Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War (47 page)

But that brought him back to the first question. Should he allow the landings? He could secure the shuttles or destroy them on the ground. They were too few to be of much help to the survivors on the ground. That brought up a scenario generator. It brought up the possibility of an intelligence mission. The probability hovered around 84 percent, give or take 4 percent for secondary missions.

Intelligence gathering was the most likely scenario then, which brought him back to the first problem, allowing them to land or not. Interdicting them would expose his control of the air defense network. It would also use up resources he would need at a later time. Allowing them to land would hide those resources and keep them in a reserve for a future major landing attempt.

But what if those teams had secondary missions to disable his air defense network from the ground? That could not be allowed.

Interdicting the shuttles would force the enemy to reconsider their options. That would throw them off of their current planning cycle. Loosing missiles would be suboptimal so the A.I. focused on using energy weapons. Three of the targets would be within range of energy weapons. Two were obscured by the weather but could be within range. The last was only just making its descent.

Ares considered all of this within a space of five seconds. Then it acted.

<>V<>

“Do you think they'll get down? I'm really concerned about the landing with the snow and the way some of the strips look,” General Murtough said, looking at the tablet in his hands.

“Sticking the landing is important. If it comes down to it, any reasonable flat surface will do though,” the major said with a grimace. “Though I wouldn't want to be on board for that sort of landing. I've done it in the simulators but it's a bitch, sir.”

“Okay. We're not sure about the defenses. That's the other part of my concern,” the general said. “We are aware the North American defenses were up. I have no idea if they can interdict the shuttles. We'd planned on such contingencies, but …,” he waved a helpless hand, which sent him adrift. His free hand lashed out to grab a hand hold to steady himself.

Johnson grimaced. “I don't know, sir. I … think if they are up, it's about to get dicey. I wish you'd brought that concern up earlier. We could have sent more shuttles to other locations and left North America alone for the time being.”

The general grunted. “I know. But one way or another, we need to know.” He turned away to look at the tablet again. The major wasn't certain what to do or say so he remained silent.

<>V<>

Ares hadn't gone active on its sensors; it didn't want to alert its targets. The plasma balls were enough of a beacon anyway; any heat seeking system could see the incoming shuttles for thousands of kilometers away.

Once it was certain of a target, the hidden stations acted. The hot fire of a contained sun licked out from a hidden site within the Olympic National Park in what had once been Washington State. The laser was designed to strike down incoming missiles or even small aircraft. The beam was designed to superheat the normally thin skin of the target, breach it, then superheat the fuel within to make it explode.

That wasn't so easy with the shuttles, each had special coatings designed to ward off the heat of reentry on their nose, flanks and undersides after all. Ares realized that and switched to its remaining missiles as the lasers waited for a better target.

<>V<>

“So far so good,” Clancy reported over the intercom to the passengers. We're passing through the plasma cloud now. Keep your fingers crossed, people,” he said.

He looked over to his copilot Mags. “I hate this part. Especially going in like this naked but blind with our sensors on passive. One bird strike could ruin our day.”

“Definitely,” Maggy replied. “We've got another,” she checked the clock, “two minutes four seconds until the heat's dropped enough for us to start the jet engines up,” she stated.

“Right,” Clancy replied. He looked over his shoulder to Pauline. “Let me know if there are any problems with the engine start-up,” he told her.

“We're all green,” the small woman said, checking her board. “Yup, good to go here.”

“Okay. I'm curious what all that water vapor hitting us outside will do. Probably flash boil and explode,” Clancy said, turning back to look at the rapidly approaching cloud and soot layer below them. “Should be fun,” he said.

“Fun he says,” Maggy grumbled, trying hard not to roll her eyes in despair.

<>V<>

SAM sites along the western seaboard took their directions from the thermal sensors. When they had a proper lock, they swiveled and then engaged. Ares had allocated four missiles, each the size of a telephone pole for each shuttle. The first rocketed up at the nearest enemy craft before it could get out of the kill basket. They hit mach 1 within the first five seconds of their launch.

By ten seconds into launch, they were past mach 3 and still climbing.

Flight NA-1 had no chance to see let alone evade the incoming fire. It was directly in front of her but obscured by the cloud cover they were about to pass through. Their shuttle was torn apart as each missile impacted the expanding fireball.

Ares noted that four missiles were decidedly overkill so scaled back the second flight to two missiles just prior to launch. Each missile took off a second apart, clawing through the hail and snowstorm battering Northern California to the sky.

Meanwhile Ares had determined that the energy weapons could hit the shuttles on the flanks or obliquely. Taking out the crafts rudder would do significant damage. Repeated hits from some of its weapons would take a shuttle out in theory. It was time to put that to the test. It locked the Olympus site's laser onto NA-3 and went to rapid fire.

<>V<>

“What the hell was that?” Clancy demanded, looking out the side window.

“What was what?” Maggy demanded as Clancy bobbed and weaved in his seat, trying to look out the small side window. “What the hell, Clancy?” she demanded.

“I saw an explosion of some type. We're going active,” Clancy said. He flipped the radar switch. Maggy opened her mouth to object but he'd already done it. Immediately threat alarms howled.

“Incoming at our one o'clock low! Range one hundred forty kilometers and closing!” she yelped.

Clancy immediately yanked the yoke hard over to his left and dove.

“Mayday, I say again, mayday,” he intoned into his microphone. “Olympus and all flights we have a hostile LZ! Abort! Abort! Missiles incoming! Repeat …”

He never got a chance to finish his warning. His turn and dive had exposed the topside of his shuttle to the laser defense network. Ares immediately fired, tearing the shuttle apart.

