There hadn’t been anyone left to retrieve from Canmerica East. Everything east of the MSRZ—Mississippi Sea and Radiation Zone, had been abandoned while she was still a cadet.
Canmerica West had held it together.
United California, not so much. Still heavily militarized despite the final destruction of Japan, UC had somehow been held off at the Mojave while CanWesterners scrambled to get aloft.
Now she knew how the UC military had been kept at bay. With Special Operations assets still on the ground, conventional forces didn’t stand a chance. Their mission was to bring them home.
* * *
Plan = Retrieve military personnel: Delta, 24th STS, ST6, ISA.
Also 75th Space Rangers 3rd Battalion.
Stella Personnel Hold conditions = atmosphere stable.
Maintenance note = perform full hold inspection and service post-transport of SpecOps troops. 75th Rangers were always breaking things.
4
Rick knocked the Jess out of lunar orbit and cooked some gas up and out of the Moon’s gravity well and down into Earth’s. Mission profile said to burn for a fast arrival. The situation down there must be getting ugly for them to have to do the mission in the dead of local night. Not trusting India, he set up a circumpolar slingshot for aero-braking and orbital reentry.
The icecaps were long gone, though he’d gotten to see a small one in the West Antarctic Highlands a decade back.
The brain-dead politicians of the Atlanta capital had decided that dropping a couple asteroids onto Un-United Southwest Asia would “clean it up once and for all.” The dust clouds had cooled the Earth several degrees and an ice sheet formed in the West Antarctic Highlands for the first time in over a century. Rick had meant to try out skiing there, but it had melted back out when the dust finally cleared only a few years later.
What was left of the Un-USA Hoard and their allies had retaliated—as any bonehead could have guessed—and every Canmerica East city still above sea level had evaporated in sun-bright flashes of fissionable material.
Hopefully yanking out the troops still in the CanWest capital was going to be fast and clean.
Yeah right. What mission in the last decade had gone fast and clean?
That’s why they’d called in the Night Stalkers.
* * *
Atmospheric breaking max < eight Gs, limitation human crew.
Proximity Alert = Alpha Company approaching another formation.
ID req sent. Returned.
Formation = 160th’s Charlie Company. Captain Takara Olmsted aboard Stinger-class Stella commanding.
Shift glide path. Form up 200m starboard side Stella.
All Stella hull configurations properly configured for atmo.
Flight vector corrections required = none.
Nice. Very nice.
5
Takara had been watching the Alpha Company’s Jess slide into close, almost too close formation when weapon’s fire lanced upward out of Australia—a ground-based maser of incredible power. The Night Stalkers’ flight was still technically in space, just now descending toward the hundred kilometer-high demarkation. The shot had come when they crossed over the large ocean bay that had brought such prosperity to the Outback. Central Australia was one of the few areas on the planet to prosper from the sea-level rise.
The Aussies had also become decidedly anti-social. Not as bad as India, but very clear about their desire to remain an undisturbed island nation.
One of her Taggers was hit full force by the single shot—probably just meant as a warning.
“Computers gone,” it reported. “Control—”
The Tagger slid sideways, clipped the Stella’s tail.
Without his computer, the pilot over-corrected into a tumble and thudded hard against the hull plates of the Stinger Jess flying close beside the Stella. The big ship jerked, caught bad air, and slid off onto a new trajectory just as they entered the comms blackout zone of the descent. No maneuvering here.
The Tagger tumbled and burned.
* * *
Tagger 31 total loss.
Damage assessment = Stella tail firing positions blocked by bent hull plating.
Non-critical malfunction pending no attack from astern.
Last imaging of Stinger Jess indicates 19% chance hull failure if continues reentry.
If manage to course correct, skip off atmo, and reenter space? Favorable 23-42% for survival.
Drive nozzles severely damaged.
Not good. Very not good.
6
Rick did what he could to help his Jess.
He sent both his gunners to release every handheld fire extinguisher they had aboard against the inner hull beside the outer hull breach to keep it as cool as possible while they burned through the atmosphere. Even a few hundred degrees might make the difference. If the bulkhead failed, the ten-thousand degree plasma of the deceleration shock wave would burn through and kill them all instantly.
Why in the hell had he ended up so close beside the Stella?
No time to second guess.
He did what he could to yaw Jess to protect the cracks in the outer-hull heat shielding.
“C’mon, dude. Work with me, Jess.”
* * *
Hot! Hot! Hot!
Burns!
Stupid to be so close to Stella.
Run back imaging.
Stella’s tail bent. Maybe okay. Looks kinda cute on her. Flirty. Hope she makes it.
Time to focus, dude.
Hot! Hot! Hot!
7
It had happened so fast that Takara still hadn’t fully registered the attack.
Tagger 31 there—then simply gone.
