Nebula (26 page)

The whole battle was over in less than one minute, with all the enemy ships either completely destroyed or obviously out of action permanently. They were now just a big mass of space junk in near-synchronous orbit around Mars.

“Good work,” Brad said. “Now we have some cleanup to do. First of all, we didn’t detect any emergency transmissions from the battle group to their fleet, so we need to do something quick to tell them that it was a complete wipe-out. It’s important that they’re intimidated by this and hold off with that second battle group. We need to give the pathogens time to do their job. We should also inspect all the alien ships. We may be able to take prisoners if any of them are still alive, and we may be able to salvage some of their equipment. Can your guys do that, Brendan?”

“My group isn’t prepared for a salvage or boarding operation,” Haverford replied. “But I alerted Nebula Ops that we’ll need some salvage ships, and they’re preparing to send three. They should be here within the hour. Meanwhile, I’m taking my ships back to Earth unless you need any of them to remain here.”

“No. We’re good. We have Milo’s and Igor’s ships.”

“OK, then I’m signing off.”

This stage of the war was now over, and the human forces had scored a complete victory. But Brad and the other team members knew that if the aliens mounted another attack, the results would be far different. Their second battle group was much more powerful than the first, and this time they wouldn’t be as complacent. In a force-on-force battle, the human fighters would be no match for the cruisers and battleship. Haverford’s fleet had only seventy five fighters, and if they charged at the alien force, most of them would be destroyed by the heavy cannons on the battleship and cruisers before they got within range to use their own weapons. The only hope was that the aliens were dissuaded by the results of this first engagement and would hold off until the pathogens could take effect.

But Nebula still had to plan for the worst. They still had the advantage of being able to intercept the alien message traffic. Those messages were unencrypted, probably an indication that the aliens had never encountered a situation that required them to protect information. And Igor and the worker robot were still plugged into the robot network. There was also the possibility that something of use could be salvaged from the alien wreckage orbiting Mars. Maybe another surprise could be arranged if the aliens did plan a second attack before the plague broke out in their main fleet.

Milo flew the alien fighter back to the base, and the crew disembarked and joined the rest of the AFO team in the bunker. Igor also flew back but remained in his ship, waiting for his next orders.

The AFO team, now joined by Milo and the four gunners from the fighter, gathered in the conference room and were discussing potential scenarios and alternative courses of action when the voice message arrived from Nebula Prime. Billingsley, himself, was at that end of the line. “Brad, we’re going to start a planning meeting at Prime in half an hour. Can you make it?”

“I’ll have Milo fly me back to Earth,” Brad replied. Then he turned to Yuri. “You’re in charge until I get back. The main things to do right now are to coordinate with the salvage teams when they arrive and to let us know immediately if you get any message traffic from the aliens. I hope to be back here in a few hours. Any questions?”

“No,” Yuri replied. “We’ll hold the fort.”

Brad and Milo put on their space suits and left for their trip back to Earth. The rest of the group at the base decided to take a break and get something to eat while the leadership at Nebula decided what to do next. Hopefully, they’d come up with something clever.

When Brad arrived at Nebula Prime, most of the others were already in the large conference room and laying out their thoughts on the possible scenarios. Haverford was unusually silent as the senior leadership threw suggestions back and forth. The chair next to him was empty, so Brad walked over and sat down.

This was definitely a war council at the highest levels. Brad knew most of them first hand, except for Seduro, who he’d only met in teleconferences. But here Seduro was in the flesh, seated at the head of the u-shaped table, with Billingsley on his right and Giovanis on his left. The directors of the European and Asian divisions also sat at the head of the table, one on each side of the three who were obviously the senior members present.

The discussion went on for about fifteen minutes when Seduro finally turned to Haverford and asked for his summary of the situation.

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Haverford began, and then he proceeded to explain the details of the previous two engagements, the first being the AFO team’s ambush of the aliens on Mars and the second being the engagement with the battle group.

“Until now, we’ve had the big advantage of surprise,” Haverford continued after summarizing the battles. “We could read all the alien message traffic and could work within their inter-robot network, so we were always one step ahead of them. They had no idea that we were waiting for them or that we had taken over their weapons on Mars. They continued to think that their fighter and robot ship would join them in the attack on Earth and were totally surprised when we fired the plasma and EMP cannons at them. That
was the mortal blow and made it easy for my fighters to finish the job with only one pass at them. But next time they’ll be more prepared, and their second battle group is bigger and has more heavy ships. If we have to engage them in a direct battle, we’d come away on the short end of the stick. So we need to outsmart them again and hope that we can keep them at bay until our biological attack starts to take effect. That should be in about one or two more days for the plague to start to break out and another couple of days before it sickens or kills enough of them to give us an upper hand.

