Wolfhound

by Kindal Debenham

  When he reached the line, he filled up his tray with a plate of pizza and a salad. He turned back to where he had been sitting, and he grunted in surprise. Well that didn’t take long. Schroder was sitting at a table across from Isaac, casually flipping bits of bread at the lanky ensign. Isaac was obviously trying to ignore it, and flinched with each impact. Laurie looked like she was ready to turn and start chucking bits of food from her own plate in retaliation. Jacob, however, had been waiting for an opportunity just like this one. Time for the show to start, I guess.

  As Jacob approached, Schroder didn’t seem to be aware of him. The ensign was so obsessed by his prey that when Jacob cut in front of him he looked stunned. Jacob smiled. “Hello.”

  Schroder blinked and drew back slightly. “Hey.” For a moment, he simply watched Jacob. Though he seemed uncertain at first, Schroder’s face hardened. “You going to move?”

  “No. I’m good for now.” After a few moments, Schroder got frustrated and leaned to the side, trying to get to an angle where he could throw something again, but Jacob simply moved to keep himself in the line of fire. The other ensign growled and leaned another way, even going as far as moving to the next seat, but Jacob simply shifted until he was in the way again and waited.

  Finally, Schroder jumped up out of his seat. “Do you have a problem with me, Ensign?”

  “Yes.” Jacob watched surprise and rage flash across Schroder’s face and suppressed his own smile. He simply held Schroder’s gaze without flinching.

  “What did you say?” Schroder’s hands were clenching and unclenching, as if he was barely restraining himself from taking a swing at Jacob. Jacob wasn't intimidated.

  “Yes.” Schroder started to coil for an attack, and Jacob glanced around. Several crewmen and officers were watching, including a lieutenant. Schroder caught himself on the edge of attacking and looked around, suddenly aware of the eyes watching him. With a wordless snarl, the ensign stalked off, his back still bristling with frustrated rage. Jacob watched him go before sitting down.

  Isaac was watching him as he shoved a piece of pizza in his mouth and chewed. Then, in a low voice, he spoke. “Thanks Jacob. I owe ya one.”

  “No problem, Isaac.” Jacob shrugged and bit off another mouthful of pizza. He had encountered plenty of people like Schroder before, and he always felt a certain satisfaction in dealing with them.

  “You do realize he’ll be gunning for you now.” Laurie’s voice was faintly resigned, but Jacob simply shrugged again and nodded.

  “Let him. Once I’m on Bridge duty, there won’t be much he can do to me anyway.”

  Isaac shook his head and chuckled until he half-choked on a bit of bread. Laurie took a moment to pound on his back until he could breathe again, and Jacob shook his head in amusement. Now, if only tomorrow can go as well.

  The next day, Jacob stood waiting for his turn at the Helm simulator. Unlike the other sims, this one was fully enclosed. Shaped like a large, dull gray egg, it was capable of generating a limited gravity field to simulate the motion a helm officer would experience. Depending on what maneuvers or impacts that occurred in the simulation, the simulator could rattle around the person inside quite a bit.

  So far, it had shaken every once in a while, but nothing too serious. Jacob had been keeping an eye on the faces of the ensigns who left the sim, trying to figure out which of them had done well, and which were nothing to worry about. So far, most of them seemed to be more sheepish than victorious, and his hope of gaining the post continued to grow.

  Schroder had been the last ensign to enter, and Jacob’s distraction over the Helm simulator had resulted in his absolute failure in the Detection scenario he was supposed to be watching. The simulator posted his dismal performance at detecting enemy shells just moments before the egg shaped sim unsealed itself.

  He watched as Schroder left the Helm simulator triumphant, his lupine face glowing with a terrible glee. As Schroder looked around the training room, he caught sight of Jacob watching him, and his eyes narrowed briefly. His smile became a blank expression, and Jacob blinked in surprise at the ferocity of the hatred he saw in those eyes.

  A chuckle from nearby drew Jacob’s attention away from the helm simulator at last. He found Isaac leaning casually against the wall nearby, a mischievous smile lighting his features. Catching Jacob’s eye, he nodded over to where Schroder was now stalking away, his back stiff with attempted dignity. “You hear any news?”

