by Lee Guo
Maybe he got it back running just in time.
It didn’t matter. Because less than a minute later, the Dartmouth’s signal disappeared. Its dot on the minimap blinked out of existence.
“Do we still have the Dartmouth’s signal?” Vier yelled.
“No, ma’am…They’re gone. Sensors read debris and antimatter detonations.”
Four hundred crewmen. All dead. “How much data did we get?”
“All their sensor and ship logs until that point, ma’am. It’s safe with us.”
Vier clenched her fist. The smell of pale recycled oxygen in the cockpit lent a bitter feeling in comparison to the burnt smell of dead bodies and scorched machinery typical on board a heavily damaged warship during battle. Why? Why was she here and they there? Why did so many good men die today? Why was humanity attacked so ruthlessly, and so many star men murdered?
Minutes later as she gazed at the sudden bright lights that exploded outside the cockpit’s forward viewscreen—typical of hyperspace transition—all she could think about was the dead crewmen on board the Dartmouth and the vain sacrifice of its captain. We’ll avenge your death, Compton. I’ll make sure they pay for what they did here.
CHAPTER TWO
4 hours later.
December 13rd 3986 AD
Planetary Defense Command, Meerlat
Operation Room…
Colonel Arthur Streit did not like the fact that every human warship had been destroyed before they reached the hyper limit. He gazed at the holodisplay coolly as the last human cruiser disappeared in a massive antimatter explosion. So many trails of debris. The enemy was very intent on not letting any of humanity’s largest assets get away. At least, he thought, hundreds of smaller shuttles managed to escape. He couldn’t say the same about the fighters nor the slower moving civilian freighters. At least, the admiral got away.
Now, it was just him and his soldiers.
The operation room that controlled the ground forces for an entire planet looked like a giant theater. Rows and columns of workstations layered the giant room. A vast series of holographic projections littered the front wall. Embedded within twenty kilometers of rock, the room was safe as it could be from orbital and kinetic bombardment.
But that wasn’t what the aliens were after.
Or they would have done that hours ago. No, the aliens were after something else. Something that mattered more to them. The lives of the civilians on the planet were spared. But for what?
The giant hologram in front of the room showed that the aliens were just now positioning their largest vessels around the planet, in what was typically a pattern that provided orbital air cover to take out meaty ground targets. While their main ground forces—as seen by the troop transports that had hypered into the system hours ago—would land. As seen by the position of their orbital warships, their attack would center around the main population areas on the colonized planet, mainly the nine major cities on Meerlat, each filled with more than four hundred thousand people.
But what did they want with the planet’s civilian population? Interrogation? Experimentation? Slavery?
In any case, Streit was as prepared as he could be with his measly forty thousand marines, not including the planet’s police force. He was willing to defend the planet’s population from whatever the aliens planned to do with them. Or at least try. He doubted he had enough. There were too many unknowns. What type of technology did the alien ground troops have? What did they even look like? What type of tactics would they use?
Nevertheless, he’d ordered his marines to take camouflage in the cities hours ago, because he knew for a fact that they would be sitting ducks outside the cities where the enemy’s orbital fleet could bombard them to bits. The surface-to-orbital cannons and missile batteries outside the cities, on the other hand, would be safe because they were already camouflaged. Or at least he hoped. He would fire them at the alien landers when they came. Only then would he reveal their positions.
Why didn’t he have more marines? Because high command had never planned against a conventional ground army invading Meerlat, since its colonization fifty years ago. The only contingency was a simple pirate raid, and forty thousand marines was more than enough to take care of that. The Orion border wasn’t anywhere near Meerlat, so an Orion invasion of Meerlat was next to impossible. Besides, during the Orion War, the Orions didn’t have any use for civilians. They simply ignored them or bombarded them when they felt the civilians got in the way.
These aliens were different. They had use for them.
Streit wracked his brain trying to think of past situations but came up empty.
All he knew was that he had to protect the civilians with any means necessary. He was well aware that if the aliens had no problems destroying thousands of people up there, they would have no problems killing people down here.
“Alien troop transports are ejecting landing vessels,” the tactical officer announced.
He gazed at the hologram of the planet. He could see the smaller landing pods separating from the larger hyperspace capable troop ships. No doubt, the aliens had the same type of technology and tactics when it came to sending troops down to the ground. At least in this respect, he felt relieved. Technically, large kilometer long ships could descend down to a planet’s surface, but they would be exposed to anti-air fire. If the large ship went down, everything within it would be annihilated. It was much better to separate the cargo into smaller ships. Besides, there was the issue of logistics. It was much easier to deploy stuff onto the ground from hundreds of smaller transports once they reached the soil than it was to deploy everything from one big ship.
Streit stood aghast at the figures. The seven big troop transports were a dozen kilometers wide. But the thousands of smaller landing pods were only a hundred meters wide. If alien technology was anything like human technology, each of these smaller ships could contain up to thousands of ground soldiers. He was facing an invasion force of a million enemy ground troops. There was no way he could fight off this many even if the enemy had infantry technology—which they certainly did not. But perhaps he could prevent some of these ground troops from landing.
