by KA Hopkins
As successful as the “fireside chat” operations were, our lack of manpower was always the limiting factor. At best, our ten QRF teams, with an average of ten guys each, could spare five or six operators to do all the prep and intelligence gathering for each target. Each takedown took time; while our Special Forces teams could do it more quickly than anyone on the planet, they still needed time. At best our teams could take down twenty “bad guys” a week, and even at that they were swamped, running flat-out seven days a week. The chances of Murphy jumping onboard was getting high. Twenty people per week was noticeable. Quietly, without any public fanfare, the security protective measures for public officials increased several fold - sooner or later we would get caught. A different, less hands-on approach was required.
Between Guide, Mother and Einstein, the three of them had as much computing power as the whole of the western world combined. While they could not hope to match the Central Surveillance AI on the Moon, they had more than enough computational cycles to run sophisticated enemy future intentions simulations. Predicting what an enemy might do in the future is sound military practice and the basis of many war games.
Two future scenarios were simulated, one for Draco behavior and one for human. The character assessment from the simulations showed exactly what we were up against. If the Draco Empire wanted your planet, they took it, or made sure that no one else could use it. They played for keeps and played rough. On more than one occasion, when their pacification efforts failed, they retreated to geocentric orbit and dropped planet busters, turning the planet into a cinder ball.
Not only did we have to stop the alien pacification - we had to ensure simultaneous targeting of all extraterrestrial ships within Earth’s solar system. Even if only one interstellar-capable ship was unaccounted for, the single planet buster it carried could destroy all life on Earth. When faced with the prospect of complete annihilation, most targeted planets chose slavery. We were walking a fine line.
We then tried modeling human reactions to an alien pacification. We had lots of data going back over six hundred years, starting with when the new world conquered the old world and from what happened in the aftermath of Earth’s many wars. That model scared us. Unlike the generation that fought World War II, most people now seemed overwhelmed by apathy. We found little difference in people’s attitudes, whether slaves to debt or slaves to extraterrestrials. As long as circumstances didn’t directly impact the individual, they were completely uninterested in what happened outside their personal bubble.
The depth of human apathy was a real shocker. It’s one thing to make sacrifices to save someone who wants saving; it is quite another doing it for someone who doesn’t care. Our models suggested that most humans would not oppose the pacification. What else could we expect? For years, the mainstream media had bombarded society with messages containing themes of “What’s in it for me?” “How do I benefit?” The concept of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others was completely gone. I was dumbstruck. How was I going to help humanity - when humanity did not want to help itself?
I did know how to help my family though; if I had to save the Earth to save them, so be it. If I had thought it through, it would have been so much easier to steal an alien interstellar ship and run away. Despite all the physical and biological advances made to me, balancing what was best for mankind and my family was a struggle.
With an understanding of how both humans and Dracos might react during an alien pacification, I had the three AIs calculate modern society’s greatest weakness. It did not take them very long. The modern world is addicted to electricity - all communications, transportation, commerce, even basic services such as water and heat depend upon it. Using electricity as a weapon was the key to slowing down the alien pacification.
Of all the effects of nuclear weapon usage, the one that’s overlooked, yet is the most damaging, is the electromagnetic (EM) pulse. Even a large megaton class weapon will physically destroy a limited area no more than eight to ten miles across, with gamma ray radiation poisoning extending another thirty or so miles. Fall out can go for hundreds of miles downwind, but unless you ingest or breath in the radioactive material, you are reasonably safe, provided you take active measures to remove the radioactive dust on your clothes. The EM pulse effects depend upon the size and the height of the airburst. Using the VHF range equation, the EM pulse horizon is the square root of the height in feet multiplied by 1.23, so a 2000 foot airburst could affect all electronics for forty to fifty miles from the blast center.
The higher up in the atmosphere the nuclear blast, the greater the damage due to the Compton Effect that occurs when gamma rays of a nuclear explosion collide with air molecules forming Compton electrons. Compton electrons are similar to a lightning strike in speed, causing massive electrical and magnetic fields which affect all non-shielded electronics regardless if they are powered on or not, causing them to burn out. A single one megaton nuclear weapon detonated 250 miles above the Earth can destroy all non-shielded electronics within a 1300 mile cone. In practical terms a bomb going off over Kansas would destroy all electronics from Nevada to Indiana and Canada to Mexico, an area a little more than six million square miles. Two nuclear weapons equally spaced across the country would destroy all of North America, taking large parts of Canada and Mexico with it.
We thought that we were so clever in our target selection. But we failed to take into account all the possible unintended consequences. Target selection was prioritized, based upon those that would have the biggest impact on slowing the pace of the corruption and influence by the Global Elite. Since money was the key to their power, it became target priority number one.
