Fermi's War

by Richard Tongue

  "Good idea. Work with Lieutenant Cunningham; I've assigned him to see about training some additional fighter pilots."

  "Aye, Captain."

  "One more thing. I presume you have noted the lack of a Security Officer at this meeting; that role has yet to be filled. For this mission, Ensign Esposito will fulfill these responsibilities with her espatier force."

  Esposito nodded, looking around the table, "We're going to have some limitations in this mission. We haven't replaced the casualties we suffered at Ragnarok yet, nor been assigned any new security staff – I understand there have been some delays in the recruitment of new personnel, and one of our squads has been transferred on temporary duty to the clean-up operations on Mariner Station."

  "About time," Quinn muttered.

  "So I only have a single squad to work with. I'll be retaining the deputies from before, so I'll be liaising with the department heads to fit their training schedules into the duty roster. That's all, sir."

  Marshall nodded; she'd gained a lot of confidence after her first mission, it was good to see an officer develop. The only one who seemed at all uncomfortable was Shirase, who was spending most of his time scanning his datapad, reluctant to make eye contact with anyone in the room.

  "Anything else I need to know? Mr. Quinn?"

  "All as I reported earlier, Captain. The ship's been returned to us in good hands, though I'll still keep going with my checks. Given that we're going to be operating a lot closer to home this time, I think everything should be fine."

  "And the fighters?" Cunningham pressed.

  "Don't worry, sir, they'll be ready to go in plenty of time. We'll be on constant-boost trajectory, so I don't think we'll be engaging in any maneuvers for a month."

  Looking around the room, Marshall concluded, "After last time, this seems like a rather more straightforward mission." Caine looked at him, raising her eyebrow, and he smiled back before continuing, "Let's use this opportunity to prepare us for the more critical missions to come, but don't get complacent. We'll be further from home than we were at Lalande in terms of travel time. Ms. Vivandi?"

  "Yes?"

  "I'll expect you to prepare a briefing pack for the crew on our objectives. Don't leave anything out; I understand even the espatiers can read." A chuckle echoed around the table. "If you have any questions on what data is critically needed, consult Lieutenant Caine. I also want some tactical analysis of the sub-system, just in case."

  "Good practice, I suppose," Caine said, frowning.

  "We depart in two hours. Dismissed."

  "Captain?" Shirase said. "Could I speak to you and Senior Lieutenant Dietz in private?"

  The two officers looked at each other, and Marshall nodded as the rest of the staff filed out, Vivandi already excitedly talking with Caine about some archaeological theory or another. Cunningham seemed as if he was trying to talk to Caine, but when the opportunity obviously failed to arise, he instead left the room alone, looking back at Marshall with an odd expression on his face.

  "What is it you have to say, Lieutenant?"

  Nervously, Shirase looked around the room, before replying, "How much additional briefing have you had, Captain?"

  "Only that this mission is more critical than it sounds."

  "That's something of an understatement." He looked at the two officers. "The High Councilor has personally authorized me to release this information, but I must stress that it cannot under any circumstances leave this room."

  "Quite clear," Marshall said; Dietz nodded.

  "Then I can tell you that the Belt economy is perilously close to collapse. This has been coming for two decades, but the war prevented us making any real preparations for it."

  "Martian and Callistan mining operations at their respective Trojan points," Dietz said.

  "You are well informed, Lieutenant. As well as the opening up of Proxima and Barnard's Star, and now Lalande 21185. So many of the major battles took place in our territory, and the cost was high. In every sense of the word." He paused for a moment, looking into space, then continued, "For the last five years, we have worked on closer integration into the Triplanetary economy, but resistance has been great. Understandably."

  Frowning, Marshall said, "The People's Republic is an Associated State of the Triplanetary Confederation. We're not going to let you starve, nor suffer."

  "But you might take away the option to decide our own destiny. Our affairs would be governed from Port Lovell, or Gagaringrad. That isn't something that any of us want, but it is coming unless we do something about it, and soon."

  "Not to mention the infighting that would take place politically, Captain," Dietz added.

  "I appreciate your problem, and you certainly have my sympathies, but what has this to do with our mission?"

  "Shakespeare Station represents our last throw of the dice. We need to find something lucrative in the Uranian sub-system. The archaeological expedition is essentially a smokescreen; most of the targets that were chosen actually correspond to sites of potential geologic interest."

  "I take it that Dr. Vivandi has not been informed of this element of her mission," Dietz said.

  "No, Lieutenant. In fact aside from Counter-Admiral Remek, Commodore Tramiel and yourselves, no-one outside the Council and the Directorate has been informed of this mission. I was briefed personally by the Council before I left Ceres."

  "So to sum up, Lieutenant, the economic future of the Belt is dependent on Alamo finding you something to exploit," said Marshall. "Something valuable enough to put you back into the black, or at least close enough that you aren't seen as a drain on Triplanetary resources. Is there anything else we need to know about?"

  "The Lunar Republic is aware of our difficulties. Dissidents in our government are known to have been in communication with them. Anything that weakens the Confederation is potentially something of interest for them." The worried officer looked over at the viewport, "It doesn't have to be much. We're on a knife-edge. Too many of our resources were committed in the wrong places, too much was lost in the war."

