ALICE, page 25
Jake found the recruits in the briefing room off the hangar as Dallas was preparing to run a video lesson on weapons familiarization. After the class, they would go next door to the armory for some hands on instruction.
He slipped in as the session had started, trying to avoid notice, and grabbed a seat in the rear. Jake hadn’t seen any of the training videos, his education having come while he was in stasis. He was entranced with the 3D holographic examples of each weapon and the exploded display of each as they reviewed each one.
“This is just too cool,” he thought.
After the session, he followed the crowd into the armory, several surprised to see him there. Jake greeted them casually, hanging to the side as they filed in.
April was already in the armory, having selected several examples of the weapons just covered. Breaking them up into groups of four, she took each group to a table, set up in the center of the room, and had them strip and reassemble each model.
Jake was impressed with how well organized the group was, no grab ass or loss of focus. Besides Robert, he noted two or three more that seemed to direct the others.
After the weapons class, they broke up into smaller groups for various other classes. Jake took the opportunity to head down to the control center, where he found Bonnie and Sara sitting at a console.
“Ladies,” he said, kissing each on the cheek, then grabbing a chair.
“Oh, you remember us?” Sara said snidely, but smiling, “to hear Sandy this morning, there was no other woman on earth for you!”
“Ouch,” Jake replied, wincing, “She was a virgin, wasn’t she?”
“Do tell, what gave it away?” Bonnie said with a laugh.
“The term nervous as a virgin has a reference you know,” Jake replied.
“Well, apparently you cured that!” Bonnie replied.
“I thought Becky was going to rip her head off when she came to breakfast,” Sara said laughing.
“Kiss and tell huh?” Jake replied, “I’ve told you all that I thought this was a bad idea from the beginning.”
“It’s OK. You just made the mistake of being a good first time. Now she wants everyone to know how wonderful it is,” Bonnie said.
“Like we’ve never done it before,” Sara said with a wink.
“Just be really bad next time and she’ll go elsewhere,” Bonnie said.
“Didn’t work with either of you!” Jake replied.
At that, they both stuck their tongues out at him.
“Ok, so the real reason I came here, besides getting abused, was to see how things were going at the other facilities. Are Linda and Jessie handling things OK?”
“We did a status call earlier and so far no one has any issues or concerns. Linda says the Militia is still pushing north. She’s been flying them in supplies, and has delivered four more armed jeeps, for patrol routes. She says the Alaska recruits are learning quickly.”
“Jessie is still sick as a dog and swearing at you regularly,” Bonnie supplied, laughing.
“Yeah, maybe I’ll hang here for longer than planned,” Jake replied.
“Chicken,” Sara said.
Bonnie continued, “She reports that the balance of the recruits in Alaska are coming along quite nicely as well. We might get one or two pilots out of that group.”
“At some point we need to cycle all the pilot candidates through Seven. Sara, one of us needs to be there for that,” Jake said.
Sara nodded in acknowledgement.
“Barb says she and Sharon believes they’ve located all the monitors in our sky, including on the moon. But both agree there are likely more in geosynchronous orbit on the other side of the planet,” Bonnie said.
“Have they made any progress on identifying what might trigger an alert?” Jake asked.
“They agree it’s likely a combination of speed and energy signal. Anything we fly now going less than 1000 mph shouldn’t trigger an alert, but one of those fighters in a hover will.”
“Crap,” Jake swore, “that’s what I was afraid of. I really wanted to get us some flight time, but it looks like it’s just the simulators for now.”
Chapter 16
Jake and Sara stayed in Texas for the next week. He was anxious to get the recruits to the point where he could send them to Seven for flight training ASAP. He and Sara double-teamed them on the training schedule, reducing class sizes and speeding up completion times.
Jake even handled some of the hand-to-hand instruction, joking that only the hard-core students could be in his class, but making sure he meticulously pulled his punches. Robert was the first in line.
On the personal side, he was just as conscientious in attending to the four ladies he was committed to, though he was concerned about the dynamics developing.
Sandy finally came down off her cloud, much to Becky’s relief. She still refused to talk to Sandy for 2 days until she finally got her night with Jake. Sara and Bonnie just seemed happy for his company, shrugging off the younger women’s behavior as transitional and nothing of concern.
On the plus side, April, Joe and Abby had shipped off to Seven for flight training after the latter two completed basic combat skills training for the recruits to be transferred to ALICE. With those three, the 13 Dallas recruits, Jake, Sara plus two more in Seven, he would have all 20 fighters manned in 3 or 4 weeks.
He also shipped Jason off to the Washington State ALICE-4 facility for activation. Considering he already deployed fighters there, he felt it was the right thing to do. Karen accompanied him on that trip, as well as Heather and Brian, her for the experience, and he as the only other experienced body available at the time.
Under Becky and Karen’s tutelage, Heather’s aspirations of nursing blossomed into becoming a full-blown doctor. She progressed far enough along in her studies that accompanying Jason made her an asset to the team as medical support.
