The rifles were essentially miniature versions of the ion cannons in the defense satellites. While slightly less powerful, they carried more than enough of a punch to destroy tanks and planes, much less individual troops. The weapons could pull in the hydrogen atoms they needed from the surrounding atmosphere, and their electrical charge was generated by a small thermoelectric generator. It was basically a miniature nuclear reactor with equipment that converted the heat given off by the pellet of plutonium-238 directly into electricity. Add an electron to the vacuumed hydrogen atoms, apply negatively charged electricity to the negatively charged hydrogen ions, and the ions shot out the barrel at nearly the speed of light. The soldiers grasped the science only at the most basic level, but had a deep appreciation for any weapon that could function for a decade without needing to be loaded or cleaned. It was also deadly as hell.
Even so, Ben itched for a good, sharp knife he could strap to his thigh.
Old habits die hard, man, Eddie thought. Ben grunted.
The solar system had been quiet since the drone assault. No signals yet. It was a lot noisier down on Earth. Russia had erupted in civil war. A rebel force was coalescing in the south of the country, inching north toward Moscow. General Gretchenko already had his hands full with the humanitarian disaster around what was left of Saint Petersburg. Russia’s nukes were still secure—for now, anyway. No one was sure what the rebels wanted. Its leadership was murky and most of the world’s surveillance capabilities were now directed away from the planet. There was just too much to watch.
You know, the funny part is that we’re now the perfect spies to get into the Russian rebel camp, Nick thought. We’re literally invisible. If we didn’t have to fight off a damn alien invasion, we could sneak into any organization or building in the world.
Yeah, but if we didn’t have to fight a damn alien invasion, Russia wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place, Ben replied.
The three men shouldered their weapons as the retrieving APC rumbled into view, and they headed back to the base.
Even outside of Russia, public opinion was turning bitter. The Chinese blackout around the attack in Shanghai was complete. Their leadership had gone into a protective crouch, cutting off almost all internet access to the outside world. The flood of amateur videos of the robot attack that Rickert and others had counted on to galvanize a global response? It never materialized. While the Chinese remained a key contributor of technical expertise to the military buildup, the White House had so far failed to convince them of the value of a media response. Ben pleaded regularly with Dr. Ying in video calls and emails to make the case to her superiors, but she invariably deflected or ignored the requests. After a particularly frustrating chat, Ben slapped his laptop shut, paused, then snapped the machine in half over his knee. It whined its disapproval, the hard drive still spinning and sputtering. Ben hurled the debris out a window, where it landed in the sand. Ben had brought his emotions back under control, or at least held them at bay.
Rickert understood the anger, even shared some of it. His age and experience provided him a bit more perspective, though.
“I think she’s doing the best she can. She’s ready to go as soon as she’s given the word. Look, Ben, you’ve got to understand where she’s coming from. The Chinese government doesn’t have a much stronger grasp on its citizens right now than the Russians do. From the bits and pieces I’ve gathered talking to Chinese generals, the attack in Shanghai was a hell of a disturbance. Blackout or not, the Chinese people pretty much know what happened, and they feel vulnerable.”
“Tom, we’re all vulnerable.”
“Yeah, but that’s not how most Chinese were raised. The oldest remember World War II and the Japanese invasion. For most of them, their entire life has been lived in a propaganda bubble. Whether they fully believed the BS they were fed or not, it’s one thing to suspect the world isn’t as simple as you’ve been led to believe and quite another to have a damn alien robot crash land in the middle of your richest city and kick your army square in the nuts. Being saved by an American super soldier only makes all that tougher to swallow.”
“They’ll come around. They aren’t stupid.”
“No, they’re not, and that’s the problem. That sort of system shock has repercussions. You start getting angry. And you get enough angry citizens together and they become revolutionaries. Hell, that’s the history of China. And the leadership knows it.”
“So even if the whole world ends, at least they’ll have saved their jobs for a few weeks. Fucking idiots.”
Rickert shrugged. “Maybe. Would you rather hang today or hang next month? Look what’s happening in Russia.”
“So we do nothing?”
Rickert smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. C’mon, I think you guys are done here. We’ve got a flight to catch.”
“Where are we going?”
“Ever been to Israel?”
“Well, I flew over it a couple times, I think, when I was flying my spaceship, shooting down invading alien robots. But that was, like, a whole month ago and I haven’t done anything really weird since, like, lunch. So yeah, sure, let me grab my toothbrush.”
Rickert sighed.
“Just grab your team and load up.”
18
Goldberg could tell the three gray-skinned guys thought these ships were the same as the last one. He couldn’t wait to tell them how wrong they were.
“The Chinese salvaged some of the mrill ship that crashed over there, and we’ve actually been able to reverse-engineer some of it to upgrade your ship,” Goldberg said as he strolled around the craft, wiping the mustard off his hands from the two hot dogs he’d just devoured. “We’ve increased the power output of the MPD thrusters 74 percent by expanding the capacity of the reactor to 200 megawatts, which should give you much better acceleration and three-dimensional thrust vectoring. We’ve also added an auxiliary power unit should the main generator be knocked offline, and made a few minor tweaks to the external fuselage, such as adding rear-facing cannons and fiddling with the targeting algorithms.”
