Numbuh Five dropped the magnum and slowly backed away from what she had done, Lawrence walked over and scooped up his sidearm before twirling it on his finger and holstering it.
"It's a nasty job, yes. But someone has to do it eventually," He said as he went over to Cree and tugged on the rifle that he ran through her abdomen. "Someone help me with this, and get this room cleared out as well." He added between grunts. Numbuh Three-sixty-two watched as William and a few commandoes went to help him while the Expedtionaries started to clear the bodies out of the room. She looked over to Sector V only to realize that they had left the room while she was distracted, she quickly jogged out of the room to try and catch up but it was too late, they had left the treehouse in their Scamper that had been remotely piloted up to a small landing pad. Numbuh Three-sixty-two sighed, feeling bad for Numbuh Five, having to shoot her own sister like that after watching her get speared by Lawrence during what could only have been a mad bloodlust. A cheer of accomplishment shook her out of her stupor as she heard the soldiers in the other room congratulating Lawrence, William and the commandoes for retrieving the rifle from the wall. She sighed and went back into the roof to see Lawrence holding the rifle while soldiers all posed with him as a few others took pictures, he tossed the rifle over to his brother who chuckled.
"You look such a mess with all that blood on you," William said, "Looks like you came out of a horror movie."
"After what happened back there it sure felt like one, but I'm okay now," Lawrence replied. "I'm gonna go outside and call this in, make sure that every officer on the field knows that this place is ours now." He put a finger to his ear and walked past Numbuh Three-sixty-two, giving her a nod of acknowledgement as he went to the outside walkway and leaned against the railing. Numbuh Three-sixty-two followed him outside and stood back as he talked to his soldiers.
"So…how'd it happen?" Numbuh Three-sixty-two asked when Lawrence was done talking.
"What, the madness driven fatality I pulled off back there? If you want me to be honest, I really don't know."
"You do remember it, don't you?"
"Oh yes, it's just that I don't remember what causes it in the first place." Lawrence said as he looked out to the development, smoke plumes rose up from destroyed houses and downed Teenager aircraft. Artillery was still pounding away at enemy ground forces and UKA jets continued their bombing runs on their targets. Numbuh Three-sixty-two walked over next to Lawrence and leaned against the rail with him.
"So…now what?" she asked. Lawrence simply shrugged in response.
"I dunno, but I know that something will come up in the next day or two."
Nearly a week passed before Numbuh Three-sixty-two heard anything from a single high ranking officer of the UKA, let alone Lawrence himself. She had gone back to the Moonbase in order to organize her newly equipped military and maybe try to work out a lasting relationship between the KND and the UKA. When she asked where Lawrence was the officer on the other side of the radio stayed quiet and changed the subject. After being cut off short of an explanation she could only guess that either Lawrence was busy or something bad had happened to him. Numbuh Three-sixty-two shuddered a little and sat down at her desk, rubbing her eyes. She knew that if Lawrence died then not only would the war be lost but it'd also be the death of everyone on the planet. After the Sector V Territory War she'd overheard some of the UKA commandoes talking about the Stone of Summer having a massive nuclear bomb on board, there was no doubt that the UKA would use it if Lawrence died in battle. She leaned back in her seat and span around to watch the sun rise over the horizon of the Earth, lighting up the other planets that were close by.
"You see, this isn't the real Earth. There's no other planets in that close proximity to where I used to live."
Numbuh Three-sixty-two jumped and span around to see Lawrence leaning against the door to her office. What surprised her was how bad a shape he was in, his left arm was covered in bandages, and his right was in a cast being held by a sling. His pant had been torn up badly, making the wounds on the legs more visible. Lawrence's face was also cut up and badly bruised, an eyepatch over his left eye. As Numbuh Three-sixty-two stared at him Lawrence simply chuckled and pushed himself upright. "No, I didn't get a haircut." He said jokingly as he limped over to her.
"W-what happened to you?" Numbuh Three-sixty-two asked as Lawrence sat down on her desk, wincing a little.
"Oh you know, air-to-air battle above England, took a missile in the back, ejected, ended up smashing headlong into a house and through a window thanks to high winds and an awful parachute."
"You're okay though, right?"
"Yep, give myself a day or two to heal up and I'll be back in action."
Numbuh Three-sixty-two had to admire Lawrence's determination to get back into the fighting as soon as possible even after getting beaten up by a hard landing. He may be the leader of the UKA but he couldn't help getting involved in the gritty fighting, she could only assume that it was something that he enjoyed. Still though, it was amazing to see Lawrence even walking at this point. If it were her, Numbuh Three-sixty-two knew that she'd be in the medibay for a month. Lawrence slid off the desk and sighed.
"Say, Rachel. You want to help me out with something?" he said as Numbuh Three-sixty-two helped him stand.
"Sure, what is it?" she replied.
