Battle for the Earth (35 page)

The campaign against Earth had cost the Annunaki’s dearly but, because they hadn’t been at war with an adversary for millennia, the cost didn’t matter. It was more about the glory. There were other planets in this solar system that could be plundered for raw materials.

The battle group was now under repair to bring it back up to full readiness. Sutan would have liked to have salvaged some of his disabled cruisers, but was well aware that the antimatter device could go off at any time, and he was prepared to sacrifice them in return for the ultimate defeat of Earth.

**

On board the
Cronus
Jumouk and Lee were pondering the problem of moving the antimatter device. It was Lee who finally came up with a viable solution.

‘Why don’t we freeze the device to make it more stable? It can then be moved and freezing might slow down the antimatter production as well.’

Jumouk contacted Pausanias and ran the plan past him. Pausanias was delighted and was very confident it would work. But where would they move it to?

**

Preparations were already under way to freeze the device. Liquid nitrogen LN2 was on the way and would be used to create a super-freeze state within the holding container in which the device would be placed.

A large, metal, twin-door fridge freezer was selected to contain the device. Inside it was stripped down to the shell and then laid on its back. The LN2 holding containers were placed inside and the doors closed. The device had first been surrounded by LN2 containers to get its temperature down to minus 50 degrees, so it could be moved into the twin-door fridge freezer. Moving it was painstakingly slow, but eventually the device was packed safely into the fridge freezer. Once the temperature had plummeted to minus 50 degrees, the freezer was welded shut. The whole process had taken five hours and had been an enormous strain on everyone involved.

Now there was the problem of what to do with the frozen package. Once again it was Sacha who came to the rescue.

‘I know it’s not the movies, but why don’t we run it into the far side of the sun? There are lots of reactions going on in there all the time, and if we do it on the far side any solar flares caused by the explosion won’t affect Earth.’

The plan sounded pretty good to Mark, and he looked across to Pausanias for approval. Pausanias smiled.

‘I still can’t get over your constant inventiveness, Sacha. That is a brilliant plan, and it might just work.’

‘Well, thank you kindly, sir. It’s always nice to be appreciated, but shouldn’t we get this done sooner rather than later? I’m still feeling quite uncomfortable with this thing sitting here.’

**

It had been agreed that three shuttles including the fated one would fly to the far side of the sun, and when the timing was right the shuttle would be set on autopilot and sent on its way with the device to its destiny and eventual incineration within the sun’s corona.

Arrangements were made to have the freezer taken to its shuttle and carefully placed in the hold. The final question was: who was going to fly the shuttle?

**

Lee volunteered for the job without hesitation. Even with the high levels of danger and uncertainty, this task could have been made for him.

He boarded the shuttle cautiously. Time was now critical and everyone was getting nervous. The device had been on Earth long enough.

He inspected the freezer briefly. It all looked fine and Lee once again gave thanks for Sacha’s ingenuity. Where would they be without him, he wondered?

Safely installed in the pilot’s seat, Lee couldn’t help feeling a sense of pride, as the three shuttles took off slowly together and began their journey to the sun. As they broke free of Earth’s atmosphere, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Two of the Atlantian battle cruisers took up positions to protect the three shuttles from any unwelcome Annunaki attention. As Lee guided the shuttle slowly through space towards the far side of the sun, the cabin began to feel uncomfortably cold even with the climate controls set to high.

Lee was having a lot of time to reflect on events. Ever since the Dropas had made their presence on Earth known, it had been a non-stop, one-thing-after-another, real fight for survival, one that many times Lee hadn’t thought mankind would win.

The worst time was when the second battle group had arrived unexpectedly in Earth’s space. They had done so much at that point just to survive, and had beaten all the odds against them, only to have to start all over again. Thank God for the Atlantians, he thought! If it wasn’t for them humanity would probably be extinct by now and the Annunaki would be lording it over Earth.

He had been so deep in thought that he hadn’t noticed that the cabin temperature was rising, but a quick glance out the left-hand-side viewing window explained the increase in cabin temperature.

He’d never quite realised how big the sun was, always just taking it for granted. Seeing it now closer up, it was colossal, a truly magnificent sight filling the whole side of the viewing window and was still burning his eyes even with the solar filters on.

He checked his coordinates and the orbit of Earth. He still had a fair bit of travelling to do to ensure Earth would be safe from the inevitable solar flares after the huge explosion that would be created by the device. Nobody could know for sure exactly what would happen, but this was the only viable option, he knew.

Lee remembered when he had been a very young diplomat serving some time at the Chinese embassy in Scotland. Edinburgh was a beautiful city, and Corstorphine where the embassy was located was only ten minutes from the centre of the capital. The Scots had a perfect expression for situations where the outcome was uncertain: they used to say, ‘lucky white heather’. If ever there was a need for lucky white heather it was now.

The calculations for the release of the shuttle to its fiery doom weren’t that complex. Just so long as the shuttle exploded on the far side of the sun away from the Earth, everything should be OK.

Lee contacted the other two pilots. It looked as if they were now just about at the right coordinates. He doublechecked the figures and began to programme the autopilot. A few minutes later everything was ready. Lee set the delay of ten minutes for the autopilot to kick in and headed for the docking bay, ready to transfer to the other shuttle.

The transfer shuttle docked perfectly with Lee’s, and he opened the air-tight doors between the two shuttles, then made his way through to the transfer shuttle, not without giving out a small sigh of relief.

