Earth on Target (Survival Amidst the Stars)

by Angel Bright

  Our first contact with civilization from another star led to the destruction of one of the civilizations. What about the second contact? It consisted of battles and destruction of space objects inhabited by priceless specialists, scientists, and their families, as well as prospects of major conflicts with thousands of warships.

  In other words, if you wanted peace, prepare for war.

  28 Theories and Realities—Conspiracies and Betrayals

  We were enjoying peace and tranquility. We finished the warships that had been waiting for spare parts but with great internal reconstructions in line with our new combat doctrine. We already had in our combat system six aircraft carriers with a new construction. When I saw the demonstration of the first one, I was impressed. Suddenly, the barely visible protruding cylinder of the aircraft carrier hanging in the cosmic blackness, seen with its holographic image in the command room of the Fearless minifrigate, broke open like a cone, and hundreds of fighters were catapulted from their decks and sped to their designated battle positions. Everything was executed with precision and consistency.

  Even I shivered as I knew what battle strength I was seeing unfolding before us in an unusually short period.

  Our military doctrine was correct. Above all, it was a strike-defense one. Our overcrowded aircraft carriers did not have enough living space for the manpower involved in the planned active-combat actions. That was why we planned short-term actions and replacement with another aircraft carrier, and the participant would return to the rest base. For now, we had over 2,500 combat aircraft with enough aircraft carriers to actively defend the solar system.

  Together with the military experts from the Earth General Command, we built variants of interactions between our available forces with increasing opportunities to bring in probable invading space armadas into our Earth Defense schemes. A noticeable pressure was in certain areas, and an inconspicuous flexible defense was in places where we would not allow enough time for invaders to break through and destroy our defense installations. All these maneuvers of our forces had to look chaotic and with insufficient combat power for us to be able to lead the main combat forces of the invaders into the designated strike zone for a hit against them with Tempor One.

  I visited the HT361288 asteroid to check the Tempor One installation and the power reactor. I left them in conservation. It took six hours to activate the reactor and load the capacitors. Everything was covered with dust, on which there were no traces. Everything in the machine was untouched, but the six-hour time frame to launch our primary safety guarantee was too long. Besides, we had a single mobile device, and this was a real oversight. Our main facility with the highest power was installed on the planet Mercury. Our second mobile device would be installed after 6 months, and I had to have come up with that years earlier. A work group was already simulating ore digging on a miniature asteroid; within a week, another group would begin assembling the finished block of the sun-type reactor. Its size did not matter. There was plenty of room for this new type of reactor in the project, which was in accordance with the increased and complicated configuration of the unit. We had also added a new function for short-term exchange positions of spaces, one of which was under our control. This idea was not yet theoretically developed fully, but it was only an experimental continuation and result of the earlier constructive applications of the Tempor One construction. I found this ability during our last and only firings at the battle groups of the fleet from the Kerrani System, which had been attacking.

  The powerful double-sun reactor was designed to cover this new and powerful application of the installation, too, which we stored as the most surprising and difficult-to-detect weapon.

  This weapon was a double-edged sword that could strike with the same force of us and our opponent. Only I knew the installation locations and control method. None of the assembly groups could reach the surface of the asteroid and perchance get an idea of its type and location. I teleported the groups directly into the underground cavities to perform a portion of the assembly work. The first group of miners knew only that they had carried out an unsuccessful search for inert materials on several small rocks, as was the case with other mining groups. There was not even a hint of secrecy.

  Our defensive plans included developments in two hemispheres spanning 360 degrees on two sides on the orbital plane of the solar system, with the possibility that the whole scheme of our tactical combat system would spin its plane of collision according to the direction of the main groups of invaders. But the appearance of large enemy groups of warships outside the plane of the solar system’s planets was tactically pointless. A narrowly targeted attack on a chosen planet-target through the empty space was strategically possible, but there would be no element of surprise, and the use of only brute force would bring them great losses from the concentrated combined fire of the ship and planetary batteries with the weapons we had demonstrated.

  At least, these were our defense plans, and the future would show if our estimates were correct. We were grateful for every day we lived without a direct threat.

  Still, we felt strong. Even if the invaders defeated us, they would suffer huge losses.

  I was not quite sure our military doctrine was the right one. We had tasted interstellar contacts and willingness or agreement to cooperate, even if it was only in the military field, and now we were shut out again in the solar system and looked at the inhospitable space, hoping the danger would pass us by. We hoped to be forgotten by the civilizations that had proved to be predatory killers. But from them, we also received power and technology we hadn’t imagined. Yet the threat to us had always existed.

  A dream would not leave my mind. In it, I heard a distant and weak call, and I would try to catch it and find out what it wanted, but it stopped. The one calling was looking for my help but did not get it. He knew about me and was looking for me.

  And where should I look for him?

