by J. F. Holmes
“OK, Lex, give me a visual of yourself. I know it isn’t necessary, but please,” he asked.
In front of him appeared the blackness of space, with the sun a distant star. The Lexington had been designed as a carrier, long and sleek with landing bays extended out on either side, and massive fusion reaction engines in the rear, though they were dead. She looked for all the world like the classic Battlestar, and he wished, for a moment, that they had named her Galactica.
Massive solar panels extended out on either side, angled to face the sun; the passive collectors had allowed Lex to remain alive but unnoticed. As soon as the fusion reactors lit up, it would be like setting off a blow torch in a dark room. Even as he watched, they folded inward, and various lights began to glow slightly in the darkness. Their warmth in the coldness of space made his heart beat faster.
Amidships was a massive hole through the body of the ship, and, even after eleven years, there were still bits and pieces of the ship drifting along with her, caught in her slight gravity field. With a start, he noticed that some of the debris were space suited bodies, spinning endlessly in the void. They would be left behind as soon as the Lex moved out, but he swore they would be recovered. If they won.
“Zoom out,” he absentmindedly ordered, falling into command mode. Around the Lexington were the shattered remains of her division, the battleships America, broken in half, and a debris cloud that was all the was left of the United States. All were headed on the same ballistic trajectory they had been on when the battle ended.
“OK, Lex, tell me about your damage. What works, what assets do you have, what can’t you do. Give me the bad news first.”
The avatar said, in Captain Kira Arkady’s dead voice, “I have full reactor power, in simulation, but I haven’t been able to test it. We have devised a gravitic shield similar to the Invy for protection from rail gun rounds, but again only in simulation. Antigravity is, as usual, only adaptable up to five gravities of thrust, but without human crew, I can, in theory, accelerate up to thirty two gravities. Just do not ask me to maneuver at that speed.”
“Noted, but that will help. Thirty plus G’s of acceleration versus the Invy is going to give us a hell of a tactical advantage.”
“This was noted when constructing me, but for some reason, human crews were insisted on.”
“Our mistake,” he answered, remembering the old Skynet argument. Human crews had been there just as much to pull the plug, if necessary. “What about armament?” asked Warren.
“My mechs have salvaged the main gun of the America, though I cannot guarantee viability.” What she didn’t tell him was the slow death of her brother AI Benjamin, as the America lost power and batteries went cold and dark. They may have been created, but they lived and felt just as deeply as humans. Her sister Columbia, the U.S.S. United States’ AI, had whispered goodbye as her reactor blew. “I can make perhaps a dozen shots. I also have three fighters which are responsive to radio commands. Two are in my hangar bay, one is on a parallel ballistic course approximately three thousand kilometers away. Before his oxygen ran out, the pilot matched speed and course and deployed his solar arrays.”
He thought about the pilot, dying alone, just waiting, and performing one final act of bravery. Damn it, was he worthy of such sacrifices? Then he considered the guns. That’s a 240 mm steel shot accelerated to hypervelocity, he thought. Figure two for each cruiser. It would have to be enough, but those damn shields. The fighters could get inside them, but no, they would get smoked long before they got close. He also wished for the capability to hit the Invy orbitals with the rail guns, but they would have to save them for space combat.
“What about missiles?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” the AI answered, “but our magazines were expended. Each fighter in my hangar is armed with a three hundred megaton fusion warhead, but I cannot guarantee their functionality.”
“Hal, have either of you managed to come up with anything to defeat their shielding?”
The answer took a minute, which, for an AI, was a lifetime. When Hal finally answered, it was with a note of resignation. “No, we have not. The only weakness we have found is an approach from the rear. The design of their propulsion requires an opening in the field when they accelerate or decelerate.”
