Chapter Three – Navigators
Irish Sea, UK Airspace
July 4, 1996
With a low, humming rumble of its huge anti-gravity drives, the City Destroyer climbed away from the besieged port city, increasing its altitude within minutes.
As it accelerated under the guidance of the Navigator – which channelled more emergency power into the propulsion, determined to break through the atmosphere and back into space – the land rumbled with slight tremors, while the sea churned in disturbance.
This geological effect caused by the acceleration of the vessel – witnessed across the world when the Hive Fleet had first arrived – was linked to the nature of the Destroyer's propulsion.
The propulsion systems used by the Swarm did not rely on physical propulsion drives, boosters or rockets. Instead the Destroyer and its array of smaller vessels were propelled entirely through gravitational manipulation. Their anti-gravity systems – grown from organic compounds, like the rest of their masters' technology – were so powerful that a vessel of the Destroyer's size could achieve flight at considerable speed.
Even when conducting interstellar travel the Hive Fleets did not enter wormholes, or any alternate dimension. Nor did they use faster-than-light travel in the conventional sense. Instead, the main Hiveship would use its immense drives to generate a gravity well in front of the fleet, harnessing both the gravity of the gargantuan vessel and any natural body or star nearby – thus creating a corridor of compressed space through which the Mothership and its fleet would be propelled at FTL-equivalent speeds.
The gravimetric signals that the propulsion and navigation systems detected also helped to pinpoint nearby star systems; a further device the Swarm used to locate their next prey.
This system was not understood by the majority of other civilisations in the galaxy. Furthermore, it required and displaced a huge amount of energy; one of many reasons why the Swarm constantly needed more resources, not just to feed themselves and grow their technology, but to fuel the insatiable energy needs of their vessels.
More importantly, the Navigator knew that this was why it's Destroyer would not reach a safer feeding ground quickly.
Vessels of the Destroyer class were capable of interstellar travel. However, they only rated a limited gravity field, much smaller than that of the main Hiveship. One reason as to why the main vessels in a Swarm Hive Fleet were grown so huge was so that their combined gravity could be easily harnessed to achieve interstellar travel.
The largest Hiveships – those commanded by a Queen, at the centre of a Royal Hive Fleet – naturally projected the largest gravitational field. Thus Royal Hive Fleets were the fastest.
This new would-be splinter fleet – this lone surviving Destroyer – was no such thing. Its gravity field was much smaller. Its propulsion drives were far less powerful. The on-board reactors could not generate the same level of energy.
Thus the journey to the next feeding ground would be long. Much longer than it had taken to get to this star system.
Furthermore, the Navigator knew, the Destroyer needed to be refuelled quickly. There were a few ideal sources of fuel in this system, besides the third planet. The Navigator brought them up on the holographic display in its control center, captured perfectly by the scouts that had combed this system before arrival.
The richest source orbited the largest gas giant in this solar system – a volcanic moon, one of the four largest satellites of that giant planet. It had an unstable, violent core, rich in magma and precious metals. The Destroyer couldn't extract the whole core by itself – but the wounded vessel would be able to extract what it needed to heal and refuel. Orbiting this same planet, another moon was rich in liquid water beneath its icy shell.
Another valuable resource lay around the second gas giant, a planet crowned with extensive rings. The promising moon here was tiny –even smaller than the archipelago the Destroyer had retreated from. Yet it boasted volcanic geysers and a heated core – small enough for the Destroyer to extract on its own, unlike the others, even though this moon was further away.
The Navigator could use these tiny worlds to refuel and repair its giant ship, stock up on fuel and water for the coming journey, grow new Attacker craft and other weapons for new conquests, hatch new warriors and workers for the great harvest to begin once more…
Then an alarm interrupted those thoughts.
The Navigator let out an enraged snarl as the scanners revealed the cause of the disturbance – another huge barrage of native missiles, headed straight for it.
