A haunting photo microseconds after the first Chinese nuclear ICBM detonates over Seattle, USA. AUG 2060.
O Liberty...! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded?
-Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Shattered Citadel: Lotus Blossoms
San Francisco, United States of America, Earth (Sol), 1500 08122055
"Why throw your life away? There are so much more… respectable things to do with your life then be in the military."
"Mom, it's my decision." She tried her best not to roll her eyes.
Her mother sat at the far side of the room on a large sofa all by herself. After a long awkward silence, she spoke again, "You do realize there's a war going on?
"I know Ma. I want to do my part," the petite blond said, half believing it herself.
"I didn't raise you like this."
"Mom, I already signed up. I leave for Lackland in three days. I just wanted to say goodbye."
"You can still back out. I can call my lawyer. We can fight this thing."
"No, Ma. I'm serious about this."
"So am I"
"Goodbye, Mom." She reached the door and started fumbling with the locks. As her mother rushed out of her seat and put her hand on the door.
"I paid for your college. Is this how you repay me? If you leave now Laura, don't bother coming back, because you won't be welcomed back!" Her mother screamed in a high pitched shrill.
Laura hesitated for a second, she had never heard Mother scream like that before, but her mind was set. She touched her Mothers arm and slowly led it off the door. Stepping outside she closed the door behind herself. Avoiding making eye contact with her Mother's weeping eyes.
Las Vegas, United States of America, Earth (Sol), 1845 29072060
"You know they all hate you." A man in a neatly pressed light blue uniform said in between bites of his chicken sandwich.
"I don't care. It's nothing new to me, I've dealt with it since day one of my commission." The young first lieutenant didn't even look up as she said it. She was too busy picking out the onions from her lunch.
"Look, I'm your friend. I'll always have your back. I'll talk to the guys."
"I don't need your help. Thanks, but no thanks." She pushed her lunch to side. Tired from picking out the onions and no longer hungry.
"I'll do it anyway. No way I'll stand for this. Look its not your fault. Things have changed. I should know. I've been in the Air Force for twenty years, most of it enlisted. Airmen are bitter. For good reason. Ever since congress slashed the budget and pretty much fired half of the military almost twenty years ago. There's no money for anything anymore. Even with the war going on. A lot of Airmen are scared, that since you're the first female space fighter pilot, that they will start losing their jobs to women. Their threatened. The military used to be tolerant, but over the last few decades its gotten worst and worst. The cuts. The nepotism. The political B.S. It's taken its toll. Only the dumbasses and incompetent remain." He took another bite from his sandwich and said in mid chew, "to them you're a convenient outlet for their frustrations. Were getting our asses kicked all over the world and we can't do jack shit about it." He swallowed hard. "At least your not in the Army or Marines. Its even worst there."
"I earned the right to be a space fighter." She said almost whispering.
"I know you did. There's only three hundred in all of the military. Its an honor."
"Thank you, Brad."
"For what?"
She just smiled at him and grabbed her cover from the table. He pointed at her discarded sandwich and she nodded. The Air Force Officer snatched it from her plate and put it on his own. "Brad. What does that make you?"
"Make what?"
"For staying."
"A dumbass." He finished restocking the onions on her sandwich and looked up again, but she was already gone.
She walked alone down the corridors of the sprawling mall. Admiring the latest fashions and doing her best to ignore the hostile stares from the other shoppers. She could see a crowd forming around her. She turned towards the exit and started walking as fast as she could without alerting the mob of her fear. They followed closely behind her and directly in front of her a glass bottle shattered on the floor. She was wearing heels, but she never ran so fast in her life. She reached the exit and slammed it behind her. Satisfied that they were no longer following her, she turned around and her heart sank. All around her hundreds, if not thousands of protestors were holding a massive protest. The few police in sight were hiding inside their cars, not daring to leave and face the angry crowd. The crowd rocked the police cruisers from side to side and smashed bats on the hood of their cars. The crowd for the moment did not see the young Air Force Officer and were distracted for the moment. So she took the opportunity to try and slip away unnoticed.
"Peace is within our reach! Give in to China's demands. No more blood spelt for Taiwan, Hawaii, the fucking Moon! Are they serious?! They want to start a draft! Do you want to die for the FUCKING Moon?!" The crowd reacted together with a massive "Hell NO!" Laura could sense that a few of the protesters were eyeing her and that the only things saving her from a beating, was her petite stature and gender. She had to leave soon. It only takes one psychopath to attack her and embolden the others to jump in. She ran for dear life. The loudspeaker continued, "Join us! Stop the draft. End the war. August 31st. We will march twenty MILLION strong in San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and Vancouver! Together we will show the government how strong we really are! Free transportation, entertainment, and food at this event. Just sign up…." Laura reached the Los Vegas strip and the voice from the loudspeaker was replaced by the lively sounds of the Vegas nightlife. She flagged down a taxi and entered as fast as she could.
"Where to Lady?"
"Nellis Air Force Base. Please." The taxi driver nodded and the cab lurched forward racing down the street in a blur. She slumped down into her seat. She could hear her mother's voice in her head. Mocking her. Telling her she was wasting her life. Laura found herself crying softly into her ruined uniform. Alone, unhappy and scared in the city of sins.
Somewhere Above North America, Earth Orbit (Sol), 0010 31082060
"USS United 93 actual, this is Kitty Red Team One. Outbound. Heading One-Two-Niner degrees north. Patrolling Vector Beta One Niner One Lima. Over." She waited for the green confirmation light in her fighters cockpit to light up. The confirmation light flashed and her fighter blasted forward through the vacuum of space. She switched on the auto pilot and let the computer handle the hard work of avoiding the millions of softball sized garbage particles in space. Any of which could smash into her ship at five times the speed of a bullet and kill her. She scanned the night sky with her eyes and spotted her wing mates. They were also on auto pilot. It had been more then three years since the Chinese Hegemony had tried entering American orbit. America was clearly ahead in space, so everyone felt at ease. Laura stopped scanning the sky around her to rub her eyes, she was very tired. It took all of the will power she could muster to stay awake. A voice inside her helmet snapped her out of her stupor, she immediately recognized it as Ladies Man.
