Ascendancy: A Near Future Sci-Fi Thriller

by Randal Sloan

In their attempt to follow her, the missiles had all moved closer together. Julie fired a single defensive missile at the attackers’ missiles and when it reached the group it exploded, destroying all of them. “They don’t have a clue about what they’re facing, or they’d be running away right now. That was one of our defensive missiles. Right now I could probably take out all five planes with just a couple of our offensive missiles, which are much bigger.”

  “That’s just one of the differences in this ship, Professor. Our missiles are designed to destroy the pirate spacecraft, so they pack a pretty big punch,” Zeke explained. “This ship is also a lot bigger than it looks, so we have a bunch of them too. They really don’t have a clue.”

  Julie’s flight had gotten them a good amount of separation from the planes, but she slowed down long enough for them to catch back up. She pointed to the display, “Yes, and it looks like they aren’t smart enough to figure it out. I’m going to give the pilots one chance to back out. Some of them are just flying a mission, only following orders, and have no idea what they were really doing.”

  She keyed her radio, transmitting the message. “Cease your fire. This is a Space Tech vessel and you are in violation of US and international law in this attack. If you continue your attack, I will be forced to defend myself.” She clicked off the radio.

  “Now they all know. It will also show the world that this is not an accidental attack,” Julie explained to her passengers. “We’ll see if they break off or continue.”

  Two of the five planes dropped off from their pursuit. The First Lady had told her that would happen if she announced her identity, and they both wanted those pilots to have that opportunity. The result for the other three was not quite as clear from Lady Catherine’s visions, at least as to what Julie would have to do about them, but she had seen that they would continue in complete disregard of her message.

  Julie explained what she believed was happening with those three. “Although they can’t claim any further actions are accidental, it’s possible they’re going to claim radio failure, or maybe they believe that their general will protect them. He probably promised them all big rewards if they succeeded in shooting us down.”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it? You have to handle them now,” the Professor said quietly. He was still a little apprehensive, but he understood.

  “No, those three will not be returning,” Julie said. As they watched, the three fired their missiles one after the other. “They think that by spreading them out like that I will probably miss at least one of them. Totally wrong, as I could sit here all day and knock down a hundred of them. But again, that’s not my style.”

  Julie immediately began moving their craft at an extreme rate of speed. But this time she moved toward the missiles! Using her favorite tactic, Julie began her twisting 3D spiral where she would use the ship’s drive to make it appear to phase in and out of space. All of the three missiles immediately lost lock and none of them came close to striking them, each missile eventually self-destructing after failing to find a target.

  At first the Professor had been terrified for his life. Five planes against their one ship had seemed like terrible odds. Secretly, he had hoped Julie would just give up and leave. Obviously she had the speed to pull away and leave them all behind. What if she let even one of the missiles get through? He didn’t think she had a lot of experience flying, much less battling it out with veteran pilots as he was sure they were facing.

  But the longer he had watched, the less frightened he was. Zeke was right about the ship being a class above the attackers. Then when she flew toward the missiles, he couldn’t help it, he caught his breath. That’s crazy! She’s going to get us killed. He should have known better than to worry. By the time she was finished with the three missiles, he was simply watching in horrified fascination. He also had begun to understand Zeke’s proclamation at the beginning wasn’t just a bunch of hot air.

  Once more Julie keyed her mike. “Big mistake, boys. Your only chance of getting out of here intact is to lock all of your systems now and eject. But I know you aren’t going to do that.”

  The three planes and her ship were much closer together. Julie was moving so fast toward them that she flew right past them. The three planes separated from each other and each began individual attack strategies, weaving and dodging through the air. Of course, they were using traditional jet fighter tactics, obviously without any clue as to what they were facing.

  Julie couldn’t resist showing off a little. She easily avoided their attempts to get missile lock, although she was able to get her own lock several times. With a touch of her drives, she could go the equivalent of zero to 10g’s acceleration, something the jet aircraft had no chance at achieving. To make things worse for the pilots, the way the corvette drives handled inertia, Julie and her passengers barely felt the acceleration whereas in the jets, the pilot was experiencing all the g forces. At the highest g maneuvers, the other pilots would be almost incapacitated. Still she withheld her fire, not wanting to be the one to kill American pilots. The pilots knew it too. After a couple of minutes, she pulled up, momentarily separating from them.

  “You see, they still don’t get it. Each probably thinks he’s such a hot shot that he will somehow get me, even though I’ve shown them I could have easily taken all of them out. It’s not going to work for them ever. With my speed and maneuverability, I could dodge them all day.”

  Julie pointed at the plot. “It does give me an idea, since they’ve gotten really separated now.” Turning to her two passengers, Julie said, “I’m going to try one thing to see if I can knock them down without just shooting down their planes. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to destroy all three. I can’t let them think they can ever get away with this again. Plus, there’s no way I’m going to leave it to the government to fix, even if the President himself gets involved. Too much is at stake and too many politicians are involved.”

  “I agree,” Zeke told her.

  The Professor nodded. He added, “You have to stand up for your principles. And never leave your principles up to lawyers and politicians. I learned that one early on in my life.”

