Gray Panthers: Earths Revenge (4 page)

Flag Staff, Arizona

7 August 2128

Danny “D2” Daniels had finally had enough, leader of the Gray Panther Army and Gray Panther Industries, depending on the way the wind blew, either savior of the world or public enemy number one. Grabbing Juanita Jorge, his longtime secret girlfriend and executive assistant, he escaped from his office prison after ordering the AI Grub not to divulge his location to anyone. Taking her car, they drove up to Flagstaff to have a weekend of normalcy. Borrowing the keys to a friend's house ensured he did not have to worry about being recognized when checking into a motel. The house was old and small in an older part of town but that only decreased the change of being seen. Walking from the carport to the side door Danny finally spoke. “I feel like I can breathe; we should have done this a while ago.” Juanita just smiled as he fumbled with the keys to the door. Once inside she pulled him to her and made fast love on the kitchen floor, afterwards discovering there was no food in the house they cleaned themselves in the shower, planning to eat then decide what they wanted to do next.

The cool night air was an enticement to walk to a local pizzeria. Just walking in with no worries was great. As they neared the Pizzeria two Hispanic men laughed at Juanita. “Hey Puta, when you’re done with Viejo come on back for some real fun.” One of the drunks slurred. Dan immediately moved toward the man when Juanita grabbed his arm asking him to ignore the drunks. Taking her arm he put himself between her and the drunks as they proceeded. Dan felt the presence of the drunk as he turned his head to look back as the bottle in a bag came down towards his head. Pushing Juanita forward he ducked and brought up his arm to deflect the bottle while kicking out sideways with his foot as he felt and heard the kneecap pop from his assailant the same time the bottle connected with his head and shoulder. Staggering slightly he turned to see the first assailant sitting with his knee brought up to his chest in obvious pain. His friend staggered towards Dan muttering to himself as he swayed and brought out a switchblade.

“Why do you want to do that my friend? I just want a quiet night with my girl. She will be unhappy with me if I spill your blood all over me,” Dan stated.

The drunk stopped and seemed to see for the first time his friend sitting on the ground nursing his knee as the broken bottle spilled onto the street. “My bottle, bastard!” he raged as he made it two steps before Dan did a lightning fast leg sweep connecting with the drunks ear, knocking him out cold. Dan reached down and picked up the knife sliding it into his pocket. Turning to Juanita he put out his arm and asked if pepperoni on her pizza would be OK with her.

Shortly after starting their dinner a uniformed deputy came to their table and asked if they knew anything about the two beat up men out front, already assuming they could not be the ones since Dan was an old man of 70 and the young woman with him was too small to hurt the men.

“Why no officer, is this a dangerous place to be? Should we leave here?” Dan asked appearing to be nervous at the prospect of being in a bad area.

“No, this is a good area, just not common to have broken bodies on the street here. I hope you folks have a nice evening.” Turning towards the door he looked one more time towards the couple before he left.

“Well you got out of the office, got some fresh air, and got to beat up a couple bad guys, then lie to the police about it, guess you are having the start of a good weekend,” Juanita pouted as she sat across from Dan eating a slice of pizza.

“You forgot to mention my quality time with you, and the satisfaction of knowing you are safe, as well as this excellent pizza,” Dan replied washing his pizza down with a long swig of beer.

Gray Panther Space Academy, Arizona

7 August 2128

Matt and the rest of the flight were amazed when they were told they would have half of Saturday and all of Sunday off from training. They were still restricted to the academy grounds but it was on the honor system.

“Hey guys, they have a huge simulator farm here, over 100 can be used at the same time. Weekend is open to first come first served for individual training. Lots of money changing hands, what say we find some suckers?” Zach asked the group grinning. Everyone was in quick agreement as they formed up and double-timed to the Sim farm. Everybody there was cheering on their favorites as they took on the computer simulations. Matt saw a familiar face in the crowd who he knew was one of the sim operators.

Walking up to the operator Matt prepared to report when the operator just smiled and said “Hey there, Cadet Andrews, how you doing today? Going to show some folks how it’s done?”

“Sir, I was hoping we could do some human vs. human training instead of against the computer.”

