“Sir, I’ve got eyes on from the rim.” The transport commander came in over the vehicle’s comm. system. “They’ve got a ton of sites active all along the crater’s southern edge, both on the floor and the rim. It looks like they brought more systems up from the hangar on a lift- it’s hard to tell for sure from here. There’s also at least another hundred defenders at the hangar doors like they were here again with the grounded ships. There’s no way they’ll let us get close enough for mortars. We’re taking shots as it is.”
“Stay in place up top and keep us informed. Don’t get yourselves shot for nothing.” I ordered. “Everyone else, pull back to the northern hangar. Stack up in the side halls and post security.”
I turned to my squad leader as we started back down the hall. “We don’t have enough people left to take all of this at once.” I said, frankly. “But if we can secure an escape, I’ve got nothing against burying these freaks alive in their holes.”
“Nor do I.” the squad leader responded. “Just tell me what you need and it’ll get done.”
I smiled once more. His request was easier said than done.
31
When we got back to the hangar, things were already heating up. We had maybe forty soldiers left on the left with me, and another fifty on the far side. The back of the hangar wall was charred and crumbling from the constant barrage of heavy weapons coming from the south. With each blast the room shook with a low rumble and my team ducked instinctively ever so slightly as if that would help.
We had maybe a hundred capable soldiers left. Three transports and two dropships that were so far out of range as to render them useless. With no shields, we could get away with using the nukes Heddings had provided, but not without baking ourselves in the process.
The aliens had the southern half of the rim secured with fighters in the hangar, plenty of ground forces and six operational defensive outposts. Even though we destroyed all we could, the six were more than enough to take out an incoming ship.
Our rifles were out of range. Even the alien’s rockets were useless this far away. Too bad, there were probably a ton of them in the other northern outposts I hadn’t even secured.
The armories in the hangar! The one on my side was burned out but I didn’t even think about the other. “Hey!” I shouted across to the team on the right, “I need some guys to check the alcove up on the wall! This one’s burned out, but check to see if there’s anything we can use!”
They confirmed and moved three soldiers up along the wall, out of sight of the aliens that continued to pound away at the wall. I moved forward as well and checked the last grounded fighter I could reach that hadn’t been destroyed.
It was identical to the one I had attempted to pilot before and had no signs of damage. I climbed up the fuselage and threw the canopy open. Identical - even down to having no real seat. I grumbled as I dropped in and powered it up. No engine, but from what I remembered it still read “mission ready” on all the weapons stations.
“Sir, there’s a bunch more missiles over here.” One of the soldiers waved from the armory’s doorway. “Nothing’s damaged.”
“What do they have?” I demanded.
We didn’t have names for their munitions and didn’t know their yields or compositions, but they gave me rough physical descriptions. Most were identical, and I imagined those were the ones we had been getting hit with. Some high explosive mixture with a fragmentation charge built in. Some plasma cannons like we had been getting hit with were there but had been disabled with explosives.
They continued describing weapons until one sounded familiar. “Wait, what was that last one?” I asked, glancing up from the controls.
“There’s a huge black one here. It’s about twice the size of the others with a triangular center section behind some guide fins.”
“Check it for radiation.” I waited.
“Good call, the payload in the center is off the chart.”
“That’s got to be a nuke.” I replied. “I saw a prototype a while back. I need it over here plus as many of the others as you can get. Fill all the stations on this ship. I’ll bet they load up just like ours.”
More of my soldiers came forward to pull the racks of weapons out. I waited for a lull in the barrage of incoming shots to cross the center. “Do you see that?” I asked, to the men around me, “They pause about every eight shots to reload. We can line the racks along the wall and next time they stop we can push them across.”
I checked all the warheads as we brought them out. I was right; the nuke was obviously a weaponized version of the one I had used earlier. In my mind I counted the incoming rounds. “Heads up.” I reminded, “After this next one, we’re moving.”
The next warhead roared through the door and landed short of the wall and carved out half the runway floor on its way in.
“Dammit! Go!” I shouted, and pushed the rear corner of the first rack across. “Go around the ditch, don’t fall in!”
I got to my station and positioned the rocket in front of the wing. It was a simple dovetail mount similar to ours and the weapon slid over without effort. I attached a single cable bundle to the pylon and got the rack out of the way. Next to me, another team pushed theirs in place. It went on with equal ease and quickly we had the entire ship loaded.
“Alright, I think we’re good.” I announced as I gave the weapons a final check. “Next time they reload, we’re pushing the ship into the opening so I can get a clear shot at the far side just like they did to us.” I dropped down once again into the seat-less cockpit. “Transports, give me all the covering fire you can on my signal.”
While powering the controls up again I looked about the panel. All the weapons were activated. I only had to aim and fire.
“Standby.” I hit the open frequency as number seven came in. Number eight landed short again and nailed the remains of a hangar door. “NOW!”
