"I strode purposefully back to the DUCTAC Ops console to check on Lt. Breen's progress. To the right of his TARGET OVERRIDE, MXI 330, and LUNGE-HOWLER levers was a two-by-three-foot multi-colored CRT display. Individual ducklings in the Common/Public Garden area were represented as horizontal bars: the vertical coordinate represented bearing, length for distance, color for tangential velocity. Lt. Breen watched the screen intently, straining to hear the slightest sound of duck activity in his headphones.
"'Sir, I hear quacking,' he said suddenly.
"'Quacking?'
"'Quacking, sir.'
"Light poured from the display in all colors of the spectrum: an entire task force of bogies somewhere in the vicinity of Beacon Street. They looked at first like garden-variety Scum, Suck, or Shun-class light cruisers, but as the bars shrank and pulsed, the truth became clear: the enemy had dispatched part of Fleet 107 of Mallard light waddlers in our direction.
"It was a masterstroke, an incredible coup of misdirection. If only those Pentagon fatheads had listened in on my gaming sessions, I thought-- it takes a swift kick in the pants to make them think out of the box... Direct intervention would be necessary, and fast."