Chapter 41: The Final Plan
Back on Minerva, everyone was just about done loading the few supplies that they had onto the rockets. Jimmy was underneath one of his rollercoaster's carts, trying to reattach some wires and remove the rocks embedded in it.
"Knock knock," Nick said as he and Cindy knelt down on the ground beside the rollercoaster.
"Is everyone ready?" Jimmy asked while crawling out from under the cart.
"All the supplies are onboard, Jimmy," Cindy told him while extending her hand.
"Good," he answered while grabbing her palm. She hoisted him up and he dusted off his ripped jeans. "Is everyone in their rockets?"
"Pretty much," Cindy said as he let go of her hand. "Nick and I just wanted to run something by you before they finished strapping themselves in. We think that we should get three other kids to fly the rockets so that Nick, you, and I can sit in one of the carts alone and strategize."
Jimmy quickly pondered her proposal, and came up with a response almost immediately. "Yes, that is a good idea," he told the two of them. "Everyone here is capable of flying the rockets. Besides, we'll need more than a rough plan if we are to get our parents back."
Cindy smiled. "Excellent. I'll go find three pilots." She spun around and sashayed her way towards Ike.
Nick looked to his left and noticed Jimmy staring after her. "You are so in love with her," he laughed while adjusting the canvas bag strewn over his shoulder and hopping into one of the rollercoaster's carts.
Jimmy just smiled as he watched Cindy strike up a conversation with Ike. "No argument," he dreamily replied before spinning around and hopping into the cart with Nick.
"This is Captain Neutron, repeat, Captain Neutron. Requesting sound off of three pilots," Jimmy calmly spoke into his headset. Cindy and Nick sat on either side of him, listening intently to their own headsets.
"Ike reporting in," Ike struggled to answer through the cigarette clenched in his teeth. He took his hands off of the rollercoaster's steering wheel and lit the stick dangling from his lips. "Ready to kick some ass, chief."
"Pilot of Ferris wheel sounding off," Betty calmly answered while chewing on a few strands of her long brown hair. "Waiting for the green light to disengage from Minerva."
"Third pilot sounding off," Brittany spoke in an unusually serious tone. "Give me the word, Jimmy, and I'm pushing this bird as far as she'll go."
Jimmy squinted his eyes. There was a good chance that this would be his last time taking off in a rocket. "Green light, everyone. Activate thrusters!" he shouted.
All of the children in the three rockets grabbed a hold of anything they could as the thrusters powered up. Cindy and Nick looked to Jimmy, silently asking whether the ship could fly after the damage from the asteroid belt, but he simply stared straight ahead. He tightened his grip on the seat beneath him and gritted his teeth. "It'll hold," he assured them.
All of the passengers in the three rockets were suddenly thrown backwards into their seats as the vehicles lifted off and exited Minerva's atmosphere. Even Jimmy found himself holding his breath as the ship lurched and pitched to the right. "It'll hold," he assured himself.
Then, the rumbling stopped. The entire army held in their breath for a moment later, and then exploded into cheers. "This is Pilot Quinlan, reporting that we have exited the atmosphere and are in for a smooth ride to the mother ship."
Jimmy leaned back and loosened his grip on his seat. He looked down and was surprised to see that his fingernails had dug holes into the padded cushions. "Cindy, Nick, and Libby, set your frequency to private channel four. We're going to need some alone time to plan for this mission."
His three friends nodded and changed their headset's frequency from the common channel that everyone used to a private channel. The four of them could only hear, and be heard, by the four of them. "Sound off," Jimmy instructed.
"Libby Folfax operating on private channel four," Libby quickly answered.
"Cynthia Vortex operating on private channel four."
"Nick here."
Jimmy took a quick second to shoot Nick a reprimanding glance for his casual reply. Nick met the gaze with confidence, and both the boys looked away at the same time. Cindy stared on, amused at the subtle power play.
"Moving on," Nick finally spoke while unzipping his canvas bag, "here are a few things we can use." Nick grabbed a notebook and a pen from the bag, clicked the pen, and handed them both for Jimmy. "For illustrating your plan," he explained. Jimmy nodded and took the two items.
Nick rummaged through the various supplies in the bulky bag before finally pulling out two pistols. "Like I said before, we only have seven guns. Since you're not the main attack force, this is all I can spare you. Use them wisely. I can't give you any extra ammunition," he told them, a pang of regret evident in his voice.
Cindy and Jimmy nodded as they examined the guns, made sure that the safety was on, and placed them in their waistbands. "Now let's go over your plan," Nick said while zipping his bag shut and putting his feet on top of it.
