Last Flight of the Acheron

by Rick Partlow

  Yet despite the length of all the tubes and all the space inside the two saucers, it seemed there were people you just couldn’t avoid. I’d spent as much time on the Artemis, my new cutter, as I could. The food shipboard was no different than what I could make in the galley of my boat, the entertainment was accessible remotely through my ‘face jacks if I felt like joining other crewmembers in a ViR multiplayer game, and the training simulations were available the same way, so it wasn’t as if there were a lot of things I was missing out on.

  But I couldn’t avoid briefings, both the ones I was getting and the ones I was giving, and I had to use the Implacable’s gym if I wanted to get any exercise at all. That was where he found me. I was beating the shit out of a heavy bag, trying to take out my frustrations and yet, after over an hour, still not able to get rid of them all.

  “How do you like our new secret weapon?” Conrad asked, hands hanging off the towel draped around his neck. He’d just finished running laps on the perimeter track that went all the way around the saucer while I’d pretended not to notice when he’d passed. He was dressed in running shorts and a tank top and was drenched with sweat in a way that was making it hard to concentrate on the bag.

  “Are you referring to yourself or the Implacable?” I asked, pausing long enough to raise an eyebrow before I fed the heavy bag a combination jab-hook-roundhouse kick, the pad over my instep smacking into it at head-level with a loud pop.

  “I am but a humble servant,” he assured me, placing a palm against his chest and bowing his head, “whose job it is to ensure the safety of true warriors such as yourself.”

  “You are so full of shit,” I told him, unleashing a flurry of body shots. “Sir.”

  “Is that any way to treat a superior officer who was just about to invite you to his room for a drink?”

  “You have a room?” I asked him, pausing in the bag workout to regard him skeptically. “And alcohol?”

  “We Search and Rescue team members,” he informed me, “don’t have cabins on our ships, so they had to put us up. And, as a Commander…”

  “Lieutenant Commander,” I reminded him archly. Only one rank above me, despite being in the military years longer.

  “As a Lieutenant Commander,” he went on, smiling hugely, “I do get a certain weight allowance for personal goods that no one checks too carefully for contraband.”

  I looked at him carefully and blurted out what I was thinking before I could consider whether that was a good idea or not.

  “You’re a really good-looking guy,” I said frankly, “with an exciting job and a pretty good personality…why the hell are you so intent on getting with me? Honestly, Conrad, I have issues. My issues have issues. You can’t be that hard up, even on a ship this size.”

  He leaned against the heavy bag, draping an arm over it as he met my eyes.

  “You don’t know me that well,” he confided, “or you’d know I have issues of my own. You don’t do this job for as long as I have without having a few bad logic gates. You just learn to get better at pretending you’re normal.”

  I considered that for a moment, then I hauled off and slugged the bag at head level, hard enough to jolt him.

  “I have a Squadron meeting at eighteen hundred hours ship-time,” I told him. “Message me the directions to your quarters and I’ll be there at eighteen thirty.”

  “Roger that,” he said. He tossed me an off-handed salute and headed out of the gym.

  I tried to get my mind back on my workout, but a thought kept nagging at me: was I getting with Conrad just to get even with Ash? Finally, I stopped working the bag long enough to decide that Conrad likely wouldn’t care, so why should I? Life, as events kept reminding me, was too short.

  ***

  A quick shower and a change of clothes later, I was headed for my Squadron meeting and running through everyone’s names in my head. It was hard enough to remember my new Crew Chief’s name, and thank God, he wasn’t going to be at the meeting because he was a huge buzz-kill. Most of the time I’d spent with the other pilots was over the interface in the simulator, and I needed to connect names to faces.

  I wasn’t sure why I wanted to know them better when some of them wouldn’t be coming back from this mission; it would be easier for me if I didn’t know them. For some reason, I felt like that made it even more important that I did it, like it was one of the duties that I’d signed on for when I became their Squadron Leader.

  They were already there when I arrived, which was the plan. A commander had to show up late enough that the others had a chance to be early, but early enough to keep them on their toes. They’d taught us that in the Academy, and unlike a lot of the other bullshit they’d told us, I could see the point of this one.

  “On your feet!” Grimaldi snapped sharply as I entered the room.

  “As you were,” I said before most of them could even get out of their chairs. I took the seat at the head of the table and looked over the eleven of them.

  All of them were young, at least as young as me, and all of them Lieutenants-junior grade except for Grimaldi, who was the same rank as me and was my wingman. He was five years older than I was, and had been enlisted as a Marine before he’d attended the Academy. He had a face like the blade of a hatchet and a thin-lipped line of a mouth and was perhaps one of the ugliest men I’d ever met, but he was also one of the most daring and competent pilots I’d served with. Since he was guarding my ass, I was happy about that.

  “Okay, people,” I addressed them, “we’ve gone over the simulations until we could do them in our sleep, and I know you all have the mission parameters memorized backwards and forwards. Let’s get down to the meat of this. What do you want to ask that you’ve been afraid to bring up?”

