Rust Bucket

by Atk. Butterfly

  I replied, "Fine. I'll gladly take you to dinner. I also hope you and your family come to visit us someday for dinner and relaxation on our lake."

  "Wouldn't the food get soggy?" he asked slyly.

  It took me a moment to catch his joke and realize what I'd said. Then we both laughed about it together before we found a restaurant and had dinner. As the Sarge promised, we swapped war stories where we told the truth about some of them we had each heard exaggerated versions about.

  Chapter 22

  It was nice to know that I had resolved either wholly or partly, two of my concerns. I had a partial solution to the mystery I uncovered and I had resolved completely my relationship with Annie. That left only one other pre-occupation for me to solve that I devoted a little time to each day with casual reading of historical battles. Even though it was a naval type conflict, I also read about air and ground battles to see if one of them held the solution to the predicament I felt the Navy would soon be facing inside the next five years.

  As it turned out, there were countless instances throughout the history of combat where one force had a significant advantage over another. There were also several ways to blunt the advantage. Some of them were too costly in lives and material. Others were inappropriate. A few, however, were adaptable. Those were the ones that I concentrated on as I wrote a treatise on how to defeat an enemy holding a significant advantage over our current naval forces. The treatise took me almost nine months to write. For once, I had an idea of what a pregnancy felt like as I struggled to make the evidence give birth to the solution I saw. I could make that comparison easily because Annie became pregnant with our first daughter, Angelica. After I wrote it, I realized that I needed to get it published and seen by the military as well as the people who might control their funds, if they could understand it.

  I went to see the Sarge, since he was my closest friend and my mentor. He looked at a disk copy of the treatise after I presented it to him and promised to read it. Then he said that he would get back to me with his advice. He did far more.

  ***

  The call came over the lightbeam radio. "Dave, Sergeant Clark. I finished reading your treatise. Very interesting. I found it well-balanced and founded. I passed the copy on to someone who will start circulating copies around the military to the right people. You made a lot of friends when you were in the Navy fighting the Ape-oids. A number of them remember you fondly if only because you saved their lives or careers. They're going to bat for you. Now, as far as getting it published, what you need to do next is . . ."

  I listened intently as the Sarge outlined what I had to do with another copy of the treatise. Finally, he got off the lightbeam and hung up. I went to work immediately to fix up another copy into proper publishing format and send it in. Hopefully, it would see the light of day and someone would use it.

  Already, the war clouds Sarge warned of were starting to roll in again. Already, the Ape-oids were making incursions into sectors of space that were off-limits to them. They were making threatening moves at ships moving through those sectors. So far, they hadn't made an outright attack, but the more I heard about the situation, the more I realized that Sarge was right about another war and it wasn't far away.

  Meanwhile, I continued to escort Pennyweight freighters on their runs to Adriena, Gabriel, and sometimes to the Blues on Leuion. The Edmund and Theodore were also kept busy, but, more and more, they were carrying special, small cargoes on solo runs because they were faster than the freighters and armed.

  ***

  During my spare time, I kept current on military tactics and strategy, partly because of the war I expected and partly for the enjoyment as a hobby. When I was at home I spent time with my wife and son, enjoying their company, and laughter filled our house. Our son was nearing his first birthday when one of the first incidents occurred. Annie was almost frantic at the thought of war as the politicians rattled sabers. Still, it worried me because she was about to give birth. The incident wasn't all that large, but it was something which had riled governments and people before throughout mankind's history. Ours didn't take kindly, either, to having its citizens harassed while in its territory.

  The Ape-oids deliberately sent a ship into one of the Union's sectors of space and bumped a commercial space ship carrying passengers. The damage to the ship was minor, but there was no immediate damage to the truce. Despite the saber rattling, the politicians did nothing after a few well-placed bribes from rich families convinced them that it was merely an accident when the alien vessel came into our space and bumped into one of our vessels.

  Had the military retaliated then, there might not have been a war for several more years or longer. Instead, the Ape-oids were emboldened to try larger indiscretions to see how far they could go. At the same time, the Ape-oids complained diplomatically that the terms of the truce were unfair and limited them to too little territory. Almost immediately, groups sprang up demanding that the government give up space territory as an appeasement. Other more radical groups claimed that the Ape-oids were right in their demands. At the same time, some of the traditional hard line organizations warned of impending disaster should we give in.

  I kept on looking through old history texts for similar behavior and was again rewarded with several examples that coincided with the actions of the Ape-oids. It was like seeing history repeat itself, only in space rather than on Earth. The more I read, the more I worried when not in Annie and our children's presence. While with my family, I always tried to make the threat of war seem less severe which was probably wrong on my part. I should have been preparing Annie for what I was seeing as a likely occurrence.

