Starfighter
" Ok squids lets bring it home." Wing Commander General Alex Rogan said over his wing comms.
" Thats enough for today." 20 years after the battle of the frontier he still enjoyed taking his Gunstar Mark X out to show the "kids" how to fight. After the battle of the Frontier, Alex led the gunstars that arrived from other sectors to victory over the rest of the Ko-Dan armada, taking the fight to the enemy with a viciousness never before recorded in the annals of the Star League history. The reason for the severity of the attacks is because Xur threatened to destroy the new Starfighter base and kill all personel including Maggie recently arrived from Earth. What Xur didn't realize is that by threatening Maggie he removed the reason that Alex had to show mercy to the forces of the Ko-Dan armada. Ambassador Enduran hearing this threat correctly surmises that Alex will be properly motivated to defend the base and take the fight to the enemy. This thought is a correct one as Alex asks the Ambassador for command of the newly arrived squadron of Gunstars, The Ambassador though sceptical agrees that it is in the best interest of the human to lead them properly. With Grig as his pilot and the newly arrived and armed Gunstars, Alex leads the squadron through the hole cut in the frontier and valiantly drives the forces of the Ko-Dan all the way back to their homeworld and forces a ceasefire by threatening to completely obliterate the Ko-Dan homeworld with a new planet killing Nova Bomb designed by Star League R&D. The battles were terrible and many were lost on both sides however the "Death Blossom" designed by Grig was the turning point of the war. Included in the design for all new Gunstars, the Death Blossom allowed many Gunstar pilots and gunners that would have died to escape with little damage and many destroyed ships around them.
" Gunstar One to command. We are RTB winchester." One of the first things that Alex taught the Gunstar pilots was Earth slang used by the military for comm security. He then explained to the new pilots that RTB means that they are returning to base and winchester means that they are out of ammunition. The experienced pilots were concerned about the new lingo until they found that the Ko-Dan fleet were unable to understand the context of the intercepted words.
"Permission for a flyby base?" A pleasant female voice belonging to the base commander came over the comm and denied the request. Alex smiled inside his helmet as the thought of his wife being irritated by his request at fouling up her traffic into and out of the base a flyby of four of the small Gunstar ships would cause. He could hear the amusement in her voice as she asked
"Gunstar One while you were out playing with the recruits did you stop for some bread at the store?" Alex watched as the comm chatter on the secondary frequency flared for a few minutes as the recruits commented to themselves about the "old man" and the radio games he and his wife Commander General Maggie Rogan played at their expense because they didn't know some of the words they said. Finally one of the more daring recruits asked over the open channel.
"Sire? What is 'bread'?" Alex couldn't help but laugh as his pilot explained what bread was and heard the gagging from the semi-aquatic 'squid- like' recruits who were able to filter liquid through their gills to feed.
"Gunstar One, This is command I know you are on a training sortie but can you check out a strange sensor blip in sector 4? We have been getting a few strange readings from that area in the last few days, however each patrol we send doesn't seem to find any evidence of anything wrong. This time we still have the strange reading and your group is the closest."
"Base, Gunstar One I copy your transmission and am on the way with four. Can you send the alert fighters in case this turns out to be something? I would really like to have something with more punch than training lasers if something is out here."
"Gunstar One, We have the alert fighters on the way but you will arrive 20 minutes before the first wing can get there. Use caution and remember that you do have your full decoy package available." Alex smiled again at that reminder, one month before he required all training sorties be equipped with full defensive countermeasures. There were two reasons, the first was at the Gunstars handle differently when fully loaded, and there were enough strange reports that he didn't want some training mission blown away because they couldn't defend themselves. He kicked himself mentally for removing the one live missile that all Gunstars are required to carry for this reason but he wanted to have this mission to be practice for if the new pilots and gunners ran out of missiles.
"Gunstar One rolling in on the contact, Angel can you give us a vector?"
"Gunstar One, Angel, turn to 115 mark 30 to locate the intermittent contact.". Angel was one of the developments that Alex requested. A ship full of sensors and fire control that can vector Gunstars for hundreds of units. They were based on the AWACS planes on Earth.
" Angel, Gunstar flight show us in route to the contact."
Alex brought up the contact information on his navi computer. He asked the computer to layer the current contact with the previous reported contacts and it came back with a single dot. Alex frowned and asked the angel " Angel, Gunstar six I had the computer layer the previous contacts and it comes up with a single point. Is this accurate? Even if it is a asteroid radar reflection it should move around.".
" Six, Angel we had the same problem however the data is correct the contact appears within 50 meters of every other mysterious contact."
" Angel I need you to get the alert Gunstars here ASAP this feels wrong. "
"Gunstar One, Angel the alert ships are on the way buster." Buster was the term used for balls to the wall as fast as they could possibly go.
"Copy Angel, good to know Gunstar flight rolling in on the target now."
Alex and the recruits split into pairs as they entered the sector that held the contact that they were getting from the angel ship. He reminded them that they were very vulnerable and if something happened to run as fast as possible toward the approaching fighters.
"Sire, if something does happen what do we do?"
"Glon, I told you I am not royalty please stop referring to me as Sire. Also remember your training, now you know why I had you have so many sessions with the simulator."
