by John Walker
“Sam, it’s coming here. Would you rather me let it get to our backyard?”
“If you’re five hours away from here with only an untested hyperjump as your method of return, what good are you going to be doing us? No. You need to stay close.’
Gray sighed, looking away. “We’re at least going to break orbit and meet it in open space, far enough away from inhabited areas to avoid any damage.”
“That I can authorize. Just remember, you’re our shield, Gray. Not an arrow.”
“We really have to consider the future,” Gray said. “You may not think so now, but eventually this ship’s going to have to go abroad.”
“It’s not that we don’t trust you, but you should understand our caution. We’re in the midst of building another ship and when we do, we’ll have the luxury of traveling around the solar system. Right now, the conventional fleet can handle internal security. Your purpose is to protect. Is that clear?”
Gray nodded, doing his best not to look away. “Perfectly.”
“Just…be careful with this thing. We can’t afford to lose you guys. It would really trash morale.”
Gray chuckled. “That’ll be our biggest concern. I’ll keep you up to date on what we find. We’ll break orbit shortly and get into position…shield you guys from whatever this is.”
“Sounds good.”
“Hey, don’t forget to wear sun screen before you hit that beach.” Gray tried to lighten the mood. “I don’t think you can afford a serious sunburn.”
“Don’t give me a hard time about this post. You know I’m from Alaska. This tropical heat’s killing me.”
“Yeah,” Gray shook his head. “Things are tough all over, buddy. Behemoth out.”
***
Captain Atwell took his seat on the bridge as Adam prepped the bridge for departure. Ensign Agatha White worked with orbital command to clear the area. Various civilian and police vessels crowded Lunar space as people went about their daily activities. The academy contributed to the majority of this congestion and Gray knew they practiced fleet maneuvers during every shift.
Weapon tests near the moon made sense and that’s why the Behemoth berthed there.
“Commander,” Agatha turned in her seat to address the room, “space lanes are cleared. We are free to depart for the next thirty minutes.”
“You heard her, Redding,” Adam said. “Initiate protective field and get us underway. Thrusters only. Let’s keep this as clean as possible.”
“Aye, sir.” Redding turned to the navigator, Tim Collins. “Give me a guide to open space please.”
Tim ran his fingers along the smooth console, his eyes flitting left and right as he performed his tasks. “It’s…up now.”
Redding nodded. “Got it. Protective field engaged. Thrusters are…active. ETA to open space, five minutes.”
“Give us plenty of room to engage the pulse engines,” Adam said. “Let’s not mess up school maneuvers with a sub-light wake.”
“Academy vessels are well outside of our range, sir,” Olly announced. “They’ll for sure see us though.”
Gray grinned. What he wouldn’t have given as a young cadet to see a war vessel like the Behemoth leave dock. He imagined the distraction and the instructors cursing about it before reprimanding their students back to the task at hand. Hopefully, if all went as planned those young men and women would pilot a sister ship to the Behemoth. A little excitement might go a long way toward improving morale.
Might not be a victory but we take what we can get.
Far off in the bowels of the ship, the pulse reactor fired up. Containment kept the ship from vibrating but the raw power fired up his soul, giving him a brief adrenalized rush of excitement. They participated in only a few police engagements since entering active duty but nothing compared to embarking on a real mission, one with unknown variables and real danger.
Clea took the seat to his left. Adam sat on the right. She watched the view port impassively, legs crossed with her hands resting on her knee. Gray wondered what she thought of the mission and whether or not getting into action fired up her blood. Kielans seemed to be reserved by nature but their chess games occasionally annoyed her out of her disciplined shell. They weren’t emotionless, just controlled.
“We have cleared Lunar orbit,” Redding announced. “Heading into deep space. ETA three minutes, twenty-five seconds.”
“Steady as she goes,” Adam replied. “Olly, are we still clear on scans?”
“Aye, sir,” Olly said. “There’s no way anyone wants to get in our way but we do have an audience.”
Adam smirked. “Try not to wave at them as you go by, Redding.”
“The thought never crossed my mind, sir.” Redding chuckled. “But there was that time…”
“Yes, we all know,” Tim interrupted. “And I don’t think anyone wants to hear about it again.”
“It was only garbage,” Redding replied. “Not like I made them dump a cargo full of medical supplies or anything.”
“Let’s focus on the task at hand, people,” Adam said. “Past glories…or otherwise…can wait for the mess hall.”
Gray leaned toward Clea, keeping his voice down. “What’re you thinking about?”
“Working through the variables,” Clea replied. “Since we have no idea what we’re walking into, I figured I’d at least contemplate the problem. Maybe I’ll think of questions we’ll need to ask.”
“Are you leaning toward anything? Any theories at all?”
Clea nodded. “A few but they’re meaningless. The weapon idea makes sense to me, mostly because if they were friendly, they would’ve communicated by now. With our satellites, we’d easily pick up any message they wanted to send. The fact they’re running silent makes them all the more suspicious.”
“True.” Gray sighed. “They seem to be intent on Earth too, ignoring our outposts and mining operations.”
