The Quantum Connection

CHAPTER 28

We spent a few minutes resting and thinking about our next move. Tabitha was right; the Grays would be pissed at us and would soon be coming for us. The question was, how long would it take for the Grays to figure out what had happened? If we assumed that Prawmitoos got a message off to the Grays, then they would be preparing for us. We had a secret weapon that neither the Grays nor the Lumpeyins could reproduce. Mike, Tatiana and I had figured out how to send matter in super-miniature warp bubbles over the universal Infrastructure from one SuperAgent to another. Even if one of the aliens that saw us vanish into thin air survived the explosion at Lumpeya City—which sounds impossible—it wouldn't have understood what happened to us. To the alien it would appear that we just vanished and there would be no way of them knowing that we used the YIT connection to travel. We all decided that this was the single most important information that the human race now had and it should be the most guarded secret in the history of mankind. Think about it. If hostile aliens knew how to approach us by quantum connecting through our SuperAgents then they could zip in and out of our society at will—assuming we place these SuperAgents rampantly throughout our civilization. Complete armies could travel through the YIT by using a warp bubble that was large on the inside and small enough on the outside to travel through the Infrastructure.

This was exactly what we planned to do—warp armies through the YIT and take the fight to the Grays. We needed to get closer to home first, but our present location was a good twelve days from Earth at maximum warp velocity and that could be too late if the Grays decided to immediately eradicate Earth. We couldn't quantum connect to Earth because there were no SuperAgents there. We only had Mike and Michelle available and had used up the last bit of the rare alien materials needed to build SuperAgents on Michelle, so we couldn't just make another one. We needed to get to Earth faster than maximum warp allowed, so we had to find a SuperAgent close to home to surf the YIT to.

"Mike, can you find where there are Phoenix-class Gray ships as close to Earth as possible?" Jim said.

"Yes, Jim. There are seven Gray ships in the outer part of the Sol System now and there are nineteen Gray vessels dispersed evenly about the quarantine zone's edge."

"Then we should take the ones at Earth first," Tabitha said.

"Michelle, can you fly the Phoenix back to Earth's Moon without us?" 'Becca asked.

"Of course I can, Rebecca," Michelle answered.

"What's our plan for taking the ships?" Anson asked.

"It will be easy, Anson," Tatiana said. "Steven and I beat them as normal humans with no warp armor or anything like that. We only had a couple of machine guns each."

"I helped a little," Mike said.

"Of course you did, sweetheart. I'm sorry and I didn't mean to forget you, Mike," Tatiana said.

"So, how about this? We armor up, zip into the operating room of one of the ships and, with the warp bubbles, we run around the ship and squish the blue blood right out of a bunch of little Gray monsters," I suggested.

"Sounds like a helluva plan to me!" Anson said.

"Okay, let's do it!" Tabitha ordered.

* * *

We loaded up for bear and little Gray aliens. Once, Tatiana couldn't get her gear to sit straight and I had to touch her and let the nanomachines fix it. She told me that she felt naked without Mikhail. I assured her that as soon as we got more SuperAgent material we would remedy the situation.

We also let the gang in on the mind communication through the SuperAgent link. We trusted them all completely now and they didn't seem too sore about the fact that we had kept that from them. They had known Tatiana and I could communicate to each other through the SuperAgents, but we had not told them that anybody could with a simple temple implant. Anson commented that we had learned the secret weapon lesson well and that he was proud of us.

We all told Michelle that we would see her in a few days and then Mike closed the warp bubble around us. The bubble shrunk down and we were riding the quantum connection a third of the way across the galaxy, about thirty thousand light years. We popped out into the abductee operating room of the Gray alien spaceship and there were two catatonic humans lying on floating stretchers. The room we were in was completely white and it was very bright. We settled to the floor quietly and the two Grays working on one of the humans were caught totally unaware.

