"Alert, Alert, all squadrons to your ships, enemy contact imnent. This is not a drill, I repeat, this is not a drill."As the contact alarms blared throughout the ship James Thompson's feet smacked against the floor as he rolled out of his bunk, his body instinctually opening his locker and pulling on his flight jumpsuit. His mind however was just beginning the process of shifting from the rather pleasant dream he had been having into conciousness. He was a fighter pilot, he was on a ship, and his squadron needed him in his fighter. The rational part of his mind had finished catching up to the situation as his body finished tying the bootlaces on his boots. Slinging his holster and pistol onto his waist, he hurried out of his berth with the other eleven people of his squadron. There was Gax with "Stallion" as his callsign, Francis "Freakshow", Jeffery "Joker", but where was his wingman? A hand clapped his back as a woman with short cropped blonde hair jogged up next to him. "Hey Cupcakes, excited for todays run?" James grimaced. He hated that callsign. "Yeah Kariss. Hell, do you even know what we're up against this time?""You know it baby, the Ice-Queens always ready for a stroll through the woods. But today's picnic? I have no idea.""Its still unfair you know. How the hell do you get 'Ice-Queen' as a callsign and I'm stuck with fucking Cupcakes?""Aww is little mommies boy tired of his nickname?"James had to nearly push another crewman aside as the group of pilots rushed down the corridors, grouping up by wing-pairs and chatting as they rushed to almost certain death."I'm just saying, it was one time.""It was twice Cupcakes, and you know it.""Once! it was only that time in flight school.""And that one time in Tahiti, remember?"James frowned, she was right. He had tried to block Tahiti out of his mind. Damnit she was always right. Luckily the conversation was cut off and he was spared further embarresment by the arrival of the squadron into the hangar bay. They ran by dozens of fighters with pilots scrambling into the cockpits until they reached their fighters, mechanics finishing topping off the fuel or loading a final missile or two. James hurried up the metal ladder into his fighter, a F/A-93, the favorite space superiority fighter of the United Nations of Earth. As he settled into the ejection seat, he clipped together the safety straps on the chair, securing himself into the fighter. He then turned and retrieved his helmet from the small ledge behind the head of the chair, slipping it down onto his black hair. After plugging in the leads from the helmet into the side of the seat where it connected to the fighter's computers, he started to spin up the engines, starting the launch process. The engine coughed as it started to warm up, shaking the frame of the fighter slightly. As his systems started to come online he worked through the pre-flight check-up, shortened due to the rush of battle. In fact that reminded him. He flipped his communications to talk to his squadron leader."Hey Captain, what's the skinny on this launch? Why does everyone seem to have a bee up their ass?"Muhammad, the squadron leader, called back to the entire squadron across the comms from three fighters away. "Everyone has a bee up their ass because those damn Rebels just assaulted Earth and Mars. We have reports of nuculear weapons detonating on both planets." That quieted everyone. James had never seen earth, but somehow he still thought of it as home. If Earth was gone... "Well shit." Somebody, somewhere was going to have to pay.