The Nelson Touch

Chapter Twenty-Three

When he’d been a child, Major Charles Parnell had read Starship Troopers and fallen in love with the idea of wearing a suit of powered combat armour on the battlefield. It had been a disappointment, when he’d finally joined the Royal Marines, to discover that battlesuits were so expensive and finicky that they were rarely allowed to use them in combat. Even the Americans, who had done more research into the concept than anyone else, had their doubts about the value of the suits. But they did serve well for plunging from orbit and landing on a hostile planet.

He sucked in his breath sharply as the Royal Marines — and American Force Recon Marines — plummeted towards Target One. Space seemed to be sparkling with light, either from chunks of debris falling into the planet’s atmosphere or enemy fire from the planet below. Bright warnings flared up in his HUD, only for him to banish them in irritation. There was no point in tormenting himself with the prospect of being targeted by the enemy. The suits were tough, tough enough to survive a nuke if there was some distance between them and Ground Zero, but if the aliens zapped him with a plasma cannon designed to take out an orbiting spacecraft he was dead. None of the Marines had any illusions on that score.

Missiles plummeted past him, wrapped in showers of decoys that would — that should — make it harder for the aliens to pick out the Marines with their sensors. They’d have to go after the missiles anyway, Charles knew, although no alien cities were being targeted directly. The planetary defence complexes could be hammered from orbit, if they didn’t shoot down the missiles before they reached their targets. And, once the fleet entered orbit, kinetic strikes would be added to the human arsenal.

He felt a shiver running through the suit as he entered the planet’s atmosphere. Target One seemed to shift in front of him, moving from a orb hanging in space to something that dominated the horizon… and then a world falling towards him. His head spun for a long moment, then he gathered himself. It had been years since he’d taken his first jump out of an aircraft and parachuted down to Earth, but it still managed to scare him on a very basic level.

It’s all perfectly safe, he reminded himself. He knew that some of his men had the same fears, even though none of them would ever admit it out loud. The Royal Marines didn’t react well to weakness, particularly ones that might be common. We’ll hit the ground before we know it.

He saw a missile go screeching past him, followed by sparks of purple light that seemed to dance up from the planet and reach out towards low orbit. The aliens were firing on the incoming Marines… he hesitated, then looked back down towards the surface of the planet. Their colossal planetary defence centre was coming into view, far larger than anything humanity had ever built to protect their world. It looked as though the aliens had hollowed out a mountain and converted it into a fortress. The rocky mass surrounding it would give them some extra protection, although it wouldn’t be enough to protect the plasma cannons, not when they had to be exposed to open fire…

The suit blinked up another warning. Charles closed his eyes as the parachute activated, cutting his speed sharply. Moments later, he crashed down on the ground and looked around, activating his suit’s active sensors. The remainder of his unit fell around him, hastily dragging themselves into combat formation. It wouldn’t be long before the aliens realised they’d actually managed to land on the planet.

Scratch that, he thought, as he saw a line of aliens appear from the direction of the fortress. They’re already here.

The aliens opened fire with handheld plasma weapons; the humans returned fire with suit-mounted machine guns. Charles felt a stab of envy as he saw the alien weapons — he wanted something like that, even though they posed an unanticipated threat to his suit — and then concentrated on fighting, leading his men forward against the aliens. They fought back savagely, but they had clearly been caught by surprise. The theory that most of the planet’s defenders were actually reservists seemed to hold water.

A brilliant flash of light distracted him for a long second, then he resumed the attack on the fortress, moving towards the main doors with terrifying speed. The aliens fell back in disarray, slamming their gates closed and sealing the mountain. Charles checked the live feed from the orbital monitors — the plasma cannons had been taken out by a direct hit — and then ordered his men to fall back. There was no need to force their way into the fortress if it was no longer capable of interfering with the landing operations.

The Rhino’s face blinked up in his HUD. “Congratulations, Major,” he said. “The enemy fortress has been neutralised.”

Charles nodded, considering the situation. “They may be impregnable deeper inside the fortress,” he said. “We can’t break through without nukes.”

“Then don’t worry about them,” the Rhino said. “Concentrate on securing the planned landing sites.”

Charles nodded, signalled his men to leave a detachment monitoring the mountain and then led the remaining forces towards the LZ. The aliens hadn’t built a convenient spaceport, unfortunately, but there was enough flat ground inland to serve as a landing zone for assault shuttles. Dozens of warnings blinked up in his display as the aliens continued to fight, yet no one troubled his Marines as they swept through the landing zone, looking for unexpected surprises. Nothing revealed itself.

“The zone is clear,” he said. “You can start unloading your troops at once.”

