America One: War of the Worlds (43 page)

Jonesy knew it was a trap, and he still headed in smiling as the enemy spaceship turned over once it saw Jonesy descending and headed down towards the ground.

“OK, guys, Saturn, Lunar I need wingmen. I’ll flush out the others and you guys sort them out
.” Jonesy leveled out of the dive and followed the lone ship through a canyon as the two other shuttles headed down.
SB-III
caught up with the slower ship, and Maggie was locking onto the target dead head, when it turned through a ninety-degree corner in the canyon valley and Jonesy had no choice but to head upwards. His ship was going too fast to take the corner and he went skywards at 97 percent full power.

“Jonesy you have two bogeys on your tail,”
shouted Saturn to her father as she turned in to cut them off. She already knew that she wasn’t close enough for Michael to get a clear lock and she went vertical under full power to try and cut the corner. As she did that the third bogey Jonesy had been following rose vertically up out of the canyon miles ahead to follow his two buddies who were already heading through 40,000 feet, 15,000 feet behind Jonesy

In the weak atmosphere of the planet, Maggie in the co-pilot’s seat watched as they rose skywards and two maser beams passed within several yards of their shuttle.

“Maybe a few tactical maneuvers might be in order, darling,”
she stated simply to her husband as they rose under full power.

“I need another 60,000 feet, then I have a fancy idea in mind,”
replied Jonesy squeakily, the rush of the climb at 21,000 knots taking his breath away.
“You just ready your locking mechanism and leave the firing to me, and tighten down your seat straps, I’m just hoping the wings stay on this bird.”

It took several seconds before Jonesy reached his wanted altitude. Four more maser beams had passed within yards of their craft, and the enemy weren’t losing ground. It was just a matter of time before one of their maser beams took out
SB-III
, and they knew it. They were also prepared for Jonesy’s next maneuver.

Down below, the two other shuttles were behind the third bogey, which had realized the same mathematical negative as Jonesy had, and had turned over in a loop to head back down to hide on surface.

Jonesy had no choice but to do the same and at 100,000 feet he looped the shuttle upside down and around in a 180 degree turn as fast as the next to zero atmosphere allowed him to do.

Maggie did her best to lock onto a target on their way down, but the loop was too fast, the distance too far and she had no time for a lock.

“Who do you think I am, Maverick?”
Maggie complained to Jonesy as the two ships behind them did exactly the same maneuver.
“Now we are really in the crap Mr. Jones. They are going to blow us into tiny little bits. Bang goes your fishing retirement.”

“Maybe, maybe not,”
smiled Jonesy in return.

“They are right behind us and even closer on our damn tail,”
she replied not happy about her husband’s command of the situation.

“Ready to shoot down some pigeons Mags,”
Jonesy replied calmly.
“Watch this, and be ready. I saw this trick on The Matrix.”

Jonesy hit all his side thrusters and only one of his two aft thrusters at the same time, and with Maggie unbelieving, whipped the shuttle around 180 degrees. As they began flying backwards, vertically and directly towards the ground, he leveled the ship out and added full rear thrust to the rear thrusters, and full forward power to the side thrusters.

SB-III
had never been flown like this, but at so high an altitude, and with virtually no atmospheric conditions, she didn’t seem to mind reversing her butt towards earth.

“Lock and destroy,”
ordered Jonesy and Maggie, forgetting her discomfort about her husband’s erratic flying, locked her laser on the closet target now coming directly towards them at speed.

The Matt never had a chance and the ship exploded less than 10,000 feet above the reverse-falling shuttle.

It took the laser less than two seconds to lock onto the first ship, then another two seconds to lock on the second ship as it came through the first ship’s massive explosion. Even the laser wasn’t fast enough as the second ship exploded as it flew directly through the mass of energy, and Maggie began to feel sick heading backwards at speed.

“Hang on,”
stated Jonesy and he whipped the shuttle around to complete the 360 degree maneuver.

