“A police net,” Kilo shrieked.
Terra Novans appeared from every possible place of concealment with weapons drawn and firing. The felines panicked as projectiles from the Terra Novan weapons hit all of them multiple times making them even weaker. All yelled frantically to Black Leader over their headsets as one by one they dropped to the ground paralyzed and losing consciousness.
Before he passed out from the tranquilizer darts hitting him in his chest, abdomen, arms and legs, Alpha shouted, “They knew we were here, Black Leader.”
Alpha fell to his back on the ground. As he was slipping into unconsciousness, he heard Terra Novans all around him, shouting unintelligible orders to each other.
A loud explosion came from somewhere close by. Alpha could make out a huge orange fireball above his head and lots of inky black smoke, but the ground didn’t shake and he couldn’t see any flying debris.
“That’s odd,” he said to himself as everything went dark.
The faces of the human and two felines on the transport took on expressions of horror as they watched the huge fireball rising from the direction of the city. Black Leader frantically called to all of the feline commandos, but none answered her.
The sounds of an incoming artillery round steadily grew louder.
“Hit the deck,” shouted the human as a shell dropped in on them from the direction of the city. It exploded thirty meters to their left and the ground shook under them. Another shell quickly landed to their right, but closer. The shuttle was showered with sand and dirt. A piece of shrapnel lodged itself in the right side of the cockpit canopy.
As the two shaken felines looked at the human, another round impacted about twenty meters behind them.
“They’re getting the range, Colonel,” Black Leader shouted. “What are your orders, Sir?”
The human rose up and looked out the canopy at the thick dark smoke that was rising into the sky from the direction of the city.
“Bravo,” he barked. “Get us the Hell out of here and back to New Phoenix.”
“My pleasure, Colonel, Sir,” the feline shouted as he and Black Leader climbed from the deck into their seats.
Three more shells burst within thirty meters of the transport before the pilot could get it off the ground and moving away from the city. Air bursts exploded all around the shuttle until it was out of range of the Terra Novan artillery. None of the bursts got close enough to do any great damage, but the pilot chose to fly relatively low as they headed back to base in case he needed to put the transport on the ground in a hurry.
“How did they know we were there,” Black Leader asked. “Did they pick up on our chatter and triangulate?”
“That must have been how they did it,” Bravo said. “I didn’t detect any active scanning whatsoever.”
Bravo and Black Leader both asked at the same time, “If they are sophisticated enough to monitor our chat, how the Hell did they miss us with that many shells?”
The human colonel looked at his flight crew and smiled. He was shaken, but to him, interpretation of combat tactics was almost second nature. He thought about it for a few seconds and then answered the felines.
“If I had to guess,” he told them. “I’d say they wanted us to return home and tell the others what we saw. Or, at least what they wanted us to see.”
“Which was what, Colonel,” Black Leader asked.
The human looked at Black Leader as if he was coming to some sort of realization.
“They wanted to show us there are a lot more of them than we thought,” he replied. “It also looks like they also want us to know they are watching for us and know when we are there, even though it may not look like it. And, they made it obvious; to me anyway; that they aren’t going to put up with any more intrusions into their cities.”
“But why blow up a large portion of your base of operations just to kill six commandos,” Black Leader asked.
“If that was intentional,” the colonel answered. “They could be letting us know if they can’t keep their cities, they’ll be damned if they’re going to surrender them to us. I believe they are preparing for the rest of this war and they want us to know.”
The cockpit lights turned red and a claxon sounded. The three tightened their lap and shoulder restraints and prepared for evasive action.
“Bravo, do we have incoming,” the colonel asked the pilot.
“Can’t tell yet, Colonel,” Bravo replied. “Hitting the deck. Hold on.”
The transport dove sharply until it was less than twenty meters from the surface and leveled off. Bravo zigzagged in a random pattern to avoid a weapons lock by the enemy. He flipped a switch on his heads up display and a three-dimensional map of the planet’s surface was superimposed over his field of view, scrolling from top to bottom with a flashing red dot that represented the transport in the middle. There was a large target above and behind them that looked as if it was climbing into orbit.
“Colonel, Sir,” Bravo shouted. “They launched something big from the exact center of the ring of cities.”
“Is it headed for us,” the colonel asked.
“Negative, Colonel,” Bravo yelled. “It’s directly over top of us now, headed toward New Phoenix. Time to impact is approximately four minutes and twelve seconds. Got some chatter for you from Air Traffic Control, Sir. They want to know what the Hell we did back there to piss the natives off.”
“Tell them I’ll explain things when I get back,” the colonel said. “Do we have anything that can knock that bird down?”
“Negative, Colonel. We’re configured for close ground support only,” Bravo answered. “It looks like ATC is on it though, Sir. I have six returns climbing from New Phoenix on an intercept course.”
“Anything from upstairs,” the colonel asked.
“No Sir,” Bravo answered. “God’s Eye is on the other side of the planet and the battle cruiser is still alongside the Ark.”
