Nebula (37 page)

“This is where you come in, Colonel Lincoln,” Seduro said. “Let’s convene in private so we can discuss this.”

That was the cue for everyone but Seduro, Billingsley, Haverford, and Brad to leave the room. Three security officers took Radeek back to his quarters in another part of Ops, and the door to the room was locked once all the others were gone.

Then Seduro began. “Brad, I want you to take Radeek back to his fleet to make them a proposal. I want Professor Ambrose to join the two of you since he’s had quite a bit of experience dealing with the
Chanreeks via their robots and he’s also been reading most of the information that they send into storage. He’s more familiar with their attitude than anyone else and would be very useful when you start to negotiate with them.”

“Why me?” was Brad’s reply to the very surprising order from Seduro.

“Either you or Brendan would have to go,” he replied, “and I need Brendan here in case things take a turn for the worse. Besides, you’ve had quite a bit of experience dealing with the Chanreeks via their robots, and you’ve also been reading most of the information that they send into storage. So you understand their position better than anyone except Harry.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I like the idea of dealing with them. We’ve been at each other’s throats, and I’m a soldier, not a
diplomat. I’m not sure that I’d be able to control my anger when meeting the leaders of a race that wants to exterminate us. Why not go yourself or send B? Either of you would be better than me.”

“It’s precisely because you’re a soldier and not a
diplomat Brad. We might miss some subtle indication that it’s all just a trick to get their weapons close enough to Earth to do us harm, or maybe it’s an intelligence ploy on their part to see just how strong we are. You’d be a lot more skeptical than us, and you’d be more alert to anything of a military nature. Besides, B and I will have our hands full with the politicians in all the nations. We have to get them to agree to cede a good bit of territory to the Chanreeks, at least until Mars is ready for habitation. No, you’re our best candidate, so you’ll go along with Harry Ambrose.”

“What about Radeek?” Haverford said. “Is he aware of our actual capabilities?”

Billingsley replied, “No. He hasn’t been anywhere except for a few places in Ops and one trip to Prime. He doesn’t know any more than their command knows about our capabilities. In fact, they probably know more than him by now. He was taken out of the battle early on, so he didn’t see our use of the converted transports or the mines.”

“OK,” Haverford said. “But I still don’t like the idea of sending him back when he’s had a chance to see us up close and when he might have some ideas of his own about how to defeat us. I’d rather …”

“Look,” Seduro interjected. “This is what we already decided to do. Doctor Petrov assures us that Radeek is not being deceptive. They even gave him something like a truth serum, and they polygraphed him and monitored his expression, body language, and all the other things to detect lies or duplicity. The intelligence professionals also took part in this, and everyone agrees that he is almost certainly being straight with us.”

“It’s the almost that worries me,” Haverford replied. But it was clear that the decision had been made, so he let Seduro and B continue with the plan. They discussed the specific process to contact the
Chanreeks and send the negotiators. Radeek gave them what they needed to make contact, and Harry’s connection into the robot network would let them send the message through the Chanreeks’ own systems.

Brad spoke up and pointed out that this would compromise the fact that Nebula could read
Chanreek traffic in the robot network, and that would eliminate the most important advantage that they had up to this point.

Seduro waved it off. “They must already suspect that,” he replied.

So the plan was firmly set. Brad, Harry, and Radeek would try to go to the alien fleet to begin negotiations, and Seduro and B would get the national leaders on Earth to line up behind a plan to give away huge chunks of their territory. “Good luck,” Brad thought to himself. “If this works, Seduro is a magician.” But he kept his mouth shut, like a good soldier, and prepared to make the trip into enemy territory, unarmed and with a senior enemy officer who knew more about Nebula than Nebula knew about his people.

*

Brad arrived back on Mars shortly after the other reinforcements from Earth had arrived. They’d already staked out positions at the other five guns and were building small living quarters at each place, so they could have extended stays there. They used prefabricated, air-inflatable shelters that could be erected in about an hour. The shelters weren’t as comfortable as the bunker near the
Chanreek base camp, but they were good enough for a stay of a day or two, before being relieved by the next crew.

The gun repairs were also nearly complete, to Brad’s surprise. It turned out that the fire control and radio parts that were destroyed were almost identical to the same types of parts in other guns that had been salvaged. Judith was able to adapt them. Reloading software was even easier, since Ludmila already knew how the code worked. Harry and Yuri had been giving her source code from the
Chanreek archives, and she simply copied what she needed and reloaded it through a connection that Judith made to the input ports. So Mars was now a strong fire base, firmly in human control. If the Chanreeks attempted to approach, they’d be blown away before they got close enough to be a threat.

