The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “So the method of attack is this: to use modified Viper drones to deliver the battledroids to their targets. The Vipers will be cloaked and the droids will be cloaked. The Vipers will attach themselves to the outside of the target and the droid will exit the manpod outfitted into the Viper weapons bay. Each droid will carry a backpack nuke of the same type used by the SSS team on the Gaia base attack. Once the Viper attaches, the droid will have been instructed to arm the nuke on a timer, which cannot then be deactivated. The droid will then head to a weak spot on the target. It’s different for each type, but for the destroyers it’s the shuttle bay and the carrier the fighter launch bays. The nuke will then be planted and detonated well inside the target on a timer if the droid is undetected or detonated immediately, if the mission objective is likely to be compromised. The AI will decide the tactical decisions, but we will have mission control from Seattle using the EQP transceivers that each droid has been fitted with. We’ll have instantaneous two-way comms, albeit at very limited bit rate due to the limitations of the EQP transceivers.”

  “Do we plan an excess of Vipers and droids in case some are taken out before reaching their targets?” asked Secretary of Defence Romero.

  “Yes, sir, a ten percent excess.”

  “Probability of success?” probed Romero.

  “With so many unknowns the PoS is almost meaningless. But for what it’s worth, from the simulations we ran, it’s a mean of fifty-six percent, with an uncertainty range of plus or minus thirty-three percent,” conveyed McIver, slightly embarrassed by the figures, which essentially showed it was a roll of the dice. So little was known about the alien ships and facilities: their sensors, weapons, layout and so forth.

  “And what is the follow-on mission and exfiltration plan for the droids that manage to get away from their targets?” asked Romero.

  “Sir, the follow-on mission is to infiltrate and attack other space-based assets on the secondary target list. Some of these use straight Viper attack using its cannons at close range, others call for the battledroid to get inside and cause havoc. So going back to the original question, we can't risk our men and women on these missions as there will be no exfiltration. The droids will fight until they can fight no more. They will fight to the death,” responded McIver.

  “And if it fails we’re going to need all the elite soldiers we can to defend Earth,” concluded the president, on an uncharacteristically gloomy note. Powell was inhumanly tired and had greyed noticeably since the London Guardian exposé had broken ten months ago.

  The endorsement session went on only a short time longer. The president and secretary of defence already agreed with the plan, which formed a key part of the alien threat strategy. The president would wait for the success he desperately needed to appease the restless public and the relentless media before announcing anything. His hopes were high and for the first time in as long as his tired brain could remember they had a plan that gave some reason for hope.

  ***

  March 20, 2063 Gaia Orbit - Operation Stellar Shield

  The Mark VIII battledroid sat fearlessly in the manpod of the car-sized Viper as it neared the gargantuan alien carrier. The satin grey hull plating diffusely reflected the rays from its mother star, Avendano, as it orbited the blue-green world hundreds of kilometres below. The carrier was the size of a small city, but betrayed no sign of life except for the occasional launch and return of solitary fighters. Like an enormous metallic wasps’ nest, the relatively tiny fighters sped out of the launch bays into the dark of space, others returning from unknown places. As Viper-Charlie-Four’s flight progressed towards the port-underside of the enemy ship, her giant mass blocked out the alien sun, revealing faint points of light all over the shaded hull, the launch bays now clearly visible as low, rectangular apertures of illumination. Another one-hundred and fifty-eight Vipers, each with their own deadly cargo of a battledroid and backpack nuke were simultaneously heading towards their targets. Five Vipers headed towards the alien carrier unseen, cloaked by technological wizardry.

  The battledroid inside Viper-Charlie-Four had a mission that could decide the fate of its human makers. The thinking machine had no feelings in the human sense – its artificial intelligence was still short of sentience – though its battlefield logic and ability to integrate data was better than any human’s. Its mission parameters – objectives plus rules of engagement – dictated that it must land on the hull next to the front-port fighter launch bay, attaching the Viper’s top side to the plating with the special adhesive pads. The adhesive pads made use of the Van Der Waals force, each containing thousands of microscopic projection like those found on the footpads of a gecko. Nicknamed ‘gecko pads’, the battledroid’s hands and feet were equipped with the same technology. When they exited Viper it would allow them to move efficiently across the sheer hull plating and into the launch bay. Once inside the launch bay, the droid would seek an as yet unknown place to hide the nuclear device. The bomb timer would be auto-activated once the Viper touched down on the carrier. This was to ensure that some damage was done even if the droid did not make it inside or was to be disabled before reaching a planting location. The battledroids had the same invisibility coating as the soldiers’ battlesuits, making them almost undetectable.

