Chapter 46
The plan was brilliant - there was no way it could fail, Smasher gloated to himself.
Then he wondered if it really was gloating - after all, it wasn't his plan. He wasn't really smart and he knew it. He hadn't come up with the plan - Dragon had, and she was really really smart. That was why it was sure to work.
She had made a couple exact copies of the shuttlecraft the enemy battleship had left in orbit.
And she'd recorded all the transmissions the real shuttlecraft had made, so she could figure them out - break the codes or something, Smasher wasn't sure.
Then she could play back the parts she needed to, or make up new transmissions, or whatever, to convince the battleship people that her shuttles were the real ones.
She'd gotten rid of the real shuttlecraft by tricking them.
When the battleship left, she had sent signals - pretending as if she was the battleship - to the shuttlecraft saying if they got attacked, they should run to the moon and hide.
Then later, she'd attacked them, with a couple low-strength ground-based lasers.
They'd run like they had been told to.
So then Dragon had put her fake shuttlecraft in orbit, where the real ones had been, and waited.
Soon the battleship had returned, and then Dragon had waited until it got near, then she had attacked her own shuttles with the same low-strength lasers.
That was the signal, and Smasher had immediately told his pilot to fly the shuttlecraft towards the battleship as if fleeing danger, then land on it, just as the plan said.
Smasher's buddy, Bruiser, in command of the boarding party aboard the second shuttlecraft, had done the same, like he was supposed to.
And it was working!
Both of the fake shuttlecraft had made it all the way to the hangar and were in the final moments of landing inside the helicopter hangar on top of the battleship.
In his excitement, Smasher flexed his enormous muscles.
But, in the cramped shuttle - crammed full of 15 Brute type capes, each of them well-suited for boarding a ship and taking it despite any opposition - that motion shoved the man next to Smasher. That man, who called himself Mister Muscles, shoved back and they would have had a friendly fight if the shuttle doors had not opened just then.
While he'd been thinking, the two shuttles had landed in Agamemnon's helicopter hangar - with just a couple feet to spare on each side - and the hangar's outer door had closed.
Four stealthy DragonSuits, who had been clinging to the back of each shuttle - keeping the shuttles between them and the battleship, so they would not be seen prematurely - immediately jumped off and ran for the hatch leading further into the ship.
At the same time, the shuttles' doors sprang open and men poured out.
The boarding parties - 15 Brute capes each, with most of them having both super-strength and super-durability, so they could rip locked hatches off their hinges, take any lucky shots the defenders got and capture the ship anyway - rushed out of each shuttle into what their instruments had reported as being breathable air.
Two-thirds of them immediately lost consciousness. The rest felt nauseous, tired, and a kinda distracted or scatter-brained.
So the 30 Brutes faltered while the DragonSuits, unaffected, rushed on.
Quickly, the 8 stealthy DragonSuits reached the hatch, found it was not locked, and quickly swarmed through into a long narrow metal room with spare helicopter parts along one wall and a door at the far end - the start, they were sure, of a room-by-room fight to capture the battleship.
-0-0-0-
In Agamemnon's command center, Jason, commander of the night shift, touched a button and one portal closed, while another one opened.
Ron, at the Illusion Console, touched another button and the auditory illusion of a flushing toilet was heard.
He said, "And with that, we flush our troubles away - this latest set, at least - and at the same time capture two shuttles capable of getting themselves to orbit, plus, soon enough, 8 more DragonSuits!"
"Plus," reminded Jake, at the Main Console, "We remove 38 bad men from the general population."
"Here it comes," Said Jason.
He hit a button and screen 2 lit up, showing a view from outside of a metal shipping container in geosynchronous orbit above the Earth. The planet was visible in the lower right of the screen.
As the battleship's crew watched, the door on the shipping container was flung open and 8 DragonSuits rushed out, only to immediately begin floundering in the unexpected environment, especially the zero gravities.
"I'll bet they didn't expect that!" Jake said.
"Too bad we can't see the expressions on their faces through those opaque helmets," Ron mused. "Still, they look comical enough floundering around like that in zero-g." He turned to Jason, "You were right - they were in such a hurry to board the ship that they never noticed the portal right there at the first hatch - they went right through into the disguised shipping container."
