Invardii Box Set 2

by Warwick Gibson

  A cheer rang through the South Am military headquarters, and Cordez felt a moment’s grim satisfaction. Still, he knew the odds for the Javelins were very low. The Reaper ships had adapted to that method of attack. He found his fears realized as hundreds of salvos were expended before the next Alliance success.

  The third victory came at a heavy price. The detonation of the enemy ship sent chunks of debris flying out from the blast, and one of them disabled a Javelin coming around for another pass. An arc of fire from the nearest Reaper ship destroyed the ship moments later.

  Cordez called the Hud Javelins away from the fight, and sent them to top up their armaments at one of the space stations floating above Mars. In the first encounter between the two forces the Alliance had made little impact. Cordez was beside himself with frustration – they had to do better than this!

  He reviewed the situation. The Invardii fleet would soon arrive at Earth, and the Hud Javelins needed to be re-armed and ready to engage as soon as possible. The Sumerians had finally entered the Solar System, but they were still some way from Earth, and the squadron at Prometheus had not yet been loaded with Carlos Paula’s little shield-busting prototypes.

  He rubbed his eyes. It was going to be a long, long day. He looked back at the screens as the armada approached Earth. There were so many of them! Then an aide brought him the welcome news that the Sumerian forces were now passing the orbit of Mars.

  CHAPTER 2

  ________________

  EarthGov had followed through with its early plan for huge military space stations as part of their defenses. Cordez had objected, knowing they would be nothing but cannon fodder for the Invardii ships. Now the space stations engaged the armada as it approached Earth orbit. Long trails of missiles sped away from them, rapidly closing the distance to the armada.

  Somewhere above the night side of Earth, hundreds of high-megaton warheads exploded among the Invardii fleet, making a strange fireworks display. It looked almost pretty on the long-range visuals. Cordez could imagine children clapping at the sight, in the care of grim-faced adults who had more of an understanding of what was going on.

  He marveled at the Invardii technology anew. How did their shields absorb such a prodigious outpouring of energy, while the ships escaped unharmed? Yet they had their weaknesses too, and often seemed in their arrogance to overlook simpler technology and more practical approaches that were just as effective. They had little understanding of strategy, preferring to let their superior firepower do the work for them.

  The brightness of the detonations diminished, and Cordez could look at the aftermath. One Reaper ship drifted away below the main body of the armada. It turned end over end, and would in time be drawn into Earth’s gravity field to be burned up in the atmosphere. It had probably been a malfunction in its shield, decided Cordez. Among so many ships one or two must strike operational problems from time to time. Still, it was one more enemy ship down.

  The Invardii flagships sent dozens of glittering projectiles arcing away toward the space stations in reply. They looked like handfuls of fire flung through the darkness of space, and Cordez remembered the fireballs Fedic had reported from Uruk that had downed his ship, and he knew the space stations were doomed.

  He wondered momentarily how Fedic was getting on. His man on the ground in Uruk had reported in on the sub-space link two days ago, but he had asked that a rescue party not be sent for him. The Invardii forces were now concentrated in the Solar System, and it would have been easy to rescue Fedic, but Cordez didn’t have a ship to spare.

  Fedic would find a way out of his predicament, as always, he mused. Then he noted on a side screen that the Sumerian ships were, at last, approaching Earth.

  He looked back to the main screen, and watched the space stations as they took hit after hit from the glittering fireballs. The stations gently crumpled as their hulls were chewed apart. Power plants inside began to brew up, and tear them apart in sudden explosions. It was as Cordez had predicted, that they would have little effect on the outcome of the battle for Earth.

  The stations were largely automated, so the loss of life was not great. Still, every death was always a death Cordez felt he might have been able to prevent, and one that he would berate himself for later.

  The Sumerian forces were too late to make a difference to the destruction of the space stations, but they were an impressive sight as they swept toward the armada. Each cooling tower was a hard, bright beacon outlining the ship in front of it.

