The first active nuke was not armed to go off but only to become unshielded after a three minute push. We needed practice. I entered the parameters into the flight computer and then pushed the stick forward. For three minutes I made modest maneuvers while the active nuke supposedly was riding just in front of us.
When the three minutes came to an end the active skin on the nuke shut down and our sensors showed it to still be riding on the gravity wave in front of us. We calculated our distance and speed to the waiting alien fighter and then reset the timer on the nuke. This time it was armed for detonation.
When the active skin enabled we turned the ship at a ten degree angle to the side of the alien fighter and then accelerated. While still at a very long distance from the enemy fighter we turned so that our path was momentarily aimed directly at it.
At that moment I slowed and veered hard left. Since the alien fighter had not detected an active nuke launch and since we were not coming at it in a threatening manner it remained in its initial stationary position. We watched our countdown timer as the invisible silent nuclear weapon closed in on the fighter. Our calculations had been perfect as the simulated alien fighter disappeared in a brilliant flash of light.
Team A33 was still working hard at their game of cat and mouse with their fighter. Our next move was to take out the Moon base. This is where Whip made her contribution to our mission.
Instead of firing our weapons and having them easily deflected by the alien gravity weapon Whip had come up with a different plan. We would approach the base from its blind side behind the crater wall and then fire two of our remaining nukes into that crater wall. The active skin would allow a nuke to bury itself deep within the rock and when the detonation occurred we hoped to let the rock do the work for us.
As an extra precaution we would also fire our remaining nuke directly at the base with a five second delay. If the initial nukes collapsed the crater wall as planned the final nuke would only be wasted powder, but well worth the extra precaution.
Within two minutes of Whip spelling out her plan we were putting it into motion. I moved our position to the far side of the Moon and began our attack. Two active nukes were launched followed by our remaining one five seconds later. I banked hard away and began to make distance at full throttle.
Eight seconds later the first two nukes found their target and detonated. While the gravity of the Moon was not sufficient to give the falling rock the momentum it needed to overwhelm the enemy shielding the push from the nuclear explosions was.
The crater wall collapsed and the Moon base was destroyed in a storm of rock. Five seconds later the last active nuke detonated in another spectacular white flash. We had completed "Moonbase Run".
In a final gesture I sped outward from the Moon and then turned towards where A33 was still being chased by its alien fighter. Again I pushed us to full throttle at a slightly off angle from the alien craft. When we reached one quarter light speed I shut off the BHD and hid our sensor array making us invisible to the enemy.
I did a quick calculation with the ships computer and then at the very last possible second turned on the BHD and adjusted course. The alien fighter was engaging A33 and was unable to adjust to our showing up behind it in time. Our BHD clipped a small portion of the fighter’s tail knocking it into a violent spin.
The resulting high speed collision coupled with the fighter swinging its gravity weapon around instantly overwhelmed our skin. We were nothing but space dust in less than a pico-second.
Team A33 was quickly able to counter attack the damaged alien fighter ending its reign of terror over them. My crew was yelling at me for getting us killed, but I was sitting with a big smile on my face.
The DSim shut down and Paige and the other handlers came in to unhook us from the system. Red was waiting when we exited the back of the DSim. Whip and Bigg were still yelling at me while Pop displayed his usual grin.
Red came up to me and stood looking me in the eye. He asked why I had done that and I told him we were told to do maximum damage and that I was not leaving fellow fliers to fend for themselves.
Red then held up his hand as he received an incoming audio message. We were once again being summoned to the Commanders office. This time I wondered if I would be in for a medal.
We sat down once again in General Buck’s office. The General circled around our chairs stopping briefly behind mine. I expected a pat on the back but got nothing. The General then sat on the front of his desk looking at us. He began to discuss the Moonbase Run mission. At first I was giddy with excitement of the praise that was to come.
But, praise was nowhere to be found. The General went over one mistake after another and then began to ride me about why I had gone on the suicide run at the end. He preached about how I had thrown away the lives of my crewmates and lost a valuable ship in the process. His words were that Team A33 was fully capable of exiting the scenario without being harmed... they had been doing it all day.
General Buck then said that he wanted to congratulate us on winning a previously un-won scenario, but he could not because we were dead. And, despite his better judgment we were being moved up in schedule to level-nine.
Level nine would put us only one month from activation as fully flight qualified. Flight qualified meant that we would be going up against the real thing. There would be no restarts from live mistakes. My prior giddiness had quickly turned to a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was a good pilot, but I was not mentally ready to go up against a real alien fighter.
The General then let us in on a secret. The bulk of the alien fleet was indeed still close to two years away but there was another advance set of ships coming that would likely arrive within four months.
This was the primary reason we were being moved up in level. The top six crews had jumped six levels and the rest had jumped three. New batches of recruits were arriving on a weekly basis.
