Chaos Tactics (The Reckless Chronicles Book 1)

by Trent Falls

  The blinding blue light offered little warning as two of the beams hit their ship. The ship rocked slightly but wasn’t jostled badly. The beams were ion bolts. They were designed to degrade the electrical systems of spacecraft and disable the vehicle long enough for law enforcement to arrive. A third bolt hit as John veered the ship away from another blinding volley. The console in front of John popped, crackling with electric discharge. John pulled his right hand away from the electrified console. Several of the instrument panels in front of him winked out, including the main navigation screen above his flight controls.

  “Ohhhh-kay!” John’s eyes shot wide open. He tried his absolute best to be calm, and to remain calm visibly. He looked ahead out the forward viewport and saw Earth getting larger. He knew just by the feel of his ship that he was going way too fast. His right hand shot up to the radio controls. He hoped to God the radio still worked or that he could find a way to get it to work if it didn’t. He didn’t want to tell Julie but he knew from experience that he was in a very life threatening situation.

  After a few seconds of tapping uselessly at the radio interface John hear the signal crackle to life in his headset com.

  “This is Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine! Stop shooting damn it!” John shouted. “I’ve got way too much velocity! My daughter is on board!!!”

  “Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine.” A male controller’s voice called back over the com. “Maintain present course and speed. We are dispatching recovery craft to your location.”

  John’s eyes jumped over the instruments of the flight deck. Half of them were out.

  The ion blasts had at least stopped. Someone on the ground or manning the defense systems hopefully came to their senses.

  John then glanced at Julie. His niece, with her long straight blonde hair, stared back at him, a worried expression obvious on her face.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie. We’ll be okay.” John forced himself to grin at her.

  He returned his attention to the instruments. He took a calming breath. Earth was getting dangerously close ahead. His approach angle on the planet was way too shallow; almost vertical! Calm. He needed to ascertain what he had and what he didn’t have; to figure out the flight capabilities of his ship. The Earth Control ships wouldn’t arrive in time at the speed he was traveling.

  The Tequesta was essentially drifting forward in space at a good clip. The yaw in the nose of the ship was becoming more prominent. He must have started turning ever so slightly during the last ion blast to strike the hull.

  John immediately tried to correct – gently. Repulse was still out. John’s hand reached for a switch in front of him. He tried the controls again. Jets of white dinitrogen tetroxide pulsed on the starboard side of the Tequesta’s nose. His attitude control thrusters were working! John thanked God for small miracles.

  The main screen above his controls powered up. The nav computer seemed to have reset and was rebooting. Power up of the nav systems took a few seconds.

  The main screen came back up, indicating John’s position in space, his speed, and the condition of his ship. Repulse seemed to be the main victim, with the main coil fields polarized. John keyed in an expanded readout of the main engines. Two were out altogether. Engines three and four were questionable. He was reading errors in the fuel control system. An overload of the engine could mean the entire rear half of the Tequesta might explode if he pushed the engines too hard.

  John looked up. He could see India ahead as he raced into the night side of the planet. To the right of India he could make out Indonesia, Japan, the east coast of China, and the upper part of Australia. The crossover to daylight wasn’t too far beyond to the east.

  An idea suddenly came to John’s mind. He checked the status of his heat shield. Integrity of the shield was 100%. He then checked the atmospheric control surfaces of the Tequesta.

  Outside, the rudders on the small twin vertical fins at the back of the ship moved left and right. Elevators at the back of the wedge shaped ship moved up and down. The Tequesta, being a lifting body, didn’t really have ailerons or flaps. The oversized elevators at the rear of the trapezoidal ship functioned somewhat in a similar manner to ailerons. The BAE Explorer was a lifting body on purpose, designed for exactly such a situation that it could be flown into an atmosphere in a classical flight profile; the space shuttle landing profile!

  John already had a landing spot in mind. It was the safest way he could imagine to get them out of that tough spot.

