Nebula

by Howard Marsh

  The message also specified the time that the battle group would arrive. At the time of transmission, they were five hours from launching at near light speed, so they would arrive slightly more than five hours from reception of the message. Once they arrived, they would coordinate on the tactical plans and launch the attack approximately two hours later.

  “OK, so we now know what we’re going to be faced with,” Brad said. “We have about five hours before that battle group arrives, and we need to have everything prepared to make sure that they can’t organize for an attack on Earth. If they do that, they would probably overpower Haverford’s fighters, especially if that battleship and that heavy cruiser have the kinds of weapons that we think they must have. Let’s all sit down at the conference table and develop our plan. Yuri and Gladys can stay connected with the robots for now, but I want the rest of you in on this.”

  So the seven of them gathered around the table and began to develop a course of action to meet the coming threat.

  “First thing,” Brad said, “is to eliminate the aliens over there in their bunker. We can’t let them get onto the fighter. We’ll need to take control of it and also the plasma cannon. Those two will have to be our main ways to attack the battle group. We’ll also have to destroy or disable all the robots except the ones that we modified. I’m even concerned about Igor and that new model worker, but we’ll have to take our chances with them. We’ll need all the help that we can get.”

  “They should be reliable,” Ludmila said. “I’m confident that we have supervisory override control with them, so if they decide to revert to alien direction, we can stop that immediately. We can either recapture control or cause them to go completely off-line.”

  “OK,” Brad replied. “You’re the expert. I trust your judgment. So we’ll use them. First step is to eliminate the six aliens and prevent the robots from interfering. Any suggestions?”

  “We’ll have to go outside and kill the aliens when they come out,” Nigel said. “It will take at least two or three of us to do it. We could use the machineguns that we have in the arms locker. I could probably pick off all six of them myself if they came out in a pretty tight group, but we can’t count on that.”

  “I agree, but why not use the x-ray weapons?” Brad questioned.

  “Look,” Nigel replied, “if I’m going out there, I prefer a weapon that I know and trust. I’m pretty good with our ballistic weapons.”

  At that point, Gladys joined the crowd at the table. “I’ll go with Nigel. I’m pretty good with a machinegun myself. Both of us did a lot of recreational target practice with all the weapons at Ops, and I agree with Nigel. A couple of us could take them all down if we ambush them as they come out.”

  “Yuri and I can handle the robots,” Harry added. “We can get Igor and Robby to take out the sentries while we jam all the others with multiple, conflicting commands. Yuri even worked out a sequence that would drive them into a chaotic state. Once they’re in that state they’ll be totally defenseless. Igor and Robby can deal with them one at a time. Then we can have our robots take control of the two robot ships. I don’t want them taking off under some prearranged failure plan.”

  “OK, that’s a start,” Brad agreed. “So, Nigel and Gladys are going to take down the aliens when they come back out. Do we need a third to help them?”

  “That would be good insurance,” Doug added. “I’m pretty good with the weapons too. I’ll go out there with them.”

  “Fine,” Brad said. “Once we secure the area, we’ll need to figure out how to operate the fighter and the plasma cannon. I don’t trust letting the robots handle the cannon, and we need a couple of us to fly the fighter. Judith, you seem to know a lot about that weapon that they’re putting on the fighter. Can you take a look at it once we get rid of the aliens and their robots?”

  “Sure, I’ll see if I can figure it out. But we still need to know if we’ll be able to fly the fighter at all.”

  “What I plan to do is get Milo here as soon as we can. If anyone can figure out how to fly it, he can. He’s been through the original Roswell ship that we rebuilt, so he has a good head start unless the fighter is a lot different.”

  “I’ve been through that ship too,” Nigel added. “I’d like to have a crack at it with Milo.”

  “Me too,” Gladys chimed in. “Besides, Nigel and I will already be suited up and working outside. Once we get rid of the aliens and robots, we can start right in with the fighter. Judith can join us. Then we might be able to have things figured out even before Milo gets here.”

  “OK,” Brad agreed. “But I still want Milo as the pilot on the fighter. Next, what about the plasma cannon?”

  “That looked pretty easy when the alien fired it,” Mikio said. “All the alien controls so far have looked pretty intuitive. I bet that a few of us can figure out how to aim and fire it if we have a couple of hours.”

  Harry added, “It may actually be easier than you think. The sentry-soldier robots know how to use most of the alien weapons. We may find that we can get a complete user’s manual in Igor’s stored records.”

  “Excellent,” Brad said as he completed making notes on all that was being said. “So, here’s the plan. Phase one will neutralize alien presence on Mars. Nigel, Gladys, and Doug will suit up and hide in ambush for the aliens. We need to synchronize this with the attack on all the robots except our five. Harry and Yuri will do that the instant our ambushers open fire. It’s important not to do that any sooner, or it could tip our hand. We also don’t want to be too late, or the robots might react against us, and they could send a message to warn the battle group before they get into our kill zone. We can’t take that chance.

  “Phase two will take control of the fighter and plasma cannon. Once they finish with the aliens, Nigel and Gladys will go into the fighter, and Judith will join them. I’ll get a message to Nebula Ops to tell Milo that it’s safe for him to get back here. Then he can see what he can do with the fighter.

