Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem

by Christopher Nuttall

  He smiled before Jones could explode. “We do have one possibility,” he admitted, slowly. “We’ve been studying the telemetry from the big battles and it seems that the reason the alien craft are being brought down is because their drive fields are being disrupted…”

  “As you told me,” Jones snarled.

  “And that the impact from the cannon fire is apparently insufficient to bring down the craft,” Frandsen continued, getting a small measure of revenge. “There are other ways to introduce vast amounts of energy into such a field. We might even be able to get one to implode with really dramatic results.”

  “Get me something, get me anything,” Jones snapped. “Get us something we can use before the entire country comes apart!”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Alien Base, Antarctica

  Day 40

  Sergeant Edward Tanaka had been a Marine on active duty for four years before he’d been transferred into the United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance unit, better known to the public as Force Recon. It had been an interesting career covering far too many countries that were too hot and dry for his taste, but one of the most interesting postings had been Antarctica. He’d spent two weeks at one of the research bases drilling for operations in the Antarctic after reports that terrorists intended to occupy one of the Antarctic Research Bases. The threat had never actually materialised and the Marines had been pulled out, yet it had clearly served as good experience. Edward would be among the first American soldiers to assault an alien base.

  The Antarctic was a land of contradictions. The public thought of it as a massive icy continent, rather like the Arctic. There were places where that was all it was, but also places where there was little ice, places where later bases could be built. There were vast deposits of coal somewhere within Antarctica and Edward had been briefed that, one day, countries might start raping the Antarctic for resources they desperately needed. It would devastate the area and perhaps lead to the extermination of countless birds and sea mammals that inhabited the continent. The Antarctic wasn't to everyone’s taste, yet it had a stunning natural beauty and Edward had already seriously considered trying to obtain a permanent posting to one of the research stations. A Force Recon Marine was a master of many skills and some of them would definitely be useful in the Antarctic.

  And it was also a very dangerous place. There were areas where snowstorms blew up out of nowhere, presenting a very grave hazard to life and limb. There were the famed Areas of Inaccessibility where aircraft ran into massive distortion and had to turn back, or crash. Dozens of aircraft had been lost over Antarctica and, it was becoming increasingly clear, some of those aircraft might have been helped to crash by the aliens. No one knew how long they’d been hidden away in the last great unexplored wilderness, yet Edward was becoming sure that it had been for a very long time. The Antarctic had the highest number of UFO sightings in the world, even though there were natural conditions that suggested that many of the sightings were caused by ball lightning or other more mundane causes. The presence of the alien base, however, was no joke.

  He peered down from the hide towards what looked like a sheer cliff face. It would have been daunting to even an experienced climber, even men who’d been through the dreaded training exercises required for Special Forces. It also wasn't real. They’d seen hundreds of alien craft flying out of the sky right towards the cliff face and passing right through, somehow either moving out of phase with the rock or, more likely, passing through a hologram. It was a neat way to camouflage the base and the Marines had been impressed. Hell, they wished that they could do that. The Marine Corps had specialists in camouflage and blending in with enemy populations – Edward himself had once walked through a terrorist camp without being noticed or challenged, before calling in the air strike that had obliterated every last terrorist in the camp – but mobile holograms remained in the realm of science-fiction, until now. The aliens had somehow cracked another technological mystery.

  As they watched, another flight of alien craft floated out of the sky, flashing down towards the cliff and stopping just before they crashed into it, then drifting slowly forward and passing through the hologram. Edward had wondered why the aliens had built the base like that until realising that it helped to conceal the base if the aliens flew right into a cliff face, rather than down into a dark pit. It suggested that the aliens didn’t have a large hangar, but merely a small landing pad, although the only way to find out for sure was to pass through the hologram themselves. They’d been given strict orders to remain out of sight and merely observe, no more. The attack wouldn’t begin until the entire force was in position.

  “Send the signal,” he muttered. They’d chosen not to bring their standard equipment to the base, knowing that the aliens would pick up the radio transmissions and deduce their presence. Instead, they’d brought a tiny laser communicator that could reach a British satellite high overhead, which would relay the transmission to their superiors. In theory, the laser beams were impossible to detect or intercept, but they’d been warned to keep their transmissions as brief as possible. No one knew for sure just how secure the entire system was. “How long do we have to wait now?”

  A moment later, the reply flickered back down the laser. “Thirty minutes before the main body arrives here,” his spotter said. They’d been a sniper team in the Middle East, but watching the alien base was far more fascinating. It was far too clear that the alien base was supporting the attacks on their homeland and both men had been tempted to open fire, even against orders. Their discipline had held, but both of them hoped and prayed that it wouldn’t be long before the attack began. The Marine Corps had its own aircraft and they were engaged against the alien craft – and many had been lost. Both men wanted some payback. “And then we move.”

  “Thank Christ,” Edward said. The alien craft were taking off again, returning to the fight. At their speeds, they would be over America within minutes. “Keep an eye on that hatch and see if you can find any other way into the base.”

