Nebula (29 page)

The display showed the simulated maneuver of the Nebula ships from their attack positions outside the asteroid belt back to the region around Mars. The display indicated that only half of the fighters were expected to make it back, but they were joined by the twenty five that had been waiting on Deimos and Phobos.

Haverford gave everyone a few seconds to look at the display and then went on with his explanation. “You can see that we’ve positioned the artillery just beyond the orbits of the two moons, arranged as a shield in the direction that we expect the aliens to come from. Our fighters will stay behind them and off to the side so that they have a clear field of fire. When the aliens move in, we’ll start our artillery barrage, and then the fighters will go out to meet them, hopefully without having to contend with that battleship or any of the heavy cruisers. Milo will go with them, with his EMP cannon on the alien fighter. The transports will retreat, trying to keep out of range of the alien plasma cannons, but staying within range for their own heavy plasma cannons. They should be able to duel with anything but a battleship.”

“What happens if your force fails to turn them back?” Billingsley asked.

“We then fall back to keep out of range of their long range guns,” Haverford replied. “Then we try to give our team on the surface as much support as we can, but at that point they’ll pretty much be on their own and will have to play it by ear. They won’t be able to repel a strong alien invasion force, so we’ll lose Mars eventually, but if we can hold them off long enough for the biological agents to do their job, we can win even if we lose Mars. Our artillery ships will still be able to hurt them until they get their big guns set up on Mars, but after that, we’ll have to retreat back to Earth and launch our thermonuclear weapons against their fleet. We might be able to penetrate their sensors and defensive systems if we launch multiple waves of nuclear strikes, one after the other in close sequence. But we don’t want to get to that stage for obvious reasons, so our delaying action has to work.”

Billingsley looked at Gladys. “Are you sure that it’s going to work?”

“I’m positive. I just don’t know how long it will take. But it will work. We have at least three pathogens that we know should be nearly 100% lethal and a few others that are almost as bad. The only thing that we don’t know is how long the incubation will take now that we understand that their metabolism is a lot different from ours.”

“But it will work?”

“Yes. Of that we’re absolutely certain.”

The planning session ended on that note, and everyone filed out of the room and went off to do their work. Brad and Brendan went together to the shuttle that would take them to Nebula Ops, where they would complete the preparations for the defense of Mars.

*

The team on Mars had welcomed the arrival of Colonel Haverford’s five special operations soldiers and was just preparing to discuss how to engage the aliens in direct combat when the first of the big problems occurred. It took everyone by surprise and was a clear indication of the difficulties from now on in dealing with an enemy that wasn’t as perfectly predictable as in the past.

The assault on Earth by the robotic ships started as expected, but the course that the ships flew wasn’t precisely as expected from the messages that Harry and Yuri had intercepted. The problem seemed to be in the interpretation of the ingress route that they’d take at near light speed, before dropping to low speed and starting to fire on Earth. The attack was supposed to come from an angle of approximately 30 degrees above the Earth’s orbital plane, but the aliens apparently used a coordinate system based not on Earth’s orbit but on the average of all the planets, weighted by their size, so Earth’s orbital plane was averaged into the result well below the weighting given to the planes of Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, and Neptune, and the ships arrived at an angle off by several degrees. Since the minefield had been deployed to present a very dense shield at the location where Nebula’s planners expected the ships to appear, it was off sufficiently to degrade its effectiveness and more than just one or two of the ships survived the blast.

Nebula’s fighters engaged the surviving robot ships, and a relatively quick battle did manage to destroy all of them before they could take shots at Earth. But in the exchange of fire, two of the Nebula fighters were destroyed and another three suffered damage. The damaged ships could probably be repaired in a few days and could return to battle, but this was the first fight in which Nebula’s forces had taken any damage at all, and it was a sobering wake-up call for what lay ahead. The loss of comrades in the fighters that were destroyed also dampened the high morale and enthusiasm that had built up since the wildly successful operation against the first battle group.

