SODIUM:4 Gravity (2 page)

After seven hours adrift I was elated to hear an incoming message. A rescue ship was fast approaching. My team got loud in celebration. The plan was for the rescue ship to match our speed and move in close enough for a door to door transfer attempt at getting us out. Their ship had a pilot and one crewman to handle the winch line.

The rescue Defender would be maneuvered until its rear door and ours were facing one another. Their ships computer would attempt to bring them within three meters for the transfer.

We had been monitoring the stellar winds and they seemed to build and then ebb in an eight minute interval. We would attempt our first transfer during a lull.

The pilot of the other ship introduced himself as Bumba. He was South African. He manually piloted his Defender to within one kilometer before turning it over to the ships computer. Within minutes the two Defenders were facing back to back while traveling at one half-light speed. We again watched a timer tick away waiting for a lull in the stellar winds.

With precision timing the active skins on both Defenders shut down and the doors lifted. Rocko was at the ready with a line and winch with Tork being the first to hook up and cross. The process took four minutes.

The doors once again closed and the skins re-activated as the stellar winds again began to build. When the easing cycle repeated the transfer process began again. This time it was Raven who was then followed by Randy. As the squad Commander I felt it was my duty to go last. When the time came for my turn the stellar winds did not die down.

We waited patiently for almost three hours for the ebb, but no change came. Bumba then made a command decision of his own. I asked what they were doing when the Defender began to slowly pull away. I was told that our time was limited and that Tork had volunteered to go out on a tether in an attempt to change one of the damaged rings on the front of our ship.

I thought it a bad idea to risk the lives and safety of five in an attempt to rescue the one. Tork reasoned that we would need the ship if it was at all repairable. We had 315 fighters looking to destroy our world.

It was a reasonable argument, but one that was easily countered with why five live crewman and a good Defender were not worth risking. My arguments were ignored. Bumba brought the Defender in close before putting the plan into action. The door opened and out floated Tork with the tool needed to make the exchange for a spare ring that the rescue ship had brought to us.

The stellar winds still raged as Tork hurried through his repair attempt. With no active skin the rescue crew was taking a big risk. I felt unworthy of their gamble. Seven minutes into the ring exchange and Tork was reeled back into the other Defender. When their door had closed and the ship had moved safely away I was ready to give the new ring a try.

I applied power slowly and checked the status. The exchange appeared to have worked. I took a moment to thank Tork and again chastise him for taking the risk. But I was glad to be heading home in my own ship.

Bumba then told us to say our goodbyes because he needed to get back as soon as possible. There was much that needed doing. I watched the green blip from the sensors as the fast Defender quickly sped away. I pushed my throttle full and watched my own speed climb at what seemed like a snail's pace.

If I was lucky I would arrive home just before our attackers. Our Defenders were much slower with only one BHD ring but, just as the fully capable ship, they would continue to accelerate when the throttle was set to full. My trip counter ticked away from more than 17 hours.

When I arrived at the base near Lake Pleasant in the Adirondacks I moved quickly into a hangar. A crew was waiting to effect repairs. I hurried away to the elevators to take me to Chamber 2 for a briefing on the fight that was almost upon us.

I hustled into the briefing room where I was met by my crew. I took note that Tork was not looking well. Just as the briefing was about to begin he collapsed. I was sure it was due to the sacrifices he had made to get us safely home.

When the medic team had him on the way to the infirmary the briefing began. Our Battle Commander, Admiral Rex Hall, strode in with a stern look on his face. We would be fielding 42 Defenders against the 315 alien fighters. It was not good odds. We would be deploying our fighters in squads of six, based on a perimeter around where the alien fighters were expected to arrive.

Our newest space based coil guns were now on mobile platforms, but there were only eight of them and they were still relatively slow to move. Our strategy would be to try to quickly move forces to wherever the heaviest need was.

In the few months since the carrier attack, the Australians had constructed and opened a factory that was now pumping out 300 light coil guns a day. These new light guns were mobile and were being rushed to every major city in an attempt to beef up their defenses. There was also added emphasis on protecting our factories as further destruction could end any attempt at rearming ourselves for defense against the main fleet.

When the briefing ended we had our orders. We also had a new engineer. He would be meeting us at our Defender as he was being pulled directly from training in the DSims two weeks early. I was not happy with the current crew chang,e but being happy was not a requirement. I would have to give the new crewman the chance to prove himself.

