Solar Warden (eBook)

CHAPTER ONE

The Nautilus air wing assembled in CAG-OPS and waited for Rear Admiral Reynolds and the senior staff to arrive. The room was pockets of conversation, some trying to figure out what happened, some attempting to solve the problem, some in shocked silence.

After 20 minutes, the senior staff arrived.

“Admiral on deck!” Hutch declared as everyone rose to attention.

“As you were,” the rear admiral said as he and his officers walked to the front of the room. “My apologies for our tardiness.” He turned to Hutch. “Alright, CAG. Let’s have it.”

“Well Admiral,” Hutch said. “It appears we have a new threat.”

Hutch’s tone mirrored the expressions on the faces of his pilots and their crews as he activated the ARI. The sensor telemetry from their engagement in the Proxima Star System began to stream.

“First, we intercepted a group of enemy saucers that had been detected by our sensor net. Scarecrow, Bad Boy and I all agree they were a decoy.”

“For what purpose?” Commander Nathan Travis, the TAO (Tactical Action Officer) asked.

“To spur us to investigate,” Scarecrow replied.

“So that we could then be targeted by these …” Hutch said as he manipulated the ARI, and the two sinister enemy craft appeared. The senior officers each shot a look of surprise at the ominous, ethereal images.

“This is a completely new type of enemy assault craft,” Hutch said. “While attack wing alpha was in pursuit of the 37 traditional bandits, these two showed up and engaged attack wing bravo.” He nodded to Scarecrow. “Steve … you want to take it from here?”

Scarecrow stood and walked forward to stand beside the ARI. He manipulated the display, and one of the images grew while the other dissipated. The single craft spun in place with a slow revolution, surrounded by its tactical information. Everyone stared at the black, insect-like craft, its image almost mesmerizing in its repugnance. The image was so realistic that viewers half-expected it to spring to life, leap from the confines of the ARI, and assault those in the briefing room.

“As you can all see, this is not your typical enemy tactical craft. This hideous thing and its repulsive comrade almost took out two of us.”

Scarecrow expanded the tactical data.

“We’ve all been wondering when the enemy would get wise to the fact that we have their shield frequencies and modulate them so we can no longer shoot through them. Well, it appears they don’t need to anymore. These creepy-crawlies have no detectable shield canopies.”

“Are they using ablative armor? Like your Black Bart, Steve?” Reynolds asked.

“No, Sir. Our scans detected no armor. However,” he continued expanding the vital information once more, “it appears their hulls are made of a compound unlike anything we’ve seen before. It’s an entirely new element, extremely dense. It also appears to absorb our directed energy weapons fire.”

“We recommend that we use particle beam weapons only when engaging this new threat, Admiral,” Hutch said.

“Correct,” Scarecrow said. “Somehow, they seem to feed on our directed energy weapons. Not only that, but they don’t appear to have any beam weapons of their own. Instead, they launch this little parasite.”

The ARI switched to display the enemy drone, which appeared as a miniature version of the larger enemy tactical craft. With subconscious action, several in the room began to scratch themselves.

“They’re some type of drone that can attach itself to our activated shield canopy. Then, it proceeds to drain the shields, drawing power from them as it builds up an explosive charge. My SO speculates that once our shields are weak enough–somewhere around 15 percent– this little chigger then detonates, destroying its target. And it gets worse. As they continue to draw power from the shields of their target, they become increasingly difficult to destroy themselves. During our engagement, the only way Rachael and I were able to save Dmitry and his crew was to extend our shields around his bird while we fired on this drone-thing.

“This is an entirely new threat, and we need to find a strategy to deal with them. If we’re confronted by a squadron of these new tactical craft and they launch a cluster of these bugs at us all at once, we’ll be hard pressed to repel them. It took four of us working on one of the larger craft to successfully destroy it.”

The room remained silent while everyone considered Scarecrow’s presentation.

