Chapter 604

After discovering that a Paladin could be destroyed if it were hit with multiple and near-simultaneous missile attacks, Earth had put practically everything it could into the air if there were the slightest chance the endeavor could down one of the alien craft.

For those who don’t know, the A10 Warthog is basically a giant cannon – the GAU-8 Avenger – with a set of wings strapped onto it. Okay, so that might be a slight exaggeration since the aircraft has 11 hardpoints for missiles and the electronics to pretty much make the plane capable of firing them at just about anything.

The aircraft was designed for close air support, and is perfectly suited to that job. Many ground troops swear by them and love the “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrp” sound of that cannon firing on an enemy position with projectiles that weigh just shy of a pound each. The cannon that the pilot is basically strapped onto fires up to 3900 rounds of 30 mm cannon shells per minute. Of course, if the pilot fired all the rounds he carried at once, he would melt even the Avenger’s barrels.

The gun has 7 rotating barrels, each 7½ feet long and weighing 70 pounds apiece, with the entire gun assembly with ammo loadout weighing in at over 4,000 pounds. It can spit out up to 70 rounds/second, approximately 3900 depleted uranium rounds/minute that can defeat armor from up to two miles away. The A10 has a top speed of up to 375 knots – slow when compared to other combat jet fighters. The pilot sits in a titanium “bathtub” that in an early test withstood rounds from a 57 mm antiaircraft gun. One engine can burn and fall off, and the Warthog will keep flying with a wing and a half and only one tail fin.

The aircraft has triple redundancy, which means that if the main hydraulics goes down, the secondary will kick in. If that fails, then the pilot can change to a manual version and keep flying.

One pilot came back from the sand wars with a hole in his wing that was almost big enough to drive a golf cart through. The hole was the result of an exploding SAM missile. When they say that the Warthog can fly with one and a half wings, they aren’t kidding.

Every country in the world that had an air force was putting everything that carried a missile or gun and could fly into the air, but when Captain Farthington and the other Hog pilots walked out onto the flight line that morning, the “real” fighter jocks were kidding them – as usual. “How do you intend to catch up to an alien in those things?” was one of the lighter jabs. “You don’t even have any missiles.”

True, they didn’t because many had been assigned to faster aircraft and other airbases.

“I still have my gun,” Farthington growled under his breath as he continued on toward his Hog.

He was barely clear of the runway since he was last after all the later-model, high-speed fighters that had been given preference, and was just past 2000 feet as he began his turn toward his assigned area. As he continued his climb, one of the alien Paladins dove past him at enormous speed. Because of its shields, it had not appeared on his radar until it was almost upon him.

Nevertheless, one of the Paladin gunners fired at him as they dived at the base. His A10 shook and seemed to stagger in the air, but it was a Wart Hog so it kept flying. The Captain barely noticed, his blood up, as he banked hard to fall in behind just as the Paladin slowed abruptly and began firing at the planes lined up on the ground.

The gunners either didn’t notice him or disregarded his ugly craft as they poured bolt after bolt toward the airfield below. The Wart Hog has a rudimentary sight that the pilot uses, but mostly he just points his plane at the target and hoses it with the Avenger’s tremendous rate of fire. The gun uses 30 millimeter depleted uranium cannon shells capable of burning through thick tank armor since the depleted uranium is much harder than steel, and the huge projectile is rocking along at 1013 meters/second or roughly 3323 feet/second.

The shields of the Paladin could easily shrug off a cannon shell, but a stream of them made of depleted uranium wasn’t in the same ballpark. Halfway through the first second, the Paladin’s shields failed, and most of the rest of the rounds in that two-second burst chewed up the fuselage, motor, energy system and ... aliens – although it was certainly debatable if they ever knew that they were under attack before they ceased to exist. Since the Captain had started firing a quarter-mile before he caught up to the hapless Paladin, the blast only rocked the Hog.

There weren’t nearly as many derogatory comments about the slow-flying Wart Hogs that day. From then on, the Wart Hogs at that base were given preference in whatever their Commander wanted in loadout. And yeah, that probably went against a number of regs, but this was war with Earth’s very existence hanging in the balance. Besides, no other pilot at that base had managed to shoot down a Paladin, let alone with something as ugly as an A10 – and with a gun, at that. Whatever worked was used, and they now knew that a 30 mm cannon would do the job – at least at that rate of fire.

