Connection (26 page)

“Yes General. I say again. They knew. They came in impossibly fast and stopped in just a few feet. Yes – I would have said it was impossible too – but I am just reporting what I saw. They had robots. None of our military operatives on Mars went on the mission. They had friggin’ robots that fought our ass to a standstill. They had ground-to-air missiles that shot at the one fighter we got into the air and downed one of our helicopters. No sir. I’m not trying to make excuses. I had 27 casualties with ten wounded. I had three soldiers ambush the truck and we captured it easily. Those three soldiers qwere shot directly between the eyes and Kobe’s people couldn’t have known about them. No sir. No sir. We can shoot straight.”

“We hit that ship with a 200 kW laser – nothing. Small arms had no effect. We had two direct hits on their craft as they were taking off. That damn thing shrugged off two Hellfire – anti-armor missiles– direct hits general, and it didn’t even dent the damn thing. No. We didn’t see it on radar. US Reconnaissance Service alerted us when they got a visual on it coming in from the Pacific. It didn’t show up on any radar. It didn’t cause a wake and only had a sonic boom right before landing. Sir – it was like magic – it went from supersonic to nothing in a few yards.”

“What do I think? Sir. They are a couple of decades ahead of us in technology and they don’t have bureaucrats holding back on research. We tried to kill them. Yes sir. They broke the law trying to export restricted materials. Terrorists? Really sir. Terrorists? Are they supplying aid and comfort to our enemies? Which enemies… sir? Mars? No sir. I’m not trying to be a smart ass. No sir. I’ve already spent two tours there… sir. Yes sir. We did recover the robots sir. Our tech guys said they must have been controlled remotely. The control mechanisms were fried – they self-destructed. The robot designs? They came from some of the old DARPA challenges sir with a few minor improvements. The power supplies were a new design – one of the robots shorted out his own power supply after its legs were shot off just to destroy one of our vehicles. My evaluation of their fighting ability? Sir…we don’t want to fight these things. They jammed all our communications. We have no idea how they did that and kept control of those robots. Yes sir. We’ll find out. Right sir. We’ll get right on it.”  Colonel Jeffries broke the connection and turned to Major Matinez. “Why did you talk me into staying in after our last tour?”

                                                                        ****

The shuttle return and landing on Mars was uneventful except many officials came out to apologize about the saboteurs and explain how ferreting out a spy had occurred. They explained that they had had three sessions teaching how to ‘repair’ metacrete and that the methods were all explained differently. One group had a member that transmitted a radio signal to Earth about the method to cut the material and they had traced who it was. Did Robert want them to arrest him? No? He said. Better to know the spy you can feed misinformation to than the spy you don’t know.

                                                                    ****

Tod supervised the installation of the lasers and railguns on the large ship. Twlise suggested a name and it stuck. She had been studying Earth history and suggested the name – Nemesis. It seemed appropriate with the five-megawatt lasers and railguns. The missiles were converted to explosive pumped X-RAY lasers and explosive pumped microwave weapons. The missiles were to be rotated out of the bulkhead and not carried on the hull. That way they could be deployed just before firing. They rushed to complete the installations. They had another few weeks of grace before the Earth attack force reached them but it would be cutting it close.

“We have the ship ready,” Grace Müller said. “What is the plan? All the older Mars defenses are pathetic in comparison to your ship. We do have a ring of defense satelilites but they can only be detonated and produce a small globe of shrapnel. It would do nothing in the long run – maybe damage a few of the assaulting ships but that’s it. We have a population of four and a half million but only a quarter million of those would be useful if trained – most of that quarter million are not trained to fight. We have about ten thousand professional military.  We thought winning our independence was permanent. We were wrong. Greed trumps ideals it seems. Ideas?”

Professor LeEck spoke. “Could you not use the same technique you used on LesMa? A few small asteroids would demand their attention.”

Robert tilted his head to the side. “Nothin small. We need something larger that they could not easily deflect. We need something like a planet killer that we can deflect. We need something they can’t deflect in time. That way if they destroy us – it dooms them.”

“Wait Robert. You would kill your own planet?” Twlise said. “You can’t do that. Surely there is something else you can do?”

Tod chimed in. “Are you out of your mind? We can’t threaten to destroy life on Earth. What if you miscalculated?” He paused a moment. “Wait. I know you are a crafty devil. What are you thinking?”

Cassandra. What is a large planet killer or near planet killer asteroid that we could move into an imminent orbit to impact with Earth? We’d need something that will pass near here soon that we can ‘adjust’ to impact Earth.

