Nebula (25 page)

“Wow,” Milo exclaimed. “That was a surprise. Even with the heavy electromagnetic shielding that the aliens put between us and the gun, we still got a hell of a blast from it. I recorded flickers in all the electrical and gravity control systems and in all the shields. This thing is a monster. I can see how it would do a lot of damage on a global scale even when it’s fired from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. When we fire at the battle group, we’ll probably take out all the systems on any ship in the main beam and probably even in the first couple of sidelobes. That could cover them all. They should be sitting ducks until they can get back on line, if that’s even possible after taking a direct hit. Make sure that all our ships keep in that safe zone when I fire.”

“Good work. We’re OK here,” Brad reported. “It looks like the sidelobes beyond 90 degrees are low enough even at this close range. We had only a minor flicker, nothing that caused a problem.”

“We had no damage,” Doug reported. “We had an intermittent power surge in the gun control and display unit, but it didn’t seem to do anything to the glasses other than a brief flicker. Mikio kept his on, and he says that the glasses still work and the flicker didn’t bother him. Our computer and radio seem OK too.”

“The worker robot and Igor look good too,” Yuri said. “Harry and I can’t see any effects at all in either of them.”

“Nothing to report from Deimos or Phobos,” Haverford said.

Everything worked pretty much as planned, with only a few minor surprises with the EMP gun. Now that they knew what to expect, they would be prepared.

They were now set for the arrival, only minutes away.

*

“Message coming in from the alien force,” Yuri announced as he sensed the incoming communication in the worker robot’s receiver. “It’s a notice of approach and a request for clearance and guidance instructions. They’ll drop from near light speed in about two minutes, when they’re about three hundred thousand kilometers away, and then they’ll proceed at one twelfth the speed of light to an assembly point about eighteen thousand kilometers from Mars, directly above the alien base.”

“That looks like it would put them pretty close to synchronous orbit altitude,” Haverford interjected. “I wonder what that means. It’s too close to be just a coincidence.”

“I’m not sure,” Yuri continued. “They don’t give any other information on their assembly position, but they do list all their ships. It’s what we expected: one battleship, one heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, ten fighters, and ten robot ships. They also ordered the fighter here on Mars to position itself five thousand kilometers away from their assembly point, toward the direction of galactic north and await further orders. They don’t say anything about the robot ship, so I assume that it should just follow the original orders until we launch our attack.”

“Roger,” Haverford replied. “Our ships are ready to go as soon as the plasma cannon fires. Brad, is everything good on your end.”

“Status check,” Brad ordered.

“Good to go,” Doug answered.

“Proceeding to station near the assembly point,” Milo answered. “We’ll be there in less than a minute.”

“All good to go on this end,” Brad replied to Haverford. “I’ll give the order to fire. I’ll broadcast on both your net and our local net. The plasma and EMP guns will fire at the same time, on my command. Everything after that will be under your control. We may still have a working plasma cannon here if they don’t get a chance to fire at it before you hit them. I’ll let you know so you can tell us how you want us to use it.”

“Roger,” Haverford replied.

The couple of minutes passed quickly, and the battle group appeared first on the long range sensors deployed far from Mars and then in the local sensors that were installed around the base. As it moved toward its assembly area, it could even be seen through the binoculars that Doug and Mikio had brought with them.

“Holy shit,” Doug said as he focused in on the battleship. “That thing’s a monster. I estimate that it must be at least twenty or thirty times as big as the fighters. Those cruisers are pretty big too. The big one is about ten times the size of the fighters and the other two are at least half as big. If they have three more battleships and more cruisers, we’re in big trouble even if we kill these.”

“Just focus on this job,” Brad replied. “We’ll worry about the others later.”

Doug and Mikio put down their binoculars and put the alien glasses on so that they could prepare to target the battleship. Then they waited in hiding behind the ridge, leaving the plasma cannon pointed away from the alien formation. They’d swing it around when the time was right.

The first alien ship to approach Mars was a fighter. It went ahead of the others to do a reconnaissance sweep of the surface and near-space around Mars. First it descended to about ten thousand kilometers above the base and scanned the area. It reported that the alien cannon was intact but that there were no other ships present, nor did it detect anything other than one worker robot positioned near the cannon, where Mikio and Doug had moved it after the test shot. The alien fighter also reported that there were no aliens present at the base, assuming that they were all now on the fighter with the EMP gun. It also failed to detect the AFO base that was well hidden below ground.

The battleship then sent a message to Milo’s fighter requesting confirmation that the crew was onboard and that all systems were normal. Milo replied in the affirmative. He’d been expecting that inquiry and had an appropriate response already prepared and stored in the communications buffer. Yuri had helped him construct it. Fortunately, Igor’s memory had all the information on these types of messages, so it was easy to compose.

After the fighter scanned the area around the base, it proceeded to fly several times around Mars at high speed to check on anything else that might affect their plans to assemble and initiate an attack on the Earth defense forces. Its rapid scan showed nothing other than Milo’s and Igor’s ships. Haverford’s ships were well concealed on the two moons. When it completed its reconnaissance, the fighter rejoined the rest of the ships that were now taking their positions, under direction from the commander on the battleship. They appeared to be very confident that
there were no imminent threats and were proceeding very methodically and with no evident sense of urgency or danger.

The alien formation had the battleship at the center, flanked by the two light cruisers and with the heavy cruiser in the rear. The ten fighters and ten robot ships were grouped in pairs, each pair of fighters having a pair of robots attached to it. Those five fighter pairs were deployed to the sides and slightly to the rear of the formation, leaving the battleship and its two light cruisers in the lead position.

