fighting automatics. We'll need every bit of
skill we all have. I want to wait for the other cruiser. We're going to
need her firepower."
25 "Yes, sir," North and Gray Mountain answered. A few minutes later
all three Officers were gathered in Morn's conference room. Morn was
reviewing how the battleships had fared against the flying death
machine. He didn't like what the recordings showed him.
26 "This thing's a nightmare! " he commented. "They must've
supercharged her engines. She's faster than anything I've ever seen.
She flew rings around them! She seems to have virtually no crush line.
All her components must be hardened in plastiseal. That's going to make
her awfully hard to disable. She's got double shields rigged in two
layers. You can see the separate dispersal patterns when the beams hit.
27 We'll only be effective at extremely close range. We've got to draw
her away from that planet and, soon, before we can fight her at all, or
she'll do the same thing to us she did to the battleships."
28 North turned away from the view screen. "We can't wait," he
insisted. "These are the latest pictures a remote probe got before it
was vaporized. Take a look on the upper star drive unit."
29 Morn came over and looked where North had indicated. "Good grief!"
he gasped, "It's attaching a leap pod! It's equipping itself with leap capability! But where did it
get the parts?"
30 "Over here," explained North, pointing off to the side. "It didn't
vaporize two of the battleships, simply crippled them, killing the
crews. Now it's salvaging them. See, here? It's reassembling three star
drive destroyers, probably reprogramming their computers.
From the look of it, she's modifying them, giving them more firepower
using the energy that would have gone to life support in the ship."