The Monkey and Squirrel fight for freedom. (27 page)

“Its been completely rebuilt three times since then, the only parts of the original we are using are the accommodation modules and workshops. The structure it sits in now was designed as a combat carrier from the beginning, it can actually take far more punishment than the human one, that's just a transporter.” explained Tman.

“I though they were hardening theirs?” enquired Chatty.

“They are installing an armoured skin over the original. It should now take two laser strikes to punch through instead of one, a rail gun round would only penetrate three decks, rather than five. If our forces were evenly matched it might make a difference, as it is the drones on this carrier could wipe out the human carrier without the support of the fighters.

But we are going to let them come to us, and we are going to oppose them with such an overwhelming force there can be no sane argument for them to engage us. If they do it will at least be a quick death for them. The speed of their total destruction should even get through their leaders thick skulls.” answered Tman.                                                                                                                                                                            

“You would certainly hope so, but nothing is guaranteed.” signed Chatty.

“Three shots from the spinal laser on this carrier would turn their carrier into junk, it is pulsed at one Terra-watt. The thermal shock, secondary emissions and induced currents will push a wave of destruction though out the carrier, after the third shot I doubt anyone would be left alive on the human carrier. The one problem with our spinal laser even with the advanced cooling system, we have to wait a minimum ten minutes between firings. Fire it three times in half an hour the coolant won't be liquid any more, firing again will it destroy it. But that laser is really in-case we meet anything big and nasty on our own.” explained Tman.

“We know that, but just think what it looks like to them, with the rail gun turrets and laser turrets, the missile defence systems, it looks every aggressive, a real killing machine, even the name Punisher gives that impression.” commentated Chatty.

“The whole point is intimidation, that's why the others are named Judgement, Enforcer,  Sentence, Condemned, Retribution, Contempt, Executioner and Decimator so far. It gives them the right impression, giving them names like Freedom, or the more whimsical, 'Here is your lesson' as some suggested, they could not take seriously. It's part of their psychology, if the name is not right they don't think you're serious.” explained Tman.

“I believe you, anyway I'm off to my bed I'm sleepy”

“I'll be off to my bed too, until tomorrow.”

Major Johnson was looking at the latest intelligence reports, the photographs and the pilots accounts left him in no doubt. Three months from Jupiter to the asteroid resort, it must have been travelling like a bat out of hell. For a carrier it looked deadly in its own right with a spinal laser, rail gun turrets, laser turrets,and missile defence systems; it looked like a super sized fighter. But it shouldn't need to mix it, with forty fighters and hundreds of drones, no doubt about their performance, so as a unit could probably defeat the human carrier alone.

Technical's power estimates for drone lasers was one gigawatt, fighters ten gigawatt, for the carrier it was more speculative a hundred gigawatt laser, appropriate for one named Punisher. The released pilots reported the carrier as heavily armoured, they had seen a massive cooling system presumably for that laser, they had seen no escape craft only fighters and hundreds of drones.

That's a message in itself, no surrender just a fight to the death, with that mind set the design made a sense, no going quietly into the night for them, take the enemy with you was the philosophy at work here. The other interesting bit from the released pilots was they were attacked exclusively by stealth drones. The fighters only showing up after they had been completely disabled, clamping on and taking their disabled fighters to the monkey carrier.

The pilots had been frightened, why they were wanted alive? was their number one unanswered question, and their imaginations gave them some unpleasant possibilities. The reception had not been reassuring, and attempting to rush their captors, getting tasered for their efforts, that pre-recorded statement,

'we want some of you alive, how many and how healthy is up to you' had been chilling.

But after that it had been mostly boring, you couldn't speculate as to your fate all the time, the facilities being basic but good. They were housed in ten cabins, doors lockable on the inside, on a short stretch of corridor, with blast doors closed at each end locking them into that space. Their only complaint about their treatment was the food was all vegan.

They hadn't known prior to being taken prisoner, that the monkeys couldn't speak. They had been also surprised that their captors had so little interest in them, ultimately shipping them millions of miles to make a point. Carl knew this was part of the 'convince the idiots to stop scheme' the monkeys were showing how outclassed the Earth force was, trying to do it without killing every one.

The Monkeys will only go for the kill if the carrier crossed their figurative line in the sand, once it did, the carrier would be mercilessly wiped from existence, probably in seconds. The e-mail to Jimmy asking him to thank the Chinese for getting the none combatants off the carrier was a nice touch, knowing the Chinese would relay it to his command.