The American Marine Corps might not, in his considered opinion, be as tactically flexible as the Royal Marines, but they did bring a vast amount of resources to the party. Hundreds of shuttles dropped through the atmosphere, a couple falling to alien weapons that had held their fire, waiting for the chance to take a proper shot, and landed in front of Charles and his men. Moments later, thousands of American Marines had spilled out of their shuttles and started expanding the secure perimeter, followed by tanks and self-propelled guns. The Americans had planned to secure a landing zone and then expand as quickly as possible. Charles had to admit that the plan had worked perfectly.

“We have alien detachments moving out of City One,” an American voice said. “I think they’re soldiers, sir.”

“Good,” the Rhino grunted. “We’ll meet them outside their city.”

Charles briefly accessed the live feed for himself. It was clear the aliens were… uncomfortable away from the water, although they didn’t seem as badly impeded as he’d hoped. Maybe they could endure uncomfortable conditions for quite some time, just like humans. They didn’t seem to have any heavy weapons, although with alien plasma cannons involved it was hard to be sure just what counted as a heavy weapon. He’d seen them wielding handheld pistols that could burn through a tank’s armour.

He ducked instinctively as something flew overhead, then realised to his embarrassment that it was a pair of American helicopters. A troop of tanks roared past the Royal Marines, heading towards the alien forces, followed by a line of armoured Marines. Charles smiled, switched the suit to full power and gave chase. In the suits, infantry could move fast enough to catch their enemy on the hop.

“They seem to be evacuating the city,” the analyst added. “They’re sending everyone into the water.”

“Even better,” the Rhino insisted. “No civilians to get in the way.”

Charles wondered, absently, just how far underwater the aliens could go safely. There were very definite limits for unprotected humans, even with a portable oxygen supply. The aliens might be able to swim down to the bottom of the oceans or they might only be able to go a few hundred metres below the surface. No one knew for sure, if only because no one had managed to get a probe near an underwater city. It was one of the minor objectives for the entire deployment.

He pushed the thought aside as an explosion billowed up in front of him. Cursing, he ducked as streaks of light flared out towards the human forces, one of them striking a tank and blasting it into very little pieces. The humans fell back and waited; moments later, a volley of shells fell from the sky, smashing the alien position. Charles led the charge forward, only to discover that most of the aliens were dead or retreating in a hurry. They didn’t seem inclined to stand and fight.

Makes sense, he told himself. They can delay us indefinitely through a series of ambushes, while we have to take the time to clear them, one by one. It buys time for them to evacuate the city.

“Agreed,” the Rhino said, when he mentioned his theory on the command channel. “And they’ve already prevented us from leapfrogging their positions and dropping troops into their rear.”

Charles nodded. Two American helicopters had died in quick succession; the remainder had been pulled back to await developments. They might have armoured hulls, but they couldn’t stand up to plasma weapons fire. It struck him, suddenly, that that might be why they hadn’t seen any signs of an alien air force. They believed aircraft to be largely useless in modern war.

The march towards the alien city devolved into a series of ambushes, each one costing time to clear. Thankfully, the aliens didn’t seem to have invented IEDs or other insurgent tricks or the battle would have taken much longer. Instead, they jumped out, opened fire and then fell back rapidly. They were moving too quickly to be caught by the shells the Rhino would inevitably direct into their position.

“This would be beautiful countryside if the aliens didn’t live here,” he muttered. He couldn’t help thinking of a mixture of the English countryside and the rainforests they’d used for training exercises, years ago. “We could just come to an agreement about sharing planets…”

The Rhino snorted. “So people have been saying,” he said, as the Marines reached a large river running down to the sea — and the alien city. “But we have to get them to talk to us first.”

Charles nodded as the aliens launched another ambush. The tanks opened fire, tearing through undergrowth and aliens alike, while the armoured infantry ran forwards in hopes of preventing the aliens from retreating. Charles saw a pair of aliens stumbling right towards him — a shiver ran down his spine as he saw their movements, utterly creepy compared to human movements — and held up his hand, trying to get them to stop. The aliens lifted their weapons instead, refusing to even try to surrender. Charles opened fire with bitter regret, wondering just why so many aliens were prepared to die in a futile attempt to slow the human advance. Were they terrified of humanity?

He put the thought aside as they finally brushed through the last ambush and found themselves staring down at the alien city. For a moment, it took his breath away; the aliens might be eerie and creepy, but their city looked like something out of a fairytale. It was a glowing mass of spires, all gleaming as if they were made of ice, while water seemed to run freely through the streets. Half of them, he realised, were actually canals. To the aliens, they were as good as roads. Hell, there were boats on the surface.

“Odd design,” Private Butcher commented. “Where the hell are the oars — or the outboard motor?”

Charles frowned, using his suit’s sensors to zoom in on the closest boat. Butcher was right; there were no engines or slots for the oars. It puzzled him, leaving him wondering if the aliens had used the canals as rapids, then he understood what he was seeing. The aliens swam under the boat to provide motive power.

