Chapter 42: City of Devastation

The shuttles and bombers belched from their landing bays, as lifters descended to drop off their cargo of mechs. Blaring from the shuttles' loudspeakers as they landed, they called on the people to come out so they can be helped. Specially equipped bombers flew over the worst of the blazes and dropped tons of water putting the fires out, while another ten special bombers headed for ground zero, and started spraying the area with ARCL198. As the mist hit the affected area, it turned green and dissolved into the ground taking the radiation with it. It would take thirty drops of the chemical; but in three days, every trace of the radiation would be gone. In the center of blast area, a crater over a mile deep was slowly filling with water diverted from the Truckee River.

Lieutenant Aaron Wilson, in one of the Washington's fighters, looked down on his hometown. He almost started crying at the devastation. Banking his fighter, he saw the tankers dumping tons of water on the burning casinos on Virginia Street. He switched his radio to 'intercom' to talk to his navigator Shawn McAlister.

"Stupid fools. I always said that connecting the casinos like that made them a fire hazard, and now you see why."

"Yeah, it was kind of stupid. So what if they get their feet wet if it rained when they crossed the streets. Looks like 'Circus Circus' has had it. There went the second tower. Hey look at that! That Cheetah just tore right through the connecting concourse of those two casinos, they just may save the one, but the other is a goner."

Aaron jerked his head to the other side of the ship just in time to see the tower collapsing in on itself.

"Reminds me of 9-11 when the towers came down, damn I cried that day."

Dropping down to two hundred feet he passed over a squad of mech, "Hey! I think that's my brother Matt's mech. It's covered in lightning bolts."

"Aaron the whole country cried at 9-11, but this is different. Those Crytherian bastards did this just to cover up their crimes, while 9-11 was a terrorist attack. Just a sec let me activate my camera and I will let you know about the mech." Shawn flipped the camera on, focused it on the mech as it shook the debris off, and he could see the white bolts on a blue field.

"Is his mech blue with white bolts on it?"

"Yeah, that's his mech. He painted the bolts himself. He loves to paint. You should see the paint job he did on the Admirals mech! It is so awesome. Especially the picture of Tammy in the cockpit, he got every detail, right down to her G-string bikini.

"You know I have been thinking on that nuke, it makes me wonder on all those other bases of theirs, would they do this as a preemptive attack so they could rape the planet of the entire human race?

"I don't know, Aaron, but its something to kick upstairs. You should ... Uh oh, we have inbound traffic to our location, I make it four F-15 fighters out of Klamath Falls Oregon, coming in at mach three. ETA is twelve minutes. Better contact the ship."

Aaron flipped his com on, and started making his report, "Sierra-Echo-One-Niner I have fast traffic inbound to my location. I make it four F-15 fighters out of Klamath Falls Oregon. What are my rules of engagement?"

"Do not fire on them. We are trying to raise them now. Raise your shields. If they fire on you, you are to evade them."

The black haired five-foot Eurasian woman stood there looking as the cloud of death dissipated into the atmosphere.

"Come on get that camera set up," Elizabeth Chang said as she began tapping her foot as she gathered her thoughts of what had just happened when her camera operator Jim Stone interrupted them.

Jim kicked the generator when it refused to start, and then started checking it. He found that the sparkplug wire was loose. Snapping it back on, he tried to start the generator again. It fired right up, this time. Looking over at Elizabeth, he let go of the cord.

With a grin, he said, "Beth we will be ready in sixty seconds." Looking over at the rest of the crew he continued, "Come on! Get those cables over here."

The rest of the crew dragged the black cables over and started plugging them in. From the van, Rick Torris yelled out, "We got power, tracking on satellite number one, we have a lock. You're a go, Jim."

"Okay Rick, keep that signal locked and break in, in twenty seconds, we have no phones so we can't call out."

Running over to the camera, he focused it on Beth and said, "Beth you're on in ten seconds we are going to break in."

Beth watched as Jim counted down and when he signaled she started talking, "This is Elizabeth Chang for CNN. I would like to apologize for breaking in like this. I am standing outside Cannon International Airport in Reno Nevada, where twenty minutes ago, a nuclear device was detonated nearby. From where we are standing we can see pillars of black smoke drifting up into the sky. I have heard reports that the beautiful downtown casinos are burning as we speak. The explosion seems to have been some miles outside of the city itself, but as you can see behind me, even several miles was too close for this once beautiful tourist town."

"We haven't had any official reports of ... Oh my God, Jim, turn the camera!" Beth said as she stood there and pointed behind him.

Jim looked at Beth for a second and then looked over his shoulder and saw the ship descending out of the clouds, whipping the camera around he settled it on the huge ship, and shouted, "Go, Beth."

"It's a ship descending from the sky! It's huge, and all white as you can see. I can see lightning bouncing off the hull. It looks like some doors are opening on the bottom, yes some type of doors. I count six of them. There are small craft coming out of these bottom doors. There must be three hundred craft descending from the ship, they are scattering around the city. Some are hovering over buildings on fire. They are dumping what looks like water on the fires. It is as if they are trying to save the city. Wait, several of them are coming towards us." Beth said.

She watched the two ships fly over and land at the airport, and then continued, "Two of the strange craft have landed at the airport behind me. One of the craft is as tall as a three-story building. I can see the top of it from here. There are some men and woman in some type of grey uniform coming towards us. They look human to me from this distance. Several of them are stopping and helping the people, they look like they are injecting something into the victims. They are talking with them and now are handing each person several items. I cannot tell what they are from here, I will find out as soon as I can. I will continue..."

Sergeant-Major Tim Anderson looked at the forty marines in the mech lander and shouted out to them, "Okay people we have a lot of wounded Americans out there. Hand each person two bottles of water and one MRE, for now. Also, inject them with the serum. If you have to explain to them what you are doing, do it fast and move on to the next person. You're working in two person teams, one has a cart the other passes it out."

The shuttle slammed into the concrete apron of the airport and as the door opened the marines rushed out followed by the two Cheetah mechs that took up guard duty while ten of the marines set up an eight-foot force field wall. The walls made a pen around the two ships to protect them and a maze to herd the survivors aboard the ship to get them out of here. Two other marines used a portable tractor beam and emptied the storage compartments of bottles of water, injectors and cases of food.

The rest of the marines gathered their carts, and forced their way into the airport. They started injecting everyone with the serum, to prevent radiation sickness and the blindness from looking at the blast.

Terry sat at the scanners and said, "Sir we have fighters inbound from Oregon, it looked like F-15s out of Klamath Falls ... Wait we have twenty-four F-18's inbound from Fallen and sixteen F-16s coming in from Nellis.

"Get me those fighters if they attack I do not want to fire on them," Ken said.

Terry flipped on the com unit and said, "This is the ship over Reno, to inbound fighters. You are approaching a search and rescue mission. Please turn back. Do not interfere." She waited for a response, and said, "They are not responding, Sir."

"Keep trying Terry, we need to get them to turn them around."

"Sierra-Echo-One-Niner is calling they have them on scope they want to know what their ROE are?"

Ken stood there for a second thinking and replied, "Tell them to use their shields and evade. Then get me the President on the ... no patch me into CNN. Its time the world knew of the lies."

Ken walked back to his chair and sat down. "Amy, Jessica to the bridge." Before he finished speaking both women materializes beside him.

"We are patched in to the CNN feed they are talking about the destruction of Reno, Sir. There is a camera crew up and running at Cannon International."