“We also need to adjust our original plans that assumed that their forces would be exposed to the pathogens. The large part that remains docked with their fleet will probably get infected, but that second battle group, the one only about six light hours away from here, departed before the pathogens reached the fleet, so we’re going to have to deal with them at some point.”

“Do you have any suggestions?” Seduro asked.

“Yes, I have a few thoughts, and Brad may also have some. His team on Mars may still play a role in this even if the main battle is out in space.”

“Well, let’s hear what you have in mind,” Seduro replied. “Then, maybe Colonel Lincoln can add his views.”

Haverford began by laying out the various courses of action that the aliens might take once they digested the information about the demise of their battle group. His assessment was that their plans would probably be based on information that the AFO team had sent in a message that masqueraded as one that was sent from one of the alien ships as it was being attacked. Nebula put information in it that made it seem that the human fighters had plasma cannons that were able to penetrate the shields on their ships, even the battleship’s heavy shields and hull, and they attacked quickly without giving the battle group a chance to organize its defense. The information also included reference to an EMP cannon that the humans had on one of their fighters. The alien sensors that must have been deployed prior to their arrival would have sensed the EMP and also sensed that the human ships were small, more like fighters than cruisers, so it was important for the message to be consistent with what the aliens probably knew about the battle. The message also had to make the aliens think that even though the human ships were small, they had very powerful EMP and plasma cannons, not just the two alien weapons that the AFO team captured on Mars.

So, based on the assumption that the aliens would evaluate the battle based mainly on the information in the fake message, Haverford outlined the most logical courses of action for the aliens. All the participants had small computer terminals in front of them, and the terminals could drive the display on the large screen at the far end of the table, so Haverford used his terminal to post the various courses of action that they would have to consider as he discussed his estimate of each of them.

1. Call it quits and leave.
“This is unlikely since they’re already prepared to invest a lot of their energy and assets to seize Earth. We can expect at least one more attempt.”

2. Launch a massive thermonuclear strike.
“They would probably do this with robot ships on suicide missions, each of them carrying a thermonuclear weapon and traveling all the way to Earth at near light speed. Most of those ships would probably penetrate any defenses since at that speed there would be almost no time to react once they were detected, and fire control would be difficult if not impossible. They might choose this option if they weren’t worried that the Earth forces could also respond in kind, and with the amount of thermonuclear weapons that a planet could muster against a space fleet, they might decide that they could be on the weak end of this type of strategic exchange.”

3. Launch an attack with the second battle group.
“They might attempt to draw the Nebula fighters within range of the cannons on the cruisers and battleship. This would also let them calibrate the true strength of the Nebula force, and they have more forces still in reserve to act on that information if it looks like they could win a force-on-force battle. It also lets them keep their most valuable assets in the rear until they can determine exactly how strong we are and how far our weapons can reach.”

4. Refocus on a biological attack.
“They could give up on trying to fight us directly and just wait until they had produced sufficient pathogens to launch a biological attack on Earth. They’d probably use the same types of robot ships that they’d use to deliver thermonuclear devices. This was the option that we thought they’d choose when we developed our original plan.”

“In my opinion,” Haverford commented after completing his summary of the alien options, “they are most likely to choose the third course of action. Once they see that our force consists of relatively small ships, they’ll probably want to use that second battle group to probe further and to act decisively if they find that we don’t match the strength of their cruisers and battleship. It would be like a massive reconnaissance in force, with some small and expendable ships out in front and the larger ones serving as long range artillery. They might also organize some of the cruisers and fighters into a maneuver group that stays to the rear and can sprint forward to exploit any breaches in our defense.

“But we also need to be prepared for any of the other options. If they still want to attack with physical force, the nuclear option would be next on the list. If they back off and decide to refocus their attention on the biological attack, we may still have to deal with the second battle group once they find that their own population has been attacked by our covert operation. That battle group would be unaffected by the pathogens, and it could overwhelm our forces if they decide to launch a revenge attack on Earth. But they wouldn’t be able to call on any reserves, and they might not operate effectively once they’re totally on their own.”

“So what do you suggest that we do if they exercise option two or three?” Seduro asked. “Do we have any way to stop them?”

“We might,” Brad suggested. “We still have the EMP cannon on Milo’s fighter, and we might be able to put the plasma cannon on one of our fighters. It looked like it was pretty easy for the aliens to assemble, and it’s actually a bit smaller than the EMP gun. Maybe our salvage people can figure out a way to get it onto one of our ships. They should already be on scene at Mars. We can ask Yuri to discuss this with them. Judith, Doug, and Mikio already know a lot about it, and we probably have more information in the memories on Igor and the worker.”

