Conquest of Earth

by James David Victor

  “Acting Commander-in-Chief, Corporal Malady,” Ochrie corrected. “Until we can get a free and fair democratic election, that is.”

  “With the Ru’at everywhere, and Earth under the control of a renegade general, it doesn’t particularly look like that is going to happen any time soon,” Jezzy muttered, but Solomon was relieved to see that she relaxed her hold on the Jackhammer and let it drop to her side.

  “And you, Kol—” Solomon turned immediately to the traitor behind him.

  “I’m not a Marine anymore, Sol.” The young man sounded petulant.

  “Take it as a friendly warning, then,” Solomon said, and Kol did so, sliding the Ru’at weapon back inside his encounter suit.

  “Ratko?” Jezzy called to the bridge. “Get us as far away from Mars as possible. Somewhere we can lie low and send a message to Pluto and Asquew…if she’s still alive,” Jezzy said irritably.

  “Belay that order,” Ochrie countered, raising her voice instead. “This ship has all the transmission equipment I need to activate the super-black satellites and get us to the ECH.”

  “The what, sir?” Jezzy still managed to sound annoyed.

  “Experimental command hub,” Solomon filled her in, taking a deep breath. “We’ve found a place where we might be able to lead the fight back against the Ru’at.”

  “It must be the same place that Asquew wanted me to get to,” Jezzy said, “Malady?” She extended her hand to the large man-golem, and Solomon saw him draw from his side a tiny data-stick. “It’s the higher command codes for the CMC Fleet. Or what’s left of it.”

  “Excellent.” Ochrie smiled. “You keep hold of it, Corporal Malady. I can think of no better protection.”

  “And once we’re there,” Solomon continued, “we can use an ansible to contact what’s left of the Fleet and tell them how we’re going to stop the Ru’at.”

  “I know that they don’t like EMPs,” Jezzy said.

  “Exactly.” Solomon grinned.

  14

  Not What We Expected

  The tiny star of the Marine vessel burst from the upper atmosphere of Mars and soared into space. It was almost unnoticeable against the vast backdrop of the Red Planet below and the flashes of wreckage of the First Rapid Response Fleet as it slowly burned up in Martian atmosphere.

  “A lot of Martians are going to die.” Kol mourned the effect of all that metal falling on his home.

  There was nothing that Solomon or any of the others could say to counter this. It was disastrously true, and the Red Planet had already suffered a lot of planetary bombardments recently.

  I don’t even know how the Confederacy is going to rebuild itself after this, Solomon thought. Even if they managed to stop the Ru’at and liberate both Mars and Proxima, there was still Hausman to try and convince to give up his hold over Earth.

  Maybe she’ll have to let the colony worlds go. Solomon looked at Ochrie, who was looking out through one of the portholes at the Red Planet beneath them.

  All this trouble started with the colony-Confederate war, he reminded himself. Which he thought might have even been orchestrated a century or more ago by the Ru’at ‘Message.’

  “Is this what they do? Wait for a civilization to become spacefaring, and then undermine them from the inside, just to take them over with their drone fleet?” Solomon murmured to himself. The scale of such a battle plan—and the cruelty of it—was staggering.

  “What’s that, sir?” Jezzy looked over to him from where she was busy trying to sort the ship’s battle equipment. It was clear to Solomon that the surviving members of his squad had been through one hell of a journey, and it had taken the best part of an hour for Jezzy and Malady to fill him in on everything. He listened to their retelling of the Oregon and the Last Call, the battle for Pluto, the attack in jump-space, and the creation—and detonation—of quite possibly humankind’s largest ever nuclear explosion aboard the Invincible.

  Jezzy’s feelings toward Kol had cooled somewhat, Solomon saw. She still wouldn’t talk to him and refused to work alongside him or even go anywhere near him. Which is understandable, the man thought. He had no idea what would happen to Kol in the end, either. The young ex-Marine had done brave, heroic things to get them out of the Ru’at colony.

