Conquest of Earth (Stellar Conquest Series) (31 page)

Taking a cursor, Spectre spun the enormous globe depicted in the holotank so that Asia showed. Above it all, they could see a million ships spiraling down and spreading out, so many that they were grouped together by the computer in icons of up to one thousand. “Originally I had ordered each city to create a kill zone, a defense in depth, in order to destroy as many of the enemy on the way down. When the Scourges landed, the defenders would escape through extensive tunnels back to the fortified cities, activating millions of inexpensive mines. The goal was to make the enemy pay for every inch of ground regardless of casualties, to buy time for the parts of Earth not under attack to rush reinforcements and attack from the perimeter.”

“Yes. Like the Russians in World War Two,” Gilgamesh said, shifting his great bulk in his seat. “They fortified their cities and turned them into deathtraps for the Germans, gaining time to build up their armies. Eventually those armies came back and crushed the exhausted Wehrmacht.” The Blend was merely fat now rather than ridiculously obese, as Spectre had worked him as hard as any of them. Gilgamesh had proven himself a reliable right-hand man for anything to do with the Blends. “It seemed like a good strategy,” he continued diplomatically. “What has changed?”

“Only the emphasis and timing. My plan had always been to put the least competent fighters – the youngest, the weakest, the least well trained – on the front lines. If they died, they died.” The other Blends nodded, hardly less ruthless than Spectre. “This would leave the best troops to hold the cities. Every mouth to feed or weapon to service must be as effective as possible.”

“And?” Cleopatra challenged. “What changed?” she repeated.

“Admiral Absen pointed out that all the enemy are dropping into the atmosphere. They have ceded space in order to put all their air power against us. That will make our kill zones much less effective. They will bombard us with masses of plasma torpedoes and beams from long range. That’s a losing proposition for us. Better not to engage at all, but instead to simply allow them to land everywhere. Even in the cities, we will only defend locally, not even shooting at their landing craft.”

“But they’ll just bombard the cities instead!” Cleopatra protested.

Ah, a better foil I could not have asked for
, Spectre thought,
feeding me such setup lines.
“The more they bombard, the more rubble they produce. Modern cities become easier, not harder, to defend as they are wrecked.”

“But the countryside! We’ve all seen the briefings. The Scourgelings will eat everything. Even though we have harvested all the crops and hoarded all possible human food, they can consume any biomass. The Russian and Siberian forests alone will let them grow fat, and we will be left with wastelands.”

Spectre grinned, a thing that caused several present to blanch. “Yes. I’m counting on it.”

Not for the first time did he feel surprised at how much biology influenced behavior.

“Are we going down after them?” Scoggins asked.

“Not a chance,” Absen replied. “We can’t spare the fuel, especially our fighters. A tanker is coming from Mars and three from Jupiter, but we are on our own for a while. No, we’ll just roll over and strafe them from orbit as we pass.”

“Aye aye, sir. Okuda, make it so.”

“Setting course for low Earth orbit with maximum coverage of Asia and Europe,” the helmsman reported.

Thirty minutes later, the squadron crested the horizon and swung over the enemy landing zones. “’You may fire when ready, Gridley,’” Absen misquoted. “Pass the same to the fleet. Priority targets are their fighters, and watch for them shooting back. With this kind of space supremacy there’s absolutely no reason to lose even one of our StormCrows. In fact, open the launch bay and tell the manned Crows to start rotating in as fast as they can for refit to automate them.”

Once his orders were passed, Absen stood and strolled over to the holotank. Conquest floated over old Europe on a roughly west-east track, providing maximum hang time above the atmosphere as they raced the globe beneath them.

All of the small towns along the coasts had been evacuated. The tsunamis the Destroyer impacts caused fifty years ago had wiped away the large coastal cities, and the surviving concentrations of population were well inland and in the mountains. London, Hamburg and Naples had been destroyed back then, leaving mountain cities such as Milan and Vienna to prosper. Those had formed the nucleus of the Blend oligarchy’s city-states, and now they became urban fortresses.

The Scourges landed in swirls and waves, more or less evenly across Europe and Asia. “Not much combat going on,” Scoggins remarked. “Just some ground fire where they touched down within cities. Those beachheads have been wiped out.”

“Yes, and the ones that landed in the surrounding zones died to the mines. That attracted a few more from nearby but generally, as long as the enemy isn’t being shot at, they’re just eating stuff, not turning to attack our defenses.” Ford said excitedly. “Sir, how did you know?”

Absen turned to lean against the railing. “I know because I really do read Fleede’s briefings, Commander. When given a choice between fighting and eating, Scourgelings eat. They only attack things that attack them or smell like food. In fact, if they didn’t see something to eat – like people – they often just walk right by, unless Soldiers drive them to attack. So as much as possible, our forces in the cities are sealing themselves in. If they can’t, they wipe out the local Scourge incursion and then retreat so no more are attracted.”

Weapons fired from the fleet, depicted by lines reaching down toward the clouds of Scourge fighters that still buzzed above the ground, picking them off. In response, many rose to attack, but their small beam weapons couldn’t hurt
Conquest
, and even the few StormCrows that were hit only suffered repairable damage. The atmosphere sucked all the range out of the enemy’s weapons.

“Concentrate on those coming up after us,” Scoggins ordered, and soon the targets were either dead or left behind, limited by air resistance to mere supersonic speeds while
Conquest
and her flock cruised along at orbital velocities exceeding 27,000 kilometers per hour.

“You see,” Absen said smugly, “without orders, they just react to local threats, by whatever groupings they use. Perhaps all the critters from one mothership swarm stick together. Anyway, we shoot at them and they turn to attack.”