  "We will do everything that we can, Lieutenant. You have my word on that," Marshall said.

  "It would be sensible to put Lieutenant Shirase in charge of collating the survey reports, as well as prioritizing mineralogical targets," Dietz suggested.

  "Good idea. Lieutenant, what about the personnel on Shakespeare Station?"

  "They know of the importance of the Uranian project, Captain, but not of the details of our mission."

  Looking down at the datapad with the mission briefing on it, Marshall felt a brief impulse to delete it. The hunt for alien ruins had mutated into a prospecting expedition; it might be more important, but somehow all the excitement had gone. Politics again.

  "Thank you for briefing us immediately, Lieutenant. It must have been tempting to leave us in the dark as well."

  "This mission is too important for that, Captain! I might miss something. One man might miss something. Nothing can be overlooked, nothing. Our budgetary reports must be made public in three months; some good news is needed by then to restore public confidence."

  "A billion-credit game, with the Belt's future staked on the outcome. We'll do our best to win. Dismissed, Lieutenant."

  Shirase smiled, stood up, and bowed at the waist, turning to the door before pausing to say, "Captain, you should also know that I have officially requested to be transfered permanently to the Triplanetary Fleet, whatever the outcome. My loyalties lie with the Triplanetary Confederation first. You need to know that."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. I will evaluate your performance accordingly." Marshall looked at Dietz, who nodded as the operations officer hurried out of the room.

  "I will begin work on our departure preparations, Captain."

  "Good. I'll be up on the bridge in a few minutes."

  "Aye, sir." Dietz rose, turned, and left the room, leaving the captain on his own. He zoomed in on Uranus, looking at the moons spinning around. Eleven previous exp
editions had failed to find any resource sufficiently valuable to exploit, and with no local population to speak of, whatever they located would have to be exceptionally profitable to justify the expense. More than a hundred thousand people were scattered across the Belt, all of them, it seemed, dependent on this mission beating the odds. He closed down the hologram, glanced down at the datapad for a minute, then started to call up the latest prices on the futures market for rare elements and minerals. If they were going prospecting, he'd probably find it useful to know what they were prospecting for.

  Chapter 5

  Chairs had been scattered around Alamo's ready room; a cluster people sat around, waiting for the arrival of their instructor. A holoimage of a P-12 Cyclone was slowly rotating at one corner of the room. Orlova had already scrutinized it carefully, and started to look around the rest of the room. Cunningham had really stripped ship to assemble this assortment; all three flight controllers, leaving Kibaki on his own up on the bridge to cover them, Quinn sitting in a corner looking mildly amused – somehow, it didn't come as a surprise at all that he'd turned out to have spent some time on fighters during the war, and one of the scientists, sitting hunched over a datapad in the pack of the room, the riotous colors of her civilian clothes standing out in the room. The door opened, and Esposito ran in, sitting next to Orlova.

  "Did I miss anything, Maggie?"

  Surprised, Orlova responded, "I was surprised enough when I was brought in. What are you doing here?"

  "I took a couple of semesters of flight training back at Syrtis before I transferred to the Espatier Corps. Thought I'd keep some options open by re-training if it was offered."

  "Huh. No, you haven't missed anything. So far our instructor is only demonstrating how to be tardy."

  A gruff voice from behind interrupted her, "Hopefully you'll find the later elements of this course more to your liking. TEN-HUT!"

  The officers in the room stood at various grades of attention, the civilian at the rear taking the longest to get to her feet. Cunningham walked over to her, looking her up and down, shaking his head.

  "What sort of outfit do you call that?"

  She looked down at her clothes, then back up at the wing commander, replying, "That's the only one I have, apart from my flight suit."

  "According to the roster, you are – god help us all – actually a reservist."

  "Yes, sir. Third Lieutenant Douglas."

  "No Martian uniform?"

  Her eyes darted about to the rest of the room; only Orlova met her gaze, flashing her a quick smile.

  "I didn't think I'd need it. I wasn't expecting to be offered flight training."

  "I see. Lack of preparation is one of the things that's going to get you killed. Not might, will. You might care to remember that in future."

  He walked to the head of the room, looking around at the assembled officers as if they were raw cadets, frowning at the slightest uniform infringement. Throwing a pair of switches, he switched the hologram to a series of flight projections, course computations running back and forth.

  "My instructions from the Captain are to provide a course of instruction for three of you in the basics of combat flight training, with the goal of you becoming fighter pilots in the unlikely event that Alamo faces battle in our current mission.”

  He looked at the group, shaking his head, “I have prepared a curriculum that should at least minimally prepare you for duty that will take the better part of the next month, but I'm not taking a class this big. I'll pick three of you, I will make the final judgment, and I am the sole arbiter, and if you find that unfair, tough."

  That didn't seem to go down well. Jenkowski – who already had a pair of wings prominently sown on his jacket, seemed to be growing red, and Orlova placed a hand on his shoulder in a bid to calm him down. Cunningham pulled out a datapad, looking around the group.

