Starfire
Copyright© 2025 by Mark Randall
Chapter 33
Tom Olivet and Benjamin Jones, his COB, had been standing by in Flight Operations for 2 days. This had caused a certain amount of concern for the operations crew and a lot of anger from Sergeant Jones’ wife.
When the yellow alert was called over the loudspeakers, Tom looked at Benjamin and nodded. Jones immediately called out loudly, “Attention, Commence launch operations. Launch the ready force Starfire’s.”
As expected, a call came into commo. “Sir,” The tech called, “The captain is calling.”
“Thank you”, Tom answered while picking up his handset. “Already here, Captain.” The operations crew could only hear one side of the conversation, but knew what was being said.
“Yes, Captain, the blue squadron is already out, and the red squadron just finished fueling ops and is launching as we speak.”
Hanging the headset up. He turned towards his COB. “Ben, it’s in the hands of god and those brave youngsters now.”
Following their orders, Thad took his red squadron ahead of Folly, while Max took the Bulldogs aft.
After Thad’s Dragons had formed up, he gave them their orders. “Team Alpha, your sector is above, Bravo, you’ve got starboard, Charlie, port. And Delta straight ahead. If you see anything, sing out and let everybody know. But keep your active systems on standby until I order it. And keep your fingers off those triggers. I don’t want anybody getting blown up by mistake.”
While Thad was briefing his squadron, Max was doing the same with his squadron. Ten minutes into the flight, both ships’ AI systems announced. “Pilot, incoming message from Seward’s Folly.”
“Go ahead, computer,” they both responded.
“Message as follows, From Command, Seward’s Folly to squadron leaders. Coordinates follow, relative to my position. Tally Ho. Message ends.”
When Thad received Captain Sullivan’s target coordinates, he immediately ordered his squadron to come about, and they raced towards the coordinates.
Soon after the Yellow Alert went out, the Security Center was swamped with calls. Different stations were calling in status reports, and civilians were calling in for instructions and reassurances. Through all of this, David was busy putting out hysterical fires and lighting motivational fires throughout the ship. Gradually, things began to calm down. And that’s when things got worse.
“Sir, “Sheila Stapleton, the video systems equipment tech, approached David.
“Yes, what’s up, Sheila?”
“Sir, we’ve lost our video feed.”
“What? Where?”
“Everywhere, Sir. We lost everything right after the alert sounded.”
“Equipment failure?”
“No, Sir. This was a command shutdown.:
“A command shutdown? That takes a high-ranking ship’s officer.”
“Yes, Sir, the order came from a congressional officer. Congressman Bob Chambers.”
“Dammit, I knew it.” David turned to Jesse Merrill, his second officer. “As soon as we can, I want an arrest team to find that traitor and throw him into the brig. In the meantime, get me Wayne on the Alpha team.”
“Turner here, boss, what’s up?”
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