Authors: Max Feinstein
“
Specialist Spencer, are you still with us?” came a mocking voice from behind him, pulling him back into the here and now.
“Yes sir, sorry sir,” Inikus quickly replied and blinked his eyes, his heart racing from the memories of what had transpired over the past few days, before refocusing on the semi-transparent monitor in front of him.
For the past day the sensor display had been completely empty, but now it was lit up with over a dozen craft, both friend and foe. Inikus’s unit had actually been one of the first to detect the friendly ships through the battery’s powerful sensor array instead of just the LADET when they broke orbit and emerged within the lower atmosphere. The enemy fighter group that trailed them appeared much later and caused his already anxious personality to go into sudden overdrive. The fact that the flight path assigned to those craft by General Stelle came within range of Crossbow Three’s position didn’t help his nerves any either.
Inikus had had
a problem with anxiety during his entire twenty years of existence, but had learned to control it with the help of counseling and mild medication. The start of the armed conflict on Frontiera had simply made the problem harder to control. Even so he had been mostly successful at keeping the thoughts and feelings at bay and away from the eyes of his commanding officers. Over the past twenty-four hours, however, something had changed and caused his stress levels to increase tremendously, culminating in a horrible nightmare filled sleep the previous night. Since his awaking this morning Inikus had started jumping at shadows. All day he had been seeing and feeling the enemy. It was almost like they were constantly watching him. He had no idea where this sense of paranoia had come from, having never experienced anything like it, but was too afraid to admit it to anyone in the unit.
He took in a deep breath to try and calm himself and looked over to the young private sitting the command station next to his. Unlike him
, she seemed rather relaxed in the current environment and busied herself by simply monitoring communications between the various batteries belonging to the regiment. Concentrating on his own station Inikus tried to occupy his mind by triggering a diagnostic check. All the while he watched the enemy Alpha fighters get closer and closer to Crossbow Three as they chased the Federation Navy Cyclone interceptors and Albatross dropships. The closer they got they more anxious Inikus became. Nervously he tapped his foot against the floor, his breathing quickening further with each decreasing kilometer between him and the enemy.
Finally at fifteen kilometers out something inside him just snapped, “they are coming to destroy us all!”
Inikus yelled out and without a second thought slapped his hand down on the panel in front of him. It was almost like he was possessed, without any control of his own body. He had never experienced anything like it and couldn’t help but just watch as his body acted all on its own to trigger the battery’s engagement protocol. The sounding alarms that followed helped to drawn out the sound of his commanding officer shouting at him. Unable to reply to the man’s demands he only felt himself being pulled back from his station and watched the 2
nd
lieutenant try to stop the missile launch sequence.
It was already too late, however, as the system was designed to engage targets as quickly as possible. As such it had been tracking each Alpha target from the moment they had appeared on LADET, continuously updating the entire system with their ever changing position within the three dimensional battlespace. Without pause the fully prepared Adino battery commenced firing. One after the other each of the three vertical tube launchers threw a triplet of surface to air missiles into the air, whose thrusters ignited the moment each cleared the treetops above. Together the nine missiles streaked into the sky towards five different targets. Following this launch two of the three particle cannons facing the Alphas powered up and unleashed a pair of particle beams in rapid succession. These beams were fired in perfect timing, coordinated by the now fully automated system, so that they would impact their targets just before the missiles reached them.
As all of this autonomously occurred outside, inside within the command vehicle Inikus began to regain full function of his faculties. Like a veil being lifted from his eyes Inikus became aware of his surroundings once more only to realize that his commander was yelling and shaking him in an effort to determine what his malfunction was, demanding to know why he had disobeyed orders. Trying to find out what was actually happening outside Specialist Spencer looked past his lieutenant’s shoulder to the sensor display screen. To his horror there were no enemy fighters heading towards Crossbow Three. The enemy had stuck to following the friendly forces as they proceeded along their previously assigned corridor. It was at that moment that the first Adino interceptors struck.
Two of the five Alphas disappeared in a pair of rapid explosions as the powerful particle beams slammed into their sides. Each fighter shuddered in midair as the two energy beams hammered their shields. Being unprepared for the assault the pilots had not reinforced their shields and so they were not able to withstand the full power of each blast. The crafts armored hulls underneath that portion of shielding struck fractured from the combined thermal and kinetic strikes. After achieving their job of weakening the enemy shields the particle beams were followed up immediately by a single Adino missile per Alpha fighter. The large missiles, guided without fault by the LADET sensor array, came in from below and impacted almost the exact location damaged by the preceding particle cannons. Their large warheads, designed to bring down much larger aerial vehicles had no problem punching through what remained of the Alphas defensive shields and ripped apart each one in a pair of blistering explosions that filled up the surrounding sky.
Back at Crossbow Three Inikus was paralyzed with fear as he watched the two fighters disappear from the monitor and the rest of the Alphas scatter to avoid the rest of the incoming fire. He began to feel immense guilt for just exposing their location to the enemy and his mind raced trying to figure out how all of this could have occurred. All his worries ceased at that moment, however, when the entire missile site disappeared in a tremendous cloud of earth and debris. Four orbital strike projectiles detonated just above the installation with one of them triggering directly over the command and control vehicle. Multiple secondary explosions from the scattered vertical missile launchers cause even further devastation. When the cloud of destruction cleared it could be seen that everything within impact zone had vaporized leaving behind only a large barren crater. It seemed that Crossbow Three had served its purpose to the enemy war effort.
“WHAT HAPPENED
?! Who initiated that fire sequence?” demanded Brinek as he slammed his first down on the tactical table that now only showed four Adino missile batteries instead of the original five.
