Chapter 10

Now they were going to have to move their operations away from North and South America, and the question was: where to, next? The obvious place was Europe, but was that the best choice? They could take a hint from World War II and use the UK as a staging area. They now knew that the Wasps were relatively easy for them to defeat when they had plenty of poison, so they were highly confident of victory no matter which way they went first. The combination of Europe and Asia would take a while to clean out just because of the vast area involved. They decided to go with Europe as the first target purely from considerations of convenience. They would send recon flights to check out Greenland and Iceland, but they didn't expect to find many, if any, Wasps in either location.

It was just too damned cold for the Wasps north of 60 degrees latitude, so only cursory recon flights were sent there. Experience in Canada had shown that even 50 degrees was usually too uncomfortable for the Wasps to be more than a terrible nuisance. However, all of Scotland would be checked out just to be on the safe side.

Ireland was found to be covered with Wasps! The Wasps really took to the place and made themselves at home. The humans didn't like to use napalm because it was so destructive, but the Wasps had so thoroughly infested all of the major cities of Ireland that napalm was the only sure way to drive them out. The poison was just not effective in closed in areas where the fumes had trouble penetrating. The poisonous effect did not last long, a day or so, so that it was possible for Wasps to lie low and hide from the poison until it had become too weak to be dangerous to them. On the other hand, the Wasps could not hide as easily from fire, and the napalm was very effective. If this was the pattern for Wasp infestations all over Europe, then the battle was going to take longer than originally hoped. It was also going to be a whole lot more destructive.

General Charles O'Malley was in charge of the Ireland clearing operation and he was often driven to tears because of the destruction that was required to kill all of the Wasps. As near as his staff could determine, there just were no humans left in Ireland, the population had been wiped out by the combination of need for incubators and the need for food. About the only animal life left on the island were some sheep that simply had been in out of the way places and not yet found by the Wasps. This mass destruction of the indigenous population was just not like what the humans knew of the Wasps' normal action. They usually left enough people alive to maintain a minimal population so as to insure a supply of incubators. Indications were that the "Irish" Wasps were poaching on Wales, etc.

Based on experience in the Americas, it should have taken no more than a week to clear Ireland of Wasps, but, in reality, it took nearly a month. There seemed to be at least 10 times the population density of Wasps in Ireland as compared to the Americas. Why?

Gen. O'Malley finally reported that he had eliminated the Wasps from Ireland and captured seven pyramids in the process. Based on what they had seen so far in Ireland, and what the preliminary recon sweeps of Great Britain had shown, they were going to need a lot more bathtubs than they had in order to clear that island in less than nine months.

Back at Auburn, plans were being made to accelerate the training of more bathtub pilots. A general call went out, and over 2,000 people showed up to volunteer, most of these were teens. They were welcomed with open arms, but they were also screened carefully to be sure that they were willing to take orders when the situation called for it. A war was no place for rebellious teens who would not listen to advice or orders. Every new bathtub was equipped with an emergency recall device to make it possible to pull uncooperative pilots out of action and ground them. The new trainees were not told about this added item, but the new pilots were still carefully checked by psychiatrists to be sure of their mental and emotional stability.

While he was waiting for the reinforcements, Gen. O'Malley sent forces to clean out the Isle of Man and the other islands between Ireland and Great Britain. The reports that came back were startling: as far as the recon could tell, all of these islands were completely stripped of animal life, from humans on down. A few sheep were found, but that was it, and there were no pyramids to be found. What was going on?

Jill and Jim Anderson, the most successful translators, had been working on the navigator's station in that first pyramid and had made a momentous discovery. They had found a way to locate the position of every pyramid, and the indicators worked for all ranges, from the immediate vicinity to what appeared to be the whole galaxy. With this locater, they were able to fix the exact position of every pyramid on the surface of the Earth. This was going to make the eventual elimination of the Wasp menace possible by killing all of the male Wasps. Eventually, the fertilized females would die, and that would result in the extinction of the Wasps, somewhat similar to the way the screw worm flies were eliminated in the 1950s and '60s in the Southeastern USA.

