A flight to Nellis Air Force Base, followed by a thirty minute ride in a windowless V-22, brought Thayer, Mike, Noreh, and me to a sun-baked cluster of unmarked buildings alongside a runway in the middle of the Nevada desert. Other than a rusty windsock squeaking in the hot breeze and the V-22’s rotors quickly fading into the distance, nothing moved for miles in any direction.
A squadron of F-16s sat under a row of open air shelters that did nothing more than provide shade for the fighters. They were painted in a variety of camouflage patterns, from shades of blue and gray to a desert pattern of brown, green, and tan to a striking arctic pattern of black, white, and gray. Across the runway stood a row of hangars. A few were painted the standard Air Force brown while most had only the remnants of ancient white covering sandblasted metal. All showed signs of disrepair with peeling paint, dented walls, and broken windows everywhere.
The three of us stood in the desolate middle of the ramp. I was the least out of place in my green Air Force flightsuit with its blue flight cap and 301st Agressor Squadron patch prominently featuring the silhouette of an F-16. Thayer and Noreh wore dark blue Mendellian flightsuits while Mike made quite a fashion statement in a bright aloha shirt. The olive green duffel bag he carried clashed horribly with his shirts red and orange flowers.
“Where are we?” Mike asked. “Area 51?”
“Nope, it’s over that way,” I said with a casual wave in the right direction. “This is Skywalker Field.”
“Catchy. Let me guess - you named it?”
“Well…not by myself.”
“Strange place for an aggressor squadron,” Noreh said.
“That’s not all we do here,” I said. My announcement met was met with surprise by absolutely no one.
“I hope not,” Noreh said. “I don’t think those F-16s will make it to the moon.”
“Do you guys have the ship from Roswell hidden here?” Mike asked.
“Something like that,” I said with a glance at Thayer. He knew a bit more about this place than Mike or Noreh - though still far from everything - but he’d remained silent so far. “Come on, let me show you the world’s second biggest secret.”
Paint was chipping off the closest building’s steel outer door and a layer of dust covered its walls, but the keypad and biometric reader beside it hinted that it wasn’t as neglected as it appeared. Once I entered my 16-digit code and laid my hand on the reader for a palmprint scan the door lock clicked and I held it open for the others.
We stepped out of the heat into a short but claustrophobic tunnel that only allowed us to pass one at a time. I knew that the walk-through scanner was taking images of each of us that we wouldn’t want to put on the family Christmas card, as well as performing an X-ray and an explosives sniffer test. Past the scanner stood an Air Force staff sergeant with a holstered pistol backed up by two airmen cradling MP-5s. Behind them was an extremely solid wall with a knobless door shielding another airman in a control booth, who was bent over a computer screen reviewing our security scans.
The staff sergeant, whose nametag read GREER, acknowledged me with a nod. I knew the Security Forces NCO, but not well. He seemed very serious, beyond the needs of professionalism, and didn’t socialize with the rest of the squadron. “Welcome back, Major. We were told to expect your guests. Chief Harriman is waiting to take them through their paperwork.”
Greer insisted on searching the equipment bag Mike carried, despite my assurance that it only held deadly weapons, not cell phones or GPS receivers. Once he confirmed that I told the truth, the airman in the control booth pressed a button and the thick inner door slid open. I took the bag and led the others through.
Just past the door I guided my three guests into a small conference room where a short, gray haired man wearing Chief Master Sergeant stripes waited with an intimidating stack of papers on the table before him.
“Afternoon Major,” he said. “Are these our visitors?”
“That’s right. Walter, this is Thayer Atner, Noreh Sytsirk, and Mike Clark. Guys, this is our First Sergeant, Chief Walter Harriman.”
Harriman was Greer’s polar opposite, friendly and outgoing, a leader among the enlisted troops both professionally and socially. He somehow managed to be both highly involved in our day to day operations as well as serving as an aide to General Hammond, the base commander. Harriman shook each person’s hand in turn and gave the group a friendly smile. “Great to meet you all. We don’t get many visitors here. Major, I’ll walk them through the NDAs and getting their security badges made. The whole base is talking about them and this mission tonight.”
“Well let’s not have too much talking, Walter,” I said. “Loose lips sink ships, you know.”
“Yes sir. I’ll take care of them if you want to go change.”