Jimmy nodded once more and began drawing a quick sketch of a Yolkian ship on the notebook's first page. "Now, I don't know exactly how big this ship is or what it looks like…"
"Sorry to interrupt," Libby suddenly chimed in, "but I've got some info that may be of help. Goddard's helped me hack into the observational site that you installed on Pluto. I was able to focus the cameras on the Yolkian ship's coordinates. The ship is roughly a kilometer across and around three hundred meters vertically tall."
The three kids on the rockets sat in silence. The ship was much larger than Jimmy had anticipated. But the larger the ship, the easier it would be to sneak up on. "Can you give me a rough estimate on hostile resistance?"
Libby tapped a few keys, her hands seeming to float along the keyboard in the control room. "Processing," her warm and soothing voice told them. But beneath her calm tone, he could sense sadness in her voice. The loss of Sheen had hurt her badly, and she couldn't hide it.
Several seconds later the faint sound of keys being pushed down and flips being switched stopped being sent over the headsets and into the three leaders' ears. "Based on what we know about their fighting styles, ships, and past confrontations - which by the way isn't a lot of data - my estimates put the enemy force at approximately three thousand Yolkians."
"Three thousand?" he shouted while lurching forward and staring incredulously at the drawing of the ship resting on Jimmy's knees.
"More or less," Libby quickly answered. "I'm basing this information on how many Yolkians manned the few ships we've seen before. It's all strictly hypothetical. The ship would hold a maximum capacity of over five thousand Yolkians."
Cindy joined Nick in staring incredulously at Jimmy. Jimmy noticed their stares and tried to put on a brave front. He was their leader, and one of a leader's duties was to keep up morale. He thoughtfully tapped the pen against his chin, trying to control the shaking of his hand. "Well, it appears that we may be outnumbered a little more than I had thought."
Libby pressed a few more buttons on the computer and pulled up the roster of the kids involved in the mission. Carl, Mike, and Goddard had worked on it two nights before. It was split into two sections, the faction of kids on Earth, and those traveling through space. She opened up the roster of the soldiers in space and tallied the total.
"You have one hundred and thirty-seven sold…" she suddenly stopped mid-sentence and felt her eyes begin to water. Stow it, she angrily told herself. They need you right now.
"One hundred and thirty-six soldiers," she corrected, remembering to not include Sheen in her tally. The roster on the monitor in front of her listed his status as KIA; killed in action.
Cindy, Nick, and Jimmy sat in silence, both in a moment of silence for their fallen comrade and to think about how horrendously they were outnumbered.
"If there are three thousand troops, you're outnumbered a little more than twenty-two to one," Libby told them, seeming to read
their minds.
Jimmy chewed on the end of the pen, pointing the ballpoint at the reinforced steel wall in front of him. "Well, battles have been won with worse odds."
Nick was about to counter with a sarcastic "Name one," but he held it in. Jimmy had yet to steer them wrong, and he deserved Nick's trust. At least until he told them the specifics of his plan.
Jimmy finally spoke. "Thanks for the information, Libby. Please withhold all further data until I'm done my presentation," he told her as nicely as he could.
Libby tried to tell whether he was angry or not at her interruption. She finally gave up and leaned back in the padded leather chair. "Yes sir."
Jimmy took the pen out from his mouth and tapped his seat with it. "Ok, let's move on. This is Ergo 22, the planet that Nick's squad will wait on," Jimmy told his audience while drawing a circle at the very edge of the paper. "Now, when reviewing the plan that I told you all earlier today, I noticed one problem."
Jimmy cleared his throat and ran a hand through his grimy hair. He hadn't washed it or taken a shower in days. "I said that the three rockets would land on the planet. Then, Cindy and I would empty the kids out of one of the rockets and take it to the mother ship, leaving its occupants on the ground. I had assumed that Nick's two rockets could give them a lift to the mother ship, but now I realize that he won't have the means to do that. All three rockets are filled to absolute capacity. There is no way that you can put another forty-something kids from my rocket onto two of yours," he said while motioning to Nick.
"Let's hear the plan," Nick told Jimmy, eager to hear what his fellow soldier had cooked up.
A small smile spread across Jimmy's lips. "What I have in mind is, to put it mildly, risky. I am not prepared to leave those forty-something kids on an alien planet while the rest of our army fights the Yolkians. We need every man and woman that we can get our hands on to fight. Leaving the kids on that planet would tear our offensive forced down by a third. That is unacceptable."