[You want to threaten the extinction of your home planet. That is counter-intuitive.]

No. I want something that they cannot ignore. We redirect the orbit pretty far out. We have to destroy the ships threatening Mars and Titan. We negotiate. If we lose, they will be forced to expend all their energy deflecting the asteroid. They would not threaten to destroy what could be the last bastion of humanity. I want them more interested in deflecting a killer asteroid then attacking Mars.

[Wouldn’t they just destroy the colonies later or redouble their effort to get the bias drive. You know they will figure it out sooner or later.]

We need to destroy those ships or all we can find. Their big threat is the asteroids. We need to arm the Nemesis and the shuttle, deflect an asteroid, and then destroy or disable their ships. We must form a joint patrol from all over the Earth and Mars before they get the bias drive. We might want to enlist people from LesMa too.
“Looking at the intercepts – we will have asteroids dropped on us along with nukes if we do nothing.” Robert said to the group. “I don’t want to be a slave or dead. I am also not going to let that happen to LesMa.We must arm the Nemesis and the shuttle immediately. That is a given. Destroying the attacking ships gives us the time to have other options. Let’s get on it. Tod. I’ll help install all the armaments. Grace, will you send someone to see that the Chief and the Professor are armed and housed? Then I need you to see what we’re doing. You will be building more ships in the future if we live through all this,” Robert said to those around him.

Grace said, “So. We’re calling it the Nemesis? Good name. I’ll get a metacrete nameplate applied. What will you name the shuttle?”

Robert looked at Twlise. “Twlise? What do you think?”

Twlise looked around and said, “How about Skip? Name it after your friend or is that too simple?”

Robert smiled and gave her a big hug. Chief Latima raised his left index finger to show approval. “It is now officially SKIP. Grace would you make a metacrete plate for the shuttle?”

She nodded and went to direct her assistant to help the LesMans get armed and settled.

[Robert. I need an upgrade too. There is enough metacrete available to retrofit my hull. My hull is like paper compared to the metacrete and I don’t like being that vulnerable. This 100kW laser on me needs to be upgraded too. The threats headed our way make me feel like I am in a paper bag armed with a slingshot.]

Good analogy
, Robert thought at her.
I will get it done.
Hell yeah.

                                                              ****

Tod was complaining to Robert. “I had no idea those microcontrollers had backdoors. They didn’t say they were Chinese. We bought them from a German company. We can use some older chipsets. They are actually more robust. The gimbals work fine but adding those laser modules to the outside hull wasn’t easy. Cassandra sent me the design changes we needed. I appreciate you working on that last night.”

“Cassandra is a tremendous help. I give her problems and then we work through them together. She is better than me when we have big data but I can often spot workarounds that she has missed…my intuition – her data crunching. The hard part was getting laser pods to track together. The latency was pretty bad between getting a target trajectory and aligning dual lasers to attack the same point. Did you work through the overheating issue? I know the lasers are 5MW. Did LeEck’s heat pipe idea work out? They use the same principle in their toilets. Those things draw heat from the ambient air to warm water. This is just a heavy-duty rework of their method. I wouldn’t have thought of that in a million years.”

“We got the railguns working fore and aft on the Nemesis. The shuttle, Skip only has a forward railgun. That’s a tight squeeze as is. It has two missiles and a 1MW infrared laser.”

Grace came over to the two. “Sorry to butt in. We are provisioning the Nemesis as best we can. Evidently, we can still get funds from some of your accounts on Earth. I have no idea where you’re getting it from and I’m not about to ask. We had another sabotage attempt last night. One of our guards was killed in an exchange of fire when they challenged two approaching soldiers. We tracked them down and they’re dead. They had been serving with us since the end of our independence war. We had no idea. We suspect there are more. Earth is burning up a lot, I hope a lot – of their covert abilities on us. They want those ships and the ability to control this system.”

“I gathered that. You saw those intercepts,” Robert said.

“Sorry,” Grace said. “It just didn’t hit home ‘til I saw what they’re trying to do. I can imagine what this planet would be like being occupied by corporations and military bent on control. I really like Twlise, LeEck, and Latima. Earth military would be taking over their planet as soon as they could get there. I thought your Space Patrol was a kiddie idea at first but we have to survive to pull it off. Mars is resource poor.”

“…but attitude rich,” Tod said.

