Page 31 of Agrippa's Acceptance

“I thought I’ve seen some fucked up shit, but this beats it all. Pardon my French.”

“Why do you keep asking pardon for French when you are not speaking French?” It was driving her crazy.

“Focus Agrippa, sergeant. We have the chance to steal a clone ship,” Amelagar reminded them.

“If it can enslave a ship, for us to steal, can you widen the range of the cloak?” Amelagar asked Anutu.

“Yes, with Agrippa and your help, I can do it.” Anutu said without looking up from the tablet. “Little Big Ship says it will enslave any of the clone ships we choose.”

“Can he do it without alerting the other ships?”

“Yes, and please call him Little Big Ship,” Anatu said with a pointed look.

“How long will it take?”

“Little Big Ship is already in command of some of their ship functions. He is making it so that the other ships don’t realize when we take one.”

“Hot damn, I like this little ship,” sergeant Scott muttered. Little Big Ship must be careful to work during cryo cycles when the crew sleeps.”

Sargeant Bjorn snorted. “Saying that all the time is going to get irritating real soon.”

“Also, before it is completely enslaved, we don’t want the ship we are stealing alerting the other ships. Little Big Ship can make the cryo chambers inhospitable to clones and kill any of them in stasis.”

Amelagar nodded. “Agrippa, get maps and start showing the humans where we need to go to take over command of the enslaved ship.”

“There is one thing we have not considered,” colonel Farnham said quietly.

“What is that?” Amelagar did not look away from the viewscreen showing the clone ship.

“Should we do this? With the help of Little Big Ship, we can take out most or maybe all of these ships.”

Amelagar sighed and turned his chair to face them. “We have no idea how these ships are getting faster with regular intervals. Any improvements they make will be transmitted to the clone temples.”

“So, these ships will still be destroyed?”

“The temple will produce a new ship within days. You are dealing with technology millions of years older than your own.”

“So, we take them out and they send replacement at super speed?”

Amelagar had explained this before, but the humans didn’t quite grasp how efficient the clone technology could be.

“Yes.”

Amelagar looked at the large screen where they tracked the progress of the fleet. “If we don’t bomb the clone temples, all our people are going to die.”

“We should bomb them from orbit. I think I can get precise coordinates from the Rising Sun database I have and from this ship,” Anatu muttered.

“Hit and run, I like it,” Scotty made a sign to the others. “They won’t be suspicious of their own ships.”

“I’d better get back to my human after this,” Anutu mumbled without looking up.

Agrippa smiled at Anatu. “You will.” The cyborg female was fading away from missing her human. If she had to face the possibility of fifteen years of separation from Amelagar, she would fade away too.

Col Farnham you and I will work out our plan of attack.”

They took the clones by surprise. Agrippa and Amelagar opened the cargo door remotely and they flew inside still cloaked.

“Remind me not to tell the story of Jonah and the whale,” sergeant Scott mumbled.

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