Last Flight of the Acheron

by Rick Partlow

  “No,” he said again, still smiling. “I don’t want another drink.”

  Well, that would work, too.

  ***

  “There’s someone at your door.”

  It took me a moment to place the voice. I squeezed my eyes shut against a hangover headache, then opened them and saw Conrad’s face staring at me intently. He was propped up on one elbow on my bed, and his grey-eyed gaze scanned me like the sensor suite on a missile boat. It was dim in my bedroom, but not totally dark; I’d left the light on in the living room, apparently, though I didn’t remember it. There was enough light to see the interplay of the muscles in his arms and chest; the S&R guys were all gym rats, even their commander.

  Then I heard the faint knock and tried to shake my head clear.

  “What time is it?” I wondered, glancing around on the nightstand for my ‘link.

  “Past midnight,” he supplied. Then he grinned. “Glad I have tomorrow off.”

  I rolled out of bed and grabbed a T-shirt and shorts off the chair up against the wall by my closet, pulling them on blindly and hoping they weren’t backwards and inside out. Who the hell would be coming by this time of night? I hoped it wasn’t a mission; I’d been wiped out already, and Conrad had proven extremely energetic and durable.

  I slitted my eyes against the glare of the light in the living room, noting that the clothes I’d been wearing were still on the floor by the couch, and the little decorative sculpture of a lioness I kept on the coffee table was knocked over. I grinned and felt a tingle in my stomach. That I remembered.

  I opened the door and my grin faded. It was Ash. He was in civilian clothes now, but he still didn’t look like he’d slept; the circles under his eyes had deepened and the stress lines on his face made him look older.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to wake you, but I want to talk to you.”

  “You already did enough talking,” I snapped.

  “Come on Sandi,” he pleaded, reaching out a hand to touch my shoulder, but I shrugged away from it. “I don’t want things to end like this…”

  “Then you shouldn’t have ended them.” I wasn’t feeling merciful at all. In fact, if anything, getting laid had been liberating, palate-cleansing. “Don’t act like I’m being unfair to you, somehow. You already made your choice about what was more important to you, and you didn’t choose me, that’s for damn sure.”

  He looked around him at the harsh light of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters hallway, conscious of the other doors close by. “Can I come inside?”

  “No,” I said flatly. “Just go back to your room and get some sleep.”

  “Just for a minute?” There was a puppy-dog begging turn to his eyes and finally, I felt bad for him.

  “You can’t, Ash,” I said, my tone softer, almost apologetic despite the anger still burning in my chest. “I’m not alone.”

  His mouth shaped a silent “oh,” as understanding finally came into his expression…and hurt. A deep, deep hurt.

  “I’m…sorry to disturb you.” His tone had turned flat and hard, purposefully emotionless. He stepped back from the door. “I won’t bother you again.”

  I almost called out to him as he turned and walked off, his motions stiff as he tried to hold himself together. But I didn’t. It was too late for that. I let him go.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I don’t know why we still had mass briefings. We could have done the same thing with a ViR briefing faster, easier and cheaper; but there was something visceral and human about being together physically in the same room, and the military never seemed ready to get rid of them. There were fifty of us jammed into one of the Fleet’s smaller auditoriums in Tartarus, clustered around a large holotank that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Around the edges, more officers were filtering in, trying to find open seats with a view of the projection.

  A short, muscular woman with skin the color of charcoal nodded to me as she took the chair beside me.

  “Morning, Sandi,” she said genially.

  “Felicia,” I responded. She was the Second Squadron Leader, and a damned good pilot.

  The rest of the squadron leaders from Strike Wing Alpha were already present, except for Ash. I hadn’t seen him since three nights ago; we’d been off for two of those days, and yesterday I’d been busy breaking in three new pilots on the simulator. Honestly, I’d been glad we hadn’t run into each other; I had no idea what to say to him, and I cringed at the thought of what he might say to me.

