SODIUM:4 Gravity

by Arseneault, Stephen

  As we watched on with dejected looks on our faces, we soon got the reason for our orders. Again, the jammers surfaced in Puget Sound and our sensor screens went white. Thousands of skimmers surfaced and raced for the shores. I pushed hard on the throttle and engaged the enemy within seconds.

  But this time the enemy came prepared. Fighter after fighter emerged from the waters behind the skimmers. The skies were soon flooded and our attentions were turned to the larger craft. We had 20 Defenders and one GAF. Within minutes the aliens had us outnumbered by ten to one.

  I dove hard and knocked out the jammers in one fast sweep. Command soon unleashed the 66 mini-Drillers and our tactical screens were full of blips running wildly in every direction. The coil guns that remained from the initial invasion fired non-stop.

  The alien fighters continued to surface and the odds against our defense continued to grow. As I piloted our GAF through and around the alien hordes Randy smashed fighter after fighter. The numbers were overwhelming and our small Defender force was being picked off one by one.

  Our numbers dropped quickly from 20 to five to two. Our shields had taken numerous hits with some as high as 90%, but they had continued to hold. Randy had 17 kills and his numbers were climbing, but our defeat in Seattle was inevitable. As I turned and twisted and fired our gravity pulse gun we took three hard hits knocking two of our BHDs offline.

  We were ordered to retreat southward to Tacoma where we would join a force coming north from Portland. The skimmers continued their destruction moving slowly outward from Puget Sound as the alien fighters had complete control of the skies. With the new forces from Portland, our numbers would not be sufficient to stop the alien advance.

  The skies over Seattle, Victoria and Vancouver were ruled by more than 400 alien fighters. The thousands of alien skimmers moved ever outward crushing everything in their path. The northwestern cities had been reduced to rubble and more than 12 million citizens had perished. But that paled in comparison to the 137 million lives lost in the Philippines. Death tolls around the world were climbing rapidly.

  When the annihilation of the Seattle area was complete, the invading forces returned to the waters of Puget Sound. I then received orders to fall back to the hangars at Long Beach to affect repairs. Within minutes I set the GAF down and maintenance crews began their work.

  As we awaited word that our GAF was once again at full strength Shepard remarked that Edmonton had fallen and the enemy forces were now heading southward across the eastern Alberta plains towards Montana. The fighter support for the alien ground force had been reduced to 72 from its original numbers.

  Again I requested orders to take several squadrons to attack the invaders and again my request was denied. It was maddening to sit idly by while lives were lost but such were the emotional struggles of war. It was a dark time for all of Mankind.

  The alien forces from the Philippines and Australia had combined and were expected to overtake Indonesia by the afternoon. The aliens were relentless in their attack and complete in their destruction.

  The forces from the Black and Caspian Seas were cutting a wide swath through western China. The use of tactical nuclear missiles had been attempted repeatedly with each occurrence resulting in the weapons being knocked from the sky before detonation. The aliens learned our tactics fast and quickly countered those which were effective.

  When the green light on our repairs was given we prepared to fly back to Portland to join with our new command. As the rear door of our GAF closed a tech yelled at me to turn around. When I did I was surprised by a package striking me in the chest. When opened Randy had to ask about my broad smile. It was one of the new BGS gloves with the micro BHD. My BGS suit was now fully up to date.

  After pulling on the new glove I was given command of 14 Defenders out of our force of 46. Once in Portland it took no time for me to introduce myself and to organize our two squads by experience. Three Defenders had seen battle while the rest were barely out of training.

  Hours passed as we sat idle over Portland. The invading force in North America had crossed into Montana and continued their deadly assault on anything human that was in their path. When my frustration had reached a peak the orders finally came in for my detachment to move to a rallying point over Yellowstone National Park. A force of 35 Defenders was being moved up from Denver to join our ranks.

  We arrived in Yellowstone within minutes and began organizing for our assault. My team would head east towards Sheridan while the Denver squads headed north to Bozeman. We would attack the invaders over Lewis & Clark National Forest, but only after Great Falls had met with its demise.

  When our next great air war began the alien fighters had again been reduced in numbers. We had the advantage and it quickly began to show. Eight alien fighters soon fell to the Earth. I was again dismayed when the order came in to pull back. I rolled and Randy fired damaging two more fighters as we turned towards our new destination in Helena.

  When the last Defender had moved out of the area the alien forces once again regrouped and moved towards the southeast. As they crossed into the valleys around Martinsdale I was stunned when four large nuclear weapons were detonated at once. The nukes were placed on the ground in the path of the incoming invaders and detonated once they were within their midst.

  We were ordered back to finish the job as the mushroom clouds boiled up into the skies. The alien forces had been reduced by two-thirds. Within hours we would once again have complete control of the North American continent. It would be a small victory on the world stage but a victory none the less.

  The neutron bombs used in the explosion had a half-life of only months. Within two years the area would once again be safe for Man to inhabit. The residents of Martinsdale had been relocated before the warheads had gone off. It was a brilliant move by our Tacticians and Battle Planners. The American breadbasket would once again be secure if only for a short while.

