CHAPTER 9 – BATTLE FOR NORDLAND
11:32 (Universal Time)
Monday, October 14, 2335
Bridge of the A.M.S. NOSTROMO
Emerging inside the TOI 700 System, between the orbits of the third and fourth planet.
‘’Jump completed, Tina. Comet TOI 77399 is slightly to our port side, 1,800 kilometers away.’’
‘’Nice precision jump, Dana! Frida, get us quickly behind that comet, so that it could mask us from the Space Predator fleet stationed around Nordland. Renée, be prepared to launch three stealth reconnaissance probes and position them just around the edges of that comet and of its tail, so that they could watch in passive mode Nordland and report to us via tight directional maser beams.’’
‘’Preparing and programming those probes now, Tina. I will launch them as soon as we will be hidden behind the comet.’’
‘’Excellent!’’ said Tina before looking down towards the second lower platform, where Janet Robeson was sitting at an otherwise unused work station and following the events closely. Tina had asked her to be in charge of receiving and assisting as much as possible any survivor or refugee from Nordland that could possibly be saved during their mission. To her credit, the ageing retired politician had immediately accepted that responsibility.
‘’Janet, do not hesitate to ask for the assistance and help from the relatives of our crewmembers: any survivor or refugee we will be able to extract from Nordland will most probably be traumatized and in deep psychological distress.’’
‘’I realize that, Tina. I already talked with the spouses and older children of our crewmembers and they are ready to do anything they can to help.’’
‘’Good! Please thank them on my behalf for that.’’
‘’I will, Tina.’’
Next, Tina looked at Dana Durning, sitting next to her in her navigator’s seat.
‘’How long before the orbit of this comet gets to its nearest point with Nordland, Dana?’’
‘’It will take another seven hours and ten minutes, at which point we will be at a distance of approximately 320,000 kilometers from Nordland.’’
‘’Good enough to allow us to give a nice surprise to these monsters and engage their outer screen. Hopefully, the radar-absorbing stealth black paint we spread over our hull three years ago will still be effective.’’
‘’Do you think that our Navy will show up before that, Tina?’’
‘’I don’t think so, not because I believe the Admiralty to be unable to react faster but because of the need to assemble enough warships to have any chance to win a fight with such a huge Space Predator fleet. Unfortunately, we are still rebuilding our battle fleet and the number of major warships in our Navy is still quite pitiful. I wish that the nations of Earth could have got off their buns during the last decade and built some viable combat fleet of their own that could help us now.’’
‘’Well, don’t expect much from them, Tina, except maybe a lot of navel-gazing.’’
Many around the bridge smirked at that bitter comment from Dana: Earth had been basically little but a dead weight in Space for twenty years, despite having by far a much larger population than that of the whole Spacers’ League. The only meaningful contribution to the Spacers’ League from Earth was actually the steady flow of Earth emigrants moving to Space and joining the Spacers’ League as new citizens every year. Even twenty years after the Spacers’ League had gained its political and military independence from Earth as a result of the historic Jovian Uprising of 2315, anti-Spacer sentiments and racism still endured among a sizeable minority of Earth’s citizenry.
17:44 (Universal Time)
Bridge of the A.M.S. NOSTROMO
Hiding behind Comet TOI-77399, approaching orbit of Nordland
‘’Heads up, Tina! A long-range radar pulse emitted from beyond the orbit of the third planet has just swept in, painting the Space Predator ships around Nordland. I classify it as a Navy frigate radar signal.’’
‘’The Admiralty probably sent an advanced scout to gather firm information about what exactly is around Nordland before sending in its warships.’’ said Tina, in reply to Renée d’Argenteuil’s warning. ‘’Let’s see how those Space Predators will react to this. But first, let’s go to battle stations.’’
Tina then opened a safety cover on her command chair’s console and pushed the red button inside the recess, starting an ominous pulsing horn blare all around the ship.
‘’TO ALL: BATTLE STATIONS! BATTLE STATIONS!’’
Next, she looked at Renée d’Argenteuil, her weapons officer.
‘’Deploy all our disintegrator cannons! Set them on ‘matter converter mode’. Start spinning the flywheel capacitors for our laser batteries.’’
