by Terry Mixon
Jess raise an eyebrow. “Do you think they’re going to attack at night? Wouldn’t they have to know we were here first?”
“The Asharim have advanced technology. Just look at the air cars. Who’s to say that they don’t have some kind of communications devices with them? They may already know that we took out their forces back at the hill and are behind them. That would make it perfect for them to come roaring back and attack us at night. Makes a lot of sense for them, if they can manage it.”
“But the drones will spot them, right?”
The sniper nodded. “Commander Krueger said that they could see the aliens just fine in infrared when they assaulted the Volunteer camp. They didn’t quite look like humans, but they weren’t invisible. Infrared will work through the trees, though I’d bet these big growths are going to give them a little trouble. We should have plenty of warning if we have infiltrators.”
Jess was certain that was meant to sound reassuring, but she still lay awake worrying about an attack for almost an hour before she finally nodded off. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. She might as well be rested if trouble came knocking.
Brenda woke abruptly but realized after a moment that it was only Colonel Montalvo touching her on the shoulder. She sat up on the cot and blinked at him, trying to clear her mind.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We’re about to have visitors,” he said grimly. “The drones we’ve got watching the alien city have picked up a pair of slow-moving air cars headed our way. I wanted to get your input on how you wanted to respond to their intrusion if they come too close.
“Under other circumstances, they’d already be in range of our anti-aircraft weapons, but we weren’t able to bring in the bigger stuff. They’ll be in range of the smaller weapons before much longer, and the drones can engage them if they keep moving this slowly.”
Brenda scrubbed her hands across her face before standing up. She’d laid down on the cot fully clothed, only removing her shoes. It only took a few seconds to get those on, and she was headed out of the crowded tent and into the night air.
“Only two air cars? That seems like a scouting mission to me. Do we know if they have any troops on the ground?”
The man shook his head. “Not that the drones are picking up. You’re probably right that these two are just scouting us, but considering the fact that the aliens have access to high-tech weaponry, the possibility exists that they have something capable of clearing this hill on board one or both of those air cars. Can you shed any light on that possibility?”
“My knowledge of the Asharim is a thousand years old and passed down from generation to generation,” she said as they walked toward where the drone operators were set up in the large tent. “A lot of the specifics have been lost over the years. I’m not going to rule anything out.”
The inside of the tent was well lit. She hadn’t noticed anything from the outside, so the canvas walls must’ve been well sealed to keep even a hint of light from leaking out.
Colonel Montalvo stepped over to one specific table, and she followed him, staring over the shoulders of the operators at the images they were seeing. In infrared, the air cars were cool. Whatever kept them aloft didn’t generate sufficient heat to mark them strongly at all. Frankly, the aliens inside the air cars were brighter on those frequencies.
From what she’d heard before, the air cars used a pilot and copilot, and these were no different. Rather than being filled with troops, each air car had only another pair of beings in the open-topped rear of the vehicle. Based on their heat signatures, all four beings were probably Asharim. Their slaves gave off a slightly different appearance in infrared.
“Can we get any greater detail of what they’re messing with in the back of the vehicles?” she asked.
One of the operators, a young woman with bright red hair in a military uniform, turned to look at her. “No ma’am. Whatever they’ve got back there isn’t putting off heat. We’re moving some drones into place that have ultraviolet capability.
“Honestly, I’m shocked that the drones they brought in didn’t have both already. I’m guessing they were old or just whatever the New Zealanders had on hand.”
Colonel Montalvo cleared his throat. “I believe those were drones from the Navy destroyer the New Zealanders captured. It’s probably not a good idea to assume that we always have the best technology at hand, Corporal.”
The woman’s face reddened, and she nodded. “Sorry about that, sir. In any case, we have a drone with ultraviolet capability that should be in position in a minute. If we decide that these vehicles are threats, we can use the onboard weaponry to take them out.”
“Is there any way that we can capture one of these vehicles?” Brenda asked. “We’ve got no air transport, and one of these would be damned helpful.”
The colonel turned to face her, raising an eyebrow. “Do you know how to fly one?”
Even though Brenda wasn’t completely certain of the answer, she nodded. “I do. Or at least I should be able to figure out enough to get it onto the ground. If they’ve got a weapon on board that’s capable of clearing this entire hill, I’d like to take a look at it as well.
“We were lucky to spot them on the way in. What if next time they just send a couple of people on the ground to open fire on us?”
“I can’t argue the logic of that,” he admitted, “but even if we can take out the people on one of these air cars, it’s probably just going to crash. That’s what vehicles without people at the controls do.”
She smiled. “I think I have an idea about that if they hang around.”
Just as she was about to tell them about her idea, one of the drone operators turned his head and looked at them. “We have a change in status. It looks like they’re pulling back toward the city.”