  “You’re strapped in, right?” John asked Julie indirectly.

  “Yeah.” Julie answered in a worried tone.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.” John began working over the controls of the ship, getting it ready for landing. He took another calming breath. John’s flight skills were rusty enough. A controlled reentry glide of a ship that large would be challenging enough. With repulse out it would surely be tense.

  John remained calm. He worked through what he could remember of his training, allowing common sense to override fear as much as he could when he found himself lost. He couldn’t afford to screw up.

  “Earth Control. This is BAE Explorer Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine.” John announced confidently into his headset com. “I am ingressing Earth’s atmosphere at the following coordinates following this profile.” John transmitted his hastily assembled flight plan.

  “Negative Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine! You are forbidden entry!” The angry controller’s voice replied. “Hold your present position until rescue arrives.”

  “Your ion cannons made it impossible for me to ‘hold position’!” John growled back. “My daughter is on this ship and as captain I am going to see to the safety of my vessel and passengers.”

  “Your vessel is in violation of quarantine, customs, and treaty violations sir!” the controller’s voice responded forcefully. “Use whatever attitude control you have and remain outside of the atmosphere.”

  “I already told you I can’t!” John shouted back. “I’m going in. You can either help me or shoot me out of the sky!”

  John depressed another few keys on the panel in front of him. He pulled back on the flight yoke, pulling the Tequesta out of a dive towards India. The nose picked up as the ship rotated clockwise, aiming him at the Pacific Ocean with his heat shield down.

  “They won’t really shoot us out of the sky will they?!” Julie asked fearfully.

  “No. They won’t have time to if they did.” John replied. “Hang on!”

  John calculated a brief burn of the main engine. Ordinarily, the Tequesta’s main engine would be oriented backwards to reduce orbital speed and gravity would have pulled him back down. John didn’t have that kind of time. His nose was still oriented downward enough that he could thrust downward into the upper atmosphere.

  Two of the main thrusters fired. Julie and John were shoved back hard in their seats. John took a slow deep breath. His grip was fused to the flight yoke. The burn lasted only eight seconds but it was enough to push them down into the thin air.

  Gravity quickly took over. John was able to raise his nose to the proper orientation. Now all he had to do was wait.

  The ride for the first few minutes was uneventful and smooth. They weren’t shot down. Julie sat for those few tense moments looking to her right out of the elongated triangular window. The sky outside was spooky, changing from deep night with a clear array of stars to an obscure dark veil. Many of the stars vanished from sight, leaving only the brightest visible as the sky itself grew slowly brighter.

  It took about twenty minutes for the Tequesta to really encounter any air resistance. The heat friction with the atmosphere began as a hint on the front of the ship, then grew to an intense orange and purple flares. Flames began to appear at the leading edges of the ship. The flames, actually plasma, flared up around the nose of the ship, quickly engulfing it. The ship jostled a few times. Julie had already experienced reentry but it seemed a bit more intense in the Tequesta given its state. The ship seemed to move faster withou
t repulse. The plasma burning around them seemed more threatening. Another jolt shook the Tequesta.

  Julie looked over at her uncle nervously. He seemed intently focused on the job of flying the ship but he seemed collected. John didn’t seem to panic. The ship moved subtlety. Julie looked at her uncle’s hands on the flight yoke. The segmented yoke, really a joined pair of control sticks, rotated in his hands slowly and carefully.

  The Tequesta maneuvered through very long banking turns. John was working the craft to bleed off speed. He knew he could have allowed the flight computer to land the ship but he wasn’t sure about the condition of the autopilot system.

  It took several minutes for the Tequesta to slow enough out of the ionized gas. The Tequesta was still traveling extremely fast. The plasma flames eventually vanished as the sky around them got ever brighter. Morning arrived quickly, with the sky transitioning from a dark bluish purple to bright blue in bright daylight.

  The Pacific Ocean stretched out to the far horizon below.