The Alien Ship

“That thing destroyed one of our glorious Paladins?” the Captain stammered out, his anger so intense that he could barely speak. “It looks as if a child just put the pieces together randomly in his playset,” he said as he viewed the video taken from the base and broadcast over nationwide TV as the A10 pilot hosed the Paladin with one long “Brrrrrrrrrrrp,” that overloaded the Paladin’s shields as if they weren’t there, setting off its energy source.

Then there was an absolute insult as the camera zoomed in on the still circling A10 with a good-sized chunk of its right wingtip gone from the Paladin’s energy bolt, the pilot apparently unconcerned about the airworthiness of his aircraft as he continued his mission.

Time dragged on, and the Paladins continued their assault on bases, cities or anything else that seemed to catch the craft Commander’s eye. Fighter pilots, ground gunners, and SAM sites poured their rounds and missiles into the sky when a Paladin showed. Occasionally the enemy’s shields were overloaded, and a “glorious” Paladin submitted to Earth’s gravity, and what was left of the craft and its occupants came crashing to the ground in pieces.

As the number of Paladins diminished, the crews’ spirits did as well. True, they were wreaking havoc on the Earth’s inhabitants, but there were billions of the Earthlings, and there had been only 48 Paladins that left their glorious Raider to take this planet. Never had they lost more than one or two Paladins as they assaulted a world. The inhabitants usually capitulated when they realized the enemy craft had shields that could not be penetrated. The Miadax promised that the subjected species would be treated fairly, but then punished the race unmercifully if they were unable to meet unrealistic levels of goods that they must supply.

“We need to give up on this world and use the big guns to send its inhabitants back to the Stone Age,” (Interpreted), the Commander growled out. “As I have repeatedly said, these Earthlings are crazy. They cannot win, and they must know it by now, but they continue unabated in their maniacal defense of their planet. We have not even been more than moderately successful in razing their cities because those damn interceptors show up almost as soon as we began firing. And they come in teams of two to four with others only seconds away because of their inertialess drives and their truly enormous speeds.

“They pass us at a quarter light with their weapons locked on and firing. By the time we realize that they are there, we are taking damage and have to put all our energy into breaking away. Even then, they often match our speeds and keep firing at us. We can’t even run away, because they have learned to fire at our engines. Once they surround you, your chances of survival are nil. There is nothing left to do but bombard the planet with the ship.”

“And ... you very well know what happens when I move my glorious ship toward the planet. That ... that thing comes out of nowhere and pours enormous amounts of energy into my vessel. Even one of our battleships could not withstand that much energy, and certainly not my glorious Raider. It was designed to take and transport the spoils of a newly acquired planet, not to stand against a true battleship. No other race in our records has resisted the way these Earthlings have, and certainly no race has ever had the technology to produce those damned interceptors, let alone that monster that lies in wait for me to draw near. I tell you that it is laughing at me.”

“You have missiles that you could fire at the planet. Why do you not do it?”

“Do you honestly believe that I have not tried that? They are barely away before they suddenly cease to exist. Truly, an exercise in futility. That ship is just waiting to destroy my glorious Raider and there seems to be absolutely nothing I can do about it.”

“Is the ship space worthy?”

“Well, of course it is. We have a couple of holds that are in vacuum, but our impulse drive works, and ... our warp drive would if that ass hadn’t locked out my controls.”

“Then we need to make a concerted effort with everything we have – all together. We will override that Earth ship’s defenses and win this battle once and for all. I have 12 Paladins and crews left. We shall all attack that ship at the same time. Surely its shields cannot withstand all that energy pouring into them all at once.”

The Captain stared at the image of the Commander. “You might just have something. It would take considerable coordination...”

“The computer could do it,” the Commander offered as he sat more upright in his chair.

“I could tap the extra energy reserves for our impulse drives. It could be used to reinforce the shields as they are depleted. That should give us at least a thirty percent increase in shield strength. Of course, the First Officer would know how to do that.”

“I sent a technician with you that should know how.”

“Then, we shall attack. One last all-out attack that will destroy the ship that prevents the completion of our mission. I will take great pleasure in seeing that thing disintegrate into a ball of energy that will never bother us again.”

The Primary Bridge of the Alien Ship

“Do you think it will work?” the First Officer asked the Chief Engineer over the intercom that the Science Officer now had functioning.