“Put us on the ground and under cover until we know that thing has been taken out,” the colonel commanded. “We don’t want to be hit by an EMP mid-air.”
“You think it’s a nuke,” Black Leader asked.
“There’s only one and it’s tracking high sub-orbital. What the Hell do you think it is,” the colonel replied.
Bravo set the transport down on the desert floor. The three jumped out and moved away. They found cover in some rocks and scanned the sky looking for the missile the natives fired and the anti-missiles coming from the settlements.
Black Leader spotted the missile’s vapor trail and pointed it out to the others. They dropped the ray shields on their helmets and turned on their heads up displays so they could see the feed from the transport’s tactical scanners.
The scanner output showed the missile descending upon the settlements and the six anti-missiles closing in on it. When the anti-missiles were fifty kilometers from the Terra Novan missile, there was a bright flash and the radar return of the missile started to expand to an enormous size.
The colonel lifted his ray shield and looked up in time to see an enormous ball of white flame and grey smoke. The anti-missiles were veering off track, toward random areas of the mid-air inferno.
“What the Hell,” he exclaimed. “Did it break apart without detonating?”
The two felines lifted their visors just in time to witness, along with the colonel, the missile emerging from the flames as the anti-missiles exploded inside the fireball, one by one, without taking the missile out.
“Chaff,” the colonel shouted. “New Phoenix missed the damned thing. Drop your shields or turn away.”
The missile rapidly closed on the settlements. The three waited for more anti-missiles, but before the colonists fired another round, the missile altered course away from New Phoenix and out over the ocean.
The three watched the tactical visuals being projected on their heads up displays in abject horror as the red dot that marked the projected ground zero of the native missile crawled across the map fro
m the military base on the western end of the continent, over the ocean to the center of a large island.
“It’s heading for New Australia, Colonel,” Bravo shouted.
The colonists had always taken for granted that the natives had no idea the compound had been built on the large island they called New Australia. There were no surface-to-air defenses there at all. If this was a nuclear strike, almost all of the human colonists and a great portion of the felines would be wiped out.
As soon as the missile was exactly halfway between the settlements on the big continent and the compound on New Australia, it exploded. The flash from the nuclear fireball in the upper atmosphere could be seen easily from both places.
After the initial flash, the colonel and his two commandos flipped their visor shields up just in time to see the sky along the western horizon fade from yellow-orange back to light blue.
“Holy shit,” the colonel exclaimed. “That one was big.”
Bravo and Black Leader stood in awe of the spectacle.
The colonel started to tremble slightly as he came to the realization the situation on Terra Nova had changed drastically.
“Bravo,” he said. “Run a quick system check on the transport. I think we were far enough away from the blast that the pulse didn’t fry anything, but you never know. We need to get back to New Phoenix before the natives throw anything else at us.”
Chapter 15
The transport arrived back at New Phoenix less than an hour after the native Terra Novans detonated the nuclear device in the upper atmosphere. Colonel William Black Bear reported to Commanding General Dennis Yuen immediately upon stepping off the transport and gave him a full description of everything that went on during the mission.
“I think the chaff probably contained a highly reactive metal. Either magnesium or aluminum,” Black Bear told Yuen. “The radar return was enormous and the fireball was white-hot. I thought the fuel supply had exploded at first. It had to be some sort of exothermic reaction. They defeated both the radar and heat guidance of the anti-missiles.”
“Thermite. That’s damned ingenious,” Yuen mused. “How do we defeat it?”
“We don’t have anything laser-guided that can reach that high,” Black Bear replied. “Most of what we have is built for close ground support. We can adapt some of the radar-guided stuff to use lasers, but it would take a damned good marksman to paint a target that far away and that fast with a hand laser.”
“Maybe we can modify the radar so it can track the missile through the chaff,” Yuen suggested.
“It would be easier to program our anti-missiles to compute an intercept course once they have a lock and lead the incoming,” Black Bear answered. “That would defeat the chaff, as long as the enemy didn’t catch on and alter the course of the missile after dropping it. We need to get the rest of the God’s Eye constellation armed and in orbit. The Ark is too high to provide an effective cover and the cruiser isn’t maneuverable enough.”
“The second and third satellites are due to be deployed from drop shuttles next week, Billy,” General Yuen replied.
As the two talked, there was a knock at the door.
“Enter,” Yuen commanded.
In walked a feline major who paused just inside the door and saluted.
“Here are the first damage reports, General,” she said, as she walked over and handed him a tablet with the text of the report on the screen.
“It looks like the pulse blew the electronics in some of the farm vehicles,” Yuen said as he looked the report over. “What the Hell is wrong with diesel? Why would you put a gasoline engine with electronic ignition in a tractor?”
Yuen scanned farther down the report.
“Well, son of a bitch,” he exclaimed with great annoyance. “We lost most of the microwave ovens. How does that happen? I thought microwave ovens were damned Faraday cages. How in Hell does an EMP over five hundred kilometers away damage one of those?”
Black Bear smiled.
