My squad mates kept a line of sight on the door and I let my gaze stray to the fallen aliens in front of us. Several were mortally wounded in their extremities and had lost a lot of blood already. One was cowered behind their makeshift barrier, desperately trying to stop the flow from a gunshot that had nearly severed its left arm.
In a flash of evil I stepped down on its hand while getting a firm grasp across the top of its head. I gave it a sharp tug; simultaneously pulling the creature to its feet and tearing what remained of its arm clean off. It continued to struggle as I carried it off to the door. The other two soldiers gave me a quick look before we shot our way into the hall.
I went left, the other two right, still holding my dying alien in front of me. I could see the last few aliens further down the hallway and I adjusted my rifle to fire. Rather than shoot over my victim’s shoulder, I pressed the rifle straight into the back of its neck and squeezed the trigger. The first burst of rounds tore his neck apart and I continued firing though the recess. The other aliens turned and tried to run but were cut down in seconds. I held the alien’s body in place until the last few strands of flesh broke. The corpse crumpled to the ground at my feet and I heaved its head farther down the hallway before joining the other two men in their fight. Another volley and we had taken back our ship.
I found the rest of my SF squad farther down first long hallway, with the enemy vanquished. They lowered their weapons as I approached through the smoke and I waved for them to follow me again. “Did you see any more of them?” I asked the others.
“No sir, the starboard wing is clear as well.”
“Good. Keep your guard up; I need to make a stop at the deck to find out what the hell is going on out there.” We made our way up to Three’s bridge. The pilot was waiting for me. “Sir, we have a solution to destroy the carrier. Five members of our fighter wing are going to hand-carry AM charges to its surface, inside the energy shields.”
I understood the sacrifice instantly. There would be no coming back for them, but we had no choice. “Approved.” The next few seconds were the longest of my life as I watched them approach. One, then two, blinked out as they encountered overwhelming enemy fire. It seemed to be a lost cause until I saw the cataclysmic explosion tear the carrier in two. “Everyone move in, engage whatever’s left!”
Clearly I had underestimated the dedication of those around me, and I knew now exactly what needed to be done. We glassed Ash without incident and without shedding a tear then returned to the fleet to repair and rearm.
Our flight back to the fleet took us around a third of Sol Bravo’s perimeter and ended a ways beyond the orbit of Shai. With the last of our enemy vanquished in the outer system, I desperately needed a chance to get away from the constant commotion on the bridge. Unlike the missile frigate that I had commanded before, the Hellfire Bomber had no real place for quiet contemplation. Every room was bustling with activity, all of the hangar bays were being cleaned up from the earlier skirmishes and even the captain’s office was little more than a hole in the wall behind the bridge, muffling little of the noise.
Rather than force myself to stay sane for the entire trip back, I took a chance when things quieted down and donned my suit of zero-g heavy combat armor. I exited through the same airlock off the landing bay that I had used before and made a brief hike up the outside of the ship. Electromagnets in the boots kept me glued to the surface of the hull, even though we were flying at nearly the speed of light. I took a seat a few dozen feet above the bridge’s main view screen and watched the stars in utter silence.
Even with our speed so high, we were still too slow to see the stars move any more than a slow rotation, but smaller, nearby objects flashed by left and right. I felt as if I was coming full circle, having left earth with no plan whatsoever to now having a clear mission in mind. I had now seen the war from multiple sides, from a simple foot soldier and infantry commander, to commanding, planning and executing massive interplanetary bombardments.
My thoughts consistently lingered on the men I commanded who never returned, who gave their lives freely for humanity’s survival. I had misjudged so many of them early on and now wished I could take back every derogatory comment I made. I could still hear the last transmission from Capt. Greene as he led his four wingmen to their deaths. His actions alone had saved every life under my command including my own.
I remembered Admiral Heddings’ comment which seemed so long ago, to eventually take on the challenge of fighter training. The alien ship had given me the rush I had been looking for as well as the opportunity to reach out and deal a ton of pain.
Command of a fighter wing was the only choice left for me. I knew I couldn’t count on my orders coinciding with my revenge, so complete autonomy was a must. Heddings’ had all but given me the clearance as it was. I could fly and I could fight, what remained was finding some pilots willing to follow.
28
“So what can I do for you today?” Admiral Heddings asked bluntly as I marched into his office.
“I know what I want to do for my next assignment.” I stated.
He leaned back and looked straight into my eyes. “Oh really? Enlighten me.”
“I want to command my own fighter wing.” I paused for a moment to allow the flag officer to interject. He didn’t say a word so I continued. “I want the most advanced ships in the fleet. I will recruit all of my own pilots. I will train them, I will plan our missions and I will lead the wing in the execution.”
“You’ve got some nerve to come in here asking for something like that.” The admiral returned, taking me aback. He interpreted my stunned silence as confusion and continued. “Have you seen the intelligence report for your run against Bravo-Geb?”
My mind flew over the possibilities. “I can’t say that I have, sir. I imagine it shows a bunch of pictures of a parking lot.”
