Cherubim

by David Hallquist

  There’s nothing to do but wait for a while. The good news is they’re going to release “Mad Dog” Jack back into our custody. That’s also the bad news. He’s a phenomenal pilot and asset to the Angels…who loses control as soon as he’s on leave. Picking him up from a security station after leave is over has gotten to be pretty predictable.

  Here he comes, with a grin on his battle-ravaged face. “Sir!” he says and grins. Hardened criminals waiting in the station nearby shy back from that grin.

  “Martin,” I answer as I stand up, “let’s go.”

  “Did you pick me up, or did they throw me out?”

  “It can be two things, Martin.” We get out the door as my vehicle capsule arrives in the city tube and waits for us. I help him in; he’s still kind of dizzy. “Rough night?”

  “Just the usual.”

  I instruct the vehicle capsule to take us to the shuttle port, and we take off through the city’s capsule-crowded tube networks. After that, we’ll take a flight back to base, and perhaps the city will breathe a sigh of relief. We desperately need pilots of Martin’s capabilities…and we also need to keep him busy and not tearing up local bars and private property. He’s staying on base until we deploy.

  “Jack, I tried that new simulation of yours…” I begin.

  “Yeah? Wasn’t it great?” He grins.

  “It’s totally unrealistic. You’ve got this surprise attack, complete with cyborg raiders, without any warning at all…”

  “Yeah, great huh?”

  “No. It’s not. There’s no way that happens without something being given away. There’s also no threat identification and recognition tasks. The fighting starts right away.”

  “We have to train for surprise, right?”

  “Then, there’s the biggest problem—you end up being the lone survivor of a comprehensive surprise enemy attack, and the only one able to take out the attacking ship. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Hey! There’s been plenty of times in history when one person in the right place at the right time tipped the balance of a battle or war.”

  “Well, sure, but…”

  “But it was intense, right?”

  “Yeah, Mike, it was intense. I just don’t know about its value in training.”

  “Bet I can beat your score!”

  “You’re on.”

  * * *

  My top staff are with me here in the meeting room. Now that my battlefield promotion has been confirmed, I’ll be an official squadron leader—along with all the data-work and meetings that goes along with that in the Jovian Navy. I already know most of the people in the room, and, unlike Martin, I didn’t have to get them out of jail, because they don’t bust up bars when on leave—well, there was that time on Ceres…

  I look out at the four men who are going to be my direct subordinates—flight leaders who’ll carry out my orders in battle, good or foolish ones. Hopefully, I’ll lead them wisely. We all lost a lot of good people in the battles of Terra and Mars. Too many aren’t here in this room or others like it. Takashi “Joker” Ford died in the Battle of Terra, cut down right in front of me by a Terran fusion strike. It was just bad luck—it could have hit any of us. Still, he should be here, saying something to brighten the mood.

  Dashiell “Data” Bertrand, my former flight leader, was critically injured by the Saturnine Virus at Eros. It almost destroyed him through his own cyber-augments. He survived it, but he’ll never be the same. After losing his flight status, he’s now working in the Logistics Division. Given his love of charts, tables, and all the bureaucracy he made us deal with, I expect he’s probably happy now.

  Then there were all the others. I lost people under my new command that I’d barely gotten to know. Afterward, I found out who they were and what they’d been like from their friends. There’s so many who should be here now…

  Almost everyone in my squadron is a new, eager volunteer straight from Frame Combat School. That’s why people with any experience are now finding themselves in command positions, even if they normally wouldn’t have been considered for it before the war.

  Jack “Mad Dog” Martin is not normally someone you’d want leading a flight, unless you were fighting for the future of the entire world itself. Since we are, he’s certainly someone I want guarding my back. He’s absolutely fearless and cunning in battle, and so at home in battlespace it’s like he was born there. Maybe that’s why he can’t handle times of peace very well. I’ll need him in the days to come.