‘’Deploying all batteries. Matter converter mode selected. Charging our laser batteries’ capacitors.’’ replied the tall and lean mature woman. Renée did feel her heart jump in her chest as she selected the ‘matter converter mode’ for their disintegrator cannons. That energy mode, invented by the late Doctor Koomak, basically transformed already extremely powerful weapons into doomsday weapons of terrifying power. Yet, the modifications added to their existing disintegrator cannons were both simple and a stroke of genius on the part of Doctor Koomak. Essentially, special devices had been added to the muzzles of their disintegrators, devices which used the same physics principle used for centuries by the Koorivars to easily and cheaply produce anti-matter that could then be used to power rocket engines. That same principle had then been used by Tina Forster to produce light missile warheads with explosive power in the multi-megaton range. Now, Koorivar anti-matter converter devices attached to the muzzles of the NOSTROMO’s disintegrator cannons would, when selected and activated, transform the disintegrator beams, which normally broke apart the molecular bonds in the objects or medium they hit, into matter conversion beams. Such matter conversion beams would then react on impact with the molecular structure of the target object, converting large masses of it on their outer surfaces into anti-matter. That newly formed mass of anti-matter would then react violently with the surrounding matter still in its normal state, resulting in a matter/anti-matter explosion that could represent hundreds or even thousands of megatons of pure energy blast, depending on the initial power of the weapon’s beam. However, such terrifying power needed to be used very cautiously. If, for example, a matter conversion beam directed at a Space Predator ship missed its target and went on in penetrating Nordland’s atmosphere, the NOSTROMO could then unwittingly cause some catastrophic damage to the planet it was trying to save. Right now, nobody but Tina and her senior officers knew about the new capacity of the NOSTROMO’s disintegrators, not even the Spacers’ League’s Admiralty. This was going to be their first ever use in combat and they gave Tina hope to win an otherwise nearly suicidal fight. However, this was not the sole nasty surprise Tina had reserved for the Space Predators. Young Roshana Golshan, continuing the work started by the late Doctor Koomak on captured enemy transporter technology, had succeeded recently in adapting that technology to Human use. Tina, still without the knowledge of Spacers’ League authorities, had then produced in-house a number of transporter craft and transporter projectors which would now enable her to beam down directly to the surface of Nordland groups of security androids. The battle to come thus promised to be epic.
As Tina had expected, the Space Predators reacted to the arrival of the Navy frigate in the system by sending some of their warships to intercept and destroy that frigate. However, the number of warships that accelerated away from Nordland surprised her.
‘’They are sending fifteen of their warships just to intercept that lone frigate? That’s gross overkill!’’
‘’Maybe they intend to form a barrier well away from Nordland, in anticipation of the arrival of a complete Navy fleet.’’ proposed Dana Durning, making Tina nod her head.
‘’A most logical guess, Dana. This will give us an opportunity to exploit that move by those monsters.
As her bridge crew was tracking the departing Space Predator warships while keeping tabs on the remaining enemy ships still in orbit around Nordland, Tina called up her husband Michel, who was waiting in the hangar deck complex with 600 of their security androids ready to beam down in their assault craft.
‘’Michel, be advised that we are about to engage the enemy fleet. We will first destroy a couple of enemy transport ships, then I will give you the signal to beam down to the surface of Nordland. The initial objective of our troops is still as discussed earlier on: the government administrative complex in the capital, New Oslo City. Our androids will first clear that complex of the Predators in and around it, then will expand out in search for the citizens who can still be rescued. If you find survivors, bring them to a secure location in the city and do not send them back to the NOSTROMO yet: I just don’t have any firm idea of where I will be during the next couple of hours.’’
What she didn’t say then was that she wasn’t even sure that she and the NOSTROMO would still exist in a couple of hours. Somehow, Michel understood that as well and replied in a most sober tone.
‘’We will all do the best we can against those monsters, Tina. With luck, the gods of war will smile on us.’’
‘’What do you mean, with luck? You already have Thor, Odin and Athena with you! Just ask them to say ‘cheese’ to you.’’
Michel briefly laughed at her mention of three of their security androids, which had been built to look like their namesakes.
‘’I will, Tina. We will give hell to those monsters on the surface.’’
‘’And we will kick ass here in orbit. Good luck to you all.’’
‘’And good luck to you and the rest of our crew.’’
Michel then cut the link, leaving Tina to stare at her communications display screen with a big heart. She fully expected to lose some of her people in battle today, with her counting her security androids as people. Maybe they were all going to die today but if that happened, she was going to make sure that lots of Space Predators would also die first.
