Struggle for a Small Blue Planet

by Warwick Gibson

"The Berbers have been sending their brightest young people out to study things related to the ship for a hundred years or more."

  "Yedder should be here to lead us," said the young man, dressed in long desert robes. He was tall and lean, in the typical Imazighen style. "He was our leader in all things of the ship, and he was my mentor. He was killed in Algiers when the 'quakes came."

  "I'm sorry," said Don simply.

  "This is Dassin," said Jo, pointing to a nervous girl who seemed to shrink into the corner when everyone looked at her.

  "A natural in the field of electronics," said Sufian. "Yedder trained her himself. His loss has hit her very hard."

  Don bowed his head. When he looked up again he realised the girl was older than her slight frame suggested, in her late thirties maybe.

  "We're still using the emergency frequency Cal gave you when we want global information," said Jo. "It's in the low 5Mhz. Cal wants you to report in now you've seen the ship, by the way.

  "The citadels are destroying anything with a strong transmission signal," she continued, "so the emergency frequencies may not last. Some groups have adapted telephone exchanges in outlying areas, and are using the old copper lines.

  "The submarine telephone lines are being used in the same way. But there aren't any copper lines out here in the desert.

  "What do you think of this as a solution?" she said, pulling up a wave signal that looked about as random, and intermittent, as it was possible to get. Don leaned forward, brushing past her hair.

  It had been short when he met her, but now she was growing it out, in a more Imazighen-appropriate style. She had also adapted to the local ways, using Argan oil on her wavy, black hair. She smelt good.

  "Sorry," he said abruptly, pulling back.

  "For what?" she said, enlarging one of the wave strands to show how information was hidden in it.

  "For invading your space," he said, feeling uncomfortable.

  "Oh, that," she said. "Invade away. As much as you like." Then she coloured up, and stared intently at the screen.

  Don didn't know what he should do. Was she flirting with him?

  Her parents were both gone, and she would have lost most of the people she cared about in the 'quakes. His SAS team was her family now, but was there a him and her thing going on as well?

  Don's training took up most of his time, and it made him one of the best at what he did, but at 35 he had a limited knowledge of women. On top of that he had never understood American women. He was from New Zealand, and while Kiwis weren't British, they shared certain rules about emotional closeness.

  Shouldn't there have been more footwork first? Wasn't she supposed to make him think it was his idea? And weren't they too busy trying to save the world for this?

  Then he realised some part of him had already considered her offer, and hadn't said no. That was when he saw he no longer had logical control of the situation. It was developing a life of its own.

  "Jo, could you help me over here?" said Dazzin, in a small girl's voice that sounded strange in her heavily accented English. She seemed to be sensing Jo's discomfort.

  "Yes," said Don hastily, "and I should be organising training for Izem's people.

  "Some of the Berbers possess those long rifles, but most of them have no idea about modern tactics, and now the women want to be part of the training, which is creating all sorts of problems – ah, not of course that there's anything wrong with that in itself . . ."

  He was saved from further embarrassment by a messenger at the door. Would Don go with the man. It was urgent.

  Izem looked grim when Don walked into the same room where he'd first met the High Council. The other five members of the Council were already there. Izem motioned Don toward a chair.

  "We have people loyal to us scattered through the surrounding mountains," he said. "One of them has just sent word that a pretender from Tinghir is sending a raiding party our way.

  "The man is descended from an early 1900s warlord who called himself Thami El Glaoui, or Lord of the Atlas Mountains. As well as supplying the Marrakech hashish markets, his family made a lot of money from the Moroccan struggles for independence in the sixties, and an attempted military coup in the seventies.

  "Tinghir used to be three hours north-west of us by road, but it will take them a lot longer to get here now. I doubt they'll waste precious fuel on a raid they expect to net them some stock and household goods. They'll be walking the men and taking the equipment by camel train. We've got a day before they get here, maybe two."

  He paused for a moment.

  "I think maybe the new Thami El Glaoui is curious. We've never been able to squash all the rumours about this valley."

  Don knew a bit about Tinghir, the governing city for Tinghir province. It was a large oasis town between two great mountain ranges, with a hundred square kilometres of land under cultivation. The population had been forty thousand before the quakes. It might be back to that as people flocked in for protection and food.

  The ruling family would have a well-stocked armoury, and the new warlord had probably ransacked the police stations and the local outpost of the Moroccon military. This might turn nasty.

  "What's their strength?" he asked, his mind already working out how to defend the valley.

  "My source says about two hundred, with some mortars and RPGs," said Izem.

  A raiding party then, thought Don. Not expecting much resistance. Shock and awe tactics to ensure local compliance.

  He had already done the sums. The village had a lot more people than the raiders did, but far fewer weapons – and limited training on what they did have.

  They would be going into this as the underdogs.

  34

  Atmospheric boundary

  Somewhere over the Pacific ocean, planet Earth

  Phillipe Pesquerre checked the roll rate of the International Space Station. At three degrees a second it wasn't excessive. They would bring it back to zero before they detached the re-entry vehicle, and made that last, vital burn toward the alien structure ahead of them.

