by Chris Hechtl
Tales of the Federation Reborn
Short stories 1
Chris Hechtl
Copyright © 2016 by Chris Hechtl
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book and or portions thereof in any form.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations are fictional. Some may be parodies. Some characters are with permission. Any resemblance of some characters and places to others are strictly in the mind of the reader. Grin.
Cover art by Chris Hechtl, 2016. All rights reserved. The models are owned by their respective creators and used under the usage license. Some models were made by Chris Hechtl; others were purchased on Daz3d.com or Renderosity.com.
Proofread and copy edited by: Jory Gray, Mike Kotcher, Poon Yee, Carlos d'Empaire, Ulrich Schlegel, Thomas Burrows, Tim Brown, Wayne Gaskin, Tom Stoecklein
Professionally copy edited by Rea Myers.
Formatted by Goodlifeguide.com
Dedication
I was trying to think of someone else to dedicate a book to, when I realized, I hadn't devoted one to my sister or my mom. Both ladies are occasionally a pain in the butt (all siblings and mothers are!) but when things are down, we can count on each other to help out. Both ladies have always been supportive of my writing even if they tend to be the occasional frustrating distraction.
Mom is on her way to be a cancer survivor. (She isn't quite there yet but getting there! Even if we have to drag her kicking and screaming into that category) We're all rooting for her as much if not more than she's rooted for us.
Love you Mom, Sis.
Table of Contents
Lone Wolf
El Diablo
Kittyhawk
The Gladiator Pit
The Score
Aquarius
Catch 22
Swatcats
The Bismark Incident
Queen of Space
My Darling Caroline
Author's Afterward
Appendix
Sneak Peek
Lone Wolf
Proofread by Wayne Gaskin, Thomas Burrows, Carlos d'Empaire
Cast:
Dominic Santini
Jo Santini
Second Lieutenant String Fellow Hawk: Marine Pilot
Lieutenant Sinjin Hawk: Marine Pilot
Caitlin “Kate” Oshanassey: Red-headed Air Ranger
Ed: Neocoyote prospector/trapper/sniper/guide
Arturo: Neochimp, sniper/spotter in training
Diamond: Lynx Neocat female
Corgi: Small Neodog
Gypsum: Neodog mutt, pilot
Boots: Black domestic Neocat with white hands and feet
Orin: Old Neocougar male, retired prospector, friend and client of Dom's
Edna: Old Neocougar female, mate of Orin
K'r'll: Fireworks maker
Kiyagi: Electrician, female chimera
Shi San Li: Owner of a class I food replicator.
Naki, Lumus: Mechanics with pups, Neodogs
Shale: Resistance leader
Patty: Neomutt with two pups
Zelma: Owner of A to Zelma's trade store in Menifee, human
Doctor Dee: Vet/Neo doctor
Seven other adults rescued from Santini Air, half are mechanics or pilots with family: six Neos, one Veraxin.
Ensign Mike Rivers: Marine pilot
Lieutenant Jason Locke: Naval intelligence
First Lieutenant Michael Coldsmith-Briggs XXX: Naval intelligence
Alicia: Blond assistant to Briggs, native to Protodon, unaware of his double role
Horathians:
Brigadier General “Baroness” Busche: Female
Colonel Paulings: Male, bald
Captain Alegra: Male
Captain Lan: Female
Lieutenant Shariff Samoy
Sergeant Reginald Antwerp
Travis: Sergeant
1
Santini Air had been an institution on the planet of Protodon for nearly four hundred years. Dominic Santini, the current proprietor, had ancestors that had migrated to Protodon to escape the corruption of Epsilon Triangula. They'd brought with them the technical blueprints and skills to rebuild their air freight business on their new homeworld.
They'd been dismayed at the low level of industry at the time. They and their mechanical skills had become one of the central proponents of steam and electrical power, as well as dirigibles and other craft. For centuries Santini Air had flown cargo and people around the world.
Protodon, like many colony worlds that had been battered by the loss of the Federation, had spent the centuries in the dark times reinventing itself. Due to the terrain, locomotives were slung under elevated tracks. Dirigibles and ships ran freight and people around the planet. People dressed in a mix of styles, usually more to practical.
Like its stellar neighbor Kathy's World, the planet's population centers were near the poles. That meant they had bitter cold and snowy winters. The cold was perfect flying time for the lighter-than-air craft.
A few years after Dom's birth, his father had attended an auction when a freighter had come through. The freighter had needed fuel and had purchased biplanes and helicopters with the anticipation of selling them for a profit on Protodon. They'd been cunning in their plan; Protodon's steamer punk independent style had meshed well with the whirly gigs and aircraft. The planet's mountains and islands made it the perfect place to transport goods by air. But the crew of the freighter had made a mistake in their planning; they'd failed to research Protodon properly.
