Nebula (36 page)

“OK. Getting around the hill should be pretty easy. I don’t see any obstacles from here, and the boulders look good enough to let me get a lot closer, but covering fire will be much appreciated if I end up needing it. Let Bob know what we’re planning so that he doesn’t make a mistake and pick one of us off.” Ave gave Lu a thumbs-up and both of them started to move to their new positions.

Lu climbed to the top of the plateau and looked through binoculars to see if the aliens had moved from their hiding positions, but there was no sign of them. Then she saw Ave at the bottom of the plateau, about one hundred meters from the cannon. She fired a shot in the direction of the cannon and saw the bullet hit the ground and throw pieces of sand and fragments of stone into the air. Still no sign of the aliens.

At the sound of the shot, Ave began to move toward the cannon, keeping as low to the ground as possible and trying to keep large boulders between him and the aliens. Lu could watch from her vantage point at the top of the plateau and kept an eye on both Ave and the cannon, looking for any sign that the aliens had seen Ave and were going to fire at him. There was no sign of any movement except Ave’s. He made his way quickly from boulder to boulder until he was only about ten meters away from the cannon. Then he stopped and made hand signals that Lu knew meant that she should tell Bob that both of them should open up with automatic fire to distract the aliens while Ave made the final dash to the cannon, hopefully without the aliens even knowing that he was that close.

Immediately after Lu and Bob started firing, Ave went to the side of the cannon where he could see the aliens hiding. He opened up with his automatic pistol as soon as he had a good shot, and they never had a chance at that range. He fired five shots in rapid succession, three of them hitting one of the aliens in the chest and hitting the other in the arm, just below the shoulder as he ducked for cover behind the one who was clearly dead or dying. The fifth shot missed, but the shoulder wound would put the alien out of action. The pistol packed a pretty big punch.

When the shooting stopped, Lu and Bob knew that the fight had ended and that Ave had most likely killed both of the aliens. But they held their positions and waited for some sort of signal from Ave.

They got the “all clear” signal a couple of seconds later. Ave fired several short bursts into the air to let them know that he was OK. Then he ran up to the fallen aliens to make sure that they were either dead or sufficiently wounded that they couldn’t cause any trouble. His main concern was the one that had been hit in the shoulder. That one might still be able to put up a fight. The other one was almost certainly dead.

When Ave reached the aliens, he saw that one was definitely dead, with three bullet holes through his suit, in places where he must have vital internal organs. The other one was unconscious, with something that looked like blood coming out of a hole in his space suit. Ave figured that most of it stayed inside the suit, so he had no idea how badly the alien was wounded or if he would just bleed out and die. He was surprised that the blood was a color somewhere between red and the blue color of human blood that was depleted of oxygen. It looked a lot like human blood might look in the very thin Martian atmosphere. It was also beginning to froth and at the same time thicken as the processes of freezing and boiling competed in the near-vacuum and cold temperature. Ave realized that he should do something to keep the alien alive. This was standard practice for dealing with a wounded enemy, and even though all his experience was with simulated human enemies, he knew what he should do.

He took a piece of tape from the dispenser built into the side of his suit. The tape was meant for temporary repairs of holes in the space suit, but it had many other ad hoc uses, like the duct tape of earlier days. He first used a piece of tape to mend the hole in the alien’s suit. Then he used longer pieces to bind the alien’s arms and legs. Now it was time to stop the bleeding. His space suit had many places to store essential items. One of these was a standard tourniquet. Ave took out the tourniquet and assumed that it would work on aliens just like on humans. The wound was pretty high up on the arm, but there was just enough room below the shoulder joint to tie it. Most of the blood had been draining into the suit even before the hole was patched, and now all of it would be trapped inside the suit, so there was no way of telling if the tourniquet had done any good. But he did what he could, and it was only an alien anyway, not a real person.

Lu and Bob arrived just as Ave had finished with the tourniquet. “Good job,” Lu said as they approached. “Is this one still alive?”

“I think so, but I don’t know for how much longer. If this tourniquet works, we may be able to get him back to the base. Maybe someone there can do a better job with him. This other one must be dead. I got him in three spots that look like they’d kill anything remotely like us.

“Right. Let’s get this wounded one onto their shuttle. It’s closer than ours. Can you fly it or do you want Bob to take it?”

“I should be able to. You had no problems with the other one, did you?”

