Nowhere to Hide by Saxon Andrew Read Free Book Online

view down as much as possible but all he saw was the massive blast of the force field’s destruction. He tried numerous times but couldn’t determine what had fired on the three ships. The first blast had blinded the ship’s sensors to what was directly in front of them. Could it have been those green ships again? Whatever it was, it had appeared faster than the scanners could detect and killed the three warships. He sent the recording to his Grandfather and began to feel real fear for his family. Something in that galaxy was deadly. He also worried about the High Council’s response to the failure to destroy the planet. Grandfather had not contacted him since he sent the recordings and that could mean problems.
    ***
    The Ship Controller had lost eight ships attacking the three invaders. The other civilizations who had taken part in the defense also lost ships and he knew they were going to have to attack using FTL drives in the future. Fly in, fire missiles, and fly out as other ships attacked. Staying in normal space and firing on the enemy was suicide. He sent the information to the Sovereign and knew the urgency of updating their ships had just increased tenfold.
    ***
    Ian looked at Drey on his display, “I know; we made a mistake.”
    “We should have used an attack ship to see how effective it would have been against their ship’s force fields.”
    “We learn from our mistakes. Does Dee have an idea of what happens next?”
    “They didn’t learn much. I suspect another attack is in order. However, she senses that we will have some time before that happens.”
    “How much time?”
    “Between four to eight months.”
    “We need some time to build our number of ships.”
    Drey smiled, “Moe tells me that if the force field is weakened, an attack ship may be able to knock the force field down and hit their ships.”
    “Do we know how many boson beams would have to be used to weaken it to a point where the new boson missile will get through?”
    “Cole says the data indicates it will take between two to three hits of the boson beams for the new missiles to make that happen.”
    “Get that information out to Admiral Kregen and have him start training his pilots on how to do it.”
    “He called me a few minutes ago and told me the same information. He’s on it and his fleets should be ready before the next attack.”
    Ian shook his head, “This is not going to be easy with thousands of those ships attacking.”
    Drey shrugged, “You do what you have to do to survive.”
    “Plan to meet with the Sovereign and the other leaders of M87 to discuss what they can do more effectively.”
    Drey looked at his panel, “I have a message from him. I’ll contact him and let you know what he says.”
    “Thanks, Drey.” Drey nodded and the display went dark.
    ***
    The Father saw his Grandfather’s anger, “So they destroyed our probes, used some kind of energy field to prevent us jumping close to the planet, and then destroyed our ships and you don’t know how they did it?!?”
    The Father knew his Grandfather’s anger was misplaced but how to get him to see it without angering him more was not going to be easy. “Grandfather, we sent those ships to gather information. Should more have been sent?” The Grandfather stared at him. He continued, “We know that galaxy has been able to destroy our probes preventing us from learning what’s happening there. We’ve learned a great deal from this attack and can make our future plans based on what we’ve seen. Did you anticipate our ships might be destroyed?”
    “The Council felt that three should have been able to destroy the planet.”
    “But that decision was made not knowing about the energy field, which requires a much longer flight to the target. We know our force fields were weakened considerably before the ships were destroyed. I suspect more ships would have broken through to the planet.” He saw his Grandfather thinking about what he said. Good, his