by Howard Marsh
Brad agreed with that assessment. “Then we’ll have to develop our tactics to keep them out of the line of fire, hopefully beyond the range of the alien weapons. But first let’s see what we can do to put the weapons on them. Did you find any other things that could be useful?”
“We’re finding that some of the robots look like they’re not totally dead.” Anderson replied. “The EMP seems to have knocked out their computers. As far as we can tell, none of the electronics were burned out, but the operating systems were clobbered and would need to be completely reloaded. We can ship them back to Earth if you think that would be useful.”
Ludmila spoke up at this point. “Ship them back. My people can reload the operating system with all our modifications. Are any of them sentry-soldier robots?”
“All of them seem to be,” Anderson answered.
“Good,” Ludmila replied. “Send any that look salvageable back to Nebula. I’ll alert my people to be ready for them.”
Before Anderson could respond, his communicator alerted him to an incoming call. He answered and listened for several seconds before speaking back.
“Alive? Are you sure?” He asked. … “How many of them?” … “OK, get them down here pronto. We’ll see what the docs can do.”
Then he terminated the call and reported on the latest findings. “It looks like a few of the aliens survived. My guys found an emergency escape capsule floating in space near the battleship. Three of them were in it. They seem to be injured but alive. I’m having them brought here, and a couple of doctors from the medical team with my group will come here and see if they can treat them.”
Brad was surprised by the news. He and all the others thought that all the aliens had died when their ships were destroyed. But he realized the possible benefit of having alien prisoners to question and maybe even use. “Good work. We’ll prepare a room for the medical team. If they can stabilize the prisoners, we’ll ship them back to the hospital at Nebula Prime. The biologists and physicians back there learned a lot from working with the dead aliens from the Roswell crash. Maybe they’ll know how to treat the injuries. Alien prisoners could prove useful.”
While these discussions were going on, Harry was starting to receive information through his connection with Igor and the worker robot. Messages and data were flowing between the second battle group and the fleet, and even though the day-long time delay kept decisions moving at a snails pace, it was becoming clear that the aliens were reaching some conclusions and would react soon to the previous events.
“Brad,” Harry interrupted. “We’re getting new information on what the aliens are planning.”
“OK, everyone else, get going on the work to see what we can do with those weapons. I need to get with Harry now.” He then went over to where Harry and Yuri were sitting at their robot interface work stations. “Let’s have it.”
Harry summarized what he knew from the messages so far. “It looks like they do intend to use the second battle group to probe our defenses, but they seem to be developing a more extensive plan to seize control on Mars and the Moon so that they can deploy heavy weapons that can’t work on anything the size of a space ship, even those monster battleships. The battle group is going to try to keep us away from Mars first, and then a larger force will arrive and force its way onto the Moon. They’re still concerned about our defenses, but the high command still thinks that we’re weaker than they are and that a lot of our success was due to surprise and complacency on their part. Their earlier surveillance of Earth’s surface showed them that most of the technology was pretty antiquated from their perspective, so they believe that our gravity-controlled ships and our advanced weapons are probably not representative of any massive defense that Earth has.”
“Well, they’re right about that,” Brad remarked. “But go on. What else do they say?”
“We already have most of the initial plan for what the battle group will do and how they intend to use Mars. They don’t seem to know that we have a base here. That reconnaissance sweep that the fighter made when they arrived seems to have them convinced that Mars is deserted except for what remains of their own base.”
“OK, that’s a bit of good news. What else?”
Harry then went into a detailed description of how the battle group would attack and what they intended to do on Mars.
“The battle group will form into echelons, pretty much as Brendan Haverford had expected. The first echelon will consist of robot ships that would move at near light speed to a point about half way between the Moon and Earth. They’ll take a route that loops up out of the plane of the solar system and then comes back down at about a thirty degree angle, straight toward Earth. When they reach the point at half a lunar orbit distance from Earth, they’ll slow to battle speed and proceed to attack some of the major cities with plasma cannons. They expect that to flush our best defenses, so they’ll be able to see what they’re up against.
“The second echelon will be a force of five fighters, one light cruiser, and one heavy cruiser. It’s going to follow the first echelon by a distance that puts them out of range of x-ray weapons and most of the smaller plasma cannons. Their job is to try to pick off our fighters when they react to the robot ships. That’ll calibrate the effectiveness of the weapons on the fighters and both classes of cruisers. They expect the robot ships to be destroyed, and that doesn’t seem to matter to them. Their main objective is to see how well they can work at a distance against us.
“If the second echelon doesn’t appear to be able to engage successfully at a distance, it will retreat and join the third echelon. That includes the rest of their fighters, three light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and a battleship. The reinforced third echelon will then move in on our fighters and once again see how well they can do against us.”
“Do they say what they’ll do if our fighters destroy the robot ships and refuse to engage the larger force?”
