Each salvo was accompanied by a loud crack as the speed of sound was breached. And each salvo cut an even deeper swath through the forest before us as well as the one behind us. The girls had fired every round, and they both loved the feeling of power.
After several dozen rounds, we switched our attention to the swivel gun mounted on Bubba. I wanted a go at it first. I know David was a little disappointed since it was his baby, but he offered no argument against it.
We connected the power cables, and David flipped the fuse into place. We had the auto feeder dialed up, and I let a five-second burst fly. It was a good thing we had taken the time to really make the swivel mount sturdy. The back pressure generated was immense. With each five-second burst, I could cut a two-foot-diameter tree in half.
I was beginning to think we might just have a shot at defending ourselves after all. If we could catch a fighter with its shield defending a different side, we could do some real damage to it. We believed the fighters’ defense was the concussion shield, and we had a gut feeling it could only be aimed in one direction at a time. The nature of it focusing a wave of energy down to a point would have to leave other parts of the ship vulnerable.
For simultaneous attacks, we guessed they would rely on stretching out the point of concussion on a first projectile, and then swing it around and to focus it closer in for the second. It was pure speculation on our part, but we were willing to take some risks over it. With our day of practice complete, we headed home to begin preparations for our next offensive.
Chapter 20
* * *
We tended the animals as best we could. We were planning to deploy our little army to the field for at least a week. David devised an automatic feeder for the chickens, and a new calf would hopefully take care of our milking for us. We had taken one of our old refrigerators and strapped it to one of the trailers.
We would be making a semi-permanent base at Two Mile camp and would be able to power the fridge for our hoard of food from there. None of us could wait to get back into the fight with the aliens, and I guessed it was partially because we had not suffered any casualties as of yet. When and if we did, it would be a very bitter pill to swallow.
I loved those three kids and had not felt that familiar love since I was a young boy with my parents. I remember idolizing my father before getting to the age where my friends became far more interesting. Living at home was a feeling of peace and security, and even though I was dealing with three teenagers now, they brought me that same feeling of home. And I had not met anyone in all my days I would rather be going into battle with. All three were loyal, intelligent, and fearless.
The lack of fear is what sometimes makes people into fools. That same lack of fear is also what makes people heroes. Heroes, after all, are not born. They are self-made through their actions and deeds. With the three of them having already contributed so much to taking out that first ship, they were all already heroes to me.
We left base camp that afternoon to begin our week-long spy mission and our strategy planning session. We found a good spot for our decoy gun where the fifth gun had taken a lightning hit. We still had the cable laid out to it, so the hookup was relatively easy. We decided to place a smoke decoy with it. If we were lucky, we could lure a fighter in and take it down.
We were also able to salvage much of the other cabling we had used in our first offensive. By now, the aliens had abandoned the downed ship, so we were able to move about the substation freely. We scavenged other power cables from the area and strung out a cable covering nearly three-quarters of a mile over to our Daytona camp.
We hooked up Bubba’s machine gun along with our one remaining big gun. The howitzer was placed in a location nearer the substation, and the remaining decoys spread out at quarter-mile intervals leading away from us.
Our preparations were all in place by the afternoon of the second day. We then began the planning of our next assault. The second water ship had not been over to the substation for recharging but instead relied on the mother ship to come in close to it once a month. We had timed our week to coincide with what should have been one of those recharging visits.
We would use the large gun to try to hit the second water ship during its recharge. After that, our existence would definitely be known. With some luck, we felt we would be able to get off three or four shots at a minimum before the fighters reached us. I could only hope the weapon would be effective at that distance, because distance gave them time to react, time to move their shield.
After giving it some thought, I decided I would fire the howitzer at the same time and hopefully be able to draw away the shield and do some damage of my own.
It was once again eagle-eyed Janie who spotted the mother ship descending toward the smaller water ship. There was no doubt we would be fully exposed. All our efforts—building our home, our tremendous victory over the first ship, our hard work, and all of our planning—were coming to a defined moment.
We had a few hours to kill as the recharging of the water ship from the mother ship also lasted close to a day. I stood looking at the steeled faces of the others as they all watched the alien invaders.
The defiance in their eyes was exactly the same as recounted in so many war stories over the history of man. The true heroes stood strong in the face of imminent death, unwavering in their commitment to give it every ounce of energy they had, whatever the cost.
Their strength in turn steeled my resolve. We had come so far and accomplished so much in our little survivor family. It was now time to stand up for all mankind and to push these brutal murderers back into the blackness of space. Zero hour was upon us.
I left the camp and made my way over to the howitzer. We had strung a coaxial cable from Daytona camp over to the howitzer so I could securely communicate with David without giving off a radio signature.
I had put on a copper-screened helmet to reduce my radio-signature further, leaving enough visibility to aim and fire the weapon. I didn’t know if the helmet would actually work, but we were all willing to wear aluminum hats and suck our thumbs if we thought it would help.
