Chapter 4: Landing Drill
“Now hear this,” The PA system bellowed in every compartment and work space aboard the 10 mile long attack carrier. The Majestic had been carved out of a nickel iron asteroid twenty years before. The carrier paid for its own construction with the high quality nickel steel that had been mined from the piece of sky junk as compartments, hangers, the three flight decks, and all the other places and things an attack carrier needed to take war to an adversary. “Set Condition Foxtrot throughout the ship. Prepare to launch boats!”
Bedlam broke out on the carrier’s flight decks as the line crews ran to the ready flights. 4 fighter space craft always ready to launch at a moment’s notice. They were hot on the launch rails needing minimum work to put them into space. As they reached the ready birds the word filtered down, hold the ready flight and begin getting the 88th Heavy Lift Squadron ready to launch. This caused its own set of turmoil as the Double 8 Ball was never ready for instant launch. Several of the landing craft were in ready mode needing minimum work to get them flight ready; but for the most part the 88th Heavy Lift Squadron was never intended to be used as a fast reaction force. As the line crews began to swarm over the Double 8 Ball’s space craft preflighting the immense LC10 Galaxy Lifter landing craft. Load Crews were surprised to find load up orders for Lifesaver armored ambulances, jeeps, and medevac ambulances.
“Hey chief,” a load crew chief called to a flight line chief, the NCO responsible for getting his bird ready to fly, “What is this some sort of mass casualty drill? The only thing we’re uploading is med shit.”
“That’s what flag quarters are calling for.” The chief said, “Make sure that the jeeps are ready to go first.”
An hour later the flight crews were finishing their briefing. The Double Eight Ball’s briefing room was packed shoulder to shoulder and nearly standing room only. Usually the wing’s entire compliment of one hundred flight crews was never briefed at the same time. Usually only 25 or so crews were ever launched from the Majestic in one operation. Rarely did the entire wing make a lift at the same time. This was only the fourth or fifth time on the six month cruise that the carrier had generated the entire wing.
“Okay crews,” The Commander of the on board Space Air Group (CSAG), stood before his crews, “We’re almost over. You have been studying Trena since we got our orders. You know what our mission is. You will have a small contingent of SpecWars with you. They are there for your passengers’ safety. They have a simple rule of engagement. If anyone tries to stop the loading of your passengers they will be shot. Marshal Wilson has endorsed those Rules of Engagement. The ROEs allow deadly force to be used when your patients are threatened. That includes preventing you from lifting. You have permission to fire on any space or air craft that prevents you from landing or lifting. If you are challenged your code phrase is Quebec and a number between 1 and 7 they should reply Quebec and give you an answer that adds up to 10. But you will only authenticate if you are challenged. They will ask you to authenticate Quebec 7. Should you return Quebec 3. If the numbers don’t add up to ten you should request Authentication Lima. This will bring Space Air Defense controllers in to sort it out. Your instructions are to go for orbit. If fired upon you will return fire but only to get your butts to safety. If you get bounced yell rape fight your way to orbit and let the militia bloody a few noses.
“Yeah I know you’re fat wallowing landing craft and fair game for anything that has fangs.” Captain Worley responded, “Your nose and tail guns will be uncadged. You should get your licks in. You are not to dog fight! Punch your way through and get to orbit. The medics and patients you will have aboard are more important than your victory record.” The captain saw movement at the back of the briefing room and called, “Attention on deck!”
The crews in the briefing room thundered to their feet as Admiral Klond, the longest serving officer in the uniform of the Imperial Armed Forces, walked down the aisle followed by two immense aides/body guards. Normally Admiral Klond didn’t travel with both her aids. They were former SpecWars medics, now on permanent reassignment to the Admiral, and were intimidating just standing beside her. No one wanted to mess with her.