"Kitty. How are you feeling today?" Laura rolled her eyes and just remained silent. "Fine be like that bitch. I even got you a present and lovingly left it in your cockpits storage compartment." She unlatched the cockpits storage compartment door and out flowed a stream of kitty litter. It quickly filled the cockpit. In the zero-G environment it got in every crevice. She pressed the air filtration button in her control panel and the ship worked hard to remove the white sand like substance.
"Manning you asshole. I swear to God you act like a five year old." All she could hear in response was laughter from the rest of Red Team.
"Hey that's Ladies Man to you missy."
"Manning, your mom doesn't count." A few of her wing mates laughed, but it seemed forced. More then twenty hours passed while they were patrolling. It was long, boring and tedious work. Laura felt like she was going to pass out at any moment. She kept herself awake by monitoring the chatter from her wing mates and from the fleet. It was the usual crap. Grab-assing, shit talking and complaining. One comment stayed in her mind. One complained about a lack of supplies and missiles because of the budget cuts and that all the ships carried less then half of their normal load of weaponry. She checked her gauges and discovered it to be true.
"Dammit the internet is down again. Must be another Chinese cyber attack. Those attacks are starting to get really annoying." Ladies Man said clearly irritated, shattering the silence.
"Your supposed to be working. Why are you even on the internet?" Laura said angry that he was putting his life. All their lives in danger by not doing his job.
"Porn. What other use do we have for the internet?"
"I hope to God your joking, because if you spent any time on the internet. I will make sure you are court-martialed." Laura was now tired and angry. She was getting sick and tired of Ladies Man.
"Christ. It was only a joke. Calm the fuck down."
"Both of you shut your fucking mouths. We got something on our sensors."
Laura could tell from McNugget voice that it was serious, so she ignored the disrespectful way he said it. "What is it McNugget?"
"Enemy crafts are launching from occupied Hawaii and mainland China. I'm seeing nearly two thousand of them." McNugget sounded scared.
"That's impossible. There is no way the Chinese have that many fighters." Laura said doing her own scan. She stared at her cockpits computer screen in disbelief. She wasted no time uploading the information to the US Fleet. The dots representing the enemy fighter appeared in her helmet and were closing in on them at an alarming speed. The enemy fighters were moving at mach ten and would be all over them in less then five minutes. Red Team was alone. Waiting. One minute passed, then another. No one said anything, all their attention fixed on the massive wave of fighters heading their way. Laura kept looking outside her cockpit for any sign of the US Fleet. She could see nothing but debris, satellites and the moon against the vast black of space.
An alarm wailed inside her helmet, she knew it meant the enemy fighters were within weapons range. All together the twenty fighters of Red Team locked on the closest enemy target and unleashed forty missiles. At the moment they had the advantage. Nothing the Chinese possessed could reach them, but the US could hit them from more then five hundred miles away. They were taking full advantage of their edge in space. All forty missiles connected and destroyed their targets. It did nothing to stop the Chinese fighters. They were still coming. Red Team let go of a second volley of missiles which had the same result. Red Team was less then a minute away from being within range of the Chinese weapons. One volley from them and they would be wiped out.
Laura looked around for the US Fleet and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted it in the distance. She could make out the four massive battleships in the distance. They were already blasting away with their huge MAC guns and missile turrets. From the belly's of the massive battleships dozens of fighters were pouring out. They were catapulted out of the ship with its wings folded. Once the fighters were a safe distance from the battleships their wings unfolded and they blasted toward the prearranged skirmish line. The newly arrived fighters swarmed together into a claw shaped formation just in front of the battleships. The formation provided the fighters with excellent concentrated firepower in front, flexibility in movement and the added security of all the fighters within helping range of each other. Red Team broke off and found a place within the huge formation of US fighters. All together they released their last uncontested volley of missiles at the Chinese. Then all hell broke loose. The huge wave of Chinese fighters smashed into the US formation and almost immediately both sides lost dozens of fighters.
Laura could see a massive blur of red and blue dots in her helmet screen and was having a hard time keeping up with all the chaos going around her. All she could do was stay in formation and keep firing. A missile streaked by her fighter from out of nowhere and kept going. If it had been aimed at her, she would have been dead. She checked her gauges and was horrified to learn her missiles were dangerously low. She now had to use her secondary weapon the dual 65mm MAG cannons. At the speeds the enemy fighters were moving it would be impossible to hit even with the computer targeting for her. The Chinese had somehow found a way to scramble their sensors at close range and the US fighters were now shooting blind. She broke from the formation and moved away toward the closest battleship, all the while shooting her cannons. Spray and pray style toward any blur that resembled a Chinese fighter ship. The Battleships directly in front of her were constantly shooting their big guns. She could see the tips of their guns glowing red from overheating, but it kept shooting. The Chinese fighters were swarming the massive ships. The battleships were designed to take a huge beating, but it would only be a matter of time before they were destroyed by the Chinese swarm. The rest of the US fighters broke off from the skirmish and retreated to assist the big ships. Laura was already there firing away. The Chinese swarm was so thick around the battleships that with every burst of cannon fire from her fighter she was sure she was hitting something. The Chinese were ignoring her for now, they were determined to bring down the battleships. Over the communication network she could hear a frantic call for assistance from the USS Fallujah, it was already too late as she saw the massive ship split in half and fall back down to Earth. The dying screams from the bridge of the USS Fallujah filled the network and she looked away as the ship burnt up as it hit the thermosphere. Large chunks of the USS Normandy were blown off and it was leaking oxygen and people into space. The USS United 93 and the USS Saratoga were damaged, but nowhere as bad as the USS Normandy. The Chinese even after suffering devastating losses were still pressing the attack, totally ignoring the US fighters shooting them down one by one.
Laura jumped in her seat as the entire cockpit filled with a high pitched whooping sound, she had only heard the sound once before during training. Her body starting shaking uncontrollably, because she knew exactly what that sound meant. Nuclear war. She looked down to see the cockpits computer screen and could see the launching of hundreds of ballistic missiles from mainland China. The ICBMs moved so fast into space she knew they would hit their targets in a matter of minutes.
