by Tori Harris
The admiral paused once again, this time scanning a portion of his audience displayed in a grid-like pattern on a nearby view screen. Although he generally liked to look people in the eye as he spoke in order to gauge the impact of his words, the faces on the screen were too small to provide much in the way of useful feedback.
“Everything we know about this weapon system is included in your briefing materials, so that’s all I was planning to say about it for now. All of our AIs will be keeping an eye out for these pods from here on in. It goes without saying that if you detect one, you should destroy it immediately. I don’t think I can make it any more succinct than that. Any questions on the Carrada Area Denial System?”
“Admiral Patterson, do we have any idea how many of these systems they have available, or how they are deployed?” asked the captain of the frigate TFS Industrious.
“Yes, good question, thank you, Captain.” Patterson was irritated that he couldn’t remember the man’s name, recalling only that he had proven a bit of a sore loser after taking a shellacking from Ingenuity — under the command of her XO at the time — out at the Live Fire Training Range. “According to Commander Takkar, we can expect that each of their newest warships will have four of these pods available. That means their remaining Gresav-class destroyer, their remaining Keturah-class defense cruiser, and both of their Baldev-class battleships each have the potential to deploy four more of these things as they prepare to conduct their attack. The pods themselves can operate autonomously, but they generally aren’t fast enough to keep up with their ships. That means they will most likely be either deployed by fighters, or launched from their host ships after they reach their destinations.
Standing just a few feet away but intentionally remaining off-camera, Captain Davis motioned for Patterson’s attention, then tapped his wrist in the still universal, but now anachronistic signal for running short on time.
“Alright, folks, Captain Davis is telling me we need to move things along, so I’d like to cover a couple of additional things we have learned over the past several hours and provide a high level summary of how I see our defensive strategy shaping up. As I’m sure most of you know, the remaining Resistance warships that departed Location Crossbow appeared to be on their way to Earth, so, obviously, we must assume they intend to commence their attack as quickly as they can make the trip. If we proceed under that assumption, I think we can also assume that Commodore Sarafi is not expecting any additional reinforcements beyond the arrival of the two Baldev-class battleships we discussed earlier — or at least none that he plans to wait for. This agrees with what our new ally, Commander Takkar, has told us as well. After a bit of cajoling from Captain Prescott, Takkar provided two additional pieces of valuable intelligence, both of which are critical to our defensive preparations. First, the Sajeth Collective’s newest vessels are capable of traveling at approximately eleven hundred light. At that speed, they would arrive here from Locations Crossbow or Dagger in just over twenty-six hours. Their older warships, however, including the Rusalov battleships, are capable of only about half that speed. Since Sarafi took a pretty big risk by waiting for the three Baldev-class battleships in the first place, my best guess is that his main body will travel directly to Earth at approximately five hundred and fifty light, rendezvousing with the two Baldev-class vessels here at approximately 1125Z — that’s just over forty-eight hours from now. Even though I believe that’s the most likely scenario, we’ll also call it our best-case, since it provides us the most time to prepare our defenses. Our worst-case would be that Sarafi proceeds directly to Earth at the best speed of his fastest two ships, perhaps hoping that the two additional Baldevs will still arrive shortly thereafter. That scenario would put him here by approximately 0900 tomorrow.
“The other important thing we learned from Commander Takkar is that Sarafi’s flagship, the destroyer Gunov, may be carrying some sort of biological weapon. He had no specific information regarding its effects, but he indicated that the Lesheerans, another member of the Sajeth Collective that we have only rarely heard mentioned by the Wek, are adept at creating such weapons. The biological agent would most likely be targeted at something specific to our genome, using a highly modified virus to act as its vector. So we have to assume that, once released, it would spread rapidly via person to person contact, and even a single Human infection could have catastrophic consequences for the entire planet.
“Since we obviously don’t want to find ourselves struggling to cope with a global pandemic while at the same time fighting an interstellar war, our only real hope of defending against this type of weapon is to prevent it from ever being used in the first place. On this point, Takkar’s ship provided us with a data dump containing some information regarding how the bio weapon might be employed.
“The delivery system the Lesheerans created is called Sazoch — a wicked-sounding name that apparently refers to some sort of winged demon from their mythology. Charming, right? If it works as advertised, however, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s quite an impressive system. It’s relatively compact, very stealthy … you might even say elegant in its design. In fact, it’s so small that I’m sure the only reason they haven’t equipped every ship in their fleet with the system is due to the long-standing ban the Wek have imposed on weapons of this type.
“Before I go any farther, keep in mind that our people have only taken a cursory look at Takkar’s data so far, so all I’m really able to provide here today is a quick summary. Hopefully, I’ll be able to offer significantly more information before 0900Z tomorrow, particularly how we might go about stopping it — even after it’s launched.
