7. Shot Down
The pilots hit the bays first. Rath watched them file by as he was ushered, rather vigorously, to a waiting area. The military pilots ignored him, ignored everything, moved with the same calculated precision that carried them through their daily duties. Give them an order and they carry it out with precision.
Rath wondered if this was how they approached other battles. Then, he wondered what other battles they might have faced. Crushing pirate activity probably. But what pirate force would even consider engaging twelve full groups of melee class ships; small maneuverable vessels capable of high pursuit, capable of tracing the path of lightning across a desert sky? Pirates didn't have mobile observation stations or carriers. A force of this many melees would make short work of even an advanced cruiser.
He didn't get to see them launch. The pads remained off-limits to him as long as the melees were docked. Security officers escorted him to a secondary command post while the pilots scrambled. Here, all monitors remained secured, all scanners shut down. The silence swallowed him.
Jack entered, but barely acknowledged the scout. He perused his own portable before making a blunt statement.
"Time to go."
It was the last thing Jack said while they remained on the station. He led Rath to the freight bay.
Rath saw his new scout. The Authority had moved it off the main pads, probably to facilitate the melees. They passed it without acknowledgment.
Jack rounded a few more pads before he embarked upon a small escort. No guns on this ship. No scanners and hardly any armor. Basically a deep space shuttle made for generals to move from one flag ship to another, to view the expanse of space through the wide bubble-like viewshields both overhead and forward.
Two Authority flight officers waited in the cockpit. Rath wasn't even going to fly. He was exactly what Jack said he was going to be, a witness, and nothing more.
One flight officer turned, said nothing, but watched the coordinator intently. When Jack nodded, he mouthed something into his headset and initiated takeoff.
The small ship glided into space. The view was staggering. It was like being in a glass bubble propelled through the void. The system's sun blazed like a giant ball of fire, the stars in the opposite direction melded together like a long, dotted streak of bright white chalk dust. The planet Fenrir loomed in the forward viewshield. It appeared much like Rath remembered on his very first scout. Large sections of blue signified the vast oceans of water. Brown and yellow divided the deep aqua, indicated the existence of land. Fluffy white clouds flowed around the sphere like aimless ghosts looking for a place to land. In many ways, it appeared just like earth. And streaking toward this planet were tiny flashes of bright orange.
The melees darted through space in full group formation. As if guided by the same hand, they penetrated the atmosphere en masse. Most of the propulsion tails were lost in the clouds, but a few remained visible.
One flight officer turned back to the coordinator. "We've reached watch point alpha, sir. Speed and course locked in with planet rotation."
"Fine, fine." Jack studied his portable as the flight officer turned his attention back to the pilot controls.
Fenrir continued to fill the front viewshield. A massive portion of its largest continent held the center. As the transport moved with the spin of the planet, it looked as if the planet was frozen, suspended in space with no rotation. Only the upper atmosphere clouds appeared to move.
Rath watched intently, searching for signs of the melees. He noted a few propulsion signatures darting to the poles.
"I think they broke formation," the scout announced.
Jack was rather apathetic. "Of course they have. They're breaking into a pattern of full coverage of the planet. If they're going to shoot down those missiles, they'll have to be placed in perfect intercept position, and there's still no guarantee this is going to work."
"How long we will have to wait?"
"I doubt very long. We identified coded messages emanating from the planet that contain launch code characteristics, and we observed several birds being fueled in their nests. Estimation is that missiles with nuclear warheads will leave their silos within the next few minutes."
A flight officer interrupted. "Melee wing leaders have signaled position ready. Command has ordered standby."
"Will we get to hear them, too?" Rath wondered aloud.
"Of course not," Jack grunted, as if the question was not worthy of his response. "They're on a secure channel."
"Then what should I be watching for?"
"Flashes of light," Jack replied without looking up from his portable. #
Dr. Sinclair could do nothing but wait, wait for the courier ship to deliver the sealed report from Jack Lasonelli. Regency allowed her that. Jack would simply note that the experiment was closed successfully. After that, she could retire into the abyss of concealment and isolation.
That's all that what waited for her, and little else. They would let her subscribe to scientific journals, even keep up with the work of the council she just resigned, but it would be a one way relationship. She could not add her own input, offer her own suggestions, or even contact some of her close friends that remained on the council. She would no longer be a scientist; she would barely be an outside observer.
