by Cain Hopwood
“An aptly named ship. She will be in system for some time, and like her namesake, she will need sharp eyes.”
“Mondrian, has one of the few Gaudin sensor suites in the fleet.”
“Thank you admiral, I’ll notify her captain. That will be all.”
Katona closed his eyes for the required length of time to show respect, turned on his heel and trotted down the creaky walkway. A few parsas of transit tube travel later and he was at the executive lock of Lance, the super carrier he had taken as his flagship. He wouldn’t be taking the carrier itself back to the human planet. It would have taken half a watch to bring her to operational status, disengage her from the starship’s umbilicals, release her massive docking clamps and clear the bay.
Instead, he’d be launching in one of Lance’s sting ships. Immeasurably faster than their carrier, he anticipated joining the Kondray just as it made orbit around the human home world. It would be a long flight for the small single seat stingship, but he had done longer in his youth on blockade duty during the Chonai insurrection.
As he settled into the pilot’s couch, he allowed himself a moment of anticipatory pleasure. He had spent much too much time of late pushing markers around on maps and occupying himself with strategic concerns. There was an abstract, intellectual pleasure in command, and the successes that came with it. But they were a thin watery substitute next to the visceral joy of flying and fighting.
Katona cleared his mind and took two long deep breaths, it was always advisable to be calm and centered when melding with a stingship. He could sense it’s mind hovering at the edge of his awareness full of anticipation at the prospect of flight. They were always ready, always eager to be free of their docking clamps. But he needed to hold it off for just a moment longer. There were protocols that must be followed.
He flicked a claw into the comms panel. “Katona to flight control. Stingship two seven nine requesting departure clearance.”
“Stingship two seven nine, our boards are clear, stellar activity is low, you are clear to depart.”
That done, he retracted his claw from the comms board, and allowed the stingship to commence the meld. His awareness of the flight couch vanished as his senses merged with the stingship’s, and its view became his.
The docking clamps held him snug against the carrier. He could sense the curvature in space caused by the starship engines and, off in the distance, the gravity wells of each planet in this system, and the star at its center.
Those wells ridges and waves were his landscape. He directed the stingship’s attention on the third inner planet of the system. It now had a goal, and its simple, single minded, intellect began devising ways to reach that goal. He pruned away the slow economical routes, and likewise the fastest ones that required more fuel than he had available.
When they had settled on a route, he scanned the immediate space around them, ensuring there was a clear path out of the docking bay. Then he shrugged the docking clamp off and the stingship leapt clear of the carrier.
The stingship’s eagerness to move, and move fast, bled through the meld into his own mind. But he held back, keeping their speed nice and safe as they skirted around the small amount of traffic local to the starship. However, once they were completely clear, he let all restraint go. The deadly little ship opened up its engines and eagerly arrowed toward the inner system.
— 9 —
To Jon’s eye the transport ship was much too big to be hanging, nearly motionless, sixty meters above the hard standing at Trenton. It wasn’t so much the hovering that bothered him, troop transports and volantors hovered, it was how it hovered. When earthly craft hovered, they didn’t look comfortable. Their turbines screamed, and they kicked up a hell of a downdraft. This ship just hung.
In fact, it didn’t look like it should fly at all. It could have been mistaken for a couple of large hangars stuck to a small office block. Except that it was suspended effortlessly above the airfield. It gave off neither exhaust nor downdraft. But Jon could hear, or more correctly feel, a subsonic thrum that penetrated his very bones.
Jon was standing at the door of the regiment’s main hangar, along with anyone else who could spare a moment. They’d been working nearly around the clock preparing. But somehow, everyone could find the time to watch the ship approach. Jon tore his eyes from the impossible ship to look over the assembled crowd. They reminded him so much of gawping school children.
Years before, not long after Jon had joined the military, he’d drawn PR Duty. His commander has said it was because he was ‘pretty’. But Jon harbored the suspicion that he’d been selected because, unlike most of the other recruits, he wasn’t a teenager. Or maybe after a few years on the ski racing circuit, they figured he could handle himself appropriately in public.
The duty comprised joining a small crew that flew a heavy gunship volantor out to county fairs, shows and various annual events around the country. The gunship was an old one, but was equipped with dummy missiles, guns, sensor pods and several impressive looking spikes. It always attracted a good crowd. Their job was to press the flesh and, as his commander would say, put a friendly face on a nasty job. It was, at its heart, a recruiting drive.
Not long after they’d arrived at a town, they’d attract a contingent of pre-teen school kids who would just hover at a distance, mouths agape, too scared to approach, and too fascinated to leave.
Jon felt like one of those school kids now.
Pascale was standing next to him. “How is it that ship flies?”
“Anti-gravity I expect.”
“I don’t mean that. It came in on a normal approach track, at a normal approach speed. Yet it looks like it was designed using Lego. It has all the aerodynamic properties of a house brick.”
“More like a pile of house bricks,” said Charlie Murdoch from behind them both.
Pascale continued. “With that shape it should have left a contrail as wide as a Mormon’s smile in its wake.”
