SODIUM Trilogy Part One

by Stephen Arseneault

  The only drawback, and it was a big one, was that once the ship reached significant speeds, it was extremely slow to turn. Turns were not tight, but were instead large, predictable arcs. The alien fighters could easily outmaneuver our Defender even though we had a much higher top speed. The tactics and strategies that had been taught were constantly adjusted to compensate.

  With the system checks out of the way, we were all eager to fire up the DSim for our first mission. Red unfortunately had other ideas. We would each be practicing with our own sections until such time as they became like second nature to us. When Red thought we were ready, we would receive our first mission. As it turned out, the DSim training was initially more like the classroom than I had hoped.

  When our first week was complete, each of us was skilled at our station. We then switched to each of the other three stations for another week before Red finally gave us the green light for a mission. He was quite happy with our progress.

  For our first mission, we would be lifting, departing the hangar, and then cruising around the tarmac. It was the simplest of missions, and we were well prepared to begin. We pulled up our checklists and then one by one gave status to the others. The active skin was then turned on. The silvery-white aluminum can we had been sitting in for weeks suddenly became complete blackness inside.

  It looked as though you could reach outward forever, even though the wall was only a meter or so away. We were told that actually touching it with our bare skin would not be good. The boots and gloves of our suits were made to handle it if needed, but we had no plans of getting out of our chairs.

  The nav system was then brought online, and a meter-diameter sphere appeared before each of us. The optics of the holo-displays made them invisible from the other chairs so that we were not distracted by anyone else's view.

  I was then given the go-ahead to lift the craft. I felt a slight sensation as the monitors indicated lift on my status display. We leveled at a meter and then awaited the go-ahead for exit from the hangar.

  Red gave the command. As I looked at my displays, my shaky hand gave a tiny push to the throttle. The craft then shot through the side of the hangar and into a surrounding mountainside before alarms blasted and the active skin shut down. In my excitement, I had left a throttle multiplier setting on 10X and had forgotten to turn the ship toward the hangar doors.

  The mishap was very embarrassing, and the others were not laughing. We were all dead before our mission had even begun. I felt as though I had let the team down on my first attempt at piloting a Defender. I knew I was better than that. Everyone else was not so sure.

  After a five-minute lecture, the mission was reset and again ready to go. This time my true piloting skills showed as we flew and reached every waypoint with the utmost of precision. We continued our drills with mission one for the remainder of the day. We then had a one-hour break, during which I continuously apologized to the others. There was no excuse for my mistake.

  During our first two-hour free time, the crew would normally continue practicing with simple DSim flights. In my guilt I volunteered that time to the others for their own mission practice. Whip jumped at the opportunity and suggested a scenario with gunplay. She was eager to unleash some hurt on fictitious targets.

  We selected an advanced ground scenario where we were given various targets to destroy around Regents Air Base. We risked another death, but the others were all eager to get an idea of what we might really be up against. We reasoned it better to have a simulated death than a real one.

  Alien robots—we called them tripods—and flying drones were available for targeting. We were given five specific targets and a time limit to kill the five and return. Everything else was considered extra credit.

  We began the scenario with our preflight checks. Every scenario was given a random chance of some preflight problem occurring. If you skipped preflight or did a sloppy job and an event occurred, it would be counted as one death for your team. More deaths meant more basic training and less chance of graduation to a real Defender. I had already made our lives more difficult with a death on our first day.

  We soon lifted, turned, and exited the hangar. It was a quick flight over to the nearest building, where a unit of three tripods were harassing a simulated tank. A precision coil gun shot from Whip ended the harassment.

  Next it was over to a hilltop where two alien drones were defending a landed alien fighter. The drones were much more spry than the tripods, and this time we received fire coming back. Bigg directed the shields as I circled to give Whip a better shot. Two quick bursts later, the drones were dispatched. As we turned toward the next target, Whip selected and fired off one of her nukes.

  The parked alien fighter whopped it from the sky with its gravity wave weapon. As we sped away, the crumpled missile fell harmlessly to the ground. Whip was annoyed by the ineffectiveness of the tactic and decided to just drop one on the ground behind our ship as we flew.

  As we moved toward the next target, I could hear Whip mumbling to herself. My thought at the time was that she had just wasted another nuke. With less than a minute to go before our next target, a small mushroom cloud appeared on the screen behind the ship.

  The alien fighter had lifted in pursuit of us and had flown directly over the second nuke that Whip had strategically dropped. Whip screamed in delight, as the fighter was too close to effectively block the explosion from the nuke. She had single-handedly taken out our first alien fighter.

  The next target had five drones protecting numerous tripods. I circled left, and Whip took out the first drone as Bigg shielded us from their weapons. I then turned straight up, luring another drone into a chase. At two kilometers of altitude, I did a quick 180 and flew straight into the drone before it had a chance to maneuver away. The BHD had cut the drone in half.

  Whip then fired on the next drone, knocking it from the sky. Using a circular attack pattern, as I had with the first drones, allowed Whip the opportunity to take them both out. The tripods were then easy prey.

