Alliance, page 17
“Return Fire,” he ordered on the tack net, slightly embarrassed at his minor delay.
Likely his men and women would assume he was making some grand statement at the moment’s hesitation rather than just being startled, so he wouldn’t disappoint them. Watching the melee before him, as the heavy weapons opened up on the advancing aliens, he could see wood splinters flying everywhere as the projectiles passed through the advancing alien troops and hit the trees around them.
Small fires erupted as the energy weapons brought to bear ignited the wood and brush before him. Edwin thought he detected the slightest delay in one spot, as the fire began to grow around a small group of aliens before they disappeared entirely leaving a gap in the advancing line. Even though all that, they still kept coming at the entrenched human lines.
“Colonel, I think we need to pull back,” Daniel commented at his side, as he pointed to several places along the front where the two antagonists were barely fifty meters apart.
Edwin knew that if it came to a hand to hand engagement, the aliens could simply snatch his people off the field of battle to who knew where.
“Give the order,” Edwin confirmed as he brought his own weapon to bear in hopes of slowing the advance.
Normally, in a traditional engagement such as this, Edwin would have ordered his people to encircle the alien line and attack from their rear. In this case, unfortunately, the probability that his people would end up engaging with one another as their fire passed though the alien forces was far too great.
Abandoning their fixed positions, the men and women under Edwin’s command did an exemplary job of retreating under fire, one group cover the other as they leapfrogged their way back. The Colonel was gratified to see casualties being whisked away, not leaving anyone behind to be consumed by the advancing line. It gave him greater satisfaction to see his wounded returning fire as others worked to extract them to safety.
“Colonel, they are catching up,” Major Atkins noted as he flashed his tactical display at his superior.
The red and green dots were closing in on one another once more.
“We need more firepower,” the Colonel commented, remembering the fire disrupting the alien advance earlier.
The two officers did their best to aid in the fight, but even with every able-bodied trooper firing at the alien line, it did little to slow them.
“Benotigen sie hilfe, mein freund?” Edwin heard from behind as the forest where the alien line had just been, erupted in fire and lead.
“Why yes, I do need some help,” he heard Daniel reply in English.
Scanning both sides of his lines, Edwin saw what he thought were German uniforms mixed in with his own people. These newcomers held flamethrowers and light machine guns spouting continuous streams of fire at the enemy. After a moment, it seemed to Edwin that the return fire had ceased.
“Ceasefire,” he ordered, hearing the Major repeat the command in German.
The woods before them was burning heavily now, its brightness surpassing the fading sunlight. Nowhere in the flames or beyond could the Colonel make out a single alien form, alive or dead.
“We heard the gunfire and decided to come and help,” the man beside Daniel said in heavily accented English.
“We are bloody happy you did,” Edwin replied for the Major as he held his shoulder, the blood escaping from his fingers staining his uniform.
“Medic!” Daniel shouted.
----*----
The one hundred plus men and women surrounding the stasis bubble just outside of Beaver Dam were used to waiting. It is said that the origins of the saying, Hurry Up and Wait, had its roots in the 1940’s US Army, but it was a concept that was uniformly accepted throughout the world’s military ranks.
That notion held true for Master Sergeant Hillstead and those rushed out to envelop and secure the alien spacecraft suspected of holding one of their own. The objective successfully secured, it was now their solemn duty to retain possession of said craft until a means of overcoming the enemy and recovering those held within was determined.
“How much longer Top?” the Sergeant asked as the pair sat facing out, looking over the desert landscape.
“As long as it takes,” Hillstead replied with a shrug.
Initially deployed to contain the alien threat before encapsulation in a stasis bubble, now everyone was positioned to defend against an external threat. The common expectation was that once the other aliens discovered their comrades were missing, they would come looking. That estimate was confirmed as the third exploration craft was located, apparently preparing for a fight.
Notified to be on the alert for any enemy action, Jason knew his British counterparts were currently hunkered down in some German woods as the day must be coming to an end there. Here the morning light was still bright and the desert air clear as he scanned the blue sky looking for any signs of trouble.
Glancing down and scanning the horizon in all directions, Jason suddenly witnessed an outpouring of alien troops on the far side of the ravine. The line of invaders was still forming up, their bodies fading in and out, as their phase shifting defenses gave them an appearance of transparency in the bright daylight.
“Get those birds in the air!” Hillstead shouted at one of the pilots standing nearby while waving at the incoming forces.
The alien craft had emerged out of nowhere, already positioned to discharge a significant number of troops. It struck Jason as odd that they didn’t appear hurried in the least. It was as if they were preparing for a drill and not a combat engagement.
Technically not in charge, as there were several officers mixed in among the units deployed, he had a vested interest in protecting the three helicopters projecting the stasis bubble in the ravine.
“LT, tell those yahoos over there we are going to be firing over their heads, so stay low,” the Master Sargent informed the man leading the closest unit from where he stood.