“No,” Lu answered. “It’s pretty much the same as our shuttles. The controls are a bit different, but they’re like the alien ship simulators that we used to practice on.”

“OK, then I’ll get back with him. What are you and Bob going to do?”

“We’ll check the damage that they did to the gun and pick up anything that may be worth taking. We shouldn’t be too long.”

Bob listened as they spoke and then offered his own comment. “By the way, I can’t help noticing that we’re referring to the aliens as if they’re people, not things. Ave even did a bit of first aid on this one. Curious, huh?”

“I guess so,” Lu replied, and with that, Ave picked the alien up and headed for the shuttle. As he trudged up the hill, he was happy that the alien was so small and that the Martian gravity was so much less than on Earth.

*

Lu and Bob arrived back at the base about ten minutes after Ave. Nigel was already doing some emergency medical work on the wounded alien. They had removed his suit and most of his clothing to get at the wound, and all of them were amazed at how similar to a human he looked, a bit smaller and with an unusually yellow skin color, but aside from that and the fact of six fingers and toes on each hand and foot, the resemblance was remarkable, even a bit eerie. The only other humans who had seen aliens without all their space gear were the people at Nebula Ops who were dealing with the prisoners. Seeing one like this made them more conscious of killing sentient beings, very much like themselves. But war was war, and this one was started by them, not us. That’s the thought that ran through all their minds.

“What’s the status of the big guns?” Brad asked, breaking the silence that accompanied the focus on the alien. “Can we get the damaged ones back into service? How long will it take?”

Judith replied, “That’s a lot of questions. I’m going to need to inspect them before I can answer, but I suspect that they are only temporarily disabled and that the aliens did something to allow them to be repaired pretty quickly if they can retake the planet. What I do know is that they did something to the radios in two of them. The gun control stations lost the links to those two. And Lu told me that a big cable was cut on the third one. But these may be things that we can deal with. If Lu can get one of her guys to fly me out there, I’ll see what the situation is. Can Ludmila come with us? There may be some computer work that needs to be done as well as circuit repairs.”

“Yeah,” Brad replied. “Get going. I want to know the situation as soon as possible.” Then he had Mikio send a message back to Ops to tell them that he was about to leave and that he’d have a wounded alien with him.

The conference room at Nebula Ops was more crowded than the other times when Brad had returned for a planning session. The usual people were there. Seduro was at the head of the table, with Billingsley at his right and with two empty chairs at his left. Brad and Brendan were motioned to them by Seduro, and they took their seats. Then Billingsley introduced the others who had not been at previous meetings. Brendan apparently already knew them since Billingsley addressed only Brad with his introductions.

“Colonel Lincoln,” he started. “You are probably wondering at the large crowd today. A lot has been going on here while you were otherwise occupied for the past few days, and we need to bring you up to speed.”

Brad said nothing, so Billingsley continued. “Doctor Petrov is a senior psychologist with our medical team at Ops,” and he pointed to a tall, thin man with a beard. “The others are members of his team plus a few of our senior intelligence officers. You’ll get to meet all of them later. First, you need to know what Petrov has learned and how it can affect our next steps in dealing with these invaders.”

Brad had a hard time not grinning since Petrov looked the part, right down to the beard and the absolutely ridiculous pince nez glasses perched on his nose. But he kept control as Billingsley continued.

“Petrov has been working quite intensively with two of the alien prisoners, and we learned quite a bit about them and what to expect of them. Some of this is likely to involve you personally, plus one of your people on Mars. I’ll let him explain.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Colonel Lincoln,” Petrov began, with a surprisingly strong, deep voice and only a trace of accent. “And it’s nice to see you again Colonel Haverford. We’ve been following the exploits of your team on Mars, and you are to be congratulated for such a success.”

Brad nodded but said nothing, so Petrov continued.

“You’re aware that several of the aliens in the first battle group survived and were brought here as prisoners. We’ve managed to establish good communications with them and now have produced a voice translation device that allows easy oral exchanges, complete with most idiomatic phrases. This brought us to a mutual understanding of our respective objectives and intents in this war between our species. And I should say that, given this understanding, we may have a way to end the war on terms that are acceptable to both sides.”

At this point, Brad interrupted. “Are you telling me that a simple truce or peace treaty is possible? I can’t believe that. We’ve been engaged in a war of annihilation with them. They planned from the start to destroy all human life on Earth, even from the earliest days when their exploratory ship was collecting data to create plagues and wipe us out. The recent attacks are further indications of their intents, so how can you be sure that you aren’t just being played for a sucker by these aliens who you seem to have grown to like?”

