by Bob Mauldin
Hawaii fared almost as badly, although the tsunami took longer to arrive. The mutilated satellite system prevented warnings that would ordinarily have arrived within minutes of any disaster. In Earth’s information age, the loss of her satellite system was particularly advantageous to any enemy with the resources of the Korvil. The United States’ West Coast was subjected to waves over forty feet high, washing everything away as if it were made of paper mâché. In places, the water wormed its way hundreds of miles inland, depositing fish and debris wherever it chose.
The second raider, caught above South America, was destroyed before it had time to release its deadly cargo. The double explosion of its power core, along with the bomb it carried, left an area of devastation that was reminiscent of the Tunguska meteor of the early 1900s. A single meteor had exploded above the Russian countryside with a force approaching later-day nuclear weapons and flattened thousands of square miles of forest. Now, South America had a scar just as horrible to gaze upon.
Military communications nets, among the best on the planet, were the first to begin to come back online. Kitty, through the transmitters aboard the six ships in orbit, was able to inform all the governments of the world of the events that had just transpired, averting a nuclear exchange that would have succeeded where the Korvil had failed on their own. Those same governments, feeling the powerlessness of their positions, began to berate the Alliance for allowing the Korvil to come within range of Earth at all. Some were even calling openly for the arrest of anyone associated with the Alliance.
Stunned by the vehemence of the response to her announcement, Kitty turned to Simon for advice. “I was only trying to keep everyone from blaming each other for what happened, Simon. How could they blame us?” The anguish in her voice carried through to her husband aboard the Rigel.
“It’s the nature of the beast, hon,” Simon answered. “The human animal has to have a scapegoat. Someone to blame. I’ll take care of this.”
“Simon, don’t back us into a corner,” Kitty chided. “I know how your temper can get the best of you at times. And this isn’t the time to let yourself lose control.”
Simon didn’t immediately make the announcement he had intended. Kitty’s plea had caught him in the deepest part of his being. The one time their nearly seventeen-year marriage had almost come apart was due to his volatile temper. Shame was one of the factors that led him to subject himself to anger management counseling, but the most compelling reason was his fear of losing the only woman he’d ever really loved.
Now, he was able to recognize that same atavistic anger and fear in the communications coming from Earth, and knowing he couldn’t stop it, he sought to redirect it. “People of Earth. I am Simon Hawke, Admiral of the Terran Alliance Fleet.” Even now, his ire at being forced to take the position he occupied still rankled him, and those who knew him heard it in his voice. “It is my sad responsibility to report to you that unknown enemies from beyond our solar system have attacked us without provocation. In this new age of weapons of mass destruction that are magnitudes more advanced than even the nuclear weapons stockpiled on Earth, it only takes a few in the right spots to put an end to an entire species. Regrettably, two attackers got past our defenses in a sneak attack much like the one the United States suffered with the destruction of the World Trade Center some years back. Nothing I can say will bring back any of the lives lost due to this attack, or lessen the pain of that loss, but you can rest assured that we will do all we can to put an end to the menace that faces us all.
“I realize that the attacks are aimed at the Alliance, and the Earth is feeling the effects of those attacks, but we are of Earth as much as you are. There are some who say that we are responsible for the attacks in the first place, merely by having taken the technology we found and using it. That could well be true, but we, the Alliance, are no more to blame than would be any government we could have turned the technology over to. We still believe that the best way to get that technology into the hands of the general populace is as we are doing. Hunger is being eradicated all over the world, with a corresponding decrease in violence. Energy costs are going down as more and more homes come equipped with the new solar power converters, and automobiles that run on solar energy are even now beginning to hit the world markets.
“I cannot guarantee that there will be no further attacks. Rather, I have to work under the assumption that there will be more attacks. We of the Alliance stand ready to defend Earth and ourselves from any and all enemies, wherever they may be found and at whatever the cost. We are expanding our fleet and personnel base as fast as we can to meet the crisis before us. This enemy from the depths of space has been harassing us from the first and shall not be allowed to go unpunished for this heinous act. Root and branch, we will find and destroy his ability to persecute us. Look at your night sky and know that we stand between you and the unknown.”
Feeling like he’d left something out, Simon ended the transmission abruptly. He sat staring into the holographic display of the solar system as it floated in the air to one side of his desk until his comm unit chimed. “Admiral, the herald is calling.”
He leaned forward and activated the channel. “Well, how’d I do?”
Kitty’s chuckle came through as if she were right beside him. “Remarkably well. You only threatened the entire planet once. Are you learning restraint in your old age?”
“Well, you do bring out the best in me, my love,” Simon retorted. “I know, I know. It’s taken something going on over sixteen years now, but better late than never, right?”
Twenty-seven hours after the second attack, the threat assessment level was dropping steadily, not for further attacks but for an imminent attack. Sensor scans had gone back to one person per scan per shift. Vigilance was beginning to waver as no further evidence of enemy action presented itself. It was assumed that the enemy would have to go home, report, receive new orders, and make their way back to continue to press the attacks, giving the Alliance many months, if not a year or more, to prepare for more hostilities. It was a universal truth that unfounded assumptions had a way of coming back to bite one on the nether part of the anatomy.
It would have been better if mankind had known about a small pest native to the Korvil homeworld. Analogous to Earth’s ant, the thukira would dash about with no apparent plan, looking for whatever had disturbed the nest, and calming down after the attacker had been dispatched or after an extended period of time had passed. Over time, it had become customary to wait a full day before venturing within range of a violated nest.