She wondered how many Authority moles would watch her, to make sure she kept out of sight and out of mind of Regency's general population. She wondered what their orders would be if she decided to start writing her memoirs on planetary coms. They'd probably execute her before she could hit the send order.
She shook her head as she cursed a few of the more inept scientists that remained on the council, people she placed the majority of the blame upon. All they had to do was make a few genetic alterations. The general public was not all that bright. There was no need to get fancy. But the geneticists that created the Fenrite species had lauded their creativity, boasted that no one would ever discern from study that the Fenrites were an earth-born species altered to appear alien.
A lot of good that did. In a day or two standard, there wasn't going to be a Fenrite left to study. The planet was going to be washed clean by a nuclear bath. And why? Because the same idiot geneticists couldn't determine why the so-called "alien" was advancing so quickly.
But they didn't get the blame. They were still left to research, to study the remains of her experiment, and to determine why it ultimately failed.
#
Like angry bees swarming free from a nest under attack, the melees set upon Fenrir's atmosphere. These tiny ships zipped across the sky in precoordinated attack patterns. They broke from groups into sections and finally into wings as they covered the four large continents of the planet and targeted each major colony.
Only half of the vessels were armed, Spearhead missiles with megaton nuclear payloads, but more than enough to do the job. Detonation of a mere quarter would leave Fenrir a radiated wasteland.
The other half were needed to carry out the deception for the long range scanners. Melees responsible for simulating the signature of ground based nuclear weapons dove deep toward the surface. They took to the tops of the ever-expanding Fenrite colonies, not caring that the aliens would be able to clearly witness their vessels. They hovered over target areas like tiny clouds, harbingers for the fury of nuclear storm.
#
The Fenrites did not scramble for shelter as they did the first time a space craft entered their sight. Those that had witnessed Rath's scout and other Regency vessels conveyed the existence of such space ships across the planet. Fenrites stood ready to observe and to learn.
Though the number of craft left them somewhat uneasy, most Fenrites surveyed the hovering invaders with great interest. They took detailed notes of hull and exterior engine design. Many used their own imaging devices to capture even greater information. A discriminating eye was put to seizing the differences between these flying crafts and the science vessels that previously graced their atmosphere. Every scrap of information was absorbed.
#
Melee pilots ignored the reactions of the Fenrites. In mere minutes, the "alien" would cease to be. Over secured channels, the wing colonels issued their readiness.
#
The Station General with nuclear clearance stood firm at the main bridge of the Planning Station. As the lead officer upon this interstellar station, his supremacy of command went unquestioned. And with such military power on standby, the Authority didn't have just the final say, it had the only say. There was no regulation or even courtesy warranted to advise the coordinator. There was no overlap in jurisdiction. No other council, except for Regency Govern, could change his orders, and Govern had already made their intentions quite clear.
Still, General Hollins knew the history of this experiment, knew its origin. He wasn't about to allow the Authority to take it in the rear for erasing the indiscretions of these misguided eggheads. If there was going to be an order to fire such ordinance, it would come not from him, but from the liaison of research and exploratory councils.
He remained in direct communication with Council Coordinator Lasonelli as he issued a coded message directly to the coordinator's portable. The directive was nearly innocent in its simplicity.
"Melees in position. Station scanners set. Sequence to initiate on your acknowledgment."
#
Jack decoded the message in his mind, making no record of the directive. Unflinchingly, he typed one word.
"Acknowledged."
He hit the send order, knowing that this simple keystroke meant the end of the Fenrites.
#
Orders to proceed spread to the melees through the secured web of shipto-ship communications. There was no hesitation among the pilots. They expected the order, welcomed it. The melees hovering thirty meters over Fenrir's surface fired first.
Elongated flares rose upward into the sky, sailed into the ionosphere and hung suspended like sparklers in the hands of God. Tails of fire crossed the atmosphere, a light show captured by the Authority's scanners and observation cameras. Ops at the station's monitors immediately stamped the records and placed them into secured databanks, but they did not list the objects as simple flares. They attributed each blip to an airborne missile fired from Fenrir launch sites.