I had ten minutes to spend before returning to the hangar. I decided on a call to the family. I wanted to hear my parent's voices and I wanted the encouragement that I knew would come from my Grandfather.

My Mother had her usual worried tone. She wondered why I would be calling after not talking to her for weeks. I told her everything was fine and to just stay on the farm and tend to business. She was of course suspicious.

I then moved on to the real purpose of my call... my Grandfather. I needed his wisdom, his support, his calm and confidence. I had no problem going headlong into whatever came my way. But that did not mean my guts would not turn to jelly.

I was nervous and my Grandfather always had a way of putting my mind at ease. He told me that man makes mistakes. That all you can do when times are tough is to do the best you can. That worrying never solved anything... action did.

He ended by saying that he had complete confidence in his Granddaughter. After all, she had his genes. The talk had been just what was needed. As I rode the shuttle towards the hangars my inner thoughts changed from worry about my loved ones and for all Mankind to ones of strength and determination.

In less than two hours the alien fighters would be upon us. Earth would again be fighting for its survival. As I stepped out into the hangar and viewed the crews, handlers and support personnel hurrying about, I had a renewed feeling of pride... a renewed feeling of fight. We would be giving the aliens the best of what we had.

It was early morning when we lifted off. Our repair crews had been able to change out the BHD rings and sensors on our Defender, putting it back in service. Randy and Raven were busily checking and rechecking their system status reports while I schooled our new engineer on what I would like out of her.

She went by the name of Shepard as she was said to tend to her systems like they were a herd of sheep, always checking, always adjusting, always keeping them online and optimized.

We had four high powered Defenders that had been outfitted with four reactors each. When the first alien carrier had arrived it was only destroyed by using a risky maneuver at faster-than-light speed. One crew had departed Earth, circled in a wide loop at full power and when it reached just above light speed it collided with the alien craft.

With the ship traveling faster than light the aliens were unaware of its approach until it was too late. The active skin allowed the Defender to pass through the carrier while it fired its coil guns. The alien carrier was destroyed along with its remaining fighters. Battle Command planned on again utilizing the element of a FTL surprise to attack the incoming fighters.

The Defenders were to approach from an angle where their computers would coordinate coil gun shots that would take out multiple targets with each pass. It was hoped that the alien numbers could be cut in half just before their arrival.

Of the remaining Defenders three had the dual reactor setup like ours. We were assigned to the same squad so that our maneuvering and flight speeds could be matched. When the fighters arrived we would first loose our Drillers and then stand firm attempting to draw the fighters in close to the six mobile coil guns we had repositioned to meet them. At that point it would again turn into a free for all.

As we awaited the initial contact by our four ultra-fast Defenders I took a moment to acquaint myself with my fellow commanders. Defender 327 was piloted by Captain Sandy "Beefy" McKiddle and Defender 328 by Colonel Rudolf "Konk" Wilhelm.

Beefy was from just outside Sao Paulo, Brazil and had grown up on a cattle ranch. He had been schooled in the States before the world knew of the impending alien threat. He joined the Brasil Corpo de Astronautas while it was being newly formed. As a former motocross rider and enthusiast he had scored extremely high on the spatial aptitude tests during his initial training, placing him in the pilot seat.

Colonel Konk was from Germany and had grown up just outside the fences of the closed down and repatriated Ramstein Air base. His great Grandfather had been in the Luftwaffe and even though he had not seen battle before his passing, he had filled his Great Grandson's imagination with tales from the sky.

Konk was determined to attain the glory of being an airman that his Grandfather had only alluded to. He was precise in his maneuvers and calculating in his decisions. After several short discussions I was comfortable with the squad that I had been assigned to.

As our ultra-fast Defenders approached the alien fighters our tactical screen filled with yellow blips and the fast approaching green ones. Within seconds 82 of the 315 fighters went red on the screen. The fast Defenders had also launched their Drillers which were just beginning to interact with the now scattering alien ships.

The Drillers immediately took out another 22 fighters before slowing enough to begin their pursuits of others. By the time the fighters reached our position their numbers had been cut by another 17. That's when Battle Command enacted phase two.

