Second Earth

by Stephen A. Fender

  “Can you give me any more on that?”

  “It’s strange, Skipper. It’s like the countermeasures had no effect on the enemy craft at all. They don’t seem to be susceptible to conventional electromagnetic jamming of any kind.”

  “That doesn’t seem possible,” Shawn said, right before an explosion lit up his port side. He looked out of the cockpit a moment too late, unable to determine if it were friend or foe that had been the cause of the short-lived fireball. “What about the rest of the interceptors?”

  “The Hunters, the Golden Suns…what’s left of the Black Lions and the rest? We’re all just holding our own at this point. These enemy fighters are nimble and deadly fast, but not unstoppable.”

  “Any noticeable weak points?”

  “Their dorsal side appears to be the least armored. Short-range cannons can do the trick in just a few shots, assuming you can get one of the bastards to show his belly for longer than five seconds. I’ll link up with your onboard computer and send you what we have so far.”

  In the top left corner of Shawn’s tactical screen, an image indicated that he was receiving data from Raven’s fighter. A moment later, the blue circle of the radar shrunk to half its normal size, slid itself into the top left corner of the HUD, and was replaced by the three dimensional image of one of the enemy fighters.

  It was unlike anything Shawn had ever seen before. It had a loose delta-wing configuration, with long tips expanding out from what could be called wingtips. There was another protrusion extending from the top aft of the craft, and another—twice as large as the one on the top—pointing down and aft from the craft’s belly. It looked like the skeleton of some enormous, multi-tailed bat. Considering this was Sector Command’s first encounter with this design, the onboard computer had seen fit to classify the craft as an Alpha—the generic term for anything it couldn’t immediately discern.

  The Alpha was instantly replaced by the image of a Beta, a similar-looking fighter, but with the inclusion of a wide scoop-like protrusion under the bottom center of the fuselage. Based on combat data, the computer had identified this mouth-like structure as a multi-tubed missile launcher.

  After studying the two images for a moment longer, Shawn spoke into the communications receiver. “All we’ve seen are these two kinds, these Alphas and Betas?” he asked Raven.

  “Those two have been plenty of trouble, Skipper,” Roslyn replied emphatically. “Considering we’re still in the process of figuring out their maneuvering capabilities, we don’t need any more visitors.”

  “Understood,” Shawn heartily agreed.

  “Orders, sir?” Raven asked, effectively turning control of the squadron over to Kestrel.

  A plan was forming in his mind. Whether or not it would succeeded, however, was a different matter entirely. “Hail the rest of the Rippers and have them form up on my wing.”

  “Strength in numbers?” she asked.

  “You got it. I want to form a spearhead and get in deep. If we can penetrate far enough inside, we may be able to flank them and let the rest of the fighter wing pick them off.” Shawn studied the three-dimensional image of Roslyn’s face hanging above the centermost screen before him. She looked relieved to be turning over command of the squadron.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied. “I’ll call them in now.”

  “Move in just a little closer,” Shawn said to the image of Lieutenant Jefferies.

  The Brain looked nervous as he made infinitesimal adjustments to his course. “If I get any closer I’ll be inside your cockpit, sir.”

  Shawn watched on his radar monitor as Jefferies moved into the exact position he wanted him to be in, just to his aft and on his port side. Likewise, Drake had moved into a similar position behind Jefferies. Close on Shawn’s starboard aft quadrant was Raven, with Jerry Santorum behind her. The five ships formed a tight wedge shape, with Bagpipes McAllister trailing behind Kestrel and between Drake and Nova.

  “All right Skipper, we’re in position,” Raven said with conviction. “And I’ll bet we’re the prettiest group out here, so now what?”

  “Now we punch a hole in that defensive line,” Shawn replied, referring to the wall of Alpha and Beta fighters that were keeping a buffer between the Unified Sector Command forces and the enormous intruder beyond. “Is everyone ready?”