As the minutes passed, he watched intently as these landing pods descended through the planet’s uppermost exosphere by the thousands. 3275, to be correct. Their descent was slow, by human standards. They looked like gigantic roaches, with hundreds of small black feet scattered all across the bottoms of their hulls. Before long, he knew it was time.
“Open up the anti-air turrets, now,” Streit ordered. “Remove the camouflage.”
“Yes, sir,” the weapons officer replied.
“Set the targeting systems on each gun to fire at the nearest target. Missile targeting should be spread throughout their landing force, but still target those closest to them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Let’s see how their atmospheric shields hold up. “Fire!” Streit didn’t know what to expect, but he was glad of one thing. Because they had split up their ground troops into thousands of smaller landing vessels instead of one gigantic troop ship, it at least gave a glimmer of hope that they feared that human anti-air technology could destroy or incapacitate a massive troop ship. If that was possible, then it was just as possible that his anti-air fire could destroy their landing pods.
...Or perhaps that’s the way they always did things. For instance, against races with equivalent technology as their own, they were forced into deploying landing pods to minimize casualties against those races.
Either way, he was about to find out.
First Escarot Tranport Sheras-Cree, in orbit around Meerlat
Dictator Room…
“Yes, Subjugator. I am gracious for you granting me control of our orbital guns. Our warriors are descending now!” Terrestrial Commander Sha-Vas lifted his paws from his black plated chest and bowed his gigantic armored body to the image of Fleet Commander Hal-Dorat.
When Hal-Dorat’s holoimage vanished, Sha-Vas re
turned his concentration to his interface globe and stared at the hologram of the planet beneath. To his temporary surprise, the ground Pra had launched missiles and other projectiles at his descending ground forces.
Immediately, he analyzed the sensor data about the Pra’s counter-fire...and laughed.
The missiles weren’t even gravity propelled! He knew for a fact that the Pra still used gravity as the primitive propulsion method to move their space vessels and space-born missiles, but apparently they haven’t even solved the atmospheric problem that prevented gravitic propulsion—primitive as it was—from being used within a gaseous environment. Thus, the Pra’s missiles, all 15,000 of them, were still chemically propelled. Chemically.
Really, what type of barbaric civilization was he facing?
These missiles were small, too. Much smaller than their space-born missiles, and Sha-Vas wondered what types of warheads they contained. He probed deeper and saw that they were armed with standard fusion warheads. Good, at least this civilization hadn’t solved the size-constraint problem that prevented tiny vessels from being able to carry antimatter.
“All landing craft, fire M-D flak as soon as possible,” Sha-Vas ordered. “Take out those missiles.”
“Yes, Sturka!” replies came from his seven leading subordinates.
Eyeing the hologlobe, he watched as the Pra’s missiles rose through the planet’s atmosphere. At the same time, the first beams from the planet’s primitive laser cannons smashed into the shields of his landing craft. He saw the shields on his ships take the blow at full force, bending the beams of electromagnetism so that their impact on their hulls was much less damaging. Sha-Vas nodded with approval. His landing craft took the blow of the diffracted lasers, which only corroded their armor, but nothing else. Then he ordered, “All orbital vessels, fire kinetic rounds at the origin of their lasers and missiles.”
The acknowledgments came eagerly.
All fifty of the orbital ships of his superior’s fleet opened fire with their kinetic slugs on the ground below.
Planetary Defense Command, Meerlat
Operation Room…
“They’re firing on our missile and turret platforms!” the young lieutenant announced.
Streit nodded, fully expecting such an event. What he had not expected was that the enemy, those aliens, could deploy grav-shielding technology within a gaseous atmosphere. Human technology so far could not find a way to create stable gravitons within an atmosphere, but somehow the aliens circumvented this blockage. As a result, his laser beams did minor damage to the enemy’s landing pods. Then after the enemy’s kinetic orbital rounds slammed into his ground based laser turrets, those laser beams never will.
Now, it was up to his missiles to hit the enemy’s landing craft and perhaps take a few of them out.
As the minutes passed, Streit watched calmly as two things happened: one, the enemy’s kinetic-kill slugs slammed into every surface gun and missile position, destroying all of the human-made equipment into gigantic fireballs. And two, many of his missiles were neutralized by what appeared to be alien flak that seemed to disrupt space-time in dazzling cascades of god-knows-what.
At least those laser turrets were automated, Streit sighed. As for his ground based missile pods, he was glad at least that all his missiles had already been fired.
He eyed his subordinates as they cried frantically in the theater like command center. Humans were losing, of course. They were losing even before the battle happened. The tense situation within the command room had been like that, the moment everyone saw the seven massive troop transports hypering into the system.
“What is going to happen to us?” people around him asked.
He only told them that he did not know. But, he reminded them, they had to do their duty to their utmost. It was their responsibility to protect the population.
The civilian news channels were frantic, of course, talking about alien invasion even worse than the time the Orions had invaded. The civilians were truly in a panic. There was nothing he could do about that.
