IRON GATE
April 29, 5795
Iron Gate, Titan
Extracted from the journal of Col. Knox
I have been stationed at Iron Gate for six months now, occasionally holding off Seleniun attacks. I am not sure why I am here, but General Flicouskie said I was the best of the best and then shipped me off to this measly excuse for a moon. He said I would be needed, but currently all I have been doing is shining my magna-boots and cleaning my laser rifle after target practice. Oh, did I mention I am only 15? So any ways, I am stuck here on this hell hole with a Reaper 3000 semiautomatic laser rifle, scorching the Seleniun's collective asses and having a good time doing it.
Well, I finally know why I am here, tonight I had watch from 22:00 to 04:00 with a few of the guys, while everyone else had rest period. As duly noted in the watch log, at 23:00 I noticed an eruption in Rocky Nolle Cove, about 10 kilometers away; the alarm bells were sounded as the Seleniun were attacking with more and more regularity, and the cove friggen EXPLODED for gods sake! A task force was sent to investigate the strange happening, and as I was "the best of the best", I was sent to lead the group. A standard task force mainly consists of a leader/pilot, a tactical expert, a medical expert, a weapons expert, a grease monkey, a communications person; and of course, an assortment of misfits and outcasts that like to call themselves soldiers (they are pretty good generally... but keep that fact between you and me.)
Upon reaching the cove on some hover sleds, we discovered that ALL of the liquid nitrogen in it had evaporated completely, and a large force shield generator which we had not previously detected was holding the sea of nitrogen back.
Now, while this was very odd, it was nothing compared to what was coming next...
Upon reaching the cove and discovering that it was dry as a sun baked bone ( I'm originally from Texas...) we (or at least I) were quite perplexed to see the floor of the cove recede a little, then slide to the left until it was out out of site; now here comes the part that's really interesting. Upon the floor disappearing, a large, deep vibrating HUMMMMMMMM filled the air, and even though we were in space suits... man... you could FEEL that hum. Shortly thereafter, the sleek, silver chrome lines of a space cruiser/battleship hybrid became visible in the growing darkness. As the platform the ship was resting finished rising from the hidden base in the bottom of the cove, massive floodlights burst forward from the darkness allowing us to see the ship in all its glory. Painted on the tail of the ship in electric blue, were four symbols, it simply said "LDX-1". As soon as I read that, I knew that ship was special, mainly because X-1 series ships are experimental ships, the first in their class, and also, the LD class ships (standing for their Light Drive engines) are the most reliable in the United Planet's fleet, so a new class of LD ships could only mean that they were massively upgraded. As it turned out, I was never more right. I immediately told my communications officer to begin listening on all frequencies for incoming transmissions. We were not surprised to soon hear a simple message that carried a lot of meaning, the message simply said "Broadcasting from the LDX-1 on revolving frequencies, do you read me Col. Knox?" This message may seem like nothing, but it told us two things, one: they knew who I was, and two: the voice was General Flicouskie's voice... and that was big, he never leaves Earth, unless it was bad, really bad. As it turned out, we were largely underestimating the problem, but my team and I knew one thing, they must be pretty damn crazy, or really desperate, to want us crackpots for a mission big enough to get General Flicouskie off Earth.
We quickly replied to the message saying, "Yes, we read you loud and clear." General Flicouskie told us to head back to base and pack our gear, and to "Tell Brigadier General Jameson that we were being transferred to the LDX-1 for operation shield.," whatever that was!
As soon as we had packed up our gear and stopped our weapons expert from taking every available weapon with him (I promised that there will be bigger and better guns onboard the ship), we reported to Jameson that we were being called away on some other tour of duty; it was sad to go, every man and woman on this base were like sisters and brothers to us all. As we left, we heard over the intercoms in our suits, a farewell salute, and as we listened, a rocket lit up the sky with a flash, a final good bye, our final memory of the doomed base called Iron Gate, Titan. (It later turned out that the rocket actually shot down a cloaked seleniun ship…)
My team climbed down a crude staircase that had been hewn into the rock to reach the launch pad for the ship. As the gang plank slowly extended down to the ground, the realization of what was really happening suddenly hit us, this is war, real war, not just some sniping game where we sit in a safe, secure base and take potshots at little alien buggers. We could be killed out there!
Once we had climbed aboard the ship, the gangplank was quickly withdrawn, and all hatches were closed in preparation for the jump through the light tunnel. As soon as we were on board, the general brought us into a fancy new de-briefing room, which was certainly an upgrade compared to the standard hard backed chairs and 3-d projector they have in the original LD class ships! I mean, this room was like a lounge; there was quiet breakbeat electronic music playing in the background, gel filled adaptive chairs with optional back massagers and leg warmers, a mini-fridge, and the projector was a Holo-Pro™, the best projector ever produced by the human race; not to mention surround sound with 500 audio channels! Anyways, as soon as we could actually pay attention to the de-briefing instead of the room, we learned that we were in deep shit if we didn't do something fast; the gist of what we were hearing is this: the seleniun had been sending out small fleets of warships to stress us out and make us venerable to attack; they had finally deemed that if they attacked now, success would be theirs (A.K.A. wiping out the human race), so, we were told by General Flicouskie that “You have two weeks at the outside to find the ten shield generators that are spoken of in the books of our past, and put one on the magnetic pole of each of the five planets.”
It was a big job, and we thought that we could do it, but we had just one question to ask first:
“General, what ship will we be using for this mission?”
“Why, you’ll have full command of the LDX-1 for this mission; for that reason Col. Knox, I’m promoting you to captain of this ship.”
“But sir, won’t you be staying along on board?”
“No, I have work to do back on earth, like keeping the president from hyperventilating too much!”
And with that, General Flicouskie stood up, said farewell, and walked to the portal room for a trip back to earth.
As my ranking officers and I sat gaping at each other, I finally was able to say one word, which of course was: “SWEET!” the tension broken, we all started laughing, partially out of how cool this was, and partly because we were scared half to death, and laughing made it seem just a little bit better.
Chapter 2
As soon as General Flicouskie had left, I told the pilot “move into orbit around Saturn, and wait for further instructions”. As soon as we were stationed safely in orbit, My crew and I explored the ship, and noticed a few cool upgrades that were not immediately visible to the eye; such as: the main cannon was re-engineered to have twice the firing rate, and ten times the power, the light drive engine could plot out a portal’s end point fifty times as quickly, and the shields had five times as much defense power.
