by Jack Colrain
“But though I can’t talk about the specifics of this mission, what I can tell you about is its importance. When we ship out, we’re going to take part in an endeavor that will make history. It will be that way because this is the mission in which we are going to make certain that the Gresians can never hurt anyone again.”
There was cheer from the families who were there to see their Hardcases off to war, and Daniel gritted his teeth, keeping his tone calm. “More than that, we’re going to make the Gresians pay for what they’ve done.”
Six
Earth Orbit
The shuttle launch from Canaveral was as smooth as Daniel remembered one ever being. The Mozari technology that powered the shuttles was far quieter and easier than the old rocket-powered NASA ones had looked to be when seen on TV. This smooth Mozari-tech shuttle take-off and ascent had been downright relaxing, even compared to the regular jet plane that had brought them from the Caribbean.
He glanced at Hope in the seat next to him and saw that she looked a little bored. “It’s not as much fun as a fighter launch,” she said, catching his look. He laughed, and she couldn’t help smiling back. Kinsella, Palmer, Bailey, Torres, and several others were also aboard, all of them sufficiently used to this type of journey so that they were taking the sensible course of action common to military personnel everywhere—dozing while they could.
Daniel did the same, and in what seemed like a minute or two, opened his eyes to see a whole fleet of starships sliding past as the shuttle arced gently towards the UES Sydney, the enormous gleaming ovoid that had once been the dark and threatening alien interloper which had bombed several cities with dense, nickel-iron meteors as an introduction.
Daniel had been there several times now, but still a faint shiver cupped the back of his skull and ran down his spine, just as it had on his first visit. Then, he had been approaching what was at the time considered a hostile flagship, with the aim of disabling or destroying it, so his sense of nervousness and trepidation had been entirely natural. He had no idea why he was having the same warning sensation this time. It wasn’t going to send out drones to try to kill him for his trespassing—he wouldn’t even be trespassing, in fact—and now it was even refitted for human control, so why did he have such a sense of foreboding about the massive ship?
‘Do you have a bad feeling about this?’ Hope asked silently. ‘You seem more… uneasy? I’m not sure I know the appropriate English word.’
‘I dunno, I just feel weird today. Maybe it was all the family stuff. Knowing some of them probably won’t be seeing each other again, but not knowing who. I mean, I know it happens in war, but it still gives me the creeps.’
‘That’s not a bad thing to feel. It means you’re human, and you care.’
‘Yeah, I bet the Gresians don’t have this problem.’ He tried not to envy them that.
What had once been a railgun launch passage for the Mozari flagship’s mass-driver weapon, intended to allow nickel-iron meteors to be accelerated towards planetary targets, was now a combined hangar and interior flight deck for shuttles and fighters. As if someone had covered over the flight deck of an aircraft carrier with a rocky ceiling, the space was vast and echoing, constantly filled with noise. Everyone working there wore ear protectors, and even that probably wouldn’t have been enough protection, Daniel thought, if the aircraft and spacecraft housed within it had been powered by jet engines or rockets. At least the Mozari technology they’d adapted here used more sophisticated forms of EM propulsion.
Having disembarked from the shuttle, Daniel and Hope were escorted to cabins in separate corridors; Daniel’s was next to the billets for the Special Warfare Task Force, the official unit designation for Hammond’s Hardcases, while Hope, he knew, was billeted with the pilots of various nationalities’ air forces.
While waiting to be summoned, Daniel stowed his personal belongings, absently appreciating the nicer lines of the small cabin as compared to the more angular ones on a human-built ship. Then he checked the task force’s weapons in the armory assigned to them, making sure, as had become his habit, that all of their Exo-suits and railguns were present and correct. He was also glad to see that the regular human projectile weapons were all of larger calibers, reflecting what they’d discovered about the effectiveness of rifles and sidearms on Gresians during their experience on Lyonesse. The armory was filled with auto shotguns that would take deer slugs and .50 caliber gear: IMI Desert Eagle pistols, Barrett M50 rifles, and so on.