“If they are an attack force, cutting off the head of the snake makes more sense than wasting time on outliers. However,” Clea glanced in his direction, “they may not be counting on us. If their data is old, from before the attack, then we’ll have a distinct advantage.”
“What do you mean?”
“Undoubtedly their scans have shown them a massive warship standing guard. Watching Lieutenant Darnell’s scans over there on monitor three, I’ve noticed they haven’t deviated course nor made any sort of adjustment at all. For whatever reason, they don’t care about us and that could mean they’re unconcerned or uninformed. Either way, advantage.”
“What would your military do in this situation?”
Clea drew a deep breath and let it out before replying. “We used to be a peaceful culture. One that would give anyone the benefit of the doubt. If a spaceship like that came to our doorstep, we’d send out diplomatic vessels and attempt to make contact. We wanted to share our technology and advancements with others. Suspicion came slowly to our minds.”
“But now?” Gray prompted.
“Now, we’re more like you. Assume the worst, hope for the best. I can’t say we would’ve destroyed the thing outright but there is something to your saying better to be safe than sorry.”
Gray nodded. His people may have developed the phrase but they only recently embraced it as totally as Clea suggested. In a little less than ten hours, they’d know the appropriate response.
He turned to his tablet and scanned reports from all sections. Each department reported ready for action well ahead of schedule. Third shift was about to end so they must’ve pulled in their relief. By the time the ship arrived, the next hands would be on staff and they’d be the ones to get them through their mission.
Gray made an adjustment to the schedules, cutting fourth shift short. This would ensure fresh bodies would be running things when the foreign vessel arrived. He’d address the ship and let them know what was happening and how he expected it to go down.
“We have cleared Lunar traffic,” Redding announced. “Entering open
space.”
“Tim, plot a course to sector six-seven,” Gray said.
“Course plotted, sir,” Timothy said. “That’s…roughly ten minutes away by pulse drive.”
Clea turned to Gray. “We’re not intercepting them?”
“We’re the shield, not the arrow,” Gray quoted. “We’re going to meet them…just not all the way out there, away from our charge.”
“They didn’t give you authorization to leave.” Clea clenched her fist.
“No, and I understand their reasons.” Gray turned to Everly. “Get us into position. Darnell, keep your scans going and let me know if anything changes.”
“Engage engines, Redding,” Adam said.
“Aye sir.” Redding got the ship moving.
“Ensign White,” Gray said, “patch me through to ship wide communications.”
“Aye, Captain.” Agatha focused on her console for a moment before speaking. “You’re live, sir.”
“This is the captain speaking. So far, all we’ve really done involves training. Even the minor engagements we’ve seen are little more than stress tests on our hardware. As with most weapons like the Behemoth, sane people hope they never need to use them. Under rational situations, such a vessel would be called a deterrent.
I believe we all understood we could not be idle forever. There are threats still out there, cultures interested in our destruction and whether we are ready or not, they will descend upon us. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Hope alone cannot hold back the tide. Our training and superior equipment, make us uniquely qualified to handle any threat the universe might throw our way.
I’m addressing you now because we have such a mission, something only we can meet. Lieutenant Darnell is sending out the report ship wide with our findings. Study it and understand what it means for your department. We’re setting ourselves to Ready Thirty status. As we reach open space and wait for this object to arrive, security will lock down the corridors and leisure areas until the situation is resolved.”
“Send any questions to your department leads. Let’s get to work.” Gray nodded to Agatha and she cut the line. “Alright people, we have a lot of time to stew on this situation. I want primary bridge crew to get a hot meal and sack time in the next hour. Darnell, keep up the scans with the time you have left then automate them. You need to be fresh when it arrives. Hopefully, we’ll have plenty of answers soon.”
“And perhaps more than we want,” Clea muttered, “if we’re to be honest.”
“That’s usually how it works,” Gray replied. “Don’t worry. I think we’re nimble enough to handle whatever this thing throws at us.”
Clea grinned. “Your confidence is almost infectious.”
Gray laughed, shaking his head. “Just as your compliment is almost flattering.”
Chapter 4
Nine Hours Later
Wing Commander Meagan Pointer wanted to itch her calf. It started ten minutes earlier and started driving her crazy. No amount of writhing around in the cockpit or concentration gave her relief. Whatever irritated her skin would continue to do so unhindered until she forgot about it, got killed or returned from her mission and ground her nails into her leg for a good ten minutes.
Ready Thirty status meant the flight teams needed to be capable of launching in thirty minutes from the moment the order was given. Her wing bunked out when they heard about the mission and by the time they were woken up by their CO, they were about to enter a Ready Five status.
They were roused an hour ahead of schedule, got cleaned up and headed down to the hangar. As the object drew closer, they each boarded their vessels, preparing to sit around in cramped space but no one knew what would happen when the foreign vessel arrived or if it would suddenly get their quicker.
This meant readiness despite comfort.
Meagan and her crew sat cooped up, combat ready for nearly an hour and a half. The complaints came as soon as Estaban gave them their briefing. Pilots hated waiting, especially on the verge of action. It was like putting a racing horse on the starting line, riling him up and then denying him the release of running. Maintaining combat intensity sure became hard when you sat still for so long.
