We Will Destroy Your Planet (12 page)

It is as well to use single shot weapons for the simple reason that at greater distances, the target need move less in order for you to miss, so using automatic weapons at long distance will merely result in consuming more ammunition resources. It is better to have an accurate-over-distance single shot weapon and fire when correctly on target. Remember the military truism that the best tactical move is the one that brings you the most gain for the least expenditure in resources.

The same principle applies to the use of energy weapons. The effect of gravity or wind on energy weapons will be so negligible as to be functionally nonexistent over combat distances on Earth, so there's less of an issue with using any kind of rapid fire or burst mode, but single shot will still use less power or charge, while hitting the target instantly (if aimed accurately). Beam weapons that remain ‘always-on' while being swept around – such as heat rays, lasers, phasers, etc – are wasteful of energy, since they'll only be doing damage to a target when on target. The rest of the time they'll be wasting energy, and perhaps cutting down trees. Stick to a single effective shot or flash from such weapons; not only will it save energy, but the beam, if in the visible spectrum, is less likely to be traced back to your position.

While it's best to stick to single shot or pulse weapons when out to kill in open countryside, rapid fire automatic weapons and beam weapons will have their uses, particularly in deploying suppressive fire. The machine guns used by human forces, though effective at killing massed troops in a crossfire when set up at either end of a killing ground which those massed troops are entering, are actually even more valuable in dissuading enemy forces from advancing. Essentially, automatic weapons on the battlefield do not necessarily kill more enemies more quickly, but they do enable smaller units to make larger forces stay in shelter. This is, mind you, partly because the use of tight groups of massed troops has fallen out of favour anyway, and such units are unlikely to be encountered. Beam weapons would have the same effect, albeit with the disadvantage of more obviously giving away their positions.

In more confined areas, such as urban centres, inside buildings, and most especially within your own ship or facilities, automatic projectile weapons or energy weapons that fire pulses of energy are more useful, especially with less energy or propellant. Weapons with a burst-fire setting are useful for clearing small groups of enemies constrained within rooms or taking shelter, but it's wiser to use less penetrative ammunition or energy settings. Shots that go through walls have a nasty habit of hitting important items or individuals on the other side.

Quite aside from the risk of hitting non-combatants, it just doesn't do for shots to go through walls and hit power units, fuel stores, or ammunition supplies on the other side, and blow your own forces apart as well as the enemy. If the confined spaces are within your own facilities or aboard your own ships, it's even more important that you do not use weapons that will do damage to vital systems or members of your own forces.

Wide-effect beam weapons or shotgun-like projectile weapons are also effective in clearing enclosed spaces (there's a reason that the pump-action shotgun on Earth is often referred to as a ‘trench broom', as it was the ideal weapon for clearing enclosed trenches in which soldiers took shelter.

If you have natural inborn weapons, whether physical – such as claws – or more along the lines of psychokinetic or pyrokinetic ability, then these are best used in the more confined combat areas. In such places, the abilities can be used with greater precision and focus against closer opponents who have less room to escape, whereas in open country there would be far more chance for your targets to flee out of range. Also, of course, such abilities tend to be attuned to closer action in general. Claws, for example, can only be so long.

You will also need to think about limited area-effect weapons, for use both on open ground, in confined spaces, and against both enemy personnel and vehicles. In other words, grenades, mines, and so on.

As with so many weapons, you can use munitions captured from human forces. After all, their weapons are designed specifically with injuring and killing other humans in mind. This won't even be a matter of choice if you're simply coming from another Earth. Earth-made explosive area-effect weapons come in the form of chemical explosives packed into metal casings and/or with a layer of flechettes, or other metal objects, designed to become harmful projectiles in a spherical area around the weapon upon detonation. If the casing is indeed made of metal, it will be designed to fragment into projectiles itself.

Your technology will hopefully be more advanced than this, and could easily rely upon electrical discharge, nuclear fission or fusion, sonic discharge, and so on. Since it is always best to have as much leeway as possible where re-arming and re-supplying is concerned, it is recommended to use energy-based grenades and mines which can be recharged and reused, rather than ones which are destroyed in the process of being turned into shrapnel or flechettes upon detonation, as those must always be replaced.

If you are using some form of energy-based grenades and mines, whether they be based around light, electricity, radiation, or other forms of immediately dischargeable energy, do try to make sure that they are rechargeable only by equipment belonging to your forces, so that the human resistance cannot recover such weapons and use them against you.

Since there are a wide range of vehicles in use by the natives of Earth, both on land and in the sea and in the air, you must be prepared for the possibility of your forces on foot (or equivalent) encountering them.

You will, of course, have had the sense to use EMP weapons in the early stages of your invasion, but there will always be vehicles that are of old enough technology to have survived in reparable form, or were in shielded bunks, or have been built after the EMP use. You will therefore have a good likelihood of facing individual vehicles in the field.

This is where smaller EMP weapons will come in useful, whether in self-contained grenade form, in mine form, or as directed energy weapons which can be aimed at powered vehicles in order to stop their functioning. Such EMP weapons will not destroy ground vehicles or floating vessels, but will at least render them inoperative, and leave them as defenceless targets for your other weapons. Aircraft, on the other hand, if they are rendered inoperative by an EMP weapon strike, will simply fall out of the sky and be destroyed. Aircraft being faster and able to manoeuvre in three dimensions, however, will be much harder to hit with a directed EMP.

