Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  Kang glanced at the screen as it updated; the aliens hadn’t quite known where they were, but the computers on their missiles had to have worked out a close enough location to risk a terminal boost and make the rush towards the human ship. He took a breath and brought up their own active sensors; high-powered radars swept space around them, revealing the presence of a handful of other missiles, carrying on their course towards Earth.

  They want to soften us up, he realised. They want to weaken us as much as possible before they launch their main attack.

  He turned to the tactical officer. “Point defence; go active,” he ordered. They would have a chance to defend themselves; it depended on how much armour the missiles carried. Judging from their profile as they narrowed in on his ship, locating him by homing in on his own emissions, they carried enough armour to be dangerous if they hit his ship, even if they had no warhead. It was wishful thinking; no one, unless perhaps their alien mindsets were too alien, would send in such a wave of missiles without warheads. They would want to ensure that they maximized their returns. “Take them down; helm, move us!”

  He felt the ship tremble as the helm officer triggered the reaction jets, pushing them away from their course; in enough time, they could be well away from where the alien computers would expect to find them…assuming they had time. The reaction gas wasn't anything like as powerful as a fusion tube, but until the drive could be powered up and triggered, they would have to rely on it.

  “I’ve flashed a laser warning to Defence One,” the communications officer said. Kang nodded; the Shokaku might not survive the next few hours, but they had ensured that Earth’s defences were warned about the danger. “They want us to scan for alien craft that might be sneaking in on the heels of the missiles…”

  Kang glanced at the sensor officer. “Nothing so far, sir,” the sensor operator said. His screen was changing rapidly as other radars around Earth came online, hunting for the attacking missiles; it dawned on Kang that the aliens had duped them into revealing the positions of all of their radars…or at least the radars that had been activated. “Only some missiles; given our position, we may not see them all…”

  “Incoming,” the tactical officer said. The lighting dimmed slightly as a laser beam lanced out from the Shokaku and struck one of the alien missiles. Other beams joined it as the ship rotated; there was a sudden flare of heat and the alien missile went haywire. It might still be dangerous, but it would miss its target by thousands of kilometres. The other missiles were closing in and one of them died, but the remaining two reached detonation range before they were destroyed. Kang closed his eyes…

  The alien warhead detonated a mere kilometre from the hull of the Shokaku. If anything remained of the ship, its Captain, and its crew, it existed in very small pieces indeed.

  * * *

  “We just lost contact with the Shokaku,” Commander Darren Vargus reported, as he looked up at Admiral Thompson. The tall Admiral rubbed his bald scalp, wishing that Defence One had been spun up to provide gravity; he didn’t like prolonged periods of living without gravity. “The aliens are out there, somewhere.”

  Thompson nodded grimly. The only advantage they had was that most of the alien missiles had been illuminated by the radar, although they would now be changing course, unless the aliens considered the missiles completely expandable and unnecessary to whatever the hell they thought they were doing. The aliens were bound by the same iron laws as humanity; their missiles wouldn’t trigger their main drives until they were in a final attack manoeuvre, so there would be limits on just how much they could change their course before they had to go terminal or plunge harmlessly into the icy depths of space.

  “Keep the un-activated radars stood down,” he ordered. The wave of missiles was starting to enter the defence zone now, a handful going active to attack ships like the Shokaku, others continuing on their silent course before they found something that their presumed computer brains considered worthy of their time. There was no point in providing them with more targets; his immobile radars couldn’t escape, they were completely reliant on their point defence to keep them safe…and the final download from the Shokaku had proven that point defence wasn't perfect. “Order all stations to track and fire at will.”

  He pursed his lips as he watched the battle develop. Space warfare had been almost completely theoretical before the aliens had arrived; they’d never fought a war on such a scale before, while the aliens might have fought endless wars. Their main fleet was still hours away from engagement range, but they had already hurt his forces and forced him to remain committed to engaging their missiles, burning up power and supplies while gaining nothing, but time.

  “Earth-based defences report that they are ready to take action,” someone muttered in his earpiece. “The civil defence instructions have been issued, but hundreds of people are defying them to watch the battle from their homes.”

  An explosion, far too close to an automated Planetary Defence Platform to do it any good; Thompson shook his head as more alien missiles vanished, the point defence computers analysing their opponents and adapting their tactics to match the aliens. It took almost a minute of laser fire to kill one missile, Thompson saw; future human laser cannons would have to have much greater output to make a quicker impact. He almost shuddered as more nukes detonated, washing electronic disruption and chaos across the battlefield; in nearly thirty minutes of the strange war, more nukes had been detonated than humanity had ever used in anger.

  The battle was slowing down again as the alien missiles started to slack off; Thompson guessed that they had been fired using mass drivers, rather than launched under their own power. It was innovative, revealing more expertise in space warfare than he possessed; the aliens had had years to plan how they were going to attack the human race. Whatever they wanted, if they had intended to make peace at one point, it was too late now; they would have to punch through the defences or die…

  “That was the Falcon,” Vargus reported, his voice shaking. Thompson remembered that Vargus’ brother had served on the USS Falcon and said nothing, the ship would be little more than free-floating atoms now…and he had no effective way of hitting back at the aliens, or did he? “Sir, we can’t keep taking blows like this!”