The first use of this locater was in support of Gen. O'Malley. The locater verified that there were no viable pyramids left in Ireland. Furthermore, the locater showed that there were no pyramids on any of the surveyed islands that were devoid of life. With no life on the islands for the Wasps to prey upon, what few Wasps that might still be there would not stay around for long.

Gen. O'Malley's forces were augmented by Norwegians, Finns, and Swedes who had been living far enough north to escape the foraging raids that the Wasps had pulled on their countries. Sure, it was too cold for the Wasps to build permanent nests north of 60 degrees latitude, but it was not too cold in the summer for them to raid, which they had done diligently. As many of the new recruits as could be moved were shipped to North America for training as bathtub pilots. They were a wonderful find, since so many of them could speak American English, thus the training could move as quickly with them as with the native speakers.

The humans were ready to hit Great Britain within six weeks of the end of the Ireland campaign. By now, enough pilots had been trained so that their were 11,723 bathtubs ready for the assault on Wales. By now, the forces were truly international, but everybody was concentrating on the destruction of the Wasps, so there was no serious conflict among the national groups, though there was a lot of good-natured teasing going on.

There were so many bathtubs in the attacking force that they were going to need to be careful not to fire on each other in the heat of battle. The basic order of battle was still the flights of three bathtubs operating as a unit. Generally, three to five of these flights were sent to a particular area to engage the Wasps. The combination of FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red) instruments and night-vision glasses made it possible to keep pressure on the Wasps day and night, not giving them any time to rest. This strategy had proved very effective in Ireland and was expected to be just a effective here in Great Britain.

Another discovery: humans could be found operating at night! Since the Wasps were normally inactive after dark, the few remaining humans were out and about during those hours foraging for food while they were reasonably safe from the Wasps. The FLIR made it easy to spot humans at night, so most of the remaining humans were rescued and transported to Ireland where they could be cared for. Strangely, a few of the humans refused to be rescued, so they were left to fend for themselves.

The mode of attack had changed a bit from that used in North and South America. Now, the primary attack was on nests at night with poison-tipped rockets and with explosive warheads. It was found that this was the easiest way to kill a large number of Wasps at one time. A few Wasps were sometimes able to escape a nest under attack, and these were dealt with in the old way of single-combat—the Wasps always lost!

This was a grinding fight across Wales and southern England. Now, there was no problem locating the local pyramid, so each one was hit as it became convenient. The fight had settled into an almost boring routine of exterminating Wasps. The only excitement came when it was possible to rescue humans who had successfully hidden from the Wasps. It was particularly exciting when the rescued women insisted on rewarding the people who picked them up the only way they could, provided the pick-up crew was male.

After a short recovery period, the rescued people wanted to join in the fight. Gen. O'Malley soon had more bathtubs in action than he ever expected to see. There was no problem in making more bathtubs on the spot; they were just replicated in one of the captured pyramids. The bottleneck was from needing to train pilots, but a training facility was established in Ireland, and it was soon turning out so many pilots that Great Britain was cleared out in two months.

It was still necessary to drop napalm on the major cities, but the locals seemed to take particular delight in that, so they were usually assigned the job of clearing the cities, while the "foreigners" took care of the countryside.

It had been thought that France would be the next country cleared, but the few Frenchmen they rescued deeply resented help from the Yanks and the Limeys, so Gen. O'Malley, who now commanded the European Theater, decided to hell with them and attacked the low countries and southern Norway. The ungrateful French could wait to be the last ones rescued from the Wasps and good luck to them!

The same situation was encountered in Holland, etc. as they had seen in Great Britain. There were humans about who were very happy to be rescued from the Wasps. The poison and fire did the same excellent job that it had done across the Channel. Gen. O'Malley pushed his way into Denmark and then north. His plan was to free Norway and Sweden of the last traces of Wasp encroachment. Finland was far enough north that there was no need to move in there. Once Scandinavia was cleared, the push was made into Germany and south.

There were now enough bathtubs on hand that they were able to open a second front in Spain and Portugal. Andorra had no Wasps. There were no surprises in northern Europe; the Wasps there fought tenaciously, but they were defeated as easily as had been the Wasps in other parts of the continent.