  As we moved in to mop up the remaining forces the subsurface attack force once again appeared on the northwest coast. The skimmers and fighters had resurfaced in Coos Bay and were making their way up through Oregon towards Eugene. I winced when the 35 Defenders from Denver were ordered to return to base. With more than 400 alien fighters our force of 46 Defenders was once again outnumbered and outgunned.

  By the time we regrouped in Portland and headed south towards Salem the invaders had already overwhelmed Eugene. Again it was disheartening to know that another quarter million souls had lost their lives. As we raced into battle I gave our crew another talk.

  I talked of how these were our people that were being killed and our homes that were being destroyed. I talked of how we had attempted reasoning with the invaders to no avail and how righteousness was on our side. We would go after these destroyers of Man with a vengeance. We would turn the tides of this war when the last of the alien craft had fogged itself. When I looked around the cabin it was not at faces of despair, but at faces of determination. I then turned my focus back to the tactical screens.

  We met the invading force head on just south of Salem. The fertile valley was under assault by 412 alien fighters and 4,255 skimmers. I pushed the throttle and raced into harm's way as Randy again repeatedly fired our coil guns. We weaved and bobbed, dove and climbed, looped and swirled in and amongst the alien fighter force offering them nothing but death and destruction.

  Our success was an inspiration to the other pilots as we quickly claimed five kills. The battle south of Salem had raged for nearly an hour when we took our first hard hit. We had lost two of our port sensors making us nearly blind on that side. Shepard patched in feeds from the other Defenders, but the computer struggled to keep up with the ever changing information.

  We soon took another hard hit and then another. A third sensor had been lost along with two BHD rings. I tried my best to regain an edge, but our shots were missing and my timing was off. When a fourth and then a fifth direct hit took out two more BHDs I turned and ran for safety.

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sp; We crossed over Santium Forest and settled in a small valley by Detroit Lake. Our remaining sensors picked up two alien fighters coming our way, but we were in no condition to fight. I found a steep embankment and used our remaining BHDs to drill into a hillside. Once fifty meters from the opening I shut down the systems in an attempt to avoid detection.

  The alien craft passed directly overhead and then moved slowly outward as if in a search pattern. Ten minutes of searching continued before the fighters turned and headed back to battle. When the surrounding area was deemed safe I opened the rear hatch and walked the 50 meters of the new stone and dirt tunnel to daylight. Our fighting was done until such time as we could affect repairs.

  Our Defenders and the light coil guns around Salem put up a fierce fight. It had taken the aliens more than two hours to crush that defense and once again move towards Portland. Shepard and Raven worked the ship’s computer in an attempt to repair or bypass our damaged sensors, but it was of no use. We would have to return to a maintenance hangar.

  We were only minutes from Long Beach using the BHD, but we were damaged and the alien attack force was still nearby. Randy then joined me as we looked out across the small valley from our tunnel opening. He then looked down at my glove and then up at my face. He didn't have to utter a word.

  I activated the skin of my suit and balled my fist. From Randy's perspective I had vanished into thin air, from mine I was now flying through the air following my fist as I went. With the active skin of the BGS there was no inertia to contend with. When I turned my wrist I was immediately taken in that direction. Within minutes I was zooming about as if it had been in my genetics since birth.

  I contacted Command from my QE comm and told my commander that I was returning to battle in the BGS. I was passing command of our ship to Shepard and was asking that every effort be made to get my crew back to the hangars in Long Beach. Command confirmed and wished me luck.

  The micro BHD did not move at the extreme speeds of a full drive. But it would allow you to attack the ground forces of the invaders at-will. I followed the highway back into Salem and then turned north towards the horde of alien skimmers.

  The skimmers had the appearance of a short flat bus. They moved about 20 meters off the ground firing two gravity weapons from either side as they went. The first skimmer I came upon had minor damage and had been moved to the back of the invading force.

  I landed gently on the transparent roof and looked down at the five squids manning its posts. Four were gunners while the fifth was a pilot. I stomped hard on the roof of the skimmer until one of the squids turned its four eyes upwards to look. Before it could react I used my gravity pulse pistol to blast a hole in the roof the size of a basketball and then another hole through the bottom. The concussion knocked the squids out and their chariot tilted hard to the left and headed for the ground.

  I again activated the skin of my BGS and flew to the next closest skimmer. Two more blasts and it was off to the next. It only took moments for the aliens to attempt to counter my efforts, but they had no good response to my disappearing and then reappearing elsewhere. I was like a ghost attacker for which they had no defense.

  I continued my bloodthirsty assault on skimmer after skimmer, each time deriving a great deal of pleasure from the looks on what I perceived to be their faces. I continued my rampage for half an hour before the first 100 skimmers had fallen victim to my vengeance. I then got a flash of the alien nursery in my head.

  These aliens were unlike us in almost every way and yet I somehow had a small level of anxiety running interference with my thoughts. What if these squids were just following orders? What if they had thoughts and feelings just like us? What if my indiscriminate and merciless killing, even if during battle, what if it was wrong? I pushed those thoughts to the dark recesses of my mind and continued on with the kill.