Warren thought hard about what to do. Head to head battle would be a complete disaster; the Lexington at her best might have been a match for cruisers, but never capital ships, even with a full complement of fighters to deliver successive bomb pumped x-ray lasers. Now, though…
“David,” said Hal, “the submarines have started firing. I must go battle the Invy AI.” With that, Hal’s presence disappeared from the net. Warren wished him a silent goodbye, hopefully not for the last time. He looked at the strategic display, noted the positions of the wormhole, the Lexington, and Titan, and sudden inspiration came to him.
“Lex,” said General David Warren, “we are going to do some old school Odysseus on the Invy. Put your reactors on standby, juice up the fighters, and start doing some fancy math. I want you to …”
Chapter 47
Warrens’ consciousness had expanded when he was jacked in, and he touched every sensor, every quantum entanglement, and every communications node left to the CEF forces. Far fewer than when they had fought their original battle, with only one ship to command. Still, he felt magnified, almost godlike as he thought of his plan.
“Hubris, General, is what got us to the place we are,” said a voice, bringing him back down to semblance of reality.
“Thank you, Lex,” he answered, “we won’t make that mistake this time.” In return he felt the artificial intelligence that lived in the half wrecked fleet carrier U.S.S. Lexington smile.
He wondered what it had been like for her, drifting for eleven years in space, slowly working to repair her own damage after being abandoned by her human crew. Though the avatar of the AI, and much of her personality, had been modeled after her captain, Kira Arkady, Lady Lex was also the ship, and her damage was her own pain.
“I wish we had Hal with us,” he unconsciously uttered. The other surviving AI, who had lived in the Command and Control nodes of the CEF, had disappeared five minutes ago, locked in combat with the Invy AI that ran their networks. They would see him again soon, or never.
“General, my sensors have detected that the two Invy cruisers at Titan have ignited their engines, and are accelerating at twenty gravities towards Earth intercept, separated from each other by only two kilometers. It is a standard tactic we saw in the battle, to confuse sensors.”
“Twenty G? They aren’t going to be able to keep that up for long, it will kill the crew,” he answered.
“Probably for at least an hour, then they will drop back to a more reasonable acceleration. Even so, they will have considerable speed and a quick intercept.”
“And their Lunar Base?” asked Warren.
Lex waited a moment before responding, “I will not know their reaction for several minutes. CEF radio intercept at Raven Rock indicates increased traffic. Wait …” and her voice cut off.
After a minute, she came back online. “Ansible from Cascades Base indicates Station Two has been attacked by our Pacific based submarines. They are giving the go order for ground units.”
A cold sweat broke out on Warren. It was up to him now; if they failed to stop the incoming cruisers, then they were done. They had orbital bombardment systems, just as the stations did, and no matter what victories the CEF scored on the ground, space was what ultimately mattered.
“OK, here we go, Lex,” he said. “We’re going to go for an up the skirt shot on their engines at their flip with your rail gun. Do you think you can do it? Their fusion drives will be blinding them to your position, but we have a very small angle.” His intent was to hit them just as they turned over to place their drives in front, allowing for deceleration and arrival at Earth orbit.
“It depends on their speed at that point. In effect, the combined velocity
will be close to a fraction of C, and from my study of their shielding, the window will be approximately fifteen meters wide.”
Holy crap. They were going to try to hit two passing targets, at an angle to the Lexington’s position, moving at unknown speed approaching a fraction of the speed of light, with a rail gun that might or might not work.
“Easier than bulls eyeing womp rats back home on Tattoine,” he said, and was surprised when the AI laughed.
“May the Force be with you, General,” she said in her rough voice.
“And with you! Because we’re going to need it. Let’s assume we get one, but not the other. Options?”
“We close with and defeat the enemy.”
Well, there’s always that, he thought. “I’m going to assume we miss both, thought we still try for it. Here’s what I want you to do. Do you know of Odysseus?”
“General, I am an AI. I had the entirety of the internet to learn from. Though I still do not understand your species fascination with viewing sexual reproduction.”