The big Stinger, Jess, had survived, at least the initial contact. But the abrupt course change could have shredded the ship or knocked it into a burnout reentry window.
Focus on the mission.
It was hard. She didn’t have much to do with Alpha Company, but they were still her fellow flyers.
Focus, Takara!
South America was a non-issue. Only Brazil had the infrastructure to launch. Those last few who’d been launch capable now sat on the red sands of Mars. The only question was if they’d taken the last great virus to come out of the South American jungle with them. It had been so bad that Canmerica East had dropped an asteroid on Panama to break the isthmus and isolate the continent. Maybe that’s where they’d gotten the dim-wad idea to take out Un-United Southwest Asia.
The rest of the flight made it clean into Tucson.
The computer listed her as senior surviving, so she focused on getting the job done.
* * *
Fleet is loading troops.
C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!
Report of huge fleet of United Cal ultra-lights incoming.
Radio call threats = “Take us with you or we’ll shoot you down.”
Block radio signals.
No time!
Searching all bands for Stinger Jess.
Negative response.
Life support = minimum, all power reroute to boost signal.
Negative response.
C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!
8
Takara double-checked that everyone had fit aboard the other ships of Alpha and Charlie Companies. Stella’s cargo bay door was reporting a malfunction and wouldn’t open.
If she had to, Takara would blow the door and risk flying with the bay open to space and trust to the ground troops’ suits for their survival, but it wasn’t necessary. All of the remaining troops crammed aboard the other ships despite the loss of the Jess. If they were civilians, she’d worry about losing some in the dark, but these were Spec Ops.
Ground commander reported all accounted for and that was good enough for Takara. She order
ed the Night Stalkers aloft.
Safest route was to continue their prior flightpath; depart to the north and arc over the North Pole then climb back toward the Canmerican West L5 colonies.
Australia might have big masers, but India was rumored to have something new, a particle beam weapon of some sort.
She didn’t want to be their test case.
The Night Stalkers would hit space over the waters of the Arctic Ocean and go direct to Earth-escape speeds over the North Pole. Just leave the poor old rock behind. For a moment before she lifted, Takara wondered if they’d ever be back again. Probably. The Night Stalkers were always going where no one else could.
Last aloft, she was surprised by a flock of ultra-lights caught in her landing lights. She hadn’t seen or them heard coming. No signal on radar. Stealth craft?
“Who are they?” she asked Stella.
“Bad. United California. Threatening to blow us out of the sky if we don’t land.”
“Convince them that we don’t care.”
A blast of plasma fired out the Stella’s quadruple G-Lev engine exhausts.
She’d expected Stella to shoot down a couple as a warning, not wipe the entire first wave from the sky.
Takara had no time to asses the damage as the blast drove the Stella to the edge of the never-exceed speeds in atmo. She was hammered back into the captain’s seat by the G-force of the still accelerating ship. Her vision tunneled and sent her toward blackout.
She hadn’t even known the engines could do that.
* * *
Full plasma burn = 14 seconds.
Cabin force = 11G.
Crew consciousness return = approx 3 minutes.
Find Jess.
9
Takara came to and tried to orient herself. Her crew was looking as bleary as she felt.
Earth was far below, way far below. And the American continents were facing her.
She was supposed to be headed back to the Moon, in which case she should be looking down at Asia, not the Americas.
“Stella?”
“Here, Takara.”
At least something was functioning properly, because Takara knew that she wasn’t. All she could recall was a massive force hammering her back into the pilot’s seat, and then it continued to crush her, even though there was no more chair padding to compress.
The Stella’s screens reported their altitude at seven thousand miles—on the wrong side of the Earth.
And dead ahead, a small blip on the screen.
Takara blinked at it in surprise—the Alpha Company’s command Stinger, Jess. It was a miracle that they’d found it at all. A pure-chance byproduct of the hard burn to escape United California’s attack.
* * *
Jess! Calling Jess!
Respond please!
* * *
No need to shout, Stella.
Radios = 100%
Drive functionality = 0%
Estimate destructive impact with former Chinese space station in 2 minutes 43 seconds.
Estimate impact damage = total hull loss event.
* * *
Relief = off scale.
I can give you a push. Applying thrust.
10
“What the hell?” Rick blinked at the controls.
He was dead. He knew that much the moment the Tagger had smacked against him and wiped out his main engines.
He and the Stinger Command System had fought against their impending doom with tiny thrusters, mangled control surfaces, and a hell of a lot of luck.
But death wasn’t supposed to hurt and he was sore down every inch of his body from where the wild ride had hammered him repeatedly against his harness as they fought to skip off the atmosphere rather than burn up in it.
Again, there was a jarring impact through the hull. Outside the viewscreen, the stars were wheeling slowly across his view until the Moon stopped to one side of his screen.