  Uncertain, Jacob shook his head. Isaac’s smile broadened a little before he continued. “Turns out our friend over there had a bit of a hard time opening the door to his quarters this morning. Somebody had managed to jam it shut with some adhesive and a few other things.”

  Jacob felt his jaw drop open. “You can’t be serious.”

  Isaac shrugged, a slow, contemptuous movement. “Oh, I am. Poor guy had to yell for a half hour before somebody realized he was stuck. Then it took them another half hour to get in without breaking the door entirely. Must have been pretty embarrassing.”

  Looking around, Jacob lowered his voice. “I thought you were intimidated by the guy.”

  Another deliberate shrug. “I was, but then you took him on the other day. If you’re going to take the chance for my sake, I should probably do a little bit on my own as well.”

  Jacob nodded and then smiled. “Half an hour, huh?”

  “Yep. Good luck in the sim today. You’ll need it.” Isaac paused. “By the way, you and Laurie? Any history there?”

  Jacob raised his eyebrows. “No. Just old friends. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason at all.” Isaac gave Jacob another nod and a mischievous grin before striding off casually towards the Gunnery simulators. He whistled a curious little tune as he went.

  Jacob watched him go, then shook his head and turned back toward the Helm simulator. His mind buzzed with anxiety, but he tried to ignore it and focus on the task ahead. He held his breath for a long moment and tried to ignore the pounding of his heart. Then he started to walk toward the shell of the simulator, letting the air trickle out of his mouth with each step.

  By the time he arrived at the simulator, he felt calmer. His heart still beat a bit quicker than he would have liked, but Jacob felt only a spike of excitement as he addressed the technician on one side of the entry hatch. “Ensign Jacob Hull, reporting for the sim test.” The technician nodded and gestured for Jacob to enter and strap himself in.

  Stepping inside the doorway, he found himself in a small room. Most of it was filled with a large hologram projector that conveyed the data a helmsman would need. Near the center of the room was a control console with the familiar set of knobs, dials and flight wheel that was the same on nearly every spacecraft. A single chair was set up just behind the console. Jacob walked over to it and sat down.

  He fastened the restraints that were meant to hold him in place against the jerking motions the ship’s maneuvers could produce. The flexible bands of specialized plastic crisscrossed his chest and locked together in the middle. Reaching out from where he sat, he found all of the controls in easy reach. It was hard to keep a smile from his face as the technician closed the hatch, and the interior lights came on. This is it. I can’t screw up.

  The console and projector thrummed to life in front of him. The Wolfhound swirled into existence above the center of the projector. Around it, a flurry of bright blue specks swirled, snowflakes in a harsh storm, dancing across and through the image as though driven by an insane wind.

  The flakes represented the currents of dark energy every modern spacecraft depended on for movement. The harnessing of that unseen power had helped humans conquer space and venture into the universe. Jacob’s father had taught him to learn those energy currents by feel, to anticipate and use them to maneuver as the Sprite flitted back and forth between destinations. Jacob read the direction of those unseen currents, his smile fading as he concentrated. As he reached for the controls, he could almost hear his father murmuring instructions
to him. The energy currents are coming from directly behind you. That means you’ll accelerate pretty quickly and could move side to side even quicker, but coming back will be hard.

  The Wolfhound shrunk as the projection zoomed out. The simulation placed the ship in a nearly empty star system, with only a single planet and a few wandering asteroids for company. For a moment, Jacob wondered what the goal of the test would be. Before long, a glowing message wormed its way across the screen.

  Proceed to orbit the planet, then maneuver your ship to position Q3-alpha on the system grid and come to a complete stop. The mission will be timed. The mission will start in five, four, three…

  Jacob nodded. Time trial. He grasped the flight wheel and pulled it back several degrees. The Wolfhound responded. Maneuvering thrusters fired, bringing the nose of the ship up. Jacob turned the wheel, more thrusters activated, and the pointed its nose towards the planet, perpendicular to the unseen energy current. His father’s voice murmured again. Good, that’ll give you the acceleration, but you won’t get swept up by every eddy and flow. It won’t be as bad coming back either. Both movements had brought with them a subtle pull of inertia, pushing him against his restraints in the opposite direction. Eagerness shot through Jacob. Let’s get going then!