Brad entered the bunker and took off his suit. “Good work folks,” he said as he joined them in the planning room. “Now get ready for the next phase. It’s a bit different from what we imagined we’d have to do.”

He then explained the plan, including the fact that he and Harry would take a senior enemy officer to the Chanreek fleet and try to start negotiations for them to live on Earth while Mars was being terraformed.

Everyone listened silently, not sure whether Brad was just kidding or if he was serious. As he went on, it became clear that this was no joke. He definitely was serious. No one said a word, too stunned to even think of any questions to ask. They never thought of negotiating with the alien enemy, and the notion of terraforming Mars seemed the stuff of fiction, certainly not reality.

Harry was not only surprised. That was too mild a word to describe his emotions as he listened and learned of this new role that had been assigned to him. Just joining Nebula and going to Mars to fight aliens were beyond anything he could imagine on that day when he was approached by Walter Ferguson. But this new assignment was totally incomprehensible. He was a scientist, not a diplomat. They turned him into a bit of a soldier, but even there he didn’t get involved very much in direct shootouts. That was for people like Lu, or Brad, or Brendan. He didn’t know if he would be able to do anything productive if he was in an alien command ship, surrounded by these beings who, until now, he was trying to help Brad and Brendan kill. And, he recalled, these aliens were doing their best to kill him too.

Brad continued, “Harry and I will return to Earth, along with two of our soldier robots. Harry will take one of the portable interface headsets so that he can work with the robots on the trip to the
Chanreek fleet. The Chanreeks may confiscate everything when we get there, but maybe not. In any case, we’ll be able to eavesdrop on the robots for a while, and having a couple of soldier robots with us could be useful.”

“What about translators?” Harry asked.

“We’ll each have a set, and we’ll bring one for the Chanreeks to use. It’s a larger device that can send and receive, like a speaker-phone. It was built specifically for this purpose and has software that prevents any echo due to round-trip feedback to other translators.”

“And what about this alien officer that we’re taking with us?”

“We’ll pick him up back on Earth. By the way, his name is Radeek, and while I don’t fully trust him, the experts at Nebula say that he’s being straight with us. We’ll find out.”

“What about the rest of us?” Yuri asked. “Are we going to stay on Mars, or can we go back to Earth too?”

“You’ll stay here for another couple of days, until Brendan can send another team to occupy the bases and get trained on all the equipment. Then it’s back home for all of you. You earned a long holiday, and I’m sure that Seduro and B will take care of you.”

That seemed to please everyone. Everyone except Harry, that is. For him and Brad, the interesting part was just starting. No holiday for awhile, hopefully not too long a while.

The conference room at Prime was packed, with quite a few attendees standing along the walls as Seduro brought the meeting to order. “We have a few guests with us today,” he said as he rose from his seat at the head of the table. “I invited the heads of state from the United States, Canada, and Russia to join us since the planned locations for the Chanreek population are in their countries. Needless to say, we first met with some resistance to the idea, but I think that all of this has been worked out.”

The three heads of state looked a bit subdued, deflated might be a better description, as they listened silently.

Seduro continued, “You’re aware that Colonel Haverford’s fleet has taken a lot of casualties in the previous battles, and the pathogens didn’t do what we had hoped for. The plagues killed most of the Chanreeks, but they still have enough left to overmatch us in battle, and they’ve now determined that they have no choice but to settle on Earth. We might be able to withstand another one or two attacks, but the Chanreeks obviously figured out that we can read their mail, so they’re being a lot more careful about encrypting things, and we expect that they’ll soon start to restrict our access to the robot networks. They’re bound to be more difficult to deal with next time. We won’t know the details of their plans in advance, and they’ll be able to put a lot of force against Haverford’s fighters and the artillery ships. We also suspect that they’ll soon realize that what they’ve already seen of our force is about all that we actually have. Their sensors must have scanned enough of the military forces of the nations by now to know that our space forces don’t represent any in-depth level of capability for defending the planet, so they might take some bolder actions near Earth next time. We blocked the approach through Mars, but there’s a lot of empty space out there, and we needed to find some way to end things on reasonable terms. That’s why we think that the proposal that Radeek made is probably our best chance to avoid devastation here and at the Chanreek fleet.”

