Falling Ark

by Leigh Snelson

  Hank was in the hanger with several of the crew also ready to man the machine guns that we had also stored there, curtesy of a large container we found on the ship.

  “It seems like they have taken the bait.” Sam said to me as we watched the dots on the screen split apart, moving out of our way and following the main fleet to the left and right.

  “Are you sure we can out fly them?” He asked.

  Sam had always been able to generate confidence, he oozed charisma and being around him always gave me the feeling that I was doing the right thing, but this latest question had me doubting myself. I could tell he was nervous too and he was starting to crack under the pressure.

  “We can outrun them, that’s not a problem. I just hope the crew know how to use the weapons correctly.” I said and tapped the screens to bring up live views of the ships external cameras so that we could see the action take place.

  Ava had set up a light-based transmitter on each of the primary craft to transmit details back to the Armillary. Lara was jamming our radio transmissions which meant we couldn’t communicate using traditional radio waves, but she couldn’t stop line of sight laser transfer. Ava had found a few of these on board the ship, it was old technology, but it worked.

  I could see our fleet enter the atmosphere and the heat started to build up the glass domes at the front of the ship. Just as we had planned, the pace of ships dropped off as this happened. Unlike previous space craft returning to Earth, we were in control of our speed, we were not simply free-falling, we could slow the speed of the ship so that it wouldn’t burn up on re-entry.

  This part of the mission still worried me. These craft were designed for flight around the Earth, like traditional aircraft and I wasn’t familiar with the thermal properties of the materials used. If they burnt up going too fast on re-entry, it would all have been for nothing.

  Dialling back their speed reduced the friction of the air on the hull and the flames that had appeared, quickly dissipated.

  “Ava, update the upper speed limit of the craft.” I shouted across the room.

  “Already done.” She smiled back at me but didn’t take her eyes off the screens in front of her.

  Creating an upper speed limit for the craft meant that, if we ordered a retreat, the fleet wouldn’t accelerate too fast while surrounded by air. The gravity drives were more than capable of going near light speed which would be a disaster in an atmosphere.

  “How is Gamma squadron looking?” Sam asked me. He was overseeing Alpha Squad while I was in command of Gamma. This allowed us each to focus all our attention on the separate battles.

  “Looking good so far.” I replied.

  “Getting contacts!” Ava said, as she gestured on her screen, sending an updated overlay towards the big monitors. I looked back at my display and little red dots had appeared in the distance. The sensors on board the fleet had used the radar data and applied it to the camera feeds, now that the enemy was in sight, we could track them visually and label them as friendly or not.

  It didn’t take long until the two fleets were on top of each other. I opened a schematic readout of the Gamma Squad battlefield.

  This was a top down view of the Atlantic Ocean with the two opposing forces converging on each other, little green and red dots moving quickly across the screen.

  The reality was a lot more complicated than my screen suggested, with planes at various heights and constantly changing trajectories, but it provided a simplistic overview to relay back to pilots so they could position themselves more accurately.

  Only a few miles separated them when the barrage of missiles launched.

  “Taking evasive action.” I heard over the communication channel.

  Smaller red dots appeared, representing the missiles, and our green dots scattered in a random pattern.

  Our fleet was able to move much faster than the missiles. This was always the plan, bait them into launching their missiles, then outrun the threat.

  Based on the experiments we had done with the missiles equipped to our own craft, we had worked out the range and I hoped Lara was using the same type.

  A barrier of green appeared on the far left of the screen identifying the safe zone our craft would need reach and I was pleased to see they all made it with ease.

  Just as planned they got the other side of the safe line and stopped, rotating their vessels to watch the oncoming missiles.

  I watched as the group of missiles hit the indicated edge of the safe zone and little animations exploded over my screen. Then something caught my eye. I looked up and saw the explosions in the distance through the window. Even at this distance it was easy to spot fireballs on the horizon.

  Now we had the upper hand. The fleet rested there, waiting for a moment while Lara’s craft got closer. The screens were now showing rings around each craft showing the effective range of their machine guns.

  As the red rings got closer, I waited and watched. The aircraft came into clear view of the cameras and I zoomed in to get a better look, ensuring that these were the same type of plane as our own.

  Once again there were no pilots visible through the front glass. I was glad about this. I didn’t want any blood on my hands, after all, most of us were ex-VisionTech employees and we all could be guilty of ‘just doing our jobs’, whether we thought it was right or not.

  “Are we still jamming all radio communication?” I asked Ava who was busy watching the oncoming fleet through the onboard cameras.

  “We certainly are!” She replied confidently.

  This meant that they would be on autopilot and following the basic intelligence of their programming, programming that Ava had reverse engineered so we could predict their moves.

  “Firing defensive measures.” Ava shouted from behind her screens.

  We all watched the array of cameras displayed on the screens around the Armillary as the missiles rocketed out and roared away and towards Lara’s fleet.

  I held my breath and looked back at the top down view of the battlefield. Our green missiles were approaching Lara’s wave of fifty planes which were still accelerating.