“Yes,” Harry replied. “They’re still worried about large Earth-based plasma and EMP cannons that we might have, so they wouldn’t follow our fighters back to Earth. They think that if we did something like that, it would be intended to lead them into a trap. So they would then retreat to a position slightly beyond the asteroid belt and coordinate with the high command at the fleet about going to Mars to establish a base to support a much more massive movement toward Earth. They only plan to engage our fighters if we come out to engage them. Otherwise, they’ll want to keep a good distance away from Earth until they can get reinforcements and a lot more heavy artillery.”
Brad thought in silence for a few seconds and then continued his thinking out loud. “OK, so we’ll need to mine the approach path for the robot ships. That should be easy to do, and it can be a dense mine field since we won’t have to put up a very wide barrier. We’ll keep fighters in reserve in case some of them get through, but we won’t send our ships out to engage their second echelon. They already think that if we retreat back to Earth it will only to be to draw them in, so that should keep them away for a while. They’ll focus on Mars. Right?”
“That’s what they seem to be planning,” Harry replied, but Brad’s question was mostly rhetorical.
“So we need to do something to keep them from setting up a strong base on Mars. We can’t put a minefield between them and Mars. They must already have lots of sensors all throughout the combat region out there, so they’d see our mines and take them out.”
“They do have sensors,” Harry confirmed. “I didn’t get to that part yet, but the data show a very clear deployment of sensors, and mines too. We have pretty good data on all the locations.”
“Good,” Brad continued. “That means that we can probably send some thermonuclear torpedoes through their mine field and maybe take out some of their ships before they can regroup and come back in toward Mars. The torpedoes are like mines, but they’re powered and are intended to hit asteroids at pretty long ranges. The nations have a stockpile of about one hundred of those asteroid bu
sters, and would probably let us use most of them. We could adapt some of our own mines and put them into small runabout ships, the type that we use mainly for moving between our headquarters. They can be set for automatic flight, so they would be like torpedoes once we put the mines on them. We should be able to send at least a few dozen of the asteroid-buster torpedoes and as many of our modified runabouts as we can prepare by the time of the attack. I estimate that we should be able to have from four to eight ready by then.
“The asteroid busters don’t go very fast since they’re powered by rockets, not gravity drives, and the aliens will probably shoot them down with no problem as they approach. But they can be used to mask the attack by our own torpedoes. We can launch ours at high relativistic speed and time them to arrive at the enemy defensive barrier just as the aliens are shooting down the asteroid-busters. That should help them penetrate the defenses. A torpedo attack could even the odds, especially if we can take out the battleship and heavy cruisers.”
“We’ve looked at the technical specs for their sensors,” Harry added. “They can detect the gravity bow waves at pretty long range. It’s like hearing the sound of an approaching aircraft when it’s moving slower than Mach 1. I estimate that they’ll be able to detect our fastest torpedoes a second or more before they pass the first sensor barrier. Won’t that help them destroy the fast ones too?”
Brad replied, “That does complicate things, but in this operation the signals from the gravity bow waves would probably be buried under the noise of the detonations when the asteroid-busters are destroyed. If they do detect the bow waves, it would probably be at much closer range than usual. I’m betting that most of our fast ones will get through. It’s our best option.”
“So we can keep them away from Mars?” Yuri asked.
“Probably not completely, but we should be able to weaken them quite a bit,” Brad answered. “If we can get those alien weapons mounted on some ships we might be able to fight them off. I need to talk with Haverford about this. Now that we know the details of their plan, he can start to develop his own plans.”
“You probably want to know about the big weapons that they would put on Mars and eventually on the Moon,” Harry added.
“Right, I got so wrapped up in the battle group plans that I forgot. What do you know?”
“Well, we have some information, but not a lot. It seems that the weapons are mainly just big --- really big --- versions of the plasma and EMP cannons. They’re so big and require so much power that even the battleships can’t carry them. They apparently want to start by putting some on Mars, distributed around the entire planet so that they have a field of fire in all directions. They’ll use Mars as a fire base to support their movement further toward Earth. Those big guns are real monsters. Apparently, the big guns that they put on Mars would reach about half the distance from Mars to Earth against shielded ships like their cruisers and about thirty percent against shields like the ones on the battleship.”
“Holy shit,” Brad exclaimed. “Are you certain?”
“That’s what I get from the data bases and messages. They seem to use some combination of high power and focusing to get this long distance. That’s what makes the guns so big. I think that the technology is something that we haven’t seen in any of the other things that we captured so far. It would look more like a tightly focused solar flare than one of our plasma bursts. These are really monster guns.”
“But, we’d still be able to defend space beyond the Moon,” Brad replied. “Their heavy artillery on Mars wouldn’t reach that far, so it would still be force-on-force. I don’t understand what Mars would do for them.”