"Disengage! Disengage! Disengage! Our number one priority now is to destroy those missiles. A massive Chinese cyber attack has shut down all communications with Earth and the national missile defense system. All vessels must disengage and intercept the ICBMs." Laura did not recognize who spoke over the COM network, but if it was true it meant that the main defense against a nuclear strike was somehow disabled and that the people down on Earth were oblivious to the apocalypse coming their way. They would get no warning and no one would reach the shelters. Immediately the US fighters broke off away from the battleships and away from the Chinese which were scrambling their sensors. Away from the Chinese the US Fighters targeting computers immediately locked onto the incoming ICBMs and unleashed a volley of their last missiles. As the missiles closed in on the ICBMs the ICBMs exploded into hundreds of smaller warheads.
"God fucking dammit! I guess it was too easy, you had to just make it harder?!" Laura recognized the voice as Ladies Man as he cursed Gods name in more ways then she thought possible. The US missile volley shifted targets and took out a hundred warheads out of nearly twenty thousand, most of them decoys.
"How do we tell which ones real or decoy?" Laura asked over the COM network.
A long pause then finally someone screamed, "Switch your view to heat detection. The nukes are hot as hell. The duds are black. Dead. No heat." Laura smiled. It was Brads voice, he was still alive somewhere. She flipped her fighter upside down with the Earth now above her, she switched on heat detection and could see the real nukes. Shining like a flare in a moonless night. She locked on one of them and let her last missile fly. The nuke was destroyed, but she was now utterly useless. She had nothing left to destroy the nukes . She wasn't the only one. All over the COM pilots were begging for someone, anyone to have missiles. Her gaze immediately turned toward the Earth, and she switched back to normal view. She could see most of North America and the Pacific Ocean. To those on the ground it would be night time, dinner for most. She could see the great cities of America shining brightly above her. She had never taken the time to see them in all their glory from space, but she had to see it before it was gone forever. A massive white light shaped like a lotus blossom erupted from where she guessed Los Angelos would be. She stared at the light with a mix of awe and disgust, it looked so beautiful to her, but that same light meant the deaths of millions of her people. Another lotus blossom appeared on the Earth. Then another. Then another.
She was snapped back from her daze by the COM which was now filled with the sound of grown men crying. Other pilots like her who felt they had failed their country when it needed them most and now were powerless to stop its destruction. The few surviving Chinese fighters were now in full retreat, they had played their part. Laura looked down at her hands which were shaking uncontrollably with each new flash of light from Earth. She hit her thruster and violently moved her fighter forward. She made a quick scan of the sky and quickly separated an incoming nuclear warhead from the decoys. She forced her computer with an override to accept the new trajectory which would put her in the path of the warhead. She had one last weapon left. Herself. She broke away from the other American fighters and headed full speed toward the point of interception.
"Kitty, what the hell are you doing?" Laura ignored Ladies Man and kept going. She was about to die and all she could think about was how she wished the space fighters were equipped with ejector seats. They were never added because of their huge cost. Laura closed her eyes the moment the nose of her fighter slammed into the warhead. She didn't even have time to pray before everything went black.
Liberty Field Hospital 23, Free America, Earth (Sol), 1235 23072061
"Lieutenant Laura Gently," Laura woke up startled and immediately raised her upper body from the bed towards the sound of the voice calling her name. She was groggy and scared. Her last memory being her violent death. She realized she was in a large hospital room filled with doctors, generals and men in tailor made suits all staring at her.
"Am I dead?" Laura asked out loud the first question to pop into her head. The people in her room murmured to themselves and from the group stepped out a man Laura could tell by the way the others looked at him was the man in charge.
"No. Your very much alive."
"Who?" Laura asked lifting her hand to point at the man.
"I am the acting President of the Free United States of America. My name is Michael Hannover."
"I have to be dead. There is no way I could have survived what I did."
"After impact you were ejected from the ship and slammed against the USS United 93 at full speed. Breaking nearly every bone in your body and causing massive internal injuries. You were quickly recovered and put under a medically induced coma while these doctors here slowly repaired your body over the last year. About 75% of your organs are new. Cloned from the shattered originals."
"Why would you do that? I wanted to be left dead."
"For what you did and what you will do."
"What?"
"First Lieutenant Laura Gently of the United States Air Force. I President Hannover acting in the name of congress and the people of the Free United States of America presents you with the congressional medal of honor for your actions on August 31st 2060." Laura stared at the man at disbelief as he lifted the blue, white and gold medal from a case someone was holding open for him. "You and your fellow space fighter pilots engaged a massive Chinese fleet out-manned and outgunned protecting the USS United 93 and the USS Saratoga and saving them to fight another day. Most importantly you and your fellow pilots intercepted countless Chinese ICBMs inbound toward the United States. Lieutenant you also rammed your ship into a nuclear warhead when you ran out of armaments. Your example inspired the other pilots to do the same thing." The President became visibly shaken as he continued, "because of you and those with you that day. There is an America left to defend. Many, many, many more Americans would have died and many more cities would have been wiped out." The President walked toward her bed and slipped the medal over her head and let it rest around her neck. He hugged her and slowly backed away. "We need you still. Were losing the war. Badly. More then half of the United States is occupied and the colonies will fall without us. Space is no longer ours. We have plenty of birds, but not enough decent pilots. You're the only pilot with any combat experience and you have nearly four years worth of flight training. A lot of which was lost to us in the nuclear exchange, when the air force training centers in Houston and Colorado Springs was destroyed. Will you do this for us?"
Laura looked around silent. She noticed a child behind the President and stared at the little girl. "What is she doing here?" Laura avoiding answering the Presidents question.
"That girl? She's here to see you," the President replied.
"See me?" Laura said confused as the little girl ran up to her and hugged her tightly. Some of the men in the room had cameras and took pictures.
"Thank you Lu-ten-ant Laura. Thank you for saving my mommy and my home." The little girl said as she kissed Laura in the cheek. Laura looked up at the President more confused then ever before.
"This girl is from New York City. The warheads trajectory you rammed was aimed for New York City. You single-handedly saved twenty million people. I wanted you to see what you saved and what still needs to be saved." The President looked at Laura and still said nothing. Laura kissed the five year old girl and lifted her off the bed. Laura got up off the bed and stood up walking a few feet before stumbling and falling. "Laura you haven't used your legs for a year. Please stay in bed."
