by Howard Marsh
Now everything was ready for the tests. Harry reported that information in the robot network indicated that the local gun at the base would be tested first, as they had expected. One of the aliens operated the gun and aimed it in a direction to avoid hitting any of their ships. It fired a single burst that painted a bright line of plasma through the Martian atmosphere. They then went into automatic mode and fired a series of bursts that lasted about one second. The surveillance cameras were able to detect each burst and recorded them in the computer. Brad quickly confirmed that twenty of them were fired in the one second interval.
Satisfied that the first gun worked as intended, the aliens went to the other fire control stations and performed the same tests for the remote guns until all were verified to be working. The entire process was completed in less than ten minutes. As each gun was tested and verified, the alien-robot pair at that gun returned to the base. The pair with the shuttle was at the first test location, and they went immediately to the second, picked up the pair at that location, and brought them back to the base. Then they went to the next location and repeated the taxi service until all five pairs were returned to the base.
Judith and Ludmila monitored each test and were able to determine which fire control stations were used for the guns that had the best fields of fire against the alien ships overhead. Three of the guns had good coverage of most of the ships, and a fourth could hit the remaining ones on the extreme edge of the widely dispersed alien formation. They configured the remote control terminals to work those guns, and they were now ready to act as soon as they detected Milo’s attack.
According to the plan, Milo was supposed to be stationed about thirty light minutes away, so he would see the test shots in just a few more minutes and then would move in. The action should start in less than an hour, and they got ready to seize control of the guns as soon as Lu’s attack took the aliens’ attention away from the fire control stations.
Lu’s troopers had already suited up and went out through the secondary airlock at the rear of the bunker. It was virtually unobservable from where the aliens were standing. They carefully moved to positions behind several small hills, so close to the aliens that Harry and the others were worried that they’d be seen. But they were professionals, well trained and practiced at concealment and stealthy approach to an enemy, and they remained undetected as they waited for Mikio’s radio signal to begin the attack.
*
Milo and Igor were in position well before they detected the plasma bursts from the alien guns. That was their cue to start their deception attack and maybe even take out a few of the larger alien warships. Milo commanded Igor to send the message warning of their arrival and ten minutes later he started to move at near-light speed toward the alien formation. The aliens would receive that message about fifteen minutes before Milo’s ship reached the area, and they would have to respond with instructions that Milo had no intention of following. Harry and Yuri would also see the message as it arrived in the robot network since standard practice was to alert robot sentries as well as the aliens at the arrival area. But everyone on the Nebula team was already aware of what would happen and approximately when the message would arrive. It would only serve to inform them more precisely of the timing of Milo’s charge at the alien ships.
The passage of time for Milo and Igor was very small as they streaked toward Mars. He slowed the ship to 90% light speed as he approached within five light minutes. Relativistic time dilation backed off, and the ship was now able to receive message traffic from the command ship. Just as he had expected, the commander ordered him to halt at a distance of ten light seconds from the light cruiser that served as the command and control ship. His orders were to wait there as a robot ship approached to retrieve the memory chip with the message. Harry and Yuri saw the reply in the robot network, and Mikio saw it in the alien radio channel that he was monitoring with one of his sets. So far, so good.
Milo detected the approach of the robot ship two minutes after receiving the message, and he slowed his ship as if intending to stop at the predetermined position. As the robot ship came close, a series of messages were exchanged between Igor and the pilot of the other ship, and it swung alongside to prepare to dock and make the transfer. At that point, Milo pushed the speed lever up to 90% light speed and hit the button to put it into automatic pilot and weapons release according to instructions that he had already loaded into the memory. At these high speeds, manual control was impossible due to relativistic effects, and the ten light second distance to the target would be covered almost immediately in Milo’s relativistic time-compressed condition. But the computer could handle it easily.
Harry adjusted his interface to merge with the robotic brain in the pilot of the robot ship. He could see everything that was happening, with only the ten second delay. He saw the robot pilot’s surprise, if that was the right word for what happened in the cybernetic brain, and the pilot’s attempt to adapt to the unexpected situation. But the ship’s guns weren’t aimed and ready to fire, and Milo was able to dash into the enemy formation before the robot could do anything to stop him.
Milo’s first target was the light cruiser that was the alien command and control ship. He had set a course that would take him directly toward it and had set the torpedo to fire when he was one light second away and to detonate when it was within fifty meters of the target. Once the torpedo was launched, Milo’s ship would execute an instantaneous reversal to 99% light speed, taking him out of lethal range of the blast fast enough to avoid the burst of energy that would come at him at light speed.
Everything worked almost exactly as Milo had intended. But the light cruiser had moved a small distance from the original position that Milo had entered into the computer when he first arrived at the parking spot ten light seconds away. So it wasn’t a direct hit, but the thermonuclear blast was sufficient to tear a large piece of the cruiser’s hull away, and it clearly was out of action. Most of the crew was either dead or locked away in sealed emergency compartments or escape capsules. That ship plus several of the escort fighters and robot ships were now out of action. But the battleship and the two heavy cruisers were still undamaged. His next target was the battleship.
