The Monkey and Squirrel fight for freedom. (22 page)

John's communications with his security and intelligence liaison, Major Johnson, had unsettled him. The Major told John, 'they know everything about your force and their human friends are convinced that you're going to meet something very nasty, run in to a mincer as they said. These monkeys are very intelligent, excellent engineers with access to the total store of human knowledge.

There was a dispute about the possible numbers of fighters the Monkeys had, estimates ranged between thirty six and a hundred plus. John recalled the official brief estimate of forty to fifty was obviously the politically acceptable one, a good job he had managed to get two anti-ship missile loads for each bomber. Giving him the option of long range engagement to whittle down their numbers before their weapons could do the same to his force.

Group captain John Hampton was just thinking, we'll know in a couple of weeks, according to his own expectation of where they'd make their stand. When the alarm sounded, he hit his link to the bridge,

“What force”. he demanded.

“Unknown, searching, incoming message,

'this is New Peoples patrol flight fifty two, human vessel reverse course, you are not allowed in this space, reverse course or be destroyed' it is repeated.

Two unidentified vessels closing, assumed to be Monkey and hostile, estimated time to engagement of this vessel fifty one minutes.” reported the watch crew.

John had heard enough, he activated his crew link,

“All crews prepare for immediate launch.” he ordered as he ran to his battle control room, it had all the sensor information, the bridge had plus links to his forces and a dedicated sensor suite.

He hit the chair, “Report! He barked at the watch crew.”

“Two bogeys, on closing vectors as displayed in red, convergence in forty seven minutes. Six flights read at ready to launch, five fighter, one bomber anti-fighter load. No change in transmission.” it came back.

The main screen gave the picture, “Launch flights five, seven, nine and seventeen, five and seven intercept bogey one, nine and seventeen intercept bogey two.” he commanded. The rest of the flights had now reported ready.

He launched flights four, twelve, fifteen, eighteen and bomber fights twenty one and twenty four as they had been the first ten flights ready, four, twelve and twenty one to intercept bogey one, fifteen, eighteen and twenty four to intercept bogey two.

His second in command wing Commander Jeremy Jones, asked,

“A bit of over kill don't you think sir?”

“Better safe than sorry, we do better over estimating their abilities than underestimating them. Anyway we need as much flight time as possible this will be a good exercise for our crews, the flight time is a reward for the first crews ready.” answered John as there was nothing to now but wait.

“I get it sir, better to overkill rather than fail with too small a force, not long until the first wave is in range, what the hell our fighters are taking laser fire already!” shouted Jeremy in surprise.

“All fighters maximum thrust, close to weapons range.” John commanded, now all he could do was watch, he was already four fighters down but the survivors were nearly in laser range. Ho JC now they were taking rail gun fire as well, he'd lost eleven now, those oncoming fighters were now taking damage but fighting on unimpaired.

He ordered the bombers to engage the enemy fighters with their missiles at the earliest opportunity, he scrambled all units with the bombers taking priority the enemy had to be stopped.

The Newp fighters ploughed thought the remains of the first wave. Detecting the missiles they targeted them with their laser and sent out a barrier of rail gun projectiles before themselves. The engaged bomber flights had launched all their missiles,and were returning to base to reload.

The Newp fighters, computed low survival probabilities, now targeted the second wave fighters with their rail guns, laser still targeting the missiles until they hit or over shot. After the wave passed they tried to go to maximum thrust engaging all engines.

One had only manoeuvring thrusters, its laser sill worked so it used that, the other had lost all its weapons. But as it still had its engines it aimed itself at the carrier at maximum everything. As the rail gun ammunition was now just dead weight, it was jettison in the general direction of the now pursuing missiles.

John had no time to be shocked, bogey two's intent was clear, he ordered all bombers to engage bogey two. Watching closely as the missiles tracked towards bogey two it made no attempt to doge. Just before contact bogey two turned into a small sun and six seconds later so did bogey one, all the second wave fighters were toast. Blast was not the problem it was the radiation, even those just launched fighters had suffered high doses and the crews would require medical treatment.

The carrier was trying to manoeuvre out of the path of the debris cloud, it couldn't move fast enough, some debris did impact. Causing a lot of minor damage and some not so minor, but nothing mission critical. As the bomber crews were in the best shape, he sent them out on search and rescue.

“Well Jeremy however you look at it, that was an expensive lesson, Jeremy are you OK?” asked Group captain John Hampton.

Jeremy just stared blank eyed at the battle monitor, another type of casualty. John was amazed when they found eleven crew alive, six of them not even wounded in the remains of the first wave fighters. 

Tman and Chatty watched the drones video record,

“We didn't expect to do that amount of damage, but once they started to use missiles we lost the range advantage, so they'll use them first next time.” said Tman.

“Next time, after that carnage, two fighters take out twenty percent of their total fighter strength, damaging the carrier, and killing forty nine humans in the process. You think after all that there be a next time?” queried an incredulous Chatty.

“They're human, they'll keep coming. They'll rationalise it along the lines of, we surprised them with the range of our weapons, but they believe they have an answer for that, so they'll come on.” explained Tman.

“Time for us to fit anti-missile systems to our fighters now, any ideas?” asked Chatty.

“How about clusters of lasers, each cluster with it's own targeting radar, so they automatically aim and fire themselves. Use the power from the rail gun supply, as at missile ranges, rail guns are not a lot of use, at too long a range the target just moves out the way.” answered Tman who had been reading up on missile interception.

