Battle Extraordinaire (mine own)

Recent events have me thinking about To Defend the Earth. Ten years ago I was writing about Mid-Course Interceptors and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense' batteries. Now the former has been tested and the alter deployed, all in response to the Norks.

By the way, we plan to wrap up Tiger's Tail this weekend.

Parts of To Defend the Earth are ten years old now.

Of course the book begins with the line, 'Madam President'....I wrote that line in 2006 and figured it'd be Hillary! Alas it was not to be. So the president morphed into a vague Midwestern mayor and uber-liberal. I thought that would be more interesting. What you want some pistol-packing Sarah Palin Type? Well, just go ahead and read To Survive the Earth, you get plenty of that there.

[Sarah Palin type? You might as well have put an 'I love Alaska' T-shirt on her-Ed]

Oh I can think of some things I'd like to put on Sarah Palin.

[Really?-ed]

Anyway, I always liked the way the combat sequences turned out in To Defend the Earth. Here's one with all that missile gadgetry.

As we rolled up to the command bunker we saw several missile contrails streaking into the sky. We heard several sonic booms as air force jets raced north. Just as we stepped the bunker there was a series of large, loud explosions to the northwest.

In contrast to what was happening outside, inside the bunker everything was calm. Technicians sat at their computers. A few aids walked back and forth between the banks of terminals. General Lutch stood before a large flat screen. He sipped a cup of tea as a pair of red dots made their way down the island’s northwestern coast.

He sipped his tea and said, ‘Keep the fire coming.’ A blue triangle off the coast flashed. A second later a sinking ship icon appeared next to it. ‘Damn,’ said Lutch.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked Scott.

‘Means one of the S-A-Gs just lost a ship.’

‘S-A-Gs?’ Denny asked.

‘Surface Action Groups.’

We weren’t supposed to bring any recording devices into the bunker, but I still had my cell phone on me. As things got tense I hit the record button. I’m not sure who Lutch was on the phone with but it was someone high up for sure. There was a lot of military talk but basically two Jai ships, one of those big carriers and what turned out to be a transport were making their way along the coast.  Here’s the money graph.

‘Tell the national command authority that I need my nukes released…that’s right…this is a formal request…Hold on? I need to fire now… ok….ok….no I haven’t asked the Icelanders…I don’t have time for this…alright.’

He hung up the phone and issued orders. ‘Alright, weapons free. Nuke those incoming ships.’

Getting right to the heart of the matter, as far as I was concerned, I asked Scott, ‘Any danger to use?’

‘I dunno.’

We heard air raid sirens.

What exactly they fired I didn’t know at the time. I later learned that one of the cruisers in the surface action group fired off a trio of nuclear tipped cruise missiles. They nabbed a pair of smaller ships, those bombers that were about to cause so much trouble for the Marines, but the carrier ship and the other large ship, I later found out it was an assault landing craft survived.  The nukes scarred them off the though and the Jai withdrew into space.

A few hours later they came back. This time a barrage of missiles preceded them. These took out suspected missiles sites and troop concentrations. The missile attack was followed up by Jai bombers. A great air battle erupted over the island. Denny went outside and shot some footage but all she was able to get was contrails and some distant explosions. She did capture some footage of a parachute, one of ours. General Lutch kept throwing aircraft in the fight, with heavy casualties resulting, but it wasn’t enough and the Jai were able to seize control of the air.

With air superiority achieved a pair of Jai carriers escorted an assault ship into the atmosphere. Lutch had one last surprise for them though. While they were still in the upper atmosphere he committed a squadron of ASAT armed F-15 Eagles. None of the missiles got through but they did complicate the Jai descent, forcing them to pause while they dealt with the Eagles. This last ditch effort was joined by a battalion of THAAD missiles, and finally, the battery of Mid-Course Interceptors that had been deployed to the island. They scored a couple of hits on one of the carriers but that’s all. The Jai landed at Stadur, a village at the head of a deep fjord on the northern coast about 80 miles from Reykjavik. One carrier stayed behind with the assault ship.

A Marine battalion was stationed nearby and within minutes a recon team was on sight and beaming footage back to Lutch. Denny and I saw it projected on the big flat screen. Two ships lay at anchor in the fjord. They were massive. Actually the assault landing ship was even larger than the carrier. A pair of great doors were were opened. A causeway had been erected to the shore, across it moved vehicles, one by one. The camera man zoomed in on one vehicle, it was some sort of tank. On the shore were soldiers, alien soldiers carrying rifles and clad in body armor. You could clearly see Jai giving orders and directing squads to different points on the shore.