Brenda watched the display as the two air cars turned away and move back toward the city. She was somewhat disappointed that she wasn’t going to get a chance to carry out her crazy plan, but maybe that was for the best.
“What do you think that was all about?” Colonel Montalvo asked. “Was it a scouting mission? It certainly didn’t look like they were ready to attack.”
Brenda shrugged. “It’s as good an excuse for them to be doing what they did as anything, I suppose. We’ll just have to keep a close eye on what happens next. If they come back, we’ll deal with them.”
“What was your plan?” he asked as they walked away from the drone tent.
“I think I’ll keep that to myself,” she said with a grin. “If I told you ahead of time, you might just forbid me from doing it.”
The Army officer sighed. “The sad thing is that I don’t know whether you’re kidding me or not. We’ll just have to hope that they don’t come back looking for trouble.”
“They’ll be back,” she said with a dark chuckle. “I think we can take that to the bank.”
39
Jess woke far too early the next morning, stiff from sleeping on the cot. To her annoyance, Sandra was already up and looked as fresh as a daisy.
“How do you manage to sleep on that cot without being twisted up like a pretzel?” Jess asked, trying not to sound petulant and failing.
“Practice,” Sandra said with a grin. “If you do this long enough, you’ll get used to sleeping on anything.”
Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs and coffee, with something that was supposed to pass for bacon but failed miserably. Jess just shrugged, forced it down, and went out to preflight her ultralight.
By the time she got into the air, it was just after dawn. She and Sandra flew throughout the day, trying to catch up with the Asharim forces. To her irritation, they failed.
They found more burned homesteads but no sign of the actual enemy. Those aliens could travel a lot faster than humans could under the same conditions, it seemed.
That changed as they went into the third day. The signs of the enemy started growing stronger, and they could see what looked like
active fires up in the distance.
Based on the maps that they’d been given, they weren’t so far away from the largest of the Volunteer settlements. If they had a few more hours to spend traveling, she was pretty sure that they’d make it.
“Liberty Air Seventeen,” a voice said over the radio in her ear. “I want you to press ahead and see if you can get any visuals of the enemy.”
“Copy that,” she responded.
She opened the throttle on the ultralight, and it shot forward. Well, shot forward as well as any ultralight could possibly manage. These craft weren’t exactly designed for speed but for fuel efficiency and fun.
It took her about half an hour to raise her altitude and go far enough to start seeing things that were actually interesting enough to report. There were definitely signs of the alien force down below, because the destruction was much more recent. She could see buildings actually on fire, which indicated that whoever had set the fires had done so recently.
She also started seeing groupings of the Peret moving about below. The enemy army was definitely down there.
“I see something in the distance,” Sandra said. “Can you take us up a little higher?”
“You got it,” Jess said as she pulled back on the stick.
With a little bit more altitude, it was obvious that Sandra was right. She could see something that looked like a city on the horizon. That was almost certainly the Volunteer settlement they’d been heading for.
It looked like it was under siege. There appeared to be a vast army spread out on the plain around it. The aliens didn’t seem to be attacking but appeared more focused on digging in. They were setting up fortifications of their own.
“Why don’t they just attack?” Jess asked. “They’ve got so many soldiers. They could just swamp the walls and take them out.”
“I’m not sure,” the sniper answered, sweeping her binoculars over the scene that was unfolding in front of them. “It may be that there are a lot more troops behind those walls than we expected.
“Or they may have trained the civilians to protect the city. If that’s the case, the aliens would run into a wall of lead as they approached. It makes sense to at least take a look at the lay of the land before they rush in.”
“We can’t count on them holding off,” Jess said grimly. “As soon as they know we’re here, they might attack. If they get inside the walls, they could kill everyone in there. How many people do you think that city could hold?”
“It’s big. Tens of thousands, I think.”
Jess increased their altitude and turned back toward Harry’s forces. She activated the radio and called back to the person in charge of the scouts. “This is Liberty Air Seventeen. We have visual on the Asharim forces. They look like they’re setting up for a siege on the Volunteer settlement. What are your orders?”
“Circle around the city at a distance,” the commander said. “Try to get a decent count of the attacking forces. I’m sending other scouts forward to assist in documenting what you’re seeing. I’d imagine that we should be in position to strike them from behind in a couple of hours.
“Make certain that you stay high enough not to be a target. They can see you now, I’m sure, but don’t let them shoot you.”
“Copy that.” Jess said, tweaking her flight path to take her just a little bit further away from where the enemy was settling in. She could already see some of the troops below pointing toward the ultralight. Now that they knew she was there, it wouldn’t be long before they decided to do something about it.
With black powder weapons, she wasn’t precisely sure what they could do about her, but she really didn’t want to find out the hard way.
“We’re supposed to get a good count of the enemy forces and how they’re laid out,” Jess said to Sandra. “I assume you’ve got better skills than I do in that arena.”
