19
BRANDI
It was boring being the spaceship babysitter, so I daydreamed about what would happen next.
First, we would need to get word back to the base. I'd almost certainly have to walk into Mountain Home on foot, and then allow the Karak aircraft to fly inside. There's no way they wouldn't shoot it down otherwise. I mean, that's what I would do if I were a perimeter guard, or an Airman manning the AA guns.
Oh man. Everyone would flip out. So long as nobody lost their cool and started shooting, that would be a fun sight to see.
Base Commander Elliot would probably end his vacation early when he found out. He was somewhere in Central America with his family--Costa Rica, maybe? I couldn't remember. It'd probably take him the better part of the day to return, if he even believed the message when it came. "Hey boss, an alien spaceship landed at base, so you should come home ASAP. Oh, did we mention there are aliens? Because there are aliens. Just FYI." That kind of call wasn't one a lot of people would immediately believe.
Now that I thought about it, he'd started all of this by canceling those candidate interviews. If those had still been on my schedule I probably would have been at the base cantina having late drinks with the candidates instead of alone at home. I doubt the aliens would have chosen me then, since they'd been so concerned about people going crazy. A crowded bar full of sloppy Airmen was probably a terrible place to suddenly appear out of thin air.
Maybe things happened for a reason after all. My mom had always insisted so, but I'd never believed it until now.
And then all the stuff that would happen after we escorted the Karak onto our base. The defense of our planet! Surely the Karak would share technology with us humans. Aircraft like this for everyone. I rapped my knuckle on the bulkhead and listened to the dim echo deep inside.
If we were invaded, what would the battle lines even look like? Would we fight the Wolvae in orbit? I assumed this thing could fight in space. Or maybe we'd battle the Wolvae closer to the surface. Idaho might suddenly become an awfully exciting place.
Shit, what was I thinking? War wasn't exciting, especially not the kind that could suddenly appear on our doorstep. America hadn't had a battle in its own territory in nearly a century. But still, I couldn't shake the feeling that everything was about to get a whole lot more interesting. Forget paperwork: I'd have a lot of work to do helping the Karak.
At least, I hoped I'd have a lot of work to do. Surely as the Lieutenant Colonel to make first contact--and the first to fly one of their ships!--I'd be involved in the process of--
All hell broke loose.
The cockpit flashed with bright lights and a high-pitched noise like an undulating siren. I flinched, hit my head against the wall, then covered my ears with my hands. The HUD on the cockpit window showed a map of the nearby terrain, and an angry red symbol began moving.
"What the..."
And then I saw it through the window. Above the trees, maybe half a mile away, the Wolvae aircraft rose into the sky. It was a hideous thing, like a jagged piece of charcoal with engines glowing on its back and underside, yet it moved through the air swiftly.
How was that possible? They said it shouldn't have taken off for 30 minutes!
"Kerix? Tyrix?" I called. "What's happening?"
For a moment I indulged an optimistic thought: maybe the Karak had captured the ship and were flying it back here. But somehow I knew that was not the case, and the Wolvae ship began soaring in the opposite direction.
I looked around for Kerix and Tyrix, expecting them to burst through the trees and join me at any moment. But they didn't. And the enemy ship was growing smaller in the distance.
So I did the only thing I could.
"Not today, motherfuckers."
I strapped myself back into the cockpit chair. Sparing a moment of concern for the Karak's lives, I grabbed the control wheel and pulled the ship into the air with the foot pedals.
When I was above the trees, I really opened her up: I leaned forward on the controls hard, which shot our ship forward with ludicrous speed. Like a jet fighter, but smoother and easier. The Wolvae ship grew in my view, a stain of black against the beautiful Idaho sky, my sky goddamnit, and I wasn't going to let these fur-covered alien assholes take it from me.
I took a closer look at my control wheel. The buttons along the front were within reach of my thumbs, but there were a lot of them. I ran my thumbs over them, wondering which were weapons, and when my thumb brushed over one cluster the cockpit window changed. A targeting system appeared superimposed over the glass, instantly recognizable as something similar to what I'd see in a human spacecraft. Bingo! This cluster of buttons must have been weapons.
Whether due to me pulling up the targeting system, or because I was an obvious sight in their alien rear-view mirror, the Wolvae began evasive maneuvers. They slid away to the right, a sudden change in direction that would have been impossible in a human aircraft, and I had to scramble to whirl around and follow them. Then they were shooting up into the air and away, parallel to the ground again to the south. I quivered with excitement as I threw the wheel forward to follow.
My instincts were only as good as my information, and right now I had no idea what weapons were on this thing. I needed to know what I was working with. So I aimed the target reticule at the sky, winced, and pressed the first button on the wheel.
A burst of lasers shot away like tracer bullets, green flashes that were almost imperceptible if I weren't already watching. They didn't look like much but the Wolvae reacted like a frightened animal, darting to the left and down, then right again, zig-zagging over the Idaho mountains. I followed as best as I could, trying to get them to remain in the center of my reticule, but they were too chaotic.
Things were simpler in our human aircraft, where you had to fly in one damn direction.
I moved my thumb to the next button and fired. This time a pulse of light like a medieval mace shot away from the ship, thick and slow. It was like a missile made of light, but it didn't follow the Wolvae ship as I expected--it continued into the sky, slowly curving downward in a long arc. So that weapon had some sort of mass affected by the earth's gravity. It was out of sight before I could see where it landed; I hoped it didn't hit anyone out walking their dog in Colorado.
