Conquest of Earth (Stellar Conquest Series) (19 page)

“What about anticipating their arrival?”

“It should be sixteen minutes and twenty-three seconds from gravitic wave front detection until they emerge from wormhole space.”

“What about the sixty-six second lightspeed delay between us and where they come out?” Absen asked.

A graphic appeared in the holotank, no doubt thrown up by Conquest’s AI. “About ninety-three seconds actually, sir. The hypotenuse of the right triangle described by a line from us to Sol’s center and a line from Sol to the ecliptic.”

“Right. Okay, ninety-three seconds. The delay?”

“Sir, gravity propagates at lightspeed as well, so the delay in detecting the gravity wave and the delay in seeing them are the same. No matter what our sensors detect or see, it’s ninety-three seconds late.”

“Right. Got it. Is there any way to tell how many motherships are coming?”

“No, sir, not according to Fleede. Twelve to sixteen is what they anticipate, based on the Meme info.”

Absen waved. “All right. Go on.”

Pointing with the cursor, Scoggins said, “From this position we can see any Scourge appearance along the plane of the ecliptic. As you noted, any attack will still have at least ninety seconds to travel, even at the speed of light. Once we have determined their location and formation, we can launch SLAMs from here, or we can pulse closer and launch from the new position, but sir, you have to decide on one tactic or the other well beforehand.”

“Because we have to shove the SLAMs out of the launch bay and let their drive fields get well away from
Conquest
before lighting them off.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long will that take?”

“At least five minutes before they are far enough.”

Absen sat back, thoughtful. “What happens if the drive fields do interfere with each other?”

Scoggins frowned. “
Really, Really Bad Things
, Commander Ekara said.”

“So let’s not do that,” Absen said. “Okay, we either set them up right here and fire them as soon as we have targets, or we zoom to some point closer, using the warning time to prep the SLAMs. What’s wrong with that?”

“We’ll be giving up our polar angle on the enemy. We’ll only see the closest ones, and they’ll actually see us first, because the EM that allows them to see us is continuously propagating, while theirs is brand new and has to travel to us. And, if we stay here, they are very unlikely to see us in the glare, while we’ve installed a whole suite of auxiliary sensors and filters so we can see them. Bottom line, sir, I believe we really need to launch the SLAMs from here.”

Absen growled. “Ninety-three light-seconds gives their motherships a hell of a long time to dodge. Even a routine course correction on their part will cause the SLAMs to miss. Do you know how much effort those things cost us?”

Scoggins nodded gravely. “I do, sir. But they aren’t tactical missiles. They were supposed to bombard the Weapon, a fixed target. We only made eight of them so far, and this is our best chance to use them right. If we’re lucky and they don’t arrive for a while, we’ll have more. The other option is to wait and hold them in reserve, but…”

“But we give up the opportunity to take out a mothership and its entire swarm of millions with each SLAM.” Absen glanced over at COB Timmons, who shrugged and took a sip of his lifer-juice. “All right. Set them up here. Ellis has a team working on a more robust tactical version that we can launch like a regular missile, if the enemy gives us a couple more months. Go on.”

Scoggins flicked her cursor and caused the holographic display to rotate in three dimensions. “Defense of Earth. The Weapon on the moon is fully functional and under our control.” She paused, and Absen could just hear the wheels turning in her head as she pushed herself beyond the agony of thinking how useful the inward-facing laser they had destroyed would have been.

“Spilled milk,” Absen said, as if he had read her mind, and Scoggins started slightly.

“Yes, sir. We’ve got a good loyal man, one Captain O’Rourke, running the Weapon. You’ll remember he was a resistance mole in the loyalist military, and he commanded an orbital fortress on Jupiter, so he’s got the chops.”

“Okay.”

“The rest of the defensive infrastructure of Earth is relatively intact. Die-hard loyalists have been purged. Spooky – I mean Spectre – and his tame Blends have been running all the officers through personal mind-probe interviews. The PVNs manufactured enough modular laser auto-turrets to beef up all the fortresses and captured asteroids, so we have something like one hundred thousand point-defense weapons in orbit now.” Scoggins looked sour.