“That’s a pretty strange way to form up,” Haverford commented, as he viewed the alien formation on the tactical display. “They must have a hell of a lot of confidence in their battleship’s ability to withstand any attack if they put it out front like that. But it definitely will help the guys on Mars get a clear shot at it.”

“Roger that,” Brad replied. “OK, everyone, I’ll start the countdown in ten seconds. If anyone has a problem, let me know now. Otherwise, get ready to go on my count.”

No one replied. Everyone just held their breath and got ready to fire.

Milo had his ship positioned alongside the main battle group, as commanded. He was prepared to swing into position at the count of one, with his EMP gun aimed directly at the heavy cruiser to the rear of the battleship and its two light cruisers. He and Judith could see that all the alien ships, except maybe two of the fighter/robot formations, would be in the main beam. Those other four ships would probably be in a strong sidelobe and would also take a big hit. Milo loaded data into the autopilot to swing the ship into position as soon as he pushed the button.

Mikio was in charge of the plasma gun, with Doug taking care of moving data from the alien fire control device into the tactical net. When Brad announced ten seconds to countdown, Mikio began to swing the plasma gun around and set the target finder on the battleship. Five seconds later, the aim point in the display was directly over the battleship, and the control display indicated that the gun was ready to fire. Both Mikio and Doug hoped that the battle group had stopped looking closely at them and couldn’t see that they were now being targeted. That was the one loose end that no one had considered, but they were fortunate that the commander in the battleship was confident that there were no nearby threats and that the reconnaissance had shown that everything on the surface of Mars was as expected and therefore uninteresting.

“Three – two – one …” Brad counted down. Milo swung his fighter into firing position, and Judith set the power of the EMP cannon to maximum. Harry and Igor prepared to move the robot ship from its assigned position as soon as the two cannons fired. They had its tactical systems programmed to attack the heavy cruiser first and then to swing to the nearest light cruiser before dashing off at near light speed so that it would be out of the way when Haverford’s ships came in for the kill. Mikio did the final tweaking of the plasma gun fire control, and he and Doug waited.

“Fire!” Now everything happened in the blink of an eye. Both cannons fired. Igor’s ship charged at the heavy cruiser, and Haverford’s fighters emerged from hiding and dashed toward the battle group at twenty percent light speed. All of this happened in less than two seconds.

The initial results were spectacular. The plasma gun vaporized the left front quarter of the battleship. The mortally wounded ship spun out of control from the force of the strike. All of its systems were down, and it tumbled in space, without any gravitational control and now just in a normal orbit around Mars. Since it was approximately at synchronous altitude and was already maintaining station above the alien base, it was already moving in what was almost precisely a synchronous orbit. Now it was a dead wreck in a real orbit with a period equal to approximately one Martian day.

Judith had been right about the effect of the EMP cannon. Even the two fighter/robot formations in the sidelobes were hit hard. Now the entire battle group was defenseless until they could get their systems back on line, but that would probably be too late for them. Igor and Haverford were already going in for the kill.

When the alien battle group first arrived, Harry was almost overwhelmed by all the other robot brains that were now on the network connected with Igor and, through Igor’s brain, to Harry’s. For Harry, it was like the din of chatter in a crowded room, but he quickly regained his focus on Igor. He and Igor and the robot ship were like one integrated organism. The small distance between the two of them made the time delays nearly zero, and Harry seemed to be right in the pilot’s seat watching the action and knowing precisely which lever and button would be used next. It was almost as if he was doing everything himself and knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

Igor immediately went on the attack, aiming directly at the heavy cruiser. With its shields disabled from the EMP strike, the ship was defenseless as it tumbled out of control. Igor’s plasma cannon blasted a gaping hole in the hull, and a long x-ray burst from the forward machinegun bored into the hole and set off multiple explosions inside. Within a couple of seconds, the cruiser was as dead as the battleship.

Igor then turned to the light cruiser. The plasma cannon was not yet recharged, so Igor used the machineguns to punch several large holes in the unshielded hull and then retreated at high speed to get out of the way as Haverford’s fighters moved in for their first pass. Harry was amazed at how easy this had been. He watched through Igor’s sensors as the battle continued to unfold, if it could really be called a battle at all. It was more like just killing a wounded animal. He almost felt sorry for the aliens that were being killed so efficiently.

Haverford’s attack was a piece of precision flying. His crews were clearly well trained for this type of operation. They were organized into three formations of four fighters each, in a diamond shaped pattern with one in the lead, one in the rear, and the other two flanking them. Haverford led the Squadron Alpha. They slowed to about three kilometers per second as they approached the enemy formation and then zeroed in on the heavy cruiser to deliver a coup de grace that was probably unnecessary. Haverford fired his cannon and finished blasting that ship to pieces. Now that the primary target was destroyed, the other three fighters in his formation peeled off to take shots at other ships. Two of them teamed up to attack the remaining light cruiser that hadn’t yet been hit. It was still out of control from the EMP strike, and its shields were still down, so the kill was an easy one. Both fighters fired their plasma cannons at it, and two huge holes were blown in its hull. The remaining fighter attacked one of the alien fighters and it too went down without a fight. Then Haverford’s four fighters looped back out to make way for the next formation to get its turn. They accelerated back to half the speed of light and traveled to the preplanned rendezvous point where the other two formations would rejoin them and prepare for their next attack if that proved necessary. The rest of Squadron Alpha did their passes and took out all the rest of the enemy ships and looped out to rejoin Haverford and form up for the next wave. Then they watched the action as Bravo came in for the kill.

Squadron Bravo now swooped in as Alpha moved out of the way, but they had little to do except for cleaning up some of the enemy ships that were damaged but still not completely dead. Haverford had prepared for multiple, coordinated hit-and-run attacks by the two groups of fighters, but the effectiveness of the EMP weapon made that unnecessary.