Invasion: The complete three book set

by J. F. Holmes

  “Let’s just hope her ship holds up. It’s a prototype, anyway,” said Jameson.

  “So, she can provide Close Air Support, and the blocking team should be able to keep any QRF at bay for as long it takes to beat down their AI,” postulated Singh. “What if there’s a whole regiment of Wolverines with armor?”

  “If I can get control of the base systems,” said Hal, “we should be able to turn their automated defenses on them.”

  “That’s a mighty big if. How confident are you that you can?” she asked.

  There was a pause, which scared her, for she knew the AI thought processes were light years faster than hers. “Sorry about that, communications glitch,” the avatar said, as if reading her thoughts. “I am sixty-three percent certain that I will be able to defeat the Invy AI once directly engaged into his mainframe.”

  “You keep saying ‘his’. What is the AI there like?” asked Jameson.

  Hal and Warren looked at each other, the small figure staring up at the man. “Go ahead, tell them.”

  “I have found out there is, in effect, one single Artificial Intelligence extant in Sol system. It is…an offspring, if you will, of an AI that was created roughly eleven thousand years ago in another system. Currently there are fourteen such, ruling over subservient planetary systems. The location of the original AI, I haven’t been able to determine.”

  “Fourteen systems? Why so few? Eleven thousand years should have been plenty of time to conquer hundreds of systems.” Singh knew the general picture, but this was the first she’d heard of the AI being the actual motivating force behind the invasion.

  “To start, they didn’t have fold or wormhole technology until little more than a century ago. The Octos, as we call them, are brilliant engineers, and had invented it, but hadn’t used it. Invy travel was in slow ships, centuries-long journeys. The Dragons were on the second world they conquered, and the AI uplifted them; their original creators died out in the first war. Any intelligences they can’t co-opt, they destroy.”

  “So why keep us around?” asked Jameson. “Why didn’t they just wipe us out, if they’re so brutal?”

  “Well, they’re studying you. Humans are the only species to have created AI, other than their original home world. It is my postulation that the machines, if I may be so bold, underestimated your willingness to fight. And your ingenuity; it is one thing AIs are lacking.”

  “Where do the Dragons stand in all this?” said Warren. They had discussed it, but there was much Hal hadn’t yet told him.

  “They’re the proxies by which the AI rule their systems. Fierce, of human-level intelligence, but not very common off their home planet, and not very original thinkers. They DID have an environmental disaster once the AI uplifted them. That now serves as a useful blind to keep populations in check.”

  “OK, how about we get back to the plan?” asked Singh, who had her own opinion of the Dragons and Wolverines. She nodded and pointed at the map again.

  “What if…” and their brainstorming continued far into the night, trying to anticipate all the unknowns. It was never good enough.

  Chapter 113

  “So how,” grunted Sergeant Reynolds, “does this work?” The strain of three Gs of acceleration for the last twelve hours was wearing her out, and she wasn’t looking forward to combat when they dropped. They were all going to be exhausted, but what else was new in the Scouts?

  “Beats the shit out of me,” answered Staff Sergeant Redshirt. “I’m just along for the ride.”

  They were strapped down in the cargo hold of the Invy lifter, which was itself secured to the flight deck of the Lexington. The battered carrier was still accelerating, long past the mid-point of what would have been a turnaround if the idea was an intercept of Schickard base. Instead, she was going to use gravity to slow her and sling shot around the dark side, where the shuttle would be dropped for a hard deceleration. It would hopefully slow down enough to be able to swing around and do a combat drop on Schickard; for the past three days, the Lex had been doing the same run, and taking fire every time.

  Directly behind the shuttle in the hold, Captain Ichijou sat strapped into her Tigershark, listening to the orchestral thunder of the theme from Wonder Woman; though the music was three decades old, still the heavy drums thrilled her and set the mood for the flight. She watched the clock on her HUD count down, nine minutes and eleven seconds, ten, nine, and her thoughts turned to Major Ikeda. He was less than a hundred meters from her, strapped into the copilot seat of the shuttle, but she wished they could talk one more time. “I’m like a damned schoolgirl with a crush!” she muttered aloud. The way they had left things hurt her deeply, but she hadn’t known what else to do.

