Second Earth (21 page)

  
“Yes, ma’am,” they
all repeated once more.

  
“Good. Brain, we
should be nearing sensor range of our recon squadron. What do you see out
there?”

  
Lieutenant Brian
Jefferies adjusted the long-range sensors on his craft which, thanks to some
minor modifications done by himself over the course of their deployment, were
slightly more powerful than anyone else’s on the
Rhea
—with the exception of the two ELINT squadrons. He adjusted his
sensors to their finest settings, but his readings were as perplexing as ever.

  
“I’m not getting
much, Raven. There’s some kind of localized ion disturbance in the area. I’m
picking up the
Agincourt
, but she’s
as cold as a fish.”

  
Caitlin Hayes,
monitoring all comm traffic from the
Rhea
,
jumped into the Rippers’ signal. “This is Commander Hayes. Can you explain that
statement any further, Lieutenant?”

  
Jefferies was
caught off-guard by the image of the
Rhea
’s
operations officer on his vid-screen, but he recovered quickly. “There’s no
heat signature of any kind, and no signs of power, internal or external. No
life signs, either.”

  
Roslyn took a
moment to process the information. “What about the hull? Is there any damage?”

  
Jefferies had his
limited sensor computers construct a simple three-dimensional hologram of the
Agincourt
. As he watched it spin slowly
in the space between his chest and the instrument console, his eyes caught
sight of an irregularity on the front end of the destroyer’s bow. He held out a
hand, stopping the spinning model in mid-turn, then zoomed in on the stricken
bow of the destroyer; there before his eyes was a large hole burned right into
it.

  
“Yes, ma’am.
There’s a whopper of a hole, right on the bow. I’d say it’s about fifty…maybe
sixty feet in diameter. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  
“What about the
recon squadron? What happened to Mitchell and the Black Lions?”

  
Jefferies made
several sweeps of the immediate area, but found very little to show for it.
“I’m afraid I’ve got nothing here, Commander. They were probably very near the
intruder when that weapon discharged. If the front hull of the
Agincourt
is any indication of the
initial damage that alien can delve out, then our recon squadron didn’t stand a
chance. I’m guessing they were atomized within the first half-second or so.”

  
“Damn,” Roslyn
swore on the net. She regarded the intruder with a renewed sense of distaste
and disgust. “Has the enemy vessel made any further aggressive moves?”

  
“Negative,” The
Brain offered back. “Intruder is motionless.”

  
“Drake,” she called
to the squadron’s tactical officer. “Suggestions?”

  
As tactical officer
for the Rippers, Drake was weighing their next moves heavily. With all the
options that would normally have been available to them, however, there was
very little to reference in their current situation.

  
“Whatever kind of
weapon it’s using, it probably can’t track small fighters. The only reason our
craft were disabled or destroyed was because they were in the weapon’s
periphery. It probably draws a significant amount of energy to fire,
considering they haven’t made any further aggressive moves against us, nor have
they increased speed to intercept the
Rhea
.”

  
“Sounds pretty
logical to me,” Jerry replied. “So what’s it all mean?”

  
Drake’s voice was
calm and level. “It means that if we want to attack, we need to do it before
that thing decides to take a bite out of the carrier.”

  
Lieutenant
Junior-Grade Gunderson was the next to speak. “That’s all well and good, but
what if all we do is make it mad? I mean, one blast of that cannon could wipe
out the whole fighter wing.”

  
“Someday your
pessimism is going to get the best of you, Weasel,” Jerry Santorum called out.

  
“We don’t have much
of a choice, Weasel,” Roslyn said. “We need to defend this position until we’re
ordered to do otherwise.”

  
“Yes, ma’am,”
Gunderson replied halfheartedly. “But I can already tell this isn’t going to
end well.”

  
“Just keep your
eyes open,” Brunel injected. “Rippers, form up on my wing into an attack
formation. McAllister, send out a fleet-wide broadcast signal to all squadrons:
move in and fire at will.”

  
“Yes, ma’am,”
Bagpipes responded.

  
In space, high
above the ravaged surface of Second Earth below, the hundred-strong fighter
wing of the USCS
Rhea
lined up
abreast of one another, forming a firing line meant to pummel the intruder into
oblivion. With a simple signal from Lieutenant Commander Brunel, the entire
wing opened fire with long-range missiles.

  
Hundreds of plasma
trails lit up the darkness as the warheads streaked toward their target, and as
the first missiles from the Unified forces impacted squarely against the hull
of the still-unidentified alien vessel, small lights began to illuminate in the
cracks and crevices along the port and starboards sides of the intruder. At
first there was jubilation in the Sector Command forces, as they felt they had
dealt the enemy a crippling blow.

  
All at once those
elations were quenched as a horde of small fighters poured out of the intruder
like a swarm of bees attacking an invader. The enemy’s missiles, trailing a
noxious-looking green vapor, streaked through the darkness and slammed into
several of the Unified Interceptors that had earnestly begun to rush into the
battle, destroying them in seconds as the two forces began to clash in a
galactic free-for-all.

* * *

  
Shawn entered the empty
hangar deck with little fanfare. The cavernous hold, appearing even larger
without the fighters or other craft present, was eerily quiet as he stepped
toward his fighter. To his surprise, it seemed that either the disgruntled
flight chief—or someone else—had seen to getting the ship ready for launch. All
the craft’s hard points had been outfitted with various types of weaponry, and
Shawn marveled at the combined destructive power he was about to wield for the
first time since the Galactic War had been waged.
 

