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SODIUM Trilogy Part One

Page 42

by Stephen Arseneault


  The remaining eighteen fighters over Atlanta dove and pummeled ground targets and then swooped back after the remaining Defenders. The chaos of battle was almost overwhelming. We managed to take out another four fighters before the last of our ground-based weapons was eliminated. The aliens had taken out one more of our Defenders.

  I ran cover and came in close on our attacks as we took out two more alien fighters. Just as we had adapted our tactics, the aliens changed theirs. The dozen fighters all turned on us at once. The coordinated attack took out our third remaining Defender. It was now just us and the girls in A277.

  We shot straight skyward in an attempt to lure the fighters from the city. They feinted a follow and then turned quickly back to their destruction.

  With another sweeping pass, we took out another fighter. Then, A277 took a hard hit that knocked out four of their rings and their active skin. A final salvo from their guns took out one more fighter before they turned to flee. My girls were out of the fight, leaving us to defend against the ten remaining alien fighters. Even with the extra power of our second reactor, we would not last long.

  When six of the fighters maneuvered toward me, I had to push full on the throttle to squeeze out of their trap. Another hard hit took our shield to 92 percent saturation. In my slow-turning Defender with no other help, I was out of moves. The aliens were becoming skilled at evading my hit-and-run attempts. They continued to ravage the suburbs of Atlanta and all who had sought shelter there.

  When the darkest moment of dread was upon us, our consoles lit up with green blips. In a last-ditch effort, the Tacticians had launched our conventional fighter aircraft. They were no match for the alien fighters, but they brought a distraction that allowed my crew to operate. As the brave airmen of the USAF, USMC, and USN sacrificed their lives over Atlanta in a gesture of bravery that I will never forget, we began to eliminate the remaining enemy fighters one by one.

  When the clock struck noon, the battle for Atlanta was over. Our small battle had been won, but at tremendous cost. More than eight million souls had been lost below us. Our orders quickly came in to divert to Chicago to continue the fight. There would be no rest for the weary.

  I pushed the throttle to full, and within five minutes we were doing battle with another sixteen alien fighters. Only three other Defenders remained. We made our first pass and eliminated two fighters. On the next sweep we took out two more. The remaining dozen then suddenly turned and headed back skyward toward their carrier.

  We continued to make runs as they retreated. One more fighter fell before we got pinched between two gravity weapons. Our shields went to 102 percent.

  We lost three of our BHD rings, with the remaining two taking damage. The safety fuse in our second reactor blew, filling our cabin with smoke and eliminating our shields and active skin.

  I cut hard away from the fighters and almost blacked out from the sudden effects of inertia. I looked for an immediate place to land. There were plenty, as most of Chicago had been flattened.

  We set down hard in the parking lot of what had once been a thriving community grocery store. The back hatch opened and the smoke from the blown circuits roiled out. We had made it out alive, but not before the City of Big Shoulders and many others lay largely in ruin. Fire raged in every direction. Mrs. O'Leary's cow had done nothing compared to the devastation that lay all around us.

  I attempted to contact Battle Command at Regents Field but got no response. I tried repeatedly to raise Paige, but the silence was the same. I wondered if any other Defenders had survived other than the three we had come to assist.

  They had been redirected to another destination as soon as the alien fighters retreated. The comm channels were jammed with individual pilot chatter. Command had broken down. I questioned the team, and the only conclusion they could draw was that Regents Field might have been taken out... along with the chamber.

  My heart sank as I thought of the possibility of Paige's death. I had gone into battle feeling that at least she would be secure in the underground rock fortress. Perhaps I was wrong.

  Once the smoke cleared, Pop got to work on making our craft flightworthy. The blown circuits for the reactor were bypassed and the two somewhat-functioning BHD rings inspected. It would be risky, but we could fly. The immediate choice was to go back to Regents Field. When we lifted off, I pushed what throttle we had to full.

  We passed over Denver on our way back to the Nevada desert. Smoke plumes billowed high, placing a dramatic haze over the adjacent Rockies. On final approach to Regents Field, it was as we had guessed... complete devastation. The hangars had been flattened. The administration buildings flattened. Anything that had once been sitting on the tarmac had seen the same fate.

  We landed beside our hangar. There were no people in sight... only flattened piles of debris. The elevators and the tunnel that headed off to who knows where were buried under the rubble. I again tried all comm channels in an attempt to raise Battle Command and the chamber. Again there was nothing but silence.

  The chaotic pilot chatter had died down. The remaining alien fighters had retreated to the safety of their carrier. Whip got on her console and began to coordinate with the other pilots to return to Regents Field.

  Even if there was nothing left, we needed a rally point, and Regents Field was as good as any. Within half an hour, the twenty-two other remaining Defenders joined us on the tarmac. Three were heavily damaged.

  One of the crews had followed the retreating fighters back to their carrier. They had seventy-six fully functioning craft and thirty-six that appeared damaged. Their robotic assistants were no doubt busily at work making repairs. We had eighty-eight crewmen left to do battle with this titanic vessel and its hundred or so fighters that remained. It was impossible odds.

