Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (39 page)

After all, it seemed like General Stoddard’s plan was practically foolproof. He had a remotely controlled saucer approaching from what they thought of as the rear of the relatively long and slender mothership. The front of the alien ship had that big mirror on it and so that end seemed like a poor target for the military’s secret beam weapon on the basis that whatever they were using for a mirror might reflect the beam away.

Learning of this concern made Tiona think that the military’s beam weapon must be some form of light based weapon like a laser.

Stoddard had spent hours poring over the images that Rob Marshall and Dan Vincent had obtained of the mothership. For their first target, he’d chosen one of several long cylinders in the agglomeration of shapes that were packed together to make up the alien ship. He hoped the cylinder contained important gases or liquids which would leak away through any holes punched by the Air Force’s beam weapon.

Stoddard was in a manned saucer a couple of hundred thousand miles from the remotely controlled one that carried the beam weapon. It was communicating with the weaponized saucer using a laser in the hopes that the aliens wouldn’t notice the command saucer. The weapon saucer also was constantly varying its acceleration to make it a difficult target, though it was still at risk. Tiona still wasn’t wild about Stoddard, but she had to respect him for being out there on the sharp end himself. Most people wouldn’t expect a general to be out there within reach of the aliens’ beam weapon, but Stoddard pointed out that if he wanted to be truly safe he’d have to be far enough away that the light-speed delay would be significant. “If I’m going to command,” he’d said, “I have to be on the spot.”

The weaponized saucer made its pass by the aliens’ ship “edge on.” This wasn’t just to present a smaller profile, but because the beam weapon was mounted transversely across the top of the disc. Also, having the main thrust of the saucer perpendicular to their approach allowed it to rapidly accelerate and decelerate or even zigzag across the approach path in order to make the saucer more difficult to hit. They were using a constantly shifting acceleration pattern to make its position extremely difficult to predict even though it made the laser communication and targeting more difficult. The saucers’ AI could compensate for the movement fairly well and the trade-off against the risk of the weapon-saucer being shot was thought to be well worth it. The aliens, on the other hand, with a massive ship and the meager thrust of their plasma engines, were unlikely to be able to move themselves sufficiently to avoid the beam from the Stoddard’s weapon.

The beam weapon was definitely a standoff weapon, but the beam did spread a little with distance so Stoddard was sending the saucer on a pass within 100 kilometers to fire his first shots.

It seemed like the saucer had all the advantages of mobility, so everyone out there in space, as well as the alien team members waiting in the president’s conference room were feeling pretty confident.

“Madam President, the weaponized saucer has broadcast your final warning and received no response,” Stoddard said. “Permission to fire our first shot?”

“You may proceed,” the president responded gravely.

Several minutes passed while messages traveled to Stoddard’s location and back.

“We’ve fired,” Stoddard said. “As agreed, this first shot was at twenty-five percent power for 10 milliseconds.” The beam weapon could fire for a full second so this represented a much lower energy shot than their maximum, but even at this low power the beam would punch a two centimeter hole in half inch steel plate.

The president had asked them not to fire at full power initially on the chance that they might destroy the alien ship before the aliens had an opportunity to surrender. Tiona thought it would be pretty bizarre if their ship was destroyed by having a two centimeter hole punched through it. After all, the aliens had punched holes in several saucers now without destroying them, though they
had
killed Kurt. Still, she didn’t disagree with an initial low-power shot.

As if he’d realized they might wonder what was going on, Stoddard said, “We’re waiting for imaging to evaluate the effect of the shot.”

Tiona heard someone ask, “Can they really see a two centimeter hole at that distance?”

That query got an amused snort from the man’s neighbor, “Not a chance. He’s got a small disc making a pass at a distance of ten kilometers. Its scope can resolve a millimeter per pixel at that distance.”

***

Levon entered the bridge, “What is it now?!” she asked in an exasperated tone.

Second Officer turned, “The aliens have another ship approaching. It’s transmitted another message.”

Levon wanted to lash out and hit something. After all this time in the system with the aliens transmitting nothing but garbage, several decidays ago they’d transmitted something that could be understood after a fashion, even though the wording was clumsy. In the message, they claimed to have destroyed the lander.

Levon hadn’t believed they could even
hurt
the lander, but as the decidays passed without any further transmissions from the lander she was getting a sick feeling in her stomach. Even more appalling, the aliens had offered to hold talks in the hopes that they and the rendas could get along!

As if rendas would talk to an inferior race!
Levon tried to calm herself, then said, “What does
this
message say?”

“It says they’re going to attack us because we won’t talk and they don’t want us to return to Naust and bring more rendas to their system.”

“They’re
warning
us?”

Second Officer nodded.

Levon scoffed, “These primitives can’t
possibly
hurt us… Fire the meteorite system at them. We’ll disable or destroy their ship and see how they react to that.”

A moment later Levon heard the thrum as the meteorite system fired. “Miss,” Sixth Officer said.

Levon turned, thunder in her eyes, “
How
did you miss?!”

“They decelerated,” Sixth Officer said. “They’re constantly accelerating or decelerating. Sometimes they move transversely to their path. The computer can’t predict…”

Levon cut Sixth off with an irritated wave. She’d forgotten these claims her officers had been making that the aliens wasted reaction mass so prodigiously to change their velocities. On the one hand, she didn’t believe it, on the other hand it didn’t matter. “Just keep firing, even
you’ll
have to hit them eventually.” She turned and left the bridge

***

The alien team heard Stoddard’s voice say, “No plume or other evidence that our beam penetrated. Firing again. Full power now.”

