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it with a few junior officers, yes.”
    Vaganov shook his head. “Next time, don’t. If you share ideas with junior officers, they’ll only run it up the chain as if it were their own. What’s worse, their simpleminded commanders will dismiss the tech outright because they won’t understand it. Then these same commanders will fight against the tech’s approval should it resurface elsewhere, lest they look like the fool for not approving it initially. That’s how these people think, Mazer. They’ll do anything to protect their own image. I saw it all the time at Acquisitions. It’s senseless and stupid, but that’s the IF. Share your ideas with others outside your circle, and you’re throwing pearls before swine.”
    Mazer considered that. On one hand, he agreed. He had seen commanders act in the very way Vaganov described. Yet guarding ideas wasn’t the solution either.
    â€œIf you have ideas,” said Vaganov, “anything that requires development, bring them to me. Let me employ our engineers and get some momentum behind it before some dimwit commander puts a bullet in it. While at Acquisitions I developed relationships with people who can make things happen. They trust me. If I connect you with them, they’ll listen to you.”
    Mazer didn’t like the arrangement. If he took Vaganov’s orders to the letter, he would never post to the forum again, he would bring everything directly and only to the colonel. That would defeat the very purpose of the forum and hinder the proliferation of ideas.
    And yet … if Vaganov was sincere, if he had the connections he claimed, he might break down all the barriers Mazer and others had encountered as they tried moving intel and ideas up the chain.
    â€œAre we clear?” said Vaganov.
    â€œUnderstood,” said Mazer.
    Vaganov nodded, the matter settled. “Good. Now, back to the gravity disruptor. You think the device will fail. Why?”
    â€œSeveral reasons,” said Mazer. “One, Formics communicate instantaneously across great distances without tech. As soon as one Formic figures out we’re using camouflaged capsules, every Formic on every ship will know. They won’t take chances after that. They’ll obliterate every scrap of debris approaching their ships. Big or small.”
    Vaganov nodded. “Go on.”
    â€œProblem two,” said Mazer. “It’s unlikely that the GD can penetrate the hull of a Formic ship. We have their scout ship from the previous war in our possession … well, technically Juke Limited has it, but it doesn’t matter anyway because the engineers at Juke can’t even scratch its surface. Nothing damages that hull. It’s an indestructible alien alloy that remains a total mystery. Ukko Jukes believed gravity manipulation could damage it, but he was wrong. The GD is built upon the same principle. It will likely prove ineffective as well.”
    â€œThe hull of the Formic scout ship is not the only material the Formics use to construct their ships,” said Vaganov. “The Juke gravity weapon ripped Formic fighters to shreds.”
    Mazer nodded. “Fighters, yes. But those were small vessels not intended for interstellar flight and built with a different alloy. The ships we need to breach are the big interstellar ships en route to our solar system. They will likely have indestructible hulls much like the scout ship.”
    â€œProbably,” Vaganov agreed. “Anything else?”
    â€œThe GD’s delivery system,” said Mazer. “The pieces must be hand-delivered and set. Which means if the capsules don’t deliver the marines, the mission fails. In our test runs, we use a dummy Formic ship that’s adrift. In battle, Formic ships will be active and mobile, capable of altering their speed and trajectory at any moment. If they do while the capsules are en route, which is highly likely, the