“As you were,” The admiral called in clear voice that held no hint that she had just celebrated her 91st birthday. She turned to face the assembled men and women of the 88th Heavy Space lift wing, all one thousand or so of them. “I won’t keep you long,” she said, “We’ve got work to do. As you participate in this mission, I want you to keep in the back of your minds, that these people could be any of your family members. Some of them, many of them, may be retired IRS people and marine officers and enlisted personnel who have retired to Trena. Your call sign is Nightingale flight. For those of you who barely passed history; Nightingale is the name of a legendary nurse of the second century Pre Empire. She was an awesome and dedicated nurse who knew her stuff. She made sure her patients were well taken care of. You will do the same.
“Who’s got Nightingale One,” The admiral asked.
A bull dog of a man stood up near the back of the room. “I do ma’am”
“May I ride with you commander,” The admiral asked. Although she was the chief surgeon of the IRS, aboard the Majestic her authority lay only in the ship’s medical section. The medical section was more than a ships sick bay, it was a complete trauma center. It had to be. It had to be able to handle the thousands of casualties caused by a major engagement. Although she could assign herself to a landing craft, more so since this was a medical mission, she asked for permission to ride the lead boat.
“Nightingale 1 will be honored to have you aboard Admiral.” The man replied, “May we fly your pinnate?”
Admiral nodded, “Shall we get on with it.”
“You heard the lady!” The CSAG said softly, “Man your boats.”
With that command, the wing began filling out of the briefing room. Within minutes the flight crews were on the flight deck double checking the work of the flight line crews.
The crew chiefs of each bird went over the loading with the load master of their landing craft. Although the line chiefs were responsible for the loading, the crews of the load teams were also responsible for how the landing craft was loaded; the load masters were ultimately responsible for the load on their birds. They wouldn’t fly until the load master of each bird was happy with the way their bird was loaded. Even the pilots knew better than to challenge a load master.
The flight engineers checked the space craft over, going over the gripe list with the flight line chiefs. Finally the pilots having completed their checks, they signed the master receipt, accepting full responsibility for the space craft. When they signed off they stated that the landing craft was mission ready. The load master would be last one to sign off on the receipt. It was his job to ensure that the ship was ready to move. Although usually only a petty officer, the Load Master was the mission commander aboard the landing craft as his cargo was the reason for the mission. Almost in unison the one hundred landing craft crews reported ready for launch.
Now the ballet began. The wing was parked in loading spots on the flight deck angled into docking collars that ran the sides of the hanger. These docking collars allowed the landing craft to be loaded without pressuring the bay during major combat operations. It allowed fast and furious loading without slowing the pace of operations. Some days the wing would be generating a landing or take off every thirty seconds. During those operations it was safer and easier on operations to leave the bay open to space. Today the bay had been left pressurized to assist in the movement of heavy equipment, and the preflight of the landing craft. Although the line crews could work in a no atmosphere environment, it had been discovered leaving the flight deck pressurized as long as possible was beneficial in the end run. There were fewer accidents, and the quality of the work went up. It was worth the added time to depressurize the two mile long quarter mile wide, and two hundred foot tall hanger/flight deck. Each landin
g craft was a 300 foot long. They were more boxy than slender. Because of this, moving them around became a challenge even in the large flight deck that they were hangared in. Each landing craft had to be backed out of its loading point so as not to damage the one across from it. Then they were turned onto the launch track. It was amazing to watch this ballet of men and machines.
A tow tractor pulled the landing craft out of its spot, while another one pulled it forward. As it was pulled forward the main passenger hatch opened and the load master stood in the air lock watching the tow tractor spot them. The launch crew made another quick wipe down of the landing craft doing a final check of the hatches, and inspection ports. The launch chief flashed thumbs up to the load master who shut and locked an air lock near the nose of the landing craft for flight. One by one the red ribbons of the safety pins were handed to the launch chief.