  The strange, five-pronged target was now clearly visible. The ISS would sweep past it at 11km per second, but the re-entry vehicle would be able to bridge the gap and catch the station unawares. If they detached early enough.

  The commander snapped out a series of orders, and his fellow Frenchman began to run through a checklist, calling out the status of each component. The third member of the crew, the American, was running other checks in the aft compartment. He was near the comms station, and was the first to notice an incoming call.

  Satellite coverage was out, and all the powerful transmitters on Earth had been destroyed by the citadels. It took him a moment to realise it was the other re-entry vehicle, somewhere way behind them.

  "Commander!" he called out. "You might want to hear this."

  Phillipe waited until his countryman had okayed the first checklist, before transferring the call to his station.

  "Pesquerre here," he said, connecting in.

  "How's it going down there?" said Grant Deward, the most outgoing of the three Americans, and the most senior of the astronauts on the other vehicle.

  "We're very busy, Grant," snapped Phillippe, "what the hell do you want?"

  There was a silence.

  "We're thinking of doing what you're doing," said Grant at last, his previous enthusiasm gone. Indeed a great sadness seemed to have enveloped him.

  "If we manage to destroy this goddamn station ahead of us," growled Phillipe, "there's no point in you hurtling into the debris field half a day later!"

  "Another one, Commander," said Grant. "We think we can take out another one."

  He hurried on before the commander could reply.

  "We're guessing the stations are automated, and we don't think they have any space-to-space defenses. They don't need them. The citadels have taken out every ballistic missile the planet has, and there's no other way our military can reach the alien space stations from the sur
face. Not that we've much military left.

  "If your attack doesn't stir up any defences, we'll start a burn that puts us through the middle of the next station on our current orbit."

  "That's what we all think," said Evie quietly, the one female astronaut.

  "Ya, me too," said Kurt, the German.

  There was a long silence while Phillipe digested this information.

  "We'd like your blessing, if you think our plan won't jeopardise your attack," finished Grant. "There's no one else to talk to about it."

  That was true, thought Phillippe. It was eerily silent up here now. The constant chatter from ground bases had stopped when everything of a technological nature had been swept away by the citadels. They were six people, in two tin cans, who might as well be at the ends of the Earth.

  "Sounds good to me," said Phillipe, trying to inject some warmth into his voice. "Let's see if we can bring down two of the bastards!"

  There was a round of cheers from the other re-entry vehicle. Then the American in the aft compartment reminded Phillipe it was one minute to the burn to seperate them from the ISS. The burn that would give them enough sideways velocity to make the jump to the alien station ahead of them.

  The commander looked at the strange structure on the central screen. It was enormous, many times larger than the ISS.

  "Have to go," said Phillipe, swinging round to take control of the engines. He was going to fly the re-entry vehicle every step of the way to its target, his hands steady on the controls. He wanted to be sure they got it right.

  The metal shell around the three astronauts vibrated as the seals let go, and then they were free of the ISS. The crew felt a gentle shove as the engines fired. Then the distance back to the ISS started to increase as their speed increased, and kept on increasing. A quick check showed Phillipe they were right where the computer wanted them to be.

  "We can see the burn. Everything on track?" said Grant's voice in his ear. Phillipe grunted.

  "I'm gonna be here all the way to home plate, understand?" said Grant, and Phillipe switched him over to the interior speakers. The other two astronauts looked up as Grant's voice continued.

  "When this is all over and we rebuild, they're gonna name a sports stadium after you," said Grant. "Hell, each of you will have a sports stadium named after you. There will be a new Arc de Triomphe in Paris, called the Arc de Meteore, commemorating your ship slamming into that space station like a vengeful meteor."

  One of Phillipe's crew had tears running down his cheeks now. Phillipe looked intently at the readout. He was riding the dotted line of their trajectory down the green arc on the computer screen toward the huge structure that loomed ahead.

  "Remember when we first met?" said Grant, "in Houston, and Marty cleaned you and your guys out at cards?"

  Phillipe was smiling. The re-entry vehicle was an 11km a second bullet, tiny against the bulk of the alien space station ahead of it.

  "Marty cheated," said Grant. "Marked deck or something. I always meant to tell you, but there was never a spare moment."

  "You evil bastards!" said Phillipe, with a laugh, before a ball of fire erupted from the point of impact. The crumpled mass of the re-entry vehicle had a huge kinetic energy, and it drove the central hub of the station out of alignment. Moments later the five giant arms began to crumple inward.

  An hour later, Cleet was sifting through the limited intel Mount Weather was still able to access. Reports from people on the ground had to travel overland first, and then be routed through the old copper telephone lines.

  Several reports from Hawaii talked about bright lights in the sky to the south, and then something big disintegrating as it fell through the atmosphere. Most of the action had been observed through binoculars, but there were a few descriptions from amateur telescopes. He headed for the Presidential office.

  "So you can't be sure, but . . ." said the President.