"Well, just recently we've had a small problem with the Teenagers. Turns out that they've managed to build up a small Starfleet while we had our backs turned, now I need a few ships to join my fleet in order to take them out."
"I guess I could join you with a few ships, after all the crews are getting bored from just guarding the Moonbase."
Lawrence smiled and used his bandaged arm to playfully punch Numbuh Three-sixty-two's shoulder. "Glad you could help. Have your ships seen combat yet?"
"No, nothing really."
"Then this will be the perfect time to test them out then. The Teenager ships are nowhere near as tough as mine and I would like to see if yours outclass them as well."
"I hope so, I trust that your engineers know what they were doing when they fitted the weapons."
Lawrence chuckled and nodded. "Don't worry, UKA engineers are second to none when it comes to arming starships," he said as he nodded towards the door. Numbuh Three-sixty-two took that as a sign to follow him as he left.
"So what kind of battle will this turn out to be?" she asked as Lawrence walked through the door, a pair of Delta Force Commandoes standing either side of them who then followed Lawrence as he walked through the threshold.
"What we're looking at is most likely another air battle," Lawrence said, looking to her. "This time however I'm not going to have Anti-Aircraft guns operating on the ground. One wrong shot and they've taken out a friendly jet."
"With all the technology that you have I'd thought that you would've worked out that problem."
Lawrence shrugged and adjusted his sling. "It happens more than you think."
"So when do we attack?"
"Right now, Rachel. Right now."
Numbuh Three-sixty-two was surprised when Lawrence had summoned her to the Stone of Summer less than a few hours after leaving her office, she was curious as to why he requested her aboard his ship rather than meet her in Sector E like they had planned earlier. She departed the Freedom of Imagination and arrived in the Stone of Summer's hangar, after the Starfleet Marines had checked her and the ship she was escorted to the War Room where Lawrence was leaning over the holographic table, reading something on the screen. He looked both deep in concentration and very annoyed. Numbuh Three-sixty-two bit her lip and walked up to him.
"Um…G-General Rogers?" she said timidly, hoping not to surprise him. Lawrence looked up at her and his expression relaxed slightly.
"Ah, Rachel. Glad you could join us."
"You're looking better."
Lawrence smiled and stood up, the light showing that his arm had been healed and his uniform was no longer torn up, he noticed that she was looking at him wondering where his wounds had gone, "Yeah, all thanks to the medical deck and the amazing equipment and personnel that they have."
"So…uh…why'd you ask me to come here? My understanding was that we were gonna meet in Sector E."
"We were," Lawrence sighed, "Right up until we learned that the Teenagers toppled the place in revenge for us offing Cree. So now we've got no safe way to survey the land before we launch our attack."
"You have drones and satellite cameras, don't you?" Numbuh Three-sixty-two asked.
"Yeah but they can only do so much, plus the Teenagers have got some really powerful beam weapon based anti-aircraft guns. From what we've tested is that they can't hit fast moving targets and take a while to charge up so we'll be able to take them out quickly once they fire."
"So have you guys got a plan?"
Lawrence smiled and nodded. "Oh yeah, we know what we're gonna do. If there's one thing that the UKA Air Force can do is tear the enemy to shreds both on the ground and in the air."
"So it's going to be an air battle like we talked about before?"
"Oh yes, one that I'm going to partake in as well since I'm a pretty good pilot."
"You can fly planes?" Numbuh Three-sixty-two asked.
"I can do other things than lead a military. That and sometimes there aren't a lot of wars going on so I've got to distract myself somehow."
"And then you learned to fly jets," Numbuh-sixty-two added, smiling at him. Lawrence nodded and smiled back.
"Say, we managed to get some information on the Teenager Starships if you want to see what we're up against."
"Sure I guess." Numbuh Three-sixty-two said.
Lawrence hit a button on the holographic table and a three dimensional, semi-transparent image of what looked like a UKA ship hovered over the table.
"This," Lawrence started to say, pointing to it, "Is what the Teenagers are using as their new ships."
"Um…did they get some of yours?" Numbuh Three-sixty-two asked.
"No, surprisingly. What this is, is what we classify as a bootleg ship. Clearly the Teenagers are trying to find ways to beat us so they thought that making ships similar to ours would help. What they failed to accomplish was a basic shielding system and high impact resistant hulls, making these ships very weak and susceptible to sustained fire."
"How many of them are there?"
"No more than thirty from what we can gather. There could be more but it shouldn't be too big a problem, I don't think that their weapons would even put a dent in our armor. However I am a little worried about their fighters. They're much smaller and more nimble than our fighters so they'll be able to evade our missiles more than we want them to."
"Your planes have guns on them don't they?"
"Yes, mostly twenty and thirty millimeter guns but they only have so much ammunition. Thankfully we'll be getting some orbital support from Starfleet along with a few ships of our own in atmosphere."
"You're making this sound as if we will win," Numbuh Three-sixty-two said. Lawrence smiled and turned off the table.