  Detonating the devices on the outside, next to the hull, would’ve been easier, but the hull plating was designed to take a battering and, to guarantee success, getting inside it offered far better odds of destroying the ship. The planners’ main fear was not the nuke’s ability to rip the carrier apart – only one successful detonation would seal its fate – hence the reason why synchronisation of the timers wasn’t vital. Instead, their main concern was detection of the Viper before it got close to the target. There were five chances to destroy the carrier with five droids heading towards their quarry. Viper-Charlie-Four was still up and running, moving relentlessly towards the target, the kilometre-long warship, replete with weapons blisters and thick armoured plating, growing larger at an exponential rate. The danger zone was immediately after the transit into Avendano through the FTL gate. It was the gravimetric spike that was fingered as the culprit that gave away A-Patrol’s earlier incursion. Motor and his squad had been lucky on that occasion, narrowly avoiding the flak rounds of the alien combat space patrol. Other battledroid-laden Vipers on this current mission – Operation Stellar Shield – had not been so lucky; although this had been anticipated and was one of the reasons for the excess of Vipers. Once Battledroid-Fifty had set its deadly device somewhere inside the ship it would make a hasty retreat back to the Viper, attempting to take off and flee the imminent burst of thermonuclear fusion.

  It moved closer-and-closer as the puff of the manoeuvring jets punctuated the dull humming inside the Viper; although there was no way the droid could hear it in the airless, dark space. The craft slowed to match the orbital trajectory of the carrier as it sped around the alien homeworld, the planet framing its grey bulk. The Viper’s top side camera feed was being sent directly to Battledroid-Fifty’s HUD and showed the smooth, metallic hull plating filling more and more of the view. The extent of the flat surface extended far towards the bow and even further towards the stern. The hemispherical hillocks, that were weapons blisters, protruded from the expanse of grey alloy. Some dim lights emanated from other places; the portholes seemed completely flush with the hull plating as if there were no join or frame sealing them in place. Only to the right-hand side of the view was there a break in the ship’s flank—the fighter launch bay opening, the width of several aircraft hangar doors side-by-side. With the merest of bumps, the Viper touched down on the carrier upside-down. Within seconds, the doors to the manpod opened with the whole craft and the human-made robot still invisible to virtually all means of detection.

  Battledroid-Fifty, in his recumbent seat, prepared to climb out, a speck on the surface of the monstrous alien carrier. His backpack was hidden under the same type of tied-down invisibility cloak that the human soldiers had used on G
aia. Without its invisibility cloaking, the oversized humanoid robot would be an intimidating sight to any human, its grey classified alloy body standing at seven feet high. Even unarmed, its inhuman strength could throw a large man through a wall; although no droid had so far come up against an alien. The droid would reach to the average alien’s shoulders, such was the scaly beings’ size. He carefully pushed the recumbent seat to the side on its pivot mounts and grabbed the frame of the Viper weapons bay, through which he was about to exit. The blackness of space was punctuated by the destroyers of the space armada, the closest of which showed weapons blisters casting shadows on its metallic hull in the sunlight. A tail of clustered destroyer trailed off into the orbital distance to the aft of the carrier.

  Battledroid-Fifty half-climbed, half-floated down from the Viper and onto the hull plating, firmly affixing himself by his gecko pads. He strode with robotic efficiency towards the upper edge of the launch bay aperture, a terminator without mercy for his enemy’s aims, hope or dreams. If the plan worked, the metal plating he now traversed would be just particles and atoms spinning through space having been vaporized by the weapon carried on his back. With any luck, the cloud of debris that would envelope Gaian orbit would take out the enemy assets, which had dodged their own nuclear demise. As he neared the edge, a fighter darted out of the opening a short distance below. A human soldier might have been startled, but Battledroid-Fifty showed no such reaction and continued relentlessly around the lip and onto the roof of the giant hangar.

  The subdued lighting inside meant that he continued to use night vision technology to see in the visual spectrum. The hangar extended fore and aft and contained at least forty-five fighters parked to either side of the runways which led out into space. There was no apparent gravity – artificial or otherwise – aside from the negligible microgravity exerted by the massive ship. The launch bay and hangar were open to space. No force fields were necessary during flight operations as there were no alien beings anywhere to be seen. The fighters were clearly drones. Giant manipulator arms, which ran along tracks sited on every wall of the hangar, motored along and kept the fighters in organised ranks.

  As Battledroid-Fifty progressed deeper along the hangar roof, a manipulator effortlessly picked out a fighter from its row and placed it at the start of the runway. Moments later, it accelerated at an almost inconceivable rate past the threshold. The only other movement came from a small number of maintenance droids, which plied their trade between the ranks of fighters. Some carried spares, some were cutting or welding, others were inserting probes into their fighter, diagnosing its needs. He saw a maintenance droid exit a dark tunnel to the far right of the hanger and placed it on his shortlist of hiding places for the nuke. He walked further and considered planting the nuke on or in a fighter, but quickly dismissed the idea as illogical and prone to mission failure if the fighter departed. He could see additional dark service ports directly below him in the wall, on his side of the hangar as well as on the rear wall. Further possibilities existed in the vent-like openings dotted all over the ceiling he was trekking across. These were for pressurizing the hangar when the hangar doors were closed during times of no flight operations and defensive manoeuvres. He made his way over to the vent grill and tried it to see if it would budge. There was no give and he did not want to employ his laser for fear of detection and mission failure. He decided on the left-hand tunnel near the base of the far hangar wall. The further inside the carrier the more destructive the nuke would be and there appeared to be nothing stopping entry to the tunnel.