These had to be high-altitude surface-to-air missiles – the Navigator could tell because the direction they came from, shooting upwards. Also, the Destroyer was beyond the known effective altitude of native fighter aircraft.
There was no way to launch Attackers to intercept – the emergency power levels did not permit it. Even if power had been available, almost all of the ship's Attacker complement had been lost.
The low power levels also meant that the Destroyer's shields were not recoverable.
There was only one slim hope for a successful escape now – and it rested on the few point defence systems that could still be powered.
Once more, the Navigator interfaced with the ship's systems. It brought as many of the point defence weapons online as possible – but the low power levels ensured that this was a minimal number.
Even so, some of the enemy missiles were intercepted and destroyed by the rapid-fire bursts of short-range plasma. But this was nowhere near enough.
Once more, the Destroyer's already damaged hull was racked by warhead detonations. Fires that had not been extinguished flared up once more, joined by new blazes across the ship. Pieces of hull were blown off the superstructure, sent tumbling to the ground thousands of feet below. Worst of all, vital energy conduits and relays were severed, further exacerbating the power problems on board.
By the time the barrage had ended, the damage had clearly been done. The vessel began to slowly descend from the sky, despite the Navigator's best efforts.
The Navigator let out another snarl of rage, as it felt its vessel enter a steady plummet towards the surface below. There was only one option now – a controlled landing.
The Navigator scanned the approaching land mass below it – in the same island where it had began its original assault. It would have to choose a landing site quickly – it did not have enough power or control left to hover over this small island for much longer.
The Navigator hissed in thought as a holographic map of the island projected in front of it. It manipulated the hologram with its tentacles, zooming into the ideal location. It would need a find a secure base of operations, secluded from large native settlements, fortified by natural defences…
There.
The chosen location was diligently plotted into the navigational systems that still functioned. The Navigator manipulated its tentacles into various bio-mechanical sockets, ensuring maximum power from the engines to reach the chosen destination.
Sure enough, the City Destroyer arrived at its destination swiftly from high altitude, with its engines on emergency acceleration. It moved far too fast for any native missile or aircraft to intercept it.
The area that the Navigator chose for its controlled landing was remote and mountainous, in the far north of the island. The Hive Fleet's reconnaissance pickets had recorded all the natural features of this planet before arrival – terrain that could be used to the advantage the native resistance or by the Hive Fleet's ground forces. The scouts had recorded everything, right down to the names the humans gave for such features.
They had recorded this mountain range too, but the Navigator didn't care what name the natives gave to this land. These mountains would serve as a shelter for a new hive – they belonged to the Swarm now.
With supreme skill and calm that could only be achieved by a collective mind, the gigantic Swarm vessel descended into the mountains. The remaining anti-gravity systems ensured an intact crash landing, as well as the survival of its hellish crew and inhabitants.
Even so, the moment the City Destroyer crash landed felt like an earthquake for miles around. Rock-slides and avalanches were set off in the normally placid mountains around it. Forests of pine and oak trees were uprooted like mere tufts of grass under a colossal shovel. The surrounding woods and moorland echoed to the sound of the sonic boom as the destroyer descended from the sky, and shook with the earth-shattering force of its impact.
The alien leviathan carved a deep scar through the mountainside; a deep, smoking trench that marked its terrible arrival. The ship eventually came to rest in a large valley, surrounded by hills, mountains and moorland. It dominated the majestic landscape like a newly arrived city.
The dark disk-dome had not burst into flames, nor had it broken up. The City Destroyer was as intact as it had been while in flight. Indeed, many of the ship's lights still burned bright in the evening gloom. Further away, the lights burned through the moorland mist like a vast supernatural phenomenon.
Only a handful of stone cottages were scattered around the landscape – their residents would be the only human witnesses to the landing. Upon seeing the crashed ship, lit up in the mist-shrouded valley, these people would flee from the area in terror – though not all would flee in time.