Seduro then gave a brief summary of the situation. “We approached the governments with the proposal to settle the
Chanreeks on Earth temporarily, while we terraform Mars. That should take about thirty years, and during that time the Chanreeks would live in three areas. One is in the southwestern part of the United States, extending from the desert east of Los Angeles, down to the Mexican border, eastward into Arizona, and north into southern Nevada. We’ll give them two other areas of similar size, one in Canada, bordered on the east by Hudson Bay, and the other in the steppes of Russia. That should be sufficient for what remains of their population and will give them enough room for the thirty years that it takes to make Mars livable.

“
None of the governments were very happy about ceding territory, even for the temporary use of the Chanreeks. The United States was the first to offer resistance beyond just protests. They stationed military units at Twenty Nine Palms in California, at their military base in Yuma, Arizona, and at several locations in northwestern Arizona and southwestern Nevada, and they advised us that any attempt to enter the area would be met with lethal force. We sent our fighter with the EMP gun to Twenty Nine Palms, and it hovered there, letting them take as many shots at it as they liked, until they just quit. The shields were obviously too strong for their weapons. Then we turned down the EMP power and fired a low power burst at their systems on the ground. All the electronics were fried instantly. We made a video recording of the entire operation and sent it to all the national governments, with an explanation that the EMP power was turned down to its lowest level and that a slightly more powerful burst could wipe out all electronics within line of sight of the gun. We also stated that the next demonstration would include one of our smaller plasma weapons, the results of which they had been able to see in their observations of our previous battles in space. That ended any talk of resisting, so here we are, ready to proceed. Colonel Haverford will now update you on what will happen next. The floor is yours, Brendan.”

With that, Seduro sat back down and Brendan Haverford took the floor. He, Brad, and Harry were seated at the table along with the more senior members of Nebula and the three heads of state. Haverford walked to the front of the room and began his briefing.

“Three days ago, Radeek sent a message to his commanders at their fleet headquarters. He used an emergency transmission frequency and format, similar to the type of guard channel that our aircraft use for emergency messages. In it he told them of our proposal to end the war. They replied that they would accept the proposed visit by him and two humans, and instructed that the delegates approach in an unarmed transport ship. They defined the specific flight path from Earth to a position about thirty light minutes from the fleet, where three fighters would meet them and escort them to a docking location approximately two light seconds from the main fleet. A Chanreek transport would meet them there and take them to the command ship.”

Harry listened as Haverford spoke. He was already aware of the detailed plan, but hearing it again made it seem more real, even though he still had a hard time believing that this was actually happening. He had met Radeek and actually liked him. He seemed like a personable sort of fellow, if fellow is the correct term for a non-human, and he did tend to believe that what Radeek was saying was true and that the plan might have a chance of success, as strange as it sounded. He and Brad had discussions among themselves too, and it was clear to Harry that Brad’s assessments of Radeek and the plan were much the same as his own. It did seem to make sense.

The plan was very simple. Harry, Brad, and Radeek would go to the Chanreek command ship and present the offer for resettlement in the areas that Seduro mentioned. They would be told that these resettlement areas would be temporary, while Mars was being terraformed to support a more permanent home world, and they would be invited to send a delegation to inspect the areas and work with Nebula and the governments to iron out any details or to make adjustments that the Chanreeks determined were necessary.

Terraforming Mars had already been planned to a high degree of detail, and the scientists and engineers were confident that it could be done in at most thirty years. The first stage would involve increasing gravity and temperature on Mars to support a denser and more habitable atmosphere. That was relatively easy to do, since gravity control and virtually unlimited energy were technologies that were commonplace for both the
Chanreeks and Nebula. Then once the environmental conditions were acceptable, water would be synthesized, and plants would be established to provide a viable ecosystem. Animals and Chanreeks could be settled on Mars once the ecosystem was stabilized. Then work could begin to increase the mass of Mars by bringing mass from asteroids and moons of the outer planets. The optimistic estimate was that this could be completed in about twenty five years. The pessimistic one was approximately thirty two years.

“The main risk to us,” Haverford continued, “is that once the
Chanreeks arrive on Earth and see that our technology, other than Nebula’s, is far below theirs, they could back away from the agreement and simply attack us. I know that most of you thought of this, but we have another part of the plan that should take care of it.”

That other part was the use of biological agents that could make Earth uninhabitable for the
Chanreeks if they did violate the terms of the agreement. Nebula was in the process of positioning hundreds of thousands of canisters with pathogens that Nebula’s biologists had recently developed. These pathogens were entirely new, not related to the ones already sent to the Chanreek fleet, so the Chanreeks would have no way of anticipating what to do to defend themselves. All the pathogens would be deadly to the Chanreeks, and the canisters would be buried in hidden locations that covered most of Earth’s surface. If the Chanreeks did back away from the agreement and tried to seize Earth for themselves, the canisters would automatically release the pathogens, and Earth would be impossible for them to inhabit for many thousands of years, possibly forever if the pathogens integrated into the ecosystem on Earth.