She ignored him and crawled out of the hospital room and out into a vast open room which in both directions seemed to have no end. The room was filled wall to wall with hospital beds. She stood up and immediately looked down. The entire room was filled with horribly wounded men and women and their robotic nurses nursing them back to health. She could sense the group from the hospital were behind her now. "My family?"
"All dead. San Francisco was one of the first cities to be destroyed along with Los Angelos, Vancouver, San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle and twenty-seven other cities." The President said matter-of-factly.
"Did any other pilot survive the battle?" She asked trying to block out the chorus of groans from the injured and dying all around her.
"Two others. Captain Brad Flaggs and," Laura looked at him shocked, "Lieutenant Greg Jenskusky."
"Where is Flaggs?" Laura asked almost happy.
"Dead. Shot down over the plains of Utopia on Mars. A few months back," one of the generals with the President said with a smirk like he was waiting all along to answer that question.
"Mister President I'll train your fighters." Laura said looking up and taking in the scene of pain and death around in front of her. The President simply nodded. She had nothing left, but a burning desire to inflict as much pain to the Chinese as she could. Laura reentered the room and sat on her bed, depressed as hell.
USAF Bunker 7565, Chicago Ruins, Free United States, Earth (Sol), 1245 05052062
Laura marched slowly and deliberately down the long corridor which led to the outside world. She was wearing a crisp new uniform with all of her ribbons, patches and medals aligned perfectly. Other military personnel and civilians inside the bunker when they saw her coming would snap into attention and salute her. From the lowly private to generals, they all did it. Sometimes she would salute back, but today she couldn't be bothered. She reached the bunkers main door at the end of the corridor and the massive fifty ton titanium door slowly swung open. She stepped out into the real world, took a quick look around and continued forward past the guards who saluted her as she passed. Most people had to wear masks out of the open because of the smog and contaminated air, but she never had to. She guessed it had to do with her cloned lungs.
The once great city of Chicago was now a hollow shell of its former glory. It now straddled the front line between the Free United States and the Chinese Hegemony, it wasn't destroyed in the nuclear exchange but you couldn't tell now. Every building was in ruins and the streets were all chewed up and full of unrecovered bodies. Fires burned throughout the city and went unchecked, which released massive plumes of black smoke that stretched out into the heavens above. The sky even at high noon was always a dirty yellow, it had been since the nuclear exchange. The sun struggled to shine through and even in summer it was cold. Very cold. She stopped for a minute to allow a column of American soldiers to pass by, the officer in front of the formation spotted her and saluted. She saluted back. She continued marching alone through the ruined city and reached her destination. She could see a few hundred teenagers standing together in a sloppy formation around a broken statue. They hadn't spotted her yet, which pissed her off.
"Line the fuck up! Hurry the fuck up!" She screamed, projecting her voice across the area. They all scrambled to square themselves away and a few bumped into one another, but quickly found their places. She walked down to the front of the formation and stared them all down. The teenagers were confused, they were both scared and in awe of this petite woman. Laura could sense hundreds of eyes fixed on the medal of honor around her neck, they seemed to be interested in nothing else. Behind Laura her security and training detachment arrived and fanned out around the teenagers which made them shift slightly uneasy.
"Your all here because someone somewhere thinks you have the testicular fortitude, intelligence and skill to be a space fighter. What I think is your all pieces of shit. If you didn't see me standing a few yards from you, then there is no fucking way your going to see the enemy bearing down on you from miles away. Your all going to be under my direct supervision during the next three months of training. I don't expect you all to make it thought. In fact I expect some of you to die in training." She began walking through the formation pulling individual recruits heads down to look them in the eyes. "Now who doesn't want to be here?! Tell me now because I hate people that waste my time." Three recruits raised their hands. "I admire your honesty. Fall out of the formation." She left the formation herself and approached the three young men. She waved at her training detachment around her and they presented the young recruits with rifles. "The front is seven miles that way." Laura pointed in the direction of the front with her hand. "Get going." The three of them looked down at their rifles in disbelief. "You don't want to be here. Leaving is not a free ticket to do nothing." The three recruits still did nothing.
"This isn't right, I don't want to be a part of this war." One of the recruits told her defiantly. Laura said nothing and looked down at the floor as she slowly removed a pistol from her hip. "Fuck this shit and fuck you!" the recruit tossed his rifle aside. He was encouraged by Laura's inaction, he interpreted it as weakness. Laura lifted the pistol and shot him in the groin. The recruit howled in pain grabbing the hole that used to be his genitals.
"No. Fuck you." The formation of recruits stared at Laura in horror as she stood over the sobbing wounded recruit. She gave the two other recruit who wanted to leave a hard look and they ran towards the front lines without looking back. "You all better wake the fuck up! This ain't no video game. The world is at war. Everything is different from what it was three years ago. You all better get used to that fact." She stared at them for a long time. "Your first lesson of your training. Death. You better get used to seeing it happen all around you. You need to toughen up and get that killer instinct." With that said she grabbed the wounded recruit by the hair and pulled him up. He sobbed and mumbled something that Laura ignored. "Look at his face and don't close your eyes!" Her training detachment held their rifles up and pointed them towards the formation. She placed her pistol on the wounded recruits temple and pulled the trigger. A loud gasp emitted from the formation as she let the dead recruit slump forward. She placed her pistol back in its holster and continued speaking, "You hear that?" Dead silence filled the area and the recruits didn't notice it before, but in the distance they could hear the sound of thunder. "That's the sound of Americans dying. That's the front. We are here to win this war and we will win it by retaking space and being strong. Control space and we control the Earth. Like our forefathers before, we will not stop until we win, we will soldier on through hell, we will bear any burden." Laura looked past the formation toward the broken statue. "You can die here like cowards waiting for the Chinese to cleanse the Earth of the American race or you can fight. Taking as many of those bastards as you can before you die. I ask you all to remember those we have lost. The millions of innocent people dead who didn't deserve to die. May the memory of them and times past give you the courage to fight." She stopped herself. She continued staring at the broken statue and read the plaque at the foot of the massive brass figure.
In Memory of Brad Flaggs, Savior of Chicago.
To leave the gates unguarded?
-Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Shattered Citadel: Lotus Blossoms
San Francisco, United States of America, Earth (Sol), 1500 08122055
"Why throw your life away? There are so much more… respectable things to do with your life then be in the military."
"Mom, it's my decision." She tried her best not to roll her eyes.
Her mother sat at the far side of the room on a large sofa all by herself. After a long awkward silence, she spoke again, "You do realize there's a war going on?
"I know Ma. I want to do my part," the petite blond said, half believing it herself.
"I didn't raise you like this."
"Mom, I already signed up. I leave for Lackland in three days. I just wanted to say goodbye."
"You can still back out. I can call my lawyer. We can fight this thing."
"No, Ma. I'm serious about this."
"So am I"
"Goodbye, Mom." She reached the door and started fumbling with the locks. As her mother rushed out of her seat and put her hand on the door.
"I paid for your college. Is this how you repay me? If you leave now Laura, don't bother coming back, because you won't be welcomed back!" Her mother screamed in a high pitched shrill.
Laura hesitated for a second, she had never heard Mother scream like that before, but her mind was set. She touched her Mothers arm and slowly led it off the door. Stepping outside she closed the door behind herself. Avoiding making eye contact with her Mother's weeping eyes.
Las Vegas, United States of America, Earth (Sol), 1845 29072060
"You know they all hate you." A man in a neatly pressed light blue uniform said in between bites of his chicken sandwich.
"I don't care. It's nothing new to me, I've dealt with it since day one of my commission." The young first lieutenant didn't even look up as she said it. She was too busy picking out the onions from her lunch.
"Look, I'm your friend. I'll always have your back. I'll talk to the guys."
"I don't need your help. Thanks, but no thanks." She pushed her lunch to side. Tired from picking out the onions and no longer hungry.
"I'll do it anyway. No way I'll stand for this. Look its not your fault. Things have changed. I should know. I've been in the Air Force for twenty years, most of it enlisted. Airmen are bitter. For good reason. Ever since congress slashed the budget and pretty much fired half of the military almost twenty years ago. There's no money for anything anymore. Even with the war going on. A lot of Airmen are scared, that since you're the first female space fighter pilot, that they will start losing their jobs to women. Their threatened. The military used to be tolerant, but over the last few decades its gotten worst and worst. The cuts. The nepotism. The political B.S. It's taken its toll. Only the dumbasses and incompetent remain." He took another bite from his sandwich and said in mid chew, "to them you're a convenient outlet for their frustrations. Were getting our asses kicked all over the world and we can't do jack shit about it." He swallowed hard. "At least your not in the Army or Marines. Its even worst there."
"I earned the right to be a space fighter." She said almost whispering.
"I know you did. There's only three hundred in all of the military. Its an honor."
"Thank you, Brad."
"For what?"
She just smiled at him and grabbed her cover from the table. He pointed at her discarded sandwich and she nodded. The Air Force Officer snatched it from her plate and put it on his own. "Brad. What does that make you?"
"Make what?"
"For staying."
"A dumbass." He finished restocking the onions on her sandwich and looked up again, but she was already gone.
She walked alone down the corridors of the sprawling mall. Admiring the latest fashions and doing her best to ignore the hostile stares from the other shoppers. She could see a crowd forming around her. She turned towards the exit and started walking as fast as she could without alerting the mob of her fear. They followed closely behind her and directly in front of her a glass bottle shattered on the floor. She was wearing heels, but she never ran so fast in her life. She reached the exit and slammed it behind her. Satisfied that they were no longer following her, she turned around and her heart sank. All around her hundreds, if not thousands of protestors were holding a massive protest. The few police in sight were hiding inside their cars, not daring to leave and face the angry crowd. The crowd rocked the police cruisers from side to side and smashed bats on the hood of their cars. The crowd for the moment did not see the young Air Force Officer and were distracted for the moment. So she took the opportunity to try and slip away unnoticed.
"Peace is within our reach! Give in to China's demands. No more blood spelt for Taiwan, Hawaii, the fucking Moon! Are they serious?! They want to start a draft! Do you want to die for the FUCKING Moon?!" The crowd reacted together with a massive "Hell NO!" Laura could sense that a few of the protesters were eyeing her and that the only things saving her from a beating, was her petite stature and gender. She had to leave soon. It only takes one psychopath to attack her and embolden the others to jump in. She ran for dear life. The loudspeaker continued, "Join us! Stop the draft. End the war. August 31st. We will march twenty MILLION strong in San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and Vancouver! Together we will show the government how strong we really are! Free transportation, entertainment, and food at this event. Just sign up…." Laura reached the Los Vegas strip and the voice from the loudspeaker was replaced by the lively sounds of the Vegas nightlife. She flagged down a taxi and entered as fast as she could.
"Where to Lady?"
"Nellis Air Force Base. Please." The taxi driver nodded and the cab lurched forward racing down the street in a blur. She slumped down into her seat. She could hear her mother's voice in her head. Mocking her. Telling her she was wasting her life. Laura found herself crying softly into her ruined uniform. Alone, unhappy and scared in the city of sins.
Somewhere Above North America, Earth Orbit (Sol), 0010 31082060
"USS United 93 actual, this is Kitty Red Team One. Outbound. Heading One-Two-Niner degrees north. Patrolling Vector Beta One Niner One Lima. Over." She waited for the green confirmation light in her fighters cockpit to light up. The confirmation light flashed and her fighter blasted forward through the vacuum of space. She switched on the auto pilot and let the computer handle the hard work of avoiding the millions of softball sized garbage particles in space. Any of which could smash into her ship at five times the speed of a bullet and kill her. She scanned the night sky with her eyes and spotted her wing mates. They were also on auto pilot. It had been more then three years since the Chinese Hegemony had tried entering American orbit. America was clearly ahead in space, so everyone felt at ease. Laura stopped scanning the sky around her to rub her eyes, she was very tired. It took all of the will power she could muster to stay awake. A voice inside her helmet snapped her out of her stupor, she immediately recognized it as Ladies Man.
"Kitty. How are you feeling today?" Laura rolled her eyes and just remained silent. "Fine be like that bitch. I even got you a present and lovingly left it in your cockpits storage compartment." She unlatched the cockpits storage compartment door and out flowed a stream of kitty litter. It quickly filled the cockpit. In the zero-G environment it got in every crevice. She pressed the air filtration button in her control panel and the ship worked hard to remove the white sand like substance.
