Chapter 22
Simmons Air Force Spaceship Yard, Pierce County, WA
October 11, 2010
There was a blip on the Simmons Air Force Spaceship Yard monitoring radar that was soon joined by more flashing icons. The technician on duty, Sergeant Doss, was notified and spinning his chair around from watching the capitol’s filmed Columbus Day parade that was just getting started, checked out the radar screen.
Doss stared in disbelief at the script flashing underneath the eight icons on the radar moving in a V formation.
UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT.
The Aschen ID program was so good it identified sparrows! And whatever those things were moving into the yard’s airspace were a heck of a lot bigger than sparrows.
Reaching over he placed a call to his superior, Colonel Parker, who answered in his usual gruff manner.
“Ah Sir,” Doss said uneasily, “we have eight bogeys on the radar.”
“Bogeys Sergeant? What are they?”
“Bogeys Sir. The radar says ‘unidentified.’”
The next thing Doss heard was a dial tone in his ear and not long after placing the phone back into its cradle Colonel Parker appeared in the radar room. At the colonel’s appearance, Doss pointed to the radar and the eight icons on the screen moving steadily closer at six hundred kilometres per hour—standard for the old commercial aircrafts but those bogeys were the size of fighters and most definitely not shaped like bi-planes.
“Get them on the comm,” Parker ordered.
Obediently Doss started scanning the airwaves, broadcasting the standard warning, and managed to pick up some chatter but no responses to the yard’s hails.
“Pierce-One to Bravo, ETA is twenty-two minutes.”
“Bravo copies Pierce-One. Commence with Operation Zone,” a feminine voice decisively ordered.
“Roger Bravo. Commencing Operation Zone.”
Doss tried on the radio again, “To the unidentified aircrafts approaching you are entering a restricted zone. Divert your course.”
Even before the sergeant had finished speaking Parker was calling the squad on standby and had them scramble some fighters into the air. Within three minutes six F-301s of the defence squadron were suited up and in the air moving to intercept the approaching bogeys.
Parker claimed a radio headset and got on line with the squad leader, Lieutenant Colonel Bryce Ferguson. “We have detected eight incoming bogeys approaching the yard. Bogeys are not responding to warning. Can you confirm visual?”
“On our way Sir, but we won’t see them for several minutes,” Ferguson responded.
“Colonel,” Doss turned to Parker, “they’re picking up speed and their chatter indicates that they know the 301s are approaching. Still no response to our hails.”
Hearing that and taking another look at the radar Parker snapped into his headset: “Get those bogeys in sight Blue Team!”
Immediately the deployed 301s increased their speed.
Parker turned to look at Doss. “How much time before they’re in firing range?”
Doss lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Depends what they are Sir. If they’ve got missiles they could’ve hit us long ago.”
Suddenly the bogeys radio chatter cut in again.
“Whoee!” a Texas drawl cut through the airwaves, “I got a visual on the Mongooses!”
“Visual confirmed,” the voice of bogey Pierce-One responded. “Pierce-One to Bravo we have visual on some Mongooses.”
“Any Firespeeders?” the feminine voice asked.
Doss and Parker were definitely looked concerned by now. The F-301’s were named Mongooses, for the rodent that was known to eat snakes considering the aircraft had been designed to fight against Goa’uld forces, and Firespeeders was the name of the Aschen fighters.
“Negative Bravo.”
“Number of Mongooses?” the woman asked.
“Six.”
“Have three engage the Mongooses. The rest remain on target.”
“Copy that Bravo. Pierce-Three, Pierce-Four, and Pierce-Eight you heard Bravo—engage those Mongooses.”
“Roger that Pierce-One,” three voices chorused. On screen, three of the bogeys broke formation by accelerating rapidly. The five bogeys designated to remain on course reformed their V formation.
“Blue Team, do you have visual?” Parker barked.
“Yes Sir. They don’t look like any fighter I’ve seen,” Ferguson responded as he transmitted video back to base. “Only paint they have is Papa-One to Papa-Eight.”
Looking at the silver, angular fighters fast approaching Colonel Parker had to agree that they did not look like any aircraft anyone on Earth had ever designed before. They did not even look like any of the fictional fighters in shows like Star Wars or Wormhole X-Treme either. As Ferguson reported, the only paint on their metallic silver bodies was the large P-1 to P-8 on their tail fins.
“Blue Team, assume hostiles. You are cleared to fire,” Parker ordered.
. . .
In his F-301 Mongoose cockpit, Lieutenant Colonel Bryce Ferguson murmured to his co-pilot, “Ready Shaft?”
“Bring it on Fergie!” Major Cameron Mitchell exclaimed. “Let’s show these bogeys we’re more than enough for all eight of them.”
Ferguson smirked behind his air mask as he let the craft’s automatic guiding system lock onto the approaching lead bogey, P-3. Pressing the fire button on his stick Ferguson and Mitchell watched a missile drop from the wing and blaze away.
The missile was one hundred plus pound of high explosive that when detonated generated a blast with a force of over ten thousand pounds per square inch and would pulverise any object within a radius of several hundred yards. More than enough to deal with the oncoming target.
With the missile launch, the bogeys on the tail of bogey P-3 banked away and the missile impacted dead on the bogey’s nosecone.
Premature cheers of success from the Blue Team were cut off by strangled gasps when P-3 emerged from the impact cloud. Shielding technology shimmering bluely in the air like a second skin at the missile’s impact site.
Frantically Ferguson radioed a report of the bogeys’ defence shields to the base. He did not know anything smaller than a Goa’uld teltac could be shielded!
“Come on ’goosies,” the Texan voice drawled over the radio again just as Ferguson finished his report. “Let’s see if you really earned your wings.”
Then a Texan yell was hollered through the airwaves and bogeys P-3, P-4, and P-8 began their deadly dance.
Using the force shields and sharp edged wing-designs the bogeys used their fighters as weapons themselves as they engaged the ’301 squad in an aerial dogfight that they could not combat. A dogfight they had no experience with either as the bogeys used close combat by cutting their shielded wings through the wings and tails of the ’301s, forcing the pilots to bail as their fighters were knocked from the sky.
The bogeys waved their wings saucily at the parachuting men, while the six 301s fell to crash into the ground hundreds of feet below, before following the flight path of the other five bogeys.
Back at base the twelve remaining fighters of the F-301 squadron was being scrambled but by then it was too late. The other five bogeys had reached their target areas encircling the yard perimeter and dropped their loads.
The devices floated down on parachutes, activating in mid-air and all Aschen based technology on base, no matter how minor, died. Shutting down the yard in a fraction of a second.