SECTOR 64: Ambush

by Dean M. Cole

  A new light yanked Sandy from her internal debate. Dead ahead, in the bay waters between her fighter and the runway, a flame flickered to life. In the fire's rapidly growing light, she discerned the aft half of a large jet protruding from the waves. A wing, cracked open midspan like a leg bent at the knee, jutted from the left side of the fuselage. Lightning fast, the fire spread from the jet's right side to its left. Then a blinding roiling fireball exploded from the airplane.

  Sandy yanked her fighter hard left, narrowly avoiding the hellish conflagration. The horrible silence of a second engine flameout rewarded her efforts. Passing the expanding fireball, but now out of alignment with the runway environment, she set her flaps for max glide distance. Uttering a short prayer, she fingered the ejection handle. Reconsidering, she released it and gripped the fighter's control stick with one hand and the landing gear lever with the other.

  "I'm not done with you yet!"

  Passing over the seawall and panting, she watched the runway's near left side slowly slide toward her fighter while the ground grew closer. Her breath hitched as, directly in her flightpath, twisted wreckage of two airplanes loomed out of the darkness.

  "Oh shit!" She yanked the control stick left and slammed the emergency landing gear actuator. Three squibs detonated. Their report and the high pitched whistle of streaming compressed air along with the mechanical actions of the gear was uncharacteristically loud against the deafening silence of the dead engines.

  Only a few short feet separated her fighter's belly and the airport's sod. Just as the near edge of the runway's left side rolled under her F-22, the two main landing gear indicator lights shifted from red to green. She rolled wings level, and the rear two wheels barked in protest of a rough landing.

  Roaring down the runway at incredible speed, Sandy held the nose of the fighter off the ground, buying time for the aircraft's longest landing gear strut to complete its extension. She looked at its indicator light. The bulb formed the top of a triangle of three. Fortunately, the main gear's lower two lights remained solid green. However, indicating it had not reached the lock-detent, the nose gear light stubbornly remained red.

  "Come on!"

  Losing speed, the aircraft's nose started falling. Futilely pulling against the aft control stop with all her might, Sandra tried to hold it off the runway. However, the tail was in full stall. The drop accelerated. She cringed in anticipation of the gear's imminent collapse. Falling from the unusually nose-high attitude, the gear slammed into the runway with a loud jolting crash. To Sandy's amazement, it held, the indicator shifting to green.

  Miraculously, the fighter was directly over and in line with the runway's centerline lights. However, they were still flashing by too fast. Like a meth-fueled Pac-Man, the fighter's pointed nose gobbled up the streaming luminous dots. Sandy deployed the fighter's emergency drogue chute. The runway's edge lights were already red. Less than two thousand feet remained.

  Looking ahead, she sought the thousand-foot marker, the section where the alternating red and white centerline lights also shifted to solid red. However, they weren't there. The lights appeared to come to an abrupt end at a rapidly closing point. With renewed horror, she realized the background stars and clouds were being blotted out by the looming nose of a giant aircraft parked over the far end of the runway.

  Captain Fitzpatrick jammed in full right pedal, but the fighter didn't respond. Inexorably, it persisted on its collision course with the huge airplane.

  "Shit!" Realizing the problem, she smacked the drogue chute's jettison lever. Released from the device's inline drag, the fighter shot diagonally off the runway, narrowly avoiding the double-decker Airbus A-380. Its nose gear and then its left engine passed just off her left wing.

  The last of her momentum carried her across a strip of sod and fortuitously onto a section of tarmac. Pressing the toe brakes with all her might, she finally brought the F-22 to a full stop, nose to nose with a stationary Learjet.

  "Holy shit!"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Following the weapon's deployment, Commodore Salyth scanned the displayed surface images, verifying the weapon's effect. The results mirrored those seen during the test against the Argonian refugees. Exposing dripping fangs, a dark grin spread across his face. Lord Thrakst will elevate me above all others.

  On his command console, he watched the planet's radio traffic spike as panicked communiqué raced to every corner of the globe. "These Argonians are sniffing their fate," he gloated.

