Battle for the Earth

by John P. Gledhill

  Jumouk gave the order for the Dropas and ESG fleet to form a V-shaped formation, half a mile above Blue Star Base.

  All of the control rooms on Earth, the moon, the fleet, and Sub Sea One had specialised digital, 3D displays fitted, showing a real-time representation of Earth, the moon, and all the surrounding space. This would enable the commanders to make tactical decisions instantly.

  The 3D display on the Katchinas looked extremely impressive as the craft came together in the V shape, but that was nowhere near as impressive as the view from the lunar surface. The huge fleet above the lunar base seemed to be never ending and filled all those who watched with a new sense of hope, inspiration and pride.

  **

  Terry contacted the fleet and with Jumouk’s blessing fifty of the newest assault craft broke formation, formed their own V-shaped formation and hurtled towards Earth at fantastic speed. Within ten minutes they were hovering above Terry at Earth Central. An experimental magnetic shroud emanating from the ground covered the craft, bending light itself and making the craft virtually invisible. A similar system was installed on Blue Star Base but on a much larger scale. It was designed to cover not only the base, but the fleet hovering half a mile above as well. Unfortunately it hadn’t yet been tested.

  Marie was full of trepidation as she stood in front of the console. A lot depended on the shroud working correctly. With a small tap of her finger a confirmation notice was voiced from the console.

  ‘Do you wish the shroud activated.’

  Marie spoke with authority.

  ‘Yes.’

  The console retorted, ‘Authorisation code please.’

  Marie quoted, ‘Baker, Marie, Alpha, Delta, Beta, one six, one six.’

  The electronic console replied, ‘Accepted, thank you.’

  It seemed as if everybody held their breath at the same time.

  A slight shudder could be felt through the base floor and everybody looked to Marie, or at least it seemed that way to Marie.

  **

  A small shuttle craft left the lunar surface and sped off towards Earth. About ten miles from the base it came to an abrupt halt. Lee stood up and looked out the front observation window. All there was to be seen was the desolate lunar landscape. So far so good, thought Lee, and set the shuttle craft on an automatic orbit of the moon. As he continued to watch from the window, he couldn’t help thinking how beautiful space and the many planets were.

  After three orbits Lee reported back favourably. Now he checked the shuttle’s proximity indicators and ran a fifty-mile sweep of the area while continuing to orbit the moon. Good, he thought to himself, still nothing showing, to all intents and purposes Blue Star Base and the fleet are invisible.

  Much to Marie’s relief, Lee reported back that the cloaking had been a complete success. Marie thanked Lee and wished him a successful trip to Sub Sea One. Lee sat back, resumed control of the shuttle and sped towards Earth.

  **

  Lee had docked at Sub Sea One and was on the way to the control room. He had never seen so many Androids at one time, certainly not in the last two and a half years he had known about them. The control room was a hive of activity, all run by Androids, and run quite well, he thought.

  A meeting had been arranged between Lee and the principal Android, who was called Thourus. This still unsettled Lee a bit, but he was getting more used to it. Lee went over to the meeting area in the control room, and sat down. Within a couple of minutes Thourus arrived and sat down opposite him. This was the closest Lee had been to an Android and he was fascinated by the look of them. Standing around five feet tall, humanoid in appearance, but expressionless, they were remarkably life-like.

  Thourus thanked Lee for coming. His voice was soft and expressionless, strangely almost hypnotic in its monotone.

  ‘Eh, thank you,’ Lee stammered.

  ‘It’s alright, you know,’ said Thourus.

  What’s alright, thought Lee?

  ‘I know it takes a little bit of getting used to,’ Thourus continued. ‘Talking to Androids, I mean.’

  Lee nodded, thinking to himself: this is my fault. I was picked to do this meeting I shouldn’t have been so unsociable to Androids. This is Konoco’s idea of payback.

  Taking stock, he determined to pull himself together. The meeting was going extremely well and Thourus was brought up to speed with the entire game plan. After four hours of discussion Lee was starting to flag a bit. It was Thourus who suggested they take a break. Lee agreed and thought: Thourus is a pretty considerate guy or however you want to describe him. Thourus immediately became involved in another task, while Lee went to find some refreshment.

  Feeling a bit better and a lot more comfortable with Androids, Lee resumed the meeting. He explained to Thourus that, when the Dropas and ESG high councils had planned a strategy, it was decided that the most obvious place the Annunaki would attack first would be North America - this being the biggest threat to them on Earth -probably the eastern seaboard. From there they could set up a land base and mop up the rest of America, then the world. After a long debate, it was decided the trap would be sprung there. Thourus agreed this would be the most logical course to take and enquired what he and his Androids could do to help. The meeting carried on for another two hours before everything could be concluded. Lee thanked Thourus, and left Sub Sea One feeling a great sense of achievement.