They only had images of two other carriers, both from the lunar telescopes, they had seen the names Retribution on one and Decimator on the other. The names are another part of the message, the carriers positively screamed, hard and nasty. A puzzle was they had been nowhere near where the experts had expected them to be and had been travelling fast. Perhaps they move them all the time, drop the fighters off, scoot off until it was time to pick them up. It made sense even if there was nothing in Earth orbit that could challenge one of those carriers, why risk a possible confrontation. You don't win friends and influence people by shooting them full of holes, and that was what they wanted, to influence people to stop this insanity. He was convinced that the monkeys had the tools to do exactly what they said they'd do if persuasion didn't work.

The command group didn't like his report last any more than the previous ones, even though the technical group were more in agreement with his. Basically they were telling command we can't win, which they didn't wanted to hear. They were committed to moving things on, but would be moving onto other things themselves before the crunch, they are making sure that when the brown unpleasant stuff hits the fan, it would be their young ambitious rivals that coped the lot.

His thoughts turned to his daughter Daisy working on her twin degrees, mathematics and high energy physics. She hoped to work in one of the commercial fusion power projects that were starting up. In fact she had secured sponsorship from one of the companies building one, giving her a reasonable chance of doing so.

She didn't spend much time at home these days, he didn't like her current boyfriend, a pretentious idiot studying art history of all things. Carl didn't like his superior attitude, hated the way he talked to Daisy and about her area of study. His routine background check on the idiot had revealed not a lot, lots of family money, privileged upbringing, large family art collection. The whole family a collection of privileged dilettantes, with an average sprinkling of alcoholics and other addicts.

On a council estate they would be described as a dysfunctional problem family, as they were wealthy they were described as interesting or eccentric. He had no clue as what the attraction was for Daisy, he had asked his wife Rose what she thought the attraction was,  he didn't believe the reply,

'he owns a good sized flat she shares with him for free, the exotic and skiing holidays he pays for, as soon as she is finished at university he's toast'.

But that couldn't be, his darling Daisy, she just wasn't mercenary and calculating, she was a beautiful person once the teenage thing was over.

Chapter 25

Departure

Everything was ready for the carrier to depart, Wendy had been one of the last to leave. That meant Wing commander Harry Glover was now second in command, his grasp of the situation was now more realistic. Even if his response was to try and find a weakness in the enemy that could be exploited tactically, desperately searching for a way to win. The main flaw in his simulations was he consistently underrated the threat of the drones not willing to accept that robots could be so effective without external guidance.

Even so his best plans of action required that they faced no more than two hundred and fifty fighters. If they faced one of the Monkey carriers, he produced a plan where they would win but it would be a Pyrrhic victory and the death of them all. Their key life support system the carrier and most of the fighters would be wreaked, even if things happened as simulated.

Glover did not respond well when this little fact was pointed out, there was no where to go. The Chinese evacuation ships had a long range and could make it back from Jupiter to Earth or Mars whichever was closer. But Saturn to Earth or even back to the mining colony habitat around Jupiter forget it they would run out of life support before they got there. Their only of survival was if other monkey ships were to arrive and accepted their surrender. Harry stormed out yelling defeatists, a couple of hours later he came back and apologised to everyone present, explaining that his focus had been on winning. He'd spent so much of his time trying to find away to win, he had lost sight of the logistical problem presented by space being such a hostile environment.

Group Captain John Hampton explained the tactical realities to him once again.

“Look Glover this is all we have, we are not going to get any more, there will be no more missions in your life time, our governments are broke. The monkeys were never an active threat, but an opportunity was perceived where our governments could grab some ready made habitats. You've seen the videos, the monkey habitats make the one on this carrier look poky. But the monkeys had suspected something on the same lines could happen so planed for it. By laying a false trail to Jupiter, the fighters blatantly blowing away our probes bated the trap.

When they did the same with the Saturn probes, we were already committed to Jupiter, then we were attacked by the same type of fighters that blew away our Jupiter probes. We only stopped them because they had no missile defences, something they have corrected in the latter models, drones then shadowed us, until we were inside the Jupiter system. Then they struck with sneak attacks, disabling this carriers main engine, crippling or destroying a few fighters, then they changed tactics to just crippling our fighters. We were always sending out rescue missions, every time we countered their tactics, they came up with another way of harassing us.

