Specialist 1st Class Wald Grugger leaned into the microphone for another attempt at making contact with ES 26. By his calculations they should have been in range, but for some reason ES 26 was not responding.
“ES 26, this is Earth’s Destiny, come in. . . . ES 26, come in. . . ,” he said and then leaned back in his chair.
The two lead ships in the Fleet would soon reach Earth, so it was critical that they establish contact before ES 39 to warn them and plan a rendevous. The Earth shuttle had to go dirtside without delay to support Commander Lanzia’s mission to contact the authorities there and warn them of the Fleet’s imminent arrival and hostile intentions. But Earth’s Destiny needed to borrow a number of ES 39’s fighters before the Earth shuttle left orbit for the surface.
“ES 39, come in. . . . ES 39, come in. . . ,” Grugger repeated.
There was static and then finally a response. “ES 39 here.”
“Thank God and Sandee,” Grugger said. “This is Earth’s Destiny. Where are you?”
Grugger touched his com link and notified Tam that he had made contact with ES 39.
“Just dropped into a stationary orbit around Earth,” said the voice from ES 39. “How long until you’ll be here?”
“We should be there tomorrow,” Grugger replied.
“Good, because we can’t hang around too long.”
Tam rushed up and took the mic.
“Hi. This is Commander Lavendar. Who am I talking to?”
“This is Lt. Musht.”
“Hi, Lieutenant. Just sit tight until we get there. We need your fighters. We lost most of ours fighting off the Fleet.”
“Really? Where’s the Fleet now?”
“Two cruisers should be almost there. The other one is a day back.”
Tam explained how they’d been attacked by the Fleet and had managed to destroy Humanities Hope. He told them how Videl’s Revenge had fled the moment they realized they were in jeopardy.
“Wow! That’s very impressive.” Lt. Musht said. “I wish I could have seen Evohn Cystrom’s face when Humanities Hope was obliterated. So, one less attack cruiser to worry about. Commander Lanzia will be ecstatic.”
“Yes, we are just happy to be alive,” Tam said. “It was a stroke of luck that Humanities Hope tried to board us. It’s got us to thinking about how to eliminate the rest of the Fleet.”
“Really.”
“I’d like to hear about that,” Captain Reeling said as he walked onto the bridge.
“Captain. It’s good to hear your voice,” Tam said.
“I bet, after what you’ve been through.”
“Yes, God and Sandee were with us.”
“So, what’s this new strategy? I’ve been worried about how we were going to deal with the Fleet. You’ve eliminated part of the problem, but three Purist attack cruisers are still a formidable force.”
“Yes, three against one aren’t good odds, but the plasma cannon could be a decisive advantage.”
“Obviously. So, what’s your strategy?”
“Well. Now that the enemy knows we have the plasma cannon they won’t let us get near an attack cruiser. If we try to get close they’ll just go FTL and we’ll lose them.”
“Right. That was my conclusion as well.”
“So, we have to keep them from going FTL.”
“Exactly. A difficult task, though,” Captain Reeling said thoughtfully.
“True, but when we were first attacked we were traveling FTL and the enemy stopped us by putting a squadron of fighters directly in our path. If we’d tried to do an evasive maneuver to avoid them and miscalculated, or they compensated for our movement, we might have struck one of them.”
“Okay. I understand. You make it risky for them to go FTL. If they try and hit a fighter they’ll be destroyed anyway. . . . Excellent. When do you plan to try out your strategy?”
“Just as soon as they arrive. We don’t want to give them time to interact with their forces on Earth. But we’ll need as many of your fighters as you can spare to make this work.”
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do: Let’s leave this communications link open until our rendezvous so that all the necessary planning and coordination can be done ahead of time. That way there’ll be no delay for either of us tomorrow. We’ll transfer the ships to you, finalize our plans, and then we’ll head to the surface.”
“Sounds good. It was great talking with you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The next day, when the rendezvous of ES 39 and Earth’s Destiny took place, the fighters were ferried over to the cruiser quickly and efficiently. While this was going on Captain Reeling, Lt. Musht, Tam and Colonel Belmoht all met on Earth’s Destiny to discuss strategy and wish each other well. When the meeting was over the ES 39 officers went back to their shuttle and headed down to the surface of Earth. After they’d watched ES 39 disappear into Earth’s atmosphere, the crew of Earth’s Destiny prepared for their very daring mission—taking on two Purist attack cruisers and luring one of them into a deadly trap.