She snapped back to the reality on the TV screen, as something seemed to be happening. It appeared the bombardment of targets in the Tropics had started. Poor people, she thought, considering the billions of ordinary folk stranded in there. The BCC News seemed to be focusing on India. With its enormous Tropical population and Commonwealth status, there were millions of personal connections to the British broadcaster’s home audience. The coverage went over to an embedded reporter with the Indian Army.
“We now join the BCC’s Jeremy Macfie, who is with the Indian Army, somewhere in the Tropics of India. For security reasons, we can’t give a precise location. Jeremy...” said the news anchor. The shot switched to the reporter half a world away, his face shaded in the greens of night vision. With him stood the compact, moustached Indian Colonel in full battle-dress uniform. Directly behind the Colonel was a main battle tank, silent and camouflaged in netting. Every so often, the lightning flashes of particle beams silhouetted its shape.
“John,” said reporter Macfie, to his colleague in London, “I cannot give away our precise location, but I can say that we are dug in and defending a strategically important place. I am now joined by Colonel Satish Kaur of the Indian First Armoured Division.”
The Colonel nodded in anticipation of the questions about to come. He looked tired and on edge.
“Colonel, it seems the bombardment has started. How do you expect the next hours and days to play out?”
“Jeremy, I cannot give away operational details, as you know...but what I can tell you is that we predicted the bombardment. We have done our best to assist citizens evacuate the city.” He looked over to his right, implying there was a city nearby.
As Zara watched, she wondered if the sum of clues – the timing of the particle beam strikes and the signal from the BCC’s transmitter – were enough for the Korgax to find them. She hoped not.
The Indian officer continued, “We are fully prepared for the alien ground invasion – they will need to fight us for every square inch of our blessed country. Most of our armour has survived and we are ready for them...”
The interview continued, but it was clear to Zara that they would not, or could not, say anything tangible. Operational security trumped all else – and understandably so. She switched to GNN, where a World map showed the extent of the Korgax bombardment. As their fleet orbited Earth, they were systematically destroying city after city. She hoped the Indian Colonel was right about the cities being evacuated. She focused on what the presenter was saying over the map.
“It seems the Korgax are conducting the equivalent of carpet bombing of entire cities. I say ‘equivalent’ as they are, on the whole, using particle beams rather than bombs. We heard our expert tell us just now that this is likely to be followed by what he called, ‘a mopping-up operation’ by enemy forces...”
She flicked back to BCC and they had switched to the view from a drone over a daytime city. She didn’t know where it was, but it looked like a warm, less developed country. Many of what used to be concrete and steel office towers had collapsed completely, others were on fire and badly damaged. It was complete carnage. Streams of unfortunate people ran in search of safety amongst the smoke and rubble. In the background, the columns of a large suspension bridge sat at an odd angle to the vertical. The central part of road deck was missing and its remainder hung by damaged, mangled cables. A semi-truck hung off the now-sloping right hand road deck. A brief pulse of light came and the building right in front of the camera shot exploded, sending debris flying towards the millions of viewers around the World. The camera feed turned to interference as the flying eye became the latest victim of the Korgax. The show returned to the newsroom and the familiar face of Dana Alessi. Moments later the screen went blank and simply said, ‘No Signal.’ Zara flicked through the channels, but all were the same. Her husband – Chip – had warned her of this. Now was the time for her to join their boys downstairs in the bunker and batten down the hatches. The jamming had started, which only meant one thing – the Korgax were about to invade Earth.
Chapter Fourteen
January 12, 2064: Mount Hazard, Large Continent, Planet Gaia
“What the...?” exclaimed Sorensen. He could not believe what he was seeing, coming through the opening blast doors.
“I thought we were the only squad on this mountain!?!” exclaimed a confused-sounding Jonah.
Jen counted the human soldiers advancing in a methodical defensive formation, weapons raised. “Eight...”
“Not just anyone...you know who these guys are? Russian SPETSNAZ,” she said.
“Well, that’s great, we’ve got reinforcements! Let’s hail them...” said the young Sergeant, Jonah Fitzroy, as he was interrupted by his Captain, Jen Martin.
“Not so fast, Jonah! Let’s think about this. I mean...why did no one tell us about these guys? Who the hell’s coordinating this operation?” she asked in an alarmed voice.
“Aren’t the Russians on our side for once?” Jonah countered.
Sorensen broke into the exchange over the secure EQP system, his voice calm. “I tend to agree with Jen. There shouldn’t be friendlies anywhere near our position. There is no way these guys would’ve strayed here by mistake.”
The SPETSNAZ were closer now. To Sorensen this felt all wrong.
He continued, “Could be mind-controlled...”
“Well, how do we tell?” asked a now-worried Jonah.