“No doubt,” Sandra said with a chuckle. “Go ahead and circle while I make some notes. Just based on what I can see from here, it looks like they’ve got a lot more troops than Harry has. We’ll know more once we’ve made a complete circle.
“What I can say for sure is that this is going to be an ugly fight. Even with superior weapons, a lot of people are going to die.”
Jess took a good look at where the sun was. “By the time we’re in position, it’s going to be close to dark. Do you think Harry will attack at night?”
“Almost certainly, though he might wait until a few hours before dawn. We have night vision and they don’t.”
“Actually, we don’t know that. They’re aliens. Their normal visual processes might allow for them to see a little bit into the infrared or ultraviolet. We don’t really know.”
“Well crap,” Sandra said with a sigh. “I hadn’t considered that. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. We’ll just have to do the best that we can.”
With that, Jess continued her circle around the Volunteer settlement. There were a lot of men and women on the walls facing off with the aliens. If the Asharim forces attempted to attack these people, they were going to pay a heavy price.
Perhaps not a heavy enough one to stop them, but they’d certainly bleed. She hoped Harry could work together with the Volunteers to pinch the aliens between their forces and the walls and that that would be enough to turn the tide, but the only way to find out what was going to happen was to wait for events to unfold.
With the use of the ultralights and scouts moving through the forest, Harry was eventually able to get into position to take a look at the city for himself. It wasn’t that his own eyes were better at seeing the layout of the aliens than the drones traveling overhead or the reports of the ultralight pilots, but he needed to see things for himself.
The army that the Asharim had dispatched to destroy the Volunteer settlements was significant. By their best estimate, there were probably six times as many troops as he’d brought with him. Their advanced weapons would more than even the odds in individual fights, but there were a lot of enemies out there willing to shoot them up if they had a chance. It was his job to make certain that they didn’t get that chance.
Taking a good look at the settlement through his binoculars, he guessed that there were probably twenty thousand people living inside what had to be a walled city very similar to what one would see in medieval times.
True, it was built in the style of cities from the Revolutionary War period, with some modifications that he wasn’t sure he understood, but even with the precautions that they were taking, he didn’t think the walls could hold for very long against this force.
It was an hour before dark, and he couldn’t position his forces in time to make a difference before the sunset. That might actually be a point in his favor. He had night vision and could utilize the dark as a shield against their return fire.
Of course, that assumed that the enemy couldn’t see in the dark either. Something that wasn’t known at this time.
“What do you think, Rex?” he asked his scout commander.
The man lay beside him and was looking through his binoculars toward the city. “It’s going to be a bear. Even with our superior weapons, they can still swamp us if they want to.
“It would be something like the Zulu wars that the British had to fight. We might have better weapons, but they’ve got numeric superiority and, based on the last battle, they’re not afraid to charge into the face of overpowering firepower. We’re going to have to be very careful in how we choose to fight.”
That pretty much matched up with what Harry had been thinking. “So, do we attack at night, or do we wait until morning and force our way in towards the city and push them back?”
“Why can’t we have both? We can attack early in the morning and shoot them up really good using our night vision, and then we can attack at dawn with more force. With the way that they’ve surrounded the city, we’re not going to be able to take them off guard. They already know about our ultralights, so they have to know we’re here. One good thing i
s that we haven’t seen any Asharim. That may mean that we’re not dealing with advanced weaponry. That would be nice.”
Harry considered that for a long moment. A two-staged attack like that would carry some risks. If things went badly during the first part of the attack, the enemy could be in position to counterstrike with devastating effectiveness as soon as it was light out.
But the benefits of doing both couldn’t be ignored. If they could knock the enemy off balance during the hours just before dawn, it was entirely possible that they could push them away from the city walls when they attacked in force.
He couldn’t discount the possibility that they’d have their scouts out during the dark hours looking for exactly what he was planning on doing. If they discovered him while he was positioning troops, they could hurt his people badly.
“We’ll do it,” he decided at last. “Pull most of the ultralights back to get the pilots rested. We’re going to want to have a clear spot to launch them from safely behind us when we’re ready to attack. We need to have human eyes watching what’s going on as well as the drones. If anything goes wrong, it’s going to go really wrong.”
He hoped that he was being overly cautious, but he knew just how dangerous this fight was going to be. They’d have one chance to smash this army before it fractured if things went well. If they went poorly, it would be his people retreating under heavy fire and hot pursuit. That was a possibility that he prayed never came to pass, but only the gods of battle knew for sure.
40
Brenda again woke in darkness, but this time she knew it was Colonel Montalvo waking her before she reacted. She sat up, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and looked up at him. “What’s happening?”
“Our friends are back. The same two air cars, or at least they look the same through the drone feeds. They’re at about the same place they were last time, but it looks like they’re moving forward with a little bit more purpose this time. I think they may actually intend to do more than scouting tonight.”