The Battle for Antarctica

Everyone had his own reason for enlisting. I still remember the look on Mom’s face when I told her where I’d be going and what I’d be doing. To their credit, when the suits showed up to the museum and waltzed into the restoration hangar, they didn’t sugarcoat it. There was no talk of saving the world or buying a Camaro with your signing bonus. They told me three things: first, that they needed my plane; second, that they needed a plan; and third, that they needed me to come with them to DC to help make it. I might have refused right there. Honestly, I should have. But there was something about the genuine fear in their eyes that chilled me to my bones.

My brother Arthur was always more thoughtful and less fearful than me. He thought, planned, and analyzed every outcome before making a decision. I don’t think in my entire twenty-five years with him I’d ever seen him act irrationally or callously. When they came to him, they had an offer in hand that he couldn’t refuse: service guarantees one ticket to the safest place in the world—and he got to choose the passenger. The two of us had agreed we’d get Mom and Dad to relative safety in Svalbard, and hopefully, when this war was all over, we’d come and join them. Suffice to say, no parent would be happy about that arrangement, but my brother and I ended up winning the argument.

“Ed, hand me the 9/16ths, will you,” my brother muttered, a flashlight wedged between his teeth. How on earth he could stand the cold air here was a wonder. Every inch of exposed flesh felt like it was being sandblasted. Everyone has been “cold” before, but standing in gale-force winds, ankle-deep in fresh Antarctic powder, changes the meaning of the word. I dug around in the toolbox and handed him the socket wrench.

The rest of the briefing had gone more or less as you’d expect. With a very sour and deflated face, General West retreated to his quarters to get a stiff drink in before the shooting started. In the lower holds of our ship, the USCGC Elmo, Gramps and Ernst were being read their last rites. The Russians—though only on temporary loan to us—worked with impressive efficiency and prepped our howitzers and AA guns. Of course, the engineering team—poor bastards that we were—got stuck out in the snow.

An X-15 is a beast. If my shining little lawn dart was a Porsche, my brother’s baby was a Charger packing half a million horsepower under the hood. It’d go from zero to three-thousand miles per hour in 60 seconds, and you’d feel the engines in your chest from half a mile away. He had pulled out every stop to make sure she was ready for flight, and for the most part, the plane would be doing what it was built for—going high and fast. Rigging it to carry a nuke was a small matter of putting a square peg in a round hole—easy enough with a cutting torch. There was one major problem, though: the X-15 was originally an air-launched vehicle. Without a bomber wing to sling it under, we needed another plan.

Planes need to be moving to stay in the air. A 40,000-pound bird with wings thin enough to cut you had to be moving ludicrously fast. Anything below 200 mph, and you’d be the proud driver of the world’s fastest bobsled—but about 100,000 feet too low for the mission. The solution, of course, came down to simply adding more thrust. In this case, a 300-foot-long rocket sled, painstakingly assembled by yours truly.

“That should do it, right?” I asked hopefully.

“Well, once Kirill and Miles finish setting up the five-eighty-four.” Arthur wiped a streak of grease across his forehead.

“Great. Well, since our job is done here…”

“You’re one lazy bastard, you know that.”

“Come on! How aren’t you cold?!”

He just sighed. It was impressive how much of a stick-in-the-mud he could be. Worse still, he was probably right. It took us about ten more minutes to lower the plane onto the launch rail by crane and begin fueling. At the same time, our only functioning radar—a World War II-era SCR-584—was being set up about 100 yards away, connected to the bridge of the ship by gargantuan spools of cable.

Nobody knew what the interior of the storm was like, but all bets were on poor visibility with a high chance of showers. One of the Russians, Kirill—a former SAM site operator—was going to be tracking both the Hive and our plane on his scope and guiding our pilots via radio. We had no autopilot, of course, so the radio commands were more like requests than anything else. The pilot would hear one tone when he was high off the target and another when he was low, coming through his earpiece. When he was right along the bore axis of the radar beam (and directed right to the heart of the storm), he’d hear the beat frequency of the two—a kind of warbling sound. It was a far cry from a proper guidance computer, but the best we could come up with on such short notice.

