The three aircraft hurtled through the night sky, and an eerie sense of calm washed over Falkirk as he watched the tachyon energizing matrix indicator resume its full charge. Bulling through the air with a vengeance, Falkirk and Valmont had moved several miles ahead of the S-1 in order to intercept any stray alien craft. The encounters were becoming more and more frequent as they neared the Antarctic, and Falkirk was worried that the aliens had not even begun to bring their full power to bear.
A stray blip appeared on his radar. The blip was blue, so Falkirk originally dismissed it as nothing. It was steadily approaching from the east, however, and Falkirk knew that it was no time to take chances. As they neared the Antarctic, the formation had dropped into the lower atmosphere, so Falkirk turned, firing his engines to intercept the unknown. As he closed, the number of blue dots grew larger. Was this potentially a brand new alien force, one coming from the east?
After a handful of minutes, Falkirk cut the engines back to Mach 1, a practical speed to intercept an enemy or a friend. A most impressive sight met Falkirk, one that all but made up for the battle over Egypt.
A task force of aircraft, at least two hundred by a quick look, were facing him. They were flying in squadrons of twelve, twelve squadrons to a section, and there were at least two complete sections.
“Mustang Leader, this is Devil Leader, over.” Falkirk heard a pilot chant over the radio. Pinpointing its source, Falkirk’s HUD threw a blue diamond upon the plane, flashing at the edges. The plane’s batwing shape was instantly recognizable. A group of twelve B-2 bombers, capable of delivering any payload from nuclear to biological to chemical missiles, was led by Devil Leader. Peeling off, Falkirk joined their formation.
“Devil Leader, this is Mustang Lead. It’s sure nice to see you boys here. We weren’t expecting any support with this op.” Falkirk said.
“Well sir, we weren’t expecting on giving it. Our briefing was pretty short, but we met up with planes from the Independence and the Lexington to fly down here. They told us about the aliens. Is it really true, sir? Is that what we’re fighting?” Devil Leader said, in a cautious tone.
“Yes, pilot, it’s true. We’re certainly glad that you all showed up, though. You should at least be able to help us in this dimension. We need all the help we can get.” Falkirk said, pleased to at least have some support.
“Sir, before our wing of B-2’s left the continental U.S, the techs layered some sort of metal over our planes. While I don’t think that the rest of the fighters can go though, my wing should be able to go through with you and lend some support in that other dimension.” Devil Leader volunteered. Falkirk realized that going into the alien dimension with him was almost certainly a one-way proposition. It was a noble gesture of self-sacrifice that would allow mankind to deal a harsher blow to their alien antagonists.
“Alright, Devil Lead. Patch in all planes, I want everyone to hear this.” Falkirk ordered.
“Pilots, in just over twenty minutes, we will engage the enemy. The enemy does not fight with bullets, missiles, rockets, or even nuclear weapons. Nothing so mundane. We will be facing a fleet of extra-dimensional alien vessels. They seem hell-bent on destroying Earth. We will stop them. We must. When you help us clear the gate, a small strike force will enter, and we will do as much damage as we can. I know that many of you have loved ones, children. I’m asking you to fight for them today. Fight hard.
Because we are the last, best hope for all mankind.” Falkirk said, clicking off the channel, lapsing into silent contemplation.
May God have mercy on our souls, he prayed.
* * *
The twenty minutes passed far more quickly than Falkirk had expected. Already, Falkirk’s radar showed hostiles, red dots in masses the level of which he had seen during the attack on the Midway. He cleared his throat, and broke the silence.
“Well Captain, ready to kick some ass?” Falkirk joked, trying to break the tension.
“Hell yes, Captain. Let me at ‘em!” Valmont replied, rising to the occasion. The two planes lined up and pressed forward, the tip of the spear to impale the alien force. They dropped lower and lower, cresting the peaks of ice and snow that made up the desolate Antarctic continent. The shattered settlements that met his eyes were a reminder of the price of failure.