Now that the enemy would be adapting in real time to the situation, the defenders would no longer be assured of knowing exactly how to respond and the upcoming battles would no longer be so heavily weighted in favor of Nebula. Everyone knew this, especially the eight AFO members and the five special operations soldiers who would have to face alien soldiers on the surface of Mars, probably unsupported by heavy artillery or fighters sent from Nebula.

“OK,” Brad began. “This isn’t the end of the world. We expected losses in combat. That’s what we’re trained to accept. Up to now, we’ve been lucky. We never thought that the first big battle would go as well as it did, and I guess that our mindsets were that this would be easy and that the biological warfare would kick in before we got into any real trouble. But we were prepared to take some losses, so we need to get back to the business at hand and learn from what happened but not dwell on it. Our job is to try to delay the aliens as long as we can. When they come here to set up their big guns, we need to prevent that from happening for as long as possible. Once they do get set up, they’ll be able to control a big region around Mars, and they’d be able to assemble all the firepower that they need to advance toward Earth. We don’t know how long it will take for the viruses to do their job, so we need to be prepared to fight and survive for a long time, on our own and with no support and no way to evacuate. This isn’t necessarily a suicide mission, but it won’t be easy. Some or all of us may not make it, but whatever the case, it’s up to us to do whatever we can to protect Earth. Understood?”

The other twelve all nodded their agreement. The seven AFO scientists looked a lot grimmer than the special operations soldiers, but none of the twelve looked particularly at ease or confident.

“So, let’s start to assess the situation and develop some plans,” Brad continued. “Major Napolitano, let’s have your thoughts.”

Lucia Napolitano was the officer in charge of the five-soldier team. Brendan Haverford had picked her personally and told Brad that she and the other four were the best that he had and had worked together for several years. This was their first combat against real, live aliens, but they’d been through many simulations of direct combat on Mars and Titan, and they were extremely proficient with both alien weapons and the kinetic weapons that were more mainstream on Earth.

“Thank you sir,” she began. “First off, just call me Lu. We tend to use one-syllable words whenever we can. It speeds things up. We’re also pretty informal regarding rank and things like that. Let me introduce my team.”

She pointed to a small but muscular-looking man. “This is Lieutenant Avery Chang. He goes by the name of Ave. He handles our rocket propelled ordnance and is our radio man and my second in command. He’s also an expert in small arms and alien x-ray machine guns. All of us are also experts in those weapons and carry them.”

Next she pointed to a woman who was about the size of Ave but didn’t appear as strong. “Sergeant Sally Jones – we call her Sal – is an expert with the arrow gun. It’s a six shooter, with six barrels loaded with composite arrows that are launched by an electromagnetic wave. The barrels rotate across the electromagnetic generator like the chambers on one of those old fashioned revolver pistols. It’s silent and very lethal. Sal can split an apple in two from more than fifty meters on Earth, and probably further here on Mars.

“This is Sergeant Bobby Sturgeon, Bob for short. He’s a jack of all trades, but mainly provides cover fire for the others. Bob’s our best marksman with a rifle, x-ray gun, and arrow gun and handles the sniper duty. Last but not least is Sergeant George Olden, code named Ogre. It’s two-syllables, but it fits him so we let it pass. Ogre’s our scout and is skilled at sneaking up and dispatching his target without a sound. When he goes out front, Bob provides cover fire for him, but that’s usually not needed. He’s also our expert on cover, camouflage, and deception. When he wants to hide something, he’s so good that the best scouts have a hard time finding it without some hints. Ogre is good at his job. We’re all good at our jobs.”

“Good to meet all of you,” Brad replied. Then he introduced his team and their specialties. “I’m not sure how much help we’ll be to you when the fighting starts. My team is a bunch of scientists without any combat experience except for that first fight with the aliens at the base. But we do know how to use the weapons, and we also have control of some robots that the aliens think are their own. When the time comes, we’ll do everything that we can to help you. For now, I’ll continue to take charge of the planning and preparations, but when it’s time to fight, I want to turn over tactical control to you. I won’t get in your way, OK?”

