by Dean M. Cole
***
"Standby, Captain Allison. My other fighters are rejoining," Colonel Zach Newcastle said.
"Roger, sir."
Having completed their first attack run on the reorganized enemy fleet, Vampire Squadron's Alpha and Bravo Wings reunited east of the battle. Superimposed over Earth's curving blue sphere, Vlad's ship pulled alongside his. "Bravo Wing checking in," Commander Yaakov reported through a thick Russian accent.
"Roger, Vlad," Zach said, saluting him through his fighter's canopy. "Good shooting, comrade."
Commander Yaakov returned the salute, his mirrored helmet dipping in a nod. "As well to you, my friend."
Nodding and dropping the salute, Zach returned to the Space Control frequency. "That's great news, Captain Allison. I'll brief my squadron then we're heading back in. Keep feeding me the updates."
"Will do, Colonel. Turtle One, out."
At Admiral Thoyd Feyhdyak's request, the squadron had rejoined the battle. The Argonians had diverted most of their strong lasers to vaporizing the massive chunks raining down from the conflagration. Because of the suspected hot enemy weapon and the ongoing laser barrage, Admiral Feyhdyak asked Vampire Squadron to abandon their previous close combat tactics and deploy their bunker busters from a greater distance. He said the combined effect of the squadron's nukes coupled with the Argonian's lasers would speed up the destruction of the Zoxyth while limiting the unit's exposure.
Zach knew they owed the Argonians a great debt of gratitude. He figured some of the GDF ships could get away if they made a run for it. However, that would leave the planet undefended and lighten the barrage, potentially opening a window for the enemy to drop shields long enough to deploy their weapon. The Argonian ships were holding station in a heroic effort to save the planet.
He returned to the squadron frequency. "Good job Vampires. Our first attack helped destroy all but the last two enemy dreadnoughts."
A chorus of cheers filled his helmet.
After a quick inventory of the squadron's remaining missiles, Colonel Newcastle continued in a somber tone. "Those two enemy ships are all that stand between us and what's left of their command ship. It's time to finish these bastards. Only nine of us still have missiles." He nodded to his right. "Commander Yaakov, in addition to your two missiles, I count one each in three of your fighters. Take your armed fighters and hit the far ship with four missiles."
Vlad nodded.
"Major Jakobson, I'm going to bring up the rear with my two missiles. You and three of your wingmen have one missile each. I want you four to hit the near ship with four missiles, as well. I'll take care of the command ship. Stagger your weapons. If the first one weakens the shield, the second or third might get through. At any rate, the combined effect should give the Argonian lasers an opening to finish this."
Commander Yaakov's thickly accented voice came across the radio. "Comrade, by my count, we have eleven missiles left. No?"
Newcastle nodded. "Da, my friend. I want to keep a couple in reserve. You and I will hold onto one missile each."
Vlad nodded again.
Zach punched a series of numbers into his Fire Control Computer. "I'm uploading the attack sequence into each of your FCCs." Two seconds after pressing the send key, he received an automated confirmation from each fighter.
Saluting his squadron, he said, "Good luck, gentlemen, I'll see you on the other side."
Each returned the salute.
Heart racing—as it always did just before joining the battle—he watched the computer countdown. At the designated time, Alpha and Bravo Wings accelerated to their initialization points. Reaching their assigned vector, each turned and rocketed toward the back of an Argonian fighter.
With an eye on his clock, Zach flexed his gloved fingers over the fighter's flight controller. Three … two … one … now! He shoved the stick forward. The fighter shot west, toward the battle, quickly narrowing the two hundred mile gap.
Ahead, Alpha and Bravo Wing's missiles started streaming toward their targets. Launched at their programmed intervals, they looked like a staggered line of fiery-tailed arrows. Each flew straight toward the back of the friendly Argonian fighter assigned to block its approach from enemy observation. At the absolute last second, when Zach was certain it was doomed, each fighter darted out of the missile's path. The tactic hid the Vampire fighter's egress and their missile's ingress until each had accelerated to a velocity that left the enemy no time to react.