The enemy was close now. Falkirk could feel it in his blood. A quick glance at his radar confirmed his suspicions. At twice the speed of sound, Falkirk would cover the five miles in exactly twelve point five seconds. He had one last thing to do.
“Mustang Lead to all flights, ride the charge!” Falkirk bellowed as he crested the final ridge.
The alien masses were sweltering. They filled the sky, flesh and metal contraptions with no apparent symmetry. Falkirk hated their look with a vengeance, pulling the trigger and throwing tachyon bursts. The ships lit up like fireworks, collapsing and crumbling, shattering on the ground like children’s playthings. Falkirk wasn’t even aware of the rest of the battle; couldn’t be aware. Blood lust clouded his eyes, the edges of his vision clouded red with rage.
A missile arced in front of his plane, fired by an incoming F-35. It impacted a smaller alien vessel, slamming into it and throwing a combination of shrapnel and flesh outward. Falkirk’s plane was buffeted from all angles. Warning klaxons screamed in his ears. The sound of rending steel met his ears, but Falkirk still pressed on, annihilating another alien craft with his tachyon cannon, bringing it crashing to the ground.
Suddenly, it was over. More accurately, it seemed too quick to Falkirk. The battle lasted barely three minutes, and the large number of remaining alien craft were retreating back into the gate, the shimmering ruby portal dominating the sky, sucking in all clouds and weather related phenomena around it. Something didn’t feel right to Falkirk, and he had a gut wrenching premonition of something very sinister happening.
Falkirk distracted himself by looking at the electronic damage reports. The damage was nowhere near as bad as it had seemed during battle. A power leak had sprung in the tachyon energizing matrix, but that had been sealed. The infrared sensors were damaged, but Falkirk didn’t really need those anyway. All in all, the plane had held up quite well. He knew that he could not delay the inevitable any longer. He pointed his aircraft towards the harrowing portal, and pushed the throttle forward.
“Devil Flight, White Knight, Mustang Two, charge!” Falkirk yelled into the radio. He felt his own plane surge forward, into the crimson gateway.
A jolt battered Falkirk’s plane, and he felt as if the engines had cut out and he was falling. Falkirk couldn’t comprehend where he was, or, for that matter, even when he was. He felt like he was flying backwards, and then falling again. Falkirk’s nerves felt numb, like they were overloaded by sensations. While it seemed like an eternity, Falkirk checked the internal chronometer on his plane, and found it to be running backwards. Clearly, the gate was not a dimensional portal, but a wormhole, sending him, faster than light, to somewhere.
Falkirk emerged back into reality. In front of him was a seemingly endless blood red horizon. Rising up from below him, and towering above him, were what seemed like buildings, structures made out of the same chitinous armor that the aliens wore. In strange clawlike and knifelike shapes, the buildings seemed to begin far below him, beyond where he could even see. They rose over him, rising to what seemed like eternity. Falkirk looked over his shoulder and saw that the gate that he had just passed through seemed to be at the “edge” of their world. That is to say, seemingly infinite numbers of gates were found there, billions of small swirling masses. Colored all different colors, whites, blues, reds, yellows, greens. In a way, it was the most beautiful, magnificent thing that Falkirk had ever seen.
Falkirk’s tranquil state was broken by the arrival of more planes. Valmont, the S-1, the Devil Squadron, were all pouring through. The S-1 began to drop towards the “bottom”, as it were. Without any discernible horizon line, there was no actual way to tell.
Immediately, the drop bays of the bombers split open. They contained a payload of the most powerful nuclear missiles in the United States. The bombers howled towards the massive claws.
“Devil Leader, save your missile, and form on my wing. I have a suspicion that there’s something else out there that we need to be going after. Leave the building to the ground troops and the others. They’ll know what to do.” Falkirk said.
Falkirk weaved through the infinitely large buildings. They were so close as to be almost connected to one another, but Falkirk found his way through. The density varied, and soon became more spread out. As the buildings got to be fewer and fewer, Falkirk shot out of the cluster. With infinite descent below them, Falkirk experienced a dramatic sense of vertigo. Shaken from his distraction, Falkirk saw that his radar had pinpointed a monolith-sized alien vessel tracking towards them. It was at least a hundred times the size of the smaller alien craft, almost five miles in length from top to bottom. It looked to be near invincible.