  The fourth target was sixteen drones that flew in a tight formation. We again got them into a pursuit, only this time, when I had spun the DSim backward, Whip fired all four coil guns at once. The combined shields of the sixteen were enough to block our weapons but not enough to block the effects of us blasting the rock formation they were flying close over. Two of the coil guns were directed at the fighters and two at the rocks.

  They could effectively shield one direction but not both. It was a well-known weakness of the alien defenses. Whip had taken full advantage of this fact, and the result had been the destruction of twelve of the drones, with two of the remaining four heavily damaged. We mopped up the survivors within a minute.

  As we approached target five, I took note that we had no intel on what we were after. There was only a report of enemy activity at that location. When we topped the final ridge, we were greeted immediately by another pod of sixteen drones. They had locked onto us and within seconds had the active skin capacity up to 40 percent. At 100 percent, we would be considered dead.

  I turned straight up and pushed the throttle to full, but I could not shake the drones. In ground scenarios, we were limited to 3 percent maximum power. I thought it an unfair advantage to the aliens that we were not allowed to go faster, but rules were rules, and we did not control the battlefield.

  I again tried my flip maneuver, only to have the pod scatter before I reached them. They quickly reassembled and once again pursued us. As I headed back toward the ground, Bigg chimed in with an alert. There were two alien fighters fast approaching. If we could not outmaneuver a drone pod, we certainly could not outmaneuver a fighter. Having to deal with two of them was just ridiculous.

  The only effective plan I had come up with was to keep the drones between us and the fighters. It took all my flying skills to keep us alive, but it was soon evident that our death was imminent.

  I tried to do another flip, but this time the drones stayed scattered and the alien fi
ghters raced in. As they closed, the skin capacity rose to 50 percent, then 70 percent, and then 90 percent. When the skin failed, we would easily be crushed by the gravity waves. I attempted a final flip, and the ship's systems all shut down. After an automated twenty-second reboot, our reactor came back to life and the ship's screens with it.

  The scenario monitor showed that we had indeed died. Then Pop let out a howl and directed our attention to the scenario stats. Somehow the two alien fighters had been destroyed. Pop was grinning from ear to ear as he told us he had simulated a massive dump of sodium into the reactor core. The resulting huge explosion had taken us out along with the two fighters. We had lucked out on our position over an unpopulated area, as there was now a crater on the ground a half kilometer wide.

  We had two deaths on our first day of scenarios, but we had managed to take out numerous tripods and drones... and three alien fighters. From what we had been taught in class, it would be considered a huge victory. Moments after our celebration had begun, Red's face popped up on our screens and the DSim powered down. We had been called to the flight commander's office.

  Chapter 5

  * * *

  Our handlers came in and detached us from our chairs. We were then escorted over to see the flight commander. With two deaths on the first day, I wondered if we were being flunked out of USAC training. The team had somber looks on their faces. It was the first time I remember seeing Pop without his continuous goofy grin.

  A sergeant led us into the office of USAC General Daniel Buck. We were told to sit. The General then looked us over as he slowly walked around behind us.

  He then began to talk about the mistake I had made, killing us on our initial DSim flight. That soon turned to a berating about many smaller mistakes during the ground fight. A small part of me wished for my great-uncle to come in to our rescue. The General then focused on the ending of our scenario.

  His tone abruptly changed. There had only been one other team who had taken out an enemy fighter in a single crew scenario. That victory had come only near the end of their training. It had earned the crew the command of A000001. We had just taken out three fighters on our first day!

  I looked around at the others as the General continued to talk and could see a sense of pride welling up in them. Our team had just kicked ass on our rookie set of missions. The General then went on to tell us he was erasing our two deaths from our DSim logs. We were also to be given one day a week during our remaining training where we would be allowed to watch others, ask questions of our scientists and engineers, or do free DSim hours.

  The General had one last reward for us that he had been saving. In two days, the first squad of seven Defenders would be lifting off to do battle with the alien fighters. We were to have sideline seating in the Battle Room, where we would be allowed to monitor every aspect of the fight. It was an honor that only a few would ever know.

  The remaining crews, their trainers, the techs, and everyone else in the chamber would not be aware of the coming event. Command, the first squad, their handlers, and the Battle Tacticians would be the only ones who knew what was happening. When we were dismissed from the General's office, he shook each of our hands. He then gave a stern warning about the seriousness of the whole affair before giving us a final "Good job."

  As we headed back to the DSim, Red came over our audio implants and directed us toward the lounge. We got word that beers would be on the house, and Pop's goofy grin was instantly fully restored. As we sat in the lounge taking in our reward, we rehashed every little element of the day’s events. The talk soon came around to Pop's reactor overload. He had reasoned that if we were doomed anyway, why not do as they had instructed... inflict maximum damage.

  When the thought first occurred to him, he was hesitant, as our DSim had a real reactor in it. The DSim parameters would not allow it to be overloaded in the real world, but in sim world we could direct it as we chose. Pop had been unsure the simulation would respond as he desired. We were happy it had.