“Understood,” Lu replied. “I appreciate that Colonel. Just tell me when.”

“OK,” Brad continued. “Let’s settle in and get down to the planning. Colonel Haverford will launch his counterattack as soon as the battle group reassembles for its move toward Mars, and we have to be ready. Get whatever you want to drink or eat, and be back here in five minutes.”

As they were breaking, Lu went over to Brad. “I want to send Ogre out to see if he can improve on our concealment. It looked pretty good, but he’s the expert, and he’ll make us just about invisible. Sal and Bob will also need to go out and calibrate the arrow guns for the gravity and air density here. We can fill them in on the plans when they get back.”

Brad nodded his OK, and Lu motioned to the three of them to get busy. No words were exchanged, just a few gestures back and forth, and the three soldiers left to get into their suits and do the work outside.

*

The counterattack was launched as soon as the alien ships began to reform at their assembly area just outside the asteroid belt. As expected, the slow torpedoes from the nations were destroyed well before they reached the target area, but the blasts caused enough disruption in nearby space that the gravity bow waves from Nebula’s small runabouts with the thermonuclear mines were obscured and not detected by the sensors until the runabouts were within a few light seconds from their targets. Two of them were destroyed by the aliens’ defensive weapons, but the other three were able to penetrate the alien defenses, aiming directly for the battleship and the other big ships nearby. Their thermonuclear mines detonated while they were still at near light speed and destroyed the battleship and one heavy cruiser stationed close to it. Six fighters and fifteen robot ships near the battleship were also blown to pieces. Other ships in the battle group were damaged to varying degrees, but they were still able to fight as Haverford prepared to begin the artillery barrage.

Haverford was in one of the fighters that accompanied the artillery ships. When they first dropped from near light speed, he was unaware of the damage that the torpedoes had done, so he acted on the assumption that the battleship might still be operational. He kept his weakly shielded transports with the plasma cannons well out of range of the battleship’s big guns. He moved his twenty five fighters and Milo’s alien fighter with the EMP cannon closer to the alien battle group but still far enough away to survive fire from the battleship. Then he sent two of the fighters forward to assess the damage.

The damage assessment came one minute later. “Our torpedoes took out the battleship and one of the heavy cruisers. They’re blown to pieces. It looks like we got some of the fighters and robots too. There’s a lot of debris, pieces of ships all over the place, but we didn’t get a count of what’s left. We started taking fire from two heavy cruisers before we got close enough and had to bug out. We’ll rejoin in about twenty seconds.”

The report was what Haverford wanted to hear. His main worry had been the battleship. Now that he knew it was out of action, he could move his artillery closer and bring the entire enemy formation within range. Milo’s ship was moved in front of the other ships to keep the EMP discharge from damaging them. The transports with the plasma cannons were deployed off to the side, two of them on the right and the other on the left. Eight fighters were grouped near each of the transports to protect them and help them retreat if the aliens launched an attack. It was doubtful that they’d do that, but Haverford didn’t want to take any chances. He needed to preserve those three ships and Milo’s EMP ship for a possible last ditch defense of Earth.

On Haverford’s count, the barrage started, first with an EMP burst and one second later with the three long range plasma cannons. The EMP had minimal effect on the remaining cruisers since they all had shields at maximum, expecting a follow-up to the torpedoes. But it still disrupted their combat systems for several seconds and caused confusion among the ships that were trying to recover from the torpedo attack. The fighters and robot ships had weaker shields and fared worse than the cruisers. They had to retreat to a safe distance from Nebula’s artillery until they could restart their combat systems and reload all the tactical data that had been corrupted by the EMP that had leaked through the shields.