  Julie once again accelerated toward the three planes. She picked one of them out and they shot forward toward that plane, moving at an extremely high rate of speed to approach before finally slowing to match speed and fly beside it. When they were only a few feet away from the plane, Julie rotated her ship so that the rear drive field of her ship was directly facing the plane, and then she pulsed the drive.

  The effect of the drive was exactly what she was looking for. It moved them away from the plane, but because she was so close to it, the drive field hit the plane dead center. Not intended to take those kinds of stress, the plane literally broke apart, tumbling away. A few seconds later the pilot ejected.

  Julie repeated the maneuver with a second one of the planes. For a few horrific seconds, Julie thought the pilot was not going to be able to eject, but he finally managed it.

  She was just getting ready to repeat it with the third when he apparently decided to show a little common sense. Seeing what she had easily done to the other two and knowing he had no chance to outrun Julie’s ship, he locked his controls, ejecting before she could reach him.

  As soon as he was clear, Julie fired a single railgun round, striking the plane and causing it to instantly disintegrate. “No point in wasting a missile,” she murmured.

  The Professor stared in disbelief. A perfect shot, yet at their high speed trajectories he knew it was an amazing shot. Plus, she appeared to have done it almost as an afterthought, not even giving it her full attention. He had played a few video games in his day, and until now, he’d thought he was a pretty hot shot, but he knew that his ability was nothing compared to what he had just seen.

  Julie changed course, headed back toward the space station. “Let’s go home, guys. I’m sorry to say, Professor, your first day is going to be busy. I am demanding from the US government an immedia
te apology. I want all the ones involved in this brought to justice, from the pilots who continued the attack after the first message, to the general who ordered the attack, and to the politicians who set it all up. I’m not going to tell you how I know it, but I know all those names, so I will know if they try to leave out even one of them.”

  Zeke had pretty well stayed quiet the whole time, just enjoying the show. “I told you she could fly!” he told the Professor.

  The Professor believed him now. If anything, Zeke had understated it. “She sure can, son. She sure can.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  New Envoy

  The next morning Julie sat with her Uncle looking over a very surprising message. Rather than the disaster planned for her and the US President, everything pretty much had turned out like the First Lady said it would. Instead of hurting the President and his political party, the attack backfired against the opposing party. With a little help from the First Lady’s knowledge from her vision, the investigation quickly revealed all of the culprits, including all the politicians behind it. Julie’s restraint in destroying the planes without killing the pilots only helped. Any questions about the reelection vanished; instead, it looked like it would be a landslide for the President and his party.

  When no one launched an attack on Space Tech station, Julie finally had been able to relax a little more. She had been in particular worried about what the Chinese might do. Instead she was surprised when a message came in to her from the Chinese government also recognizing Space Tech International as an entity. They had an additional request. That was what Uncle Ted was reviewing now.

  He read it aloud again as he looked over it. “The People’s Republic of China is hereby requesting the honor of sending a Special Envoy to be the contact between Space Tech International and the Chinese government. Our envoy would be functional similar to the US government’s envoy in that they will be responsible for communication between Space Tech and our government. We’re not asking for any additional constraints, but we feel having this envoy would be appropriate to represent the interests of the People’s Republic of China.”

  Uncle Ted finally gave her his thoughts on the proposal. “It’s probably the best you can do. We’ve been worried about China and how they would react. Even though this probably means we’ll be in effect letting them assign a spy directly in plain sight, we can control to some extent what they see. I’m sure they’re already routinely getting most of the same information. I expect their intelligence is not as good as what the US President has demonstrated to you, but it has to be pretty good.”

  Julie smiled at her uncle. “At least this spy we’ll know and have a little control over what he sees. The old saying, ‘Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.’ Not sure I totally buy into it, but we don’t really have a choice.” Her face grew hard. “Send back a message indicating tentative acceptance. Make sure they understand that I will try this, but I will reject any envoy I don’t feel is acceptable.”

  Knowing his niece like he did, Uncle Ted didn’t argue. He also recognized how hard she was working to keep it all together. “Ok, I’ll take care of it. Why don’t you take a break? I’ll let you know when I have an update.” He would word the reply a little more diplomatically than Julie had, but he would also be careful to make sure the meaning was understood.

  Glad to pass off a little of her stress load, Julie nodded. “Thanks, Uncle Ted. I knew you would be able to help.” She hurried out the door, not able to bear the thoughts running through her head. Please, God, let this work out. I don’t want to ever have to do what I did again.

  Knowing Zeke had already picked up on her distress, she hurried to see him. He would understand. Nevertheless, I’ll do what I have to do.

  #

  Later that morning, Julie got a call from the Space Tech control center. When she entered the room, she stared in surprise. A live view of her corvette was up on one of the main view screens.

  “What is that painted on my corvette?” Julie asked, more than a little concerned that someone had been that close to her ship.

  Matt Morrison, the main tech on duty was a big fan of Julie, so he answered her with a big smile, “Isn’t it just awesome? You do realize that with two pirate ships destroyed and three planes for five kills, that makes you an ace?”

