Chang saw the remains of the luxury hotels that lined the edge of the destruction. He remembered playing in the streets near the resort with his brother and younger sister when he was a boy. His sister had died during the flooding, trapped below ground in the underground tunnels between shopping areas. Eddie had been training in flight school and had returned only after the damage had been done. The city-state had been wiped from the map with only the remains of hotels and government buildings left behind. The Terran central government had finally decided to begin the rebuilding of the city and relocate any survivors to the northern regions of Malaysia and Indonesia where the mountains had sheltered the populations.
Eddie skimmed the tops of the remaining buildings heading north. He accelerated towards the ruins of the causeway that used to connect the country of Singapore to the state of Johor. The area had once been a city that supported trade between the two countries, but now the jungle was reclaiming the land. He pulled his ship higher away from the treetops to avoid any bird strike.
“Flight leader, this is flight three,” signaled one of Chang’s wing mates. “Zone three is clear. Requesting permission to regroup.”
“Permission granted, three,” Chang replied. “Rendezvous at Sentosa.”
“Affirmative, leader. Flight will rendezvous in sixty.”
The southern Pacific states were sparsely populated so the patrol flight flew solo routes to check for scavengers. They were quick missions that Eddie could fly in his sleep but he enjoyed the opportunity to fly without distractions and reminisce over the destroyed city. Since his brother had been promoted to captain of the Confederation carrier Baal, he felt as though he was living in the other man’s shadow.
“Flight leader, this is flight two. I am reading an incoming object deorbiting near your position. Do you have a visual?”
Eddie shook himself from his daydream and checked his scanners. There was a massive object descending from the sky at a dangerous speed. He tried to look out from his canopy towards the object’s position, but it was positioned behind his current location. He pulled up and banked the ship around to intercept the incoming target. While searching for the object, Eddie scanned the frequencies for any word of a falling satellite or unauthorized orbital entry. There was nothing
“This is flight leader calling flight two, please respond,” signaled Chang. “I have a contact coming in from high, do you confirm signal contact?”
“Flight leader, this is flight two,” responded the other pilot. “I have signal contact on unknown target at three-two…”
The signal cut off in mid-sentence and Eddie tapped the radio keys, trying to find his lost wing mates. There was a blanket of silence over the entire area that troubled the pilot. His fellow patrol pilots should have responded by now at the acquisition of the unknown target, but they were silent.
“This is flight leader calling So-Pac flight, please respond,” Eddie called. “Any pilots, this is TDF pilot Chang calling any aircraft in South Pacific zone one. Please respond.”
Eddie waited, but no answer came. He swore in Bahasa Malaysia, a language that had fallen out of use over the years as English took over as the standard language on Earth. His parents had insisted he and his sibling learn it. Now it seemed its only real use was as a way to keep secrets from the other pilots and talk to his family.
He nosed his ship upwards to meet the incoming target. The scanner showed the object just entering his visual range, but he could not make it out yet. He flipped the control for his heads-up display to try to get a fix on the target and magnify the image. A small item appeared in his lower right screen that appeared to be an insect of some type. His computer though told him that the object was nearly a hundred meters long.
“Unknown aircraft entering So-Pac Zone airspace please identifies yourself. This is Terran Defense Force pilot Chang. You are in violation of Singapore Quarantine area,” Chang warned.
The object continued to fall through the atmosphere, leaving a bright wake of burning air behind. It was obviously powered and now began to turn towards Eddie’s position. Chang felt a sharp pang of fear as the insectoid ship accelerated towards his rising ship. He flipped on the energy shields that strengthened his hull.
His fighter was not like the space ships that his brother flew. The sub-orbital patrol craft did not have the power systems for plasma shields. The ship had an anti-gravity thrust system that manipulated the local gravity of the ship and pushed him through the sky. In a combat situation, though, the patrol ship could hold its own against most earth-bound vessels.
