Peace Army (31 page)

The exclamation hit Grant in the gut. The decision to do the flyover had been his call, and it had obviously been the wrong one. As a result, four people had just died. He filed the knowledge away and pressed on with the mission.

“Alpha Three, how are you and Four?”

“Um,” the excited pilot paused. “No damage to my carrier. Four has minor damage, but is still a go.”

Grant closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He had known it was risky to send the fighters in over the base. The risk was not yet over. More of his pilots could die in the next few hours.

“Continue the mission,” he ordered the pilot. “But I’m revising your flight plan. Regain altitude. Do not—I repeat—do not perform flyovers of Bases Two through Four.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot replied. Grant thought he heard relief in the man’s voice and could not blame him. “We are still a go for Base Five, right, sir?”

“Affirmative,” Grant acknowledged. The attack on Base Five would continue as planned. They would be short two fighters, but they would have to do the best they could.

He relayed the revised orders to the remaining flights. No flyovers were to be done
en route
to their final destinations.

“Grant,” Gee called out.

Grant held up a “not now” hand to the engineer. He needed to think this through.

He reminded himself that he was not battling human forces. The calculated move to do the flyover was based on his experience on Earth. Either the Minith were not prone to getting sloppy, or the weapons and warning systems at Base One were much better than those they had employed within the base his forces now occupied.

Either way, it was apparent he had not needed to kick the hornet’s nest. The alien defenders had their attention fully turned to the skies.

“Grant.”

Grant considered putting Flight Foxtrot in the air. He could send them west, into the wind, and they would probably arrive in time for the attack, but he discounted the move almost immediately. It was reactionary, and not in the best interest of his forces as a whole. He refused to leave the mothership unprotected unless he had no choice. The two remaining fighters of Flight Alpha would have to complete their mission alone.

“Grant,” Gee persisted.

“What, Gee?” He did not mean to snap at the engineer, but he was dealing with life and death decisions. He needed his full attention on the issue at hand.

“We, uh… we have company,” Gee said. He dipped his head toward the monitor where he sat.

“We what?”

“There’s a mothership,” the other man said. “It’s orbiting the planet.”

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” was all Grant could think to say. He had wondered when the cavalry would show up, had hoped he would have more time before it happened.

“The ship’s sensors picked it up a little while ago,” Gee said. “I just noticed it.”

Grant’s mind raced. He was in the middle of an attack on the five remaining Minith bases, two of his fighters had just been shot out of the sky, likely killing the pilots, and now this. It was true that a plan was nothing more than a best-case scenario for what a commander thought would happen. But this was the worst-case scenario.

He thought he knew how the defenders at the base were able to react to his fighters so quickly. They had been warned.

“Gee, how good are these vid screens?” he asked. “Can the Minith mothership see us clearly?”

“Oh, yes. If the Minith are using them, they would be able to see anything on this side of the planet.”

“They knew we were coming,” he spoke to himself. Then he had an idea. “These ships can communicate with each other. Right, Gee?”

“I would think so, yes.”

“Can we listen to the other mothership without them knowing?” Grant grew excited and nervous at the same time. If he could listen to the Minith, it was possible they were already listening to him.

“Amazing,” Gee said. It was clear he was analyzing the idea for its implications. That did not deter him from finding an answer, though. Grant watched as the engineer played with the controls and data systems on the ship.

“Ha!” he cried after a few moments. “Yes, we can.”

“Excellent. How long until you can get that going?”

“Done,” he answered. The excitement in his voice was clear.

Grant heard a hum fill the command center. It took him a couple of seconds to place it—it was the sound of a mothership in space.

“And I’ve blocked our communications so they cannot listen to us.”

Grant and Gee listened to the feed from the alien ship closely. Although they recognized the hum, they had heard no other sound. Grant was at the point of asking Gee if something was wrong when they heard it.

“What next, humans?” the voice growled.

There was no doubt as to the translation—both Gee and Grant spoke fluent Minith.

Chapter 44

“What next, humans?” Soo spoke to the two ships still heading east. They showed no sign of turning back toward the human base.

The fact that none of the four aircraft had fired on the base was unusual, but did not alarm him, Perhaps they were on a reconnaissance mission.

Whatever the purpose, the fact remained that two of them were now scattered across the plains outside the walls of the mining base. It was a nice victory, but there was more to be done before the war was won.

“Send word to the base that a second group of aircraft is closing in,” Soo ordered. “Have them move all fighters from the east wall to the west. I want maximum firepower facing the approaching craft.”

* * *

So, Grant was right. The fighters on Base One had been warned. Now the Minith were moving even more of their forces to the wall facing Flight Bravo.

“Flight Bravo, come in.”

“Bravo One,” came the reply seconds later.

“Maintain altitude,” Grant instructed the pilot. “Adjust your heading as far north as you can to avoid the base.”

By moving the flight path to the north instead of flying directly over the mining base, Grant hoped to avoid any danger. The Minith weapons had limited range.

“Will do, sir.”

* * *

The humans learned their lesson.

The second group of aircraft safely skirted the base and the weapons that were pointed in their direction.

Interesting
, Soo thought. He wondered again at their purpose. He would continue to watch and report the human movements to the bases below.

“Sir, the first flight is passing out of visual range.”

“Can we position ourselves to keep them in sight?” he asked the officer in charge of piloting the mothership.

“Yes, sir,” the other, a captain, replied. “But we will eventually lose sight of the human base if we continue to track the aircraft.”

Soo considered his options. It was more important to track activity at the human base than to follow the two craft.

“Very good, Captain,” he allowed. “Maintain our position.”