  Fifty missiles and fifty enemies. Ava knew not to waste any missiles, so she had only launched what was necessary.

  It was too late when Lara’s fleet realised what was happening. They broke formation and tried to evade the oncoming barrage, but their actions were in vein.

  In one large fireball they were all hit, the missiles timed perfectly. Even if a knockout blow wasn’t achieved, the ensuing fireball consumed everything in the vicinity.

  After watching the flames rise and flatten out at the top of the atmosphere my screen gave me the good news, the enemy count was zero. I took great pleasure watching the debris fall from the sky.

  Some of them fell slower than others and I suppose this depended on how much damage the gravity drives had taken, but it was a clean sweep. Occasionally I would see implosions as falling craft would suck up everything within a twenty-metre radius and compress it to a single point, the tell tail sign of a gravity drive at the end of its life.

  “Well done pilots! Just as we had planned, now you need to get across to the North Sea and finish the job.” I broadcast throughout the fleet.

  Woops and cheers rang out over the communications channel and I turned to see how Sam’s fleet was doing.

  We had developed the strategy that allowed my fleet to engage first while Sam’s fleet, Alpha, would move further away and therefore engage second. This way, if something went wrong, we had time to correct it before the second engagement.

  Fortunately, everything had gone exactly to plan so far but we couldn’t expect the same luck twice.

  After seeing the situation with the first battle, Lara’s fleet started accelerating hard at Alpha Squad. They still outnumbered us two-to-one and this time they waited until they were much closer to fire the missiles. I guess they hoped we couldn’t outrun them this time. They were wrong.

  “Ava, update Gamma Squad wi
th the new co-ordinates to give Sam some support.” I ordered.

  “Issuing the command now.” Ava confirmed.

  It would be a few minutes before my fleet arrived at the new battlefield and evened up the numbers, but I could already tell that this was going to be a different fight.

  “Missiles launched.” Derek said calmly as the screen depicted a wave of missiles much closer to our fleet. At my count they had only launched about half their missiles. It was no issue as our entire fleet accelerated away, fast.

  If they had been traditional planes the g-forces from the acceleration would have crushed the pilots, but gravity drives didn’t work like that.

  It was more like the missiles were being pushed away from our fleet. At least that would be the impression you got if you were inside one of our planes. You would feel no force of acceleration, you would just see the environment change in front of you.

  “They have only launched half their missiles” I pointed out to Sam who was watching the dots dance around the screen.

  He looked up at me. I don’t think he had seen what had happened on our side of the battle.

  A green barrier appeared on the screen indicating the safe zone again. All our ships flew into it and, once again the missiles blew when they reached its outer edge, running out of fuel just as before.

  Sam looked at me as his fleet rotated and prepared their weapons just as my fleet had done.

  “Are you sure? They still have missiles?” He asked.

  “Absolutely.” I replied.

  “I can confirm.” Derek added from his control desk.

  “Cease Fire! Hold your missiles!” Sam yelled on the communications channel, but it was too late. A barrage of all our missiles made their way towards the enemy front line.

  We all watched the screens again but this time I knew what was coming.

  “Second wave of missiles launched.” Derek said.

  I looked at Sam’s displays and saw Lara’s fleet launching the rest of their missiles at our oncoming attack.

  “What are they doing?” Ava asked. “They have launched their missiles at our missiles. There is no way they will hit each other, it’s an impossible shot.”

  “They don’t have to hit our missiles, watch.” I gestured to the screen as the two swarms of missiles met.

  Lara’s missiles exploded just in front our own, creating a wall of flame that was clearly visible out of every camera and lighting up the window to our left. Even the ships from the Gamma fleet, that were rapidly making up the distance between the two battles could see it.

  The technical readout showed that all the missiles had been destroyed. Impacting with the fireball and detonating themselves.

  We were now out of missiles and had a dog fight on our hands.

  Sam reached out for the communication button again.

  “Revert to plan B.” He said calmly.

  I reached out to my comms button and repeated the same message to my half of the fleet as they would soon be joining the fight.

  Now Sam’s fleet was vastly outnumbered as the two groups of dots intersected each other. They just needed to hold on long enough for my re-enforcements to arrive.

  “Enemy is now in range and weapons are targeted and ready.” Derek said to Sam.

  “Fire!” Sam shouted down the communication channel.

  Half of Lara’s fleet exploded in huge fireballs that appeared and then sucked back into themselves as the gravity drives within imploded leaving nothing behind.

  Plan B was to use the lasers that were mounted on the side of the craft. These had much greater range than the machine guns, but they required so much energy that we only had one shot with them.

  We knew that they could target individual atoms, Hank had tested them on the ship and we started to understand how they could be used.

  Within the gravity drives there were certain rare elements that would be easy to target. We set the lasers at this wavelength before we left and now, they had proven highly successful, blowing up the gravity drives and taking the rest of the ship with them.

