Gust Front

by John Ringo

  Most of the school thought that he was waiting for Morgen to come back. Sooner or later she was bound to discover that Wally had fast hands not only in the backfield. Besides being the quarterback Ted was considered an all-round nice guy. As too many girls had learned, that did not hold for Wally.

  Wendy had considered that dissimilarity carefully before deciding to move into the circle around Ted. After a few unpleasant dates with the backfield she had practically sworn off football players, but maybe Ted would be different. She practiced her opening line as she swayed closer.

  * * *

  Little Tom glanced over again as Wendy closed in on the bevy, then looked away as his eyes burned from the sun shining off her long blonde hair. You'd figure sooner or later they'd learn. He pulled his glasses off again and took another swipe at his eyes.

  "What the hell's wrong now, Tommy?" asked his father.

  "Nothin', Dad."

  "Allergies?"

  "No, just the sun. I should have brought my shades."

  "With all I paid for custom sunglasses, you think you would. Stop a Posleen shotgun blast."

  "Yep," said Little Tom with an unheard sigh at his dad's total cluelessness. "Pity about the rest of my face, mind you."

  His dad laughed and went back to berating his sister. At nine she was already a star athlete and well on the way to erasing Big Tom's shame at having a computer geek for a son. Big Tom unconsciously checked the Glock behind his back as a high, thin line of cirrus clouds swept across the sun.

  "Could come any time," he commented just as unconsciously.

  "Yep. Anytime," Little Tom agreed. Another sigh and rolled eyes. "Dad, can I go home now?"

  "No. We need to stay here and show our support for Sally."

  "Dad, Sally's got enough confidence for three of us. She knows we support her. I've got homework and I have to get in two hours range time so I can be in the tournament next week. When am I going to be able to?"

  "After the game," answered his father with a frown.

  "After the game you are taking Sally and her friends out for sundaes," answered Little Tom with the sort of remorseless logic that always got him in trouble. "You will expect me to participate in that as well. After sundaes we will convey Sally's friends to their various residences. We will return home at approximately nine p.m. You will maintain lights out for ten p.m. I repeat . . ."

  "Tommy," Big Tom growled.

  "Shut up."

  "More or less. You are going to show your support or you can kiss any goddamn computer game tournament good-bye."

  Little Tom took a deep breath. "Yes, sir!" he snapped, crossing his arms and tapping one boot.

  "When is this damn tournament, anyway?" asked his father.

  "Next Saturday, three p.m. until it finishes," said Little Tom, knowing he was in for it.

  "You're supposed to be participating in a Youth Militia exercise that night!"

  "Chief Jordan excused me," said Little Tom with another roll of the eyes. "I've outgrown the local militia, Dad. Besides, the tournament counts as tactical exercises for military prep credit."

  "Who says?" asked Big Tom with a snort of disgust at the asinine idea. As if sitting in front of a computer playing shoot-'em-up games could be considered real combat training.

  "Fleet," answered Tommy. "They count national standing in Death Valley toward military pre-training."

  "Well, I don't. You need to know what the real thing is like, not a Virtual fairy tale. You're going on the Youth Militia exercise."

  "Dad!"

  "No means no."

  "Okay, no means fucking no," said the son furiously. "In that case, what is my motivation for watching this softball bullshit, O Great Master of All Things Military?"

  "Watch your mouth, mister!"

  "Dad, you are a fuckin' dinosaur!" the teenager finally exploded. "I am damned if I'm going to be in any Ground Force unit! I am going to be Fleet Strike or nothing! And Youth Militia does not count towards Fleet! I don't mind you acting like I've got two heads and a tail because I don't measure up to your ideal son, but you are not going to screw up my chances of getting into Fleet!"

  "You had better calm down and get a civil tongue in your head or you're going to be grounded for the rest of the school year!"

  Little Tom met his father's eyes fiercely but he knew the old man would never back down now. With the other parents listening it was going to be a point of pride, something that his father had in overabundance. His eyes closed and his face worked in anger as he tried to control himself. Finally he opened his eyes.