  **

  As he guided the shuttle through the depths of San Francisco Bay, Lee had an idea. Why not give Terry a quick visit? After all, he hadn’t seen Earth Central since the shroud mag had been turned on.

  Lee turned the craft vertical and shot out of the water like a bullet out a gun - no gravity, no G force, inertia a thing of the past. Excellent! His face lit up like a kid in a sweet factory. He loved doing this, but would never admit it.

  He levelled off and headed for Earth Central. If he had wanted he could have made it in seconds, but Lee was enjoying himself, a rare feeling nowadays. The shuttle skipped along effortlessly and Lee took in the views; even though the planet surface had been trashed to fool the enemy, it was still beautiful.

  It took Lee two hours of leisurely sight-seeing to reach Earth Central.

  **

  11

  Lee’s craft landed just outside the main entrance, a desolate-looking suburban house in a street of similar-looking desolate houses. Lee entered the house and lifted the telephone. He spoke an access code into the receiver. The whole floor of the living room descended a level.

  Lee entered a corridor and, as he pressed a pad to his left, the living-room floor promptly ascended to its rightful place. Lee carried along the corridor for fifty feet and entered a huge turbo lift guarded by two ESG troopers. The turbo lift went into freefall, at least it felt like it to Lee. Secretly he liked the feeling, it reminded him of the feeling of flying in an F-15 Eagle. That was when gravity counted.

  There were only four floors: the living room, the ground floor; the top of the turbo lift, floor one; base command where Lee was going, floor two; munitions and weapons technology, floor three; three miles down, the non-combatants’ shelter, floor four. Apart from the living room to the turbo shaft each floor was a mile down.

  In all there were five turbo shafts feeding this massive complex.

  **

  Arriving at floor two, Lee left the turbo lift and stepped onto a magnetic conveyor system used to traverse the huge complex of corridors. All you had to do was enter your choice of destination, the conveyor system would do the rest. Not bad, he thought. A six-foot-wide by fifteen-foot-long slab of alloy, hovering two inches above the shining metallic floor of the corridor. You had a central hand rail and the control panel with choices of destination. Pick one and away you go.

  The journey took Lee about seven minutes. When he entered the control room, Terry looked taken aback.

  ‘I hadn’t expected to see you here today, Lee,’ he said. ‘I thought you had a meeting with some And
roid?’

  Terry smiled, and Lee thought defiantly: Konoco’s idea of a joke at my expense.

  ‘Been there, seen it and got the tee shirt.’ he said jokingly.

  Terry enquired a little more seriously:

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Really well, learnt a lot, and brought Thourus right up to speed with the plans.’ Lee spoke with a slight sense of self-satisfaction.

  ‘You hungry, Lee? I’m just going to get something to eat,’ Terry asked.

  ‘Excellent!’ exclaimed Lee.

  He was starving. It had been a long day.

  **

  Lee was up early next day. He had checked in with Jumouk, and stayed the night at Earth Central.

  After a hearty breakfast, Terry had taken him back to the surface. They were both surveying the area around Earth Central’s entrance. Terry crossed the road to the houses there, then, carrying on to the back garden of one, suddenly disappeared in a field at the bottom of the garden, Lee followed in his footsteps and likewise disappeared. They had just slipped through the magnetic shroud covering the fifty assault craft sent to Earth Central yesterday. It was an extremely impressive sight, and Lee was impressed by the way the mag shroud was working.

  He wandered around the parked craft. They were stacked as if in a multi-story car park, but without the concrete. Sitting there defiantly suspended by their own power, truly a sight to be seen, thought Lee.

  The new Dropas assault ships had all been built incorporating the same type of energy-absorbing materials as the defence pods. It was hoped that this would give them a significant advantage over the Annunaki craft.

  Terry winked at Lee.

  ‘Fancy a test drive?’

  Lee was up for it and they hopped into a two-man assault craft. Terry gestured to Lee, and Lee powered up the Dropas craft. Silently it slipped out of the parked formation and slid through the mag shield.

  Lee glanced across to Terry for assurance that everything was OK. Terry nodded.

  The assault vessel tore upwards vertically at stupendous speed, levelled off at 30,000 feet and proceeded to circumvent the globe.

  Lee and Terry were like kids on their first bikes, both smiling ear to ear, doing moves a jet fighter pilot couldn’t even imagine, swapping the controls between them and trying to outdo each other. Still, all good things had to come to an end and they headed back to drop Lee at his shuttle.

  With a smile and the word ‘superb’ somewhere in the conversation, Lee thanked Terry and returned to his shuttle. Meanwhile Terry returned the assault craft to its makeshift parking place within the safety of the mag shield.

  **

  Back on board the shuttle Lee was just leaving Earth’s atmosphere, feeling quite relaxed. Yesterday had been a really good day and had lifted his spirits. He thought to himself: I hope today’s as good. It was probably more to do with the flying than anything else. Lee just loved to fly, and his time with Terry this morning had been a tonic.