The ship began to resolve as he came closer. It seemed to have slowed its descent from orbit and was now leveling off and angling to intercept Chang. He lowered his own angle of attack to await the rest of his flight. The ship was too big for him to take on alone. He checked his scanner to see when his wing mates would arrive, but saw that the device was not registering any contacts at all anymore. The insect ship must have been putting out a strong jamming signal that hid its intentions.
Shots of white-hot plasma blasted past Chang’s cockpit window. The insect ship had opened fire on his patrol ship. He banked hard away from the oncoming ship, trying to evade the deadly bolts. He briefly gave thought to why orbital defense had not stopped the invader, but trying to keep from getting hit took precedence.
He nosed the ship down, corkscrewing left and right through the air as the other craft pursued. Visually, Chang could see the ruins of Singapore rushing towards him. He saw that stray bolts from the other ship had already ignited an inferno on the ground. One of the cranes involved in the rebuilding effort had begun to melt under the attack. It dripped molten metal across the ground below. Eddie’s mind raced as he tried to form a plan of defense against the onslaught. He pulled up hard and accelerated.
The insect ship flew past him, unable to compensate for the quick moves of the little ship. Chang felt the turbulence buffet his ship as he tried a ballistic trajectory over the enemy ship. His engines began to strain as they pushed against the natural pull of the planet’s gravity. As his ship began to shudder, Eddie pushed the nose over and down.
The enemy ship was rising towards Chang’s ship. Eddie opened fire at the ship but watched as his own projectiles bounced harmlessly off of the banded hull of the invader. He pulled his ship into a wild corkscrew as he hurtled down at the bigger ship. The plasma bolts continued to flash past Eddie’s cockpit as he tried to get out of the line of fire.
A new flash of fire lit up the side of the enemy craft as another patrol ship arced in from the left. Eddie almost cheered as he saw the designation for Flight Three on the wing. He continued past the insect ship as Three crossed behind him at nearly full speed. Behind the invader, both fighters loosed projectiles at the stern engine ar3ea. The bullets bounced off, but the pilots felt a sense of accomplishment anyway.
The insect ship heeled over hard and began to fire from multiple locations at the two smaller ships. It seemed to be having difficulty locking on to the patrol craft as they danced around the sky. Eddie assumed that the other ship was having difficulty making the adjustment from orbital to air tactics. He tried to think of a way to exploit the weakness. As he studied the ship, another patrol craft flashed into the local airspace. There were only two ships left unaccounted for but he felt much better about the odds.
Three formed up on Chang’s wing. Eddie looked over at his wing mate and signaled with his hands for a defensive retreat to await the other ships. The other pilot acknowledged the order with a dip of his wing and then peeled away, narrowly avoiding a plasma blast from the enemy ship. Eddie veered away as well and continued his evasive maneuvers. The other patrol ship had flown a wide arc and was now joining Three at his wing for a feint towards the big ship. When the enemy vessel rotated to fire, the two separated and flew off in different trajectories.
Two more patrol ships blazed past Eddie and attacked the enemy ship. He did not have time to warn them or give them orders before they each began firi
ng projectiles at the armored ship. They each skimmed the hull of the invader and then broke off their attack. Eddie dropped altitude as the other four craft formed up into a defensive block.
He tried to relay by hand signal what he had in mind and the nearest pilot gave him a thumbs-up and turned to pass the order along. Chang knew that they had almost no chance of surviving the encounter, but he needed to hold off the ship as long as he could. If this was an isolated attack, Terran Defense would send additional craft and fleet fighters soon. If it was not than Eddie knew there were more important areas to defend and they were on their own.
The five ships broke formation and raced off in different directions. Eddie nosed his ship upwards and tried to get a visual on the insect craft. He saw the big ship descending again towards the ruins of the island nation. It occurred to him that the invader could not have known that the area was abandoned or they would probably not have tried a landing here. If they were pirates or raiders, there was little left anymore to scavenge. If they were an invasion force, there were no forces other than the patrol craft to conquer.