#
Rath looked back and forth from the front viewshield to the coordinator. He couldn't ignore the flashes of light cutting through the white clouds, but Jack's stern face held a message of its own.
The coordinator said nothing. His concentration remained almost completely fixed upon his portable, though he allowed himself a few quick glances at the planet when the flares reached mid-flight.
The flight officers in the cockpit said nothing and Rath felt the silence add to the tension. He asked a question more to break the quiet than out of curiosity. In truth, he already knew the answer.
"Are those nuclear missiles?"
Jack spoke as if identifying a body in a morgue.
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Are you getting reports on your portable?"
"Yes."
"Well, how many were fired?"
"Too many," Jack responded somberly. He shook his head softly and
returned his attention totally to the coded messages flashing across his small terminal. He didn't look at Rath again, he didn't need to. The scout had seen exactly what he had wanted him to.
#
After firing their flares, the hovering melees darted back into space. Only those ships armed with nuclear-laced Spearheads remained within Fenrir's atmosphere. As the elongated flares began their descent, the melees launched all Spearheads. The missiles assumed a flight pattern accompanying the falling flares, moving besides them like burly bodyguards with malevolent intentions.
Never before had the Authority utilized so much fire power. The cooperative guidance system targeted every inch of Fenrir's surface, not just the main colonies. The impact, the force of detonation, the fallout; every angle of devastation was calculated to carry out full coverage. Not a single living organism would survive the assault. There would be nothing left but the original rock, and even a good deal of that would be blasted away. That was, at least, the intended result. Anyone studying the Fenrites to this point should have expected the surprise.
#
An Authority scanning technician observed the first firing. He called his finding immediately to the Station General.
"Sir, I read a planet based launch. Another one. Sir, several launches have just been identified, all from surface based sites."
The general stood like an ice statue.
A post major stepped briskly to the technicians’ station, he replied after one quick glance.
"Confirmed." He looked to the other techs. "All ops report." They answered in quick succession.
"Launches detected."
"Several airborne objects on scanners."
"Reading missiles in the air."
General Hollins remained emotionless. He stepped over to the scanning station. "Am I to understand the Fenrites have fired missiles?"
The major replied almost curtly. "No other explanation, sir."
The general growled. "I'm not even sure that's an explanation I can accept, major. What are they targeting?"
"The Spearheads, sir."
A dozen questions and a hundred curses rushed to the general's lips, but he stifled them all. It remained his charge to always consider the safety of the station and its crew. And this was what drove his simple response.
"Recall all melees. Dock them and have them refueled."
#
Jack rubbed his forehead as he reread the coded message.
He cursed to himself silently. Unexpected, but not a true surprise. They waited too long, and the Fenrites were moving so fast, unbelievably fast.
He closed his portable as he stared directly at the planet.
#
The Fenrites waited, much like the humans waited, but their whole world hung in the balance, their very existence. They stood in their homes, or gathered in colony centers. A sense of trepidation prevailed across the entire planet, but they did not simply accept their fate. They would fight to survive and their hope rested in the form of radar-guided and heat-seeking defense missiles with high charge explosives. They created these missiles almost out of instinct, a desire to protect their land from the metal birds which seemed to stalk them.
It was the use of the flares that saved them. The humans were so intent on creating the illusion that the Fenrites destroyed themselves, they composed the very circumstances which made the interceptor missiles so effective. The flares, used to make it appear as if the Fenrites fired nuclear missiles, attracted the Fenrites' countermeasures. The Spearheads rode a path right beside these flares, and the flames attracted the heat-seeking defenses of the Fenrites like sugar attracts ants. The radar-guided missiles were less effective, but even they managed to take out more than their share of Spearheads. In the end, only two melee-launched Spearheads reached their targets. For the Fenrites, one was too many.
Their planet was saved, they would survive, but one highly populated colony center and a smaller manufacturing center suffered devastation to the point of total eradication. The destruction captured the fear of every inhabitant and no Fenrite could ever ignore or forget what happened on that day. Word spread among the global community, word of the tragedy. Fenrites had died at the hand of a hostile, outward foe, and the entire planet felt the loss.
When night fell upon each city, town and village, they looked to the stars, not with hope or joy, but with disdain, and they cursed the existence of this enemy to their world.