‘’The Navy frigate just jumped out of the system, Tina. The fifteen Predator warships are now deploying beyond the orbit of the third planet and forming an interdiction barrier.’’
Tina nodded once and smiled to Dana Durning.
‘’You guessed right, Dana. Time for us to use that opportunity to the utmost. Let’s do a micro-jump and reappear behind and below that small Predator support ship bringing the rear of the enemy fleet. Then we will start blasting our way through the enemy transport ships.’’
Dana nearly replied that this ‘small’ Predator support ship was actually an egg-shaped converted M-Class asteroid with an approximate diameter of five kilometers, with three times the volume of the NOSTROMO, but kept her mouth shut and quickly calculated a micro-jump.
‘’Micro-jump calculated and ready to engage, Tina.’’
‘’Good! TO ALL THE CREW, HOLD ON TO YOUR PANTS: WE ARE JUMPING INTO COMBAT NOW. DANA, ENGAGE!’’
‘’Jumping now!’’
Leaving its hiding place behind the comet it had been using for nearly seven hours, the NOSTROMO briefly disappeared from normal Space, then reappeared in a flash of orange light some 2,000 kilometers behind and slightly the tail-end Space Predator ship. As soon as she saw that the enemy ship was visible ahead, Tina shouted an order.
‘’MAIN BATTERIES, FIRE AT WILL!’’
All four of the NOSTROMO’s ultra-heavy disintegrator cannons fired as one, targeting the converted asteroid and hitting it squarely at once. The normally electric blue beams of the disintegrators however showed up as fiery red beams of energy as they cut through Space. The result was immediate and cataclysmic: the five-kilometer-wide Predator ship disappeared in a titanic explosion and eye-searing flash of energy. Hit from slightly below its orbital path, that explosion projected the few pieces of ship that survived away from the planet, like the pellets from a shotgun pattern, thus preventing grievous damage to Nordland if those debris would have fallen from orbit and entered the planet’s atmosphere. Even Tina was shocked by the power just demonstrated by her modified weapons but she quickly regained her footing and shouted more orders.
‘’STAY UNDER THE ORBIT OF THE ENEMY FLEET AND RACE DOWN THEIR LINE WHILE KEEPING OUR BOW SHIELD POINTED AT THE ENEMY. ENGAGE THE ENEMY SHIPS AS THEY FILE PAST US, ONE MAIN CANNON PER TARGET. WE WANT TO DESTROY THOSE ASSHOLES AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.’’
Having already discussed together their battle tactics while still hiding behind Comet TOI-77399, her bridge crew went at it with well-practiced battle efficiency, firing continuously their main disintegrator battery at enemy ship after enemy ship. The Predator support ships, being much less heavily armed than the Predator warships, did fire their laser batteries at the NOSTROMO as it sped past under them but their lasers were much less powerful than those of the warships and also in much fewer numbers. The few laser beams which struck the thick bow shield of the NOSTROMO, which was rotating around its centerline axis in order to prevent enemy laser beams from digging deep in one spot, were not able to penetrate that bow shield, digging only a few shallow furrows in it. In contrast, each Predator ship struck by a red beam from the NOSTROMO was immediately and utterly destroyed, vaporized in explosions in the gigaton-range. With the NOSTROMO passing under the transport ships, the Predator warships escorting them, being in higher orbit in order to screen them from attacks from Space, had difficulty in targeting it. The secondary disintegrator batteries of the NOSTROMO, which had also been modified, then took over the firing on the enemy transport ships, allowing the main batteries of the NOSTROMO to shift their attention to the enemy escort warships. This time, with those warships being much further from the planet, Tina’s crew did not need to be as choosy about the angle of fire of their cannons and started blasting away Predator warship after Predator warship. Seeing that a nearby Predator transport ship had been gutted by a secondary cannon hit but not completely destroyed, Tina placed a marker on its silhouette shown on the holographic sphere of her bridge complex.
‘’FRIDA, QUICKLY FLY TO THAT PREDATOR SHIP CARCASS AND USE IT TO SHIELD US. WE WILL CONTINUE FIRING FROM BEHIND THAT ASTEROID SHELL.’’
‘’ON IT!’’
Pushing their main directed gravity propulsion system to maximum power and piloting the NOSTROMO with virtuoso, Frida Skarsgard managed to put their ship behind the destroyed enemy ship in less that five seconds. However, she couldn’t help making the NOSTROMO bounce against the asteroid carcass with an impact speed of a few meters per second, making the whole ship vibrate like a bell.