After an hour, and a cup of coffee, a message over the intercom summoned him to a meeting in the C-In-C with Colonel Barnett, his superior when he was training new suit-wearers at Camp Peary, and by extension head of the Special Weapons Task Force under the aegis of the 45th Space Command.
When Daniel reached the Sydney’s C-In-C, he was glad but unsurprised to see Hope already stepping through the door. He was surprised to see Professor Doug Wilson sitting quietly to one side.
The Sydney’s C-In-C was still the gray room that Daniel remembered from his first visit to the then Mozari flagship, but had received so many modifications to accommodate its human crew that it took him a few moments to realize that. The ring of smooth gray obelisks was still there, along with the wraparound viewport, but a tabletop screen central tank had been installed, and other console boards had been set up in an array around the obelisks. Most importantly, there were chairs now, one of which was occupied by Doug Wilson, who seemed to be able to lounge there with poise.
Barnett rose and came around his console desk to greet Daniel. Around fifty years of age, Barnett was a little shorter than Daniel and pretty solid, like a boxer whose gut was on the cusp of turning to fat. His head was shaved to help disguise his age, and he wore steel-rimmed round glasses over piercing eyes. He stepped forward offering a hand to shake. “Dan. Captain Ying.” They shook hands and Barnett welcomed them through to his inner office. Daniel hesitated momentarily and his brow furrowed as he saw Doug Wilson rise from his chair to extend a hand.
“Lieutenant West, Captain Ying.” Daniel and Hope exchanged handshakes with him, too, Daniel racking his brains to think of a single good reason why the archaeology professor and former leader of the Lyonesse colony would be aboard a military vessel about to go on the offensive.
“Captain Ying,” Barnett began, getting straight down to business, “how did you feel the mission rehearsals to Titan went, in a general sense.”
Hope’s answer was simple and honest. “Not that well, Colonel. Every trial run resulted in failure, and I knew that would be the case.”
“You knew?”
She shrugged. “The shuttle chosen for the infiltration runs was not fast enough; it is that simple. Daniel believes that, with some adjustments, we might be able to make it.”
“And what do you feel about that?”
She gave Daniel an apologetic look, then continued, “He’s wrong—unless we can use a vessel that will do at least .32c, and that’s far faster than the capability of any of the shuttles we have.”
“And slightly faster than any of the fighters we have,” Barnett pointed out.
“Yes. But if one can be produced, it may be possible, so long as other astronomical bodies in the target system line up correctly at the time of the incursion.”
Barnett shook his head. “And they wouldn’t, even if we could build a ship to meet the limitations…. No, it simply isn’t possible; we know that now.”
“We do?” Daniel asked.
Barnett indicated the equipment all around them. “We’ve run thousands of computer simulations, before your group even tried the first rehearsal. The approaches we had you try out were the ones the computers suggested had the best chances of success.” He paused to let that sink in. “But even those route predictions had extremely low chances of success.” He grimaced. “By which I mean single-figure percentages of reaching Titan Base undetected. The chances of reaching a Gresian planet’s surface intact and undetected are at least as slim. Almost certai
nly slimmer, in fact, since we don’t know for sure how far in advance of ours their detection systems are.”
Daniel wished he could have said he was surprised by any of this revelation, but it had really seemed inevitable all along. He thought for a moment, while Hope glanced at him and Wilson fidgeted, clearly waiting for a cue of some kind. Daniel thought he looked like a man who knew he was here on sufferance, which was a nice change from the arrogance and overconfidence he had shown on the mission to Lyonesse. Daniel knew it was his own turn to speak, and said, “Respectfully, sir, if we’re not going to making an incursion onto a Gresian homeworld as originally intended, then why are we here? Not just me and Hope, but all of us? If the plan is a no-go...”
“That plan is a no-go,” Barnett corrected him, “but things have changed, and not just the problems with making an incursion run. New intel analysis has produced both a requirement and an opportunity for a different objective to be achieved. A much more meaningful and effective strike than we originally expected.”