“Let’s light it up! Devil Lead, stay well back, only engage on my order!” Falkirk bellowed, guiding his plane to engage.
Veering towards the monstrosity, Falkirk fired a tachyon burst to gauge the resilience of the large ship. The particle ionized a bright red, streaking forwards as a beam of light would. It impacted the alien ship, causing damage, but the ship clearly did not have a problem resisting such a relatively minor blow. The flesh of the alien ship began to regenerate around the wound, rebuilding and repairing itself. Suddenly, a blow rocked Falkirk’s fighter, sounding alarms in the cockpit. The rending of steel could be heard, but Falkirk opened fire again and again, trying to pinpoint the tiny, well hidden points of metal that were extremely well hidden in this larger craft.
The red sky was awash with the bright white light from the tachyon explosions. The massive ship still seemed to retain its balance, and Falkirk could find nearly no weakness to exploit. He dropped low, skimming along the surface of the alien ship, trying to find a larger patch of the metal to exploit. There was no luck. This craft did not have the large portions of metal exposed that the smaller alien craft did.
Falkirk switched to missiles, jettisoning two of the multi-impact missiles. They split into two dozen other missiles, tracking true, ripping into the aft section of the craft. The damage was impressive, the missiles clearly having a greater advantage with an easier to hit larger craft.
Falkirk swung around the aft side of the craft, and locked his engines in the direction away from the craft, while he turned to face back towards it. Throwing tachyon pulse after another into the area which was decimated by the two missiles, Falkirk watched as the top of the ship began to tilt, swaying downwards. The alien ship finally began to tilt over, the damage causing the gravity emitters to become unbalanced. As the ship tilted, it began to tear itself apart. It was no longer a threat.
Falkirk re-engaged his engines in the proper direction, and found himself looking at a large black point off in the distance. Attempting to ascertain the size of the object, Falkirk threw out a radar pulse to gauge the distance. His radar identified it as being almost two hundred miles away. Whatever it was, Falkirk thought, it was huge. As he was thinking those thoughts, his radio crackled.
“Devil Lead to all craft, we’ve got word from the last member of my squadron entering that the alien strike force is closing on the coast of Florida. Captain Falkirk and Captain Valmont have been ordered by President Donley to intercept. You’ve got to get going, and now. The ETA is forty minutes.” Falkirk heard Devil Leader say.
“Pilot, I just found something big. I think that it could be important to them, maybe even their leader.” Falkirk argued.
“Leave it. All planes are ordered to pull back outside of the gate for the time being. We’re to intercept any craft coming through, but to wait and see what the aliens do before taking any further action.” Devil Lead said. He was clearly as frustrated by the orders as Falkirk.
Falkirk thought hard. If this wasn’t the alien leader, he could well have condemned the United States, as well as the rest of the world. And if it is, another voice in his mind said, you will have this thing over with.
Falkirk looked sadly at the black object, performed an Immelmann to put himself on course for the gate, and pushed the throttle to full. He roared out of the damned dimension, blasting into the Antarctic sky.
* * *
Falkirk and Valmont were side by side, roaring towards the United States at full afterburner pace, closing in on Mach 8. Although the aircraft had an experimental liquid- suspension system designed to keep the pilot from feeling immense gravitational forces, Falkirk was still subjected to a substantial force of gravity that kept him pinned to the seat. He felt like an elephant was sitting on top of him.
The beaches of Florida were close now, however, and the suffering that Falkirk had endured would be made up in the numbers of lives saved. By his own calculations, the aliens had been given almost two hours to wreak havoc on the continental United States. There was no telling how much damage could have been done in that short span of time.
Falkirk adjusted the range of his radar out to two-hundred miles. There, he saw, were the alien masses. As he looked over the coast, he was appalled at the damage. Trees, torn up like children’s playthings from the ground. Homes flattened under the power of a gravity pulse. People lying on the ground, horribly disfigured, lying next to their liquefied skin as a result of the sonic pulses.