  “Harry and Yuri will probe Igor’s records for the plasma cannon users’ manual. I want Mikio to go outside and join Doug to work with them to figure out how to use it. Mikio and Doug will be our artillerymen. OK?”

  “What about my assignment?” Ludmila asked. She appeared to be the only one not assigned to anything.

  “I need you here to deal with the robots if anything goes wrong,” Brad replied. “The big question mark in my mind is whether we can keep control of things, and you are the only one who understands how all that computing works. Yuri and Harry know what it’s supposed to do, but you wrote the code and debugged all the problems so far. You, Yuri, and Harry are staying inside with me. We may also get some help from Haverford when Milo gets here. I expect that he’ll want to send a few of his soldiers to plus us up.”

  “What about the robot ships?” Ludmila asked. “When we disable the aliens’ robots, we’ll have only Igor, Robby, and the other three left. How will we be able to operate those two ships? One of them needs to deliver the pathogens. That has to happen as soon as possible once we take control.”

  “Good question. I forgot about that,” Brad agreed. “We need to send one sentry and two workers with the pathogens or the aliens at the fleet might become suspicious when they see that the orders weren’t followed. I don’t trust any of them except Robby and the two older models.”

  “That should work,” Ludmila said. “We can give Robby and the other two specific instructions to obey all alien commands once they leave here until they get an override message from us. It should look perfectly normal to the aliens, and I don’t think that they’ll be able to detect any of our modifications before it’s too late for it to matter.”

  “OK,” Brad replied. “Now we need to figure out how to operate the other robot ship. Can a worker fly it?”

  Ludmila shook her head. “No, workers can operate the weapons but not fly the ships. That takes a sentry-class robot. We could use Igor, but that would leave us without any here on Mars, and
it might not look right when the battle force sends their request for final approach to their assembly area. They’d be coming pretty close to Mars itself, so they would probably do that to avoid any defensive action when the sentry detected them, and they’d expect an answer. They know how many sentries should still be on Mars, so we need to make it look like one of them responded.”

  “What if we don’t destroy all the other sentries?” Doug asked. “Can’t Yuri and Harry just temporarily disable one of them and then reactivate it once the aliens are out of the way? Then we could use that sentry.”

  Ludmila shook her head. “No, that wouldn’t work. We can’t trust any robot that we haven’t already modified. Those others need to be put out of action permanently.”

  “Here’s an idea that may work,” Harry offered. “We’ll have one of our workers left here, and it has the same communication capabilities as the sentries. All the robots are on the same network. Yuri and I can create a separate channel that allows us to act as a relay between Igor and the worker, and we can force all of Igor’s transmissions to go through that channel rather than directly out to the rest of the aliens and robots. When the approach request comes from the battle group, Igor’s reply would go through us to the worker and from the worker to the battle group. That way it will look to the aliens like they still have sentries on Mars, like they expected. It should work.”

  “We’ll go with that,” Brad agreed. “We really don’t have another choice, unless someone else has an idea.” No one offered any other opinion, so it was decided.

  “OK,” Brad said. “Nigel, Gladys, and Doug need to get suited up and in position now. Our friends may come out to play at any time. Take your weapons of choice and position yourselves behind some of those boulders alongside the entrance to their bunker. I’ll leave it to you to work the arrangements on how to coordinate fire.”

  The three of them left to get into their suits and take their weapons. Brad continued with his orders. “Yuri and Harry need to get the instructions to paralyze the robots into a form that can be sent as soon as Nigel’s team opens fire. Can you do that?”

  “No problem,” Yuri replied. “We already have most of it composed. It’s a data set that sends them into a chaotic state like an epileptic seizure. I call it a cyber-epileptic seizure. It’s a failure mode that occurs in many types of self-adaptive systems, and if you know how their programming works, you can send just the right data to set one off. Fortunately, we know enough about the robots to know how to do it. My only concern is being able to react quickly enough when you send the cue to transmit. When we’re connected so completely with the robots, we suffer some sensory deprivation and we’ll probably be slow to react when you give us the signal.”

  Ludmila had the solution. “I can keep in close contact with you through the computer interface. I’ll write a small program that cues you through the robot network once the fire starts. I could even send the message for you if you want, but it’s probably better to do it as a brain-to-robot transmission so that you get all the right feedback once it’s sent.”

  “Right,” Harry agreed. “Just give us the cue, and Yuri and I will do the rest.”

  “So, is everyone clear on the assignments?” Brad asked. Everyone nodded. “Mikio, send a message to Ops telling them what we are going to do.”

  *

  Nigel, Gladys, and Doug positioned themselves behind boulders to the side of the entrance to the aliens’ bunker. They spread out with about ten meters between each of them, in locations where they would have clear fields of fire. After about fifteen minutes, the first alien came out, followed by four others.

  Inside the ops center, the other AFO team watched the video sensor feeds.

  “Where’s the sixth one?” Mikio asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.