That just stopped after the paint ball attack, the message is they have demonstrated they can attack us any time, any where they want to, but they want this nuisance done with one way or another. This carrier they regard as a nuisance, they have told our high command and anyone else that will listen that they will demonstrate their forces. Giving us shows of force, but if we cross the line they have drawn, this carrier will be a cloud of expanding gas not long afterwards.

I for one believe in their ability and intent, if they show up with forces far superior to ours I will give the order to retreat, I will not kill my men for nothing but a politicians pride. It would be a mockery of brave men to have them die pointlessly, it has been done too often in the past, can you honestly tell me you would retreat if faced with overwhelming odds?Glover because if you can't, the men deserve a leader that can make that decision, if anything happens to me.

Strange as it might seem I have spent time in the same denial you are currently in, desperately trying to fine a way to win, Wendy managed to shock me out of it. Remember we are at the end of a very very long supply line, as we advance, our distance to a safe haven gets longer theirs gets shorter. Our opposition are building and developing better fighters and weapons while we are travelling. While our fighters might be on the same page weapons wise at the moment, there is no guarantee that will be the case when we get there, do you understand?” demanded Group Captain John Hampton.

Glover looked rebellious for a few moments, then said.

“I can give that order, I'm not stupid but it's the idea of going on a mission being prepared for defeat, that really leaves a hollow feeling in my gut, it's just not right sir.”

“I'm not exactly, happy about it myself, but if you are unprepared for the possibility, you could get every one killed to no purpose. But our intelligence has now independent conformation of the existence of a minimum of five enemy carriers, two passing the moon you know about. One was spotted near Mars, another seen near the asteroid mines and the one that flew past us last week, they were all seen within five days of each other. Their names being Condemned, Retribution, Contempt, Executioner and Decimator, two of those have been seen before. Assuming they have not changed names the other previously spotted Punisher makes six, tell me if you faced an attack on your home where would you have those carriers?” asked the Group Captain.

“Where they would do the most good, in position to attack the enemy. I get your point, with those god awful looking spinal lasers they could knock lumps off our carrier before delivering two hundred fighters to the battle and probably thousands of drones.” answered Harry Glover.

“You forget they send the drones in first especially the ones they call battle drones, they regard them as expendable munitions. Having a tactical nuke for self-destruct once the power cell is drained and it can't fire it's laser any more, it becomes a missile. That came out in an e-mail exchange between Lad (Tman) and his old crew mates. One of them asked why didn't they have missiles, he replied we have the battle drones instead. They can fight their way to a target then detonate when they close on the target of opportunity, they claim to have thousands deployed and in reserve.” the Group Captain criticised.

“Where did they get all that nuclear material from, sir?” asked Glover.

“Can you remember that fuss when they sent that ship to mine the asteroids, the Chinese had actually surveyed it and marked it for future mining. It was nearly all high quality uranium ore, the monkeys took about twenty thousand tonnes of it. With them scooting about the solar system like they own it you don't know what else they have mined.” replied John.

“They certainly have been busy, I want a carrier as fast and as tough as the enemy’s, do you have any idea how wrong this feels to me! The enemy being more powerful than us, its like god has switched sides, the universe is upside down and everything’s wrong, sir.” explained Harry.

“This mission was sent out as one of genocide, I believe god does not like genocide, just look what happened to the Nazis they came to a bad end.” John commented.

“Your not comparing us to the Nazis? they were evil, we were trying to get rid of an embarrassing mistake, we didn't even realise they were people, sir.” asked an incredulous Harry.

“That's no excuse, it makes no difference to the victims what you think, we're just as evil to them. I too, am only obeying orders, but the only reason I'm carrying on is we haven't a cat in hells chance of succeeding. The only reason the monkeys have let us live this long is to make an example of us on live television, the politicians and their spin doctors will be building things up for the fantastic finale! Where we either turn tail and run or get our ass handed to us on a plate just before its vaporised.” explained John.

“No fun agreed, are we under way sir?”

“Yes its that feeling of being on a slope, more pronounced with this carrier having a higher acceleration than the mining vessel you get used to it. We go to meet our fate, may it be better than I fear.” said Group Captain John Hampton.

“Why do you fear? if we have the more powerful force we engage, if they have a greater one we runaway, its that simple sir.” asked Wing Commander Harry Glover.