After a pause, Stoddard’s voice came back, “Still no evidence of damage. Firing at a different tank now. Planning to keep firing each time the beam recharges until the alien ship is destroyed.”

The president said, “Don’t you see
any
evidence that you damaged your target?”

When Stoddard’s reply finally came back, he sounded a little unsettled, “There’s a mark where we targeted. It looks… black.”

People around the table looked at one another.

Minutes passed. Finally the president said, “General Stoddard? Any progress?”

This time when the reply came Stoddard sounded frustrated, “No ma’am. The beam’s hitting, because it keeps leaving spots where we aimed it. But as best we can tell, it’s not doing any damage. The spots do look… Aw dammit!”

When Stoddard didn’t elaborate, the president said, “What’s happened?”

Before Stoddard could have gotten the president’s query, he said,” After a pause he continued, “It looks like it might be yawing, but our imaging from here isn’t very good. We’ll send one of the camera discs over to look at it.” There was a brief wait, then he came back on, “We’re also sending another camera over to get a close-up look at the marks it made on the alien ship. I’m hoping if it moves slowly enough, their automatic defense system, assuming that’s what their beam weapon is part of, won’t recognize it as a threat.”

A long period of silence had ensued with everyone in the room getting fidgety. Tiona contacted Nolan, “It looks like plan A isn’t working. We may be moving to Plan B. Can you get me an estimate on how much longer it’ll be before the impactors’ll be ready?”

Nolan said, “I think it’ll be a week or so, but I’ll get back to you.”

“Thanks.”

Tiona had been about to say more, but then Stoddard’s voice came back on. “It looks like the weapon-saucer got hit by the aliens’ beam weapon. It’s got one of the four centimeter holes that the mothership’s beam weapon makes. From its location, and the fact that the saucer seems to have completely shut down, we think it hit the fusor.

Tiona thought to herself that it was unlikely the beam destroyed the fusor since the water jacket around the actual fusion unit would have been difficult for the beam to penetrate. However, it could easily have hit the power runs coming out of the fusor with the same result.

Stoddard was continuing, “The camera disc approaching the alien vessel has gotten pretty close by now. We continue to see black spots in the locations we’d targeted. They
look
like perforations, but there aren’t any plumes of escaping gas or liquid. We’re sending images now.”

The big screen in the room lit up. An image cleared on it showing a black spot on a white background. Tiona thought the white had to be a part of the alien ship. It looked like it’d been painted white like many of the objects humans had out in space. The black spot had an odd look to it that she couldn’t put her finger on. While she frowned at it a white spark drifted across it. She frowned, wondering what the spark could be, then she had it. “That’s a star!” she exclaimed.

A few doubtful murmurs signaled the fact that some people had heard her, but had no idea what she was talking about.

For a second, Tiona had thought she was seeing a star through a hole that went right through the alien ship, but a second later she realized she was looking at a mirrored surface. She waved for attention and said, “The laser burned off a layer of paint and exposed a mirrored surface underneath.”

Muttered exclamations of doubt came from around the table. One of the NASA guy said, “First of all, why would you have a mirrored surface underneath, it adds cost but no benefit. And, second, if you did have a mirrored surface, why would you paint over it?”

Tiona waved toward the screen, “Keep your eyes on the image, eventually another star’s going to drift across to it to prove my point. As to why, I don’t know, but remember this thing flies really close to the sun and uses a huge mirror to reflect away the heat. I suspect it’s mirrored in case something happens to its orientation and part of it gets exposed…” She paused for a second, wondering why they would’ve painted over it, then she had that too. “They painted over it because working on something that looks like a bundle of fun house mirrors would be a pain in the ass.”

The NASA guy stared at her for a moment, then gave a sharp nod of agreement. “Lasers aren’t gonna work,” he said decisively.

People around the table were looking at one another with horror in their eyes.

Tiona turned to General Cooper and found his eyes already on her. “Plan B,” he mouthed.

The president said, “Well, if that’s not going to work, I’m hoping we have some kind of a backup plan?”

General Cooper got the president’s attention and said, “GSI’s been working on strategies for hitting them with kinetic impactors.”

The president blinked, “Is that some kind of fancy military euphemism for shooting a cannon at them?”

Cooper snorted, “Essentially yes, though we’re planning to use thrusters to accelerate our cannonballs rather than lighting off a big barrel filled with gunpowder.” He went on to describe some of the possible strategies they’d discussed. “Essentially, we think we can send some big chunks of steel at them. Something that massive’ll be too big to deflect with their beam weapon. If the aliens try to move their ship with their plasma thrusters, we’ll simply use the attached disc to correct the course of our,” he quirked the corner of his mouth, “cannonballs.”

Nolan reported back to Tiona then, so she could tell the group that the first of the impactors should be ready early next week.

The president adjourned the meeting until the next week. “I think you can all use some rest time with your families, but please hold yourselves immediately available in case something else happens.” As everyone started to get up, she said, “And, just in case the impactors don’t work either, everyone try to think of some
other
strategy we can use.”

***

Tiona glanced behind her as she sat at the big table in the president’s conference room. For the first time, she, like many of the other people at the table, had an adviser sitting behind her. She grinned at Nolan. He looked a little bit wide-eyed over the whole thing.

She and Nolan had been working together almost constantly, putting the finishing touches on the various projectiles GSI’d been building. The projectiles themselves weren’t all that complex, simply being big chunks of steel or, in some cases, a barrel of large steel bearings with water around them. However, a lot of work had gone into command-and-control. They had lights on the back of them that General Stoddard’s saucer could use to track them in order to aim the control lasers without giving away Stoddard’s position.