Attacking an armoured vehicle, or trying to bring down enemy aircraft, are circumstances in which beam weapons should definitely be considered. Any form of laser or particle beam that can burn through armour, or slice off a plane's wing as it makes an attack run towards your forces, is worth using. Since Earth aircraft generate a lot of heat, the use of heat-seeking missiles against them is also advisable.

Rockets and missiles are also advisable for use against vehicles when beam weapons are not available.

Of course, no ranged weapon is much use if you don't aim properly, so it's always worth making sure that your weapons have decent sights. Sights using a mix of X-ray, thermal vision, magnetic resonance imaging, and sonar would be ideal, giving you plenty of options to see through walls and identify your targets even when they can't see you.

It would be somewhat unimaginative to rely strictly on the visible spectrum for aiming, since you would be limited by available light and by solid cover between you and your enemies. Even if your weapons cannot shoot through a concealing wall, it is always better to at least be able to see them and track them. A pheromone sensor of some kind is also useful for this, which would enable you to track where enemies had already been, so long as they had been in contact with their surroundings.

Whether you equip the weapons with such sights, or use them in other battlefield equipment such as armour or environment suits, is up to you, so long as the two things can be linked in the perception of the being who is using them.

The most important thing to remember about sights and sensors on your weapons (and on your vehicles, for that matter) is to use
passive
sights rather than active ones. That is to say, sights and sensors that receive incoming light/pheromones/sound waves/heat etc and turn them into an accurate display for aligning the weapon. Never use sights that project a light or tag on to the enemy, not even a red dot of otherwise harmless laser light, because it's a dead giveaway that you are targeting that enemy, and will allow your position to be identified and counterattacked.

If you absolutely have to project a laser spot onto a target, make sure it's strong enough to be an instant kill in the first place.

There are as many different kinds of melee weapons as there are people. Spears, knives, swords, maces, flails, you name it. All have their uses, though the variety that are most useful are bladed or edged weapons.

There is little that can be said about blunt trauma weapons. Hit the enemy with a heavy object, it will cause impact damage, rupture cells and tissue, and break bones. Simple, and not really something that becomes any different when upgraded by technology. So long as you make sure a blunt instrument is made of a material which will transfer all its kinetic energy into the target – i.e. it won't bend or break upon impact – and is both solid and fast-moving, you're on to a winner.

Things get more complicated when blades become the subject, as there is a great temptation to move away from using solid materials for the blade, towards using more flexible materials, or even energy. There is a certain sense to this, because there are flexible materials stronger than steel, and energy such as gas plasma, lasers, and electrical arcs can be used to slice and cut.

Powered physical blades with small cutting blades chained together make useful tools for cutting certain types of materials, but actually will not make such effective weapons for your space marines against flesh and armour, because the chains will tend to jam when pieces of bone or body armour etc are caught in the mechanism.

Vibrating blades are almost as useless an idea, and worth avoiding, unless you are carving the meat course at your victory feast – the energy used to vibrate a blade doesn't make it any more effective at cutting, since it's the sharpness of the edge and the mass of the blade that does that.

Many would-be planetary conquerors whose tales are told on Earth seek to use massless blades, or as close to massless as possible, whether it be in the form of blades made of light, energy, gas plasma, or monomolecular material. A monomolecular filament blade is one made of a single molecule, and so it is invisibly thin.

Monomolecular filaments are a staple of alien knife-wielders, rather than swordsmen. Such a weapon is potentially practical as a short blade such as a knife or dagger, with the single molecule filament able to slide between the more complex molecules of things – other blades, armour, flesh – but they also pose problems for the user. For one thing, a single molecule filament would be so thin that it would be extremely difficult to tell whether the thing was actually there at any given moment. It is also difficult to judge whether such a blade could remain rigid over a full sword's length. Sheathing it would also be difficult, as it would cut through the sheath. In many ways it would be more dangerous to the user than to the enemy.

A blade made of ignited gas plasma would be a practical cutting blade – in fact they're used in manufacturing and construction everywhere – but would not necessarily be able to sustain the full length of a sword's blade. Also, the longer the blade, the more it would vary according to atmospheric conditions and how rapidly it was moved. In the end, such a tool is probably not worth the bother of adapting as a weapon.

When it comes to massless blades, however, one of the most popular concepts on Earth is the lightsaber, a blade made of light and energy, and sometimes described by their owners as ‘laser swords'. Laser light is invisible in vacuum or in a still air, which means a lot of users would fall victim to looking down the hilt to see whether it was on, with predictably gruesome results. Not the kind of weapon you will want to issue to forces whose lives will depend on it.

Aside from that, there is the question of just how does one regulate the length of a laser beam to three or four feet anyway? The only way would be to have a physical object at the core of the blade, which a plasma blade wraps around, but this core would be fragile. The lightsaber also has some obvious design flaws even if you can perfect the concept. The danger of accidental activation is obvious.

What's particularly strange about the lightsaber is that its users apparently tend to be those with psychokinetic abilities – that is to say, they can move objects with their minds, their thoughts somehow interacting with the physical world to affect physical objects.