Gravity Wars: Saturn Protocol, page 1
SF Books by Vaughn Heppner
THE TRAVELER SERIES:
Galactic Marine
Sleeper Ship
The Zero Stone
The Institute
Neanderthal Planet
The Science of Mu
THE SOLDIER SERIES:
The X-Ship
Escape Vector
Final Odyssey
INVADERS SERIES:
Invaders
The Chronowarp
The Antaran
Dreadnought Ocelot
Earth Gate
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GRAVITY WARS #2:
Saturn Protocol
by Vaughn Heppner
GRAVITY WARS SERIES:
#1 Interstellar Assault
#2 Saturn Protocol
#3 Nova Strike
#4 Extinction Orbit
Copyright © 2024 by the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
Author’s Note
I’ve written many a space opera with warp drives, hyperspace, and jump points—faster than light travel, in other words. I’ve often wondered how an interstellar war might occur without such fanciful technology. As far as we know, traveling faster than light is impossible. Would such a war make any kind of sense under that restriction?
The novels in the Gravity Wars series imagine such a situation, using hard science as the basis. That means there are no light sabers, warp drives, or telepathy. I limited myself to using only technologies that we know are possible. Here is the ongoing scenario, one that could theoretically occur given our current scientific understanding.
-- VAUGHN HEPPNER
Minden, Nevada
Introduction
History is the story of how things happened in the past. If one wants to know what might happen in the future, a sound method is to look at the past. Since we only know human history that is the only one we can check.
As the old saying goes, “What goes around comes around.” Some historians also tell us that history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.
How well would aliens fare if they arrived in our Solar System in a generational vessel, as the Valiants did in book one of the series? Does human history provide any indication?
Indeed, it does, and the prospect doesn’t appear good for the aliens.
Many of us are familiar with the Spanish conquest of the New World by Hernan Cortes, Francisco Pizarro and others. Later, the French, English and Dutch created colonies and eventually the French and English built empires in North America.
The Europeans had personal firearms, cannons, horses and steel weapons, and they had ocean-going vessels. The Indians, including the Aztec, Incas, Iroquois, Huron, and other Native American tribes, possessed Stone Age weapons and birch-bark canoes at best. Even so, the Indians often fought valiantly but in futility in the end.
The situation described above is nothing like an alien generational vessel reaching our Solar System. The Europeans were more like a society with warp-drive starships that could easily reinforce their beachheads in a new star system. The industrial and populated might of the Old World continually reinforced the New World Europeans through ocean-going carracks, caravels and galleons.
Even so, history does supply us with an example much closer to the situation of the Valiants in the Voyager Akkad.
That is Thorfinn Karlsefni’s Expedition in the 11th century. Around 1010 A.D., a wealthy Icelandic “Viking” merchant set sail from Greenland with three knarrs, a type of cargo ship used by the Norsemen. Karlsefni took a group of around 160 people with him. They attempted to set up permanently in Vinland, somewhere around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence or Newfoundland.
The Norsemen soon encountered those they named as Skraelings (Indians). There were several battles or skirmishes during the three years, one in which the sagas tell us the Skraelings launched inflated moose bladders that made an awful noise during their flight through the air and frightened the Norse warriors.
In one battle where the Skraelings were winning, a pregnant Freydis Eiriksdottir seized a sword from a slain warrior, pulled out one of her breasts and slapped it with the sword, frightening the Skraelings by such odd and unseemly behavior.
Finally, after three years, Karlsefni and his demoralized Norsemen left the New World and returned to Greenland, never to go back to Vinland.
The interesting thing for us is that the Norse settlers had been on their own, without reinforcements from overseas, from their old home. In the end, in the long haul, the lonely settlers lacked the resources to compete against the hostile Skraelings.
The three knarrs full of Norsemen are similar to the Valiants landing in the Solar System via the Voyager Akkad. Each is on their own now in a completely new setting.
The difference lies in the scale. One hundred and seventy thousand individuals are much more than 160. But the number of Skraelings in the New World was surely far less than several billion.
Still, one can accomplish much more with 170,000 than with 160.
The critical difference, perhaps, is the state of technological superiority over the natives. One hundred and sixty Norsemen armed with swords, shields and possibly chain-mail armor could not compete in the end against endless Skraelings armed with wooden clubs, spears and bows and arrows.
What about 170,000 Valiants? Can they compete against the billions on Earth?
The key will be maintaining technological superiority and its sustainability over the long haul. Can the Valiants produce new weapons in sufficient quantity and types to defeat the humans on Earth before the billions of humans get their act together?
This is the final point of the introduction. Space war fought along real lines, with real science instead of science fantasy, means a much different war than normally portrayed in science fiction novels.
Here then, is how such a “real” space war might go down.