#
Two recorded detonations, that was all. One must have occurred on the other side of the planet for Jack only saw one bright flash synonymous with nuclear discharge. He waited for long minutes, but no further explosions occurred within his sight. The rest of the Spearheads were destroyed when the Fenrite missiles burst against the flares. The conventional charge was great enough to destroy the arming and detonating circuitry within the Spearheads. The missiles fell to the ground like rigid, toothless snakes; no true danger to the Fenrites but an opportunity for them to learn even more.
Rath witnessed the flash, but he anticipated more. He expected the planet to burn with fire. It did not.
He had seen the melees regroup in space and return to the station. He could only conclude that they had accomplished their mission.
He turned to Jack with enthusiasm, enthusiasm unshared by the coordinator. The scout could not understand the look of confusion, the beads of sweat on Jack's forehead.
"I only saw one. They stopped the rest, didn't they?"
Jack didn't answer.
"The melees were recalled," Rath persisted. "They did it! The crisis is over."
Jack curled his bottom lip. He was not ready to deal with the scout; he wasn't ready to deal with any of this.
"Keep quiet!" he ordered.
Rath recoiled. He sat silent, but he began to watch the coordinator intently, followed Jack's eyes as they perused coded lines on his portable.
Jack heaved a heavy breath. He wasn't use to this. He had lost control, and he had no answers. He stood from his seat and moved to the cockpit. He whispered something into the flight officer's ear.
Rath struggled to hear, but could not catch a single word. Still, the coordinator's movements spoke volumes.
Jack returned to his seat and his eyes fell heavily upon the scout.
Rath met his glance with an expression of anticipation.
"Obviously, things have not gone as expected," Jack began.
"Right now, nothing's obvious to me," the scout pressed.
Jack swallowed hard and his tone revealed exasperation. "I guess that's somewhat true. But you do know what we were trying to do here, trying to stop nuclear war."
"You didn't?"
"No! You saw the flash. What did you think that was? A fire cracker?"
"I also saw the melees leave. That means it's over. And I only saw one explosion on the planet."
"There were two. Another one on the other side of the planet."
"I thought you were worried about the whole planet."
"We are! We wanted to stop them all."
For the first time, Jack sounded less than convincing. His eyes and expression betrayed a larger sense of concern, a deeper problem, and Rath found reason to doubt the coordinator's honesty. To the scout, it finally appeared as if Jack was sorry the planet was still there.
Jack regrouped the best he could. "Look, the detonation of one nuclear device on a planet has huge consequences. These Fenrites are warmongers. Now that one has been fired, they'll fire more. They won't be happy until they destroy the whole planet."
It didn't sound valid, not by a long shot. Rath knew a little about earth's own history, and professed as much as he offered his own considerations. "We used an atomic bomb on earth. People died, it was horrible, and we learned from it. We didn't blow up the earth."
Jack cringed. Too many factors gnawed at his worries, too many pitfalls opened before him. Rath wasn't supposed to see this; he was supposed to see the eradication of Fenrir. The deception was falling apart and he fought desperately to bring it back under his control. "How many times do I have to tell you? This isn't earth and the Fenrites aren't like us. We can't say what they might do, how they might react. It's a whole new ball game."
Rath decided to say little more. He allowed Jack to take the lead. "Fine, what now?"
"I've made an adjustment to our flight orders. We're going planet side. We have to estimate the damage at the two strike sites."
Rath couldn't believe the order. "In this ship? What are you crazy? This is a space shuttle, a ship-to-ship transport. You don't recon in something like this."
"We're here, so we're going in," Jack stated with finality.
"Are you nuts?! Send a melee in there for recon. They're better outfitted for this."
The coordinator exploded. "Melees are under Authority jurisdiction. This ship is under my orders."
"Yeah, but I'm not!" Rath shouted back.
"Then get out."
"Very funny, a*shole."
Jack raised the index finger of his right hand, but said nothing further. He called an order to the flight officer piloting the craft.
"Bring us in."
Rath gritted his teeth. He thought atmospheric entry was bad in his scout. This time, he nearly passed out. Even when the transport finally reached a safe flying altitude within Fenrir's atmosphere, his stomach turned over and over. The large bubbles for viewing space buried Rath in a sensation of free falling through the bright blue sky.
