Звезда Пандоры

As the first ones arrived in Treloar they flew through temporary gaps in the force field and started to spread out toward the coast. Two hundred Prime ships had already splashed down on Anshun and over a thousand more were in various stages of descent. Wilson didn’t like to think what effect that would have on the planet’s already-reeling environment. But then he’d seen Dyson Alpha’s sole habitable world and the fusion ships that swirled constantly above it. The Primes didn’t have the same priorities as humans.

“Scouts launching from Treloar,” Anna reported. “The Primes have landed just off a coastal town called Scraptoft. That’s sixty kilometers away. Should be getting pictures any minute.”

Wilson turned to the video display relayed from the lead scout as it left Treloar. It was flying at Mach nine, its pilot array holding it steady twenty meters above the ground. Behind it, a swath of soil a hundred meters wide was being ruptured by its furious wake, the torn air pulverizing trees, bushes, plants, and the occasional building it flew over. As it neared the shoreline hundreds of small stealthed sensor drones were ejected from the fuselage, building up a much wider image.

When it shot out over the cliff at Scraptoft, it revealed thirty Prime ships floating on the sea amid a dense swirl of agitated steam. The big cones were almost completely black, surrounded by sparkling force fields. Halfway up each superstructure, tall doorways had hinged outward to form horizontal platforms. Smaller craft were flying out of the openings, squat gray cylinders with metallic beetle legs folded up underneath. Three energy beams struck the scout, and the image vanished immediately.

The stealthed sensors scattered behind the scout watched the Prime flyers slide in over the sea, mapping their electrical, thermal, magnetic, and mechanical structure, along with their weapon and force field parameters. There were several types, some that were nothing but flying weapons platforms, while the larger ones were carrying small units of some kind that were protected by individual force fields.

“That’s got to be them,” Nigel muttered. Even now, he was curious what they might look like. Combat aerobots screamed in toward Scraptoft at Mach twelve. Prime flyers arched around to intercept. The sky between them was ruptured by energy beams and explosions, turning to a huge patch of electrically charged gas. Lightning bolts flashed outward, clawing at the ground for kilometers around.

Eight of the big Prime landing ships coming down through the atmosphere altered their trajectory slightly. Their fusion exhausts swept across the coastline, creating instant devastation. Soil and rock melted, flowing away from the superheated beams of plasma. Waves of thick glowing vapor spewed out, boiling high above the clouds until they were pulled apart by the jetstreams. Meters above the ground, aerobots and Prime flyers alike vectored around in high-gee maneuvers in an attempt to avoid the miasma of incendiary particles. The eight Prime landing ships were poised fifteen kilometers above Scraptoft, balanced on their drive exhausts. They started to fire their weapons, blasting the aerobots out of the sky.

Nigel watched the tsunami of filthy smog roll across the land. It was over twenty kilometers high, and spreading wide as the eight giant ships continued to hang there with their fusion fire searing into the ground. The front engulfed Treloar’s force field, bringing an abrupt night to the city.

Screened by the pollution, the Prime flyers began to touch down around Scraptoft’s outskirts. Stealthed sensors continued their quiet transmissions, showing what they could see through the dark oppressive vapors asphyxiating the land. A visual spectrum sensor locked on to one of the flyers that had landed in the smoldering ruins of a tourist complex. Sections of the cylindrical fuselage had opened, extending ramps. Aliens walked down, their bodies encased in suits of dark armor reinforced by force fields.

“Taller than us,” Nigel observed dispassionately.

“Weird walk,” Wilson replied. He was watching the creature’s four legs, the way they bent, the curving feet shaped like blunt claws. His gaze moved up the torso to the four arms; each one was holding a weapon. The top of the suit was a squat hemisphere divided into four sections, each one replicating the same sensor arrangement.

“There’s a lot of electromagnetic activity around them,” Rafael said. “They’re communicating with each other and the flyer on a continual basis. The flyers are in contact with the landing ships, ditto the ships that are going into orbit. The signals look very similar to the ones you recorded at Dyson Alpha.”

“Tu Lee reported that the missiles required continual guidance updates,” Tunde Sutton said.

“Meaning what?” Rafael asked.

“Possibly, the Prime commanders don’t allow for a lot of independence on the battlefront.”

“Okay,” Wilson said. “Anna, have we got any electronic warfare systems we can deploy?”