SODIUM:5 Assault (9 page)

It was to be a battle for the existence of freedom... the existence of Man. If we dug down deep, and if we gave it everything we had, every ounce of courage, every ounce of determination, if we absorbed and suppressed every ounce of pain... we had a chance.

I then spoke of what might come with a victory. If we were to prevail, the Human race would be the most feared, the most respected and the freest thinking beings that the galaxy had ever known.

Our ways would dominate. Our culture would be revered as the highest of cultures. Our descendants would rule the stars for millennia to come. We would be the generation that saved the Earth and brought the HE to the waiting masses of alien beings living as slaves on distant worlds. It would not be the war to end all wars, but it was a war that we had to win. As I closed my speech I raised my arm and pointed out into space. I concluded with the following "Out there... is where our destiny lies".

Just after the Borten fleet left their system, heading towards Toleda, four more of the massive globe ships had joined their ranks. They had decelerated through light speed from a different direction than the first ships. Calculations soon placed their departure point at 186 light years away. The new globe ships soon departed the Borten system and would no doubt catch up to the Borten fleet before its arrival at Toleda.

I ordered a recon destroyer immediately towards the new suspect direction in an effort to gain further intelligence on what planet or planets were producing so many mammoth ships, it departed within half an hour. I paced the bridge constantly asking my planners for new ideas; we needed an edge if we were to take on such massive numbers.

I was given a briefing of a new prototype weapon that was yet to be tested. It was called the Starburst. It would be launched in a container the size of our early Defenders. When it reached 100,000 kilometers distance it would MIRV into hundreds of overcompensated BHDs. The BHDs would spread out slowly in a starburst pattern while steering towards a designated target.

They would form a cone shaped virtual shield of black holes that we hoped to be able to exploit by flying ships in immediately behind. If it worked, it was speculated that we could get up to 100 mini-fighters or five BGS Marine transports into whatever the target vessel was. The massive gravity weapons that had been used to defeat our drillers and our shields... could possibly be overcome.

I gave the order for a dozen prototypes to be tested, but there was a problem. They required Lawrencium. Lawrencium was a synthetic transuranium derivative that was difficult to produce. It had a half-life of about 4.2 seconds. The process started with Plutonium which yielded Curium, which when further processed yielded Californium and then finally Lawrencium.

The Lawrencium was consumed in the powering of the overcompensated BHDs. From starburst we would have 4.2 seconds to reach a target. The 12 Starburst prototypes would take two months to construct.

After the briefing I checked in on the status of our Toleda masquerade and was told things were progressing well. The capital city of Gurthead was a shining facade of a major planet's capital. Empty transports were whizzing back and forth on maglev rails and automated air taxis dotted the skies. The biggest difficulties were attempts at reconstructing the massive farmlands that surrounded the cities.

The topsoil in vast areas had been vacuumed away by the gravity lens leaving massive areas of nothing but rocky terrain. It was soon decided that green paint was the best solution for our short time-frame. The planners had gone as far as matching the colors to those that would be expected to be seen on an October Toleda. The concept of October had no meaning on Toleda, but the time was relative to their summer growing season.

With strategic plans in place and moving towards completion I decided on another visit home to the farm. I knew it would not be the same, but I wanted to see my parents before the hostilities once again began. I arrived unannounced and took note of the strange man sitting on what would possibly be called the front porch of the new pod style farmhouse.

He was an older gentleman and had a young girl, possibly eight years of age, sitting on his lap. I raised my hand and smiled as I approached before greeting him. When I stepped up onto the porch and looked him in the eye I was in for a heart-stopping shock. It was Zack...

My knees nearly buckled as my mind raced from thoughts of joy to anger and then back to joy. I stood for several seconds with my mouth open, unable to speak. Then Zack said hello.

After he sent his daughter inside we talked for hours about the circumstances surrounding our lives. He had not been in Dallas when the Chinese nukes went off. He was on a recon mission behind their borders and was captured just before Dallas was destroyed. His base, all of his battalion, his commanders and all records of the mission had been destroyed.