  I checked my ‘link. Five minutes until the briefing started, which meant that, according to the unwritten military rules of etiquette, Ash was late. I glanced back over my shoulder at the rear entrance and saw him slipping through the door, shuffling up the aisles between the empty outer seats. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes down, and I felt a twinge of pain in my chest. He’d hurt me, and I’d wanted to hurt him, but I still hated to see him like this.

  “Group!” A voice that I recognized as Captain Osceola’s barked loudly and I stood in reflex. “A-ten-shun!”

  I stiffened to attention, letting my eyes follow Captain Frasier as he strode across the stage at the center of the auditorium. He was a tall man, born on a world with lower gravity, towering above Osceola but as skinny as a skeleton and with a head that looked too small for his body. He had a flat-top cut to his blond hair and a scrunched-up face that only helped to reinforce that image, and I always found it hard not to laugh at him when I saw him. But I didn’t laugh, because that would be a mistake with a Captain senior enough that he was maybe a year from being promoted to Admiral.

  “Take your seats,” he said, regarding us with a critical eye.

  I thought I saw that eye follow Ash as he squeezed down the row of chairs where I was sitting, not looking at me as he passed. He slumped into a seat a second behind everyone else, staring studiously up at the stage.

  “Good morning,” he said, hands behind his back, as straight and stiff and stern as a recruiting poster. “Our first operation as a Flight Group was successful, and you all performed very well. But things are about to change, and I’m going to have to ask you all to show some adaptability.”

  “Oh, great,” I heard someone mutter off to my right. Frasier’s dark eyes darted towards the sound and I thought he might have heard it too, despite the fact it had been so soft I couldn’t even make out who had said it.

  “We have been tasked,” Frasier went on, “with striking deeper into enemy territory than before, past the point where our supply lines can support you. A vessel the size of our missile cutters can only spend so much time in T-space, can only carry so much ordnance, can only maneuver for so long without refueling. We need to extend that range; but we do not, as of yet, have the means to defend a fixed base from which to do so. That’s why we’ve been building these.”

  An image snapped to life in the huge holotank, of something odd and awkward and ugly, with the air of practical utility to it. I leaned forward in my seat, suddenly intent on the thing.

  It seemed to be half space station and half starship, and I had the feeling that was the general idea. My brain initially rebelled at any effort to describe it, but then I decided that it looked like someone had taken a pair of breakfast biscuits and jammed half a dozen straws into them to connect them to each other. Only the straws were kilometers long and the biscuits were two hundred meters across, and dozens of missile cutters were docked along the straws and the whole thing was rotating slowly for gravity.

  “This is the Implacable, the first of a new line of ships,” Frasier told us. “She’s what we’re calling a carrier platform. She’s not built to fight; she’s not heavily armored, her only armament is a few point defense turrets, and her reaction drives are mostly for use as short-range maneuvering thrusters. If she’s attacked, her first defense is to retreat to Transition Space. What she’s good for is carrying a whole Flight Group close enough to their target system that they can reach it with only a few hours of Transition, then re
turn to re-arm if necessary. She’s going to take this Flight Group deep into enemy space, and we’re going to hit them where it hurts.”

  He used a small pointer to project a red dot over the huge, metallic “biscuit” sections.

  “She also rotates for artificial gravity when she’s not in Transition, and has enough deck space for use as an R&R area for pilots between missions. The idea here is that we can operate away from Inferno or other Fleet bases for extended periods of time.”

  Which I guess made sense, but also didn’t exactly fill me with anticipation. Inferno might be a humid, sunbaked hellhole, but at least you could go outside and look at the sky once in a while. There were a few murmurings around the room, prompting a barked “At ease!” from Captain Osceola. She had the least time in grade among the Captains who commanded the Strike Wings, so she got to be the one to ride herd over the Squadron Leaders.

