Ace High

Sam Nolting

They hit the planet nightside.

"Red-One! Early!" Me, Alfonso Early, Airman First Class, United States Air Force, flying a beat-up souped-up Lockheed-Boeing-Martin F-31 Barracuda, oh-one-hundred hours, scrambling.

Now, night don't mean a thing to a comp-operated missile battery or an automated defense grid. Dark doesn't fuddle an orbital antimatter cannon, and when you light a bandit up at midnight he lights up all the prettier.

"I read you, Ground. Red-One is prepped for takeoff."

But there's something about nighttime that can catch a body off-guard.

"You got clearance, Red-One."

We got caught off-guard.

"Roger that, Ground. I'm firin' her up."

"T-minus three, Early." The lights on the coil came on, and I looked up the launch tunnel to a little circle of night sky.

Hell, we got caught with our trousers down.

"Two!" I tripped the burner switch.

We won't make that mistake twice.

"One!" A rumble as the engines roared to life.

Wish I could say that's because we learned our lesson, 'stead of because we let 'em through and the goddamn frogpedes fried the surface like a one-fifty-million-klick-wide barbeque grill and fricasseed every last man, woman and child planetside. Yeah, I wish.

I hear some 'ports say Liftoff. We had a different system.

"Fuck 'em up, Early!"

"Damn -- " A crack as the rail-chute's leads connected -- "straight!" -- and a wham as the jet shoved air aside like an impatient birthday boy at present time.

That was Earth's last night, sure. But we lit up that night. By God and heaven, we damn well lit. it. up.

It was a hell of a show.

---

This plane is an ugly piece of shit. It's got lumps and bumps and antennae sprouting off its ass like nose hair. Looks like the love-child of the old Space Shuttle, a good old-fashioned pointy-nosed low-alt fighter, and some kinda hog. Yeah, I know that's three. Science does amazing things nowadays.

I call her Maria.

My co-pilot's a crip; a withered little genius so ripped up with the curveballs of Life that his rich folks finally gave up and slapped his brain in a tube. Hardly takes up any room, and he never has to piss.

Far's I know, me an' him an' Maria are the last checkers on our side of the board. Those red pieces made a clean sweep. Maybe there's an ark left somewhere, eating space on its sublight way to Alpha Centauri or something, like the bigwigs were saying before the 'pedes fried 'em. I doubt it. The frogpedes aren't nothing but thorough, and they can count on their fingers like nobody's business.

They fly nice boats. They've got big ol' arks like carriers, Mother Ships that can belch out thousands of little beautiful waxy-smooth snubnosed babies with the flip of a hatch. Those planes -- those planes, Lord. If we'd've had planes like that, we'd still be a we. They didn't have to go easy on the atmosphere, man, they were the atmosphere, they slipped in like a roofie. We saw a lot of them, that night.

---

The plane was shaking and groaning, I could feel the bits falling out the back, I felt like I needed to grab both sides of the cockpit just to hold the halves together. We shot up, out from our big pretty blue ball, out to where the air was thin and black and you could look down and see half the hemisphere, see the spiderweb of lights all across both coasts and the band in the middle, connecting the two. Like a big H, Canada to Baja to Boston, then up and down from Maine to Miami.

It wasn't dark then and it isn't dark now. Now there's fires.

"Red wing, sound off!" crackled Ground in my head.

"Red-One, Early," I sang out. "Where's the target?"

"Up," said the other voice in my head, the British one.

"Thanks, Brain."

Two, three, four, all eight of us in the high-sky by now. There were a load of wings; not all of 'em had names as boring as ours, but really, if you're up there, you'd rather be calling "Red" for help than wasting your breath and your last few milliseconds screaming your face off for the Hellcat Sky-Panthers.

The Hellcats are gone now, but that's okay, they were punks anyway. My wing was cutting up the deep high blue, wingtip to wingtip, no longer straight up. We'd leveled off, turning pirouettes, waiting for the hippos in tutus to join the dance.

And then they did. Big black waves blotted out the stars, and then they flipped the inside lights. I had to squint, because all of a sudden there was the biggest goddamn Christmas light ever made, hovering over my head so close I could touch it. It wasn't really; it was a few thousand miles off. Those mothers are big.

They'd flipped, engines down, pounding to an orbital stop, the blue rings of flame under their big round-pointy selves searing a thousand klicks of air to ozone. They were like the Empire State Building all smoothed and rounded out and glowing. My wing scattered, screaming. We lost one right there, fried to nothing in the engines. Bobby Ruider, young kid. New. Probably he'd been watching the planet 'stead of the sky; he was still too green to have gotten used to the view.

"How'd they get through?" I yelled out loud, banking away from the burning blueness, as the big mothers began shelling the Eastern seaboard.

"They blew through our ant-mat guns like paper," whispered the Brain in my ear. "They wiped the research posts on Mars already. And the lunar penal colonies. They've only taken ten percent losses from the first shot fired."

