First Strike
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Colonel Wright pursed his lips as he read and re-read his orders. For a minute, he thought about disobeying them, but he knew better. It would not serve his unit to have him in the stockade. He pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the ship’s speaker system. “Flight Crew Bravo, this is Colonel Wright, please report to my office right away.”
A minute later, there was a knock on the door.
“Please come in,” said Wright.
The doors slid open. Tarina and Wendy stood there wearing their gym clothes and were covered in sweat.
“Ladies, please take a seat,” said Wright as he opened his fridge, grabbed two bottles of cold water, and handed them to the women.
“Thanks,” said the young officers in unison.
“Running?”
“No, sir, we were sparring,” responded Tarina.
“I was about to win when you called, sir,” announced Wendy.
Tarina laughed. “In a pig’s eye you were.”
Wright grinned, sat down and turned his computer console around so the women could see his orders. “Ladies, I’ve been ordered to dispatch a ship to Derra-5 in order to gather real-time intelligence on what is happening on the ground. As you can see, I have been ordered not to go myself. My superiors have deemed this mission as highly dangerous. They do not feel that I should risk going myself. To quote the last line: ‘I have duties and responsibilities to the Corps that preclude me from this assignment.’”
Tarina could tell that the words were like a personal insult thrown in Wright’s face. He had always gone first and shared the risks with his people. To be told to stay back was tearing him up inside. “Sir, what would you like us to do?” asked Tarina.
“Yeah, sir, you’ve got to let us have some fun without adult supervision from time to time,” added Wendy.
If there were two people who could pull it off, Wright knew it was the women sitting across from him. “Okay then, what I need you to do is study everything you can about the capital and pick a landing zone as far away from the enemy as you can. You’re going to have to calculate your jump from here to a location inside Derra-5’s atmosphere. Give yourself time to start your sublight engine or you’ll smash into the ground like a falling rock and be killed on impact.”
Wendy smiled. “Piece of cake. I can have my calculations for your review within the hour, sir.”
Wright continued. “When you land, you’re going to need to gather as much information as you can from the defenders and then get the hell out of there before the enemy gets wise and sends a drone to blast your ship into a million pieces.”
“You can count on us, sir,” Tarina said confidently. If Wendy’s calculations were precise, she knew that she could land her Avenger on a dime if need be.
Wright stood. “I shan’t keep you from your pre-mission calculations. I’ll come join you in one hour’s time. You can back brief me on your plan at that time. Dismissed.”
Tarina and Wendy stood up, turned about, and left Wright’s office.
“Have you ever calculated a jump from space into a planet’s atmosphere before?” Tarina asked Wendy.
She shook her head. “How hard can it be? There has to be a first time for everything. Come on, we’ve got to find us a good map of the city. We don’t want to come out of our jump right into the middle of a skyscraper, now do we?”
Colonel Wright found the women in the hangar bay double-checking Wendy’s calculations. Instead of a computer, Wendy had grabbed a marker pen and written all over the side of a wall so she could see her work from beginning to end. Wright stood behind the women and looked over the math. He was an accomplished pilot, but her calculations left him wondering if he had missed something at the academy.
Wendy stopped what she was doing and looked over at the colonel. “Does this look right, sir?”
“Does it look right to you?” Wright asked Tarina.
“Yeah, it should work, Colonel,” she replied.
“Then it looks right to me,” said Wright. “When do you plan to go?”
“Sir, we want to land at night, so we were planning on commencing our pre-flight checks around 2200 and jumping at 2300 hours’ local time,” explained Tarina. “Ideally, we should be able to get what fleet needs and be out of there in under a couple of hours.”
Wright nodded. Her plan made sense. “I’ve ordered the technicians to ensure that your bird is as full as they can make it with fuel. I’d hate to lose you because you ran out of fuel.”
“We’d hate that too,” replied Wendy.
“Well, it looks like you have it all in hand. I’ll meet you back here in a few hours’ time.” Wright smiled at the women and then left them to get on with their work. A nagging feeling in his stomach told him that if this worked that it was not the last mission that they would be launching to Derra-5. There was only one thing he could do now, and that was to ask his superiors to send the rest of his squadron to him as soon as possible so the risk could be shared by all.
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