  "I am going to go catch a ride home," he snarled at his father. "And then I am going to cap targets for a couple of hours. And I suspect I am not going to miss."

  "Get out of here," his father husked and dismissed him from his attention.

  He stepped out of the crowd of parents and started looking for someone, anyone who had a car. As he did he saw the coach of the opposing team charge onto the field towards the umpire.

  * * *

  Wendy waited carefully as Ted warmed to expounding about himself. Until his breakup with Morgen he had been the quietest of all the football players. His humility was rapidly slipping away under the onslaught of female attention and since there was not much he could think of to talk about except football the focus was on recent games.

  "Then I handed off to Wally and he ran . . ." he continued.

  "Thirty-two yards for a touchdown," interjected Wendy.

  "Yeah," he said, momentarily stymied.

  "You were down by more than seven, so you decided to go for the double point rather than try for a touchdown and a field goal."

  "Uh-huh."

  "So you threw to Johnny Grant for a touchdown," continued Wendy, flipping a lock of blonde hair out of the way, "but I was wondering something at the time . . ."

  "Yeah?"

  "It looked like Jerry Washington was in the open and you had to throw past a safety to get to Johnny. Why didn't you throw to Jerry?"

  "You know," he said, chagrined, "Wally, the big son of a bitch, was blocking, was in the way, I couldn't see past him. Everybody asked me that, afterwards, especially Jerry. He was really pissed." He turned towards her as the conversation finally turned to something he could talk about.

  "You need to do something about that. That explains the same problem on the next series when you got intercepted," she said with a toss of her hair. She personally thought it was her best feature and decided that subliminally showing it off would help.

  "What," he asked, laughing, "you doing a piece for the school newspaper?"

  "No," she answered, "do you think we need a better sports section?"

  "Oh," he started to respond, "I think the school . . ."

  "What is that bozo doing?" asked one of the suddenly snubbed coterie, watching the coach of the opposing team apparently charging the umpire.

  * * *

  "For she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellllow, which nobody can deny!" "Woof! Woof!"

  The chorus of male, female and canine voices rang through the Fredericksburg Public Safety Building and out the open windows into the splendid autumn sunshine. A mob of happy faces in jumpsuits and body armor–bulked uniforms were gathered around a conference table to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the fire chief.

  "Speech! Speech!" cried the usual joker at the back.

  "Speech! Speech!"

  "Okay! Okay!" said the slight gray-haired female as she stepped up to the head of the table. Her blue, patch-covered coverall bore the nametag "Wilson" over her left breast. One side of her face and the back of her hand on the same side bore the stigma of replaced skin, slick and shiny, but her electric blue eyes were undimmed by age and untrammeled by care. "If I can get you guys to just shut up for once it'll be worth it."

  She looked around at the sea of young faces and suddenly grinned. "Now," she cackled, shaking her finger and gumming the words, "lemme tell you about the ooold
days, smack, smack, wah in mah day, we had ta carry the water up from the river, yep . . ." At the common, quavered litany the group of firefighters and police—most of them trained and all of them at one time counseled by the wise old woman—laughed uproariously.

  "No, really," she continued in a normal voice, shaking her head. "I just want to say that the last thirty years are what living is all about. I don't know how people who don't like their jobs get up in the morning. Every damned day I wake up and spring out of bed more ready to come to work than the last." That the job had eaten two marriages and left her without children she carefully did not mention. There were balances in any life and on the scale she was willing to accept her portion.

  "You people, and the generation before you and I hope the generation after are what makes this job so special. That and the chance, every day, to go out and do some good. If there is a better thing to do with your day than to save a life—whether fighting a fire or preventing a crime—I don't know what it is. Someday, someday fairly soon, I suspect, I won't be able to climb the ladders, or carry the stretchers or run the hoses. And the legacy that I will leave is right here in this room." There were a few sniffles in the bunch now and she thought it best to wrap up before it got too sentimental.

