Nebula (34 page)

Everyone nodded agreement, but the looks of concern were obvious. The scientists were obviously scared out of their wits, and even Lu’s team looked a bit less than confident. Brad continued. “Look, it’s going to be pretty chaotic, but we’ll know what’s happening, and the aliens will be caught off balance again. So we’ll have the upper hand as long as we can take control of the guns and destroy their ships before they can react. Just keep calm and focused on your assignments, and we have a very good chance of coming through with flying colors. Don’t worry about any aliens that aren’t at the base. We’ll have time take care of them later. So let’s get ready to do our jobs.”

*

On the fourth day, the aliens and their robots had completed the deployment of the six big guns. They were evenly spaced at ninety degree intervals around the planet. This allowed them to cover all angles of approach for any targets, even ones that were within the orbital distances of the two moons. The deployment allowed most of the space beyond ten or fifteen thousand kilometers to be covered by at least two or three guns. It was a very impressive installation. And fortunately, as Yuri predicted, they erected the firing stations outside their bunker, and two of them were oriented perfectly for viewing by one of the telescopic video cameras.

Harry and Yuri were monitoring the robots and saw that preparations were being made to test each of the guns. The aliens were going to test one at a time, starting with the one near their bunker. One alien and one robot were stationed at each of the guns, so only seven aliens remained at the base. The other five were at the five other guns. They’d gone there in the small ships that they had used to transport small pieces of equipment and that were obviously used as shuttles. But they only used one of the shuttles, leaving the other at the base, so only one of the alien-robot pairs at the other guns would have transport. The others would rely on it to pick them up when the tests were completed.

The seven remaining aliens gathered around one of the fire control stations, and the robots were sent back about fifty meters to keep them out of the way. They were also commanded into sleep mode, probably to avoid any potential problem from the electromagnetic burst that would accompany the firing. Harry and Yuri saw this and reported it to the others. Ludmila commented that this was a stroke of luck. Robots in the sleep mode should be easier for Harry and Yuri to disable since they would be open to receive the commands to turn them back on. Yuri’s cyber-epileptic inducement data would almost certainly work anyway, but it was one hundred percent certain if the robots were awakened with that input, and the general mood was boosted by this news.

Now everything was ready for the tests. Harry reported that information in the robot network indicated that the local gun at the base would be tested first, as they had expected. One of the aliens operated the gun and aimed it in a direction to avoid hitting any of their ships. It fired a single burst that painted a bright line of plasma through the Martian atmosphere. They then went into automatic mode and fired a series of bursts that lasted about one second. The surveillance cameras were able to detect each burst and recorded them in the computer. Brad quickly confirmed that twenty of them were fired in the one second interval.

Satisfied that the first gun worked as intended, the aliens went to the other fire control stations and performed the same tests for the remote guns until all were verified to be working. The entire process was completed in less than ten minutes. As each gun was tested and verified, the alien-robot pair at that gun returned to the base. The pair with the shuttle was at the first test location, and they went immediately to the second, picked up the pair at that location, and brought them back to the base. Then they went to the next location and repeated the taxi service until all five pairs were returned to the base.

Judith and Ludmila monitored each test and were able to determine which fire control stations were used for the guns that had the best fields of fire against the alien ships overhead. Three of the guns had good coverage of most of the ships, and a fourth could hit the remaining ones on the extreme edge of the widely dispersed alien formation. They configured the remote control terminals to work those guns, and they were now ready to act as soon as they detected Milo’s attack.

According to the plan, Milo was supposed to be stationed about thirty light minutes away, so he would see the test shots in just a few more minutes and then would move in. The action should start in less than an hour, and they got ready to seize control of the guns as soon as Lu’s attack took the aliens’ attention away from the fire control stations.

Lu’s troopers had already suited up and went out through the secondary airlock at the rear of the bunker. It was virtually unobservable from where the aliens were standing. They carefully moved to positions behind several small hills, so close to the aliens that Harry and the others were worried that they’d be seen. But they were professionals, well trained and practiced at concealment and stealthy approach to an enemy, and they remained undetected as they waited for Mikio’s radio signal to begin the attack.

*

Milo and Igor were in position well before they detected the plasma bursts from the alien guns. That was their cue to start their deception attack and maybe even take out a few of the larger alien warships. Milo commanded Igor to send the message warning of their arrival and ten minutes later he started to move at near-light speed toward the alien formation. The aliens would receive that message about fifteen minutes before Milo’s ship reached the area, and they would have to respond with instructions that Milo had no intention of following. Harry and Yuri would also see the message as it arrived in the robot network since standard practice was to alert robot sentries as well as the aliens at the arrival area. But everyone on the Nebula team was already aware of what would happen and approximately when the message would arrive. It would only serve to inform them more precisely of the timing of Milo’s charge at the alien ships.

The passage of time for Milo and Igor was very small as they streaked toward Mars. He slowed the ship to 90% light speed as he approached within five light minutes. Relativistic time dilation backed off, and the ship was now able to receive message traffic from the command ship. Just as he had expected, the commander ordered him to halt at a distance of ten light seconds from the light cruiser that served as the command and control ship. His orders were to wait there as a robot ship approached to retrieve the memory chip with the message. Harry and Yuri saw the reply in the robot network, and Mikio saw it in the alien radio channel that he was monitoring with one of his sets. So far, so good.

