Final Assault (6 page)

“Agreed,” Maddox said, but her tone was measured.

“I want to have enough rescuers to blanket the world twice over,” Portia said. “Right now we’re barely going to make once over, and I’m afraid we’ll miss areas.”

“I think we will miss many areas,” Maddox said. “The other problem is delivery of the nanorescuers.”

“We talked about dusting the Earth with them. I mean, didn’t you?” Portia was looking at Cross now. “That’s what I understood—”

“Yes,” Cross said. “I told them. That’s what we plan.”

“The problem,” Shane said, “is with delivery. I’ve been put in charge of coordinating this section of the Project.”

Cross knew that was because of his position with the Air Force, but Portia obviously didn’t know who Shane was. She was staring at him as if she were trying to figure that out.

Shane turned toward Maddox, as if to get approval to give his part of the report now. She nodded almost imperceptibly. Portia pulled the dog tighter and leaned back in her chair.

“Every small working plane in every country is being impounded and fitted for crop dusting of the nanorescuers,” Shane said. “We’ve also drafted every person who can fly small planes—or at least everyone we can find. Most of the countries have a standing request out for volunteers.”

Some countries had made no requests, Cross knew. Some had ordered compliance. Shane was tactfully skipping over the different methods of the varied sovereignties. Everyone had been skipping over those things. Right now, as someone had pointed out earlier, the most important thing was for the world to work together, not to fight over differences in methodology.

“We hope to be able to blanket the world, as Ms. Groopman said,” Shane continued, “but the way it looks—based solely on delivery methods—we’ll only be able to dust cities and towns.”

“But what about the people who live in villages or the country?” Britt asked. She sounded shocked.

“That’s part of the president’s speech tonight,” Maddox said. “He’s going to tell people to move to populated areas for safety reasons.”

“So the cities are going to be overrun,” Cross muttered.

Britt elbowed him.

But that didn’t stop him. “General,” he said, “people can go to deserts as well. The aliens aren’t going to touch areas that aren’t lush. I think we should also launch as many ships as possible, oceans only, of course. That should take some of the pressure off the cities.”

“Good point,” Maddox said. “I will make sure that gets mentioned as well.”

“That still won’t take all the stress off the cities,” Bradshaw said.

“We have a month to make this transition,” Shane said. “It’s not like people have to be to a major city tomorrow. In fact, the dusting won’t even start until two days before the aliens’ arrival, and it will continue throughout the attack.”

Portia was shaking her head. “Two flybys should be enough,” she said. “Let’s spread the rescuers other places. I mean, these aliens are going for crops, too. If they destroy the unpopulated areas, how are we going to feed people?”

Her words echoed in the large room.

“We have to make it through the attack first,” Maddox said. “Then we worry about the aftermath.”

Portia leaned forward. “But if we do it my way— “Ms. Groopman, the issue has already been decided.”

“But we can’t. We have to spread them all over—•” “Portia,” Cross said quietly. “No one here made the decision. It came from upstairs and is already being implemented.”

“Idiots,” Portia mumbled. “They should have consulted with me.”

They had seen her recommendations, Cross knew. He also knew that the world leaders were trying to solve two problems here: they wanted people to survive the alien attack and they wanted to stop the unrest.

Then Cross glanced at Maddox. She seemed to be working to suppress a smile. Apparently, she had agreed with Portia.

“I think Ms. Groopman has a point,” Maddox said. “Let’s make sure that when we report to our superiors we mention the possible future food shortages. I’m sure FEMA and the equivalent organizations in other countries have already thought of making sure enough food is in the cities to feed the added population. But we should also be stockpiling seeds—things will grow in that ash, won’t they?”

Cross nodded. “If the aliens do as they have in the past,” he said. “We discovered soot layers buried under centuries of organic material. They don’t permanently harm the Earth, but I’m not a biologist. I can’t guarantee whether we’ll have a growing season at all after the nanoharvesters land.”

“Forgive me for interrupting,” said one of the members of the Argentinian team. “We have already seen plants begin to recover in the rainforests.”

“Good,” Maddox said. “Then the next growing season will go on as usual.”

“But that doesn’t make up for all the lost food,” Portia said.

“We’re getting off track,” Maddox said firmly. “This work is very important, and if I had the power to alter the commands of the world leaders, I would do so. But right now, we are dusting only major population centers, and we will make sure people are in those centers.

Dr. Shane, if you or someone can guarantee us a better delivery method, I might be able to bring an altered plan to the president. Otherwise, this plan remains.” Cross felt a shiver run down his back. It was a minimal damage plan. People would die in the country and villages. Some of them would just refuse to leave. He hoped that his assessment was right; that the aliens would continue to target fertile areas only.

Portia looked down. She obviously didn’t like this plan at all. Perhaps she was still young enough to believe they would all survive this. Or perhaps she was in denial about the extent of the problem that faced them.

Maybe, with all the work she’d been doing, she hadn’t even had time to think about it. Cross decided that he’d try to talk with her later. He didn’t want her angry at the program so that she stopped working hard. She was one of their very best assets.

“Anything new on the ships?” Maddox asked Britt. “We haven’t been able to observe much yet,” she said. “At the moment, we estimate that there are one hundred and eight ships coming our way.”

This sparked discussion among all the groups— worry that this was just the first wave of ships, and concern that the ships would use more nanoharvesters than before. Some worried that the aliens were going to use new, different weapons on the Earth.

Maddox agreed that all of this was possible, but that there was no evidence to support any of it.