“You’re very dedicated, Cadet Andrews. Ten percent of the action and I’ll make it happen.”

“OK, that’s a deal. We need to be configured for ten on ten each flight protecting their own mother ship against the others. I’ll go find some suckers now,” Matt said laughing as he turned to the small crowd of cadets waiting their turns to use the sims. The first potential victim Matt recognized was the cadet flight leader of Class 88.

“Hey Peters, you and your flight ready to lose some money and learn how to sortie? My flights getting hungry for some good food and we’re ready to give some lessons, say about a grand?”

Cadet Peters looked at Matt as though he had discovered a new bug and was going to brush on by him until he heard the rest of his flight take up the challenge. Turning back to Matt, he towered over him and replied, “OK, little man, let's call it five grand to make it interesting. Who holds the money?”

“We’ll let the sim operator hold the pot. He’s running the game for ten percent.” Both groups immediately produced their half of the wager easily since there was nothing to spend money on at the academy.

Peters called his group together and laughed as he told them how Matt's flight had only had one orientation ride in the sim compared to their ten flights and expressed regret he did not wager a larger bet as they headed for the sim.

Matt smiled as he told his flight they had fresh meat, the flight they were going up against had only had ten sessions in the sim, with only three as a flight together compared to the hundreds of hours they had competing on the outside.

Sim operator Dew smiled as he looked down on the pile of money on the console next to him as he activated the board for the sim. “Attention Peter flight and Marauder flight, this is the scenario, both flights will be in ready status until ordered to launch. Objective of your mission is to protect your own mother ship while trying to destroy the enemy mother ship. The mother ship's defense will be performed by the computer. In the event both mother ships are destroyed it will be a tie, if both mother ships survive, the winner will be determined by the flight with the least shuttles lost. Simulation will commence in two minutes and will have a thirty minute duration. Any questions?”

“Sim Control this is Marauder lead, what generation are the mother ships?” Matt asked.

“Mother ships for both teams are level 1, second generation,” Dew replied.

“Marauder flight, lead, stay the hell away from the enemy mother ship and instead concentrate on destroying enemy shuttles, level 2 ships are too heavily armed. Upon launch we will stick to the 4,3,3 formation. I’ll take the 4 ship up the middle with both 3 ships on each flank, copy?” All members replied as Matt started to sweat.

“OK guys, here’s the plan to smash the turkeys. I will take a 5 ship to provide cover as Patty leads the other 5 ship on the attack on the enemy mother ship. After we’re done maybe we can get a couple more sorties and make some more cash,” Peters briefed his team.

“Alert flight, you are ordered to launch immediately, enemy mother ship ten minutes out and closing, target is at heading 355 level.” The AI on each team announced at the same time.

Upon launching Matt saw immediately what their attackers had planned, “Marauders, looks like they have not been keeping up on current events. We will attack the cover force and let the attackers close in on our mother ship. If anyone gets in trouble and finds themselves open return to the cover of our mother ship.”

Peters smiled as he saw his attack force slip right by the enemy as he brought his 5 ship flight to bear on the enemy ten ship formation. “OK guys, we fly into the middle of their formation and when they scatter it’s each ship for itself. Lowest score buys the beer.” As they closed on Marauder flight, Peters realized the enemy flight not only was keeping formation but had a devastating concentration of fire power. He realized this as he was notified that he along with his entire 5 ship flight were dead. “Marauders, good job, each flight may now engage the attacking force if anything left. The shuttles performed a tight 180 as they then had to jink to avoid the debris of the destroyed shuttles. The enemy shuttles had almost reached weapons range of the mother ship when the mother ship fired on them, three ships were destroyed immediately as the two survivors realized their folly and began to jink as they turned away trying to increase speed to escape the slaughter only to see the Marauder shuttles bearing down on them, two minutes later the sim was over. Marauder flight had zero casualties to Peters' flight being wiped out.

Peters was furious as he exited the sim, when he saw Matt laughing with his flight it was the final straw. “You cheating mother fucker, time to die!” He hollered as he ran towards his opponent, winding up figuring one punch and the little shit would be done for the count. He let fly when he was not even a foot away and closing fast.