  As a consequence, the Defenders that would be seeing battle in two days were having their safety protocols changed to allow manual overloads. It became a point of pride for our team.

  The following day was spent conquering level-one scenarios. It was somewhat boring, but every once in a while you would get thrown a curve. It kept us on our toes.

  When our free hours arrived, we continued with level-one missions. In our overall DSim training, we had twelve levels to conquer. The twelve levels had more than four hundred scenarios, with each one having some level of randomness to it. Rerunning the same scenario would yield a different experience every time.

  On the morning of the first Defender battle, we were marched into a chamber area that had high walls. Inside the Battle Room there were numerous holo-displays floating in front of a multitude of Tacticians.

  The crews would interact with their crew commander, who would be receiving orders from the Battle Planners. The Tacticians would be directing their insights through a prioritization computer that would in turn display before the Battle Planners.

  The whole affair was a complex system designed to give the maximum amount of information to the crews. The crew pilot would have the final decision if none was forthcoming from the crew commander.

  We were seated in chairs identical to the ones in our DSim. Our handlers then hooked us up. The staff didn’t know if the battle would last two minutes or two days. Once the mission began, there would be no breaks for anyone in the room. As I looked around, I noticed that everyone who was seated and expected to participate in the mission was also wearing a reclamation suit.

  If the battle ran many hours, the handlers could adjust levels of stimulants and nutrients in an attempt to keep everyone fully alert. I imagined that man could not have ever been more prepared to do battle than we were on that day.

  The Battle Commander came on screen and gave his short but to-the-point speech. This was it... this was real... this was war. In our observer chairs, we had access to every fighter, every station, and even the Battle Planners’ operations. With the swipe of a hand, we could bring up any perspective the Battle Room had to offer. I chose the pilot's display for Defender A1.

  The pilot's call sign was Dixie. She was a southern girl with red hair, bulgy eyes, and a freckled face. She may have been a little hard to look at, but within the first few minutes it was easy to see why she was A1. She was decisive and hard core.

  The Battle Commander gave the order, and the newest war for Earth was begun. The seven Defenders of squad one taxied out onto the tarmac in unison. The Defenders next all tilted upward and then silently shot off into the air at a seventy-eight-degree angle. The seven blurs quickly shrank and disappeared from the ground view.

  The hope of the Battle Planners was that the squad would race up undetected and blast the fighters before they knew what hit them. The only detectable signature they had was the void caused by the BHD.

  Every inch of space had some signal emanating from or passing through it... except for the void of a black hole. Since the active skin passed signals through and around the Defender, the enemy would have no way of knowing the rest of the ship was there. We hoped the aliens were not tuned into our BHDs.

  As the Defenders raced toward the first fighter at more than 100,000 kph, we were all on edge. Coil guns were loaded and powered on, and the command had been given to fire once within optimal distance. As it turned out, the coil gun projectile was best fired from within ten kilometers. It would give the enemy the least amount of time to react, and reaction time was critical to the alien fighters.

  When the ten-kilometer mark was reached, all seven Defenders fired at once. The twenty-eight high-inertia projectiles made their way to the first fighter in under a half second.

  The alien fighter seemed to react instantly and was able to slightly deflect the projectiles while at the same time maneuvering out of the way. As squad one came to within three kilometers, the alien ship then fired its own weapon.r />
  The result was seven ships knocked slightly off their trajectories. Five of the Defenders reacted by moving away from the others, but the closest two were not so lucky. Defender A7 hit A4 from the side, with the result being that A4 was chopped in half by A7's BHDs. The exploding reactor of A4 then overwhelmed the active skin of A7. Both craft disintegrated in a matter of nanoseconds.

  Our first shot at the aliens had been a complete failure. The Battle Commander directed the team to regroup behind the moon. The "Run and Gun" strategy was a disaster.

  The alien fighter did not pursue the Defenders. We were unsure if it was unsure of its own offensive capability, or if it was part of its programming. To date, the alien craft had all been autonomous. We still had no idea of who the alien species were or what they looked like. The fact that their ships were smart only worked to instill fear in us.

  Within minutes after the regrouping, the Battle Commander had a new plan. This time the squad would split and approach from five different angles. They would not come close enough to one another to once again be forced into a collision.

  The squad would wait until the ten-kilometer mark before firing and turning hard away. The four guns would also be fired at slightly differing times and in a slight spread pattern. With luck, the fighter would move into one of the projectiles.

  At the ten-kilometer mark, the projectiles were let go. This time the fighter came straight toward one of the Defenders. It took aim with its gravity wave weapon, and the result was that A3 had four of its five sensor arrays and three rings of the BHD knocked offline.

  One projectile then came close enough to the fighter to knock it spinning. The fighter quickly recovered and turned to pursue the closest Defender. A1 sped away at full throttle, and the alien craft soon gave up its chase. The crippled A3 was quickly escorted away by A5. The crew was unharmed, but the ship had sustained substantial damage. Round two had still been in the favor of the alien fighter.