GENESIS - THE BEGINNING. Book 1

CHAPTER 14 ... Landfall - D hour, A State Of War

The first drop ships made landfall on a blistering hot afternoon.

The forward teams of enemy fighters and scout ships entered Overlord's atmosphere unmolested.

Field workers were the first to be taken as prisoners of war.

"Are you willing to lay your life down for this decision Admiral Blair? Not only yours but all of ours?

"Sire." He bent his head, self-doubt sent tentacles down his spine and into his thrumming heart. Shaking his head in frustration, he looked at the comp screen. "Sire. This is a trap. A clever trap to draw us out into a killing field of their own making. Should we engage, and everything about it tells me that we must not, then we will be severely at a disadvantage."

"Let me get this straight Admiral," the Emperor said in an agitated voice. "You are telling me that I must not attack and that neither must you. To allow the enemy to get a foothold on our Capital planet and to allow them to dig in? Is this what you are advising me?" the anger in her eyes burned across the thousands of kilometers.

"Yes Sire. They have already done the unexpected by splitting their forces. Our people made the mistake of thinking that this war would be similar to that of the Annulars with their frontal attacks. I tried many times to convince YOU that-that attitude would be disastrous. These are, in the end, humans and, like us, just as devious. We cannot, must not attack yet, Sire. A day. Three at most. Allow complacency to set in. Allow them to become impatient. They have travelled countless distances to arrive at this moment. There is only one thing they can think of right now and that is to bring the war to us as soon as possible. They will in the end Sire, spring their own trap and then ..." His icy blue eyes begged her to understand.

"To my way of thinking Admiral," the Emperor said, as she looked off-screen in deep thought. "Is that outer space is that; space. Surely you can find them out there? One cannot hide a large enemy force where there is no hiding place? Where could they have gone?"

He smiled to himself as he heard her words. It seemed she had forgotten that her own navy including the might of the Annular, were at this moment in hiding, themselves. In hiding in an area where there was no place to hide at all. "We have tracked them since the first indications of their arrival Sire and with the Annulars help, we know for a fact that the two forces we know of, although large, are not all there are supposed to be. A third force has somehow eluded us."

"And the spy satellites? What of them?"

"Again Sire. The Satellites first registered minor movement and soon after failed to respond which to me, indicates that they were destroyed. If you would follow the picture on your screen ..." he tapped on the screen before him and a diagram of Overlord appeared on both screens. "The green flashing lights are our spy satellites Sire. Now watch." Seven lights turned red, one after the other.

"How?" she asked simply.

"If I were a man prone to superstition Sire, I would have to admit to magic being the only way. But as I'm not, I'm leaning towards Old earth has found a means to avoid detection. Though, and this is my best bet, they have not completely got the hang of it yet as indicated by the satellites which picked up some sort of anomaly before they stopped responding. We are evaluating the data right now Sire and hopefully will have the answers soon."

"Are they there? There where those red lights are blinking?"

"Yes Sire. Like us, they are in hiding beyond Overlord itself. And yet, we cannot attack because we have nothing to attack. We will be seen coming and will be destroyed without catching a glimpse of the enemy. We may fly right past them and not notice. We require more information. Attack now and we may not only lose men and fighters but also lose our main advantage; surprise."

"I take it the moon's satellites are also destroyed and included in this?" she asked but did not wait for an answer. "My scouts and Polrobs have been reporting a lot of movement down there Admiral. The enemy is making a move on Kargo City it seems. They will be knocking down buildings and killing my people in a short time. Do I do nothing?"

"They want us to attack. We dare not. That second group Sire, ships of extremely heavy tonnage and..." he tapped on the screen again. The green and red blinking lights disappeared and two large cluster of red lights appeared a few thousand kilometers from each other. "This is the first enemy cluster" he pointed to a group of lights, "They are nosing about trying to draw us out but notice how close they stay to the second group Sire, which is positioned right above their ground forces. The first group is the muscle. The second, devoid of their human cargo has nonetheless, the ability to deliver serious fire power. Their fire power alone will destroy our forces in moments. This is going to be a space war Sire. Let us do what we are paid to do. Let us fight this war out there where we have the advantage. Then and only then, do we mop up the ground forces."

"But, my people."

"Will die whether you respond or not," he said harshly. "Sire, we have a small window of opportunity. A very small one. First we discover as much as possible about this invisibility trick and then ..."

"Invisibility?" she asked. "Admiral. Just a moment." She said excitedly and disappeared from the comp screen as somebody came up behind him.

"Admiral, sir...."

"Excuse me Mr. Quiney. I'm busy at the moment."

"Sir. Pardon me, sir. But the results. We have the results, sir. It's the mass. We were looking in the wrong place."

"Mass? What mass, Mr. Quiney." The admiral frowned, trying to change from one subject to the other in his mind.

"The third enemy force sir. Look." He passed over a batch of printouts. "The enemy may be invisible sir. But they could not do anything about their mass. And according to these figures," he pointed out to a table of random numbers on the sheet of paper.

"Mr. Quiney, what am I looking at?"

"Here, sir." The admiral's number one pointed at a section of a graph that peeked upwards. "This shows the information received at 15H46. There were no sightings of the enemy. And here," his finger moved to the end of the graph, "Is the time of destruction; 15H46, 5753. But if we go here," he paged over, "16H04 and time of destruction; 16H04, 5236. And here ..."

"I get the point, Mr. Quiney. So it took them under a minute to destroy each satellite. The question is how the satellites knew the enemy was there in the first place unless a large mass approached from off camera and disturbed highly sensitive apparatus." His eyes followed the pointing finger. He turned the page and noticed that the figures matched the previous ones, he whistled softly.

"They all match, sir. Every one of them. That's a serious amount of fire power out there waiting for us to make a mistake."

"Thank you, Mr. Quiney." The admiral said as he noticed a silent and excited Emperor impatiently waiting for his attention. He smiled at her, "We have found them Sire. Sooner than expected it seems. The answer is that they may have found a way to become invisible but not how to hide themselves completely."

"Shallwe discuss how we are going to attackall three forces at once, or do you still plan on waiting for three days whilethey kill my people before my very eyes?"texg�Z'�=