“Given that they can make it fly at all, I don’t expect that dealing with its contrail would be much of a stretch,” said Jon.
As he finished speaking a bright beam came out of the nose of the ship and scanned several times across the hard standing. Then the ship descended. As it did so, panels slid back on its belly and stubby legs unfolded. Each leg then extended just enough to allow the ship to settle evenly.
After it touched down, the subsonic thrum reduced in volume until Jon could no longer hear, or feel it. With his awe subsiding Jon took a closer look at the ship. He noticed that it was not only scarred, but patched. Like an old English castle, it exuded a sense of great age.
Its three escorts though were another matter entirely. Sleek and deadly, they looked to be a cross between a stealth bomber and a bird of prey. They didn’t hang statically like the transport, instead they loitered. As if they were inspecting the area, looking for trouble. They seemed animalistic, behaving more like a couple of lions surveying a herd of antelope, than aircraft on patrol.
Jon suppressed a shiver, suddenly he wanted to be out of sight. “Get back to work you lot. Colonel’s going to want us loading this thing shortly. Besides, I’ve got my pre-deployment appointment with the doc.”
Pascale grimaced. “I feel for you, mine was two days ago.”
“How long did you hurt?”
“Just a day or so. About what she said.” Pascale’s face lit up like a kid in a candy shop. “It will rock your world though.”
Jon looked up at the menacing alien escorts above the airfield. “I’ve had plenty of world rocking for one day.”
“So what’s a little more then?” Pascale thumped him on the shoulder and they disappeared into the hangar.
With Pascale’s words ‘it will rock your world’ in the back of his head Jon pushed open the door to the doctor’s surgery with just a little trepidation. The Quebecois engineer was known for his dark and sarcastic sense of humor. If he told you the water was a little chilly, you had as much chance of i
t being a warm bath, as you did of it being testicle shrinkingly cold.
But something in Pascale’s tone made Jon feel he wasn’t referring to the usual, though always surprising, grab and cough twice exam required for deployment. A few years ago, Jon would have riled at having to see a doctor for permission to be deployed. Until his spotter had been laid out by a dental abscess while they were on peacekeeping duty in the nano-phage infested Brazilian wilderness. Unfortunately, it was just after the local contra’s had unearthed an old supply dump of AA missiles. Regimental refused to send in any aircraft until they secured the dump and rooted out the contras with the missiles.
During the operation, Jon’s lieutenant at the time had taken over as spotter. He was okay, but he wasn’t as fast or accurate as Jon’s usual spotter. And they’d had a couple of close situations. After that, Jon had cheerily jumped through every hoop the doctor, the dentist and even the base hygienist had requested of him.
The doctor was unusually jolly. “Ah Lieutenant Moss, been avoiding us have we?”
“No ma’am, it’s just that the colonel has trumped my appointments in the last few days.”
She gave a knowing smile. “Well, you’ve been missing out on all the fun haven’t you.”
“Fun?”
“Oh yes, the enlisted men have been given the story that what we’re giving you today is a run of the mill medical capsule. But officers get the truth.”
Jon blinked. “Medical capsule? The truth? Did I miss the memo?”
“Oh no, there’s been no memo, you can rest assured of that. What you’ll be receiving today is the spook pack.” The doctor was happily tearing open packages and setting them up in a machine next to her desk. It looked like an eye examination rig. “That’s not the implant’s proper name of course. We call it that because it’s usually only issued to deep cover covert operatives. As far as I know they’ve never before been issued to an entire company.”
“Ma’am, I’m not even sure what a spook pack is.”
The doctor tapped her nose. “No you wouldn’t. Its proper name is a subcutaneous data processing implant, or SDPI. It’s usually just referred to as an ‘implant’. It functions the same as your wrist comp there.”
Jon looked at his trusty old wrist comp. “What’s wrong with this?”
“Nothing, except that the implant is embedded under your skin. So it can’t be taken from you, well not easily. It’s also non-metallic, and low emissions so it’s virtually undetectable. It interfaces with your datatacts and mastoid audio implant same as your wrist comp.”
“Sounds good, but if it’s under my skin how do I charge it?”
“We’ll go into the details later, but it harvests energy from your muscles so doesn’t require charging at all.”
Jon took his wrist comp off and put his hand down on the doctors table. “Oh well, might as well get it over and done with. I guess this is going to sting a bit.”
The doctor smiled. “I can promise you that it won’t sting at all. But it doesn’t go in your arm. It’s embedded in the muscles at the back of your neck.”
Jon sat just a little straighter. “Okay then. Still, can’t argue with the doc.”
“That’s the attitude, you should see the malarkey the enlisted have kicked up when I told them where it went. You officers are no trouble at all.”
“Well, we’ve been around longer than they have.”
The doctor motioned toward the machine next to her desk. “Take a seat.” She pointed at a pad above two eye holes. “Now if you could just rest your forehead there please.”
Jon followed her instructions and sat in front of the rig.
“Clamps coming in, this won’t take a moment.”
Jon felt two pads press into the back of his head, pushing his forehead firmly up against the rest.
