Chapter One

It happened on a dreary, overcast, Sunday morning in midwinter. It

was one of those days, one of those lazy days; you just want to while away

in bed. I guess it was around 7am or so, and I was just getting up for the

day. It just so happened to be December 7th. I still don’t know if they

planned it that way, or if it just worked out that way…neither would surprise

me. My name is Lieutenant Jonathan Xavier Richards, and I, am a survivor.

I had just set my foot on the floor to get out of bed when I heard the first

explosion. I didn’t think much of it. Living on a military base, one’s prone

to hearing things like explosions, especially when that base is a testing

ground for experimental new technologies. We had had a “boom” in

business since the day the Bri-Atspi ship crashed down in the Canadian

Rockies. Who ever would have guessed that those “alien abduction” stories

were true…well, at least some of ‘em were.

See, what all the so-called “UFO experts” and investigators had

always called “Grays” were, in fact, called Bri-Atspi. The Bri-Atspi are

actually taller than the “Grays” were reported to be. They have no mouths,

and communicate through telepathy, which is why we never had a “language

barrier” to overcome with them. They eat through some combination of

osmosis and photosynthesis. Working together with the Bri-Atspi over the

following five years resulted in a veritable cornucopia of new technologies,

not to mention the new farming techniques. They even managed to help iron

out some old differences, and end a few old feuds. Just the fact that we

knew we weren’t alone in the universe did wonders for ending war on earth.

Yep, war was almost obsolete. Almost. At that point, instead of fighting

over resources and territory, we fought over which country would get to

keep the best and brightest among the Bri-Atspi. Fortunately, most of those

battles were political debates, rather than the more traditional “shoot-outs”

commonly associated with war. I wasn’t too worried about it though. Hell,

the Bri voted “least likely to succeed”; still makes Einstein look like an idiot.

‘Course, I’m just a Navy pilot from Mississippi, what do I know about

rocket science. Anyway, the point is, out there in Nebraska, one can expect

to hear a lot of explosions on any given day…except Sunday. Which is

what was slowly dawning on me at that very moment. “Today is Sunday;

there ain’t no testing on Sundays”, I thought.

Right about that time, the air-raid sirens started going off, bet that

scared some folks. For the second time in American history, we had been

caught totally off guard. As we all scrambled to get to general quarters,

explosion after explosion continued to rock the base. Most of us seemed to

spend more time on the ground from the concussion of a blast than getting to

where we were supposed to be. Looking around, the devastation was

terrible already. Hangers were bonfires, runways were smoldering dirt trails.

All that had managed to get airborne at that point were a some Marines in a

few antique “Harriers”. The sky over the installation was alive with anti-

aircraft fire and…little black dots. They weren’t really dots…more like…

smudges. They weren’t really little either, just higher than I was expecting.

The Marines didn’t appear to be having much luck in killing the “bad guys”,

but at least those “little black dots” weren’t shooting at the ground anymore.

Finally I arrived at my squad’s hanger to find it mostly intact, much to

my relief. As I arrived, the rest of my squad came running through the

doors. Luckily our mechanics were already loading the planes with live

ordinance, and topping off their fuel tanks. We were airborne in a matter of

minutes. Things didn’t seem much better up there. Those little black dots

were darting around faster than anything I’d ever seen in a dogfight. I

couldn’t seem to get a lock on ‘em, even using the improved targeting

computers from the Bri-Atspi techs. I got a real close look at one of ‘em as

it screamed past me. It was like looking at a black hole. It was a cloud of

nothing, streaking through the air. It was invisible, but solid, all at the same

time. My eyes couldn’t focus on it, my radar didn’t pick it up, and my
weapons couldn’t lock on it. When I looked forward again, I saw one

headed straight for me…like he was playing chicken with me. I decided to

hold my course, and break off into a steep climb right at the last second. I

thought maybe that would foul its air intakes. Seemed like a good plan. But

when I climbed at the last second, it banked and flew straight through my

wingman. Not my wingman’s cockpit mind you, my wingman himself. It

split his plane, and him, in half…and kept flying as though nothing had

happened. I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this battle.

I banked my plane sharply to pursue. It was a tough job, but I kept

my eyes on him. I couldn’t lock with missiles, so I just used my guns. Twin

40 calibers; firing 200 rounds per minute…hard to dodge that for long. I

sprayed the air all around him. I know I hit him solid at least a couple

hundred times. He wasn’t smoking though, didn’t even flinch. This guy

was really starting to piss me off. I decided to take my chances firing

missiles “from the hip”. No lock, just point and fire. Almost got him twice

before I ran out. In the end, his maneuverability proved superior to my own,

and he got in behind me.

