Surface to Space, Group Conference: Secure Channel
Attendees
Commander Ddraig: CSA-TET-1
Commander Tova: CSA-TET-2
Commander Kranz: CSA-TET-3
Senior Officers: CSA-TET-1,2,3
Layan: Chief Designer
Altai: Core Design Engineer
Jaak: Lode Bearer-1
Dieter: Lode Bearer-2
Tag: Lode Bearer-3
Ambassador Schönheit: Hundeerde Presidentum Observer
Chancellor Saxe: (Well… because he thinks he’s important and insisted)
Friday – early afternoon, condition YELLOW
The meeting being held between the three TET control rooms, and the surface was virtually crowded. The guidance and navigation officers had fine tuned their lemon squeezer transmitters so that not one stray pip would leak out.
Commander Tova was chairing the meeting.
Commander Tova: The battle at Foxtrot-Oscar-Bravo has concluded and we succeeded in our objective to eliminate the bug swarm. We are grateful to the Hundeerde Dog Squad for their invaluable assistance. We are however a long way from winning the war. Queen Anostosia had suffered a setback, but she will view this defeat as a grave insult to her over inflated abdominal ego. She will be back, and this time she will again set her sights on one of our TETs.
We know that a single core blast is not sufficient to eliminate her ship. This is where our Chief Designer, Core Design Engineer and our three Lode Bearers come in.
Layan and Altai, would you please outline the plan to power-up each TET core and ultimately destroy the Bugaarian ship.
Layan: Thank you Commander.
We now have our three lode bearers each stationed on a TET. They have brought with them a cache of cyan stones that the core engineers will need to install into each of their core reactors. We calculate that this will increase the power output of each core by another seventy five percent. This however will still not provide sufficient power for one TET in isolation.
Altai: The Bugaarian bio-ship, part living and part machine, is protected from the external geomagnetic plasma storm that a regular core blast generates. What is needed is a blast that can penetrate directly into the interior of the ship.
At the right time to be determined by Commander Tova, the lode bearers will need to simultaneously manipulate their lode stones into the TET cores, which will then activate the tri-luminal effect. This will then power up one TET core sufficiently to unleash the final core blast.
Layan: This blast will require a precise hit on the forward distal corpus cavernosum firing nacelle of the ship, an opening which is only two metres wide. This will then start an internal chain reaction throughout the inner corpus spongiosum, sealing itself within the bio-mechanical walls of the ship. The shock waves will be tremendous, a real bug-quake.
Dieter: So what you’re saying is that we’re gonna fire a buzzy-bug straight up that bug ship’s whizz-stick?
Layan: Yeah. Pretty much.
There was a slight uncomfortable silence while all the males on the surface and in space, squirmed ever so slightly in their seats.
Altai: We will only have one shot to get this right, so we need to take our time and all do our jobs perfectly to make it count.
No pressure.
The meeting was interrupted by a beep on the communications console.
Hanne: ALL STATIONS – COMMS: She is coming.
Rönd: FLIGHT – TACTICAL: We will be within Delta-1’s striking range in one-five minutes.
Commander Tova: ALL STATIONS, ALL STATIONS: Condition RED.
Core Engineers and Lode Bearers – you know what to do.
Activate Operation Whizz-Stick.
Cyanos Geosynchronous Orbit
The effect of condition RED was immediate.
Personnel on all three TETs swung into their assigned condition RED action stations, for the second time that day. The three core engineering officers on each TET simultaneously swept up their young lode bearers and headed down the elevators to the engineering compartment, where their engineering crews were already standing by.
On TET-2, Blaze and Dieter were met by engineering compartment lead, Malik.
Malik: How long do we have chief?
Blaze: Estimate less than ten minutes. We need to get the main cache of stones correctly installed in the box before the three boys activate the effect.
Similar scenes were simultaneously playing out in the engineering compartments on TET-1 and TET-3, with their crews working as fast as they could to install the new cache of stones into the core reactor – commonly called ‘the box’. This was normally a very precise process that might take several hours to add even one extra stone. Now they had about 10 minutes to add several hundred. It was time to work fast.
Blaze turned to Dieter.
Blaze: I guess now would be a good time ask if you still have your stone?
Dieter grinned, and opened up his leg pocket and took out his stone. It was glowing and pulsing brightly.
Dieter: Well that is a good sign – its glowing already!
Blaze: We need to get me, and you patched through to the two other core engineers and your friends, so that we can all coordinate for the effect.
COMMS – CORE: Ready for engineering voice loop up-link.
Hanne: CORE – COMMS: Working with TETNO now to establish three way loop. GENO is making attitude adjustments for the secure link.
Standby.
There were a few tense moments, while they waited for the link to be established.
Hanne: CORE – COMMS: Inter-engineering compartment voice loop established – you are secure. Go ahead CORE-2.
Blaze: CORE-1, CORE-3 this is CORE-2: Report stone loading status.
Límón: This is CORE-1: stones are six-six percent loaded.
Edan: This is CORE-3, our stones are at seven-one percent loaded.
Blaze: CORE-2 reports we are six-eight percent loaded.
Another urgent sounding voice broke onto the loop.
