by Schism
“Dash Two-Billy, punch it and do a barrel roll, maybe we can get `em to over shoot.”
The planes split and raced up, down, and off. Afterburners glowed hot; thrust plastered pilots into cockpit seats and strained both men and machine.
One then two of the enemy shots missed, a third clipped off the wing of Dasher Ten, an F-111. As the bird spiraled toward the spiked mountains below, the cockpit assembly separated with the pilot and weapons officer inside. A chute deployed and it descended into the unknown.
Dasher One and Two completed their maneuvers and re-aligned. The other F-15s and F-111s found formation again.
“Bogey! Bogey!”
“Electric Jets at twelve o’clock coming in fast!”
“Hit the burners!”
The Imperial planes followed Dasher One’s orders and created maximum thrust on their afterburners. The sudden jolt of speed surprised the enemy flight of four black F-16s, once known as `electric jets’ to old school aviators.
The opposing fighters roared by in a blur. Streams of jet wash rocked the passing planes like boats caught in wakes.
“Dash Two, take Thunder flight and hit your primary target. Dash three, take my wing, four and five you two are married. Swing around, it’s time to bump heads.”
“Dash One, that’s a negative, you’ve got no scopes.”
“Follow orders, Billy, I don’t need a scope to splash these pricks. You got your orders.”
Dasher One executed a high-g turn about and ordered, “Find their tailpipes and use the heaters. Thunder, get your asses in gear. Every one else, snuggle up to these bandits we want a knife fight in a phone booth here.”
The F-16s held a huge advantage not only in radar but also in maneuverability. Their only chance was to use heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles at close range.
“Dasher One this is Dash Seven, roger that, tallyho.”
Four of the F-15s closed ranks and sought targets. The three remaining F-111s followed Dasher Two’s fighter to the west.
* * *
Trevor shifted uneasily aboard the bridge of the Excalibur as the radio chatter echoed through the control room.
The first question of the day had been answered: the California Cooperative’s stealth field worked as advertised. Imperial jets in the zone lost their radar, rendering radar-locking munitions ineffective and blinding them to the enemy.
The fight played over the radio.
“Dash One, Fox Two.”
“Dash Four, you’ve got one on you six.”
“Heater found its mark! Sierra Hotel! Splash one bandit!”
“Roger that Dash One, Bravo Zulu.”
“Dash Four, turn to your.”
“Dash Four is down. Mother send a Helo, I’ve got one of my boys in trouble.”
“Dash One, this is Dash Five, negative, I didn’t see a chute. He didn’t get out, man.”
“Dash Three, Fox Two, missile away.”
“Christ. This is one fucked up fur ball. I can’t see shit on my scopes! How the Hell we supposed to fight these guys”
“I’m hit! This is Dash Three, I got—”
Static.
“Three Three What’s your status”
“Dasher One this is Dasher Five, three is gone away, no chute.”
“Flight leader, Dash Five here, bandits bugging east, tell Mother company’s coming.”
“Dasher one, Fox Two! Missile track.shit.missed.”
“Excalibur to Lightning Flight, disengage.”
“Lightning lead to Mother, you got bad guys heading your way.”
* * *
Dasher Two led the three Aardvarks low and fast over the sharp peaks of the Sierra Nevadas. Those peaks became less pronounced and more green than white as the target approached.
Billy—the F-15 pilot—knew the target zone from photographs and computer mock-ups salvaged from Pentagon records and maps. The older pilots in his group—guys like Dasher One who had been flying before ‘all this’—told stories of mission planning that involved detailed satellite imagery and real-time Intel.
Must be nice.
Alas, military satellites were unreliable and rarely accessible. No more GPS-guided munitions, at least for the time being. Throw in the interference of the Stealth Field and that meant laser-guided and even gravity-‘dumb’-bombs. Of course, the whole point of Thunder flight was to take out that Stealth Field. The target should be easy enough to hit: a big three-sided building resembling a 1970’s stereo speaker.
“Thunder, we need altitude. Let’s grab some sky.”