“Please hold still while we scan,” said the doctor. The machine emitted some whirrs and, after a moment, a single short beep. “Okay, we’ve got good positioning. Not much longer now…”
Jon heard the almost inaudible whine of a capacitor charging. Then the machine clicked, gave a loud bang, and something hit his neck hard. Before he could react, the pressure from the clamps disappeared and with a hiss the machine withdrew.
“Ow! I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt,” he said, rubbing the spot the machine had hit. It had been bandaged and, disturbingly, shaved as well.
A guilty smile crept across the doctor’s face. “Actually, I told you it wouldn’t sting. If I’d told you it was like being hit in the back of the head with a nine iron, you might not have been as co-operative. Still, you’re taking it like a champion,” she said, patting him on the arm in a rather condescending manner.
For just a second Jon’s anger started to boil, but he quelled it down with a deep breath. She was right of course. He’d suffered much worse at the hands of the military, and doctors, in the past.
The doctor consulted a small hand held scanner. “Implant looks like it’s bedded in well, we’ll just boot it shall we?” She tapped on the scanner’s faceplate, then scanned Jon’s wrist comp. An authorization glyph appeared in Jon’s field of vision.
“Just approve that, then I can copy your ID from the wrist comp to your new implant.
Jon did so, and after a short wait another glyph appeared, it was the implant, his wrist comp was now relegated as its secondary processor.
“Right, that’s that. It will take a couple of hours for the implant to grow its haptic tendrils. Once that’s done it will pop up a calibration tutorial. Until then continue to use the wrist comp control surfaces. Once you’ve done the tutorial, you should have full body haptic.”
“So I won’t need rings or gloves to interface?”
“Nope, it can read your nerve signals straight from your spine.”
“Cool, maybe it’s worth the thwack in the back of my head after all.”
“That’s not the best of it. Once it’s fully calibrated to your body, you’ll be able to interact with your datatact imagery in a way that can’t be replicated by haptic devices.”
“Right, I’ll get straight onto it.”
“Good enthusiasm.” The doctor held up a finger. “But keep the wrist comp until you’re on mission and do the calibration in private. Remember, your men don’t know the implant’s true purpose. And if everything goes well, they may never know. They’ve been told it’s just a medical implant, vital signs monitoring, emergency dispensary, the usual. But you’ll need to coach your men on its setup when, or for that matter if, they’re activated. Your CO will decide when, he’s the only one with the authority to enable them.”
“I understand now why it’s called the spook pack.”
The doctor’s face took on a serious set. “Absolutely. The Brazilians aren’t even aware this tech exists. And we’re fairly sure the Europeans aren’t capable of building it. The top brass would like to keep it that way.” The doctor glanced out the window.
Jon’s eyes were drawn to the huge Galactic ship taking up most of the hard standing space and dwarfing the regimental hangar.
“We don’t know what kind of environment you’re going into,” she said. “We don’t know what type of equipment you’ll be using, so we’ve packed everything we can think of into those implants. There’s survival guides, information libraries, calculation programs, star charts, you name it. And it can’t be taken off you, at least not easily.”
“Sobering words, doc.”
“Well, it’s a sobering situation your company is going into. We’re just trying to prepare you as best we can.”
For a moment Jon considered all the logistics, medics, engineers and support services that enabled the men at the pointy end of the regiment to do what they did. Heading away, with none of them at his back was a sobering thought indeed.
“So, what about the rest of the medical?”
The doctor consulted her scanner. “It looks like you’re pretty much up to date. You’ve just got the dental to do. Hope you’ve been flossi
ng.”
Jon flashed her a big white grin. “You betcha.”
— 10 —
Colonel Whitfield stood just inside the hangar entrance and surveyed the scene before him. The Galactic transport, he now knew as the Aquina, was the center of frenzied activity. The Galactics had completed unloading cargo the day before, all of which was now sealed behind a shimmering barrier and, rather pointlessly, under heavy human armed guard. Now his men were working non stop to get everything they would need on board the Aquina before she lifted.
The Aquina’s hold seemed inexhaustible. However, she was slowly but steadily taking on board the long line of supplies and vehicles. Everything they would need in the months ahead.
Beside him General Birkenhof was muttering and running his hand down a flexi containing the full deployment list of men and material. Birkenhof was the commander of the whole of JTF2, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was a little young for someone of his level. He’d rocketed up through the ranks during several tours of Brazil through a mixture of luck, savvy politics, and willingness to make hard decisions. Also, from what Colonel Whitfield understood, he was hotly tipped to be next in line for chairman of that select group.
“This is good work colonel,” he said in a grudgingly respectful tone. “I spent the flight up thinking of a few obscure things this deployment might need. You’ve got them all, and then some.”
“I can’t take credit for that, sir. Avis has put this deployment together more or less single handedly. I’ve had to attend to, other matters.
Birkenhof gave a small chuckle. “By other matters I presume you mean babysitting generals.”
“Not just generals, sir. There’s corporate VPs, there’s press and conferences with all manner of people in Washington. I’m just trying to keep them out of the regiment’s hair while they prepare to deploy.”
“I always knew you had a good grasp of what it took to be in command colonel.”