  With this attack, half of the remaining enemy were destroyed. Now the numbers had been evened up between the two fleets, I liked our chances. Soon my fleet would join the battle, and we would have the upper hand.

  Derek sat up in his chair and tapped a few buttons on the screens.

  “Evasive procedures initiated” Derek said.

  The two fleets merged, our little green dots allowed themselves to get chased by the little red dots, all the while, staying just outside effective range of the machine guns. Our ships flew erratically so that it was impossible to get a direct shot with guns or lasers. They were time wasting until my fleet arrived and Lara’s fleet was playing along.

  “One minute before convergence.” Ava said, and I looked at my ships moving into position.

  Sam smiled at me and I grinned back. It was happened almost exactly how we had thought it might. Sam’s forces just needed to keep the enemy busy then my forces would fly up behind and use either lasers or machine guns to take them out. It was a perfectly executed manoeuvre.

  I watched as one of Sam’s planes was being chased by Lara’s, there was a noticeable wobble and erratic movement to all our craft. The pilots on board we in charge of the overall direction but the intelligence in the onboard computer ensured that they could not be hit.

  As the fleets merged I ordered one of my craft to approach this game of cat and mouse from behind and shoot Lara’s plane out of the sky. It was a simple tactic, but it worked very effectively.

  Machine guns at the ready, my plane took aim and fired. It wasn’t normal bullets that came out of the guns, it was the pellets that Julie and Tony had been working on.

  When they hit the enemy ship a bulbous plant rapidly grew across the outer hull and roots wormed their way inside the machine. After a few moments the plane was on fire and a few moments after that it started to fall from the sky. Very effective.

  After the final few ships had been destroyed it took another three minutes for the fleet to return and once again, forming the cloud formation around the Armillary.

  “That couldn’t have gone any better!” Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I know! Outnumbered two-to-one and we didn’t suffer a single casualty. That’s the power of speed!” I replied excitedly. “Now we just mop up the remaining few planes, grab the replicator and get out of here.”

  We descended out of high Earth orbit, chasing the remaining half-dozen ships Lara had sent our way. They had turned tail a few minutes ago after the main fleet had been destroyed and were making their way back to the facility.

  “Hank, we have a few more planes to contend with before we get to the facility, but you can prepare the harpoons and open hanger doors.” I radioed downstairs.

  “No problem. It looks like the strategy worked!” Hank replied.

  “You bet it did!” The enthusiasm and excitement still in my voice.

  We slowly transitioned into the dense atmosphere and it felt good to be back home, even if it was only for a brief visit.

  Hank had placed gravity drives on every hanger bay door to ensure the air remained inside the ship. It was only necessary to use one but Hank had insisted on three as backup, after all, he was the one who would be standing near the open door to space.

  “Ava, can we get a more detailed view of the ground?” Sam asked.

  “No problem, loading it up now.” Ava replied.

  The screens around us swapped to a more detailed view of the facility showing cars moving around the carpark and lights turning on around the building.

  We were about ten miles out and I could see the facility appear as we broke under the clouds. The sun was just peaking over the horizon, but I had lost all concept of time, was it setting or rising?

  “Where did the rest of the planes go?” Sam asked Derek with slight alarm in his voice.

  “They flew under the tree and into the facility.” Derek replied. “I’m watching
the location and I’ll update you if anything changes.”

  Sam turned to face me.

  “I think she has worked out what we are doing. She is going to use the planes to sneak up on us as we try to leave.” Sam suggested.

  “Don’t worry, Tony and Julie have a few more surprises for them if they try anything.” I replied.

  “More tricks up your sleeve, good to know.” Sam confirmed.

  Pressing the intercom, I got back in touch with the hanger bay.

  “Tony, you might want to get your bullets in a gun. There are six planes that need to be dealt with.” I radioed down.

  “We’re ready when you are.” Julie replied.

  Turning around, I prepared to give Sam the thumbs up but his face was white.

  “Enemy aircraft! Hundreds of them!” Derek screamed.

  The screen in front of me that previously displayed an empty building and carpark had suddenly exploded with little red dots and both Sam and I stared out the window in disbelief.

  “There’s hundreds of them!” I said aloud.

  “Two thousand and forty-eight.” Ava said in a monotone voice. All emotion had been stripped and replaced with concentration.

  “How many!?” I yelled in disbelief. “Where did they come from?”

  “They are swarming out from the middle of the facility, from within an unmapped part of the basement.” Derek explained.

  “How could she build up a force that quickly and hide it!” I was becoming overwhelmed at the situation.

  “Calm down!” Sam threatened to slap me if it would help.

  “We need to retreat. As soon as we get clear of the atmosphere we can easily outrun them back to the moon!”

  “Just sit down!” Sam said, slowly pushing me back into my chair.

  Ava looked up from her station, past me and towards Sam.

  “I’m ready.” She said calmly.

  “Is that all of them?” Sam asked.

  “It appears to be, yes.” Ava replied.

  A loud chirp came from the control deck and Franks face appeared!

  “It can’t be!” I said. “How is he still alive!”