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

later, just after the night shift left the manufacturing facilities and an hour before the day shift arrived; he had a ringside seat to the destruction of every ship and construction facility on the planet. The only things remaining inside the force fields protecting them were massive flames and explosions.
    • • •
    Dat arrived back in the Milky Way and watched the Grey Ships explode on the main display. The fleet had dropped five probes and they broadcast the event in crystal clear video. He shook his head and seven hours later he watched the Grillen forces on the planet blown into dust. He waited but didn’t hear anything from the Madator Team. Gresha arrived on his ship and saw his expression. She ran forward and wrapped him in her arms and held him tight. She knew how much he cared for Blacky.
    “Dat, do you have a moment?”
    Dat looked up and saw Belwen on his display, “Belwen, I believe we’ve lost the team. I need some time.”
    Suddenly, Blacky appeared on the display, “Time for what?” Dat was shocked speechless. Blacky stared at Dat and smiled, “Are you upset that I might have been killed?”
    Dat shook his head, “Why didn’t you tell me you escaped, you oversized, round bodied, eight armed…”
    “We had to disable the tracking device in Green Space before we could emerge.”
    “What tracking device?”
    Belwen leaned in and said, “They’ve delivered a brand new Grey Ship to my lab, Dat.”
    Dat jumped up and yelled, “You wonderful demon! You’re the BEST!!”
    Blacky laughed, “Yes…I believe I am. Now you need to get here; we have a lot of work to do.”
    Dat looked around and heard Stein, “Jumping now.”
    • • •
    Katherine arrived an hour behind Dat and sat down and debriefed the four Madators. Dat listened to their report and was amazed at what they had managed to accomplish. He was proud of their bravery and their skill at evading detection. At the end, Blacky said, “We need to get our teams trained on how to attack those planets and get them dropped as quickly as possible.”
    Dat slowly sighed and shook his head, “I’m afraid that isn’t going to be easily done.”
    Everyone in the room turned to him and George said, “Why not?”
    “We know they detected the ship that took you there.”
    Katherine looked at Dat, “Yeah, so what?”
    “Do you think they might put two and two together and be watching for another ship skipping through the barrier toward the other planets?”
    Silence dominated the room until Blacky said, “What could they do about it? They can’t detect us.”
    “No, but they can see the flames from your entry to the planet. I suspect they’ll fire on you from orbit. Targeting those bright lights will be easy.”
    Blacky turned to Belwen, “Is he right?”
    Belwen shrugged, “I’m afraid he is.”
    “So how do we get in?”
    “I need to think about it.”
    Dat looked at Katherine, “We need to get them back to their planet so they can train the others. We need to be ready if another way to drop them is found.”
    Blacky was reluctant to go without knowing what was going to happen but he finally agreed to go after Dat asked him how he was going to contribute to the effort. “Now, you know I’m not that good with technology.”
    “So leave it to those that are and get your warriors trained to go.”
    Ringie said, “You know he’s right.”
    “Yeah, I guess.”
    Dat turned to Belwen, “Do you have any ideas?”
    Belwen shrugged, “Let me work on it. I’ll let you know what we come up with.”
    Dat looked at Gresha, “We will probably need to get our ships ready for meeting them. I don’t think they’ll take this lying down.”
    “They’ll be reluctant to start something at the moment.” Belwen, Katherine, and Dat stared at her. “They don’t know how their ships were destroyed. They’ll investigate that before they use them against us.”
    Katherine smiled, “I hope you’re right. We need to find their probes.”
    Belwen