The Chinese had at first been ruthless captors who used unscrupulous methods in their interrogations. Zack was one of the few who did not break and his captors had hated him for it, and yet they had great respect for him at the same time. When I returned and the food wars ended his captors had not been forthcoming about his detention. They had received no requests for his release and with an initial air of mistrust over my command he had been held well beyond any required release periods.

He had also been told that his family in East Alabama was dead. Given that I had been captured and taken away when the Kurtz ship left, heading back towards Alvin, he thought I was long dead also. When his captors finally released him he was placed in a small rural farming village where he did not speak the language. They had hoped to one day claim that he had been there all along.

By the time his captors told him he was a free man he had befriended several of the locals. After his years of war and captivity, and given the fact that he thought everyone he knew was dead, he had decided to stay in the village and to just live out his life in peace. Not long after he took a wife.

He had two strong sons who had just joined the BGS Marines and a nine year old daughter that had been sitting on his lap. His wife and his boys were inside the house visiting with the grandfather they had never known.

I began to tell Zack of my captivity and escape and he raised his hand as if to say stop. My father had already told him everything. I then asked why he had not tried to contact me when he had learned that it was I who had come back and taken control. He said that he wanted to... he wanted to run to me as fast as he could... but he had a wife and children whom he loved.

At first he was not sure of how I would take it and later he was embarrassed that he had not acted sooner. He began to find it easier to put off until the time was right... a time which had never come. He was only here because of his sons enlisting in the BGS Marines. When home from boot camp they had questioned him about his relatives overseas and he told them they had all perished when Alabama had been nuked.

His boys then told him that East Alabama had not been attacked during the war. The death of his parents had been a lie. And that was what had brought him back to the farm, a chance to once again see his father. The story was tragic, as tragic as mine. But we had both moved beyond those deep wounds and were soon smiling and laughing about where our lives had gone. He a family man and me... I was the Supreme Commander of the HE.

As we talked I looked deep into his eyes. The young smiling and energetic Zack that I had known so long ago was no longer there. His eyes were hard and yet reserved, his face and arms were heavily scarred from the years of war and his right leg was a modern prosthetic. His hair was a salty gray and his hands were the hands of a farmer... rough and calloused.

He then smiled and said that I looked well... being Supreme Commander had obviously been good for me. But I knew he was only being kind. My body, from years of wearing a BGS, which I had self-tuned to overcompensate, was muscle-bound and out of proportion. My long blonde hair had been dyed and cut to be a short black bob that I thought gave me a more commanding look.

My skin was still near perfect, no doubt because of the tightened DNA strands I had received so many years before, but my facial expression was no longer a constant smile. My face was muscular and usually had a scowl on it from the issues I had to deal with on a daily basis. He was no longer the handsome gent and I was no longer the beautiful and happy young woman.

When I left the farm my spirits had been renewed. A heavy wound in my life had been healed and while I would not be getting back together with the one love of my life... I could once again look upon the short time that we had without becoming sad. He would always have that special place in my heart, but I was no longer in love, that Zack, had passed long ago.

As I made my way back out onto the bridge of my command ship I began barking orders and demanding status. I had a feeling that even though the odds were stacked against us... we were going to win the war. I wasted no time passing those feelings on to my staff with orders for them to pass them on down the line. We were going to take on the task at hand and we were going find a way to win... it was in our nature.

As we waited for the Borten fleet and the globe ships I got word of the first tests of a Starburst system. A 100 by 100 kilometer thin panel had been setup as a simulated alien vessel. The Starburst team had mounted every sensor type we had available, as well as a number of weapons and mini-fighters, to the frame of the simulated craft. It would not be a true test of the alien defenses as we were unaware of what they might have, but it was a true test of ours.

I watched from my chair as the Starburst module was launched and sped on its way towards the target. The Battle Planners sent in ten mini-fighters that would ride inside the cone of the Starburst, protected from any defenses that could be put forth.

As the timer ticked down I began to get nervous over the excitement that came with a new potential weapon. When the module reached 100,000 kilometers the overcompensated BHDs dispersed and spread out into the cone shaped pattern as designed. It was like a black void moving through space. The mini-fighters soon swept in behind and took refuge in the cone.