“It's if the force isn't quite big enough, we commit ourselves and large re-enforcements turn up as soon as we can't back out.” offered John.

“Surely they won't be that sneaky? their whole strategy as I have had repeatedly explained to me, is to make us back down before a major battle takes place, sir.” replied Harry.

“Yes, but with us not backing down they may change tactics again and decide to teach our masters a very different lesson, one they'll never forget and give them sleepless nights.” speculated Group Captain John Hampton.

“Don't you mean us, sir?” asked a confused Harry.

“The dead can learn nothing Glover, if they go for that option, the phrase cloud of expanding gas is the one they used, I believe.” explained  Group Captain John Hampton.

“You actually believe they'll do that sir?” asked Wing Commander Harry Glover.

“Believe it, I certainly do, I've been closer to two separate one hundred Megaton blasts than I ever wanted to be.” explained Group Captain John Hampton.

“I thought they went off at some distance, the carrier was only damaged by debris from the blast, sir?” asked Harry.

“Do you have any idea how close even a bomb that size has to be for the blast to damage something in open space, very very close. As it was it was just the wreckage of the second wave of our fighters that impacted the carrier, all the surviving deployed crews had to have weeks of anti radiation treatments. If you had been here you would have no trouble believing they mean business.” explained Group Captain John Hampton.

“I really do understand sir, I'm irritated by every one treating me like I was some sort of gung ho idiot. I'm quite open minded and tolerant, I raised no objection to other faiths using the chapel, I just have concerns about the rise in the number of Satanists on board.” protested Harry.

“No worries there Glover, just some of those convinced we're hell bound, trying to curry favour with their prospective future CO.” replied John.

“Nothing to be concerned about then, just the men believing the mission is so inherently evil, that if we get blown to hell we'll stay there, do I have that right sir?” asked a bemused Harry.

“Pretty close to bang on Glover, but I think they are being pessimistic! None of us volunteered knowing the full mission and most still don't officially, but most have worked it out. When my command team got the final brief, we didn't believe that the occasion to use those nerve gas missiles, would present it's self. As Major Johnson said in his unofficial brief those habitats all have engines and the monkeys are not stupid, in fact they have a higher average IQ than humanity, they were made that way.

While the habitats made their getaway, we would have to deal with a suicidal rear guard, made up of monkey psychopaths who just want to kill humans. If it had come to that, the hundred plus fighters he expected us to face would have just destroyed us.” elaborated  Group Captain John Hampton.

“Do you think they had a hundred plus fighters then sir?” Harry asked.

“In the early days it was still hard for them to lie directly to humans, so yes they would have had around a hundred fighters to face us, but no more, hence we were met by two not ten or fifty fighters to delay us. We have some ideas as to the armaments they have been manufacturing, don't we, it's apparent they prefer to commit expendable drones rather than fighters into battle.

That fact makes the actual number of fighters irrelevant for the most part, say we get lucky and it takes ten of their drones to take out one of our fighters, a thousand drones take out a hundred fighters. That's losses of twenty six percent of our total force, before we face the fighters, and you know that's a fantasy calculation, the best realistic exchange rate we can hope for is a drone per fighter we lose. Those carriers of theirs have been designed to carry enough offensive armaments to easily take out our entire force. But it doesn’t look like that to our masters sat in comfort back home. They just see the numbers of fighters, discount the drones, only conceding that they would make a difference if the numbers were even.” explained Group Captain John Hampton.

“So anything less than three hundred fighters in opposition we have to engage, or our family’s are on the street, sir?” asked Harry,

“By Jove I do believe he's got it.”

“Is that why you're going on sir?”

“Quite right Harry, that is also the reason I'm so glad the Chinese gave so many people a legitimate out, it comes to something when you're dependant on the Chinese to protect your men from your own government.”

“Well women and children mostly sir.”

“Always been the way of civilisation Harry, it's always women and children first if your society is to survive, men are the expendable part of any society. Wendy is a damn fine officer, the equal of any man in a fight, but you don't waste a woman like that in a suicide squad. If we have to go into battle I will miss her, not to belittle your abilities, which I admit are greater than I initially believed, but she is better than you, but I am now confident you're up to the job.” explained Group Captain John Hampton.

“Thank you sir, for that roundabout backhanded compliment, I understand the regard I'm held in, particularly the way some of the men always glance at their line officer when I give an order, I know they are checking with them to see if they should obey.” said Wing Commander Harry Glover.