The creation of money is controlled by the Federal Reserve, the storage of money is controlled by banks. Banks depend upon massive computer centers to track who owes and owns what. All computer centers depend upon the electrical grid with local on site generator power as backup. Targeting specific banks moving corrupt money with localized power failures should have minimized the collateral damage. The unintended consequence was that nearly all banks are connected; once the bigger banks started to fail, the smaller banks had no way to clear electronic funds or debts.
Since most money in the western world is virtual rather than physical, few banks settle transactions by actually moving hard currency between branches; it’s so much easier and quicker to settle transactions electronically. Without electricity almost no one had access to real money. The breakdown was anything but gradual. If it had been, we might have had enough time to change our tactics. It was more like a crack in a dam - a little water on the surface footings is nothing to be worried about, but a little water on the surface doesn’t show what’s happening underneath until it’s too late and the entire dam lets go. We managed to break the dam.
Our attacks on the electrical grid were two-pronged – cyber-attacks against the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems controlling the grid and EM pulse attacks against the transformer substations. We did not have the hacker skills ourselves to attack the SCADA systems (our operators much preferred a "hands on" approach usually involving twenty pounds or more of C4), so we hired out the cyber-attacks. Each attack required customization which took weeks. Not wanting to allow the Global Elite a chance to coordinate their defenses, we took a shortcut and decided to supplement the cyber-attacks with EM pulse attacks. Taking shortcuts bit us in the ass.
The original plan was to knock out the surrounding city blocks around banking infrastructure such as: transformer stations, bank headquarters, processing centers and the bank data centers in the five biggest banking centers in the US, located in: New York, Charlotte, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. Although we had exact target coordinates, Mother and Einstein fired their EM pulse cannons from an altitude of 500 feet knocking out all electronics for fifteen to twenty miles from the epicenter of the attack. We made a dreadful mistake doing this, but many of the downtown buildings reached fifty or more stories making it
impossible for the ships to get lower.
The EM pulse knocked out not only the banking infrastructure but all non EM pulse shielded electronic devices. Any local backups used for disaster recovery were destroyed as well. Unless you walked, rode a bike or had a horse, you were not getting out of the impacted areas. With the cities completely blacked out, the electrical grid experienced wide scale failures due to the sudden loss of load in the targeted cities. Circuit breakers trying to shed hundreds of thousands of volts, arced due to the plasma discharge and fused shut, putting most of the country into darkness until the circuit breakers could be replaced.
The life blood of all large cities is electricity - when lost, the cities start to die. Due to the marvel of just-in-time delivery, stores have at most two to three days worth of food on the shelves. Without electricity all water and sanitation services stop. With so many people crammed into a limited space, without working water and sewage services - killer diseases like cholera and dysentery soon emerge.
From a slow down the alien pacification point of view, the cyber and EMP attacks were critical successes, but the human cost was high. Tens of millions of innocents died, not just by the attacks, but by the ensuing riots and resultant resource shortages. Within days, life in many inner-city neighborhoods became medieval. Few people were prepared, even those who were, quickly found themselves targeted and overwhelmed by those who were not. Any form of civility was lost once the strong and more aggressive segments of our society formed gangs to take what they wanted by force. Once the panic started, it picked up momentum with each passing day, a bad situation quickly turned into a catastrophe.
With the black outs far larger than expected, communications across the country were affected. Governors could not call out the National Guard, police or emergency workers, nor could emergency disaster agencies coordinate their relief efforts. It was everyone for themselves.
When we switched the attacks to the offshore tax haven islands, the EM pulse attacks took out all services on the islands, with a huge loss of life to the local population. Without outside support, food and fresh water ran out in days. Nearly ninety percent of the populations died, as there was no way off the islands other than by sailboat. Even then, none of the electronics worked, so unless you could navigate by the stars or with a magnetic compass, you traded a slow death on an island paradise for death on the open ocean. Non-impacted areas such as the European Union, China and Australia sent relief ships, but because the attacks were so widespread only a few ships arrived at each of the islands, two to three weeks after the attacks. It was a case of too little too late; there was nothing left to save.
All virtual money stored in the offshore tax havens was lost. Physical money or valuables stored in the offshore havens were also lost, unless you had the ability to physically break open the bank vaults. The targeted offshore banking centers were completely destroyed, as effectively as being hit by a class five hurricane. The Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Channel Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands were all completely devastated. Without offshore banking, seventy-five percent of the worldwide illicit money trade stopped overnight.
To ensure that the Global Elite got the wakeup call and would experience the disaster firsthand, we specifically targeted the Global Elite’s gated communities and surrounding areas with EM pulse attacks. Many of the Global Elite have compounds off the grid - but they have to get there first. Even then, the compounds were usually in the middle of nowhere and pretty austere compared to their palaces and mansions. Those who made it to their redoubts, went from having everything, to having just the bare necessities – they were the lucky ones.
