We Will Destroy Your Planet Page 7

  Those of you who have crossed the stars, on the other hand, may have evolved in a completely different biosphere, or one with fewer geological, climatological, or environmental variances. In that case – and especially if this is your first invasion of a planet other than your own – you would be more advised to pay attention to the following.

  FIELDS OF BATTLE

  Because the Earth’s surface environments vary so much, you will need specialist equipment to most effectively operate in them, regardless of your species’ nature and abilities on land.

  Although aerial vehicles allow for travel to any point on the surface of the Earth, they are likely to be very resource-intensive in terms of requiring fuel. Even if the ability to fly is natural to your species, it would still, presumably, be tiring, and there’s no point in being able to swoop in to an area if you’re then too tired to fight effectively. Most importantly, however, life forms on the surface itself will be able to take shelter and conceal themselves by the simple expedient of ducking under cover.

  Buildings constructed in urban areas, ground under forest cover, caves, walkways under overhanging ledges… All of these will provide cover and concealment for native life forms and resources. Sooner or later, therefore, you will have to negotiate ground terrain on Earth, either in person or in vehicles – and most likely both.

  Land vehicles of some kind will, therefore, be advisable, even if your physical abilities make them not technically necessary. Whatever your abilities to adapt to the environment, or to move over terrain, it will almost always be useful to have vehicles that can offer protection from attack by human resistance forces or non-sentient animal life, move more quickly than natural mobility allows, and carry heavier weapons and supplies.

  The size of the vehicle is entirely a matter of your preferred doctrine. For example, you may find that you work best operating with individual vehicles, each acting as a protective covering for a single invader, or you may prefer to deploy in transport or assault vehicles that can carry many troops and supplies to a region where you are operating with your natural mobility. This preference may or may not be influenced by the physical size of your species.

  Individual vehicles may make more sense if the Earth’s gravity or atmospheric pressure is greater than that of your native sphere, or if you lack limbs entirely. Assuming you have limbs for mobility, you may find that powered prostheses will both support your frame against the environment and offer greater speed, strength, and agility than the native humans. This will provide a valuable bonus in any pursuits or melee combat encounters against humans.

  If the Earth’s biosphere is totally inimical, you are going to need life support systems installed in your vehicles – of any size – and environmental controls to maintain the optimum conditions to support each of your individuals while out and about on Earth. This makes larger vehicles more logical, as more of your forces can crew each vehicle, making a better use of whatever resources are required for you to maintain the environmental systems on board.

  There will always be the danger, however, of such a vehicle being damaged or destroyed, or crashing, or malfunctioning in some other way that will lead to the crew and passengers within being exposed to Earth’s biosphere. You will therefore still need emergency life-support equipment to support such stranded individuals.

  This may be enough of a problem to justify using individual vehicles, which should be as form-fitting as possible on the inside, so that the exterior, whatever its form, is effectively an extension of the occupant. This should be more efficient, especially if the vehicle’s external sensors – you will need at least pressure sensors, accelerometers, and temperature sensors – are directly linked to the occupant’s nervous system. In this way, the occupant can feel their surroundings as if they were not inside a vehicle, and so will be able to navigate and respond to situations more quickly and efficiently.

  The actual means of locomotion will be an important choice for vehicles of any size. Given the wide variety of differing terrains on the Earth’s land surfaces, some form of antigravity would be the best option, allowing your forces to move across any type of surface with impunity. Failing this, a form of ground effect cushion – a hovercraft, as vehicles with this feature are called on Earth – is another good choice, allowing free movement over most surfaces, and easy transitions from the land surfaces to water.

  The disadvantage to this form of support is that the vehicle must be quite low, and large obstacles will block movement.

  Wheels are an obvious choice, and should be as sturdy as possible. The larger the tyres, and the more variable their pressure, the more variety of surface conditions can be traversed. Lowering pressure within larger tyres will allow them to travel over far rougher surfaces, even including fallen trees or plains of stones up to the size of small boulders. Even then, slopes with large boulders or fissures, and forested areas with heavy tree growth, will still be problematic.

  Segmented tracks are quite useful for covering many types of terrain, but you must be careful to ensure that the wheels are each given a separate suspension, with as much leeway as possible, especially on the vertical axis. A minimum of three wheels on each side of the vehicle is recommended, even for small single-occupancy vehicles, with the wheels arranged in a triangle. The uppermost wheel should be at least as high as the fore-and-aft wheels are apart, and if the whole arrangement of wheels on each side can also turn and/or rotate as a unit, then so much the better. Such an arrangement should give better steering and navigation ability.

  If the whole triumvirate of wheels can rotate as a single unit, and especially if each wheel is able to be moved closer to or further from the centre on some telescopic mount, you should be able to arrange for a greater climbing ability, both on stairs and exterior natural surfaces.