  "And every day, I want you to keep that in mind. There is nothing more important than saving an innocent life and anything that you have to do, through fire or explosion, it is worth whatever effort. There is just nothing like it." As the crowd was cheering the door to the hall burst open to admit the dispatcher.

  * * *

  One of the opposing team softball players was following her coach, dragging a boombox nearly as big as the player. At the same time, one of the teenaged sisters dragged along by the parents was tugging at her father's arm, leaning into him and proffering the headset from her Walkman. At the coach's first words the umpire waved the game to a halt, leaned over and dialed the boombox's volume to the max.

  " . . . not a test, this is an announcement of the Emergency Broadcast System. Posleen ships have been detected exiting hyperspace in near-Earth proximity . . ."

  Everyone at the game unconsciously looked up. As they did there was a flash of white light, clear against the crystalline blue sky. The blossom of nuclear fire marked the location of at least one space battle. Tommy looked back towards his dad and, as they caught each other's eye, they both unconsciously checked behind their backs. When they realized the mimicry, they both looked chagrined. For a moment they seemed to connect in a way that they had not felt in years. Then Big Tom headed out to the field to collect his daughter and Tommy headed for the Suburban.

  * * *

  "Earth is under a landing watch. This means that probability of landing in your area within the next four hours is high. All military personnel are ordered to immediately return to their units by the shortest possible means. All aircraft are ordered to ground immediately at the nearest possible landing area. Citizens without military duties are strongly urged to go immediately to their homes and stay there until landing areas are determined.

  "All businesses with the exception of essential services, such as groceries and fueling stations, are ordered to close immediately. All citizens are urged to return to their homes and remain there. Stay tuned to your local TV and radio stations for updated watches and warnings. Up-to-date watch and warning information for your local area is available through National Weather Service Broadcasts. . . ."

  Wendy listened to the announcement in shock. The group around Ted swayed towards him then started to break up as individual girls sought out their parents. Wendy was the last one to leave and she looked at him for a moment, reached out her hand in farewell then walked away.

  * * *

  " . . . Citizens are urged to remain off interstate highways which are designated for military troop movements. If you feel it necessary to leave your area, or if your area is ordered to evacuate, follow the designated evacuation routes from your area to refuge areas. There will shortly be a statement from the President. . . ."

  The dispatcher had a portable weather radio with her and simply held it over her head. As the dispatch began to repeat Chief Wilson looked around and said, simply, "You all know the drill. Time to get to work."

  * * *

  The mountain of black metal had appeared with a brief flicker of plasma discharge at a range of less than six hundred kilometers—knife-fighting distance in space—and more or less on a collision course. Before Takagi and Stinson could even initiate evasive maneuvers a plasma cannon wiped Stinson from the heavens. Takagi grabbed his stick, flikkered, engaged thrusters and hit the Hammer. The next plasma wash missed his fighter by less than thirty meters.

  The fighters conceived of and designed by the GalTech Fighter Board were the most advanced spaceships ever built. Because the Posleen occasionally exhibited a degree of skill at jamming, and because the Galactics required a human in the fire decision loop, there had to be a body in the cockpit. To survive in the expected environment the ships had to mount not only impressive countermeasures but be able to maneuver in ways considered impossible by the first designers.

  The primary Posleen weapons that would be used against fighters were either a terawatt laser system on the landers or a similar grade plasma cannon. Galactic reports and information developed on Barwhon and Diess determined that Posleen detection and acquisition systems were state-of-the-art. Indeed, there was mounting evidence that they surpassed the Federation in every respect. Furthermore, a laser beam traveled at the speed of light, a plasma ray only fractionally slower. While over extremely long ranges there was lag, at any practical engagement range the time between firing and impact was effectively instantaneous.

  Given these two facts there was little hope for a fighter component, despite their obvious utility against landers. The entire battle would have to be fought by ships that could take a hit and keep coming.

