by Rob Mclean
“But some of the locals have been shooting at it from the ground,” the Captain added
“I know. I have seen the reports. The bullets, mostly from AK-47s, have fallen back to the ground and have been retrieved for analysis.” He paused. He knew that the information he was giving them was classified well beyond their rankings, especially the signals operator, but he figured it wouldn’t matter for much longer. “They were deformed as though they had impacted with the vessel.”
“You mean it’s bullet-proof?” one of the other officers asked.
The Admiral gave him a condescending smile. “You’ve all seen the footage of that Arab reporter’s joyride in their shuttle? You all saw how the walls melted and reformed, how it went transparent?” He saw a chorus of nods. “Their materials science would be way ahead of our own. It would be like if this fleet were to appear off the coast of some stone-age tribe. We’d all feel quite safe knowing that nothing they could throw at us would worry us in the least.”
“So we do nothing?” the Captain asked.
“On the contrary, Captain Weslowski. “I intend to assist the Iranians as best I can.”
Silence filled the room, but all eyes were on the Admiral.
“Strike Commander, what assets have we got that can do the job in…” the Admiral turned to the signals operator, “How long until that nuke hits?”
“Less than twenty-five minutes sir.”
The Strike Warfare Commander, a long-serving veteran of over twenty years, didn’t question his orders, but he shook his head anyway. “Twenty five minutes? Are you thinking nuclear or conventional?”
Good question. The admiral hadn’t considered a conventional attack. He has always assumed it was going to be nuclear, but now with the Iranian nuke supplying all the firepower he would need, he considered other options.
He had never liked the idea of wiping out millions of innocent people with a nuclear strike in the Cairo area. Let the Iranians live with the fallout from that as well as the retaliation if their attack failed.
“Wait,” the Lieutenant cried. She looked wildly about at all the officers in the command center, trying to engage each and every one of them and appeal to their sense of reason. “You can’t be serious. You aren’t really going to attack the alien? Especially after all that stuff about them being bullet-proof?”
“Lieutenant Grey,” the Admiral addressed her formally, keeping his voice level and slow. Of course she would protest. She would try to protect her overlord, her master. It was all he could do to keep his tone civil. “There are two possibilities. Firstly, that the Iranians fail and that their actions would initiate unknowable consequences. Ones that we have no ability to prepare for. No time to prepare for.
“The other outcome is that they are successful in destroying the alien spaceship. However, as we have already discussed, we all very much doubt that possibility. If they were to succeed however, it would still bring those unknowable consequences, but we may gain more time to prepare for them. Time it would take for their retaliatory forces to travel across the stars. Time in which we can study the ways of our enemy and learn from them. We would examine the wreckage and salvage valuable technologies. We might be able to boot-strap ourselves enough to have a chance of resisting their retaliation.
“So, as the nuke has already been launched and is in flight as we speak, I believe there is no other option for us. It is in our best national interests to assist the Iranians to achieve our common goal.”
The Lieutenant’s pretty face hung aghast at his words. “Karl, you’re gone mad.” She cradled her hands to her temples, covering her ears. Her eyes were opened wide with fear.
“Lieutenant!” Captain Weslowski snapped.
“No, Captain. It’s alright.” The Admiral put a placating hand up. “The Lieutenant is just coming to terms with the possibility that we may all die. I don’t think she’s ever had her life on the line before. She’s always been on the winning side, on the biggest ship. There’s never been any real threat to her life before. Now she’s petrified that her alien friend will wipe us out if we fail…”
“They’ll wipe us out eventually, even if you succeed,” she snapped. He saw his fellow officers exchange looks that told him that her unprofessional outburst had confirmed his assessment.
He continued as though she had not spoken. “And I think, Captain, that she is only now considering where her soul will go afterwards…”
“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?” she screeched. “You actually believe that the alien is the bloody AntiChrist, don’t you?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, I do.” He gave her an even stare.
She nodded and pointed at him, as if to say, ‘I told you so. See, he is crazy,’ but no one on the bridge reacted to her antics.
“But I don’t let my personal opinions interfere with my professional decisions,” he added.
“For what it’s worth, Sir,” the Captain said with a salute, “I’m with you. These are the End Times.”