  But he had also caused the deaths of many people, Solomon thought. He would have to face a court martial, if they survived, and that was only on the guarantee that the Confederacy and the Marine Corps even looked like what they did now when all of this was said and done.

  “Nothing.” Solomon shook his head. “Just thinking out loud.”

  “It feels good to even have the time to think at the moment,” Jezzy groaned, slumping against one of the bulkheads. She had managed to find a range of medical equipment with which they treated the imprimatur, who was not on her rover-seat stretcher anymore but on the tiny medical berth of the scout, hooked up to machines that blipped and scanned her periodically.

  “Do you think she’ll make it?” Solomon breathed as their eyes slid to their wounded ally.

  “Will any of us?” Jezzy shrugged.

  As Ratko and Willoughby—stalwart Marines, Solomon acknowledged—piloted the ship further and further away from the Red Planet and out past its moons, the very next obstacle had been how to get to the ECH.

  Luckily, however, Acting Commander-in-Chief Ochrie already had a solution.

  “Open a broadcast channel, Marine.” Ochrie had taken herself to the bridge, where she stood near Willoughby’s desk. “Frequency 481.2 megahertz.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.” Willoughby did so, only for the scout’s speakers to be filled with the background static hiss of empty space. “There’s no answering station there, sir…” Willoughby started to say.

  “None that your sensors can pick up,” Ochrie said. “Broadcast my voice.”

  Willoughby hit some dials and nodded. “You’re live, sir.”

  “Input Code: Hermes-Alpha,” they heard Ochrie said.

  “Hermes?” Jezzy whispered at Solomon’s side.

  “The messenger of the Greek gods,” Solomon pointed out.

  “Input Code: AA23AA,” they heard her say, to be followed by a final command. “Input Order: Activate.”

  The static continued for a moment, and Solomon had a terrible, foreboding feeling that it wouldn’t work, until it did. The static stopped, and an automated voice announced itself from the speakers.

  “Voice Authentication: Ambassador Ochrie, Tier 2. Input accepted,” it said.

  Solomon shared a spooked look with Jezzy beside him. This was the voice of the super-black satellite program, the deeply secret network of spy satellites and drones that the Confederate Marines had seeded the system with.

  “Input Order: Update mainframe, given data of current chain of command,” Ochrie said.

  “Updating… Updating… Task Completed. Voice Authentication: Acting Commander-in-Chief Ochrie, Tier 1.”

  It didn’t recognize Brigadier General Hausman, Solomon thought. That meant that the spy satellites must have such a wide reach that the network was able to scan for any surviving Tier 1 members and come to the conclusion that Special Regulation 201 was correct. Ochrie was now in charge of the human race.

  Solomon thought that Ochrie sounded just a little bit pleased with herself as she went on to say, “Input Order: Activate ECH Test Fleet and rendezvous on my position.”

  “Command Accepted.”

  “Test Fleet?” This time it was Solomon’s turn to sound puzzled, and the silence in the cramped space was enough that his words carried clearly to the leader of humanity.

  “There have always been more than three CMC Fleets, First Lieutenant Cready,” Ochrie said. “But the existence of the Test Fleet has been a super-black secret for decades.”

  “Did Asquew know about it?” Jezzy asked.

  “Of course.” Ochrie nodded. “As does Hausman, I am certain of it. The ECH Test Fleet is undoubtedly the reason why the general was trying to send you to the ECH, and
why she gave you the higher command functions, so that you would be able to activate it,” Ochrie explained.

  “But it is not an ordinary CMC Fleet by any stretch of the imagination. It is, as the name suggests, a test. It is made of a fraction of the number of craft that the Near-Earth or Rapid Response Fleets had, and mostly they were experimental ship designs,” Ochrie went on. “New craft mechanics, new weapons systems, propulsion, communication—”

  “The ansible,” Solomon said.

  “Precisely. The ECH Test Fleet is historically where CMC ships start out, and where they are field tested, before being put into general production. There is no guarantee that these vessels will even be able to counter the Ru’at at all. There have been many, many fatal accidents in the Test Fleet.”

  “Outstanding,” Kol muttered miserably from his porthole. Everyone ignored him.