"Trust me, I know we will."
"So, will I be commanding our fighters in this battle?"
"You sure will but I feel as if you should be a little closer to the front line during this fight. Air battles are hard enough to coordinate from the ground or inside a starship."
"What do you mean?" Numbuh Three-sixty-two asked curiously. Lawrence smiled and tossed her what looked like a disfigured motorcycle helmet with a long rubber tube protruding out of the back of it.
"My fighter has two seats, I think you should be in that second seat."
Despite several long winded protests, Numbuh Three-sixty-two reluctantly agreed to join Lawrence in his fighter jet for the battle. Most of the walk down to the hangar he didn't listen to her saying how that she'd not only be ineffective in commanding the KND's air force but also would get badly airsick if Lawrence did any fancy flying tricks. Lawrence, at this last statement, handed Numbuh Three-sixty-two a small capsule inside a tiny box and told her to take it saying it would nullify all airsickness even if he did any combat maneuvers. Numbuh Three-sixty-two stayed quiet after taking the airsickness pill and was then greeted with the sight of over a hundred black fighter jets all hanging from their various docks inside the hangar of the Stone of Summer. She stopped dead and looked up, counting more planes, all ready to launch.
"Lawrence do we need this many planes?" she asked.
"Sure we do, Rachel," he said as he walked into an elevator, pulling Numbuh Three-sixty-two inside and pushing the up button. "Besides, this is just the first wave that's going to exiting the Stone of Summer, there's going to be another two coming out of here along with a few other carriers."
"How many ships do you have for this single battle?" Number Three-sixty-two asked as the elevator stopped.
"I think we've got four Saturn Class Carriers and two Jupiter Class Battle Carriers along with a large number of cruisers, frigates and destroyers. The Stone of Summer included. In total we've probably got about eight hundred fighters and twenty starships partaking in this battle."
"Like I asked before; do we really need this much?"
"Yes, actually. The Teenager Fleet may consist of under twenty ships but we don't know how many fighters they're bringing. So I find it better for us to be ready for anything rather than go on just simple numbers and estimations. How do you think we've won so many battles?"
Before Numbuh Three-sixty-two could answer she found herself staring directly at a highly modified UKA fighter jet. Lawrence saw her stop and stare, which made him chuckle. "This," he said, "Is a Trident X-One-A Fighter Jet. I have a number of these modified from existing Trident X-One fighters."
"Why do you need a modified jet?" Numbuh Three-sixty-two asked.
"I'm the leader of the United Kids Alliance. How could I not have my own garage of personalized and heavily modified vehicles?" Lawrence replied as he nodded for her to follow, "Looks like the mechanics and whatnot have got the fighter prepped and ready for takeoff. Let's get inside that thing before you change your mind."
Numbuh Three-sixty-two sighed and followed Lawrence to the Trident, although she was reluctant to join him she couldn't help but marvel at the sleekness and fearsome appearance of the jet. She gathered that all the missiles were inside the body of Lawrence's Trident since they weren't visible on the outside. What did interest her was a large cylinder sticking out of the front of the wings on the jet, her attention from the devices were distracted when the crew chief helped her up the ladder into the cockpit.
"Hey Lawrence, what are those things on the wings?" she asked.
"Dual thirty millimeter rapid fire cannons," Lawrence said as he strapped himself into the seat while the crew chief helped Numbuh Three-sixty-two into her seat, "You good back there?" he asked when the crew chief slid down the ladder and pushed it away so the canopy could shut.
"Yeah…I've never been inside one of a fully functional fighter jet like this before."
"The Trident X-one fighters are pretty cool, the X-two bombers look pretty scary too but the X-three multi-purpose fighters are the best and coolest jets in the UKA. I think you'll be seeing them later today as well."
"How come you don't have those fighters in your ship?"
"Because there's only five of them and they're off on another mission."
"Wait, there's only five of them? Are they some sort of special team?"
"Yep," Lawrence said as the jet was picked up by a large crane arm and carried over to the main hangar.
"Well…who are they exactly?"
"Spearhead squadron."
"All fighters, prepare to launch." Admiral Jones's rang out over the speakers rigged throughout the hangar. Lawrence slapped the front of his flight helmet down and leaned back in his seat, instructing Numbuh Three-sixty-two to do the same. The crane carrying the Trident X-One-A stopped overhead of the main hangar, Numbuh Three-sixty-two looked down and saw that they were suspended over a several hundred foot drop to the hangar floor. Underneath them were more UKA fighters, all hanging from cranes as well. For a minute there was silence then the whole room started to roar with the sounds of starting jet engines and a loud klaxon alarm as the floor underneath them started to open up, revealing the English countryside. UKA crew members were all standing in the individual fighter hangars, saluting as the first row of fighters closest to the open floor suddenly dropped and flew downwards and out of sight.