“Than you, Captain. I can only hope the rest of the fleet share your convictions,” The Admiral returned the salute, confirming his decision to split the fleet. He looked about the room and was greeted with a ring of salutes. “Thank you, people.”
The Lieutenant lowered herself to a chair, her head buried in her hands. The Admiral regarded her with distaste, then turned to the rest of his officers, “Now let’s see what we can do. Strike Commander, we’ll go conventional.”
“Sir, I’d suggest cruise missiles. Should be there in twenty minutes.”
“Very good,” the Admiral nodded.
“And, Sir? I’d further suggest we use the AGM-129Bs”
“Stealth cruise missiles? Yes, good thinking. See to it.” The admiral nodded with satisfaction.
“Do we have those?” the Captain asked. “I thought they were decommissioned after the last S.A.L.T. talks?”
The strike commander grinned, “The nuclear tipped ones were, but we kept a few of the regular ones for just these sort of more ‘covert’ jobs.”
Lieutenant Grey raised her head. She looked from one face to another. “Stealth? Does that mean you’ll be able to get away with the strike without anyone knowing where it came from?” Hope glimmered across her face.
“We can’t just launch missiles across a foreign country,” Captain Weslowski addressed her as though she was a new ensign, “without at least letting our superiors know about it…”
“Afterwards,” the Admiral interjected, and then added when he saw their shocked expressions, “My call.”
“Sir,” the Captain acknowledged.
The Admiral then walked over to where the Lieutenant was sitting. “But essentially, yes, we can hope that we can hit the alien without it knowing where the blow came from.” He saw her expression brightened as he spoke.
The Captain saw it too. “You should have more faith in your commanding officers, Lieutenant, in your country.” The Captain glanced at the Admiral before adding, “and in our God.”
Lieutenant Grey swallowed hard. Her eyes were red and tears threatened to further undermine her professional standing. The Admiral could see her jaw muscles flexing. She was fighting to control her anger and to reign in her emotions. “Yes, Sir.” She risked a quick look to the Admiral, “Sorry, Sir.”
“The plan, Lieutenant,” he said ignoring her apology, “is to send three stealthed cruise missiles. They each have a thousand pounds of penetrative ordinance. If we time it right, they will act like ‘rabbit’ punches,” he mimed three, short little jabs with his left fist to the Lieutenant’s face. She flinched each time.
“They will be disorientated and hopefully damaged enough to be unable to avoid the knock-out blow from the Iranians.” He drew back his right arm, holding his fist poised to smash the Lieutenant unconscious. She blinked rapidly, instinctively wanting to shut her eyes, but fighting it, as she didn’t want to take her eyes off the threat. She turned her head and covered her face defensively.
&nb
sp; The Admiral lowered his fist and sighed, “But I’m sure you get what I mean.” As much as he blamed her for his infidelity, he would never hit a woman.
She nodded, but didn’t uncover her face until he had turned and heard his footsteps walk away.
He paid her no more attention, instead issuing the order to launch the missiles. They watched the screens, some showing the target, others counting down the impact times for both the Iranian and American missiles. The first of their missiles were timed to hit less than two minutes before the Shahab-6. He knew they were not leaving much room for error, and he prayed that God was with them on this mission.
With the missiles launched, there was little else to do. He maintained their course northwards up the Gulf of Suez. He had heard that from the Combat Information Centre on her Aegis Cruiser, that the Air Warfare Commander was busy scrambling her jets. He could see them launching at regular intervals to establish air superiority. Their launch catapults were now electronic, instead of the steam-powered ones on the preceding aircraft carriers, and as such were much quieter.
He surveyed the faces of his officers and took pride in their calm efficiency. Like him, they would know that they may soon all be dead if their plan failed; yet they were focused in their duty.
The time passed at an unrelentingly glacial pace. They all watched the inert vision of the spacecraft on the screens without comment, expecting at any moment that it would detect and react to the missiles racing towards it. They expected it to move, or do something, but inexplicably, it remained suspended in place.
The Admiral could imagine his missiles speeding across the Egyptian desert, skimming over sand dunes. As the alien ship was invisible to their radar, its G.P.S. co-ordinates had been programmed into the missiles beforehand. To increase the stealthiness and to reduce electronic emissions, the missiles used inertial navigation and terrain contour matching software, combined with updates supplied from an on-board laser Doppler velocimeter. It made them as invisible as humanly possible.