Falkirk flew on, detached. There was no time to waste.
* * *
The city of Tampa was reporting alien attack. According to satellite imagery, Orlando and Cape Canaveral had been completely destroyed. There would be no more shuttle launches from the East Coast for quite some time.
Falkirk lowered to subsonic speed, the engines still glowing red from their extended afterburn. Falkirk descended into the city proper, flying among buildings and sniping out aliens wherever he could. The city was effectively totally destroyed, however. A large office tower that Falkirk was flying by tilted dangerously, barely missing his aircraft. The aliens were clever, using the city itself to their advantage to hide and attack.
Falkirk punched high upwards into the sky and let loose with a half-dozen multiple-impact missiles. The missiles exploded outwards, tracking the distinct radar signal that the alien craft emitted. Falkirk watched as the missiles tracked, slamming into the alien craft which were hidden from view. The ships collapsed along the roads, shattering homes and buildings in their wake.
“Falkirk, this is Valmont. Looks like the vast majority of them have moved out of Florida. Satellite reports indicate that Miami’s been fried, and that a group is moving towards Texas, along the Gulf Coast. Another group has moved up the eastern sea board, and it looks like they’re tracking for Washington D.C. I think we know what group we have to head off, Captain.” Valmont said. Falkirk understood. They were going to D.C.
The two planes streaked away from the ruined city, at speeds that ordinary aircraft were not designed for. Burning, shattered buildings lay in heaps and ruins in the streets, as if a mighty giant had attacked them with a sledge hammer. The few buildings that did remain were burning out of control, skeletons of their former glory. Falkirk passed over a wrecked fighter jet, crashed into a street. The few fighters that remained in the United States were obsolete, no match for the aliens. The best, most advanced fighters were all deployed in the Pacific to respond to any Chinese aggression. Political necessity had left the United States blindsided.
Falkirk shot low over the marshes of Florida. He knew that fate of the whole of the United States was now securely on his shoulders.
* * *
Falkirk and Valmont arrived at Washington D.C. just in time. The aliens had already began their attack, pushing inwards from six sides towards the White House. Falkirk and Valmont split off to distract the alien craft, attacking from opposite sides of the hexagonal attack pattern.
Buildings collapsed next to Falkirk as he pursued an alien ship through the crowded streets. Falkirk fired off a round from his tachyon cannon, watching the tattered flesh that remained collapse into the streets below.
A jolt slammed Falkirk’s plane. Craning his neck, he found that the gravitational beams of the two craft behind him were rocking his plane. Falkirk dipped beneath the buildings and flew over the street, screaming overhead at Mach 1, barely a hundred feet off the ground.
Falkirk dove into a narrow street, hoping that the alien craft would get trapped behind. Falkirk was quite pleased with his ingenuity until he saw the two craft smash their way through the buildings. One ship got trapped under the rubble, pinning it to the ground.
Falkirk was running out of options. Another gravity pulse shook his plane, and Falkirk decided that he needed to launch a multiple-impact missile. He only prayed that it would arm before hitting the ground, otherwise, it would do him no good. The missile dropped, arming and launching backwards at the alien craft. The alien ship crashed and burned, hurtling down the narrow street.
Another craft came into view, and Falkirk lined up for an easy shot. As he lined up and pressed down the trigger, a sort of whirring noise filled the cockpit. The aircraft shook and vibrated harshly, and all of a sudden, all power went out. It came back on within a second, the heads-up display showing the message, “Fusion Reactor Error – tachyon burst”. Falkirk cursed, and felt his plane bottom out from underneath him.
Falkirk had a choice. He could rewire the “weapons” reactor to provide engine power. Or, he could wait for the “engine” reactor to restart. At a scant couple hundred feet from the uninviting ground, Falkirk made the decision very quickly.
Toggling through the many menus on the plane’s computer, Falkirk rerouted power from the two reactors. With a jolt, Falkirk felt the ramjet engines kick on again with a reassuring thrust. The situation with regards to the weapons was far more dire.