Jason laughed, "Yep. and look, a couple of them have remembered they have rocket packs on those DragonSuits. They're getting back into the container. Any bets they bust a hole in the other side, looking for the hatch they originally came through?"
The Old Codgers, as a general rule, could never resist betting on such things.
Money changed hands a moment later when a hole opened in the opposite end of the shipping container and the torso of a DragonSuit poked out and looked around.
"It's time - now before they do anything really stupid or desperate," Jason said.
Jesse, at the Replicator Console, used it to dismiss the spare helicopter parts, and the extra sheets of metal they'd made to line the container's normally corrugated walls. Those sheets had made the container look more like a battleship's interior, but had also hidden a message painted on the walls.
That message, now revealed, informed the men in the DragonSuits of their situation - 23,000 miles above the Earth, with no safe way to descend and nowhere else to go. Their rocket packs were wholly inadequate for a safe landing. They had no more air than was in their suits and in the container. When that ran out they were doomed.
The message further instructed them that, once they accepted the fact that they were doomed, they could surrender by removing their DragonSuits, leaving them at one end of the container, and waiting at the opposite end.
While the captives were reading the message, a repair robot was sent, by portal, to repair the new hole in the shipping container, so it would be airtight again.
Before beginning, it pushed two oxygen cylinders in through the hole.
The DragonSuits saw that, and rushed the hole, but it was repaired before they got there.
The quicker thinkers among them prevented their more rash fellows from punching a new hole to go get the robot. Instead they flew out the door at the other end, to circle around and get the robot, but it was long gone, having been dismissed when it's job was done.
Eventually, after some fruitless flitting about and scouting around, the DragonSuits all went inside the shipping container, closed the front door, and started arguing among themselves.
"Ron," asked Jake, "Sometime you have to show me how you do that trick with the teleportation portals where you change orientations. Making the portal from the hatch to the shipping container was easy - both the portal entrance and the portal exit were oriented vertically. I get vertical. But I need to know how you did the other one - a horizontal portal along the whole floor of the helicopter hangar leading to a horizontal portal just above Madagascar in Dimension 211. Maybe after I understand that, I can understand the more complicated stuff, like having the entrance be vertical and the exit be horizontal."
"No problem," Ron said, "But that reminds me...how are our new playmates doing?" He checked his console, made a couple settings, and screen 3 lit up.
It showed a scene with a bunch of repair robots standing along the shore of a lake next to a tropical rain-forest.
Most of the repair robots were using their telekinesis to hold 30 Brute capes aloft - one per robot.
Some more robots, in groups of 5, were using their telekinesis in cooperation to hoist two shuttlecraft back up through the portal into Agamemnon's helicopter hangar.
And the last few were using their telekinesis to soft-land some crates of food and supplies which had also fallen through the portal and were going to be left for the new exiles, to help them survive and get started farming.
The 30 Brutes had been examined with the appropriate consoles and had been judged to be bad enough to be banished, but not bad enough to be executed.
Once they surrendered, the 8 men who'd come in DragonSuits would be joining the 30 Brutes in exile, though at some distance from the Brutes.
The cleanup didn't take long - as soon as the two shuttles were lifted back up into the hangar, the portal below them was dismissed.
Then,a moment later, once all the crates of supplies were down on the ground, the other repair robots lowered the 30 Brutes to within a foot of ground level - high enough to remain helpless, but low enough that falling the rest of the way would not hurt them.
Then all the robots were dismissed, and all the Brutes fell that last 12 inches to the ground and began their banishment in their new home: Madagascar in Dimension 211.
The 2 shuttles immediately got scanned into the Replicator. In the morning, when Boz and Abe were up, they'd do test flights of Replicated shuttles to see what they could do.
About that time, the men in the DragonSuits, gave up, opened the oxygen containers to fill their shipping container with breathable air, then removed the DragonSuits and went to the other end of the container to wait.
They immediately got banished through another portal.
Then the suits were collected, brought back, and scanned into the Replicator.
After a few minutes, they opened a portal in the sky 100 feet above the newly banished men. Through the portal, they dropped several copies of a note, which offered to give the men food, tools, seeds, and instruction manuals, if the men would in turn hand over the passwords and codes to control the suits and shuttlecraft.