  Shawn got affirmation from everyone in the squadron except for Clarissa. She was having a problem locking down a power drain in her starboard engine, but promised Shawn that it shouldn’t affect their run against the enemy. He advised her to watch the drain and, if it got too severe, to return to the Rhea for repairs. After she reluctantly agreed, Shawn could have sworn he’d heard her say, “Like hell I will,” but it was too faint to accurately discern from whom it had really come. He initiated the command and control procedure in his maneuvering computer, taking limited control of the entire squadron’s movements. While each of the pilots could have easily disengaged from the system in an instant, it was imperative that one ship control the group’s maneuvers when they were this close together. One minor mistake or jerk of the flight stick would send any of the fighters into another, and the results would surely be fatal.

  “All right, Rippers. Let’s get in there and make some trouble.” Shawn gripped the throttle control with his left hand, holding onto the flight stick just as forcefully. He quickly slid the throttle full-forward, the ion drives in the rear of the fighter responding instantly to his command. He checked his screen to make sure the computer was accurately controlling the other fighters and, when he was assured they were right where they needed to be, he pressed the flashing red button on the side of the throttle’s T-handle. A jet of supercharged plasma injected itself directly into the ion drive, and gave Shawn and his squadron a amplified burst of speed as they headed into the clash of enemy fighters.

  Raven and Drake were the first to open fire as Shawn concentrated on the split-second maneuvers that would keep them all alive. Each of his wing mates scored hits with their short-range lasers, Raven’s target disintegrating in a hail of blue-white bolts of energy while Drake’s target spun wildly out of control after taking a direct hit to its forward fuselage. It careened and then contacted another Alpha as both neatly exploded. Nova and The Brain fired next, followed by Bagpipes. Of those three, Clarissa was the only one to score a kill, with both Santorum and Jefferies’ shots causing their respective targets to disengage from the combat area.

  Shawn saw another dozen enemy fighters just forward of his squadron’s position, with another five slightly closer and coming around behind them. The five enemy Alphas came in hot, their green weapons blazing for a split second before each of them was neatly knocked out of existence by a barrage of missiles. Through the expanding fireball and shrapnel remains of the Alphas, a pair of Maelstroms sailed over and past Shawn’s group at full speed. Shawn didn’t need his sensors to tell him what his eyes noticed during the brief seconds the two squadrons were within arm’s reach of one another—the bright red skull emblazoned on the glossy black vertical tails: the Red Skulls, the only other squadron on board the Rhea to have the same experimental fighters.

  Shawn didn’t have time to send a word of thanks to the two pilots before the dozen Alphas in front of the Rippers came into missile range.

  “All pilots, fire at will!”

  The five forward Maelstroms let loose with medium-range missiles simultaneously, their gaseous gray emissions showing the telltale signs of their presence as they streaked away from the group toward their respective targets. Seconds later the barrage contacted the enemy fighters, with nearly all the aliens destroyed in the ensuing explosions. Two Alphas managed to peel off to starboard at the last minute, but Shawn wasn’t about to let them get away. “Bagpipes, intercept those two fighters.”

  “Already on it, sir,” she said, launching three missiles from her port wing. Two contacted one of the Alphas, incinerating it in an instant. The final fighter succeeded in slipping out of the last missile’s range and d
isappeared into another swarm of fighters heading away from Shawn’s group.

  The frustration at losing her prey carried over the communications network. “Damn. He got away.”

  “Keep cool, Ensign. There are plenty more targets where that one came from, ones that are far more of a threat to the carrier than one little fighter,” Shawn said, trying to calm her obviously agitated state.

  She raised her voice and yelled at the unknown alien, hoping her words would carry themselves into its cockpit across the dark void. “You won’t get lucky twice!”

  “Skipper,” Drake signaled, “we’ve got six more fighters coming in on our starboard side.”

  “And five more from down below,” Nova added.

  “All right, people, it’s time to part ways. Nova, you and Drake go up. Raven, you and Brain go down. Bagpipes and I will maintain course for five seconds and then snap-roll back on this vector. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” said each pilot.