Jack ignored him. "Bring us to the second explosion site. I want full camera surveillance. Record everything."
The pilots said nothing. They simply followed the orders. They were Authority officers but they were placed under the coordinator's charge. They reacted as if Jack was nothing less then the Station General.
The transport streaked across the sky, from light into darkness, and back into the edges of an orange sunrise. The first light of dawn skimmed the edges of scorched ground as the vessel reached maximum viewing distance of the second detonation site.
The damage was staggering. Twenty square kilometers were nothing but dust and ash. Not a single structure remained within this radius. Further out, a few blackened poles spiked themselves into the ground, the only remnants of a flattened Fenrite city. Around the rim of the detonation crater, burnt debris formed a gray circular border lifted two or three meters up from the now leveled surface. All life was absent. Staggering levels of heat flushed out from the core, still flaring across the countryside like storms of fire.
Jack looked upon the devastation with a cold grimace. He said nothing about the destruction. Instead, he ordered a reconnaissance just beyond the edge of desolation.
The transport pitched in the turbulence, wavered within the folds of hot winds. The pilot brought the ship up to escape the rough air.
As the transport settled into calmer winds, Jack stepped from side to side of the ship. He looked across the landscape, judging the damage with a warlord's eye.
He gauged the estimated casualties as a mark of lost production capacity. He did the same with the hollowed out factories on the far edges of pure desolation. He wanted the pure elimination of the Fenrites, that he did not get, but here was a staggering blow to their burgeoning population and industrial output. This would certainly serve as a setback for the Fenrites, but would it slow them down?
He doubted it. They kept surpassing every estimate of advancement based on their limited population and supposedly stretched intelligence. Why not another surprise? They'd probably rebuild this colony in the wink of an eye. In truth, he couldn't guess what they might accomplish.
"Take us to the first detonation point. I want..."
The flight officer stopped listening to the coordinator as his attention fixed fully on a transmission threw his headset. When the pilot spoke, it was without regard to Jack's order.
"Station Control is advising us of a missile launch in our area. We have been targeted."
Rath tensed at the warning, braced himself within his seat. He looked to Jack with burning anger. "You idiot. I told you we shouldn't have gone in."
"Shut up!"
Jack seethed, but more, he appeared surprised, as if this was unthinkable.
Rath saw the astonishment, but he didn't understand it. If the Fenrites were capable of launching such powerful nuclear missiles, then certainly they would have the ability to fire missiles at aircraft.
"Do you have a fix on the missile?" Jack demanded of the pilot.
The officer was nothing less than curt. "Sit down, strap yourself in, and be quiet."
Rath almost laughed, but he was too scared. He clenched his fists together as the transport went vertical. He could feel the pressure growing on his chest, pressing against his ribs, forcing the air out from his lungs. He jammed his eyes shut, but his head still felt as if it was about to explode.
Transports of this class didn't have Boscon Props. They were designed primarily for limited space flight, and the engines fought desperately to break free from Fenrir's gravity; twentieth century rockets reached escape velocity with greater efficiency. Still in vertical climb, the transport pitched right at the pilot's command. Through the clear bubble overhead, Rath saw a lance with an orange tale skid meters past the hull.
He heard the pilot curse and he understood. The evasive action caused a serious reduction in climbing speed. The pilot would have to level off, even dive to generate velocity before returning to a vertical climb.
Rath could still see the orange glow of the Fenrite anti-aircraft missile. It did not follow. It had lost its guidance and burned out in the upper atmosphere.
Lights dazzled before his eyes as the ship broke downward. With a sudden lurch, it reverted to a vertical climb. Rath passed out for a few seconds.
As he regained consciousness, he felt the ship rattling uncontrollably, no longer in a pitched climb. They were descending, fairly angled, but definitely going down.
He struggled to look out the forward viewshield, but he could not shake his vision into focus. He felt queasy and almost passed out again. He shut his eyes, bent forward as far as his straps would allow, and took several deep breaths.
With clear sight slowly coming back to him, he looked to Jack. The coordinator frantically dismantled his portable, yanking wires and crushing chips under his boot.
Rath didn't take the time to ask. The horizon finally appeared in the forward view shield. They were about to land, or crash.