  "Each of you gets paired off in the simulators. Winner gets training. Orlova, you get to fight Douglas, Esposito draws Franklin, Jenkowski gets Quinn. I've programmed all of them myself, so you can start as soon as you want."

  "Should we not receive a mission briefing?" Jenkowski asked.

  Smiling wryly in response, Cunningham responded, "Bad guy approaching. Win. Use your judgment, Sub-Lieutenant, assuming you have any."

  He walked past the group, heading for a door in the rear of the room. Hesitating for a second, the group followed him, filing towards the six simulators. Orlova slid into the couch, sliding her key into the slot; behind her, Franklin was cursing. Evidently she'd forgotten her control key, and it didn't look like Cunningham was going to give her any time to get it. Likely six had just become five; no pilot out of basic would fly without their own carefully designed control pattern.

  As she slid the helmet on, she was in space. She looked around the fighter controls, a simulation of the basic P-12, and made sure that everything was where it should be, making a couple of minute adjustments to test the systems. The tactical display flashed up in front of her; orbiting a large gas giant with a ring system and a pair of moons.

  Her fighter was in the ring system, on a spiral course from rock to rock to provide her with a limited cover against detection. Preferring to take control of her own destiny, she turned the throttle on for a quick burst, sending her down out of the ring, seconds ahead of detecting an incoming energy spike – a missile heading for her position.

  Damn, Douglas was actually good. That missile must have been launched within a few seconds of the simulation starting, but she ignored it. Impossible for it to have had any opportunity to get a visual lock; she calculated that the on-board system scrammers would deal with it. Tapping a random walk course into the computer, she ran a track back along the course of the missile, all the way back to a small ice fragment a thousand kilometers away, and sure enough there was too much ambient heat. As the incoming missile self-destructed short, she headed in a lateral course away from it, continuing the random walk. She had three missiles left, but her opponent only had two.

  Eyes ranging around for her own hiding spot, she broke for a cluster of fragments, keeping a wary eye on the detectors, then slewed out of position, exposing herself; and her adversary took the bait, unleashing another missile. Textbook tactics both times, and this time Orlova had something to worry about. Throwing her main engines off, she allowed the fighter to coast while the missile sped in, the homing track growing stronger and stronger as the distance decreased. Counter-measures out, but she remembered a trick that Quinn had taught her, and slowly turned her fighter to point its engine at the missile, turning it on at the last second.

  Unable to take the heat, the missile exploded, but warning lights began to come on; damage to the sensor array caused by shrapnel from the explosion. Her missiles would now be effectively on their own, without any assistance from the fighter's control computers. Which meant that Douglas' countermeasures would likely be able to handle them quite effectively. As long, of course, as they knew that the missiles were coming. Trying to get around to a point where she could get an easy track on her foe would be difficult; Douglas would have an easier, and more fuel-efficient time maneuvering to avoid her shots. Instead, she ordered a collision course for the fragment that she was hiding behind, smiling as the acceleration kicked in.

  With only a single missile left, Douglas evidently decided to hold her missile for the final moment of decision. Probably a good thing; an impact would not have been a certain thing as Orlova approached, but would be a lot more likely afterward. As the range closed, the pilot smiled, firing all three missiles in salvo directly at the fragment. This wasn't going to require any precision.

  The fragment couldn't change course, couldn't dodge out of the way; the missiles were effectively just dumb projectiles, and no amount of electronic warfare was going to alter that. There was a large energy spike, Douglas firing up her main engine in a bid to get out of the way, and at last loosening her last missile as Orlova set up a skew course to get out of the way of the expected i
mpact.

  The missile came in strong, the two impacts set to happen at almost the same second. Counter-measures didn't work, random course changes didn't do the job, and she didn't have much fuel to dodge it anyway. As the three missiles slammed into the fragment, sending shrapnel flying in all directions, Orlova had the satisfaction of watching Douglas' fighter spin in space helpless, just before she herself felt the brief shock of impact before the screen went dark. She pulled off her helmet, looking around the room; Douglas had dropped her helmet into the couch and was running her fingers through her hair, Cunningham looking at both of them, shaking his head.

  "That was some damn nice flying," Orlova said.

  "Likewise. I thought you had me there."

  Cunningham frowned, interrupting, "If this mutual admiration society for the advancement of pyrrhic victories is quite finished, perhaps you would care to watch the other dogfights on the monitor."

  The two of them bounded to the rear of the room; evidently all three of the dogfights were taking place in the same simulated arena at different points in the planet's ring system. Esposito was all over Franklin, the pilot waving around imprecisely, the use of standard control surfaces coming back to haunt her, and Jenkowski and Quinn were fighting a carefully matched duel. Franklin's fighter exploded, a missile catching her amidships, and Esposito raised an arm as she cheered while the guidance controller swore.

  Jenkowski seemed to have managed a slight advantage over Quinn; Esposito made her way over to look at the monitor. His maneuvers were rigid, somewhat perfunctory, but they were working. Quinn, by contrast, almost seemed to be having fun, whipping his fighter around ice fragments more for the joy of it than out of any practical benefit as a missile arced in. It took ten minutes for Jenkowski to finish the kill, but Quinn's fighter finally exploded.