As a U.S. government strategy to preserve its technological advantage of Sodium fusion the nano-reactors could only be started using a full sized reactor. Each reactor had also been outfitted with a tiny canister of the same corrosive liquid that the alien craft had used. With several layers of fail-safes in place there was little danger of the technology falling into the hands of potential rivals.
Many of the United States defensive aircraft were in the form of UAVs. I was one of the lucky few who had been given the chance to pilot them. My career in the Navy had been as a pilot for one of the remotely piloted UAVs.
The USAC had come about under military control. With improved economies and world peace, man had once again regained his desire to explore the solar system. Since being a young boy I had dreamt of being one of the first astronauts to reach Neptune. Little did I know that I would soon go far beyond.
For the last decade David Brenner had been busily designing space propulsion systems. Some of it had been derived from the alien craft and some from his own team's ingenuity. If anything... my Great Uncle was a brilliant man.
As I sat on the sofa in the Astronaut lounge I awaited my new orders. I watched intently as the developing story unfolded on the 3D wall holo-screen. With all the alien speculations the nations of the U.N. were once again calling for the release of the secrets of Sodium fusion power… just as they had many times before.
As I watched the reporters and media pundits throwing out their wild accusations and theories an executive aid of David Brenner stepped in front of me. She was a young ensign and a very attractive one at that. The aid touched a medallion on her hat and a miniature holo-projector sprang to life. My new orders had come in. As I watched the hologram floating in the air in front of her I couldn't help but muster up a smile and a wink. Ensign Braswell however, remained professional and did not return the favor.
The news was fantastic. I was being assigned directly to my Great Uncle's research team. It was the most coveted job a pilot could dream of. I jumped up from the sofa, kissed the aid on the lips, turned and walked towards the exit. I had a big smile on my face that only broadened as I heard the aid say "Thank you sir." as I left the room.
I reported to my quarters where another aid was to come by to collect my duffel bag and lead me to a transport. I was then flown to Area 51 in the Nevada desert. When I touched down at Groom Lake I was surprised at how few buildings there were. I had thought I would be housed at the new Regents Air base about 200 km away.
Regents was where the bulk of the new activity with fighters and weapons had been taking place since I had been a young boy. The Regents base housed our most highly classified secrets… or so I thought. When I exited the plane and entered the old building at Groom Lake I was a little disappointed.
What I did take note of once inside was all the security cameras and automated mini coil guns. The buildings interior was heavily defended. After a bio-scan to verify my identity I was escorted into an elevator. We descended two floors and exited into another room. I was again subjected to a bio-scan only this time it was much more thorough... and a bit invasive.
My escort then pointed me down a long hallway and watched as I walked the 150 yards carrying my duffel. At the other end of the hallway I was greeted by another escort and taken into the next room.
Again I boarded an elevator and again descended another two floors. Upon exit from the elevator I was greeted by a third escort. After another long walk down a curving hallway I entered a room that had a windowless shuttle sitting on tracks in the floor. There was a closed door on the wall in front of it.
The shuttle door opened and I sat and was buckled in by the escort. When the door closed I was in complete darkness. I sat quietly as the shuttle began to move. I could hear the door to the room open and then moments later close after the shuttle passed through. The shuttle then quickly accelerated and then just as abruptly, it came to a complete stop. I sat waiting for the door to open. What came next was unexpected.
I felt the shuttle lift slightly and it then began to spin. The spinning increased until I was pressed hard back into my seat. When the spinning finally stopped I was relieved but completely disoriented.
The shuttle was once again placed on a track where it then began a rapid acceleration. The speed continued to increase for a full minute. A short time later it began a heavy deceleration that would last the same amount of time. When the shuttle came to a complete stop I was sure that I had traveled at least several hundred kilometers.
As the door opened into a bright room I squinted my eyes. I was then greeted by a new escort. Again, a complete bio-scan was done to reconfirm my identity. When complete I was taken into a room that had a blast door. Once the blast door had been opened before me and then closed again behind, I boarded yet another elevator.
A two story drop then brought me into a room that was attached to another long hallway. I was beginning to get irritated and wondered what all the fuss could possibly be about. This hallway however, was dotted with many doors as we walked. The escort beckoned me along with a smile and a semi-auto coil machine gun that was powered by a pico-reactor.
When we arrived at the door labeled 236A the escort knocked and then turned and walked back towards the elevator. When the door opened I walked into a room where my Great Uncle David was sitting at a desk.
David Brenner rose and came to greet me. I received a big hug and welcome from him. I had only had the privilege of briefly meeting David Brenner once before. He had attended a band concert rehearsal that I had played in during my seventh grade year of school.
I had the pleasure then of standing in awe and listening while he had praised my performance. After a brief chat with my parents he had been whisked off again to other more important duties. The fact that he had taken the time to pay a visit had left me with an immense sense of family pride. He was after all, the man who had first saved and then powered up the world.
I sat down in a very comfortable high-back leather chair and looked around his office as he made himself a cup of coffee. When he sat back down at his large glass topped desk he then pressed a holo-button on a small console floating above it.