“The admiral said, when we were voluntold to join this mission, that we were going to be attacking the Gresian homeworld,” Hope said.
“Is that still the case?” Daniel asked warily.
“We’ll be assaulting a different planet,” Barnett answered. “Truth to tell—and strictly between us—I don’t believe anyone’s really sure which planet even is the original Gresian homeworld, but we know which ones they’re using as command and control centers. This one is a different command and control center than the one we originally planned to visit, but the objective is going to be very different. I think your AI friend can probably explain.”
At Barnett’s cue, Lizzie stepped between them and caught their attention. The AI had been the only sentience aboard the Sydney when Daniel and Hope, and the other Hardcases, had first boarded the Mozari flagship. Since then, she or it had formed a link with Daniel, as he’d been the leader of the first group of humans she had met in person. So-called Lizzie usually preferred or else was able to be seen only by him, but here on her own ship she was able to be projected through its systems as a separate entity visible to anyone and everyone. This was also sometimes true in other ships or buildings using enough Mozari computing power, Daniel had discovered.
“The Mozari were never quite certain whether the Gresians originally had a single homeworld, either,” she said. “They seemed to have been historically well-established on several planets by the time the Mozari first encountered them.”
“Everything has to evolve somewhere,” Daniel said with certainty.
“That’s mostly true,” Lizzie agreed. “Well, probably true. But the Gresians as we know them didn’t evolve. Sorry to disappoint on that one, but don’t get all Biblical on me. They were deliberately and scientifically uplifted from some earlier species and re-engineered to be a slave race for someone else lost to time. Or at least lost to their own mythology, other than the Gresians’ name for them. The Gresians call them the Shaldine.”
“So, this other race will have, what? Bred Gresians on their planets?” Barnett asked.
“You know, it doesn’t actually sound any less creepy when you put it that way,” Lizzie said.
“All right,” Daniel acknowledged, “so, we’re still going to a Gresian planet, so our incursion run would be impossible anyway.”
“That is correct,” Barnett said briskly. “We’re not going to a gas giant. We will be attacking a terrestrial world with global Gresian occupation, so sneaking in would never be a possibility. We need to be on the ground as quickly as possible, and establish a firm footing—”
The announcement had taken Daniel by surprise, and when his mouth caught up to his mind, he couldn’t help exclaiming, “We’re going to invade?”
“Yes. Multinational Earth forces will make assault landings in force, at five separate LZs. We’ll be dropping almost ten thousand soldiers in the first phase.”
Daniel tried to make sense of these numbers, and couldn’t. “Surely, there aren’t that many suit-wearers in the military yet? Even with the new synthetic protein—”
“That, unfortunately, is also correct,” Barnett admitted. “The majority of the soldiers who’ll be landing are incapable of wearing the Mozari exo-suits, but they’re well-trained, and all forces have taken on board your reports about the types of ammunition required to deal with Gresian armor and bone structure.”
“It’s not just that,” Daniel protested, “it’s the strength and speed. They’re naturally faster and stronger than humans, and they have a type of Exo-suit, as well. The Mozari suits we have just even things out. Even the fittest and most highly trained regular troops are going to be as weak as kittens by comparison.”
“All the more reason why we’re looking to sheer force of numbers to counter their advantage,” Barnett replied, a little wearily. Daniel got the sense that he would have preferred to agree with his own comments and experience. “And, yeah, it’s not up to me.”
“The original operational planning was with a view of destroying their major shipyard on a moon,” Hope reminded him. “Now we’re invading a planet.... Are we trying to take a whole planet from them? It’s bound to be defended on a much larger scale than a lunar facility.”
Barnett looked glad to have the opportunity to explain, even if the question was a rather awkward one. “The objective planet is, thankfully, quite lightly defended.”
