Talosian Chronicles 2: Star Dancer (35 page)

The troops being deployed were Caldarian, and they were vicious fuckers. The armor they wore protected the vital areas of their bodies, and a weak shield protected the rest. The Marines, opened fire on the invaders with their normal weapons, and quickly discovered how poorly those weapons worked. By the time the front line of Marines got the weapons Alan had brought out to them, the Caldarians were almost on top of them.

The Marines were good, there was no doubt about that. Faced with obviously non-human enemies, they still fought back with tenacity. Once the new rifles got to the front, it was almost like the Caldarians ran into a wall. While the Marines fought this strange enemy, the drones that had been dropped removed the wounded and dead back through the maze to the aide stations that had been set up.

The Marines actually stopped the Caldarians almost a hundred meters from the first row of trenches until the first of the Caldarian heavy weapons was unlimbered from the ships. Small, anti-personnel missiles started raining down on the trenches along with the grenades thrown by the Caldarian troops.

The small missiles, were actually like smart bullets, only targeting one person at a time, but once one locked on, it was very difficult to avoid getting hit. It distracted the Marines enough that the Caldarian troops could once again advance. Ten minutes into the fighting, and the US Marines had to pull back to the second position.

The drone guarding that section, waited until the Caldarian troops dropped into the vacated trench before detonating the explosives. The anti-personnel mines in the floor and walls shredded anything that had been unlucky enough to be anywhere near it. Not even the shields or the armor the Caldarians wore saved them. As the drone retreated after the Marines, it filled in the connecting trench.

Once it got back to the second position, it was joined by another drone and they quickly tried to create a roof over the fighting positions to protect the Marines. Drones, by themselves did not have the computing power for these tasks, One of the controllers in the Command Center had seen what the Land Rails had done, and took control of them. Ty didn’t say anything, just shook his head. “You might need a few more out there. Six drones are going to be hard pressed to keep up.” It was when those drones arrived that they began to handle the removal and recovery of the Marines casualties.

During all this fighting, a larger construction drone had slipped out of the front gate and quickly dug a place large enough for a command post for the Marines, a little further out, it dug a place for the aide station. Both of these places were hardened, and covered from all but heavy bombardment. It even hooked it into the community utilities and sanitary facilities.

Once they were finished, Alan told the Colonel and they quickly relocated to the new bunkers. “One of these days you’re going to have to tell me how you did all this shit! But for the time being, I’m damn glad you can!”

“Did what, Colonel? I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Alan said sarcastically.

“Heh, Okay, Smith. We’ll keep your secrets,” Petrie replied before signing off.

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S
ince the troops had encountered more resistance than they had anticipated, the Caldarian assault commander ordered the landing ships to use their guns on the ground troops. The ship’s medium lasers blasted through ten feet of sand and rock in about second, the Marines that were hiding behind it didn’t last as long.

“Now that’s not nice at all! Carl, target those ships with the compound defense guns! I want them turned into salvage, now!” Ty ordered. “Be careful not to hit reactors, if one of those fuckers detonates out there, those Marines are history. Weapons and bridge only!”

“Get on the ground, Carl, and I’ll get a shield around them in case they self-destruct!” the other controller said. He was the one controlling the drones. He was typing furiously as he spoke.

Outside, all hell was breaking loose. From the top of the bluff directly behind the main compound, two mass drivers and a rocket launcher that had been built for air defense turned and opened up on the grounded assault ships. The ‘water tower’ for the community opened up revealing another of the mass drivers that also started firing. All told, two rocket launchers and four mass drivers opened up on the assault ships. Because of the range involved, the rocket launchers had to fire their missiles up into the sky so they would have time to arm themselves before turning to the targets. The attack most definitely took the Marines off the minds of those ship captains.

“Holy shit! Why didn’t he do that ten minutes ago!” Petrie asked, rhetorically. “Keep your heads down boys, and give ‘em hell!”