  We had no weapons except for our coil guns. We had no command coordination for an attack. We each wondered just how long it would take before the aliens mounted another assault.

  After evaluation, two of the damaged Defenders were deemed unfit to do battle. The decision was made to scrap them for spare parts. The design of the Defenders was such that they were extremely simplistic and modular. Parts could easily be removed and fitted to another craft with the small set of tools that each Defender carried.

  Pop got to work on stripping the circuits for our second reactor while Bigg and Whip changed out BHD rings. Within an hour Defender A55 was once again battle ready.

  But, we still had no plan. No one in command. Arguments were beginning to break out over heated discussions of what we would do next. At that moment I made a decision. I stepped into the small crowd of Defender crewmen and let it be known that I was now in charge.

  I split the crewmen into groups for quiet discussion. Two groups of each type of crewman were quickly organized. I gave direction to discuss any and all possible options. No arguments. No raised voices. I gave a speech about how everything was still on the line. Billions of citizens were still counting on our ability to defend. Our families, friends, and fellow countrymen needed our help now more than ever.

  If we were to fail, everything would be lost. It was the talk everyone needed to hear. Soon afterward the groups were hashing out possible scenarios of the options before us. As the discussions proceeded, Pop came to me with an idea. He could mount a third reactor in our Defender. We could also double up on the BHD rings.

  He thought it might give us a shot at punching through the much stronger gravity wave being put out by the carrier. If we could take out the carrier, we had a much better shot at the war of attrition General Buck had contemplated.

  I then asked Whip to calculate a speed at which our active skin could handle hitting the carrier head on. I asked, what if we made our Defender into a Driller of sorts? Whip typed feverishly at her console and within minutes came back with the answer. It might be possible. It was not the answer I wanted to hear, but it looked like we were out of options.

  I then made the command decision. Defender A55, with three re
actors and ten BHD rings, would fly outward from the planet, turn, and then accelerate back toward the carrier at more than light speed. We would pass Jupiter and then turn behind its cover. If we reached light speed before coming from behind the planet, we could fly right into the alien carrier before they saw us coming.

  It was a kamikaze run. And, it was our only hope. Before I had a chance to finalize the plan, the pilot of A224 scrambled to her Defender. We all watched in wonder as the door to the craft closed and the active skin powered up.

  With only the pilot on board, Defender A224 lifted off and headed straight up. Word from the pilot soon came over the comm. She was putting my plan into action. If she was unable to make it through upon impact, then so be it. She could at least do damage.

  I tried to convince her that it was suicide without the extra shielding provided by our triple reactors, but she did not care. Her defensive specialist came over with the reason why. Her husband and children had been in Boston when the battle began. She had nothing to go home to. She reasoned that perhaps her sacrifice could show us if the plan would work without sacrificing those who had something to live for.

  Pop then reminded me of just how long it would take for her to enact her plan. It would be at least six hours before she was able to achieve light speed. So, six hours out and six hours back.

  With our added rings, we could do the trip in its entirety before she turned her ship around. I then ordered my crew to stand down. They were off duty. I would be flying alone. There was no sense in all of us dying if the attempt was a failure. But, my crew would have none of it. They each pushed past me and boarded A55. I could not have been prouder.

  I then barked the order for a new commander of the group to step up. Three crewmen did so. I selected the eldest among them with the hope that he would be the most experienced. I gave command over to him and then had a final word for the rest. I told them if this failed, it would fall to them to do their best. To fight for Earth and all who were on it.

  As I turned back to board the Defender, several crewmen shouted out in support. I sat in my chair and connected in as the door closed on the cheers behind us. We lifted off and immediately went to full throttle. The readouts on my holo-gauges moved much faster than before. We programmed in the flight plan and seconds later were greeted with our friendly, familiar countdown timer.

  As we sped away from the planet, the monitors gave us our first look at the rallying alien craft. Half were in flight, buzzing about the carrier’s protected space, while the rest remained docked. We sped outward in a wide arc, ever accelerating. Instead of a straight trip out and back, it was determined that a giant loop would allow us to continue to build speed all the way to our target.

  The counter ticked away from two hours, twelve minutes. Pop worked feverishly at his console while we accelerated toward our destiny. I asked what he was planning, but only received silence. I looked at the others, whose responses were shrugs.

  With just over an hour remaining, Pop sat back in his chair. He apologized for the silence and told us of his efforts. He had reprogrammed the power split to instantly divert to the active skin if it was reaching its limit or to divert excess from the active skin to the BHD if available.

  He also sent a new course to my console. He reasoned that if we were going to hit this thing, we wanted to do it endwise: fly in one end and out the other to inflict the maximum possible damage.

  The new course for the attack was laid in and the timer recalculated to add the needed extra four seconds. Whip then presented an idea of her own. We could fire all four coil guns in a spread pattern just before we entered the carrier. She was not even sure what would happen when they were fired at that speed, but she quipped that if the physics held, the tungsten pellets would do major damage of their own.