On cue, the Argonian's unleashed a fresh onslaught, providing cover for the egressing fighters.
Reaching his approach vector, Colonel Newcastle's ship turned and accelerated toward the back of his assigned Argonian fighter. One hundred miles from the enemy ships, he launched his missile. An instantaneous course reversal snapped his ship outbound. Flying backward, he watched the first group of missiles approach their targets.
His canopy auto-dimmed as a strobing chain of four brilliant nuclear detonations blossomed above the bracketing enemy ships. Not penetrating, the nukes exploded against their shields.
The hourglass shape of the overlapping glowing shells looked like a massive amoeba frozen in the act of cellular division. Completing the illusion, the ships within formed nuclei. The right half of the amoebic shell flickered and collapsed. As the others had, the shield released its energy in a storm of dissipating lightning bolts.
"Come on!" he screamed, heart racing.
Adding to the assault, the few Argonian lasers not tasked with debris vaporization still drilled into the trio. The fifth nuke detonated against the far ship's shield. Still extended to encapsulate the enemy ship-remnant, it flared like a teardrop-shaped miniature sun, but somehow, it held against the nuclear assault.
"Damn it! Come on," he growled, willing the last shield to collapse.
The sixth and seventh missiles slammed into the unprotected near ship. For a millisecond, it looked like a star had been born within the vessel's rocky confines. Glowing with internal brilliance, a network of hundreds of fissures suddenly crisscrossed its surface. Then, the dreadnought disintegrated in a nuclear holocaust.
Newcastle pumped his fist. "Yes!"
Turning from the roiling plasma cloud, he watched the eighth missile close on the last enemy dreadnought. Following close behind, his missile bore down on the ship-remnant.
Eyes narrowed with focused hate, Newcastle glared at the bastard that had wiped out DC. "Die you son of a bitch!"
***
Another blinding flash came from the right of Salyth's ship. Checking that sector's video feed, he saw the unmistakable roiling fireball of another fission bomb. Its shields weakened by the barrage of focused energy weapons, the starboard dreadnought succumbed to the renewed nuclear attack.
The blast slammed the remains of The Forebearer's Revenge into the ship on its left. The impact overloaded the inertial compensators. Thrown across the bridge, Salyth crashed into the far wall with bone-crushing force. Fighting to his feet, he scrambled back to the weapon control panel. Through the blood covering its surface, the Charging icon still pulsed red.
Outside, brilliant light blossomed again as another fission bomb struck his final dreadnought. The last protective ship's forcefield flickered, threatening to fail. His ship rocked under the shock wave, knocking him to the deck again.
Pulverized and bleeding profusely, he clawed his way back up to the control panel. Knowing his death was only moments away, Commodore Salyth feared he had failed the Forebearers.
***
The tremendous battle played across the Turtle's view-wall. Only the ship-remnant and its two protective dreadnoughts remained.
Jake felt a hint of hope struggling to castoff some of the day's overwhelming dread and horror. The three Air Force pilots watched in shocked trepidation as Vampire Squadron's nuclear bunker-busters slammed ineffectually into the Zoxyth shields. Like an insane disco-strobe on hyper-drive, the rapid-fire detonations and subsequent auto-dimming painted the Turtle's cabin in surrealistic stop
-frame animation.
Two blinding flashes later, the right dreadnought ruptured with the brilliance of an internal nuclear detonation. Under the combined assault of the Argonian's laser barrage and Vampire Squadron's nuclear bombardment, its shields collapsed in a spreading electrical discharge and the asteroidal ship detonated, a blinding fire blasting from a spiderweb of fissures.
"Yes!" Jake screamed.
Their stop-animation celebration froze when the third missile detonated against the left cruiser's shields which flickered but appeared to hold. Their final hope rested on the last two missiles bearing down on the remaining two targets.
"Please," Victor whispered.
Collectively holding their breath, all three pilots stepped up, placing their hands against the view-wall. Willing the missiles into their targets, Jake whispered through clenched teeth, "Go … go … go!" He pushed against the clear wall with each chant.
