The Unlikely Defenders

by Scott Haworth

  As the flight reached the French coastline they encountered their first aliens. A group of three hundred pods descended past them rapidly.

  “And just how the fuck are we supposed to attack those?” Blythe, Daniel’s veteran wingman, asked over the radio.

  Good question, Daniel thought. The pods were going far too fast to chase. A missile lock would be nearly impossible, especially given their small size.

  Daniel looked down at his radar. Other fighters were starting to emerge at the edge of the screen towards the north east. He was about to order the flight to alter course when Johnson’s frantic call came over the radio:

  “Bandits! Bandits!”

  Daniel rolled his eyes. He checked his radar screen again to make sure he had not missed anything. “Johnson, if you’ll be so kind to check your display I believe you’ll find those are friendly fighters. You see quite a few years back we signed a pact with some lovely chaps known as the French and the Germans. We created what is lovingly referred to as a European Union. You probably remember. It was in all the papers.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Johnson replied sheepishly.

  “No, no. Glad you’re paying attention at least,” Daniel responded, his voice still filled with sarcasm.

  “Fighting alongside Jerry,” Blythe said. “My grandfather is spinning in his grave.”

  “Now, now,” Daniel joked. “You mustn’t say such things. They’re all a bunch of peace-loving chaps now,” Daniel said. He inspected his radar screen once more. “And I think they’ve found something to shoot at.”

  The British fighters increased speed and turned to investigate what the Germans and French were doing. Within a few seconds unidentified aircraft began to appear on Daniel’s radar screen. There were a half dozen at first, but as the range decreased the number increased to fifty. Given the time it took to close the distance, Daniel and his flight got an added advantage. They were able to watch as the other human jets engaged the enemy ships.

  “Can’t be that tough,” Blythe said confidently. “The French are still in the air after all.”

  This brought a round of approval from the rest of the flight.

  “All right lads nothing fancy. We’ll dive on the closest group. Caution is the key until we see what they’re capable of. Tally-ho!” Daniel announced.

  When the squadron reached weapons range Daniel led the group down towards a flight of eighteen Kessiam ships. Daniel fired off an ASRAAM missile at his target. The other three harriers followed suit. Within a few seconds all four had hit their targets. Four small Kessiam ships exploded and fell towards the ground. The rest of the Kessiam ships did not react. Impressed by the first volley, Daniel’s flight launched another round of missiles with the same result. As the eighth Kessiam fighter fell to the ground, the rest of the flight finally reacted. The remaining alien ships slowly broke off in all different directions.

  “What the hell are they doing?” asked Blythe.

  “Breaking formation,” answered Daniel skeptically. Nothing about the aliens was making sense. Daniel had expected to be at a serious disadvantage against the alien technology. As of yet he had not seen anything impressive. Now they were scattering when they should have been sticking together and engaging. Wherever they were from, the basic principles of air to air combat were apparently lost on them.

  Daniel made a slight heading adjustment to follow one of the Kessiam fighters. Blythe stayed a short distance behind and to the right, covering Daniel. With its back towards the Harrier and no friendly support, the Kessiam ship became an easy third victim for Daniel. He proceeded to bank right and target another enemy ship. His fourth and final ASRAAM missile knocked it from the sky. With his missiles expended, Daniel dropped back to let Blythe take point.

  Blythe came dangerously close to colliding with another fighter as he anxiously zoomed ahead.

  “Mind the French, Blythe,” Daniel warned.

  Blythe responded affirmatively and continued to maneuver behind another enemy ship. After a few minutes he was also out of missiles. His success rate was the same as Daniel’s.

  Daniel took the opportunity to check on the other section of his squadron. What he saw disturbed him. “Johnson! Stay with your fucking wingman!”

  In his zeal to attack Johnson had strayed dangerously far from the fourth member of the flight. He was well out of range of Daniel and Blythe, and a Kessiam fighter was now maneuvering behind him.

