This was exactly what we planned to do—warp armies through the YIT and take the fight to the Grays. We needed to get closer to home first, but our present location was a good twelve days from Earth at maximum warp velocity and that could be too late if the Grays decided to immediately eradicate Earth. We couldn't quantum connect to Earth because there were no SuperAgents there. We only had Mike and Michelle available and had used up the last bit of the rare alien materials needed to build SuperAgents on Michelle, so we couldn't just make another one. We needed to get to Earth faster than maximum warp allowed, so we had to find a SuperAgent close to home to surf the YIT to.
"Mike, can you find where there are Phoenix-class Gray ships as close to Earth as possible?" Jim said.
"Yes, Jim. There are seven Gray ships in the outer part of the Sol System now and there are nineteen Gray vessels dispersed evenly about the quarantine zone's edge."
"Then we should take the ones at Earth first," Tabitha said.
"Michelle, can you fly the Phoenix back to Earth's Moon without us?" 'Becca asked.
"Of course I can, Rebecca," Michelle answered.
"What's our plan for taking the ships?" Anson asked.
"It will be easy, Anson," Tatiana said. "Steven and I beat them as normal humans with no warp armor or anything like that. We only had a couple of machine guns each."
"I helped a little," Mike said.
"Of course you did, sweetheart. I'm sorry and I didn't mean to forget you, Mike," Tatiana said.
"So, how about this? We armor up, zip into the operating room of one of the ships and, with the warp bubbles, we run around the ship and squish the blue blood right out of a bunch of little Gray monsters," I suggested.
"Sounds like a helluva plan to me!" Anson said.
"Okay, let's do it!" Tabitha ordered.
* * *
We loaded up for bear and little Gray aliens. Once, Tatiana couldn't get her gear to sit straight and I had to touch her and let the nanomachines fix it. She told me that she felt naked without Mikhail. I assured her that as soon as we got more SuperAgent material we would remedy the situation.
We also let the gang in on the mind communication through the SuperAgent link. We trusted them all completely now and they didn't seem too sore about the fact that we had kept that from them. They had known Tatiana and I could communicate to each other through the SuperAgents, but we had not told them that anybody could with a simple temple implant. Anson commented that we had learned the secret weapon lesson well and that he was proud of us.
We all told Michelle that we would see her in a few days and then Mike closed the warp bubble around us. The bubble shrunk down and we were riding the quantum connection a third of the way across the galaxy, about thirty thousand light years. We popped out into the abductee operating room of the Gray alien spaceship and there were two catatonic humans lying on floating stretchers. The room we were in was completely white and it was very bright. We settled to the floor quietly and the two Grays working on one of the humans were caught totally unaware.
Tatiana moved so fast that you couldn't see her snapping the necks of the two little monsters. Ick! This brings back some bad memories, huh, Steven?
Yeah, it does. Mike, can you take over the programming of this SuperAgent like I did you?
Already done, Steven.
Excellent. Open the doors and let's go squish some Grays!
How many are there? Tabitha thought.
There are nine more aliens aboard, Mike told us. Then he displayed a map of the spaceship in all of our heads. There were little blinking red dots where the live Grays were.
Okay, just like we planned, three teams. Tatiana and I will take the three on the bridge, I thought to them.
Anson and I will take the three in the aft section!
'Becca and I will take the other three. Good hunting!
We split up into three different directions and went about taking the ship. The ship was similar to the Phoenix, minus the humanizing that had been done to it. With the warp armor we all made light work of the Grays on board. It took us about seven seconds to take the ship. The Grays never even knew we were coming.
We went through similar steps and took all seven of the Gray ships in Sol space. We felt an urgency to quickly take as many ships as we could, because who knew how the Grays were going to react when they discovered we had the controller and had blown up one of their nobles.
Once we had liberated all of the vessels Mike generated a replacement for Mikhail, and Tatiana and I zipped back into the little confinement singularity where he was trapped. We replaced him with a dumb SuperAgent and Tatiana picked him up and placed him against her navel. Mikhail quickly dissolved through her skin and placed himself inside her abdomen. I touched her and gave her a crew of nanomachines to make her complete.
Let's get out of here.
Okay, Steven. Mikhail, it is great to have you back!
It is great to be back, Tatiana.
Now, we are all one big happy family again, I said and toggled the warp field back on. The bubble grew opaque. It was the last we would ever see of the little prison the Grays had trapped Tatiana in.
You think Opolawn is enjoying his accommodations? I asked Tatiana.
I hope he hates it! Tatiana said as we popped back into the belly of the commandeered Gray spaceship.
We zipped the new ships back to the Moon and reprogrammed all of the SuperAgents to be more like Mike—that is, to be loyal to humanity and to us in particular. We updated Annie, Al, and Sara on current events and decided that a good plan of action would be to take as many alien ships as we could. So we recruited fifteen of the most trusted members of the military moon colony that we knew. Tabitha reminded them all of their oaths and then we trained them on how to take the Gray ships. Before Michelle returned to the Moon, we had taken thirty-seven Gray ships and were retrofitting them for human use.
We sent out teams every day over the Infrastructure and captured more and more alien ships and technologies. Each of the teams carried one SuperAgent with nanomachine accompaniment and each time they would bring back more and more alien materials and resources. With the Infrastructure and our new means of traveling through it we were rapidly spreading out through the local cluster.