  ***

  As the holidays came along, I watched each one carefully to see how the Ape-oids were behaving. If they followed historical examples, then their behavior would soon fall into one of several patterns, all easily distinguishable and identifiable. If nothing else, I was glad that our home was distant from the military base on Beulah. It wasn't a large base, but it was on the outer fringes of Union territory. That made it important. Even more important was Echo. It was a veritable nest of military bases, each one important.

  I wrote a second treatise, much shorter than the first and not as well documented. Still, it was complete enough for an experienced military mind to comprehend. I finished it in one month's time and sent several copies to the Sarge. When he received it, he called me immediately and asked for more. The title caught his attention and he read it immediately. He agreed with my reasoning and knew that it was hot material that needed to get out into the field immediately.

  I also took a copy of it to my father-in-law and sat in front of him as he read it in his disk reader. The looks on his face told almost the whole story as he stopped once or twice to look at some fact sheets he received from Supreme Headquarters. Not a word passed from his lips until he finished reading. Then he finally set it down with shaking hands and looked at me.

  He said, "Son, you better get me some more copies of this disk soon. There's some people whom I want to have a copy of this. I'm going to take your advice as far as Beulah is concerned if only because my daughter and grandchildren are here. We'll not be caught napping. If you have any more ideas like this, I want to see them, too. By the way, that other treatise you wrote was one fine piece of writing. I hope it gets adopted before hostilities break out. Yes, I think they will, too."

  I answered, "Yes sir. I'll get you more copies. All you want. Just let me know how many."

  He said, "For now, get me twenty copies. No, you better make that forty. That will do for my purposes. Keep at it, son. You're going to go far when this war breaks out."

  I replied, "Yes sir. By the way, have you seen Annie's Cavern?"

  "No. First I ever heard of it. What is it?" he asked.

  I said, "Annie found a tunnel behind the waterfall across from the house. It leads to a deep cavern on our property. I'm going to instruct Annie to head there in the event of an attack. I'm going to have part of
it reinforced and supplied with everything she and the children might need."

  He replied, "Good for you. I'll remember that in case I go looking for her in your absence."

  I said, "I know you would. That's why I'm telling you about it now."

  ***

  Bill's word was good. He took steps at his base to make sure that his people weren't going to be surprised. Training was stepped up. It wasn't unusual for patrols to be out under the guise of training in the near sectors of space to Beulah. Because of my job, I was able to notice the stepped up activity from the base. That alone sufficed to make me feel easier about Annie and our children being on Beulah. It was our home. I wasn't interested in giving up it or any other part of the Union to some alien-come-lately who thought he could bully his way about and have what he wanted without a fight.

  ***

  For my own part, I suggested to Penny in the head office of the company that the gunships perform some practice when not on runs. She saw what I was actually after since she was the Sarge's wife and had seen both of my treatises. She gave me the go ahead to conduct practice with all three gunships. That was all I needed to further develop and practice the wingman concept as it might be used later in war, especially when I required my ship and the wingman ship to go at a slower speed than the gunship pretending to be the enemy. We practiced at least once every two weeks for a few hours until we learned how the wingman concept worked and could defeat the faster ship in our mock battles with regularity.

  ***

  Despite the fact that the politicians were beginning to run the military once more to the advantage of the rich families, there were enough combat veterans inside the military from the recent war at all levels of rank who saw what was happening or were reading my treatises. Some of them were practicing with the techniques I re-introduced during the last war. Others were trying to make other things happen in research and in the development of better ships and weapons. They were all racing against time since none of us knew with any certainty when the war would break out. We did have a definite idea of where and how it would break out since we were on ground zero, so to speak.

  ***

  The Ape-oids continued to transgress at almost regular intervals into our government's spacial territory, moving their ships close to our ships, threatening commercial ships, and shadowing military ships, taunting them to do something. More and more the military was disgusted with not being allowed to blast apart the transgressing ships.

  ***

  I should have realized that the practice I was doing with the wingman concept and not being as fast as the enemy would pay off in my job. After all, part of my pitch to Penny was that we might someday run into a pirate with a faster ship. That someday also came a lot sooner than I thought it would.

  We were on the Gabriel run when we spotted the first pirate in months. Because we were taking out to Gabriel a shipment not worth a pirate's efforts to steal it, we weren't bothered. The pirate moved away from us at high speed, giving up valuable information inadvertently.

  "Did you see how fast he moved?" asked Ed at the sensors.

  "He did appear to have legs. How fast was he going?" I asked.

  Ed said, "Better than we can do at top speed. He's an entire factor faster from what I'm reading on the sensors."

  I said, "I wonder how much firepower he has?"

  Ed replied, "I couldn't determine anything about that."