In slow motion Matt saw Peters shoved aside as the monster size cadet reached out and grabbed him by the neck and softly laid him on his back then followed up with his knee on his chest pinning him to the ground firmly. “Nice work, Tiny. I’d hate to get expelled because this shit bag can’t lose like a man. Peters, day after I graduate we have a date. Now can we let you go or do you need to be embarrassed some more?” Matt stiffened when he saw the rest of Peters flight take up positions and other cadets were backing away as fast as they could.

Peters' flight had materialized all around them. “Let him up, he’s not going to do anything else stupid today, but we don’t want to see him on the ground any longer,” a slim pretty red head said. Matt signaled for Tiny to let the unhappy cadet up. Peters rose and looked at Matt with murder in his eyes, then looked behind to Tiny and slinked back to his flight.

Gray Panther Head Quarters, Arizona

9 August 2128

Brigadier General William "Black Jack" Black, 98, U.S. Army, retired; now the Gray Panther Ground Forces Commander, wanted nothing more than a cup of hot coffee as he could not tear himself away from the intel reports that he was receiving on the variety of aliens, especially the Claw Clan of the Jacka Race. Huge and hairy, feline in appearance the creatures sport huge manes around their necks similar to lions. Two sets of massive arms rivaling the single set of legs that easily propelled them at great speed either on their legs alone or in combination with their arms. The race of mercenaries from the planet Glory, live by a strict religious code; that honors; clan, honesty, and warrior skill. The ten clans are distinguished only by each clan's color of clothing.

The mercenaries had been captured aboard the ships that had been part of the Earth invasion fleet and were being interred in a cavern on the moon until they decided what to do with them. The creatures were able to breathe the same air as humans and there was serious debate to hire them to train the Gray Panthers. To date there was no luck in finding any of the files or histories to show the tactics or strategies used either in space or on the ground.

Captured weapons were similar enough to the beamers used by the Gray Panthers that they did not appear worth copying, especially since they were configured for someone with four arms and much more upper body strength. The mercenaries were primitive in their ground communications, where only company sized units and above had active communications, all units smaller than that had runners to communicate. Transportation used by the mercenaries was a form of hovercraft that went a few feet above the ground lacking both armament and armor of any type. Mercenaries would land from their ship in a huge shuttle then use that shuttle as their base of operations until they returned to their ship.

Black Jack looked at the staff around him. “If this is an example of what we are going to be fighting, I’m feeling better already. These guys don’t appear to use any type of cover fire, or supporting arms, let alone air support, how have they survived this long I wonder? I want the Major we have babysitting them to start pumping them for where they have fought and how often they have won. Let’s see how they compare to the other talent out there.”

Gray Panther Shipyard, Hawaii

9 August 2128

Commander “Red” Erickson, looked over at the rest of the flight deck crew. There was a pilot, weapons system officer, and sensor operator. “How are we looking gentlemen, how goes the preflight?” Red asked.

The pilot, Major Sam Louis, using the traditional title of a ships master replied to the commander, “Captain, all sections report ready for departure. Everything is green."

Red then asked, “Bia how are we looking?” Before him, materialized an athletic six foot tall brunette, while she was attractive, the word handsome seemed more appropriate. She wore a white toga that seemed to drape itself over her, yet not covering up the wings on her back.

“Captain the ship is ready to depart and the crew is very excited at the prospect of leaving the planet,” The ships AI Bia answered. The ship previously known as the Queen Mary 6, had been converted to a space going ship and had a few shake down sorties, this would be the first time she entered space.

“Sam, go ahead and get clearance for us to depart, no variation to flight plans. Crew, this is the Captain. We will soon be departing for our space trials, Captain out. Well we can’t kick the tires so let's just light the fires.” There was no sensation of either lift or movement as the Bia rose to 50 feet and headed down the channel towards open ocean. Red was content to let Sam have the controls as he ordered a heading of 98 degrees inclination 35 degrees, speed 600 knots. "After we leave the atmosphere we will take a high orbit away from the junk fields at your discretion. Sensor operator, be sure we don’t hit the new International Space Station up there, the Soviets would not be happy with us.”