Milo detected the approach of the robot ship two minutes after receiving the message, and he slowed his ship as if intending to stop at the predetermined position. As the robot ship came close, a series of messages were exchanged between Igor and the pilot of the other ship, and it swung alongside to prepare to dock and make the transfer. At that point, Milo pushed the speed lever up to 90% light speed and hit the button to put it into automatic pilot and weapons release according to instructions that he had already loaded into the memory. At these high speeds, manual control was impossible due to relativistic effects, and the ten light second distance to the target would be covered almost immediately in Milo’s relativistic time-compressed condition. But the computer could handle it easily.

Harry adjusted his interface to merge with the robotic brain in the pilot of the robot ship. He could see everything that was happening, with only the ten second delay. He saw the robot pilot’s surprise, if that was the right word for what happened in the cybernetic brain
, and the pilot’s attempt to adapt to the unexpected situation. But the ship’s guns weren’t aimed and ready to fire, and Milo was able to dash into the enemy formation before the robot could do anything to stop him.

Milo’s first target was the light cruiser that was the alien command and control ship. He had set a course that would take him directly toward it and had set the torpedo to fire when he was one light second away and to detonate when it was within fifty meters of the target. Once the torpedo was launched, Milo’s ship would execute an instantaneous reversal to 99% light speed, taking him out of lethal range of the blast fast enough to avoid the burst of energy that would come at him at light speed.

Everything worked almost exactly as Milo had intended. But the light cruiser had moved a small distance from the original position that Milo had entered into the computer when he first arrived at the parking spot ten light seconds away. So it wasn’t a direct hit, but the thermonuclear blast was sufficient to tear a large piece of the cruiser’s hull away, and it clearly was out of action. Most of the crew was either dead or locked away in sealed emergency compartments or escape capsules. That ship plus several of the escort fighters and robot ships were now out of action. But the battleship and the two heavy cruisers were still undamaged. His next target was the battleship.

Milo flew out to about ten light seconds, just enough to avoid damage from the blast and then commanded the ship to execute the next maneuver that he had preprogrammed. It would take him on a course toward a point where he could launch the second torpedo at the battleship, but this time it wasn’t a straight line to the target. Instead, he had to program an erratic series of high-speed swerves like the “jinking” maneuvers that pilots used to evade fire from air defense guns and missiles. The aliens would be ready for him this time, so an evasive maneuver was necessary in order to survive what he knew would be dense fire from the x-ray guns.

The ship almost made it to the launch point without being hit, but at the last moment, one of the x-ray bursts scored an indirect hit that damaged the torpedo launcher. The torpedo was still intact and operational, but it stayed on the ship as the high-speed escape maneuver was executed. Milo noticed the problem only seconds after he had reversed course and reached the safe distance from the target. He now had a problem and a decision to make. The enemy was beginning to recover from the initial surprise, and they had sent two fighters and three robot ships out toward him. He could evade them for a few more seconds and could make one more attempt to attack the battleship, or he could retreat with his remaining torpedo and let Brad’s team do the rest of the work.

He made his decision and reactivated the second attack program, the one that had just failed. But this time, he deleted the launch command and the retreat command. What was left was just a direct charge through the alien formation and at the battleship. He would use his own ship as a torpedo to deliver the warhead.

Milo’s ship swung back toward the alien formation and flew the erratic course to its target. If a human had been at the controls, there might have been some hesitation in steering this suicide course, but the ship was only a machine and just did as it was told. For Milo, the time passed so quickly, that he hardly had time to reconsider his decision before the torpedo detonated. It was a direct hit, and the battleship was totally obliterated, along with Milo’s ship and two robot ships that were docked at the battleship. The torpedo’s blast was amplified by a secondary explosion of the battleship’s own power generation systems, and the combined force of both explosions damaged one of the heavy cruisers nearby.

*

Brad gave the signal to go as soon as the detonation of the first torpedo appeared on the view screens of the telescopic video cameras. Everyone detected the bright flash in the sky above, even those who were focused on the aliens and their fire control stations outside their bunker. Mikio sent the “go” message immediately to Lu’s team.

Harry and Yuri sent the data to disable the sleeping robots before they were automatically awakened by the action. As sentries, their sensors would detect activity and react to it even when they were in sleep mode, so it was necessary to send them into cyber-epileptic seizure states before they could become a problem, and the data download worked just as Yuri had said it would. So the easy part of the problem was solved. Now it was up to the others to take out the aliens on the surface and to destroy all the alien ships above them.

Lu gave the order to go, and all five jumped from cover and began to fire as they charged at the aliens and their gun control systems. Bobby Sturgeon and Sally Jones launched a volley of rounds from their arrow guns. The silent fire of the arrows caught the aliens by surprise, and five of them were cut down. The other seven aliens now saw that they were under attack and scattered. Avery fired a rocket propelled grenade into a pair of them. The remaining five ran in the direction of their bunker, either to get shelter inside or to try to get to the far side where they would be shielded from Nebula fire. They didn’t have time to draw their own weapons, and they just ran.

All five of Lu’s team charged at the gun control stations, firing as they ran. Lu hit one of the retreating aliens with a burst of fire from her sidearm, a standard automatic pistol that worked better in the thin Martian atmosphere than it did on Earth. The arrow guns took out two more, but the remaining two managed to get around the side of the bunker, where they were shielded from fire and where one of the small shuttle craft had been parked. Avery tried to launch a grenade over the bunker and almost hit the shuttle, but the aliens were lucky this time. They managed to get into it and shoot off at high speed. But at least the area around the base was now clear of aliens.