The third button didn't do anything, and neither did the fourth. Or, they did something, but I couldn't tell what.
Okay, Brandi. This is gunna be a good old fashioned dogfight. And to think us Airmen thought that type of training was outdated.
I returned to the laser bursts as I followed the Wolvae ship, spraying the lasers in their general direction but not doing much damage. I wondered if I would run out of ammo, or energy, or something; there was no indicator to tell me so.
Moreover, the Wolvae didn't return fire. That's when I noticed three smoldering chunks of metal on their exterior; I suspected those were defensive turrets that had already been damaged. Thank God for that.
I maneuvered the control wheel, spinning and diving and darting as best as I could.
Static suddenly crackled in the air, and then sound came from all around.
"Attention unidentified aircraft," said an Airman, "if you're reading on this frequency, please identify yourself immediately."
"Shit," I muttered. That was Mountain Home base.
"Pardon me?" they responded. They must have heard me.
"Hey there!" I said, trying to sound casual. "I, uhh, can explain. Just do me a favor and don't shoot me down."
There was a pause. "Lieutenant Colonel Forbes?"
I spun the aircraft to the left to keep up with the Wolvae. "You bet."
"But how... we've only made visual contact with the two aircraft. We have nothing on radar..."
"I'll explain later," I insisted. "Just please, please don't shoot me down."
The Karak aircraft cut off the connection before I could tell them to shoot the one I was chasing. Damn.
And then the mountains flattened into plains. I groaned as the Wolvae craft shot directly toward Boise, a skyline in the distance. Here's hoping they didn't have any weapons on the front of their craft.
I stopped firing as we neared the skyscrapers. The Wolvae seemed confused by them; they slowed as they approached, then abruptly zoomed diagonally between two of them, curving around the other side. I slowed my own aircraft enough to follow carefully, passing so close to the buildings that I could see faces pressed against the windows, gawking at the sight.
This was going to be an ordeal when all of this was over.
I put it out of my mind as I pulled the aircraft in a tight turn on the other side. The Wolvae dove low above the city, then up again like a roller coaster, but thankfully didn't shoot anyone.
They're trying to get out of range of the blocking device, I thought. They probably believed transmitting the data from our flight computer was of prime importance, and were confused as to what was stopping them.
Hopefully they wouldn't figure out that the range was limited.
They turned north again, accelerating quickly.
I threw the wheel forward farther than I had before, and the thrust shoved my head back into the seat. I couldn't let them get away! Tyrix and Kerix might be injured, or even dead, so it was all up to me. I had to stop them while I could.
The Wolvae craft grew quickly in my sight, much faster than I expected. I moved my thumb to the blaster button.
And almost realized my mistake too late.
I fired a salvo at the same time as I shot off to the right, avoiding the Wolvae ship that was now flying straight at me. It fired its own lasers into the space my craft had just occupied, wicked beams that looked like barbed harpoons, but I was already curving up and away.
The Wolvae followed, not chasing me instead of the other way around.
Instincts helped me perform evasive maneuvers, but it wasn't easy in a craft that was foreign to my hands. The Wolvae weapons flew past my cockpit to disappear into the blue sky, always just barely missing me no matter how sharply I changed directions.
"I need a rear camera or something!" I shouted into the empty cockpit. I was used to being able to twist my head around to see behind me. "Something? Anything?"
The ship lurched and shuddered as one of the beams struck the side. But she still flew, and no alarms came on, so it must have been a glancing blow.
I redoubled my efforts at avoiding them, flying in a pattern that probably looked like the needle of an earthquake seismograph.
The mountains to the north beckoned me. I was dead meat over the flat terrain outside of Boise; I needed to get somewhere I could use to my advantage. The Wolvae might have been better pilots in their ship, but I knew Idaho.
Besides, I needed to keep them near the transmitter, lest they get that communication out.
I stopped avoiding them and shot toward the mountains as fast as the ship could fly. I let out a squeal that was half fear, half excitement as the mountains spread all around me. Then I decelerated and dove, falling into the valley between the first two ridges, soaring just over the treetops and hoping they would make me a tougher target. I think it worked; the Wolvae attacks continued to shoot across my vision, but they were less accurate than before.
The valley ended, and I pulled up to try a tight half-loop to get behind them, but they followed me flawlessly.
I curved around the mountain peak, Wolvae beams striking the snow and sending up gouts of steam. Then back toward the forest, where trees were already reigniting from the blasts, tendrils of smoke in a line to mark my previous flight path. I spared a moment of pain for the forest--if I started a fire I could feel guilty about it later, not now--and then shot to the right, toward the mountain peak with the blocking device. Maybe I could keep them right around here. Buy some time.
But buy some time until what? Unless there was another Karak aircraft coming to my rescue, this was all up to me.
Suddenly the Wolvae beams no longer clawed at the sky. I gained some altitude from the trees and brought my craft around in a cautious circle.
The Wolvae ship was a tiny speck in the distance now, and growing smaller. I felt a moment of excitement that I would again be the hunter, but then the HUD superimposed on the cockpit glass flashed a warning in red letters.
ORBITAL DRIVE POWER-UP DETECTED.
"Orbital drive," I said out loud, which made it more real. I could guess what that meant.
If they couldn't get a message out, they would simply leave earth altogether. What would I do then?
With no other option, I threw the control wheel forward and hoped I had enough time.