  "I don't see what else it could be, Mr President," said Cleet enthusiastically. "The astronauts on board the ISS told us what they intended to do, and what we're seeing now bears out that course of action.

  "I can be fairly sure about the space station over the south Pacific, but there are reports from north Africa too, and they're more sketchy. From what I can make out, a second space station came down there as well."

  "How could the astronauts have taken out both stations?" said the President, struggling to keep up with the turn of events.

  "There were two re-entry vehicles docked at the ISS," said Cleet. "One brought up by an American crew, and the other a European crew. It is entirely possible."

  The President leaned back in his chair.

  "I think we should let the astronauts take credit for both space stations. We desperately need some good news, and this will lift morale around the world."

  "Two out of four, Mr President," said Cleet. "The citadels are blind across half the sky!"

  "Indeed, my friend," said the President thoughtfully. "You know, this is the first sign we've had that these creatures are not invincible."

  35

  Imazighen village

  Atlas Mountains, North-west Africa

  Don paced across the entrance to the valley for a second time. It was his way of assessing zones of fire and usable cover. Sadly the entrance was too wide to fortify, and it didn't have enough natural features to use as forward positions. At least the cliffs on the other three sides of the valley would concentrate the action here.

  He went back to his first plan, which kept proving itself the best one. The villagers had scrambled to implement it once they knew the warlord was coming. Holes were being dug, tunnels bored in the sandstone cliffs, and walls of earth thrown up as the day wore on. Most of the work would also be disguised in some way, and made to look as natural as possible.

  The warlord from Tinghir had a lot more firepower than the villagers, and the Berbers were going to need every trick they could think of to neutralise the difference. The possibilities kept going around in Don's brain, but so did other things. Jo was one of them. He shook his head to sharpen his focus.

  So this Thami El Glaoui thought himself 'Lord of the Atlas Mountains', did he?

  Well, the man was about to be rudely awakened from his dreams. This time round the villagers would humiliate him, and send his men packing, at least if Don's plans worked as they should. The long-term problem would remain though – the warlord's power needed to be broken. There was only one enemy, the citadels, and the resistance didn't have time for sideshows.

  It was mid-morning of the second day when a horse and rider galloped into the Imazighen village, and up to the meeting house of the High Council.

  Two of the older women had taken up a position overlooking what was left of the road from Tinghir. The route opened out into a valley as it came down off the low mountain passes, and the field of view was good.

  A quick mirror flash from the women and the scout below had made his way up the side of the valley. Once he confirmed what they had seen, he let his horse pick its way down off the heights, and spurred it for home.

  The news was not good. The number of raiders exceeded the two hundred the villagers were expecting, and they were mostly regular army, in uniform, which meant they were well trained. They were strung out in individual companies, with a number of camel trains in the middle.

  Don and Izem went through the various parts of the plan again. It made use of everyone in the village, including those who had come in from the outlying areas. Most of them were already in place, finishing off their positions. The rest hurried there now.

  The oldest women had ushered the children inside the caverns at the far end of the valley, where water was stored. Don had then been forced to find a place in the battle plan for the old men. He had never seen such eagerness. Most of them had been in some war or another, and wanted to contribute again. It appeared that a man's honour was ranked highly among the Imazighen people.

  It wasn't long before an unearthly calm settled ove
r the valley. Don looked up at the cliffs. The birds of prey had vanished. The stock animals, penned against the cliffs at the back of the valley, moved restlessly, but did not cry out.

  He had seen the same thing before other military actions. He doubted the troops climbing the rise to the village would understand it. Men on foot, sweating as they marched, with dust rising around them and loud complaints from the camels, wouldn't notice such things.

  The first company reached the entrance to the valley, and surveyed the lack of activity with suspicion. Imazighen villages kept a good lookout in these days after the 'quakes, when opportunists and lawless bands took whatever they could. But there were no guards.

  Don swept his binoculars across the valley and back again. The first company had around a hundred troops, split into a lead and tail of fifty men each. They were armed with modernised versions of the Soviet AK 47, weapons produced in a number of countries around the Meditteranean.

  In the middle were forty civilians controlling five strings of camels, laden with provisions and heavier armaments. Another company of troops brought up the rear, and these last were spread out in a long column.

  A moment later a group of around twenty camel riders, bearing old moukalla muskets, swept over the rise on one side of the valley. The ancient weapons could throw out a large slug, but they were inaccurate at a distance. The men raced forward, keeping their distance from the troops and brandishing the long-barrelled weapons.

  When they were abreast of the first company, they lowered the muskets and fired a ragged volley. A dozen of the enemy fell lifeless, and the rest, until then laughing and jeering, scrambled to find shelter.

  Don smiled. The original Lawrence of Arabia would be proud.

  That first ragged volley had been backed up by Izem's German rifles, firing from elevated positions in the cliffs 600m away, using telescopic sights. A number of storage rooms had been cut out of the cliffs in previous years, well off the valley floor, to provide cool, dry storage places. They were coming in very useful as sniper positions. There were only eight of the German versions of the old moukalla muskets, but tungsten alloy bullets could pass through a number of bodies.