April 5, 2035
06:00 Kamchatka Time Zone
Siberian Countryside
He was beginning to understand why Van complained about feeling jetlagged. It had only been a few hours ago that they'd wrapped up getting that damn gate at noon and now it was early morning the following day.
Bradford realized that he was mentally stalling even as he made the short walk to Van's quarters. The news he had to discuss…
The old soldier hoped it wasn't too much for the Commander. He couldn't help worrying. She was a strong woman, but everyone had their breaking point. God knew she'd been through enough to have reached that point.
Enough dawdling, he needed to get this over an done with.
Only to get sidetracked again when he approached her door and saw Harkes was doubled over with tears streaming down her face.
As he ran towards the soldier, he worried that she might have been injured worse than she had let on.
When Bradford got closer, he saw that she was laughing that hard. He stopped with a frown as she held up a finger in a wait a moment gesture, then she gestured to the door.
That's when he heard the refrain about a chest high wall and the frown shifted into a scowl. That damn song. It was one of the most nonsensical things he'd ever had the misfortune to hear and it had of course swept through the barracks twenty years ago because of it mocking shooter games.
It was still one of the most goddamn annoying things he'd ever heard and now it seemed that Van was infecting another generation with it.
Harkes wiped her eyes. "Sorry, Central, but that was some of the funniest shit I've heard in a long time."
Despite the situation, he smiled. "Understood."
Satisfied that all was well outside, he approached the door to Van's quarters. It opened as the volume of the music turned down to something bearable. He silently cursed the timing of everything, because if she was blasting some of that wretched music, she had to be in a good mood.
Now he was about to ruin it. If things weren't so urgent, he'd wait until later.
Van was seated at her desk and spun around in her chair with a smile. That expression quickly vanished before she asked, "What's wrong?"
He drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out as he came into the room, making sure the door closed behind him. "We're being hunted. There's a UFO on our trail and I'm not sure if we can shake it off."
She paled at his initial words, then her color returned. She dryly asked, "So why are they still called UFOs if we know what they are?"
Bradford didn't resist the laughter her question sparked and relaxed from the tension. That was such a Van comment, either as the woman or the Commander. She would be all right and that would help keep the rest of them steady. "Guess we call them UFOs out of habit."
"Makes sense." Then she turned serious. "So what do we know? And what are our options?"
He grabbed a chair to sit down at the desk with her to go over what intel he had. When he finished, Van was quiet for a time thinking about the information. "Just how good are our odds to avoid it? Or any other units it might call up for assistance?"
"Not very and very good."
She was quiet as she thought that over. "Right. I take it you've already prepared for the worst?"
This was one of the reasons why he loved her. "Of course. We're already on evasive maneuvers. Or rather what the Avenger is capable of doing. We're in a remote area of northern Asia so we shouldn't have to worry about any population centers. Both the troops and the staff have plans for situations like this."
"I take it you wanted to brief me before activating them?"
"Yes."
"Then get the ball rolling."
He gave her a grim, tight smile and sent the command through his tablet. "Done. If there isn't anything else, I'll return to Mission Control to monitor things."
"I'll come with you."
That was the response he expected and while they didn't say anything else during the short walk, he could practically feel her thinking. About what, she didn't give any sign, not even mentally.
Oddly enough, she seemed remarkably relaxed, as seen by the cheerful greeting she gave the staff in Mission Control. "Afternoon, or morning, folks. I hear we might have some unwanted guests crashing in on us at some point."
There was nervous and subdued laughter in response.
That's when he remembered the raid they made on the alien base all those years ago. She'd shown that same attitude then.
And the present staff, like the one long gone, took heart from her and the tension eased to something manageable.
Her next words was for his ears only. "We'll get through this somehow, John. This time we have warning."
Bradford wondered if she was saying that for his sake or hers.
Then he didn't have time to think about that as his attention was taken up with piloting the Avenger.
Despair almost overwhelmed him when he saw the saucer shaped image appear in the radar and head toward them. He left the ship in the control of the autopilot and returned to Mission Control.
The atmosphere was tense, but there was no panic. Van stood off to the side, calmly talking to Shieldmaiden on one of the small, secondary displays. At some point she'd changed into her armor with sword and shotgun at her back. That's when he saw that most of the crew were armed, if not already in some type of armor themselves.
"So if we are boarded, are you joining us in dealing with them?" There was just curiosity in the soldier's voice.
"I plan on staying in Mission Control, but I wanted to be prepared just in case."
Van's voice whispered in his head. Speaking of just in case. You really should get in armor yourself while you have the chance, my knight.
Tucker yelled out. "Incoming!"
