Commander Harrelson approached me and took me aside for a few moments. At this point in the evening he was still sober, although that was a condition soon to expire. He said, “Lieutenant, the conditions which held during the formation of the Hawk wing and the missions we flew, were extraordinarily rare and you should know that when we reach Earth there will be a reshuffling of assignments. You should not expect to continue as overall flight lead. I’m not speaking from secret information, but from experience. For my own part, I believe that you and your cohort in crime have a good future ahead of you, if you don’t screw up. I have spoken privately to Chief Kana and he expressed a willingness to continue to serve with you. As you must know, he could get pretty much any assignment he wanted, but he seems to have formed an attachment to you two. I urge you to listen to him as he can keep you out of the kind of trouble that could ruin both of you. Etech4 Kwan is sure to get bumped out of the Hawk, and I’m sure she will be missed. As a team, you and Lieutenant Turner have managed to turn defeat into victory at every turn, and Fleet is hopefully smart enough to keep you together. I have done everything I can to that end. I hope that we can work together again, and I extend to both of you my great pleasure at having served with you in the past.”
He held out his hand and shook each of ours in turn, looking intently at us. Then, with a smile, he turned and roared, “Where is that flat nosed, gap toothed, ugly as sin, misshapen social reprobate of a master chief? He owes me a drink!” The crowd laughed and from across the room an even louder voice thundered back, “What brass plated, iron bottomed tin hat with a leaden sense of humor wants to know?” The room echoed with more laughter and the two men walked up to each other with ear splitting grins and shook hands. It was of course, another contest.
I sat alone at a table. Elian and Carolyn were off somewhere and I wanted suddenly to be by myself. I thought about a fleeting smile that had promised the possibility of much more. I never said anything to Elian, but I had wanted to get to know her. Now, she was dead, and I was alone with my thoughts and memories.
I got up and started for the hatch. I smiled and returned the waves of my Hawk teammates, but I wanted to get away from all those laughing faces, wanted instead to remember the faces of all my dead friends.
For the first time in many months, I thought about my family, wondered what they were doing now that there was a war. I hoped that their business would prosper, and that they were safe and happy. But mostly, I wanted to be alone.
Carolyn spotted me through the crowd and called to me. I waved but kept on going. She yelled, “Lieutenant Padilla! Get your cute butt over here!” I was startled out of my funk, and turned back to look at her. She was standing with one hand on Elian’s’ shoulder, the other holding a drink. Elian yelled, “Robertito, if you even think about leaving, I’ll unleash the chief on you. Get your flabby assed self over here right now. I’ve got a sissy drink that I’ve been saving, just for you. To tell the truth, it wasn’t hard to save, as what manly, heroic warrior of a Hawkmate would even think about putting that non-alcoholic crap in his mouth? Still, here it is.”
He grinned and held up a tall glass containing God knows what. I hesitated, but suddenly, I didn’t want to be anywhere else and I walked over to their table, to my friends. Carolyn greeted me with an extremely against-the-regulations kiss. Elian burst into laughter and grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me as well, causing a roar from the others. I grinned and said, “Thank you for the kind greeting Elian and Carolyn, but while I enjoyed getting two kisses, I would have preferred that they both be from Carolyn, who is rather more familiar with a tooth brush and mouth wash.”
Amidst the laughter Elian said, “You idjit! I had to threaten the poor woman with a promotion to Lieutenant in order to get her cooperation.” I laughed and said, “Elian, you should be ashamed of yourself. Not for threatening her with a promotion, but for giving her the idea that you could possibly swing such a thing. The only power you possess is in your socks.”
The evening gradually turned raucous, and the older and wiser returned to their quarters, leaving the room to the lieutenants, lieutenant JG’s and a highly unusual and large contingent of enlisted.
At the height of the evening, numerous less sober pilots allowed themselves to be blindfolded while their navigators gave them verbal instructions, called ‘navigation’. The highly inebriated pilots would race around the room, dodging tables, chairs and other drunks, with the mission objective being to successfully conclude an attack run. ‘Success’ was a fairly rare and elusive thing. First, the pilot was both drunk and blindfolded; second, the navigator giving him or her instructions was also drunk; and third, the other pilots and navigators would shout out their own instructions. This was called ‘enemy jamming’, and led to some spectacular collisions. The one pilot who managed to run this gauntlet and reach the objective, a huge senior chief, collided into him and bounced off his chest to land on her shapely behind. Her reward was placed into her hand, a large tankard of beer.
After each attack run, the entire room would erupt into a rendition of “Going Downtown”, a song of nearly endless verses that was probably older than the Fleet itself. The song was about fighters and their inevitably filthy forays against the enemy.
Over the decades, new, ‘official’ verses were added to commemorate a particular battle. In many of the verses, however, the objective seemed to be both amorous and spectacularly unsuccessful. The pilot or navigator who could come up with a new verse was highly regarded. Less successful efforts were roundly booed, and frequently showered with beer, the drink of choice for these events.
