Stolen Worlds

by Bob Blink

  "No word. With the satellite down, we don't have a direct link to them. We could only talk via a turnaround from Earth."

  "See what you can find out. I'd like to know if they are experiencing a similar situation." He would also like to speak with the Russians, but that would be even more complicated just now.

  In fact, three groups of alien ships were making their way around the moon. They had already eliminated all but one of the orbiting spacecraft, and were simultaneously approaching both of the American bases as well as the Russian base, which the aliens had decided was responsible for the attack which had eliminated the project that had been so painstakingly created. A fusion weapon! Who would have thought these planet bound primitives had such capability? They had thought the facility here was secure and undetected, but they now knew how wrong they were and how dangerous these primitives were.

  The ships were approaching in three groups. Sixteen of the alien ships were closing on the base at Peary Crater where the large Russian base was located, and ten more ships to each of the remaining two bases. The alien beings were also already very much aware that the attacks had not been limited to the moon alone. Communications via the very secure FTL underspace communications network had alerted them to what was taking place on the surface of the planet. Their facilities on what these creatures called Earth were being subjected to attack as well. It was time to show these backward primitives what they had unleashed upon themselves.

  The alien ships moved at a speed that exceeded anything that Earth could launch, and closed on the three targets with a single-mindedness of thought. The sixteen ships closing on the Russian base wasted no time in revealing their intent. As soon as the base came into view, the closest of the ships triggered the strange glowing weapon that had proved so effective against the incoming missiles. Moving faster than any missile, but considerably slower than any form of electromagnetic energy, the two-foot diameter glowing balls impacted at multiple locations around the Russian base. Whatever the weapon was, it worked by simply causing the matter that it encountered to simply dissociate into independent molecules and atoms, depending on the material. For a range of roughly five miles around any strike, everything seemed to disintegrate in an increasing radius circle as the weapon worked its destruction. Within less than a minute of the first strike, the Russian base along with sections of the moon simply vanished. A ragged hole a couple of hundred meters deep was all that remained of the facility.

  The Russians didn't go down without taking their own 'pound of flesh'. Realizing the aliens were about to attack, the base commander launched every remaining missile that was mounted and set to go. Most had conventional warheads, and the only one that actually found a target demonstrated how ineffectual such weapons were against whatever material the aliens' ship were made of. But three of the missiles were fitted with nuclear warheads, smaller than the ones that were launched against the Fermi Crater facility, but still impressive. The missiles weren't designed for ground to air combat and couldn't be used to target specific vessels, but instead were directed on a flight path that took them through the center of the approaching fleet.

  Realizing the missiles might have more of the deadly warheads, the alien ships had attempted evasive maneuvers, putting distance between themselves and the group of hastily launched weapons. Most were able to move well away, but a number of the ships that had been damaged by the blast at Fermi Crater as they fled, were slower to react. When the Russian weapons officer triggered the warheads, the last act of his life as the base was consumed by the alien's attack, the blast was able to take out six of the alien ships. The rest weathered the attack without serious damage. With the base completely eliminated, the surviving ships reformed into a group, and set off for Earth, bright in the skies above.

  The attack at Tranquility followed much the same pattern. The weapons that had been launched from Earth to the base only days before were set off en-masse toward the enemy, and triggered by proximity sensors. Another five of the enemy ships were consumed by the nuclear fires, but the remaining ships were more than sufficient to reduce the base to another ragged hole in the moon.

  Shackleton didn't even get to score a single kill. With no defensive hardware, they could only watch as the alien's spacecraft approached, then trigger the deadly weapons that killed everyone at the base, including the survivors of the long trip to Fermi Crater only days before, and reduced the former facility to dust.

  All twenty-five of the surviving alien spacecraft joined up and set off for Earth, less than four hours away at the speed they were soon making. The moon was once again a lifeless rock.

  "We've lost all contact with our moon bases," the communications engineer informed the mission control in Houston. "The last of the communication satellites has failed to appear as well."

  The moon normally had satellites in two different orbits. The equatorial orbiting satellites would pass across the face of the moon that was facing the Earth, then loop around the back side, before repeating the process. They were only in view of the Earth antennas while on the front side of the moon, and the last of these which was supposed to have made the transition back into view had failed to materialize. The other spacecraft were in polar orbits, circling the moon crossing alternately over the north and south poles, and essentially always in view of the Earth. Mission Control had watched as these had been systematically eliminated. Now, for the first time in many years, they had no means on contacting any facility or receiver on the moon, if indeed any existed.

  The information was swiftly forwarded to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. where it reached Bud Hollister almost immediately.

  "We've lost the moon!" Hollister informed General Easystone and the Secretary of Defense and the others in the Command Center. "There are an unidentified number of alien spacecraft headed toward the Earth, estimated to arrive in just under four hours."

  "Four hours!" someone exclaimed. "They are fast."

  "Time to get the President and ourselves airborne," the General ordered. "We can't know their intentions, but Washington is a likely target."