  “Patience,” Brad said. “The other one will come out too.” Then he spoke to the three snipers through the radio link into their headsets. “Try to hold fire until the last one comes out. If it doesn’t come out before the others start to go to the fighter, you’ll have to take them out, and one of you will have to go into the bunker to get number six. You’ll need to do it fast. We don’t want it to have time to send a message to the fleet.”

  Nigel replied, “We already had that figured in before we got into position. I took a breech gun with me, loaded with two bunker busters, the types with the shaped charge penetrator and delayed demolition charge. If I have to go in, I’ll fire that into the airlock. The first shot should blow through both airlock doors and probably kill anything inside the first couple rooms in the bunker. I’ll fire a second shot to make sure and then go in with my machine gun. But let’s hope that we don’t need to do that.”

  The five aliens outside their bunker split off, causing the team to start to be concerned that their ambush might run into problems. Two of them went to the storage unit and opened the doors. They then went in, probably to inspect the pathogen containers. The other three went to the robot ship. It looked like they were preparing to load the pathogens for the trip back to the fleet, as they had been ordered to do.

  Harry then sensed direction being given to the workers to fetch the pathogens and load them into the ship. He followed the interactions between the workers and the sentries and saw that they were dividing up the work. One of the workers that had been modified by Ludmila was part of the three-worker group that would do the loading. That gave Harry and Yuri an opportunity to disrupt things if it became necessary, but for now they would just follow along and hope that all six aliens would be exposed to the snipers.

  After only a minute or so, the two aliens emerged from the storage facility, and the five regrouped near the entrance to their bunker.

  “Now what,” Gladys said. She could be heard on the radio net by all the team.

  “Patience,” Brad said again. “Let’s wait for the sixth one to come out. It’s probably doing some last minute housekeeping or just turning systems off. It should join the others soon. Hold your fire until it comes out or until we have no other options. Just make sure that none of them get into the fighter.”

  They waited another minute or so, as the five aliens continued to discuss something. Finally, the outer door to the bunker’s airlock opened. For once, luck seemed to go in the right direction, and alien number six emerged and hurried to join the other five. They then started to move toward the fighter, but before the sixth could reach them, it veered off toward the storage facility.

  “Oh shit,” Gladys said. “That bastard is running away from the others. I’ll get him. You two get the rest of them.”

  “Fire!” Nigel’s command was clearly heard over the radio net, and he and Doug opened fire with their automatic weapons. It was a turkey shoot. The five aliens were grouped so closely that they were mowed down almost instantly by the heavy fire.

  Gladys had a bigger challenge. The sixth alien was obviously a trained soldier. It sensed movement of the three shooters from behind their boulders as they rose and prepared to fire. It threw itself to the ground and rolled toward cover behind another boulder, near the side of the storage facility, drawing an x-ray machine pistol from a holster on the side of its space suit.

  It all happened so fast that Gladys couldn’t get a shot at the alien before it was partially covered by the boulder. She leaped forward to get into position behind another boulder where she could take a shot, and she fired a quick burst as she ran toward it. Her aim wasn’t perfect since both she and the target were moving fast, but she hit the alien in the leg while it was still partially exposed. The shot only wounded it and it managed to roll out of sight and was still alive and able to fight back.

  Gladys was now exposed herself and needed to move quickly to duck behind the boulder. She got there just as the alien was able to get off a shot. The x-ray burst hit the boulder, penetrating deep inside it and causing the back end of it to explode into a shower of rock fragments, like shrapnel. Most of the fragments flew over Gladys’ head as she dropped flat
on the ground, but a couple of them hit her shoulder and upper arm, tearing holes in her suit and cutting into her flesh. Blood and air poured through the holes in the suit before the automatic sealants could do their job, and she lost consciousness.

  Nigel and Doug watched in horror at the action only a few meters away and immediately ran to Gladys’ aid. They had no idea of the alien’s condition and disregarded any thought that they themselves could be targets as they ran to what was left of the boulder that had partly shielded Gladys. They could see that they needed to stop the bleeding and make sure that the suit was sealed well enough so that she wouldn’t suffocate in the thin Martian atmosphere. Doug began to work on her, and Nigel called for help. Fortunately, the space suits had emergency kits in the utility pockets, and the internal sealant had already done a reasonably good job of slowing the leak. Doug found some suit repair material that he was able to wrap around the area where the shrapnel had penetrated. It was able to stop the leak almost completely, and it could serve as a makeshift tourniquet to slow the bleeding until they could get something better. But they needed help fast.

  “Brad, we need help out here,” Nigel shouted. “Gladys was hit, and the alien is still alive and hiding behind a rock near the storage building. Doug is trying to take care of Gladys, and I’m going after the bastard. Send someone out with a medical kit and bring a stretcher. We need to get Gladys inside fast, and we need to get her back to Nebula. We can probably patch her up, but she’ll need a surgeon. Her shoulder and arm look pretty bad.”

  “Roger,” Brad replied. “Judith is already suited up. She’ll get there as fast as possible. I’ll tell Milo to get here with another ship to bring her back. And I’ll tell him to bring a medical team. Meanwhile, be careful. If there’s a live alien there, it’s probably a trained soldier, and well-armed.”