"Manning you asshole. I swear to God you act like a five year old." All she could hear in response was laughter from the rest of Red Team.
"Hey that's Ladies Man to you missy."
"Manning, your mom doesn't count." A few of her wing mates laughed, but it seemed forced. More then twenty hours passed while they were patrolling. It was long, boring and tedious work. Laura felt like she was going to pass out at any moment. She kept herself awake by monitoring the chatter from her wing mates and from the fleet. It was the usual crap. Grab-assing, shit talking and complaining. One comment stayed in her mind. One complained about a lack of supplies and missiles because of the budget cuts and that all the ships carried less then half of their normal load of weaponry. She checked her gauges and discovered it to be true.
"Dammit the internet is down again. Must be another Chinese cyber attack. Those attacks are starting to get really annoying." Ladies Man said clearly irritated, shattering the silence.
"Your supposed to be working. Why are you even on the internet?" Laura said angry that he was putting his life. All their lives in danger by not doing his job.
"Porn. What other use do we have for the internet?"
"I hope to God your joking, because if you spent any time on the internet. I will make sure you are court-martialed." Laura was now tired and angry. She was getting sick and tired of Ladies Man.
"Christ. It was only a joke. Calm the fuck down."
"Both of you shut your fucking mouths. We got something on our sensors."
Laura could tell from McNugget voice that it was serious, so she ignored the disrespectful way he said it. "What is it McNugget?"
"Enemy crafts are launching from occupied Hawaii and mainland China. I'm seeing nearly two thousand of them." McNugget sounded scared.
"That's impossible. There is no way the Chinese have that many fighters." Laura said doing her own scan. She stared at her cockpits computer screen in disbelief. She wasted no time uploading the information to the US Fleet. The dots representing the enemy fighter appeared in her helmet and were closing in on them at an alarming speed. The enemy fighters were moving at mach ten and would be all over them in less then five minutes. Red Team was alone. Waiting. One minute passed, then another. No one said anything, all their attention fixed on the massive wave of fighters heading their way. Laura kept looking outside her cockpit for any sign of the US Fleet. She could see nothing but debris, satellites and the moon against the vast black of space.
An alarm wailed inside her helmet, she knew it meant the enemy fighters were within weapons range. All together the twenty fighters of Red Team locked on the closest enemy target and unleashed forty missiles. At the moment they had the advantage. Nothing the Chinese possessed could reach them, but the US could hit them from more then five hundred miles away. They were taking full advantage of their edge in space. All forty missiles connected and destroyed their targets. It did nothing to stop the Chinese fighters. They were still coming. Red Team let go of a second volley of missiles which had the same result. Red Team was less then a minute away from being within range of the Chinese weapons. One volley from them and they would be wiped out.
Laura looked around for the US Fleet and breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted it in the distance. She could make out the four massive battleships in the distance. They were already blasting away with their huge MAC guns and missile turrets. From the belly's of the massive battleships dozens of fighters were pouring out. They were catapulted out of the ship with its wings folded. Once the fighters were a safe distance from the battleships their wings unfolded and they blasted toward the prearranged skirmish line. The newly arrived fighters swarmed together into a claw shaped formation just in front of the battleships. The formation provided the fighters with excellent concentrated firepower in front, flexibility in movement and the added security of all the fighters within helping range of each other. Red Team broke off and found a place within the huge formation of US fighters. All together they released their last uncontested volley of missiles at the Chinese. Then all hell broke loose. The huge wave of Chinese fighters smashed into the US formation and almost immediately both sides lost dozens of fighters.
Laura could see a massive blur of red and blue dots in her helmet screen and was having a hard time keeping up with all the chaos going around her. All she could do was stay in formation and keep firing. A missile streaked by her fighter from out of nowhere and kept going. If it had been aimed at her, she would have been dead. She checked her gauges and was horrified to learn her missiles were dangerously low. She now had to use her secondary weapon the dual 65mm MAG cannons. At the speeds the enemy fighters were moving it would be impossible to hit even with the computer targeting for her. The Chinese had somehow found a way to scramble their sensors at close range and the US fighters were now shooting blind. She broke from the formation and moved away toward the closest battleship, all the while shooting her cannons. Spray and pray style toward any blur that resembled a Chinese fighter ship. The Battleships directly in front of her were constantly shooting their big guns. She could see the tips of their guns glowing red from overheating, but it kept shooting. The Chinese fighters were swarming the massive ships. The battleships were designed to take a huge beating, but it would only be a matter of time before they were destroyed by the Chinese swarm. The rest of the US fighters broke off from the skirmish and retreated to assist the big ships. Laura was already there firing away. The Chinese swarm was so thick around the battleships that with every burst of cannon fire from her fighter she was sure she was hitting something. The Chinese were ignoring her for now, they were determined to bring down the battleships. Over the communication network she could hear a frantic call for assistance from the USS Fallujah, it was already too late as she saw the massive ship split in half and fall back down to Earth. The dying screams from the bridge of the USS Fallujah filled the network and she looked away as the ship burnt up as it hit the thermosphere. Large chunks of the USS Normandy were blown off and it was leaking oxygen and people into space. The USS United 93 and the USS Saratoga were damaged, but nowhere as bad as the USS Normandy. The Chinese even after suffering devastating losses were still pressing the attack, totally ignoring the US fighters shooting them down one by one.
Laura jumped in her seat as the entire cockpit filled with a high pitched whooping sound, she had only heard the sound once before during training. Her body starting shaking uncontrollably, because she knew exactly what that sound meant. Nuclear war. She looked down to see the cockpits computer screen and could see the launching of hundreds of ballistic missiles from mainland China. The ICBMs moved so fast into space she knew they would hit their targets in a matter of minutes.