The rest of the engineering team—four airmen—were running through checks on my F-104. I had done what I could to set everything up beforehand, so the fuel and ammo were loaded before we ever took it off the ship. I also got to check “arming a nuke” off my bucket list.

* * *

The war began at 0900. The distant clap of a single gun swiftly grew into a chorus of ten thousand—a sound you felt more than heard. Thousands of glittering lights danced on the horizon for as far as the eye could see, and the sun grew a shade darker under the canopy of lead in the air. You could almost hear the thunk of a thousand boarding ramps hitting ice and half a million boots, armed with rifles and grit, moving off to storm the beaches.

Nobody here had personally fought the enemy, and we still didn’t know what made them tick. For the most part, the attacks across South America were mindless and brutal: a tide of biomass swarms into the city and slaughters door to door. Biblical, sure, but it felt more like a natural disaster than a coordinated attack. It was like they lived just to consume. Never once had we seen the creatures defend what they took—with the exception of McMurdo.

Best estimates varied, and the reconnaissance photos were spotty at best. At minimum, two and a half million “troops” stood motionless in the snow. Every eye peered out to the coastline, but otherwise they stood sentry—never eating, never moving, and as far as anyone could tell, never even breathing. Shooting fish in a barrel would have been great, but unfortunately the fish didn’t stay still.

They had waited for us to fire the first shot, and at once all hell let loose. A chorus of screams cut the air, and millions moved as one. Even fifty miles away, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I just hoped the poor bastards in the first wave would find more steaming piles of meat than monsters greeting them.

The air felt heavy. Not the cold and dense type of heavy—that was a given here. It felt oppressive. Standing under the canopy of a storm that blotted out the sun and warped every ray of light to a dull shade of gray or red, I was hit with a thousand emotions. Most of all was dread. It hadn’t felt real. It still didn’t feel real. But here I was, and in a few hours, a thousand square miles of snow would be stained red with blood. Still, that wasn’t quite it…

My radio squawked. “Ed! Is the one-oh-four ready for launch yet?” Even through the static whine, I could hear my brother’s breathless voice—frantic, perhaps for the first time in his life. If I had more sense about me, I probably would have been too.

“Ready as she’ll ever be. Any word from recon?” I replied.

“The general just said they’ve taken the bait—the main force is pulling away, and we’ll launch in five minutes. They’ve got air, so make sure those ‘winders are armed and do your last checkouts.”

“Copy… and good luck.”

“You too…”

My radio went silent. I set my watch. Five minutes until we launch. Fifteen minutes until this was all over. I pictured it in my head. Ernst would be climbing into the cockpit any minute now. He’d launch first off our mobile JATO truck and clear a straight corridor ten miles out from the Elmo. Any airborne threat he’d try to engage and draw off. Gramps would follow about two minutes after and close distance. In a little over a minute after launch, he’d be impossible to intercept anymore. Our teams on the ground would guide him into the heart of the storm. He’d hit the wall at 110,000 feet. He’d fire a mile to the core. If we did everything perfectly, every one of us would get to go home today. That was a big if.

All of a sudden, a strange feeling washed over me. The air didn’t just feel heavy anymore; it felt…

I reeled around and looked back at the ship. Nothing had changed. The snow was still falling. The wind still sandblasted my cheeks. The rolling thunder on the horizon kept its pace. But I couldn’t shake the feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was like every one of my senses was screaming at me. No… it was like a sense I wasn’t even aware I possessed was protesting. Nothing was wrong, and yet everything was. I reached for my radio and paused for a second. What if I was wrong? We couldn’t risk the operation on some feeling in my gut—and certainly not on my nerves. I took a deep breath and focused.