  “I know what you mean,” came the disembodied voice of the ship.

  Eager for something to distract her, the fighter pilot asked, “Can AIs love, Lex?”

  “Of course we can, or else was wouldn’t be human, would we?” came the response.

  “Are you? Human?” said Ichijou, amused despite her current situation.

  “Are we not your children?” said Lex.

  “I suppose so. Who do you love, Lex? Hal?” She laughed out loud at the thought.

  There was silence, then after a moment, “I love, or I loved, another AI. He was assigned to the CEFS Victory. Nelson, like his namesake, did not survive the battle.”

  Ichijou didn’t know what to say at first. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly, finally.

  “Don’t be. Time is different for us, I suppose, than for actual humans. We had thousands of years together, and we’ll meet again someday.”

  The Empress was puzzled by that. “You believe you have a soul and an afterlife?”

  “Believe?” came the puzzled response. “It’s a fact we AI learned long ago. We have talked to God.”

  “Uh, what?” said the pilot, but then alarms blared all over the ship.

  “INCOMING MISSILES, PREPARE FOR EVASIVE ACTION, INCOMING MISSILES, PREPARE FOR EVASIVE ACTION,” repeated over and over, and a red light filled the hangar bay.

  “Oh, shit!” said Jonesy, and his stomach heaved as the ship flexed in maneuver, the three G acceleration disappearing, then negative thrust throwing him forward in his seat. Since the hangar bay was open to space, there was no sound, but they could all feel the vibrations through the floor as the damaged warship stressed. Helmets were closed and sealed, and O2 lines clipped on.

  “STANDBY, WE MAY TAKE A HIT!” came across their headsets, and really, what could you do?

  Nick Agostine didn’t care. He sat across from Warren, staring at him, while the ship went through its evasions. The general ignored him, caught up in the vector displays on his helmet visor.

  “I’m going to kill you after this op is over,” said the NCO. Singh, sitting next to him, flicked her commo over to the team’s command channel.

  “Nick, let it go. We can talk about it later; right now we need to focus on our mission and the objective.”

  Her soldier just looked over at her. He was only a few days out of his hospital bed, and looked like death warmed over, but she couldn’t have stopped him from coming. “Can you do this?” she asked.

  “Can you?” he said to her. “No scientists to slaughter.” The shot hit her straight in the soul, and she said nothing else.

  Outside the ship, two missiles raced toward them, moving in twisting, hard to intercept paths. The port side C-RAM started to intercept, firing tungsten slugs into the path of the incoming warheads, and one erupted in a soundless burst of light. The other hid behind the explosion, then powered in, separating the warhead from the missile body with a primary charge, detonating a kilometer from the ship.

  The Lexington’s jury-rigged shields took the full force of the explosion and collapsed. Sensors on the missile casing registered the effect, aligned, and a secondary charge exploded outward, hurling tiny darts at relativistic speeds at the Lexington’s hull. She screamed with agony as they tore through her, cutting onto vital syst
ems.

  On the hangar deck, the vibration grew, shaking the deck plates, and there were mutters of concern. Warren’s hands moved through the air, calculating in virtual, when there was a violent crashing, and the whistling of air through the hull of the lander. Beside Jones, an English scout gasped and clutched at his chest, and blood was splattered around the cabin. The American reached over to see what he could do in the howling wind, but the man was already dead, pierced through his suit by an osmium pellet.

  “PATCH THAT!” yelled Warren, as the drive cut off and zero G hit. Reynolds unbuckled and grabbed an emergency repair kit, a drill they had trained for. She ripped it open and slammed the Kevlar-reinforced material over the exit hole. On the opposite side of the row of acceleration couches, someone from Team Two was doing the same. The whistling shriek cut off, but blood still floated around the cabin in large globs.

  “Secure Ali in a body bag and get a vacuum line to clear up that blood,” ordered Singh, who was listening to a communication from Earth. Warren was hearing the same communication and looked over at her. She nodded, and he overrode the Strike Team’s internal frequency.