  The proximity detector on board the shuttle craft could be set on a scale of five feet, to one million miles, roughly four times the distance to the moon, not as much as it sounds in the terms of deep space. Mars our closest planet, after Venus, is roughly thirty-six million miles away depending on time of orbit.

  Lee was just having a leisurely cruise back to Blue Star Base, about half an hour on auto pilot.

  **

  Jumouk was looking serious as he studied a large display on board the bridge of the Katchinas. It was the long-range proximity detector. This was similar to the ones on the shuttles, but much more powerful and with a far greater range.

  He had been watching Lee’s progress back from Earth, when a small speck on the edge of our solar system caught his attention. At first it looked like a meteor, but when Jumouk enhanced the speck on the display, it showed a faint electronic signature. Jumouk switched the proximity detector to look only for electronic signatures and carried out a maximum scan.

  Our part of space around Earth and the moon showed a lot of traffic, but the only other very faint signature was the speck Jumouk had been watching. Jumouk thought for a moment: at least it didn’t appear to be the onslaught of the Annunaki fleet.

  **

  Lee almost fell off his seat when the message came through. He had been nearly asleep while the auto pilot ferried him back to the moon. Jumouk explained the situation to Lee, and asked if he could investigate, Lee had already dropped out of auto pilot and turned to an intercept course by the time Jumouk had finished speaking.

  It hadn’t taken Lee long to go from being a back-seat diplomat to a full-blown adventurer.

  With a big smile on his face Lee sat back and engaged the shuttle’s hyper-drive from a touch pad on his control seat, taking him more or less instantaneously to the outer reaches of our solar system.

  **

  12

  Back on December 2, Tukie was in a bit of a fix. He had to think fast. He was heading for open space. From a standing start the hyper-drive would take twenty seconds to power up, and in that time the Annunaki would have incinerated him. Just at that moment a large piece of debris in the form of a huge boulder spun past his front viewing window.

  Tukie reacted instinctively. In a split second a tractor beam shot from the front of the shuttle, latched onto the huge boulder, then pulled the craft to within five feet of the surface.

  The discharge from the shuttle was mainly masked by the boulder, Tukie immediately fired up the engines and hyper-drive. The next few seconds were the longest in Tukie’s life. Finally the hyper-drive came alive and the shuttle, boulder and all, disappeared in a burst of light.

  **

  Onboard the Nephilimis, the targeting computers locked onto a small surge of energy just on the outskirts of the debris field.

  Tannacha, the Annunaki supreme commander, studied the view screen. A small electronic signature was emanating from a boulder tumbling out of the debris field. It was possible this could be some form of background radiation and Tannacha scrutinised the view screen, then he paced up the deck of the bridge to the viewing window at the front of his magnificent flagship.

  Tannacha was not one to leave things to chance and barked the command:

  ‘Fire!’

  A shot flashed from one of the smaller banks of weapons on the flagship and cracked into the boulder, just as it disappeared into a ball of light and flame.

  **

  On the bridge of the shuttle craft Tukie picked himself up. The boulder had taken most of blast from the flagship and reduced in size by about a third, the remaining part still in the hold of the tractor beam. Tukie checked for damage. There was plenty of it. Up till now Tukie had got off extremely lightly.

  The primary concern was the hyper-drive. Sure enough the seals on the hyper-drive containment field had been pushed beyond their limits. The hyper-drive was working, but for how long? Tukie just didn’t know.

  As the days and hours passed, Tukie had time to reflect. Four years ago there was virtually no direct contact with the humans; everything had been covert, and life had been simpler. Having said that, things had got a lot more exciting in the last four years; after all, look at him now!

  Tukie thought back and remembered the sense of pride he had felt when Konoco had personally picked him for this mission. Sure, they had been friends for a long time, but Tukie was sure he had been picked for his piloting abilities, at least he would have liked to think so.

  Konoco had stressed how dangerous the mission would be, but also reflected on the huge advantage of a positive outcome. How knowing your enemy’s movements and strength would be a great advantage.

  Tukie had agreed straightaway to the mission. He had felt that anything he could do to lessen the Annunaki advantage in the coming attack was well worth giving his life for.

  That thought was rudely interrupted as his craft shuddered and came out of hyper-drive. Driven now only by momentum and on minimal power, Tukie’s futur
e was looking a lot less promising.

  **

  13

  The date was now December 11 and Tukie was trying everything he could think of to get some kind of power back to his instruments. No engines, no guidance, no communication and life support more or less non-existent. If that wasn’t bad enough, he didn’t even know his position in space.

  Tukie had stripped the hyper-drive assembly to the core, the gaseous gold had reverted back to its normal state and lay at the bottom of the drive unit like sand on a golden beach. The matter rods had overheated and been sealed off by the core safety systems, leaving a gelatinous blob of inert matter, Tukie shook his head. There was absolutely nothing salvageable from this mess.