by Crucible
A new holographic projection appeared. Redfire ordered the display of the sphere exploding and reforming to shrink and fade, he didn’t need to see it again. The telemetry from the probe grew and sharpened, but remained a smoky swirl of dust, illuminated by flashes of near and distant lightning. It shuddered and jarred, sometimes giving way to blank white pixels.
“Wind velocity is 260 klicks, and there’s a lot of electromagnetic interference,” Saic explained.
“Altitude?” Redfire asked.
Saic answered. “21,000 meters… that’s extremely high to be encountering this much wind and cloud.”
“It will get worse as you get deeper into the atmosphere,” Skylark told him.
Something large and black flashed by. “What was that?” Redfire asked.
“Debris… probably a chunk of Keeler, ” Skylark told her. “Sorry, TyroComamnder.”
“That’s all right,” said Redfire.
The probe flew on through the storm, its sensor showing dust and could. Saic spoke up.
“Our initial estimates showed that…”
Suddenly, there was a bright flash and the feed went blank. “What happened?”
“We lost telemetry,” said Saic. He tried to call it up again. Then, he switched to on-board sensors. “We’ve lost tracking on the Alpha Two probe. It’s… it’s gone, sir.”
“It must have impacted with some of the debris,” said Skylark. “Maybe lightning, but I doubt it.”
“Shall I re-task another probe?” Saic asked.
Redfire shook his head. “Neg, we’ll need the remaining probe to do damage assessment on Keeler. We’ll launch more probes later. Salvaging Keeler is our first priority.” He turned to the other two tacticians, who were studying data from the probes sweeping the debris field. “And on that topic, We’re about to launch a recovery mission to Keeler. What I want to know is, is this War Zone hot?”
The tall, blond, linebacker form of Warfighter Lieutenant Commander Adrian Honeywell, Pegasus’s number two tactical officer, gave the report. “The destruction of the Megasphere and any additional Aurelian ships was near-total. We haven’t tracked anything giving off an engine core signature, or anything maneuvering and flying on a path that can’t be accounted for by the dispersal pattern.”
“What about the wreckage in the debris field?” Redfire asked.
Adrian Honeywell was unconcerned. “If there are any Aurelians left… the flight to Keeler is only a few minutes, and the Aves can handle anything they encounter en route.” Landing Bay Alpha
“Let me go!” were the insistent words of a young Flight Cadet named Artesia Bechtel, a girl of Republicker background whose curves nicely filled out her gray and blue flight uniform.
“Neg!” Max Jordan insisted. He was a little younger than she, but filled out his own flight suit in a way every bit as pleasing to young females. He also sported a lush mane of unkempt red hair that tended to fall into his bright blue eyes.
“Please, Max, Let me go instead of you.” They were crossing the catwalk above the landing bay. Below them, technicians and engineers were boarding the Aves Kate, a beautiful ship, once described as an eagle with the head of a viper, but only by someone not very much familiar with zoological anatomy.
“Flight Lieutenant Ironhorse is my mentor,” Max insisted.
“But you have twice as many flight hours as I do,” she said, fixing him with a kind of sultry, pouting expression.
“I need twice as many flight hours as you,” he responded. This was part of the penalty attached to him for an incident almost two years previously, in which he had hijacked an Aves.
It had been returned undamaged, but the ship that chased him had crash-landed and come out much worse for it. Privately, he thought it more than a little unjust that he had borne the brunt of the punishment, but the Flight Commandant (whom he called “mom” in her off-duty hours) was a real hardass.
She stopped him on the downward catwalk, and took him by the arm. “Please,” she said, gently caressing him through the sleeve.
He wished she had not done that. It made his uniform too hot and tight, especially below the waistline. Deep inside him a voice was calling out “You know what they say about Republicker girls.” “It’s only a fourteen-minute flight to the other starship,” he argued.
“There’s a lot a girl can do in fourteen minutes,” she whispered, with a flash of wickedness in her almond-shaped eyes, which suddenly made him angry for some reason.
“Stop it,” he snapped at her.
“Just change with me, Max. I’ll take second seat on Kate, you take second seat on Susan.
She’s in the third wave.”
Flight Lieutenant Dallas, Max Jordan’s mind groaned, and he understood why she wanted to swap. If you enjoyed long verbal dissertations on the subject of how men were all pigs, then Dallas was the pilot-mentor for you. Otherwise, not so much.
“Please, Max… be my best friend,” she pleaded
Flight Lieutenant Ironhorse came up behind them, “I’ll save you the trouble, TyroCommander Lear has suspended all training flights for this mission.”
“What?” said the two of them, more or less in unison.
“TyroCommander Lear does not think any of her crew should be distracted by the presence of uncertified cadets,” he explained, in his deep rich baritone. “Once we have secured the other Pathfinder ship, there will be other missions to map the system… 20 hours or longer in duration. You will both have opportunities to increase your logged flight time.” He studied Max with his dark, dark eyes. “I was wondering if your… if Flight Commandant Jordan would like to undertake a survey mission with me. “ Max began talking over him. “Why…”
“I thought after such a long time out of service, she might wish…”
“…is it because you love her?”