  “However, one of the prototypes that have worked are the automated jump-ships. No need for human pilots. They are essentially drone systems that will jump to your location, and—well, see for yourself!”

  Warning! Proximity Alert!

  The scout’s mainframe crackled into life as there was a sudden flash of light and a hazy ripple of stars in front of them. It was the unmistakable effect of a Barr-Hawking field, and a moment later, the shadowy form of a jump-ship materialized in front of them, looking as solid and as real as if it had been sitting there the whole time.

  The automated jump-ship looked almost like any other Confederate Marine Corps jump-ship that Solomon had ever seen. It still held the small, forward-pointing cockpit as the main body, jutting inside a much larger ring of metal, not with the four bulbous particle generators at each cardinal point, but instead three.

  “Improved Barr-Hawking engines,” Ochrie said, a note of pride in her voice.

  Indeed, it looked a lot like any other CMC jump-ship—apart from the fact that it was gun-metal black, and there were certain discrete differences here and there about its body. It was less angular and blocky compared to the regular jump-ships in standard operational use. All the Marine Corps vessels appeared to have been churned out by a factory, even the super-massive dreadnaughts. They were bulky, and their ports, weapons modules, vents, and grills were all austere and functional. This ship, however, looked…

  “Sleek.” Corporal Ratko nodded appreciatively. Solomon’s eyes slid to the treacherous Kol—a technical specialist, like Ratko—to see that he was nodding in agreement, before quickly clearing his throat to cover the fact that he agreed.

  And it has no portholes or windows anywhere, Solomon thought, which he found a little creepy.

  “Willoughby, open a channel to the jump-ship and tell it to take us to the ECH,” Ochrie said.

  Willoughby looked at the silent ship in front of them, and First Lieutenant Cready saw her shrug slightly and tap the navigation and comms console in front of her.

  “CMC jump-ship, this is the Special Operations CMC Marine Scout, requesting a lift to ECH, over and out.”

  There was no reply from the other end of the channel, but the creepy ship apparently received the message. It fired positional rockets to turn around, and Solomon saw the puffs of gases as it fired magnet locks from its hull. The thin, glittering lines of cables lanced through the air to slap onto the nose and hull of the scout with audible bangs before the automated ship completed its turn and started to move.

  All eyes of the crew were fixed on the strange ship ahead, but it appeared to function just the same as any other CMC jump-ship.

  “Right, take your harnesses please, people,” Willoughby said as she buckled herself in.

  Oh yeah. Solomon had forgotten what jumping was like. How long have I been on Mars? Days? Weeks? He didn’t know, but he moved quickly to check on Mariad in her medical berth to make sure she was secure before taking his seat and pulling the X of poly-mesh fibers across his chest to buckle himself in.

  “Jumping in three…two…and they’re—I mean it’s—initiating,” he heard Willoughby’s voice loud and clear over the speakers as everyone else looked forward through the bridge viewing window.

  First came the sparks of light from the three particle generators as the ring started to turn, blurring faster and faster and creating a circle of strange light. Solomon could feel the forward momentum on his body as the scout was pulled along faster than it ever could hope to travel on its own. The light ring expanded to become a fuzzy halo, a corona of energy as the Barr-Hawking field was generated.

  Spacetime became malleable, and the very energetic structure of the universe was displaced.

  Solomon saw the hazy, washy lights of the stars start to wobble and diffuse as their photons failed to reach his retina. His eyes registered odd, strange colors that his brain had no name for.

  And then his stomach lurched, and he felt his body cover itself with a fine film of sweat. His teeth ached, and his head started to pound with a pressure headache, moments before vertigo and nausea took him. This was what happened when humans endured jumps. Even though there was no technical or physical reason for it, there was still a primal knowledge that this was something that no human body, designed for terrestrial gravity and Earth-regular spacetime, should experience.

  And just like always, as soon as the sensation started to get too intense, it suddenly stopped, and Solomon was sitting in his harness, blinking and taking deep breaths to calm his ragged heartbeat.