  “Is that what I think it is?” Julie was staring at the painted design. “Is that a dragon?”

  “Yes, it’s you flying on a fire-breathing dragon. We had to carry on the tradition. We being the royal we as I really can’t tell you who did it. However, I knew you would want to see it.”

  Julie gave a sigh. Matt obviously was referring to the tradition of decorating a pilot’s ship when the pilot becomes an ace. She knew this was way too far gone to change it.

  Smiling, she told him, “Whoever did the artwork, they’re really good. Please pass on my thanks.” She had to act cool about it, but secretly she had to admit to herself, I really like the dragon!

  Unfortunately for her, Zeke soon found out about the little addition to her ship. When he met her for lunch, he couldn’t resist ribbing her about it. “Ace!” he told her. “You go girl!”

  “Did you do this?” Julie asked, ready to pounce if he was the guilty party.

  Zeke knew that look in her eyes. “No way, Jules. Although I love it, I wasn’t crazy enough to do it. Besides, you know how bad I am at artistic stuff.” Julie smiled at the nickname he’d started using for her sometimes. She also knew he was right about his artistic ability. Then he added, bringing a frown back to her face, “But have you seen the VR from the dark web? Everyone knows now just how good you are.”

  When she shook her head, Zeke sent her a link to a VR video showing the whole incident with the planes. “Obviously, someone set up a satellite to record the attack in advance. I’m guessing they didn’t quite get the show they expected. Still, it was there for everyone to see.”

  As Julie watched the VR, he told her the rest of it. “They also have a discussion group dedicated to analyzing the battle. Since we’re keeping the full specs of the ship secret, no one could figure out how you did a lot of what you did. Not that I could tell them either.”

  “You know I can’t explain it, Zeke. I just do what I need to do, pretty well by instinct,” Julie told him. “But I’ll tell you this. I may be able to do things in flight that are beyond you, but no way would I want to take you on in a one-on-one attack.”

  When Zeke started to deny it, she went on, “It’s just a feeling I have, but you know how I am about those. Load you up with weapons, you would beat me every time.”

  Zeke knew better than to argue with that, so wisely he kept quiet. Plus, somehow, he knew she was right, but only if he had to do it to protect her or others that he cared about.

  By this time, she had finished the video. “At least no one should bother us in the corvette any more.” Seeing the doubt on his face, she went on, “Well, I can wish it were so, can’t I?”

  Zeke just shook his head. “Sorry, Jules, you know as well as I do the capacity of men to do stupid things. Plus, you still have the remaining pirates to deal with, and they’re not going to give up.”

  Julie had to fight a little bit of the anger that flared up in her, knowing that he was right. In frustration, she told him, “If they would just leave me alone, everyone would be better off.”

  Zeke gave her the only comfort he could. “Sorry, Jules. You’re going to have to deal with them, but remember, I’ll be there with you.”

  Julie just nodded. Knowing she was getting close to losing herself to her emotions, she changed the subject. “I need your help on something, Zeke. We need at least one pilot capable of flying the corvettes besides the two of us. I already have a second corvette ship on order and it will be completed within a couple of weeks. We need to get a simulator set up specifically designed for the new ship and its capabilities so we can look at other pilots. Someone should be able to do it better than the pilots we’ve tried so far.�
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  Zeke immediately knew the answer and he gave her a big smile. “I can tell you exactly what you need to do. We need Joe to come try it out. Before you, he was the best pilot I knew. I bet he can do it. Besides, it will give me more time to spend with my best friend. I have to admit, I haven’t been able to see him much lately.” Zeke thought about his time in the simulators at school. He had learned a lot from studying with Joe there. Joe had demonstrated his own superb flying skills, doing stunts that no one else had even thought of.

  Julie’s smile grew to match Zeke’s. “You’re right. I knew Joe had experience as a pilot. Didn’t he plan to work as a pilot if the Space Academy stuff didn’t work out? But I didn’t know he was that good.” Julie had picked up on Zeke’s feelings about his friend. “But when you brought up Joe, something about him felt right. I think he just might have that special ability to move beyond the ordinary. I don’t expect he’ll be able to feel the fields like I do, but with your tweaks to the AI, I bet he’ll be just what we need.”

  Both Julie and Zeke had learned to trust her feelings so Zeke carried it a step further. “So I guess this afternoon’s task will be to start building a simulator for the new ship.” Zeke’s eyes glazed over as he thought about what all that would involve. “That should actually be a lot of fun to do. Want to work with me and get it done today?”

  About that time, Julie received a VR from her uncle. The arrangements with the Chinese had been finalized. They would have a small reception early the following afternoon, pending her approval of the envoy who would arrive a couple of hours prior to that time. From the way their reply was worded, she got the impression the Chinese government really wanted to please her. They probably wanted some of those new power systems, but what they didn’t seem to understand was that Julie wanted to sell the power systems to them. They themselves had been the barrier prior to this.

  “Looks, like my afternoon is pretty much free,” Julie happily agreed. She knew she needed something that would be fun, thus distracting her from all the other things on her mind. “Yes, I’d very much enjoy working on the simulator with you. Just like old times, huh?”