Nebula (20 page)

“But they’re not hooked just yet,” Mikio cautioned. “Let’s cross our fingers and see what happens next.”

A few minutes went by, and then the seven aliens emerged from the underground base and headed back to the smaller of the two ships. Two other aliens came out to meet them. One was A-5 and the other was a new one. Gladys named it A-9. They gathered in what looked like a huddle in American football and had a discussion that lasted several minutes. During this time, two more aliens emerged from the fighter, and Gladys immediately named them A-10 and 11. Those two joined the other eight already in the huddle.

“That’s eleven of them,” Mikio said. “There must be one more left on one of the ships. They always seem to do things in sets of six or twelve.”

He was right. About a minute later, A-12 emerged from the smaller ship along with two worker robots. The workers were carrying what looked like a big piece of equipment of some sort. It seemed to be a stand, with strong legs that looked like they could be adjusted to keep the upper part level when placed on an uneven surface. It was about half a meter in total height, with the legs folded straight down, so it probably would support something about a quarter meter off the ground when the legs were opened and placed on the ground.

The two robots carried the stand to a place designated by A-12 and then set it up and adjusted it to keep the upper part level to the Martian ground. They then returned to their ship and brought out another piece of equipment. This one looked like a huge piece of electromechanical equipment, one that was probably intended as a weapon. It had a large box-like compartment on one end and a tubular structure on the other. They fastened it onto the top part of the stand that they had erected and leveled.

“What the hell is that?” Nigel asked.

Judith replied, “It looks to me like it could be a big plasma cannon of some sort. See how the barrel seems to taper down at the end? And see the big sockets in that box on the other end? If the next thing that they bring is one of their high power sources, we can bet that they’re setting up base defenses.”

The next thing was indeed one of the high power sources, and the robots connected it to the sockets in the box. Then A-12 confirmed what Judith had said. It operated some controls on a hand held device that was evidently connected by radio link to the box, and the gun swiveled, pointed upward into space, and fired a strong burst of plasma. Off in the distance a small piece of space debris flared up and vanished as the plasma struck it.

“Well, we can forget about having any rescue party come to our assistance,” Nigel remarked. “These blokes have one impressive weapon here.”

“OK, look,” Brad said. “We expected that they’d deploy a base defense. This is nothing that we didn’t anticipate, so let’s not get ourselves all worked up. So far, things are going like we planned.”

A couple minutes went by as the aliens seemed to be discussing things and working with one of the small devices that they brought out of the ship and set up next to the entry to their underground operations center.

Then Doug called out, “They just sent a message back to the fleet. I picked it up on our communications intercept grid. They use the same encryption code as the one that was on the Roswell UFO, just like we thought. They must not change codes very often. I guess that they don’t worry that someone might be able to intercept their messages. That’s a good piece of luck for us. I’ll have the message translated in a few seconds.”

Judith confirmed that the data from the message was also being loaded into the robots’ memories. “It looks like the robots also receive and decrypt the messages, so we should be able to read their mail even if they do change codes. It’ll just take a few seconds longer to get it from the robots’ storage instead of directly as the robots receive it, but that shouldn’t be too m
uch of a problem as long as we’re still able to read it.”

Doug continued, “OK, here it is.” He then started reading through the message and summarizing it as he went. “They’re going to do a reconnaissance of Earth. That apparently was what was planned when they left the fleet, so they’re just going to continue. And they also say something about preparing weapons for an initial probing attack, but they’ll wait for instructions before going beyond the preparations.”

Doug paused as he waited for the translation to progress further and then continued. “Their preliminary scans while they were approaching Mars looked like there wouldn’t be any big threats to a direct attack. They reported that the inhabitants appear to have primitive technology, only rocket propulsion and artificial satellites. They said they don’t see any space-based defenses and no indication of gravity control at all. They again requested permission for a probing attack to verify this. Then they signed off.”

“That’s not good,” Brad replied. “Mikio, send that information back to Nebula. Tell them that Haverford should prepare to respond to any reconnaissance that gets close to Earth, and he may need to exercise one of the deception ops. If they do send a ship to probe Earth’s defense capabilities, he may need to destroy it. Make sure that he advises us of what he plans to do.”

Brad then returned his attention to the message that Doug had received. “Did they mention the preparations for the biological attack?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t seem to be very important to them. It was just a small note about new information, nothing much more than that. The reconnaissance probe seems to be what they’re interested in at this point since that’s apparently what they were ordered to do. It’s also pretty clear that they didn’t know about the biological warfare preparations before they got here. They must have missed that message, so it’s not figured into their plans.”

“OK,” Brad replied. “So we have to change their minds and get them to drop plans for a direct attack and start to figure on using the biological weapons to soften things up before they launch anything. We need to make them worry that we may be stronger than they are. I guess that Haverford is going to have his work cut out for him, and so will we.”

“More activity outside,” Nigel announced, as he and Gladys scanned the visual sensors. “They have a few of the robots taking things out of a couple of the ships and fitting them onto the top of that fighter. They also seem to be getting the smaller ship ready for something. Five of them got back into it, and a sixth is checking something on the outside. It looks like it’s inspecting the landing feet or something else on the bottom. OK, it finished whatever it was doing, and it’s getting onboard.”

Everyone except Yuri and Harry were now glued to the screens with the visual sensor inputs, following the activity outside. Yuri and Harry kept connection with the robots and were totally occupied with that task while the others watched what the aliens and their robots were doing.

