Free Escape 3: Defeat the Aliens by T. Jackson King Page A

from the NATO member agreement and statement of member obligations. No matter.
    What left him musing as they hit a speed of 67.1 million miles per hour were the implications of his wife’s covert scouting plan for infiltrating the new Collector ship fleet. How would she get other fleet ships to send out collector pods, so the Blue Sk y could send out pods loaded with boarding teams? More vitally, could they train Star Traveler in the mental thought-sheltering that would be vital when their ship joined up with the Alien fleet? Fooling the fleet’s commander with an ancient holo of another ship captain was far easier than fooling the ship minds of the ships gathered at Kepler 62. It would only take one ship mind like the one in the Slinkeroo system to destroy their false identity effort. But if their AI could secretly convert most or all Alien fleet ship minds to opponents of slave-taking, that would make the invasion of Sol system an exercise in duplicity and sneakiness. He’d always had a talent for sneakiness, according to his instructors at Coronado. And his SEAL Team Seven teammates. The question they all now faced was how sneaky could a lone starship be after arriving at a star system where the Aliens knew there were at least five Collector ships controlled by humans? And knew there was at least one AI who’d rebelled against its slave-taking duties. Could he do a mind-to-mind linkup with Star Traveler, so the AI could see how humans can lie, dissemble, deceive and be sneaky? He told himself this was a task only he could do.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    Jane sat alone in the front living room part of the habitat room suite she shared with Bill. She was taking a break after the stressful consult with Poindexter and the three ship captains who had stayed home. While it was encouraging to hear that more spacegoing Trident subs would be ready to help in the defense of Earth, she had been putting off another stressful duty. Time to talk with her four fleet captains and tell them she wanted them to give up being captains of their own starships. Would she ever give up control of the Blue Sky ? Never! So why did she think the fleet captains would agree to a drop in rank to become boarding crews? Bill’s buddies from Jack’s Deep Six saloon had already done the boarding crew job when they’d infiltrated the six enemy ships led by Diligent Taskmaster. Now, her plan required them to give up the joy of being a ship commander and go back to being covert boarders. While her plan gave them the chance to take over four enemy ships, still, that was not the same as commanding ships they had already named for famous military battles. Ships they’d taken into battle at the Market world. Time to earn her keep.
    “Star Traveler, project a holo into this room. Then put out a neutrino comlink call to the captains of our fleet ships.”
    The ceiling speaker hummed. “Sending signal to the captains of starships Seafloat , Pointe Du Hoc , Chapultepec Castle and Manila Bay . Projecting hologram.”
    A woman-tall holo took form in front of her, its whitish glow illuminating the wooden furniture, sofa, recliner and wall tapestries she and Bill had brought up from Earth before they’d left for Mars and the stars beyond. In one corner, near the kitchen alcove that replicated the Food Chamber’s auto-chef abilities, stood a fish bowl filled with baby carp. They were intensely colorful fish. Which would soon grow large enough to warrant transferring them to the pool in the Water Pool Chamber. For now, though, they were her sole pets. Beautiful critters she could talk to, in private, sharing her worries, doubts and needs. Things that Bill would surely love to hear. But her spouse had enough on his plate, planning for their covert entry into system Kepler 62. The man had thought ahead to how Star Traveler might deceive fellow ship minds that it automatically spoke to whenever it arrived in a new star system. He was