Each note had a pencil and a clipboard with it, and any of the newly exiled men who agreed were to write the desired information on the backs of their notes, then hold them up to the sky so they could be seen.
After a short delay, one man did so.
Then, figuring there was no point resisting, now that the information was already released, the rest followed suit, writing what information they knew on their notes and holding them up.
All their notes were recorded photographically from the portal.
Then more crates of supplies were dropped to them, after which the portal closed again.
The night shift used the Replicator to make copies of the DragonSuits and shuttlecraft - which were apparently called DragonCraft - then used those to try the passwords and codes to make sure they worked.
They did, and there followed a successful effort to get instruction manuals and schematics - included to make repairs easier and because storage space was cheap and plentiful - from their built-in computers.
Then they went back to sweeping orbit clear of debris, emplacing satellites, and scanning for bad guys to zap from orbit.
Doing so had proven to be very handy in also noticing the approach of bad guys trying to trick you and get close enough to try capturing your ship.
A couple of them started preparing for the next day's planned activities, by scanning Colombia and Venezuela with the Detect Chemicals Console, looking for drugs - particularly cocaine - and gunpowder. Places where they found significant amounts of both, were likely part of the drug-dealing network, and so got scanned more carefully, and mapped for later attention.
They also called back the two real shuttlecraft from where they'd 'hidden' near the moon to play along with the enemy and draw them in.
These would resume Earth orbit and continue helping to zap bad guys.
Ron had decided to combine two activities - both clearing orbit and emplacing satellites.
He collected sand from The Simurgh's remains, and got it shaped into rock casings around most of each satellite - the parts that could be covered up without problems, that is. He left the solar panels, radio antennae and such things free. But the rest of the satellites were made to look, to the best of Ron's ability, like they had come from The Flintstones' cartoon.
He used teleport portals to collect some logs and twigs from Earth, to use as decorations in making the effect even more 'Flintstoney'. He put some effort into it, and even made some fake antennae from a series of small rocks on sticks, strung together like Tinker Toys.
Ron thought it was refreshingly silly, and argued that the rock would help protect the satellites by acting as armor.
In the course of zapping bad guys, they noticed a large mixed group of them gathered near Wichita. Several really bad guys were talking to a gathering of mostly not-very-bad-guys mixed with some pretty-bad-guys.
The really bad ones were working on brainwashing the rest and stirring them up to riot.
They had multiple motivational banners around the crowd, proclaiming that they, The Fallen, would triumph.
After using orbital lasers to remove the worst bad guys, the rest, surprisingly, kept at it, just with replacement speakers.
The night shift zapped the ones that deserved that, then discussed what to do.
After some discussion, they sent missiles down to airburst above the crowd and hit the lot of them with Reset.
At the same time, they sent more missiles to make a smoke screen covering the whole crowd, and they scheduled more smoke to arrive at intervals, to maintain the smoke screen for a while.
They hoped that many in the crowd would, after getting Reset and therefore becoming well-adjusted mentally again, would throw off any brainwashing or coercion, and would use the cover of the smoke screens to leave the area and get free.
Then, having done what they could for that group, Agamemnon, worked on orbital cleanup until that was done. While they were at it, they finished emplacing the requested weather and communications satellites, as well as a set of global positioning satellites.
Then for the rest of the night, they continued zapping bad guys from orbit, and mapping out all the drug-dealer locations they could find in Colombia and Venezuela.
-0-0-0-
Boz got up early, excited to finally collect the rest of the food they'd ordered and then feel able to leave this crazy planet, after taking care of just a couple things they'd committed to, like helping Lisa capture a shipyard in Venezuela.
When he heard the report from the night shift, he was excited for other reasons too, and immediately got busy having his Duplicates reading manuals, and examining, as well as test driving, Replicas of the captured shuttlecraft - aka DragonCraft.
He spent an hour at it, until Abe got up and joined him.
Abe was always interested in new things he could pilot.
And Boz knew Abe would check things out thoroughly, which was good because Boz, having gotten a fairly good, though incomplete, idea about the DragonCraft, was ready to go land in Brockton Bay and get their food.