Soo’s decision was validated minutes later when a third group of ships lifted off. Like the previous two, they also headed east.

* * *

“Flight Charlie, continue along the flight path you were assigned,” Grant said to the pilots taking off. “But I want you to fly as far south as possible when you reach Base One.”

“Will do, sir.”

He doubted the Minith weapons could reach them, but changing up the flight path from the north to the south seemed like a prudent step to take. Now that he knew the Minith commander would not follow the leading group to the other side of the planet, Grant could focus on the groups on this side.

* * *

Soo watched the fifth group of human aircraft begin their eastward journey. The past few hours had become almost boring in their similarity. The humans would lift off from their base, turn east, then avoid all contact with the Minith bases.

The input he had received from the three bases on the far side of the planet relayed the same data. They saw the human aircraft in the distance—sometimes on the south side, other times on the north—but they never approached.

The humans were up to something. Soo felt it. He stared at the screens showing the human base and the human ships. However he turned them, he could not fit the pieces together.

Their actions refused to form a clear picture.

* * *

Grant took the Minith commander’s inactivity as a good sign. It meant he still had no idea what Grant had planned and was not defending against it. Any actions the Minith took now would not change the plan, but their lack of activity gave them a greater chance of success with the least amount of danger for his pilots.

The Telgorans were in place, and his final group, Flight Echo, had just lifted off.

Their attack was less than fifteen minutes away

* * *

It would not be long now.

Titan waited with Patahbay and five hundred other Telgorans for Grant’s signal. The mass of solid gray flesh pressing in against him was proof that they were ready to move once he gave the word.

This was the fourth time Titan had joined them on their march, the fourth time he had waited with the Telgorans as they prepared for an attack on the Minith. But this time was different.

This time, he would be joining them.

He lifted the pulse rifle and checked the charge again. As it had the last dozen times, it registered a full charge. The Telgorans had been offered rifles, but they held stubbornly to their tradition. They all hefted large rocks and carried stone staffs.

Titan thought it was better this way. The Family had waited a long time to use those weapons effectively against their enemy. Now they were going to get their chance.

It was Grant’s idea to dig channels from the Telgoran’s existing network of tunnels to the mining shafts the Waa had created. The information contained in the mothership’s databanks showed that each mining shaft was supported by elevators used for delivering agsel to the surface. Though large, the elevators would be of no use in the plan. What did appear useful were the wide stairwells the Waa had built next to the elevators. While the stairways did not reach the full depth of the mines, they went down far enough.

The Telgorans started digging their tunnels as soon as
shiale
was reached. The first mine was completed within hours of starting. The last was finished only hours ago. Its completion was the signal for Flight Alpha to lift off.

When word reached Titan that the fifth sortie, Flight Echo, was off the ground, he relayed the message to Patahbay. Within seconds, the thin barriers that still separated the five new tunnels from the stairwells were removed.

When the fighter attacks on the mining bases started, the Telgorans would flood the stairwells and begin their ascent.

* * *

Soo stood and stared.

Something was different.

The two groups of fighters on the screens had performed the expected deviations to the north or the south, but now they were turning directly toward the bases. This meant something.

When the ships simultaneously shed altitude and began their final approach, the pieces fell together for the Minith general.

Five groups of aircraft, five mining bases.

“It’s an attack,” he snarled.

* * *

“Yeah, you asshole, it’s an attack!” Grant shouted back. The Minith commander could not hear him, but it felt good just the same.

It was too late for the Minith to react to the sudden change in direction. For good or bad, they were stuck with the defenses they had in place.

Grant had revised his plan to accommodate the Minith’s repositioning of their forces on the west-facing wall. He now had all flight groups approaching from the north- or south-facing walls. Fewer weapons were pointed at his pilots from those directions. It was a small advantage, but Grant would take it.

Success in battle, as is in other areas of life, is often built upon a foundation of small advantages.

Chapter 45

Though Grant had said it was large, the stairwell was barely wide enough for three Telgorans standing side-by-side. That limitation did not deter them from trying to reach the surface as a single unit, though. The surging wave of steely gray flesh lifted Titan in its maw and literally pushed him up the stairs. The wave’s momentum slammed him into and through the door at the top of the two-hundred-foot climb.

He was briefly thankful that the door was not made of steel as he was catapulted through it. He landed on his back and the brightness of the sun burned into his eyes. He squinted at the skinny gray legs and pounding feet flying past. He was stepped on.

Again.

And again.

The blinding sun piercing his brain was quickly forgotten as he scrambled to regain his feet while avoiding being trampled.

He had always watched the Telgoran sprint for the mines from a place behind the mob—from the safety of a tunnel entrance. Now he knew what it was like to be a part of the sprint itself.

He hoped he lived through it to join the fight against the enemy.

* * *

Patahbay led the charge up the alien walkway and through the thin partition at the top. He was comforted by the closeness of Family and felt pleasure being sent his way by brothers and sisters as the other attacks were launched. He gave back his own sense of pleasure and felt it join with the collective feeling of the Family.

In the entirety of their history, the Family had never felt such happiness.

The feeling of contentment increased as the first of his brothers—in a location on the other side of the planet—struck the first blow against an invader. Other blows quickly followed.

Without slowing his stride, Patahbay looked around to gain his bearings. He noticed the doorways the general had pointed out as leading to the top of the structure’s walls. He headed for the closest one. Receiving his input, a fourth of the Family followed him while the others split off in equal groups and headed for the other three doorways. To a casual observer, it might seem as if each of the Telgorans knew exactly where they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to do.