From the moment they landed at Skywalker Field it was a race for our pilots to get out of their standard green Air Force flightsuits and into the black ones we could only wear on this base. Although we’d all come from the regular Air Force - more or less - what we did here was Something Different. We were enormously proud of that difference, even as we kept it from our closest friends and family. The change in uniform here let us show our pride openly in the only place in the world it could be allowed.
I shed the uniform of our agressor squadron cover identity quickly and pulled on the real one. Even Lenka had never seen me wear this particular black flightsuit, although I’d worn one often enough in our Terra Group days. I wondered if any of the TGers would notice the subtle change in the unit patch on my shoulder. Over the flightsuit I added a shoulder holster with the same P99 I’d carried on my first flight to Mendellia. On this base everyone was a member of the security team.
Once I finished changing I left the duffel bag in my locker and returned to the conference room to find everyone still bent over their stacks of papers.
“I signed fewer papers when I bought my house,” Noreh said as she shook out a cramping hand.
“I hope I haven’t signed my kingdom away,” Thayer said.
“I hope you haven’t signed my job away,” Noreh replied.
“I’m certain they would find a use for you.”
Once the papers were signed I sent Harriman back to work and took them next door to the badging office. Each person was fingerprinted, retina scanned, and photographed, and this new data went into a database with their entry scan. Thayer, Mike, and Noreh received plastic photo ID cards edged in bright red with the word VISITOR displayed prominently across the bottom and clipped them prominently to their clothes. I led them to the end of the hallway and down a flight of stairs to an underground tunnel to the next building.
“This is how we make the place look deserted,” I said as we started back up the stairs at the opposite end of the tunnel. “These tunnels connect every building, so there’s no need to go outside. We still remotely monitor every square inch outside, of course.”
“So what’s all this security hiding?” Noreh asked.
We reached the top of the stairs and stopped before another steel door with a keypad beside it. “That’s what I’m about to show you.” I entered my code again and this time the door slid open.
We emerged in a hangar containing a single aircraft, a sleek plane that looked fast sitting still. On a scale of F-5 to F-111 it stood somewhere near the size of an F-15. Its nose contained a two seat cockpit that faded back into a broad fuselage blending directly into a pair of trapezoidal wings. The engines and vertical stabilizers sat on either side of the fuselage with the stabilizers slanted inward. Its flat black paint was unmarred by any insignia, serial number, or safety warnings.
Noreh stared at the plane for a long moment before asking, “What is it?”
I thought this moment deserved some fanfare, but the empty hangar had nothing ready to provide it. “Lady and gentlemen, this is the F-203 Phantom, the world’s first indigenously produced starfighter. You’re the first non-Americans to see one. This is how we’re getting to the moon tonight.”
“I don’t think we’ll all fit,” Mike said.
“That’s why we’re taking six of them.”
“Six? You have six of these things?” Noreh asked.
“We have nine, actually, with two more coming next month. We’re building them as fast as we can.”
“So this isn’t a prototype?” Mike asked.
“No, this is an operational unit.”
I could feel the storm cloud of suspicion gathering in Noreh’s mind, accompanied by the hot flashes of approaching lightning. I wasn’t surprised, but I was a little disappointed. “Just how involved were you in this project?”
She already knew the answer. I designed and built the prototype of Grace Squadron’s Stinger aircraft from the body of a Harrier. It was an obvious evolution from the Stinger’s suborbital capability to a true purpose-built starfighter. But she wanted to hear it from me.
“They were already working on the project when I arrived. They reverse engineered the technology from wreckage they picked up here and there, and then reproduced it as best they could. A repulsor unit from Iraq, an engine from Antarctica, and I think the laser cannon came from the Pacific.”
I hadn’t directly answered her question and she wasn’t about to let me skate by. “And?” she prompted.
“And they couldn’t get it all to work together. The engines didn’t put out enough power to run everything and drive the ship. The repulsorlifts cut out at random. Our native materials science just wasn’t up to making the components and the engineers couldn’t integrate them anyway. We built your Stingers with parts we ordered from the New Republic. Here they had to do it from scratch. I helped them work through those problems until we had a working prototype.”
The storm arrived in Noreh’s flashing eyes as she closed in on me, forcing me a step back. “So you’ve spent the last three years flushing everything Terra Group did down the toilet?”