  
In space, there was
little need for the aerodynamics a traditional wing would provide in
atmospheric flight. However, the craft still needed to carry multiple types of
projectile weaponry, and so far no one had come up with a better idea for their
placement. Several years ago, Unified R&D had toyed with the idea of
storing all the weapons internally in specially designed bays near the center
of the fuselage. This idea was quickly abandoned when several incidents had
occurred that rendered the bay doors inoperative, making the craft’s entire
arsenal of heavy weaponry completely unusable. There were, of course, still the
pulse cannons and Gatling guns—both highly effective at close range—but modern
pilots were taught to use the tactical advantage of distance that the infinite
size of space easily afforded. The close-range weapons tended to be regarded as
weapons of last resort.

  
After inserting his
IDC into the slot, Shawn heard the computerized voice spring from the micro
speakers in his helmet. “Good afternoon, Lieutenant Commander Kestrel. Ready
for query.”

  
“Initiate the
engines and bring the short-range sensors online.” He held his breath,
wondering if the computer would again deny his request. He was delighted to see
that his fears were unfounded as the computer replied to his command almost
instantly.

  
“Acknowledged.
Engine initiators online and charging. Reactor core temperature at five hundred
twelve degrees and rising. Thermolytic fission inducers on standby. Waveguide
transceiver online. Sensor director array online.” With a slight whine, the
craft began to hum with power as all her systems slowly came to life.

  
When the computer
had finished its readout, Shawn flipped a series of holographic switches on a
secondary screen and brought up a diagram of the craft’s heavy armament: three
infrared rockets on the pylons closest to the fuselage; a pair of micro-missile
launchers—one on each of the center pylons—capable of firing fifteen plasma
rockets; and on the outermost pylons, two photonic missiles, powered by a
plasma-fusion hybrid propellant that gave them a tremendous speed. Shawn
accessed the close-in weapons controls on his holographic HUD, initiating the
nose-mounted neutron Gatling guns and the parallel-mounted pulse cannons.

 
   
The bizarre silence that surrounded his
fighter made the entire moment surreal. In a brief flash of sanity, Shawn
wondered again what he was doing in this cockpit and on this carrier. For an
instant, the controls of the fighter looked completely foreign to him, and he
scanned from left to right in the cramped space looking for
something—anything—that made sense to him. It wasn’t until he caught sight of
the landing strut lever, just forward of his seat and to the left, that
everything started to fall back into place. He pressed the last of the
preflight controls: the switch that would link his communications with the
Rhea
’s combat information center—as well
as with the rest of the combat wing.

  
He quickly heard a
dozen voices, most of them overlapping one another as they called out various
battle orders. He heard the flight control officer, Commander Hayes, give out
formational orders to have 301
^st
Shamrocks and the 307
^th
Gunfighters form up together and flank the enemy fighters in quadrant L-16,
which Shawn knew to be the port-forward side of the
Rhea
. Caitlin parsed out several more battle orders, first to the
Devil Dogs, then to the Rippers’ sister squadron of Maelstrom fighters, the Red
Skulls.

  
It was after those
orders that Shawn distinctly heard Roslyn’s voice, asking with a worried tone
when she was going to receive backup. Not caring to wait for authorization from
CIC, Shawn Kestrel knew it was his time to launch. Although it had only been a
few minutes since he had climbed into his craft, he knew that every one of them
had counted. He turned on the null gravity plates that lined the underside of
his sleek fighter, causing the already-light craft to hover a few feet off the
deck. Moving with a grace only capable from a mind-linked fighter which used
built-in receptors in his helmet, Shawn nursed the Maelstrom into pre-launch
position on the forwardmost magnetic pulse catapult. He flipped on the
automatic launch controls as the
Rhea
’s
computer took control of his fighter. The thrusters made marginal adjustments,
and then Shawn’s craft hung motionless, the hundred-yard-long semi-circular
launch tube dominating his entire field of view.
 

  
“Flight control,
this is Ripper one-zero-three requesting launch.”

  
A three-dimensional
image of Commander Hayes appeared over the centermost display in front of
Shawn.

  
“Ripper
one-zero-three, stand by. There seems to be a malfunction in the guide beam.”

  
The guide beam was
designed to keep the fighter on a straight course as a magnetic acceleration
wave pushed the craft down the length of the launch tube. If the guide beam
failed, it was entirely possible that the fighter could impact the side walls
of the launch tube, and that would ruin just about anyone’s day.

  
But Shawn Kestrel
wasn’t just anyone, and he needed to get to Roslyn’s position as soon as
possible.

  
“No time to wait,
Commander Hayes.” Shawn slipped the copy of the access card Melissa had handed
him earlier into a slot in the fighter.

  
“Ready for query,
Lieutenant Commander Kestrel.” The voice, no longer female, now sounded more
like a British butler.

  
“Order the
Rhea
’s computers to override the safety
protocols on launch tube seven.”

  
“Command sent.
However, course guide beam is down. A launch at this time would be
ill-advised.”

  
“That’s not my
concern. Initiate the mag-catapult.”

  
“Understood.
Command sent. Stand by for launch.”

  
Finally, a computer that takes orders like
it should.

 
Waves of
magnetically driven pulses rippled down from the opening of the launch tube.
Shawn could see them coming quickly, warping and twisting the visible spectrum
of the overhead lights as if they were submerged in a pool of water. He
instinctively tightened his abdominal muscles as he prepared for the push into
space.
 
Just as the waves were about to
overtake the nose of his craft, the computer’s simulated voice called back into
his helmet. “Launch in three…two…one. Mark.”