Starfighter (Strike Commander Book 1)

by Richard Tongue

   A tall, muscular woman was in the elevator when she entered, glaring at her as she selected for the Habitation Deck. She looked her up and down, then shook her head, turning back to the door.

   “Is something wrong?” Morgan asked.

   “You don't look like an Espatier,” she replied.

   With a thin smile, she said, “What's an Espatier supposed to look like?”

   Waving her arms over herself, the woman said, “Ready.”

   Morgan shook her head. “When we get into action, and we will, you'll have a chance to see for yourself. Besides, I'm not an Espatier, not really.” As the woman mustered a triumphant look on her face, she continued, “I was in the Martian Defense Force. Joined seven years ago, right out of school. After a couple of tours, they offered me officer training.”

   “Mustang, then.”

   She shrugged, and replied, “Not that I ever had a chance to use it. When the three planetary services merged to form the Triplanetary Fleet, they didn't have any room for a half-baked officer. It was either back to the ranks, or take Reserve status and do something else.”

   “You should have gone back to the ranks,” the woman said.

   “I'd wanted to get a degree anyway. Figured I might be able to come back in later.” Gravity returned as the elevator slid across the ship, and she tucked her feet under the guide-rail. “It worked, anyway. Soon as I finished, they recalled me, but as a scientist, not a soldier.” Frowning, she asked, “What about you? Ex-Fleet?”

   “No.”

   “Come on, I've told you my life story.”

   A thin smile crossed her face, and she tapped the elevator controls again, replying, “Earn it.”

   The doors opened to reveal a long, thin compartment, a rack of pistols along the wall and a targeting matrix at the far end. Without waiting for Morgan, the woman walked over to the rack, tossing a gun to her as she took one for herself, and took up her firing stance. Morgan moved next to her, feeling the weight of the pistol on her hand. It felt real, only the thin beam of the laser sight at the far end to indicate that this was a training weapon, not an actual sidearm.

   All around, the lights dimmed, and strange shapes began to appear, ghostly images with red dots at their heart that seemed to dance around the room, rushing towards them with a life of their own. Instinct took over, and she started to fire, round after simulated round smashing into the targets as they phased into life, vanishing as they disappeared. Snatching a glance at her counterpart, she saw the woman coolly taking down her fake opponents, one after another, with razor-sharp precision.

   “Winner, Angelina Webster, twenty hits to eighteen. End program,” a harsh computer voice uttered from the ceiling, and the lights came on again.

   “Not bad,” Angel said, shaking her head. “Most people get spooked by this, first time out.”

   “I've never seen a firing range like this,” she replied.

   Sliding the pistol back into the rack, Angel said, “I built it when I first came on board. A condition of my hire. About six months ago, Max talked me into letting him make some modifications, give me more of a challenge.” Glancing at the matrix, she continued, “It's different every time.”

   “I wouldn't mind spending some time here,” Morgan said, passing across her weapon.

   That earned her a wider smile, and she replied, “I could do with someone around here who can give me a decent challenge. Kirk's not bad, but he doesn't come down here that often. I'm heading to the mess. Want to get something to eat?”

   “Sure. I've been stuck down in the hold all morning looking over the salvage.”

   “Much damage?”

   “Too much,” she said, following Angel through the door. “So, did I pass the test?”

   “Test?”

   “Life history. Why you didn't join the Fleet.”

   “Ah. Simple answer, I'm not a Triplanetary citizen. I was with the Liberty League, out on Thalassa, during the big crackdown a few years ago.” She smiled, and added, “There's a death sentence on my head, anywhere in UN Colonial Territory.”

   “You don't seem worried.”

   “It'd cost them more than they'd like to cash that check. Still, after the network was smashed, I needed to do something, and I drifted out to the frontier. Jack hired me, though it was rather unexpected for both of us.”

   “How?”

   “I was out drinking one night, working local security, and he ran into the club with three gunmen on his tail. After a quick conversation and a firefight, he was in the clear and I had a new job. Easy.” She paused, then added, “Though we were both barred from that place when the manager recovered.”