"Disengage! Disengage! Disengage! Our number one priority now is to destroy those missiles. A massive Chinese cyber attack has shut down all communications with Earth and the national missile defense system. All vessels must disengage and intercept the ICBMs." Laura did not recognize who spoke over the COM network, but if it was true it meant that the main defense against a nuclear strike was somehow disabled and that the people down on Earth were oblivious to the apocalypse coming their way. They would get no warning and no one would reach the shelters. Immediately the US fighters broke off away from the battleships and away from the Chinese which were scrambling their sensors. Away from the Chinese the US Fighters targeting computers immediately locked onto the incoming ICBMs and unleashed a volley of their last missiles. As the missiles closed in on the ICBMs the ICBMs exploded into hundreds of smaller warheads.
"God fucking dammit! I guess it was too easy, you had to just make it harder?!" Laura recognized the voice as Ladies Man as he cursed Gods name in more ways then she thought possible. The US missile volley shifted targets and took out a hundred warheads out of nearly twenty thousand, most of them decoys.
"How do we tell which ones real or decoy?" Laura asked over the COM network.
A long pause then finally someone screamed, "Switch your view to heat detection. The nukes are hot as hell. The duds are black. Dead. No heat." Laura smiled. It was Brads voice, he was still alive somewhere. She flipped her fighter upside down with the Earth now above her, she switched on heat detection and could see the real nukes. Shining like a flare in a moonless night. She locked on one of them and let her last missile fly. The nuke was destroyed, but she was now utterly useless. She had nothing left to destroy the nukes . She wasn't the only one. All over the COM pilots were begging for someone, anyone to have missiles. Her gaze immediately turned toward the Earth, and she switched back to normal view. She could see most of North America and the Pacific Ocean. To those on the ground it would be night time, dinner for most. She could see the great cities of America shining brightly above her. She had never taken the time to see them in all their glory from space, but she had to see it before it was gone forever. A massive white light shaped like a lotus blossom erupted from where she guessed Los Angelos would be. She stared at the light with a mix of awe and disgust, it looked so beautiful to her, but that same light meant the deaths of millions of her people. Another lotus blossom appeared on the Earth. Then another. Then another.
She was snapped back from her daze by the COM which was now filled with the sound of grown men crying. Other pilots like her who felt they had failed their country when it needed them most and now were powerless to stop its destruction. The few surviving Chinese fighters were now in full retreat, they had played their part. Laura looked down at her hands which were shaking uncontrollably with each new flash of light from Earth. She hit her thruster and violently moved her fighter forward. She made a quick scan of the sky and quickly separated an incoming nuclear warhead from the decoys. She forced her computer with an override to accept the new trajectory which would put her in the path of the warhead. She had one last weapon left. Herself. She broke away from the other American fighters and headed full speed toward the point of interception.
"Kitty, what the hell are you doing?" Laura ignored Ladies Man and kept going. She was about to die and all she could think about was how she wished the space fighters were equipped with ejector seats. They were never added because of their huge cost. Laura closed her eyes the moment the nose of her fighter slammed into the warhead. She didn't even have time to pray before everything went black.
Liberty Field Hospital 23, Free America, Earth (Sol), 1235 23072061
"Lieutenant Laura Gently," Laura woke up startled and immediately raised her upper body from the bed towards the sound of the voice calling her name. She was groggy and scared. Her last memory being her violent death. She realized she was in a large hospital room filled with doctors, generals and men in tailor made suits all staring at her.
"Am I dead?" Laura asked out loud the first question to pop into her head. The people in her room murmured to themselves and from the group stepped out a man Laura could tell by the way the others looked at him was the man in charge.
"No. Your very much alive."
"Who?" Laura asked lifting her hand to point at the man.
"I am the acting President of the Free United States of America. My name is Michael Hannover."
"I have to be dead. There is no way I could have survived what I did."
"After impact you were ejected from the ship and slammed against the USS United 93 at full speed. Breaking nearly every bone in your body and causing massive internal injuries. You were quickly recovered and put under a medically induced coma while these doctors here slowly repaired your body over the last year. About 75% of your organs are new. Cloned from the shattered originals."
"Why would you do that? I wanted to be left dead."
"For what you did and what you will do."
"What?"
"First Lieutenant Laura Gently of the United States Air Force. I President Hannover acting in the name of congress and the people of the Free United States of America presents you with the congressional medal of honor for your actions on August 31st 2060." Laura stared at the man at disbelief as he lifted the blue, white and gold medal from a case someone was holding open for him. "You and your fellow space fighter pilots engaged a massive Chinese fleet out-manned and outgunned protecting the USS United 93 and the USS Saratoga and saving them to fight another day. Most importantly you and your fellow pilots intercepted countless Chinese ICBMs inbound toward the United States. Lieutenant you also rammed your ship into a nuclear warhead when you ran out of armaments. Your example inspired the other pilots to do the same thing." The President became visibly shaken as he continued, "because of you and those with you that day. There is an America left to defend. Many, many, many more Americans would have died and many more cities would have been wiped out." The President walked toward her bed and slipped the medal over her head and let it rest around her neck. He hugged her and slowly backed away. "We need you still. Were losing the war. Badly. More then half of the United States is occupied and the colonies will fall without us. Space is no longer ours. We have plenty of birds, but not enough decent pilots. You're the only pilot with any combat experience and you have nearly four years worth of flight training. A lot of which was lost to us in the nuclear exchange, when the air force training centers in Houston and Colorado Springs was destroyed. Will you do this for us?"
Laura looked around silent. She noticed a child behind the President and stared at the little girl. "What is she doing here?" Laura avoiding answering the Presidents question.
"That girl? She's here to see you," the President replied.
"See me?" Laura said confused as the little girl ran up to her and hugged her tightly. Some of the men in the room had cameras and took pictures.
"Thank you Lu-ten-ant Laura. Thank you for saving my mommy and my home." The little girl said as she kissed Laura in the cheek. Laura looked up at the President more confused then ever before.
"This girl is from New York City. The warheads trajectory you rammed was aimed for New York City. You single-handedly saved twenty million people. I wanted you to see what you saved and what still needs to be saved." The President looked at Laura and still said nothing. Laura kissed the five year old girl and lifted her off the bed. Laura got up off the bed and stood up walking a few feet before stumbling and falling. "Laura you haven't used your legs for a year. Please stay in bed."
She ignored him and crawled out of the hospital room and out into a vast open room which in both directions seemed to have no end. The room was filled wall to wall with hospital beds. She stood up and immediately looked down. The entire room was filled with horribly wounded men and women and their robotic nurses nursing them back to health. She could sense the group from the hospital were behind her now. "My family?"
