"I agree, Joe." Skippy said. "This is where we need your military genius. I could hammer the asteroid open with railguns, and then we search through the debris, but that's too much risk of damaging the items we need."

"Lieutenant," I addressed my remark to Giraud, "you have special forces training and experience. If you think we can't achieve mission success, then I don't have anything to add."

Giraud frowned. "We are, as you Americans say, back to square one."

"We are not giving up. I'm sure you've considered everything. Let's step back, take a break, and approach this again tomorrow with a fresh set of eyes."

Giraud helped Thomson out of the Kristang combat suit, Thomson moved his stiff shoulders, the suit had barely fit him, and the edges of the suit had dug deeply under his arms.

"Sergeant," I asked while examining the Thuranin space suit, "if that Kristang suit is properly adjusted, are you confident you could use it in combat?"

"Yes, sir. When it moves, it's almost effortless. With practice, we can be deadly with these suits. We're fortunate the Kristang weren't able to use these suits when we took the Flower."

"Good, good." I was distracted. The Thuranin suit was lightweight, almost flimsy. Even assuming it was made of exotic high-tech material, I couldn't see how it could compete in combat against a Kristang suit. "Skippy, these Thuranin suits are like spandex. Does this material harden into diamond or something like that? Or do they have, like, energy shields like a ship?"

"No, nothing fancy like that. It's a space suit." Skippy replied.

"Huh. How do the Thuranin fight in these things?"

"Fight?" Skippy laughed. "The Thuranin don't typically go into combat themselves. Those little green pinheads aren't going to expose themselves to danger directly. They remotely control military drones, you'd probably call them combat droids or robots or something like that."

"Combat droids? Are there combat droids aboard this ship?"

"Of course, there's three dozen of them in the ship's armory." There was an implied 'duh' in Skippy's voice. "Thirty eight units, to be exact."

"Armory? What armory?" I asked.

"We have combat robots?" Giraud demanded. "This would have been a good thing to know, before I spent days planning an assault!"

"There are combat robots, rifles, rockets, all kinds of toys in the armory, it's located aft of the command section. It's kind of hidden, you have to know where it is."

"Why the hell didn't you tell us about this?" I didn't try to keep the frustration out of my voice.

"Well, Joe, you didn't ask," Skippy grumbled, "and I'm not going to volunteer to tell a bunch of monkeys where they can find dangerous toys to play with."

"Merde." Giraud's face was red. "Colonel, if you ever feel like throwing Skippy out an airlock, let me know, and I will be very happy to take care of it for you."

"What?" Skippy asked innocently. "What did I do?"