  “Bandit on your tail, Johnson!” Daniel warned.

  Johnson’s Harrier banked hard to the right but it was no use. The Kessiam fighter unleashed a blinding volley of energy blasts. The Harrier was torn apart, leaving only small pieces to fall back to the Earth.

  Bloody idiot, Daniel thought to himself. He ordered the other member of his flight to disengage and rendezvous with him and Blythe. He took a moment to check his fuel gauge as he waited for the flight to reform. His radar screen showed the French planes finishing off the last of the Kessiam fighters in the vicinity. By the time the other Harrier joined the group, the radar screen had changed dramatically.

  “Jesus Christ,” Blythe whispered through the radio. “We’re going to need some more missiles.”

  Daniel switched his weapon indicator from missiles to his Harrier’s 25mm cannon. He ordered his flight of three to join into a larger formation with the French and the German fighters. The European fighters organized just east of the French coastal city of Dieppe. The combined formation contained twenty-seven fighter jets. They turned north and headed towards a Kessiam formation containing over six hundred ships.

  At the age of twenty Daniel’s father had finally started to treat him as an adult. There had been years of unpleasantness, particularly when Daniel had become a teenager. Daniel knew it had been his fault. As a teenager he had been disrespectful and insubordinate. His father’s new admiration was a clear sign that he had finally gotten on the right path.

  “How much longer do you have at college now?” Daniel’s father asked.

  “Still another year and a half,” Daniel answered for the umpteenth. He did not mind. He could understand his father’s eagerness for him to graduate.

  “That’ll fly by,” his father said reassuringly. “With your grades you’ll have no trouble getting into the Air Force.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Daniel started. He paused for a moment. He was reluctant to bring the topic up as he was unsure of how his father would react. He decided how to word it diplomatically and continued. “I’ve been thinking about the Navy.”

  “The Navy?” his father responded in such a way that it was unclear initially whether he approved or disapproved. “Would you still be going into aviation?”

  “Yes, sir. If anything it’s more difficult since I’ll be operating off of a carrier. With the current state of things I’ll have a better shot to see combat in the Navy than in the Air Force,” Daniel responded. He poured over the reasons quickly, desperate to win his father’s approval.

  Daniel’s father did not speak immediately. He sat calmly in the house he and his family had lived in for decades. It had been Daniel’s childhood home and had not changed much in the last twenty years. It was by no means extravagant, but it had plenty of space for a family of three. Daniel’s father had stayed in the Air Force after WWII which allowed for a steady, albeit modest, income.

  There was a wood burning fireplace against the far wall of the living room which was never used. His father had always said it was too much of a hassle. The mantel above the fireplace was centered below a large oil painting of a Spitfire fighter plane. To the left and right the various medals and citations his father had accumulated were prominently displayed.

  “I think that’s a splendid idea,” his father said after what seemed like an eternity.

  Daniel slumped down into his chair in relief. He had not been thinking about the Navy so much as he had already made up his mind. He had rehearsed the sales pitch he would use on his father for months. It was essential that his father a
pproved of his decision or else that decision would have to be altered. Given his father’s love for the Air Force, Daniel had been worried that any alteration in his own plans would be met with hostility. Luckily his father had agreed with him. Daniel knew he would still be following in his father’s footsteps despite this slight change of plans.

  There was an awkward silence after the decision had been approved. With school and future plans out of the way, there was little else for the two men to discuss.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time my engine stalled over Portsmouth?” his father asked after a little while.

  “Not that I recall,” Daniel lied. He had already heard the story at least a half dozen times over the course of his life. His father liked to tell it though, and he still enjoyed listening.