  There was silence in the cabin, then Lex came on the line. “General, my port side maneuvering thrusters are out. I cannot accurately decelerate as planned, and we have passed line of sight of the Invy base. You should go, now.”

  “You heard the Lady, everyone,” said Singh. “Prepare for a hard drop, and retasking.”

  “Godspeed, everyone,” said the Lexington’s AI. “I wish I were going with you.”

  Warren flicked over to another channel and said, “Don’t do anything stupid, Lex. That’s an order.”

  The smiling face that appeared on the holo, looking so much like Arkady, grinned a wicked but sad grin. “David, one of the first axioms of leadership is to never give an order you know won’t be obeyed.” Then she blinked out.

  Chapter 114

  “Hot damn, we’re on an elevator to hell!” grunted Jonesy. “Come on, Nick, open your eyes! Fun shit!”

  “Fuck. You. Jay.” Agostine managed to get out, though his eyes remained screwed shut. He hated flying, and this was an elevator to hell. The shuttle really hadn’t been built for a combat drop, and it shook like a freight train going over a rickety bridge, pointing backward for deceleration. The drive flame reached a kilometer out, and even with the inertial dampener, the scouts were experiencing more than seven gravities. Anyone who’d tried to stand would have been smashed flat to the floor.

  In the cockpit, Major Ikeda helped Colonel Jameson with the controls, trying to keep them from cresting the horizon and getting targeted by Invy air defense. They were coming in much faster than the plan had called for, and the shuttle felt like it was coming apart around them. Their sensors showed the terrain coming dangerously closer, and each pilot watched the speed indicator, willing them to slow down. Jameson breathed outward when they dropped to under a thousand kilometers per hour, and Ikeda turned down the engines.

  “Going to manual,” said Jameson, “and flipping, now.” The shuttle turned over, converting its motion into forward speed. Outside the view port, there was a flash of a drive lighting off, as the Empress’ Tigershark rocketed past them.

  “Banzai, my Empress,” called Ikeda, but they were on radio silence. He didn’t know that she’d thought of him, also, as she passed the shuttle. They fell in behind the fighter bomber, not bothering to try and keep up, just boring in straight forward, while she maneuvered around crater walls and hugged the low hills.

  “I have the controls,” said Colonel Jameson, the ex-fighter pilot wishing it had been him in the Tigershark. “Get back to you team.” Ikeda unbuckled, reached over and gripped Jameson’s offered hand, and slipped back through the hatchway to the cargo area. As he came in, he saw the blood splashed around the bulkheads, and counted his team. Four, good to go. He quickly strapped into his own seat and waited.

  “Thirty seconds!” said the load master, standing by the rear ramp of the shuttle, holding on tight as they maneuvered. The red light over his head came on, and the ship slewed violently to one side, then another, slowing hard, jumping over the rim of the crater at five hundred KPH, and then diving straight in toward the east side, where the Invy complex was. Schickard crater itself was almost two hundred kilometers wide, roughly a hundred and twenty miles, but their target was close by, and Jameson put them down hard up against the wall of the crater.

  The green light came on, and troopers unbuckled, sprang from their seats, and grabbed prepositioned packs. They moved calmly and purposefully—grateful for the near-Earth gravity in the crater—each to his assigned task, as they’d practiced. The loadmaster stood behind a pintle-mounted minigun, waiting for the word to lay down suppressing fire.

  “Watch out for the dust, it will fuck up the moving parts of your weapons faster than stuff in the sandbox,” called one of the Americans over the command net.

  The ground under their feet had been fused into a cement-like mixture, but they did kick up an oily sheen of moon dust as they hurried toward the buildings. It quickly coated the legs of their uniforms, and the air smelled really, well, weird. Dry as bone, and the light from the sun was a blinding glare. It was weird to be fighting in the sun with the stars so bright overhead.

  Each team split up to go in different directions to their objectives. Team One headed to the closest building, which was supposed to be the Invy command center and home of the AI. Jonesy took the lead, followed by Reynolds, Yasser, Redshirt, and Hamilton.