  Yanking him from his exultations, the weapons officer yelled across the bridge. "Commodore Salyth! We have several ships inbound from port!"

  "Don't bother me with trivial intelligence, idiot. Just destroy them!"

  "But, Commodore, they have the maneuvering profile of Argonian ships—"

  Cutting off the officer, Salyth gesticulated toward the main display. "They're all Argonians!"

  The weapons officer opened his mouth to speak.

  Salyth's temper flared. Blood boiling, he closed on the obstinate officer. Towering over the hatchling, he placed a razor-sharp forearm talon against his neck.

  To his surprise, the officer stood his ground. Slowly extending an arm, he pointed toward his display. "Galactic Defense Force Argonian ships, Commodore."

  Salyth froze.

  The officer continued. "Their trajectory originated from the surface."

  After a moment, Salyth allowed his talon to slide into its recess. With a final glare at the officer, he turned to face the front of the bridge. "Put them on the main display!"

  Without the commodore's attention, the monitor had returned to its default. It now showed an image of the bay waters ahead of the ship. The weapons officer changed the feed, and it morphed into a formation of eight fighters as they approached from the left side.

  Studying the unexpected ships, Salyth stepped closer to the display. There was nothing Argonian in their appearance. "Those are not Galactic Defense Force ships," he growled at the officer. "They're on straight-line trajectories! I see nothing to ind—"

  Salyth cutoff mid-word. In an instant, all of the ships changed heading, shooting into eight separate vectors.

  "Battle stations!" Salyth roared. He turned and ran to his command post. "How long until the weapon is charged and ready to deploy?"

  "Thirty-eight zyxn, Commodore."

  "We don't have time for that," he roared. "Engage them now!"

  "Lord, the build-up of the weapon's quantum field can't be rushed. I can't fire it now. It won't—"

  "Curse the gods!" Salyth roared. He blazed across the bridge. His steel reinforced talons gripped the floor's stony surface leaving a flurry of sparks in his wake. A ferocious blow sent his weapons officer flying across the room. A wet smack echoed through the cavernous bridge as his partially decapitated lifeless body crumpled against the far wall.

  Standing over the weapons console, he activated the hull mounted defense systems. Eight energy beams shot out, one for each ship. Salyth's dread grew tenfold. As he'd feared, each ship instantly repositioned out of the beam's path. Their movement was so fast, it looked like the small ships disappeared from one spot, and reappeared in another—a ghostly blur, the only evidence of the transition.

  The form of the ships confused him. They obviously weren't Argonian, but somehow these humans had mastered the same inertial control that had eluded Zoxyth for untold millennia.

  "These devolved Argonians will not block my ascension!" he growled.

  Activating all weapons, Salyth sent a barrage of beams at the enemy ships.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Feeling the pressure of their rapid descent, Jake pinched his nose and popped his ears. The elevator chimed and slowed. With a final lurch, it came to a stop at the bottom of the deep shaft. The doors slid open and revealed the familiar stainless steel trimmed onyx walls decorating Space Control's deep underground entrance.

  Jake felt his last shred of hope evaporate. A pile of clothes and a discarded weapon lay
where the guard should have been. Checking Victor, he was thankful to see the young lieutenant successfully fending off the dread hovering just behind his eyes.

  Reaching the vacated guard station, Richard activated the security panel. It still worked just as the one aboveground had. Once they passed the computer's security checks, the door opened, affording them their first glimpse into Space Control.

  They silently walked into the large room. Jake wished everyone would pop out of their hiding places and shout: Surprise! Instead, he saw a broken coffee cup in the middle of the floor next to another pile of clothes. An unfinished email was visible on a computer near them. Empty shirtsleeves lay strewn across its keyboard.

  "Oh shit," Vic said, looking at the far wall's large monitors.

  A separate monstrous alien ship filled each display.

  "They must've set the satellites up to track them automatically," Richard said.