  Dimly, Thompson remembered a lecture from one of his old training officers; the training could always end, even if it meant a cadet had washed out, but the fighting could never end, save with the cooperation or the defeat of the enemy. They were putting their people under hideous stress; none of them would have expected that they were going to enter combat in such a hideous manner, nor that they would be standing between the enemy and their homeworld. Americans had plotted to fight Chinese, or Russians; Chinese had plotted to fight Japan and Russia and America…how many of them had considered aliens?

  It was immaterial at the moment. “Send the signal to Commodore Yokuv,” he ordered. The Russian had dreamed up the scheme and had been rewarded with one of the handful of United Nations commissions for the defence forces. “Tell him that I want him to launch Mad Dog as soon as the aliens enter engagement range.”

  He sensed, more than saw, Vargus’ astonishment. “Sir, with all due respect, Mad Dog would mean that…”

  “I know,” Thompson snapped. He allowed a little of his own anger and frustration to show. “There’s no choice, is there?”

  “No, sir,” Vargus said. His hand danced over the console. “The orders have been transmitted.”

  * * *

  The missile racks had been designed for warfare in the early 2020s, when space had become a very real battleground between the established power of America and the rising power of Russia and China. The early plans for international cooperation had been pushed aside as space rapidly became a military testing ground, then a sign of military power; the very brief Taiwan War had proven beyond all doubt that space was the important arena of the 21st Century. The missile racks had once held missiles near the primitive space stations for targeti
ng on locations on the planet below; now, they rotated and launched their missiles in sequence towards the alien craft as they slowly entered the very edges of engagement range. Not unlike the aliens themselves – the tactic was an obvious one – the missiles would alter course slightly as soon as their first stages burned out and were left flashing towards the aliens on the known course; if the human forces were lucky, the aliens would either destroy the first stage and conclude that they had taken out the missile, or they would ignore the first stage and it would strike an alien craft. At such speeds, even a marshmallow would be horrifically deadly…

  Behind the missiles, the real surprise of Mad Dog went into action.

  “Go,” Major Tyrone Stults ordered.

  Flying Officer Shelia Hartford – the rank had been transferred over from the RAF when most of its exo-atmospheric assets had been transferred to the Royal Space Force – checked her fighter’s systems one more time, then triggered her thrusters and pushed the fighter out of its orbit and towards the alien force. The aliens hadn’t tracked the force of human fighters – or they hadn’t considered them worth bothering with, part of her mind added darkly – and they hadn’t launched any missiles at the flight, perhaps allowing them to get one shot in before the aliens noticed them. If luck was with them, they would have mistaken her force for more missiles…

  She closed her eyes for a second as the acceleration faded slightly. "Space fighter" was such a laughable term, so laughable that it might just give them an edge; if some of the conclusions of the scientists studying the broadcast from the alien ships had been right, the aliens were a united force. No Russians or Chinese or Americans for them, only one nation; perhaps they wouldn’t expect craft that had been designed to fight mainly in LEO, although there had been talk of deploying the fighters to the belt. Instead of the trim craft of science-fiction, her ship was a long pipe, with a tiny compartment for her and plenty of weapons…and very limited fuel. They would make one pass through the alien fleet and then, if they were lucky, they would be picked up by one of the constant-boost ships before the air ran out. If they weren’t lucky, she would die out there, alone and unnoticed as she suffocated. The plan hadn’t been called Mad Dog for nothing…

  She kept a careful eye on her scope as the fighter closed in on the alien formation, linked only by laser light to the other fighters, the one hundred and seven space fighters that humanity had produced before deciding that the entire concept was useless, or very close to useless. The RSF had been on the verge of abandoning such craft entirely; only the distant possibility of a police action in the belt had kept them from dispensing with the craft and her services. The aliens…she had wondered, then; would the aliens have fighters of their own, or would they simply engage them with point defence? The alien fleet was growing closer; she wondered, with a yearning that surprised her, what was happening to her family down below on Earth. What would happen to them if the aliens won the war?

  An alien radar swept across her fighter and locked on; she hit the gas jets and altered course slightly, enough to avoid a rail gun or a laser beam, if the aliens had fired on her. She cursed as power emissions rose on one of the alien ships, revealing laser weapons that targeted two of her comrades, along with the remaining missiles. The space fighters vanished in mere seconds; the conclusion was inescapable. The alien lasers were more powerful than human lasers…

  “Lock on, now,” the Wing Commander said. A large alien craft, one of the ones that seemed to be a warship, was being targeted; she selected it quickly and launched four of her missiles, targeted on the warship. Seven of her remaining comrades fired as well; a massive spread of missiles lancing out towards the alien craft, which abandoned its attempt to fire on the other fighters to cover itself. She noticed that the other alien craft were concentrating on covering themselves as well; she wondered if that would give them an edge as the remaining fighters grew closer to the alien ships…

  She watched grimly as missile after missile fell to the alien fire; their weapons were powerful enough to reduce the warhead to slag within minutes at most. The fighters had thrown most of their missiles into that attack; the remaining fighters launched their final missiles, adding to the chaos and trying to break apart the alien formation, but the aliens refused to panic. Their power emissions kept sparking oddly; she stared at it, trying to understand just what the aliens were doing, but the readings matched nothing that humanity had ever seen.