  There were looks of doubt and hesitation. They were all young and ballsy and combat pilots, which meant not one of them wanted anyone to think they were afraid of anything. But we’d been out here for a couple weeks and still had a couple more to go and I thought it was a good idea to clear the air. Finally, a tall, spindly woman with blond hair tied into a complex knot raised her hand.

  “This isn’t the Academy,” I reminded her---Goddard was her name, I recalled. “Just ask.”

  “This installation seems like it’s going to be very heavily defended,” she said. “Do they really think we can pull this off, or are we just being thrown at it because they don’t have anything else?”

  “You mean because they won’t commit the cruisers to this?” I prompted and she nodded. “I’ve never met Admiral Sato,” I admitted, “but everything I’ve read and heard about him is that he’s not reckless, but he is willing to take a risk when the reward’s high enough. So, if you’re asking me if he’d sacrifice us all just to look like he’s doing something proactive, then no, I don’t believe that.” I shrugged. “But if you’re asking if he’d be willing to risk us on something that wasn’t a sure bet because he thought we might do enough damage to make it worthwhile, then hell, yes. He doesn’t want to throw us away, but he’s not afraid to lose us, either. Does that answer your question?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She nodded, looking a bit troubled but less confused. I guess that was an improvement.

  “Anyone else?”

  This time it was a man, a nondescript, average-looking pilot with one of those faces I couldn’t have picked out of a crowd.

  “Yes, Wolczk?” I prompted him.

  “Is this mission military or political, ma’am?” He wondered in a tone that indicated which option he’d already chosen. “The Tahni hit our shipyards,” he continued, “and it didn’t win the war for them. We’ve just built more ships somewhere else. Is this really going to accomplish anything?”

  “You’re making the mistake of assuming the Tahni think like humans. When we got our asses kicked at Mars, we figured we’d been fighting the war wrong and we changed our tactics and strategies. But the Tahni don’t second-guess their leaders the way we do. They follow an Emperor they think is the living
embodiment of their god, immortal and occupying one body after another. You don’t accuse god of making a mistake, so when things go bad, it’s because you failed, not the one who created the strategy.”

  “I get you, ma’am.” Wolczk nodded after a moment. “They won’t change the way they do things, they’ll just double down.”

  “Right. If we can find a weakness we can exploit, they’ll crack like an egg. We just have to find the right spot to hit.”

  Of course, I was taking for granted that our intelligence about their psychology was correct. But you have to work with what you’ve got, I suppose.

  “On the other side of that coin,” I reflected, “every military operation is also political. Everything we do is to try to get the Tahni to stop fighting, and since their government is not run by their military, that’s a political decision.”

  God, now I was sounding just like my Academy instructors. I might have lifted that directly from one of the intensely boring political science lectures Colonel Mabrey had given, actually. I was shocked; I thought I’d slept through every one of his classes. Was this how all officers did it? Just bullshitting and copying someone else’s words?

  “Why aren’t we jumping in closer to the target?” Steinhart said in what seemed closer to a demand than a question. “I know it would be cutting it close as far as the wormhole formation near a gravity well; but I did the figures and we could come in at least a hundred thousand kilometers closer, which would let us drop the missiles right in their laps. The way they got us jumping in this far from the objective…” He shook his head. “It’s just gonna’ give them more time to shoot at us.”

  My first inclination was to bite his head off, but I clenched my jaw shut to give it a moment to pass. Then I had the thought that I probably would have asked that question myself, and not in as well-mannered a tone, back before I had this job.

  “Yes,” I said with exaggerated patience, because that was the only kind I had, “technically, we could come in a light-second or so closer than the plan calls for. But there’s two problems with that.” I stopped, forcing myself not to lecture at him. “Anyone have a guess what they are?”

  “It’s the orbital mechanics,” Wandrey said confidently. He looked like a gym rat, blocky and muscular, but he talked like a science geek. “With that many moons and moonlets in so many orbits around the gas giant, it’s constantly changing the closest possible distance for stable wormhole formation. We’re coming out with enough of a fudge factor to make sure we can all Transition without anyone overshooting and winding up on the other side of the planet.”

  “And that’s problem number one,” I confirmed. “Number two?”

  This time, there were no takers.

  “Coordination,” I gave them the answer. “We have different wings and different squadrons hitting different targets. If we don’t want the enemy defenses to all be able to concentrate on one of those attacks, they all have to occur simultaneously. Now, what happens if we have three different wings jumping in and out at three different times and three different locations?”

  “Transition lag,” Wandrey supplied, smacking the heel of his hand against his forehead like he was an idiot for not remembering it.

  “Transition lag,” I repeated in confirmation. Wandrey was smart; much smarter than I was about the physics side of things. I memorized enough of it to pass the Academy classes, but a real expert is able to look at the math and see the picture unfold in front of them, like it’s a language. I looked at it and saw hieroglyphics.

  “It might only be for a few minutes, but when you’re talking about thousands of missiles, that’s long enough to get a single Strike Wing wiped out.”