While the discussion continued, Cross watched Portia. She had left her cookie stack alone. She was cuddling the stuffed dog and plucking at its fur. The conversation about the nanorescuers had bothered her. She obviously wanted to blanket the entire planet, and she was disturbed at the changes in the plan.

After a moment, Bradshaw entered the discussion, explaining what his grad student group had discovered about the aliens. Some of the biologists talked about their studies of the dead aliens, and what the theories were.

Cross forced himself to look away from Portia and concentrate on the conversation. He knew all of this stuff, so it wasn’t of much interest to him, and he knew that Bradshaw could handle much of it on his own.

It wasn’t until one of the Egyptians said, “I do not care whether the aliens need our planet as a food source. I do not believe that understanding the enemy makes much difference in this case.”

Cross stared at the man on the screen. He looked fierce. Maddox started to answer, but Cross said softly, “Let me.”

Maddox nodded.

Cross said, “We don’t know a lot about these aliens. We don’t know their cultural norms. We don’t know how they are born, how they raise their young, or how they live when they’re not at war. What we do know is that they are intelligent, they are—or were for many millennia—significantly more advanced than we are, and that they work well together in groups.”

The Egyptian was watching, arms crossed. Some of the other scientists leaned forward. Cross felt a shiver run through him. Britt had told him time and time again that people listened to him more than they listened to the others. It surprised him every time he saw evidence of it.

“The biggest thing that we know is that they harvest Earth like lost travelers in the desert would harvest an oasis. As far as we can tell, we are their only food source. For thousands upon thousands of years, we did not fight back.”

His voice was rising. He tried to keep it in check. He didn’t want to sound strident, even though he was feeling that way.

“It would be as if every animal group that we slaughtered for food, from chickens to cows, suddenly started fighting back—and also fighting to protect the crops and the grass around them. That’s what I believe these aliens are facing.”

“So?” the Egyptian said. “I cannot—I will not—feel compassion for them.”

Cross let out a small breath. Ah, that was where this argument was going, then. “When we try to understand the aliens, we’re not doing it so that we can empathize with them. We’re not doing it so that we feel compassion. We’re doing it to try to second-guess how they will attack us.”

Maddox folded her hands together. Portia was watching him over the head of the small dog. Britt was squeezing her cappuccino cup so hard her knuckles were white.

“I believe, and this is just my belief, that these aliens believe this is a fight to the death.” Cross glanced at the other screens. Heads were nodding at tables all over the world. “I think they are fighting for their own survival and we’re fighting for ours. They’re not going to come in, retaliate, and leave. They have to harvest food from this planet, or their species will die. That means that they’ll have to defeat us, at least by their game plan. I think this next fight will be extremely difficult.” The Egyptian bowed his head once. “If you put it that way,” he said, “I will agree with you. I would like to hear less psychoanalysis, however, and more about ways that we can
physically
defeat them.”

“Well,” Maddox said before Cross could speak again, “let me tell you what I can of the military plans.”

What she could? Cross glanced at her. She was a smart woman, one of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She chose her words with great care. Obviously, she felt she couldn’t share all of the plans. And now he was wondering why. But he knew better than to challenge her in front of their international peers.

“We have come up with a method of attacking the alien ships,” Maddox said.

Cross held his breath. No one had told him this and, judging from the surprised looks around the table, no one had told anyone on the U.S. part of the Tenth Planet Project.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Yolanda Hayes asked.

“1 wasn’t at liberty to,” Maddox said. She smiled. Apparently the silence hadn’t bothered her. “Let me explain what we’re going to do.”

Her smile grew and she rubbed her hands together. Obviously this part of the plan pleased her. “All of you remember the first attack. Nothing electronic can get through the aliens’ dampening fields. They have some kind of equipment that steals the energy from anything within a certain radius.”

Most of that, Cross knew, was for the members who hadn’t been in the Project during the first attack. The aliens’ dampening fields had been part of the problem from the very beginning and the subject of many meetings.

“We have figured out a way around this. We are going to have planes fly
above
the dampening fields. As the alien ships approach the ground so that they can release the nanoharvesters, we will drop bombs on the ships from above.”

Maddox had all of their attention now. Cross’s stomach was in knots and he didn’t quite know why.

“Government scientists who have been working on parts of the alien ships have found a material that will stick to the hulls. We are going to use bombs that will stick and do no immediate harm. Instead of having an electrical timer, these bombs will have a simple altitude pressure switch that requires no electronics at all. When the alien ships rise to a certain altitude, the switch will trigger and the bombs will blow. We believe that enough bombs, dropped on the ships, will destroy the ships.”

“But the harvesters will already have been released,” Killius said.

Maddox nodded. She seemed almost annoyed that the first response was a negative one. Cross had to admit he was stunned by the news and was searching, in his own mind, to find a hole in the idea. Because Maddox had kept this secret from them? Or because he was trying to be a good scientist, skeptical to the end? He wasn’t sure.

“We should be able to use ground launchers to send these bombs into the air as well,” Maddox said.

Cross had a horrible image of apes hurling mudballs at tanks. He tried to shake it off.

“We have given this technology to all of the world governments,” Maddox was saying, “and they are rapidly arming themselves. Between these bombs and Ms. Groopman’s nanorescuers, we have a strong defense against the aliens.”

Cross glanced at her. But that wasn’t all. From what she had said before, they were making other plans as well. “Are we going to attack them before they get into orbit?”

“We haven’t finalized any other plans, yet, Dr. Cross,” Maddox said.