“Noreh-“ Thayer began before I cut him off.
“No! I didn’t give them anything they didn’t already have. I didn’t give them hyperdrive. I didn’t give them shields. I only helped fix what they already found on their own.”
It was a weak excuse and Noreh called me on it immediately. “But they didn’t have this until you got here!” she said with a sharp wave at the Phantom. “All our work. All the people we lost, trying to keep exactly this from happening, and you threw it away!”
“Major Sytsirk, may I remind you that we’re here today because this type of technology isn’t contained?” Thayer said.
Noreh’s eyes lost focus for a moment, and I knew she was back in the blood bath on the Pacific Monarch.
“These planes give us a capability the whole world lost when Terra Group shutdown,” I said.
“Yeah, and you put it in the hands of the most dangerous nation on earth!” Noreh said. I didn’t care for the new gleam in her eye. “What other capabilities did you help them develop? That plane that attacked the Monarch, maybe?”
“You think I had something to do with that?” I asked. “You’re crazy!”
“Am I? I always wondered why the Air Force took you back so quickly. I guess these shiny new toys are worth a lot more than a falsified medical report and that one F-16, huh?”
“Noreh, you can’t really think Josh is involved in the attack on the ship,” Mike said.
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t believe, Mike! He doesn’t seem to feel any loyalty to Terra Group’s people or its mission, so why not?”
“You’re out of line, Major,” Thayer said. “Look around. We’ve just been made privy to the United States’ greatest military secret. Because we asked Josh for help. We would not be standing here without his steadfast loyalty.”
I looked away from the two of them, not wanting this line of discussion to go any farther. Mike noticed my discomfort, though, and I could almost hear the pieces clicking together in his head.
“How did you two arrange this, anyway? What did it cost you?” he asked.
“It cost me very little,” Thayer said. “I called the President to request his assistance. I explaned the threat to him and assured him that we would deal with it if he would help us retrieve some equipment from an out-of-the-way storage facility. The US has a vested interest in protecting the uniqueness of this technology, and Pacifica poses a significant threat in that area. It was in his best interest to do us this favor.”
“And you?” Mike asked. Damn him and his perceptivity anyway
“My job,” I said. “It cost me my job. This will be my last mission.”
“Why?” Noreh asked at the same time Thayer said, “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Because ironically, they’re questioning my loyalty too,” I said gesturing at the base in general to indicate the Air Force as a whole. “To them this is the second time I’ve jumped into the fire to help Mendellia. There are three foreign nationals in a base none have ever seen before. It’s always been a sore spot that I’m married to a Mendellian, but before they needed my help. Now that we’re operational they can get by without me. I’m being discharged effective midnight tomorrow.”
Everyone fell silent. They were all there when, a few months after Terra Group was disbanded, I was offered the chance to rejoin the Air Force. My status with the US government had improved following the election of the new president in 2008, in no small part because of Thayer’s lobbying the new president on my behalf. Thayer and the President seemed to hit it off, but even he was surprised when his new friend suggested there might be a place for me back home. To say that my excitement was a bit undignified would be an understatement.
“Josh, I’m-“ Noreh began.
“Forget it,” I said, not in the mood for an apology. “What happened on that ship would have shaken anyone up. Just…try to remember who your friends are, okay?”
“I will,” she said with a slight smile, the first I’d seen on her face all week.
“Come on, we have a briefing to get to.” I led them across the hangar toward another flight of stairs.
“I have to ask,” Mike said as we walked past the Phantom, “did you get all the problems worked out? The repulsors aren’t still dying randomly, right?”
“Oh yeah, we’re good now. An F-203 isn’t an X-wing by any stretch of the imagination but they don’t fall out of the sky either. I wouldn’t put them up against a Star Destroyer unless we had a lot more of them than what we have, but they’ll suit our needs just fine.”
We started down the stairs to another underground tunnel as I said, “So here’s the basic plan: each of you will ride in the backseat with one of our pilots flying. We wear a hardened space suit that looks a little like stormtrooper armor. They’re meant to keep one of us alive if we had to eject in space, but they’re tough enough that we can use them on the surface of the moon for a short while. They’re partially powered so they won’t restrict your movement if it comes down to a fight in the base. I’ll give you the rest of the details in the mission briefing.”