“Good idea,” Haverford said. “If we can put that gun on one of our ships, we’ll have long range firepower that may match theirs.”

“We also may be able to salvage other useable weapons from the alien ships that weren’t totally destroyed,” Brad added. “Maybe we can use them on some of our own ships.”

Seduro thought for a few seconds and then replied. “Those are good ideas. Let’s contact our people on Mars and have them work with the salvage crew to get us some answers. We need this quick. That other alien force could be here six hours after their high command decides what to do. Let’s hope that it takes them a while to decide.”

“I wouldn’t expect any decision from them in less than a day,” Brad replied. “It takes that long for messages to reach their high command at the main fleet, and they may want to discuss options with the battle group before committing to anything. We might have a few days.”

“I understand that,” Seduro responded. “But we still need to do all our planning and preparation as fast as possible. There may be a lot of work to do just to get ready.” He then shifted his remarks to Haverford. “Should we set up a mine field just in case they go with that nuclear option?”

“That’s a good idea,” Haverford agreed. “We’ve already been looking into it. We can place a pretty big field of mines out beyond the orbit of the moon, with sensors further out to detect fast movers and cue the mines. The signals from the sensors should get to the mines a bit sooner than the attackers, and the mines would destroy them even if they did get slightly past the mines before the detonations. That should be useful for any of the attacks in near-Earth space.

“We also figured that they don’t need to come straight at us. They could loop out of the plane of the solar system and then dive back down and converge on Earth as they get close. My rough guess is that we have enough mines and sensors to cover almost a full hemisphere of approach directions if we keep the mines only about two lunar distances away. We’d have to use most of the small warheads that the nations have for deep space mining and space clearing operations. They already have remote controlled detonation capability, and we can easily integrate them with our own systems. The national governments already understand the situation and would probably cooperate with us.”

“OK, I’ll take that up with the national leaders,” Seduro said. “We’re already consulting with them on what we’re doing, and so far, they’ve been very supportive. They were a bit shocked and annoyed at first, but the battles on Mars and in space captured their attention. I think that they’ll do anything that they can to help us. That’s not my concern at this point. What happens after we win, if we win, may be a different story, but that’s for later. If there are no further comments or questions, let’s adjourn for now. We’ll get back together in four hours.”

Brad replied, “I’d like to get back to Mars to work with the people there if I’m not needed here.”

“That would be fine, Colonel Lincoln,” Seduro agreed. “The rest of us will return here in four hours. Be prepared for a long session. I want to have a firm course of action for each of the alien options that Colonel Haverford just presented. If anyone can think of something more for us to worry about, bring those thoughts with you too. We’ll have to deal with every possibility. You can bring one or two experts with you if you like.” And at that, the meeting ended.

*

By the time that Brad reached Mars, the salvage teams were already at work and had found some things that could be useful. A few of the salvage engineers and Judith, Doug, and Mikio were also well into the planning to mount the plasma cannon onto a Nebula ship. Brad called them and two of the senior salvage engineers into the bunker to get briefed on progress and to start to put together a report to send to Haverford so that he could factor everything into his recommendations.

Major George Anderson was in charge of the salvage operation, and he began with a summary of what they found so far. “We have some good news. That battleship wasn’t destroyed as completely as it first seemed. It was blown apart, but there are some armored compartments within the ship that remained intact. They’re like the watertight compartments that navy vessels have to help with damage control. We found two of these compartments in the battleship with salvageable equipment in them. There are also two big plasma cannons that were mounted in the part of the battleship that wasn’t hit directly, and they may still be in working condition or at least repairable. They don’t look too damaged, and our technicians are checking them out.

“We think that we found some useful equipment on the cruisers too. The cruisers were hit pretty hard and are too far gone to be repairable, but we found four plasma guns that don’t appear to be badly damaged. They’re bigger than the ones on the fighters, but they have the same mounting hardware, and we think that we may be able to fit them into any alien fighters that we can salvage and repair. That would give those fighters a bigger punch if we can make it work. We’re taking the salvageable armaments from the cruisers and then we’re going to de-orbit them and send them off into deep space to get them out of our way.”

Judith added that she had already done a bit of work with the salvage team that was going though the battleship and that she agreed that some of the big weapons might be serviceable with a bit of repair. She and her team of engineers in Nebula Two were already familiar with alien electronics and said that if she could get things back to them, they might be able to have some of the weapons in working order in a day or two.