  As we hit the outskirts of Portland my kills had surpassed 300. The aliens soon adopted a tactic of firing their gravity weapon just over the top of their adjoining skimmers in an attempt to catch me when my skin was inactive.

  I had noticed the tactic as one of the first shots annihilated a blackbird flying just above the skimmer I was about to land on. I quickly changed my tactics to land on the ground below and behind the skimmer and to fire my pulse pistol upward.

  The skimmers then adapted to also pummel the ground in a random series of blasts in the hopes of getting that one in a million shot. I again adjusted my tactics to deactivate and then to fire in mid-air. My relentless and uninhibited killing of the squid forces began to take its toll.

  The aliens began to move their skimmers in tight pods where their weapons were much less affective. I continued to fly in and around the invaders killing at-will. I had again adapted my tactics to wait until I sensed a gravity pulse in my direction and then to fire immediately when it ended.

  The big guns at Portland were effective for a time, but one by one they were taken down by the skimmers. By the time Portland had fallen the aliens had lost half of their subsurface fighting force. I had taken down more than a thousand skimmers and with them their crews.

  With Portland in ruin the remaining skimmer force turned and headed back towards the Pacific. The 227 fighters continued northward to finish off Tacoma. I pushed hard with my glove, but I could not keep up with either force. Tacoma soon met with the same fate as had Seattle, Portland and Eugene.

  With Tacoma finished the alien fighters returned to the depths of the Pacific to rejoin their skimmer force. I headed back towards my crew and the tunnel I had dug with our GAF. They were gone.

  I then realized I had not checked in with Command since my killing spree had begun. My commander listened in disbelief at my story. They knew the aliens had been losing a high number of skimmers, but they did not know why. My adapted tactics were soon sent around the globe to the other BGS fighters. I had hopes we were onto something big, something useful to our weak defenses, something that could turn the war back in our favor.

  The remaining alien skimmers in Montana had continued their southern trek overwhelming the forces defending Casper Wyoming and were quickly approaching Cheyenne. From there it would only be a short run to Denver. But the alien invaders were not prepared for the BGS squad moving north from Colorado Springs.

  A dozen Marines who had no qualms about killing squids were in route to the front lines. Command had quickly passed on my tactics. Denver committed another 50 Defenders and for the first time since its landing the alien force was finally losing and losing big. The dozen BGS Marines wasted no time with their highly efficient methods and the newly adopted tactics.

  With the tides of war turned squarely against the invaders they turned in retreat and sought refuge in the depths of Grayrocks Reservoir. The BGS Marines were not far behind and the bloodbath that followed was one that would no doubt be talked about for centuries. Centuries of Man's history that had yet to be written, if we were to survive.

  Two more squads of BGS marines were then loaded onto transports on the East Coast and sent to San Francisco. If the next alien invasion came we would be prepared to defend. Our factories were now turning out more than 100 updated BGS suits a day and training camps were being setup to accommodate the new force.

  Defenders were stripped of much of their insides and setup as fast transports to move the BGS Marines into battle where needed. Our Tacticians and Battle Planners now had a formidable weapon with which to counter the invaders. Plans were being put into place of how to best deliver decisive blows.

  I was soon met by my crew with a repaired and reloaded GAF. I begged Command to send us into battle. My crew would take me in close and I would do the rest. This time the orders came down as desired. With a heavy burst of our BHD we were soon setting down in Brazil near the alien force that continued to devastate the Brazilian croplands.

  Ten minutes later I was hard at work destroying skimmer after skimmer. I had not slept in more than 72 hours, but I felt as full of energy as I had ever been. The stimula
nts of my BGS and my highly conditioned body had given me the ability to fight non-stop. I didn't need sleep, I didn't need food and I didn't need breaks for the restroom. Man had never seen a soldier such as me.

  I was soon joined by the squad of BGS Marines who had defeated the ground force north of Cheyenne. We pushed the limits of what our suits would allow and soon had the alien forces retreating. Their fighters circled helplessly overhead having nothing to add to their defense.

  When the skimmer force had finally escaped our wrath their numbers had been reduced from the thousands to several hundred. We were picked up by our transports and headed to the coastline where they had initially deployed from. The skimmers were gone; the alien fighters gone and the alien destroyer gone, vanished into the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.

  They disappeared deep into the Atlantic where our sensors could not detect them. Our acoustic capabilities were the best they had ever been, but the aliens were a water species and their technologies somehow allowed then to move under the waves without detection. The fog of war was vast and deep.

  We soon received new orders to head to Tokyo after a refit in San Francisco. Command had a new addition to make to our micro BHD glove. The Japanese had been in a slow torturous battle for their homeland with Osaka finally succumbing to the relentless onslaught. Nagano was in danger of falling with Tokyo next in line.

  The Japanese BGS fighters had not been as effective as our Marines. The alien forces had locked in on their micro BHDs and had picked them off one by one. If not for the fierce determination of the conventional forces the nation of Japan would have already fallen.