It didn’t take long for one of the ships to slam to the ground as its power failed. The Marines cheered, but were surprised when the drones that had been helping them all shot forward, dodging Marines and Caldarians, towards the crashed ship.

“Where the hell are they goin’?” one of the sergeants asked.

“Hell if I know, Sarge, but I hope they come back soon, we’re gonna need to move again,” was his answer.

The Marines expected the enemy to lose heart as their ships were destroyed, if anything, they fought harder, and became much more aggressive. When the third assault ship hit the ground, the last one tried to lift off again. It didn’t make it. Under the combined attack of all the base’s weapons, it took only a minute for them to eat through the shield. Once that was done, the mass drivers pealed the armor off the ship, and ate into the vital areas.

The Caldarians true to their history, did indeed destroy their ships. The shields that the drones built were opaque, and blocked the light from the explosions from escaping. However, it was clear to the Marines that had time to think about it, what had happened inside those strange looking bubbles.

The Caldarian hover tanks had moved up to provide cover for their troops. The Marines had been pulling back before those tanks made it to their lines, because there was little that they could do to the heavy machines. Ty’s remaining people on the hover sleds and land rails had been slowly working on those tanks, but it was slow going, since they had been designed to take a beating.

As proof of the fine line between bravery and stupidity, two Marines stayed in one of the trenches and waited for one of the enemy tanks to float over their position. The two men set their new rifles to full auto, and fired them into the belly of the craft, from underneath.

Although both men took horrendous wounds from the attack, the rifles blasted through the lightly armored belly and broke through into the operator’s compartment, killing the operator, and in effect, the machine. The tank dropped to the ground, right on top of the two men that had killed it. Luckily it was straddling the trench, and didn’t crush them. Two drones recovered them before the Caldarians that were rushing forward could get there and kill them. As they passed through the other Marines, they were cheered as heroes. The detonation of the trench flipped the tank back over onto its own troops, crushing six of them.

Colonel Petrie ordered his Sergeants Major to call for immediate resupply and reinforcements shortly after the battle started. When the Sergeants Major asked why, the officer said it was necessary to keep curious eyes from falling on the community that was keeping them alive.

The Sergeants Major smiled and nodded. “I’ll make sure everything is covered, Sir.” Officers could be a funny lot, but the Sergeants Major liked this one. He knew when to keep his mouth shut. He immediately put together a list of what would need to be done in order to make it look like they had been fighting using their own resources and supplies. He formed the plan and made it work.

The resupply drops took an hour and a half to get to them. Their reinforcements took two hours, since the response was a lot larger than anticipated. The Marines had to scramble to get all the advanced weapons off the field before the new troops arrived.

There had been a satellite monitoring the action, but both Star and Mathias had been censoring it to hide the advanced weaponry. Considering what was going on in space, Ty was surprised that the two AI had the time to do that.

Luke and Elias quickly got their crews busy and built makeshift buildings outside the gate to use as aide stations, and a mess hall. One of the buildings had been placed over the top of the command center the drones had dug, and all the Marines dropped the advanced rifles there so everything could be destroyed at once.

While Ty was getting his people changed back into Earth combat uniforms, the scientists and their helpers were busy making everything in their areas capable of passing an inspection by government investigators. The larger weapons systems that couldn’t be lowered into the ground, were camouflaged to look like something else. The guns and rocket launchers on the top of the bluff turned into two observatories and an atmospheric/weather research station. The gun in the water tower, turned back into a water tower.

Three construction drones, with cloaking modifications done to them, recovered all the mines that had been placed. By the time the ‘reinforcements’ arrived to relieve the Marines, the fighting was over, and everything looked normal.

Alan met Colonel Petrie and his staff in their newly rebuilt command tent.

“How bad is it, Colonel?” Alan asked by way of greeting.

“Not as bad as it could have been, ‘Agent Smith’,” the Colonel replied. “Who are you folks, really? There is no way in hell you’re DARPA or anything else associated with the US Government.”