Rönd: BREAK-BREAK: ALL-CORE – TACTICAL-2: Delta-1 – range to strike, three minutes. We need that core boost in next two minutes.
Blaze: TACTICAL-2 – CORE-2: We’ll be ready.
Blaze looked across and made a shovelling motion to Malik.
Another tense minute passed, running the clock down even closer to the time when the Bugaarian ship would be within striking range.
Edan: This is CORE-3, our stones are loaded!
Límón: This is CORE-1 – we are nine-eight… wait…!
One hundred! Standing by for lode bearer activation.
Blaze: CORE-2 – we are done!
Blaze muted his loop and turned to Dieter
OK buddy you and your friends are up. Give ’em a call.
This was the moment – would their plan work? What would their stones do?
Dieter activated his communicator.
Dieter: Lode Be-aroow-ers.. aroow-reyou red-deey?
Whether it was nervousness or the pressure of the moment or both, Dieter’s normally deep teen voice chose that very moment to break – he snuffled, shook his head and tried again…
Lode Bearers – are you ready?
Jaak: LODE STONE-1 – is burning bright and I’m standing by.
Tag: LODE STONE-3 is ready and so am I!
Dieter: LODE STONE-2 is ready and I’m ready too!
Rönd: Three-zero seconds!
Commander Tova: LODE BEARERS! ACTIVATE!
Then, all together, the three boys stretched out their arms and opened their paws.
The three cyan stones rose gently a couple of centimeters from their up turned paws and began to rotate. The stones glowed brighter. A myriad of piercing blue shapes and patterns mixed with deep azure indigos, swirled within.
The stones in all the station cores began to hum and vibrate at a different and distinct frequency that filled each station with a single note of sound. TET-3 had the highest frequency, TET-1 had the middle frequency and TET-2 had the lowest.
The stones revolving above the boy’s paws, became completely translucent with diamond like clarity, emitting a light that increased in intensity with each passing second. The stones rose from the boys paws and moved towards the core reactor portal.
The lead engineers, had just finished adding the final stones from the cache were ready. They activated the pinholes in the core portal curtains one last time, pinholes that would allow the final three lode stones to pass through into their cores. Simultaneously on three stations, three stones passed through, and the portal pinholes closed.
Commander Tova: CORE report!
Límón: LODE STONE-1 is in!
Blaze: LODE STONE-2 it is in!
Edan: LODE STONE-3 it’s in!
Another moment passed, then…
VAAAAWOOOOOOSH!
There was no slow build up in speed this time. The three lode stones shot at hypervelotic speed out of their core and on towards the next, covering the 33,000 km distance between them in a fraction of a second.
They did not stop. They did not slow.
A triangular, 99,000 km, crackling line of blue light sparking with energy now connected all three TET stations. Connection complete, the three single notes, that filled each TET, now combined into one tri-harmonic chord.
In addition a new phenomenon occurred. Not only did the three TET cores connect, but this time three 33,000 km lines of crackling blue light extended from each TET right down to the surface of Cyanos, forming the frame and fourth apex of a tetrahedron.
The TETS were now drawing power and massive amounts of energy directly from the core of Cyanos.
Límón: CORE-1 is at two-seven-three percent and rising!
Blaze: CORE-2 – two-eight-six percent and rising!
Edan: CORE-3! – three-zero-zero percent and holding!
Rönd: BREAK! – BREAK! – BREAK!
Delta-1 is firing!
Commander Tova: Brace for impact!
The venom pulse of the Bugaarian ship impacted into the A-C-D side of TET-2.
The station shook, and gave a great heaving shudder, that spilled Calico’s hot cup of coffee into her lap.
Calico: Myeeeeryoooooooow!
The TET’s shields held.
VROOOOOOOMPPH!
It was hard to describe, but there was something like an inward sucking sound punctuated at the end with thump, that came towards and stopped at TET-2.
The sparking blue lines of crackling energy connecting the three TETs and the surface of the planet disconnected. All three lode stones, still shining with diamond bright intensity, had stopped right in the centre of TET-2’s core.
TET-2 was now brimming and overflowing with super-charged energy. The tri-harmonic chord built to a crescendo and permeated every part of the station.
Blaze: Core is at nine-zero-zero percent!
It’s gonna blow!
It did.
With no command given, TET-2 blasted its core.
It had one target.
A direct impact on a two metre wide opening on the whizz-stick at the front of the Bugaarian ship.
Rönd: It’s gone look! My God!
Dieter: Hoo boy! I bet that tickled going in.
Previous: Episode 45 – All Lights Blazing
Next: Episode 47 – Cup of Tea and a Lie Down
Commissioned space battle images by Colourbrand
Screw Pile Developments 
BEAUTUFUL!!!! JUST BEAUTIFULL!!!!!
And, the big splat. Gonna need a lot of Windex for that one.
The details and the sheen on Chris’s Tets really came out phenomenally well.
Now… Calico, perhaps save the coffee for later while you’re not in the middle of battle, eh? 🙂
Calico not drink coffee? Yeah not gonna happen.
Poo. Can’t edit. I meant to say, save the coffee for later while you’re NOT in the middle of battle.”
I can loool.