“Target locked,” one of the technicians said. Ellertson shivered, despite himself; they couldn’t use active sensors to track the alien craft, but the alien radar was pumping out a formidable amount of energy with each sweep. It might as well have been taunting them; it was easy to track it, but far less easy to attack it. “Laser primed and ready.”
Ellertson picked up the field telephone. “We’re ready,” he said, without preamble. “Go?”
“Ten seconds from my mark,” the voice on the other end said. “Mark.”
Ellertson counted down the seconds. “Fire,” he barked, as soon as he reached zero. The humming from the laser truck grew louder, but there was no sign of any other effect; the laser beam was almost invisible in the air, although some people might see a hint of its presence. “Run!”
The laser was firing on automatic now. He could almost imagine the beam pumping energy into the alien system, vital components frying and being damaged, even as the alien craft zeroed in on the source of the attack. They sprinted as far as they could from the vehicles, knowing that the aliens would react swiftly to the attack, wondering which laser would be the first to go. There were a dozen stations pumping out laser fire, trying to take down the alien radar network before the aliens could react… and one of them would be the first hit. Perhaps…
The ground heaved and threw him through the air, smashing him into a rock. He felt, in slow motion, his bones start to break under the impact… and then darkness came for him. He almost welcomed it. Behind him, the laser truck had been almost completely obliterated by the alien strike.
The display had been showing the eerie red sweeps of the alien radars, both the space-based and ground-based systems, but now, one by one, they were blanking out. The operator turned to General Ridgley and gave him the thumbs up; the alien network had been knocked down, for now. They’d have a window of opportunity to hurt the aliens before they got their radar network set up again and started to strike back.
He lifted his field telephone and smiled. “All units, this is base,” he said. “Go!”
Captain William Morrigan, USN, checked the message slip against the codebook and winced. The USS Nebraska had been lurking in deep water ever since the aliens had started their invasion, hoping that they would have a chance to launch their missiles against a target in orbit, if not a target on the ground. The possibility that they might be called upon to nuke Texas had sparked some interesting debate in the wardroom, but most of the crew had understood that it would be their duty, although several seaman who had come from Texas had almost collapsed when they realised that they might have to kill their own families.
“I have an authorised launch code,” he said, once he had briefed the firing crew. He inserted his key into the launch system and waited. “Do you concur?”
One by one, the remaining four officers inserted their own keys. The order had been simple and, in some ways, it was almost a relief. They had to fire two missiles, programmed to detonate at high attitude and generate an EMP pulse, which would — hopefully — disrupt the aliens from counterattacking.
“Missile primed and launched,” he said, finally. The boat shook as the missile was discharged from its tube in a burst of pressurized gas. A moment later, its rocket engine ignited and propelled it towards space. The second missile followed moments later. “Helm, take us out of here, somewhere deep!”
The Russians had reported that the aliens had killed two of their ballistic missile submarines from orbit, Morrigan knew, and there was no point in taking chances. They had to run silent, run deep… and hope that the aliens were too occupied to fire back. The odds were in their favour, he hoped…
The MLRS truck had been carefully camouflaged and positioned only a short distance from the alien lines. Its crew had been amazingly lucky to get as close as they had, although given that the MLRS looked fairly harmless from the air, it might have simply been mistaken for a truck and ignored. The aliens might have worked hard to prevent human vehicles from moving within the red zone, but there were so many vehicles of all kinds in the United States that destroying them all from orbit might have expended all of their projectiles. They still shot at tanks and other obviously military vehicles, but they tended to leave civilian vehicles alone, unless they presented a very temping target. The railroads had been almost completely shut down by the aliens, so the truck was being used to move food and supplies across the United States… and military gear. The logistics were interesting and, in places, hung by a shoestring.
The aliens hadn’t created a World War One-style network of trenches and so there was a ‘no man’s land’ between their positions and the human forces, gathering in strength. Both sides were uneasily aware that they could be attacked at any moment, and the aliens had insurgents to worry about, and so the border had been surprisingly peaceful, although the KEWs had continued to fall. The aliens had been fairly confident of their ability to defeat any conventional attack and so… they might, the crew hoped, have grown a little overconfident.
Time to show them the error of their ways, the commander thought, as he made the final checks on his vehicle. The briefing had warned that the alien parasite ships would have something else to worry about, but they couldn’t rely on that. He smiled, briefly, as the sky lit up with a blinding glow in the distance. The first of the nukes had detonated. That explained why the higher-ups had thought that the aliens would be distracted, although no one knew how much EMP shielding the alien technology mounted. What little had fallen into human hands had been crude, but functional. That hadn’t stopped them tearing the guts out of the USA — or, for that matter, the rest of the world.
“Fire,” he ordered. The MLRS elevated to launch position and started to fire. Illuminated by the flare of the rockets, the crew ran for their lives, abandoning their vehicle. The aliens might still be able to react, somehow. He watched, as they reached their pre-prepared bunker, as the rockets continued to fly towards the alien base. They looked to have been completely surprised. Their lasers weren’t even burning the rounds out of the air. A moment later, he started to hear explosions as the rounds came down in the alien positions, shattering their defences.
Operation Lone Star had begun.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Surprise is the one constant in the universe.
The SSTO slowly fell away from the Guiding Star. Researcher Femala sat back in her chair and tried to force herself to relax as the pilot started to guide the shuttle down towards the planet below, but it was impossible to be calm. She was about to set foot on a new world, the first female to set foot on the planet Earth. How could she be calm when excitement was bubbling up within her chest, her four hearts beating like crazy as the craft’s engines fired, pushing them out of orbit? How could she keep herself composed when she was going to study the human technology in its own environment?