“What makes you ask that, Colonel?” Alan asked innocently.

One of the other officers snorted, and two others chuckled. The Sergeants Major chuckled. “Son, remind me never to play poker with you.”

Alan smiled back. “I don’t play cards anymore, Sergeant Major, it’s no fun when you always win.” He turned to the Colonel. “If you’re still here when everything calms down, I’ll give you folks a tour and tell you everything. Until then, I am to express our very sincere gratitude at keeping our secrets.”

“What are you going to do about the dead aliens?” Colonel Petrie asked.

“Leave them. I’m sure the government will want something to study. Unfortunately, all of their weapons got destroyed beyond any hope of salvage, but I’m sure they’ll still try,” Alan replied, smiling innocently.

“So that’s what those gizmos were doing. We had been wondering. I can understand leaving the bodies, but why destroy the weapons?” one of the other men said. He wore the rank of Captain, and his name tag read ‘Thompson’.

“One of our goals is to make sure no one government on the planet gets advanced weaponry to use against the other. That’s the reason we set the rifles we gave you to self-destruct after a set amount of time. We want to make life on this planet better, not worse. If you discover how to do it on your own, that’s a different matter, but we will do everything we can in order to ensure none of our weapons or those of the aliens fall into governmental hands.

“Right now, up in Wyoming, Colorado and parts of Nebraska, we have people and equipment recovering the downed craft from the airstrike that was coming here. Our fighters managed to shoot them all down before they got into range. Just so you know, a flight of fighter craft from Peterson Air Force base was also shot down. Only two of the pilots managed to survive, and neither of them are in very good condition.” Alan finished. Further conversation was stopped by the arrival of a two star General.

The Guard yelled attention, and everyone in the tent, except Alan came to attention as the burly man entered and walked up to the Colonel, who saluted. “Welcome to New Mexico, General.”

“Thanks, Colonel. You know, you could have saved some for us!” the man smiled.

Colonel Petrie smiled. “Sorry Sir, they were a bit insistent about wanting to die, so being good Marines, we obliged them.”

The General chuckled. “Well done and very good work. Fighting aliens with advanced weaponry couldn’t have been easy. Rest assured that this battle will be studied intimately so we can learn what to do if we need to do this again. Who is the Civilian?”

“Sir, may I introduce Agent Smith of DARPA. I don’t know if you’re familiar with our original mission out here or not...” Petrie said, but the General stopped him.

“Yes I am, the Agent that doesn’t exist overseeing the project that doesn’t exist. I’m sure by the end of this day, this battle won’t exist either. I saw the buildings and whatnot being worked on out there. Is that you’re doing, Agent?” the General asked.

Now that he was facing Alan, he could read the man’s name tag. The first thing Alan noticed was that he was an Army General, not a Marine. His name was Keller and the unit patch was for the eighty-second airborne strategic assault team.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you General. Yes, the head of the operation thought it would be helpful to get the construction teams out here and get some places built to help with wounded and other needs for the troops. I think he was talking about dragging some empty trailers they had out here for makeshift hospitals,” Alan replied. “They are planning on making some helicopter landing areas as well.”

Keller was nodding his head. “Damn helpful, please tell him thank you for the assistance. Now, can someone please tell me what the sam-hell happened out here? Why would aliens travel across the fuckin’ galaxy just to come down here and get their asses handed to them by a battalion of Marines?”

Alan snorted. “Honestly General, I have no flippin’ idea. We’re not working on anything that earth-shattering. I would have expected one of the oil companies to attack us, but Aliens? Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Why would the oil companies attack you?” Keller asked.

“Well, most of the research being done here is new power systems. My part of the pie is the possible military applications we might exploit out of it. But, if they get this working on a larger scale, the oil companies are going to be going out of business,” Alan explained. “When you’re ready, I can show you what’s going on in there.”

“There’s no time like the present. I need to make a report to Washington soon, and it would be a great help if I can tell them what I saw,” Keller replied.