“Do you fly missions to the moon often?” Thayer asked.
“No. Actually, this will be the first. The F-203’s always been capable of making the trip, but we’ve never had a reason to do it until now.”
“So where have they been used?” Noreh asked.
“The places you’d expect. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Other places I can’t talk about, of course.”
“Pakistan a few weeks ago?” Mike asked as we started up the stairs at the end of the tunnel.
“We were on standby for that but we weren’t needed. We knew it was happening, though, and we weren’t short of volunteers for the mission. I think every pilot we have was here waiting that day, just in case.”
“So what are the F-16s outside for, if the aggressor squadron is just a smokescreen?” Noreh asked.
“Oh, we actually fly aggressor missions in the F-16s sometimes. It’s good for the cover and it’s a lot cheaper to fly an F-16 for an hour than it is to fly an F-203. But mostly we use them to get back and forth between here and Nellis without raising eyebrows. Nobody even notices F-16s flying in and out of Nellis.”
The four of us arrived outside the briefing room to find Colonel O’Neil, the squadron commander, waiting for me. O’Neil was one of a very select few here who knew everything about my past, Terra Group, and the galaxy at large. He had been here from the very beginning – he was here when I arrived. I introduced him to our guests, whose identities he already knew, and watched his brown eyes widen in mock surprise at Thayer’s title.
“Well, since a king clearly outranks a colonel, call me Jack,” he said. “Cochran, could I have a word with you?”
We took a few steps down the hallway from Mike, Thayer, and Noreh, which left me feeling very alone in the hallway with Colonel O’Neil. Especially when he stared at me as though he expected me to sprout wings any second. “So,” he said.
“So,” I said, forcing myself not to look away.
“You don’t write, you don’t call, then I find out that you’re going to show up with a group of strays, and I’m supposed to give you all a ride to the moon. On personal orders from the President.”
O’Neil’s sense of humor always kept me off balance. Even after three years here I never quite knew how much of a comment like that was sarcasm and how much was rebuke. Some days I thought I had his complete confidence and others I thought he wouldn’t trust me to peel potatoes in the mess hall. “That’s…one way to put it,” I said.
“Oh come on, Cochran, how else would you put it?”
“That’s one very valid way to put it.”
“Are you sure about this? It’s not too late. I could talk to General Hammond.” That seemed like a vote of confidence.
“This has to be done, sir. Besides, I think the General is ready to be done with me.”
I barely heard him mumble, “He’s not the only one,” which made me rethink my previous opinion. Then out loud he said, “Maybe it has to be done, but does it have to be done by you? With your history you won’t get another chance. We can still take your friends up there and drop them off.”
“It’s not soccer practice, sir. They need me.”
“Alright,” he said, turning for the door. “Your funeral.”
“Let’s hope not,” I said.
O’Neil, Thayer, Mike, Noreh, and I walked into a briefing room already full of pilots in black flight suits. They were strangers to Thayer and company, of course, but I knew them almost as well as I did the old Terra Group team. Lieutenant Colonel Carter was already here with O’Neil when I arrived. Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell survived a rough bailout in Iraq flying an F-15 Strike Eagle and fought his way through a tough rehabilitation to get his flight status back. Colonel Young’s marriage had recently exploded in spectacular fashion, and there was some talk that Captain Johannsen might have been involved. Major Sheppard’s frequent sarcasm was more biting than O’Neil’s but nobody was more reliable on a tough mission. Major Marks was quiet, professional, and mercifully lacking in drama, so he usually became the calm voice of reason in a crisis.
I was trusting these people with my friends’ lives and I didn’t doubt that choice for a second. In fact, my only hesitation came when the reality hit me that this would be my last time in this room, my last time flying with these people. I wondered if they knew.
“Hey Cochran, I didn’t know we had a Take Your Friends to Work Day,” Sheppard said with a smile as he, Mitchell, and Carter approached us. Sticking his hand out to Thayer he said, “John Sheppard.”
“Thayer Atner,” Thayer said as he took Sheppard’s hand. “This is Noreh Sytsirk and Michael Clark.”
The three pilots shook hands with the newcomers as Mitchell said, “Don’t let Sheppard bother you. He’s just jealous because he never gets to bring his dates back here to show off.”