Falkirk saw that he had just enough power remaining to launch a single missile. Although he still ran the risk of hitting the ground with his missile, there was no choice. The monstrous alien ship that he had previously targeted was now bearing down on him.
The large pod launched, and split. The twelve missiles streaked towards the alien ship, all twelve flying true. When the explosion vanished, there was nothing left of the alien craft. Falkirk was now weaponless. Or, to put it more accurately, powerless.
“Valmont, my weapons are down. I’m going to need some help here!” Falkirk said as a sonic pulse smashed his fighter.
The plane screamed under the intense pressure. Every jink, every roll, even a double reverse Immelmann would not throw the alien vessel off. Red emergency lights came on, and a warning flashed across the heads-up display, which had turned from a peaceful green to a disturbing orange. “Frame integrity at fifty percent”, Falkirk watched the message flash over the screen. The number was steadily scrolling downwards as Falkirk maneuvered through the streets. Falkirk pulled straight up, and felt his blood go cold as a different message came up on the display. “V-MAX warning”
This warning was quite possibly the most feared that a pilot could receive. It would only come on when flying too fast, upwards or downwards, and it meant, very plainly, that the wings were about to shear off. In this case, with the engines on them as well.
Falkirk cut his engines, attempting to hold on to those precious pieces of metal for just a little longer. He stalled, and glided above the city. Another burst shattered his plane, and the orange lights and wailing klaxons went from orange to red, a feminine voice from the computer chanting the word “warning” over and over again. The plane’s structural integrity was down to ten percent. Falkirk reached in between his legs and grabbed the D-ring, the charge that would activate the ejection system. The unfortunate this about his ejection would be the utter vaporization of Washington D.C. due to the nuclear missile tucked neatly into his weapons bay.
Falkirk felt everything become serenely calm, as if nothing could hurt him. He knew that he was going to die, but that didn’t matter any more. He just drifted, hearing the klaxons, the sound, the cars honking below him, the White House coming into view ahead of him, and he took it all in. So this is death, he thought.
He was shaken from his spiritual trance. A bright flash from behind sent the alien craft reeling, and saved Falkirk’s damaged plane. Valmont’s fighter flashed by in front of Falkirk’s eyes, looking all the more like an avenging angel saving the righteous.
“Thanks for the save, Captain. I owe you…” Falkirk said, trailing off.
“No problem, Alan. Get back to the Pentagon and get that plane fixed up.” Valmont said with a chuckle.
“I think it’s just a simple wiring job. I’m pretty sure that I can fix it in-flight.” Falkirk said optimistically.
“Trust me on this, man, you really need to go back. Take my word for it.” Valmont replied, splitting off and going after an alien craft hidden amongst a cluster of buildings.
Falkirk broke off, racing towards the ocean ramp which led down into the Pentagon. Valmont covered behind him, swatting down any alien craft which pursued. Falkirk cut his engines and dropped, catching the tail hook of the concrete tunnel squarely. Falkirk was surprised that the hook didn’t pull straight out of the plane.
Falkirk waited until the plane was fully lowered and then popped the cockpit. Stepping away, he saw his battered plane. At least, what remained of it.
The reinforced titanium struts supporting the wings were visible, but they had been bent and wrenched from their original positions. One of the engine covers was gone, apparently torn off. A large amount of metal had been melted away from the plane in general, the sonic pulses liquefying and spraying metal rivulets across much of the body and wings.
“What did you do to my plane!” A technician yelled. Falkirk recognized him as the same technician that had introduced him to the plane originally.
“It got in a fight. Held up surprisingly well, I might add. The fusion reactor shorts out if you try to take too many shots, though. We need to fix it.” Falkirk said.
“This plane is as good as scrap. We can’t fix it! We’ll never get it done in time!” The man panicked.
“You’ve got one hour. Don’t worry, I’ll help too. I find it hard to believe that you are panicking when you still have one of these things up in the air.” Falkirk said.