Grace smiled but Robert wasn’t sure she was interested in Tod in that way. Tod’s girlfriend was still on Earth and the ‘hundred foot rule’ was in effect for him – where it is okay to look for ‘companionship if you’re more than a hundred feet from home.

                                                                        ****

Getting the Nemesis to orbit was going to be like trying to run a horserace while dragging an anchor. They hoped the Inductrack launching system would be finished in time. The previous launch rail system, a hybrid mass driver, would accelerate a vehicle using a linear synchronous motor. The rail guideway curved up at the end to aid the vehicles own thrust to reach orbit. The new Inductrack addition had litz wire sections (bundled copper wires shorted at the ends). The vehicle sat on a wheeled platform of Halbach arrays (arrangements of powerful rare earth magnets designed to project the magnetic fields down into the wire sections). When the platform supporting the vehicle reached 3 meters per second – when pulled forward by the linear synchronous motor, the platform magnets induced a current in the litz wire segments, and the platform levitated slightly – resulting in much less drag. The system had been used on Earth, top secret, in the early 21
st
century to add 30% increase in range to ballistic missiles. On Mars, it cut energy costs and would impart a much higher delta-V to any launching spacecraft…in this case…the Nemesis.

“So we are ready for a test launch,” Robert said turning to Twlise. “You ready?”

“Yes darling. I understand all this much better since Cassandra explained it all to me. She told me they have just finished resurfacing her hull. This metacrete is amazing. You didn’t tell me the details for today. Chief Latima is all set too.”

“Chief. You set to go? Are you ready with your team?” Robert asked Chief Latima who was ‘commanding’ ten robots.”

“Ready Captain. The new suit has a lot more flexibility. I like them. These robots are ready.”

“Hang on everyone. We will experience just short of three Earth gravities when we launch and that will be tough on all after being on Mars for two months or more. Gravity here is much less than on LesMa.”

Twlise spoke. “Thank you for stating the obvious. I got it. I can understand anything if explained well enough and Cassandra did an excellent job of that. We are going to be trying the weapons and maueuverability I take it? When is the first of the Earth task force due here?”

“Twlise. I didn’t mean to be patronizing. They should be approaching the vicinity of Mars in the next few days. We are trying to detect them by passive sensors but they have to be pretty close for that to happen even though we intercepted their planned approach vectors. I imagine they will have a number of ships so they can transfer personnel to other ships if some fail.”

“How long will it take us to get there? …to where you think they’ll be, I mean.”  Twlise asked.

“Tod. How do you read me on this link? Are you positioned yet? I have a return on passive sensors where we predicted. Is the shuttle team ready?” Robert asked.

“Read you five by five. We’ll be in position in one. Latima says he’s sealed and the robots troops are ready to deploy,” Tod replied. “They are right where you spotted them earlier. I can see where it took you a long time to find them a couple of days ago. We were worried as hell when Cassandra wouldn’t even tell us where you were.”

Cassandra?

[I am paralleling the ships and bit off to the rear side to be out of the line of fire as we planned. The shuttle is moving up...it’s in position now. I doubt they can see me, or the shuttle. You would appear as a vague return on their radar but would be visible optically. They will not have accurate targeting ability. You must change your position randomly. Your position will be compromised every time you fire or use active ranging. I will jam their radio communications at your command.]

Nemesis?
Robert queried.
Please begin random microjumps on bias drive.

“Lasers and railguns prepped. There appears to be eight ships using old Mars Interplanetary Expeditionary Complex design with NERVA nuclear thermal engines – just lasers. The one big one is huge but has a large railgun slapped on the side. I can read the lettering – the Prometheus…really…Prometheus. Do you want to hail them?” Tod queried over his quantum link. “I can’t believe they even got those pieces of crap to make it this far.”

“We know why they’re here and what they want,” Robert said. “Engage them when you are in range.”

[Robert. They have an enormous railgun on the large ship that could damage us. The smaller accompanying ships have lasers that should not be a problem unless our hull is damaged.]

Cassandra? Did you check that trajectory? It’s been two days. We need to be right on. Is Admiral DeAngelo still in charge?

[It is correct within the calculated margin of error. He is in charge as of the last communiqué from US Generals Hernandez, Russian General Petrov, and Chinese General Xu. The CIA, GRU, and MSS have also been in contact.]

                                                                                  ****

Prometheus bridge – enroute to Mars

“Admiral. We may have a single ship in range. It’s a weak visual – it may be a black ship but we only see it when it occludes a celestial object. It’s not the small one we were warned about sir. It’s much larger,” said the Captain.

“What do you show on radar?”