  Jake nodded. He counted six unique enemy ships. Four of them hovered over major cities while the other two glided across the surface, one over water while the other traversed a mountainous area. With compounding dread, he wondered what the other ten ships were up to.

  Richard pointed at the alien ship on the top right monitor. "That looks like Paris,"

  "Yeah, that's the Arc de Triomphe on the right," Jake said.

  "Look," Victor said excitedly. "Cars are still moving—" He broke off with a choked scream as a sphere of light blossomed from the hideous ship. Racing across the surface, it quickly filled the satellite's field of view.

  "Oh god," Richard said.

  Jake felt his heart sink.

  As if trying to hold himself together, Vic wrapped his arms around his own shoulders. His eyes unfocused, he kept repeating the same words. "Oh god. Oh god…"

  Knowing they needed something to focus on other than the televised hell filling Space Control's walls, Jake moved to stand between his wingmen and the monitors. Placing a hand on Vic's shoulder, he tried to shake the young officer out of his catatonic state. "Listen, guys. Let's get out of here."

  Richard tore his eyes from the displays. After a moment, he nodded.

  Jake nudged Victor again. Sluggishly, he focused his eyes and also nodded.

  "We have to figure out the weapon's range. Whoever is left in charge will need to know where to send aid. We need to know how far it went and what happened to the victims not at the epicenter. Maybe people were just incapacitated farther out." Jake pointed around the room. "This weapon isn't stopped by soil or rock, but we don't know what happens to it over distances."

  Something on one of the displays drew Richard's attention.

  Jake turned to see what had distracted him.

  Richard pointed at the top left monitor. "Look at the ship over the water. It must be the one that attacked DC. You can see those small ships closing on it."

  "You're right," Jake said. Glimpsing his first clear image of them, he studied their shape on the high definition display. "They look like smaller low-profile versions of the Turtle."

  "Yep, like a fighter version," Victor said.

  Suddenly, a barrage of laser beams shot out from the alien ship. Somehow, the fighters evaded them. A few seconds later, an intensified laser attack streamed from points all over the enemy ship. Fired in an enveloping strategy, they appeared to cage each fighter in brilliant beams. Again, the small ships dodged the attack, each leaping out of the path of the laser aimed at their central mass. However, one jumped into the path of another beam, instantly transforming into a brilliant vapor cloud.

  "No," Vic whispered.

  "Look!" Jake said, pointing at the screen. "The lasers won't be enough. They're almost to the ship's shields."

  Richard nodded. "I hope they have a way to get through, otherwise…"

  Jake's optimism sprang anew as the ships made another rapid hop, safely emerging within the alien ship's forcefield. "Yes!" He pumped his fist. "Get some!"

  "Who are these guys?" Victor wondered aloud, a glimmer of optimism edging the dread from his words.

  A moment later, a familiar voice blared from a radio speaker.

  ***

  "We're in, gentlemen," Colonel Zach Newcastle said to his space fighters. "Let's not waste Major Pell's sacrifice. Make it count. Go to your attack vectors. Launch your weapon at the assigned time. Once it's away, get the hell out of there. We'll rendezvous just as we've trained, assess the situation, and god willing, move on to the next targets."

  He looked down at the narrowing bay, wishing it was open ocean. He never imagined a scenario where they deployed these dreadful weapons this close to the planet, much less a population center.

  The weapon, a secret asteroid buster, was a two-stage double nuclear penetrator. A special chamber encased the first-stage nuke. For the initial nanosecond of its detonation, the energy from the exploding atom bomb focused in one direction, generating an intensely powerful x-ray laser beam. Even though the nuclear detonation obliterated the device a fraction of a millisecond later, the initial powerful beam disrupted molecular bonds deep into the target. To preserve the integrity of the second nuke, the same focusing physics diverted a significant portion of the first nuke's energy away from the trailing stage's hardened nuclear weapon.

