I finished looking over the mission report and sent a message to Jack Bladestar congratulating him on a successful mission. I then opened a message from Manny pointing out, in a colorful way, that we were running low on some of the equipment we use. He mentioned how lack of ammunition for our new fangeled laser weapons has made me lazy. I would have had stern words with him two months ago for something like this but one learns to give up on such people. As long as he did his job, I couldn't complain about his attitude. We have never had a weapon misfire or jam and every piece of equipment was polished and fully serviced. Manny may be annoying, but he's the best equipment master the world has to offer.
I submitted an order form to Auraluna that included a fair amount of avalanche missiles, Interceptor cannon rounds and some of the special equipments we use. I also added in a couple new soldier recruits to the list. She quickly processed the form and sent it out. I had the rest of the day to work on my impending meeting with the funding nations' representatives.
Late in the day, A medium UFO was detected on the ground in souther Spain.
The UFO was north west of a city called Seville.
I decided to send the Skyranger along with my second Interceptor to take it out.
RAM 1 and Cerapa would take on this mission. RAM 1 took Dash Gunmetal, Roll Fizzlebeef, Shigeo Okabe and Hugh Mann as a breach team while Cerapa took Tamunshin, Archangel, Shu Bei and Mehmed as an over-watch team.
As the Interceptor and Skyranger made their way to the Atlantic ocean, we detected another UFO, this time it was larger and traveling south west at 2560kt/h.
The large UFO was flying over the remote areas of Kazakhstan.
I watched the large UFO carefully and noticed it was heading towards South Africa, avoiding any major cities along the way. What was it going to do there? I wondered if it was returning from some sort of mission to a forward base or perhaps setting one up. I would have to have the matter looked into when we had more aircraft available. I decided to focus on the medium sized UFO at the time.
I kept a side screen focused on the large UFO however and watched as it headed straight for South Africa. We lost radar tracking of the craft around Central Africa.
The Interceptor arrived on scene above the grounded medium UFO and began to patrol but it was running low on fuel already. I ordered him to patrol as long as he could in case the UFO took off.
The Skyranger however had not even reached the Atlantic ocean yet.
I shook my head and rubbed my eyes as I asked anyone for an estimate on their arrival time.
After an hour, Jack Bladestar came into the command center to relieve me of duty so I could get some rest. I wanted to stay despite my growing weariness. Before he could object though, the radar technician interrupted. "Commander, we detected another UFO on the ground."
"This time it's in Bulgaria near a city called Sofia."
"We don't have another drop-ship, do we commander?" Jack thought out loud.
"No we don't lieutenant commander. But I have an idea." I responded, my weariness replaced with a sudden burst of energy.
"Oh no you don't commander, you're assistant has been on my case to make sure I do my job and get you into bed." He replied with a wag of his finger.
"Oh I'll go to sleep on the way there lieutenant commander, you take command and make sure I get there. I'll be on-board Mac's Interceptor, we're hunting aliens today." I replied with a smirk.
I quickly left the room before anyone could stop me from my decision and personally got a team together. I would, with the help of Darkwind, lead a small team and take the UFO. There was a very limited number of soldiers to choose from but I was confident that between myself and Darkwind, we could handle it. We roused Mr. Apple, Argatson and Sarah Newman and met up with Mac in the hanger. Manny greeted us with our load-outs and gave me kind parting words along the line of "What kind of moronic commander follows her soldiers into battle?".
Jack Bladestar took his post at command and surveyed the situation. The Interceptor patrolling the first medium UFO was forced to return to base because of it's fuel supplies dwindling. The medium UFO remained on the ground without anyone being able to thwart their schemes.
Shortly after at 7:30am they both took off at the same time.
Jack Bladestar stroked his chin in deep though, he could see that Mac's Interceptor was close enough that it might be able to take the closer UFO down. He ordered Mac to target the closer UFO.
Mac caught up to the UFO over the United Kingdoms and began following it across the English Channel. The Skyranger lagged behind, They were amazingly slow compared to the Interceptors.
Mac warned us of impending turbulence as he pushed the Interceptor to it's max speed to intercept the UFO as we crossed into France.
Mac began unloading round after round of his heavy cannon shells into the UFO, dodging and weaving through it's return fire. The dogfight was long however and the UFO managed to land a few hits itself. Mac stuck to his guns however and the UFO soon fell to the earth in an ungraceful descent.
Mac followed the wildly spinning craft as it fell and hovered over it's crash site for a moment before landing nearby. It was time to take and recover this UFO.
TO BE CONTINUED!
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Hope you guys enjoy the post. Thank you Sluissa for your great post, keep up the good work. Next post will be the ground mission. ^.^
edit - whoops, duplicate picture where I didn't mean to put one in.