I asked the General if we knew what the makeup of the advance fleet was and he replied that it consisted of two large ships, of about a half kilometer in diameter. They were only guessing that each had a complement of fighters although we had no way of knowing how many.
We left the general's office in a somber mood. Suddenly our casual DSim attempts at completing missions alive took a hard turn. We would now have to plan diligently and execute with precision each and every time we entered a scenario. Level nine would also be our first cooperative missions. We would have to coordinate our efforts with up to three other crews.
I could multitask within a small group but it was not my strong suit. I would also likely be answering to a squad commander. By the time we arrived back at the DSim my head was swimming with negative thoughts.
We still had our final two hours of the day ahead. The handlers connected us back into the ship and Red gave us a quick briefing on the ongoing scenario that we were about to join into midstream.
As we raced around in our first level-nine scenario we attempted to use some of the tricks we had used earlier in the day. They failed miserably as the main simulation computer had learned from its earlier mistakes. We ended our shift with two quick deaths. The deaths that day had been our first deaths other than my suicide run since we had first begun at level-one.
During the two hour fraternization time we all huddled at a table in the corner of the lounge. It was beer Friday for Pop, but he had no interest in it. It seemed that once again the spirit of the team had been sucked out, leaving our fight shriveled up and near death.
At that moment I decided it was up to me to try to change our eroding attitudes. I looked at the mopers sitting around the table and I then banged my fist on it loudly. I did not chastise any one person. I instead began to talk of the team and how far we had come.
I talked about us winning scenarios that no other team had come close to winning. I talked about how we had already been pushing the limits of the scenarios and that it did not matter if we died every day from here until the end of training. It only mattered after.
This war we were in was bigger than us. We were fighting not only for our survival, but for the survival of Mankind. I then tried to turn the focus to something positive. I asked each of the others to try to come up with one new strategy, move, weapon or just any idea per day. It was a tall order but I had already seen what this crew was capable of.
I asked everyone to take ten minutes and then toss out an idea, any idea, no matter how crazy it sounded. We only had one month left to try them out in simulation. After that it would be against the real thing.
When our contemplation time ended I started with the handlers. Bigg's handler chimed in first. He had been toying with an idea about how to extend our shields. He reasoned that if we could build a mini unmanned vehicle and pack it with the alien gravity tech, a mini BHD and a nano-reactor to power it we might be able to extend our shielding further out by sending the small ship out away from our own.
We discussed the prospects of building our own RPV and I flagged it in my audio recorder, starting a list of our new possibilities. Bigg would talk to his son about getting the components together to build one.
Next up was Pop's handler. She had been thinking about the reclamation suits and specifically about what it would take to build a backpack unit that would function in the same way as the ship’s system.
If we needed to land and exit the ship for any length of time we would have a built in food supply that could potentially last weeks. It might be useful in a survival type scenario. Whip's handler then moved in with an idea for removing the propulsion part of the missile and just having the nuclear warhead and timer surrounded by the active skin.
It would save time in manufacturing and room aboard our already crowded Defenders. Again, I flagged the idea for further review. Paige then looked at me with pursed lips. I asked her if she had anything at all. She then began to give us a physics lesson in quantum entanglement.
Back in the day of the S.A., physicists had come across a strange phenomenon, Quantum Entanglement. QE was where two like particles could be bound together by a strange and unusual force. If one particle was put in one state the other would instantly transition to the opposite state of the first one. The geniuses of the day were not sure why it happened, but only that it did. Many years of research had gone into discovering the secret, but no answers had come forth.
If you took the two entangled particles and moved them far far away from one another, the QE stayed intact. Change the state of one and the other instantly changed too. After 20 years as a hot topic in physics it had been relegated to only the occasional fringe physicist taking an interest in it.
Many had attempted to use it to send data instantly between two points only to be confounded with the randomness of the initial states. As Paige continued to try to explain it to us my eyes glazed over. Most of what she was saying was well beyond the physics knowledge of the rest of us.
As she continued schooling us on QE I stepped in with a question. Why was it that she had brought the subject up? Was there some way we could make use of it. Her response was a definite maybe. She had been working on a theory that if we could start with a particle in a known state we might be able to then use that information. With the power of the magnetic fields used in the Sodium reactors it might be possible to set the initial particle state to whatever we wanted.
As she continued to explain her reasoning my eyes began to wander and my brain was soon tuning the conversation out. I then got a small balled up fist to my shoulder and a scowl from Paige. I abruptly apologized and then moved on to an idea of my own.
Why was it that we could not wrap a Defender in BHD rings allowing us to turn instantly in any direction? It would certainly add to my ability to pilot the ship during battle. The alien vessels outmaneuvered us in every way except for speed.
Pop reasoned that it was because of the power it would take to keep all the rings running. The reactor on the Defender was already being taxed at full capacity. We would need a second or third reactor and they were in short supply... as were the BHD rings.