  Shane “Sparky” Greensport is the genius who decided to be an Angel pilot, following his heart rather than his prodigious brains. During the Battle of Mars, he repaired his damaged frame, which was orbiting in the middle of the battle and then flew right back into the fight. There’s nothing wrong with either his heart or his brains.

  Larry “Shockwave” Jacobs will finally be flying with me again. He was sidelined before the war by a training injury that took him out. I sure could have used him in those fights. He’s a better natural pilot than I am, and I’m looking forward to him being my strong right arm in the battles to come. Since his injury meant they had to replace his neural augments, anyway, they went ahead and upgraded him to the next level so he could control the Cherubim-class frames. He’s been recovering and training with the new frames while the fighting’s going on. Now he’s our second most experienced Cherub pilot.

  Eric “Commit” Donner is our new guy. He’s not new to Cherubim-class frames, though. In the Battle of Mars, he was almost killed by the near miss of a plasma torpedo, followed by infiltration by a Saturnine computer virus. With his old frame failing and plasma fire burning through into his cockpit and eating him alive, he’d still managed to make a faultless landing. Somehow, he managed to land before the Saturnine virus finally immobilized him and his frame, sending him off to that black void I’ve experienced myself. He never cried out in pain once. The reconstructive surgery had to replace almost everything, and there’s little of his original body left. The cyborg body sitting at the table with us looks completely normal, though; you’d have to scan him to tell. He’s going to be vital in training a lot of our newer frame pilots as he’s actually got the most Cherub experience, and is also a combat veteran.

  In a holo-show, we’d all have scars, eye-patches, and crude prostheses, making us look more like pirates than spacers. Actually, we are all sporting a lot of medical replacement prostheses, but they don’t show…and the scars are all on the inside. We’ve taken everything that can be thrown at us, and we’re still here. We’re all battered, bruised, and beaten up from everything, but we’re far from done for. With men like this fighting with me, the enemy doesn’t stand a chance.

  “How’s training coming along?” I ask. I know the answer, of course—everyone’s readiness reports and scores are right in front of my vision, displayed by my cybernetic augments. Technically, they all look good, but I want to get the opinion of my trainers, too, and maybe hear about things that don’t show up in an official report.

  “They’re good pilots, but none of ‘em have seen combat,” Jack Martin brings up. “We’ll know what they’re made of for sure soon.”

  Most of my staff nod their heads.

  I skip past a bunch of data in my augments. There’s no point bothering my staff with mindless bureaucracy when they need to be getting my flight officers ready. It seems like the higher up you go in the Jovian Navy, the more data-work there is. It’s a wonder the commander gets any time to fly at all.

  “I heard we’d be shipping out on the Callisto,” Shane Greensport says.

  “You heard right.” I bring up a hologram of our new carrier assignment, hovering over the doughnuts in the middle of the table. The host carrier is an unremarkable-looking cylinder of armored hull, engine mounts, launch tubes, weapons turrets, and sensor spars. “The Callisto is now fully repaired from the battle damage she took in the Battle of Mars. The survivors of her old wing are being formed up into a new group for a different carrier. So the Cal
lie will be hosting mostly new pilots.”

  More silence around the table. We’ll be stepping into some large empty shoes, indeed. The Angel pilots from the Callisto fought with incredible bravery and turned back the first Saturnine offensive. They also lost almost every one of their pilots doing it. How will we measure up to that?

  “It looks like we’ll be touring the inner system.” I bring up a solar system map indicating our likely stops. “With the armistice forcing the Saturnine to pull out to the outer system, we’ll be patrolling sites sunward to see that they’re not up to anything in the inner system.

  “First stop should be Vesta.” The large asteroid appears, hovering above the table. “While Saturn abandoned their base there, you can bet lots of their agents, partisans, and booby-traps are all over the place. There’s a resistance movement asking for our help, and the asteroid has returned to its historic and time-honored tradition of piracy. So we’re going to help the Navy clear out hostile ships and help the Marines take the port.

