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Dodging the bullet part 1 of 8
Dodging the bullet part 1 of 8
I was lined up in the launch tube. The check system for my Combat Armor, Tactical, Heavy, was running. Our last-ditch assault on the Instagram home world would launch in a few minutes. This war had lasted far too long. I had been a CATH pilot for twenty-four of my thirty-two years in service.
I watched the last of the system lights switch to green and thumbed the intercom system to life. “This is Field Admiral Adam ‘Rock’ Drake. I am green and hot across the board and ready for launch at your command.”
My intercom answered from the bridge of the carrier. “Rock, we are a go for launch in T minus seventeen seconds. Hang onto your hats men this is an all-out assault. No matter what happens the war ends today.”
I watched the timer count down. We were under radio silence once the umbilical cut lose. I listened to the last minute chatter as the nineteen other CATH suits reported green lights. Then the timer hit zero.
It felt like someone stuffed a rocket engine up my ass, as the launch system slammed me down the length of the tube. Faster than it took to think about it, the launch sabot was packed around my suit, and I was ejected at mind-numbing speeds toward the planet below.
Two minutes after launch, we passed the moon of the planet IN stag. That was when the first layer of the sabot wrapped around my suit started its function. The braking rockets fired, and we started to slow. We would still hit the atmosphere at more than eighteen thousand miles per hour. Much slower than our current speed.
I looked at the combat clock. In four minutes, we would enter the outer atmosphere. I had expected enemy fire by now. The fleet was moving in behind us with the landing craft and space defenses. But there was no resistance. Not even a scanning beam to detect us.
The job of my men and I was to establish a landing zone to bring the troops in. It is what we do. First in, last out, and never give ground. These combat suits had been designed and upgraded so many times. The current model weighed eighty-one tons and held the firepower of a full artillery division. At the current rate, we were going to make ground fall with a full complement of ammo.
the first layer peels off and disintegrates as we passed the edge of the outer atmosphere. Then the first of the flower petals bloomed. The pod extended the next layer out and started using the atmosphere to break our fall. I watched the display for my speed. I was slowing rapidly as the friction heat burned away the petals of the flower, I rode in. Then a sudden jerk as those petals collapsed and broke away.
The third layer spread, and I bloomed again in the springtime of our planet's fall. I watched as my indicators drifted into the range of acceptability. Layer after layer peeled off and slowed me until I came down to terminal velocity. Then the last layer broke away and I was in daylight. Five thousand feet above the ground I was now hanging from a massive air foil.
Still, we had encountered no resistance. Not even a single projectile had been fired. My Radio cracked and a voice came on. “Cease fire! Cease fire! It is over, the Instagram people have surrendered! Do not fire, we are under a cease-fire command!”
It took a few seconds for it to register. I was going home. I was going to see my wife. I had not touched her in thirty-two years, and I was now only a few short weeks from being home. I activated my radio for transmitting. “Men put your weapons on standby, do not power them down. Word of the cease fire may not have reached the ground troops at the landing zone.”
I turned my active scanners on and scanned the landing zone. Below us stood four men and none of them were armed. More than five miles away was a group of soldiers and none of them carried weapons. My mind began to truly grasp that this was real. The war was over.
Then it came over the radio. “All troops, we are under a peace treaty. Men and women, we are going home. The war is over. Soldiers this comes by direct order from the president of earth, Lady Domini, power down and holster all weapons. You are to treat anyone you meet as an honored friend. The war is over, and we are not to hold grudges. Talks are proceeding for trade agreements and cultural exchanges. Men we are leaving for home in fourteen days. Yes, you heard that right, we are going home!”
I was back on the carrier. There was an air of excitement here. Everyone had come to believe. We had been treated as honored guests by the Instagram people. They had truly surrendered. We were completely unprepared for what we found when we hit the ground. The population of their planet had been hit hard by the war. At the beginning of the war there had been almost a trillion people on the planet below. Now they numbered less than one hundred million. They had no choice. They did not have enough people left to fight. It was going to take them millennia to rebuild, and they were going to need help.
I was waiting my turn to make a call home. I refused to use my rank to jump the line. No one here was less important to someone back home. As the line slowly diminished, I thought back on the war. I had expected some of the other fleets to be here for the final assault. At one time there had been over one hundred fleets. Only ours was committed to the last battle.
Could we be the only fleet left? That thought hit me like a ton of bricks. Had we come that close to being defeated? My thoughts were interrupted by my turn at the communications panel.
I thumbed my home contact number into the panel and made my recording. “Baby, we are coming home. I cannot wait to see you. I hope you have not given up on me and moved in with the milkman. We go into Jump-Space tomorrow morning and will be making Earth orbit in twenty-three days. As always, my heart is yours. I love you, Danni.”
When I hit the send button, I looked at my chronograph. My meeting with the admiralty staff was in fifteen minutes. It was supposed to be important but there was too much of an air of festivity aboard for me to worry.
