In the morning I was directed to a refitting room where I was put into a new reclamation suit. I was then told that my training was complete and that I should report to Red for new orders. When I arrived at the DSim the rest of the team was waiting. We were greeted by a gracious Red who immediately foisted a set of shooting stars into each of our hands. The shooting star in the USAC was the equivalent of earning your wings in the Air Force.
There would be no more DSim for us. We would instead be utilized for instructing other crews until it was time for battle. Red sent us to a conference room where we would receive instruction on how to be an instructor. I looked forward to the task of yelling at a new crew for their mistakes.
After two days of instructor training I was given my first crew. Two Brits, an Israeli and an Indian. All women. They were eager and they were tough. They had been briefed about what was coming and were committed to giving all they could in the effort to protect our precious Earth.
I gave them hard scenarios. I pushed them. In two months they would be going up against a foe that had them outgunned and outnumbered. Their names were Kat, Kate, Inrasia and Krysa. The girls were each good at something that I had always had trouble with... multitasking.
When Kat barked an order the other three were on it. And they each had the knack of being able to focus on their own duty while keeping an eye on the others. The subtleties that I would rely on Bigg or Whip or Pop to catch were never missed by the crew. As a team they were tight.
For six weeks they put 12 hours a day into the DSim. Their final two weeks would be alongside my team in A55. It was imperative that I taught them everything I could as once in battle crew A277 would be our wing-man.
We would be going out in formations of three. The other team joining us was A104. Each of the early crews that had received the full training were being teamed with a crew from the accelerated class and one from the short class that I had been instructing on.
The rookies that I had been schooling were not as green as I had originally thought. General Buck had authorized the DSim code to be rolled into an online holo-game where thousands of teens and twenty-somethings had been in competitions for prizes for more than a year.
Two of the crew of A277 were regional winners of the ZZ Defender game. The Generals vision had been to generate a steady stream of experienced simulator pilots to fill the ranks of our new pilot recruits. Over a third of those newly admitted to the USAC had come from participation in those games. Every little item that was preplanned gave me hope that we at least had the right people in the top positions at the right time.
As the training continued the countdown clock had soon dropped to two weeks. We had gathered in a large hangar at Regents Field for the first flight test of more than 60 new crews. We would take to the heavens with 210 Defenders in a mass formation. Our weapons would be on sim mode. The DSim system had been tied into the fleet of Defenders.
As a safety precaution the ships had all been programmed with anti-collision software. There was no sense in losing crews and their ships during a simulation because of an accident. We would be flying in our formations and following battle instructions fed to us by the Tacticians. The alien carrier would be simulated on all sensors and monitors during the live flight.
We launched from the tarmac at precisely 2PM. It was a hot July afternoon. I split my view screen and had the view from Regents Field displayed on the left side. 210 Defenders taking to the sky at once was an impressive sight of blurry details.
The battle against the simulated alien carrier only lasted 45 minutes before the last Defender was turned into space debris. Half an hour later the last of our newly launched space guns were taken out. An advance of the simulation told us that the Earth would fall in less than a day. In less than a week Mankind could be sent back to the Stone-Age. It was a sobering thought.
As each of the ships met their fate during the simulated live battle they were programmed to turn and report to a rally point just above Regents Field. It was to be the launching point of each of the day's battles.
Half an hour after each of the simulations were lost a new one was starting up. The slaughter of our Defenders and their crews went on all day... every day... for the next nine days. Just before the start of our fifth attempt on the tenth day I asked Pop and Whip to simulate the Drillers in our weapons program. I wanted to see what the simulators thought they could do.
We passed the Driller info to our other two crews and by battles inception we had 18 Drillers at the ready. When our orders came down from the Tacticians we were questioned as to why our weapons supplies had been altered.
I asked why they cared as we had been unable to utilize our full complement of weapons for any of the battles we had been directed into. The result was a ground commander yelling at me over my audio implant. In every scenario we had been left on our own to contend with at least 15 alien fighters to our squads three. At our best we had managed to destroy four of them and temporarily disable two others.
Just before the swarm of fighters attacked I gave the order to launch all Drillers. By the time our squad had been annihilated we had managed 12 kills. It was the best performance by any squad since the simulations had begun.
When we had once again lined up for battle we had our full complement of 48 missiles altered to be Drillers. When the scenario had ended we had knocked out our 15 targets while losing two of our Defenders.
A55 flew on to take out two more alien fighters before finally being overwhelmed. When we had returned to our launch point the simulations were stopped and our squad of three Defender crews ordered to report back to Regents Field.
We were hurried through the elevators and tunnels and back to a briefing with General Buck. When we arrived the Tacticians were all over us as to what we had done. I told the General and the Tacticians that we had once again tried modifying our missiles to make Drillers. I had wanted to see how they would fair in a simulation.
The room erupted in chaos. General Buck once again slammed down his fist in a demand for silence. The General then directed comments. The Tacticians thought it counter productive when the crews were not following battle plans. They felt our best chance was with fully coordinated attacks where everyone did what they were asked.
