Battlefield 2196

The year was AD 2196. In an alternate universe, the United Nations had failed to maintain world peace. The Cold War between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics worsened gradually. The struggle between democracy and communism escalated to a global war. High-power laser became standard issue on the battlefield, replacing many guns and cannons. Charged-particle beam weapons such as ion and proton cannons were first used in warfare.
Hovercrafts were equipped with laser cannons for amphibious assault. Tanks and armoured personnel carriers were also equipped with such weaponry. High-speed hydrofoil gunboats were in general use by world navies. Aerial warfare was waged using warplanes fuelled by liquid hydrogen. Among such warplanes were the F-31A fighters and Rockwell HiMAT (highly-manoeuvrable advanced tactical) fighter-bombers. Each of these aircraft had features such as autopilot, a combat computer, mass driver cannons or laser cannons and ‘fire-and-forget’ robot missiles.
The final nightmare seemed inevitable. Then in 2197, radio telescopes picked up interesting signals from the orbit of Jupiter. It consisted of a series of prime numbers, numbers that could be divided by one and them. The whole world held a cease-fire. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and other European countries joined forces with Asian countries such as Japan, China and Singapore to investigate.
Surveillance probes were sent to the source of the radio signals. They were named Recon Probes Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. They sent back pictures of the source. It was an egg-shaped spacecraft the size of a big asteroid. Although they were unarmed, her concussion missiles destroyed them when they were within range. Then she launched hundreds of combat space vehicles towards Earth. They disappeared in Jupiter space and appeared in Earth space. The recently formed United Earth Alliance (UEA) activated many X-ray battle stations, killer satellites, chemical-laser battle stations, anti-satellite weapons, and kinetic-energy weapons (KEWs) to intercept the invaders. The enemy ships resembled space shuttles but were four times larger and bristled with cannons and missiles.
Several X-ray battle stations located and tracked the enemy ships using ultraviolet or infrared telescopes. Their on-board computers guided laser rods and aimed many of them per station at individual targets. Then they slammed brutally intense pulses of X-ray laser against the enemy ships. Some of them were intercepted and destroyed by the X-ray battle stations. Earth space blossomed with gigantic spherical explosions. The surviving ships fired concussion missiles at the battle stations blowing them up.
. Above the Earth in a manned space factory named Vulcan, engineers, technicians and scientists from all over the planet waited. They watched as the enemy missiles exploded and the space weapons were annihilated.
"It's horrible!" Dr. Larry Zeng exclaimed. He was a Singaporean astrophysicist onboard the Vulcan.
"Fortunately, we're safe because the Vulcan is far away from those XRL (X-ray laser) mines," Dr. Syed Faisal said. He was a Malaysian physiologist.
The commander of the Vulcan, Captain Bartholomew Philips, a New Zealander, was in the command module.
"What's the trajectory of the enemy ships, ensign?" He asked a controller sitting at a tracking console.
"They are heading straight for us, sir," she answered.
"Battle stations!" Bartholomew ordered. "Sound general quarters!"
The red alert klaxon blared through the whole space factory, and the lighting turned red.
"Activating laser-array and ion batteries," the combat controller said as she keyed for the computer-controlled combat system. Her name was Angelica Michaels, an American. Meanwhile, all the engineers, technicians and scientists got to their pre-assigned quarters.
"How many enemy ships are there?" Bartholomew asked Dale McFarlane the tracking console controller.
"Fifty ships, sir," he answered.
“Tune in to their tactical frequency and activate the CETI (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence) computer. I’m going to speak with their commander.”
“Yes, sir,” the communication station controller said and carried out his order.
“CETI computer activated.”
Captain Philips picked up the microphone at his station.
“This is Captain Bartholomew Philips of the Earth space factory Vulcan. Why have you attacked us? Leave our solar system or be annihilated.”
“We are here to conquer your planet,” the translated computer voice said. “Surrender now and be spared further attacks from us – the Sparians.”
So finally it is ‘Star Wars’ and we know whom the enemy is, Bartholomew thought.
“Range: 400 metres and closing,” the synthesised voice of the Vulcan’s fifth generation main computer said.
The battle began this time between the Vulcan and the enemy. Both sides exchanged fire and all hell broke loose. The SDI security wheel directed X-ray laser and chemical laser at the Sparians. Again some were annihilated but the chemical lasers had to lock onto their targets for a long time to destroy them.
The manned kinetic-energy batteries fired salvos after salvos of high-density projectiles at the enemy ships. These KEWs propelled several shells of awesome destructive force disabling or destroying those ships. Starlord robot missiles were also fired at them. The space around the Vulcan blossomed with spherical explosions that were the characteristic of microgravity. The crew in the command module staggered as a missile exploded near it. It was an enemy concussion missile. If it were a thermonuclear missile, the command module would be severely damaged if not vaporised. Could the aliens be trying to capture the factory? Bartholomew thought.
The space shuttle Lemuria from Earth was approaching the Vulcan to dock with it. Her mission was to ferry all of the personnel to Earth. The captain ordered his crew to place the factory system under the control of the main computer. Then all of them moved quickly to the escape module. A robot on the spine of the Vulcan sealed the air lock and detached the module to load it into the shuttle cargo bay. The shuttle closed the bay and headed back for Earth.
Meanwhile, the enemy mother ship had executed a space warp and appeared in Earth space. The main computer of the Vulcan had set it to self-destruction so that it would not fall into Sparian hands. Its random access memory had been transferred to the Lemuria’s main computer. It started to pull up to the mother ship.