  ***

  Nicolas cursed again under his breath as the Arctic Cat floundered, before catching itself and carrying on towards their destination. It was becoming increasingly clear that their estimates for how long it would take to get the entire force in position had been rather…optimistic. It wouldn’t have taken so long in the Middle East, or even in the most sadistic training area in the United States, but Antarctica was something else again. The sudden sharp changes in the weather, combined with the need to spread the force out to make it look as if they weren’t a single unit, were making their lives increasingly difficult. If the aliens hadn’t seen them coming, they had to be blind. The only reassuring point was that a thousand angry UFOs hadn’t already swarmed the convoy, or destroyed their base camp. Perhaps the aliens had other things to worry about.

  He felt cold and it was nothing to do with the weather. They’d trained endlessly in the expectation of taking war to someone else’s country, despite an increasing number of novels predicting political or ethnic strife within the United States itself. None of them had seriously expected to end up fighting a war in their own backyard, even though they had engaged terrorists on American soil, and many of them wanted to get back home and get stuck into an enemy who dared attack their families and country. Nicolas himself remembered his daughter and shivered at the thought of her being caught up in an alien attack, even though she lived well away from any logical target. The tactical experts all agreed that once the air defences had been softened up, a ground invasion would be the next alien move…and his daughter might be killed in the process. Her step-father wasn’t a military man. He might not be able to protect her as society came apart. Nicolas pushed the thought of his little girl out of his mind as they finally stopped at the planned location and stumbled out into the cold.

  The United States GPS system had been destroyed along with its satellites, but the aliens had left both the European and Russian systems alone. Nicolas rememb
ered complaining bitterly that both systems were used by enemies of the United States – along with plenty of countries that didn’t want to be dependent on the United States for something of vital military importance – but now he was relieved that the capability existed. Whatever the aliens thought they were doing by sparing those satellites, it allowed the attack force to assemble without getting badly lost. It would have been much harder to navigate without the satellites.

  “Check weapons,” he ordered. Some of the early missions in sub-zero temperatures had ended badly when weapons had failed. The old hands had had plenty of horror stories to tell the new recruits, ending with dire warnings to test everything in conditions more extreme than they expected to face. It would have been embarrassing to have made to the alien base, only to discover that none of their weapons worked. “Move out.”

  The attack force had practiced marching in Antarctic conditions back at the research station, but now it was deadly serious. They spread out, wearing camouflage gear that would have made them hard to see against the snow and ice, while dampening their heat signature in case the aliens had scattered a few hundred tiny sensors around their base. If Nicolas had been running the base, he would have had patrols constantly checking and rechecking all of the approaches, but that would have risked exposing the base’s existence. The Force Recon team had stated that they’d found no trace of alien patrols, yet that could change at any moment. Their orders were simple. Any alien patrols they encountered would not be given a chance to sound the alarm. They’d done it before, against terrorists and several Middle East countries, but this was different. No one knew what an alien ground combatant force might look like.

  His gaze fell on the four men at the rear. The Wrecking Crew was just a legend to most of the military world, even the majority of the American Special Forces. They were so classified that their names were stricken completely from the records and former members tended to be treated as posers, simply for lacking a record. Nicolas himself had a record, even if most of it was highly classified, and he could have proven that he was a SEAL. The reason for the secrecy was terrifying. Two of the Wrecking Crewmen were carrying a single backpack nuke each. Just one of them would be enough to destroy the alien base.

  “There,” Sergeant Rawlings muttered. Nicolas followed his gaze towards a sheer cliff face, only a kilometre away from the team. Everyone froze as an alien fighter flew overhead and came down into the cliff face. Nicolas winced, expecting a massive explosion, but instead the craft passed through the cliff and vanished. The Force Recon Marines had reported that the base was concealed by a hologram, but being told about it and seeing it in person were two very different things.

  The Marine position had been carefully hidden. Nicolas didn’t see it until he was right on top of it. “No change, sir,” Sergeant Tanaka said. “They’re just landing hundreds of fighters and then launching them again. They seem to come in groups of five, at twenty minute intervals, and then vanish before the next group arrives.”

  “We attack just after the next group arrives,” Nicolas muttered. There was no disagreement. Civilians found it odd, but if anyone who’d made it through the training and into the Special Forces disagreed with the CO, he would have said so. He might even have been right. “Pass it on to the men. I want the Ravens in the rear scooping up everything they can, including prisoners if we can take them.”

  “It might be hard getting them back to the subs, sir,” Sergeant Tanaka pointed out. “We don’t have stuff for them with us.”

  “They can take their chances,” Nicolas said harshly. He didn’t want to take prisoners at all, if the truth were to be told, but a single enemy captive would be worth his weight in gold. It might allow them to finally figure out just what the aliens were really doing on Earth. “How long do we have until the next flight?”

  “Seven minutes,” Tanaka said. “They rarely seem to be early or late.”