I agreed that when the time came we would need to follow orders. But, we seemed to be repeating the same mistakes time and again in an effort to perfect a failing strategy. I asked the General for permission to take my squad out to meet the alien carrier before it reached Earth. I reasoned that it would give us a chance to once again test the Drillers for effectiveness.
In one day we could travel to the carrier, deploy a full barrage of Drillers and return back to the fleet for continued training. Our three ships would hardly be missed for perfecting the war strategy.
General Buck agreed and we were given orders to proceed with our plan. We had eight hours to have any weaponry converted and then 24 hours to carry out our attempt. If successful, the tacticians would fold the Drillers into their plans where they thought they would do the most good. If the Drillers failed we would most likely be flying into a disaster when the carrier arrived.
Pop, Bigg and Whip immediately made their way to the weapons technician area and began having the full complement of missiles for our three Defenders altered. I used the time to check in on Paige's effort at creating another QE comm pairing. When I arrived at her lab she was busily making adjustments to another audio implant. She had succeeded in her quest for a second entangled pair.
The new QE comm would be added to the implant of the red-haired pilot of Defender A1. The ground based end of the pair would be wired directly into the fleet communications system.
The following morning 16 Drillers were loaded onto each of the Defenders in our squad. Within an hour we had launched and were on a trajectory that would take us to the alien carrier. Nine hours at full throttle followed by nine hours of deceleration took us within firing range. The other crews were excited to finally be g
oing up against the real enemy because after ten days of continuous dying in the simulated events they were getting depressed.
Here at least, we would be firing from a standoff position. While we were all eager and willing to fight the aliens none of us wanted to go on a Kamikaze run. When we arrived we programmed the Drillers and let them fly. Bigg had updated the code for their sensors and Whip had added a new target selection algorithm. The Drillers were each programmed to seek out and attack individual fighters.
From our standoff position it took half an hour before the advance of the Drillers stirred up the hornets nest. Our sensors went wild as more than a thousand fighters took to flight at almost the same time.
At final count there were 1326 alien fighters in flight. It was many more than we had estimated. I guessed that after we got lucky taking out the first carrier the surviving fighters had somehow attached to the second carrier for the duration of the trip.
The carrier itself moved fast and had to drop its speed by half so that it did not run away from its fighters. I reasoned that if anything, by slowing down the carrier, our little experiment might buy us a few more hours of time before it reached Earth.
The slower speed added a definite benefit to our mission. The Drillers soon began to interact with the swarm of fighters. We cheered as several of their fighters collided in attempts to avoid our new weaponry.
When a group of nearly 50 of them broke away from the rest I ordered the squad to move away from the fighters while matching their speed. When I pushed the throttle to full our reactor sputtered and went dark. Pop sprang from his chair and began working on it. Without power we would be sitting ducks.
Kat came on the air asking why we were just sitting there. When I told her she turned her Defender around and made full throttle towards the incoming fighters. A104 followed soon after. They would distract the fighter group while we attempted repairs. Pop soon came back with the bad news. The reactor feed had somehow gotten fouled.
He immediately turned to the second reactor and prepared it for a cold start. Again, we would have one shot at starting it up from the battery we had on-board. Kat and the crew of A277 flew within 15 kilometers of the alien onslaught. Her distraction worked, if only for a moment, as the fighter group turned in unison to follow.
Just as I thought we were in the clear a lone fighter was dispatched in our direction. A104 did a fly by while firing their coil guns in an attempt to knock it out before it reached us. The attempt was unsuccessful.
I called back to Pop to hurry it up as we had incoming heading our way. Bigg soon had a countdown counter up with how long we had before the fighter reached us. When the timer dropped under two minutes I again prompted Pop to get that thing started. He did not reply but kept working at it feverishly.
As the counter dropped under a minute he reached over and slapped the flashing red holo-button on the reactor console. I watched as the seconds ticked by. At 35 seconds the quick flash of the reactor showed us that the process had begun. The flash dimmed and then began to slowly build.
The reactor would take a full minute to come up to power and we had less than 20 seconds left. When it reached 12% I gunned the throttle in an attempt to buy us more time. Our Defender began to accelerate but the pace was not such that we could outrun our foe. With my final seconds I thought of Paige and of how little time we had really had together.
As we braced for impact from the fighter's concussion weapon Kat came on the air with a yell. Just as the fighter had gotten within range of us she had done a fly-by at a half kilometer while firing all four of her coil guns.
The fighter exploded in a flash of glory as Defender A277 swept past it. Our wing-man had come to our rescue! Within the minute we had full power, it coming from the second reactor. We each gave out a shout to A277 and then immediately got back to the business of the other 49 fighters that were coming our way.
For half an hour we played cat and mouse first waiting for the fighters to catch up and then speeding away, all the time watching on our sensors as the Drillers took their toll.
