Jill Titan and the Secret Weapon

Jill Titan and the Secret Weapon

Book 3 of the Jill Titan Series

By Rob Summers

Copyright 2018 by Rob Summers

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

No actual persons are represented in this book.

To Noel

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: The Spaceship That Would Never Return

Chapter 2: A Look in the Cabinet

Chapter 3: Professor Titan Saws Off an Arm

Chapter 4: Freight Alley

Chapter 5: Unscheduled Landing on Mitar 4

Chapter 6: The Tarwakian Snipe

Chapter 7: A Scattered Landing on Rimspar

Chapter 8: Jill Shops for a Dress

Chapter 9: Jill is Advised by a Brissian

Chapter 10: Before the Lytesian Council

Chapter 11: The Secret Weapon

Chapter 12: Nord’s Greater Wheel

Chapter 13: War, Peace, and Jill

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Chapter 1 The Spaceship That Would Never Return

The Free Merchant States warship Esther was motionless in outer space, and not far from her floated the separated halves of a smaller warship. This, the FMS Voltage, had been captured by the FMS’s enemies the Lytesians, manned with a Lytesian crew disguised as FMS traders, and sent out as a spy ship. Just days earlier these ships had met in battle, and the Esther had defeated the Voltage. Though the winner looked scarred and almost tattered from raygun damage, the Esther had survived and could fly. She had flown to the nearby planet Narlash 4, had left the captured crew of spies there as prisoners, and had returned to the Voltage.

Robots picked up from Narlash 4 were repairing the Esther, slowly sealing off her five damaged compartments so they could hold air again. Leading this repair bot—or repbot—crew was Jill Titan, who during the recent battle had been temporarily both the Esther’s pilot and captain. She was a very intelligent eleven-year-old who loved to learn. Her father, physics professor Jer Titan, had taught her not only to be a scientist but to cheerfully take on other challenges of life in space at an edge of the Milky Way galaxy. Her enthusiasm for adventure he had not had to teach her.

Presently Jill was floating in zero gravity in the hangar bay in the Esther’s mid-section. Releasing the trigger of her spray gun, she peered out of her spacesuit helmet at the buckled interior hull of the bay, trying to decide if the thick layer of clear liquid-sealant she had applied had been enough.

Mappy, give me a reading, she said through her suit communicator.

Using compressed air thrusters that were built into her suit, she moved aside to make room for a tall skinny robot with yellow lights blinking in a circle around its head. The managerial bot named Mappy, also using air thrusters, floated forward carrying a small scanning device with a tube like a gun barrel in front. It moved the tube around in front of the sealed section of hull while the scanner hummed.

The seal is complete, the bot said in a female-sounding voice that Jill heard through her helmet com receiver.

Hot comets! It won’t be long before we can fill this bay with air again, Jill said. 512, take this spray gun and start on the next section. I want to go report to Dad.

From among the repbots working in the bay, one floated forward that had the number 512 printed on its dark blue chest casing.

Professor Titan is available by communicator, it commented as it took the gun and its attached tank of sealant.

"I know, but I want to see his face when I tell him the good news. He’s been worrying about all the trouble and delay we would have in moving things from the Voltage to our ship if we can’t seal this hangar bay."

On her way out of the bay, she passed the Esther’s lifeboat and ship’s boat, craft small enough to be stored within the hangar with plenty of room to spare. Their landing gear was locked to the metal deck to keep them in place in the zero gravity. Besides these craft the compartment held only several metal objects many meters long that were shaped rather like archery bows. These too were locked to the deck. They were secret weapons called RDAs that Jill’s father Jer had invented, with some help from her. If they worked as well as hoped, they would be of priceless value to the league of planets called the Free Merchant States that included Jill’s home solar system.

She passed through an airlock into an inner passageway that had been damaged in battle but that the repair team had already sealed tight and filled with air. Here the artificial gravity had also been restored, so she stood solidly on the floor, feeling her full weight. She took off her spacesuit and hurried toward the ship’s bridge, dressed in the standard crew’s jumpsuit, yellow and green, that she had been wearing underneath. As she ascended narrow metal stairs, she pulled off the elastic band that had been holding back her shoulder-length brown hair inside the space helmet.