Just over 400 Drillers were launched from the ground as the mobile coil guns began to pump out long distance rounds. The 38 Defenders in our group next launched the 608 Drillers we carried with us. Randy's tactical display went haywire with blips of the Defenders, Drillers and fighters as they each twisted and turned.

As the first fighter came within range I pushed the throttle to full and followed an initial flight plan posted up by Beefy. We would travel outward at a 45 degree angle and then turn hard towards the incoming horde. As was expected from them, the alien fighters then broke into two groups. A group of 90 headed for the atmosphere and the cities that waited below while the remaining ships attacked our position.

We were soon in the thick of it, shouting commands over the comm and reacting to commands shouted back. Fighters and Defenders were exploding right and left on our first pass when Battle Command called our squadron home.

The bulk of the 90 alien fighters that had entered the atmosphere were headed for the industrial grounds in Australia. As the fighters swooped in low to do their damage, they were met by thousands of rounds coming up from the light coil guns the Aussies had been manufacturing.

The aliens lost 16 fighters on their initial approach before they once again began their devastating crushing attacks with their gravity weapons. The fighters, despite the defenses, cut a wide swath of destruction from Brisbane to Sidney to Melbourne. Millions of lives were lost in a matter of minutes.

On the first pass our squad took out two fighters. We banked hard and came in for a second pass when the aliens revealed a new tactic. Each alien fighter had a compliment of four repair robots attached to its outer hull. As we came in hard the fighters launched the robots directly at us.

When the first one came in contact with a Defender it was partially dematerialized by the BHD with the remainder being absorbed and then ejected by the active skin. When the second repair robot hit it took out two of our sensors. Of the 15 initial Defenders sent to assist Australia, nine were made useless by the alien robot tactic, including that of Konk and his crew.

The battle in space and the battle over Australia only lasted for 37 minutes. When the final alien fighter went down we had lost 28 Defenders with another 12 being damaged. We had lost all six of our mobile space guns as well as 16 stationary ones.

When counting the light ground based guns the losses were in the thousands. But, the worst losses of all were the 3.4 million Australian civilians who had perished in the onslaught. The once powerful industrial corridor between Brisbane and Melbourne was now in shambles.

With only 14 months remaining before the main fleet arrival we had our work cut out for us. The fleet consisted of 18 carriers, each with a compliment of 1024 fighters, 14 Destroyers, five Cruisers and three Battleships. And then of course the 40 kilometer wide mega-ship.

Our squadron had survived to fight another day. But we had only encountered a force of 315 fighters versus the more than 18,000 fighters that were now headed Earth's way. New Defenders and ground defenses had to be built and new crews trained. It was a daunting task.

The world powers called another emergency meeting to discuss possibilities and plans for the next 14 months. Every man, woman and even children down to the age of eight were enlisted and assigned work duties and production quotas.

No one was immune from the toils of defending the planet. Many nations resorted to extreme punishment for those who were caught slacking off or not pulling their weight. One such nation offered a severe beating with a cat-a-nine-tails on the first offense with execution offered on the second. Only a handful of beatings had occurred.

There were no outcries of injustice, no protests and no lawsuits. Everyone participated or was thrown to the wolves by the society they lived in. This was for the survival of all Mankind. Everyone had skin in the game.

Within a month of the conclusion of the fighter onslaught, new recruits were lined up in the parking lot of the Adirondacks base as far as the eye could see. It was my job to train them, train them fast and train them well. The pilot training sessions lasted eight hours a day, seven days a week for 12 weeks running three shifts. The Adirondacks base would crank out over 1,000 crews by the time the main fleet arrived. The other two training locations would add another 1,500.

After the initial four weeks of training, if crews were doing well, they earned a half day break. Crews were restricted to the base during the time off, but trainers had the option of "Going into town." On our first such occurrence Randy, Raven and I headed for the local bar. Our reclamation suits would hardly be considered high fashion during any era, on that night they drew extra attention. Four locals were already well into a particular way when we entered the establishment.

We sat at a booth against the wall and quickly ordered our drinks. I had not had a real meal for months and with the nutrition fully provided for by the suits, I had no taste for the greasy fried bar food that was the normal fair.

As we waited for our drinks, the four hucksters at the bar turned around on their stools to face us. At first it was just the occasional low comment followed by snickers. The minor harassment soon turned into loud laughs and slapping knees, with a rude gesture thrown in here or there.