“I’m surprised you still think we’re worth saving,” he answered. “OK, so we’re going to pull a Trojan Horse, sort of, or more like a sucker punch. I want those fighters you have in your bay lit up, and they’re going to go for the wormhole. Threaten that, and they’re going to shit themselves; it’s their communication with the rest of the Invy Empire.”
“But what is the Trojan horse part?” the AI asked.
“That other fighter, the one trailing you. That’s going to be sitting waiting for them along their intercept course for the wormhole. We’re going to detonate it just as they go past, and THEN hit them with your railgun. But you will have to carefully maneuver to get yourself in position, or, go balls to the wall with acceleration to catch up to them. The two fighters will destroy the wormhole junction with their nukes. If we don’t cut that off, we’re going to have another Invy fleet on us, and none of this will matter.”
“The mathematics will necessitate me cutting myself off from you while I compute. I will have a solution in approximately twenty five hours, once I know their speed and vector.”
“Lex, Kira trusted you, and I trust you. I will wait.”
She nodded, and her avatar, looking so much like his lost love, her captain, smiled, and then blinked out. David Warren was left to sit in his command chair, to wait out the first day of the war, unable, and unwilling to influence the events that he had set into motion.
While he waited, he thought about the Invy, trying to figure them out. There were three races that he knew of, and probably more that he didn’t. In his mind, courtesy of the implant, he held terabytes of data, all the information the CEF had on them. Each called themselves by their own name in their language, but he knew them by their human nicknames. Dragons, the leadership, six limbed and reptilian. They ruled an interstellar empire of eleven enslaved worlds, using wormhole technology to move their ships. Wolverines, their uplifted infantry, wolf-like creatures who were tough and vicious, yet honorable in their own way. Last, the mysterious Octos, looking for all the world like an Earth octopus on land, managing the Invy tech.
The question he couldn’t get out of his head was, one that had bothered him for all of his long exile, was simply, “Why?” None of it made any sense. Sure, the Invy had somewhat superior technology, but only about a century ahead of earth. The odds of two species being that close to each other, only light years away, was astronomical. Even more, the Dragons’ rule was apparently feudally based, hardly something that catered to innovation and technological development. Their fleet went from world to world, hammering them into submission, and then moved on, as far as CEF Intelligence could tell. Individual aliens came to carve out domains, and establish cities in the tropics. That was pretty much all they knew about their culture.
Another thing that puzzled him was the charade they played, trying to brainwash humans into believing they were there to “rescue” Earth from environmental degradation. In reality, it was slavery marked by stagnation and slaughter. He had access to the interrogation reports from the CEF xenobiologist, Doctor Morano, from the one Dragon they had ever been able to take alive. Inwardly he cursed at her; she had killed it to do an autopsy. Warren would have loved to have his own interrogation session with the creature, but maybe after today they would have more opportunity.
None of it made any sense, but he still passed the time waiting trying to puzzle it out. Like soldiers throughout the ages, he had plenty of time to sit and think before the action started.
“…when the band begins to play.”
Outside Loch Brea Invy Spaceport, Scotland.
Chapter 48
“For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’ But it's ‘Saviour of 'is country’ when the guns begin to shoot!” muttered Private Thomas Atkins as he looked through his rifle scope. He wasn’t watching any of the enemy; instead he was gauging wind speed and direction between himself and the sensor pod mounted on a tower high above the base. In his hands he held a .50 caliber rifle with high explosive rounds.
“That’s why your mother named you Tommy, son. So you can die for your King and Country!” said Sergeant Vlonski as he lay next to him. The polish immigrant still spoke with a heavy accent, but was as laconic as his native English counterparts.
“I bloody hope not, but if I do, the girls in Inverness will burn down the Invy town all on their own,” he replied with a grin.