Jake laughed to himself that their entire medical staff was under 21 years old, minus the ALICEs.
The one downside to all of this activity was they hadn’t been able to let anyone spend time on the island. He needed to make R&R a priority after flight training completed in a month.
Jake also secretly asked to have his fighter flown down one night, slung underneath one of the heavy lift helicopters, and stashed away. He asked Seven to add some additional armament to the hard points. The added firepower would permit automated multi-target engagement, while allowing Jake to concentrate his main guns manually on specific targets.
In simulations, they had proven extremely effective at stopping a bombing run, taking out the bombs while Jake targeted the ship. He hoped it was as effective in real use.
Seven also completed the first of the second 20 fighters early, so he asked her to paint it up as the fourth 1st Air Cavalry fighter, completing that squadron of four. He also asked her to change the squadron designation on his fighter to a fictitious squadron from a TV show he had seen as a kid, removing himself from command of the Black Knights and designating they be commanded by some else.
“Hey, sometimes it’s good to be king,” he laughed to himself.
Jake was currently sitting in the control center with Barb and Sara reviewing a 3D Holographic map Barb and Sharon put together showing all the alien sensor locations. Seven then configured the fighter’s sensor arrays to identify them so they could better target and destroy them when the time came.
While they were discussing the possibility of taking them out without triggering an alarm, three of the sensors over the Northwest US started flashing.
“What’s that about?” Jake asked.
“That means the sensors are transmitting, which suggests someone triggered them,” Barb said with a concerned tone.
“That looks to be over ALICE-4, Dallas can you see what’s going on up there?” Jake asked.
After a few minutes, Jason appeared on one of the monitors.
“Hey Jake, what’s up?” He asked.
“We just saw three of the alien monitors go on alert and start transmitting, are you guys doing anything unusual there?”
“Not really, I did just have to reset all the stasis storage systems, one of the field coils was bad, and it required a reset to replace it.”
“Crap,” Jake said, “ALICE didn’t you say your alien components are located under the stasis storage lockers?”
“That is correct; apparently they also mask their location to the sensors,” ALICE replied.
“Well, apparently we are now on high alert. Pilot training gets top priority,” Jake said.
“Jake what are we talking about?” Jason asked.
Jake continued, ignoring Jason for the moment, “ALICE-4 and ALICE, please update your resident staff on our current situation, I’d rather not broadcast this information unless I know it’s secure.”
“Jason, ALICE-4 will fill you in,” Jake finished.
Turning to Barb he said, “I so want to go take out those sensors now so they come in blind, but that would tip our hand, I don’t want them to know we can reach orbit until it’s too late. What’s the status of the stasis shields?”
“All 8 facilities are fully functional. Anyone inside will be protected,” ALICE replied.
“Yeah, that’s what worries me, Prosperity, Kern, Paint Rock and the other towns aren’t protected,” Jake said glumly, “even if we wanted to, we couldn’t bring everyone inside before the bombs hit.”
“Then we need to catch them before they get there,” Sara said flatly.
“My guess is we have no idea how far away they are or how soon they’ll get here,” Jake stated.
Just then, Sharon and Jessie chimed in, “Jake we have an alert!”
“Yes, thank you, unfortunately we discovered that the stasis lockers were masking the ALICE systems from the sensors. Jason was doing repairs in ALICE-4 and had to bounce them un-shielding the computer rooms.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Sharon said, “that’s their biggest worry, so the sensors were most sensitive to detecting the ALICEs. Even a blip would set them off.”
“To answer your question Jake, no, there is no data on the location of the alien home planet or how long they took to get here the first time. The ship we have in Seven was an exploration vessel and apparently had been away from their home world for quite some time. We haven’t been able to determine if one of the recorded stops was home or just a link in the chain of planets they visited,” ALICE replied.
“Well, I guess we just wait,” Jake said.
----*----
The wait lasted a week. Jake was in the control center following a routine he developed ever since the sensors alerted. He started every day in the control center reviewing the scanning reports from that night and finished his day doing the same thing.
After the alert, he immediately shipped Sara and the 13 Dallas recruits off to Seven to begin flight training. Sara protested violently that she her training was complete, and she could better support Jake by staying. Jake had to escort her physically onto the aircraft and strap her in.
He reminded her he needed all of them not just flight ready, but trained in squadron tactics. They needed to fly as a unit, which was something she hadn’t trained for.
With Abby, Joe, and April several days into training already, he hoped the four could back him up and take out anything that got past his guns. They weren’t ready for head to head combat, but this would be more like target practice. She was now officially the Black Knight's squadron leader.
He was fretting about the unprotected communities. The last thing he wanted was any of those bombs to reach earth.
“Hey Dallas?” Jake asked.
“Yes?”
“I was doing some math and I’m confused about something. Seven told me that the fighters were test flown to the moon and back in about 2 hours. She also said they appeared significantly faster than the ship we have in hangar 19?”
“That is correct,” Dallas replied.
“Well by my calculations, using 1 hour to the moon as a measure, an alien ship coming in from Pluto is going to take 491 days to reach earth?”