  The most versatile form of locomotion for travelling on Earth’s land surfaces, however, is a set of legs. Legs offer far, far more variability in the types of terrain they can cover, and also offer the advantage that it is possible to construct mechanical legs without having to use wheels anywhere. The joints can use spherical sockets, flexible materials, or hydraulics to move.

  Ideally there should be at least three legs, and preferably four or more. Despite the bipedal nature of humanity, the bipedal form is actually inherently unstable (bipeds are designed to essentially keep moving forward, rather than even stand still). Although evolution has led bipedal species to use all of their senses in maintaining the optimum posture, it has always proved far more difficult to balance a mechanical device on two legs and make it walk with any degree of speed or stability. If you have the technology to do so, however, then feel free, as the psychological effect of seeing giant-sized humanoid figures wandering around will be effective in giving humans pause. In fact, some societies on Earth are so taken with the idea of piloted mechanical giants that they may even be persuaded to join your side just for the chance to interact with them. Failing that, they may at least be lulled into a false sense of security, and thus lured to an easy defeat while they stop to admire your handiwork.

  For a better solution, four legs is more likely to be a workable system, though it would be something of a mistake to have them patterned after humanoid legs, with all four central joints aligned in the same direction. In fact, the optimum arrangement for a four-legged mechanism would have the central joints – the knees – in the opposite positions for the front and rear legs. As with the majority of quadripedal mammals you will find on the Earth, the central joint of the rear legs should be aligned to have their apex at the rear.

  Even human cyberneticists have realized this, and begun to construct autonomous transport machines to this pattern, given the name ‘Big Dog’.

  More legs still are also a viable option; most terrestrial insects have six, and arachnids have eight, and all are particularly manoeuvrable and adept at traversing even the most complex surfaces. Psychological effects on human witnesses and opponents can again be exploited here, as most huma
ns have a revulsion to insectoid or arachnid forms, and utilizing such forms will not only be efficient, but frighten many humans into either not approaching to harm you, or making mistakes in their counterattacks.

  You can choose whether to have weapons built in to the vehicles, or simply have the vehicle equipped with manipulator arms capable of utilizing weapons it picks up. The former approach is more reliable, with a solid mounting for whatever weapon, and means you can have the energy supply and/or ammunition supply integral to the vehicle itself. On the other hand, something capable of picking up whatever weapon or tool is necessary at the time – without the need for physical modifications – obviously offers more variety and adaptability. You will need to plan in advance whether you are more concerned with security and reliability, or with the ability to adapt to fluid circumstances.

  The type of power source you use – and this applies equally to air and sea vehicles as well as those on land – should be both long-lasting, renewable, and not dependent on being refuelled or recharged in your secure areas or at home. While you will obviously not want the humans to be able to reactivate any vehicles or power units you use, there will be more chance of losing such vehicles to them if they run out of power in human-controlled areas, and can’t get back to you.

  It is recommended to use one of the following means of power for your terrestrial vehicles:

  1) Some form of miniature fusion reactor, or equivalent. This will be relatively clean, last for years without refuelling or recharging, and can be used as a self-destruct weapon if in danger of being captured.

  2) Local fuel sources such as electric motors, diesel or petrol. These are more crude, and you may have destroyed the production facilities in any pre-invasion bombardment, but they have the advantage of not advancing the human technology if they are captured. On the other hand, they can be used against humans if captured, and, on the gripping hand, if you’re coming from a parallel Earth this will be familiar technology that will work with your existing vehicles.

  3) Bioelectric or psychokinetic power drawn from the occupant(s). This has the advantage of being unstealable, lasting as long as there is an occupant, and not being subject to EMP attack or other energy-draining effects.

  The most fundamental and important rule of vehicles for travelling on Earth – especially vehicles designed for a single snug occupant – however, is this: Do not rely on small wheels or castors, because there is basically nowhere on the planet, other than some of the better-maintained roads, upon which such a wheel will roll more than a few inches.

  ATMOSPHERIC SUPERIORITY

  There is a big difference between space superiority and air superiority within the Earth’s atmosphere. Space superiority can be maintained with stationary vessels, and the ability to conduct orbital bombardments. Air superiority requires constant movement, either very quickly, with great agility, or in such a way to avoid detection. Air superiority means being able to control traffic in the atmosphere and use that control to exert force upon the surface and upon other atmospheric traffic.

  Air superiority is a misleading subject for the tactical planners of an invasion of Earth, or any other planet. In particular, if you have a fleet of starships in orbit it may be tempting to assume that you have air superiority handled. After all, you came who knows how far, you can observe everything that happens in the atmosphere below, and you can target anything moving down there, can’t you?

  Well, not necessarily. For one thing, it all depends on what weapons technology you brought with you. If you only brought strategic missiles, or mass-drivers, or some form of artillery designed for engagements between capital ships, then you will have a problem. Depending on the ship(s) you have as strategic/tactical support, your weapons systems simply may not be able to hit a manoeuvrable aircraft below, for example. Strategic weaponry simply isn’t suited to quick reactions and the flow of an aerial combat.