Like many terraformed worlds, Protodon lacked a past rich in biodiversity. That meant there were no layers of decay in its soil and therefore no pockets of crude oil to tap. Oil had to be synthetically made from chemical works, squeezed out of plants, or imported.
It wasn't much of a problem on Epsilon Triangula since they had vast lands to grow crops to convert into ethanol and synthetic fuel. But on Protodon it was a serious oversight. The aircraft were turned into curiosities instantly and the price plummeted, as did the expectation of handsome profits.
What Protodon did have was a massive chemical works complex near the spaceport. It took in the ample sea water and converted it into hydrogen and other chemicals. The hydrogen was used in vehicles or converted into helium. Hydrogen was relatively cheap due to the hydroelectric and ancient wind turbines used to power it all.
Machinery had been set up and maintained to keep the chemical works functioning smoothly since passing ships stopped to trade for fuel and fresh food all the time. Protodon was one of three gateway star systems when you were traveling from one side of the sector to the other.
Dom's father had angered his parents and wife when he'd scooped up the lot as well as the spare parts, tools, precious manuals, and equipment. He'd been proud of the achievement. He'd after all gotten it for pennies on the pound, but they'd only seen it as a waste of much-needed credit.
That winter had been rough on the family financially, but Dom remembered it well and kept those treasured memories of his father and him working in the family's hangars tearing the aircraft apart, puzzling and documenting each piece, then putting it back together so it would function on Protodon. His mother had been a chemist; she'd figured out how to create a synthetic fuel that would burn in the engines of the aircraft. It wasn't terribly efficient, and the fuel making process was labor intensive, but it used all natural materials that were readily available. She'd quietly helped her husband even though she continued to hold her grudge against the purchase.
That spring Santini Air had flown the first helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft on Protodon in centuries. The media had gotten a few grainy photos and splash
ed them in print all over the planet. Their company's profits had exploded skyward as had demands for their services and offers to purchase the aircraft. His parents had reconciled their differences, and Dom had learned valuable insights that he kept trying to pass on to his family.
When Dom turned thirty, his father died of a sudden heart attack, and he was left with the business. Dom had trouble handling the books initially until his mother managed to work through her stages of grief in order to lend him a hand. While he was out, she hired a family group, the Hawk family, to help run the business.
Rory and Jasmine Hawk and Rory's brother Walt had been painfully young and keen to get into the business. Dom had patiently taught the trio of adults how to fly, though he had some second- and third-hand thoughts about teaching the pregnant Jasmine how to fly. The small Inuit woman handled her air sickness like a trooper however, and he'd learned valuable lessons and respect when dealing with a stubborn woman.
Dom grew close to the Hawk family, even becoming the godfather to the two children of Jasmine and Jory, String and Sinjin. He became their Uncle Dom and was well known for giving them a wink, a piece of candy, and spoiling them rotten, much to their mother's amused mock annoyance.
While taking hunters, trappers, and miners out to their claims around the foothills of Hemet, Dom passed over a lot of beautiful country. Ordinarily he filtered it out, but on one occasion, he noted the glitter of metal where it shouldn't be. Since he was alone at the time, he did a series of orbits. He found straight lines and metal peeking out of a bunch of overburden and trees.
A week later curiosity got the best of him, and he took Rory out with him to explore. The two landed a few kilometers away from the cave and then hiked in. To their amazement they found a trio of a hundred-meter-long cargo pods. The cargo pods had been the standard size in some freighters. The lead pod had plowed into the soft earth and partially buried itself and the two follow-ons. All three of the pods had been damaged, but to their surprise the seals had held while the forest healed around them.
A look within fired their imagination. Dom and Rory spent a small fortune purchasing the land from a hunter family and made it his family vacation hot spot with the intent of secretly salvaging the content of the three pods over the years. Rory and his brother built a vacation log cabin on the side of the lake nearby, along with a dock and helipad.
The prize was the three crafts within. Each had been carefully padded and secured, but the lead pod and trailing pod had been battered in the landing.
Their misfortune had protected the middle pod nicely, however. Dom christened the craft within “The Lady.” She was a Bell Ichim 222 marine attack craft, an aircraft of the late Federation. She was an air gunship designed to provide fire support to the troops or to soften up and secure a landing zone for troop shuttles to follow.
There were two other similar Bell Ichim craft, the same model of the marine gunship, but they were more battered. The lead craft had its engines shattered by the crash. It was labeled as Scorpion, painted a garish red like the follow-on craft with a black scorpion painted on each flank. The follow-on craft’s tail and underside were mangled in the crash. Dom planned on using the spare aircraft as parts, but the small Hawk boys liked to think of them as flyable.
The first time they did an engine test and heard the throaty roar, Jasmine renamed the craft the Lone Wolf. The third red craft became the Red Wolf. She even sketched up a wolf's head with bat wings for the craft's logo.