Ben stopped walking after hearing that last claim.
“Oh, I know,” Goldberg said with a flap of his hand. “I gave them holy hell about even thinking about that. The hardware here is complex and advanced, but not light years ahead of us. I mean, the brin knew we’d have to be able to manufacture this stuff ourselves and wouldn’t have time to cram four hundred years of advances in optical lithography, metallurgy, and propulsion systems into a couple months. But to compensate for the primitive hardware, they obviously sent us some pretty fantastic software. I mean, this is just hardcore, kick-ass stuff. Not my specialty, but guys I trust made it clear how insane it was. So when the software guys told me they had some modifications in mind, my first reaction was to tell them to cram it up their ass.”
Goldberg laughed at his own wit. Ben smiled politely and waited.
“Anyway,” he continued, “there was a team from Stanford, these computer science and applied mathematics nerds, and they showed me some demos and hell, you’ll be impressed. So anyway, continuing our tour . . .”
Goldberg dragged the three men along in his wake. They probably couldn’t understand most of what he said, but he was still enjoying the audience. He liked to talk, and being unemployed for three months had mostly left him with no one to talk to but his dog. Berta didn’t care for shop talk.
He wasn’t sure what to make of these three, though. The gray skin didn’t freak him out like it did most folks. The inside was what mattered; true with radios, true with people. They were hard to read, though. Quiet. Barely spoke. Occasionally Bert would look over and they’d all seem to be nodding at each other or grinning at some private joke, which was weird. Bert had heard a little about their supposed mental connection or something. He guessed that’s what they were doing, chatting with their brains.
It was hard to get to know people who almost never talked. He’d never really thought about it before, but Bert
realized now that the way you mostly got to know people was by talking to them. How people talked was supposed to show how people thought. Maybe that’s why politicians talked all the time. These guys, though, were like three walking rocks. Good luck rallying the planet with that attitude. On the other hand, they did have more immediate concerns.
Ben, Nick, and Eddie, for their part, were almost completely oblivious of their garrulous tour guide.
Part of it was that the engineering jargon was mostly incomprehensible. More importantly, though, was that they didn’t need it. Their onboard computers had begun communicating with the ships about five miles before they’d even reached the disguised hangar, the electronic link providing in an instant a full technical readout to each man. It was a two-way connection, with each man’s nanomachines providing a readout to the ships so each craft could tailor itself to the particular neural pathways of the different pilots. The walkaround was superfluous.
Well, superfluous to them. Rickert had impressed on Ben the importance of the moment. Goldberg was a gifted engineer, a savant, really, but his promotion had made many of his more accomplished peers considerably envious. President Lockerman had gathered some of the most brilliant technical minds in academia and industry; men and women who commanded thousands of employees, ran prestigious departments, and had patents, awards, and accolades piled on their résumés. “Ambitious” was an understatement. Watching the crass, flabby Bert Goldberg saunter in from the unemployment line to lead the whole operation had generated enough resentment that Rickert only half-jokingly suggested to him that he hire someone to check his meals for poison. Even at the world’s end, you still had to worry about who got lead credit in the scientific journals.
Ben had shaken his head at this nonsense. What a waste of time. But if he needed to do a photo op with Goldberg to make sure everyone knew their place, so be it.
“. . . and that’s pretty much it,” Goldberg said. “Any questions?”
Nick and Eddie had been unable to contain their boredom and drifted off a bit to check out the ships themselves. If the technobabble left them cold, the beauty of the war machines they would soon be piloting did not. It was a professional interest, but also something personal. They were about to become space fighter pilots. Even though their first mission was probably a suicide run, it was still thrilling, and Ben could sense their concealed excitement.
Been there, done that, Ben thought, and turned back to Goldberg.
“What do you think?” Ben said.
“About what?”
“Can we win? With these?”
Goldberg frowned and scratched his head, leaving a small smear of mustard on his temple.
“Win? I don’t know. They’ll do what we built them to do. They’re as close to magic as I think I’ll ever see. You boys are in good hands.”
“That’s not what I meant. You mentioned that the brin had to dumb down their tech so that we could build it. We’re driving last year’s model. What do you think the mrill are going to come with?”
Goldberg sighed.
“It’s a problem, and we’re working on it. We’ve got guys cranking on stuff you wouldn’t believe. Hell, they don’t believe what they’re doing. For now, though, the truth is, you’re gonna be outgunned. That first wave of unmanned drones was amateur hour. They were hoping to catch us with our pants down and our wangs in the wind, and they sent their most basic stuff our way. They probably weren’t ready for a full invasion at that point. The mrill did us a real favor. I’d guess they’re assembling one hell of an armada now, their best. Can you win? I honestly don’t know.”
Ben nodded, reflective. Goldberg was silent, too, for a change.
“Invasions follow a pattern, you know,” Ben said as he ran his hand over the surface of one of the ships. To him, it felt alive, a glistening race horse with a thumping heart, eager to run.