-1-
SATURN
JANUARY 2065
Chief Marshal Assur, leader of the Valiants who had invaded the solar system, impatiently awaited the special message from his mother. He stood in a ready room aboard the Enkidu, a teardrop-shaped, Enforcer-class warship in orbit around Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.
Assur was big and human—although not Earth human. He had blue-tinted skin, and was the second oldest of the People to have reached this star system via the Interstellar Voyager Akkad. The oldest person by a considerable margin was his mother Ningal.
Assur cocked his head. He wore a black uniform and military hat, had a large head, and piercing dark eyes.
Assur had forgotten. There was one older than Ningal, her grandfather Sargon. Chief Analyzer Sargon had been alive when the Akkad left the home system, 48.7 light years from Earth. The Earthlings had captured the frozen Sargon when their flotilla of Orion ships had attacked the Akkad near Neptune. Sargon had been in stasis for most of the 286-year voyage. Was the old man still alive, or had the space marines slain him when they had taken his stasis unit?
The Akkad, the mighty, generational voyager, was still a wreck as it orbited Neptune. The Earthlings had crashed their assault vessels into it to disgorge their space marines. The armored humans had fought in surprisingly deadly battlesuits.
Assur scowled thinking about it and the success of the enemies’ mission. The Valiants on the Akkad should have destroyed the two Orion ships that had reached them…
Assur shook his head. The Valiants had destroyed the Orion ships, but not all the assault vessels carrying Earth space marines. A few of the assault vessels had escaped the wrecked Orion ships. Incredibly, the space marine survivors had stolen a Corsair-class warship from one of Akkad’s hangar bays and then—
The screen before Assur blinked several times as it activated. The radio message from Neptune had finally arrived. The present distance from Saturn to Neptune was 20.6 AUs. One AU was the average distance from the Sun to Earth. It took a radio wave that traveled at the speed of light, 299,792 kilometers per second, 171.33 minutes to traverse the distance. That was 2.86 hours for the message to travel one way.
That meant his mother and he couldn’t have a normal conversation, only the monologues they sent each other.
A signal flashed on the screen in bold red letters: For the Chief Marshal’s Eyes Only.
Assur shifted restlessly. His mother had informed him last time that she would be sending a for-his-eyes-only message. Did she think he had forgotten, or was this a sign of her growing senility?
The flashing signal vanished, and his frail mother appeared on the screen. She sat in a chamber aboard the half-wrecked Akkad. She wore bulky red ceremonial robes and a ridiculously large hat, indicating her new religious nature and religious position as the authority on the old gods. The ridiculous size of her garments made her seem childlike. Her wrinkles were few, a tribute to the drug treatments that kept her alive, but her eyes shone too darkly and zealously.
The truth was that Assur believed his mother’s eyes indicated that Ningal was going mad. She had led the Akkad for many years, and had been the wife of two ship commanders, Rim-Sin and Chief Marshal Enki, a true Valiant and Assur’s father.
The fact was that Assur was only half-Valiant. The other half was from the tainted blood of his mother, one of the small, old People that had originally fled the predatory Vims from their destroyed home system.
The main Valiant colony in the solar system was on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. It had approximately 160,000 individuals. The rest lived aboard the Akkad orbiting Neptune. The total was a pittance compared to Earth’s teeming billions.
“My dear Chief Marshal Assur,” Ningal began in her old woman’s reedy voice. “I have been praying diligently since the Earthlings reached their planet with our kidnapped women. I have prayed for the old gods to give us a clue as to how we can win this war.”
The Earth space marines had captured 23 females while storming the Akkad. According to what Assur’s Intelligence Primary had learned—from intercepting Earth TV and radio signals—many of the females were pregnant and ready to give birth.
The thought enraged Assur. Imagine inferior human stock impregnating Valiant women. The spawn would be substandard mongrels. Worse—although Assur rarely allowed himself to think this—the alien spawn might be closer to him than anyone else in the solar system. Even though he ruled the Valiants, technically, he was a half-breed: half old-style from the home system and half genetically enhanced Valiant.
Rim-Sin had perfected the genetically superior Valiants during the early part of the interstellar voyage. Rim-Sin had also brought about the death of the old People, or ninety-nine percent of them.
What would the Earth human-Valiant spawn be like? The fact that a human could impregnate a Valiant meant they must both originate from a common ancestor that might have lived ten to twenty thousand years ago. That had serious implications that Assur did not want to think about it just yet.
On the screen, his mother Ningal inhaled and sat straighter. She had become besotted with the old gods toward the end of the interstellar voyage. She claimed to believe the old gods of the home system had migrated with the People and yearned for humanity’s eradication so the voyagers could take the humans’ planet for their own.
Assur didn’t believe in any gods, young or old, but in material existence or things that he could kick. During the voyage, he had used the belief in the old gods to cement his authority. That was quite different from his mother. At the time, he believed Ningal did the same as he. The reality of her true belief had come as a rude shock.