Unfortunately, even Jonesy had out flown himself and his shuttle this time. They hadn’t wiped off very much speed in the ten or so seconds they were in reverse mode, and as the shuttle wiped around in a much lower altitude, small external parts separated themselves from the main fuselage of the spaceship.

“Crap!”
mentioned Jonesy as the shuttle changed its pattern of flight.
SB-III
became a vibration as she plowed towards the Martian surface still in a near vertical dive. He struggled with the controls as he spoke to the others.

“Saturn, Lunar, where is the last bogey?”

“Somewhere down in these canyons, Dad,”
replied Saturn.

“We are doing a sweep of the entire area, but he has gone to ground,”
added Lunar.

“We saw the two explosions high above. Are you OK,”
Saturn asked.

“You father is driving like a madman,”
replied Maggie calmly, Jonesy was too busy trying to get control of the shuttle.

“I think she is pulling out,”
added Jonesy as the nose ever so slowly came up.

At 9,000 feet above the planet’s surface the shuttle began to fly straight and level.

Jonesy was sweating, so was Maggie as she watched the hard surface of the planet rapidly come up to greet them, then began to pass them by as Jonesy kept it on straight and level, trying to catch a breath.

As Jonesy brought her nose up to gain altitude the last
Matt
rose out of one of the valleys and locked his maser onto their aircraft. It was a quick lock and he had one short burst before Gary Darwin in
SB-IV
had locked onto him and Gary ended his space flying career for good.

The short maser blast, a mille-second of energy melted the very rear of Jonesy’s engines and thruster openings, and cut through the walls of his underfloor fuel tank like a knife through butter. His rear thrusters stopped powering the shuttle as the three quarter-full fuel tank began peeling away the floor of the aircraft.

“We are hit!”
stated Maggie over the intercom as they still rose up into the Martian sky.

“No thrusters, but we still have 19,000 knots on our side. We are going to have to put her down,”
added Jonesy still gaining height. He watched as the speed bled off. He managed to get her up to 17,000 feet before what was left of his controls began to want to act independently of him and the computers, and she began going down.

“Do you have side thrusters?”
Jonesy heard Mars Noble add as they headed back down. This time he had little control of the craft, and realized that what control he had, apart from gliding, was the still-working tiny side thrusters.

“Affirmative, Mars,”
he replied.

“You aren’t going to survive out there if you break up your suits. We have a blue shield and oxygen in the second cavern. If you can bring her in through the opening, it saves us climbing out to get you.”

“I get your drift Mars, but I have no visual. Most of my systems are down,”
replied Jonesy.

“I’ll take you in, Dad,”
added Saturn. “
I have you on radar five miles away and 4,000 feet above us.

“Better hurry Saturn, our cockpit is pulling itself apart,”
added her mother
watching a tiny crack appear in the wall of the cockpit beside her. It slowly cracked forward and disappeared behind the console to be followed by a second one.

“Turn ten degrees to starboard, Dad,”
stated Saturn.
“You are twenty miles from the cavern, and you are decreasing through 12,000 feet. Your speed is just over 500 knots.”

Jonesy had never landed on an aircraft carrier, but he began to picture trying to land on one. Mars told him the cavern was about 250 feet from the door to the back wall and 300 hundred feet long. On an aircraft carrier, they had systems to stop aircraft, this base didn’t, and he prepared the side thrusters as they glided towards the mountain.

“Dad, you are too low and too fast,”
quipped Saturn now on her father’s left wing only 100 yards away.

“Don’t tell me how to fly girl,”
was the reply and Maggie smiled.

“What a way to die, right in front of my own daughter,”
she thought.

“Mars, what ground clearance do we have between the planet surface and the bottom of the entrance?”
Jonesy asked.

“About 100 feet. The surface is pretty flat outside the cavern door,”
was the reply. “We can’t get down there.”

“OK, we are coming in,”
replied Jonesy now seeing the gaping hole in front of him.

Suddenly the entire cockpit windshield blew out and for once Jonesy was happy to be wearing his suit helmet, even though he hated the thing.