“There’s no way they can catch us, so we can attrit the fighters and gunships this way, but what about the landing forces?” Rick Johnstone asked. “There’s what, eight hundred million of them on the ground now? That’s more than the population of Earth!”

“Sounds like the fight is even, then, eh?” Absen said. “But no, I don’t intend to fight fair. Crops and forests can be replanted; farms and houses can be rebuilt. The people on the ground will wait and save their strength for a couple of days. Let the enemy have the countryside.” Absen waved airily. “Let the Scourgelings eat. For now, what we have to do is find and kill the nests.”

The holotank had shown most of the Scourges landed in the Europe-Asia supercontinent, with scattered groups coming down on all the other continents, perhaps in the nature of scouting forces. Spectre knew the small infestations outside of Asia and Europe would be easily dealt with. “Good. Order the militia to patrol aggressively for any Scourges that run wild in the countryside, and alert the reaction forces worldwide to begin loading their transports. Give me your best recommendations for our counter-invasions within one hour. I want to be ready to hit them in two to three days.” He made a gesture of dismissal.

“My Lord,” Cleopatra purred, “I am no general, but I have read many of humanity’s books. Isn’t it more difficult to invade across the seas than to defend? Why not hold the continents we have at our borders while EarthFleet builds ships? The Scourge can be wiped out from space and then we repopulate what we lost later.”

“Yes…that was one of my many contingency plans,” Spectre said, giving the woman her due. “But we are being presented with an opportunity too good to pass up. Besides, if we wait too long, the seven enemy nests even now being built will cause problems. Even now, fertilized Archons are burrowing into the ground and laying eggs, while Soldiers gather food for the hatching infants. In two weeks, the enemy’s numbers may double, and then double again. We cannot wait.”

“My lord,” Alexander said, “
Conquest
is already hunting the nests. We need have little fear on that score.”

“Are you certain?” Spectre asked. “How do you know the seven nests are all they have? Perhaps they are cleverer than we presume. In any case, my point holds. All forces are ordered to wait and prepare to assault onto the Asia-Europe supercontinent, no less than forty-eight and no more than seventy-two hours from now.”

“You’re talking all around your plan, but you are withholding some key detail,” Cleopatra complained. “You are playing with us, my lord, like cats with yarn.”

“An apt metaphor. Usually you’re the cat, but today you’re the yarn.” Spectre held up a hand. “I’m indulging myself, I admit. Let me explain what we must do.” He turned to the holotank and called up a stored intelligence briefing authored by one Commander Ronald Fleede.

Once he’d outlined the proper courses of action and reviewed Alexander’s deployment of forces onto Asia-Europe in order to crush the Scourges there, Spectre spoke with Admiral Absen once again and told Gilgamesh to oversee the minions in their duties.

Now that victory seemed inevitable, he decided to indulge himself in something he had been contemplating ever since he’d arrived on Earth. Spectre sent one of the Skulls to find Major Naomi Alkina and bring her to his private terrace.

Yes
, he told himself.
A great-great-grandniece is a distant enough relation not to offend the populace when I take her as a lover, perhaps a bride.

Not that a little thing like public opinion would have stopped him anyway.

At least atmospheric heat and friction wasn’t an issue.
Conquest
had briefly stopped in her orbit and hovered on her massive fusion engines while the Marines lined up and leaped out of auxiliary ports well away from the hot exhaust. Several pinnaces and a few sleds followed them down with supplies and Recluse drones.

The drop wasn’t intended as a hard insertion: it was simply the only way to put the brigade down intact, as most of the sleds had been lost during the mothership assault.

They would land near New Delhi in what once was India. Over the last three days,
Conquest
and its auxiliaries had used their superior position to systematically exterminate most of the enemy fighters and gunships in that area. With the arrival of the interplanetary tankers, the dreadnought had enough fuel to slow orbit and descend, flying by brute force on fusion engines to engage near-helpless targets below them at a range of less than one hundred kilometers, point blank for
Conquest
’s massive weapons.

Extensive bombardment from orbit of the Marine landing zone had destroyed all the grounded Scourge craft, the only other source of enemy heavy weapons. With a wing of StormCrows for cover, Bull’s command was probably one of the safest “opposed” landings in Marine history. The only danger was on touchdown – the millions of Scourgelings and thousands of Soldiers that infested the countryside.

As Bull flew his ram-air parachute inexorably downward, he unlimbered his pulse gun and passed his last instructions to his commanders. As he landed, a Soldier popped out of a foxhole and fired its assault cannon, slamming slugs into Bull’s chest and knocking him over.
Lucky he didn’t have something heavier
, Bull thought as he fell backward and rolled, trying to stay low. For a moment he got tangled in his parachute. When he cut loose and came to his knees to fire, he saw the enemy slaughtered by several nearby Marines.

“Good job, diggers. Get organized and start the bug hunt, now. Hustle! Exterminate everything in your area with minimum ammo, one shot per as briefed,” he ordered.

“Bull, this is Reaper,” Command Sergeant Major Repeth radioed. “Did you ever think we’d be walking into this like cake?”

“No. Thought we’d be fighting for our lives, but we still might be if we don’t move fast.” He jogged toward the nearest pinnace, firing a single shot into each Scourgeling cocoon he came across. “We only have two days.”

The cocoons were everywhere, some in clumps, some just scattered here and there. Bull knew that all across Asia and Europe Earth’s ground forces were on the offensive and were winning handily. Like Reap had said, a cakewalk. Instead of a Marine, he felt like an exterminator, though the occasional Soldier kept the troops on their toes. “Conserve ammo,” he reminded everyone. Even if they killed one Scourgeling with every round, the Marine brigade would only get rid of two or three million of them, out of an estimated eight hundred million now on Earth.