U.N.E.

Chapter One

Chapter One

 

Ten months later

 

The hot Nevada sun pounded down on the two month old tarmac of the NATO Special and Advanced Mech training facility located less than an hour from Caliente, Nevada. Lieutenant Angela Baker shielded her eyes with her free hand and gazed up into the brilliant blue sky as the distant sound of jets echoed through the area. Nellis Air Force Base located near Las Vegas was just down Route 93, a two hour trip by vehicle, and military aircraft often flew overhead on their way to and from training areas. At one point in time Nellis had been the only Air Force base in the Nevada region, but with the threat of UNE's continuing to grow NATO deemed it necessary to build and maintain a training and testing base dedicated to Mech's and their pilots. Thus the NATO Special and Advanced Training Facility was created. The entire area was dominated by military vehicles, hangars that housed top secret and untested Mech's, and a special runway for the Mech's to use.

Angela had been stationed here for ten months to the day and she was finally beginning to see the end of her long journey. When she was first assigned to the NATO forces it had not been what she would call her dream posting. All she had to go on was that she was supposedly being assigned to a supply depot in Pennsylvania with her best friend, Second Lieutenant Sarah Dresco. Little did she know was that she was actually being assigned to a special joint task force with two Canadian pilots to train and get the latest M.W.P.'s operational. They were the top of their field and were given a once in a life time opportunity to pilot the most advanced mechanized units ever produced by mankind.

Before they had even gotten on the plane Sarah had assured Angela that they were not going to a supply depot, that the military would not send the two top graduates their academy had ever seen to some place where their skills would never be used. At first Angela didn't believe her friend, but the night they touched down at this base she became a believer. In the last ten months they had trained hard and become accustomed to the new, more advanced M.W.P.'s that both Canada and the United States had recently produced. All they had to do was make it through two more months of training and lessons and they would be deployed as the first wave of the new vanguard against the UNE threat. Angela was living the dream.

A high altitude Airborne Warning And Control system, or AWAC for short, streaked through the bright blue sky and left a white trail behind it as it made its rounds of the area. AWAC's were a common sight in the area now that the new base was operational and countries from around the world tested their new Mech's before mass producing them. If there was one bad thing about being stationed there it would definitely be the heightened security that the base was under at all times. Most machines at the facility were classified above top secret and the base also housed some of the most brilliant engineers and thinkers in the Mech field, a job class that was relatively new. The nearby town of Caliente, while small, was the only place personnel from the base were allowed to go and it was only if they had special permission from the base commander, their section commander, and the Military Police. When off base everything that you saw and heard there was considered confidential and you were encouraged not to interact with the local civilians too much. Because of these rules Angela had only ever been off base three times in the ten months she had been there. It was just too much of a hassle.

Stealing her eyes away from the sky, Angela looked out over the black runway and saw a cleaning and maintenance crew out working on the catapult system down near the ramp at the end. Unlike normal aircraft, Mech's weighed as much as ten times more and because of this the designers and military needed to come up with a way to get them airborne without wasting too much fuel and space. The easy solution to this problem was to borrow what the Navy used on their aircraft carriers and add a tall ramp that rose quickly towards the sky. A Mech would be attached to the catapult system and start their engines while they prepared for takeoff. The catapult would then speed them down the runway at close to seventy five miles per hour from the start while the Mech's engine pushed it to even greater speeds. Once the Mech hit the top of the ramp the catapult would release the unit and it would soar into the sky where the onboard flight engines would take over and keep them going. Once you got over the initial shock your first time doing it the whole experience proved to be one hell of a ride. It was Angela's favorite part about training so far.