SODIUM:4 Gravity (9 page)

The alien forces spread slowly outward from Puget Sound destroying everything in their path. It was like a cancerous plague devouring the city one block at a time. We destroyed one skimmer after another, but their numbers were too great. Seattle was falling.

Shepard then came back with a call. She had identified three alien vessels out in the Sound that were emanating the jamming signals. I banked hard and pushed the throttle forward. Within seconds the jamming pods were eliminated and our small Defender fleet once again began the task of killing squids.

To our dismay the remaining skimmers turned and headed back to the protection of the Sound. I followed a pack of three as they submerged firing a full gravity pulse into their midst. The water beside them shot immediately downward and then rose in a high column as if a giant cannonball had been dropped.

I then began feverishly pounding the waters of Puget Sound with pulse after pulse. Raven took note of debris surfacing from destruction of several more of the alien skimmers but it was soon evident that the amphibious force had gone.

Most of Seattle's waterfront was in flames or flattened and millions of dead fish were now floating on the surface of Puget Sound. We had lost two Defenders in battle to close-in fire and had confirmed kills of 178 alien skimmers.

Estimates soon came from Command that more than 300,000 souls had likely perished. Gone too was much of the manufacturing base and nearly all of the shipping abilities of the city which fed into much of the American northwest.

We again took up a defensive position over the city. My commander came online on a private channel. My decision to take command on my own would be dealt with at a later date. We were at war and every soldier was needed. Seattle had taken a horrendous hit.

But I was not to concern myself now for decisions I had made. There was much fighting yet to be done. Commander Jacobs went on to offer that if it was any consolation, our attack had slowed the alien ground forces enough that Calgary had received reinforcements before their arrival. The battle was ongoing and Calgary as a whole would not fare well. My actions were a wash and had likely saved as many lives in Calgary as were lost in Seattle.

Reports were trickling in from around the globe. The Philippines had been devastated. Alien fighters were reported circling about mopping up any remaining survivors. The islanders put up a good fight, but the forces against them were overwhelming.

The force that landed in Hervey Bay in Australia had turned north along the coast destroying town after town. Gladstone, Mackay and Townsville had been wiped from the map and Cairns was under siege and would fall within the hour.

This war was not like most wars of the past. Throughout history there had been battles where complete cities were razed to the ground, every stone of every wall knocked down and every inhabitant enslaved or killed. But, those battles were the exception and not the rule. The spoils of enslavement had always been greater than those of annihilation.

The squids took no prisoners and destroyed everything they came to that had been touched by Man. The inhabitants of each of those cities were dead, the cities completely destroyed. Their histories had come to an abrupt and complete end.

In Japan the fighting had been fierce. The squids came ashore on Tsushima Island, overwhelming the local forces and then spreading southward. Japan's southwestern Islands had fallen quickly and the squid force had moved on to the southern Japanese mainland.

Sasebo, Karatsu, Omura and Nagasaki had been crushed. The force at Fukuoka had been divided into three fronts. The first swept upward along the north shore, the second was cutting a wide swath across the center and the third moved deliberately southward, annihilating everything in its path. The squids were relentless and complete in their destruction.

When observing each of these battles I had the urge to fly immediately to the aid of those under attack, but I had learned a hard lesson about why we follow orders, even if we don't agree with them at the time. In the fog of war the mind is left to fill in holes with speculative thoughts. Sometimes those thoughts are clouded by emotions that lead to bad decisions.

I was not the first human to fall prey to the emotional minefield that we all walk through during wartime. But I had been lucky that my transgression had not caused more harm than good. Seattle had survived. While the waterfronts had been devastated, the rest of the city was now hard at work with rescues and repairs.

I continued to scan the battle maps for information on how the war was going. Time after time the news was coming back as not in our favor. It was only the first day of fighting and our casualties were already in the millions.

I selected the Indian peninsula tactical screen and observed that the attacking forces had moved from Sri Lanka onto the mainland of India and up the eastern coast. Again, laying waste to everything in their path.

The forces that landed in the Black and Caspian Seas had combined into one and were busy flattening the great wheat fields of the Russian plains. I suddenly had the bad feeling that the aliens were now targeting our largely unprotected food supplies.

I flipped from map to map and quickly came to the conclusion that we were in deeper trouble than I had imagined. The aliens would soon control the oceans which would eliminate our collecting of fish stocks which fed one quarter of our populations. They were destroying the wheat fields in Russia and the agricultural plains in Brazil.

I wondered if their next targets would include the breadbasket of North America. We had food stockpiled in the cities but it would only feed the masses for a number of months. If this was the new alien strategy they would not have to attack our strongholds. They would just wait us out as mass starvation set in.

Again the emotions of wartime crept into my thoughts. I asked my commander for orders and was told to hold my position. I passed on my observations of our food supplies being attacked and was told that Command was already fully aware. I looked around at my crew and received looks of apprehension. We were losing the war for Earth.

When the war moved into its second day we were being pushed back in the fight for Earth on all fronts except one. The battle for Italy was largely at a standstill. I pored over tactical screens and soon found the reason why. A single platoon of European soldiers, wearing BGS suits identical to mine, were stopping the aliens on every attack. The wearer of the suit could activate the skin at-will, making the less powerful weapons of the alien skimmers ineffective.

I had contemplated the suit’s capabilities only to come to the conclusion that it would not be very useful during battle. When active you could travel through walls or enemy vehicles, but you had no way to stop or maneuver. If the suit was made active and you headed downward into the Earth you would not be able to halt your progress. You would drift endlessly through the ground until the power-pack failed and you became ensconced in rock or roasted in molten lava.

To resolve the issue our engineers had come up with a micro BHD that attached to the knuckles of the suit glove. The first picture that popped into my mind was one of flying around like a superhero with one arm outstretched culminating in a balled fist. I wondered if the BHD enabled BGS came with a cape.

The truth was not far from fiction. The assault platoon of BGS soldiers had discovered that the micro BHD also made for a formidable weapon. If the gravity pulse gun these troops carried was unable to stop the alien forces they could count on the destructive power of the BHD. They only needed to make contact to unleash its power.

While the advent of the new BGS was good news, we continued to be pushed back on the remaining battlefronts. With the battle of the Philippines over the alien forces there had swept southward into Indonesia while the Australian force moved north into Papua New Guinea.

The Japanese attack force moved up the island to take Hiroshima and Kochi. The conventional forces of the Japanese Army were slowing the progress of the alien assault, but it was still moving forward. With every city lost so went its manufacturing, so went its transportation, so went its contributions to the civilizations of the world.

With the great Russian wheat fields in ruin the combined alien force of the Black and Caspian Seas had turned south across Kazakhstan. This was still largely an unpopulated area and the Tacticians were having fits trying to discern the strategy behind the move. The aliens continued to destroy anything of man as they went.

The long day fell to night and the fighting continued around the globe. News soon came that the alien battleship at Tsushima Island had fallen prey to a single Driller. The South Korean forces had launched hundreds of stealth Drillers towards Tsushima and one of them had found its mark.

The Japanese were in the process of fielding two squads of BGS troops who would be busy wreaking havoc amongst the invading ground forces. Their only hope of survival lay with the new BGS as the invading force would otherwise finish the task that it had begun.

In the nearby battle of Alberta, Calgary had finally succumbed to the attacking force which had then moved on towards Edmonton. Again, I requested to fly to their aid, but was again denied. It was like watching some stranger assaulting your neighbor while you were not allowed to intervene. I had quickly learned that war was not for the weak of heart or mind and that sometimes you had to fight every instinct you might have, because someone else up the chain of command supposedly knew better.

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.

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.