David wore a similar screened helmet on his end and manned the large gun. The girls took thirty-minute turns staffing Bubba’s machine gun, with the lucky one getting to be at the trigger when it all went down. That day was Rachel’s lucky day.
David and I had taken our best aims when I gave the final command. The crack from both weapons was again deafening, but worth the pain. The big gun and howitzer fired at almost the same instant.
As it turned out, we were indeed lucky, and our velocities were sufficient to bypass their shields. The round from the big gun just missed the smaller water ship but slammed into a propulsion disc on the bottom of the mother ship. The down blast from that hit blew right into the smaller ship just below.
At the same moment, the howitzer round struck the water ship, blowing a small hole through the side and a larger one out through the top. The side shot also sent the smaller ship into a slow rotation. Neither ship moved position or made any adjustments whatsoever before I fired the howitzer again ten seconds later. This time I hit square in the center of the water ship, sending a large plume of smoke, fire, and debris upward into its parent vessel.
Again, ten seconds passed with no reaction from either ship. We had taken them by complete surprise, but we knew we only had a finite amount of time before they would do something about it. I fired the howitzer a third time, this time striking under the water ship. I spotted a plume of debris falling from its other side.
The big gun was ready for another round, and David let it fly. It skimmed the top of the smaller ship and again went directly into one of the propulsion discs on the mother ship. Again, the back blast of debris came hurtling down upon the ship below. The mother ship then dropped slightly and lurched forward toward us.
It happened like the first water ship—because of its immense size, everything looked to be taking place in slow motion. My next howitzer round
found its mark, releasing the same devastating, powerful explosion we had seen after taking down the first ship.
Fully one-quarter of the water ship was instantly incinerated, with the damage reaching up to the bottom of the larger one. The debris then did our work for us, knocking out another propulsion disc on the mother ship.
The resulting drop and lurch forward of the big ship was all it took to end the existence of the smaller vessel. The five-mile-wide behemoth dipped down enough to crash into the severely damaged vessel below. The impact flattened a large portion of the smaller craft and sent it slowly spinning down and crashing into the ocean.
I fired another round into the mother ship. This time the shot seemed to be absorbed by the larger ship, no doubt doing tremendous internal damage. At that point, the fighters finally began to emerge. I counted fifteen of them. And with the chaotic pattern they fell into, I could only guess they still had no idea where they were being attacked from.
Our rounds must have been too small and must have been coming in too fast for them to get a fix on us. David then let off another round, striking the far underside of the great ship and damaging two more of the propulsion discs. The fighters then locked onto the tungsten projectile coming out the back of David’s gun. The destruction it caused behind us had given away our position.
The mother ship had a total of sixteen discs on its underbelly, and we had managed to take out five. Unfortunately, with our last round’s origin detected, we had less than a minute before fighters swarmed us. A half dozen of the fighters came straight in, and I was ready for the first one.
The howitzer round punched a small hole in the front of it and blew all its guts out the back. The empty shell of the fighter flipped over and crashed down into the water before making it to the shore. I could just make out by the distortions in the air in front of the fighters that they now all had their shields on and facing toward us.
My next round missed, but I had a large backup target behind it. Once again the mother ship absorbed my howitzer round with untold internal damage done. The next fighter headed directly for David. He waited patiently for it to come into his firing line before letting go. With its shields already in front, the fighter did not appear to take any damage. But the shock of the force was enough to knock the fighter from the sky. It plummeted downward, skipped once on the waves, and came to rest on the beach, out of commission.
My next round would not be ready for the following fighter bearing down on me. So I triggered the first decoy and waited. The fighter shifted its shield down as a concussion weapon and began blasting the ground directly below it as it flew. I lucked out in that it went to my side on its way over to the decoy.
My timing with the vertical gun at the decoy was perfect. I blew the nose of the fighter clean off. It spun violently as it turned back out over the beach before crashing into the ocean. Two other fighters turned back in an attempt to protect the mother ship, while one last fighter approached David.
This time Rachel had the machine gun ready, and David set off one of the decoys. The fighter turned toward the decoy and began thrashing the ground under it with its concussion weapon.
Rachel let loose a five-second stream from the machine gun, but the fighter shifted its shield and effectively blocked the incoming barrage from the weaker weapon. David then set off another decoy. The fighter flew over the second decoy, obliterating it, and again turned back toward Rachel. As the fighter approached with its shield up, Janie had planned a distraction of her own.
Since our encounter with the looters, Janie had taken all the practice she could with her .38, and she had become a great shot. She opened up from a hundred yards to Rachel's side as the fighter approached. For only a moment, the fighter turned its shields toward her, but it was long enough for Rachel to cut loose again.
The ensuing stream of tungsten pellets sawed the fighter in half, and the two halves flew just over David and Rachel’s heads, spewing debris, before crashing into the ground just beyond their position.