“You got it Top,” the Lieutenant replied as he relayed the information to his counterparts closest to the alien attack.
Hillstead waved those around him to positions closer to the edge of the ravine. Unable to cross over the ravine even if they wanted to, this gave them the ability to engage the enemy without abandoning their positions, should the aliens try and flank them. Checking his tactical display, Jason could see the aliens had chosen the far side to attack as it gave them a bit of an advantage.
The curved part of the D that the humans were defending only held one of the three helicopters and made a longer front for them to defend. If they attacked in mass and concentrated their fire on the single shield projector, they could collapse the stasis bubble and free their companions. It was the ability of the Marines on the far side to fire in support that helped negate the advantage.
Almost at once the four helicopter gunships and the alien troops opened fire on one another, the aliens targeting the stasis helicopter almost exclusively while the gunships split their fire between the troops and the ship behind them. Jason expected to see the far helicopter dissolve into a smoldering wreck, but was shocked to see it standing untouched as it continued its job of entrapping the ship below.
“Stasis shields,” one of the nearby Marines commented between returning fire.
Jason laughed as he realized the ALICEs had installed far more than a single stasis projector in each helicopter. The three stasis projecting craft had shield generators capable of not only a focused projection, but they also had defensive shielding capabilities of their own.
Returning his attention back on the attack, he soon realized his discrete method of target selection and execution had no value in the battle before him. Padma had been fortunate enough to catch one of the aliens in its physical form when she triggered the round that ended its life. Here, with the phase shifting in full swing, he could see the majority of the rounds fired kicking up dirt in the distance as they passed through their intended targets.
Just then an explosion to one side of the firefight indicated one of the four gunships had taken a hit from the spaceship guns as the craft provided cover fire for the advance. Debris rained down from above as the fragments of gunship scattered across the desert floor.
“Top, we are losing ground,” the Marine Sergeant next to him commented as he checked the tactical display for confirmation.
Sure enough, the line of red dots was driving a wedge, separating the Marines into two groups on the far side as they pushed their way toward the stasis helicopter.
“They can’t get the bird!” Jason shouted, encouraging the men and women around him to increase their rate of fire.
There was a brilliant flash as the far helicopter was awash from an energy blast delivered by the alien space ship. Return fire from one of the gunships, as it ripped past the alien craft, silenced the gun that had provided a stable target as it fired.
“They are gonna take it,” another woman declared as she let rip a burst of automatic fire towards the line of phantom shapes fading in and out of view.
Frustration was building up inside as Jason realized nothing they could do was going to halt the alien breakout as it gained on the lone helicopter. All at once, everything was gone in front of Master Sergeant Hillstead but the sound of gunfire. Before him was the fuzzy, almost luminous shape of a stasis wall. It took him several minutes to realize what the ALICEs had just done.
“It’s another stasis bubble,” the Sergeant at his side announced triumphantly.
The sounds of gunfire on the far side died out as the aliens must have withdrawn with the bubble’s creation.
“ALICE, what just happened?” Jason keyed in from his headset.
“We were about to be overrun, so as a secondary measure, all three stasis generators linked together to encapsulate themselves securely inside.”
Realizing he was just steps away from the shimmering wall, he asked a second, more obvious question.
“Aren’t their people in there?”
“Both human and alien combatants are trapped, frozen in place until the time we choose to release them.”
Not particularly driven to the sciences, Jason had to wonder about the physics of a stasis bubble inside a stasis bubble. The paradox of it made his head hurt as he considered time trapped in time, so he dismissed the whole thing except for one piece. Looking around the battlefield, he had to wonder who was missing inside that wall.
“Sergeant, tell the LT we need a headcount, and let’s get the wounded medevacked ASAP.”
----*----
The initial capture of the ship in the Nevada ravine had turned the nature of the enemy from something slightly more than a reactionary neutral into an aggressive, persistent, determined adversary. If Jake didn’t know any better, he would assume they had never experienced a loss of the nature the humans had inflicted on them.
Multiple simultaneous strikes had Jake sifting through a stack of reports, searching for the successes in the flood of failures, though he hardly used that term to describe the tenacity and bravery he was seeing outlined in these pages. He could also detect the frustration experienced by the authors of these reports, the inability to visibly wreak havoc in response to the attacks.
In the room with him were Sara, Linda, and a Marine Captain responsible for gathering as much of the battlefield tactical details as possible. Jake felt that when fighting an unknown enemy, it was a warrior’s eye that caught things an analyst might miss. The woman was one of his first recruits and a veteran of the Battle for Klinan against the Netite, a green Private First Class at the time.
Remoted in, Patti and one of her assistants was covering for all that had occurred in the German forest.
“We were forced to retreat across the entire front, the only way we finally halted them is with the extra firepower of the Germans who came to our aid,” Patti commented as she referenced her area of operations.