Dexter Iorns knew that with the loss of Crossbow Three the early warning sensor net that covered the whole of Secturo base needed to work harder in order to compensate by
further utilizing the two closest sites. In order to accomplish this task more power had to be fed into the sensor arrays so that LADET radius of each could be extended further. The drawback to such action was the increased power output of both Adino batteries when compared to normal standby operating levels. As such they were at higher risk of being detected and targeted by the enemy, who were now obviously in orbit and no doubt searching for the base itself.
“Checking sir,” one of the soldiers manning a nearby console replied as he began to access the relevant data recorded and stored by the air defense network as a whole, “Specialist Inikus Spencer activated the system.”
General Stelle let out a breath and looked down at the holographic map, “well it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?”
“No sir. I guess Secturo is compromised, suggest proceeding with evacuation plans,” Captain
Resinek suggested and straightened up at the side of the TID.
The general took one last look at the map in front of them and tried to take in every last detail. He knew what needed to be done, but also knew how hard it would be on everyone’s moral to evacuate from another base. Brinek justified the decision by thinking how many lives he could save with the order. It was better to survive and fight another day than to squander all of these valuable resources in a futile effort to hold off an enemy that controls the higher ground. It was horrible to think in such terms, but as a commanding officer Brinek knew there was no way to support a successful resistance effort without soldiers on the ground.
General Stelle finally looked up and turned towards Colonel Hofens, “Ben, I want the Twenty-Third to lead the evacuation of Secturo. Evac all of our wounded with you and try to take as many support personnel as possible.”
In response to the new orders Colonel Hofens
head snapped in Dexter’s direction, “Lieutenant, gather Second Platoon and move out to clear a path towards Mirjian Peak. The rest of Alpha will provide support along your flanks, while the rest will follow you as planned once you signal the all-clear.”
In quick acknowledgement of the general’s order Dexter snapped to attention and activated his combat helmet. The fully encompassing cranial protection extended from the side and back portions of the PCU body armor neck support section and sealed together around his head. Right after these three pieces came together an almost mirror finished forward visor plate came down from the top and over his entire face. As it curved slightly around his face it came down directly on the front of the suit’s neck armor, forming a perfect airtight seal around his head.
With an almost inaudible
hiss
the powered uniform became completely sealed against all external environments. At the same time the faceplate powered up and quickly ran through a suit diagnostic, displaying the status of each PCU section in a semi-transparent image on one side of the heads-up-display as the other went through all the people in the immediate area. In the dimmed environment of the bunker-like command center the visor automatically adjusted for optimal vision and let Dexter see two new soldiers within the room. These two men stood motionless in the bunker’s two far corners and had been invisible to him moments before. Guessing they were both the general’s personal bodyguards he paid them no more mind and turned towards the exit with only his new mission to focus on.
“Enemy Alpha’s on approach!” Dexter heard from behind as he ran up the stairs from the command center and emerged in the much brighter midday light that shone through the forest’s dense canopy.
He turned to scan the horizon beyond just as warning alarms came on throughout the base. In response to the alarm the armored vehicles surrounding the command center immediately powered up fully and prepared for battle. The rest of the base, having unfortunately gone through such alarms on multiple occasions, knew instantly how to react without panic. His platoon was no different and was already rushing to get battle ready when he contacted them with their new orders. At the same time he accelerated into a full run to link up with them as fast as possible.
A thunderous
boom
resounding through the entire base causing Dexter Iorns to stop in his tracks and look up into the sky to try and locate the sound. His uniform made the task easier by automatically determining where the sound had come from. When he finally settled in the direction it was just in time to see a trio of blurs streak by the treetops over the base before another sonic boom slammed into him. The ground underneath him shook at the same time as some of the branches in the trees above snapped and fell to the dirt below from the force of the expanding air hitting them. Luckily the MultiSpec netting that stretched from trunk to trunk above the base held steady and hopefully still kept the Secturo hidden from enemy sensors.
Dexter followed those
shapes as they now sped away from the base with his entire body, his visor classifying them all as Alpha class fighters at the same time. He was about to get back on his way when his suit detected multiple other objects in the sky and projected them locations within his HUD. Looking in those directions he used the helmet to enhance one section of the sky and finally located a group of large surface to air missiles racing towards the craft that had just overflown the base. Their metallic bodies giving off slight twinkles in the clear sky as the sun reflected against them as they chased down their prey.
As he continued to watch, walking slowly through the dirt street now,
Dexter heard two thunderous explosions to the east and south followed by two thick mushroom-like clouds rising up into the air from many kilometers away. At the same time each of the missiles flying into the air shattered in different directions as if their guidance had been shut off. Dexter began to lose hope at that moment and started to look away, when a number of small explosions suddenly rocked two of the three Alphas in midair, causing them to spin out of control. He was ready to yell out in excitement, but quickly realized that these damaged craft were still heading towards the base with various parts ripped off their airframes.
In what seemed like an impossibly short amount of time the group of fighters sped over the base once again. This time, however, two of them disintegrated over it
and scattered large pieces of Alpha in a long line. Dexter knew immediately what these heavy parts falling through the forest canopy could do. There was no way the MultiSpec netting draped over those sections of Secturo could withstand the weight. The spinning and rolling debris shredded through the protective cover as if it was simple cloth, exposing those parts of the spanning facility to any enemy sensors pointed at the location. To make things even worse, Dexter watched in shock as the largest part of one of the fighters pitched forward and crashed through the trees and came down in the vicinity of the medical center.