“Nightingale Flight one I count ten ribbons, and show you at 210,000 pounds light.” The line chief called seeing the last of his crew scurry out of from under the immense landing craft seeing that the chains holding it to the launch shuttle were secured. The shuttle wasn’t a catapult system, but a guide system, to ensure the landing craft made it to the end of the flight deck without colliding into a wall. A moment of inattention by the flight crew who was being bombarded by information could prove to be disastrous. The pilot flashed the running lights twice and the launch chief stomped on a pedal that caused the deck under him to descend one level and caused the AI controlling the flight deck to make its last safety checks. In the space of a second ensuring that the launch crew had gripped their safety handles, that the blast shield was up and rigged, and that the area was safe for launch. All this took place from the time the chief hit his pedal and the top of chief’s helmet sank under the flight deck. As soon as the chief’s head cleared the deck the Launch AI told the Landing Craft’s AI to go. Before the Pilot, Copilot and Flight engineer pressed their launch buttons the landing craft was flying like a bat out of hell down the launch track.
The launch chief cheated death one hundred and two times. When the flight deck was clear of the last bird, he walked over to primary flight and entered the compartment. He walked over to the launch boss, once there, he saw on the wall near Commander Stone’s work station where she controlled everything happening on the flight deck the chief marked off another box on the chart by his name. Each number represented how many launches a chief had participated in. He had just marked 4,999.
“Damn just one more launch and I get to retired!”
The commander looked at the chart took up a crayon and marked off the last launch. This would be the first chief she had ever known to make it through 5,000 launches. Of the thirty launch chiefs on the Majestic, Chief Borders was the only one who had made it this far. The third most dangerous job on the ship was shared by thirty chiefs many being promoted into the job from the launch crew shortly after the death of their crew chief. The chief was so close that one didn’t matter. The chief nodded at the commander and had to sit down quickly to keep his feet from going out from under him when he realized that he had, had 5000 opportunities to be killed; it was almost too much for him to deal with.
Like a flock of geese the landing craft began to descend to Trena. In ten flights of ten looking for all the world like water fowl as they flew from winter to summer habitats. But these fowl were anything but animal. Loaded as they were with medics and ambulances they were not birds of prey but angels of mercy. As they flew down to the doomed planet, Space Air Superiority fighters nick named Sassies rose up from the planet and intercepted them. Authentication signals were passed, having received the right pass codes, the Sassies allowed the landing craft to enter the space defense zone. As they did they were contacted by Evacuation Command.
“Nightingale flight,” The voice called over the space control channel, “This is the Evacuation Command Controller. I have your assignments. Stand by for tasking.”
The tasking had come through just moments before. It had taken Lady Hawthorne’s girls all weekend to do their job. The nursing homes had been identified. The rough part had been determining who met Marshal Wilson’s criteria. They had to be critically ill, on life support, but not too ill to survive the transport to the hospital ships and wouldn’t die in transit and who were expected not to be able to get off life support shortly after arrival to their new world. In other words if they were expected to die soon, they were not going to be transported. Those that met those conditions should be the last member of their family, single adults who were in the nursing home because they had no other family members to care for them. Yet not expected to be well enough to help with the evacuation. Lady Downs grouped her nursing home people in four categories, expectant, people so ill they were going to die anyway. Critical, people so sick they were on life support but the prognosis was good, that within days or hours they would be stepped down to serious. Serious, were people who still needed daily nursing supervision for medications, and couldn’t help themselves. Ambulatory were people who could mostly get around on their own and needed some help either with things like bathing, and putting on their clothes, or just being reminded to take their medications. Of the four groups 10 percent were critical, 30 percent were serious, and 45 percent were ambulatory fully 15 percent of the nursing home patents were expectant. Lady Hawthorne’s girls had come up with a plan for that. Lady Hawthorne had asked if it was okay to group all these patients in one location. She wanted to set up a hospice. Wilson said do it and made arrangements to bring down an evacuation hospital.