Tatiana moved so fast that you couldn't see her snapping the necks of the two little monsters. Ick! This brings back some bad memories, huh, Steven?

Yeah, it does. Mike, can you take over the programming of this SuperAgent like I did you?

Already done, Steven.

Excellent. Open the doors and let's go squish some Grays!

How many are there? Tabitha thought.

There are nine more aliens aboard, Mike told us. Then he displayed a map of the spaceship in all of our heads. There were little blinking red dots where the live Grays were.

Okay, just like we planned, three teams. Tatiana and I will take the three on the bridge, I thought to them.

Anson and I will take the three in the aft section!

'Becca and I will take the other three. Good hunting!

We split up into three different directions and went about taking the ship. The ship was similar to the Phoenix, minus the humanizing that had been done to it. With the warp armor we all made light work of the Grays on board. It took us about seven seconds to take the ship. The Grays never even knew we were coming.

We went through similar steps and took all seven of the Gray ships in Sol space. We felt an urgency to quickly take as many ships as we could, because who knew how the Grays were going to react when they discovered we had the controller and had blown up one of their nobles.

Once we had liberated all of the vessels Mike generated a replacement for Mikhail, and Tatiana and I zipped back into the little confinement singularity where he was trapped. We replaced him with a dumb SuperAgent and Tatiana picked him up and placed him against her navel. Mikhail quickly dissolved through her skin and placed himself inside her abdomen. I touched her and gave her a crew of nanomachines to make her complete.

Let's get out of here.

Okay, Steven. Mikhail, it is great to have you back!

It is great to be back, Tatiana.

Now, we are all one big happy family again, I said and toggled the warp field back on. The bubble grew opaque. It was the last we would ever see of the little prison the Grays had trapped Tatiana in.

You think Opolawn is enjoying his accommodations? I asked Tatiana.

I hope he hates it! Tatiana said as we popped back into the belly of the commandeered Gray spaceship.

We zipped the new ships back to the Moon and reprogrammed all of the SuperAgents to be more like Mike—that is, to be loyal to humanity and to us in particular. We updated Annie, Al, and Sara on current events and decided that a good plan of action would be to take as many alien ships as we could. So we recruited fifteen of the most trusted members of the military moon colony that we knew. Tabitha reminded them all of their oaths and then we trained them on how to take the Gray ships. Before Michelle returned to the Moon, we had taken thirty-seven Gray ships and were retrofitting them for human use.

We sent out teams every day over the Infrastructure and captured more and more alien ships and technologies. Each of the teams carried one SuperAgent with nanomachine accompaniment and each time they would bring back more and more alien materials and resources. With the Infrastructure and our new means of traveling through it we were rapidly spreading out through the local cluster.

And then the Grays came. Just a few weeks after we had returned from Lumpeya City they came in a fleet of more than a thousand Phoenix-class ships.

Fortunately, we knew about it. We had infected most of the SuperAgents within a thousand-light-year radius of Earth. The Grays were still fairly oblivious to hackers. It seemed that this was a human specialty that was lost on them. Although they made some attempts to set up firewalls, we quickly hacked them down. Tatiana and Mike had overcome the isolated abductee firewall through familiarity and cunning reexamination of instruction definitions. It was like arguing with yourself what the definition of the word is is—you can convince yourself of a lot of things that way. Like I said, the Grays were no good at keeping generations of hackers out of the Infrastructure.

We would ping out through the Infrastructure waiting for "connection established" or "denied returns" and then start in with code decryption hacks and backdoor tricks. The only thing missing was dumpster dives. Since we didn't know what the Grays did with their garbage we couldn't go and dig through it. We didn't need to; as I said, the Grays were amateurs at designing firewalls. Once we established a data connection we simply made a quantum connection through the Infrastructure, warped into the bellies of the oncoming assault fleet and took the ships from them.