The walls of his office came alive with 3D holograms. It was as if we were sitting in Yellowstone National Park watching Old Faithful. Coupled with a 3D sound system as well as the scents of the area it was hard to tell that we were not actually there.
He told me it was his way of dealing with not seeing daylight for most of the year. As I sat, I listened intently as my Great Uncle told me the story of the alien craft and its many secrets.
The Sodium fusion reactor had been child’s-play as compared to the propulsion system. It had taken David almost 40 years to unlock some of the propulsion drive's secrets.
The fusion power system had been used to generate a magnetic field that was just powerful enough to almost stop the spin of an electron. He described to me how it was well known that all matter in the universe was made up of sub-atomic particles. Those particles all had spin, and they all spun in the same direction.
The aliens with their advanced knowledge had figured out how to nearly stop the spin of a particle. The result of almost no spin was a craft that defied the pull of gravity. The absence of particle spin also greatly reduced the effects of inertia on anything within the craft.
I struggled to keep up as my Great Uncle tried his best to discuss it in layman’s terms. After our long talk David Brenner rose and then walked me through another door. The door entered into an immense chamber.
The chamber ceiling was at least a half mile above and the far walls of the chamber were a mile away. It had been carved out of solid rock. The place was abuzz with activity.
I was given a lengthy tour with a first visit to the alien craft. David talked of the knowledge they had gained from the different components of the ship. We then proceeded to the next area. This was where I was shown the first vessel of what was to become our space fleet. David then made note of the fact
that all the ships would be manned and that I would be going into space!
We continued our tour into an area that was flooded with holo-screens. The information was a hemispherical display of the skies above the northern half of the Earth. Several hundred feet away was an identical setup of the southern hemisphere. As I looked up I could see seven red flashing dots. That's when David told me that indeed the aliens had returned.
He then told of our new satellites that had coil gun defenses. On the holo-screen the flashing red satellites that had been destroyed, belonged to other nations who lacked our defensive technology. David then pointed me towards an orange dot. He explained that the satellites had been destroyed by a handful of advance alien fighters. He pointed to four yellow dots. He then described the orange dot as an entire alien fleet.
Our imaging systems were still too weak to discern the size of the fleet. We just knew that it looked to contain ships that were bigger than the eight kilometer diameter behemoth that had attacked us during the S.A. Our scientist’s best estimate was that we had at least two years before the bulk of the fleet arrived.
All the activity going on in the chamber was geared towards manning and equipping a fleet of our own. It would be tiny in comparison to what was coming but we hoped our technological gains of the last 70 years would give us an advantage.
We next moved to another area where a number of pilots were busily training in fighter simulators. Simulation training and then manning one of the new ships, was to be my job for the next two years as we planned our defense before the alien fleet was to arrive.
David looked me in the eye and then shook my hand before drowning me in another rather embarrassing hug. He said his goodbye and then hurried away back towards his office. I was then left at the mercy of my new training handler... Ensign Paige Braswell.
Chapter 2
Ensign Braswell wasted no time in stepping forward to let me know who the boss was. I outranked her but she had been given full authority over my training and as such I was under orders to follow her every command... to the letter.
She stepped directly in front of me and then moved her face to within inches of mine. It was definitely a stare-down. As I began to smile she stepped back and then let me have it. She barked off the command for 50 pushups.
I hesitated for a moment in disbelief and then noticed that she was not smiling. And the several other workers who had turned towards us were looking on with stern expressions as well. Even though my Great Uncle was still within sight I dare not invoke the family name. Not then... not there.
Given my heavy frame the pushups were slow and torturous. When I had completed my ordered duties I was then directed to follow the Ensign to the mess hall for some breakfast. As we walked towards a far door I could see she had a slight smirk on her otherwise stoic face. The smirk told me that she must at least have a sense of humor. I thought perhaps there was hope for Ensign Braswell after all.
We proceeded through a buffet line that had just about every imaginable breakfast item. I was in Heaven. We then sat at a long table and were joined soon after by three other new pilot trainees and their handlers.
Captain Albert Biggings, Major Robert Hardee and Major Beatrice Parks. We were quickly told that anyone calling her Beatrice would likely die quietly in their sleep. I laughed along with Al and Rob as Betty smiled along with us.
As we ate our breakfast our handlers began telling us of what was in store for the next few weeks. It would be all classwork followed up by more classwork. It would likely be several months before we would get time in the fancy holo-screen simulators we had been shown in the chamber.
I could see the excitement melt away from Al and Rob's faces as the handlers talked about the coming coursework. Betty on the other hand was enthused. It seemed that no matter where you went there was always someone who enjoyed the bookwork. After her emotional display I knew that Betty was surely one of those people.
After breakfast we were taken back by the holo-simulators for one last look. The handlers raised their voices as loud as they could as we stood just on the edge of the nearest holo-sim area. Each of the areas in the chamber were outfitted with noise cancellation gear that kept sounds from the other areas out. We were told it was the only thing keeping the underground hollow from becoming one gigantic and distracting echo chamber.