Soon, his remaining ground-based missile wave reached their targets. Streit watched as those remnants connected with the nearest alien landing pods, detonating in a brilliant flash of nuclear inferno. He eyed the monitors with hope.
A feeling of joy perused his body when he realized some of the alien landing craft seemed to lose control. He could see the armor on those landing craft smashed to bits. Good, Streit felt slightly relieved. At least some of missiles had done some damage through their gravity shields. The ones that had been overwhelmed by a large amount of missiles seemed to have taken heavy damage. Still, it was only a very minor portion of their overall landing force.
When his final missile had detonated, fifty of those land craft had disappeared in nuclear fire, now falling over the planet as debris. About twenty of them seemed to have suffered lesser damage and lost navigation drive, free-falling out of control.
Yet—out of all those missiles, so few of them had actually made it through the enemy’s counter missile fire, and even fewer had penetrated the enemy’s superior gravity shielding before actually damaging their craft...
Streit sighed, again. What could he do?
He eyed the hologram as the thousands of landing craft continued descending, a bit fewer in number. That was it. It was over. The entire anti-air assault was finished.
He knew what would happen now. Those aliens would no doubt land, and he would finally get to see what they looked like and how they fought on the ground. He feared what they intended to do to the people he had to protect. “Lieutenant Holmes, contact the head of civilian police. Ask them about the condition of their preparations.”
It had been less than ten hours since the first alien ships had entered the system. At times like this, protocol dictated that civilian police relinquish authority of their units to him, the military commander of the planet, and he was to answer to Rear Admiral Kleingelt, the fleet commander of the system. But since the rear admiral was gone, that left him in charge.
“Chief of police is online, sir,” the grim faced lieutenant said. “He reports that all police squads have been assigned defensive positions according to your orders. He thanks you for adding the marines to his cities.”
Streit nodded. “Are there any problems with the integrated datanet?”
“No, sir. Command and communication with their units and ours are all nominal.”
“Good. Update the main display by wiping the unnecessary projections concerning our destroyed missile and laser turrets. Update the main display with all infantry, armor, and artillery pieces including the civilian police.”
“Yes, sir.”
Streit stared at the main holoscreen at the center of the room. He wondered how the aliens would fare against conventional ground tactics. It was time to find out.
Bajor City, Southern Continent, Meerlat
Main Hospital Complex
Rooftop, Building 2D…
“What do you think they look like, sarge?”
“Big, green, ugly,” Sergeant Will Kubersly grumbled as he rubbed his chin using his oxygen filter. The XG-29 Spartanian Armor Exoskeleton Suit was big green and ugly in itself. It weighed two hundred pounds and wrapped the skin with a thick layer of nanocarbon armor similar to those used on starships. He gazed at his platoon through his in-head display, most of them raw recruits trained during the last recruitment drive less than a year ago. Meerlat was a new system, whose marine detachment came from one of the core worlds as well as from the native colonists.
Everyone positioned around him wore the same exoskeleton armor. They looked like mean killing machines.
His position on top of a hospital wasn’t much for cover, but it allowed him to see everything within a mile. Not that he needed the direct line of sight, however. His datafeed allowed him to see through all the cameras from every aerial recon probe around the city.
From the probe data, his computer would naturally update the position o
f enemy units on the map that displayed inside his helmet. And when the time came, his recon probes would fight the enemy’s recon probes if they had them. He didn’t know if the enemy used recon probes like humans did or had sensor technology that circumvented them altogether.
“Do you think Bajor City will survive this, sarge?” Private Dawson asked.
“We survived everything so far, Dawson. It doesn’t look like the enemy wants our civilians dead or they would have nuked us hours ago.” Kubersly returned his attention toward one of his helmet’s displays. At this very moment, he could see those giant hundred meter long alien dropships falling from the sky outside the city.
When they reached the ground, they slowed until they were hovering. Then, they smoothly landed onto the soil using their abundant black insect legs. They didn’t waste a second before opening up their hatches and deploying their ground units out of those black buglike drop ships. Soon, he saw them...their vehicles, their infantry, their aerial fighters, everything.
His platoon members started chattering. “Wow, those are big.”
“So they’re humanoid, like us.”
“They’re huge! I wonder what they look like inside that armor.”
Kubersly gazed at their basic infantryman who had just deployed outside their dropship. It—they wore armor much like his. Black, a bit bigger than his own. Their armor covered its entire body. He gazed at what it was holding. Hmm...Its weapons didn’t look so much advanced that his platoon couldn’t put up a fight when the time came.
Their infantrymen deployed readily outside their dropships in the plain grass as if on lookout for enemy units. Little did they know that all the human units had been deployed inside the city.
Then the rounds rained down on the enemy. Human artillery pieces started firing the moment those enemy ground units exited the drop ships. Kuberly wondered why the artillery rounds hadn’t been fired on the dropships themselves but then realized they had. The dropships’ gravity shields had protected them against tactical nukes. But what type of protection did the enemy ground units have?