“It’s impossible to determine if we are having any direct impact on them as there are never any casualties on the battlefield. We did find this in Nevada,” Sara supplied.
With the statement, a small hologram appeared, its image replicated for those remoted into the meeting. In the image, a gory pile was soaking into the dirt just outside the stasis wall.
“We believe the alien was at the precise point the stasis wall was formed, in effect slicing him in two pieces regardless of their phase shifting abilities. This is the only enemy casualty we recovered from the alien attack in the desert,” Sara explained.
With that information, Jake could just make out the parts of the alien uniform mixing in with the bone and goo of its wearer.
“Good to know they can’t shift in stasis, but not an effective weapon,” he said after a moment’s observation.
With his comment, the image disappeared with the group collectively working to erase the carnage from their memories.
“The only other indicator we have been able to use is what we are calling the phase count,” Linda added.
“Phase count?” Jake asked, the term new to him.
“The ALICEs have worked out a means to estimate the damage we hope we are inflicting,” the Marine Captain began.
“If you assume a line of ten alien shooters, we know they fire at us as they shift in and out and it appears all our return fire just passes right through them. In fact, if you watch carefully and count the weapons fire, the number of points of return fire diminishes over time. We can only assume that the reduction in return fire represents casualties inflicted by our troops. If we hit them right when they are phased in to fire at us, we score a hit,” the Captain finished.
“Nothing we can plan, just luck of the draw to get a hit,” Jake observed.
“Yes Sir, but that's the reason heavy fire drives them off. No way to phase under continuous bombardment,” the Captain confirmed.
“And our estimation of their casualties?” Jake asked.
“Optimistic, ten percent. We feel the number is more like five to eight percent,” Linda supplied.
“And ours?” he asked, not looking forward to the reply.
“KIA is thankfully low, under three percent,” Linda answered, knowing they were discussing people they all knew, having been killed in action.
“But the WIA is almost thirty percent. We try and hold our ground, but this enemy has the advantage in this kind of engagement,” The Captain added.
“We can’t keep going like this,” Jake said in frustration as he listened to these combat reports.
“My big concern right now is the numbers. In reviewing the force correlation, we are only holding our own because the enemy is few in numbers. If this is just an exploratory effort, a real invasion can only be expected to be bigger and better equipped,” Patti explained.
“Any progress on disabling the phase shifting equipment?”
“We are still trying to activate the device in our possession for testing purposes, with no success. If we were able to discern the exact set of circumstances that disabled the alien vessel at the DMZ, we might be able to replicate the effects. Unfortunately, we cannot identify exactly what the NeHaw vessel was projecting at the time we were using the range finding system,” ALICE explained.
“You think it was the combination?” Jake asked, now focused on the conversation.
“Indications are strong. We had been tracking the ship for a number of minutes before the NeHaw began their own emanations. It was at that exact moment the ship appeared.”
“And how do we know it wasn’t just their system that did the trick?”
“We have intercepted Phantom communications describing another attempt to disable the phase shifting abilities that resulted in the destruction of two of their Cruisers. The attack appeared to have no effect on the alien craft while the enemy ravaged both NeHaw vessels.”
“I’m beginning to understand the NeHaw frustration with our stasis shields, it’s like our roles are reversed,” Linda added.
“Now there’s an idea,” Jake replied absently to confused looks from the others.
Chapter 19
“Thank you for meeting with me,” Jake said as he sat across from the gray alien.
It had been some time since Jake had visited their resident NeHaw, self-proclaimed exile, and a known NeHaw spy. It was the latter that inspired the visit, as it was Jake’s experience that the information would flow both ways depending on the whim and motivation of the individual.
HeBak had once been returned to his homeland, free to pursue a life among his own people. He had instead returned to Earth to a supposed exile, but Jake knew there was a lot more to the story than the NeHaw had provided. It was his guess that HeBak had brokered a deal with General KaLob that, if successful, would not only restore HeBak to a place among his people but would do so with prominence.
“It is my pleasure. How might I be of service,” the NeHaw replied as the pair rested in HeBak’s version of a living room.
Years ago, they had added a module to the NeHaw living module that permitted humans and NeHaw to interact without requiring specialized breathing equipment. This made it easier to share meals and casually socialize without placing an undue burden on either participant.
In this case, Jake had chosen to don the breathing gear that permitted him to enter HeBak’s living quarters directly. Jake felt it showed a certain respect for the alien as he was making an effort to meet the man in his own element.
Although that was a bit of a misnomer because at the moment the alien was dressed in human attire. Most definitely custom made to accommodate the irregular proportions of the NeHaw physique, he was attired in blue jeans and a red checkered flannel shirt. Jake wasn’t sure if the NeHaw was just trying to fit in or playing with the novelty of dressing like the locals while on vacation.