  Who am I kidding? I’m not qualified for this. These young people, each of them fine officers, have put their lives in the hands of an incompetent space hauler. This is never going to work, and we’re all going to die. Shawn tried to suppress his morbid thoughts as he gripped the stick tighter. “On my mark. Three…two…one. Break formation!”

  The group immediately split up on their respective vectors, the blue thrust of their engines giving the maneuver the look of a firework bursting into the heavens. As directed, Shawn and Clarissa maintained course for a few seconds before snap-rolling back onto their previous course. This banked their craft one hundred eighty degrees, and then used the thrust vectoring of the two powerful ion engines to “snap” the fighter upright and onto the path they had just come down. Shawn hadn’t been sure if Clarissa could manage the maneuver with the slowly depleting power levels of her engines, but when it was over, he saw her on his port side and keeping pace with him at full speed.

  “Did you get that power drain locked down?” he asked.

  She laughed nervously in response. “Not exactly, sir. That snap-roll depleted the rest of my starboard fuel cell. I can reroute from the port side, but I’ll be hard-pressed to keep up with you for much longer.”

  Two Betas came sweeping in behind Shawn and Clarissa and, before either of the Sector Command pilots knew what was happening, they were enveloped in a downpour of weapons fire. Both of them maneuvered as best they could to avoid being hit. Clarissa pulled up and banked sharply to port, narrowly avoiding a missile that the Beta had fired. Shawn wasn’t so lucky, taking several hits to his vertical stabilizers before he managed to maneuver out of the Beta’s range. Thankfully, the enemy had been too close to fire its missiles.

  “These guys aren’t playing very nice, sir,” Clarissa said.

  “Why don’t we teach them some manners?” Shawn offered back with a smile.

  “Yes, sir.”

  With so many alien fighters in the area, it was nearly impossible for Clarissa to discern if the fighter in her reticle was the same one that had fired on her and Kestrel moments ago. She watched as the alien, evidently unaware of her presence, proceeded to target a lumbering ELINT with a sputtering engine. Clarissa pulled in quickly behind the intruder before it could fire on the helpless Unified craft. She let loose with her cannons, holing the alien through several hundred times before it fragmented into a ball of expanding green gas and debris.

  Similarly, Shawn didn’t know if he had reacquired the Beta that had fired on him or not. He simply locked his missile onto the first enemy craft that passed in front of his Maelstrom and fired two micro-missiles, each one striking against the Beta. Not powerful enough in small numbers to destroy the craft, the projectiles impacted the fighter’s stern and crumpled what Shawn assumed was its thruster assembly. Somehow, the alien’s inertia slowed more quickly than Shawn had anticipated, and the commander banked sharply to avoid a collision. Circling around, he saw the craft, unmoving and apparently without power. There were some things Shawn would never do—some levels he would fight tooth and nail to never stoop to: there was no need, nor honor, in killing a wounded enemy. There were far more dangerous targets to spend ammunition on. With a final glance, he turned once again and headed back into the fight.

  * * *

  Captain Richard Krif stood on the upper deck of the combat information center, his back to the rest of the officers in the compartment as he stared at the glowing holotable and watched as the desperate battle unfolded. The projection, a spherical overview of the entire battle zone that stretched from the Rhea to the intruder, was a blur of small blue and red wire-frame representations of the combatants, blue for USC flyers and red for the aliens. His eyes focused on a pair of Cobra fighters—the mainstay of the Unified Marine Corps’ attack wing—as they careened down from a high Z-angle and took out three Betas and an Alpha in a single pass.

  Krif waved his hand into the projection, causing the two craft to become highlighted. “Commander Hayes, these two Marine Cobras…who are they?”

  From her flight control station, she accessed the holotable matrix and pulled up the information for the underscored craft. “Gunslinger-One and -Two, sir. Major Stevens and Captain Jones.”

  Not taking his eyes off the two craft, Krif nodded approvingly. “Excellent flying. Put a note in the ship’s log to commend them both when this mission is over.” If we live through it.

  “Yes, sir. Making a note of it now.”