The target defenders took action, firing and launching everything they had at the incoming formation of BHDs. Nothing was effective. The black holes of the BHDs and the cone shape they formed kept our fighters completely protected. But just as the cone was about to reach its target the defenders sent the target moving backwards at its fastest pace.

It was a move the team had not counted on and the Lawrencium that powered the BHDs was soon exhausted. The defenders then pummeled the ten approaching fighters with simulated weapons to prove their point. Even though the Starburst was an ingenious idea on paper, it was doomed to fail if every eventuality was not planned for and taken into account.

The Starburst team quickly cried foul and I got on the comm to settle their objections. The defenders had done exactly what they were supposed to do in defending the simulated alien ship. It was my Battle Planners who had failed by not putting their maximum effort into the exercise. There would be another test of the system in two days and I insisted that each team do their best to achieve their goals.

In the meantime, our recon destroyer that had been sent to the far system, where the last globe ships had come, from was starting to report in. There was no habitable planet in the system, but there was a massive spaceport with what looked like construction yards attached to it. They were working on more of the globe ships.

When the destroyer reported that there were two gas giant planets in the system my staff ordered the destroyer to move behind one of the planets and to then launch and slingshot a Driller around it towards the spaceport. If we were lucky and their defenses were low we might be able to do some damage without being detected. Once launched the destroyer would slowly move back to a safe distance. Two hours later the Driller was away.

We watched patiently as the Driller took 4 hours to drift towards its target. The excitement built with each tick of the clock as there was no outward appearance that it had been detected. When the Driller contacted an outer wall of the spaceport its BHD activated and it quickly disappeared inside. The first explosion did not occur for almost an hour.

The destroyer had a live feed from the Driller and we watched as it twisted and turned and did its dirty work. The spaceport was nearly 5,000 kilometers diameter so the Driller would be busy for many days if they were unable to disable or destroy it. We were soon greeted with a second, larger explosion that told us the device was indeed doing significant damage. Hundreds of smaller ships were buzzing around the outside of the spaceport as if someone had disturbed an angry beehive.

As the Driller moved through bulkhead after bulkhead we became aware of the fact that there were no alien beings aboard the structure. It was completely automated. I wondered how powerful and wealthy a civilization had to be to have built such a huge and powerful machine. If they had more than one we could possibly be facing a fleet of the globe ships. It was not an eventuality that any of us wished for.

When the counter reached seven days until the arrival of the Borten fleet I ordered our own armada to move to a position near Toleda. We would wait, hidden, in the Rho Puppis system until such time as the attackers had fallen into our trap.

Our factories had been busy cranking out ground launched Drillers and mobile space platforms. The unpopulated planet of Toleda was a bastion of defenses. When the Borten arrived they would be greeted by the mobile space platforms launching millions of rounds of Protactinium pellets at near light speed. As they closed on the platforms more than two million ground-based Drillers would come rocketing up to greet them.

It was hoped that in the chaos that ensued we would find an opportunity to strike. From that point on it would be survival of the fittest as we would be fully committed. We had 20 full fleets to take into battle. It was reasoned that Earth would not be in need of a supporting fleet should we lose at Toleda. In that event, all would be lost.

When we arrived we took up position on the opposite side of Rho Puppis from Toleda's orbit. Hershen stood beside my chair admiring his former sun's glow. It was hard to imagine the feelings the Kurtz had over losing their home planet. They were given a second chance on Toledus and Mabia, but it would never be the same for his generation.

I had done all I could to protect Earth and yet I still felt as though much of what I had known when younger was gone, changed forever. Earth was our world and with that came a feeling of pride that there was no substitute for. It was the same pride that made you root for the hometown team. I had no doubt it would be generations before the Kurtz once again had those feelings.

With the remaining days before arrival I had the fleets running simulated war-games almost continuously. The fourth fleet seemed to come out on top in almost every scenario. It had earned them a place at having the first ships that would enter battle. It was deemed an honor, but I had thoughts of it possibly being a death sentence. We had no idea of what weapons the Borten or the globe ships possessed.