Pop was up next with his previous Sodium feed idea. He thought it would be possible to increase the Sodium throughput into the reactor thereby increasing its output by as much as 15%.
It would not be enough to power another set of rings but it would give us some headroom if we came up with a need. I asked Pop to check back with the scientists and techs in the power research area to see if they could possibly work up a prototype.
I then moved on to Bigg. He and Whip had put forth the idea previously of the possibility of using the gravity shield to push a black hole out away from the ship. We had concluded that the gravity wave did not react with black holes in the manner one would think. The wave was instead absorbed by the black hole leaving no trace behind.
Bigg and Whip had been discussing a new variant of that idea. Would it be possible to put a single ring BHD into a small pod powered by a nano-reactor and then launch that pod with its one black hole towards an alien craft?
The hope would be that the BHD would pass through the alien gravity wave and then cut through the ship. We all sat for a moment soaking that one in. I soon flagged it as our number one prospect and then asked Bigg and Whip to make a priority of researching the idea on our next free day.
With our audio implants we each had a recording of the conversation that we could play back at will. I forwarded my flags to each of the others before we headed off to our personal quarters. After my sonic shower I lay down on the anti-grav mattress and wondered if I would be able to sleep given the day’s events. What I didn't know was that Paige had set my suit to administer a small sedative that would automatically be dosed when 10PM arrived.
She reasoned that a rested pilot was a more alert pilot. I was soon dreaming of some nonsensical argument with a childhood friend. Paige knew I would be in need of a full rest for our continued level-nine training.
The following morning we were again teaming up with four other crews. The first mission of the day was against a single medium sized ship plus its escort of four fighters. A winning scenario was one that inflicted any significant damage. Crew A1 had been in on the only time in this scenario when an alien fighter had been destroyed. DSim losses were always heavy.
The medium size ship was about 500 meters in diameter. The gravity wave that it could muster was much more powerful than that of an alien fighter. If we came within 15 km we would take severe damage.
I consulted Red on what we were allowed to do in the DSim when it came to modifying our equipment. He told us we could try to do just about anything, but the program was fairly strict on what it would actually allow. If it was possible in the real world we might be able to do it in the DSim.
Before the mission began, I talked with Pop about modifying our reactor. If he could simulate his reactor feed idea we would have a 15% power boost available to us. I asked Bigg and Whip if there was any way to modify one of our missiles with a nano-reactor and a single BHD ring. We only had 20 minutes to work with but they were both very good at improvisation.
When we lifted off, Pop was still at work at his console while Bigg and Whip had managed to remove a missile warhead to make room for a reactor and a BHD ring. Whip was busy at her console trying to program the single sensor on the ring as a guidance mechanism.
We reached a rally point just outside of the atmosphere when the squad commander of A26 began giving orders. We were to proceed to the right flank of the big ship from our current position and harass the fighters.
A29 had been given the same orders for the left flank. A26 and A22 would be going straight in attempting to fire whatever they could at the big ship while trying to keep their distance. Pop then gave us the go ahead with his reactor mod. We put the extra power towards our gravity wave shield.
When we reached our waypoint we were given the go ahead to commence harassment. As the first fighter rapidly approached I began my evasive maneuvers. With the reactor gain we were seeing that our shield would be working at 180%. I did some quick calculations which showed we should be able to pass within a kilometer of an alien fighter without sustaining significant damage.
On our first pass we managed a two kilometer pass with Bigg working the shield while Whip fired off two missiles and a salvo from the coil guns. The missiles were easily destroyed but to our surprise the alien craft had difficulty with the coil guns.
We swung around and attempted a second flyby and this time came in just under the kilometer barrier that I had calculated. The result being that we lost one of our ring sensors to the alien gravity wave.
But, there was benefit to the close pass. The alien fighter had taken a deflected hit to its right side. It briefly exhausted gas and debris of some sort before seeming to recover.
One thing I was able to pick up on the sensors was that it had chassis tripods attached that had immediately begun repairs. It was an unfair advantage that the aliens had over us. We had to return to base if we were in need of having anything external repaired.
We made another pass at the alien fighter and again managed another hit although with no apparent damage. Another sensor was lost from that engagement. Whip then announced that the missile modified with the reactor and BHD was ready to fire. I hoped that at a minimum it would be a good distraction.
Whip touched the holo-display in front of her and the BHD guided missile was away. On its first pass it came too wide to be of any threat but it quickly circled back in. The alien fighter turned directly towards it and used the full force of its gravity wave to attempt to destroy the missile. The BHD cut right through the gravity wave.
The single black hole driving the ship towards the enemy fighter was absorbing the full force of the gravity weapon. The missile struck the fighter just to the right side of dead on and drilled itself into the hull of the ship.
There was no detonation. The warhead had been removed. The missile eventually worked its way out the back of the ship and began to circle around for another charge. The fighter was now dead in space. Its propulsion system had been taken out.