  However, in any weapons system there was a slightly longer lag between acquisition of target and firing, the "lock-on" phase. It was this inherent lag that was the single chink designers could foresee in Posleen antiship weapons. What would be required to survive in that type of environment would be a fighter capable of carrying a reasonable payload and sufficient projectors and deflectors to be able to somewhat spoof the Posleen acquisition systems, but most of all it would have to be incredibly maneuverable. It would have to be able to make vector changes that could avoid a light-speed weapon in the time it took that weapon to acquire it and fire; it would have to be able to turn on a dime at a fraction of the speed of light.

  The only thing that made this possible was inertial control. Inertial controllers were used in all space craft, otherwise they could not reach reasonable speeds without squashing their crew flat from acceleration forces. After months of research and development the Galactic science/philosophers, the crablike Tchpth, managed to create an inertial stabilization system capable of damping six hundred standard gravities with a reasonable field area and mass. Since the resulting craft would be at least the size of a conventional F-15 it had more than enough room for weapons and jammers. Acceleration, however, remained a problem.

  The Federation in general used a reversal of the inertial damping field for reactionless acceleration. While it was a tremendously efficient system, it had some limitations that they had not yet overcome. Specifically, although they could damp six hundred gravities of acceleration, they could not generate them. Thus the fighter's dampers exceeded its actual abilities. This was where human ingenuity came to the fore.

  The humans on the design team made a series of points on the subject of reactionary as opposed to reactionless thrust and the utility of some of the materials the Galactics used regularly. After a brief protest over the inherent danger of the system, the antimatter thruster and afterburner were born. Antiprotons and water were squirted into a plenum chamber at a three-to-one mix ratio. When the antimatter hit the water it created a thrust just made for getting down and busy. Dropping more raw ant
imatter into the thrust plume created an afterburner that gave new meaning to the name "Hammer." The Space Falcons could even do a maneuver previously the sole prerogative of the Harrier jump jet, a VSLP.

  This maneuver was discovered, accidentally, by a new Harrier pilot who found himself in a fairly high-altitude battle of maneuver—a dogfight or furball to the military—with an F-16. The F-16 was inarguably the superior aircraft for the situation; it was considered the best dogfighter in the world.

  The new pilot was desperate to avoid impending mock doom and not yet instinctive about what not to do in a Harrier. As a mistake, he accidentally pointed all of his vector fans in opposed directions, then somehow recovered. If he had not been high above the ground he would have found out just how unforgiving an aircraft he was flying. Briefly.

  Instead, he suddenly found himself going one hundred eighty degrees in the opposite direction, directly at the rapidly encroaching F-16. He fired his own, notional, missiles, dove for the deck and both avoided the nearly inevitable midair collision and "killed" the surprised and momentarily terrified F-16 pilot. Once it was determined what he had done—and a method to successfully and safely replicate it was developed—the maneuver became a regular part of the Harrier's repertoire. All the other pilots suddenly started to give Harrier pilots, mostly semisuicidal Marines, a wide berth in a furball; they were likely to fly right up your nostrils.

  What was unusual in an "airbreather" fighter was the norm in a space system and the F-2000 Space Falcon could do the identical maneuver. In spades. With a flip of the pilot's wrist the fighter could be pointed in the opposite direction, but because of inertial forces would continue along its initial vector. However, an application of antimatter thrusters and afterburners slowed all but the most extreme velocities and had the fighter headed in the new direction in no time. In the case of Takao Takagi—up close and personal to a Posleen Battleglobe that had not even existed moments before—he used every trick he knew in that first moment and it spared his life for another day.

  He flipped his fighter end for end, a "flikker" maneuver, and fired off his antimatter thrusters. At almost the same instant he kicked in his afterburners. Hitting the Hammer was a desperation maneuver at low relative velocities. At reversed velocities, as he was after the flikker, it was nearly suicide, requiring an extraordinary degree of skill. If the ship already had velocity or acceleration negative to, that is away from, the antimatter mass, the additional punch of the antimatter degrading was absorbable by the ship systems. Although the inertial effects would be high, the dampers could absorb them. All that occurred was extremely rapid acceleration.