The drillers had taken out three fighters and damaged three others. However, they were not completely impervious to the concussion weapons as we had hoped. The fighters had quickly taken our Driller numbers from 48 down to 19.
We moved and watched patiently as the last two Drillers continued taxing the fighters. With our partial victory I decided it was time to head for home. The Drillers from our three Defenders had accounted for five alien fighters destroyed and four damaged.
I gave the orders and all three Defenders went to full throttle. After arriving back at Regents Field Pop had a group of Techs look over the failed reactor. A minute design change from his original conception had halted the free delivery of the Sodium fuel. With our primary reactor corrected we would be free to fly with both reactors running on future missions.
We had not been allowed to operate both reactors on the last run. It was not a question of having a good supply of Sodium. Sodium was plentiful. Our second reactor had been slated for removal to install in a new Defender.
After our mishap General Buck gave the order to leave it where it was. I was really starting to like the General. He would listen to reason, make a decision and then stick with that decision. When we arrived back in the chamber it was time to turn the data over to the Tacticians where our fates would soon be decided. The world's clock of doom was quickly counting down.
Chapter 13
After some lengthy discussions General Buck ordered that the missiles on 250 of our now projected 286 Defenders were to be converted to Drillers. When the alien carrier arrived we would be launching 4,000 Drillers at them all at once. It was a risky strategy but we were out of options.
We would be fielding 286 Defenders, 416 space-born coil guns, 602 heavy ground based coil guns and 244 medium ground based mobile coil guns. A third of the world's cities with populations over 10,000 would be left unprotected. Those residents had been urged to seek shelter in the larger venues.
On the final day before the alien carrier was to arrive the General ordered all USAC personnel and accompanying foreign crewman to take at least ten minutes out of their day to call loved ones. This was it. This was a fight for Earth... for our freedom... for the survival of Mankind. For those who were religious it was a time for prayer. For everyone it was a time to offer encouragement to others.
As I walked around in the chamber I could see the occasional worker or crewman step to the side for a private conversation with family or friends. I took my ten minutes to visit with Paige in person. After a long embrace we made small talk in an attempt to comfort and reassure one another.
It felt good to have someone to share those moments with. I was fighting for all Mankind, for my Great Uncle David Brenner, for my freedom and survival... and for Paige, the one who made it all worthwhile for me.
The remainder of the day saw everyone scurrying about in an attempt to make everything as ready as possible. The expected arrival time of the alien carrier was approximately 11:08AM on July 29th. For my final hour before bed I sat in my quarters contemplating what was coming. The warble of channel 1647 went off on my audio implant.
It was Paige. She was on her way over so that we could share what might be our final night together. She would be a good distraction from my thoughts of doom. When she entered my quarters we shared a long kiss and then settled in on my anti-grav mattress. We lay staring into each others eyes as I gently stroked her hair and she my cheek.
Within minutes I was fast asleep as the time released sleep aids in my suit took hold of my consciousness. I held fast to Paige and she soon drifted off as well. The big fight would be upon us shortly. I awoke in the morning with my arm still hanging over Paige's small frame. She was pulled in close and clutched my hand to her heart as she slept.
I gently woke her and said good morning. We cuddled for a few minutes longer before the orders came in on my implant to report to station. I kissed my wife, then rose and gave my
face a sonic wash. I then turned and winked as I stepped through the door into the now crowding hallway. The place was awash with everyone heading to their duty station.
I soon met up with my crew and headed towards our final briefing. I sat up front with Bigg, Whip, Pop, Kat and her team and the crew of A104 while the Tacticians went over our part of the final battle plan.
We would launch and then half the Defenders would rally on the opposite side of the Earth with the other half on the opposite side of the Moon. When the first alien craft was within range of one of our space based heavy coil guns all 4,000 of the converted Drillers would then be loosed at once.
The 36 Defenders that still had the nukes would then be called upon to close and fire upon the carrier itself while the 250 remaining Defenders sought out fighters. We hoped for a single direct hit on the carrier.
If all went according to plan it would be a war of attrition. If the number of alien fighters could be knocked down to a third by the Drillers, General Buck felt we had a strong shot at winning.
I was not happy with the odds, but it was all we had. By 10:15AM we had launched all Defenders and the rally points were beginning to crowd. The alien carrier was now passing the Asteroid Belt and would be striking at the Earth within the hour.
All Nations had been fully briefed on the impending attack. At first there was a huge outcry, but the reality of what was coming soon took hold. There was cooperation between Nations like the Earth had never seen. Factories ran 24 / 7. Resources were diverted. Cities Defended. Neighbor helped neighbor. There was also martial law in every country.
Anyone caught in the commission of a crime was taken immediately before a judge and sentenced without trial. If the Judge ruled against you the sentence was the same for all. The arrested had 3 days to appeal and were then locked up with no legal recourse until such time as the alien threat had ebbed. No one was interested in wasting time on criminals while the world was in such peril.
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