‘’Oops! Sorry about that!’’
‘’Don’t worry about it, Frida: we will fill the accident report later.’’ quipped Tina, making more than a few laughs or smile despite the tension of the moment. Tina then spoke in her intercom, contacting her husband, Michel.
‘’WE’RE IN THE THICK OF IT NOW, MICHEL. START BEAMING OUR TROOPS DOWN!’’
‘’Beaming our first troops down now!’’ was his terse reply. Being already aboard one of the four assault craft in position on the four transporter pads installed in the hangar complex, he gave a thumbs up signal to Roshana Golshan, who was posted at the control station of her transporter system.
‘’BEAM US DOWN, ROSHANA!’’
Roshana, excited as much as she had ever been in her life, forced herself into operating her controls with calm and efficiency and powered the pads. Her heart pinched as the four first craft vanished from their platforms: Paul Messer was part of the first batch of security androids to beam down. She however quickly focused back on her present task as four more assault craft moved to take place on the now empty transporter pads.
18:22 (Universal Time)
Downtown New Oslo City, planet Nordland
The four assault craft rematerialized some 200 meters above the main government administrative building in New Oslo City, one of the few population centers in Nordland and by far the largest one, with over half a million inhabitants. As soon as they reappeared, their pilots immediately started diving towards the large, flat rooftop of the building, their main objective, while the door gunners manning heavy portable disintegrator rifles mounted on pintle mounts anxiously scanned the rooftops of the buildings around them. Two of the gunners spotted Space Predators apparently posted as sentries on the roof of the main building and fired at them, vaporizing them before they could react to the craft. A few more distant Predator sentries did fire back at the craft, with a couple of laser beams hitting their targets. However, the relatively low power laser beams caused little damage to the armored craft, prompting a short exchange between two gunners.
‘’Those assholes finally understood that you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.’’
‘’Yeah, but they brought pop-guns to this fight.’’
Michel Koniev smiled at that exchange but quickly concentrated back on his target: the rooftop of the main administrative building, now free of Predator soldiers. He then gave quick instructions to Jehanne de Domrémy, the leader of the First Century, whose unit of 104 security androids was embarked in the first wave of assault craft.
‘’Split your century as discussed previously: four squads will fly down to the ground level and secure the entrances of the building, while four more squads will enter through the windows of the second and third floor. The rest will follow us down from the rooftop.’’
‘’Understood!’’ replied Jehanne in a calm voice before relaying those instructions via radio to her androids. Mere seconds later, the four assault craft landed on the flat rooftop and Michel and the androids ran out of them at once, deploying and dispersing in order not to offer a concentrated target to the enemy. As soon as they were empty, the assault craft took off and started patrolling the skies at low altitude, firing at any Predator they could see. As eighty androids flew down from the roof, using their gravity drive systems implanted inside their cybernetic bodies, Michel, Jehanne and the remaining 23 androids of the First Century broke into the roof access hut of the building and rushed down the emergency fire staircase. A squad of ten androids then split up from the group at the first level they got to, tasked to search for, find and kill any Space Predator found in the building. Hopefully, they would be able to find some Human prisoners held in the building but Michel had no realistic expectations about that: after nearly two days of Predator occupation, the chance of finding survivors here was very low indeed.
Few Predators were encountered in the building at first and were promptly killed but that changed when Michel burst into the main hallway of the second floor. He was nearly immediately greeted by hastily aimed laser rifle beams from three Predators posted near the double doors of what Michel knew from blueprints was the entrance to the main civic town hall room. Quickly retreating back into the emergency stairwell, he grabbed from a cargo pocket of his tactical vest a large grenade and primed it before shouting a warning to the androids following him.
‘’FLASHBANG GRENADE! WE WILL RUSH IN AS SOON AS IT EXPLODES.’’