  "I just got word of the three ships that survived the attacks at the Earth bases," Hollister warned. "One is headed toward Plesetsk where the Russians initiated their attack on the Western Sahara facility, and the other two are headed to locations inside China. I am assuming they are headed toward launch sites there."

  "We need to get all combat fighters airborne," General Easystone ordered. "I want all equipped with nuclear armed missiles if at all possible. At this point we had no indication whether conventional warheads would have any effect against these guys. We have less than four hours to get these planes equipped and in place above all our major cities. I want every missile we possess that can be used to attack maneuverable airborne targets with a nuclear warhead armed and ready," he added. "That includes everything on our ships, which should be directed as close to the shore as possible to increase their effective range against these ships. We have multiple cruisers with nuclear ship-to-air capability."

  The General assumed the Russians and Chinese would do much the same. He'd already had his communications team pass the information they had on the impending arrival of enemy spaceships. The problem all of them faced was the lack of appropriate hardware. For a long time, none of the major powers had focused on nuclear air-to-air missiles. The kind of airborne targets they needed to go after were too small to warrant a nuclear warhead. Air-to-ground existed, and ground-to-ground existed, but these weren't optimum for attempting to shoot down fast moving aerial targets. The United States had recently fielded the hypersonic missile with a small nuclear warhead, as had Russia, but the numbers of such weapons were small. He knew the Chinese also had something of the sort now as well. Unfortunately, only certain bases had supplies of the new weapons, and then in very limited numbers. Most of their planes wouldn't be able to be equipped with them. They would have to use the air-to-ground and hope that a proximity detonation would be able to take out some of
the enemy's ships.

  Plesetsk was the first location to come under attack, by only a single alien ship, but it was enough. A half dozen aircraft were launched to intercept the attacker, but all were armed with conventional weapons, none of which they were able to deploy successfully. The aircraft were swept from the sky by the same weapon that had taken out the Russian missiles on the moon, and moments later relying on a series of six shots using their strange weapon, they were able to entirely demolish the Plesetsk facility. The ten Sarnat missiles launched, even though three were triggered before being destroyed, were not close enough to do any damage to the alien vessel.

  The two ships headed toward China targeted the source of the earlier attacking missiles, but discovered exactly what the Chinese had hoped. There were only the spent mobile carriers left behind as targets, which were destroyed using a more conventional and less destructive alien weapon before the two ships set off for other targets.

  It soon became clear that the aliens had a much better knowledge of the leading countries and their infrastructure than might have been guessed. The two ships made for Jiuquan, the oldest and most used of China's launch facilities. The launch site was not used for military launches at this time, and wasn't equipped to handle the attacks of the powerful alien ships. Only the fact that the base did have a storage facility of nuclear weapons, and the General in charge elected to trigger one of the larger bombs as it sat in the warehouse as the alien ships were passing overhead were the Chinese able to bring down the two attackers. The Jiuquan launch facility was, of course, lost to the explosion, but it was going to be destroyed anyway.

  Reports of the damage being caused and the nature of the destruction being unleashed by the aliens was shared between the allies. The U.S. team was very aware they had been lucky to be spared the initial Earth-based attacks giving them additional time to prepare.

  "I believe we can assume that we won't be spared once the rest of the enemy arrive," General Easystone warned everyone. "They appear to be going after our launch assets first, and then I'd guess they are going to target our military facilities. I can only assume that the civilian centers would follow."

  Several hours later the twenty-five ships from the moon and the lone surviving ship that had taken out the Russian launch facility joined up briefly, before splitting into three groups, heading in the predictable directions. Ten of the ships were tracked heading toward Russia, and eight each to the United States and China.

  General Easystone was wrong in one sense. Either the aliens didn't know about the military sites, unlikely given the extent of the other knowledge, or they didn't care. They went after the launch sites, clearly with the intent of eliminating all capability to launch anything into space, and then went after the major population centers.

  In China, the XiChang and Wencheng spaceports were quickly reduced to holes in the ground akin to those left on the moon. The eight alien ships had managed this without a loss, and turned their sights on Beijing.

  In Russia, the ten alien ships did much the same to the recently completed Vostochny launch facility in the eastern part of the country, and then attacked the older Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan. The Russians had managed to position a squadron of their newest fighters with their own hypersonic nuclear capable missiles. The ensuing fight was short lived, but three of the alien ships were swept from the skies before the fighters were all destroyed, and shortly afterwards Baikonur. The next target on the alien's list appeared to be Moscow.

  The eight ships targeting the United States swept across the Pacific Ocean, and eliminated Vandenberg along with its military personnel and the launch capabilities there. Then they set off for Florida, following a traditional great circle route. Midway across the country, forty of the United State's newest warplanes with the powerful new missiles intercepted the alien force. The engagement would have made any science fiction movie fan proud. Missiles and enemy weapons flashed and filled the skies. American planes were destroyed at an alarming rate, but half of the enemy ships were taken down by the hypersonic missiles. Unfortunately, four continued onward toward the Florida launch center. There were no more planes capable of inflicting damage on the enemy in this part of the country.

