut and ready. There's a shaft there that leads directly to the cargo bay. It's a tight squeeze, but we'll likely go undetected." He zoomed forward into the ship, coming to rest in the cargo bay. "The pipes are behind the inner wall, which is composed of dense metal plates. We'll first cut away a large section of plates and expose the pipes underneath. I'd suggest we remove at least forty square meters of plates."
Victor drew a square on the inner wall.
"That's huge," said Deen. "That's almost half the size of an American football field."
"For us that's big, yes," said Victor. "But remember, this is a big ship." He zoomed back out to see the ship as a whole. Forty square meters suddenly looked demonstrably smaller.
"Removing these plates will be tricky," said Victor. "We have to do so without damaging the pipes underneath. If we sever one, we'll unleash gamma plasma inside the cargo bay and kill us all."
"Let's avoid that," said ZZ.
"You'll be cutting with lasers set to a specific depth," said Victor. "And you'll also have scanners that will let you see the pipes beneath the plates so you can cut between pipes whenever possible. This will be the most time consuming and dangerous part of the operation. Not only because we can't damage the pipes, but also because Formic repair teams will come to fix the plates as soon as we start removing them."
"How many Formics are in a team?" asked Wit.
"The group I saw had four. But that doesn't mean there won't be more."
"So we'll need a cutting team and a defense team," said Mazer. "Where will the Formics be coming from?"
Victor pointed. "Possibly from this large shaft here. But there are dozens of shafts that feed into the cargo bay. Repair crews could come from any one of them. Or from several at once. We have no way of knowing."