All the soldiers that could fit pushed forward along the wings, landing gears and body of the ship and it slowly slid forward. My eyes were glued to the targeting screen. I planned my shots and waited. It only took a few more seconds and I could see the south base. “That’s it!” I shouted again. “Everybody clear off! Get to cover!”
The men scattered and I released the first round. It rocketed out of our bay and I guided it in a gentle arc past both of my destroyed dropships and straight onto the canopy of the fighter opposite from us. I saw the flash from the edge of my vision but was already onto the next. With each successive round, I steered towards each of the remaining outposts. It took a half a second to clear the hangar and establish the target before I was on to the next.
Four buttons pressed for each one and ten seconds later we were clear. I switched to the final round and peered down across the landscape as a mass of terrified defenders scrambled about. It was a shame they wouldn’t even feel what was coming. I fired.
With a terrific rumble, the nuke slid off its track and screamed out into the night. I kept it straight and level, leading it above their defenses and into their base.
My targeting computer went to static and I saw a brilliant flash before me. The charge vaporized the last of the alien defenses and seemed to lift half the rim into the sky before it crumbled back down in a wave of dust, fire, and smoke. I heard a mixture of curses and cheers through my radio.
“Gentlemen, we’re ready for evac.” I stated. “Do an intel sweep for anything of value. Dropships plant a glass charge in the center of the crater and come pick us up. Police the fallen.” I added and looked out at the burning battlefield before me with the shadows growing long in the coming twilight.
32
I sent two squads to push through the remaining alien defenders on our side all the way back to their command center a few more floors up. The dropships landed out front and we brought the transports down to us on the service lift behind the hangar doors. I took a fire team outside and began pulling casualties from the field.
The charge had taken a h
eavy toll on us and was especially devastating to those I took out for the recovery. The ones who caught incoming rockets were torn up, twisted and mangled beyond what I had envisioned. The heavy armor had done little to protect them. Farther out, we reached the two downed ships which still held small groups of defenders, several others wounded from the crashes, and even a few surviving members of the flight crew.
We worked the whole night through until everyone was accounted for. At last I pulled back my remaining forces, took a seat on the command bridge of the nearest dropship and lifted off back into the darkness above. We reached a low orbit before I triggered the glass charge, one of the largest yielding devices in our inventory. It burned like a sun upon the planet’s surface and obliterated the entire site. The crater, the bases, the downed ships and the landscape for another fifty k’s in every direction were vaporized.
I mused, why did they have to put up such a fight to reach the same ends? It mattered little. I’d do it all again and wouldn’t even care.
When I returned to the fleet, I went straight to Heddings’ office. The admiral looked up as I entered. “Welcome back. I assume you’ve completed your task.”
I was somewhat taken aback. “I’m not in a box, so you could make that assumption. What the hell were you thinking, sending us out there? We were outnumbered at least five to one!”
Heddings shook his head. “How many did we lose?”
“Three hundred and nine KIA.” I stated. “You could have warned us.”
“No, I couldn’t.” the admiral answered. “There was no intel available on their capabilities. The only numbers were approximately one thousand defenders and no heavy weapons, based on their normal staffing levels at similar locations.”
“In that case, you need some new analysts.”
“Not necessarily.” Heddings stated. “I was warned the site would require a storming force of at least two thousand to succeed, and to expect at least half that many in casualties. You got it done with a fraction of that, with the same result.”
“How could you send us there knowing that?”
The admiral looked back. “I had great faith in your abilities to find a solution. Are you telling me they were misplaced?” He paused. “Anyway, mission completed. Well done.”
I’d rarely been that angry at another human being before in my life. He defused me, as was his style.
“Before you left, I think you were in the middle of asking me for something crazy if I remember correctly…” his voice trailed off and I picked it up. He was right, the mission was over and it was business as usual. There would be no use in arguing with him over the semantics of the operation. Rather than keep fighting, I composed myself and came back to reality.
“I want to command my own fighter wing.” I paused for a moment to allow the flag officer to interject. He didn’t say a word so I continued. “I want the most advanced ships in the fleet. I will recruit all of my own pilots. I will train them, I will plan our missions and I will lead the wing in the execution.”
“You want to bypass the chain of command?” he asked, seeing what I was driving at.
“Yes.”
Heddings cocked his head slightly to the side as I would come to learn was his custom. “I hope you realize what you’re asking for.” I saw the wheels turning in his mind as he pondered some more. Snapping back to, he briefly shuddered before continuing. “Seriously… That’s borderline insanity. Why should I help you do this? What should I tell the command? That I let a rouge officer wage a private war at the expense of the people? What makes your plan a better investment than something else?”
“Because it is the best chance we have to finish the war.” I responded. “The inner system is too well defended for a direct assault. You know it and I know it. I learned it the hard way in my last command. The asteroid field would slow your advance to a crawl and you’d lose every bit of a surprise. That’s the reason you haven’t pushed the fleet in, finished the war and gotten us the hell home!” I saw the admiral stiffen up as I put him on the defensive.