  In Russia, the attacking force was less than a hundred miles from Moscow when the Russians acted. The aliens had neglected to sweep all of the satellites from orbit as they approached the Earth, taking out only those that were close to their flight path, possibly intending to eliminate the rest afterwards. Two of those satellites housed illicit nuclear warheads aimed at the Earth that Russia had hidden against any future attack. Realizing that Moscow was lost unless drastic action was taken, they launched all of the missiles toward the alien fleet, with the intention of triggering the warheads when they were within range, hoping to thin out the remaining ships. As before, the alien weapons detected and destroyed most of the incoming missiles, but a strange thing happened. Before all were destroyed, the enemy stopped shooting. That allowed two of the surviving warheads to get within range as the enemy ships began pulling away from the previous heading as they sought the safety of space. All but two of the alien ships were consumed by the massive fireball, with the two somehow managing to escape into orbit.

  Word of the success was passed to the United States and China. China knew it was too late to save Beijing, and made an even more difficult decision. Although their primary launch facilities were destroyed, they still had a great number of the hidden portable launchers, and they launched twenty more of the powerful DF-41 ICBMs, with the intent of following the Russian strategy of detonating the missiles, which were never intended for aerial targets, while still in flight. Unfortunately, the timing and programmed tracks showed that would happen over Beijing, ensuring the deaths of all who lived there. It was a chance, and all indications were that those individuals would die anyway, so the command was given. It was a close thing, but one of the cruise missiles managed to get through, triggering at the last moment, taking out all of the enemy ships and it vaporized China's capitol city.

  The United States was a different kind of place where triggering weapons over one's own country wasn't something one normally did. But the attackers were closing, and it was time to act. There were two nuclear submarines off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico, but Trident D5 missiles were not designed for this kind of warfare. They were made to hit land based targets. General Easystone turned to the offshore Cruisers and their missile batteries, many now armed with appropriate warheads.

  Send everything that can reach those incoming ships," he directed. "Start with standard warheads. We want decoys to force them to use up their defensive capability. The Russians indicate the aliens run out of ammunition or their deployment systems require timely reconfiguration after firing enough of those deadly defense balls of theirs. If we can drive them into that position, we have a better chance of getting our weapons through. Once we launch the missiles with nuclear warheads, augment the launches with non nuclear missiles from other ships. These invaders can't know which to fear and which not."

  In the airborne Command Center, the General and the others watched as the tracks of the missiles showed them closing on the enemy. He had to believe the enemy knew the missiles were coming, but apparently they were confident they could deal with the incoming swarm effectively, especially after seeing what had happened to their counterparts on the far side of the world.

  Forty missiles of various kinds were closing fast on the enemy ships, all that could be launched that had sufficient range. The spaceships made a small adjustment in their positions, then began firing at the incoming missiles. They were hitting them at ranges far greater than the enemy ships had attempted in either Russia or China. They had learned from the earlier encounters also. It very quickly became apparent that none of the missiles were likely to reach their detonation point. Only six were left, and as yet none had even gotten within range. It appeared this attack was going to be a dismal failure, and that meant the Florida launch facilities were
lost, and no one had any idea how to save the Capitol. If the other alien attacks were to be believed, that had to be the next target, and no planes or ships could be positioned in time to counter such an attack.

  The blast that blinded their screen came from behind and below the enemy ships, not from the direction of the incoming attacking missiles. It was a massive explosion, as the United States largest nuclear bomb had been detonated. The C5A that carried it, silently and without any RF transmissions, had flown unobserved as the enemy focused on the obvious threat, and with incredible luck had gotten within range. The pilot and crew had then detonated the bomb, sacrificing themselves, but destroying the entire remaining attacking fleet of enemy ships. The Florida launch site was spared, as was Washington, D.C., unless there were more of the enemy somewhere. Orders had already been released sending the rest of the nuclear armed aircraft to watch over the city, and those would arrive within a few more hours.

  Chapter 30

  The alien stared at the ship's readings, noting they were well away from the planet that had proved their undoing. They were far enough into space that the humans would be unable to come after them, their technology so primitive they couldn't explore the reaches of their own solar system. But primitive as they were, the damned humans had won, chasing him and the few survivors of his recovery team off their planet to run for safety from the deadly weapons being deployed against them.

  When the human world was spotted and scouted for possible acquisition after a very long and unproductive search for a suitable planet to drag home, some of their team had noticed and warned that the residents of their prospective target were much further advanced than the species on the other worlds they usually attacked. The warnings had been ignored. That decision was driven in part because of a growing desperation to find something they could acquire to offset the crippling cost of this kind of expedition, and the fact that species who lacked interplanetary travel seldom had developed the kinds of weaponry that would be a believable threat to them.