“Steve and his crew gathered as much sensor data as possible before they destroyed the two targets,” Hutch said. “As he suggested, we need to give that intel to our experts and let them get to work on a strategy we can use to repel them. The sooner the better. We have no idea how many of these the enemy has. Their regular tactical craft are enough of a handful. These things,” he manipulated the ARI to display the enemy spider-craft once more, “are a whole new level of threat.”

Reynolds released a heavy sigh as he scrutinized the ARI. He remained silent for some time.

“Just when we thought we might actually be blessed with a reprieve,” he said. “This shows up.” He motioned to the ARI. “My concern is, they may have mother ships with this same configuration. I shudder to think what kind of threat those would pose.”

Reynolds went silent again as he ordered his thoughts.

He continued.

“Give me a copy of your sensor and tactical readouts on this new threat. I’ll send it and all the AARs from attack wing bravo to Command. They’ll pass it on to our top minds and task them with developing countermeasures for us. In the meantime, I want everyone to stay frosty when you head out on your missions. The last thing I want to do is add more names to that list in the O-club. All of you …” he surveyed the room, “keep your heads on a swivel. That’ll be all. Dismissed.”

Everyone rose to attention, then began to file out of the briefing room. Reynolds turned to Hutch and Scarecrow.

“I want you two to put your heads together and work on a solution of your own,” he motioned to Zvi as he spoke. The ex-IAF pilot approached the three officers.

“Yes, Admiral?”

“Zvi, I want you to join these two. You bring a lot of experience, both in and out of the Program. Let’s see what the three of you can come up with. Pick Stacey’s brain if you need to as well. She has a lot of understanding of the enemy’s tech. Let’s see if we can’t get out ahead of this threat.”

“Aye, Sir.”

The pilots all nodded in agreement, their faces stern.

“Why can’t we just modulate the particle beam and increase its intensity?” Scarecrow asked as the four officers sat around a table in the briefing room. Their tablets were activated along with the ARI displaying the tactical information of the enemy craft.

“It doesn’t work that way, Steve,” Hutch replied. “The particle beam consists of ionized anti-protons. They’re anti-matter. Y’know, like in your Star Trek? When anti-matter contacts regular matter, they annihilate each other. There’s no way to increase the intensity of the particle beam. The beam travels at the speed of light, so we can’t increase that either, unless we’re traveling at FTL. We can’t always engage this enemy in ACM at supralight speeds.”

“What we need to do, Sirs,” MacPherson said, “is figure out the composition of this element they’re using for their hulls. We need to discover if it has any weaknesses we can exploit.”

“They’ve probably cooked this stuff up because it doesn’t have any weaknesses, Commander,” Zvi said. “We might be out of luck.”

“I refuse to believe that,” Scarecrow replied. “There’s always a weakness. We just have to discover what it is.”

“We need to collect a sample of the debris from our engagement at Proxima,” MacPherson said. “We can’t discover its composition until we have a piece of it in our hands.”

Scarecrow stood and walked over to stare at the ARI as Stacey spoke.

“You did manage to destroy them, so you are right,” Zvi said. “They’re not invincible.”

“No, but it took four of you to destroy two of them one at a time, and just barely at that,” Hutch said. “What if we’re confronted by several dozen at once, and they proceed to launch 100 of those little baby death-crabs?”

“Then we do what we’ve always done, CAG,” Scarecrow said as he continued to scrutinize the ARI display. “We deal with them one at a time.”

Scarecrow continued to examine the ARI. As he stared at the spectral image, it was almost as if he became hypnotized, like the hideous craft was pulling at him, drawing him into itself. He remained silent. The others continued to discuss the problem, oblivious to their comrade’s hypnotic condition, standing only a few feet away. Then Zvi leaned back in frustration and glanced over at his fellow pilot.

“Steve?” Zvi’s countenance morphed from frustration to concern. “Are you alright?”

He fumbled to grab Hutch’s shoulder as he kept his gaze fixed on his friend. Hutch spotted Scarecrow, as still as a standing stone.

“Steve?”

Stacey turned and joined the pilots. They stood...