  “Always a first time,” Nicolas said. He looked over at Rawlings and the other Sergeants. The plan would include a large degree of improvising, but that was fine with him. SEALS were good at improvising, even against an enemy with unknown capabilities. “Get a Stinger fire team up ready to engage any other alien craft that arrive, while the rest of us go right through the hologram. Bring up a Javelin team just in case that hologram is solid half the time, but warn them not to fire unless I command it specifically.”

  The next five minutes passed in a whirlwind of activity as the force slipped closer to the alien base. Up close, there was no sign that the hologram was anything other than a cliff face, although Nicolas warned everyone not to touch it. The aliens might not have scattered any sensors around, odd as that was, but they’d definitely have rigged the base’s entrance to sound the alarm. He pressed himself down to the ground as the first alien craft appeared and raced down towards the hologram, only stopping bare inches from the cliff face. The sheer power the aliens were showing, far beyond any human Vertical Take-off or Landing – VTOL - aircraft, was staggering. Was there any hope for victory against such a force?

  Up close, the alien fighter looked rather like a larger version of an F-117. It was surrounded by a faint shimmer in the air – there was no sign of any of the thrusters so beloved by science-fiction artists – and seemed to be vibrating slightly. He stared at it and saw no trace of a cockpit, no alien faces peering back at him. The aliens, he deduced, probably flew their aircraft completely through their electronics…or maybe the interior allowed the pilot to look out. The craft that had picked up the President had allowed him to see the Earth from space before he reached the mothership.

  The other four alien craft proceeded through the cliff face – he was pleased to see that one of them had a nasty dark scar along its fuselage – and he held up his hand, counting down the seconds. The Sergeant had refused to let him lead the assault in person, no matter how much he wanted to go first, and he’d reluctantly given the position to a group of hard-entry specialists from Delta Force. They’d pointed out that throwing grenades or explosive charges into the unknown might not have been a bright idea. If the alien craft were anything like human fighters, they might explode violently, blowing up the base and the assault team.

  “Go,” he mouthed.

  The Delta Force men pushed up against the cliff face and went right through it. A moment later, shooting broke out and the illusion vanished, revealing a massive hangar that had been dug right into the mountain. He almost stopped dead as he saw the live aliens swinging around to stare at the humans invading their base, moving so…oddly that it was clear they weren't human. It was like looking at a spider or a crab. The sense of being in the presence of something totally alien almost rooted him to the ground. Only his training kept him moving into the base.

  A flash of green light raced over his head, revealing that the aliens had recovered from their surprise. The smaller aliens were running for cover – a handful lay dead or dying on the ground – but the larger aliens were returning fire with short precise bursts. Nicolas levelled his rifle at one of them and fired three times, twice into the chest and once into the head. The alien staggered backwards and collapsed. Others fell back with blinding speed, leapfrogging from cover to cover, trying to stall the human force. One of their fighters started to rise up in the air and an antitank team put a missile into it, sending it crashing to the ground. Nicolas barely had a moment to realise that they’d had a very lucky escape before he was urging the team onwards, driving the aliens out of their hangar deck. If the craft had exploded, the entire team would have been killed.

  “Secure the deck,” he snapped. The aliens had been driven back to the lower levels, but they’d be regrouping and preparing a counterattack. He glanced from body to body and saw at least four different types of alien lying dead. The big ones – the warriors, he was coming to think of them – had fought and died hard. Three of the Delta Force soldiers had been killed, despite the advantage of surprise.

  The elevator in the deck might have passed unnot
iced, apart from a sharp-eyed Marine who realised that it was there. The demolition experts rapidly fitted it out with explosions and detonated them, sending the elevator plunging down towards the second level. There were a handful of smaller aliens hiding there who ran from the humans, although Nicolas couldn’t tell if they were cowards or merely unarmed. Two were shot and the remainder managed to escape down a long passageway. The confusion would probably help the attackers.

  “Group Two, remain on the deck and secure our line of retreat,” he ordered. The alien base was larger than he had realised. It was quite possible that the aliens would be able to drive them back out and if that happened; they’d have to nuke the base and retreat on foot to the submarines. “Group One, down the passageway!”

  There was no sign of any resistance as they inched their way down a dark corridor. NVGs revealed that there were odd heat patterns in the walls, suggesting that they’d knocked out a lighting system. The absence of resistance puzzled him. If he’d controlled the base, he’d have used his knowledge of the base against the intruders, although that might be exactly what the aliens were doing. They could be moving forces into position to flank him at any moment.

  They broke into a massive chamber filled with transparent columns, filled with a murky liquid. A handful of alien warriors came at them from the shadows and killed one of the team before they were driven back to take cover. The columns seemed to be bullet proof, allowing the soldiers to bounce bullets off them and into the alien positions. The warriors wore armour that seemed to provide a considerable degree of protection, yet it wasn't enough. The soldiers broke through and kept moving.