  Shedding sacrificial layers of carbon steel, the second nuke bored through the resultant blast and into the tunnel of plasma-state matter. Even without the nuclear laser assist, the second stage slammed into the target with enough kinetic energy to go through one hundred twenty feet of reinforced solid concrete. Theoretically, the combined effect could drive the second nuclear device ten times that depth, up to twelve hundred feet, into solid rock. Set prior to launch, a collapsing-capacitor timer detonated the second nuclear device when it reached the center of the target.

  It was rumored the design came from a weapon initially drawn up as a bunker buster for use in an all-out nuclear war. However, this will be the first full-scale aboveground deployment of the device.

  When General Tannehill called with a brief description of the alien ships and the apparent threat portended by their silence and appearance, Colonel Newcastle had framed a quick battle plan. He decided to attack the first two targets—one in DC, and one in Moscow—with eight simultaneously fired missiles. Depending on their success, he would further divide their forces, attacking the rest of the alien fleet before more cities were lost.

  Each ship only carried four missiles, so they had to maximize their effectiveness.

  Colonel Newcastle's fighter raced along its assigned vector. In less than two seconds, all seven of the remaining fighters reached their designated initialization points and turned inbound on their attack trajectories.

  ***

  "It looks like they're spreading out, surrounding the entire ship," Richard said as they watched the scene develop.

  Jake studied the evil looking alien visage. "I see some structures on top of the head. I hadn't noticed them before. It almost looks like a … bridge."

  "That thing is huge," Victor said. "Those fighters look like gnats. They don't stand a chance."

  "Obviously they think they do, and considering they're apparently our last hope, we better—"

  Suddenly, brilliant light haloed the enemy ship. In an instant, its intensity grew too bright for the camera. The satellite's video feed washed-out.

  ***

  The ship's huge size amazed Colonel Newcastle. They were inside its shields, but they were still a mile from their target. Even at this distance, the ship filled his forward screen.

  Thank god our theories on how the drive would penetrate a forcefield were right. Otherwise, this would have been the shortest counter-attack in the history of warfare.

  What happened next was so quick the human eye could not truly appreciate or capture it. If you filmed the event with a high-speed camera and slowed the playback, you would see the ships simultaneously dart at the alien ship from seven discrete attack angles. In a millisecond, they reached the desired speed and released their mis
siles. Then, the ships instantaneously changed course ninety degrees. Shooting straight up, they rocketed out of the area with enough speed to outrun the ensuing nuclear shock wave.

  Colonel Newcastle's helmet visor auto-darkened as a brilliant light enveloped the wing's seven remaining fighters. Reaching the relative safety of space, he turned to observe the effectiveness of the attack.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "Oh god, we lost them," Vic cried. His plaintive words echoed in the control room's cemeterial silence.

  As the brilliance faded and the video feed resumed, a second explosion ripped through the giant ship. Glowing with dazzling internal brilliance, hundreds of fissures spread across the ship's component asteroids. Then it blew apart. Huge pieces of various sizes plunged into Chesapeake Bay.

  They stared at the screen in shocked silence, then all three men screamed with joy. Richard wrapped Victor in a bear hug. The small lieutenant's feet left the ground. Jake laughed, then he heard the radio crackle to life. "Wait, listen."

  "… Wing, this is Vampire Six, over."

  Richard set Victor down. "It's Colonel Newcastle."

  "They made it," Vic whispered.

  "This is Bravo Wing," replied a voice with a thick Russian accent. "We're three minutes from engaging the bastards that just hit Moscow."

  The news slammed Jake. "Oh, fuck."

  "Damn it! I'm sorry Vlad."

  Jake heard his shock mirrored in the colonel's voice.

  "They hit DC too," Colonel Newcastle said, his east Texas drawl heavy with the news. "We don't know what the weapon did, but I'm pretty sure it ain't good." The colonel's voice took on an urgent tone. "Anyway, we don't have much time, so I'll make this quick. We hit them en route to New York. The tactic worked. The enemy ship was destroyed. As briefed, divide your wing into four pairs. Attack the remaining ships in teams of two. I'll split up Alpha Wing, and we'll do the same."