  The Sumerian motherships were gargantuan, almost on a par with the Invardii flagships. The lower halves of each prodigious sphere were packed with cooling towers, lit up like skyscrapers at night. They were dinosaurs of course, still sporting cooling towers that the Javelins had put to more efficient use at the beginning of this war, but they were very dangerous dinosaurs.

  Each of the 21 motherships was defended by a wing of Sumerian warships, making a fleet of almost 200 ships, but it wasn’t all of the Sumerian force. Three wings of eight warships had left the main body to enter into orbit around Mars at Cordez’ request.

  Cordez contacted ParapSanni, leader of the Sumerian ParSanni Revolutionary Reform Party, on a one of the instantaneous sub-space connections, and thanked him once again for this assistance in Earth’s darkest hour. The Sumerians had been part of Cordez’ planning from the beginning, but it still warmed his heart to see they had arrived. ParapSanni asked if there were any last-minute instructions, but Cordez simply bade the Sumerians enter the conflict wherever they saw fit.

  The Invardii forces moved closer to Earth, and the last line of defense around the planet moved forward to meet them. The re-armed squadrons in Mars orbit made the jump to Earth at the same time. They were visible as pale streaks across the heavens as they hurried to join the defensive line.

  The Alliance force fell on the Invardii armada, orderly formations breaking apart in hundreds of individual engagements. The sky above Earth was full of energy beams, and with the crisp lines of super-dense slugs in flight. Then the eruption and dissipation of coronal arcs from the Reaper ships responded just as fiercely. The Javelin’s impenetrable shields, gifted them by the elusive Druanii, and the Reaper ship’s plasma-shielded hulls, denied either side any real success.

  But the armada had numbers on its side, and Cordez knew the Alliance could not win in a contest of strength. While the battle for control of the space above Earth raged backward and forward, some of the Reaper ships dropped into a lower orbit, and began to unload the sleek needle-nosed Invardii groundships.

  Cordez saw a group of Reaper ships move into position over South America. This was his home turf, the foundation of the South Am trading block, and he sent an authorization code to move the whole continent to battle stations. His people knew the battle plan, and he trusted them to make the Invardii pay dearly as the groundships descended through the atmosphere.

  Almost at once plasma cannon, buried deep in bunkers along the foothills of the Andes, responded by pumping out streaks of super-heated, primordial matter. The Sumerian solution to the problem of firing an energy weapon through a dense atmosphere on Uruk had been a sensible one. Prometheus had then taken the idea and adapted it. The cannons were firing at maximum range as the first groundships descended, but the Sumerians had taken out groundships over Uruk at the same range.

  First one, then several of the bunkers, reported kills. Cordez felt a moment’s grim satisfaction. Then a call came from Prometheus, and it was one he had been dreading.

  “Reaper ship activity is being reported near Mars,” said Finch. “A number of their ships are closing on Deimos, the second moon.”

  “Understood,” said Cordez. “Has Carlos finished loading his prototype missiles yet?”

  “Hold for a moment,” said Finch, and the connection went silent until he came back.

  “The missiles are loaded, and the techs are fitting firing systems to the Javelins as we speak,” he continued. “They should be space-bound in a few minute
s.”

  “Tell them Deimos is their first target point,” said Cordez, “and details will follow once they’re underway.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Finch, and the connection closed.

  Cordez thought back to the meeting at Prometheus when Carlos had first unveiled the missiles. He had, oddly, seemed to be ashamed of them.

  “I’m not sure how they work,” he had said fretfully. “I mean they do work, so I should be excited about the breakthrough, but using something you don’t fully understand can come back to bite you.”

  Finch had been next to Cordez at the table, and he had nodded understandingly. It was his job to look after his research people.

  The heads of department had been clustered around one end of the boardroom table, while Carlos showed them the results of the tests of his new prototype. A mock up of a Reaper ship hull glowed with flickering orange fire, and then the bright star of a rapidly approaching missile hit it squarely amidships.