  I did not know what he wanted from me, but he convinced me of his anxiety, his despair, and his horror somewhere far away from the periphery of the solar system or even farther. He was someone with whom I had coordinated brain waves to keep in touch.

  There were four of those people: Nolen; Tim, my observer in Earth’s Supreme Command; Commodore Kobo; and Emperor Yorich.

  Nolen responded immediately and distinctly, but the other three did not. I did not feel the usual contact with Tim.

  That was strange.

  The emperor was very far away.

  And I had rejected General Kobo, who was unreliable.

  For more than a month, the anxious feeling did not leave me. It made me perfect our defensive positions and triple our major defense installations. When I decided nothing urgent was left for me to do, I went to search for Tim. I was amplifying my brain waves and looking for resonance as some sort of answer from Tim, even something left of him. I had ordered him to be my mediator in Earth’s command headquarters and to always be my observer there. I could not get in touch with him.

  I teleported to the group of massive buildings where the military command of Earth was concentrated, and again I focused in search of resonance.

  I caught it.

  It was weak and intermittent but responding to the search frequency, coming from the building to the left and deep down.

  A group of duty officers tried to stop me. With one throwing gesture, I pinned them to the wall. I ordered the most senior officer, a colonel, to show me the way; when he refused, I caused him merciless and terrible pain using high energy rays. I pointed him to go down the stairs. I was a step away from him, and he ran terrified. We went down level after level. The sentries tried to stop us, but I paralyzed them so I would not waste time with explanations. I already had a stable contact with Tim, and this contact led me like a compass to him. I knew he was being cruelly tortured, and I was holding on to that weakening voice. I was in a hurry, rushing and despising that scoundrel before me.

  The colonel once again tried to lead me along a
longer route, but this time I was ruthless. I fired a new impulse of pain into his head and body and held it long enough to make certain there would be no new attempts to deceive. We turned on the first left, and I knew why he had tried to waste my time with these wrong turns. We were in a dark and humid corridor with cell doors to the left and right.

  The colonel tried to explain to me he would seek the duty officer to unlock the cell, but I refused him. I checked the lock, and after releasing the springs of the locking mechanism, the lock clicked.

  My guide, the colonel, attacked me.

  I pinned him to the wall with a kick and pushed him through the door in front of me. In the darkness, a mutilated Tim lay pushed up next to the farthest wall. When he raised his swollen, bleeding face and saw my guide, he curled up on the bare concrete floor to protect himself in anticipation of a hit.

  I teleported him, the colonel, and me to the Park City Hospital on the moon. I entrusted Tim to the care of my student mages on duty and then dealt with the colonel. He had already grasped he was in an unusual situation, and his face was desperate. I looked darkly at him.

  “Start talking. Every lie, I will punish with pain. You are confessing to your God.”

  “What to tell? I’m just a duty officer.”

  I sent him a short, piercing impulse as a warning.

  When he stood up, I continued interrogating him.

  “Why did you arrest and torture Tim?”

  I guessed his answer and sent him another painful warning.

  “The general…wanted to get information directly about someone who is supposedly the strongest one and commands the army…and the whole world.”

  “The name of the general?”

  “Ramos. Pablo Ramos. Space Force commander from the Earth Force Command.”

  “And what is your role? Chief inquisitor?”

  He hesitated for a moment, fearful. “I could not refuse! I had an order to get the result.”

  I transferred him to the mental-copy lab.

  I then went to the hospital.

  Tim was in critical condition with many broken bones and severe internal and external hemorrhages. A group of student mages were conducting frequency searches to identify the damage and treatment procedures. We had created a map for technology sequence actions in emergency situations, and they were following it strictly.

  Tim was in shock and constantly sending me frenzied, incoherent messages. I penetrated his mind and dulled his pains. I began sending him images of tropical islands with warm sands and crystal-blue ocean waters. His general calming down cleared his aura, and the healer mages managed to complete the diagnostic procedures. They spread around him and started the energy-frequency healing action.

  I went back to my office and continued to think about the complicated situation that had unfolded. Military officers from Earth senior staffs had dared to catch Tim just because he was my representative among them, and that worried me for a good reason. How was I to act in this case? My authority was important so that Earth’s military hierarchy would unquestionably obey my commands.

  The time of equal power between me and the commanders in chief—between me and the Earth Government—was over. As much as I did not want this, the circumstances were pushing me into a dictatorial position.

  I ordered to be sent a crystal with records of the downloaded imaging mental copy of the colonel. I had a device that could play them, and I searched for the moment when the decision to arrest Tim had been made. In front of me formed a hologram of a large office luxuriously furnished with a wonderful view of a bend of a big river. About a dozen military officers sat around a massive table, looking at a stocky, muscular general who was heatedly telling them what to do and when.

  It was the beginning of a military coup that had started twenty-five days ago, and no one had told me. I played this important portion of the record and listened to the assignments being given to the subordinate commanders. The procedure was over, and the general, who had to be Pablo Ramos, dismissed the officers by leaving two of them for extra tasks.