“And you would be correct. Mostly,” he paused to judge my tacit response. “How about the moon?”
I thought for a moment but my mind quickly pulled up all the details. “There wasn’t much there. No atmosphere; Just like earth’s moon. We still leveled every square meter. I can tell you the munitions’ quantity, types, models, and serial numbers if you want to know.” From somewhere in my mind, the statistics from a random computer screen flashed across my memory.
“That’s impressive, but it doesn’t change reality. Apparently you missed a spot,” he flipped on a screen showing a satellite image of a massive crater on the moon. “Do you remember bombing this?”
To most other people, it looked like a normal crater that could have been pulled from earth’s neighbor. Still, a few small variations existed. There were small black cuts along the wall that appeared to have some structure. Additionally there were slight variations in the floor’s shading in round discs. “Vaguely.” I answered. “I made a lot of craters out there these last few months.”
“Bullshit. Your mind is a steel trap,” he flipped to another image. This one showed multiple radiation sources encircling the rim. “Our initial assessment was that this was a staging area for the alien forces. Initial strikes hit the center of the crater,” he gestured to the shaded discs. “These were landing pads. Now they’re full of lots of broken ships. Your strike pulverized the remains pretty good but there are still some remnants.”
“Is this a recovery issue?” I asked.
“No. Let me continue. These sites are still active in the rim,” he pointed to the radiation sources.
“What’s still active?” I asked, this time slightly condescendingly. “With what I was dropping out there those are probably power cells bleeding off.” The alien’s power supplies were often a common source of radiation in the aftermath of bombing strikes.
“No, they’re not.” Heddings sounded sure. “The signature doesn’t come close to a bleed-off, but perfectly matches what we think would be a ground-based shield generator.”
“Like they use on their ships?”
“Exactly,” h
e said, matter-of-factly. “We found some prototype materials a while back but this is the first time we’ve seen it fielded,” he sighed. “This brings us to you.”
“How so, sir?” I had a good idea what was coming. Another run on it, maybe some heavier charges. The bomber could carry a few stronger ones than what I had used.
“You will drop in and secure the area from the ground.”
It took a lot to leave me speechless but this came close. “Really? Is that the best you can think of?” I wasn’t too thrilled with the decision and Heddings could tell.
“If they’ve got something new, we want it in one piece,” he explained. “Plus if you try another bombing run they might get wise and bump up their defenses even more. If we do this on a low profile, we’ll wipe them out with minimal resistance and casualties.”
“I thought I was done being a ground soldier.”
Heddings laughed. “Grant, you’re never above being a soldier. Even I’m not, should the need arise. Do you think I just wear this because it looks good?” He added, tapping a fist against his arm and sidearm.
“Granted, sir.”
“Four hundred, that’s the number,” he stated. “Four hundred soldiers, four dropships and eight medium transports. That’s all I can spare and honestly more than I think you need.”
“So you don’t expect much resistance?” I asked him.
“Probably some, but I know you can handle it. Dig up your vengeful streak and accomplish the mission.”
“If I could I’d kill them twice for making me do this.”
“See, I knew you’d like it. Head down to Hangar One. Your ships are already getting loaded up.”
Walking out of the admiral’s office, I was pissed, but more than that I felt energized. I had more aliens to kill. It was to their detriment that they resisted before. I wouldn’t make it nearly as easy this time. Back to the armory I went, drew my armor, weapons and doubled up on ammunition.
I didn’t have a totally clear plan of attack yet, but without clearer intelligence there wasn’t much I could do. Four dropships would be able to secure the edges and push assaults in eight directions. Simple and effective it was. If there was one thing our forces were good at, it was advancing.
By the time I reached the hangar bay, the four ships were already loaded up. I briefly met with the ship’s pilots and squad leaders. They concurred with my plans and agreed to follow my lead on the infill.
The flight across the systems got old fast. Since we had to stay together and arrive as one unit with no battleship to guide us, we had to take more than double the normal number of sub-jumps to get there. The pilots laid out a series of way points where we were supposed to meet along the way.
Each course correction took hours to get the precision we needed and even more time waiting on the ships that drifted farther away. I was actually glad to not be positioned on the command deck with all the garbage I overheard them dealing with.
There were no standoff weapons in the ground inventory with us. The ground transports were armed with a few indirect fire devices but they were generally not powerful enough to sustain a siege. It was a similar story with the dropships. They had a light caliber cannon to fend off fighters and a medium air to ground missile launcher pulled off of a gunship to deal with ground threats.
I spent a good amount of time planning the approach to the target. The air to ground weapons would be very useful in dealing with anything that came up by surprise. They’d also be needed to take out the shields before our landing. With the targets as close to pinpointed as I could get, I eventually found a route in that allotted us an acceptable position.
As we came to the end of the last jump, my soldiers geared up and got strapped into the ground transports. I met with the platoon leaders from the other vehicles and wished them well before I got on-board myself.