What he'd learned about the DragonCraft both pleased and disappointed him.
They were nowhere near as capable as the shuttlecraft Boz already had.
These DragonCraft used a gravity drive that could achieve a range of speeds similar to the rockets used to put up satellites. So it was useful for getting around the solar system, but too slow for anything beyond that, really. And the gravity drive's effect had a limited ability to be moved and shaped, so it could act like a rudimentary tractor beam when not propelling the craft.
His existing shuttlecraft had telekinesis which was far more capable generally.
But, on the other hand, the gravity drives could be built and maintained by both Mars Colony and Lisa's organization, giving each access to space that they hadn't had before - not when Boz and his shuttlecraft were not around.
With one of the DragonCraft, Lisa could easily crew and resupply her moon base, which she'd left empty for now, because she'd lacked that capability.
And Mars Colony, with the other DragonCraft, could start using their new space stations.
Boz would mull that over before taking action, in case any better ideas came. But he was pretty sure that's what he'd do - give a DragonCraft each to Lisa and to Mars Colony, along with their schematics and manuals..
The thought made this a good day already.
It didn't stay that way for long.
"Why did you assume I meant the morning, when I said the food would arrive today?" Lisa asked, when he called her.
"Wishful thinking, I guess," he sighed.
"Cheer up, then. There is good news Boz Honey. Dragon let me know that figuring out the steam engine we gave her was easy. There really was only one tricky part: the super-cold element in the condenser. She said she has it all figured out, but is testing to make sure. She'll have schematics for me by noon and a mass-production-quality working example by 2pm, which, by the way, is when your trainload of food is due."
"Nice," he allowed. "but 'due at 2' and 'will actually arrive at 2' are two very different things sometimes. Is the food shipment actually on schedule?"
"Yes, Boz dear," Lisa cheered, "I've been keeping track of that, and even nudged things a few times to keep it on schedule. You may now thank me for 'going the extra mile' for you."
"How about I give you a moon base in token of my appreciation." he asked.
"No fair - you already gave me that," she retorted.
"Yes, but not your own way to access it. And without that it wasn't nearly as useful. I have a DragonCraft shuttle to give you, with manuals and schematics. It can take your folks to and from the moon base with ease. And as you know I already put a Landkreuser Monster there, to defend it and provide any Thor Strikes you may need."
"Oh Boz my love, you make me positively swoon with rapture." Lisa snarked. "But proper appreciation of it will have to wait a little, since this morning we need to go take a certain Venezuelan shipyard. Negotiations went long but finally completed last night. I'd ask if you are ready, but I can hear in the way you caught your breath that you are excited to tell me something about that, so I infer that you are very well prepared, instead of merely ready."
"Indeed," he replied, "The guys on duty last night did more than just keep watch to keep the ship safe. They scanned all of Colombia, where Emil Vargas is based, and Venezuela, where his Los Santos shipyard is, for drugs and guns and mapped out what they found: farms, drug dens, distribution points, and what, in the military, would be called outposts and bases. One of the guys spent time as a military tactical officer, and came up with an interesting plan of attack I want to show you."
"Excellent! I have some ideas too. My folks are gathering now. We'll be ready for pickup in 15 minutes." Lisa replied.
"OK, we'll be ready. I'm just going to pop back to my dimension really quick to drop off something for them." Boz said.
"Ooh, while you're out, there's something you could pick up for me," Lisa cooed.
"What's that?" Boz asked.
"Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia," Lisa chuckled. Then, when she didn't get the right reaction, said, "You haven't seen that movie? Too bad. So much for jokes. But it is something like that - I want you to kill an evil cape named Nilbog. He lives in the walled-off city of Ellisburg, New York. He's a lunatic that can turn anything biological into anything else biological, and he's used that power to make horrible monsters out of everybody in that town. He's got them all biologically programmed to be his faithful and fanatical servants. In effect, he is super-contagious and deadly, and that's why the PRT walled him off, and his city too. In fights before being walled off, Nilbog even used dead followers as a sort of transplant donor to his other followers, effectively recycling their flesh, then making new followers by having existing ones split like amoebas. So the PRT have no idea how to stop him. I don't need threats like that lying around. Can you take care of him for me?"