Each plane gained altitude. While this made them easier marks for the defenses at Beale, it also allowed the gunners on the Aardvarks to better target their quarry.
“Dash Two this is Dash Seven, we’re locked and loaded just get us to the party.”
“Roger that,” he answered her voice. “Make it count.”
The old PAVE-PAWS facility sat three miles east of an airport. It came in to view as the mountains faded away, replaced by trench-like mounds of rolling earth.
Billy spied the three-sided structure on the far side of a group of featureless, rectangular buildings which, he knew from his briefings, had stood for decades. However, he also saw that The Cooperative had made some changes.
A tower with dark-tinted windows and an array of sensors on top rose from the center of the compound. A pair of mushroom-shaped objects protruded from the sides of the tower. No one in the briefing knew their function.
On the south side of the complex the Witiko had constructed a square, open-roofed building that intelligence labeled the ‘pen’ but that was all they shared on that subject.
Next, Billy spotted three horizontal boxes atop short bases, what intelligence guessed to be anti-air batteries.
To the north of the three main buildings sat a cluster of fuel tanks. Billy thought how confident the Witiko must be in their defenses to locate such explosive materials close to their facility.
“I’m painting the target now,” the female weapons officer aboard Dash Seven reported.
Billy saw a flash, then another, from the base. Despite a clear scope, he understood.
“INCOMING!”
“One more second.”
He saw—literally saw—the weld marks and bolts on the surface of an anti-air missile as it streaked by his cockpit.
The three bombers stayed on course even as the missiles closed. The first two missed but the third hit Dasher Eight. The plane disintegrated into a cloud of fast-flying debris. Thrusting engines—no longer attached to an airframe—flew off aimlessly like rogue fireworks.
Nonetheless, the remaining two Aardvarks dropped clusters of ordnance following laser beams toward the PAVE PAWS building.
That’s when the mushroom-shaped devices revealed their nature.
Metal covers on each slid away revealing honeycombs. From those holes fired a veil of shells in a dense storm creating a bubble of safety overhead of the base, hitting and destroying the incoming payloads.
Some of the laser-guided bombs exploded in the air, others smashed off-course and landed inside the chain link fence surrounding the Stealth generator, causing damage to secondary buildings.
Another anti-air missile scored a hit, tearing apart Dash Seven and sending lifeless pieces—mechanical and otherwise—tumbling from the sky.
With their strike thoroughly defeated and more missiles aiming their way, the remaining Aardvark and Billy’s F-15 retreated as fast as their engines allowed.
* * *
Jon Brewer—the Brain of the Excalibur-darted his eyes from display to display. Voices and tones played through his earpiece. His right hand rolled a track ball fixed in a side rail that in turn moved a pointer on the Air CounterMeasures screen to the Heat-Defeat option.
At the same time, on the right eyeglass of his goggles he saw the image of approaching F-16 jets. Beyond those goggles he could see—on another of the mounted screens—a radar image that offered no warning of the approaching threat.
His left fingers found the buttons he wanted not by looking, but by training. The voices in his ear piece echoed his orders.
“Sparrow tubes loaded and ready.”
“Securing flight deck; closing hangar doors.”
“Close Support Batteries ready to fire.”
He waited. The F-16s closed. Soon enough, The Cooperative’s fighters would have to leave the safety of their Stealth Field if they wanted to engage the Excalibur.
And when they did.
First one, then three flashed on the radar.
I see you now.
Jon’s fingers tapped a warning.
“Incoming enemy fire. Brace for impact.”
Three more faster-moving blips painted on the radar screen. Missiles. His missiles.
“Sparrows away.”
Rockets raced from the Excalibur and passed more rockets heading in for the massive ship, fired by the F-16s. A bank of radar-controlled Gatling guns on swiveling turrets along the bow of the Excalibur fired in tandem, managing to knock out the first of the inbound projectiles.
The second missile skipped across the flight deck and exploded near the closed hangar bulkhead. The third flew over the flight deck and hit the superstructure square-on. A tremble vibrated across the bridge.
