Giraud made our crew mentally run through a simulated attack on a typical Kristang frigate, using Skippy's best guess of where the Kristang aboard would be, and what systems aboard the frigate he could control. It surprised me when Skippy said he couldn't seize total control of the frigate's computer systems, at least not right away. The Kristang very deliberately and carefully had built their ships to prevent the possibility of an enemy remotely hacking into their computers, on account that they were afraid of their patrons the cyborg Thuranin doing exactly that. Because the Thuranin had done that before, and the Kristang weren't going to fall victim to that trick a second time, or, as Skippy reported, more like the hundredth time. The Kristang had gotten better at hardening their computer systems from intrusion, but their technology was still far enough below the level of the Thuranin that the Kristang weren't yet capable of even imagining some of the technology the Thuranin routinely used. Fortunately for us, Skippy's technology was as far beyond the Thuranin as the Thuranin were beyond humans. Or, as Skippy of course said it so tactfully, a treeful of monkeys.

The key to the whole plan was that we needed to literally plug Skippy into the ship, to establish a physical connection to the ship's network for him. Once he was in, he'd have access to the whole ship, and could download a subroutine of himself into control nodes all over the ship. But we first needed to locate what was basically a wall jack aboard the frigate, and plug a zPhone into it. Fortunately, the proper cables and connectors were aboard the Dodo. Unfortunately, getting to the wall jack closest to the frigate's two landing bays was going to be a bitch. And Skippy's trick of disabling weapons, like he did with Ruhar rifles, wouldn't work with the Kristang, because the Kristang didn't trust that type of technology, and their rifles mostly did without fancy computer chips.

Giraud's plan was to throw the entire boarding force of twenty two people into the effort to establish a physical connection, after which our crew would split into two groups, one led by Giraud and one led by Chang. With Giraud, I assigned Sergeant Thompson, while Sergeant Adams was going to Chang and the Chinese sergeant. I could see people were totally keyed up, completely understanding that jacking a zPhone into a data port was life and death not only for us, but potentially for all of humanity. Rousing speeches were not needed. I ordered everyone to eat and drink something, and relax. Giraud agreed, adding that he wanted the crew to memorize the layout of typical Kristang frigates and destroyers, which helpfully each came in only two major types. Picture the layouts in your mind, he advised, over and over, and over and over again, and then repeat, until it became instinct, ingrained in your spatial memory.