"All dead. San Francisco was one of the first cities to be destroyed along with Los Angelos, Vancouver, San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle and twenty-seven other cities." The President said matter-of-factly.
"Did any other pilot survive the battle?" She asked trying to block out the chorus of groans from the injured and dying all around her.
"Two others. Captain Brad Flaggs and," Laura looked at him shocked, "Lieutenant Greg Jenskusky."
"Where is Flaggs?" Laura asked almost happy.
"Dead. Shot down over the plains of Utopia on Mars. A few months back," one of the generals with the President said with a smirk like he was waiting all along to answer that question.
"Mister President I'll train your fighters." Laura said looking up and taking in the scene of pain and death around in front of her. The President simply nodded. She had nothing left, but a burning desire to inflict as much pain to the Chinese as she could. Laura reentered the room and sat on her bed, depressed as hell.
USAF Bunker 7565, Chicago Ruins, Free United States, Earth (Sol), 1245 05052062
Laura marched slowly and deliberately down the long corridor which led to the outside world. She was wearing a crisp new uniform with all of her ribbons, patches and medals aligned perfectly. Other military personnel and civilians inside the bunker when they saw her coming would snap into attention and salute her. From the lowly private to generals, they all did it. Sometimes she would salute back, but today she couldn't be bothered. She reached the bunkers main door at the end of the corridor and the massive fifty ton titanium door slowly swung open. She stepped out into the real world, took a quick look around and continued forward past the guards who saluted her as she passed. Most people had to wear masks out of the open because of the smog and contaminated air, but she never had to. She guessed it had to do with her cloned lungs.
The once great city of Chicago was now a hollow shell of its former glory. It now straddled the front line between the Free United States and the Chinese Hegemony, it wasn't destroyed in the nuclear exchange but you couldn't tell now. Every building was in ruins and the streets were all chewed up and full of unrecovered bodies. Fires burned throughout the city and went unchecked, which released massive plumes of black smoke that stretched out into the heavens above. The sky even at high noon was always a dirty yellow, it had been since the nuclear exchange. The sun struggled to shine through and even in summer it was cold. Very cold. She stopped for a minute to allow a column of American soldiers to pass by, the officer in front of the formation spotted her and saluted. She saluted back. She continued marching alone through the ruined city and reached her destination. She could see a few hundred teenagers standing together in a sloppy formation around a broken statue. They hadn't spotted her yet, which pissed her off.
"Line the fuck up! Hurry the fuck up!" She screamed, projecting her voice across the area. They all scrambled to square themselves away and a few bumped into one another, but quickly found their places. She walked down to the front of the formation and stared them all down. The teenagers were confused, they were both scared and in awe of this petite woman. Laura could sense hundreds of eyes fixed on the medal of honor around her neck, they seemed to be interested in nothing else. Behind Laura her security and training detachment arrived and fanned out around the teenagers which made them shift slightly uneasy.
"Your all here because someone somewhere thinks you have the testicular fortitude, intelligence and skill to be a space fighter. What I think is your all pieces of shit. If you didn't see me standing a few yards from you, then there is no fucking way your going to see the enemy bearing down on you from miles away. Your all going to be under my direct supervision during the next three months of training. I don't expect you all to make it thought. In fact I expect some of you to die in training." She began walking through the formation pulling individual recruits heads down to look them in the eyes. "Now who doesn't want to be here?! Tell me now because I hate people that waste my time." Three recruits raised their hands. "I admire your honesty. Fall out of the formation." She left the formation herself and approached the three young men. She waved at her training detachment around her and they presented the young recruits with rifles. "The front is seven miles that way." Laura pointed in the direction of the front with her hand. "Get going." The three of them looked down at their rifles in disbelief. "You don't want to be here. Leaving is not a free ticket to do nothing." The three recruits still did nothing.
"This isn't right, I don't want to be a part of this war." One of the recruits told her defiantly. Laura said nothing and looked down at the floor as she slowly removed a pistol from her hip. "Fuck this shit and fuck you!" the recruit tossed his rifle aside. He was encouraged by Laura's inaction, he interpreted it as weakness. Laura lifted the pistol and shot him in the groin. The recruit howled in pain grabbing the hole that used to be his genitals.
"No. Fuck you." The formation of recruits stared at Laura in horror as she stood over the sobbing wounded recruit. She gave the two other recruit who wanted to leave a hard look and they ran towards the front lines without looking back. "You all better wake the fuck up! This ain't no video game. The world is at war. Everything is different from what it was three years ago. You all better get used to that fact." She stared at them for a long time. "Your first lesson of your training. Death. You better get used to seeing it happen all around you. You need to toughen up and get that killer instinct." With that said she grabbed the wounded recruit by the hair and pulled him up. He sobbed and mumbled something that Laura ignored. "Look at his face and don't close your eyes!" Her training detachment held their rifles up and pointed them towards the formation. She placed her pistol on the wounded recruits temple and pulled the trigger. A loud gasp emitted from the formation as she let the dead recruit slump forward. She placed her pistol back in its holster and continued speaking, "You hear that?" Dead silence filled the area and the recruits didn't notice it before, but in the distance they could hear the sound of thunder. "That's the sound of Americans dying. That's the front. We are here to win this war and we will win it by retaking space and being strong. Control space and we control the Earth. Like our forefathers before, we will not stop until we win, we will soldier on through hell, we will bear any burden." Laura looked past the formation toward the broken statue. "You can die here like cowards waiting for the Chinese to cleanse the Earth of the American race or you can fight. Taking as many of those bastards as you can before you die. I ask you all to remember those we have lost. The millions of innocent people dead who didn't deserve to die. May the memory of them and times past give you the courage to fight." She stopped herself. She continued staring at the broken statue and read the plaque at the foot of the massive brass figure.
In Memory of Brad Flaggs, Savior of Chicago.
SC: Lotus Blossoms
Thu, 11th November, 2010
China launches its long planned nuclear strike on America and 300 U.S. space fighters are stuck in the middle of Armageddon.
Comments greatly appreciated. Feel free to leave a comment.
Comments greatly appreciated. Feel free to leave a comment.