"Shit," I said. "Red wing, get over here. This one's our momma tonight."

Then our ground guns opened up, and the monster I was ogling got a twenty-kiloton prostate exam at Mach Eight.

I pulled into an uphill turn, my belly to the stars, turning away from the nuke flash, my nose aimed at the next loaf of blue-burning French bread. "Okay, scratch that. This one."

---

When the frogships come in, their first move is dropping their fighters; a momma's no good if she gets blowed up pregnant. So I could see the hatches whizzing open up there, spitting watermelon seeds.

"We got bandits, we got bandits, to my twelve and high!" Brain was already tossing the bearings to the other navs, but old habits die hard. I rolled upright again and climbed. "Break off and take 'em, Reds!" I called. "Enough to go around!"

"Shaddup," growled O'Kerner. He was short and Irish and whiskery and so fat and ugly that the Force would've axed him years ago if he hadn't kicked so much ass with a rail-gun.

Missiles are obsolete, you know. Don't listen to the desk generals, pushing papers all day. Can't get their heads outta their asses long enough to see a thing. Rail-guns can put a billiard ball through a tank a mile away before you let go of the trigger. And that's in atmo. Out here we've got our Gatlings for the dogfights and our rails for every mother-of-God thing else.

The Irishman shot first, nailed a bugger off my right wing. Then it was all in, all our chips on the table and the shirts off our backs and our little dog too, all on the line against the kingpins. We knew it was bad odds. We just hadn't quite figured on it being Russian Roulette with all six chambers loaded.

---

Frogpede planes look like manta rays and they move, God they move like a dream, a wet dream for Chrissakes. I drew a bead on one and he jinked up; I rolled after him, spitting. I winged him but he kept going, slipping side-side-down-up, spinning. I stayed on his tail like I was leashed.

"Bandit on our six, missile in the air," Brain said. "Countermeasures." I heard the cough of the flares dumping. I said our missiles were obsolete. Theirs are beyond words. They move fast. And when they hit --

WHOM went the missile as it burst in the flares, a mile behind us. The shockwave blew us crazy, and I lost my man.

"Bank nine!" yelled Brain in my skull and I did, threw the stick hard left. Whoosh a bandit streaked past me, trailing oily smoke, going down. "Nice shot," I said to the world, as I straightened out and climbed. My bandit right ahead, tooling on, oblivious. Five seconds 'til I hit rail range. I could hardly miss.

"Bandit on my six!" screamed O'Kerner. Four seconds.

"Somebody cover the Irishman's ass," I gritted, three two --

"Get 'im off me, Early!"

I broke off and opened up as O'Kerner screeched past, smoking, bandit behind him jabbing out with its laser.

Holes walked up the side and the bandit broke off, coming apart. I ducked under the debris, heading for Brain's target.

"Australia's ground guns are out," said Brain like he was reporting the weather. "Asia's nearly gone too."

Bam and the 'pede went down, spiraling. I wheeled and picked up another bandit, this one slaloming through the fight, taking potshots. One man, two men two planes down. I tapped the railgun too early, and the tin-can drew a pencil line past his alien ear. Three seconds 'til the recharge. Two.

"Jesus!" came the Brain's scream, and the radar howled.

FWOOM and a bomber dropped past me, a big evil teardrop with fins. "On its ass!" I hollered, falling at it like a rock with a jet engine. "Roger," said O'Kerner, and I realized that he was the last of us.

Bam bam bam O'Kerner and I put three new holes up the bomber's ass but it kept going, falling or flying I wasn't sure.

"Pull up, Early," said O'Kerner in my ear, "or you're crisped!" I pulled up, watching my window edge itself with fire in the heavier atmo.

"Oh shit," said the Irishman as a 'pede cut him in half. I climbed, hooked myself to a bandit, and watched their fighters streaming upward too, back to their mommas, as bomber after bomber fell away planetside.

Below me, the lights went out.

---

Earth was gone, Earth was wiped, but I chased that bastard. I gave him all I had and a little more, and he ran. He ran in circles and he danced air polka but I stayed on him. Above me the hatches were closing, the bombers were rising up and away, below me was nothing but scorch and melted steel.

I don't know why I didn't get iced with them. I think they just assumed all the fighters they didn't blast would eventually have to land and die. Well. To hell with that.

"They're opening the portals," said Brain. And the 'pede broke for them, running his ass off for the wavery green-red-purple distortion of the holes between the stars. I followed, because what else? I was homeless with a gun.

Zap, zap, zap, went the mommas and they were gone. Zap went the bombers and they were gone. The portals shimmered and began to close; my plane rattled in the horror of vacuum. The 'pede put on the juice, as the portals shifted faster, red-purple-red-purple-red-purple-green.

He squeezed his alien ass through, and by God I squeezed mine in after. There wasn't anything left to go home to.

---

End of part I. If you'd like to read more, drop me a review or email up at look dot com.