“Do we still have fuel escaping Saturn?”
Jonesy asked as he reached bottom and kept the shuttle a few feet off the planet’s surface.

“You had a white steam of ice pouring out behind you, but it’s gone now,” she replied.

“All the better,” he replied as the craft slowed and began to get difficult to fly.

At the last moment he raised the nose, bought it up into a stall and angled the two tiny thrusters under the wings to push downwards, at full power.

He entered the large cavern door just missing the roof, but the tail of the shuttle was ripped off as it smashed the floor section of the cavern at just over 100 knots.

The two underneath thrusters at full power stopped the ship whipping itself onto the floor, and
SB-III
landed for its final time, and slid directly cross the open cavern and slamming into the rear wall with a heavy impact.

Chapter 19
 
The Secret Base

Saturn Jones hovered
SB-IV
in seconds later and she saw the five suited figures already all over what was left of her father’s shuttle.

“Mars?” she asked her face pale and her hand shaking slightly as she brought the large shuttle into the cavern and landed 100 feet from the wreck.

“Your mother is alive and looking at me,”
replied her husband.
“Her helmet is cracked and leaking, Joey and Pete will carry her into the blue shield to keep air around her until we have your dad out. Prepare your docking hatch, then lift SB-IV off an inch or two and edge as close to the shielded tunnel as you can. Maggie’s suit seems to be working, she looks very dazed. Joey go and open the outer door, its closing. Saturn, I’m working on your father. His legs are trapped between the console and his flight seat…trying to get the seat to retract…but its stuck. Max, Vitalily…pull that seat back. Pete, give me the emergency oxygen bottle, quickly.”

Mars could see that Jonesy was unconscious, and his face was turning blue
.
His suit wasn’t working and he was unscrewing his helmet as fast as he could.

“Mind your legs, Mars, I’m going to hit the seat legs with a laser burst
,” ordered Max, and a second later flames, and sparks erupted all around them, and the seat collapsed and fell back against the cockpit rear wall.

Mars felt sick as he looked at Jonesy’s mangled suit legs. They had been pinched completely between the seat and the front of the shuttle when it had hit, and Jonesy was lucky the suit was not torn.

“Max, Vitalily cut a cord quickly, Jonesy‘s legs must be bleeding inside his suit around his knees, get a tourniquet on both legs above the knee, tight. I have his helmet off and he’s breathing oxygen. Saturn when we get them in, you head straight up to the mother ship.”

Joey rushed back from opening the door. It would now stay open for a few minutes. It wasn’t difficult to get Maggie out, the right-hand side of the cockpit was completely open, and the outer shell detached and scattered around the crash site.

As tourniquets were tightly bound to stop the bleeding from Jonesy’s legs, Maggie was carried over by Joey and Pete through the shield wall to be able to breathe. Gary jumped down the six feet from the wing with a new helmet and followed them in. He needed to get it on Maggie’s before she could go through the docking hatch and into the shuttle.

Within two minutes of the crash, Jonesy was lifted out by the other three, his legs dangled uselessly as they carried him straight to
SB-IV
, got him up onto the wing, they climbed on, lifted him up and placed him ungainly into the docking port and closed the outer hatch.

“Saturn lay him down flat on a bed and strap him down when you get him through, keep your thrusters on idle,”
ordered Mars as they jumped off to help the others. Gary was still screwing on Maggie’s helmet, and she winked at Mars as he looked into her face. She was OK.
“Gary needs to reenter first, and we will lift in Maggie, she’s OK I think, then Saturn, you head up. The mother ship should be above us and you head all the way up, depending on your fuel. You should have enough.”

Within five minutes, Maggie was lifted into the docking pot and closed the outer hatch, Gary was already inside, the crew took cover and Saturn lifted off, Joey had the door open for the third time, and carefully she hovered out. Seconds later, the door began to close as she disappeared from view.

“VIN to Mars, give us an update over, medics are preparing for their arrival up here,”
and Mars told his father what he had seen.

“SB-IV to mother ship heading up at 97 percent power
,” stated Saturn.