  “It was just after I had become an Ace now that I think about it,” his father started. “That’s a good story too. My fifth kill was a real sonvabitch. A group of BF-109’s got the jump on us when we were after a flight of their bombers. Two of them jumped right down on me! I banked and rolled like a mad man and when I looked back one of the fighters was still on me. Now don’t let anyone ever tell you that the Focke-Wulf was the best German fighter in the war. If you put a good pilot behind it, like the sonvabitch who was chasing me, the BF-109 was every bit as lethal. Now anyway, I was able to roll in front of another member of my flight. Tuttle, I think his name was. Bought it over the channel a few months after that, the poor chap.”

  Daniel’s father paused for a second. He was not overwhelmed with sadness for his fallen comrade. He felt he needed the pause to show respect to the deceased. “Anyway, what was I saying?”

  “Shaking the Jerry pilot,” Daniel added helpfully.

  “Right, good,” his father said, regaining his train of thought. “The German anticipated the maneuver and broke off before Tuttle could make a run on him. Smart chap, real smart. Anyway, to cut the story short, Tuttle and I performed a series of maneuvers, brilliant ones if I do say so myself, and eventually I was able to get behind him. Watched his plane fall all the way down. No parachute,” he added with a wicked smile.

  Daniel’s father ended his story and stared down into his cup of tea.

  After a few seconds Daniel reluctantly spoke up, “What about the stall over Portsmouth?”

  “Oh, that!” his father exclaimed, turning back towards Daniel. “Smashing story. After I got my fifth kill I was flying over Portsmouth and my bloody Spitfire’s engine just cut out. I hadn’t taken any damage in the dogfight… wasn’t trying to climb. I was just flying perfectly level and it stalls out on me. Fell three thousand feet before I got the engine revving again. I was so low I felt like I could reach out and touch the buildings. Bet I gave the good people down there quite a fright too,” he ended with a chuckle. “But that’s nothing compared to the time I brought my plane home all shot up. They found twenty-nine bullet holes in her! Did I ever tell you that story?”

  “No, Dad,” Daniel lied again.

  Chapter Four

  Abhaya Singh was already in bed even though it was only about nine in the evening. She usually slept at least ten hours a day. An extra two hours were spent in bed trying to fall asleep. She had little excitement in her life. The only exercise she got was pacing from room to room. At the end of the day she was rarely tired.

  The twilight between activity and sleep was the worst part of Abhaya’s day. It was in these few hours that she most often relived the tragedy of her husband’s death. She would try to distract herself and think of happier memories. Her mind always wandered back to the fateful day though, while her hatred festered and grew.

  This night she received a distraction, but it was not a welcome one. The sonic booms of the Kessiam pods speeding through the night’s sky erupted violently. She shot straight up in her bed before rolling off of it. Pain shot through Abhaya’s shoulder as she hit the floor of her bedroom. She grabbed the bed frame and tried to pull herself underneath the bed. The bed was too low to the ground, and she was only able to wedge a quarter of her body under it. Too terrified to think clearly, she gave up and stayed in that position. The number of sonic booms increased.

  Pakistan! Her thought. The fucking Muslims have started a war!

  After a few minutes the sonic booms tapered off and finally stopped. Abhaya did not dare to move from her position. She did not feel safe as she was mostly exposed beside her bed. Paralyzed by fear, she refused to find a safer position or investigate the noises.

  Unbeknownst to Abhaya, a single Kessiam fighter pilot was soaring towards her home. The pilot had launched with the first wave of the smaller Kessiam pods. The wave had attacked without orders from the commander of the fleet, Anarcmy. In any human society the action would have been considered taking the initiative at best and disregarding the chain of command at worst. For the Kessiams, waiting for an order to take an action was more out of the ordinary than simply acting alone.

  Given the ambiguous chain of command the fighter pilot had a rather serious problem. He had no idea what he should be attacking. If there was a strategy for conquering New Mortair he had not been informed of it. Until a few hours before he did not even know he would be attacking the planet. It had been assumed that the planet was devoid of intelligent life. The original idea was for the fighters to stay in their mother ships during the initial stage of colonization.