“The invader almost always has the advantage of surprise, of technology, of organization and momentum. That’s why you invade. The defender has advantages, too. Shorter supply lines, knowledge of the terrain, reinforcements arrive faster. And desperation. That counts for a lot.”
Ben turned to Goldberg, who was obviously flummoxed. Ben suppressed a laugh as he realized his speech to Goldberg had been as pointless as Goldberg’s to him.
“Stay busy, Bert. Build as fast as you can. We’re gonna take a beating. The world doesn’t know what’s coming. Saint Petersburg was just the start. And we’re going to lose a lot more than we win, at least for a while. We won’t quit. My men and me, and whoever comes after us, we’ll fight until we’re dead.”
“I’d rather you fight until you win.”
“Me too. To do that, we must be able to take the battle to them, and we can only do that if we’re properly armed. Keep your assembly lines running.”
“Rosie the Riveter. That’s us. Don’t worry, we got this.”
Ben opened his mouth to speak. At that moment, an alarm went off, a red klaxon. The early warning sensor.
The armada was on its way.
19
Rickert felt like shit.
“You look like shit,” Ben said as he walked into the room.
He waved Ben and his team to their seats in the briefing room with a grunt. Rickert’s stomach was on fire, a grumpy volcano of corrosive acid sputtering and belching up his throat. Empty bottles of Tums and Pepto filled a trashcan near his feet. He wasn’t sure if the ulcers were due to the stress, the fact that he was basically getting all of his calories now from vending machines, or an alien parasite the mrill had dropped during their last attack. If we win the war but they infect us with some kind of intergalactic diarrhea, man, that would be a bummer, he thought. He shook his head. Focus.
“The long-range sensors picked it up,” he said, trying to ignore the knot in his gut. “So far, nothing from the close-range scanners, so we think we have 24 hours, maybe less, before they pop into our solar system. At that point, we’re looking at about an hour or so until contact, assuming they cut in the same place they did last time. No guarantees, though.”
“The interceptors are ready,” Nick said. “We just checked ’em out, and they’re ready to fly. So are we.”
“I’m not worried about that,” Rickert said. “The real issue is the defensive satellites. We’ve gotten most of the replacements into orbit. We’re still short a few satellites, and not all of the ground-based antiaircraft systems are operational. If any of the mrill get past you guys and the orbital defenses, a lot of our cities are as exposed as Lady Godiva.”
“What, sir?” Eddie asked.
“The lost art of the classical education,” Rickert said. “I need some more Tums.”
“They won’t get past us,” Nick said. “We’ve got this. Is the injection chamber ready to crank out some new recruits?”
A pained look drifted over Rickert’s face and refused to move along.
“No,” he said at last. “Another 36 hours and maybe the answer would be yes. I think we’re close to getting everyone to sign off. Going as fast as they can. The equipment is so complex, and we’re designing this one from scratch to avoid . . . a repeat of last time. And this is our design. Not the brin’s. No blueprint for this.”
Rickert could tell they were all concerned and relieved; concerned that they wouldn’t have backup and relieved they wouldn’t have to worry about seeing another volunteer get torn apart in the injection process. Not just yet, anyway.
Ben shifted in his seat.
“Something on your mind, sailor?” Rickert asked.
“How many ships did the sensors pick up? Any indication of what’s coming our way?”
Rickert shuffled through some papers on the table. He rubbed his stomach.
“Nothing definitive. Analysts at the National Reconnaissance Office say the cluster looks to be much bigger than the first attack. Whether that means a couple hundred small ships or a dozen huge ones, they aren’t sure. Probably a mix of both. And there could be more coming behind,
but they apparently detected our scanners and took them out, so we don’t know for sure. And given that they know we have long-range scanners, they know we’ll be ready.”
“And we know that they know that we know, which means they know we know they know we know, which means . . .”
“Jesus, Eddie, can you shut the fuck up for three seconds?” Nick said. They both laughed.
Ben glanced at Rickert, obviously curious if the general would blow up at the seemingly pointless and time-wasting banter. Despite his stress and lack of battlefield experience, Rickert knew to let this moment play out a bit. It was Combat Psych 101; that even the fiercest warriors had to find a way to release tension before battle. Those who tried to bite down and swallow it generally had a much more difficult time operating under the stressors of combat. Tighten a string and it could play a hell of a tune, but pull too hard and it would inevitably snap.
“We’re moving your interceptors to the launch pad here in Florida. Worked well enough last time. We’ve built redundant mission control centers in Houston, Alaska, and Australia. It’s possible the mrill will aim for our command and control capabilities, so we’ve dispersed as much of it as possible.”
“What about evacuating the cities?” Ben asked.
“It’s under way, but we just don’t have anywhere to send everyone,” Rickert replied, shaking his head. “With a hurricane or earthquake, you can relocate a small region temporarily. This . . . I don’t know. We’ve got temporary camps set up around a dozen major cities. Can’t hold everyone, and not everyone wants to go. Those that do evac, though, will be out of range of a defensive nuclear strike . . . should that prove necessary.”
Everyone in the room felt those words fall like a hammer. If the nanomachines were unleashed again, America would be forced to burn its own cities, just like the Russians had.
The First Protectors: A Novel Page 19