After the ship came to rest, the Navigator performed a status check. Though casualties had been suffered from the crash-landing, the bulk of its brood had survived. Good. It was enough to continue this campaign. There was no question of launching aerial forces now – this would be ground war from now on. The Swarm was more than capable on that front as well.
The Navigator checked which systems were still functioning. Incredibly, the fleet communications system was among them – so the Navigator was able to update itself quickly on the status of all the other survivors on this planet.
Even now, the survivors of the other crashed City Destroyers were battling the native ground forces in multiple engagements. The crew of just one destroyer vessel numbered in the hundreds of thousands – there would be plenty of survivors ready to fight. With its vessel landed intact, the Navigator would have an army at its disposal.
Most intriguing of all, the Navigator saw that the Destroyer that had landed in the great continent to the south was still intact. Furthermore, it was broadcasting a distress beacon into deep space. The signal the beacon transmitted would be picked up by any other Hive Fleet in range.
Quickly, the Navigator established communications with this other landed vessel. Its Navigator also lived – the Hive Mind quickly re-asserted itself as the surviving Swarm across the planet began to co-ordinate.
None of the other Navigator caste had survived. The Master Navigator had perished with the main Hiveship, as had the infant Queen, still in a period of gestation. The entire Hive Fleet was now marooned on this accursed planet.
Yet so long as the two surviving Navigators lived, the strength of the Hive Mind would remain – and an effective resistance could be coordinated. The Navigator co-ordinated with its sibling in the south, and learned that plasma drilling operations were still proceeding in its landing zone.
With time, part of the core and other resources could be extracted from this world. Then the two surviving Destroyers could be repaired, and enough power would be gathered for them to escape into deep space. Then a new splinter Fleet could be reformed, centered on those two Destroyers.
The only way the natives could prevent this would be to somehow kill both of the surviving Navigators. Only then would the Hive Mind diminish enough for the plasma drill to lose power, for all resistance to crumble. With the Navigators dead, the warriors, drones and others beneath them would not be able to function effectively under the leadership of the remaining Protectors.
But the Navigator had no intention of allowing this to happen. It marshaled its forces in its new landing zone. It had a vast army of warriors and machines at its disposal. In the following days, they would be mounting a campaign of conquest in the north of this island.
They would seize what resources and territory they could. They would repair their ship. They would hold off the natives long enough for their comrades in the south to begin extracting the core.
The Swarm would not be defeated.
Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
July 7, 1996
SAS Corporal Chris Stanton put the clear plastic bottle to his lips once more, taking in another mouthful of cool, heavenly water. God knew he needed every drop of it, over these past three days.
Beside him, Lance-Corporal Matt "Geordie" Sharp drew on his cigarette for the hundredth time. Chris did his best to ignore the nicotine fumes – he smoked too, true, but his mate was a bloody chain smoker at times.
Not that Chris could blame him. These past few days had been hell.
When the giant alien City Destroyer had retreated, everyone had been in the mood to celebrate. But the party didn't last long. Everyone had thought that the aliens had been losing the will to fight. True, they had backed off from their assault for an hour or so.
But after that, the remaining enemy ground forces in Belfast rallied and renewed their assault inside the city. The aliens' sole objective, so far as the coalition commanders in Belfast could tell, was simply to inflict as much damage on the human forces as possible before they were all inevitably destroyed by humanity's now superior numbers and firepower.
The alien warriors had waged a bloody urban war in the city throughout the days that followed, inflicting heavy casualties on the British and Irish Army units that tried to dislodge them from Belfast's houses, office blocks and streets, which they fortified with their remaining heavy energy weapons and ground vehicles. Any area of the city the aliens still held was well dug-in and defended – and an urban battle was always slow and messy to end.