It was a flight of Mambas that was unlucky enough to be in the way of the third wave of ships as they powered up for their attack run. The flight leader ordered his ships to attack without hesitation and called in the alert. “Rigel Command, Dragon leader. Be advised we have seven drive traces on our scans. Same MO as previous attacks. Same direction. We are moving to interdict. Assistance would be appreciated, guys.”
Manned by Korvil desperately seeking to restore lost Honor to clan names, these seven ships were quite literally suicide ships. Each crewmember had already been listed among the Honored ancestors of their clans. Desperation, determination, the effects of the long separation from their species, and the certain knowledge that they were already dead to their families, gave an impetus to the attack that was almost impossible to avert.
All five Mambas went down under the massed firepower of the larger raiders, but the alert had been sounded. Operating on data dumped to the Rigel before Dragon leader died under a three-way crossfire, two battlecruisers short-jumped into range and offloaded their Mambas. Adding their heavier firepower to the lasers and missiles of the smaller ships, the battlecruisers accounted for two of the seven invaders. Wildly veering one way then another, the remaining Korvil ships closed on their target, as one by one, they went down under the massed fire of the Mambas and battlecruisers arrayed against them.
Fatalistically charging the swarm of Mambas launched f
rom the Aldebaran and the Canopus, the five remaining ships of the third wave managed to fight their way through the screen, giving up three more of their number before breaking through into clear space above their cerulean destination.
One raider, engines damaged by a near-miss, swerved off course and added a new crater to the lunar surface, while the final ship, seeing a clear path to its destination, dove for the surface as Honor dictated.
The crew of the last raider, studying their scans in an effort to find the most effective target to expend their lives on, didn’t see the three Mambas scramble from the surface. It wasn’t until the ship took repeated hits on its outer skin that they had any intimation of another bar to their progress. High-powered lasers punched through metal designed to repel inert meteoric rock, and two Mambas died in the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
The last pilot, glancing at his weapons display and seeing only one missile left—and that one a shield-penetrator—aimed his ship at the raider’s midships hull and accelerated onto a collision course. Fingering two buttons on his control yoke, the pilot closed the distance, taking advantage of his superior maneuverability to get close enough to ram the larger vessel. Fractions of a second before impact, he pressed first the launch button, sending the penetrator ahead of him, and then raised the forward shield strength to full. As he passed through the last few meters between him and the raider, he let out a scream of primal rage and fired both lasers, gouging a hole deep into the body of his opponent.
The raider, all power cut off from the control section by the smaller ship, began to fall to the ground miles below, dragging the Mamba with it. The Mamba’s nose, aided by the cutting power of its twin lasers, had punched completely through the mortally wounded raider, stopped only by her stern control vanes.
Amazed to find himself still alive, the pilot looked to the wildly careening ground, then to his altimeter. At a height of fifteen thousand feet, he activated the self-destruct timer and fired the explosive bolts that separated his cockpit from the rest of his stricken vessel.
On board the Mamba, a timer counted down to zero, and a double-sun was born high above the Earth. The falling cockpit/escape module was thrown farther from the scene of devastation by the shockwave, blaring Mayday on all frequencies. At two thousand feet, the antigravs cut in, slowing the pilot’s module to a safe landing on the Korean peninsula where he was picked up, battered but alive, less than an hour later.
Elsewhere in the solar system, four Alliance ships chased the retreating first wave. The Spica, the Niven, the Capella, and the Norton, along with their complements of Mambas, harried the invaders as they tried to rendezvous with the motherships waiting to take them home. The taskforce had whittled the Korvil light attack craft down to a mere dozen ships when the Capella’s Nav officer reported, “Captain! I’m picking up two new drive traces directly ahead of the enemy! Powering up and outbound. And these are big mothers!”
No sooner had this announcement been made than the fleeing raiders turned en masse and headed directly for the Alliance fleet. Mambas started to disappear from the battle plots as the two fleets engaged. Robert Greene, Captain of the Niven and senior captain present, ordered all four capital ships to assist the Mambas at the expense of the escaping larger ships. “If we don’t assist our fighters, we’ll be losing at three-to-one odds, and I won’t allow that.”
The last Korvil raider, obviously fighting to the last to give the larger ships time to escape, was finally destroyed, and Captain Greene ordered all hands to stand down from battle stations. “Sensor stations remain on full alert,” he commanded over the all-ships band. “I won’t take the chance of another sneak attack.”
The grisly business of searching for surviving Mambas began, scans reaching deep into space looking for distress calls. It was as the four ships had begun to widen their search pattern that the Norton’s senior scan tech sounded the red alert. Robert Greene, jolted back into full awareness from a state of post-battle euphoria, called the Norton. “What’s the fuss about, Anna?”
Captain Zandt looked into her viewscreen and said, “Nav has just picked up new drive traces. They apparently just jumped in. There are ten of ‘em, and the smallest is about half our size. I think we’re screwed, Bob.”
Thanks for reading SPHERES OF INFLUENCE!
We hope you’ve enjoyed the second book in the Stellar Heritage series. The story will continue in Book Three: Far Horizons!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob has lived in Montana for over thirty years, since late '85. He fell in love with the state almost instantly (who wouldn't after spending the previous twenty or more years trapped in Houston, Texas). Out in the Big Sky Country, he found the “elbow room” he didn't even know he was looking for. He lives quietly with his two cats and library of nearly two thousand books—about ninety-five percent Sci/Fi. He discovered that he liked to write as well and can often be found doing just that.
Learn more at:
https://www.bladeoftruthpublishing.com/bob-mauldin
Also by Bob Mauldin
The Stellar Heritage Series
Legacy
Spheres of Influence
Far Horizons (Coming Soon)
When One Door Closes (Coming Soon)