“Send it to chamber, it will probably be adopted or become the seed for the solution. I assume automatic, as the fighter brain has enough to do running the drones, coordination and navigation.” signed Chatty.

“That's the general idea, I'd better send that video to my old crew. No point in trying to duck the issue, but emphasising that a challenge and warning had issued and ignored, the fighting only started when the carrier launched fighters.” agreed Tman.             

“I can tell you're eager to get started, so until next time.”

“You're right, until next time.”

Major Johnson, was appalled at the scale of the losses, at the same time he was certain they hadn't just run into a routine patrol. It had been a test by the monkeys of combat ability, possibly a couple of the psychopath volunteers, who'd do it just for the chance to kill humans.

Compared to the shock the command group and oversight committee experienced, his was minor. Those fighters had been devastatingly effective, the range and power of those weapons, had staggered the boffins. But John Hampton was confident that a missile barrage, would allow his remaining fighters to get close enough to do the job. They'd have to follow the missiles in at maximum all the way, they wanted to do it to, the need for revenge was burning bright on the carrier.

Carl thought if I am right and this was a test, observers would have been posted. At this very minute they are probably fitting missile defence systems to their fighters, no doubt they already have them on their habitats. Even without them those fighters had done well, just about surviving a barrage of a hundred missiles apiece. Fighting on until forced to use self-destruct as their final weapon, driving a debris cloud into all engaged vessels. Even the carrier had sustained damage, all the crews that had been outside the carrier needed to have anti-radiation treatments. The Chinese were even using what they termed the civilian hospital in their core. A large part of that core was a small habitat complete with parks, gardens and small farms, a real home from home for the Chinese, the military not normally welcome. The recreational facilitates provided for the military in the carrier section were excellent, much better than that available on an aircraft carrier. But compared to the illusion of a walk in the open air, as achieved in the core, well it didn't.

Major Johnson was instructed.

'while the spin doctors decided how to release the news, keep an eye on alternative information sources releasing the monkey’s propaganda as fact.'

An alert for those monitored e-mail accounts sounded, he opened it. The text was straight forward stressing that a challenge and a warning had been issued, the attack only started when the carrier launched fighters.

A video was attached, they had recorded the entire engagement, with trepidation he started the video. Starting with a wide view, the sound track was from the carriers battle control, with the Group captain's bark of report. The challenge and warning, views of the action from the carrier and the undetected observers. The entire battle from first shot to the last hundred megaton explosion was twelve minutes twenty four seconds, closing with a close up of the wing commander.

Finishing with a caption across the screen,

'Attempting genocide is bad for the would be perpetrators, not just their intended victims.' Carl thought, I'll just send this to technical analysis they can prepare the report, this is going to put a tiger among the politicians, it's clean underwear time. Another home early day, these days are becoming a regular thing, since that encounter with that woman, he couldn't even think of her name without a shudder.

Knowledge, Sparks and Elf were shocked too, but it was the sort of thing they’d been warning could happen. They put the video on their web site, reminding people that the New People were a people ready to fight for their continued existence, leaving them in peace was the best policy.

They knew the shocks would continue as each had received a message on their screen, but not in any e-mail or on any of the drives, telling them that Jupiter had been a diversion. That battle was another division to slow down the carriers advance, to give themselves more time to get stronger. We have planted booby traps all along the way, just to slow them down, we know the only way to make them stop is with a massive show of overwhelming force. After they had read this it faded from the screen.

Sparks had thought that’s so cool, I suppose if you can hack your own brain, you must be an exceptionally good hacker to succeed. But that was before he’d opened the e-mail, this contribution to the post, was to warn that this was just the start. In their place Sparks would also be building as many powerful weapons as possible. Setting traps and ambushes to kill the aggressor, wake up smell the carnage it’s past time to back off.

The Newp version hit the news first, official sources still undecided how to play it, politicians suddenly found the news hounds baying for comment. Lacking any official brief, they had to use the same site, some even watched the video. Paranoid politicians added two and two but came up with an odd number so to speak.

Their mind set went like this, they’re developing very high speed vessels and they have nuclear weapons, so obviously it’s a threat, back off or we’ll hit you with unstoppable nuclear weapons. Being ignorant of the fact if Centauri one had hit the Earth, at the speed it crossed Earth orbit, it would have done more damage than a hundred megaton Hydrogen bomb.

Major Johnson got the flak on Monday morning. He had followed procedure sending the e-mail to technical analysis, they hadn’t even started analysing it yet, let alone making a report. So he had to wing it, from the web site. The meetings had been difficult and tiresome, he longed for the good old days when all he was fighting terrorists, at least you could shoot them. The trouble with politicians was it was closed season nearly all the time. Now he knew why Euro security had handed this ‘Plum job’ to English division, it was viper ready to kill careers at any time.

Carl checked his pension fund, no at this rate he would have to wait to retire until he got his state pension at eighty five. There was talk of economic constraints forcing them to raise the pension age again soon.  Economic constraints he snorted as he thought to himself, more likely bloody stupid unnecessary expeditions, he had heard the rumour the Chinese were only going along with it to avoid a war. He decided to risk an e mail to Jimmy, asking his option on the matter.

The reply was sarcastic but informative. According to Jimmy the Chinese had told him, 'Given a choice between war on Earth or in the outer system they chose the latter, and they don't think the attack will succeed. The Chinese are prepared to lose the carrier and its crew if needs be, they're all volunteers, it's a far lower price than war on Earth. Humanity could becomes extinct and being family men they don’t want that to happen at any cost.'