  We all sat back in our chairs as the timer ticked down to thirty minutes, then ten, and finally three. As the counter continued to run, I thought about Paige. Was she alive? Injured? Had she perished along with so many others? And what of all the destruction? Would we be able to recover and rearm before the bulk of the alien fleet arrived?

  My head was spinning as the final seconds ticked away. In a flash, the tiny Earth grew large and then small again. My console showed that the coil guns had indeed fired. We had passed completely through the eight-kilometer-long ship in twenty-six millionths of a second. I checked the readouts, and the shields had hit 96 percent.

  I looked at the high-speed video feed from our sensors, but the frame rate was not fast enough to capture any impact. We had a blurred image on approach, but the image on regress was too distant to tell if anything was there.

  I then flipped the ship’s direction and had Pop divert all available power toward the BHD. It would be another two hours before we would be back within range of our sensors.

  The wait was agonizing. Had we missed the target altogether? If so, then why did the shields spike momentarily to 96 percent? And what of our coil gun rounds? The ride back was again silent, and my thoughts once again turned toward Paige. For nearly two hours I sat contemplating what I would do if she had not survived.

  I had lived my whole life bouncing about from relationship to relationship before meeting her. She was everything I had ever wanted and more than I had ever dreamed of finding. Would life be worth living afterward, knowing what had been taken from me? I decided the answer was yes. David Brenner had thought so. Earth was worth defending, if only for the purpose of exacting revenge on our alien attackers.

  If Epsilon Eridani was their home, I wanted to journey there and wreak havoc on their world. An eye for an eye was forefront in my mind. After reaching the halfway point on our return, I flipped again and we began to decelerate. In less than an hour, we would know the fate of our mission.

  With ten minutes remaining, our sensor resolution was such that we should see the aftermath of our efforts. There was no eight-kilometer ship hovering just above Earth's atmosphere. Had it moved? Had it left? And what about the fighters? As we got closer, seventeen blips lit up our displays. They were green blips!

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  The new commander came online first to congratulate us. The alien carrier and all the fighters were now history. They quickly piped a video feed to our consoles so we could watch. The back three-quarters of the alien ship just rolled up and vanished, while the remaining quarter first imploded, then exploded forward following our path. The destruction of the carrier brought with it a shock wave that disabled all but two of the remaining fighters. Our seventeen Defenders made short work of them and made sure the others would never fly again.

  It was a tremendous victory. Any immediate threat from the invaders was now gone. But, the celebration was short lived, as we were now faced with a much more formidable force that would be upon us in less than two years, along with a massive cleanup and recovery from the destruction that had been laid upon us.

  My attention turned to Paige. Was she alive, and how could I find her? I gave the order for all ships to return their crews to their loved ones. We would attempt to rally back at what was once Regents Field in three days unless otherwise directed.

  I first set down in Orlando to drop off Pop. Then it was off to Seattle to drop Whip with her family. Bigg and I returned to Regents Field in an attempt to access the chamber. Along with Paige, Bigg's son was also there.

  After a short excursion attempting to dig through the rubble, we again boarded our Defender and made our way to Area 51. The buildings were intact. I set the Defender down outside the building I had been taken through during my first visit to the chamber. Two guards came out to greet us.

  I asked about the chamber, and neither one knew what I was referring to. I then asked for their commanding officer and was escorted inside. The security officer on detail had no knowledge of what was beyond the elevator on their floor. He did a quick bio-scan of Bigg and me and allowed us passage.

  Once down to the next level, we again worked our way through the sec
urity levels before finally arriving at the floor that contained the shuttle and its tunnel. The floor officer had bad news. The tunnel had collapsed at some point along the line, prohibiting any further access to the chamber from that point. I asked if there were other access points, to which the officer responded that he did not know.

  I asked if he had an idea of how far down the tunnel the blockage was and if there were any crews tending to it. He replied that no one had approached it from this end, so he was unaware of any rescue efforts. Everything had happened so fast, and the level of destruction of the areas that were hit was so complete, that information about and coordination of any rescue efforts was just trickling out.

  The floor officer checked the messages on his console and pulled up a status report he had just received. The blocked area was 648 miles down the tunnel. I turned to Bigg and remarked that if we could draw a 650-mile radius circle around Area 51, we should find a spot where the aliens had attacked.

  We hurried back to the surface to our waiting Defender. Bigg punched in the parameters, and a map popped up on our displays. The nearest city to the circle was Denver, an almost exact match.

  We quickly flew to Denver and began to search for the remains of any military surface facility at the 648-mile mark. The area in question had not been touched. Five miles to the east was utter devastation. I then checked our battle logs for other skirmishes. A dozen fighters had been directed at the Grand Tetons before returning to assist with the assault on Denver.

  We made haste to scout their targeted area. At the western base of the southernmost Teton, there was an area of ground almost a mile in diameter where it was evident that the alien fighters had used their gravity wave weapon. We circled for half an hour looking for any evidence of other roadways or tunnel entrances. None were to be found.

 

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