“At ease, Lieutenant,” Cobb said. “How goes the project?”
The project? Cobb had said something about a project earlier—it involved M-Bot?
“See for yourself, sir,” Rodge said, then tapped something on his datapad.
M-Bot’s shape changed, and I actually yelped in surprise. In an instant, he looked like one of the black ships that were piloted by Krell aces.
His holograms, I realized. M-Bot was a long-range stealth ship, designed—best we could tell—for spy missions. He had what he called active camouflage, a fancy way of saying he could use holograms to change what he looked like.
“It’s not perfect, sir,” Rodge said. “M-Bot can’t turn himself invisible, not with any real level of believability. Instead, he has to overlay his hull with some kind of image. Since he’s not exactly the same shape as one of those Krell ships, we had to fudge in places. You can see here that I made the hologram’s wings bigger to cover up the tips of his hull.”
“It’s incredible,” I said, walking around the ship. “M-Bot, I had no idea you could do this.”
Rodge looked at his datapad. “Um . . . he sent me a text here, Spin. He says he’s not talking to you because you muted him earlier.”
I rolled my eyes, inspecting Rodge’s work. “So . . . what’s the point of this?”
Cobb folded his arms where he stood near the door. “I asked my command staff, scientists, and engineers to tackle the hyperdrive problem. How do we find a way off this planet? All the ideas I got back were wildly implausible, except one. It’s only mildly implausible.”
I stepped up beside Rodge, who was grinning.
“What?” I asked him.
“You know all those nights,” he said, “when you’d come wake me up and force me to go on some insane adventure?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I thought maybe I should get some revenge.” He turned and swept his hand toward M-Bot, and the new, confident Rodge was back. He grinned widely, his eyes alight. This was a man in his element. “M-Bot has extremely advanced espionage capabilities. He can create detailed holograms. He can eavesdrop on conversations hundreds of meters away. He can hack enemy signals and computer systems with ease.
“We’ve been using him as a frontline combat ship, but that’s not his true purpose. And as long as we use him just to fight, we’re not utilizing his full potential. When the admiral asked for ideas on how to get ahold of the enemy hyperdrive technology, it occurred to me that the answer was staring us in the face. And occasionally pointing out how odd our human features look.”
“You want to use him to infiltrate the Superiority,” I said, the realization hitting me. “You want to pretend to be a Krell ship, then somehow steal their hyperdrive technology!”
“They launch drones from their space station nearby,” Rodge said. “And we’ve observed new ships arriving there using hyperdrive technology. The very thing we need sits on our proverbial doorstep. M-Bot can use holograms on us too. He could make a small team of us, equipped with mobile receptors like the one you wear, look like Krell.
“If we could somehow—in the confusion of a battle—make M-Bot imitate an enemy ship, we might be able to land him on their station. A small team of spies could unload, then pretend to be Krell just long enough to steal one of their real ships and escape with it. With that in hand, we could replicate their technology and escape the planet.”
I felt my jaw dropping at the audacity of it. “Rodge, that’s insane.”
“I know!”
“I love it!”
“I know!”
The two of us stood there, grinning like we had after stealing the claymore off the wall of the historical preservation chamber. It had taken both of us to lift it, but hey, we’d gotten to hold a real sword.
Together, we looked to Cobb.
“Krell ships likely have transponders,” he said, “for authentication.”
“M-Bot should be able to spoof one,” Rodge said.
“And you think you could do this, Spin?” Cobb asked me. “Imitate one of our enemies? Believably? Sneak onto an enemy station and steal one of their ships?”
“I . . .” I swallowed, and tried to be objective. “No. Sir, I’m a pilot, not a spy. I don’t have any training along these lines. I . . . well, I’d probably make a fool of myself.”
It hurt to admit that, as the plan was fabulous. But I had to be realistic.