Flight Two veered back into formation with Chang and each pilot aimed their ship at the enemy vessel. Eddie armed the missile system on his small ship. The weapons were limited, but could bring down most fleeing skimmers. He had no idea if the warhead of the missile would penetrate the armor of the enemy hull but he had few choices left to him.
The insect ship had slowed as it approached the ground, but had also begun to move northward towards Malaysia. The other three ships were circling around to attack from multiple directions. Eddie and Two nose-dived towards the other ship, firing their cannons as they went. The invader seemed to take no notice of them as they attacked. As the rest of the flight crisscrossed over the top of the enemy ship, Eddie and Two launched missiles. Each patrol ship pulled away as fast as they could, but Eddie could feel the disturbance in the air as the explosives detonated. For just a moment, Eddie’s radio crackled as if they had disrupted the jamming signal.
“Two, this is Leader. Do you copy?” Eddie signaled. His only reply was a static burp of noise. “Damn!”
The patrol ship pulled around again as Eddie prepared to strafe the big ship. He saw dark marks on the surface of the insect ship, but still no lasting damage. He peppered the ship with projectile bursts as he past close to the hull. There was a shudder and he saw Flight Five burst into superheated gas as the warship’s plasma cannons found their mark. Eddie swung around and down to skim the treetops and come up under the ship. His guns were firing almost constantly as he attacked the underside of the insect. He saw his bullets ricochet off and into the trees. Firing off another missile at the ship, Eddie pulled up and came around to the top side of the enemy ship.
Two exploded in a flash of hot gas and metal. Chang fired two more of his missiles even as his wing took a hit from the plasma cannons. He tried to pull out of the spiral, but his stabilization was gone. The best he could manage was to keep the ship from descending into the trees. He tried to pull away, but the insect ship had increased its rate of fire and made evasion nearly impossible. Eddie lowered his ship down and nearly made contact with the big ship. He was trying to find a spot where he would not be hit. The patrol craft was wobbling and he feared crashing into the invader.
“Well,” he said aloud. “I hope this is worth it.”
He pulled his ship hard away and straight up again. He had practiced the lop maneuver so many times that performing it seemed like second nature. As he came over the top, he felt his wing come loose and he jerked out of the dive hard. His integrated gravity system required the complements of his ship be intact to be stable. He struggled to compensate, but the craft would not right itself. As the sky came and went in his cockpit view, Eddie witnessed another of his wing mates die in an explosion. He knew his time would be next as the forest rushed up to meet him. He slammed all his remaining power into reversing his forward motion, but he could feel that it would not be enough.
“Mom, you were right,” Eddie said. “I would have been safer in space.”
6
Now
Alliance Vessel Terran Hope
“Jump point opening, sir,” said the small communications officer. “Bearing nine-two mark six at thirty degrees positive.”
Captain Alfredo Ortiz swiveled the view on his projected head-up display to see the new arrival. Terran Hope was hidden among the metallic debris orbiting a dark planet. The former cruise ship had been sent out to collect the alien representatives of the Alliance and then had been ordered to wait here for a rendezvous. As the captain watched the blue-black spiral of a jump point opened up in the space to port.
The vortex looked as if a vastly powerful being had pinched open a hole in space and pried it apart. The bruised spiral widened and a ship began to emerge. There was always a buildup of energy as a ship transitioned from the wild power of M-space to the relative normalcy of this dimension. A corona of fire wrapped itself around the long ship, giving it the impression of a fireball hurled from the hand of an angry god. The ship began to shed its excess speed and the orange-red halo fell away and burned out.
The ship was revealed to be slightly larger than the Hope, but with a rounded nose and flat sides. There was no annular ring as on the Hope, but a series of flattened ridges that ran from the bow to the tapered stern. Emblazoned on the lower side was the stenciled word Resolute. The battleship slowed and turned to face the rogue planet.