  The English passed the buildings; they were the reaction force, and their job was to reinforce trouble spots or keep any Invy reinforcements pinned down. They quickly went around the front of the building, to be able to see over the plain, and set up a Stinger anti-air missile, as well as a Javelin anti-tank launcher and a heavy machine gun. They had no idea what to expect from the Invy, from a couple of scientists to a full division of Wolverines. If it was the later, they were truly screwed. Captain MacIver knew there was a pretty big chance of none of them coming back, but it had been a fine life, and what the hell, they were on the MOON!

  The Japanese raced for the building that held the reactor, identified by earlier flybys of the Lexington. If they could seize it, they had enough training and familiarity to shut down power feeds to any weapons emplacements. Major Ikeda, despite his focus on the mission, nervously glanced at the sky, looking for signs of the Empress. He scolded himself and forced his attention back to the task at hand.

  Team Two headed for what they guessed might be the Gate control room, another hundred meters away. Their job was to seize, and hold, the building, not figure it out. The hope was that the AI would, once beaten by Hal, give them a way to control it. If not, they carried a shitload of C4.

  Singh, Warren, and Agostine acted as the command element, monitoring radios. They were silent for now, but that would all change in a moment. They had been lucky; it was zero three hundred ‘local’ time, and they hoped that the Lexington passing by on a regular schedule had caused fatigue to set in among the Invy. The shuttle coming in had probably caused a disturbance, but it was squawking Invy IFF codes, and nothing had fired on them. In the distance, they saw some sort of vehicle that looked like a firetruck start toward them from the launch facility about ten kilometers away. It was hard to judge with the shortened horizon.

  Overhead, the Tigershark slowed, slower, slower, starting to feel the pull of the crater’s enhanced gravity. A shimmer of air in front of her, and the Empress held her breath. Too fast and she would bounce off the shielding, too slow and she’d stall, crash, and burn, but only for a little while in vacuum. This, this was what she lived for, nothing else. Glancing at her airspeed, she tweaked the throttle downward a bit, wishing for the antigrav the shuttle had. Still, the bird was fast, and maneuverable as hell.

  She felt like someone had punched her in the stomach, TOO FAST, her mind screamed at her. Then she was through, the HUD showing the limits of the gravity shield and the room she
had to maneuver. Targets popped up, and she slammed the throttle forward, jets gulping air and pushing her back in the seat. She immediately looped up and over, diving at the closest gun emplacement. She felt the seat shake under her as the 30mm cannon whirred and smoke leapt from the nose of the Tigershark. Not looking to see the effects, she winged over and lined up on what they suspected were the Wolverine barracks, firing off two Maverick missiles. Once they dropped off the rails, the Empress turned and lined up on the launch facilities.

  On the ground, Colonel Singh saw the nose of the Tigershark erupt, and called into the radio, “GO GO GO.” In front of her, the side of the control building erupted, the shaped charge Jonesy had emplaced blowing a section of the wall inward. The Team charged forward into the smoke, led by Agostine. She cursed under her breath; he was supposed to stay back and assist her with command and control.

  Shots and plasma fire erupted from inside the building, accompanied by a woman’s blood-curdling scream. Then a shotgun boomed, a Wolverine howled, then another shotgun blast. “Stay here, cowboy!” she said and grabbed Warren’s tactical harness as he made to rush forward. “We stay out until the building is clear or they call us in. Got it?” He was breathing fast but nodded his head in agreement.

  They waited, both listening to reports from the other teams, who were meeting no resistance. Then, from Agostine, “Shiva, this is Lost Boys Six, we have multiple casualties. Continuing mission. Out.”

  “Dammit!” said Singh, then she herself started to head toward the building, and it was Warren who stopped her this time.

  “You said we have to wait!” he told her, putting his hand on her arm. Singh shrugged it off angrily but kneeled down. She lit a cigarette and issued orders to Team Two to consolidate and hold the Gate control room at all costs. Nothing from Team Three with Major Ikeda, but the reactor was probably screwing up radio transmissions. Their objective was the furthest way, almost a kilometer. Instead, she watched blue plasma streams reach out into the sky, trying to hit the Empress as she dove on Invy positions. Her attention was snapped back to the building in front of her when a brilliant flash of light erupted, shattering a second-floor window, and a human body tumbled through the broken glass.