I had been tasked with ensuring that my crewmates get back to their quarters in one piece. I stood up against a bulkhead and watched with amazement. At one point, Elian shouted out that he was a highly capable pilot. Well, what he actually said was incomparably filthy, but translated into proper English, indicated that he was the best pilot to ever climb into a cockpit. This claim was greeted with howls of glee by the navigators in the room, and cries of outrage by the pilots. Two very large senior chiefs aided a relatively sober lieutenant to regain order, such as it was.
Elian was granted permission to be blindfolded only after Master Chief Kana allowed as how he had seen Elian pilot the Hawk without running it into an asteroid, another Hawk or the Essex.
Elian requested that I be allowed to be his navigator during his mission, but that request was loudly shouted down. I was disqualified because I was judged to be ‘entirely too sober’ for the mission. Carolyn was nominated for the task.
Elian was blindfolded quite securely, spun around several times, which caused him to promptly fall down. After being pulled back to his feet, he prepared for his run against The Filthy Four Armed Bug Mother Ship. Elian was shoved forward by two enthusiastic enlisteds, signifying his launch from the Essex, and began his attack run. Carolyn ran behind him, shouting out commands, which were very hard to hear due to the incredible din.
Perhaps because Carolyn was a female and her voice was familiar, he was somehow able to pick out her shouted orders, and he made it around the room. At one point another pilot stuck out his foot. Carolyn shouted, “Elian, jump!” and he leaped over the foot with room to spare. Finally, he slammed into the objective, and a moment later landed in a heap on the floor.
The cheers from the navigators were just about as loud as the boos from the pilots, who claimed that Elian cheated in some fashion. To this, Elian said, “There is no such thing as cheating when it comes to bugs”, a claim that was received with nearly universal acclaim.
Elian accepted a mug of beer and took a large drink, after which he received a kiss from Carolyn. An outraged pilot yelled that kisses were not a part of attack runs, but Carolyn said, “Any pilot who can successfully get through all the ‘anti-fighter jamming’ and reach his objective deserves to receive a medal.” After a moment of reflection, the pilot staggered to his feet and loudly shouted, “I want another run.” The room erupted into howls of laugh
ter.
I had to carry Elian back to our quarters. The chief followed behind, carrying Carolyn, who was just a little too drunk to remain vertical. The chief had consumed a very large quantity of alcohol, yet he remained seemingly impervious to its effect.
We reached her quarters and inside, the chief gently placed her on her bunk. He straightened her legs and arms and saluted sardonically, eliciting chuckles from Elian, who was propped up by me.
We got back to our quarters and the chief helped me undress Elian and get him into his bunk. After giving me a surprisingly snappy salute, the chief turned and left.
Next morning I ate breakfast in a sparsely filled mess hall. I felt a little under the weather myself, due to the fact that I had only gotten a couple of hours of sleep. Unfortunately, I had to attend a meeting at 0800.
Commander Harrelson convened promptly at 0800, despite possessing suspiciously red eyes. Its purpose was to go over our flight to Earth. A single carrier could have held all twelve Hawks, but carriers were vanishingly scarce, and the Hawk could make it on its own, with intervening stops to take on reactor mass.
We were to depart in two days, so after the meeting finished, I went to the hanger to look in on the Hawks. I talked to a maintenance chief and we went through the logs of all twelve, finding nothing that might delay our scheduled departure.
By the time we reached Lubya, most of the craft had developed a few problems that would require either a repair or replacement of one or more parts. Nearly all of the work had already been done, and maintenance crews were hard at work on the last two Hawks that still had down checks.
The original Hawk engineers had never envisioned missions of such extended periods; despite this, the only repeatable problems that cropped up involved the massive ‘improvements’ to its power supply.
I asked the chief to comm me when work was completed. I stopped by the brand new Hawk office and spoke for a few minutes with an enlisted clerk. She brought me up to date on two crewmen who had come down with medical problems.
The Hawk was a small craft and our missions usually took several days. If one of the crew took sick, the others were probably going to come down with the illness.
All fleet personnel had small medical chips inserted in various locations throughout their body that performed many emergency medical functions, saving many thousands of lives over the years, but to date science had not yet found a way to completely eliminate illness. In fact, science seemed to feel that illness had its place. Genetic defects were removed before birth and the Fleet gave us very good medical care, so as a group, we were among the most healthy and fit people in the human race, but, we could still get sick.
In this case, if they didn’t recover in time the two crewmen would dead head back to earth. The Hawk could operate fairly easily with just two crew, so the loss of the two on that one craft did not pose a problem for this trip.
I went to a gym and worked out for an hour. Due to the fact that it was a gym and we were on a moon with just under one sixth earth’s gravity, it had an artificial gravity field that was usually set to earth normal.
I had learned two martial arts when I was young, part of my early fascination with combat. I was a brown belt in a fairly new style that borrowed from numerous others. It was called Xin Tou and was very aggressive. The other style, Kendo, didn’t seem to suit me nearly as well, and I hadn’t progressed beyond a blue belt, mostly due to lack of effort.