  I said, "Communications, call the office. Advise them that I'd like one of the other two gunships to meet us on the way back from Gabriel. Tell them the circumstances and that I believe we're going to be in for a rough one."

  The rest of the trip to Gabriel was uneventful. At Gabriel, we picked up a flash message from the home office advising us that the Theodore would be joining us and was already on its way. Our freighters were unloaded. A day later, they were loaded with a cargo a pirate would definitely consider worth the risk. Meanwhile, I kept my ship in orbit and conducted drills with the crew. There was no way that I intended to give up my convoy without a fight.

  ***

  We left after two days at Gabriel and spotted the pirate a day out from the planet. He stayed on the edge of our sensor area where he seemed to be trying to decide if he was going to take us on or not. Despite his clear advantage in speed and unknown firepower, I was looking forward to the engagement. If nothing else, that was my job to do and, though it was a dangerous job, I liked doing it and the pirate was giving me job security. He shadowed us for almost a day when the Theodore joined us.

  That must have convinced him that we were worried about being able to take him. He moved in at high speed on an attack run towards us. I pulled out to meet him with the other gunship taking position on my wing, so to speak. As soon as we neared extreme weapons range for the Mark IV quads, both ships opened fire on the pirate. It took the gunners a while before they were able to pick up on the pirate with his better speed. By then, he had closed enough distance on us that his weapons were vibrating the ship. I could tell that he considered my larger ship the more dangerous if only because we had more powerful weapons.

  It wasn't much of a fight as he twisted out of the gunners' sights and tried to get behind us. We jinked about to keep him from getting a clear shot on our engines to disable us. The other gunship weaved about behind us spoiling his shots as we maneuvered into a position where we could again defend ourselves. Finally, we caught him in a maneuver where we were able to disable him.

  The Theodore remained behind to guard our new ship, since we owned salvage rights to it, while my ship continued to escort the freighters back to Beulah. When we arrived, I walked into the office with a smile on my face, knowing we had done our jobs well, even if my ship's crew would have to share the bonus money with the crew of the Theodore.

  "How'd it go?" asked Jim.

  I replied, "Rough, but the tactics we developed and practiced did the job. I'm sure now that we probably would have lost if we didn't have the Theodore with us."

  He said, "Okay. That's good to know. We'll get the new ship refurbished and start watching to see if anymore pirates have these faster engines and where they're getting them from. Enjoy your time off."

  I replied, "I will. Thanks again for sending the Theodore out."

  ***

  The Theodore returned with the salvage crew and new ship to have it refurbished into a new gunship for the company. We were lucky when we disabled the pirate. We didn't hit the engines. We hit the controls and those were easy to replace. Our hits also penetrated the hull, so some work was required to seal it again. All in all, the pirate ship took three weeks to put back in service as our newest gunship, the William. As with our other gunships, its hull was allowed to rust gracefully.

  ***

  It seemed like there was a new transgression by the Ape-oids every month. Still our military was kept leashed. No response was made to the Ape-oids other than through diplomatic channels. Then the Ape-oids just shrugged the complaints off as meaningless while they complained about how little space they had for expansion. Despite the fact that they could easily expand in the opposite direction without conflict or complaint from us, they continued to complain about needing to expand in our direction.

  ***

  With the addition of a new gunship, Pennyweight began using two gunships on the more valuable trade routes. We weren't taking chances now that we knew there was a faster engine available and that pirates were already getting them. It seemed like there were more pirates around than before. Most avoided our convoys when they saw two gunships on the valuable cargoes instead of the usual single gunship. Other shipping companies weren't as fortunate.

  After awhile, we were travelling more often as we were leased out to escort other company freighters on their routes. If nothing else, I was really accumulating some bonus money from the work we were doing in either fighting off or destroying pirate ships. I was also getting in a lot of practical exercise for my ship and crew in using the wingman technique. We ma
naged to destroy a few more pirates, whose ships went to the companies to whom we were leased, though we were still paid bonuses by them as part of the contracts. Some of the other companies accumulated enough salvaged and rebuilt gunships to once again handle their own convoys with two escorting gunships in a similar manner to what we were doing. After a few months, we were mostly escorting only our own convoys.

  Still no one knew where the pirates were getting the faster engines from or who was making them. We were glad that we had captured one of them since it was now the only gunship we felt could carry small valuable cargoes by itself on fast runs among the planets while the rest of our gunships were outclassed in speed by some of the pirates.

  ***

  Summer was approaching. I looked forward to a long vacation with Annie, William, and Angelica, our first daughter. To tell the truth, we really weren't going anywhere. In fact, William and Angelica were going to be looked after while Annie and I disappeared from sight for a few weeks in our underground hideaway to do nothing much, except maybe have a lot of sex. If nothing else, besides our children, we had a great sex life aside from a few interruptions when they needed caring for.