“Not happy?”

The flag captain shook her head. “It sounds like a lot, until you consider that Earth will probably be getting hit with six or seven million assault craft, each of them armed and most of them full of Scourgelings and Soldiers. Simulations show we make a fair dent in them at the start, and then we get overwhelmed and they pour through. Best guess, half of them make it to the surface.”

Clearing his throat, Absen asked a question everyone already knew the answer to, but he wanted no illusions. “How many enemy troops does that make?”

“Something like three billion, sir, three hundred million of which have small arms, and six million of which pilot attack aircraft or armored vehicles. Not to mention the nests, if we don’t get them fast.” The bridge crew had heard these numbers before in intelligence briefings, but now, on the eve of battle, they seemed terrifying.

“And our ground defenses?”

“Spectre has done wonders, sir, I have to say. He’s got many old tank factories running again, and is arming all the civilian aircraft. And, of about seven hundred million fit to bear arms, which includes every child that can be trained to hold a weapon or carry an ammo box, a third of them have at least an assault rifle and a basic load of ammo, with more being made all the time.”

“And the rest of the people who have no weapons?” Rick Johnstone asked from his CyberComm seat.

Before Scoggins could answer, Bull spoke up from where he leaned cross-armed against the wall. “Stalingrad.”

“Huh?”

Bull’s eyes glittered with a grunt’s fascination as he told the story. “At Stalingrad in World War Two, the Russians often only had one rifle for ten men…but they had a shitload of men. So they sent the armed ones forward with the others right behind them. As soon as the first man fell, the next would pick up his rifle and ammo bandolier and keep shooting Germans until he got killed…and so on, and so on. They died like flies.”

“How is that good?” Rick said, distressed.

Bull stepped off the wall to loom over the seated officer. “Because, Commander, they
won
. At the end of the battle, they held the city and had taken four hundred thousand prisoners. The Wehrmacht never recovered.” The Marine colonel’s face twisted with righteous passion. “This is a battle we have to win, people. These buggers eat
everything
. It won’t matter whether we die on the battlefield if we get eaten anyway.”

Absen cleared his throat, and Bull subsided, moving back to his place. “At least we evacuated many of the smallest children to the Mars habitats. I know you wanted to be on the ground, Colonel, but I need you and your brigade here, on
Conquest
. Here is where you’ll make the biggest difference, and I need someone I can utterly rely on.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“I need you to understand in your
bones
, Bull. I can’t have half your mind on Earth.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Bull had the decency to look abashed, but not happy.

Absen waved Bull back, turning to Scoggins. “Speaking of Bull’s brigade, Captain, how about Operation Bughouse?”

“Getting there, Admiral.” Scoggins rotated the display yet again, this time showing the other side of the Sun from Earth as she marked a cluster of eight Destroyer icons. “Here’s the Meme location, 180 degrees out from Earth, as you requested. If they can decoy some of the Scourges, we want them to separate as much as possible from their Earth attack. The Meme will try to dance with them as long as possible, thinning them out and leading them away before they really run. We have no idea how well this will work. Red Team thinks it will depend on whether they view the Destroyers as attractive inhabited moonlets or tough warships.”

“What do you think?” Absen asked.

Scoggins made a gesture of uncertainty. “Even the Blends don’t agree. However, the Meme did plant a bunch of…I guess you’d call them life-forms all over the Destroyers’ skins, to make them look tastier.”

Absen waved his approval. “That’s a pretty good idea. Okay, so the Destroyers lead some of the enemy off into space. What then?”

Moving around the holotank, Scoggins pointed with her cursor. “We hope the enemy small craft will take some casualties on the Jericho Line, then head
en masse
for the Destroyers, leaving at least one mothership vulnerable. Assuming they never faced a TacDrive before, they may believe they can see any threat coming in time to pull covering forces back.
Conquest
needs to be in position to pulse in as close as possible and launch Bughouse.”

“And if Bughouse works, we’ll have ourselves an FTL drive,” Absen finished.
And if not,
he didn’t say,
we’ll have five thousand dead Marines and sled pilots.