“The test run to the moon and back did not require full power for the fighters. In fact, I don’t believe they exceeded 25% power at peak speed. My estimate is that once we detect the inbound craft we will have 2 to 3 days to prepare, depending on their approach tactics,” Dallas finished.
As if to emphasize her point, an alert started pinging on the console Barb was monitoring.
“Jake we have an inbound,” she confirmed.
On her display, she highlighted a tiny spot, not discernible as a ship, but tracking as a movement.
“Just one?” Jake asked hesitantly.
Barb surveyed her displays and confirmed, “just the one so far.”
“Good, let everyone know what’s going on. As soon as we can determine their arrival time at the intercept point I want to know,” Jake replied.
With everyone shipped off to Seven for training, it was just Bonnie, Barb, Sandy, and Becky there with Jake. He was grateful for the quiet, and none of the women were placing any personal demands on him since the sensors went off. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he could if they had. His focus was off planet now, concentrated on the inbound ship.
----*----
PeTuk brought his cruiser out of faster than light-speed at the edge of this backwater solar system. His was one of four warships required to monitor sensor arrays in this sector, he was just the unfortunate who was closest. The other three cruisers spread to the far edges of the sector, were further out.
He brought up the alert information. Ah, he’d heard about this planet. Apparently, an exploration ship had attempted a landing to evaluate the pre-star travel inhabitants for protection from outside aggression, only to succumb to an unidentified fatal influence. They transmitted their orbital survey finding home, before they perished, but those remained classified.
The locals scavenged the ship and violated the sovereignty of the empire by desecrating the bodies of the crew and cannibalizing the technology. Why the empire hadn’t just come in and fried the atmosphere, he didn’t know, but it stated in the log, that no planetary action should be taken that rendered it uninhabitable.
There was a note in the log. Apparently, the locals integrated some of the spare logic cores scavenged from their ship into their archaic domestic computers and possibly created Artificial Life. How was it possible? Even the NeHaw hadn’t perfected that. Any race with that ability would have a huge advantage in commerce and combat.
Surely, this was an error. However, it explained why they let the planet exist. Well, his orders were clear enough, investigate without landing. The planet has a quarantine status, all landings forbidden.
If any signs of the AL systems were discovered, bomb with disrupters only, neutralizing the logic cores. Apparently, the disrupters have a negative effect on the humanoid life forms, but that wasn’t a concern.
----*----
Jake had taken to wearing his flight suit 24 hours a day. They calculated he needed to take off in 32 hours, but should the alien ship speed up, he didn’t want to get caught flat footed.
It was close enough now that they could get images of the craft. He asked all the analysts to work together, extracting as much information as possible from visual and electronic sensory data.
The ship was much larger than the craft in Hanger 19 that was for sure. Based on the comparison, they figured it contained a 25 to 30-person crew. Gun platforms were evident, marking it as a warship.
Jake was sitting in the control center watching the ship’s approach. Unlike the exploration ship, this one didn’t look like a bird at all. It had more of a flat, delta shaped body with the familiar cylindrical drives at the rear, and two more cylinders, one on each outboard side of the delta. There was a protrusion located on the top of the delta that he took to be the bridge.
“Sure would be nice if we could take that ship,” he said to himself.
“Are you nuts?” Bonnie asked, overhearing the comment “I’d be happy just to see it blown from the sky!”
“Yeah, but it won’t be the last,” he replied, “My bet is there’s more goodies on a warship than there were on an exploration vessel.”
“Well, those goodies are all pointed at us right now, so that’s not a comfort,” she replied.
----*----
With that disgustingly blue ball dominating his forward display, PeTuk chaffed at the slow speed. He wanted to get this over with so he could get his ship out of the gravity well this solar system created. His faster than light drives wouldn’t operate inside their influence, so he was reduced to repluser propulsion.
At least this planet could have the decency to be in an outer orbit, instead of ridiculously close to the star. And Blue? Not even an acceptable yellow or red, obviously their atmosphere absorbed too much light.
His crew processed the previously recorded alert data and a logic core emission was momentarily detected. It was in the original primary target zone, so he couldn’t understand how it had survived the first bombing. It was most likely just a phantom emission, emulating a logic core, but he intended on bombing the location just to be sure.
In fact, he directed his navigator to plot a planetary bombing run, it wasn’t often they got the opportunity, why pass up the chance. It was too bad the locals didn’t have ships he could shoot at as well, he thought.
----*----
Sara was sitting in her simulator waiting for the next session to start. They’d been using all 10 simulators continuously since their return to Seven. She placed everyone on a rotation that had them in training 12 hours on, 12 off. With 19 trainees, they just pulled it off.
Jake asked that she, Joe, Abby and April form up the Black Knight's squadron. They’d logged the most training hours, so were more prepared to back him up once the bombs started dropping. The remaining 15, 2 from Alaska, and the 13 from Texas, were to get as much time in as possible, to prepare for the expected round two attack.