“I don’t need to bring women here to impress them,” Sheppard said.
Carter rolled her eyes and shook her head, though she gave the banter a small smile. “Just ignore both of them,” she said. “We hardly ever have visitors here. There’s been a lot of speculation since we heard you were coming. We’re used to secrecy, though, so we know that whatever’s going on must be big.”
Colonel O’Neil took his place behind the podium at the front of the room, as we all found seats. He stood under a large wooden duplicate of our squadron patch, a circle emblazoned with the words with the words 301st STARFIGHTER SQUADRON and RAVENS around the silhouette of an F-203.
“Alright, folks, let’s get this crazy show on the road,” he said. “We’ve got something just a little different for you tonight. First, Cochran, would you like to introduce our guests?”
“Certainly. For those who haven’t already met them, this is Thayer Atner and Noreh Sytsirk of the Royal Mendellian Air Force, and Michael Clark of…the Brighton airport.” Each gave a small wave as I said their name, and Mike threw a slight frown in my direction.
“The Brighton airport, huh? I hear they have a great air force.” I started to explain but he waved me back down. “Oh relax, Cochran, it’s a joke. Besides, with this mission I’m not sure I want to know.
“Now, Major Cochran will be leading tonight’s mission. Before he comes up I have one roster change. I’ll be taking Colonel Young’s place as Raven Two.” I wasn’t sure if this was a reflection on me or Young. He didn’t clarify things any when he looked right at me and said, “That’s right, I’m coming along. So don’t get me killed. And on that cheery note, I’ll turn it over to you.”
I took O’Neil’s place at the podium and faced my friends, old and new, as he took a seat. A dozen things bubbled in my mind: events in Mendellia, the (second) end of my Air Force career, O’Neil’s unplanned presence on the mission, and the utter craziness of this collision between my Terra Group and Air Force worlds. I pushed all that out of my mind and launched into the mission briefing, relaxing into something comfortably familiar after I’d done it dozens of times before.
“Good evening everyone,” I said. “We’ve got a fun mission tonight, something we’ve always talked about but never done in a Phantom. Tonight’s mission profile is Apollo.”
This announcement was greeted with blank looks by everyone except Lieutenant Colonel Carter, a blonde woman sitting in the front row, who looked like she wanted to burst out of her seat. Every type of mission we could conceivably undertake had a codename to instantly communicate the major outlines of the operation. A Reagan was a mission to intercept ICBMs, for example. A Keyhole was reconnaissance mission. A FedEx was a courier mission – if it absolutely positively has to be there right now, as we liked to say. Our real specialty was the Minuteman, a strike on a ground target which we could deliver anywhere on Earth within an hour.
“For those of you rusty on your unused mission profiles, that means we’re going to the moon.”
That got a reaction – a roomful of wide eyes and excited murmurs, plus a small fist pump by Major Sheppard.
“I’m glad you’re all excited, but listen up because this is no proof of concept, one orbit and come home thing. This is an operational combat mission with a target that will probably shoot back.” Sheppard was about to interrupt with a perfectly reasonable question about who would shoot at us on the moon, so I held up a hand to forestall him. “Let me get through this briefing before questions, because I promise it’s going to get a lot weirder than that.
“So here’s the weird part: there’s a secret base on the far side of the moon. That’s not rumor or some tabloid headline – I’ve been there. Our mission tonight is to get the four of us up there so we can retrieve some equipment from that base,” I said, indicating the three strangers in the briefing room.
“We believe the lunar base is currently unmanned, but it does have an automated defense system that is most likely armed. This is the base from above.” The large screen behind me showed an image of the far side of the moon and quickly zoomed in to highlight a strip of lunar plain strewn with boulders between two large impact craters. “It’s not much to look at from above. There’s a hangar entrance hidden in the rim of this crater,” I said as I pointed to the western crater, “and these rock formations are concealed weapon emplacements and a personnel airlock. That’s it – that’s all you can see from above.
“If these weapon systems are active they’ll be set to ignore anything just passing by but to attack any ship that tries to approach the base or land in that area. They’ll see what we’re up to as soon as we get close, so it’s imperative that we knock them out before we try to land. So here’s the plan: We’ll divide into two flights…”
Twenty minutes later everyone knew their roles in my plan, knew what I wanted them to do and how I wanted them to do it. The only question there were left with was whether or not I’d lost my mind.
