Return of the Star Raiders

by Dietmar Wehr

  “ATTENTION! ATTENTION!”

  The amplified voice coming from the ship was so loud that Strider had to cover his ears.

  “CITIZENS OF NEW CALEDON. WE ARE THE STAR WOLVES! WE TAKE WHAT WE WANT AND WE PUNISH THOSE WHO DARE TO STRIKE BACK. YOUR PITIFUL EXCUSE FOR A DEFENSE FORCE WAS ABLE TO BRING DOWN ONE OF OUR TROOP SHIPS WITH AN ATOMIC MISSILE THE LAST TIME WE WERE HERE. YOUR LEADERSHIP NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON REGARDING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ATOMICS ARE USED AGAINST US. IF ANY ATOMICS ARE USED AGAINST US THIS TIME, WE WILL RETALIATE WITH THE SAME KIND OF WEAPON AGAINST A CIVILIAN CITY CHOSEN AT RANDOM. THE LESSON WILL BEGIN NOW.”

  Even before the ship touched down, large doors swung open and a stream of armored flying vehicles emerged, heading very quickly straight for the Government Quarter, the Planetary Senate and the Executive Mansion.

  Strider began to run as fast as he could in the same direction. Nobody was coming the other way now. He was able to get within sight of the front of the Planetary Senate building just in time to see the hundred or so Senators who had been lined up side by side be gunned down in a hail of bullets from a dozen hovering vehicles carrying rapid-firing guns. The image of the bodies lying in the street caused him to momentarily flash back to seeing the newspaper photo of his father’s body slumped against the bank entrance doors. He had to do something!

  Wildly looking around him, Strider saw another Star Wolf vehicle hovering just a few feet off the ground. There was a parked car behind it. He began to run towards the car, and when he reached it, he jumped up onto the front, clambered to the roof of the car and then up to the back of the hovering vehicle. The Star Wolf manning the gun had his back to Strider. He was wearing a helmet, so hitting him on the head was not an option. Strider had only one course of action available to him. He reached down, grabbed the Star Wolf’s head with both hands and twisted as hard as he could. He heard the man’s neck snap and felt the head go limp. He had to get the body out of the way before he could get into a position where he could use the gun. With strength fueled by adrenaline and rage, he lifted the body up out of the open hatch and dropped it over the side. Jumping down into the opening, he grabbed the trigger handles of the gun, swung it around so that it was pointing at the gunners who had just executed the Senators, and pressed down on the trigger button.

  When his first target was hit, he shifted to the next gunner in the line of still hovering vehicles. He was surprised by how long it took the other gunners to notice that someone was shooting at their comrades, and then to notice where the shots were coming from. He had just shifted his aim to the sixth target when some of the remaining vehicles returned fire. He felt excruciating pain from multiple almost simultaneous hits, but he was able to press the trigger, taking out one more gunner before losing consciousness. Mere seconds after that, Strider was dead.

  Four days later:

  Richard held back the tears as his father’s casket was slowly lowered into the ground. He looked down at the medal on his own chest, which the new Planetary President had pinned there a few minutes before. It was the second medal his father had earned. The first one, awarded for bringing down the Star Wolf troop ship, was pinned to the folded flag that the President had given to his mother. His father was being buried next to his grandfather’s grave. Richard looked at the ground next to the new grave and wondered if some day he would be buried there. The sound of jets intruded on his thoughts. He looked up just in time to see a flight of four Raptors approaching and one jet peeling off to leave a hole in the formation. Richard had seen that maneuver before on the video during the burial services for the Raptor pilots killed in the previous attack. The commentator had referred to it as the ‘missing man’ formation. He knew that the four Raptors were from his father’s squadron. All the pilots had come to the house to express their condolences, and he had talked to some of them about his father and about the Star Wolves. The pilots wanted revenge too, and they didn’t laugh when he told them that some day he would be a pilot and would kill as many Star Wolves as he could. When they left the house, each one of them shook his hand as if he were already a grown man. That felt good, as did the pride he felt over what his father had done.

  When the jets had passed by, he continued to look up. That was where his future lay. His father had struck the first blow against the Star Wolf scourge. He would do his best to complete the quest his father had started.

  Chapter Seven

  Twenty-eight years later:

  Captain Richard Strider looked in on his son before leaving for the day. Troy was still asleep, so he slowly closed the bedroom door and headed downstairs. His wife, Samantha, was just finishing her second cup of coffee and got up from the table to give him the usual ‘have a good day’ kiss, only this time he’d be gone for almost a week.

  “Are you sure you’ve packed everything, Captain,” she said in her best imitation of a commanding officer’s tone.

  He smiled and put his arms around her neck. “I’m sure, boss. Troy was still asleep. I didn’t wake him.”

  “He’ll be mad at you for not doing that, you know,” she said as she returned his hug.

  “I know, but he’d be awake on his own by now if he hadn’t spent hours with a flashlight reading those space fantasy books under the blanket last night. He has to learn that breaking the rules like that has consequences.”