A typical Xin Tou match lasted for only a few seconds, although two very evenly matched opponents could dance around for a bit, feinting and making opening moves before one or the other would make a mistake. In such a case it would take, oh, maybe ten seconds, of which nine and one half served as preparation for that last, very final half second.
After changing into a borrowed gi, I went through a routine that was designed to warm and stretch my muscles, as well as clear my mind. I sparred with an enlisted man who shocked me by easily taking me down, despite being a fairly new brown belt. I had both gotten out of shape and rusty.
By the time we finished, I had recovered most of my form and had tied him at six falls apiece. Still, it was a dismaying performance on my part. I had never worked with him before, and in fact knew very few people here, for obvious reasons. I soon learned that the man I had sparred with was considered to be an exceptionally good brown belt, making me feel a little better. Not a lot, as I am extremely but quietly competitive.
I showered and changed but had nowhere to go, so I stood off to one side, watching a session between two highly skilled black belts. They were an odd pair, one being tall and slender but very quick. Her opponent was squat and strongly muscled. She flowed around the mat, feinting and dodging his moves, watching for an opening. She could move like a snake, but he was nearly as quick.
They bowed to each other, then were still. Suddenly, almost too quickly to see they both moved. There was a blur that I couldn’t see clearly, and he ended up on the mat. He put his weight onto his shoulders and sprang back up onto his feet and they squared off again.
She made a feint that flowed into another move. Somehow, he read her intentions – I couldn’t see anything – and he took her down hard.
She bounced back up and grinned wryly at him. They bowed formally and then walked off the mat in deep conversation. They ended up near me and I heard him reply to a question from her, “So, when I saw your eye flicker from side to side, I knew you were going to move. I was lucky to make the correct guess, but that eye flicker is a habit you have to work on.”
She nodded her head, and said, “I wondered what it was. I knew I telegraphed my move somehow, but I couldn’t figure out how. That was a good match. I hope we can spar again, just as soon as I work on that ‘tell’. I much prefer helping you to your feet than the opposite.
Her opponent nodded his head and they parted with casual waves. She saw me looking at her and turned with a smile. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. Her name was Nastya and she was both a full Lieutenant and a marine. When I introduced myself her eyes blinked in recognition and she asked, “Oh, you’re with the Hawk attack squadron?” I nodded my head and she said, “I am so sorry for the loss of your ship. How long were you stationed aboard her?” I said, “Coming up on a year. Well, it would have been a year.”
She was animated and very attractive. She stood about 186 centimeters, which was on the tall side for a woman, but she was still 10 centimeters shorter than I. Her hair was midnight black and her eyes had a slight epicanthic fold to them. Her complexion was smooth and very pale. The combination of her animation and looks was a powerful one.
We talked about the Hawks for several minutes, then I turned the conversation back to martial arts. I asked her, “How long have you been studying Xin Tou?” She smiled nicely, revealing two dimples and said, “Six years now, no, make that seven. I took it up in school and competed my last year. I’ve studied other styles, but Xin Tou suits my size best, and I like the way it can be extremely offensive without opening me up to get hurt.”
She grinned and held out her arm, where a bruise was purpling below her biceps. She continued, “I watched you for a bit. You’re very good you know. Judging from what I could see, you should be about ready to get your black belt. Oh, I’m once again sorry. Your ship...” I had lost my black belt master along with the ship.
I nodded my head and asked her, “Where are you stationed?” She said, “I’m in Signals, on the Fleet Carrier Netherlands. It’s a mothballed carrier that they’ve rushed back into service. We’re here while our Dash 4’s work out the kinks in them, and we try to get the ship back up to at least a semblance of readiness before we go out.”
I said, “Oh, how are they working out? I flew the Dash 6 before I lost it. The bug fighters are very fast and they’re almost impossible to kill with a Dash 6. I’m hoping we’ll get better results with the Dash 4.”
Something in my statement made her eyes open wide again. Instead of answering my question, she looked at me a littl
e strangely and asked, “Are you the pilot that got three bug fighters?”
After a flash of surprisingly painful memory I nodded my head, wondering how she would react when she found out I was a fighter pilot, or I had been. Instead of the usual reaction from women when they learned I was a fighter pilot, which was to check for hand prints on their body, she said, a little carefully, “Are you the one who first discovered the Hawk?” I said, “Actually, my navigator deserves the credit for that, as he does for most things. We had a lot of free time after losing our fighter, and in the Essex’ database we found that there were four Hawks in one of the holds. We took a look at it and talked them into letting us move it up to our flight deck. They modified it and we took it out for a spin. It’s an amazing craft. From there, events just sort of moved us along.”
She said, “From what I’ve heard, ‘events’ didn’t move you along, it was the other way around.” I didn’t know what to say to that, and instead blushed a little, an unfortunate habit of mine that is readily apparent on my light complexion. I am inevitably awkward around women. She looked up at a bulkhead time display and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve got to get back to work. I am so happy to meet you.”
Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk) Page 27
