Around him, the base personnel were pouring out of the hangars and bomb shelters, only to mill around, seeking direction in the face of the unimaginable devastation. Cochrane looked behind him, the areas where base housing had been built were leveled as thoroughly as the rest of the installation. That gave him his first priority at least. Fortunately he had a loud-hailer available, the presence of mind to think of bringing one as he’d left the AOC was one of the reasons why he’d made it to General.

“Listen up. Everybody who has family in the base housing area, you are dismissed now. Take whatever transport you need from the hangars and get to your quarters, help your families. Move.” He hesitated while about a third of the men broke away and set off. “The rest of you, we’re forming work gangs to dig the casualties out. There will be a lot of them and we have to move fast. Get whatever tools you can find and get going. Base security, get the infra-red gear and the K-9s, we’ll need them to find people buried in the ruins.”

As the base surged back into activity, Cochrane walked over the shattered hardstand to the runway. It wasn’t quite as badly damaged as the hardstands but it was still a mess.

“Sir.” The voice sounded behind him. One of the pilots was running up to join him.

“Yes Captain?”

“Sir, my Warthog is fuelled and ready to go, she was being prepped for a test flight when the emergency hit. I can take her up, see what the damage is from the air. I’ve got a FLIR pod as well, I can help look for people in the wreckage.”

“Captain, just take a look at the runway. It’s a wreck and its covered with debris.”

“No problem Sir. The Warthog can handle the damage and worse. My bird still has her Hell-filters fitted so that’ll stop any foreign object ingestion. Sir, after this we need everything we can get to help us and I can do more good up there than pushing a spade.”