  “Shit,” someone said.

  For a moment, she wondered if they had somehow scored a devastating hit, but the craft her friend was indicating hadn’t been targeted, but it was coming apart anyway, revealing a force of smaller craft. She stared, holding her breath, as the alien craft separated from their motherships and boosted up themselves; not fighters, but frigate-sized craft, closing in on Earth. All of a suddenly, the entire battle had just become much worse.

  “Hit them,” someone else snapped. It was impossible; the fighters had spent most of their missiles on the bigger ships, with only their lasers left to engage the enemy. Shelia was concentrating on shooting down enemy missiles as they launched them towards the human orbital defences, but it seemed pointless; by the time her lasers made an impact on one missile, several more had been launched. She was committed to flying far too close to the alien fleet, and she was almost unarmed…

  Her threat receiver screamed a warning, too late. Before she could react, an alien laser struck the fighter; she felt the temperature rise sharply in her cabin. She reached for the controls, but the hull glowed red and melted, the heat detonating the fuel in the fighter, and sending her craft up in a massive explosion. Unmoved, the alien fleet continued towards Earth…

  Chapter Nineteen: The Battle of Earth, Round Two

  Earth Orbit

  Dataka-War Commander-Fleet watched as the fleet spread out, closing in on the human world. The battle hadn’t gone exactly as predicted – the space fighters had been an unpleasant surprise, although they had been destroyed once the Oghaldzon had realised what they actually were – but the fleet had remained intact and was closing in. The humans literally had their backs to their own homeworld; they could have boosted the remaining spacecraft out of orbit into the outer solar system, but where did they have to run to and hide? The researchers didn’t consider it likely that the human asteroids could support their remaining ships for long…

  He tapped his console as the smaller warships spread out, fanning forward to drive the humans in front of them, their drives flaring briefly as they rotated to bring their weapons to bear on the human craft. The Oghaldzon lasers were much more capable than the human lasers, he’d been relieved to notice; the humans had fired enough missiles at the fleet to guarantee its destruction if the lasers had been much less efficient. Every time a human remote platform fired, it revealed its location and one of the warships would fire a stream of super-fast pellets from a rail gun. The human automated platforms didn’t manoeuvre; unlike the human ships, they had no hope at all of avoiding the rail guns at such ranges. The battle would be long and costly, but he was sure that it would be won.

  Information was building up rapidly, finally adding detailed icons to the images that had formed in the holographic tank, revealing the answers to questions that the Oghaldzon had only been able to guess at. The human space stations were all armed, at least with lasers, and some of them had enough power to overcome their inherent problems. The space stations hadn’t been priority targets, but that would have to change; he was sure they were serving to coordinate the human defence. Unless the humans had discovered some radical new tactics – or their racial insanity had gone too far, he reminded himself quickly – one of them would hold the commander of the defence. There was little hope of capturing him – or her; the thought that any race could discriminate against one of its sexes was completely alien to the Oghaldzon – he would have to be killed if the commanding space station could be identified. It would take time and effort, but they had time…

  The space b
attle unfolded with the slow precision of a ballot. Both sides knew the rules; as Oghaldzon missiles came down towards the spacecraft, the automated platforms, and the space stations, the humans moved to cover them and launch their own missiles, overloading the Oghaldzon defences. Once again, he cursed the delays in launching the fleet; the battle was far from one sides. Some of the larger craft had separated into their smaller mobile units; others had been hit and destroyed by human nuclear weapons. Human nukes, the researchers claimed, were less efficient than Oghaldzon nukes, but it hardly mattered; a nuke either detonated close enough to cause damage and destruction, or it did not. EMP didn’t matter that much to the Oghaldzon; the reports suggested that it didn’t affect the humans much either, although their fire control seemed much less capable than the Oghaldzon fire control.

  Dim clicking alarms echoed through Seeker for Truth – he wondered just what the human captives made of the experience of being in a battle directed against their homeworld – as human missiles lanced towards the ship. He wondered if the humans had realised somehow that it was his command ship, before deciding that that was impossible. The humans had to have gotten lucky, if luck was the word; they’d fired on a target they’d seen through the electronic haze caused by jamming and nuclear explosions. He forced himself to remain calm as the linked point defence of the fleet engaged the missiles, wiping them all out of space before they got closer to the ship. The final human missile detonated seconds before it would have been destroyed, either accidentally or through design, but the effects were almost non-existent.

  The Shipmaster was issuing orders, warning the sensor crews to watch for something hidden by the glare of the explosion, but there was nothing. The space fighters had been inefficient as a means of attack; the odds were that even humans – who seemed prepared to throw their lives away for the flimsiest of causes – wouldn’t try that again. Maybe they didn’t have any more fighters; if they had, surely they would have sent them all as one group?