“How can there be a hidden base on the moon? Who built it?” asked Major Lorne, who was Raven Three for this mission.
“Especially dug into the surface like that,” added the young Captain Scott, one of our newest pilots. “It would take hundreds of people to do something like that.”
Somehow I didn’t think ‘it was built by aliens’ would help much.
“And what do you mean you’ve been there?” Sheppard asked.
I walked around the podium to sit on the edge of a table at the front of the room. “Guys, I know this is a lot to take in, but I promise I’m not making any of this up,” I said.
“I don’t think they’re buying it, Cochran,” O’Neil said. “I think you’re going to have to give them the full monty.”
“What? I don’t think so, sir!”
“Not that full monty. The whole story. I think you’re gonna have to tell them the whole story.”
“Do you think that’ll help?”
“It can’t make things any worse.”
“Good point.”
“What’s he talking about?” asked Mitchell.
“Okay guys, you’re probably going to see some very strange things up there tonight, so I’m going to tell you something only a few dozen people in the whole world know. This doesn’t go beyond the people on this mission. You don’t even discuss it with other Ravens who aren’t present. Clear?”
Everyone nodded. I told them.
---
A moment of stunned silence, then-
“Bullshit!” Mitchell said.
“That’s what I said the first time I heard this too,” O’Neil said.
“I know how it sounds,” I said.
“Star Wars is real, there are a bunch of X-wing fighters on the moon, and you’re a Jedi? It sounds insane!” Mitchell said.
“Actually, it makes sense,” said Carter, who had sat quietly and attentively through my explanation without ever batting an eye. Mitchell looked at her as though she’d lost her mind now. “We were both on the team that developed the Phantom. We started with all this technology that just appeared out of nowhere, and we couldn’t make it work. Until he showed up. Nobody knew how to make anything work, but he handled it like he’s been doing it his whole life. We had a working prototype in just a few months.”
“Sam, it’s not the idea of alien technology that bothers me. Little grey guys could show up and hand us all their technology and I wouldn’t bat an eye. Its-“
“The Star Wars thing?” I asked.
“The Star Wars thing,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” said Sheppard. “This is a joke, right? You’re going to get us up there and surprise! There’s nothing there. And everyone’s going to have a big laugh. Right?”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” O’Neil said.
“So does this mean you know Yoda?” Lorne asked. He and Johannsen shared a chuckle over his witticism, and I noticed Young turning a little red.
“No, Yoda’s dead. Haven’t you seen the movies?” I said.
“I’ve seen Harry Potter,” Mitchell said. “That doesn’t mean I believe in magic castles with talking pictures.”
I just looked at them all, one at a time, directly in the eye without flinching. “You’re serious,” Scott said finally.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“He’s serious,” O’Neil confirmed. “Believe me, I didn’t buy it at first either.”
“How long have you known, sir?” Carter asked.
“Three years. I knew as soon as he got here.”
“Sir, you have to understand this is a little hard to believe,” Marks said. I knew I wasn’t getting through to them if even he expressed doubt. “Is there any proof you can give us?”
“I can show you a whole squadron of X-wings in a few hours,” I said.
Seeing the open doubt still on their faces, O’Neil said, “That’s not going to help right now.” He leapt from his seat, grabbed a free chair, and slammed it down in the front of the room facing the crowd. “Come on, Cochran! Ewok throne!” he said as he sat down in the chair.
“Oh no, sir, not again,” I said.
“If you want them to believe you’re gonna have to give them a reason,” he said.
“This is in poor taste, sir,” I said.
“Do I need to make it an order?” he asked.
I sighed loudly as a way to voice my exasperation, but I knew I wouldn’t win this argument. Stretching my hand out toward O’Neil and the chair, I reached out to the Force. O’Neil gripped the chair’s seat tightly as he slowly rose into the air. A few gasps escaped the crowd as he rose higher and the chair revolved slowly, just as C-3PO had all those years ago on Endor. I floated him out over the heads of the dumbstruck audience who no longer seemed interested in offering any argument.
“So,” I said, “who wants to go to the moon?”
“You can put me down now,” O’Neil said.