“Sir,” said the porcine officer. “Resolute’s captain is hailing us.”
“Light us up, Lellda,” Ortiz ordered. “Open a channel to Captain Pearce. Let’s roll out the welcome mat.”
“Aye, sir,” replied the female creature happily.
“Godfrey, call our guest to the bridge, please,” the captain said, turning to his straight-backed first officer.
“Which one, sir,” replied the man with a twist at the edge of his mouth. “We have several hundred guests on board.”
“Your counterpart from the Resolute,” replied Ortiz. “Get Farthing up here.”
“Sir,” interrupted Lellda from the communications center. “I have Captain Pearce.”
“Lee!” Ortiz said into the air. “It’s good to see you guys. We’ve been waiting for days.”
“Captain Ortiz, I’m sorry it took so long,” replied Lee. “The commodore took his time setting up this operation.”
“So everything went well?” Alfredo asked his friend. “Is Henry with you?”
There was a long pause that confirmed what Ortiz feared. They had discussed Henry Moore several times during the planning of the charade and Lee insisted that the soldier would not be able to follow along. Ortiz had held out hope, though, that his former head of security might have loosened up enough to follow along.
“I left Henry back at Perigee,” Lee said with a sigh. “I wish he were along for this one. I could use him.”
“I think Chang had a better plan for Henry. In any case, I can send a shuttle over to pick you up,” Ortiz said.
“Thank you,” Lee replied. “You can begin the crew transfer as soon as you’re ready.”
“Acknowledged, Resolute, Ortiz out.”
The captain of the Terran Hope turned to face his first officer. The tall British man had already signaled the other officers to the bridge. When the man turned back to Ortiz, he had a wry smile below his thin mustache. Ortiz had always enjoyed the man’s dry sense of humor, but it could be inappropriate at times.
“I have recalled the flock from the field, Captain.” Rowling said. “Commander Farthing is on his way to the bridge.”
“Thank you, Godfrey,” Ortiz said. “Begin the crew transfer to Resolute. Tell the pilot that they will be bringing Captain Pearce back on the first trip.”
Although the Terran Hope and the Resolute were both equipped with docking umbilical systems, the changes to Resolute had made the mating of the two ships a difficult operation. Ortiz had been told that his ship was on the list for an upg
rade to her civilian docking system, the former cruise ship had not been high on the Alliance fleet’s priorities. With preparations now underway for a major operation, the Hope would need to rely on her massive hangar deck for ferrying duties.
The captain stood from his chair and turned back towards his office. There was a thick glass wall that separated the office from the rest of the command deck. Ortiz had spent a long time after the invasion staring out at the large bridge and trying to make sense of the destruction of the Confederacy. He glanced at the picture resting on the left side of his desk. His wife had insisted on the old-fashioned two-dimensional image. There were times when he almost forgot the life he led before the invasion. The image of his beautiful wife smiling from the steps of his cabin always brought him back to reality and gave him a reason to continue to fight.
He paced towards the wall and back. The sounds of the command well drifted up and comforted him. He knew that waiting was not his strong suit and boredom made him maudlin. Their current operation afforded him too much time to reflect on his losses.
“Captain Ortiz?” Farthing said as he stepped up the ramp to the command deck. “You requested me?”
Farthing was slightly taller than Ortiz with smooth white fur that he kept impeccably groomed. He had served for three years as Commodore Chang’s first officer aboard the Resolute before Lee took command. It had been the felinoid commander who had devised a trail that had set into motion the founding of the Alliance. Since then, he had become a valuable asset in negotiations with his people on Vadne.
“Commander Farthing,” Ortiz began. “I wanted to let you know myself that the Resolute has arrived.”
“I saw the ship as I entered the bridge, Captain.” Farthing replied in his precise speech. “I will organize the personnel transfer immediately.”
Resolute Uprising (The War for Terra) Page 5