Milo flew out to about ten light seconds, just enough to avoid damage from the blast and then commanded the ship to execute the next maneuver that he had preprogrammed. It would take him on a course toward a point where he could launch the second torpedo at the battleship, but this time it wasn’t a straight line to the target. Instead, he had to program an erratic series of high-speed swerves like the “jinking” maneuvers that pilots used to evade fire from air defense guns and missiles. The aliens would be ready for him this time, so an evasive maneuver was necessary in order to survive what he knew would be dense fire from the x-ray guns.
The ship almost made it to the launch point without being hit, but at the last moment, one of the x-ray bursts scored an indirect hit that damaged the torpedo launcher. The torpedo was still intact and operational, but it stayed on the ship as the high-speed escape maneuver was executed. Milo noticed the problem only seconds after he had reversed course and reached the safe distance from the target. He now had a problem and a decision to make. The enemy was beginning to recover from the initial surprise, and they had sent two fighters and three robot ships out toward him. He could evade them for a few more seconds and could make one more attempt to attack the battleship, or he could retreat with his remaining torpedo and let Brad’s team do the rest of the work.
He made his decision and reactivated the second attack program, the one that had just failed. But this time, he deleted the launch command and the retreat command. What was left was just a direct charge through the alien formation and at the battleship. He would use his own ship as a torpedo to deliver the warhead.
Milo’s ship swung back toward the alien formation and flew the erratic course to its target. If a human had been at the controls, there might have been some hesitation in steering this
suicide course, but the ship was only a machine and just did as it was told. For Milo, the time passed so quickly, that he hardly had time to reconsider his decision before the torpedo detonated. It was a direct hit, and the battleship was totally obliterated, along with Milo’s ship and two robot ships that were docked at the battleship. The torpedo’s blast was amplified by a secondary explosion of the battleship’s own power generation systems, and the combined force of both explosions damaged one of the heavy cruisers nearby.
*
Brad gave the signal to go as soon as the detonation of the first torpedo appeared on the view screens of the telescopic video cameras. Everyone detected the bright flash in the sky above, even those who were focused on the aliens and their fire control stations outside their bunker. Mikio sent the “go” message immediately to Lu’s team.
Harry and Yuri sent the data to disable the sleeping robots before they were automatically awakened by the action. As sentries, their sensors would detect activity and react to it even when they were in sleep mode, so it was necessary to send them into cyber-epileptic seizure states before they could become a problem, and the data download worked just as Yuri had said it would. So the easy part of the problem was solved. Now it was up to the others to take out the aliens on the surface and to destroy all the alien ships above them.
Lu gave the order to go, and all five jumped from cover and began to fire as they charged at the aliens and their gun control systems. Bobby Sturgeon and Sally Jones launched a volley of rounds from their arrow guns. The silent fire of the arrows caught the aliens by surprise, and five of them were cut down. The other seven aliens now saw that they were under attack and scattered. Avery fired a rocket propelled grenade into a pair of them. The remaining five ran in the direction of their bunker, either to get shelter inside or to try to get to the far side where they would be shielded from Nebula fire. They didn’t have time to draw their own weapons, and they just ran.
All five of Lu’s team charged at the gun control stations, firing as they ran. Lu hit one of the retreating aliens with a burst of fire from her sidearm, a standard automatic pistol that worked better in the thin Martian atmosphere than it did on Earth. The arrow guns took out two more, but the remaining two managed to get around the side of the bunker, where they were shielded from fire and where one of the small shuttle craft had been parked. Avery tried to launch a grenade over the bunker and almost hit the shuttle, but the aliens were lucky this time. They managed to get into it and shoot off at high speed. But at least the area around the base was now clear of aliens.
At the first burst of arrows, Judith, Ludmila, Doug, and Nigel linked with the four gun control systems and began the fast download of software to give them total control. They knew that the process would take more than ten or fifteen seconds, and they listened intently to Harry’s report on the diversionary attack as they executed all the commands and watched the data load into the systems and begin to activate. Time seemed to slow down as their mental processes sped up due to the adrenalin surge. They were almost ready to fire when Milo’s second torpedo detonated, taking Milo, the battleship, and one of the heavy cruisers with it.
At this point, the aliens on the ground finally realized what was happening. The two who had escaped sent an emergency message to the ships above, telling them of the attack and requesting heavy fire on the base. The alien deputy commander on one of the fighters directed that all ships fire at the base with all their weapons. Harry could see in the robot systems that they were all swinging their ships around to fire down at the surface rather than at the direction from which Milo had come. He yelled to the others that they needed to fire now and to make it fully automatic.