I again turned my howitzer on the mother ship. Every ten seconds, I fired a new round into it, and it seemed to absorbed every shot.
It didn’t take long before I realized David was no longer responding or firing his weapon, but I couldn’t give up on my side, so I just kept firing again and again. Another minute passed before the mother ship finally began its ascent toward safety with its remaining ten fighters following its retreat.
I fired twice more at the retreating ship before flinging off my helmet and running toward David and the girls. I was desperate with fear. All I had seen was a fighter crashing in their direction. As I got closer, the billowing flames and smoke created a wall between me and my family. My heart raced as I ran.
After working my way around the blaze, I located Bubba, but David and Rachel were not in sight. Small fires burned all around from the debris that had fallen from the cut-in-half fighter.
I called out but got no reply. I called a second time and heard David at a distance. Another call and response, and I was again running toward him. As I got closer, I could see David bent over Janie, and Rachel crying with her fists clinched and covering her mouth. Chills ran down my spine as the fear of loss crept into my heart.
When I reached them, David had teared up as well. I knelt over Janie and gently picked up her head. Her right arm lay in a pool of blood, and she had blood on her forehead and neck. A metal shard protruded from her arm.
I tore off my shirt and ripped it into a bandage. It took all of my courage to pull the shard from her arm. Blood was everywhere. I bound the wound tightly and had David keep pressure on it. She had a small cut on her forehead that had caused the bleeding there, and after a quick inspection, I could find no other wounds.
I cradled her in my arms and carried her back to Bubba as David kept pressure on her arm. Rachel had gone ahead of us and had our small medical kit out on Bubba’s tailgate. I lay Janie down gently and began removing the shirt bandage.
Rachel carefully cleaned Janie’s head wound while David attempted to keep pressure on her arm. I could do crude stitches on the surface, but if she had an internal bleeder, we would not be able to stop it.
I had David pinch the wound together to keep the bleeding to a minimum as I began stitching her up. The extent of my stitching experience was a few drunken shots at stitching up pig carcasses back in college. My needlework had been good at the time, but it had been many years since I had practiced.
With shaking, unsteady hands, I began to sew Janie up. I was done with my butchery after only a minute. The stitches seemed to be doing their job of holding her together, but she had lost a lot of blood, and none of us were certain of what to do next.
The mother ship had pulled back to its thirty-mile range, no doubt attempting to tend to its own wounds. The crashed fighter had severed the power to the big gun and Bubba’s machine gun, so our Daytona camp was now inoperative. Rachel tended to Janie as David and I broke camp. We quickly began the journey toward Two Mile camp.
Back at the bunker was where we could best attempt to care for Janie, but it was getting dark, so we would rest at Two Mile camp overnight before heading home. With the mother ship damaged and at a distance and with our medical emergency, we decided to leave the big guns in place. With luck, we would be back to recover them soon enough, but at that moment, all our thoughts were on Janie.
I climbed onto our lookout perch in the tree and used the spotter scope to look back at the situation. Several fighters now circled the beach and a couple of the transport freighters hovered just above the ground. Upon closer inspection, I could see a multitude of the smaller helper robots moving about. It took a few minutes before I noticed them spraying a green fog as they went.
I focused on a pair moving around a large piece of a shot-down fighter. As they sprayed the fog, the material of the fighter seemed to melt away. It was as if they were trying to clean up any leftover, damaged parts so they would not fall into enemy hands. I next turned my attention to
the water ship that lay upside down on the beach. It too had hundreds of the little robots spraying about. The same thing was happening to the remains of the other water ship just offshore.
I wasn't sure why they were so intent on covering up their technology from discovery when there were only a handful of us left, but I guessed they were just being thorough. Why give the enemy any advantage when you didn't have to?
I watched until dark as the robots continued their spraying. Janie was stabilized but still unconscious. I felt helpless as my little warrior lay there so badly injured, but there was nothing more I could do. As the sun set and the moon rose, the helper robots were all picked up from shore and moved to spray the upside-down water ship.
The rage had been building in me since I had climbed the tree and once again laid eyes on our nemesis. There was a full moon that night, providing enough light to drive without headlights, and I decided if we could sneak back into our base camp, we might be able to get off one last set of shots at the remaining robots and their transports. The fighters had moved back offshore over the other downed water ship.
Rachel remained with Janie while David and I made our way back to the Daytona base camp in Bubba. Power at the camp was out, but the gun by the power station was still functional. And if we could get the rapid-fire gun on the back of Bubba hooked up to the power also, we would again be in business.
It took half an hour at a slow pace to sneak Bubba out to the power-station gun. Another half hour was needed to connect the rapid-fire gun to the substation, and then we were once again ready for battle. A substantial portion of the upside-down water ship had vanished with the sprayers working continuously. The fighters remained further out near the other water ship, which was also almost invisible except for the hovering transports and circling fighters.
SODIUM Trilogy Part One Page 27