He then quickly half-opened the door of the stairwell and threw his grenade towards the three Predator soldiers. When the grenade exploded, it did so with a lot more energy than what policemen from the Twentieth Century would have expected from their own models of flashbang grenades, Michel’s model being optimized for military assault work. The grenade blew in an extremely intense flash of light akin to looking straight at a cinema floodlight, while the detonation proved truly deafening. The Space Predators, originating from a world that had been illuminated by a red dwarf star providing low luminosity and knowing nothing of Human assault techniques and weapons, were completely blinded and deafened for many seconds, allowing Michel and his androids to rush out of the stairwell and charge them, firing their disintegrator rifles from the hip. All three Predator soldiers were promptly killed, with Michel and his androids then briefly stopping near the door, hugging the walls. A couple of laser beams did burn through the wooden double doors but they only showed to Michel that they were of low power indeed, something that didn’t surprise him. To have any appreciable destructive power, a laser weapon needed a lot of electrical energy, upward from a few kilowatts at the least, thus making them bulky and heavy for man-portable use. The Space Predators, whose ship weapons were nearly exclusively very high-powered lasers, had apparently developed a type of portable laser rifle but the half-incinerated bodies of the three soldiers they had just killed showed Michel that those rifles still necessitated to be connected to a heavy and bulky power backpack. A quick look at one such backpack told Michel much about its working principle: it most probably used a Pavlov generator, a device that used the energy from a small chemical explosion to power a dynamo and produce a short burst of energy. Looking at Jehanne, posted along the wall near him, he again gave her a short set of instructions.
‘’Have three androids prepare flashbang grenades. I will open wide that door and they will then throw their grenades in three different directions, as far as they can inside this room. We will rush in as soon as they will have exploded.’’
‘’Got it! NORMA, GENGIS, KUMAIL: PREPARE AND PRIME EACH ONE FLASHBANG. YOU WILL THEN THROW THEM INSIDE IN A WIDE ARC AS SOON AS MICHEL THROWS THE DOORS OPEN.’’
That attracted more laser beams piercing the said doors but, thankfully, the walls were thick/solid enough to prevent laser beams from going through, thus providing good protection to the androids. Preparing himself mentally, Michel got close to the double door, then kicked one door open and held it open with his body for a second while crouching, time for the three androids to throw in their grenades over his head, while sweeping disintegrator rifle fire inside the town hall room. He then retreated back in the hallway, just in time to barely avoid a purple laser beam. Another second and the three grenades burst, attracting a concert of swearing from the Predators in the room. Michel then rushed in, firing from the hip, followed by Jehanne and ten other androids. While he managed to hit and kill one Predator with his rifle firing, the firing from the androids proved devastating. Helped by their electronic fire control system and direct fiber optics cable connections between the aiming devices attached to their rifles and the heads-up displays integrated in their helmet visors, each of their disintegrator bursts hit a Predator, vaporizing him or incinerating part of their body. The 23 Predators that had been present in the large room were killed within a few seconds as they were still trying to recover from the blinding flashes from the flashbang grenades. As Jehanne made her androids fan out to search for any surviving Predator, Michel was able to look around at the town hall room and see in detail what was inside. He grinned on seeing that his unit had just captured what seemed to be some kind of command post, with a number of portable computer stations and radios set up on tables. Just at that moment, he heard a radio message coming in through the headset integrated to this helmet.
‘’Alpha Group, this is Bravo Group: we are now arriving, along with heavy fighter support. We will concentrate on the city’s police station and its surrounding area, over.’’
‘’Alpha Group acknowledged! We are doing well in the main administrative building. Have our fighters concentrate on finding and destroying any Predator vehicle or craft to be found in the city.’’
‘’Understood! Bravo Group out!’’
Michel then allowed himself a couple of seconds to relax a bit and lower the flow of adrenaline through his veins, while also fervently hoping that Tina and the NOSTROMO were still alright.
18:40 (Universal Time)
Bridge of the A.M.S. NOSTROMO
In low orbit over Nordland
‘’GRAZING BLOW BY A LASER BEAM ACROSS OUR NORTHWEST CARGO BAY DOORS! THE DOORS HAVE BEEN PIERCED BUT THERE IS NO SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE TO THE SHIP.’’
‘’CONTINUE FIRING AT THOSE WARSHIPS! THEY ARE NOW DOWN TO ONLY THREE. CONCENTRATE ALL OF OUR BATTERIES ON THEM.’’
Tina, close to hyperventilating from the stress of long minutes of intense Space combat, forced herself to slow down her breathing and examine the overall tactical picture as the disintegrator weapons of her ship, helped in their aiming by Spirit, continued to pour a murderous fire at the three lone Predator ships still surviving in orbit around Nordland. Using the shell of that destroyed Predator support ship as an improvised shield had proved to be an inspired move on her part. If not for it, her NOSTROMO would now look like a big ball of Swiss cheese. On the other hand, her modified cannons had proved absolutely devastating to the Predator ships, blowing them up with single hits one after the other. The surviving Predator ship captains should be close to panic by now. If she would have been in their place, seeing a lone ship slaughtering a whole fleet would certainly have unsettled her.