Ningal now learned toward the camera and thus seemed to lean toward the screen and Assur. He happened to know his mother practiced such moves and postures before a mirror in her bedroom, wanting to perfect them.
“My son,” Ningal said in a quavering voice, “the old gods have spoken to me about… about your coming death.”
Assur scowled and actually turned his head and spat on the rug of the ready room. What kind of mummery was this? Was she trying to sap his morale with voodoo magic? Maybe it was time to alert one of his people aboard the Akkad to pay his mother a visit and slip a knife between her ribs.
“This isn’t certain death,” Ningal said in a hushed voice. “You may avoid it, but only if you act with cunning and speed. There are rumblings in your colony. The old gods feel it, and they have whispered advice to me on how you can avoid your certain demise.”
On the screen, Ningal grew still as her eyes widened. Was she pretending that the old gods spoke through her even now? She touched her face as feeling it for the first time.
“My son,” she whispered, “your scheme concerning the Dreadnought is fraught with peril. Your highest commanders and strategy officers do not agree with it in their hearts. You must quash this opposition, or you will die in the same way your father Enki did.”
Assur found that he had clenched his hands into fists. They were shaking at his side. Mutineers had slain his lordly father, shot him down like a dog. Would mutineers dare to try that against him and usurp his authority?
“You are the law, Assur,” Ningal whispered. “No… No. I misspoke saying that. You uphold the law. That is a different thing altogether. We no longer vote for our elders as the People did in my Grandfather Sargon’s time, but chief marshals such as you grab power through authoritarian means. However, you must never believe that despite the power grab that your authority rests on your own will. Believing that would be a grave mistake. Power rests on the will of the People. They will show their will, often through higher-ranked personnel. At times of crisis, however, the People may storm the citadel and tear the ruler to pieces if he acts too far from their real although possibly secret desires.
“I say this as a warning to you, my son. Your days as Chief Marshal are in danger. You must act at once if you wish to maintain your life and position.”
On the screen, Ningal inhaled more deeply than before and sat back. She looked down at her bulky red robes and adjusted the folds over her legs. She picked off several specks, paused, and only then looked up again.
“If you will listen to me, I suggest you forget about constructing a Dreadnought for now. It is the wrong path for us. If you ask how I know this, I will tell you that the old gods have whispered it to me. Unfortunately, I doubt you will listen to your aged mother. At least remember this, however. You cannot force the others to follow your will unless your hold on power is absolute. I think such a state might be impossible, for we all need each other, even you. That means you must compromise with the People or stamp your will on them as a burning iron against their united face. Any other path will lead to your death.”
Ningal looked away as if the words were too hard to have uttered. It was several seconds before she studied him again, or pretended to. “I imagine my words infuriate you, but you should take heed just the same. I worry about you, Chief Marshal. Please, consider my words, as I want you to live even longer than me.”
With that, the message from his mother in orbit around Neptune abruptly ended.
Assur felt his stomach tighten and then growl. As much as it would have lightened her message to think her crazy, Ningal had seemed quite sane to him. She had crazy ideas about the old gods of home talking to her, but otherwise had made a cogent point or two.
Assur forced his fists open and tapped his chin with a finger. He needed to think about this. First, though, he would delete the message. If this fell into the wrong hands, he could face a mutiny even sooner than she expected.
-2-
The Valiant colony in the solar system was minuscule compared to the teeming billions on the nuclear-ravaged Earth.
According to what the Valiants had learned through intercepting TV and radio communications, Earth had waged a short nuclear war in 2050 A.D.
That had been ten years before the Akkad parked behind Saturn, when the last Type Four Annihilator missile slammed into the ringed gas giant.
It was 2065 A.D. according to the Earth dating system. Corporations ran most of the third planet, with a few holdouts like the Western States of America that used old-style governmental systems.
The Valiants under Assur had chosen Titan as their main colony base, with some mining structures and domes on Iapetus. That moon had proven to possess the most easily accessible iron ore the colony so desperately needed.
Yet how could a mere 170,000 superior Valiants conquer the Earth with its billions?
Originally, Assur and others believed their technological superiority would do the heavy lifting. That had been before the humans launched two Orion-ship flotillas. One had traveled to Neptune and badly damaged the Akkad. The other had sped to Saturn. An Orion-launched stealth attack had nearly succeeded in doing real damage to the Titan colony before the Earth ships disintegrated under Assur’s spaceship attack.
Unfortunately, the space marines around Neptune had stolen a Corsair-class warship and taken it to Earth. Could their scientists reverse engineer everything and turn Valiant technology against the colony?
The thought terrorized the military here. The People had fled the conquering and alien Vims, searching for a new home planet. Now, the People could never leave the solar system because the Akkad was too damaged for another interstellar voyage. Unless they defeated the Earthlings, the Valiant race would expire in the dark night of extinction.
Might the Earthlings accept them into their midst without a war to the death?