Suddenly, the Vulcan exploded with the force of one megaton of dynamite. The mother ship was disabled, her main engine failed and she started to plunge towards Earth. The rest of the Sparian ships escorted her down. Meanwhile, the Lemuria was safe on her trip back to Earth.
The Lemuria landed at Yokohama Space Centre in Japan. It was a protected military base of the International Earth Defence Command (IEDC) space force. Its distant early warning systems tracked the Sparians as they fell into the North Pacific Ocean.
Admiral (Adm.) Corazon Morales, Filipino Japanese, supreme commander of the IEDC gave the order to scramble HiMAT, F-22 and F-31A warplanes. Other member nations of the IEDC also scrambled their warplanes to intercept the aliens.
Asia Pacific countries including Russia, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore sent troops. Oceanian counties like Australia and New Zealand also gave military aid. The whole war machine was the largest one ever assembled since the Third Earth War. There were many fleets of supercarriers, hydrofoil gunboats, and submarines.
The supercarriers were armed with state-of-the-art war machines. Onboard were F-14C Tomcat interceptors, E-2D Hawkeye early warning reconnaissance planes, Rockwell HiMAT fighter-bombers, F-22 Rapiers and F-31A fighters.
Onboard the alien mother ship, the Sparian commander, Admiral Yagal, ordered a third of her combat space shuttles to submerge and the rest to form a perimeter around her flagship.
The spaceships bore the insignia of the Confederation of Andromeda, another galaxy in the Local Group of Galaxies to which our galaxy belonged. It was a schematic representation of a spiral galaxy with indications of its location in the known universe.
An average Sparian was 1.75 metres tall, and looked like a human shape robot. The Sparians had been overcome by their technology in 1996. They had faced the consequences of becoming unfeeling robots with brain implants; in other words, they had become cybernetic organisms (cyborgs). Their imperative was to gain knowledge and new worlds by force of arms. Sometimes, they even resorted to genocide. They had exterminated many intelligent life-forms.
A handful of Sparians who had not succumbed to their technology were politicians, but they were helpless against power-mongers. The former and some scientists, technologists, experts in what were known to Terrans as the humanities, religious leaders, and ordinary Sparians were either killed or had fled to other worlds.
“Admiral Yagal,” a Sparian technician said. “Our scopes show that the Terrans are sending warplanes, surface ships and submarines to engage us.”
Yagal nodded. She was a cyborg with organic tissues and organs. Seventy-five per cent of her body were bionics.
“Tune in to the tactical frequency of the Terran fleet,” she ordered the technician. “Then open a channel to their admiral.”
“Yes, tenno,” the technician said. ‘Tenno’ meant admiral in Sparian.
After he made a few adjustments on his control panel, the technician turned to Yagal.
“Channel opened.”
Yagal picked up a microphone and said: “This is an ultimatum, Earthlings. Surrender and withdraw your forces and your species will be allowed to live. If not, you will be exterminated.”
“Ignore that transmission,” Corazon said to her communications controller. “This planet belongs to us. We will never give it up.”
“Ma’am,” the Sparian technician said. “Their fleet commander has ignored your message.”
“Very well,” Yagal said. “Ninza,” she addressed her vice admiral. “See to it that the Earth forces are repulsed or destroyed.”
“Yes, tenno,” Ninza said. He picked up a comlink microphone and switched on the tactical network of the Sparian fleet.
“Attention, all strike elements,” Ninza said. “Launch when ready.”
Robatron aerospace fighters flown by the best Sparian pilots started to lift off from the flight decks of the floating combat space shuttles.
A short time later, the two armed forces engaged each other. Three squadrons of F-31A fighters, F-22 Rapier fighters, HiMAT fighter-bombers and F-14 Tomcat interceptors were sent to fight the enemy. There were a total of thirty-six warplanes. Two HiMAT fighter-bombers were carrying two thermonuclear bombs to attack the Sparian flagship.
The Robatron fighters with their wings swept backwards soared through the air. Laser beams and missiles swept through the air, scorching it and hitting targets of opportunity.
Torpedoes from hydrofoil gunboats, hovercrafts, submarines and warplanes sped through the water and found their marks on the hulls of Sparian ships. The enemy also fired their torpedoes and anti-shipping missiles at the Earth vessels. Some were hit and sunk by them.
A squadron of twelve F-22 Rapier fighters cleared a path that was one kilometre wide to the Sparian flagship. The pair of HiMAT fighter-bombers carrying the thermonuclear bombs followed them. The yield of the bombs was equivalent to 1.25 megatons of TNT.
The pilot of the first HiMAT jet was Captain Michael Norman. The pilot of the second jet was First Lieutenant Philip Bernard. Both were two of the best combat pilots of the IEDC.
A few minutes later, they were one kilometre away from the enemy flagship. Her mass driver cannons fired several rounds of shells at them. Michael and Philip swerved from side to side to avoid the flak.
When they were half a kilometre from the ship, they linked their bomb delivery systems.
“Lieutenant Bernard, we will drop the bombs on my mark,” Michael said.
“Yes, sir!”
“Three, two, one, mark!”
Both of them pressed the bomb buttons simultaneously. The bombs dropped from their pylons
“Full throttle!” Michael ordered.
“Roger.”
The two fighter-bombers sped away from the scene.
The Sparians tried to destroy the falling bombs but they were encased in forty-millimetre-thick armour. The MDC (mass driver cannon) rounds either bounced off the bombs or were embedded in the armour. The bombs hit the water and exploded.
The hull integrity of the enemy ships gave way. Only their skeletal frames were left. The nuclear radiation killed most of the aliens. Yagal and Ninza got into an escape pod before the two bombs detonated. So they escaped.
Michael and Philip returned to a heroes’ welcome. Earth was saved from the aliens.