Well, I'm playing a little fast and loose with the rules. This isn't a dritique or a rewrite but a sequel to Feeling of Power. I hope that's OK. This has an interesting development history. At first it was going to be a spy story in which Roger penetrates a Denebian base using his math, then it was a second attack by Earth because the first failed and then this. In any case it is short so it should be an easy read.

Dave

Works Both Ways

Roger's pod drifted toward the Terran picket ships. They were large enough to be seen from hundreds of miles away; they needed that size to hold all the hundreds of missiles they expected in the counter attack by Deneb. But the attack by Terra had not been perfect. Humans make mistakes and the Denebians had captured enough Terran manned ships to figure out the secret.

The attack by Terra had destroyed much of the Denebian planet. It had killed Roger's brother, sister and everyone else he knew. Now it was his turn.

Roger copied the last reading from the sextant onto the pad. Multiply, divide, integrate, graphitics had improved a lot from it's first concept. In a few pages he had a solution. He checked it and then operated the valves. His pod changed course sightly and in a few ours it would pass through the largest opening between the picket ships.

The moment of closest approach neared and Roger scanned the enemy ships with his telescope. The trick was not to have any electronics operating. The Terrans could detect the slightest emissions and it didn't matter how many ships you had they would be targeted. The defending ships remained silent and he did not see any puffs of rocket exhaust or flashes of lasers.

The capitol of Terra was coming into view. A few more sighting and more pages of calculation and he would have the trajectory needed to intersect the capital. Finally he had the result and operated the cold gas jets. His course was set and there was little that could be done to stop him. To the Terran defenders he would appear to be yet another fragment of warship. Not until well into the atmosphere would the outer layer of debris burn off and revel his re-entry pod and its nuclear warhead.

His life would not go on but his war would.