There was no time to do anything but hope the autopilot could keep the ship from getting shot until it could land the ship in a good location to defend themselves.
Except that too was ruled out when the emergency lighting kicked in as all of the systems around them died along with the overhead lights. The floor tilted under his feet sending him skidding and he grabbed onto one of the bars around the hologlobe. The telltale beeping coming from his tablet told him what he already knew. "Power is out! We're dropping fast!"
Shen, who'd been standing off to the side to watch the proceedings, started fiddling with her tablet. "Impossible! There's no damage to the engines. Unless… They're using an electromagnetic pulse. If I can just bypass all this alien circuitry… Hold on!"
Since he, and everyone else in the room was holding onto something, and none of the engineer's babbling made a damn bit of sense, he growled. "Shen."
The engineer's voice took on an edge of hysteria. "It's not accepting the transfer! Interface is ready… the system is overriding my command!"
Van's voice was strangely calm as she said, "Shen. Focus."
"Right" Shen's head snapped up with a look of determination on her face and she ran over to a side panel.
The floor beneath his feet vibrated with the sputtering of the engines as they tried, and failed, to kick in with what power remained.
The engineer ripped the panel off and flung it to the side before grasping the handle to a cylinder and pulling on it.
Power surged through the ship, but not enough for the engines to go to full power to try to escape the pursuing craft. Instead it gave the Avenger enough juice for a semi-controlled decent.
Avenger still landed hard.
Even though the room filled with brilliant violet and blue psionic light, wrapping Bradford and everyone else in a kind of cushion, his head still hit something and he blacked out.
Consciousness returned to Bradford with an aching head with Van kneeling by his side. With her assistance, he slowly got to his feet. In the background he heard the ship's AI reporting a malfunction with the emergency power. "How bad is it?"
Van gestured toward Shen who came over. The engineer was tense. "Bad," she said bluntly. "I managed to deploy one of the drones and before it was taken out, it reported that there was a spike out there generating the same pulse that took us down."
He pressed a hand against his aching forehead. "So while that's there, we're not going anywhere. And our enemies are gathering."
Both women nodded grimly. "How are the sensors?"
Shen turned even grimmer. "That's…not good either."
He sighed and pressed his other hand against his now throbbing forehead, then he dropped his hands and sighed. "Looks like you get to do this the old fashioned way, Commander."
The Commander readied her shotgun. "I know. Do what you can to get ready to lift off as soon as we have that generator down."
If she were afraid, she gave no sign as she headed off to the armory to round up whomever was ready.
He wasn't given long to worry about his Commander when Shen recruited him to help with…something in one of the panels. At her direction he acted as a second set of hands. There was a brief shower of sparks, then his comms crackled to life.
"Central, are you reading me?" Van asked.
"Yes, there's some static, but you're coming through clearly enough."
"Good, that'll make it easier to keep in touch."
While she was a strong enough telepath to talk to him mentally, it was still somewhat distracting, not to mention draining, for her to do so in combat.
"Anyway, we're deploying static defenses now."
Thankfully when Shen set up the repurposed turrets for defense, she'd set it up so they had their own independent power source. So there was some additional defenses, not just bodies on the line.
When the soldiers comments as they set up, he had to pause and shake his head, as he once again cursed that damn song.
Defcon yelled over the comms. "Hey guys, we have chest high walls! We'll be fine then!"
Cyber replied. "Screw your chest high wall. I have a head high wall."
There was quiet laughter in return, including Van's.
They settled down soon enough and he grumbled at Shen for lack of eyes to see what was going on as he listened to the troops.
Ice filled his veins when he heard Slinger yell. "It's not the ship they want! It's the Commander!"
"Shen! How much longer until I have eyes out there?"
"Working on it, Central," the engineer growled.
Frustrated, he ran his hands over his hair. "Commander. Can you give me an update?"
"Busy." Her shotgun fired in the background. Then she shouted out that she was switching to sword.
What the hell was going on out there?
He started to open his mouth to annoy Shen some more when she pre-empted him. "Still working on it, Bradford."
Central shut his mouth. He scratched an ear. "Commander, is there anything you can give me?"
Each word was punctuated by a grunt accompanied by the sound of metal striking flesh. "What. Part. Of. Busy. Do. You. Not. Fucking. Understand?"
Before he could reply, Shen shouted. "Got it!"
The main display flickered to life to reveal something out of his worst nightmare.
Van surrounded by enemies as she held them off with blade and telekinesis while the rest of the soldiers tried to beat them off of her.
Author's note: For those that are curious the song in question is Shooter Guy by Miracle of Sound.