***

Brigade Command Sergeant Major Repeth bellowed, “At ease! Sit down and shut the hell up.” Her eyes swept the small auditorium. It was standing room only, filled with every NCO from squad leaders up to her battalion sergeants major, about four hundred men and women. Twenty-nine of them were survivors of
Conquest
’s original contingent, but the rest were new, selected from the defense forces of Earth System under the Empire and trained to be Marines.

“For those of you who do know me, my name is Repeth. Because you are my NCOs I’m going to give you the rare privilege of calling me by my first name.” She paused and smiled, a hard, flat expression. “And my first name is
Sergeant Major
. I don’t know what kind of leaders you had during your time serving the Meme, and I don’t care. Colonel ben Tauros runs things by the book, and so do I, so you will address everyone by EarthFleet ranks and you will render all proper customs and courtesies. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

No one responded.

“Lest you think I’m just some reg-bound martinet, I’ve posted my bio on the Brigade page. All of you will read every word of it and every word of Colonel ben Tauros’ bio as well because between us we own your asses. The short version is, I’ve been a Marine since I was seventeen years old, before the Plague Wars, even. I’ve been fighting for over a hundred fifty years on the calendar, over seventy of them outside of coldsleep. Some of these people with you,” she swept a pointing finger across in front of her, “have been with me almost as long. For example, Sergeant Major Gunderson over there fought with me at Fredericksburg ten years before the very first Destroyer came. But don’t think that means I’ll favor them. I’m going to be hard on every one of you, because I need you ready to lead your troops in the fight of your lives.

“You thought your selection and training has been tough until now. I’m here to tell you that was just the start. Now that we’re billeted aboard
Conquest
, we’re not going to kick back and take it easy. The enemy could come at any time. This ship is big enough to practice zero-G company-sized assaults, inside and outside the hull. When you’re not training live, you’ll be in suit simulators and VR space.”

“Ma’am,” said a muscular female gunnery sergeant from the front row, standing up.

“
That’s
SERGEANT MAJOR
,” Repeth roared. “Do I look like an officer? Now what’s your question, Gunny…Calhoun?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major. Gunnery Sergeant Calhoun, Second Battalion, Charlie Company, First Platoon. How can we use VR simulators if we don’t have cyberlinks?”

“For you Marines new to EarthFleet, we have cocoons that use inductive brainwave stimulators adapted from Meme technology.”

Calhoun went on, “Any word on when we’ll be getting cybernetic implants, Sergeant Major?”

“It won’t be soon. The only facilities for cybernetics are aboard
Conquest
, as the use of the tech was banned under the Empire, and there are much more pressing priorities for our limited resources. Combat nano and your powered battlesuits will have to do for now. Anything else?”

The gunnery sergeant looked disappointed as she said, “No, Sergeant Major,” and sat down.

“If there are any other questions, feel free to ask them. That’s what I’m here for – to make sure you understand the mission and what we’re up against. To that end, I’ve brought a guest with me to give you a short briefing about the Scourge.” Repeth gestured at a petty officer, who had been standing off to one side. “This is Master Chief Ikagi from the intelligence section.”

Repeth sat down and let the chief speak, glad that she’d persuaded Bull to wave off Fleede and his thick, detailed files.

Once the intel briefing and several dozen questions had been dispensed with, Repeth took the podium again. “In about twenty minutes, Colonel ben Tauros will be done talking to the officers and will come address you. In the meantime, I’ll give you a preliminary briefing on Operation Bughouse.”

Not for the first time he thought how unfortunate it was that nothing could be done in the dead time of null space. How much more useful it would be if the Race could appear fully ready, every infant awake and instantly leaping to begin exterminating the pests that always seemed to infest their rightful territory.

Sometimes the infestations were stubborn. Occasionally one even defeated the first wave of motherships, and required a second application of pesticidal warfare. Yort fervently hoped this place was not one of those; for Archons to die was anathema of the highest order. Even contemplating such a thing threatened to enrage him enough to fully awaken, risking the null space madness.