Tactically, she understood the reason behind the heightened readiness. Combat situations tended to be fluid. Anything could happen at a moment’s notice and, as a result, if fighters weren’t poised to launch, they might not get out in a timely fashion. Every second in such an engagement was critical. The difference between victory and defeat might be spelled out in less than a minute.
Unfortunately, tactical readiness didn’t allow for comfort. Hence her itching leg and Flight Lieutenant Manning’s need to urinate.
A full spread of vessels were prepared to enter combat. Meagan’s wing consisted of the FI-62 Interceptors, or Wasp, a highly maneuverable and fast ship. Armed with high intensity pulse lasers drawing power directly from their engine cores, slug throwing projectiles and guided missiles, they were a match for anything in its class. The advanced tech ensured weapon superiority, at least in their solar system.
Wings swept close to the body for tight maneuvers in space and extended for transatmospheric flight. Two turbine engines occupied the back with a number of thrusters all over the body for the type of movement only space allowed. Up, down, left and right gave a pilot great flexibility for dog fighting and they learned to think in three dimensions, to really use the technology to great advantage.
Inertial dampeners provided safety for the pilots by placing the cockpit at the center of a gyroscope. Magnetics provided an appropriate reaction to quick maneuvers, reducing the massive G forces the Wasp pulled. This meant the difference between an operator tensing up and handling their ship effectively and…well…popping.
Training for those things was terrible and taxed the cadets almost as bad as special forces routines. They learned to take far worse than the ship’s allowed so when they climbed into the first cockpit and familiarized themselves with reality, their tolerance far exceeded the requirements.
Flying the fighters still didn’t cater to the faint of heart or out of shape but there wasn’t a job in the system Meagan would rather have.
Wing Commander Rudy Hale sat at the head of the bomber group. Meagan attended the academy with him and he’d always preferred the heavier, lumbering ships to the quick ones every cadet had to master. At nearly six-feet tall and two hundred pounds, he defied the odds for being nearly too big to qualify for fighter duty. He believed his size meant he was destined to fly the biggest, most destructive crafts in the fleet.
The FB-15s, or Tiger Sharks, had a lot in common with their bigger, nearly forgotten ancestors, the B-52s. They operated on a crew of two, one for flying and the other taking on the dual task of navigation and weapons control. Each vessel carried ten warheads with more destructive power than five nuclear warheads from the twentieth century and those counted as conventional ordinance.
Pulse bombs, the real pride of modern weapon crafting, may well be the most destructive force humanity ever imagined. Under ideal conditions, test runs showed them capable of annihilating meteors roughly a quarter the size of Earth’s moon. Dropping them at the perfect, precise location may be capable of exciting fault lines, causing seismic events throughout a region.
After shock from the pulse bombs facilitated heavy armor on the bombers, enough to deflect the EMP and secondary wave damage. Powerful engines and multi-point thrusters kept the ship steady though they’d still experience some serious turbulence. Because of these exceptional circumstances, bomber pilots attended an extra two weeks of training to familiarize themselves with the differences and required an additional one hundred hours of flight time to receive a certification.
These ships looked much like oversized Wasps with two additional turbines in the back but non-extending wings. They weren’t designed for extreme maneuvers and so the designers didn’t worry about the extremities becoming damaged under normal flight. Some of the best bombers handled their ships
like they were in a smaller craft but they did so with real finesse.
One could easily over-fly a bomber, few knew how to push the limits without breaking them.
Her team held a distinguished code name, Panther. Another unit, long gone in a bygone age of early space travel, flew more than two hundred combat missions over the moon after the colonization. Those days involved so much lawlessness in space, it was a wonder the colonies survived and thanks to some pretty amazing pilots, they flourished.
They called Rudy’s group the Bulls. He liked it but some of his juniors considered the name sexist. Considering how they barreled through any opposition and blew them back to hell, Meagan always thought it seemed fitting. Still, some people maintained sensitivity from civilian life. Most of them got over it eventually. Those who didn’t, tended to be one tour types.
Meagan set her com to private and patched into her peer’s cockpit. “Hey, Rudy. How’s it going over there?”
“Roomy and comfortable,” Rudy replied. “You?”
“I hate you right now.”
Rudy laughed. “I bet. Don’t worry, whatever this is won’t take long to wrap up. If it’s not another attack, we’ll be done by dinner.”
“Your confidence is…unseemly.” Meagan checked her chronometer. “We’ve got to be getting close.”
“If they deploy my guys, they won’t want to be too close. Hell, I’m thinking they should’ve sent us ahead.”
“Whatever we’re after is moving at half the speed of light,” Meagan replied. “There’s nothing we can do if they don’t slow the damn thing down.”
“God, if we’re leaving that up to the shipboard jockeys…” Rudy clicked his tongue.
“What?” Meagan prompted.
“Oh, we just won’t be done until dessert.”
Meagan rolled her eyes. “Funny. Let’s tap into the bridge coms and listen in. We might get a little warning before having to launch.”
“Fine by me.”