  Krif studied the image a moment longer. Knowing he still had Commander Hayes’ attention, Richard spoke up once more. “Where are the Rippers?”

  Caitlin brought up another angle of the battle on her screen and located the squadron quickly. She instructed the holotable to dim the images of all but the requested fighters. “Ripper-Two and -Three are in quadrant zero-six.” The blue icons representing the named fighters began to blink slowly. “Ripper-Five is in quadrant zero-nine. Ripper-Four is down. Ripper-Six has returned to base to effect repairs.”

  “Where’s Kestrel? I don’t see him out there.”

  Caitlin inputted the requested information. The image on the holotable zoomed out slightly, showing four fighters, two red and two blue, engaged in a heated dogfight closer to the intruder’s carrier on the exterior of the far side of the combat sphere. “Ripper-One and -Seven, sir. They’re pretty far outside the combat zone.”

  Krif watched as a band of fighters danced around one another, each getting off shots at one another, but to no avail. The captain was loath to admit it, but watching the small image that was Shawn Kestrel flying around the screen, the captain had to agree that Shawn still had a great deal of skill behind the controls of a fighter. What impressed Krif the most, however, was how well the young Ensign McAllister was doing. He hadn’t had much exposure to her, but what little he did had caused him some concern in her flying abilities. He smiled as her fighter and the alien did the silent dance of space combat, and was glad to have been proven wrong.

  “Can you patch me in with Kestrel?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put in on the overhead speakers,” the captain said, waving his finger toward the dimly lit ceiling.

  “Stand by. Ripper-One, this is command. Do you copy?”

  There was a burst of static over the speakers, followed by what sounded like a grunt. Krif watched as the bogie Kestrel was after dissolved into nothingness. “This is Ripper-One. I’m a little busy out here, Commander Hayes,” Kestrel’s voice said with an air of agitation. “Do you think you could possibly call me back later, perhaps when my life isn’t in imminent danger or something?”

  Caitlin gave Krif a puzzled look. “Captain?”

  “He’s fine, Commander. It’s just his way of saying ‘hello.’”

  She nodded silently and then returned to her duties.

  “Kestrel,” Richard called to the overhead. “This is Krif. Stop harassing my officers.”

  “Well,” the word was long and drawn out. “Hello there, Dick. What an unpleasant surprise.”


  There was the sound of muffled laughter behind Krif. With his back to the entire compartment, he couldn’t see who the offenders were. However, a stifled snort had almost certainly emanated from Commander Hayes. Krif turned slowly to look over his shoulder and saw the entire complement of officers and specialists hard at their duties, apparently oblivious to his presence. After glancing around, he returned his gaze to the holotable.

  “If you’re done screwing around outside the combat zone, I need you to get closer to the core.”

  There was another burst of static over the speakers. Krif watched as McAllister downed the other Beta with a missile. It was only then that Richard heard Kestrel sigh heavily over the intercom.

  “It’s a little crowded in there,” Shawn replied. “We’re having nearly as many casualties from collisions with one another as we are from weapon impacts.”

  “Well, the situation is getting worse, hotshot,” Krif said, now more irritated than before. “We’re having our butts handed to us in quadrants five, six, eight, and about a half-dozen others. I need you in there to swing the balance.”

  “Hey, I’m just one man, Dick.”

  “Get your rear in gear and do some of that pilot crap you’re always raving about. Our people are dying out there, and they need your help.” As he finished speaking, Krif watched the two Unified interceptors change course abruptly and head directly toward the center of the combat sphere.

  “Understood. I’m on my way,” Shawn replied, all pretense of insubordination dropped from his voice. “Who’s the wing commander out there?”

  “Commander Saltori, Red Skull-One, but only for another thirty seconds.”

  There was a pause before Shawn replied. “Wait a minute, you’re not suggesting that I—”

  “I don’t offer suggestions, Commander. I give orders.”

  “Whoa! Hold on! Assuming command of a squadron seemed like a ludicrous idea, but I went along for the ride on that one, despite my misgivings. Taking charge of the entire combat wing is something else entirely.”