I walked into the conference room and looked at the smiles on the command staff’s faces. It even invaded here. We all waited for Fleet Admiral Stinson to enter the room. As I sat down, I noticed an ice bucket and a collection of alcohol sitting in the center of the table.
“Please help yourselves,” Stinson said as he entered the room. “We have something to celebrate after the orders are handed out.” As men and women reached for the bottles and glasses, he continued.
“We have orders to return home ASAP. There are also a couple of strange orders along the way. All soldiers are to have their anti-impregnation implants removed immediately. Rank fraternization is not only no longer prohibited, but also now encouraged. In fact, the order states, and I quote, ‘the men and women on the ships are to make as many conquests and pregnancies as possible on the way home.’ I am not sure about these orders, but they come with a presidential seal on them. Any pregnant female soldier will be given a full pension for the rest of her life when she arrives home.”
One of the staff asked a simple question. “Sirs are we to assume from this, that the women back home are eager to start having children again?”
“I think that would be one way to put it. If I am reading the orders right, they not only are eager but are impatient to start. The orders also continue with the statement, ‘married men are not excused from this duty and must participate.’ The statement I received is that they want all female soldiers pregnant by the time they get home.”
I asked out of a true sense of foreboding. “Sir I have noticed a few things and I am afraid of what we are going to find when we get home. When was the last time this fleet received a male recruit when replacements arrived?”
“I cannot answer that. I am under orders…”
“How many soldiers comprise the complement of this fleet?”
“Thirty-one thousand, five hundred?”
“How many of those soldiers are male?”
“Ten thousand.”
“When was the last time we communicated with another fleet?”
“You are correct in your thoughts, Rock. We are the last Earth fleet.”
“If I am right, then the entire male population of humans is on these ships…”
“Not quite, but the only men left on earth are in nursing homes. We made a mistake, during the war the draft was made mandatory for men, with no exceptions. Every man was inducted at the age of eighteen or older. The mistake was not caught until the last male soldier left Earth. There have been no children born on earth in the last eighteen years. I expect every man on these ships to do their duty and have sex, as much sex as possible.”
“What about the men that have taken vows of faithfulness?”
“tell them their vows are canceled, under orders. It is simple; we have twenty-three days to get more than twenty thousand women pregnant. We need every man we can get. I expect every soldier to do his duty and sleep with at least one woman per day until we have accomplished our mission. One final thing, the soldiers need to know, any woman giving birth to a male child will be given a five million credit bonus…”
To be continued
I was lined up in the launch tube. The check system for my Combat Armor, Tactical, Heavy, was running. Our last-ditch assault on the Instagram home world would launch in a few minutes. This war had lasted far too long. I had been a CATH pilot for twenty-four of my thirty-two years in service.
I watched the last of the system lights switch to green and thumbed the intercom system to life. “This is Field Admiral Adam ‘Rock’ Drake. I am green and hot across the board and ready for launch at your command.”
My intercom answered from the bridge of the carrier. “Rock, we are a go for launch in T minus seventeen seconds. Hang onto your hats men this is an all-out assault. No matter what happens the war ends today.”
I watched the timer count down. We were under radio silence once the umbilical cut lose. I listened to the last minute chatter as the nineteen other CATH suits reported green lights. Then the timer hit zero.
It felt like someone stuffed a rocket engine up my ass, as the launch system slammed me down the length of the tube. Faster than it took to think about it, the launch sabot was packed around my suit, and I was ejected at mind-numbing speeds toward the planet below.
Two minutes after launch, we passed the moon of the planet IN stag. That was when the first layer of the sabot wrapped around my suit started its function. The braking rockets fired, and we started to slow. We would still hit the atmosphere at more than eighteen thousand miles per hour. Much slower than our current speed.
I looked at the combat clock. In four minutes, we would enter the outer atmosphere. I had expected enemy fire by now. The fleet was moving in behind us with the landing craft and space defenses. But there was no resistance. Not even a scanning beam to detect us.
The job of my men and I was to establish a landing zone to bring the troops in. It is what we do. First in, last out, and never give ground. These combat suits had been designed and upgraded so many times. The current model weighed eighty-one tons and held the firepower of a full artillery division. At the current rate, we were going to make ground fall with a full complement of ammo.
the first layer peels off and disintegrates as we passed the edge of the outer atmosphere. Then the first of the flower petals bloomed. The pod extended the next layer out and started using the atmosphere to break our fall. I watched the display for my speed. I was slowing rapidly as the friction heat burned away the petals of the flower, I rode in. Then a sudden jerk as those petals collapsed and broke away.
The third layer spread, and I bloomed again in the springtime of our planet's fall. I watched as my indicators drifted into the range of acceptability. Layer after layer peeled off and slowed me until I came down to terminal velocity. Then the last layer broke away and I was in daylight. Five thousand feet above the ground I was now hanging from a massive air foil.