Nigel’s system went on line first, and he quickly set the gun to automatic and maximum power and hit the fire control button. Ludmila was next, followed by Judith and then Doug. The four guns lit up the sky, so bright that the video cameras were blinded, and Lu’s team had to shield their eyes. The guns continued to fire for about a minute, sweeping across the alien ships as the four controllers moved the aim levers to cover the entire formation plus a good bit of empty space around it. They could have stopped firing after about twenty seconds, but they were so keyed up that it took a loud command from Brad to get them to hit the “off” button. Nothing created by humans or aliens could have survived that intense fire, and when it was over, everything in the field of fire had been vaporized. Even one of the Martian moons had been hit briefly by one of the bursts that scanned a bit too far from the targets. It now had one new crater.
“Well done,” Brad announced as everyone relaxed after the minute-or-so intense battle. He had Mikio put the communication terminal into its speaker-phone mode so he could talk to both the people in the bunker and to Lu’s team. “Let’s get back together and review status. I want the four of you on the gun controls to stay with it. Lu, have one of your team stay with the gun control stations until we can set up for permanent physical presence there. I’ll send our soldier robots out to back him up. Two very angry aliens are somewhere out there and I don’t want to risk having them disable any of the guns. We’re going to need them. But everyone else meet in the planning area. We still have work to do.”
Four of Lu’s team returned, this time by the front entrance. They left Sally Jones behind to guard the gun control stations. As they entered, the rest of the team applauded, and all of them exchanged signs of victory. But they knew that it wasn’t over yet. The most important objective had been accomplished. They now controlled a very important fire base on Mars and could prevent the attack on Earth that the aliens had planned.
But there were still two aliens loose on Mars, and there were many other paths toward Earth that could avoid the region of space that Nebula’s big guns now controlled. On the plus side was the fact that without a strong fire base on Mars, they wouldn’t be able to bring the platform ship in without risking its destruction. Any other approach toward Earth would probably have to be done without the support of those big guns.
“OK,” Brad began. “We have two aliens somewhere on the planet, and we need to get them before they can cause trouble. Any suggestions?”
“I think that they’ll go after the guns,” Harry replied. “If they can disable them, they can send more ships and try to retake Mars. They still have some big ships back at their main fleet, including that fourth battleship. The information on the robot net and in the archives is that they have a couple of heavy cruisers that are almost ready for action. They’ve managed to decontaminate them, along with some fighters. They’re also working on the battleship, but it may take another day to get it decontaminated, and they don’t want to turn it over to robots. Two light cruisers were docked at a repair ship that wasn’t affected by the pathogens, so they’re still operational. I think they’ll be able to launch a major attack in another day or two.”
“That’s a good bet,” Brad agreed. “We need to keep those two aliens from disabling the guns or the next attack could have a clear path to the other side of the planet, and they could land a heavy assault force. This time we won’t be able to surprise them.”
He looked at Lu. “Can your people track them down?”
“We should be able to. We can’t search an entire planet for them, but we can cover the five locations where the guns are, and that’s where they’re likely to head. They can’t stay out there in those suits for too long, so I think they’ll go to those locations without any delay. We can use the alien shuttle craft that’s still here and our sensors should be able to see their ship once we get close enough. Their gravity engine emits a pretty detectable signal. I’ll take Bob and Ave with me. The three of us can handle them when we find them.”
“OK, get started.”
Lu, Bob, and Ave were still partially suited up. They put on the rest of their gear and headed out.
Brad then called Nebula Ops and advised them of the situation. “We need to clean things up here, and then I want to get back to Ops to go over things with
you. We’ll destroy the robots that Yuri disabled. I don’t want to take any chances with them. And we need to finish off those two aliens before I leave. Lu is going out with two of her troopers to handle that problem. Can you send a fighter here to take me back to Earth?”
“It’ll be on its way in about ten minutes.”
“Also send some reinforcements to give my people a break and to establish a permanent position at the gun control stations. We’ll need to erect more living quarters for an extended stay here, so you’ll need to get a transport ready to make the trip.”
“Roger that,” Haverford replied. “Your people did a great job. Seduro and Billingsley are relieved that things went so well. They were very worried.”
“Well, things went well enough, but we still have the cleanup to do, and the aliens aren’t out of business yet. They still have a pretty formidable force, and they seem to be cleaning up some of the contaminated ships, including their fourth battleship, so we may still have a big fight on our hands. They won’t be able to attack along a path from anywhere near Mars as long as we hold onto the fire base here. But there are a lot of other paths to Earth, and at some point they may realize that our defenses aren’t as strong as they’ve feared so far. The good news is that without the fire base, they can’t risk bringing their platform ship into the combat zone, so you won’t have that one to worry about. But you’ll still need to deal with the battleship and cruisers.”
“That’s what we need to plan for,” Haverford agreed. “I’ll see you when you get back. Good luck with the cleanup. Lu’s people are the best.”
