Behemoth: Rise Of Mankind Book 1 (4 page)

              I believe we all understood we could not be idle forever. There are threats still out there, cultures interested in our destruction and whether we are ready or not, they
will
descend upon us. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Hope alone cannot hold back the tide. Our training and superior equipment, make us uniquely qualified to handle
any
threat the universe might throw our way.

              I’m addressing you now because we have such a mission, something only we can meet. Lieutenant Darnell is sending out the report ship wide with our findings. Study it and understand what it means for your department. We’re setting ourselves to Ready Thirty status. As we reach open space and wait for this object to arrive, security will lock down the corridors and leisure areas until the situation is resolved.”

              “Send any questions to your department leads. Let’s get to work.” Gray nodded to Agatha and she cut the line. “Alright people, we have a lot of time to stew on this situation. I want primary bridge crew to get a hot meal and sack time in the next hour. Darnell, keep up the scans with the time you have left then automate them. You need to be fresh when it arrives. Hopefully, we’ll have plenty of answers soon.”

              “And perhaps more than we want,” Clea muttered, “if we’re to be honest.”

              “That’s usually how it works,” Gray replied. “Don’t worry. I think we’re nimble enough to handle whatever this thing throws at us.”

              Clea grinned. “Your confidence is almost infectious.”

              Gray laughed, shaking his head. “Just as your compliment is almost flattering.”

Nine Hours Later

              Wing Commander Meagan Pointer wanted to itch her calf. It started ten minutes earlier and started driving her crazy. No amount of writhing around in the cockpit or concentration gave her relief. Whatever irritated her skin would continue to do so unhindered until she forgot about it, got killed or returned from her mission and ground her nails into her leg for a good ten minutes.

              Ready Thirty status meant the flight teams needed to be capable of launching in thirty minutes from the moment the order was given. Her wing bunked out when they heard about the mission and by the time they were woken up by their CO, they were about to enter a Ready Five status.

              They were roused an hour ahead of schedule, got cleaned up and headed down to the hangar. As the object drew closer, they each boarded their vessels, preparing to sit around in cramped space but no one knew what would happen when the foreign vessel arrived or if it would suddenly get their quicker.

              This meant readiness despite comfort.

              Meagan and her crew sat cooped up, combat ready for nearly an hour and a half. The complaints came as soon as Estaban gave them their briefing. Pilots hated waiting, especially on the verge of action. It was like putting a racing horse on the starting line, riling him up and then denying him the release of running. Maintaining combat intensity sure became hard when you sat still for so long.

              Tactically, she understood the reason behind the heightened readiness. Combat situations tended to be fluid. Anything could happen at a moment’s notice and, as a result, if fighters weren’t poised to launch, they might not get out in a timely fashion. Every second in such an engagement was critical. The difference between victory and defeat might be spelled out in less than a minute.

              Unfortunately, tactical readiness didn’t allow for comfort. Hence her itching leg and Flight Lieutenant Manning’s need to urinate.

              A full spread of vessels were prepared to enter combat. Meagan’s wing consisted of the FI-62 Interceptors, or Wasp, a highly maneuverable and fast ship. Armed with high intensity pulse lasers drawing power directly from their engine cores, slug throwing projectiles and guided missiles, they were a match for anything in its class. The advanced tech ensured weapon superiority, at least in their solar system.

              Wings swept close to the body for tight maneuvers in space and extended for transatmospheric flight. Two turbine engines occupied the back with a number of thrusters all over the body for the type of movement only space allowed. Up, down, left and right gave a pilot great flexibility for dog fighting and they learned to think in three dimensions, to really use the technology to great advantage.

              Inertial dampeners provided safety for the pilots by placing the cockpit at the center of a gyroscope. Magnetics provided an appropriate reaction to quick maneuvers, reducing the massive G forces the Wasp pulled. This meant the difference between an operator tensing up and handling their ship effectively and…well…popping.

              Training for those things was terrible and taxed the cadets almost as bad as special forces routines. They learned to take far worse than the ship’s allowed so when they climbed into the first cockpit and familiarized themselves with reality, their tolerance far exceeded the requirements.

              Flying the fighters still didn’t cater to the faint of heart or out of shape but there wasn’t a job in the system Meagan would rather have.