  The hull stuttered, died, and then flared into life again as the plasma generators compensated for the failure. Finch made a chopping motion with his hand and Carlos turned the recording of the demonstration off.

  “The missiles will only give us a few moments when the Reaper ship shields are down,” said the little Mersa at Carlos’ side excitedly, “but we think the missiles will disable the shields around the hubs inside the ships as well. A coordinated attack should allow energy weapons, especially those of the Sumerian warships, to destroy Reaper ships.”

  Her name was Fragicelli, and she was Carlos’ Mersa counterpart at Prometheus. The diminutive race of Mersa had an innovative approach to theory, and all across Prometheus teams like this thought up extravagant new ideas, and then tried to make them a reality. It had been the combined approach Cordez had been looking for, and it had led to breakthroughs that advanced the technology behind the Alliance war ships in leaps and bounds.

  The Regent dragged his mind back to the present. If there were Reaper ships around Deimos, then the Invardii were getting ready to try a trick that had worked for them before. Reaper ships had destroyed the Sumerian industrial planet of Rokar by driving the second moon of the system’s fifth planet into it.

  Cordez tried to recall the basic facts about the small moon. Deimos was around 15 km long, and a lot less through its width. It would be easy enough to deflect the moon out of its orbit around Mars and send it plunging toward Earth. The question was whether it was big enough to destroy a whole planet.

  Maybe it was, if the Reaper ships added a little extra velocity to it. The enemy ships around Deimos would be setting up devices that would deflect the moon into Earth right now, and Cordez couldn’t allow that.

  He wondered why the Invardii would want to destroy Earth when they could destroy the planet’s defenses with their military superiority, and decided it was a back-up plan. If the armada didn’t remove the threat of Earth, firing the moon into the planet would.

  CHAPTER 3

  ________________

  Cordez would have to wait until the Javelins currently at Prometheus arrived at Mars, before he could do anything about the Invardii plans for the small second moon of the planet. In the meantime he turned his attention to the desperate struggle that was being played out across the skies above Earth.

  The Sumerian motherships had now attacked the Invardii ships from the other side of the armada to the Earth defense forces, though most of the extensive armada still lay untouched between the two.

  The giant motherships were having some success against the Reaper ships. A dozen lances of the deepest blue struck out and encircled a dozen enemy ships in a death grip. The shields around the Reaper ships changed to an intense white as their systems overloaded, and then they were no more than spreading puffs of ionized gases. The motherships moved on to new targets, and Cordez silently applauded their efforts.

  The Invardii flagships moved up and out of the armada once they saw this, traveling over the heads of their own ranks. They were sending a distinct challenge to the Sumerian motherships. Cordez saw that the enemy flagships were outnumbered two to one, and hope stirred in him that this might be a turning point in the battle for Earth.

  He wondered what the Earth forces could do to help, and sent a number of squadrons of Hud Javelins to strike at the Invardii flagships while they were on course to intercept the motherships.

  The longer the Javelins could keep the flagships busy, the more time would be available for the motherships to get in among the armada and destroy enemy ships. As Cordez watched, the motherships latched on to a dozen more of the Reaper ships, and moments later the ships puffed out of existence.

  The Javelins struck the giant flagships together, an entire squadron to each one, and the flagship shields turned a pale yellow as they burned away the super-dense slugs in 30 and 40 spreading red stains at a time. The salvos following close behind didn’t find a way through the diminished flagship shields, and moments later a Javelin burst apart as a thick beam of orange fire from a flagship lashed out at it.

  Another pass by a concentration of Javelin squadrons on the lead flagship had no effect, and thick orange beams now snaked out from the flagships in every direction. Even the extraordinary reflexes of the Hud pilots were hard pressed to stay out of their clutches.

  Cordez pulled the Javelins off the attack before more of them succumbed to the overwhelming flagship firepower. Then, as the battle raged across the night sky above Earth, the enemy flagships and the Sumerian motherships met on the edge of the constantly shifting turmoil.