Some of the Elite tried to escape by going to sea on their mega-yachts, but this proved fatal. Mega-yachts are built to commercial standards; they are huge floating luxury palaces with few systems hardened against EM pulse attacks. All it took was for Mother or Einstein to fly overhead, deliver a single shot from the EM pulse canon and the yacht needed a tow to port. With everything electronic destroyed, they could not even call for help. Military satellites were the only reliable means to find them, as aircraft searches proved to be ineffective once the ship drifted off the normal shipping channels. Being adrift on the high seas is never good. No matter how luxurious the yacht, if caught in a storm, none were seen or heard of again. These symbols of power and wealth became floating death traps.
The Global Elite learned that society today is in reality much more fragile than two hundred years ago. Once electricity was lost, most of their wealth disappeared. Their positions of power were maintained more through fear than respect; staff loyalty became questionable - when not paid. We had hurt the Global Elite badly and they would seek revenge.
Chapter 32 - The enlightenment of the stupid cat
Being reunited with my family was great for my morale. Everyone fell into a routine quickly, which was a good thing. Even with advanced technology able to hide most machinery into the walls, making the ship’s interior bigger than you would expect, as within any enclosed space eventually everyone gets on each other’s nerves. The demanding training regime set up by the operators helped everyone get along, as it made sure no one had much free time on their hands. All-in-all our little group was adapting well to our new nomadic lifestyle with one exception: the stupid cat.
Boris may have spirit and guts in spades, and I love him to pieces, but his hygiene left much to be desired. Cats are supposed to be clean freaks; obviously he never got the memo as a kitten. Despite our best attempts with paper and an improvised litter box, Boris seemed to take great pleasure in using the entire ship as his personal bathroom.
Many a crew member found Boris had left a stinky present on their bunk, clothes or boots; he was actually quite original in his choice of target, never hitting the same spot twice. To top off his annoying hygiene, he took to sleeping in the supply rooms. Anyone looking for supplies, who dared to disturb his nap time, was subject to his wrath. When disturbed, he did not bother asking questions, he clawed first. Pam tried to talk to him, only to be met by the indifferent attitude cats are so good at. It was only a matter of time before a serious incident occurred.
Boris, as usual, was asleep in a walk-in storage closet full of packaged food stuffs, when Chris Strong, an ex-Delta Force operator, opened up the closet to grab dinner. Boris jumped at him from the top shelf, going for Chris’s head and eyes. Chris has a soft spot for cats, but Boris did not give him much of a choice. On pure reflex, Chris knocked Boris out of the air with a single blow and sent him flying out the door and down an open hatchway to the deck below. The fall was not far, maybe ten feet, but the cat landed on his back and broke it in several places. Chris called Pam as I was off-duty asleep. “You need to come down right away!” Pam, followed by Natasha, went down to the deck where Boris was lying, obviously in great pain and badly hurt.
“Boris you dumb fur ball, can’t you tell the good guys from the bad guys?” Pam said, “Look at the mess you are in. Natasha what can be done?”
“Stupid cat got what he deserves. Injuries like this normally mean bye-bye kitty, but he did save my life, so we should at least make the effort to save his furry fat ass. Mother, what do you think - up for working on a cat?”
“Sure - but what’s the point?” Mother said. “I can try to repair the broken back and stop the pain, but when the spine is broken in multiple places it damages the nerves. Since cats’ spines are so much more flexible than other mammals, I cannot fix multiple breaks.”
“Sorry kitty, things are looking grim for you; I guess this is goodbye. See ya!” Natasha said and headed off to the galley.
“Wait, you don’t have to put him down, I can put a cybernetic implant in his brain to bypass the nerve damage. He won’t even know that it’s there,” Mother said. Pam picked up Boris who let out a small whimper; even he finally figured out he was in bad shape.
Pam took Boris to the med lab and put him in the medical pod normally used to examine human abductees. All the
alien scout ships had one fully equipped with the latest medical equipment. The physicals given to human abductees could be as painless as a CAT scan. The only reason some aliens gave anal exams, was that they knew of man’s cultural sensitivity to being poked in the butt - so they perpetuated the myth - having a good laugh at mankind's expense. Mother worked her bio-engineering magic on Boris in less than half an hour. Boris spent the rest of the day asleep, as usual.
The next day Boris was up and about and acted like nothing had happened. Other than a partially shaved head, he seemed to be none the worse for the experience. In fact, his behavior changed for the better - he actually managed to find the litter box. Boris even stopped attacking people and managed in general to stay out of everyone’s way. We would often see him sitting in the galley, usually someplace high, discreetly observing the crew and the kids. We fully expected him to revert to his old behavior, but he surprised us.