<>V<>

Even though they couldn't transmit, it didn't mean they didn't have their radios on. Valdez heard the warning come to them out of the blue over the intercom that the pilot had thoughtfully left on. It was like a bolt of lightning that made him sit up straight in his seat and break into a cold sweat. He pulled out his tablet to look through the cameras that allowed the passengers to see outside the craft. He yelped when he saw missiles coming their way.

His pilot Ginger had the instincts of a cat. Since they had been the fourth shuttle going in, they were slightly above and behind the rest. Ginger flipped the bird on her tail and kicked the engines on. “This is November Alpha four to all units!
HOT
LZ!
Climb
! Abort! Abort!” She snarled just as a missile detonated a hundred meters away. It wasn't close enough for the debris field to endanger her craft but the explosion set off a bit of turbulence that set the shuttle jimmying.

<>V<>

Ares saw the fourth shuttle begin to react and climb for the safety of space. But in doing so it had presented its rear to its energy weapons sites. It locked on and fired just as the second missile detonated prematurely.

Energy licked out to rip at the slowly rolling shuttle. The roll was what saved her; the laser tore through her starboard wing, obliterating the flap on that side. However, there was no fuel in the wing due to the rapid climb so they were spared an explosion.

Instead the kiss of the laser shredded the top of the wing and took a chunk out of the tail OMS. Before it could lock on again, Ginger went into evasive.

“Frack, oh frack, oh frack!” Ginger said gritting her teeth. “Hang on, people!” she caroled out as she wiggled the yoke and played with OMS. She kept up a litany of broadcasts to allow Olympus and the other shuttles some sort of warning of the hostile reception below. She could hear the alarms going off shrilly, but she had to focus on her plan. They had to climb on a base course but she could jiggle to try to break any target lock.

Or at least make it more of an interesting challenge for the enemy.

<>V<>

Ares noted the bird going into evasive, but it had other targets still on its scope. It fired two missiles at the fifth intruder and then attempted to engage the final one with its laser.

<>V<>

NA-5 was just coming out of LOS when it heard the broken-up transmission. The pilot put his hand to his ear set and frowned. “Say again, control?” he asked carefully. He heard more chatter, but nothing that made sense.

He kept repeating his call right up until the missiles impacted, tearing his craft apart.

<>V<>

Izuma got the radio warning and immediately went active with her radar. When she saw the incoming missiles on NA-5 she pulled the yoke back and prayed. Something made her ship buck a bit but they kept going.

<>V<>

Ares noted the final shuttle had climbed in time. Energy fire on it had been ineffective, hitting only the underside. It was at the outermost range of its field of fire. When the shuttle climbed for space, the A.I. determined the engagement was concluded.

<>V<>

Tia Carmen glanced around, gripping her arm rests like just about everyone else. She looked to Duncan, who had his ears back and tail firmly tucked. “What the hell just happened?” Bobby demanded from behind her. “Are we going back to space?”

“Damned if I know,” Tia replied.

Chapter 18

“Well that sucked,” General Murtough said, looking at the report. Elliot was beside himself; he could tell. He didn't envy the chimp, but he should have expected getting hurt even a little. So soon was a kick in the teeth though. He eyed the chimp. Elliot had worked in security; he knew how to deal with people. He wasn't sure if the corporate cop had lost people or not. From what little he did know of the chimp, he was pretty sure the chimp had taken a life.

What he had no experience with was being out there, listening to the reports, sending people to their deaths. And the feelings that went with it. The feeling of helplessness, coupled with the guilt, anger, and then the false guilt of still being alive. He didn't envy the chimp, not at all. But he'd better learn to deal with such things fast.

He on the other hand kicked himself for other reasons. He hadn't expected the defenses, and that had been monumentally stupid of him. He'd approved of many of them in the anticipation of something like this happening. He really was getting old and senile if he'd let himself be deluded into thinking everything would go their way.

Lasers, microwave guns, particle weapons, rail guns, missiles … the good news, such as it was, was that each missile used meant that Ares had one less in its inventory. He wasn't sure how many it had to start wit, or how many it had left though. But knowing it was slowly losing its inventory, its ability to shoot back …

It was a very small consolation prize to losing so many people however.

“Pass on the report to Mars. Let them know so they can tell the families.”

“Yes, sir,” the major replied, sounding subdued.

“This is going to be harder than we thought,” Isaac murmured, staring at the white ball below. He had never expected to be on the outside looking in. Perhaps … perhaps that would eventually help them crack the defenses? He knew them, if not intimately, then enough about them to be helpful. Taking them out would be difficult, however.

<>V<>

Roman felt bitterness at losing four squads just like that. Sixty people dead, and it was his fault. He wasn't too broken up over losing two of the three squads of dirty dozen, but he hated loosing the air crews of those shuttles. They'd gone in with hardware they'd had on hand—another mistake. They'd sailed in fat, dumb, and happy with no defenses, broadcasting their sensor profile for all to see.

No, it wasn't just that. The superheated plasma from their reentry was a telltale giveaway as well. He wasn't sure what to do about that.

Now knowing that the A.I.'s defenses were still active was cold comfort.

They should have sent in a remote drone swarm he thought, and then discarded the idea as he flopped down into his chair. If they had, the damn virus would have infected them, and they still wouldn't have known. Not unless the drones had gone in without telemetry... he frowned, scrubbing his face with his hands. Yes, yes, that was it. He would need Athena or Trevor to rig up a package. A sensor pack. Maybe a laser for communications? One shot deal? Drop, maneuver according to program scripts, then land and let them know with a laser? He frowned thoughtfully.