“Wait, and I’ll explain,” was the reply. “One of the alien prisoners was an officer on the battleship that you and Colonel Haverford destroyed in that first battle. He’s a very senior officer in the alien command and was able to tell us quite a bit about what drives them to do the things that they’ve been doing. You see, they have almost given up hope of finding a suitable world to settle on. When that scout ship sent the message that Earth would be a perfect new home for them, they immediately returned, as you know, without waiting to rendezvous with the other scout ships. It was that important to them. They also knew that we already occupied the planet and that we were sentient beings, but they had no sense of how similar we were to them, other than the fragmentary data sent back by their scouts before they crashed and died. We now do understand each other much better, and that gives us a way to deal with our conflict without one of us simply annihilating the other. Now I want to introduce Radeek. That’s what we call him since it’s as close as we can get to something that sounds like his name and that we can pronounce. Most of their spoken language is difficult for us to pronounce. Our translator matches their speech to the words in their written language, based on what we read in their messages and archives. So their spoken words are translated to convey meaning. But names are different from ordinary words, so we try to reproduce the actual sounds of the names as closely as we can.”

A small individual seated to the rear of the room rose and worked his way through the other seated attendees. He was dressed in normal clothing, but was immediately recognized as an alien, not a human being. He was small, as expected, but he held himself with a military bearing. His right arm was in a sling, but other than that he looked healthy as he approached the table and stood next to Petrov.

Seduro and Billingsley obviously had met this alien before and simply smiled as he approached them. But Brad noticed that Haverford looked as surprised as he was. An enemy alien was the last thing that they had expected to encounter at a meeting of Nebula’s high command.

The alien began speaking. His spoken words were totally unrecognizable, as could be expected since the language was different from any human languages. But his speech did have some similarities to human speech in sound, cadence, and pitch variations. The basic sounds of the words were somewhat guttural, like Russian or German, but they were also pronounced with tonal variations that reminded Brad of Chinese, although the words themselves were far from Chinese or any other Asian dialect that Brad had ever heard.

The translation device that the alien wore on his chest responded to his words almost instantaneously. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” The translation came out in very crisp, unaccented English, similar to what you would hear from an American television announcer. “My name is Radeek, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.”

Brad noticed that the name coming from the translator and the spoken sounds from the alien himself were actually pretty close. He also saw that Radeek wore a device in one of his ears. He assumed that the bulk of the translation work was done by the larger device on his chest and that it sent translations back to the ear piece when human speech needed to be translated.

Radeek continued, “I am an officer in the Chanreek forces. This is the name that we give our species, as you call yours human. I was first officer on our battleship when we attempted to establish our presence on the planet you call Mars. I was in the combat information center, a few decks down from the bridge when your soldiers surprised us and destroyed our ships. I was near an escape capsule at the time, and that’s how I was able to survive. Your physicians did a very good job taking care of my injuries as well as the injuries of the other survivors, and I thank you for that. But we still are enemies, and we need to find a way to avoid mutual destruction, for that is surely what will happen if we continue this war. You may have won the initial battles, and I’ve been made aware of the plagues that you launched on our fleet and the enormous loss of life among my people. But you must know that we have much more power to apply and if this goes on, we could make Earth unlivable for either of us. That would serve no purpose, so we must find another way.”

He paused for a few seconds before continuing. “Doctor Petrov and I, and some of your intelligence officers, have had many conversations, and I believe that they will confirm that what I say makes sense and is an accurate description of our objectives and intents. I hope that you will consider what I say and then judge for yourselves what would be the best course of action for your people, and I hope for mine also.”

Radeek then began to explain the Chanreek perspective on the events that led to the current situation. He started with the discovery that their home world would be destroyed by the supernova and the massive effort to build thousands of space ships to evacuate their people. They built three evacuation fleets, the one that found Earth being one of them. The other two went off in different directions, hoping that at least one of the three would find a world to settle on and preserve their race.

The fleets carried no animals. It was not like Noah’s ark of the bible. Instead, they stored the DNA of all the plants and animals that they would recreate once they found a suitable world. But they did manage to accommodate nearly all of their own species. Each fleet carried approximately two billion of them, plus life support for producing food from hydroponic tanks and producing air and water, some from recycling and the rest from chemical processes that could extract the appropriate atoms from material in space that they collected at each place where they loitered and explored.