  “Then, we go inward to the true inner system.” I bring up our projected course through the inner system, while Martin reaches though the hologram to grab a doughnut.

  “The good news is we won’t have to go to Mars or the Earth-Luna system again.”

  Sighs of relief from around the table. None of us mind a good fight, but Earth and Mars have become simmering battlefields of on-and-off-again conflict between hundreds of different factions. No one wants to put a hand in that grinder.

  “Instead, we’ll go straight to Mercury.” I bring up an image of the battered little world. “During the war, all the various mining and research missions there were totally cut off. They’ve gotten pretty desperate by now. Relief shipments haven’t been able to land much help, since there’s various factions that started fighting when the war began, and some are still going.”

  I bring up the blazing orb of Sol next. “We’ll be helping the fleet scour the inner orbits of the sun next. We can be sure Saturn left a lot of mines, spy satellites, and even weapons systems in tight orbit near the sun, where they can’t easily be seen. There’s no telling what we’ll find when we get there. It’s got to be cleaned out so the inner orbital paths are safe again.” As long as the space near Sol remains unusable, there’s approach and flyby vectors the Navy can’t use that could limit our movement critically if there’s another fight with Saturn. It’s also a strategic location for any of our own weapon satellites we might want to put in later.

  “Finally, there’s Venus.” Martin gives a low whistle, and several grins break out as I put up the image of the misty blue orb. The loose morals and seductive character of the Venusians is famous across the solar system. “This is not going to be a pleasure cruise. The fighting with Venus may have stopped with the armistice, but we’re not at peace yet. We’ll be part of the fleet with our diplomatic envoy, who’s going to negotiate a lasting peace with Venus. We’ll be representing the honor of Jupiter; don’t screw that up.” That’s going to be a hard one. Venus is famous for its floating cities, luminescent jungles, and the flexible morality of her people. There’s lots of ways my people can get into trouble there.

  “All this assumes our cease-fire with Saturn holds up.” I put up an image of one of their spidery assault-battleoids, hovering hungrily over the pastry tray. “If we see any Saturnine vessels inside the Exclusion Zone, we’re to escort them back out. If they don’t comply, we’ll likely have a fight on our hands.”

  “I’d like to see them try something—” Martin grumbles.

  “I wouldn’t,” I cut in. “I don’t like them any more than anyone else, but we’ve got to try for peace, as least as long as we can.”

  Still, I don’t believe it, either. I just can’t say it out loud. There’s been too much bad blood between the two sides, too many losses, for us to just forget about it all. Then there’s the completely incompatible visions of the nature of humanity and future of the solar system. There’ll be fighting between Jupiter and Saturn again—I’m certain of it.

  * * *

  My new squadron is waiting. All 24 of them are standing at attention in the briefing room, waiting. They’re waiting for my speech, where I’ll welcome them into my squadron. Their faces are expressionless as they stand at Academy attention, betraying none of their inner thoughts.

  What are they thinking?

  They’re probably thinking, We’re under the guy who got his last squadron nearly wiped out. We’re all going to die! Or maybe, Why couldn’t we have had a squadron leader with real Cherub experience? It could be, We signed up to fight Saturn, and now we’ve got a bunch of inner-system patrol missions, instead. Whatever they’re thinking, they’ve got it hidden behind their mask-like expressions. I used to wonder why the instructors hammered that into us. Now I know why. It’s hard enough assuming command like this; it doesn’t need to be worse.

  Suddenly, my prepared speech seems completely inadequate. I’m not normally one for public speaking, and besides, the lecturers at the Academy are real pros in that arena anyway. Almost all in my squadron are fresh from training and have been getting standard packaged speeches from skilled speakers, professionally crafted for their positions or next steps. I’m not going to even try something like that.

  “At ease,” I say, and they relax their posture.

  “You’ve all had the best training and will be piloting the most advanced frames in the finest navy in the solar system’s history. You know all that. Saturn remains a potential threat, and there’s ongoing fighting on Terra and Mars and in the Belt. You know all that, too.