The fighter was definitely being modified with some sort of device attached to its upper surface. It was a strange looking piece of equipment, with a number of rods that looked like they formed some sort of antenna array and several cylindrical tubes that were placed between the rods and had struts to connect them with each other and with the rods. There was also a large box that looked like one of the high power sources.

Judith was the first to recognize what the device might be. “I think that they’re constructing a high power electromagnetic wave projector. It may be an electromagnetic pulse gun, like the EMP guns that we developed quite a few years ago. That’s what those rods look like. They seem to be arranged in a way to create a narrow beam pulse of high energy. I don’t know about those cylinders, but they’re probably some sort of pulse generators. Can you get a magnified view of the markings on the box? It looks like one of their high power supplies, and if we can see any serial or model numbers we may be able to confirm that.”

Gladys immediately adjusted the view and zoomed in on the box. The numbers were very similar to the ones on the power supply for the plasma cannon that had been deployed, so it definitely provided energy for some high power system. The cylinders had totally different markings.

Judith had been scanning new data being entered in Igor’s memory. “There’s an update to the soldier robots’ instructions. It looks like something to do with the armed reconnaissance that they’re planning.”

“I see it,” Harry said. “I’m getting pretty clear instructions that seem to be meant for a couple of the other soldiers. They’re all on the net, and that coordination link seems to inform all of them of everything that the others know. Wait a second. We’re getting something about that device being installed on the fighter.”

Yuri, Judith, and Ludmila saw the information very shortly after Harry. They confirmed that the plans were being coordinated for the armed reconnaissance of Earth. It would involve the smaller of the two alien ships and two robotic craft. They’d approach Earth and have the robots do a few close passes to see if there was any response. Then they’d have one of the robotic ships fire a few shots to provoke some sort of counterattack so that they could evaluate it.

“I’ve got a bit of information on the thing that they’re putting on top of the fighter,” Ludmila said. “It’s called something that we haven’t seen before, but it seems to be in all the records in the sentry-soldiers like Igor. My translator doesn’t have a word for it.”

Doug was already working with his translator to try to match the alien words and make some sense of them. He was also trying to correlate words and associations from the messages and the records that were available in the robots’ memories, and finally he was able to correlate some word combinations that made sense. “Oh shit. If I’m right, that thing is one of their big guns, something they call a world crippler or disruptor. It’s something like that.”

Judith said that this would be consistent with a powerful EMP cannon. “It could cripple a lot of systems over a wide area. They could bring everything down and just walk on in if it worked.”

“How close to Earth would they have to get to be able to use it?” Brad asked.

“I’m not exactly sure, but they would probably have to get well within the orbit of the moon for it to have any big effect,” Judith replied. “I’m just guessing based on the arrangement of those rods and what we already know of their high power source.”

“OK,” Brad said. “We’ll go with your best guess. We need to make sure that they don’t use it. Nebula’s going to have to convince them that they wouldn’t be able to get close enough. We have to make them think that the rockets and jet aircraft that they see are only second rate technology used for mundane purposes. We’ll have to show that we do have technology on a par with theirs. Mikio, get that information to Nebula ASAP.”

*

Haverford had already begun to prepare for a physical show of strength even before Nebula received the messages about the reconnaissance and probing attack. Once they received the message about the alien arrival, he understood that something would happen soon and that it might involve a close inspection of Earth or even an initial hit and run attack to probe defenses. It was obvious that the aliens would be able to see the jet aircraft, satellites, and other technologies that clearly indicated a lack of gravity control capabilities, and that would lead them toward a direct attack of some sort. So he coordinated with Billingsley on initiating one of the contingency plans.

Haverford was in secure teleconference with Billingsley and Seduro, explaining what he intended to do. “I’m sending three fighters to the Moon to wait for the aliens’ initial inspection of Earth. Depending on what Brad tells us about their further plans, we can just let them pass without revealing our presence, or we can destroy them to show that we have capabilities that match theirs. I want full authority to make the decision either way when the time comes. There probably won’t be time for any consultation.”

Seduro answered. “I give you the authority, Brendan. I’ll verify with the Board, but unless you hear otherwise, you can do what you determine is necessary.”

“One other thing,” Billingsley said. “We’re going to need to inform the governments. Brendan can probably get his three fighters to the Moon without anyone tracking them, but if it comes to a battle in space, especially near Earth, that can’t be hidden. We also have to prepare them for our launch of a larger battle force. I suggest that we inform them now.”

Seduro replied, “I agree. I’ll coordinate with the rest of the Board immediately. I’ll take your vote as an affirmative so you don’t need to be in that teleconference. You need to have 100% of your attention on the current operation.”

“OK, so I guess we’re done,” Haverford said. “I’m signing off and getting those ships out to the Moon. I’ll keep you informed.”

The three fighters were already prepared for the mission, so as soon as Haverford signed off, he gave the order for them to depart. They left Ops the usual way, one at a time through the airlock, then gathering at the sea bottom until the three were ready to fly. They used the standard techniques to avoid detection until they were beyond the range of the radars that could track them, and they flew to the dark side of the Moon and settled down to wait. Their orders were for them to remain hidden for up to two days.

Nebula had an array of tiny sensors and communications devices gravitationally stabilized well beyond the orbit of the Moon. These devices would be able to detect and track the alien ships and could relay communications to the three fighters to update them on the alien movements and to pass any other information that they needed.