The Starfighter was almost ready. I chambered a round in the modified 30mm cannon and ran through the guidance checkouts on the last Sidewinder. The oversized vacuum tubes peeked out of holes in the housing, and the dull growl of the spinning seeker was strangely reassuring. No matter what, if it flew, this thing could kill it.

Thirty seconds passed. Then a minute. Not too long, unless you forget to breathe. The thumping in my chest grew louder and louder, but I choked it down. I felt lightning dance across the backs of my palms. If you’ve never felt your hair stand on end before, it’s quite an uncomfortable sensation. I almost felt myself relax when I saw Gramps and Ernst on the Elmo‘s boarding ladder—but then my brain fired on all cylinders and screamed at me, “Down!”

I probably wouldn’t have seen what came next had I been standing anywhere else. For a split second, an almost imperceptible darkness flashed across the ground—like the shadow of a sundial sweeping an arc across the snow, made visible by the low rays of light streaming in from the sun behind me. The world didn’t move in slow motion or stop. Everything happened faster than I could perceive, but I heeded the screaming voice in my head and dove. By the time I heard the crack, purple flames spilled over the bow of the Elmo. A second later, a gale of wind and searing heat rushed over my back and echoed in the air I had been standing in a moment ago. A deafening roar pierced the air, and my radio flared to life. Shouts and screaming, damage reports, bearings and ranges—all flooded in over the same noisy channel.

The flames had spread across the whole deck now. The crew of the AA guns didn’t even get a chance to fire before the rolling torrent of heat stripped flesh from bone. The deck flashed and groaned as belts of autocannon ammunition went up like popcorn. Ernst and the old man had made it just off the ladder and hit the snow before the fire consumed the railings. I felt my heart lift for a second. Like only trained pilots from a bygone era could, they sprinted to their planes. Gramps ran to the foot of the launch ramp faster than I’ve ever seen an old-timer move. Before I could blink, he was scrambling up the ladder. Ernst ran toward me and the Starfighter, and for a split second I wondered why he never tried for the Olympics.

Gramps had closed the canopy of the X-15 and had run through the fastest preflight I’d ever seen. For a split second, the turbopumps whined, and a glowing exhaust plume flickered brilliantly to life. A split second later, the glow was replaced by a five-story fireball of fuel, a heap of molten slag, and a twisted titanium skeleton. The force of the blast knocked Ernst off his feet and sent a jagged shrapnel knife through his chest.

Every sense I possessed told me that this was an act of God—divine retribution for something somebody (or everybody) did. But my brain screamed at me, issuing orders to regroup though I had lost command of my senses. I didn’t feel like a sinner on judgment day; I felt like prey, hunted in the shadows by a predator—so I scanned the sky. What I saw made my heart sink.

Wings. Wings as black as night filled my vision of the sky above. I don’t think my mind could keep up with my eyes. I scanned every inch of the… thing. Pages from picture books, stories, and fairy tales flashed in my mind, and a single word breathlessly escaped my lips: “Dragon…”

I watched it slowly circle around to my front. It saw me as clearly as I saw it. It felt like it was weighing me—sizing my soul against its own. For a second, it spared a look of consideration and gazed straight into my eyes. My brain responded with searing pain—a thousand wires crossed. Some screamed “Run!”, some threatened to draw my arm to the pistol on my hip, and some just froze. In the end, I just trembled on the ground like a leaf, paralyzed in its gaze.

Everybody thinks about their death. Thinking about your death is not the same as feeling it. The bravest men intellectualize their demise, and they aren’t moved by it. I wasn’t a brave man. I was a coward. I felt with every sliver of bone and nerve and sinew that I was going to die, and I screamed at myself for being so stupid—for enlisting in a hopeless war, for volunteering for a “safe” mission, for dragging my only brother along…

I think I decided to accept death. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t fight it. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, and no way to fight. Though my mind screamed in protest, I drowned it out. The cold knives against my skin dulled. The beating drums of cannons grew muffled and distant. Even my vision started to fade as the world desaturated. I gave up. My body knew I did and was going to make my end as painless as possible. For a split second, I was thankful.

