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"Not a good position to be in," said Mazer. "The cutting team will be very exposed. There's some ship wreckage floating inside the cargo bay that could provide some cover, but the cutting crew will still be susceptible to enemy fire. The Formics, on the other hand, will have plenty of cover at the shaft entrances."
"What do you suggest?" asked Wit.
"We booby-trap the shafts," said Mazer. "It needs to be silent so as not to alert others on the ship. Do you think we could replicate what you did on the goo tower?"
"You mean electrify the shafts?" said Wit.
"Maybe just the last five meters of the shaft," said Mazer. "Maybe we create a mesh netting, like a bag that's open on both ends, and we lay it flat against the inner wall. The Formics come up, they poke their heads out. And we zap them."
"If we had a few weeks to build the nets," said Lem. "But we're at the eleventh hour here."
Benyawe stepped forward to the holofield and started flipping through files. "We may not need weeks. Juke already has nets like this made of thin metal mesh for securing loads on cargo vessels."
A catalog entry of the mesh netting appeared in the field.
"We could have it flown here from Luna," said Benyawe. "The team tapes it down along the inner wall of the shaft, being sure not to obstruct the track in the floor, and we're set. Question is, how to electrify it."
"That would be easy," said Victor. "Couple drive batteries would do it. And a few hundred meters of cable. We set the batteries in the cargo bay rigged to a manual switch."
"There are dozens of shafts," said Lem. "You're talking about a ton of equipment we don't have room for. The cocoons are designed to hold a person, his weapon, his tools, the steel, and that's it. How do we get all of these nets and cables and batteries to the ship?"
"The cocoons are covered in space junk to camouflage them," said Victor. "We remove some of that junk and replace it with batteries and spools of cable. We scuff them up and paint them so they still look like debris. If we need more space, we could attach some of the equipment to some of the small pieces of drift debris. The drone pilots then fly those pieces near to where we enter the ship. Then we recover the equipment and we're set. Or--and this is this least attractive option--we could remove one person from the mission and fill one of the cocoons with the equipment we'll need."
"I'd rather not lose a person," said Wit. "If we can make it work with the cocoons' exteriors and the drift debris, we should."
"We'll make it happen," said Benyawe. "We have members of our engineering team on hand for needs like this. We can get the supplies and start making the modifications to the cocoons immediately. Our drone pilots will use the debris drones to carry anything else that doesn't fit straight to the cannon. Those will arrive before you do. All you'll have to do is recover them."
"Good," said Wit. He turned to Victor. "Walk us throu
gh the rest of it. We've cut away a huge section of wall plates and exposed the pipes. Now what?"
"Now we rotate all of the exposed nozzles inward so they point toward the middle of the ship. Once that's done, everyone exits the ship and gathers at this point here."
Victor drew a circle on the hull, a distance from the cargo bay.
"Meanwhile, two people are outside the ship here, directly above the spot where the nozzles have been rotated. Armed with paint guns, they'll paint a giant square on the ship's exterior in phosphorescent paint that matches where the plates have been removed inside the cargo bay. Once the crew inside is clear, the paint sprayers will paint a giant 'X' in the square. Like so."
He demonstrated with his stylus.
"Then the paint sprayers will attach these glow rods near the paint to make it glow and move here to join the others outside the ship a safe distance away."
A small spacecraft appeared in the top left corner of the holofield.
"A pilot will then fly a small fighter directly above the rotated nozzles, aiming for the 'X.' The Formics will see the fighter approach, decide it's a threat, and order one of the cannons to extend. This will obviously fail as we will have already disabled them. The Formics will then fire the gamma plasma, opening the nozzles where the 'X' is located. Those nozzles will be rotated inward, however, so the gamma plasma will blast through the ship and blow a hole out the other side. The radiation from that blast will dissipate throughout the ship and kill most of the Formics inside."
"So we trick them into using their own weapon against themselves," said Deen. "I like that."
"Whoever flies that fighter needs to fly as straight as an arrow toward the 'X,'" said Wit. "The Formics will likely open up other nozzles we haven't rotated. Beams of gamma plasma will encircle the fighter from all sides. He'll essentially be flying inside a tunnel of plasma. If he deviates in any way, he'll fly into the line of fire and be obliterated."
"The pilot's not a he," said Imala. "It's a she. I'm doing it."
Everyone looked at her.
Victor was so surprised it took him a moment to find words. "Imala ... we agreed that one of the MOPs would do this."
"It should be me," said Mazer. "I have the most flight experience."
"Not in space you don't," said Imala. "I'm the most qualified pilot here."