“Odd,” Butcher said, when he pointed it out. “No engines?”

“I guess they like to use muscle power,” Charles said. “We did when we were sneaking up on Abu Hsian and his gang of merry murderers.”

He cleared his throat, checking the HUD. The landing forces had spread out, carefully sealing off all land routes to the city. It would have been more impressive if he hadn’t been all too aware that the aliens preferred to swim through the water, allowing them to bring supplies in and out by sea. The alien city seemed to have captivated everyone, even the Rhino. There were no suggestions about forcing their way into the city and taking it by storm.

But then, no one is trying to bar our path any longer, he thought, grimly. They must have given up on trying to hold the city.

“The recon units will advance, carefully,” the Rhino said, finally. “Report at once if you run into trouble.”

Charles braced himself and led the way into the alien city. He’d been in the Middle East, China and even Russia, but none of their cities had ever given him such an odd feeling in his bones. Part of him was still captivated by the alien city, part of him found the whole structure oddly creepy. Up close, it was easy to tell the city hadn’t been built for humans. There were doors that were simply too small for anyone larger than a kid. But for an alien, with their immensely flexible bodies, they would be easy to use.

He forced his way into one icy block — the walls did look to be covered with ice, although he had no idea why — and looked around. There was nothing, apart from a large pool in one corner of the room; when he peered inside, he saw a handful of fish-like creatures swimming in the water. Pets, he wondered, or a food supply? It was impossible to tell. He looked into the next room, remembering all the lectures on how best to search a site for anything the intelligence types would find useful, and saw a handful of plastic sheets on the floor. When he picked them up, he saw writing on them.

“Good find,” Sergeant Jackson complimented him.

Charles snorted as they walked out of the building. The alien writing hadn’t been deciphered, even though it wasn’t the first time they’d recovered samples from an alien base. For all he knew, they’d picked up the alien counterpart to great literature — or pornography. The reports had suggested that the aliens were actually nowhere near as sexual as humanity, but Charles was inclined to dismiss that as wishful thinking. In his view, the mating urge was one of the prime drivers of human civilisation.

But if the aliens reproduce like frogs, he asked himself, would they even have anything like sex?

Inch by inch, the Marines spread through the city, carefully inspecting every last room and compartment. There was no resistance, not even a single sighting of an alien, merely endless rooms, some of which were filled with incomprehensible machines. The Marines marked them down for larger removal by the intelligence officers, then passed on to the next section, hunting for signs of where the aliens had gone. Charles peered out over the ocean, waves lapping against the edges of the city, and knew the answer. The aliens had gone underwater, where humans couldn’t follow.

“Pull back to Base Camp,” the Rhino ordered, finally. “The follow-up forces can continue the searches.”

Charles nodded, relieved. It had been hours since they’d landed — and it felt like days. If it hadn’t been for the suit, he would probably have reached the limits of his endurance long ago. Instead, he led the way back to the Base Camp, which had been established alarmingly close to the city. A handful of Marines were already pumping water from the nearby river and using it to help set up the base. Others were working on the damaged tanks. He removed his suit, detailed Sergeant Jackson to look after the remainder of the Marines, then went looking for his commanding officer.

The Rhino met him in the mobile control centre, which had already been buried under a protective canopy of earth. he didn’t look happy; Charles knew he would have preferred to command from his suit, rather than a vehicle that was a clear target if the enemy managed to parse their way through humanity’s datanet. But with units from several different countries operating in the field, he couldn’t afford any miscommunications.

“Good work,” the Rhino grunted. “Opposition seems to have faded away entirely.”

Charles nodded, looking at the Blue Force Tracker display. The humans had secured the coastal cities, having smashed the planetary defence fortresses, but the aliens had largely withdrawn into the waters. Stalemate, it seemed, at least until the humans could start deploying the underwater probes. But it would take several days before they felt comfortable enough to start bringing scientists, some civilian, down to the planet’s surface.

“They weren’t ready for us,” he said. “The next time we force a landing on an alien world, sir, it will be a great deal harder.”

“Almost certainly,” the Rhino agreed. He slapped Charles on the back. “Go get some sleep, mate. You’ll be useless to yourself and your men when you’re half-dead on your feet.”

Outside, the sun was already starting to set. Charles looked towards a glow in the distance, realised to his amusement that a handful of soldiers were smoking, then up towards the sky. Hundreds of pieces of debris were still tumbling through the atmosphere, leaving fiery trails as they burnt up and vanished. Beyond, there was no sign of the fleet. It was still holding station some distance from the planet.

Lucky bastards, he thought. Night was falling rapidly now, sending chills down his spine. There was a faint smell in the air, he realised now, that was completely alien. He had a feeling that he wasn’t going to sleep well, no matter how tired he was. They don’t see the mud on our boots.

With that thought, he headed for the tent and sleep.