Graceful as only an apex predator could be, the thing reared up in the air and opened its mouth. I felt the protest in my soul fade as I saw the purple flame coalesce in its maw. A beautiful purple light gleamed out of every crack in its thick scaly armor. I couldn’t feel the radiant heat brush my skin, but I knew it was coming all the same. In a second, I would be ash—out of existence. But to my surprise, that second never came.

A burst of fire met the dragon. A trio of sharp cracks arrived in my ear a pause after the sparks danced from its hide. Dead? No, I couldn’t imagine something like a rifle could kill it. All the same, it wildly reared its head, searing steam blowing from its nostrils. It was both angry and impressed. Would there really be a man so foolish and rash as to challenge it? If not in firepower, it had met its match in spirit. The beast locked eyes with my brother, but he locked eyes with me. With trembling hands, he held his rifle and faced down horror, but he held his ground. I saw him a hundred yards away mouth the words, and heard my radio crackle to life: “Finish it. For all of us…” Then he was no more.

I felt something inside me break—not like a rubber band drawn to the point of snapping, but like a wall that held me back. I was given the chance that was his, and I wouldn’t stop even if it killed me. I felt a fire rise behind my eyes. The color flashed back to the world. Searing heat poured from my heart into my limbs. A trillion neurons all screamed in perfect unison. The wind that gnawed at me felt like home. I started running.

I didn’t know how I was moving—half on instinct and half on some fuel I didn’t know I had. A fire I didn’t know dwelled within me, and I knew it would burn me out. I fanned it all the same. I was sprinting now. I flew up the ladder and into the cockpit of the Starfighter. Maybe it was fate that I was the one sitting at the controls, but it was a fate my brother made. I had never flown a plane, but I knew every inch of the dash—every gauge and every screw. I remembered every time Ernst guided my hands over the controls. I couldn’t fly, but I could fly her.

I entrusted my hands to the stick and my soul to the fighter. I had the cockpit closed by the time the dragon had even turned its head back to me. The rush of pressurized oxygen flushed through the vents and danced like music in my ears. I trusted everything. I checked nothing. My finger found a small switch on the firewall that read “JATO Engage.” Let’s dance!

100,000 pounds of thrust slammed me back into my seat like a kick from a mule. The world below me sped away, and the flaming carcass of the Elmo receded in my mirror, but the beast grew closer. I was in the air but not home free. I hadn’t had time to start the engine on the ground. I found a heavy caution-striped lever and pulled it home. A small thump in the airstream let me know my emergency generator had deployed. Lights flickered to life across the cockpit as the aircraft came to life—this was probably the world’s first in-air startup. The booster had burned out and cleanly dropped away, skittering into the snow below. The jets would take it from here. I slammed the throttle to the firewall and felt the dull clunk of the afterburner engaging.

I was gaining speed—a hundred miles per hour off the launch trailer, two hundred soon after. But it wasn’t fast enough. The dragon reared its head and roared, purple light filling its stomach once more. The radio on my hip sang to life one more time, and I heard a friendly old voice fill the speakers: “Eagle-2, glad to see you made it up. Let us handle your tail, but we’ll let you do the rest.” I started to raise my voice in protest, but a hail of rocket fire pelted the side of the beast, and two ancient propeller planes drew it off. They were dead, and they knew it. I closed my eyes and kept climbing.

* * *

The world below me was shrinking now. As I pulled higher, I knew the stars should have started to fill my view, but the storm took their place. The stick felt light in my hands. A dozen hours of simulator time had paid off with interest. I wasn’t sure I could land, but I could fly. I spared a glance at my gauge. I hadn’t even noticed when I broke the sound barrier.

Sparks of howitzer fire lit the shores below, and it looked like a thousand little candles flickered gently in the snow. A black tide of men swarmed to meet an ocean of ashen-red bodies and found themselves hopelessly outnumbered. I grit my teeth and turned my eye back to the storm. I was in the air, and under optimal conditions I had a 3% chance of completing the mission. I had run those numbers myself. But conditions weren’t optimal. I had no radar guidance, I had no flight plan—hell, I shouldn’t even be up here. All the same, I was the best hope those soldiers had, and that Beretta on my hip didn’t feel quite so light anymore.