  “That’s very true. Did you always obey the rules when you were his age?”

  Strider chuckled. “No, but my father made sure I learned the ‘consequences’ lesson, and I’m grateful to him for caring enough to teach it.”

  After a few seconds of silence while they held each other, she said, “How risky is this first deployment?”

  “Fearless has been tested on short trips and its working just fine, so the risk of a serious malfunction is as close to zero as it’s possible to get. The risk of running into something hostile? Well, that’s about the same as it’s always been when I report for duty. At least this time, if someone starts shooting at me, the hull should hold up long enough for me to be able to shoot back. I doubt if anything like that will happen during the next seven days. It’s been twenty-eight years since the last attack. Why would they pick this week to come back again?” As he said the words, he was thinking that he almost wished the Star Wolves would show up that week. Lord knew, he was more than ready to pay them back for his father’s death. He didn’t fear their return half as much as he feared never getting the chance to do just that.

  She let go of him and smiled. “You don’t want to be late for your first tour of duty in a new ship.”

  “Right. See you in seven days and a bit.” He gave her a kiss and a pat on her bum. As he turned to go, he felt her give him a pat on his bum too. They winked at each other as he turned to her before exiting the house.

  The air car ride to the spaceport took less than 15 minutes. Instead of reviewing the previous day’s briefing for the mission, he spent the time pondering how the Gods of War had steered his life. He had joined the Aerospace Force as soon as he was old enough. And while his grades would normally not have allowed him to join the Officers Academy, the posthumous medal his father had earned included the right for a son or daughter to attend the Academy regardless of academic performance. Getting in was one thing, but staying in all the way through the four years was another. He had had to earn that privilege himself, and he had done it. The final year had been hell, but he had managed to graduate in the top ten percent of his class. That had led to flight school and a four-year tour of duty, first as weapons officer and then as pilot-commander of an A-15 interceptor. He followed that with his application to the Space Defense Division and then another year of training before he began working his way up the chain of command in the squadron of first and then second-generation missile ships. He’d been commander on 34 patrol missions. This would be his 35th and, according to regulations, his last. After this tour was over, he would almost certainly be promoted and assigned to a posting on the ground. He'd gladly trade his
promotion and the higher salary that went with it for another year of orbital patrol missions. The only thing better than the destruction of a Star Wolf ship was being the one who fired the missile that destroyed it. Losing the opportunity to do that would feel like he had failed his father. If only the AF had the money to build more ships, but they didn’t. The civilian leadership had decided that with the deployment of the Fearless, the Space Defense Division had enough ships; new ones would only be built to replace old ships that had reached the end of their useful lives. Older officers like himself had to make way for the next generation. He understood the rationale, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

  His air car was programmed to take him directly to the ship and then, after dropping him off, park itself at the Base’s parking lot. Being able to see the ship while still miles away always impressed him. Not only was Fearless the biggest spaceship built so far, she was also the first spaceship to have collapsed-matter armor on her. Finally, the AF had a ship that could go toe-to-toe with a Space Wolf ship both in terms of defenses and weaponry.

  As the air car made its landing approach, Strider could see the rest of his crew waiting near the ship’s ramp. Some of them waved to him as the air car landed. He got out quickly and lifted the suitcase with his gear out of the cargo compartment. A push of a button told the air car to close the cargo compartment and head to the parking lot. By this time, the crew had formed a loose circle around him. His Executive Officer, Senior Lieutenant Tomonaga, made a show of checking his watch.

  “Cutting it pretty close there, aren’t you, CO?” he said in a friendly tone.

  Strider nodded and assumed what he thought of as his ‘Command’ stance. Feet apart with hands on his hips. “Rank hath its privileges, XO. Is everyone here?”

  “All present and accounted for,” said the XO in a more formal tone.

  “Okay then. Let’s get aboard and prep for launch.” The circle parted to give him a path to the access ramp. By tradition, the Commanding Officer always boarded his ship first. Strider picked up his suitcase and pretended it was heavy by grimacing. “We know how to land on other planets, but the engineers still haven’t figured out how to make a suitcase weightless!” Everyone laughed.

  Strider was the first one up the ramp, followed by Tomonaga, the rest of the officers and then the technical crew. Strider had been inside Fearless before while she was still being fitted out. She was twice the diameter of the AF’s older ships, now designated as light cruisers, and therefore had eight times the internal space. Sixty-one percent of the total volume was taken up by power plants, contra-gravity engines, life support and cargo. Nine percent was taken up by the two lifeboats; twenty-one percent was devoted to missile launch tubes, missile storage capacity plus radar and computer equipment. That left nine percent for the crew, including Command Deck, Engineering control stations, access corridors, living quarters and common areas for eating and off-duty recreation. Being 1,000 feet in diameter meant that the ship was also 1,000 feet tall, roughly the height of a 100-storey building. And that meant elevators, with the main elevator in the center able to access all levels, while secondary elevators in other parts of the ship provided limited access. The main elevator shaft was wide enough that its car could hold the entire crew if necessary.