  “We’re here,” he heard Ochrie say, and Solomon and the others were already rising from their seats to take a look at precisely where ‘here’ was.

  “Oh, frack!” Ratko gasped, moments before she hit the thrusters and threw the ship into a spin, just as the ship’s tactical computers blurted out alarms.

  Warning! Enemy Vessel Targeting Protocol Detected!

  Warning! Target Lock Detected!

  15

  Ech

  Solomon was thrown from his standing position as the ship rolled. He didn’t see, but in front of them, the cables from the automated jump-ship stretched taut, and two of them ripped from the nose as Ratko maneuvered.

  In the space ahead of them, the jump-ship suddenly jerked as it was pulled by the scout, before it finally released the last few magnet locks—

  And an instant later exploded in a ball of blue and white energy as the enemy vessel’s missiles found it.

  “Who’s attacking us?” Solomon shouted, pushing himself up from the opposite end of the craft.

  Out of the portholes, the stars were pinwheeling and rolling as Ratko threw evasive move after evasive move. She’s trying to throw off the targeting locks, Solomon knew.

  “Keep Ochrie safe!” Solomon clicked into command mode as he stumbled and climbed toward the bridge, Jezzy right behind him.

  “How?” he heard Kol say in alarm. Which was a fair comment, as the ex-Marine must have known that there wasn’t much he could do if a missile or a Ru’at laser beam found them.

  “I don’t know! Just do it!” Solomon shouted over his shoulder as he entered the bridge, seeing the tactical map overlays above the viewing screen and the vectors of too many ships to make him feel comfortable.

  Half of them were stationary orange triangles, indicating Unknown Vessel, which Solomon knew was bad, as that was how the Ru’at ships came up on their scanners.

  But the others were the ones that made the lieutenant slam to a halt. They were CMC identifiers, each and every one, and they were all on attack vectors, either with the stationary unknown ships…

  Or their own scout.

  “Hausman,” Solomon hissed at once.

  The CMC ships arrayed against them were what Solomon would have called a forward strike force—certainly not a full battle group, which traditionally had a range of Confederate Marine fighter craft, as well as at least one battleship that would act as the operational command and a number of logistical ships such as Marine transporters, jump-ships, scouts or shuttles. It was also—thankfully—not a full fleet either, which would have had one of the super-massiv
e dreadnaughts at its heart.

  Instead, what Solomon and the others were looking at was between eight and ten CMC fighter craft—narrow wedges with four overlapping wing shapes and heavy fuselages, indicating that they could operate in the vacuum of space as well as in atmosphere.

  The only problem was that the eight craft were still far too many for one lighter and smaller Marine scout.

  “Evasive maneuvers!” Ratko called as she pulled on the flight stick once again and kicked her propulsion pedals. In response, a line of smaller positional rockets along the edge of the tubular scout fired, sending it into a tumbling corkscrew that, were First Lieutenant Cready’s boots not magnetized, would have sent him crashing into the ceiling.

  The viewing screen showed whirling stars as well as appearing and disappearing ships, giving the impression that it was the outside space that was cycling and not them. But every few moments, Solomon would see the appearing shape of their target.

  The experimental command hub was similar to a platform rather than a station in that it had no large, transparent domes of habitats, and instead looked like a disk around a central collection of spires and antennae, reaching both up and down. The external ring swam around the inner at a steady pace, indicating that it could generate its own gravity as well as hold its position.

  Just like the automated jump-ship, it was a gun-metal black and sleek. Solomon caught sight of bulkhead ports and vents, all of which seemed made to a much higher standard than the usual Marine Corps equipment.

  But it was under attack, Solomon realized, as he saw sudden bursts of flames flash and evaporate around its outer ring.

  “We can’t let Hausman destroy it!” Ochrie shouted from the rear of the bridge, where she had also accompanied Solomon and Jezzy.

  But the ECH was only suffering a modicum of the force’s attention. Most of their missile and vacuum-rifle fire was saved for the groups of stationary, sleek black craft of all different shapes and sizes that clustered near the ECH.