Ironhorse drew back. “What makes you think…?”
“… she knows,” Max told him. “She’s known for a long time.” Ironhorse turned and walked to his ship. Max Jordan tried to suppress a lopsided smile.
Bechtel scowled at him, “You’re a bastard,” she said.
PC-1/Main Bridge
Pegasus was 63,000 kilometers above the surface of the planet. Lexington Keeler was 62,800
kilometers closer.
It was a smallish world, only about two-thirds as large as Republic. It might have been a dull pink before its destruction.
“Have you found any people on the surface,” Keeler asked Lt. Scientist Morgan.
“We still can’t quite get through the atmosphere,” Morgan answered. “Our resolution couldn’t distinguish between structures and random arrangements of rock. We’ve got some spectrum that could be vegetation. There was water on the surface. A lot of it ended up in the atmosphere. There’s also a high concentration of hydrocarbons, which we haven’t accounted for yet.”
Keeler stared at the projected imagery and analysis from the probes. “I want to go down there,” he muttered.
They were interrupted by Flight Control Specialist McCormick, a big blond guy, who had a big blond twin brother, but his brother wasn’t around. “The Aves are ready to launch, Commander.”
Keeler excused himself and crossed back to the Inner Bridge.
“Four Aves ready to launch,” the Flight Operations officer York reported. She was a Republicker, who had recently transferred from Environmental Core to Flight Operations.
“Which Aves?” Prime Commander Keeler asked.
“Kate, Neville, Yorick, and Victor, ” York reported. “Mission Commander is in Victor. ” There were ninety-six people on the first four ships. Two more crews were standing by to follow immediately.
“All four of those Aves received weapons upgrades while we were docked at Chapultepec,” Redfire reported from Tactical. “I’m reading clear space from here to Keeler. ”
“Clear them for launch,” Keeler ordered.
They watched the Aves launch from the front of the ship, all four at once firing down th
e electromagnetic launch rails and emerging from the lower bow of Pegasus, just below the winged horse that decorated the front part of the ship and arced downward toward the planet.
At the tactical station, Redfire gave an order to York. “Give me near telemetry from one of the probes nearest Keeler.”
York obliged, and the projection in the forepart of the Bridge showed four Aves closing rapidly on the battered hulk of the Lexington Keeler. They seemed so small. How could they ever hope to retrieve her?
“Second flight holding at launch-ready,” York reported. “First flight, two minutes eleven second from close intercept.”
The Aves closed to the Keeler, and now they were flying across the top deck, across a twisted landscape of blasted Pathfinder Ship. Prime Commander Keeler shook his head. How are they even going to land on that thing? It was beginning to seem like a bad idea to even try.
He had to remind himself that there might be survivors…
And suddenly, bullets of charged energy began raining down on the Aves. One of them exploded, and crashed as a fireball against Keeler’s hull.
“First Flight is under attack,” said Redfire, with a surreal, awestruck calm.
“What the Hell!” said Prime Commander Keeler, speaking on top of Redfire, who was demanding long-range telemetry.
Lear’s face appeared on one of the CommUnits. “Pegasus, this is Recovery Flight One, we are under attack. Kate is down. Neville is hit. Returning fire.”
“Can you return to Pegasus?” Keeler asked.
“I think we have a better chance of making the Landing Bay on Keeler… update… we have destroyed one target…”
Most of the Bridge displays were switching to tactical views, outlined in Tactical Alert Red.
Activity on the Bridge ratcheted up as the various stations for Ships Operations, Engineering, Defensive Systems, and Sensors went into Battle Situation 1 mode and other stations ordered civilian and non-essential personnel to battle-hardened safe areas.
“Yorick has returned fire with hammerhead missiles,” Redfire put in. “Enemy appears to have broken off and are retreating at high speed.” He paused. “Krishna, they’re faster than we are.”
“Cover them!” Keeler ordered. “Give them some cover!”
“Right, sir… launching Accipiters,” Redfire told him. Within forty-five seconds, thirty-two of the “steel butterflies of death,” as someone had once described the Accipiters, had launched.
All of them were unmanned, guided by autonomous systems and by pilots in virtual environments in Pegasus Secondary Launch Bay.
“Accipiter Squadron intercept in three minutes,” Redfire reported.
“We seem to be clear for now,” Lear reported. “Twenty seconds to launch bay intercept.
Commander, we are urgently going to need more crew over here.” Keeler turned to Redfire. “You said the light path was clear to Keeler.”
“It was, Commander.” Redfire told him. “We didn’t even detect those ships until they were almost on top of the Rescue mission.”
“How is that possible?”
“I honestly wish I could answer that, Commander.”
“Is it safe to launch Flight Two?” Keeler demanded.
“Neg,” Redfire told him. “But if we don’t, we lose Keeler.”