The military aircraft were kept under wraps and became something of a secret for the two families involved. They had no intention of allowing anyone to horn in and take their find. Puzzling the craft out was tricky; there were no paper manuals. Dom and the family learned a great deal about a lot of lost engineering arts during the process.
Each year Dom would take a close selection of friends and family out to the site around the cargo pods when they had the vacation time during the summer. They'd do a campout and work on the aircraft in-between hiking, fishing, hunting, and other activities.
Getting the aircraft into the air turned into a long-term seemingly impossible dream. The Hawk family turned their attention to salvaging other pieces of the wreckage of the cargo pod when money ran tight. But when awkward questions were raised on where they got the salvage they had to reluctantly desist such efforts.
Then tragedy struck the Hawk family. Sinjin and String Hawk had been taken in by Dom after their parents and uncle had died in a winter storm when the boys were nine and ten. The two boys were taught how to fly by Dom as a way to help handle their mutual grief. He also taught them how to be responsible for their craft by teaching them the necessary maintenance and engineering that went behind the machines.
The engineering involved got both boys into uncovering why things worked, and that led to some of the history and physics involved. They had to improve their reading skills and geometry to understand some of the ancient and highly prized manuals. Dom's niece Jo came over and was a frequent playmate during the weekends and all summer. The trio grew up in the cockpits of those craft. They loved to play pretend in the aircraft, though they took the actual flying seriously.
When the pirates passed through the star system, it had been a quiet slice of hell. Dom had worried about what to do. He'd taken the precaution of relocating much of the family to the Hawk lakeside cabin. But the pirates had only stopped long enough for fuel; they had shot up the place a bit, hit the bars, and then moved on to other game, much to everyone's relief.
Once the danger was past, life slowly returned to normal on the planet. The Hawk brothers grew into teenagers and began to chafe under Dom's paternal guidance once they hit puberty. He knew it wouldn't last, that he had to weather it, but doing so was hard on him. The boys wanted their independence, and he tried to give it to them in constructive ways without losing his authority or giving in and letting them run roughshod over him. He knew they needed structure, required it. There had to be an understanding, and they had to learn to accept the rule of law or they'd have a hell of a time in civilization.
Then word came of the battle of Pyrax. The idea of Fleet Admiral Irons restarting the navy and marine corps had fired the imagination of everyone it seemed. Thousands of people bought up the magazines and newspapers. Ships that passed through the solar system were begged for more news. People flocked to the spaceport to try to buy a ticket. When spacers came to town to hit the bars and scenes, they were pounced on by eager reporters. Many learned to tell a tall tale while someone else paid the tab, so the truth became rather hazy.
Dom saw it and knew it for what it was so he became wary. But the boys were young, filled with the zest for life and an eagerness to try out their wings in a new adventure. They wanted to fight the pirates, to protect people, and he had to admire and acknowledge that it was a worthy goal. When Sinjin turned sixteen, the boys decided to follow their dream of becoming marine pilots. Dom felt betrayed when they left to join the Federation with only a note letting him know they had gone.
It took him months to get over the dismay. Jo stepped in to lend him a hand, but she was only one person. She wasn't quite up to the level of the Hawk brothers, and his younger sister only allowed his niece to help when she wasn't in school.
He understood that, but it was a problem. He'd eventually solved it by hiring new help, but it had been painful.
His civilian practice had a lot of aircraft in various conditions. He flew craft of all sizes with a mix of parts. Sometimes he was forced to dig through the scrap piles for parts to bush fix something. Other times he had to pull the part and then puzzle out its original design and then send the specs off to a machine shop for them to try to make a replacement part.
He learned early on to have them make more than one copy, just in case.
He had a handful of dirigibles as well as the hangars for them, but he had been in the process of fazing them out for some time. They just couldn't handle the loads that some of the fixed-wing craft could handle it seeme
d. They were also hard to fly in high winds and definitely a handle to land and keep air worthy.
Still, he had a few air barges with helium blimp cells, plus a dozen or so air skiffs made out of salvaged air cars with grav engines near max impedance. Steam or electric powered propellers made them move about. Then there were the six fixed-winged aircraft his father had bought or built and the three old and two relatively “new” Gotham helicopters.
His younger sister Belle was unlike the rest of the family; she was terrified of heights after a close call when she was young. She'd stayed in the family business though, running the home office while her brother, husband, and others were out in the field. They'd all found to their amusement that she was quite the dicker. She would attend auctions and monitored the trade papers for sales and scavenged parts. She was quite good at trading services for parts or whole machinery. Many of the parts were rough or bad, but the complex components could be torn down and the individual parts refurbished, copied, and reused.
Air cars, Lorries, and load lifters were highly prized for their parts. Belle and Dom worked with the independent machinists around the spaceport and around the planet to keep his fleet of birds in the air.
Dom's maintenance staff was large but were on call a lot—many times going out into the field to bring parts to a craft or to survey and repair a competitor's craft. Dom wasn't above helping a business “frenemy” … for a price.
