Splash X
Chapter One.
USS Odyssey
Earth's Orbit
July 11, 2010
Colonel Davidson was in the midst of going over a report on a digital tablet when the transport beam brought Colonel Camren Mitchell of SG-1 onto the bridge. Davidson gave the tablet back one of his officers and stood to greet him.
"Colonel Mitchell, welcome aboard."
"Thank you, sir. This beaming up stuff never gets old."
"I agree and I see you're ready to go," Davidson said referring to his flight suit and the helmet he was holding."
"Status of the squadron?" Mitchell asked.
"It's at full strength and all of the pilots are waiting for you in Hangar bay one."
"Excellent. General Landry already told me that this little competition of ours will be taking place near Saturn."
"Did he also tell you about the stiff competition Blue Squadron will be facing?"
"Yes sir, and that's why I'm here. To give my old team a fighting chance at winning this thing."
"Whatever the outcome is, this competition is bound to be fun. Good luck out there."
"Thank you sir," Mitchell replied then left the bridge.
Hangar bay one
Mitchell walked through the door and was instantly greeted by the pilots of Blue Squadron. There were a few familiar faces, but most of them were new.
"Hey Shaft, welcome back to the team," Major Amy Hulbert said.
"It's only temporary, Amy. But thank you nonetheless."
"It's good to see you again, sir. How is life on SG-1 going?" Major Kent asked.
"Pretty great. But business has been a little slow since the Ori were put in their place.
"I can imagine, sir."
"Yeah. But anyway, I heard you guys are facing some stiff competition in the Splash X competition. So I came up here to help you out."
"We appreciate that, sir. But extreme is more like it," Kent replied.
"Yeah, the Golden Eagles on the Hammond are top notch. All triple aces, I heard they racked up dozens of Al'kesh, Te'tak, and Glider kills on their anti-Lucian Alliance sorties," Lieutenant Michael Burke said.
"Colonel Carter's golden boys and girls," Kent commented.
"That they are, but if we can splash our target drones quickly and with few misses as possible, we should be able to beat'em. Personally I prefer zero misses, but I've been around long enough to know nothing ever goes as planned.
"We won't let your down, Shaft," Kent said.
"No way you guys ever could."
"You might want to check out the 302s, sir. I think you'll be impressed with some of the new features," Hulbert said.
"General Landry said I would be," Mitchell replied then followed Hulbert over to the nearest 302.
"What do you think of our new missile load, sir?"
"It looks like the kind of payload this bird should've had the moment it was built, Amy," Mitchell said referring to the eight AIM-120C-7 AMRAAMs that were housed in groups of two on the four pylons.
"We can also launch air to surface weapons from the ventral bay too."
"What kind and how many?"
"Eight Small Diameter Bombs, four AGM-65 Mavericks, or a single two-thousand pound JDAM. There was even some talk of replacing the railguns with plasma beam cannons similar to the ones on our ships, but the powers that be haven't decided yet."
"Very impressive, Amy. But what else does it have?"
"In addition to touch screen displays like the ones in the F-35s, Asgard shielding. A major boost to our survivability."
"If we had this version of the 302 at the Battle of Antarctica…"
"Our losses would've been lower and we could've stayed in the fight longer before running off to McMurdo to rearm."
"Yeah, and some of our original members may still be here today," Mitchell somberly commented and Hulbert nodded in acknowledgement.
"All hands, this is Colonel Davidson. We are heading out to Jupiter to meet up with the other ships, this should be great day four our 302 pilots. Happy hunting out there, boys and girls."
Mitchell put on his helmet and called the pilots into a huddle.
"Go Blue on three. One, two, three."
"Go Blue," the pilots shouted in unison.
"The other squadrons taking part in this competition besides the Golden Eagles and the Blues were the Daggers from the Daedalus, the Pikes from the Apollo, the Black Dragons from the PLAS Sun Tzu, and the Lions from the Pendergast where Lieutenant General Jack O'Neill would be running the show from.
There were two other 304s in the fleet, but they both on assignment. The Russian ship, the Chekov was on orbital patrol above the Earth and the USS Phoenix was on its way to the Pegasus galaxy for a supply run to Atlantis.
Chapter 2 coming soon.