The handlers then hurried us across the chamber and into a classroom along with 28 other new recruits. There was a near even split between men and women. The war-fighter game had changed tremendously as technology had advanced.
As I looked around the room I took note of the makeup of our rookie crew. Tall, thin, short, heavy... almost every size and shape imaginable. Modern air warfare had seen to it that all you needed was a quick wit, rapid reflexes and the ability to sit in a chair for hours on end.
Al was a big muscular fellow who we gave the call sign "Mr. Bigg" which was soon shortened to "Bigg". With his height he would have had trouble fitting in an earlier version of a manned cockpit. He had a deep booming voice that commanded attention.
Bigg was a veteran of the USAF. He had been in the UAV corps piloting a drone when the aliens had last attacked. Al had been one of the UAV pilots responsible for tracking the alien craft during their brief yet destructive encounter.
In a strange twist of events Bigg's son Chris had been brought in as a technician. Bigg had been told that with the several thousand personnel in the chamber and the tight schedules he would be keeping that he would likely not have much chance of seeing his son. It was a very busy place.
Next was Rob who was an older gentleman. We called him "Pop-Top" as he had told us of his taste for vintage beers. It was soon shortened to "Pop". Pop was average height and weight and sported a big caterpillar of a mustache. We weren't sure why but Pop was always grinning.
Then there was Betty. We called her "The Whip" which soon became "Whip". She was a short, razor thin firecracker of Asian descent. Several things that became instantly clear about Whip were that she was sharp and quick witted with her vocabulary. She also had no problem using that against you if she felt it necessary.
And then there was me. The 5'9" tall 290 pound giant bag of cheese puffs. After watching me eat my breakfast the others had quickly decided on the call sign "Hoover". It wasn't flattering but it wasn't inaccurate either. I liked my food.
We had been sitting in a classroom talking for ten minutes when the instructor came through the door. She was a tall brunette with linebacker shoulders and a prosthetic arm. As she turned to face the room full of chatty fliers she had a scowl on her face. The room quickly became silent.
Her artificial limb had a panel strapped to it that contained several buttons and a touch pad device. Other than the rubbery looking skin the rest of the arm looked and functioned in an almost natural manner.
Colonel Darlene Rogers then pressed one of the buttons on her arm pad and a holo-screen with a close-up of an enemy fighter came to life floating in the air just above her and to the left. The fighter rotated slowly as the Colonel began her talk.
We were told there were four alien fighters identical to the one shown above her wreaking havoc on the world's communications satellites as we spoke. We had managed to damage one of them when it had attacked one of our satellites that was armed with a coil gun. The other three had since been doing nothing but recon work. We were told they seemed to be watching for our reactions... probing our defenses.
The Colonel then told us that this was not the first return of the aliens to Earth. Thirteen years before two of a similar fighter had been taken out by our ground based coil-gun defenses.
But, it was not before they had knocked out 54 of our best equipped fighters. Our top fighters at the time were all fully manned, each with a two person team. We had lost 108 good airmen that day.
Bigg was one of the few who knew of the attack before being stationed in the chamber. He had been a UAV pilot and a liaison to Arsonics Corporation whose gear had powered those fighters.
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After that attack the chamber facility had been decided upon and funded through "Black" programs. Very few outside the chamber knew of its existence.
The two fighters had taken out three strategic satellites and then attacked a military airfield in northern Alaska. We had scrambled all our fighters there to meet the incoming threat.
It was a massacre. The alien fighters had only been taken out after being lured over a defended airfield. There we had two still experimental high powered coil guns sitting in wait.
Nine aircraft with 18 crewmen on board had been sacrificed just to lure the alien fighters to their end. It was costly as those men and women had given their lives as bait.
Without the world being aware of the skirmish, the brave 126 souls who had given their lives had only been silently mourned by the few in the know. Families were told stories of separate incidents and asked to remain silent because of matters of the highest of national importance.
Back in the classroom the history lesson went on for hours. With the new revelations there was not a tired or dreary eye in the room. It was serious business and the crewmen assembled there were now fully aware of just how serious.
The first of our new fighters was to be launched in three days. The four man crew of the "Defender" series ship had been training in the simulators almost non-stop for a full year. Scenario after scenario had been placed before them in the holo-sims out in the chamber. Many of those training scenarios were of impossible missions where the crew was not coming back alive.
Each of the team had it drilled into them that the most important thing about each mission was for them to do the maximum amount of damage to the enemy. If they completed the sim run in one piece, any celebration was short lived as it was right back in for another mission.
After 11 hours in the classroom we were given one hour for rest and relaxation before a mandatory six hour sleep period. It was to be our schedule for the next four months; we were on 18 hour days. It seemed odd at first, but with the proper lighting and ultra-quiet sleep chambers we were told the body would get into sync with it within the first ten days.
SODIUM:2 Apocalypse Page 16