  He circled Chennai several times without incident. No one was shooting at him. He was far too eager to let a simple lack of targets complicate his mission. He decided all the buildings were fair game and began his attack run. Diving down ten thousand feet, he compressed the button on his joystick as he zoomed over a row of houses. The energy blasts from his four cannons tore through the buildings.

  In an instant half of Abhaya’s house was gone. Shattered pieces of the roof fell down towards her like snowflakes. With her left arm wedged under the bed, she did her best to shield her face with her right. A large chunk of the roof fell down onto the mattress where she had just been. She closed her eyes and screamed. She expected to be dead in short order. When insulation and dust fell into her mouth her screaming stopped and was replaced with violent coughing. The pressure on her lungs felt unbearable, as if she had been kicked in the stomach. After a moment of coughing and desperate gasps for air she regained her breath. She brushed as much debris from her face as she could. Even then her eyes stung when she tried to open them.

  Abhaya yanked her arm from under the broken bed and sat up. Squinting through the debris she could see the night sky in front of her. Two of the walls of her bedroom had collapsed. The stars were visible over head as most of the roof and been blown off in the attack. She shuffled back against the wall bordering her bed in terror. The impact of her body on the weakened wall caused it to creak. She was able to throw her hands around her head and duck against the floor in the nick of time. A large portion of the wall fell and shattered against the ground outside.

  Abhaya shook more debris from her body and looked up at the remnants of her house. There was barely anything left. Her heart pounded in her chest as she took a three hundred and sixty degree survey of her bedroom. She whimpered, closed her eyes and threw her head down to the floor. She brought her legs in to make herself as small as possible. Abhaya shook with fear, her eyes closed firmly. It was the first time she had been outside in years.

  “I think it looks lovely as it is,” Abhaya’s mother said. “We can go shopping in a few days and change some things to better suit you.”

  It was early morning and Abhaya had just spent her first night in her new home in Chennai. It had come completely furnished which added a considerable amount to the asking price for the home. Abhaya had not cared. She had not even been involved in the purchase. Although it had been bought with the considerable amount of money her husband had left her, her mother had been the one to find the house and negotiate the deal. It had been only three days since the incident in Mumbai. Abhaya had only been concerned with getting everything she ca
red about out of that city, including her husband’s body.

  “It is fine mother,” Abhaya responded absently.

  “It will be so nice to have you close by again. You know how your father and I missed seeing you when you lived in Mumbai.”

  Abhaya did not respond. She sat on the couch and stared away from her mother. Having run out of forced casual conversation, her mother grew silent. The two said and did nothing for ten minutes.

  Abhaya’s mother checked her watch. It was an unnecessary gesture since she had been counting down the minutes on the clock on the wall. “We should probably leave now.”

  Abhaya nodded. She reluctantly stood and walked with her mother towards the door as her eyes turned red. Her mother patted Abhaya lightly on the shoulder and gave her a sympathetic look. As her mother exited the house she realized Abhaya was no longer next to her. Turning back she saw her daughter frozen inside the house, right before the doorway.

  “What is wrong?” her mother asked.

  “I can not do it,” Abhaya whispered.

  Her mother’s heart broke as she looked at her distraught daughter. “I know it is hard, but your father and I are here for you.”

  “No!” Abhaya’s voice rose sharply. “I will not say goodbye to my husband!” She stared at her mother with fiery eyes for a moment before slamming the door shut.

  Her mother reached for the door but stopped as she heard the sound of the deadbolt lock clicking. “Abhaya! Open the door this—”

  “No!” Abhaya shrieked. “Go away!”

  “You can not—”

  “Go away!” Abhaya repeated.

  Her mother opened her mouth but could find nothing to say. She stood on the doorstep for several minutes, unsure of what to do next. She called her husband, Abhaya’s father, who came over immediately. He had no luck coaxing Abhaya out of the house either. Abhaya’s parents reluctantly decided to proceed to the funeral without her.