"Instead," he continued, "Ike will pilot this rocket to the mother ship. He will drop Cindy and me off on top of the hull of the ship. Ike will then head to Ergo 22 and wait with the other two rockets until I give the word for the three shiploads of kids to join the fight."
Cindy pondered Jimmy's plan, not seeing why he had labeled it risky. "Jimmy, what exactly is so dangerous about that?"
Jimmy was surprised that she hadn't figured that out. "The Yolkians are supposed to believe that you and I are the only ones trying to rescue our parents. If they spot the ship flying away, then they'll know that there is a pilot onboard, and therefore another kid. If we're captured, I might be able to convince them it was Goddard or an autopilot. But if they see the other occupants of the rocket, they'll know about Nick's force and they'll lose the element of surprise."
"Damn," Nick suddenly swore under his breath while clenching his fist.
"Indeed," Jimmy agreed, "but it is the only way. We'll have to hope that luck will be on our side."
Cindy nodded as she took all of this in. "Ok, so we've covered getting onto the Yolkian ship, but how do we get into it?"
Jimmy motioned for Cindy and Nick to bend over and look at the drawing lying across his knees. He drew two small stick figures on top of the ship. It was oddly humorous, but they squelched their laughter.
"Libby, I need you to take a look at those images of the mother ship. Tell me if there is a hatch or other entry point on the top of the hull," Jimmy instructed.
Libby quickly kicked her foot off of the nearby wall and rolled across the room. She slammed the tip of her shoes onto the ground, which served as a brake. The chair stopped in front of a computer not currently in use for the myriad of tasks that control team constantly needed to complete. She tapped a few keys and accessed the observatory on Pluto.
"Hang on," she told her friends on the rocket. "Got the pictures. Zooming in, touching up the resolution, searching for entry points," she muttered each step that she took aloud as she ran her hands along the keyboard. "Jimmy, I'm sorry, but I can't zoom in enough. It was a stretch finding that water on Minerva, and this ship is a lot farther out than that. The best I can do is judge its approximate size. You're going to have to find your own way in."
Jimmy clenched his teeth in anger. His frustration wasn't directed at Libby, she was doing a remarkable job in spite of her immense loss. No, he was mad because luck appeared to be nowhere near his side. And he would need its help on the mission to come. "Understood," he finally told Libby.
He took a moment to collect his thoughts. "Alright. Cindy, you and I are going to scan that ship when we land on it. If there's a hatch topside, then we'll break in that way. If not, then we can enter through a garbage chute, exhaust systems, or even pry open the hangars to the escape pods. But the hatch would be much easier, safer, and stealthier."
Cindy and Nick nodded. "And once you two get inside?" Nick asked.
Jimmy closed his eyes and racked his brain for ideas. "First off, we might be able to use my DNA scanner to find where our parents are in the ship. I'm not sure what the range is. If we do get their location, we can radio their position to your team, Nick."
"And how do we proceed?" Cindy asked.
"As I've previously stated, we'll covertly take out as many Yolkians as we can before we get captured or killed. If we can reach the control room, I might be able to hack into the Yolkian's computer system. That could give us a nice advantage. I could seal off some of the ship, trapping Yolkians inside so that we wouldn't have to deal with them."
"But," he sadly continued, "that is more of a dream than reality. Even if we could fight our way to the control room, it would take time to learn how to hack into the alien computer. Other guards would kill us before I could do anything. No, we'll simply have to take out as many guards as we can."
"And my squad?" Nick asked.
Jimmy wiped a few nervous beads of sweat from his brow. "As I said before, we will either be killed or captured. If Cindy and I are killed, you will hear it on the headsets. Wait around a day before your attack, so as to allow the Yolkians to let their guard down. If we're captured, we'll utter the phrase, 'alright, you caught us'. Then wait a day so that we can tell the Yolkians that we came alone."
Nick took a moment to absorb that information. "Got it."
"There are also two other code words I want you to know," Jimmy continued. "Any plan, no matter how perfectly made, has a chance of going awry. We may have to quickly change tactics. If I shout the phrase 'Swarm! Swarm!' I want you and your team to come in guns blazing, ready to fight. If I say 'Cloak the dagger' that means that I want you and your team to come in silently and stealthily. Understand?" he asked.
Nick nodded. "Got it. Anything else?"
Jimmy looked to Cindy, who simply shrugged in response. Jimmy let out a deep sigh and peeled a small piece of skin out from beneath his fingernail. "No, nothing else. Let's all get some rest. Thirty-six hours from now, we're finishing this fight. One way or the other."