One shot! One shot was all it took! My plane dissolved around me in

a ball of fire. We hadn’t taken down a single one of them, and they had

already almost completely wiped us out. My flight suit proved effective in

resisting the flames, and my parachute opened. Normally, that’d be the end

of my involvement in an aerial skirmish, but not today. One of those

bastards, I think it was the same one, who had killed my wingman and shot

me down, broke away from the other planes. He was on a collision course

with me. Luckily somebody was looking after me, ‘cause a Harrier came

straight up from underneath him. Don’t know exactly why, but they both

exploded in a nasty ball of fire and debris that singed me a little more, and

damn near killed my ‘chute. My ‘chute took no serious damage though and

stayed open, so I lived to touch the ground. God bless the Marines! I was in

the air for no more than five minutes.

When I touched down, I ditched the parachute and ran for home. I

intended to grab another plane and go try to even the score. By the time I

jogged that half-mile though, the fight was over. They had retreated. Of the

twenty planes that took off that morning, only one made it home again. I

was one of two pilots to survive the battle. Of the fifty or so enemy craft, we

killed one. Not very good odds. We couldn’t figure why, with such a

decisive victory, they just turned around and went home.

I immediately switched over to clean up duty. I helped fight the fires.

I helped rescue the people trapped in the rubble of destroyed buildings. I

helped to dig out the bodies of the dead. In the midst of all this, I noticed
that they had done almost as much damage to us with the debris of our

planes they had shot down as they had with their weapons.

That night the UN addressed the world. According to the UN speaker,

we had been attacked by Xecht-Klaran forces. The Xecht-Klar are another

alien race. They had had a huge ship in orbit around our world for about six

months prior to the attack. Our representatives had been in voice

communication with them almost the entire time, trying to establish peaceful

relations. The Bri-Atspi tried to warn us, and I think deep down we knew,

there would be no peace with the Xecht-Klar. Why else would they always

insist on “voice only” communication? Why else would they accept humans

in their orbiting “planetoid” with out ever sending an emissary of their own

to us? Why else would it take six months to get a decisive response from

them? They were studying us. Watching our tactics. Seeing, at close range,

our military capabilities. The Bri-Atspi tried to warn us, but we were too

damned convinced of our own superiority to listen, and that attitude cost us

dearly. The Bri tried to tell us that the Xecht-Klar had destroyed their world,

and attempted to enslave the entire Bri-Atspi race. For six months we tried

to befriend the Xecht-Klar, and for six months the Bri tried to get us to run

away. I guess we just figured the Bri-Atspi for cowards, they are pacifists

after all, and they never had their own military. The attack that Sunday
morning was the “decisive response” we had waited six months to hear.

Now we awaited a new “decisive response”. This time though, it would

come from our own leaders. We waited to learn how we would survive this.

Immediately, teams of our best technicians and engineers joined with

Bri-Atspi technicians to create weapons that could over-come the Xecht-

Klaran threat. Simultaneously, our UN continued to attempt to establish

peace with the Xecht-Klar. The best thing to come of the Xecht-Klaran

attack was a unified earth. All nations had become, essentially, one nation,

truly united, under the authority of the UN. The US government re-instated

the draft. Every country on earth pooled their resources to combat this

mutual threat. After almost a solid year of conflict with the Xecht-Klaran

forces, resources and manpower were dwindling…all seemed lost for us.

Then one of the technical teams had a breakthrough. It was explained

to us that the reason we couldn’t lock onto the Xecht-Klaran vessels was that

their hulls absorbed all electro-magnetic radiation. Meaning, they absorbed

everything from radar waves to visible light waves. The breakthrough was a

new targeting system that could lock onto that “negative signature” and track

it. So, the greatest weapon in the Xecht-Klaran arsenal had just become

their greatest weakness. My squad was among the first to test this new

technology. It was definitely not flawless, but it was better than nothing.
We engaged the enemy much as we always had, but this time we took down

more than one of them in a single skirmish, and it didn’t take a “suicide

move” to do it. Unfortunately, in an attempt to gain an advantage in our

frequent skirmishes with the Xecht-Klar, we had resorted to the use of

stealth technology on our own craft. The new targeting system locked onto

our stealth fighters as well as enemy craft, and casualties due to “friendly

fire” were high. We implemented the use of new IFF (Identification Friend

or Foe) signals on our fighters, but the Xecht-Klaran craft disrupted those

signals too. The tides were turning however, and we began to take down the

Xecht-Klar with greater regularity. While “friendly fire” was an issue, we

killed more enemies than friends, so it was deemed “acceptable losses”. The

Xecht-Klar seemed to be getting that point as well, ‘cause they slowed down

their assault a little. ‘Course the fact remained that they were whipping our

butts. All our new targeting system really did was enable us to fight back.