  All the crew spaces and stations related to the operation of the ship were on the main deck in the exact middle of the ship. The upper half of the ship contained the weapons, while the lower half contained the power plant, engines, etc. Strider much preferred this layout to that of the light cruisers, where the Command Deck was at the very top of the ship. If the ship happened to get hit there, the Command Deck would be destroyed, and the ship would be crippled both literally and figuratively. Being in the center of the ship resulted in greater protection from hits as well as more room for the crew. Senior officers’ quarters were all within 50 feet of the Command Deck—what sailors would call the Bridge on a sea-going ship.

  Ten minutes later, the ship was ready to lift off. Strider requested launch clearance from starport traffic control and got it. The ship lifted off with an acceleration of 1G. It could have climbed much faster, but there was no rush. As soon as it reached 100 miles altitude, Strider ordered the ship to pitch over and begin building up lateral velocity to achieve a high orbit roughly halfway between the planet and its moon. There were two light cruisers in the same orbit, spaced so that each ship was one third of the orbital path away from the other two. And while the light cruisers would be replaced by fresh ones every six days, Fearless would remain in orbit permanently until something needed fixing. When a crew’s seven-day tour ended, a shuttle carrying supplies and a replacement crew would dock with the heavy cruiser and bring the old crew back down.

  It was the middle of the third day when the routine was interrupted. While Strider was having lunch in the dining compartment, the alert sounded.

  “Battle Stations! Incoming ship has been detected!”

  Strider ran to the Command Deck, where a large video screen was showing a computer-generated tactical view of the planet and the surrounding space. Tomonaga got up from the Command Station chair.

  “Radarsats picked up the incoming ship when it crossed the moon’s orbit. It’s not coming in fast. They must know they’ve been detected. We lucked out with the interception solution.” Tomonaga nodded in the direction of the main screen. It showed that Fearless’s orbit was bringing it closer to the unknown ship, although the intruder was coming from above the orbital ecliptic. If Fearless wanted to meet it head on, it would have to change its angle relative to the planet’s axis by 32 degrees.

  “Have they started scanning us?” asked Strider as he sat down in the Command Chair and began strapping himself in. Another advantage of being in the center of the ship was not having to put on spacesuits for combat. If something managed to penetrate all the way to the ship’s center, spacesuits were unlikely to keep anyone alive.

  Tomonaga looked over at the detection station. The technician manning it looked at him and nodded. “They are now,” said Tomonaga.

  The display pinged to draw attention to a change in the situation. The red triangle representing the mystery ship was slowing down.

  “What the hell are they thinking?” asked Tomonaga of no one in particular.

  “Good question. You better get to your Battle Station, XO,” said Strider in a calm voice.

  “Yessir. On my way.”

  No sooner had the XO left the room than the Communications Technician yelled out, “That ship is trying to contact us!”

  “Let me hear it,” ordered Strider.

  “—ing the ships orbiting New Caledon. This is the Royal Haven Navy ship Savannah. We’re on a mission to establish peaceful contact. Do you read us?” The message repeated one more time.

  Strider’s initial thought was that the message was a hoax to get the planet’s defenses to lower their guard. There was one way to find out.

  He switched his stations mic to the same frequency. “This is the Aerospace Force Ship Fearless. How do we know you’re not a Star Wolf ship? This could be a trick.” The reply came back quickly.

  “Is that what you call the raiders? We’ve had to fight them off a couple of times ourselves. That’s why we’re here. What would we need to do to convince you that we’re not a threat?”

  “You could keep your distance for one thing. Slow down to a complete stop, and if you do that, we’ll keep talking.” Strider noticed that the Communications Technicians was trying to get his attention. He muted his mic.

  “What is it?”

  “PDC is calling on Tac two, sir. It’s General Terrington.”

  Strider switched channels and activated his mic while he watched the tactical display. Savannah was slowing down even faster now.

  “Strider here, General.”

  “You should have let us down here respond to their call, Captain.”

  “Well, sir, since they were calling the ships in orbit, I figured I should respond. I was a
lso concerned that they would have gotten a lot closer by the time a consensus was reached down there as to who would respond and how. If that is a Star Wolf ship, then keeping them at a safe distance seemed to me to be a good idea.”

  Whatever Terrington was about to say in response was pre-empted by the voice from the Savannah.

  “We’re decelerating as quickly as we can and will hold our position once velocity is down to zero. Are you able to receive and transmit video signals. I’d like to see who I’m talking to and vice versa.”

  Strider switched his com system so that Savannah and Terrington would be able to hear him at the same time. “Your co-operation is appreciated. We do have video communication capability. Go ahead and send your video and we’ll try to reciprocate.” It took a couple of minutes to manipulate the incoming video signals so that the image on the screen made sense. Terrington was surprisingly quiet during the process. Strider realized that the video signals would be received by the PDC too. He also knew that his own image was being transmitted to the other ship. As soon as the technician figured out how to stabilize the incoming image, he adjusted the outgoing signals accordingly.