Still, we had encountered no resistance. Not even a single projectile had been fired. My Radio cracked and a voice came on. “Cease fire! Cease fire! It is over, the Instagram people have surrendered! Do not fire, we are under a cease-fire command!”
It took a few seconds for it to register. I was going home. I was going to see my wife. I had not touched her in thirty-two years, and I was now only a few short weeks from being home. I activated my radio for transmitting. “Men put your weapons on standby, do not power them down. Word of the cease fire may not have reached the ground troops at the landing zone.”
I turned my active scanners on and scanned the landing zone. Below us stood four men and none of them were armed. More than five miles away was a group of soldiers and none of them carried weapons. My mind began to truly grasp that this was real. The war was over.
Then it came over the radio. “All troops, we are under a peace treaty. Men and women, we are going home. The war is over. Soldiers this comes by direct order from the president of earth, Lady Domini, power down and holster all weapons. You are to treat anyone you meet as an honored friend. The war is over, and we are not to hold grudges. Talks are proceeding for trade agreements and cultural exchanges. Men we are leaving for home in fourteen days. Yes, you heard that right, we are going home!”
I was back on the carrier. There was an air of excitement here. Everyone had come to believe. We had been treated as honored guests by the Instagram people. They had truly surrendered. We were completely unprepared for what we found when we hit the ground. The population of their planet had been hit hard by the war. At the beginning of the war there had been almost a trillion people on the planet below. Now they numbered less than one hundred million. They had no choice. They did not have enough people left to fight. It was going to take them millennia to rebuild, and they were going to need help.
I was waiting my turn to make a call home. I refused to use my rank to jump the line. No one here was less important to someone back home. As the line slowly diminished, I thought back on the war. I had expected some of the other fleets to be here for the final assault. At one time there had been over one hundred fleets. Only ours was committed to the last battle.
Could we be the only fleet left? That thought hit me like a ton of bricks. Had we come that close to being defeated? My thoughts were interrupted by my turn at the communications panel.
I thumbed my home contact number into the panel and made my recording. “Baby, we are coming home. I cannot wait to see you. I hope you have not given up on me and moved in with the milkman. We go into Jump-Space tomorrow morning and will be making Earth orbit in twenty-three days. As always, my heart is yours. I love you, Danni.”
When I hit the send button, I looked at my chronograph. My meeting with the admiralty staff was in fifteen minutes. It was supposed to be important but there was too much of an air of festivity aboard for me to worry.
I walked into the conference room and looked at the smiles on the command staff’s faces. It even invaded here. We all waited for Fleet Admiral Stinson to enter the room. As I sat down, I noticed an ice bucket and a collection of alcohol sitting in the center of the table.
“Please help yourselves,” Stinson said as he entered the room. “We have something to celebrate after the orders are handed out.” As men and women reached for the bottles and glasses, he continued.
“We have orders to return home ASAP. There are also a couple of strange orders along the way. All soldiers are to have their anti-impregnation implants removed immediately. Rank fraternization is not only no longer prohibited, but also now encouraged. In fact, the order states, and I quote, ‘the men and women on the ships are to make as many conquests and pregnancies as possible on the way home.’ I am not sure about these orders, but they come with a presidential seal on them. Any pregnant female soldier will be given a full pension for the rest of her life when she arrives home.”
One of the staff asked a simple question. “Sirs are we to assume from this, that the women back home are eager to start having children again?”
“I think that would be one way to put it. If I am reading the orders right, they not only are eager but are impatient to start. The orders also continue with the statement, ‘married men are not excused from this duty and must participate.’ The statement I received is that they want all female soldiers pregnant by the time they get home.”
I asked out of a true sense of foreboding. “Sir I have noticed a few things and I am afraid of what we are going to find when we get home. When was the last time this fleet received a male recruit when replacements arrived?”
“I cannot answer that. I am under orders…”
“How many soldiers comprise the complement of this fleet?”
“Thirty-one thousand, five hundred?”
“How many of those soldiers are male?”
“Ten thousand.”
“When was the last time we communicated with another fleet?”
“You are correct in your thoughts, Rock. We are the last Earth fleet.”
“If I am right, then the entire male population of humans is on these ships…”
“Not quite, but the only men left on earth are in nursing homes. We made a mistake, during the war the draft was made mandatory for men, with no exceptions. Every man was inducted at the age of eighteen or older. The mistake was not caught until the last male soldier left Earth. There have been no children born on earth in the last eighteen years. I expect every man on these ships to do their duty and have sex, as much sex as possible.”
“What about the men that have taken vows of faithfulness?”
“tell them their vows are canceled, under orders. It is simple; we have twenty-three days to get more than twenty thousand women pregnant. We need every man we can get. I expect every soldier to do his duty and sleep with at least one woman per day until we have accomplished our mission. One final thing, the soldiers need to know, any woman giving birth to a male child will be given a five million credit bonus…”
To be continued
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