              Wing Commander Rudy Hale sat at the head of the bomber group. Meagan attended the academy with him and he’d always preferred the heavier, lumbering ships to the quick ones every cadet had to master. At nearly six-feet tall and two hundred pounds, he defied the odds for being nearly too big to qualify for fighter duty. He believed his size meant he was destined to fly the biggest, most destructive crafts in the fleet.

              The FB-15s, or Tiger Sharks, had a lot in common with their bigger, nearly forgotten ancestors, the B-52s. They operated on a crew of two, one for flying and the other taking on the dual task of navigation and weapons control. Each vessel carried ten warheads with more destructive power than five nuclear warheads from the twentieth century and those counted as conventional ordinance.

              Pulse bombs, the real pride of modern weapon crafting, may well be the most destructive force humanity ever imagined. Under ideal conditions, test runs showed them capable of annihilating meteors roughly a quarter the size of Earth’s moon. Dropping them at the perfect, precise location may be capable of exciting fault lines, causing seismic events throughout a region.

              After shock from the pulse bombs facilitated heavy armor on the bombers, enough to deflect the EMP and secondary wave damage. Powerful engines and multi-point thrusters kept the ship steady though they’d still experience some serious turbulence. Because of these exceptional circumstances, bomber pilots attended an extra two weeks of training to familiarize themselves with the differences and required an additional one hundred hours of flight time to receive a certification.

              These ships looked much like oversized Wasps with two additional turbines in the back but non-extending wings. They weren’t designed for extreme maneuvers and so the designers didn’t worry about the extremities becoming damaged under normal flight. Some of the best bombers handled their ships like they were in a smaller craft but they did so with real finesse.

              One could easily over-fly a bomber, few knew how to push the limits without breaking them.

              Her team held a distinguished code name,
Panther
. Another unit, long gone in a bygone age of early space travel, flew more than two hundred combat missions over the moon after the colonization. Those days involved so much lawlessness in space, it was a wonder the colonies survived and thanks to some pretty amazing pilots, they flourished.

              They called Rudy’s group the Bulls. He liked it but some of his juniors considered the name sexist. Considering how they barreled through any opposition and blew them back to hell, Meagan always thought it seemed fitting. Still, some people maintained sensitivity from civilian life. Most of them got over it eventually. Those who didn’t, tended to be one tour types.

              Meagan set her com to private and patched into her peer’s cockpit. “Hey, Rudy. How’s it going over there?”

              “Roomy and comfortable,” Rudy replied. “You?”

              “I hate you right now.”

              Rudy laughed. “I bet. Don’t worry, whatever this is won’t take long to wrap up. If it’s not another attack, we’ll be done by dinner.”

              “Your confidence is…unseemly.” Meagan checked her chronometer. “We’ve got to be getting close.”

              “If they deploy my guys, they won’t want to be
too
close. Hell, I’m thinking they should’ve sent us ahead.”

              “Whatever we’re after is moving at half the speed of light,” Meagan replied. “There’s nothing we can do if they don’t slow the damn thing down.”

              “God, if we’re leaving that up to the shipboard jockeys…” Rudy clicked his tongue.

              “What?” Meagan prompted.

              “Oh, we just won’t be done until dessert.”

              Meagan rolled her eyes. “Funny. Let’s tap into the bridge coms and listen in. We might get a little warning before having to launch.”

              “Fine by me.”

              Meagan initiated the connection and leaned her head back, staring out the top of her cockpit. Voices filled her helmet, people on the bridge going about their duties and talking it through in dry, concise detail. Five seconds of listening in on their jobs made her all the more thankful for her own. Even while sitting in the uncomfortable ship for several hours.

              “The vessel is approaching, Commander,” Lieutenant Darnell spoke, his voice sounding extra thin over her helmet speakers. “Less than ten minutes to rendezvous.”

              “I’m picking up a signal,” Ensign White said, the communications officer. “Some kind of…repeated message.”

              “Can you decipher it?” Commander Everly asked. Meagan didn’t know what to think of him. On one hand, he seemed like a warmongering ass but he’d always been fair to the men. He may’ve liked the thrill of battle, the excitement of firing big guns and for that, she couldn’t fault him. Part of why she flew involved the adrenaline rush.