Not at all like the Iranian Shahab-6 rocket blazing away in a sub-orbital trajectory for all to see. He could visualize the view from that one as well.
By now it would be in its re-entry stage, the tri-conic aero shell nose-cone glowing as it roared down through the thickening atmosphere. The booster stages having fallen away, the rocket-nozzles on the re-entry part of the missile would be firing to alter the trajectory slightly, trying to confuse everyone as to its exact target, but the spin-stabilized gyroscopic navigation system would be guiding the deadly cargo inexorably towards its target, the mega-city of Cairo.
Home to over twenty million people, by now the city would be clearly visible sprawling at the head of the Nile’s green delta. Soon, shortly before impact, the missile would disperse its nuclear payload, and multiple warheads would pepper the target, multiplying the damage.
“Why?” Lieutenant Grey’s voice brought his thoughts back to Earth. “I just don’t understand. Why get involved?” She looked at him imploringly. “You could have let it go. You have no direct orders. I’m your P.A., I would know. You’re a loose cannon,” she pointed her accusation at him, then waved her arms in the air, “but with nukes.”
The Admiral turned on her, his face tightened with anger. “They knocked over the flag, dammit. The stars and stripes, those Commie chinks,” he pointed upwards, back over his shoulder. “And they did it with help form your friends.”
She stared at him, uncomprehendingly.
“On the moon. It’s not like we can just pop up there and straighten it up.”
“My friends?”
The Admiral was about to explain exactly what he meant, when the signals operator called out, “Impact imminent.”
They all turned to watch the screens with the live feed from the news networks. The countdown reached zero with no apparent effect. The spaceship still hung there over the Pyramids as it had since it arrived. A collective groan of disappointment went up from the spectators.
“What the hell went wrong?” demanded the Admiral.
Then the images on the screen changed. One by one, they zoomed in on the alien spacecraft. They saw that an orange fireball had erupted from the vessel. Shaky, manual camera-work showed the fireball curling lazily upwards.
A huge ‘whoop’ of excitement erupted from the audience on the bridge, followed by congratulatory back-slapping and high fives. Lieutenant Grey hung her head.
On the big screens, the images blurred as the cameras moved rapidly to show another fireball that had been discovered erupting from the spaceship.
The Admiral allowed himself a tight grin of satisfaction. He had not indulged in any celebrations as yet. He knew the best was yet to come.
One of the news cameras pulled back to show the entire spacecraft. The fireballs shrunk to almost invisibility, dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the alien ship. A trickle of doubt began to etch into his mind. He had totally underestimated the size of the target. His attack would barely be noticed in a vessel that size, a mere pinprick.
Then he could see that the alien vessel had began to move.
Slowly at first and only visible because one of the news cameras was still focused on the second fireball, he could see the oily flames were dragged sideways as the vessel finally reacted.
He felt his stomach squeeze tight and his intestines squirm as he waited for the Iranian nuke to arrive. He clenched his fists into balls and prayed earnestly for God’s wrath to smite the alien, but then he had an image of millions of Muslims in Iran watching the same feed and doing exactly the same thing.
The third fireball erupted, but by now the alien vessel was moving more quickly. He ground his teeth and silently cursed that his attack hadn’t disabled the alien as much as he had hoped. He hadn’t realized the size of the vessel and should have sent his entire inventory of missiles.
Suddenly all the cameras were overwhelmed by a brilliant flash of light. All information from the news feed vanished and the crew on the bridge cheered.
The Admiral felt himself close to tears. The alien was destroyed. He had willed it, and with God’s blessing, it had happened; such was the power of God.
“The Lord be praised,” Captain Weslowski proclaimed. He crossed himself and bowed his head. The Admiral followed as they all gave thanks.
“Look!” Lieutenant Grey urged, pointing at the screens. The blinding brightness had faded and the screens showed the pyramids alone, naked without the alien ship above them.
They all stood staring at the blue Egyptian skies, where the alien ship used to be. No one spoke. They were all lost in their own thoughts.
Then the skies again blossomed into brilliant white, only this time, the feed from Cairo turned to static as twenty million people died.
To be continued in ‘Persecution,’ Book 2 of God’s Other Children.