When their scout informed them of Earth, their high command made a decision that this would be their new home world. The scout’s message advised that the human population was sentient but was very far behind them technologically. It was also a very warlike species that had just ended a massive world war, concluding with a primitive nuclear weapon. They advised that conquering Earth would be an easy task, and when the fleet received this message, it immediately made its way to Earth as fast as it could.

The initial plan was to conquer Earth but not to annihilate the human population. They would be prepared to use biological agents that their scout had produced, but that would be a last resort. Their first choice would be to show their enormous military strength through a few brief demonstrations, with minimal loss of life, and then order the Earth governments to meet their demands to settle on the planet. They never expected to find that the humans were so advanced militarily. That changed the strategy, since they realized that the humans would not give in so easily. A war to forcibly take control of Earth would now be necessary.

It was clear from what Radeek said that the Chanreeks still thought that Nebula’s technology represented the overall state of development on Earth and that the presence of the more primitive aircraft and other technologies was simply a high-low mix that the humans used for some unexplained reason.

He continued to explain that the fleet possessed a large number of thermonuclear weapons and small robot ships that could evade most defenses. None of these had been used yet for several reasons. One was that the
Chanreeks didn’t want to damage the planet too badly. They wanted to settle soon rather than have to go off at light speed and return when hundreds or thousands of years had passed and the planet was habitable again. The other reason was that they didn’t want the humans to see these other weapons and possibly find a way to counter them before a massive attack was launched. They had become very wary of the human ability to surprise them, so they held this “trump card” very closely and hoped not to use it at all.

“We are now in a very difficult position,” he said. “You have killed most of our people with your plagues, and you know that our leaders have decided that they have no option other than to settle on Earth. At this point, they probably are developing an action plan, and it probably involves a direct attack on Earth with all the forces that they can muster. I expect that they will first try, once again, to penetrate your defenses and cause you to surrender, but they don’t have too many alternatives any longer. You destroyed most of the heavy warships, and you’ve prevented them from establishing the fire base on Mars and
building the platform ship to bring heavy artillery close enough to Earth to make you surrender. I expect that they’ll attempt another strike, this time probably from a direction high above or below the Earth’s orbital plane. But your planetary defenses will probably be able to defeat this, so the only remaining options may be the biological attack or the massive thermonuclear strike. Your scientists told me that the biological agents that were sent to our fleet were ones that you constructed to fool us, so that attack wouldn’t work, and we would be left only with the thermonuclear option. This must be prevented.”

At this point, Haverford spoke up. “And just what do you propose that we do? Our only interactions with your people have been very violent, and I see no opportunity to discuss things calmly. We only want to kill each other. We now seem to have the upper hand. Most of your people have died from the plagues that we launched, and most of your warships have been destroyed. We’ve taken control on Mars and have the heavy cannons under our control, so your ships can’t even approach. Why don’t your people just go away and save what you have rather than risk another battle? We also have thermonuclear weapons, and we could probably destroy what’s left of your fleet if we get into a massive exchange.” This was a misstatement of Earth’s real capabilities, but neither Haverford nor any of the others wanted this alien to understand the actual situation. If they did know how weak the Earth defenses really were, they’d be able to plan an attack that would probably succeed. The only thing that held them back so far was their belief that the Earth forces had powerful cannons on the surface of the planet and could destroy any of their attacking ships long before they got into range to use their own weapons.

“We can’t and won’t abandon our task to settle here,” Radeek responded. “That was a firm decision that was made as soon as we received the message from the scout. It was do or die, as your saying goes.”

Seduro now spoke up. “I understand your position as a warrior, Colonel Haverford. But we’ve had some long conversations with Radeek, and we think that we do have a way out other than continuing the fight. Let him explain his proposal.”

Radeek then continued. “Earth appears to have enough room for us to settle what’s left of our people. There would be some relocation of humans, but it shouldn’t be too disruptive, and we could coexist while we terraform Mars. We’d have to create an Earthlike environment, but that is within our capabilities. Gravity generators and power sources could allow us to increase the atmospheric pressure, establish surface water, and begin to grow plants. We could bring additional mass to Mars from asteroids and moons of the major planets, and the total mass of the planet could be increased to where we wouldn’t need artificial gravity any longer. It would be a major undertaking, but we could turn Mars into another home world in five or six decades, and there would be room for both our populations. I propose that you contact our leadership with this offer. They would probably accept it.”