  “It’s the unknown that’s going to be the problem. The Academy has gotten you ready for anything we can predict, but there’s going to be a lot we can’t. The enemy will do the unexpected—”

  Memories come raging up: nanotech zombies at Eros…the screaming void of the Saturn virus…the destruction of Phobos…

  “—and they will do it again.” I hope no one noticed that pause. “Against that, you’ll have your fellow pilots, your frame AI, and your own initiative. Engaging the enemy will be different than what you’ve trained for, because the enemy will make it as unpredictable as possible. He’ll lie, of course, cheat, and break any possible rule you think he won’t. When the unexpected happens—and it will—be flexible, adaptable, and fluid. Do that, and look out for each other, and we should get through this.”

  That was awful! Well, at least it’s done.

  “Dismissed.”

  My squadron mills about, most leaving. One of them—Allanson, my augments tell me—walks up.

  “Sir.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “It’s an honor to fly with you!” His eyes shine a bit as he grins. “Thank you for the opportunity to serve with a hero from the Weston!”

  “Uh…it’s a pleasure to have you with us, Lieutenant.” Hero? A hero would have brought more of his men back alive. “Carry on.”

  The rest leave, but the air feels heavier somehow.

  Please, God, don’t let me screw this up.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2

  Sunward

  Finally, we’re on the way up and out. The drone of the shuttle’s fusion turbines hums all around us. We’re all riding up a Combat Aero-Space Transport, or CAST, a tubby little shuttle that’s used for almost all personnel and cargo shipping between carriers and elsewhere. They’re reliable and tough little ships that can even land on a carrier under full acceleration.

  I’m glad we’re not doing that right now. No mad race to catch up with the carrier and no sudden falling sensation followed by a near crash-landing when we get there. I’m used to making those kinds of landings for myself, but I’ve never liked being a passenger when someone else is doing it.

  Unlike our mad scramble up to space a year ago, this trip is more civilized. We’re under a moderate three gravity thrust, and it’s a shirt-sleeve environment in the passenger cabin. Some people are catching a nap, others reviewing a book with their cyber-au
gments, and I’m eating a bag of chips. It’s almost like being on a civilian flight, with a Navy steward seeing to us and everything.

  Our destination certainly isn’t civilian, though.

  I bring up the forward telescope view in my augmentation, and I see the spaceship that will be our home for the cruise. The Callisto is one of the first of our modern super-carriers. The hull is a cylinder over a kilometer long, and half that wide. While the big ship could rotate for gravity, that’s a vulnerability in a combat ship that would limit maneuvering at a critical time. Instead, she’s set for a constant three gravity acceleration from her torch drive, or outright weightiness.

  The hull is studded here and there with weapons-pods, sensor arrays, and communications spars, all able to be retracted behind the armored hull. The six big launch-guns that run the length of the ship only show at their terminus at the fore. These guns are the real reason for a host carrier—to carry Angels and other craft into battle.

  The Callisto was built to carry a full wing of Cherubim-class Angel frames, but also a lot more. She can also launch Marine landing ships, assault gunships, and long range recon spacecraft as well as the search and rescue and medical craft for our wing. She’s also a full-on drone-carrier, carrying massive numbers of both offensive and defensive drones. That’s all combined with the repair, manufacturing, and logistics facilities we need to keep our frames and ships going while out on deployment.

  Host carriers never travel alone, though. Two cruisers, four frigates, and eight scouts will escort the Callisto, along with a stealth attack ship, dedicated Marine assault transport, medical ship, and a logistics supply ship. A few of these ships are from our old task force, some from Callisto’s former escorts, others from other fleets or squadrons, and about half of them are brand-new spacecraft. We’ve had to do a lot of rebuilding since the Battle of Mars, and the whole Navy is having to deal with lots of brand-new recruits, too. At least this time we’re going out with up-to-date modern equipment, ships, and frames.