During night-time hours, the aliens had also launched sneak attacks under cover of darkness, targeting coalition artillery batteries and supply dumps stationed around Belfast. These raids had seriously impressed the SAS troopers fighting in the city, including Chris, in spite of himself. Using their bio-suited infantry and bizarre fast hover-tanks, the aliens struck with such speed, stealth and skill that they made all the famous SAS raids through that force's history look like child's play. Chris and his fellow troopers would have killed for such proficiency.
The most successful alien raid had been at Belfast International Airport, on the night of July 5th – they had somehow located a large ammunition dump there and destroyed it. The resulting fires and explosions had gone on throughout the night and into the morning, causing considerable damage. Though the entire alien raiding force was tracked down and killed, they took plenty of good men with them. Not one of them would surrender.
Chris just couldn't understand it. What could they gain from fighting on now? All their ships were disabled, so now they were all stuck on the ground. They had no way of even escaping the city or this planet, let alone conquering it.
Then he remembered what these bastards were – warrior ants, which kill anything that gets in their way. How could he expect an enemy like that to surrender? This war would end only one way – with every last alien left on this planet lying in a well-deserved grave.
Chris, Geordie and the numerous other soldiers who had fought at Belfast had been doing their best to make that happen in the past three days. Since the aliens would not surrender and were well dug in, extreme measures had been employed.
Flamethrowers – both official military versions and makeshift examples provided by the IRA – were a common sight during the ground battle in Belfast. Every fireteam or section/squad unit that fought in the city was eventually equipped with a portable flamethrower – it proved to be the most effective and safest way of clearing the alien warriors from any urban strong point.
Sure enough, as the battle wore on, the aliens were either flushed out of the buildings, rooftops, rooms, basements and sewers they garrisoned, or burned or suffocated alive in any place they hid and fought. The screams of aliens burning alive had rung in Chris's ears all too often during this battle. The liquid jets of fire were a weapon they could not escape, and had come to fear. It was a gruelling and gruesome way of waging war – but it got the job done.
The British and Irish soldiers also made extensive use of heavy anti-tank rockets – mostly Milan and Javelin systems – to destroy alien heavy weapons teams stationed in the buildings, as well as their bizarre walkers and hover-tanks that still prowled and fought in the streets. The hisses and explosions of these weapons echoed throughout the city. Wherever the aliens had a heavy plasma cannon stationed in a window or balcony and began firing, a shoulder-fired missile would quickly silence them.
In addition to this vicious and nightmarish infantry war, air operations continued in support of the human ground forces. A US Navy aircraft carrier had arrived just yesterday to provide further air support to the ongoing clean-up operations in Belfast. Aircraft were now flying sorties round the clock, dropping cluster bombs and white phosphorus munitions on alien-held strong points.
The employment of these weapons would cause public controversy for years afterwards – not least because of the damage inflicted on the city and civilian deaths caused by the unexploded cluster munitions. Yet any means necessary would be employed to limit human casualties – and there was a need to ensure that the aliens were crushed quickly. The last thing any human government wanted was for the invaders to succeed in prolonging their war.
Chris knew that the aliens were steadily being eliminated – they now only held out in pockets around Belfast City Airport, where he and his unit had been driven from on the 4th. Now, after three days of bitter fighting, the airport was back in human hands, along with the bulk of the city.
Not that it was much to look at. The Airport buildings were little more than blackened ruins. The taxiways and main runway, and the greens in between them, were now a moonscape of craters. The whole place would probably take years and millions of pounds to clean up.
But now it's ours again. The whole airport had been converted into a staging area for the continued mopping up operations. A huge field hospital had been set up in the ruins of the terminal buildings – that had saved so many lives other the past days. Helicopters landed here and there, bringing in supplies and ammunition and taking on the seriously wounded that needed to be shipped to better facilities elsewhere.
All around the airport, rows of army tents were set up for the thousands of men now stationed here. Supply trucks went to and fro. Tanks, APCs and other heavy fighting vehicles were lined up and parked in straight lines, ready to be sent to the front whenever they were called upon. Chris reckoned they would still be needed – though the aliens only held a few small toeholds, they still had heavy weapons and a few of their own tanks, from what he'd seen during his patrol's engagements with the enemy.