She entered the ship’s bridge to find her father seated in one of the swivel seats bolted to the steel floor. He was in front of an area of control panel that showed signs of having been severely damaged and then hastily repaired with crude welds. This, the ship’s Artificial Intelligence Unit, or AI, had indeed been sabotaged, Jill knew, by a Lytesian spy, and was now restored by the repbots. The repaired AI unit, WS-25198, could talk with them again, and answered as before to the name Willy. The FMS had supplied no human pilot for the Esther. Jill had a little experience of handling much smaller spaceships, so out of necessity she had been the usual pilot for the warship until the AI repairs had been completed. Since then, Willy had piloted and Jill had worked on hull repair.

Standing near Jer Titan was Communications Officer Missa Nyland. This round-faced young woman was the only other human on board besides Jill and Jer—all the rest of the crew were bots from the City of Robots on the planet Narlash 4.

Missa turned to Jill with a smile. The hangar’s sealed?

So close, Missa. Almost there. Please tell me that we’ll have AG in there soon too.

"Anti-gravity will be working there in less than an hour, Jill. We’re close enough that your dad and I have been talking about what we might scavenge from the Voltage once we’re ready. The com officer glanced at Professor Titan. It’s hard to decide when we don’t know what we’ll be facing."

Jill nodded somberly. A new war had just begun, started by the powerful Lytesians, who were intent on conquering the Free Merchant States. So far the FMS had lost most of the battles. But in their victorious advance the Lytesian war fleets had passed by the planet Narlash 4 where the Esther had been hidden. So this one FMS warship was, unknown to them, behind their lines and almost ready to make trouble. Furthermore, the Esther was equipped with the secret weapon invented by Professor Titan. Two of the RDAs, much larger than the ones in the hangar bay, had been attached to the outside of the warship, fitted together at their slender ends to form an eye shape around the hull’s midsection. Though this weapon had never been combat tested, it promised to make their one battered ship the equal of many of the enemy’s.

But that was not all that the Esther had been given at the secret weapons base on Narlash 4. In her rear core section was a new model of engine that made it faster than any other ship of its size or larger. She was fast in space speed, that is, when hurtling between stars at many times more than the speed of light. But her advantage over other ships was even greater when shifted into non-space speed, the speed at which planets were approached and battles fought.

This ship, if it could attack the Lytesians’ capitol planet of Nestor or some other such target, might draw off enemy warships from the battle front, easing the pressure on the Free Merchant forces.

We at least have some choice about what we’ll face, Jer said to Missa. "But I think we should scavenge from the Voltage first and then make our plan based partly on what we can take off of her. Sound familiar, Jill?"

Sure, Dad. It’s the Potluck Principle you’ve taught me, that your goal should be adjusted according to what resources you’ve got. You always say don’t plan dinner starting from a recipe but first go see what’s in the refrigerator and the kitchen cabinets. Once you know what you’ve got to work with, that’s when you should look through the recipe book. Turning to Missa she added, It’s a principle that can be applied to almost anything.

Good girl, Said Jer. "So let’s go look in the cabinet that is the Voltage. He glanced toward the re-welded outer casing of the AI unit as if worried that it might not continue to work. Willy?"

The male-sounding voice of the AI responded through wall speakers. Good day, Professor Titan. What can I do for you?

What do our long-range scans show? Any movement toward us by those spaceships you spotted in globular grid position AM22?

Yes, professor, said the computer. They are now clearly visible as three ships, one of warship size, moving toward us at medium speed from direction GGP AM21. They are capable of reaching us in a few hours.

Thank you, Willy. That’s all for now. Jer smiled nervously and ran a hand through his brown hair. We’re going to have to hurry now with the scavenging, he said to Missa and Jill as he stood up. "But we may as well get used to stressful situations, because the Esther is about to become a raiding ship—striking, hiding, and then striking again."

Missa did not respond to this, but Jill had a question. Dad, where will we go when the raiding is over? Will we go back to Narlash 4 or try to make it into one of the unoccupied FMS systems?

Her father paused longer than Jill had expected. "Ah, that’s the question, Jilly. Now that the Lytesian fleets have occupied this sector, it’s only a matter of time