Approx. 9,000 miles from Syar IV
"We have it!"
Timmy almost jumped at the suddenness of Jorgen's loud shout over the headset.
"Have what? The weakness?"
"Yes. We're sending the full schematics of the ship over to your main computers. You'll need to use your target scope to find the target you need to hit. Data transfer will take a couple of minutes."
"Aye, base. Standing by."
He signed out and returned his attention to the fighters. The squadrons had made it a competition between each of them to try to get more collective kills than the other two squadrons. Timmy had been especially impressed with Trixie: she had more skill than he did, and he played Crash Nebula all the time. Then he remembered. A year back when Wanda had turned him into a girl, he had discovered that Trixie was a tomboy of sorts. She hid her true nature under the disguise of her popularity, so much that a month after the event, Timmy had begun to wonder which identity was her true one. This answered his question.
He opened a private channel to her. The time for secrets was over.
"Red Six, that's some skill you have there. Where'd you learn to do that?"
He heard her hesitate. "Uh…I'm a natural?" She laughed nervously at that.
"Uh-huh. I doubt it. Listen Trixie, I'm gonna tell you something I was made to swear never to tell anyone. Do you know a Timantha?"
"I do, but I fail to see how—HEY! How do you know of Timantha?"
Timmy smiled. "C'mon, think. Use your head. Can you see what Timantha would look like as a boy?" A ship off to the side exploded in a shower of metal and sparks.
A gasp of realization was heard in the headset. "You…"
"Yea. Wanda made me a girl before your birthday party. I went shopping for your birthday since I could think like a girl. I found you at the mall and you know the rest of the story. Remind me to tell you the particulars after we win."
Another ship exploded.
"But…but…why didn't you tell everyone? I mean, all the mean things I did to you, you had every right to…" She trailed off as the rest of her words stuck in her throat.
"Trixie, I'm not heartless. When I make a promise of that much importance to someone, rest assured it will be kept, regardless of my gender. Give me some credit once in a while. We 'unpopulars' aren't all that bad."
She sniffed. Her next two words had tears in them, "I'm sorry…"
More than anything, Timmy wanted to hug her, comfort her, and tell her that it was alright. His attention was drawn away from that train of thought, however, when six enemy fighters in formation began to close in around him. He heard Trixie gasp over the headset.
"Hold on Timmy, I'm coming!"
Despite the situation, Timmy smiled. She had remembered his name. He was able to take out half of the fighters before they took out his weapons system. They would take a minute to regenerate, he knew. He could only run. He ran in the direction of Trixie's strike ship. She was able to destroy the other pursuing ships.
"Thank's, Trixie."
"No problem, Timmy."
He opened a channel to the rest of his squadron. The schematics of Magdir's ship were just coming in. Time to show Magdir who he messed with when he messed with them.
--
Jimmy was on the other side of Magdir's ship, fighting off three other fighter ships. He was smiling. This was better than a video game.
"Hey, N—White Leader, having fun over their?" It was Cindy.
"Indeed I am, White Two. I know this may be wrong to say, but this is fun!"
Cindy laughed. "I know what you mean. Thank goodness the fighters are only mindless robots."
"Actually, I think that they're highly sophisticated androids capable of intelligent thought. Either that or their under control of someone on the bigger ship.
"Well their obviously not sophisticated enough. YEE-HAA!"
Jimmy laughed at that. "You're obviously having way more fun than you can handle."
"HA, HA!" There was silence for a couple of seconds.
When Cindy began again, she changed the subject. "Who's winning the squadron competition? Is anyone keeping score?"
"I don't know. I haven't been keeping count. My guess would be the Red Squadron's winning. Have you seen how well Red Six handles herself? She's even better than Red Leader, and that's hard to do. I ought to know. Just this past June, Sheen, Carl, A.J., Chester and I went to his house for a massive sleepover, and he completely trumped us all in his Crash Nebula game."
"Wow, she sounds like some girl."
"Weh, she's not my type. Too snotty, at least from what I saw of her on my previous visits to his universe."
"And what type is your type, hmmm?"
Jimmy froze for an instant. He had gotten himself trapped, he realized.
"Uuh, well…" He stammered out, but (thankfully) he was interrupted by a beeping of his console. He looked down. The red light that indicated that data was being transferred was blinking. After it stopped, Jimmy opened a channel to his fighters.
"Ok, people, we have a weakness. Let's go."
--
Danny was chasing two enemy fighters, firing as he went, all the while thinking how much better they could do if they were inside the ship. He had just gotten the command to locate and destroy what was though by Home Base to be the weakness of Magdir's ship, a large weapon of unknown purpose. He destroyed the two fighters and ordered his squadron to follow him to the rendezvous point. When they got there, the other two squadrons were fighting off the many fighters that seemed to come out of nowhere.
"Hey Blue Leader, how's it going? You tired yet?"
Danny looked to the right. Sam was next to him, waving.
"Hey, Blue Two. In answer to the first question, not going too badly, actually. In answer to the second question, yes, I'm dead tired. If only we could stop these dratted fighters from coming out, we might have a chance at the weapons port."
"Well, you are a Ghost, aren't ya? Go intangible. Take the ship with you. It's big enough. You can tell Blue Three of Four to take over."
Danny paused. He had completely forgotten about that. Then he realized the implication of the other part of her statement.
"You're planning on coming with me, aren't you?"
She giggled. "Am I that obvious?" she asked innocently.
Danny smiled sheepishly.
"Ok, then. Attaching cable."
A long, back cable was launched from Danny's ship. It was almost touching Sam's ship when a barrage of fire from enemy ships destroyed the cable. Neither of them had any time to fire back. They only had enough time to activate their suits and hit the eject button.
Both ships exploded seconds later. Danny looked down, realizing how lucky he was. Then he remembered.
"SAM!"
He changed into ghost form and looked for Sam. He saw her floating, unconscious. Thankfully she had on her suit. The suit's medical system would take care of her. Danny flew over and grabbed her. He went intangible and flew into Magdir's ship, anger clearly visible on his face. Time to show Magdir just exactly with whom he was dealing with.
Oooo! Wonder what's coming next?