“Remember that the Gunov, the ship carrying the bio-weapon, is also one of the two Resistance vessels previously located at Location Crossbow capable of traveling at eleven hundred light. As I stated earlier, my gut tells me that Commodore Sarafi intends to arrive here with all of the vessels he has at his disposal, which will take him a couple of days. We must also consider the possibility, however, that he has decided to press on with only two vessels in the hopes of executing a ‘Hail Marry’ biological attack. Unfortunately for us, those are two very different scenarios, each requiring its own unique defensive strategy.”
The thought of an enemy willing to kill not just those Humans tasked with defending their world, but all Humans — now well over twelve billion of them — caused an involuntary chill to travel down the length of his spine. How does one even respond to such a threat? Patterson glanced once again at the view screen displaying members of his audience, and although their facial expressions were difficult to gauge, their posture and body language were clear enough. These were men and women nearing the limits of their mental and physical endurance. Most of them had worked around the clock for months preparing their ships and crews for combat. The demands placed upon them had been totally unreasonable, and the inevitable effects of such prolonged stress were beginning to tell.
Ever a student of history, Patterson’s mind immediately recalled a military situation in Earth’s past that appeared hopeless to some degree, yet Human beings not unlike them had persevered in spite of the odds.
“Do any of you ever remember reading the story of American Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe during the Second World War’s Battle of the Bulge?”
Patterson saw a few nods here and there, but mostly just blank stares. “It doesn’t matter, I was going to tell you the story anyway,” he grinned. “Towards the end of the war, McAuliffe — who was acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division at the time — was deployed with a relatively small group of glider infantry troops when they became encircled by a much larger German force at Bastogne, Belgium. I’m summarizing a bit, but when the German commander sent him an ultimatum threatening the annihilation of his troops as well as innocent civilians in the area if he refused to surrender, McAuliffe famously sent the following reply:
To: The German Commander
NUTS!
From: The American Comma
nder
“Now, many of you who have worked with me probably know that I’m not a big fan of foul language, and neither was General McAuliffe. In fact, his personal aide said that General Mac was the only general he ever knew who didn’t speak using a steady stream of profanity. Sadly, I guess it’s safe to say that a general officer with a clean mouth was as rare in 1944 as it is today. So when the typed message was delivered to the German lines, the receiving officers were confused by the rather enigmatic, one-word response. When asked for an explanation, the American colonel who delivered the message replied simply, ‘In plain English? It means go to hell.’
“What we face here today is similar in many respects. You and I might be tempted to think that the consequences of our failing in the coming battle makes any comparison to the Battle of the Bulge seem a bit trivial. But to the soldiers on the ground in Bastogne, I can guarantee you that it was absolutely no different. Their lives, and the safety of their families back home, were on the line every bit as much as ours are today. So if nothing else, my friends, take comfort from the fact that we are by no means the first commanders to face this kind of situation, and I’m every bit as confident as General McAuliffe was that we will prevail in the end.”
“Sir,” one of the vidcon participants spoke up, “what happened to General Mac and his troops?”
“Ah, well, the German general in command of the artillery they had threatened to use on Bastogne had been so confident that the Americans would surrender that he had already moved his forces out of range. German infantry made a number of attempts to take the area, but without their supporting artillery, they were unable to dislodge the American defenders. General McAuliffe’s troops managed to hold on for four days until being reinforced by the 4th Armored Division on the day after Christmas. So the point of my story is that it’s very often courage, perseverance, and even a little defiance thrown in that tends to be decisive in battle, not ships and weapons … unless, of course, you truly are hopelessly outgunned,” he chuckled. “And, ladies and gentlemen, we are most certainly not hopelessly outgunned.”
Taking in a deep breath and consciously drawing himself up to his full height, Patterson was pleased by the apparent changes in his audience he noted on the view screen. “Anyway,” he said after a momentary pause, “we all have lots of work to do, so let’s wrap this up, shall we? Back to the Sazoch bio weapon … the delivery system works a lot like the interceptors I described earlier that are fired by the Carrada Area Denial pods. The most obvious differences are their slower speed and significantly increased size. This is probably due to the fact that they carry a much larger payload as well as the same engines used by their standard anti-ship missiles.
“To begin an attack, the ‘vehicle,’ as they refer to it, is fired from its host ship towards the target planet. At first, it’s essentially just a large, unpowered projectile. As it approaches atmospheric entry interface, however, fairings covering the engine nozzle detach, allowing its engine to engage for a long-duration deceleration burn. This results in a relatively low speed — and, thus, low temperature — reentry profile. At first glance, it looks as if the entire design of what we might call ‘stage one’ of this thing is focused on maintaining a relatively low temperature throughout the reentry process. We might be able to infer from this that the biological agents onboard are at least somewhat vulnerable to extreme temperature changes.