The plan even included provisions to counter any
Chanreek intent to use thermonuclear weapons to destroy the pathogens by intense radiation and then wait it out by going off in space at near-light speed for a few thousand years to let the radiation die down. The canisters were buried deeply below ground, with heavy radiation shielding and radiation sensors, and they were programmed to detect an attack and wait until Earth was once again clean enough to support the Chanreeks and the pathogens. There were multiple sets of canisters, some programmed to react to an initial thermonuclear attack and several others programmed to wait for subsequent attacks that might occur up to hundreds of thousands of years later. So even if the Chanreeks planned to attack again after the canisters had opened, it would do them no good. Other canisters would still be waiting, and Earth would be uninhabitable when they chose to settle after the radiation levels had died down. The Chanreeks would be told all of this, and they’d also be told that once both humans and Chanreeks were living together in peace and terraforming was nearing completion, the canisters would be deactivated and the pathogens destroyed.

*

The trip from Earth to the
Chanreek fleet took a bit more than one day as measured on Earth, but for Brad, Harry, and Radeek, almost no time at all passed as they moved at high relativistic speed in one of the mid-size transports. They took two soldier robots with them, mainly so that Harry could link into the robot network through them. He scanned all the updates to the robotic traffic and the records of Chanreek messages and orders. Nothing seemed to indicate any duplicity on the part of the Chanreeks, so when the three fighters arrived, they remained calm and waited.

One of the
Chanreek fighters pulled up alongside the ship and sent a brief message that they would be tethered to the fighter with a gravitational mooring line and then taken to the docking point at the fleet. But first the Chanreek fighter would dock with them for a short time and send a robot onboard to inspect them and to determine that they did not possess any weapons. The robot would also do an initial biological scan to make certain that they did not carry any pathogens with them. Then the fighter would decouple and remain connected to them only by the gravitational line as they moved toward the fleet.

Everything went smoothly. The robot arrived and did a thorough inspection, including linking to the two robots that they had brought with them. It then left, and the fighter decoupled and began to fly toward the fleet, with the transport in tow. Brad and Harry watched through their view screens as they approached within two light seconds of the fleet, about twice the distance from Earth to Moon.

They could see through their telescopic viewer that the fleet was massive. It was divided into two clusters of ships. One was an enormous cluster, probably one hundred times larger than the other one. Harry assumed that this larger cluster must be the ships that were contaminated and that the smaller one was the remainder that contained all the Chanreeks that were still alive. Most of the ships in each cluster were huge, probably the massive transports that were used to move the Chanreek population. Others were smaller, some of them clearly warships and others that were probably auxiliary ships of one sort or another. All-in-all, it was a very impressive sight.

Docking was done automatically under
Chanreek control using gravitational lines. The ship came to rest a few meters from a large structure that had positions for several other ships. The other positions were empty, but several small ships approached, and one of them attached itself to the entry port. Radeek apparently was familiar with this procedure and told Harry and Brad that they would be transferred to the small ship, and it would take them to their meeting at the fleet.

A message then came in on the
Chanreek channel that they had been told to monitor. The translation lagged by only about half a second.

“You will now be taken to a secure facility where we can discuss your proposal. Commander Radeek Nol Zvi will be taken separately to another location where he will be in quarantine until we can be certain that you have not infected him with one of your diseases. You can appreciate that we need to take precautions after what you already did to us. A robot will enter your ship and take Radeek with it. You are to remain seated while this occurs. We will come for you once we have removed Radeek.”

The entry hatch opened and a robot entered and led Radeek out and through a short tunnel between the two ships. Then the hatch was closed and the small ship departed. As it flew off, another small ship attached itself as the other one had, and the hatch opened again. This time, two robots entered. One of them approached Brad and the other went to Harry. These were obviously their escorts.

The
Chanreek radio once again spoke and the translator responded. “Please rise and follow the robots. They will take you to the meeting place.”

Brad went first and Harry followed. The tunnel was sized for
Chanreeks, not humans, but they were able to make their way through and into the small ship. It had seats for six passengers plus two for the pilots. The seats were small, but Brad and Harry were able to squeeze in for what they hoped would be a very short ride. When they were seated, the robots went forward to the controls and began to disengage from the Nebula transport. They then flew to one of the large ships in the smaller of the two clusters.