“General, Sir,” he replied. “Only the magnetron is inside the cage. The rest of the components are outside.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Billy,” Yuen replied without looking up from the tablet. “I hope somebody around here can build a camp fire. We didn’t bring any charcoal or barbecue grilles, and the civilians will get pissy if they have to eat their dinner cold.”
Yuen handed the tablet back to the feline major and sent her outside.
“How quickly can we get a drone ready to do a flyover,” Yuen asked Black Bear. “God’s Eye couldn’t get us good photos for all of the smoke that was there. I’d like to see the extent of the damage to the city before we decide what to do next.”
“Yes Sir, General,” Black Bear said. “I’ll put a crew together immediately and have the transport airborne in an hour. I have one question, though.”
“Certainly,” Yuen replied.
“It seems that our benefactors either did not know, or did not tell us everything they were aware of regarding this planet,” Black Bear said. “Their estimates of the population and their capabilities are definitely off.”
Yuen’s face got stern, but he nodded in agreement with the assessment of the situation.
“Why,” Black Bear asked. “Should we trust any of the other intelligence they have given us?”
Yuen smiled to hide the fact he was getting irritated with Black Bear’s habit of questioning his leadership.
“Billy,” he asked. “You aren’t going to buck me on this, are you?”
“With all due respect,” Black Bear replied. “Either the intell we got was faulty, or our interpretation of some of it is one-hundred and eighty degrees bass-ackwards, General.”
“I lost six members of my best in and out team less than ninety minutes ago because somehow the natives knew they were coming. I know you saw the nuke they fired at us. The benefactors certainly didn’t tell us the enemy had that capability.”
“Billy,” Yuen protested.
“You can add to that, the fact the bogey was able to penetrate our anti-missile defenses with no problem,” Black Bear added, his voice growing louder. His anger at the situation was clearly getting the better of him.
“By the way,” he asked. “Has your contact resurfaced? It would be nice to know for certain if we’ve truly been abandoned or the benefactors are only ignoring us.”
“I don’t know what is going on with the benefactors,” Yuen shouted. “But they have not abandoned us, Billy. Communication blackouts have happened before and it always turned out to be a faulty hyper-channel link or something else mundane. You must learn not to read too much into this…”
“Nothing like this has ever happened,” Back Bear replied. “It’s been two months since you talked to your contact and the way the last message ended makes me think something suspicious happened on the other end. This stinks to high Heaven.”
“In my humble opinion, General, Sir, we have been orphaned and we need to watch out for ourselves, now. Our primary mission in the absence of any help or orders from our so called benefactors should be to figure out how to survive here.”
“I say it’s time to negotiate a truce and bargain for some territory to settle. We just gave the enemy the idea we either don’t have nukes or won’t use them. We’re on the defensive, now.”
Yuen flushed. He had been given strict orders to follow, but Black Bear was on to something. He had to agree that those who were directing him had not correctly evaluated the numbers or technological capabilities of the planet’s inhabitants.
“Okay, Billy,” Yuen said. “I will take it under advisement. I agree that we need to figure out what we are up against from here on in and develop some sort of contingency. What do you think today was all about?”
Black Bear was certain that Yuen was only humoring him, but took the opportunity to speak. He laid out his interpretation of the day’s events carefully.
“When we got to the city we found it wide open and my troops just walked right
in,” Black Bear said. “There was no indication of heightened security on the walls or inside the city. I’m not buying that the natives all of a sudden have forgotten we’re here and trying to exterminate them. The most logical explanation would be that my kids were invited in.”
“Invited,” Yuen asked. “You mean it was a trap?”
“Alpha reported he found a large number of hostiles waiting for him with weapons drawn just before all Hell broke loose,” Black Bear replied. “Those were his exact words.”
“I also think the natives tracked my transport in,” he added. “I don’t yet know how they did it, though. I believe they could have taken us out at any time, but chose not to.”
“You think they let you go,” Yuen asked in astonishment. “You’re reaching, Billy. It’s more likely they got a fix on you from the chatter before shelling you and they’re bad shots.” Yuen often took it for granted that Black Bear’s battle analyses were dead on, but he felt that this one bordered on nonsensical.
“Even if that’s how they did it, we’re in deep shit, General,” Black Bear said. “Our transmissions are encrypted, and randomly bounce all over the radio frequency spectrum. If the enemy is sophisticated enough to detect them, they also should have had the technology necessary to get a solid weapons lock on my shuttle. I believe they only wanted us out of there.”
“That’s obvious,” Yuen said, chuckling. “You caught them with their pants down. They were ready to launch that nuke and we took them by surprise.”
“No, Sir,” Black Bear responded. “My pilot said that Air Traffic Control saw it break the horizon and tracked its origin back to within a four hundred square kilometer patch of desert in the middle of the cities. We were nowhere near the launch site. For some reason, they didn’t want us to see what caused that fireball inside the city walls.”
“Am I missing something here,” Yuen asked. “If that was the case, why only chase you away and not bring you down? The shuttle would have been a valuable piece of machinery to study, even in small pieces.”
Chamberlain's Folly (The Terra Nova Chronicles) Page 14