   They stepped into a large room, a series of tables and chairs randomly scattered around, a battered food fabricator along one wall with a pile of dull metal trays next to its outlet slot. Angel walked over to it, tapped a pair of controls, and turned to Morgan with a smile.

   “Chicken salad for two. Trust me, that's what you want. We haven't had the system serviced in a while.”

   “So I smell,” Morgan replied, wrinkling her nose while the machine gurgled and groaned. “Were all the crew picked like that?”

   Taking the preferred plates and dumping them on a tray, she said, “Two groups on this ship. Fleet and Civilian. They might not wear the uniform anymore, but they still wear the uniform, if you know what I mean.”

   Sullivan walked in, looking at their selection and shaking his head, saying, “That's the best you can do? Live a little, for God's sake.”

   “I'd like to live long, thanks,” Angel replied, as the smiling man tapped a long series of buttons.

   “You put her through her paces?” Sullivan asked, gesturing at Morgan. “She pass?”

   “Just about. Give me a few weeks, and I might make a sportsman out of you yet.”

   Snapping her fingers, Morgan replied, “That's where I've seen you before. The '66 Olympics.”

   Nodding, she said, “Got that piece of metal swinging in my cabin somewhere. Didn't help me with the UN Marshals turned up, though.” With a shrug, she added, “I suppose it might have bounced a bullet, but I'd hate to have to get another one.”

   Sliding a plate of distressed near-lobster onto the table, Sullivan said, “You were asking about the crew. Angel's about right. About half of us, the original group, served together in the War, in the 25th Squadron.” He smiled, and said, “The Fighting Wildcats. Never liked the name. Sounded silly.”

   “Old comrades in arms,” Angel replied, shaking her head.

   “You've been on this ship for fifteen years?” Morgan asked.

   “Just under four, actually. Jack managed to scrape enough to put down a down payment when it was auctioned off. She used to fly for Cornucopia, before the company collapsed. Lots of stuff went cheap that day.” He smiled, and added, “The rest of the crew came together a piece at a time.”

   “And what is it that you do?” Looking around the room, she continued, “You're operating on half a crew, and I couldn't help but notice that you have a missile tube and a countermeasures suite. Neither of which a normal freighter has, even an ex-military one. They should have stripped that stuff out.”

   Sullivan glanced at Angel, who said with a scowl, “Fine, we're crooks. Happy?”

   “We work out on the Frontier,” Sullivan said. “Most of us like it better out here, and the rest have good reasons to stay away from the Core Systems.” He glanced at Angel, and added, “More than a few have a price on their head. Sometimes you have to push the boundaries a little to keep going.”

   “So yes, you're flying with a band of murderers and cut-throats, the terror of the Interstellar Main,” Angel said, waving her arms theatrically in the air.

   “No,” Morgan replied. “I'm running from a band of murderers and cut-throats, and right now this ship looks pretty damn good to me. You even managed to salvage most of the artifacts,
though how I'm going to get them back to the Confederacy I don't know. At least those bastards didn't get their hands on them.”

   “How bad was it?”

   “Bad. And we've lost all of the context, which makes the finds next thing to worthless. What we've ended up with is a hold full of museum fodder for gawping tourists, but I suppose that's better than nothing.” With a sigh, she said, “Most of the best pieces were taken away on Hermes anyway.” Taking a bite of her salad, she continued, “Why were you at Karnak Station?”

   “You want the truth?”

   “I'm stuck with you guys, so I might as well know. The Captain said something about speculative trading, but I figured that was just something he made up.” Gagging on the food, she added, “This is truly terrible, by the way.”

   “We were going to steal that crap,” Conway slurred, lurching into the room, stumbling into a chair, sending it crashing to the floor. “You want to know what we were doing? Your boss, Old Man Hubbard, had sold all of the non-vital artifacts to a consortium, and we were the pick-up crew.” Collapsing onto the floor, he shook his head, and said, “There you go, you know the awful, awful truth.” A bottle dropped from his hand, the contents foaming out onto the floor.