  Jacob twisted a dial on the right, angling the sail rigs just so where they would best catch the current. A second dial set the ship's maximum speed. Jacob reached out deftly with his left hand and flipped the activation switch for the main dark energy sail rigs. The projection hesitated, and then the Wolfhound flared with light as the four DE sail rigs activated. Between the large quartet of sail rigs, four flickering blue sails flared to life, and the ship started to move. The acceleration pushed Jacob back in his seat, and he smiled as the simulator started to hum with the motion of the rigs pushing him forward.

  After a few minutes of acceleration, a second flare of light burst across the screen, and a new thrumming sound added its voice to the hum of the DE sails. The brake sails, having detected the ship reaching the speed Jacob had set, flickered to life and started to turn. In contrast to the sails driving the ship forward, these sails were on the interior of the craft, and spun like windmills to drive the power behind the thrusters. The thrusters equaled the force of the sails, bleeding off the acceleration to maintain a constant speed. Don’t ignore the brake sails. They can give you the extra push to turn or keep you from running into an asteroid. Jacob smiled at his father’s advice.

  Jacob kept the planet squarely in his sights, relishing the feel of the balance between the DE sails behind and the brake sails ahead. As he approached the planet, he laid out a course in his mind. I should be able to loop around the planet, and then shoot straight back toward the target coordinates. No problem at all. The planet grew, the projection zooming in to give him a better view as the Wolfhound closed in on it.

  As his ship reached the maximum orbit distance for the parameters of the simulation, Jacob changed course. He took a hand off the wheel, twisted a dial on the right. The brake sails increased their thrust as the DE sail rigs twisted to a new angle. He brought his hand back onto the wheel when it started to fight him a little, grunting as the ship’s inertia fought him. Come on, we don’t want to run into the planet. The image of the Wolfhound started a curving dive that would take it beneath the planet instead of ramming the ship straight into the red-brown mass, and Jacob smiled as he felt the pull of the maneuver press him against the restraints, along with a subtle feeling of weightlessness.

  In moments, the destroyer had slipped into a quick orbit path. That same feeling of weightlessness continued as Jacob adjusted the sails and the thrusters to keep that course, curving around the planet smoothly. The area of the projection that was now blocked by the shadow of the planet grayed out slightly, while the area that had previously been hidden came into sharper focus as the Wolfhound’s sensors probed it.

  Partway through that orbit, alarms rang and two bright images appeared in the simulated space. Surprise filled Jacob as the two images resolved themselves into spacecraft, a corvette and a cruiser, both of which had been hiding behind the planet. A heartbeat later, both ships glowed red, and identity tags flashed to life. Oduran warships. What the hell? Jacob hit a control to his right, bringing smaller projections up to show him what he was dealing with.

  The corvette was a blunt little craft about a quarter the size of the Wolfhound, around fifty five meters long and shaped like a cylinder with a point at one end and a single pair of large sail rigs at the other. The ship also had a central radiation mast sticking out between the sail rigs like a short, stiff tail. Railguns and point defense turrets marked the ship along its length, though it was uglier than anything Jacob could have convinced himself to fly.

  The cruiser, by contrast, was at least four hundred meters long, dwarfing the destroyer. It had rail-thin central hull that broadened out near the front and four squat, cylindrical sections clustered around the aft end of the ship, along with short, stubby radiation masts sprouting from them like cylindrical warts. Sail rigs were located, oddly, near the bow, while weapons sprouted all along the length of the hull. To cap off the design, a fan-shaped wing that grew out of the ventral surface near the bow, like an upside down crest. Both ships were in his path, and even if he wasn’t convinced they would try to shoot him down, he was faced with an imminent collision.