The interior of the transport was familiar but thankfully contained less fire and smoke than the ones I had encountered before. This one was fitted with two rows of thirty jump seats plus room down the center of a row of pallets, which for us was empty. We had additional recovery gear and personnel that would remain on the dropship until needed.
With the extra gear strapped down around us outside, about half of the floor space was taken with equipment. If the rest of the level was empty, the ship could have fit six of our transports or similar vehicles in the same bay.
My team was locked and loaded up by the time we came back into real space high above our target planet. Through the cabin’s radio I heard the pilots discussing the approach to the target. They had timed the entrance nearly perfectly. We were flying our lead ship only 20 seconds in front of the last.
A minute passed and we started picking up the planet’s gravity. The navigator turned off the locally generated field quickly to keep us from completely losing our bearings. A screen beside me flickered on and gave me a wide angle view from the nose of the ship. I could see the entire planet from the one small vantage point as well as space above.
The silvery white surface was in complete contrast to the infinite abyss above. Over to the right I was able to see the planet’s terminator slowly swallowing the hemisphere in darkness. A few more minutes and we’d have the full night to our advantage. To the extreme left and right of the screen I could even make out the shadows of our ship’s engines, perched out on its stubby little wings.
They started a countdown for the altitude and time to the target. The descent was surprisingly smooth. I didn’t hear or feel anything from outside except the ever present rumble from our own engines. The atmosphere must have been very nearly nonexistent.
I felt like we could have been circling the blasted surface of earth’s own neighbor, what with the thousands of dusty craters coating the ground below. In the distance, I could make out the edge of our destination, a massive impact ring surrounding a clear basin.
“Two minutes to landing.” The pilot announced to the cabin. The soldiers all looked my way. I slowly looked back between them, nodded ever so slightly and gripped the frame of my rifle.
“Standby.” I ordered. “Be ready to move.”
For the first time the ship lurched to the side. “What was that?” I heard the navigator ask.
“Thought I saw something on the rim. It was nothing, probably artifacts from the shields. Do you see an entrance yet?”
“No. Overlaying intelligence plots. Strongest signal emanation is straight ahead across the center.”
“Copy that. Trailing ships are breaking formation for their assault points.”
On the screen I could make out the scrapped wreckages of dozens of ships that I had mutilated on my bombing run. A number had been pulled to the side but most remained on the tarmac where I had hit them. From the crater’s edge all around me I saw flickers of light.
29
Communications on the command deck instantly exploded. “SAMs Incoming!!” the pilot shouted. “Sonofabitch, shots coming in from all directions. Shit! Where did they come from?? Countermeasures out!!” The ship rocked violently back and forth as he desperately tried to outmaneuver the shots.
“HOLD ON!” I shouted to my team and braced myself against the seat. Through the screen I saw waves of missiles approach unhindered and explode on the dropship’s energy shields.
“…. Breaking contact! Moving out!” I heard from the pilot again. In the monitor I tracked a single round arc effortlessly across the landscape, pass clean through the shield, and slam right into our starboard engine. I saw and heard a resounding explosion that sent us spinning.
“Engine two is gone! Losing altitude! Brace for impact!” the pilot’s scream filled the cabin as the ship tumbled sideways and smashed into the ground at a steep angle. The impact violently threw us to the side as we slid to a halt. Half my men were on their backs while the rest were hanging from the roof.
Noise in the cabin was deafening from the curses of the soldiers within and the burning hell outside. I tried to focus on anything besides
the disaster unfolding and look the other way to the driver, trying to get any more awareness on the situation. I could still see the bay doors intact and in the correct position. We were still lashed down to the deck.
That only lasted a second longer as I watched another shot approach sideways on the monitor and land right beneath us on the far side of the cargo bay’s floor. The hit buckled the hull and kicked us free. For an instant we were weightless; inverted and landed on ground transport #2 before both of our twisted forms slammed into the starboard wall. Wherever we were going, we were going on foot.
The cabin would be our tomb. I was halfway inverted with my head facing down when we came to a halt. The panel beside me registered the dropship’s hull as still maintaining its integrity, so I did the only thing I could. I pulled the emergency release handle for the rear hatch.
With so many people in such a small space, I knew it’d only be minutes before we would sustain injuries from people trying to get out. The hatch opened with a hiss and we met only darkness beyond. “Everybody out!” I shouted to them. “Get out of the way, don’t let them pass out!” I gestured to the guys who were upside down, hanging from their harnesses in midair.
While they were making their way out, I released my own rig, twisted about and checked on the driver. He looked back at me and I couldn’t make out an expression behind his fogged face shield. He didn’t say anything; just handed me the radio to the pilot instead.
“Grant we are dead on arrival!” the pilot responded. “I’ve got injuries everywhere up here. Shuttle Three got taken out too. The others pulled back in time and are holding a perimeter outside of firing range!”
It was worse than I had imagined. “Where’s Three?”
“They’re four hundred yards behind us.” The pilot replied. “I saw them come in but they’re not responding now. Sir, what are we doing?”
MissionSRX: Confessions of the First War Page 22