   Shaking his head, Sullivan walked over to him, kneeling by his side, and saying, “Every year. Every damn year.” He patted Conway on the shoulder, then shook his head.

   “Special day,” he said, with a drunken hiccup. “Got to show due respect, right. That's what an officer and a gentleman does.” He giggled, and said, “Read that in a book somewhere.”

   “Weakness,” Angel said, shaking her head in contempt.

   “No,” Sullivan replied. “Weakness would be doing it every day. That he doesn't is strength.” Glaring at her, he continued, “You go through a tenth of what this poor dumb bastard has, and you hold it together. Then we can talk. And don't tell me about that bunch of suicidal college students you hung out with. That was just a game to you.” Looking down at his friend, he added, “Damn it, Jack.”

   Stepping over to the wall communicator, Angel slammed a button, and said, “Kirk, get down here with some sober pills. Our lord and master's gone on another binge.” Turning to Sullivan, she said, “We ought to take that damn stuff off him, you know.”

   “He'd find more anyway,” Sullivan said with a resigned sigh. He looked at Morgan, shook his head, and added, “You aren't seeing us at our best today.”

   “Oh, she is,” Angel said. “That's the problem.”

   Doyle ran into the room, medical kit in hand, and looked at the drooling Conway on the floor, murmuring to himself. Pulling a hypodermic out of his bag, he injected the contents into him with practiced ease, and the struggling pilot settled onto the floor, a low rumble coming out of his mouth.

   “Give me a hand,” he said to Angel. “We might as well let him sleep this off in his cabin.”

   “Great,” she said, moving over to the slumbering figure. “Exactly what I signed up for. Taking my drunk boss to bed.”

   As the three of them stumbled out of the room, Sullivan took his seat at the table, and said, “I don't think I'm hungry now. You want that?”

   “No.” Morgan looked at the door, and said, “What the hell happened there?”

   “We've all got our own stories,” he replied. “Angel has hers, I have mine, and Jack has his. Though his is more of a horror story.” Looking down at the deck, he added, “You want to know about the artifacts.”

   “I'd like to know whether I've spent twelve hours preparing a bill of sale for some corrupt administrator, yeah.”

   “Like I said, we do what we have to do to keep going. One-ship companies are usually a bad idea, but we're not even in a position to get any government contracts. Even if our crew was, well, suited to it, Jack wouldn't take them anyway. That means we have to break the rules.”

   “And steal my work.”

   With a faint smile, he added, “We're not the thieves. That was Hubbard. He contacted an associate of ours, Vlad Koslov, and we were hired to do the pick-up. One load of artifacts, to be shipped back to Sol for sale. There's a good market for alien art on Mars, Callisto, even Terra itself if you can get past the restrictions, but we were just taking them to Belzoni.”

   “Where we're heading now. And this Koslov is the man I'm supposed to be asking for help.”

   “Sometimes you play the hand you've got, even if it's full of junk.” He paused, and said, “I could have made up some sort of story, any old rubbish to convince you that we were a group of saints, but I told you the truth. That's got to be worth something.”

   Folding her arms, she added, “Tell me some more truth, Sullivan. Why is the Captain drunk? And why aren't you surprised? You're acting like everything is normal.”

   “Mo, for God's sake. No one's called me by my last name since the war.” He looked at the door, and said, “For most of the War, I was on and off the lines, but I met Jack at Flight School. Taught him gunnery and sensor techniques.” With a faint smile, he added, “Top marks on the first, down in the gutter for the second. Even then I could tell he had leadership potential, and he realized it in a hurry, with the War. In two years, he had his own squadron.”

   “The 25th.”

   He was looking at her, but his eyes were somewhere else, long ago and far away. “You'd have still been in school then, too young to know, but that was the darkest part of the war. We'd lost Second Vesta, Third Ceres, then the Battle of the Neptune Trojans. Our supply chains were smashed to pieces. I guess it brought out the best in us.”