Tatiana and I were along for the battle. We took several of the ships ourselves. In fact, the entire crew was along. Our battle plan required everybody aware of the SuperAgents and warp armor and the Infrastructure to be involved. At such short notice, only a few weeks after returning from Lumpeya City, we were not really completely prepared for an attack of a fleet of a thousand ships. After all, we had only captured and refurbished some thirty-odd Gray ships to date. But we weren't giving up.

Tabitha had developed a great tactical plan of slash and burn and move on. She decided that as many of us as could, would teleport from one ship to the next ship, kill the Gray crew, then move on to the next one, and repeat the process until there were no Grays in the attack fleet left standing.

There were a hundred and two of us, each with warp armor and we had had enough time to create a hundred new SuperAgents, each with its own personality. All of the slash-and-burn team members had volunteered to have the SuperAgents implanted in their respective abdomens and each of us had temple implants. We would take teams of two through to each alien ship and therefore each team would have to take at least twenty of the Grays' ships. Tabitha rallied us before the plan was implemented and gave us a pep talk.

"Attention all personnel, this is General Clemons." She paused for a second and cleared her throat. "An alien threat of far superior firepower is approaching us at superluminal velocity. These aliens are known as the Teytoonis, and indeed are as powerful as the gods from our ancient mythology. These aliens . . . these Teytoonis are self-centered and believe themselves to be the only species that should exist in the universe. Well, I disagree with them and I am sure you do too. We are going to strike these monsters with cunning and human brilliance the likes of which this alien species has never seen before. Leave no alien survivors . . . our own survival depends on this. You must also not be captured under any circumstances. The aliens must not have access to our technology. If you are caught, you have been briefed what to do and I expect—humanity expects—that you follow orders. Good luck, good hunting, and God bless." Tabitha paused again to let her words ring through the lunar base and then she added in her voice of command, "MOVE OUT!"

Tatiana and I were second in line on the Phoenix and were preparing to quantum connect to our first target. Michelle had already passed through the first two-man team of Jim and 'Becca. We nearly had to hogtie Anson and Tabitha in order to convince them that they couldn't lead this assault, just in case we failed. Humanity needed a commanding general and lead scientist that understood the threat it was facing. If the slash and burn failed, Tabitha and Anson would have to devise a Hail Mary play. We hoped that it wouldn't come to that.

Phoenix 2 going for quantum connection, I thought over the net as we shrank down through the Infrastructure connection inside Michelle. Mike, have you turned the destination ship's SuperAgent?

Steven, Michelle has beaten me to it.

I see.

Coming out of warp now, Steven! Mike said as Tatiana and I hit the floor inside a little white room.

There were no Grays waiting on us and there were no human abductees on board. That was a good sign, I guessed.

Warp armor! Mike, where are they? I asked. Mike displayed a map of the ship and indicated where the Grays were hiding out—actually they were just hanging out since they were not expecting us; they had no reason to be on their guard.

Steven, I've got the six up top. You take the six below, okay?

Right! Race you back to Michelle, last one buys.

You're on.

We made short work of the unsuspecting Grays on board and were back through Michelle to the next craft on our list. Fifteen seconds later we were on to the fourth. Thirty seconds later we had taken all twenty ships. We paused on the last one and listened in to the battle to see how it was going. Mike opened a channel to the operation net and it was rather quiet. The mission had been a success!

In less than one minute and twenty-three seconds the entire alien fleet had been destroyed. There were no survivors and we had not lost a single soldier during the operation.

"All of the alien ships are to be brought to the rally point at Mars except for one. I want three teams to volunteer to take all of the Grays' remains that can be gathered and load them into that ship. We will load the ship that Phoenix team four is presently on."

We took that one alien ship and packed it full of dead Grays as Tabitha had ordered. She then ordered it sent it at maximum velocity back to the Ringworld hive center.

"Great job, everyone! Operation Slash and Burn was a success! We will see you on Mars." She cheered.

We hoped that the Grays would get the message to leave us the hell alone.