“Short of cutting them open and doing an autopsy, we can’t tell by looking at them. We’ll know by their actions…but we should play it safe and check with command. Fall back to position two, past the first blast doors. Maintain full stealth,” Sorensen instructed.
The three humans and Lakai fell back three-hundred and fifty metres to the first set of blast doors. Lakai planted a tiny remote camera in a rock crevasse near the blast doors. They retreated past the crater where the remnants of the sentry-bot sat and took up position against the inside bend of the wall. Lakai hacked back into the control panel computer and closed the blast doors. Then they waited and monitored the sound and vision from the hidden camera on the other side of the doors.
On the one hand, Sorensen wanted to hit the eight Russian commandos hard and without warning to safeguard themselves and their mission. On the other, he had no desire for a blue-on-blue incident. He decided to call through to Special Operations Command on Exelon and find out how this happened.
After completing security protocols, he got through to a young woman with an English accent in Special Ops Command. “We’re tracking eight Russian SPETZNAZ approximately two hundred-fifty metres northeast of my current position. I’m transmitting the coordinates now. Request identification of the unit ASAP...”
“Standby...” she replied.
Thirty very long seconds passed before a familiar male voice came back on the line. “Sergeant Sorensen, this is General Hadley. All Russian ground units have gone rogue and should be considered hostile. Repeat: all Russians units on Gaia are hostiles. Neutralize at the earliest opportunity. That is all. Confirm...”
“Confirmed, sir. Out...” said Sorensen.
They didn’t have time to discuss the wherefores and the whys – the Russians had reached the blast doors. The camera feed to Zeta-One patrol’s HUDs showed one of the SPETSNAZ soldiers standing by the control panel speaking. It was in Russian, but none of them spoke the language. Moments later he typed in the correct code and the blasts doors started opening. They were only one-hundred metres away now. Eight targets, four friendlies.
“How about we repeat them a little surprise like we did the sentry?” suggested Jonah.
“No, these guys are too good – they’ll spot the claymores. Soon as they come around that bend paint two targets on your HUD. Take one with your rifle the other with your shoulder pod – warheads set to explosive. Keep ‘em forward and wait for my mark. After that, fall back to position three, marked on your HUD map. Range the wall with your battlerifle and set explosive rounds. Any questi
ons?” said Sorensen.
No one did, so they watched and they waited.
Sorensen saw the first mind-controlled Russian advancing around the outside of the bend. Sorensen’s HUD indicated that Jonah had assigned the first hostile to his shoulder pod rocket launcher. As the other seven hostiles advanced, one-by-one they were painted by the cloaked Zeta-One patrol. They waited, tense, and ready to break the deafening silence. Fifty metres and closing...
“Open fire!” ordered Sorensen.
In an instant, a wall of high velocity lead and shoulder-pod rockets tore into the unsuspecting SPETZNAZ men. The zombie soldiers only returned a handful of reflexive snapshots – none striking home – before all eight finally rested in peace.
No one said anything for a while. They stood there, surveying the fallen, mangled humans for signs of life. There were none. If the others felt anything like Sorensen did then they would be even more determined to make the Korgax pay for their inhumanity. He consoled himself, thinking, these guys were already dead, from the moment they were implanted.
***
January 12, 2064: USS Esperanza, Gulf of Mexico
“Lieutenant, report please,” ordered Captain Nathaniel Carter to his Executive Officer, George Nomura.
“Sir, we’re lined up on constant bearing, two-three-zero degrees, straight and level at fifteen knots, one-hundred metres from the FTL gate.”
The FTL gate was being controlled from a nearby fishing trawler. The team had radioed through to the Esperanza shortly before their final approach giving them the green light to enter. After several attempts, they’d resolved the terminal coordinates to a depth of twenty metres in the sea of Gaia. This was almost perfect, and was just one-point-five metres too shallow for static pressure equalisation. The result was a slight outflow of water from the Gulf of Mexico into the sea of Gaia. Such was the criticality of the mission that bio-contamination was a long way down the list of concerns.
“Very good, Lieutenant. Rig for running silent now. We don’t know what’ll be listening after we jump.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Nomura, as he instructed the crew to turn off all unnecessary equipment to make the submarine as quite as possible.
Twenty seconds later, the crew of the USS Esperanza blacked out momentarily as they passed through the singularity. When they awoke, they had made history and jumped fifteen light-years from sea to shining sea.
The queue of subs lined up for the jump was like the line of planes landing at a busy airport. Next in, were due to be the British subs, HMS Wellington and HMS Waterloo. Following them were the USS George W Bush and the USS William J. Clinton. After that came the PLA Navy’s Jin-Tang and the INS Sinduraje. Finally, the museum piece, HMS Ajax, would transit through, assuming the gate was still operational by then.