  He went ever forward, slowing only to climb over a manipulator arm track, having to time his crossing as the speedy robot arm whizzed past. One more track to cross on the way down the far wall and he’d be beside the tunnel opening. A maintenance droid came wheeling out of the tunnel carrying a small cube—a spare part of unknown purpose. Battledroid-Fifty traversed the empty manipulator arm track and stood next to the tunnel peering into it with his night vision cameras. He’d found the perfect spot to conceal his bomb but had yet to solve the logical problem of maintenance bot access along the tunnel. He was programmed to avoid mission failure and allowing the bots to detect the device, or otherwise alert their alien masters due to a blockage, was to be avoided. He took a chance, based on calculated probability and his prior observation of a droid using the tunnel at the same time as he.

  He dashed along the small tunnel on robotic hands and feet like a cheetah sprinting across the Sahel. Scanning left and right as he went he saw a round hatch to an access port. The hatch was locked with no discernible way to open it. Time was running out and, with every second, the chance of a maintenance bot entering the tunnel increased. The hatch was made up of two semi-circular pieces joined in the centre where, presumably, it would open. Calculating no better option and with only ten minutes left on the nuke timer, he jabbed the fingers of his flattened hand between the hatch doors. The doors split open like a soda can under the force of a chisel. He grabbed the bent halves and prized them back far enough to stash the backpack inside. The service hatch contained a series of laterally running pipes and some sort of panel with sockets all over its surface. He pushed the backpack into the tight space and bent the hatch doors back to their pristine state as well as he could. He looked left, then quickly right, saw nothing coming and sped back out the way he’d come.

  Just as Battledroid-Fifty reached the exit of the tunnel his probabilistic account ran out as a maintenance droid collided with him. The battledroid had the momentum of a steam train and flung the small maintenance bot out of the tunnel like a cannon ball. It carried on ballistically out towards the hangar opening with nothing to stop it now that contact between its wheels and the floor had been lost. Battledroid-Fifty stood at full height beside the tunnel and rapidly charted his exit route back to the Viper. He would retrace the way he had entered. As he made his way up the hangar wall towards the ceiling, he looked out at the escorting destroyer, its shape filling the length of the bay exit. Then, abruptly, the hangar bay doors started closing. They advanced slowly from the top and bottom as Battledroid-Fifty increased his speed to a run, trying to escape the trap. He couldn’t determine whether his close encounter with the maintenance bot had alerted the aliens or if it was something else. He didn't have to wait much longer to have the unknown answered. One second the destroyer and space filled his view, a microsecond later everything flashed white as the nuke on-board the ship outside ripped through its target.

  Shrapnel accompanied the high-speed blast wave into the hangar as he dived flat to the ceiling still twenty-metres from escape, the upper hangar door jammed where it was with its counterpart below continuing towards the midpoint. Projectiles from the blast peppered his armour in their hundreds, but none caused more than superficial damage. He had only five minutes remaining to escape the carrier. He started considering whether his Viper would still be intact. He dashed through the cloud of former-destroyer debris and hoisted himself into the Viper which was now visible and had been noticeably crushed, flattened slightly under the pressure of the blast, as well as dented in numerous places by flying debris. Battledroid-Fifty hooked into the Viper’s control system but nothing happened. The Viper had died moments after the destroyer and now there was no way off the doomed carrier for him.

  Without sentimentality or fear, he left the Viper and ran towards the nearest porthole panel, readying his laser for action. Set to full power, he cut a way in, determined to maximise damage in line with his secondary mission, which assumed nuclear device failure. The internal pressure released its payload of alien air, catching Battledroid-Fifty by surprise and showing that there were still gaps in his AI programming. The rush of exiting air threw him clear of the carrier and off towards the core of the large debris field that now streamed in orbit where the destroyer once flew. He emotionlessly continued his mission, firing his full complement of rockets from his left arm with the warheads set to armour-piercing. As the flock of conically-tipped birds hit home h
e pulsed his right-arm laser, aiming for the porthole panels compromising one of them. The rocket explosions flowered in quick succession like a cluster of bombs, but left only scorch marks and minor depressions on the hull plating. Continuing to fire, he watched the carrier recede with the unappreciated beauty of its home world filling his vista.

  Battledroid-Fifty knew he had one more second to live, but felt nothing. He had served his human masters well and had perhaps altered the fate of their planet. There could be no medal for him, but had he been human he’d have been feted as a legend, a hero. Within milliseconds, he would see no more as the fusion bomb unleashed its vast energy in a flash of radiation, melting Battledroid-Fifty back to the elements of which he was made.

  ***

  March 23, 2063 Alliance Citadel Control Centre, WGA Space HQ, Seattle