“Relatively speaking,” Lizzie added. The reassurance meant nothing to Daniel—not after what the brass had claimed when they’d sent a thousand people, including Daniel’s platoon, to be set up as nothing more than bait on Lyonesse. Once bitten, his mother had often said, twice shy.
“Sir… how are we defining lightly?” he asked, and Barnett gave him a long look. “What I mean, sir, is that on the Lyonesse colony, we ended up being driven off the planet by less than a hundred Gresians, with limited weaponry, who’d been living encamped in ancient ruins. Not much technology, no infrastructure, no bases, no orbital traffic; it’s not as if you could have called the planet ‘defended’ at all; yet, they drove us off.”
“As a matter of fact,” Barnett said slowly, “intel reports that it’s actually far less defended than the shipyard we originally intended to inflitrate and sabotage.” Daniel and Hope rocked back slightly, surprised. “It’s not a specifically important world to them, beyond being a world that they control. It has no singular strategic significance in and of its own, from their POV.”
“But it does from ours,” Hope deduced.
“Very much so,” Barnett confirmed. “Therefore, we’ve drawn up this battle plan. We’ll initially be landing four Brigade Combat Teams of two and three battalions each, plus a support brigade. Then three times more as ongoing landing waves continue. We believe that size of ground force should be more than sufficient to secure the designated landing zones and create defensible bridgehead positions from which we can launch assaults on further targets.”
“What about air cover?” Daniel asked.
“Plenty. We’re bringing along three carriers with fast-movers in both air superiority and ground attack configurations. They’ll establish orbital and atmospheric superiority to cover our LZs and entrenchment positions.”
He grinned at the look of shock on Daniel and Hope’s faces. “We need the Gresians to think that this is the opening gambit in a conquest-based invasion, and to commit to defending the planet against an attempt to wrest control of it from them.”
Daniel had to take up a glass of water to cover his inability to speak, and Hope could only spread her hands, her eyes wide, before finding a voice. “And the actual objective of the exercise, sir?”
Barnett smiled crookedly. “Don’t let it go to your head, Dan, but it’s all for your benefit.”
“Mine?” Daniel thought for a moment that he’d imagined Barnett’s words.
“Yours and Professor Wilson’s.”
“That’s… very generous, sir, but I’m not sure I understand how my unit could
ever possibly justify such a huge—”
“The computer simulations,” Barnett said. “The same computer models that indicated that you couldn’t succeed with a stealthy speed infiltration indicated that a massive attack force provided the best cover for your team’s specific mission, and provided for the highest likelihood of success.” Barnett paused and beckoned to Doug Wilson, who rose from his seat. “Professor Wilson, if you please.”
Daniel shifted uneasily in his seat as Wilson cleared his throat. The man had some sort of gift for being elevated into positions that didn’t seem to match his profession, Daniel had noticed during their prior collaborations. He only hoped that Wilson had learned some lessons from their shared experience.
Wilson paused a moment, seemingly acknowledging that they weren’t the best of friends, but then said, “Lieutenant West, Captain Ying, I’m well aware of the doubts you’ll have about me, and I’m not going to try to talk you out of them, or justify myself, because I believe that those things will ease with time as the mission to which we have all been assigned is carried out.”
Daniel kept his expression polite and neutral, but he didn’t hide his feelings and thoughts of uncertainty from Hope. Her poker face, in turn, was perfect, and what he felt from her was a sense of caution.
“The mission with which Admiral Gregory and General Carver—and several other even more senior Security Council personages—have tasked us has been drawn up as a consequence of some of the data that I was able to retrieve from the Shaldine Library on Lyonesse’s beta moon. You remember it, Lieutenant, I know.”
Wilson wasn’t wrong. Daniel very clearly remembered the cube-like computer which had refused his and Marty Beswick’s attempts to activate it. He shivered at the reason that had been given by both Wilson and Lizzie: They claimed that everyone who had the blood protein allowing them to wear a Mozari Exo-suit had some fragment of Gresian DNA in them, somehow.