At the last moment, the two Argonian fighters that shielded their approach darted aside. An eternal second later, just before the left missile struck, the last forcefield collapsed. Passing through the expanding web of lightning bolts, the missile slammed into the final enemy dreadnought and it exploded with wonderful internal brilliance.
Jake's heart raced as the final missile closed on the Zoxyth command ship. "Time for you to die!" he shouted. The view-wall auto-darkened as the missile struck the ship-remnant with a brilliant flash.
***
Salyth could feel his strength waning. His blood now ran freely across the console. Checking the flickering tactical display, he saw two missiles bearing down. The final one had the Forebearer's Revenge in its sights.
The radio crackled to life. "Commodore Salyth, I've failed you. That last missile drained our shields to five percent. We won't survive the next."
As the final dreadnought commander's transmission ended, a mad laugh echoed through the cavernous bridge.
Salyth looked at the severed head. The obstinate dead officer's eyes seemed to glare accusingly. The commodore feebly kicked at it and yelled, "Shut up!"
Again, the speaker blared. The commander's words echoed off the rock walls. "It's been an honor, Commodore. I'll see you with the Forebear—" His sentence died unfinished as the blinding flash of the next fission bomb flared across the bridge. Its shockwave shoved Salyth sideways.
The nuclear inferno of the burning dreadnought wrapped around his unprotected ship. In the brilliance flooding the bridge, Salyth turned back to the control panel. Barely visible through the radiance, a new light shone through the vital fluid puddled on its glass top. With a tremendous effort, Salyth swung a heavy arm across the console. An arc of blood sprayed from its surface. Rubbing his massive hands across the panel, he squinted, trying to read the display. Finally, the wavering letters came into focus: WEAPON CHARGED.
Commodore Salyth tilted his head back and roared. With the last of his failing energy, he hoisted both arms toward the ceiling. "The Forebearer's are avenged!" Then, his body collapsed. Falling through the white-hot light flooding the bridge, his arms thrust toward the weapon's actuator.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Sandy followed the general's aide down a long featureless corridor. The razor-sharp creases of the woman's uniform, lack of jewelry, and her jet black tightly drawn hair gave the senior officer a severe look. The female major slowed as she reached the end of the hallway. "In here, Captain."
Sandy nodded to her and passed through the double steel doors the officer had indicated. The placard on the wall above the entry read: Combat Control Center. Usually referred to as C3, the room was full of computer consoles and displays. A layman could easily mistake it for NASA's Mission Control. From here, Air Force command staff monitored deployed forces around the planet in realtime.
Stopping to stare at the room's main display in open-jawed amazement, Sandy realized the capability also reached into space. An incredible scene played out across a large display dominating the room's back wall. Like a cinematic space battle, hundreds if not thousands of ships filled the screen. Some flew about in total chaos, while others hovered in a stationary formation too big to fit in the image. Extending above and below the satellite's narrow field of view, the scope of the engagement made it difficult to tell one side from another. The disparate collection of ships, multicolored laser beams, and flickering curtains of energy painted a confused mural across the large display.
Utilizing the same gravity-defying ability demonstrated over San Francisco, the stationary vessels in the battle hovered over a large body of water. The conflict was obviously taking place in space. However, she had no way of deducing the location or altitude. Holding their position, the alien ships slowly shrank as the terrestrial satellite providing the video feed maintained its orbital velocity. Every second brought additional ships into the expanding view. A land mass slid into the bottom of the screen's right side. The curving shoreline formed familiar lines that Sandy belatedly recognized as Spain's southwest coast when the iconic Strait of Gibraltar also glided into view. Looking backward and slowly receding from the space battle, the spy satellite continued its southeastward track, bringing North Africa and the Sahara Desert into the image's lower left side.
As the point of view drew farther away, the full battle finally came into sight. Arranged in a large sphere, hundreds of sleek wedge-shaped ships formed a cocoon with several dark structures at its center. Like spokes of a wheel, scores of laser beams attached the outer shell of ships to the bulbous energy curtains encasing the central targets. As if choreographed to an unheard musical accompaniment, the beams oscillated and randomly pulsed off and on. Sweeping around the formation, incidental patterns generated by simultaneous volleys seemed to race around the sphere like a hyperactive music visualizer.