“They have more planned,” Harry continued. “Once they secure Mars, they plan to bring some of their huge transport ships from the fleet into the protected area. They’ll carry the modules for a huge artillery ship that they want to assemble in the protected zone around Mars. They already have big transports that are meant mainly for this purpose. They call this monster a platform ship or something like that. It would be a few hundred times the diameter of that battleship. The outer structure is like a huge spherical skeleton, the diameter of a big asteroid. The skeleton structure extends inward to connect with a spherical ship that’s about the size of one of their heavy cruisers. It contains everything that the crew needs to operate this mobile fire base. A large number of huge guns are attached to the outer part of the skeleton. They’re the biggest guns that the aliens have ever produced, too big to be installed on any ship, even a battleship. They’re designed for fixed, surface-based installations on a planet. That’s why the platform ship has to be so large, with a diameter like a big asteroid. There are sensors and massive power generators attached at various points in the inner skeleton structure.”
Harry brought up a series of engineering drawings on his computer screen so that everyone could see what a platform ship looked like. Then he went on with his summary of the message traffic. “They have to build this structure in space, at zero g, where it wouldn’t be crushed by gravity. They can assemble the entire thing in about a week after they take control of Mars and put some of those huge guns here. Then their plan is to move the platform ship closer to the Moon.
“The platform ship isn’t well shielded, but its guns have such long range, that it’s doubtful that we could get close enough to harm it. But they’re not taking chances any more. They’ll have an escort of ships ranging from fighters to a battleship to protect it in case we do something totally unexpected. They want to build a strong point on Mars before assembling the monster. If they can get it close enough to Earth, they’ll be able to keep us from sending anything into space, so they’ll be free to install more of these big guns on the Moon. Then they could just bombard Earth at will, and we couldn’t stop them. They discuss all of this in the message traffic.”
“So we need to keep them from getting control of Mars and the region between Mars and their fleet,” Brad responded. “Anything else in their messages?”
“A lot of details that I can translate and send back to Nebula. But you have the main points. The only other thing is that they still don’t know that we have a base here on Mars. Our fake messages seem to have worked so far.”
“OK, that’s good. We can still pull a few surprises. What’s the timing on all their plans? Do they have a schedule yet?”
“No, not yet as far as I can tell. It looks like they may need a day or two to finish the plans, and then probably another day to get organized. They seem pretty frustrated with the one-day delay in getting messages back and forth.”
“So we probably have two to three days?”
“I think so.”
“OK. Send all the information back to Nebula Prime and Ops. Make sure you indicate that it should go to Colonel Haverford. I’m going back to work up a plan with him and Billingsley. We’re probably going to have a lot on our hands here if they’re planning to set up a main operating base on Mars in a few days.”
Brad then went over to the communication terminal where Nigel had taken a turn as the operator. “Nigel, I need to speak with Major Anderson. Can you get him on the phone?”
“No problem,” and in about ten seconds Anderson replied to the call.
“Anderson here.”
“Anderson, this is Colonel Lincoln. I have some orders for your crew. I need one of your ships to take me back to Nebula Ops, along with the dead aliens and the robots that we destroyed in the firefight here. We need to clear Mars of any indication of what happened here. Can you handle it?”
“Affirmative. I’ll get a few of my crew to move the aliens and robots. We should be ready in about an hour. Is that OK?”
“That will do. Tell them to make is as fast as possible. I’ll need to go with them, and we’re on a pretty serious time crunch. How is everything else going out there?”
“We’re just about finished collecting all the useable alien equipment. I was about to call you to tell you that we’re ready to depart. I’ll keep on
e ship back here to load the dead aliens and the robots, but the other ships can start back to Nebula Two as soon as you clear us to depart.”
“Good. Your ships can go as soon as they’re ready. Send a full report on what you salvaged back to Nebula Prime and Ops. Make sure that Colonel Haverford and Billingsley are copied. We’re going to need that information for our planning.”
“I’ll send the order for them to depart,” Anderson replied, and he keyed his communicator. “This is Major Anderson. Send all the ships except S-15 back to Nebula Two as soon as they’re fully loaded. Have S-15 come down to Mars immediately, and have them bring a crew to load some dead aliens and robots to take back the Earth. Colonel Lincoln and I will go with them.”
He waited a few seconds for the reply and then informed Brad that the ship would arrive in a couple of minutes, and they could leave for Earth once the cargo was loaded and secured.
Brad consulted with the AFO team and gave the instructions to prepare for the next round. “Get everything prepared for a possible alien landing here. Make sure that all evidence of our presence is erased. Surprise may be our only advantage if they do break through the defenses that Haverford can muster. I’m also going to recommend that he sends reinforcements to help us. He has some special operations teams, and one of them would be useful.” Then he put on his space suit and went outside to await the arrival of the salvage ship.
Chapter 12
“What the hell is taking so long?” Billingsley was more agitated than anyone in the room had seen before. His face was bright red, and he paced back and forth as the rest of them sat silently around the table in the main conference room in Nebula Prime. “I thought that those viruses would already have started working. It’s been, what, a week or so already? When are we going to see something?”