They still had the superior force.

In June of 2032, just two years into our war with the Xechts, we

caught another break. It had been decided earlier that year that we needed to

“live capture” a Xecht ship, and hopefully, pilot. My squad was one of the

squads selected to carry out that mission. Our planes were outfitted with all

kinds of magnetic and grappling “weapons”. So, at the outset of every battle
we picked our target, and shot it with a paintball to identify it to our allies,

then we tried to “force land” it. Now, this ain’t as easy as it might sound.

The Xecht ships were fast and maneuverable, with thick hulls not easily

penetrated by the grapples, and, of course, the magnets were useless against

them, not to mention how hard it was to see the paintball colors on their

hulls. We made attempt after attempt to no avail. Then one of my squad

mates got the bright idea to mount the grapples on servo-controlled turrets,

and put ‘em on the wing tips. Well, our techs threw a hissy about that, said

that the controls were already difficult enough and the wings couldn’t

support the added stress of wrestling with a struggling Xecht ship, but the

Bri made it work. The result was a whole new aircraft based on Bri-Atspi

designs. It didn’t look like a plane though, more like a really wide and flat

missile. It was also faster and more maneuverable than anything else we

had. We flew maneuvers to get used to how they handled for several months

before taking them into a combat situation…and thank God for that. We

called them X-51s, and believe you me, you’ve never felt maneuverability

until you pull the “G’s” an X-51 can pull at the speeds the X-51 can sustain.

We needed the training time. The controls themselves took some getting

used to too. The stick and pedals were still there, and they controlled basic

flight maneuvers like normal, but all other flight controls were incorporated
into them as well. I mean throttle and everything, all right there. The thing

that threw us the most was the new weapon controls. See, all our instrument

panels were wired into our helmets “heads-up” style. Where the instrument

panel should have been, there was now a computer monitor showing current

weapon configuration and load-outs, remaining ammo, and what weapon

was currently active/selected. To active/select or fire a weapon required a

voice command. They spent weeks just recording our voices. Sometimes

they’d have us read through a list of command phrases, sometimes we’d read

aloud from books, and sometimes, they’d just record conversations. They’d

stick us in all kinds of situations while we spoke to the recorders too, so we

would be understood by our computers if we were calm or excited, agitated

or in pain. It took almost as long to program the computers to key off of our

voices as it took to build the planes themselves. The hardest part of the

whole thing to me was remembering to say, “transmit”, before trying to talk

over the radio. After six months of building and programming, and six more

months of training, only two of which were airborne in the new craft, we

were finally ordered to engage the enemy. Still armed with no real weapons,

we went back to trying to ground a Xecht-Klaran craft. In our first sortie

with the X-51s, we suffered a catastrophic system failure that forced us to

disengage and land. The problem had something to do with exposure to the
Xecht-Klaran “negative signature fields”. The equipment was recalibrated

and we got to go up again in the next battle. That time everything worked.

We marked and surrounded our target. We cut him from the herd, so to

speak, and lead him away from the rest of the battle. We engaged him six

on one, and in the end, it was guts, not grapples, that brought him down.

The X-51s were not quite as fast as the Xecht craft, but were much more

maneuverable. We boxed him in. I was on his right, and my wingman was

on his left. We got in close, much closer than we should have, and actually

touched the tops of his wings with ours. We had him completely hemmed in

with a man in front and behind him, me and my wingman on either side of

him, and a man above and below him. We started landing procedures, and

he had no choice but to follow us down. Oh, he bucked and jumped, trying

to get out of our “box”, but with the X-51s, all he could do was jar us a little.

We were very careful not to slow him down too much though, we didn’t

want him to grab a sudden boost of speed and rip through the lead man. The

bottom man broke off at the last second, and took up a “guard” position,

circling us just in case the Xecht broke free. By the time we got him down,

ground forces were already in place to keep him down. We went back home

while the ground troops secured the enemy craft. We finally won a battle.