  If you have no backup in orbit, you will also require air superiority for the strategic bombing component of your attack, if you have one. So, you are going to need to dip into the atmosphere in order to establish superiority there.

  Strategic bombardment does not just mean dropping rocks from orbit, however effective that may be. Clearly you can assault surface targets with many forms of ordnance, be they bombs, missiles or meteors, and whether they be delivered from orbit, launched from surface installations, or delivered by aircraft. There are many practical reasons for the application of strategic bombardment – to destroy military or manufacturing infrastructure, prevent gathering of insurgent forces, deny areas to enemy forces, and so forth – but one thing it is not suitable for is reducing the population’s will to resist.

  Historically, the military forces of various native terrestrial nation-states have often used strategic bombardment for exactly this purpose, but, historically, it has never worked to that purpose. In every recorded instance, the survivors of the bombed population have in fact simply become more determined to resist.

  Therefore, use your strategic weapons as you desire for the practical purposes mentioned above – or indeed simply to eliminate large numbers of the local populace – but if your intent is to reduce their will to resist, then you will be wasting your time using this method.

  For both the interception of other aircraft and fast precision attacks on small ground targets, you will need a faster, more manoeuvrable type of craft. Machines suitable for one individual occupant are best, as they can be smaller, faster, and more agile, and carry a decent weapons load.

  The weapons load will vary according to whether a craft is optimized for strategic bombing, tactical ground attack, or interception of other aircraft. Currently on Earth, most airborne combats take place at long range, with missiles launched from miles – sometimes even tens of miles – away. The requirement for manoeuvrability in human-built aircraft, therefore, has more to do with the need to avoid inbound missiles than to follow a target around for a close-up attack. Depending on the nature of the weapons you mount on your atmospheric craft, this may not be the case for you.

  If you fit your interceptors with light-based energy weapons, the beam should reach the target pretty much instantaneously, considering the distances involved, and so agility will be less of a requirement. If you fit projectile or particle weapons that require visible time to reach the target, or are affected by wind, gravity, or the scattering properties of moisture in the atmosphere, then you will need both speed and agility in order to get closer to your target for a higher probability of a kill.

  You will also need greater agility if you intend to either rely on using part of your aeroform as a weapon – for example using a strengthened wing leading-edge as a blade to sever parts of other aircraft – or if you intend to operate at low altitudes where there is a need to avoid buildings, foliage, or geological structures.

  Note that human-built aircraft tend to be relatively lightweight and therefore fragile. It does not take a large warhead or a large amount of energy impact to damage one beyond its ability to remain flying. Since your aim should be to eliminate as many enemy craft as possible to attain victory in the skies, there is no need for overkill. Calculate your weapon load to give you the best chance to hit more enemies, rather than fewer chances to do more damage to one. Also bear in mind that, with the object of victory in mind, it is the enemy aircraft you must prioritize, not the pilot (if there is one), so it is not a problem if the pilot survives the destruction of his or her machine.

  You may find that you can use the same vehicles as close support craft both in and out of the planetary atmosphere, but this may present difficulties, depending on your systems of motive power and steering.

  In the atmosphere, your best mode of steering a fast atmospheric vehicle will be through the use of ailerons and control surfaces built into a lifting body. In other words, you will need a vehicle design capable of being held aloft by the pressure of the air passing under it, and which can be steered by altering the surfaces in such a way as to chan
ge how much lift, or in what direction, the airflow gives you.

  This is very different from in vacuum, where there is no pressure to steer against, and space-superiority fighters need manoeuvring thrusters and reaction control units for changes of orientation and direction. Your atmospheric craft will require aerofoils and rudders, and will not be able to simply spin around on the spot.

  Let’s get the disappointing bit out of the way first; saucers are not a good shape for this type of craft, if you are building aircraft locally. Unless you have a solid, stable, antigravity propulsion for saucers, then leave them at home, as they will basically be suicide machines in the atmosphere, prone to flipping, tumbling, and crashing. However, if you have stable antigravity and do bring along saucers for atmospheric combat, you will find they give a psychological advantage, at least before your attack becomes widely known, as humans will find it difficult to believe your saucers are actually flying in their airspace, and be reluctant to report an engagement for fear of being considered to be hallucinating.

  For high-speed aircraft, you will be better off with a delta shape, with a slim point at the front. The wingspan should be less than the overall nose-to-tail length of the craft, to reduce air resistance. For manoeuvrability of ground attack aircraft, and those operating at lower altitudes as close-support in combat areas, try larger wing areas, with a wingspan wider than the length of the craft. This will give greater stability at slow speeds, and a tighter turning circle.

  You will also need a tail with a rudder for steering to one side or the other, and movable flaps on the trailing edges of the wings, for climbing, diving, and tilting to the side.