Jon’s eyepiece found the appropriate camera. His inspection of the damage saw it as superficial. It would take much more to penetrate the thick hide of a dreadnought.
The cluster of six missiles he had rapid-fired from Sparrow tubes Bow 1 and Bow 2 chased after The Cooperative’s F-16s. Those planes banked hard and flew fast for the safety of their Stealth Field.
Jon watched on both radar and telescope.
The missiles closed. The planes ran like antelope from lions.
C’mon, c’mon.
The three blips disappeared from radar. Then the six tracking blips of the Sparrows also disappeared. Through his view finder, Jon saw the F-16s slow and change altitude. Now inside the dead zone, the Sparrows lost their radar track and flew off without guidance.
He announced for Trevor to hear, “Damn, they made it back to their side before the missiles hit. They got away. I think.wait a second.”
From his position at the command station Jon monitored everything; a continual flow of information and images. One of those images came from a camera on the belly of the ship.
He saw them two miles out moving through crevices between mountain peaks, hugging the ground nearly hidden from view while their self-generating Stealth Fields hid them from electronic surveillance.
“INBOUND! Two Witiko Stingrays, starboard side contact in five seconds!”
The weapons officer repeated an order that the Brain sent electronically: “Close support batteries to manual control. Gun crews, man your stations.”
With their stealth capability hiding the Stingrays from his scopes, Jon attempted to grab an infrared lock on the warships’ rear thrusters.
The black and silver attack craft swooped up from the mountains like frenzied sharks swimming for the kill. The speed and agility of the Stingrays stood in stark contrast to the stationery bulk of the Excalibur.
High powered cannons fired in defense at the rate of thousands of rounds per minute, but without radar locks they could not do to the ships what they had done to the missiles.
In contrast, the Stingrays could not fail to hit. They raced toward the undercarriage of the dreadnought, pushed by twin rockets.
Once in the dreadnought’s shadow, the attackers fired thick gold energy beams. As the ships moved so did their beams, cutting a path across the belly of the mechanical beast and penetrating the tough hide of Steel Plus. Sparks exploded from the slice, bursts of flames and smoke erupted from the lacerations carved in the hull.
The Stingrays turned off their weapons momentarily, stayed in parallel formation, adjusted their flight, and swung up and around the stern of the Excalibur.
They then flew sideways and cut two more slices into the rear of The Empire’s flagship. This time the weapons pealed open the bulkhead on one of the Eagle landing pads and also tore a gash in an engine baffle.
In response, a bank of aft-mounted turrets sprayed rapid rounds across the first Stingray’s port side, rupturing the ship’s skin and causing a small explosion. Flakes of its metal skeleton blew off and the attacker rocked side to side like a boxer taken by a surprise upper cut.
The Stingrays nearly clipped the tower as they dove toward the flight deck. Their lasers blasted streaks in the runway causing smoke to rise from twin lines of seared steel.
Jon finally found his infrared lock. The Witiko must have received warning, for the two cruisers rocketed away at full power, dipping toward the mountains just as two heat-seekers streaked away from launch tubes.
One smacked into the rear of an enemy ship. An explosion tore away chunks of hull and knocked an engine off-line. The cruiser wobbled and, for a short moment, looked as if it might tumble from the sky. Instead, the Witiko craft righted itself and continued on, albeit at less velocity.
The second heat seeker fell sucker to flares and exploded far away from its target as the Witiko attackers disappeared from sight.
Around the bridge, alarm klaxons rung and technicians spoke in rushed voices as damage control parties and medics reported in.
Jon—the Brain—re-opened the flight deck to gather his flock of wounded fighters.
With the Air Boss in control of that operation, Jon removed his head set and turned to Trevor.
“Thunder flight reports bombing run ineffective. They say the base is well-defended against air attack.”
Trevor kept his eyes staring forward. The first salvo in the war against California had ended in embarrassment.
Jon questioned, “I suppose we should take in the dreadnoughts directly. Pound Beale with the boppers until they’re nothing but dust.”
