Chapter 7

A fleet of 2,000 space tubs could cover a width of 2,000 miles when they were lined up side by side. Their FLIR had no trouble covering a width of half a mile on either side, so they were able to sweep for hidden nests very effectively and very efficiently. Hadron IV was a small planet with very few mountains, so it was swept in only three days. A few nests were found, but they were easily destroyed and the question was now raised: "Now what?"

Very little destruction was vented on the large wasp installations, since the fogger did such a good job of clearing out the Wasps. Scientific teams were sent down to see what information could be gleaned from any records that could be found. Not much was recovered. Not even these seemingly more intelligent Wasps spent much time leaving written records; however, they did have rotatable radio antennas which were on control systems which divulged vectors from which they expected communication signals. It seemed reasonable that backtracking those vectors would point to more Wasps.

Dagda returned to its own patrol sector, and Freya's computers started to work on determining where to find the other end of the communication circuit. Three planetary systems looked like good prospects, so a coin was flipped and one was picked for investigation. All of the spacetubs were retrieved and Freya made the jump.

They returned to normal space near a system of seven planets around a star very similar to Sol. Scouts were sent out and returned the information that the second, third, and fourth planets all looked like good candidates for Wasp infestation. This particular system didn't have a name as far as the humans or Arlosians were concerned, so Loki was temporarily assigned to the star until a better name could be found.

They decided to look at Loki IV first, since it was at the most convenient place in its orbit. Six flights of three scouts were sent to Loki IV for a quick survey. Jesus led one flight and As'sus led another. The other four flights were led by pilots with similar experience. Among the 24 spacetubs were recent recruits from Earth and Arlosia; this looked like a good way to break them in with seasoned pilots surrounding them to keep them out of too much trouble.

Nothing was found by a high altitude sweep, so Ac'sus led his flight in low at just under Mach 1 to see what there was to see. There was plenty to see! They were met by swarms of SAMs and were forced to go to Mach 5 to escape. At least, now they knew that Loki IV was occupied, either by Wasps or by people who were defending against Wasps.

They decided to make another pass to draw fire and followed by another flight that would try to establish contact using the translators. Ac'sus and his wingmen made another run and drew some fire which they evaded by speeding up. Right on their tails was a run by another flight that flew slowly enough to try for communication with the people who were firing the SAMs.

They could detect sentient thought patterns, but the translator could not lock on to the minds at the other end of the circuit. This suggested that there were male wasps down there whose brain patterns were just out of the range of the translators, but nobody wanted to jump to that conclusion at this early date. It was decided to back away from Loki IV and look at the other planets.

Loki II was next and the scouting runs were repeated. This time, they were met by Wasps in fighters and had a hard time escaping. These fighters appeared to be identical to the ones they had encountered on Hadron IV, so they knew what to expect from Loki II.

It was now time to look at Loki III, though everybody expected to find it full of Wasps, too. They weren't disappointed, either. The scouts were hit by Wasp fighters, and four spacetubs were lost. This wasn't as much fun as some of the other sweeps!

Judging from the fact that the Wasps were content simply to drive off the people from Freya and not to attack the mother ship, these Wasps did not have near-FTL flight. This would mean that an attack on one of the planets would not draw assistance from the other planets—a happy note which would give Freya a possible advantage.

Since it was the most lightly defended, they decided to go after Loki IV, first. The initial phase of the attack had flights of spacetubs standing just outside the nominal atmosphere and bombarding the SAM launch areas with kinetic warheads. By the time the rocket-driven warheads struck the ground, they had enough energy stored up to be the equivalent of nuclear warheads in destructive power without having the radiation problems. There was no problem finding the launch sites for the SAMs, since these were what the Wasps used in trying to defend against the incoming bombardment. By standing so far off from the planet's surface, the spacetubs had time to take countermeasures against the SAMs, so none were lost at this stage of the attack.

A day was spent pounding the defenses until nothing was left of the launch sites but a series of craters dotting the surface of the planet. Step two of the battle saw the sweep of the planet by spacetubs down close to the ground in an effort to draw out Wasp fighters. Very few Wasps showed up to contest the control of the air, and these were quickly disposed of.

Step three involved sending sprayers in to disperse a fog of the anti-Wasp poison over the entire planet. This took a week, but it still did not completely eliminate all of the Wasps from some of their hardened sites. The only answer was to send in ground troops.

Step four began with a survey of the entire planet to determine just where these hardened sites were located. FLIR was very helpful in pinpointing these sites. There turned out to be 47 of these sites, and the amount of infra-red signatures indicated a high concentration of Wasps in each one. Freya simply did not carry the resources for such a ground offensive, so a call was sent back to Earth by FTLR for ground troops to do the grunt work.

Jess Archer was both pissed and excited by the opportunity to visit another planet, even if it did mean that he had to fight to do it. He was pissed because he was due to get a pass for a week at home, and this operation would interfere with that. He was excited because he would, at last, actually walk on a planet other than Earth.

Jess was 17 years old, and could hardly remember the time before the Wasps tried to take over Earth. He had been one of the lucky ones who had lived far enough north in Canada to escape the direct contact with the invading Wasps, but he had not completely escaped their depredations, since his elder brother had been taken by them while he was working one of the more remote fields of their farm. This had engendered an abiding hatred of Wasps within Jess, and he longed for an opportunity to strike back at them.

Jess' two older sisters were already spacetub pilots, and he longed to join them, but he had a problem with vertigo which kept him firmly on the ground. This was just another reason to hate the Wasps. He had joined the Army as soon as he could make arrangements for the care of his parents, and he was now a sergeant and a squad leader in a light-infantry unit. Jess was very young for such responsibility, but he had shown such a superior talent for leadership and a grasp of tactics, that the rest of his squad, one of whom was twice his age, were quite content to follow wherever Jess led.

Jess' battalion was assembled and ready to leave to support Freya only two days after the request came in. The battalion commander was anxious to show what his men could do in combat, so he maintained a high state of readiness at all times. This was hard on some of the logistics people, but they had learned to cope.

They boarded their transport tubs and were delivered to the assembly point on Loki IV before they had a chance to become fatigued by the trip. A tent city was waiting for them, and they took a supper and sleep break before they left the next morning for their combat assignments. Jess' platoon was assigned a site noted as gamma-14 on their maps, and it was expected to be a major battle, based on the number of Wasps detected in residence by the FLIR instruments.