“Give me fifty ships, pilots and crew. I can navigate around their defenses, weaken them from the inside out and the fleet will be able to break through with a fraction of the resistance.”
The admiral nodded slowly in comprehension. “I like your plan. Take a walk, come back in an hour. I need to get concurrence from the rest of the leadership and check on the logistics. Will that work for you?”
“Yes sir, it will. I trust your judgment that you will make the best decision.” I saluted and took my leave.
Leaving the admiral’s office I passed the executive officer’s desk in the lobby. I exited the command section of the ship through the two sets of expertly carved, utterly massive wooden doors which led back to the general access passage. The hallway was over three kilometers long, straight as an arrow and connected nearly every section from bow to stern on our floor. More than a dozen such halls were built into the command ship to aid not only in direction finding but to add structural integrity as well. The only difference between the command hall and the others was the view. Along the entire port side the wall was removed and replaced with one single pane of reinforced glass. How it was constructed I will never know.
I paced the entire length of the hallway a number of times while waiting for the time to pass. I was far from alone but I offered no one any eye contact. A steady stream of officers quickly moved back and forth between the many different connecting rooms.
The sight of the fleet orbiting around us, nearly close enough to touch, tried to steal my focus but I pushed the thoughts away along with the feelings of vertigo that accompanied my view of the system. My revenge was closer than ever and my hatred burned just as hot. I was ready. I knew I could find the pilots I’d need and at long last, it was almost over.
The minutes ticked by slower and slower before I saw the exec emerge from the office. I saw him look for me so I got his attention and jogged back to his position. “The admiral is ready for you,” he announced as I neared. “Please excuse the wait.”
His pleasant demeanor caught me off guard. Something had definitely changed. I returned once again to Heddings’ office. He waved me in from the doorway and gestured to take the chair across the desk. I took the seat and looked at him, trying to decipher the verdict from his steely expression.
The admiral sat up straighter and looked straight back into my eyes. “You’ve got your wing. I agree with your assessment, as do the rest of the staff on board our ship and spread throughout the system. We are prepared to give you one loaded gunboat as a shuttle while you find your pilots. From there it will be cleared for a jump to earth. Once you’ve assembled your team, you’ll return home for training and to pick up your ships.”
There was a hint of a slight sly smile on his face. I could detect an ever so slight hint of excitement. “Are you holding something back?” I pried.
“Indeed. I’ve got you cleared for up to sixty pilots. Also, I contacted the director of Space Research. He will provide you with the first production run of the next generation SR-2 fighters. Their existence is still classified top secret. We are the only two people outside of Sol Alpha who know about them.”
If the admiral had a bad poker face mine was even worse. He was watching my glee build and reveled in it before continuing. “Also there is the matter of the alien fighter which you recovered earlier this year. I don’t have any details regarding its use or application here, but it was delivered to the Space Research compound. I can’t say for sure what they’ve uncovered but knowing their inventive nature back there they may have some surprises in store for you,” he paused. “Are you ready for the bad news?” he asked, his voice notably calmer.
I hadn’t expected a good news/bad news situation, which caught me off guard. At this point I knew I had nothing to fear so I simply nodded. “Sure, what do you have?”
“In order for you to undertake command and plan your own missions, I need to promote you to Commander Prime.
The Prime designator gives its recipient complete autonomy in the control of their unit. You’ll need to be present at a swearing-in ceremony at Space Command headquarters to make it official. There is a catch: To get the designation, your contract will become permanently extended and you will be placed in the federal service for the rest of your natural life or until your untimely death… Do you find that to be acceptable?”
The ramifications of the commitment did not hit me very hard and it certainly did little to sway my mind. “Yes, it is.” I answered, “I doubt I’ll need to wait that long. I’m not putting this together for my own enrichment. I’ve got a big job to do and very little life to live after it has been completed. It’s my intent for this to be my last mission.”
Heddings returned my glare with a look of total understanding. “I assume you’ll inform your candidates of your intentions,” he slid a single access card across the desk. “Here is your do-anything authorization. It gives you unrestricted access to every area of the ship, including weapons, hangar and intel storage. We have 350 pilots on board, and slightly over 2500 in the system. My executive officer has pulled all of the contact information for you and provided the entire ship’s directory. Talk to whomever you want. You’ll have supplies available to take up to 80 back to earth.”
“You don’t want to have a say in who I take?”
“I’d rather not. You know what you’re asking them to do. I’m not going to get mixed up in neither your decision making nor your recruiting of this pilot or that. Right now one is as good as another. Let me know when you’re ready to head back to earth and I’ll make sure everything is set.”
I picked up the black card. “Will do, Sir. Thank you for making the right decision.”
33
I stopped at the exec’s desk on my way out of the command section. He watched me all the way from the door. I was right; something had changed in his attitude.
MissionSRX: Confessions of the First War Page 26