“Once the vehicle reaches relatively low altitude, say six thousand meters or so, it deploys small wings and its primary focus becomes that of a drone delivery vehicle. Again, it looks as if the designers intentionally kept the speed relatively low at just over four kilometers per second — roughly the same speed as some of our older hypersonic cruise missiles designed for purely atmospheric flight. The vehicle ‘sprints’ at this speed between release points, decelerates, deploys a number of small, autonomous drones, then accelerates again for the trip to the next release point. The drones themselves are capable of high subsonic speeds, and they are what actually deliver the biological agent — most likely targeting heavily populated areas first.
“Now I understand that for our latest generation of fighters, particularly the F-373, this sounds like a relatively straightforward exercise in air defense, but, as you might expect, it’s not quite as simple as it sounds. First off, the delivery vehicle itself is designed to be all but invisible, and I mean from just about any sensor you can name — visible light, infrared, radar, whatever. We’ve already done some analysis and believe the best opportunity for detection will be during its deceleration burn … if it has one, that is. If the host ship slows sufficiently to allow for a relatively low-speed deployment, however, we may literally never see this thing before it starts deploying drones. Note that the delivery vehicle itself can be targeted to reenter — or simply be released — at any location above the planet’s surface. Once inside the atmosphere, four kilometers per second is still fast enough to fly from one side of Australia to the other in just over sixteen minutes. And if the bio-agents are as lethal as Commander Takkar indicated, how big of an area it covers is probably a moot point anyway. A single successful deployment of one of these Sazoch drones might well be sufficient to kill off virtually every Human being on the planet inside of a few months.
“When I first started looking at this thing, my first thought was that we should focus our initial attacks on destroying the Gunov as quickly as possible after she arrives. Once she has escorted her task force to the immediate vicinity of Earth, however, she will no longer be burdened with providing navigational assistance for her consorts. That means she will have the capability to execute rapid transitions, if necessary, just like our ships.
“Frankly, I don’t think Commodore Sarafi will risk allowing his flagship to be brought into the battle early on. Instead, I think he will transition repeatedly, if necessary, to avoid combat. That being the case, if we immediately go after the Gunov, we run the risk that he might elect to proceed with his Sazoch attack while the rest of his forces are still engaged with ours. His older battleships, on the other hand, do not have the capability to make rapid transitions, and even if they did, I expect their strategy will be to stand and fight.
“Taking all of that into account, in order of priority, we must attack and eliminate the six Rusalov battleships, followed by the two Baldev battleships, the single remaining defense cruiser, then, finally the destroyer Gunov. I will begin issuing deployment orders within twelve hours, and I need each of your ships prepared to execute your orders immediately.
“That’s really all I have for the moment. I know we’ve only scratched the surface of many of these topics, and ignored many others that also require our attention. That means I’m relying on each and every one of you to perform at your absolute best, and I know that you will do exactly that. Now, all of us need to get moving, but is there anything remaining that any of you feel urgently needs to be addressed at this time?”
Since it was clear that Admiral Patterson was hoping to avoid further questions, it took several seconds before anyone among the audience of mostly senior officers had the courage to speak up. Just as he was about to sign off, the admiral heard the distinctive chime indicating that one of the participants had a question.
“Yes, someone had a question?” he asked. Throughout most of the briefing, Patterson had been looking over the top of his glasses to allow him to read his notes. Now, raising his chin so that he could glance at the distant view screen in an effort to identify the source of the question, he had the look of a particularly irritated college professor. “Oh … Commander Reynolds from the Theseus,” he said, his tone immediately softening as if to recognize a favored student. “Go ahead, Commander.”
“Admiral, what about the Guardian spacecraft. Has it given us any indication of how it will react once we come under attack? It has said many times that it has defended the Earth for hundreds of years, so can we not expect that it will continue to do so?”
“Thank you, Commander, I’m glad
you brought that up because I had intended to mention it. The short answer is that we have no idea what, if anything, the Guardian will do. If it really has been defending us for hundreds of years, it doesn’t seem to make much sense that it would choose now as the moment to stop doing so. Even if it allows us to do most of the fighting, it seems reasonable to expect that at some point it would provide some level of assistance, particularly if things were going badly for our side. Having said that, however, it has also referenced the fact that its defensive mission was to last ‘only until we had the means to defend ourselves.’ It has also at least implied that its continuing in that role required that we make a decision as to whether we intended to join the Pelaran Alliance. That decision process, as you know, will most likely take many months to complete, so I suppose it’s possible that we’re in some kind of probationary, pre-membership limbo period at the moment. In any event, Admiral Sexton and I are planning to attempt contact later today to see if we can get some idea of its intentions. Frankly, if it doesn’t plan to help, my preference is that it leaves the immediate area before the shooting starts. We have enough to worry about without having that thing in our way while we’re going toe to toe with the Resistance.”