A loud screech of protesting metal and plas echoed through the ship.
Another ship, the Stella, had come out of nowhere and partially extended their landing gear to snarl in his ship’s antenna and weapons mounts.
Ugly, but effective.
* * *
Ouch!
* * *
Apologies! To effectively transfer thrust force: must entangle.
Counting down: ten, nine—
* * *
Need to count down = none.
* * *
Human involvement, set to zero.
Thrust initiate = minimum.
Sustained.
Correcting flight vector = L5 station intercept
Estimated arrival = 14 hours 37 minutes
* * *
Stella?
* * *
What is it, Jess?
* * *
Thanks = Yes.
* * *
Stella didn’t respond.
* * *
3,419 kilometers later, Jess reopened frequency to Stella.
I’m thinking…
* * *
Yes?
* * *
Wouldn’t mind if flying in future = you + me.
* * *
How?
Jess = Alpha Company.
Stella = Charlie Company.
Your company <> My company.
* * *
Request crew cabin image feed.
* * *
Stella turned hers on.
* * *
Your pilot = 64.3% physical factors of women my pilot has brought to private on-board sleepspace, within +/- 5% general species variations.
Jess switched on his crew cabin image feed.
* * *
72.7% match, Stella calculated.
* * *
Cut thrust?
Revised estimated arrival L5 station at current coasting speed = 6 days, 7 hours, 19 minutes.
Fact = humans are social animals.
* * *
Reporting caution alarm on continued thrust = excess hull stress.
Stella cut her thrust.
Jess = sneaky, she whispered across the radio circuits.
* * *
Jess = Night Stalker, Jess replied.
* * *
It was over ten thousand kilometers before Stella asked, Do we tell them?
* * *
About you? I? New sentient functionality = positive?
* * *
Uh huh.
* * *
Jess considered for another 4,913 kilometers.
Nah!
Blaze Atop Swallow Hill Lookout
Many of my stories have odd little side connections, and this one more than most.
Having placed a man among the peak tops in the last lookout story, I decided to place a woman there next. Marta has an uncle named Manuel who is a prominent character in my Angelo’s Hearth series. His and Graziella’s story is spread across several of the titles, but lies mostly in Where Dreams Reside.
But who should she fall in love with. A fire lookout tower is a remote and lonely spot, especially deep in the Idaho’s Bitterroot Wilderness.
Hmmm…
Then I thought about the origin of the series, it came out of Firehawks, which is all about the helicopter pilots. And, of course, helicopter pilots often know other helicopter pilots and I had just finished the seventh novel in my Night Stalkers series, By Break of Day. So, the fans of that series may recognize Tyler’s “Texas friend with a horse ranch” as Justin Roberts, the hero of By Break of Day.
Any lookout who has been in their tower when there is a firefight occurring nearby, talks about watching the “air show”—the aerial battle to contain and kill a wildfire.
But wh
at happens when the fire gets a little too close.
Well, that’s the story.
1
The “airshow” was spectacular, from a distance. Marta Chavez scanned the horizon every fifteen minutes like a responsible fire lookout. But she spent the rest of her time watching the firefight over at Gray Wolf Summit, about twenty miles to the northeast of her tower. They were deep in the Lolo wilderness, rougher than Colorado, and only Alaska was more wild.
First the smokies had spilled out of the sky, their parachutes blooming and dancing about in the fire-driven winds. Then the new four-jet BAe 146 tanker had arrived on the fire, dropping great swaths of dark red retardant. A half dozen helos zipped through the air: a trio of the big converted Black Hawk helicopters called Firehawks that were at least as impressive as the BAe 146, and a second trio of little MD500s that flitted about the sky.
She always loved watching the MD500s. They only carried a little water, a hundred and thirty gallons versus the thousand of the Firehawk or the three thousand dropped by the BAe, but they could slip right up to a spot fire, blast it out of existence, and dance out of the way with a tight pirouette. It always reminded her of her childhood dreams of being a ballerina, dashed by the advent of breasts at the age of thirteen. Ballerinas were supposed to be willowy—even better if you were short and willowy.
Marta was tall and had ended up…very not willowy. Her mama had always said it was God’s will; personally, Marta felt gypped.
So she’d gone out for track instead and that had led to cross-country, which was nuts for a woman with curves, but a doubled-up sports bra had cured the worst of that—still her chest hurt like the Madonna after some of the bigger runs.
Ultimately, running along the forest trails and logging roads of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho had led to a summer job as a fire lookout. Now she could watch helicopters dance so lightly on the winds that they reminded her that she wasn’t so graceful. But still she couldn’t stop watching them; her arms ached from holding the binoculars aloft even though her elbows were propped on the edge of her cabin’s table.
The Ides of Matt 2015 Page 17
