Chapter 17

Jimmy was a little pissed off when I sent him out on his first foray into the real world. I sent him and Ann out as partners to take a look at southern New York and northern Pennsylvania. I sent them in the general direction of Scranton to see if the harvesters had advanced that far. What galled Jimmy was that I sent them out with Ann as the leader. Dammit, she was a GIRL and YOUNGER than Jimmy at that! That was going to kill his standing with his peers.

Despite this, Jimmy was so anxious to go that he did accept my orders, and he left us in perfect formation as Ann's wingman. I figured that Jimmy's annoyance would last only as long as they could see Worcester, and they were flying very high. This was supposed to be only a reconnaissance mission, but I figured that both of the teens could not contain themselves indefinitely, and they would just have to shoot at something before they came home.

It turned out that I had figured them correctly. Ann led the pair to approximately 4,000 feet so that they could see a wide area. They flew southwest for a few miles before they could no longer see Worcester. Only a little farther and they were beyond our concentrated flying radius. Almost immediately after that, they started to see active harvesting operations. In fact, they saw so many that they could not resist temptation.

As flight leader, Ann made the first strafing run with Jimmy on her heels. She took out the two cutters in one pass. When they returned to altitude, Ann showed her leadership abilities by sending Jimmy in as the lead to go after the three collectors following the cutters. Jimmy had to jiggle a little as he swept over the three huge machines because they were not exactly aligned. Nevertheless, he made a clean sweep of the three machines.

They went back to altitude to look for the chip carrier. There it was on its final approach, but their radar had picked it up soon enough that they had a vector to follow. It was Ann's turn again, so she took out the chip carrier before they headed for the distillery. At their high altitude, they had no trouble spotting the distillery with the Mark 1 eyeball, as all fighter jockeys like to say. Ann sent Jimmy in to strafe the building.

Jimmy slowed down to give his beams time to penetrate the building as he had been instructed. His dive was a classic, and it showed his skill in controlling his ship. His beams caught the building very near the ground and began to slice the wall in half as Jimmy flew over the building. When the beams got to the roof, they had no trouble cutting through, and flames were coming from the cuts in the structure before Jimmy had a chance to get away. Suddenly, Ann's voice came over the radio, "Jimmy, get your ass out of there! The whole thing looks like it's going to blow any second!"

Jimmy was smart enough to understand and act on an order that was very good advice, and he gunned his airmobile away just in time. The structure blew up just as if it had received a direct hit from a 2,000-pound bomb, and the debris filled the air right behind Jimmy's ship. Neither Jimmy nor Ann had any firm idea of what had happened, but they were ecstatic over the results. We heard them in Worcester as they both cheered over the radio. The VHF signal was carrying very well from their high altitude, and we could hear everything that they said to each other.

I had not told them to continue with the original mission because they had already discovered what I really wanted to know; namely, that we had missed the boat by not hitting this area sooner. Well, the two teens were doing absolutely the right thing under the circumstances, so I was not going to interfere.

I did ask Ann for the location of the distillery so that I could mark it on my map, and I told her to keep up the good work. Not only were they destroying alien property, but Jimmy was getting the practice he needed so that he could lead flights. That I did not say over the radio, but it was one of my main thoughts as the teens continued to annoy the aliens.

They were working on their third distillery when Ann suddenly came on the radio to talk to me in Worcester. "Mr. Hunter, my radar has picked up two bogies. Are there any of our flying boxes in this area? Over."

"No, Ann, there are none. What do you want to do? Over."

"Since they must be aliens operating them, can we take them out? I want to try something that may send them down without making them crash. Over."

"Okay, go ahead. Use your judgment. I trust you to do the right thing. Worcester out."

I could almost hear Ann beam at my last statement. Meanwhile, I was hoping that I had done the right thing. Later, I got the details of what the two did to bring down the flying boxes.

The two flying boxes were flying so far apart that the kids could not be certain that they were on the same mission. Ann arbitrarily selected one of them and dove right at the front of the flying box. There was no doubt that the pilot could see her, especially when she suddenly stopped in front of him and started to fly backwards at the same speed that the alien was moving forward. Once she had the alien's full attention, she started to slow down.

Well, the alien could also see the quad-mount in the front of her airmobile and how it was pointed directly at his face. That must have been one frightened pilot because he came to a sudden stop in mid air. Ann stopped as soon as the alien stopped. They were low enough that it was safe for Ann to lower her window, so she did and gestured for the alien to land. It took quite a bit of waving before the alien figured out what she wanted, but eventually he did land.

Ann stayed in front of the alien as he went down, and she landed when he did. Just to emphasize her point, Ann fired a shot into the ground in front of the alien. The alien did not know what to do, so he just froze in place.

Jimmy landed to one side, but still were the alien could see him. He got out of his airmobile and walked to the back of the flying box. By this time, he had his ray gun out and he stood so that he could burn off the latches holding the rear door closed. He pulled the door open and looked inside. There were three aliens sitting on a bench in the back of the cargo bay, and the aliens froze in position. They stayed that way as Jimmy climbed into the cargo bay and went to the front of the bay. He opened the door to the pilot's compartment and that was the first moment that the pilot knew that he was aboard.

Jimmy waved the alien toward the back of the vessel and radioed to Ann to tell us in Worcester that he had captured four aliens. He wanted instructions as to what he should do with them. Ann made the call, and I said that they should get the aliens out of the craft and sitting on the ground. I figured that if the aliens were sitting down, they would have a lot of trouble getting back up, and Jimmy would have plenty of time to shoot them if he had to.

While that was going on, I scrambled HAF-1 and HAF-7 to fly to Pennsylvania with six people armed with ray guns and air guns. It took them 15 minutes to get off the ground and headed southwest as fast as the flying boxes would travel. I was the seventh passenger in that flying box.

Jimmy had to work at it, but he finally convinced the aliens with "sign language" to sit down on the grass. They were reluctant to do it, but a couple of blasts with the ray gun into the ground near them convinced them to follow instructions.

Ann took off to fly air cover until the rest of us arrived. She also looked for the other flying box with her radar, but she could not find it. Either it had landed or it had bugged out, and she did not know what to do. I managed to contact her the second time she called. She was getting frantic by then, but she calmed down as soon as she heard my voice. I told her that she was doing the right thing by flying air cover, and she should not worry about the other alien flying box unless it started to approach her.