  Colonel Garat—my former “guide”—was ordered to organize the kidnapping of Tim and shoot him with a tranquillizer gun. In the basement of the Earth Force Command, they equipped a lead-lined room where they interrogated the “representative of that impostor whom no one has ever seen.” General Ramos ordered Colonel Garat to use everything that had been discovered until now to learn who and where “that impostor” was.

  Tim did not know anything, so they were merciless.

  The disgusting scenes of the cruel interrogations ensued. Tim’s only guilt was that he was my connection.

  I ordered General Evert, head of the Moon Defense Military Colony, and General Miller, commander of the Intelligence and Counterintelligence Division of the Moon Department of the Earth High Command, to report to me. When they presented themselves, I teleported the three of us to the office of Chief Marshal Fomel, commander of the General Staff of the Earth Command. He was not in his office but in a meeting somewhere in the large headquarters building.

  “He must present himself urgently,” I said to his adjutant. “This is an order!”

  There was a reproducing holographic device in the office, and there I placed the tiny crystal with the selected record. Within a few minutes, the arrogant officers began taking their seats around the conference table. We exchanged cold greetings and suspicious glances, and without any introduction, I switched on the holographic device. I internally sharpened my senses to perceive their emotional reactions and waited. The officers expressed surprise mixed with subsequent disturbing reactions. One of Chief Marshal Fomel’s deputies, Marshal Stern, appeared quite stressed.

  In these white-haired heads began intensified mental activity, calculations, and transpositions. Strategists! The suspicious Marshal Stern had a high emotional outburst in the meeting. The selected recording was short, but the silence that followed was long.

  “Chief Marshal Fomel,” I said. “Tim was only a communication link to you for your convenience so that he could contact me when I’m not near Earth. What obstacle did he present for you? You perceived him as a snitch or a controller over you, did you? Have I been interfering with anything in your work so far?”

  “You have not. I will order an urgent investigation and warning of General Pablo Ramos’s incoherence.”

  “Marshal Stern, do you know more about this problem?”

  The suspected officer flinched, and his gaze began jumping from one of the present officers to another, as if seeking sympathy. His forehead and neck became covered with sweat.

  “No. I’m surprised like the other officers present,” he said.

  “Not exactly like them. You are in a different position. You are an accomplice of a conspiracy and a military coup. Will you add anything?”

  “I do not have…anything to add. I am outraged, too.”

  I was looking at these people who were supposed to work with me for their own survival, but it was more important for them to get to power and positions even when facing the threat of Earth being burned down.

  “The group around Ramos wanted to break the possibility of exchanging information between the General Staff and me,” I said. “This direct connection was a threat for some of you. Since you are not being honest with me, I will turn to the political leadership of the federation.”

  I teleported with my group back to my moon office.

  I decided to give them a few days to react. Now was not the time to clarify the relations. To all the warships, we sent an order to temporarily withdraw the commanding rights of Marshal Stern, General Ramos, and his deputy General Shank; to withdraw the trust in them; and to remove their access to secret military information. The three were now forbidden access the battle and cargo ships of the Earth Navy. Admiral Niks and General Santos were appointed to serve on a temporary basis on their positions and were accordingly promoted to their rank and position in accordance with their command posts. Our space fleet was to be deployed
in our bases around Mars and Saturn.

  Now I considered the most important activity to be the colonization of the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt, Ceres. I ordered the naval engineers to begin building new underground cavities for the additional volunteer colonist flows that we always had in excess.

  To Ceres, we sent the four finished sun reactors that were designed to reinforce the Earth Defense system. With their energy, we would supply the retention-protective boundary around the oxygen atmosphere of Ceres. We would increase the atmospheric pressure of the asteroid and the percentage of extra gases in it to make them close to Earth’s. The estimates of the heat and meteorological balance for this asteroid had been ready for a long time, and we would now move the free science-production groups and installations from the Martian project. These groups had valuable experience that I was hoping to easily adapt to the Ceres project.

  Out of Moon City came rumors of disputes and discord of the Earth Federation. I was surprised that a number of scientific institutions that had grown and become well established were already collecting their most valuable machines and equipment into containers. I estimated how many transport ships were needed and how long this process would take. Almost all the science centers were located outside Earth as an opportunity for survival because Earth was considered the main target for a space invasion. Our disputes should not have had a direct impact on scientific experiments but indirectly meant changes and modifications in the directions of exploration and ultimately the closing of promising programs because of a change in the intentions of the two main participants in the dispute. In all these research institutes, I had the ability to make corrections if complications occurred because my senses were set up differently, and I could directly observe the processes and change the procedures to achieve the desired results. Most scientists were achieving knowledge and experience in these experiments that would have been unattainable to them under ordinary conditions, and they knew it well enough because the thirst for knowledge never reached its limit.