“Thirty seconds,” Farley added. He counted down the last few seconds. “Ten… five… contact!”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The recon platform had no name, nor did it want one. It was nothing more than a cluster of passive sensors, a handful of gas jets and a single laser communicator, governed by the most advanced automated systems the human race had been able to produce. There was no such thing as a true AI, at least not yet, but the controlling systems were capable of reacting to almost anything. Now, it opened its passive sensors to their full extent — taking the risk of having them blinded — and watched as the invisible projectiles smashed into the alien fleet.
Four smaller alien craft and a carrier were hit at once, all four damaged beyond repair. The remaining carriers brought up their active sensors and started sweeping space for threats, then opened fire with their point defence. Lacking any armour or means to evade incoming fire, the remaining projectiles started to vanish, one by one. The recon platform noted that the aliens took several shots to destroy each projectile, but they were definitely capable of putting out enough firepower to do it. Unbothered by human emotional reactions, the recon platform observed the destruction of another alien carrier, followed by the loss of dozens of other projectiles. Hundreds of alien starfighters swarmed free, advancing rapidly outwards to locate and destroy other projectiles. Behind them, the starships brought up their drives and started to fan out rapidly.
Faithfully, unaware of its impending destruction, the recon platform reported everything to its mothership.
Ivan had no doubts. Like the rest of his team, their emotional reactions had been minimised by the surgeons who had turned them into cyborg commandos. It was a must, he’d been told when he no longer had the emotional capability to react to what they'd done to him; they didn't dare allow their cyborgs to keep the full range of human emotions. The horror ordinary humans would feel at losing their genitals and being turned into inhuman monsters was nothing more than a minor notion to the cyborgs.
Hours of drifting through space in an unpowered shuttlecraft didn't bother him either. Yes, he knew — intellectually — that the alien sensor grids might locate his shuttlecraft and blow it out of space, vaporising it so completely that they wouldn't have a chance to test their capabilities for operating in space without a spacesuit. But it was merely an abstract concept to him. They had a mission and they would complete it or die trying.
There was no need to talk. All six cyborgs were linked together through low-power radio signals, allowing them to share thoughts and concepts without needing to open their mouths. Indeed, as they’d grown closer and closer together, they had stopped talking to others, apart from when it was strictly necessary. Ordinary humans, even Russians, feared the cyborgs, they knew. It wasn't something that bothered them. The cyborgs existed to serve as front-line commandos, nothing else. If ordinary humans were scared of them, so much the better.
Now, they prepared themselves as the unpowered missiles went active, coming online and lancing after the alien craft. The alien frigates didn't seem surprised to come under attack; they merely altered course and started to open fire with their point defence. Half of the missiles kept targeting the frigates anyway, the remainder altered course and headed down towards the planet. Assuming the odd radio signals were actually alien settlements, the cyborgs had decided when they were planning the operation, the aliens would have to concentrate on preventing the missiles from punching through the atmosphere. Unless they had radically good sensors, they would have no way to tell that the missiles carried no warheads. They’d be forced to assume nukes — or worse.
The concept of unleashing nuclear fire on alien civilians didn't bother the cyborgs. They’d had emotional reactions engineered out of them. Ivan had watched, dispassionately, as his fellow cyborgs had waged murderous war on the enemies of Mother Russia. The fact that those enemies included subversives who were, technically speaking, Russian themselves didn't bother him either. If they chose to defy the government’s orders, they deserved all they got. It had been programmed into him on the day of his rebirth.
There were times when he wondered who he’d been before he'd entered the cyborg program and turned into a monstrous amalgamation of flesh and metal. Memories of another life sometimes flickered through his dreams, suggesting that once he’d been something other than a cyborg. But the dreams were nothing more than illusions, he’d been told. It wasn't something to concern himself with, not when there was no shortage of work to do.
At precisely the right moment, the cyborgs uploaded the final set of commands into the shuttle, triggering a series of explosive bolts. Wrapped in protective orbs, they plunged out of the shuttle and rocked down towards the planet’s atmosphere, surrounded by the pieces of the shuttle. To human sensors, at least, it would look as through the shuttle had broken up in flight, perhaps after launching the missiles that had bedevilled the alien frigates. But if it failed…
Ivan had no doubts. He’d done all he could. Now, all he could do was wait and drop through the planet’s atmosphere. And if they failed, they failed.
It was all the same to the cyborgs.
“Two alien carriers destroyed, nine smaller ships picked off,” Farley reported. He nodded to the display, which was swarming with red icons. “I think we made them mad.”
Ted smiled. “Pull us back towards the tramline,” he ordered, as the alien sensors started to sweep through space for a hint of the flotilla’s presence. If they managed to get out of the system before the aliens got a clear lock on them, the aliens would waste hours searching for a flotilla that had already departed. Or maybe they’d just blame everything on the Russian stragglers in the outer system. “What about the Russian commandos?”
“They made it into the atmosphere,” Farley said, checking the live feed from one of the probes. “Other than that… we don't know.”
Ted silently wished them good luck, then turned his attention back to the swarming alien fighters. The aliens seemed determined to ramp up their sensors to the point where human sensors would significantly damage themselves, although their ships showed no traces of the problems human sensors would rapidly develop. Behind the sensor sweeps, swarms of starfighters were advancing forwards, heading towards the human tramlines. Someone, Ted realised, was thinking ahead. The tramlines were the only way out of the system and blocking them was the quickest way to prevent Ark Royal from escaping.
“Accelerate towards Tramline Three,” he ordered. The alien starfighters would get there first, but he was quite prepared to bet that Ark Royal could blast her way through them even without the help of the flotilla. “Launch a second set of drones towards the alien ships and…”
The display flared red for a long chilling moment, then faded back to black. “They swept us with a high-power radar,” Farley reported. Long minutes passed as they waited to see if the aliens would lock on, then the display turned red again. This time, it stayed that way. “They’ve got a solid fix on our location.”
Ted swore, although he’d expected it from the moment the aliens had started powering up their sensors. Ark Royal might have been impossible to separate from an asteroid if she’d been lying doggo, but a carrier moving at high speed was instantly recognisable. On the display, a swarm of alien starfighters turned and gave chase, followed by the smaller ships.