Chris and his comrades had been so caught up in the fighting these past few days that they hadn't had a chance to check on news from the outside world. So when his superior, Troop Sergeant Gary Holmes, called the surviving members of the patrol for a briefing, he was shocked at the news.
"It survived, sir?"
Holmes had cut straight to the chase. The alien City Destroyer had crash landed. According to RAF aerial reconnaissance, it was intact. That meant most of the aliens on board had likely survived. Given the size of that thing, Chris didn't want to think about how many aliens might still be alive.
"You heard me. The bastards are down, but not out. Turns out the rest of the world's been dealing with the same shit we have these past three days. Wherever one of those things crashed or they've landed, they've still been pouring out and putting up a fight on the ground. In Russia, Africa, Australia, the States, China –our boys are fighting on the ground wherever they are. It's still going on now – it'll probably go on for some time yet."
Our boys. Chris liked that. The uniform and the country didn't matter anymore, nor did any of the old wars. If you were human and ready to fight the invaders, then you were one of our boys. Perhaps some good would come out of all this after all. Chris hoped so – it would be a damn shame for everyone for start fighting each other again after this war. Then again, that might just happen too, knowing how stupid humans had been in the past.
"Our one landed intact, though. That means a lot more of them are still going to be alive. From what head-shed is saying, they've already been causing all kinds of hell up north."
Up north? Chris saw Geordie, who was sat next to him, start up on hearing that.
"Where did it land, sir?"
"Scotland, Geordie. The Highlands. They've been pouring out from where they landed. They've taken a good deal of ground already around the crash site – intel reckons there's an army of almost a million up there. These bastards could easily take Scotland if they're not stopped. They've also been using those skimmer tanks of theirs to raid though the country, across the borders into Yorkshire and Cumbria. Edinburgh's being reinforced and evacuated right now."
"Shit!"
The others looked equally pissed off. They'd fought so hard to drive the aliens off in this city, to stay alive. They'd already lost two of their mates, Duncan Baxter and Doug Hatton, during the fighting. Everyone had thought the aliens to be good as dead. As far as they were all concerned, they would help get rid of the aliens still alive in Belfast, and that would be it. The war would be over, and they'd be popping out the champagne.
Now they were being told the war wasn't over. Chris decided once again that this would only end when every last alien on this planet was dead. It really was that simple. They weren't just going to put their hands up and queue to surrender in droves, like a defeated enemy would in a human war.
Even so…Chris couldn't help look around and notice his unit was under-strength. The patrol was down to five now – which wasn't terrible, but it reminded them of the price already paid. Chris wondered how many more of them would die now.
He already had a feeling what their next order would be.
"The bosses expect us to ship out in three hours," Holmes continued. "They've got a plane ready for us and a few other patrols from A and B Squadron. I want you all to have your kit packed ready for then. We'll be flying to Edinburgh, and we'll be part of the counter-assault being mounted from there, straight at that downed ship. You've all done a fine job here in Belfast – we wouldn't have anyone else going up there to fight."
Chris smiled grimly at that. They'd killed plenty of the bastards here – it would be nice to kill some more in Scotland too. It would be even better help destroy or capture that monster vessel of theirs, once and for all. Hopefully, he'd be able to get some news on his family on the flight or when he got to Edinburgh, too. Holmes also displayed a mirthless smile as he finished the little briefing.
"This war is going to go on for a bit longer boys. These fucking aliens are down, but they're still alive and ready to cause trouble wherever they are. The way I see it lads, our job for the next few years will be to keep those alien fuckers dead in the ground where they belong. Any questions? Good. Then get your kit packed."
A/N: With more time on my hands thanks to COVID-19, I will now focus on my writing more. Read and review!