  “The Implacable will be meeting us in orbit in 150 hours,” Frasier went on as if Osceola hadn’t spoken. “Bring whatever you think you’re going to need for the foreseeable future, because we won’t be coming back here for a minimum of three months. You’ll all be sent a new set of training parameters and I want you to have all your pilots and crews running it twelve hours on, twelve off, until we leave.

  “Our first target is going to be the Tahni shipyards.”

  That caused a buzz, and I looked over at Felicia, meeting her wide-eyed stare. Beyond her, I could see Ash stirring from his funk and straightening in his chair, his expression intent. We’d been hunting for the location of the Tahni shipyards for years. They hadn’t been as obvious as to build theirs in their home system the way we had, maybe because they weren’t as blindly confident as we were, but probably for some reason I couldn’t even hope to understand based on their screwy religious beliefs.

  “After years of diligent work, our intelligence analysts have finally located them, but the shipyards are deep inside their core systems and we’re going to face some heavy opposition, the heaviest we’ve seen yet.” He shrugged expressively. “I know that some of you are probably thinking you’d like to have some support from a cruiser or two. To be honest, I would as well, but that isn’t going to happen. The new cruisers are just off the production line and the President and the Joint Chiefs have decided they’re needed for defending the Solar System, and that’s that. But it’s my opinion, and that of Admiral Sato, that the element of surprise will be with us because of the extended range provided to us by the Implacable.”

  He regarded us with a look that might have been trying for compassionate or parental or something, but just seemed more patronizing than anything else.

  “And we both have faith in you, the best and the bravest that humanity has to offer.”

  Oh, please… I slitted my eyes, trying not to roll them.

  “I know this appears to be a sudden shift in strategy; but I assure you, it was in the works from the beginning. The Fleet started construction on this ship before the first missile cutter came off the line. This is the next step in the maximization of the missile cutter concept, and it’s going to change the way this war is fought. I’m damned excited to be a part of it.”

  “Yeah,” Felicia murmured next to me, her lips barely moving, “you look excited. Get your ass out there in a cutter and we’ll see how excited you are.”

  I suppressed a snort of laughter, turning it into a cough and covering my mouth to disguise the grin. I started to craft my own snide remark but paused, my grin fading as I realized that it wasn’t Ash sitting next to me. Felicia was a laid-back sort with a good sense of humor, but I didn’t know her well enough to trust her that intimately.

  I didn’t have anyone I could trust like that anymore. I slumped back in my chair and glanced over to where Ash was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring intently into nothing. I wondered if I should do what he wanted, try to just be friends. Anything was better than this.

  “Group!” Osceola bellowed and I realized that I’d been woolgathering right through Frasier’s closing words. “Attention!”

  We stood motionless as Captain Frasier lumbered off the stage, leaving the image of the carrier platform to loom over us like a sword of Damocles.

  “Dismissed!” Osceola told us after her superior had disappeared through the side door.

  I said something politely inane to Felicia and began shuffling down towards the end of the row of seats, trying to keep an eye on which way Ash was heading. I almost ran directly into the chest of Conrad Esparza. He was in uniform, and wore it quite well.

  “Three months shipboard,” he mused, cocking an eyebrow. “Could get pretty damned boring, I suppose.”

  I felt my lip curl into a cross between a grin and a sneer. Jesus, had I really thought this guy was smooth? How drunk had I been?

  “I liked you better when you were playing the sensitive man of action, Commander.”

  “I wasn’t playing,” he protested with a shrug. “I’m a man of many parts.”

  “Which part are you thinking with right now, sir?”

  He mimed an injury, hand going to his chest.

  “Commander?” A younger officer said from behind Conrad, getting his attention. “What time do you want to schedule the team meeting?”

  “Just a second, Carver,” Conrad said to the man, trying to turn back to me and continue the conversation.

  “Go ahead, Commander,” I waved at him. “I have my own people to brief and I have to get the new training program in place. We’ll talk later…like you said, three months shipboard.”

  I headed out the rear exit, keeping an eye open for Ash, but not seeing him.