This time Stone did speak, first with a slow shake of his head then whispered words, “No. That’s exactly what the Witiko would expect. It’s what they want. Two of those Stingrays cut us up pretty good and were on us before we knew it. We go into their space while the Stealth Field is still up and they’ll mob us with jet plans, SAMS, and cruisers.”
“So then what”
Trevor told Jon, “Plan B.”
Plan B
Stonewall walked across Interstate 5, his eyes fixed on the trio of burning tanks. Black, oily smoke rose in plumes and intertwined as if dancing as they drifted into the overcast sky.
Two of his bodyguards followed but they said nothing. The only sounds other than the crackling and popping blazes came from the soft jingle of the General’s sword as it swayed on his belt, and the dull thud of his boots on the pavement.
Garrett pulled off his hat and wiped a sleeve across his forehead but kept his eyes on the burning wrecks; funeral pyres for three tank crews courtesy of an enemy Super Cobra.
These were not the only such crematoriums. In two days of fighting, the Second Mechanized Division of Virginia lost a dozen tanks—nearly half their compliment—and an equal number of trucks, Humvees, and armored cars not to mention more than seventy soldiers killed and twice that number injured.
Of course, the optimists bragged that Stonewall’s spearhead penetrated nearly forty miles into California, threatening The Cooperative’s northern outpost at Weed. Not a lie, but not exactly the truth, either. Weed served as The Cooperative’s only sizeable defensive line in the northern part of the state. In fact, McAllister had set up camp at Yreka-well inside California’s northern border—days before hostilities began.
Captain Benny Duda approached on horseback. He hurried a salute to his CO although the latter refused to look away from the dead armor.
Stonewall spoke first, “I wonder if this adventure would proceed more favorably if we had Dustin’s Cavalry Brigade,” Garrett waved a hand toward the foothills on either side of the road. “He would travel through the wilderness, away from this open highway, like we did in the early days. When we f
ollowed my vision. Or was it a dream Whatever the truth, we did not travel on the main roads, we stayed in cover.”
“Yes, General. Things were different then, sir.”
Garrett’s eyes widened. “Oh yes. Much different. The times, as they say, have changed.”
“Dustin is still in Colorado, sir. He won’t be joining us anytime soon.”
“Ah, yes, General Shepherd has use for Dustin there. Besides,” Stonewall watched his tanks burn and repeated in an acidic tone what Intelligence told him before the attack, “we won’t be needing him here.”
The first two days of fighting The Cooperative had been bad days. The advantages of California’s Stealth Field generator out of Beale were easy to see on Interstate 5 that afternoon. They never knew the chopper approached until its missiles hit the armor.
“I’m sorry, Benny, you came here to tell me something not listen to my rambling.”
“Oh, um, yes, General. We’ve been ordered to send a detachment over toward Callahan.”
“Pardon me, but did you say Callahan”
Stonewall knew the tiny gold-rush era town of Callahan rested approximately fifteen miles to the west on the rim of the Shasta National Forest and sat squarely in the middle of Route 3, a north to south thoroughfare paralleling Interstate 5.
“Benjamin, you must be mistaken. Several thousand enemy infantry with gun ship support await us outside of Weed, a far more important target than a poorly armed garrison numbering less than two hundred.”
“No sir, that’s the order. You need to confirm receipt with the courier who brought it.”
Ten minutes later, Stonewall stormed into his command tent at a rest stop along the Interstate. There, sitting in one of two chairs around a big map unfurled on a wooden table, waited a man with a bushy mustache and a shaved head wearing green camouflage but no rank on his collar. Stonewall’s urgent steps stopped as he recognized his visitor.
“Ah yes, Mister Gordon Knox. I should have guessed that an order to send my troops on a foolish errand could only come from Imperial Intelligence.”
Gordon stood and smiled. Stonewall, in contrast, found it difficult to smile after having watched so many of his tanks burn due to The Cooperative’s Stealth Shield, a technology Intelligence thought would be ‘unreliable.’