***
The CIA had discovered that the Korgax had compromised the Russian intelligence services and military. The aliens had abducted and implanted a number of key figures with mind-control technology. No one yet knew how far the rot had spread, but it was rumoured that it had all started with the turning of SVR Chief, Sergei Bekov. Amongst other things, those key figures had betrayed the locations of all SPETSNAZ troops on Gaia. The Korgax had captured and implanted many of them, including the squad encountered by Zeta-One patrol. So, after a ruse and a daring raid by Navy SEALs, they’d impounded the SSBN Vladimir Putin at Port Mobile. Until they could rule out – or confirm – mind-control implants, her crew would remain interned.
***
January 12, 2064: Asteroid 375 Nemesis, 33 days from Impact with Earth
They took just six-minutes to fly to Thruster #2 using battlesuit thrusters. They’d tracked the curve of the asteroid’s surface, grey pitted, rocky features whizzing past below. They were in sunlight now, but the Sun’s size seemed abnormally small to Chip, used to the familiar disc he’d grown up with on Earth. He knew they were 20 million kilometres further away from Sol than Earth, but it still looked wrong. Nothing seemed to change – the asteroid lacked rotation; the destroyer floated five kilometres above them in the same position – no wind, no life, no change of scene. That was exactly how they liked it; no change meant no detection. Thruster #2 was identical to #1, including the position of the nano-particle detectors. Takai repeated his code upload, quicker this time. His apprentice and backup, Sarai, would need to wait until Thruster #3 for his moment of glory. Something to tell his dozens of grandkids about, thought Chip. They could see the top of Thruster #3 poking above the horizon another four klicks away. They set off once more, contented that they should soon be back in the Foxbat. It was the ever-present threat from the destroyer above that made Chip desperate to leave. He averted his gaze and concentrated on steering himself and Sarai to Thruster #3.
“Takai tells me it’s Sarai’s turn to do the honours,” said Motor over the voice comms.
“Yes, he already told me. Thank you, Captain,” replied Sarai.
“You two been having those head-conversations again?” said Chip, chuckling.
“That is how we communicate much of the time, Sergeant,” replied a serious Takai.
Chip hoped he hadn’t insulted their culture or something, and decided to keep his mouth shut.
Motor – with Takai still strapped to his back – stood off while Chip manoeuvred himself and Sarai down towards the giant thruster. Chip checked his EMF vision and confirmed that the nano-particle streams from the detectors were as before. They were, so they came in from above, just like the other times. He carefully moved down to the control panel near thruster housing. Sarai unclipped himself, to allow Chip to secure him to the thruster. The Outcast tech was having trouble with the second karabiner. He struggled to manipulate it open using his invisible, gloved hands. They’d trained at using feel-only to manipulate objects, but it still wasn’t easy with the gloves on. He decided to give the strap a pull, assessing that the clip was half-on, half-off. A good tug, with some leverage from his feet against the thruster housing would do the trick. Sarai pushed with his feet and yanked. It worked – he was detached from Chip – except he was now floating backwards, untethered. Before Chip could react, Sarai had passed through the nano-particle stream from the nearest detector.
“Shit!” exclaimed Chip as he pushed off to grab the slowly departing Outcast. “Damn it, what the hell were you thinking?”
Before the hapless Sarai could answer, something very bad happened. Chip looked up at the launch tubes near the bow of the destroyer. One after the other fighter drones came barrelling out, forming into a four-ship CSP. It has to be an automated system to be that fast, thought Chip. Grabbing onto Sarai, he engaged his arm and leg thrusters trying to put some distance between them and the detector.
“Motor, get yourself away from the thruster! We’ve got company!” shouted Chip.
“I see them...already moving...”
The drones circled above Thruster #3 – searching, but not finding. By the time the four interlopers were half a kilometre away, a drop-ship had started speeding down from the destroyer. The sturdy-looking troop carrier landed hard on shock-absorbing legs, throwing up four puffs of asteroid dust. Next, the rear ramp-door rapidly powered onto the deck, allowing the troops to spill out. Hiding behind a large outcrop, Chip counted twenty large humanoid figures in hard-shelled space suits. They seemed to be wearing some kind of jetpack. It allowed them to fly around in the microgravity – much the same as Chip’s and Motor’s suit thrusters did. The Korgax squad were carrying plasma assault rifles and had fanned out from the shuttle towards Thruster #3. Convinced that they couldn’t be seen, Chip stuck his head above the rock to observe what the enemy were doing. As soon as he did so one of them raised his plasma rifle and fired at Chip, missing him by a few metres.
The Vassal World (The First Exoplanet Book 2) Page 18
