Nebula (32 page)

“What are the chances that they’ll find us?”

“Almost zero,” Haverford replied. “One of my best concealment specialists is with the team, and he told Brad that the place is so well concealed that even he wouldn’t be able to find it without a lot of prior knowledge. They’ll be good until they come out and engage the enemy. Then all bets are off unless they can kill every alien and robot that saw them.”

“OK,” Seduro concluded. “Keep at it, and let us know if you have any more information.”

At that point, the session ended. Haverford and Brad got up and left immediately, Haverford going back to Nebula Ops and Brad back to Mars.

*

Brad and Lu’s special operators were deep into the planning on how to hold for at least two assaults when Harry, Judith, and Ludmila interrupted.

“Brad, we have a plan that may let us keep control of Mars indefinitely,” Harry began.

The special operators and Brad looked up, somewhat annoyed that the scientists were interrupting their difficult discussions, but they stopped, and Brad motioned for Harry to continue.

“We think that if we let them set up all their equipment, including the heavy guns, without revealing our presence, we should be able to take control of their equipment on Mars, kill the aliens here, disable the robots, and destroy the aliens and take control of heavy cannons that will be arrayed across the planet to provide long range coverage in all directions. We can make Mars our own fire base.”

Silence for several seconds, and then Brad asked, “Do you mean that we should just sit here while they get their fire base up and running? Are you that confident that we could then just come out and take over everything?”

“I’m more confident of being able to do that than of being able to hold out against more than one direct assault. We’ve given it a lot of thought. Give us a few minutes to explain.”

“OK, but let’s be quick about it.”

Harry turned to Judith. “Why don’t you start? Taking control through their electronics is a big part of our plan.”

Judith was well prepared as she described how the electronics that would be set up at the alien base would control all the sensors and weapons that would be on the surface. “We’ve been going over all their equipment designs and the plans for the Martian fire base. It’s all documented in detail in the planning archives that Yuri extracted. They’re going to place six of the very heavy cannons across the surface of the planet so that they have at least one that can fire at every point of approach. The guns are all controlled from a console that they’ll set up inside their base. It uses radio to connect to the guns and sensors, and I know how to seize control of that link. I should be able to control everything from here and lock them out.”

“How sure are you?”

“As close to one hundred percent as possible. We’ve already done the hard parts when we learned how to take control of robots. This is the same thing. I already started modifying some of our radio and computer gear to do the job. I’ll be done within a few hours if you give the OK. It just means that I need to take apart some other things that we’re not using very much anyway.”

Ludmila was next. “The computer systems and software will be easy to handle. We already know how their systems work, and we have a good grasp of the programming language and protocols, so once Judith gives us the connections, we can install our surprise in just a few minutes, and we can keep it inactive and hidden until we make our move. It’s what they used to call a zero-day attack during the days of the Internet hackers. The first that they see it will be when we take over the system, and by then it will be too late.”

“This is a good plan,” Harry continued. “Yuri and I can disable the robots by linking to them through the two soldiers and the worker that we already own. Then our soldiers can destroy the other ones. I assume that Lu’s team can carry out the ambush of the aliens. That’s probably what you’ve been planning anyway, but now you’d just wait until they have everything set up. They may even be less cautious about a surprise attack if they already worked for a day or two without being bothered.”

Brad and the special operators stared at the three of them for several seconds, amazed that this outlandish plan actually seemed that it could work.

“That’s an interesting course of action,” Brad finally said. “If we can take over their fire base, we might be able to hold them back indefinitely. We could establish a safe corridor to get supplies and reinforcements from Earth, and we could keep any of their ships well away from us. I like the idea, but are you sure that we could pull it off? Have you considered everything?”

“We think so,” Harry replied. “The technology parts are pretty straightforward, and we’ve already solved the biggest problems. The main thing is being able to keep concealed and then act quickly against the aliens themselves. We have no doubt that we can take control of the guns and sensors and lock them out, and we will definitely be able to overcome their robots.”

Lu piped in, “We can handle the aliens. We already have that planned, but we’ll have to adjust things since our initial plans were to act before they had everything set up and running. But it shouldn’t be a big problem.”

“I can also ask Colonel Haverford to stage a deception operation right before we act,” Brad said. “If he can do something to distract their attention, it would give us a few extra seconds before their battleship and cruisers could do anything to stop us. I’m sure that they’d be willing to sacrifice their team here on the surface if that’s what it took to destroy us, so we need to be able to prevent that battleship or the heavy cruisers from sterilizing this entire area. A good, deceptive attack in space should take their eyes off the surface while we gain control of the guns. Then we could hit them hard.”

So the plan was starting to come together, centered on a takeover rather than disruption of the alien plans to make Mars into a strong-point on their march toward Earth. And, much to the surprise of Brad, Haverford, and Lu’s team, the scientists would be the key people in the direct action against the enemy. Brad had known from the start that his scientists would play an important role in the war, but he never figured on anything this directly associated with the most important battle.

Brad put some papers into his satchel and went to put on his space suit. “I need to go back to Earth to coordinate with Haverford on our operations once the aliens arrive. From that point on, we’ll have to remain silent until we attack so we need to be clear on what everyone will do and how to arrange to signal the start of the operation. I should be back in a few hours. I’ll leave the runabout on Earth and hitch a ride with one of Haverford’s people. We need to be totally invisible after I return.”

*

When Brad arrived at Ops, Haverford was already aware of the plan that Harry had presented and had started to work up plans for his end of the operation. The transmission from the team on Mars included a lot more detail than what they had discussed with Brad, and Haverford was starting to think that it might actually work.