  I looked around, meeting each of their eyes.

  “So, we all good or are there any other questions, problems, issues?”

  “Ventnor cheats at poker,” Wolczk cracked, nudging the arm of the woman next to him.

  “You being a bad player doesn’t make me a cheater,” she replied archly.

  “In that case,” I said, standing---which prompted the others to jump to their feet and come to attention, “take care of yourselves in the next few days. Get real sleep and cut the workouts down to warmups at least three days before the mission.” I sobered. “And make sure you update your messages for loved ones.”

  It took an effort to remember that one, since I didn’t have to worry about it.

  What message would I leave for Mom if she were still alive? Would I bother? She’d already resigned herself that I was going to die, and if my life expectancy as an assault shuttle pilot had been low, the numbers had to be in the negative range as a missile cutter commander.

  I shook the thought off.

  “Dismissed. I’ll see you all at the simulators.”

  I waited until they’d filed out before I let out the sigh I’d been holding, then walked out behind them, the bag workout dragging at me like lead weights.

  Ash was coming down the passage as I came out the door. He paused, awkwardly gesturing towards the conference room.

  “I guess I’m up next,” he said. “How’d yours go?”

  “Who the hell decided to make me responsible for twenty-three other people?” I grumbled, forgetting our personal situation for a moment. “I feel ten years older than I did a few months ago.”

  “Yeah, me too,” he admitted, leaning against the bulkhead with the same exhaustion I felt. “You…,” he trailed off. “You doing anything?”

  “Yeah, I am,” I said, maybe a little too quickly. “In fact, I have to get going.”

  He nodded, sagging a little…or maybe that was my imagination.

  “That Search and Rescue guy?” He asked, and I raised an eyebrow, wondering how he knew.

  “Conrad,” I confirmed, reluctantly.

  “He seems like a stand-up guy,” Ash said, with what might have been grudging respect.

  “Good luck with your squadron,” I said pointedly. He shrugged, accepting that I wasn’t going to talk about it any further.

  “They’re good pilots. I hope I can get them through this.”

  “You’re a good leader,” I assured him. “You’ll do fine, and so will they.”

  “Thanks,” he said, then went into the conference room.

  I cursed under my breath.

  This ship, I thought again, is too damned small.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Ten seconds till Transition,” a voice said in my ear. “Please acknowledge.”

  “First Squadron, aye,” I responded automatically, just the way I’d done in the simulators.

  It still felt odd, hearing someone outside my ship tell me that we were Transitioning. It felt odd riding the rails of the carrier platform like one of the Tahni parasite fighters hanging on their destroyers. It felt very odd not being in the Huntress; the Artemis was nearly identical, but she was from the next generation of cutters and I could tell the little differences.

  But perhaps the oddest thing was the man sitting next to me. Chief Petty Officer Nguyen Ngoc Ngan was competent and professional and as serious as a Victorian portrait, and being on the ship with him I constantly felt as if I was being graded. I hadn’t been asked my opinion, just assigned a new boat and a new crew chief and told to get the damn job done.

  “Transitioning.”

  I don’t know why, but it didn’t seem as bad going through the warp attached to the carrier. There was probably some physics reason for it, but all I knew was, I was back to my senses in about a second and I didn’t feel as if I was about to puke. My view screen activated and I was looking into a sea of stars, the primary of the system we’d jumped into so far away that I couldn’t even tell it from any of the other glimmering lights.

  “All squadrons prepare for separation,” Captain Osceola directed.

  “First squadron,” I relayed, “fire it up and get ready to kick off.”

  I was already jacked in, and it was the matter of a thought to activate the ship’s reactor and order the docking col
lar to separate and withdraw into the Implacable’s recesses. The big ship’s post-jump momentum was minimal, and the Artemis hung motionless where she’d been anchored, like a well-trained warhorse waiting for the touch of my heels.

  “Separate.”

  The maneuvering thrusters pushed at us with bangs of harsh insistence and we floated away from the body of the carrier like bees swarming off of a hive, dozens of us up and down the length of her.

  “Strike Wing Alpha, form on me,” Osceola ordered.

  “First Squadron, form up,” I echoed and fed power to the fusion drive for just a moment, feeling the raw energy like a kick in the pants.

  More bangs and shoves from the maneuvering jets set me in the center of one of a series of globes, formed up on the center sphere of the Group Headquarters Squadron. Missile cutters were spread out over hundreds of kilometers, matching velocity and orientation with each other as we drifted slowly away from the carrier.

  “Alpha,” Osceola broadcast again, passing down the word she was getting from Group Commander Frasier, “we make the Transition into the target area in seventy seconds. Each squadron knows your assignment. The Implacable will be waiting here unless she’s engaged. If your ship is damaged or you need refitting and rearming and return and she is not here, she’s jumped back to Rally Point Alpha. If she’s not there, well…it’s a long flight home, hope you brought a change of clothes.”

  I snorted a laugh. Nguyen didn’t make a sound, and I was sure if I could see his face inside his helmet, it would be as expressionless as a statue’s.