Free Lens of Time: Book 06 - Star Rover-Running Out of Time by Saxon Andrew Page A

room all stared at the monitor and saw a pointer start indicating various places on its hull. “The beams used by this ship will penetrate our force fields easily and any of our ships hit by it will be destroyed. Notice that there are four beams mounted on the hull that are able to fire above, below, and to the two sides. There is also a beam mounted in the nose to fire directly ahead of it.”
    Dat said, “What about to the rear?”
    “The four on the hull can rotate to fire to the rear but there is a blind spot directly behind the thrusters. If you can get within a half mile of it, the four on the hull cannot depress enough to hit you. However, if the pilot sees you, he can raise the bow and bring the beams to bear.”
    Gresha said, “Will our beams penetrate their force field?”
    Belwen shook his head, “No, they will not.”
    Katherine shook her head, “Are you saying they are impregnable?”
    “They are to our beams and penetrators.”
    Dat smirked, “What else is there to use against them?”
    Belwen changed the view on the monitor, “This is a piece of the rear stabilizer fin from the Grey Ship.” The attendees saw a ten foot tall section of the fin being held off the floor in Belwen’s lab. “I want to watch what happens when one of my assistants throws a ball at it.” They watched the assistant wind up and throw a white colored ball at the fin. It hit the fin dead center and a long crack shot up through it. The assistant walked forward and gave the fin a push with his hand; the fin fell apart into two pieces. Silence dominated the gathering. Belwen waited a moment and said, “It appears the material used to build the hull is quite brittle. It can’t withstand any kind of forceful hit on it.”
    Dat was shaking his head as he said, “But how do we get through the force field to administer a hit?”
    “We’ll have to use a material that the force field can’t stop.”
    “But I thought you said our beams and penetrators won’t get through.”
    “They won’t because they are primarily made of energy and metal. The force field will stop either of those two forces.”
    Katherine’s eye brows lowered, “What else is there?”
    Belwen shrugged, “Well, there’s wood, plastic, ice shards, rocks, potatoes, bricks…need I go on?”
    Blacky’s head rolled to the middle of his body, “And just how does one get close enough to throw a rock at it?”
    “Actually, Admiral Gibbons gave us a mechanism that should do the job nicely.”
    Everyone turned and looked at Gibbs and he tilted his head to the left, “I’ve always been fascinated by our ancient history and especially the weapons developed to use during the old conflicts that happened on Earth. One of the aircraft that was used to take out heavily armored vehicles in those old wars was called a Warthog. It was an airplane built around a gun.” Gibbs nodded to Belwen and the monitor showed a strange looking gun mounted on a huge brace. Everyone saw the belt that fed the gun and the shells in the belt were huge. Suddenly the gun started firing and the belt moved faster than the eye could see. “That gun could fire four thousand projectiles a second at a speed of a mile every second and half.”
    Gresha stared at the video and said, “But isn’t it firing metal shells?”
    “Yes, but it could be modified to fire hardened plastic projectiles. They didn’t have the capability of producing plastics to the hardness of our current technology back then.”
    Dat smiled, “Tell me how you see this being used against the Grey Ships.”
    Belwen interrupted Gibbs and said, “These guns can be placed in the nose and tail of a Rover, where they would fire a wall of hardened plastic projectiles at the Grey Ships. Since there is no atmosphere in open space, they will not lose speed and will not fall off their line of flight. The scanners used by the Grey Ships will not see them until they are right on top of them and I don’t believe they have the