  Oh well, I thought. I’ll catch him on board.

  We were going to be busy as hell till we launched, anyway. There’d be plenty of time.

  ***

  I rubbed at my eyes and cursed under my breath as I realized I’d lost concentration again and needed to go over the results from Stanhope’s simulator run for a third time. I tried a sip of the coffee from the plastic cup on my desk and made a face; it had gone cold while I was jacked into the interface.

  “Fuck it,” I mumbled, yanking the interface cables out of my jacks and letting them spool back into the console.

  It was nearly Midnight and I had to be up in six hours. The flight crews might have twelve hours on and twelve off but the Squadron Leaders had more like eighteen hours on and six off. I didn’t want to think what sort of hours the Wing Commanders were putting in. Still two more days of this shit to go…

  I dumped the cup into the recycler and stumbled out into the hallway. The lights were dimmed at this time of night and I didn’t recognize the shadowed figure coming towards the Squadron Leaders’ office suite until I almost ran into him. It was Ash, and he looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

  “Sorry,” he said, stone-faced as he moved out of my way. “I didn’t think anyone would be here so late.”

  I almost brushed past him; he obviously wanted to avoid me, and I was dead tired. But this thing had been nagging at me for a week and I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  “Hey.” I held up a hand, blocking his way. “I’ve been wanting to find the time to talk to you.”

  “Didn’t you get to say enough last time?” My eyes narrowed at his harsh tone and I made myself count to ten before I answered.

  “I was drunk,” I told him honestly, “and hurting, and you blindsided me. How did you expect me to react?”

  He looked like he was about to snap back, but he bit his lip and nodded, instead.

  “That’s fair,” he acknowledged. “I should…I should have waited to talk to you about it until later. I guess I was blindsided myself, when they called me in. I figured it was a regular debrief…” He trailed off, leaning against the wall.

  “How long had you felt that way?” I wondered. “That we shouldn’t be…involved?”

  “I was worried right from the beginning,” he confessed, “that if anything went wrong, it would ruin our fri
endship. But I didn’t say anything because, you know, it was fun and I thought maybe we could be something more.”

  “I guess maybe you were right about that.” I opened my mouth, closed it again. No, I had to say it; I couldn’t leave things like this. “Maybe we could try to go back to the way it was.”

  “I’d really like that,” he said, and I felt a surge of hope. “But I don’t think I can do it.”

  I frowned in confusion.

  “Why not?”

  “I told you about Carmen,” he explained, and there was a catch in his voice. “About how I found her and my brother together…”

  “Wait,” I interrupted, shaking my head. “This wasn’t like that…”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he admitted readily. “I’m not saying it was. But whenever I see you, that’s all I can think about. I keep seeing her with him, except it’s not her, it’s you. Maybe after a while, after I get that out of my head, we can try. But for right now, I think it would be better if we just keep everything professional.”

  “But you’re my friend, Ash,” I insisted, pleading and hating myself for it. “You’ve always been there for me. I need you to be my friend.”

  “And I want to be.” He sounded sad and he started to put a hand on my arm, but thought better of it and withdrew it. “But I can’t do it right now.” He nodded toward the office. “I got to get to work.”

  I stepped out of his way, feeling numb inside, and he headed past me.

  I’d done it, I’d swallowed my pride and tried to make things right. How could it not have worked?

  I wanted to say it out loud, but there was no one left to ask. I was alone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Implacable was simultaneously too large and far too small.

  She was too small to handle berthing for all the pilots on top of the ship’s own crew, Search and Rescue, maintenance and support, so we all got to sleep in the tiny cabins of our own cutters. Which meant that any time you wanted to go anywhere, you had to take the very small and very slow lift car down the tube you were docked against to one of the saucers. In zero gravity, it would have been faster and more efficient to zip down the tube manually, but the Implacable spent most of her time in T-space with manufactured gravity, and there wasn’t room for both zero-g access tubes and lifts, too, so…