I had a short temper and Randy repeatedly told me to just ignore them and take it easy. But easy was not my style. When I had finally reached the point of no restraint I rose from the booth and stepped in front of the biggest fellow.

I asked if he had a problem with me and would he like to step outside. He replied that he would never hit a lady, even a he-man lady like myself. I told him he and his friends looked like an overgrown monkey and three organ grinders. It drew an angry look. I next told him his Mama was an alien. It was the lowest of the low comments a person of the day could make.

He cocked back his big drunk fist and took a swing. After four months straight in the reclamation suit, my muscles were toned and responded quickly. I was buff. I easily dodged his flying fist and countered with a punch to his solar plexus. As he quickly hunched over the next small fist came up under his chin rocking his head backwards.

I then followed with the ole knee to the groin which dropped him quickly to the floor. The first organ grinder then made his attempt at bringing my unleashed fury to an end. His punch from the side missed and I countered with a light blow to his larynx.

When the third fellow stepped in I ducked well below his throw and again went for the groin shot. With two of the men on the ground and a third gasping for air the fourth put his hands up in surrender. The bar brawl had lasted all of 13 seconds.

I walked back to the table, downed my drink and left money for the tab and tip. I decided it best we leave before the local law enforcement arrived and carted us off to a cell while attempting to sort things out.

It was frustrating given the circumstances that the same yahoos were still causing some of the same problems out in the real world. I tried to convince myself that everyone was working hard and with that many people were on edge. They were probably just blowing off steam from a 12 hour workday of their own.

We returned to the base cantina and had another drink before settling in to our individual quarters. I took the final hour I had off and called on my Grandfather for a bit of comfort and support. All was well at the farm and the year had produced a good harvest.

But, there were no profits. Only credits. All economies had quickly standardized on credits that could be banked for future use. We all knew that the yoke of government control had been fitted tightly around our necks and shoulders, but with the approaching doom there was little room to complain.

I knew that one day in the future, if there was a future, that free men would rise up to throw off that yoke. But today was not that day, and the words of encouragement from my Grandfather only worked to solidify my resolve.

Over the next two months I continued with the training of the four crews that were under my charge. As our training techniques had continued to be refined the crews moved rapidly from level to level in the simulations.

Tactics were optimized, weapons and ship’s abilities enhanced and schedules pushed. Outside, the base factories were coming into full production. With the three main facilities and numerous smaller ones scattered about we expected to have almost 4,000 crews at the ready come zero hour.

Each new Defender came with four reactors, eight BHD rings, ten sensors and 32 enhanced drillers. They flew faster and turned tighter, nearly matching the rapid turns of the alien fighters. The coil guns had received a boost in kinetic performance of almost 30%.

As I oversaw the rewarding of Astro-pins to my first three crews upon their graduation, I was already preparing for the new arrivals. I was then suddenly told to report to the Training Commander’s office.

When I arrived Shepard was already sitting in a chair in front of his desk. Commander Jake Hargrove had a new assignment for us. We would be heading immediately to a short briefing and then taken topside to the hangars for a mission. I asked about Randy and Raven and was told they would not be going along.

Commander Hargrove escorted us to the briefing room and then offered a quick nod for good luck as he returned to his own important duties. When I turned my head back towards the others in the room, I was stunned to see our chief scientist David Brenner standing before me. He was the father of the technologies that had thus far saved us from complete destruction by the alien invaders.

David Brenner made his was over to me and gave a quick hug. He then got on to the business of the upcoming mission. A new experimental Defender was being commissioned in the hangars as we spoke. It held 32 Sodium Fusion Reactors, 20 BHD rings and 24 sensors. It also came with a complement of 64 of the newest Drillers.

With the additional gear on-board the two rear seats had been removed to make room. The new ship would only hold a pilot and a systems engineer. Our mission would be a run out to the main fleet for surveillance.

I asked why we had been selected and got a reply. David Brenner had seen video footage of the bar brawl. I had been selected because I had maintained a cool demeanor and had acted decisively during and immediately after the event. He liked my spunk and determination.

Shepard was a highly rated engineer and had been on my crew giving her combat experience. So, she was going along to keep things running. David then told us of another piece of gear we would be testing. It was a new reclamation suit.