"Sure, just get me the details." Boz agreed.
She did.
They ended the call.
And Agamemnon then did a quick trip through Dimension 439 to Mars Colony, to drop off their new DragonCraft shuttle and explain it.
While they were there. they also collected some more spare parts - the completed ones from what they had ordered on their last trip - to help with the ongoing repairs.
Then they came right back to Dimension 29 and settled into orbit above Ellisburg, New York.
They used various sensors - especially the Detect Mind Console - to map out where everything was.
The Detect Chemicals Console, assisted by the Determine Destiny Console, got lucky in finding a particular molecule shared by all the monsters, but not found in plants, animals, or people outside of Ellisburg.
That would help them be certain of their targets.
They noted that there were no plants, animals, or people - not what anybody could really call people anyway - inside Ellisburg: just monsters. Everything biological has apparently been assimilated into those monsters.
There were all sorts of misshapen and grotesque monsters in that town - all lying out in the morning sun as if the town were a beach.
On reflection, that made sense. With the town walled-off and the PRT preventing anything from getting in or out, they'd have long since run out of food. So Nilbog had clearly modified them to get sustenance the same way plants did - from air, dirt, water and sunlight. Otherwise they'd have starved to death.
But, with all the monsters all outside soaking up sunlight, that made things easier for Agamemnon's crew. They need not flatten any structures, nor send robots from house to house. All they needed was a good bombardment.
Soon enough, they were ready. Then missiles were launched, and shells fired.
All were cluster-bomb types of munitions. And all contained Bakuda bombs of the type they called glass bombs, which turned all living matter nearby into glass.
They figured that, even though Nilbog could re-use flesh torn by explosions and shrapnel, he couldn't do so if it turned into glass.
Other options had been to burn it all with incendiaries, or just disintegrate it. But they judged the glass bombs to be cleaner and more thorough - they'd affect even small scraps of flesh which might escape the other methods.
They planned the bombardment pattern lavishly, with enough glass bomb submunitions to cover every inch of the city twice, just to be sure.
And, as the bomblets hit and went off all over town, they watched the detection consoles to make sure nothing was missed.
It appeared that the bombardment had gotten everything.
Then they ran that same bombardment again, to be even more sure.
And they broadened the search for the same reason. This broadened search found one mind remained alive. It was hiding 100 feet under ground, in a bunker. And it was full of affinity for hurting others, hostile intent, and hate.
They thought about using railguns to shoot down through the soil and rock and take out that last mind. It would work, though it may take 2 or 3 shots in the same place to dig that far, depending on how much rock there was. But that would also scatter the flesh of the target, once it got hit. And, with this particular enemy, any remaining flesh could be considered dangerous - like bioweapons waiting to trigger.
So instead they opened a portal from the ship, to a spot a hundred feet above Ellisburg. Through it, they sent a dozen combat robots, which used their rocket-packs to descend that last hundred feet safely.
Once on the ground, the combat robots lined up in a semicircle, facing a point where a new portal formed. That new portal's entrance - just one foot wide and tall - stayed in front of the combat robots, while it's exit lowered into the ground at a steady pace.
Down and down it went, through dirt, then rock, then concrete, at last emerging into a bunker with a single inhabitant.
That inhabitant was looking the other way, by design - he'd been watched on the ship's visual scanners, so they'd known he was focused on a lump of flesh on a table before him, which is why they'd lowered the portal exit where they had, so it would come in behind him.
The moment the portal's exit was in place, all 12 combat robots fired grenades through the portal into the bunker, with the portal being dismissed immediately afterwards.
All the grenades were glass bombs. Some were fused to go off on contact, while others had timer detonators, set to different times so they'd have a chance to bounce around the room randomly before detonating.
The results were satisfactory. Every biological molecule in that bunker turned to glass.
They then re-opened that last portal, though this time, with entrance and exit big enough for a combat robot to go through. Two robots did go through and hauled out the new glass statue of Nilbog.
They set it up in town, next to a line of all the other glass statues, which the robots went around collecting, while making sure nothing had escaped the bombardment.
By the time they were done and got dismissed, Agamemnon was long gone, having gone off to the appointment with Lisa and her forces.