Although it had been a privilege to play such an important role in the salvation of Earth, the pressure and anxiety were now taking their toll. Lee felt absolutely shattered. They would have to linger to make sure the autopilot kicked in when it was supposed to, then they would need to jump into hyper-space without delay, well away from the inevitable cataclysm.

Everything went according to plan. As the shuttle began its final journey to the sun and its inevitable fate, the two remaining shuttles jumped into hyper-space and safety. They emerged from hyper-drive a few seconds later and turned to take up an observation position.

The sun was now just a pinprick in space. Lee activated the observation screen and magnified the picture to maximum. He estimated that within the next minute they should be able to see the results of their endeavours. The sun was now the size of an orange on the screen. Lee and the shuttle pilot hung over the screen not quite knowing what to expect.

Suddenly a white flash crept across the screen and then appeared in the front viewing window, making Lee and the pilot shield their eyes against the glare. As it went dark again, large yellow and orange flashes emanating from the sun could be seen on the observation screen, branching out into space in lashing, whip-like motions.

The predicted solar flares were more massive than had been predicted, but fortunately were not heading in the direction of Earth. They were, however, coming in Lee’s direction, travelling at the speed of light and pulling their slower-moving partners, the CMEs, the coronal mass ejections, in lumbering cloud formations behind them.

The solar flares did little damage to the shuttles, which were designed to withstand them, but the CMEs were more dangerous. Depending on their intensity, they could play havoc with the ships’ electronics.

Lee was monitoring them closely and, to his horror, saw that they were travelling at forty times the speed they normally should have, which was around 6,000,000 miles an hour. These were travelling at 240,000,000 miles an hour, which would mean that they would be in this area of space within two days. The intensity of these CMEs was generally determined by their speed and would be devastatingly destructive to anything electronic.

Lee guessed that it had been the explosion of the device that was the cause of the unusual solar flare and CMEs’ activity. Now all they could do was to make a detour and head back to Earth.

**

56

Jumouk had been monitoring the three shuttles’ progress from the bridge of the
Cronus.
As they disappeared around the far side of the sun, the proximity detectors lost sight of them, at which point Pausanias enabled the three-dimensional representation of space around the sun. Sure enough, there were the three shuttles.

As one shuttle began moving towards the sun’s corona, the other two suddenly disappeared. The shuttle heading towards the sun was gradually increasing its speed.

On the bridge of the
Cronus
the anticipation was almost physical, as minute after minute passed with still nothing happening.

Jumouk guessed that Lee would now be a safe distance away after being in hyper-drive, and was probably watching as well.

Suddenly and surprisingly a bright flash burst across the bridge, temporarily blinding everybody. As their sight slowly returned, the surface of the sun could be seen to be boiling at the point of the explosion of the device, solar flares angrily spitting into the surrounding space. Whiplike motions flailed into space and beyond. Fortunately, all this activity was in the opposite direction from Earth.

Jumouk was interested to see if the visual representation could pick up the two shuttles that had gone into hyperdrive.

‘Pausanias, can you home in on the two shuttles?’

Pausanias made some hand movements and adjustments and sure enough the two shuttles appeared in deep space, sitting all on their own with absolutely nothing near them.

‘Well, at least we know Lee’s OK.’

‘I never had any doubt Lee was the right man for the job. He is a very adaptable and clever human.’

Everyone who had seen the visual representation technology had been amazed by it. Jumouk was trying to guess how it worked, which was nothing unusual. Everyone who had seen it had secretly tried to work it out, but no one had succeeded.

**

Two or three days were going to have to pass before they could be sure there were no adverse affects on Earth, after the explosion in the sun’s corona. However, from all the checks that Pausanias had made it did look as if mankind was in the clear.

All the same Pausanias wanted to wait until he was quite certain that the Earth was going to be safe before he confronted the Annunaki commanders and fleet. To be honest, he didn’t even know exactly where the Annunaki fleet was positioned in deep space. All he did know is they didn’t present a threat at that moment.

Jumouk was more doubtful. He didn’t know why the Annunaki had been so quiet over the past few days. They may just have been waiting patiently, expecting the Earth to rip itself apart in a cataclysmic antimatter explosion, but he wasn’t happy not knowing where they were. He kept an eye on the proximity detector but there was no sign of them anywhere.

Pausanias was now quite satisfied. Earth had suffered no ill effects from the trauma on the sun, and he could now concentrate on finding the whereabouts of the Annunaki fleet.

**

Ever since Lee had got back from deep space he had been obsessed by the cloud of CMEs travelling into space. They didn’t seem to be slowing down or dispersing but just kept going at a constant speed.

He had been monitoring them on the visual depiction technology with, it should be said, Pausanias’s blessing. In fact, Pausanias was quite interested in what Lee was doing. The recent events had never been properly tried and tested, and they were producing some interesting results.

Lee stopped what he was doing for a moment and stared intently at the visual depiction, beckoning Pausanias to come over.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

Pausanias looked intently at the screen, and after making a few adjustments he nodded.

‘Yes, look it’s the Annunaki battle group. They’ve put the sun between us and them, which is why Jumouk couldn’t pick them up on the proximity detectors.’

‘Can we zoom in closer and get a better look?’

Pausanias wafted his hands around and the image intensified and grew closer.

‘I can count five, no six, battle cruisers, that big transport, and, let’s see, eight other transports and what... maybe fifty assault ships, plus whatever there is inside the battle cruisers.’

Pausanias nodded in agreement.