  It was a beautiful day. The sky was a clear crisp blue with a number of thick angelic white clouds ahead.

  “BAE Explorer Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine. This is Space Command. We have you on our screens.” A calmer male voice called out over the com frequency.

  “Requesting landing instructions per my transmitted approach profile – over.” John demanded.

  “Landing profile has been approved.” The voice replied. “We are transmitting a correction for final approach.”

  A beeping sounded from his flight computer. John looked down to see the map of his approach. A long line reached out across the Pacific, dipping down into the south over the international date line and cutting up towards the Southeast United States. The final approach line was altered to take him north of Los Angeles and Oxnard out into the Mohave Desert. John knew why the tail end of his approach had been altered. The military wanted to keep him away from the densely populated Los Angeles metro area.

  “Understood Space Command.” John replied aloud into the com.

  “We have run a scan of your ship and confirm that you are unarmed.” The voice replied. “We have escort fighters en route. Do NOT deviate from your flight path or you WILL be fired upon! Understood Explorer?”

  “Copy that.” John responded obediently.

  “I guess they’re not going to shoot us down after all?” Julie grinned in relief.

  “Cooler heads prevail.” John noted, still looking forward and focused on flying the ship.

  John turned the control yoke again, bringing the Tequesta into another long sweeping bank. “Damn! She’s a heavy bitch to turn without repulse!” John grumbled aloud as he worked the flight controls.

  The west coast of the United States appeared on his main navigation screen. He had all but done it. He was in the Earth’s atmosphere! They were home! He just needed to get them down. He prayed that the flight controls would remain responsive; that there wasn’t any further damage from the ion cannons. He focused to keep the nose down and the airspeed fast enough to keep them in the air. John knew that if they came in too fast they could end up a burning wreck in the desert. If they were too slow the lifting body of the ship would lose lift. Such a stall in such a massive shuttle would be unrecoverable. The Tequesta also didn’t have ejection seats or an escape capsule.

  He had no choice. He needed to get his little girl on the ground safe.

  Julie sat quietly next to him. She had relaxed enough to allow herself to look out the window. It felt like she was flying in a regular passenger jet, only much faster and with the nose oriented on a steeper down slope.

  Julie had no idea of the potential danger they faced.

  They descended further. A large land mass appeared ahead.

  California!

  The proximity alert went off on the nav computer. John looked down at the scope to see two blips moving quickly towards him. They had Air Force Reserve markings on their transponders.

  Two TI-57 interceptor fighters raced by the Tequesta a few miles to its port side. They flashed by the ship in the blink of an eye. They were agile and fast defense fighters. The alert fighters turned out behind the Tequesta a few miles. Banking quickly they throttled up and raced up alongside of the ship, flanking it on both sides.

  John looked left to see one of the TI-57’s as it pulled up next to his cockpit. John knew what the pilot was doing. He was trying to get visual confirmation of who might be flying the Tequesta. He also wanted to show off his armament to indicate he meant business if he were to stray off course.

  “Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine.” The escort fighter pilot spoke to John directly over the com. “This is Major Adam Wellington of the US Air National Guard. We will be escorting you into Edwards. Maintain present speed and course.”

  “Thank you Major Wellington.” John replied, looking out his side window briefly at the Major. “This is John Carn. Thanks for the escort.”

  John again looked at the helmeted form of the Major. His black visor glanced at him before his TI-57 raised up and fell back. In the maneuver John could see the two stainless silver encased solid state laser cannons mounted under Wellington’s wings.

  “Falling back high to your nine o’clock Carn. Note our position.” The Major replied.

  “I’m tracking you, Major. Thanks.” John noted aloud.

  “Wow! They really are armed!” Julie exclaimed, looking back out her right window to see the other patrol interceptor.

  “Yes they are.” John said plainly. “It’s okay. We’ll be alright.”

  They passed over the coast a few moments later. The ground below was mostly forested with a few small towns here and there.