The problem then was how to move them. Not how to move them but when. A couple of Lady Hawthorne’s girls had experience in the emergency medical services. One had simply said, “We’ll do it the way we do in the trauma center. We’ll make them comfortable, but they’ll be the last one we’ll move. The medevac teams are used to this. They deal with this in their daily working lives. Stabilize the patient, assess if they need extreme measures; but are stable to ship the ones that can be helped and gotten back into the battle.”
Lady Hawthorne had been shocked to hear that. It sounded barbaric to her; but she knew that was the way it had to happen. Else no one would be saved. She had always heard of triage, but had never expected to be this up close and personal with it.
The tasking order matched up resources to missions. The LC-10s were not all loaded alike. Some held four immense Lifesaver armored ambulances which were full life support vehicles. They were capable of handling 25 patients needing critical care and life support. Others held eight smaller and more agile Litter Bugs. Small hover craft equipped to hold eight seriously wounded people or sixteen ambulatory soldiers. Still others held the evacuation hospital. Some of the landing craft carried a mix of vehicle types. The load outs were not made known to Evacuation Command until they left orbit. Now the tasking unit was busily matching missions to resources.
“Attention Nightingale flights thirty through fifty. Switch to button two and call landing control for vectors to your LZ.” The controller called watching the holographic display in front of her. Twenty landing craft blinked from green to yellow and showed a 2 on them. Next to them was the current load out of the units. All of them held the 1052nd Evacuation Hospital. They were being directed to a meadow north of the city where a park had been about to be finished and opened to the public. Now it would be turned into an evacuation hospital where the hospice would be set up.
“Attention Nightingale flight. All even numbered landing craft on this channel go to button three and call for Evac North,” The controller called again pointing to a controller sitting half way across the room. Another series of landing craft flashed from green to yellow. “Attention remaining Nightingale flights go to button four and contact Evac South.” A controller across the room waved as the last landing craft changed colors.
“Thank you nightingale flights, this is Evac South,” The controller for Evac South called, “Nightingale one your LZ is at grid two niner five six th
ree. Offload all four of your LifeSavers they will be needed at Trenaport Nursing. I am uploading information now.”
“Nightingale 1 copies and en route,” The pilot, Commander Ancient replied.
“I’ve got it boss,” The copilot called after working with the landing craft’s AI to determine where the LZ was. Both the AI and the Copilot had to agree that this was the LZ. The AI acted as a navigator among other things.
“Skipper,” The AI called, “Come to a heading of 270. You are one hundred miles out and at angle 70. I’ve checked with AirCon we’re in a corridor all our own.”
The commander was hand flying the space craft, instead of letting the AI fly it in. They were treating this as a combat mission. Unless both pilots were incapacitated, the AI wouldn’t fly the space craft; even then the hardened nearly indestructible AI wouldn’t fly the ship unless its primary flight control interface was at 80%. He brought the ship on course and began a hostile landing LZ.
“The LZ is the front driveway of a fire station.” The AI continued, “It is LC-10 rated. I am in contact with the Trenaport Fire and Rescue Dispatcher. The dispatcher has the Fire equipment out of the house and blocking the approaches.”
“Strobe,” The copilot called he had been looking out the window searching the ground for the LZ, a strobe light was alternating green and red, the interstellar signal for a make shift landing zone. “Ten O’clock low.”
“Landing stations,” The flight engineer toggled the siren and strobes in the cargo bay. This alerted their passengers that they would be landing momentarily. In the cargo bay of the LC-10 the load master checked for the thousandth time the quick releases on the hold downs for the load. Low and high tech were the devices of choice. The chains were hooked to the tow rings on the ambulances; but a superconducting magnet held the other end to the deck of the bay. A quick kick to the handle on red hold down would break the shackles on all of the ambulances. The ramp gunner was standing by the front hatch controls. The minute the landing craft landed she would pop the hatch and the load master would pop the release, as the bell rang the APCs powered up. They were straining at the chains, as if they were chained beasts, so that when the door was opened and the chains released in a well-practiced routine, they would have the hold empty in thirty seconds.
Every Last Mother's Child Page 35