  It was a meeting of giants, and Cordez could hardly bear to watch. The motherships were the best hope of the Alliance, and it was nerve-wracking to have so much riding on the encounter unfolding far above him. Within minutes a pattern of deep blue lances and coruscating orange fire had lit up the sky on the edge of the greater melee.

  Cordez compared it in his mind to a child drawing lines connecting points on a circle. There was at first a simple hexagon, and then an octagon, and finally a rose in blue and orange. The tension as the wait dragged on was unbearable.

  The flagships and motherships held their ground, beams of the most intense raw energy growing stronger as every last efficiency was applied to their generation systems, and every spare source of power was fed into each ship’s weapons grid.

  Then an orange line in the complex diagram blinked out, and a flagship turned over and drifted out of the fight. Moments later it was lit from within by a series of growing explosions.

  Cordez exulted. The motherships were holding their ground, and the improvements the Sumerians had made since the first examples of the type were making a difference. Then two of the blue lines blinked out, and two of the giant Sumerian craft tore apart, knocked out of the circle.

  Then a series of explosions ripped across the sea of interlocked lines, and for a while nothing could be seen behind a screen of flaring discharges and burning ships.

  When the situation was clear again, Cordez saw how few of the giant ships on either side remained. But the balance lay in favor of the Invardii flagships. He opened the sub-space connection to ParapSanni again, and they spoke briefly.

  When they had finished, the remaining motherships began to withdraw from the conflict. There were more flagships than motherships now, and the risk was too great. Cordez assured ParapSanni the giant ships had done enough in the defense of Earth, and they should be kept for another day.

  The unequal numbers of Javelins and much more numerous Reaper ships battled on, with both sides rarely able to penetrate the shields of the other. The Hud squadrons occasionally weakened an enemy ship enough to destroy it, but they were kept away from the thick of the conflict by the flagships. The dangerous beams of orange fire were too much for the Javelins. The battle continued to rage back and forth as ones and twos were whittled away from the numbers on either side.

  In the meantime the Hud squadron that had been armed with the new shield-busting missiles was easing away from Prometheus, and
moving quickly towards Deimos. Battrod had command of the lead ship, and Bosun had talked his way onto the bridge in his position as instructor of the Hud pilots. He was looking forward to being part of the action.

  The Javelins came in over the curve of Mars and spotted Deimos. A handful of Reaper ships fussed busily about one end of it, and Battrod reviewed images of Deimos that had been taken over the last hour. The Reaper ships had been busy.

  “What is that thing?” said Bosun tersely, looking at a ring of towers that were connected by beams at one end of the small, misshapen moon.

  “The Mars miners say it’s some sort of fusion field device, as best they can tell,” said Battrod. “The towers are part power plant and part nuclear driver. They think they’re meant to eat the rock they are standing on and spit it out of the towers, as a way of driving the moon forward.”

  “Won’t it use up too much of the mass of the moon if it does that?” said Bosun, thinking of the mass that would need to be left if the moon were to have a chance of destroying Earth.

  “Not necessarily,” said Battrod. “The miners calculate less than five percent of the moon’s mass would be needed to make the trip to Earth in ten days. The Sun’s gravitational pull will help.”

  “Hells teeth, they can take as long as they like to send it on its way if they can get control of the skies over Earth,” said Bosun. Then he noticed something different about the enemy ships working on the towers.

  “Those ships look modified,” he said. “Don’t you think they look different to the normal Reaper ships?”

  “Yes, they are,” said Battrod. “Some sort of engineering ships according to the Mars miners. Nonetheless, they’re still Reaper ships, with the full Invardii plasma shields and arc weaponry.”

  Engineering ships or not, Battrod had seen enough. He coordinated his strike plans with the Sumerian warships, and a number of the Javelins prepared Carlos’ missiles for launch.