  The pilot of the other interceptor, Lieutenant Tina Akey, looked over to her left at the Tequesta. Its white and light blue panels gleamed in the bright sunlight, though many parts of the hull were worn and stripped of paint from damage and reentry. The Tequesta looked to be a beautiful craft that had been beaten up for several rounds. All in all, it still looked safe to land.

  The Tequesta flew out past the woodlands into the dry arid desert.

  “Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine to Edwards Control. Requesting VFR approach.” John called out.

  “Roger Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine. Confirmed to land on runway two three left.” The Edwards controller replied.

  John kept the nose down on the Tequesta, still in a fairly aggressive dive. The escort fighters matched speed and angle with him perfectly as though they had practiced the formation routinely. John looked out for the visual cues for the runway. The runway ran the length of the base on the dry lake bed. He had to swing the Tequesta out in an uncomfortable bank to line up. They had purposely directed him out there, he figured, to keep him from flying over the main part of the base.

  John turned the control yoke, pulling back with considerable strength. The flight controls shook in his hands in resistance.

  ‘Come on! Don’t give up on me now you sonovabitch!’ John thought silently to himself of the Tequesta.

  Rogers Lake stretched out as far as John could see. He pulled up hard on the yoke, willing the nose of the Tequesta to turn up. The controls shook again angrily in response. The nose turned up. John was in level flight with the desert lake bed runway. His speed had slowed considerably.

  With the Tequesta level he pulled back on the controls for the landing gear. He prayed that they would even deploy. The doors opened on the bottom of the black heat shield. The wheeled landing struts reached down.

  John looked over to a secondary display that showed he had all five green lights on the landing gear. He allowed himself a smile.

  The lowered gear created more drag. He was still coming in much faster than he liked. John pitched the nose up ever so slightly more, further reducing his forward velocity. He didn’t want to dump down on his gear.

  John gritted his teeth. Praying, hoping and with much strength dropping the craft as gently as he could.

  Gear four and five made contact first, followed a h
alf second after by two and three. Dust kicked up from the lake bed runway, trailing in a long tail behind him. The Tequesta rumbled angrily upon landing. John hoped to God they wouldn’t break the gear and fall over.

  Gear one under the nose settled. John hit the brakes at a third power first. The Tequesta rolled on slowing eventually over the long runway. More power on the breaks.

  Julie had put her head down in the final moments. The shaking within the Tequesta was rather scary.

  Forward momentum slowed, becoming a crawl.

  Wheel stop!

  The dust cloud enveloped them from behind and faded. John kept his iron grip on the controls for a few moments.

  He was down! They were home!

  A slight chuckle escaped John’s throat. Growing a few more laughs in the next breath.

  Julie looked up to see the dry desert lake bed ahead. She smiled as she realized they had stopped.

  “Great landing Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine. Welcome home!” Was all John heard from the headset before he and Julie let out a collective hysterical laugh of relief.

  “We’re home!” John smiled.

  “We made it!!!” Julie unbuckled her straps and leaned over to bear hug her uncle.

  “Be advised Romeo Golf Five Zero Nine. Secure your craft and prepare to be boarded. Units are en route to your position.” The Edwards controller called back.

  “Copy that, Edwards Control!” John answered jovially. “Shutting her down now!” John pulled the headset off.

  His hands went to the break lock switch. He shut off the hyperdrive and set the reactor to its standby setting. Once finished John released his own straps and moved to stand up. He looked over at Julie who was also getting up.

  “Come on!” he smiled at her. “Let’s have a look outside!”

  Julie offered no argument. John got out ahead of her and led her back to the cargo compartment.

  John released the small side airlock door of the Tequesta. The door swung open, releasing the stale artificially scrubbed air of the cargo bay out while letting the dry hot air of the outside in. John pulled the emergency ramp release. A yellow inflatable ramp shot out the side of the airlock, inflating into a slide.