   “My father was Fleet,” she said. “He died at Third Ceres.”

   “Then maybe you have more of an idea than I thought. Jack's squadron was sent out to Proxima, then Barnard's Star. Interdiction work. If they were going to smash our supply lines, we were going to wipe out theirs. Working out of old buckets like this,” he said, looking around. “Most of our carriers were either destroyed or badly damaged. For three years, he led that crew, day in, day out, strikes round the clock. And he won.” A growing smile on his face, he added, “The UN couldn't get a single damn freighter out of Proxima without the 25th getting there first.”

   “What happened?”

   “There were casualties, of course. That always happens. Despite that, the 25th had a good name, a good reputation. Things got bad enough near the end that they gave me my wings back, and I managed to get sent out to join Jack. We'd kept in touch.” Shaking his head, he continued, “That twenty-year-old with the stars in his eyes was a grim twenty-five-year-old veteran when I made it out there, with a wife and a baby girl attached to him by then.” A smile cracked his face as he said, “I remember the day that kid was born.”

   Closing his eyes, he said, “During the peace negotiations, both sides kept on launching strikes. They told us we had to keep the pressure on, convince the enemy that we were ready to fight on if we had to. Fight on? We didn't have the strength of a weak kitten at that point, but we had to keep up the pretense.” He sighed, continuing, “It was June 19th, 2155.”

   “Armistice Day,” she interrupted.

   “Not then, it wasn't. It was just a normal morning, and we had our orders for the day. The full squadron was to intercept an enemy fuel tanker, running out to Collins Base. Easy, we thought.” He sighed, and added, “Dirk missed it. Broke his arm playing handball the day before, and one day, he might even forgive himself for that. I took his place, leading the reserve formation.”

   “One by one, I watched my friends die.”

   “It was an ambush,” Morgan said, quietly. “They knew you were coming.”

   “That they did. And Jack still pushed that mission home. As though the fate of the galaxy depended on it, he drove onto the target, and took out that tanker. I'd never seen anything like it.” A tear forming in the corner of his eye, he continued, “Twelve men went out there. Two came home. Me and Jack. You want to know the best bit?
The war was over. It had ended before the strike began, but there had been a hold-up getting the signal through to us. It was all for nothing.”

   “God.”

   “Maybe. I've never been sure, not after that day.” With a deep sigh, he added, “We were heroes, of course, and they pinned medals on us. I said that two people came back, but that wasn't really true. Jack never did. A part of him is still out there, fighting that battle, and I guess he always will be. It was easier on me. He was the one giving the orders.”

   “And he left the Fleet?”

   “The Fleet left him,” he replied, bitterly. “Grounded him, put him in an administrative role. So he'd have time to be with his family, they said. That was stupid. He needed to get right back in the saddle, back on full duty. Instead they gave him too much damn time to think. And to drink.” Shaking his head, he continued, “The divorce papers came through on the same day as the court-martial. Dishonorable discharge for conduct unbecoming.” He paused, then added, “I don't know what he did after he walked out of the courtroom. Not for a very long time. He never talks about it, and I've never asked.”

    “He seemed fine before, during the battle, back down on the planet.”

   “Usually he is. Except, you see, today was the twelfth anniversary of that glorious day I just told you about. The day the last parts of his old life disappeared.”

   “I see.” She looked around the room, and asked, “How did he end up with all this?”

   “Seven years back, I was in a bar in Titan with Kirk and Cruz, talking over old times, and we found him outside, one of the bouncers about to extract his tab with his fists. We got that settled, and managed to get him sobered up, get him a job as a shuttle pilot. This came a few years later, when he came into some money. An inheritance, he said, but I figured there was more to it than that.” He smiled, and said, “As soon as he got it, he did this, and hired us all on. Everyone he could get from the old squadron, and a few more besides. It's what he needed.”