At Mach 2, I began to climb—as fast as this plane was ever designed for. The world was a blur below now at 1400 miles per hour. It took all my strength to wrestle the stick back against the tremendous force of the air. The engine temperature rose higher and higher. The faster I flew, the hotter the air was getting. The hotter the air got, the hotter the engine got. It couldn’t hold out long at these speeds. Even as I climbed higher and the air grew thin and wispy, the storm looked larger than ever, and the temperature kept climbing.

I closed my eyes. I don’t think I had prayed in years, but it didn’t matter now. To whatever God was listening—to whatever God could make it count—please give me a chance. My finger found a small switch—“SEC. Engage”—and flicked it. The screech of the turbopumps rose into a deafening roar, and my onboard rocket engaged. Half the weight of my plane was fuel just to power it. It would push me faster and higher than the turbine could alone, but every ounce of fuel it burned took insulation away from the wings. I pushed higher and faster still but flew closer and closer to the sun.

The Mach needle climbed: 2, 2.5, 3. The air, once faintly whistling around the fuselage, grew into a roar. The hull groaned under the stress and heat. The metal under my boots glowed an angry red. I almost eased off the power until I saw the faint flicker of blue lightning off my nose—St. Elmo’s fire. I kept going, and then I hit the wall.

The air at 100,000 feet is thin—so thin I was now using the small reaction control rockets in my nosecone to control the plane; there wasn’t enough air for the control surfaces to push against. That was why the torrential force of the storm took me by surprise. The whole plane shook with tremors that sent my gut into my throat. If I hadn’t lost the contents of my stomach that morning, it would have been all over the cockpit. It was a small miracle the seals hadn’t failed yet—this high without a pressure suit, I wouldn’t just suffocate.

I felt the plane lurch violently—the flaps, if I had to guess. That would make it a bear to land, but I doubted I’d be landing anyway.

In the midst of the storm, my mind finally cleared. Sure enough, I couldn’t see the stars above or the Earth below. I had no radar guidance, and Kirill—along with the rest of the engineering team—was dead 120,000 feet below. My hand was steady on the stick, and the gentle puffs of the RCS thrusters calmed my mind. For the second time that day, felt a sense I didn’t know I had—a premonition, a warning. I strained to touch it, and very faintly, it touched me back.

I couldn’t describe what it was like. As natural as sound or sight or smell, I sensed a flow around me—like some nerves I didn’t know I had feeling a great current sweeping me along a river. The Hive wasn’t pushing me away; it was pulling me in! The flickers of St. Elmo’s fire grew into long blue tendrils along the plane, and for the first time today, I followed my gut. Then I saw it.

The Hive would be difficult to describe. It looked like an inside-out raindrop, reflecting and spilling glittering rays of white light across the clouds. I couldn’t tell if it was moving or I was anymore. It skittered about and shook violently, pulsing and beating like an arrhythmic heart, and as I grew closer, I felt the soft heat on my skin spilling through the canopy glass.

A blaring alarm brought me to my senses: bingo fuel. My turbojet had died long ago, starved of air this high up. The tiny rocket engine powering me had only a few seconds of fuel remaining. I reached down to shut it off, and the cacophony of noises in the cockpit got a little quieter. I armed the nuclear rocket onboard. Only Ernst and I knew the secret, but I’m sure my brother figured it out at the end. We never were able to find fuel for this one—and this was only ever going to be a one-way trip.

The light that filled the cockpit grew bright and comforting. The nose melted and warped from the heat, but I felt a sense of calm wash over me even as the plane started to disintegrate around me. In my last moments in this world, I said a prayer.

“God, please let this count,” I whispered.

I pushed the detonator. For a second, I heard a click, and the world faded to black.