Two of the remaining three Predator ships had been vaporized by then when Reina Shapour shouted a warning.
‘’TINA, THE FIFTEEN PREDATOR WARSHIPS THAT HAD BEEN FORMING AN OUTER INTERDICTION LINE HAVE NOW STARTED COMING BACK TO NORDLAND AT MAXIMUM ACCELERATION.’’
‘’That was to be expected. I am in fact surprised to see how long it took them to decide to come back at us. Renée, as soon as this last warship in orbit is destroyed, shift to long-range sweeping fire against those incoming warships. Let’s cut down their numbers before they could get within accurate laser range of us.’’
‘’On it, Tina. BINGO! That third warship is now gone. Switching to long-range targeting and firing. Spirit, I could use your help here.’’
‘’And you will get it, Renée.’’ replied over the intercom the voice of their central AI computer. ‘’Targeting the nearest incoming enemy ship now.’’
To Tina’s content and relief, the firing directed by Spirit quickly bore fruits, with one Predator warship being blown to bits in seconds despite of the huge distance. The distance to its target was actually helping the giant disintegrator cannons of the NOSTROMO in their task, as their matter conversion beams widened ever slightly with distance, covering a progressively larger frontal surface. While this would mean a highly diminished destructive power for normal disintegrator weapons, a simple light brush from a matter conversion beam was still enough to transmute into anti-matter hundreds of kilos of materials at the surface of the targeted Predator ship, with that anti-matter then interacted with the rest of the hull, which was still in its normal matter state, producing a titanic blast of energy powerful enough to blow open the thick hull of the Predator asteroid ship. Wild cheers rose around the bridge complex as Predator ship after Predator ship blew up while still unable to fire back effectively. The laser beams fired by the incoming Predator warships either missed completely the NOSTROMO or simply burned craters on the outer surface of the destroyed Predator ship’ shell Tina used as an improvised shield. Even Tina had to sit back in her command chair, a look of disbelief on her face, when the last of the incoming fifteen Predator warships blew up under the NOSTROMO’s deadly fire, and this only four minutes after Spirit had started engaging those ships.
‘’My god! I can barely believe this. Spirit, you are one hell of a shooter.’’
‘’Thank you, Tina. However, you should mostly thank the late Doctor Koomak, for having invented such a powerful weapon as our matter conversion beams. With such a weapon, we can defeat about any enemy. However, it is so powerful that its design could be the target of attempts at copying it or stealing it by others, including by the Spacers’ League. As the old saying goes: power corrupts, while absolute power corrupts absolutely.’’
‘’Spirit is right about that, Tina.’’ said Janet Robeson from her bridge station. ‘’That weapon is too terrible to share it with anybody else. Only you have the strong moral sense needed to not abuse its power.’’
Looking around the bridge, Tina saw many heads nod at Janet’s words, with no one raising objections to Spirit’s counsel.
‘’Very well! Our matter conversion weapon will thus stay an absolute secret from anybody but us here. The same will apply to our use of the captured Predator transporter technology. Even though other scientists in the Spacers’ League have been studying that technology, I believe that we have been the first ones to be able to adapt it and make it work for us. This way, we will have a couple of hidden aces up our sleeve if any sort of dictator or asshole like ex-Chairman Stein ever grabs power in the Spacers’ League.’’
‘’Uh, Tina, if we are not going to divulge to anyone the existence of our matter conversion weapon, how are we going to explain to the Navy how we were able to defeat such a large Predator fleet and survive?’’ asked Dana, making Tina nod once.
‘’A good question! Spirit, do you have any ideas about that?’’
‘’How about bragging about your known reputation as a top Space tactician?’’
‘’That could work! Well, back to serious things: we still have to get rid of the Predators infesting Nordland and to save whatever survivors we can find on the planet. Now that we got rid of the Predator fleet, we will switch our disintegrator cannons back to their normal mode and will provide orbital bombardment fire support to our troops on the ground. With many thousands of Predator soldiers undoubtedly on the planet, Michel and his androids will need all the help that they can get from us.’’