A new barrage of lasers drew her attention. Burning from various points within the glowing orbs, fruitless violet lasers blazed through empty gaps in the encapsulating formation. As another flurry of beams shot through the shell, Sandy caught movement. They weren't firing at empty space. Each beam had targeted a specific vessel. However, as if prescient, the sleek wedges skipped aside, instantaneously dodging each beam.
The scale of the image slammed home when the shielded objects revealed themselves during a lull in the attack's intensity. Sandy recognized the central small irregular edifices as a collection of the giant asteroidal enemy vessels. Judging by those proportions, and the relative size of the continental land masses below, it looked like a few of the enemy ships had been trapped in a desperate defensive formation a couple of hundred miles above the Atlantic Ocean.
In a sudden epiphany, Sandy realized the encompassing fleet must belong to the galactic government Jake had described. Unrelentingly, the short duration laser beams continued to burn from the nose of each of the encircling ships. Studying their form, Sandy decided the wedge-shaped vessels must be a space-based alien analogue of a fighter jet. As she examined them, several new larger beams joined the assault burning into the shields of the enemy formation.
Following the new lasers to their source, Sandy spotted several dark shapes sliding into the satellite's ever-expanding field of view. Arranged in an expansive grid, a fleet of massive ships hovered below the sphere of fighters. As if absorbing all light, their profiles appeared to cut black holes into the backdropping azure atmosphere. The flowing lines of the beautiful crafts contrasted sharply against the irregular angularities of the antagonistic alien's asteroidal ships. Dwarfing the enemy vessels, the largest of the sleek black ships easily exceeded five miles in length.
Barely discernible against the ocean below, a shimmering halo surrounded each. When one of the entrapped enemy vessels fired its own laser down into the flat formation, the faint shimmer blossomed into an opalescent sheet. Sandy realized it was a forcefield similar to that employed by the enemy ships. The overlapping shields of the massive black ships created a huge circular plane between Earth and the enemy fleet.
While the encapsulating fighters continued to pour
fire into the entire enemy formation, all the lasers reaching up from the fleet of huge, sleek vessels burned into one object. The targeted asteroid's forcefield glowed like a white egg, completely obscuring the shrouded enemy vessel from view. Oscillating luminosity created a dizzying strobing effect as the forcefield appeared to weaken under the continued assault. Then, its opalescent shimmer faded to a lambent grid of sheet-lightning. Unrelenting brilliant beams of energy continued pouring into it. The bubble flared blindingly white and then collapsed, discharging its energy in an enormous flash of Saint Elmo's fire. The forcefield surrendered in a death knell of dissipating lightning bolts that leapt from ship to ship, dancing across every vessel in the conflict. The last of their energy spent, the fingers of blue plasma finally flickered and died as they passed into the void beyond the attacking ships.
In the same instant, the giant asteroid started dissolving under the continued assault. With unimaginable power, the lasers rendered the city-sized rocks into molten slag. Some sections detonated, casting glowing orange blobs in every direction. Trajectories curved into graceful hyperbolic arcs as their suborbital velocities proved insufficient to keep the molten rocks from falling into Earth's gravity well. Like a live action version of Salvador Dali's surreal melting clock, the rigid protuberances of the asteroidal ships drooped. Under the continued laser assault, the sagging ship's energetic glow ramped up to white-hot. Now flowing like lava, the melted ship, no longer supported by its drive, surrendered to Earth's gravity and poured down on the vessels below. The small fighters in its path slid aside. When the hellish rain passed, they snapped back to their previous position, all while continuing to pour laser fire into the remaining enemy ships.
The molten rock fell onto one of the large vessels below. To Sandy's amazement, it bounced off the much larger ship's forcefield. Like mercury seeking low ground, it puddled in a depression in the formation's overlapping shield bubbles. The enormous sleek black ships didn't even shudder under the impact. However, the entire grid seemed to sag until a gap opened, allowing the liquefied rock to slip past.