Private Fiona McClellan watched the rear approach. Like them, she was under an IR blanket, heat being converted into electricity and discharging slowly into the ground via a lead to a stake. She looked again at her watch; H-Hour minus one. In less than a minute, Atkins would put several rounds into the sensor pod. If the Russian submarines had done their job, the orbital approaching the U.K. would be blinded, giving them a half hour or more window to attack; destroying the sensor would blind the base defenses.
McClellan thought again about how she had wound up here, sweating her ass off in the cool October sun, machine gun in her hands. She had been finishing college, almost ready to become an accountant, when the Invy came, and now she was the mother of one child, with her husband in the actual assault force. Never would have met him if the Invy hadn’t come, she mused. Probably never going to see him again if this doesn’t work, either.
Atkins was a perpetual complainer, but knew his job well. Though he’d never actually fired on the Invy before, his team regularly hunted the bandits who preyed on small homesteads, in the social anarchy that was once the United Kingdom. Twenty now, he’d known nothing but the occupation, but still resented the life that had been denied him, one that he could barely remember.
“Where the hell is Thog?” the sniper asked Vlonski. The NCO shrugged; the uplifted ape did what he wanted to do, and more often than not, it was something useful. Instead he thought about how he himself had wound up there, stranger in a strange land. He had had no communication with his homeland in more than ten years, and didn’t know if his wife and children were still alive. What had been a month-long job working on the London docks had turned into eleven years of fighting and killing, and soon, he promised himself, it would be all over.
“Do you see anything?” he asked Atkins. The younger man had shifted his scope to follow the path of the scout team that was positioning to seize the assault shuttle.
The sniper waited a moment before answering, “I THINK I saw a bit of movement by the port perimeter fence, but I can’t be sure. Between those bloody chameleon suits and their skill, I doubt I’d catch anything that might give me a shot. And they’re under the blackout cone of the sensor pod tower.”
For all his bravery, Vlonski knew that what the scouts were doing took a kind of courage that he didn’t have. Each member of the infiltration team was former Special Air Service, Royal Marine Commando, or Special Boat Service. Even more, the two pilots that accompanied them, well, they must have had a serious set of brass balls. To steal an aircraft they had only flown in simulators
, with alien controls, fly it nap of the earth, probably under fire, pick up an assault team, and hurtle themselves into space! And yet the CEF commanders and soldiers around him acted as if it were just, as the Americans used to say on TV, a walk in the park.
He looked again at his watch.
H-0:00
Chapter 49
“And Fire, Fire, Fire!” muttered Sergeant Vlonski. Atkins breathed out, and gently squeezed the Barret’s trigger. The big rifle rocked back on his shoulder, and he grunted with the effort to keep it on target. He was tempted to fire another round, but the impact of the bullet, two seconds after he pulled the trigger, shattered the sensor ball. Immediately sirens started to sound on the base, and he moved to his alternate firing position, this one pointed down into the base. It was time to go Dragon hunting.
“Twelve hundred yards, HQ building, exiting doorway,” called the Sergeant, wide angle spotter scope glued to his eye. Atkins shifted to the right, and caught sight of the gold armor as the Invy used all six legs to run for the airfield. The ruling Invy resembled nothing so much as an upright Komodo Dragon, but were highly intelligent and more vicious. He led the target by almost twenty feet, then thirty; the bastards were fast. BOOM! and the rifle kicked again, jumping off the sandbags. It hammered into the creature and sent it spinning across the runway.
“Eight hundred yards, pilot ready room, side doors,” and again the rifle boomed, once, twice, three times.
“TIME TO GO, LADS!’ called Private McClellan, her voice pitched high with excitement and adrenaline. The bases’ automated counter sniper sensor would be coming back online, degraded without the sensor mount, but still accurate enough. Their next alternate site was a hundred meters to the left, and they hustled behind the ridge line to make it there. Every second spent outside a firing spot was more time for the Invy to get their shite together. They had just turned around a corner of the trail when their old site melted under concerted plasma cannon fire, the explosion lighting up the afternoon sky, and the shock wave making them stumble as they ran.