  Jacob reached for the controls to turn the ship around, but then he paused for the space of a heartbeat. Slowing down meant giving the Odurans a better target, one already tempting enough since the relative speed of his incoming destroyer would make any hits on his bow devastating. Changing course would be better, but the inertia of the destroyer would make it hard to pull off, and it would still leave him with the vulnerable DE sail rigs exposed to the enemy’s guns.

  A flash of inspiration struck. Jacob cranked the dial for the maximum acceleration up, feeling the sail rigs thrum with increased energy. In the same motion, he stabbed a thumb and index finger down on the activation switches for the brake sails, which cut off with a rumble of protest.

  The next moment, he felt the acceleration press him back in his seat. The weight on his chest increased until he almost found it hard to breathe, but he ignored it and tried to focus on pushing the flight wheel down. Maneuvering thrusters were firing all across the topside of the destroyer, trying to keep it on the same curving course, but in spite of the effort, the loop around the planet widened rapidly.

  Ahead, sail rigs flared as both Oduran warships realized the danger they were in. The corvette dove towards the planet, using gravity to speed itself along, while the slower cruiser sought to run parallel to the curving surface in a different direction. Both ships, along with the image of the Wolfhound, began to retract their vulnerable rad masts to protect them from enemy fire. Collision alerts joined the battle alarms, forming a disjointed chorus of sirens in the background. Struggling, Jacob hit another button on the left, and a third alarm that signified upcoming severe maneuvers joined the song.

  The next moment, the Wolfhound was shooting past the Oduran ships, easily clearing the still-scrambling corvette and scraping by the larger cruiser, which was still struggling against its own inertia. Jacob nearly felt like laughing out loud, but before he could, railguns on both sides unleashed a torrent of shells.

  The exchange of fire was over too quickly for Jacob to track. The blasts came from all directions, and for a heartbeat it seemed that there could be no escape. Explosions burst out all around the Wolfhound, some of which were dense enough that they managed to obscure the sensor readings of the space around the ship. Plamsa fire danced across the intervening space, whipping back and forth to catch incoming projectiles. A couple of shells made it through the defensive fire to explode on the armor, and Jacob felt the simulator shudder around him as the ship took damage.

  Without sparing thought for the blasts now lighting up the nearby area, Jacob slapped at the activation switches for the starboard DE sail rigs and brought th
e starboard brake sails back online in the same heartbeat. The background thrum disappeared from the starboard side, replaced by the familiar roar of the brakes ahead. The force of acceleration that had pressed back into Jacob's became a sharp shove and crushed him against his side restraints as the Wolfhound came around. His head whirled as the destroyer’s image swapped end for end, now facing the enemy ships while still flying backward away from them.

  Partway through the maneuver, Jacob had switched the active brakes and sail rigs, slowing the turn until he cut all of them out. He watched in momentary silence as the ships receded a ways, his finger poised over the DE sail rig activation switch. This is gonna hurt. He stabbed the finger down, activating the DE sails again. The change in inertia flung him back in his seat, and his head bounced off the back of the chair. Ignoring the pain that blossomed there, he focused on keeping the ship on its new course, using the flight wheel give the Wolfhound a jackknifing course that wove through the dark energy current and toward the fleeing enemy corvette.

  As the destroyer slowed and started to reverse its momentum, the corvette seemed to sense the sudden danger it was in. With its sail rigs in plain view and its maneuverability limited by the planets gravity, the Oduran vessel was now a very tempting target. Jacob watched with a satisfied smile as the sails of his new target flared, trying to increase the force of its acceleration. Ambush me, will you? Keeping a wary eye on the cruiser, which was trying to make its own course corrections, he started the destroyer on a swooping intercept course of the enemy corvette.

  The Wolfhound closed in and the enemy ships fired again. Small flickers of light showed the momentary traces the sensors had picked up from the enemy shells, and Jacob bit off a curse as the point defense turrets suddenly lit up space around his ship again. Explosions filled the projection, but none of the shots hit home; the awkward angles the Odurans had been left with meant that they hadn’t had the chance to fire all of their weaponry, and those guns that did fire were ineffective.