“That’s a pretty bold plan that your folks developed,” he said as Brad entered the room. “I never figured that a bunch of scientists would think in such a tactical way, and they seem to have covered most of the things that they need to do. But it’s still a big risk. If anything goes wrong, you’ll all be wiped out almost immediately.”

“We know that,” Brad replied. “But what else can we do? If we go with the original plan to hold them off for one or two assaults, we’ll buy at most a few days, and then we’ll have to deal with that strong fire base on Mars and that platform ship. What Harry and the others came up with is our best bet to win outright or at least to delay things for a lot longer.”

“OK, I agree. So here’s what my forces can do to help. What you need most is for a good diversionary operation to keep them distracted when you attack them on the surface of Mars. It’ll probably take you a few minutes to take the aliens down and disable their emergency communications, so during that time, they may get a distress message off to those ships overhead. If that happens, and if the ships see the message and react immediately, they can direct enough plasma fire at your location to totally sterilize it, including you and the aliens and robots. I have no doubt that they’d do that if they knew what you were doing. They already lost hundreds of millions, maybe more than a billion, of their people, so the assault crew would be a negligible sacrifice. So we need to take their attention completely away from what happens on the surface, and we need to make sure that they’re preoccupied for at least five or six minutes. We have a plan to do that. Will it buy you enough time?”

“I think so,” Brad replied. “At least it had better be enough. We’ll act very fast. Harry and Yuri can send data on the robot network to send the robots on the surface into what amounts to an epileptic seizure. Yuri calls it a cyber-epileptic seizure. It has something to do with data that will get their robot brains into an unstable, oscillating condition. He already did that when we attacked them the first time, and it worked. The robots on the surface will be close enough to our transmitter to overpower any other signals on their network, and Yuri and Ludmila already loaded the data packages to send. They tell me that it will work almost instantly, like last time. Our five robots will be made immune to the malicious code that we send, so they’ll be able to physically destroy the other robots. Lu has her operation planned down to the second, assuming that most of the aliens will stay close to the base once their guns are deployed and ready to be controlled from the base. Lu has a pretty good idea of how to handle any departures from the perfect setup. Once we have control of the base and the weapons, we can take control of the guns that they placed around the planet, and then we’ll own the planet and the heavy weapons.”

“Good, so here’s what we plan to do to help you.”

Haverford then described the plan that he and a few of his senior officers had developed. Brad listened and made a few comments, but for the most part, it seemed like a good plan, one that might even work.

“We should probably fill Seduro and Billingsley in on this,” Brad said as Haverford finished. “We’ll need their OK.”

“Right. Let’s head over to Prime and meet with them. Then you can head back to Mars and get your team ready to go.”

*

Seduro and Billingsley and a few other senior members of the Nebula board of directors were already seated and waiting for Brad and Haverford when they arrived. There were no formalities, and Haverford took the floor and explained the plan that he and Brad had agreed on.

Everyone seemed to agree that the suggestion from Brad’s team made sense. It was risky, but it was probably their best chance of avoiding total defeat or having to get into a massive, long range, thermonuclear duel with the enemy fleet.

Brad’s explanation of the detailed plan that Harry and the others developed was very convincing, especially since all the technology was based on what they’d already done before. Besides, no one had been too happy with the previous plan to try and hold out for a few days, realizing that in the end, the aliens would own Mars and have an impregnable base there, with an ability to support a direct assault on Earth. This option at least had some promise of being a decisive move to halt any further alien advances and maybe even end the war. But they were more skeptical about how Haverford’s forces could provide the necessary distraction long enough to give Brad’s team a chance to succeed.

Haverford started out by explaining that he could no longer count on having detailed knowledge of the alien plans and had to assume that the aliens would be a lot more cautious than before. That ruled out a direct attack on their ships with the previous combination of torpedoes, artillery ships, and fighters. The aliens would certainly deploy sensors and barrier defenses, probably mines and robotic systems, and the Nebula ships wouldn’t be able to get close enough to be a threat. So they’d have to do something else to distract the alien ships and maybe even destroy a few of the large ones.

“Here’s what we plan to do,” Haverford began. “We know that the aliens will deploy a very dense defensive barrier in the area around Mars, so we can’t do a frontal assault or a torpedo attack like we did before. The sensors would detect the gravity bow waves well in advance of our arrival, and I doubt that we could do anything to disrupt them this time. They’ll probably deploy them too far out and have too deep a layer of them. But we think that we can sneak one alien fighter into their area, close enough to do damage and keep them occupied.”

“And just how do you plan to do that?” Seduro asked, clearly agitated and concerned that they might blow this last chance to hold back an outright invasion. “Do you expect an engraved invitation? Besides, what kind of damage could a single fighter do? Even if it got through, they’d dispose of it within a couple of seconds once it showed that it was hostile.”

“In a way, we do expect an invitation,” Haverford replied. “And it can do a lot more damage and keep them occupied for a lot longer than a couple of seconds as long as things work pretty much as we expect.”

“OK, so let’s go on,” Seduro said, impatiently, waving his hand at Haverford.

Haverford ignored the obvious tension in the room and remained composed as he continued. “As you know, we captured and repaired a few alien fighters. We’re outfitting one of them with two of the asteroid-buster nuclear torpedoes that we got from the nations. Milo, our best pilot, and Igor, the soldier robot that we modified a while back, will take that ship out about thirty light minutes from Mars, in the direction of the alien fleet. Then they’ll turn back and approach the alien formation near Mars from the back side.”