              “Working on it,” Ensign White replied. “It’s…strange. Like nothing I’ve seen before.”

              “The vessel seems to be reducing speed,” Darnell said. “One quarter light speed…a tenth…they’ve slowed to a crawl.”

              “Navigation, confirm,” Everly said.

              “Confirmed, sir.” Lieutenant JG Tim Collins piped in. Meagan had no idea how young he was but he must’ve been only a year out of the academy. She only ran into him once. He got lost in the lower decks and found himself in the pilot’s mess. No one looked more out of place. His bookishness and frailty set him apart from the lean, fit fighter jockeys.

              “Move to intercept, Redding,” Everly said, “but keep our distance.”

              “Aye, sir. Adjusting position.”

              “See if we can’t get a parallel course,” Captain Atwell finally spoke up. Now he was a man Meagan respected. He’d been through some serious shit and maintained a calm, even disposition, the type which made him an amiable leader. She’d served on one of his watches before and he’d been nothing short of a great guy. One of the few COs Meagan harbored no complaints about. “Can you get better scans now, Olly? Maybe help Ensign White?”

              “Affirmative, sir.” Darnell replied. “The shield’s density I talked about before is just an anomaly of design. Now that we’re closer, our instruments are no longer blocked. Initiating a sweep.”

              “Hey, Meagan,” Rudy piped in. “I tapped into visual. Sending them over now. This thing…Jesus, it looks like some kind of…I don’t know…dinnerware.”

              “Wow, you’re not supposed to tap signals, man.” Meagan tapped her knee. “But patch it over to me.”

              “Yeah, I thought you’d say that. Here you go.”

              Meagan squinted as her display lit up. The unknown vessel filled her screen, shiny metal shaped like a teardrop. The sharp end led the way and the turbines in the back looked capable of housing a dozen fighters comfortably. A liquid green light surrounded the hull, their version of an environmental shield.

              “What the hell…” Meagan muttered.

              “I know, right? It looks like they were concerned with aerodynamics or something.”

              “Or that nose is a weapon,” Meagan replied. “God knows it could be. Imagine ramming speed.”

              “I’d rather not.” Rudy gasped. “Hey, did you see that?”

              Meagan scrutinized her screen. At first, she had no idea what he was talking about but then, she saw it. A massive panel on the side of the ship opened up, marring the perfect, smooth surface. Olly’s voice interrupted her before she could say anything. Apparently, they saw it too and probably had a much better idea of what it meant.

              “Report.” Commander Everly spoke up. “What is that?”

              “Something’s coming out of it,” Redding said. “Olly, what’re you reading?”

              “Um…unmanned drones it looks like…a dozen of them…maybe more. Wait, getting an accurate count…twenty-four, all roughly half the size of our Wasp fighters.” Olly hummed.

              “Group Commander Revente, this is Commander Everly. Launch your fighters but tell them to stay close to the ship. No engagement without word from us, understood?”

              Revente replied, “understood, Commander. Launching fighters.” A moment later, their own speakers lit up. “Listen up, all fighters prepare for immediate launch. Rules of Engagement are escort only. Do
not
fire unless you receive a direct order from command. Repeat, you will not fire without an order. Fire them up, ladies and gentlemen. This very well might get interesting.”

              “Here we go Rudy.” Meagan shifted her ship from idle to fire up. The pulse drive would reach maximum efficiency in less than twenty seconds. The bombers might take another ten or so but they’d all be out there soon enough. “You sure you’re ready?”

              “I’m not the girl here, Meagan,” he teased.

              “How was I confused all this time?” Meagan gripped the flight stick and flexed her fingers.

              Unmanned drones. She hadn’t fought any of those since the academy. They were wily, able to pull off maneuvers no human pilot could but what they won in squirrelly moves, they lost out on intuition. Human creativity proved victorious over AI controlled crafts seven out of ten times.

              Attempts to program them to feel otherwise made too many people nervous. God knows what the AI would do next so they left them dumb. But these weren’t constructed on Earth. They were alien and therefore, might be very different. Depending on their proclivity for victory, if this broke into a fight, it could be a real slug fest.