“We just lost more people in ten seconds than we lost on the first six years of this trip,” said the Prime Commander. “Is First Flight on the Keeler yet?”
“We lost contact with them sixteen seconds ago,” Flight Control Specialist McCormick reported. “It’s probably just because of the interference around the Keeler. ” Prime Commander Keeler didn’t have to look at a single face on the Bridge to know they were all looking at him, waiting to see what he would do next. “Pegasus to Battle Situation One.
From this moment forward, we are under attack.
“Ranking Phil, I want to know who and what those ships who attacked us are, where they came from, and where I need to go to kill them.
“Ranking Dave, if there are hostiles on-board Keeler, it might make it impossible for the repair and recovery teams to carry out their mission. You come up with another way to get the Keeler out of that planet’s atmosphere, or at least buy us some time before final impact.” Without waiting for acknowledgement, he turned and walked toward his command suite.
Alkema leaned into Redfire, and whispered. “Not to be competitive, but I think my task is more impossible than yours.”
Chapter Three
Lexington Keeler
Flight Lieutenant Strangelove lined up the Aves Victor with the Landing Deck that protruded from Keeler’s Aft Section, for a high-speed, high-angle-of-attack combat landing.
“Hold on,” he told his passengers as he took his ship into a tight, diving turn, into the dark tunnel of Keeler’s landing bay.
Strangelove had a heavy look to him, though he was not fat. He wore his black hair in a tight shave about his ears, and a little longer on top. His eyes were wide and deep-blue. With thick but precise fingers, he guided the Aves in.
There were simulation drills for no-power landings … pitch-blackness with no guidance from flight control. There were drills for landing on a battle-damaged Pathfinder ship. And.
fortunately, there were drills for no-power landings on battle-damaged pathfinder ships. Still, it was a challenge for Strangelove to guide his ship down the dark corridor, as Keeler pitched and shuddered around him.
He hit the floodlights as he pulled into the docks. “Shhheeee-yit,” he said in the soft accent of his native Carpentaria. Every piece of equipment in the hangar bay, including the six Aves that normally docked there, were piled in a mangled mass on one side of the docking arena.
He pulled his ship into the nearest dock. “Victor to Pegasus, we are landed and secure, confirming dock.”
A few seconds later, floodlights appeared in the canopy, and he saw the Aves Yorick putting into the docking arena across the deck from his, kicking up debris underneath its thruster jets. “Yorick confirms dock,” he heard Flight Lieutenant Revere confirm, no emotion in his stiff Republicker accent.
“Neville confirms dock,” he heard a moment later.
He then heard the voice of Shayne American. “Recovery team Alpha. What are the conditions in the landing bay? Can additional flights be accommodated?” Revere spoke first. “Port outer hangar bay conditions are very poor. No landing aids available. No power. The landing corridor is absolutely dark with debris creating collision hazards. The docking arena is a shambles. Two of the bays are occupied by our ships. One of the others is blocked with debris. That leaves two open… port outer.” Strangelove waited for Pegasus to acknowledge before he spoke. “Confirm conditions on starboard inner docking arena. No landing aids. Pitch dark approach. I have four open docks…
but the bay equipment is jumbled…”
They were interrupted by the shrill, grating voice of Goneril Lear. “I will be handling communications with Pegasus from this point forward. Pegasus, it is imperative you send additional teams, soonest possible. Lieutenant Engineer Duke tells me we do not have sufficient personnel to restore the necessary systems.”
“Six more Aves are prepared to launch as soon as we have Accipiters in position to cover them,” Redfire answered her from Pegasus.
Lear asked sharply, “TyroCommander Redfire, we were assured there were no hostile ships in the area. How did your tactical personnel so badly miscalculate?” There was a wait before Redfire answered. “We did not detect any alien ships. The ones that attack may use a form of stealth technology that makes them invisible to our sensors. We don’t have an answer yet. We’re reviewing our sensor logs.”
“Twenty-four people are dead,” Lear pronounced angrily. “Twenty-four of my best repair technicians. I can no longer guarantee that …”
Suddenly, the lights in the landing arena came up. Not all of them, and many of those that did were unsteady. But enough light appeared to show the damage in the landing bay, which was
considerable.
Another voice came on the COM link. “Duke here. We’ve interfaced the Aves power with the local energy sub-grid within the Landing Bay. Sensors show heat, light, and gravity in the bay meets nominal requirements for life support. I suggest we assemble outside and get the first two repair crews dispatched.
“Lear out,” she cut the channel off and looked past him to the workstation at the back of the deck. “Technician Yum, begin scanning for survivors. I’ll remain in here to coordinate repair efforts. Lieutenant Engineer Duke, you may prepare your teams.”
Lexington Keeler – The Landing Bay
Technical Lieutenant Scout poked out from Victor and was greeted with the stink of fresh vomit. Scanning the bay, she saw that many of her colleagues were heaving. She brushed a strand of ash brown hair back over her ear. Scout was attractive, if you like women with pixyish upturned noses, breasts that put one pleasantly in the mind of citrus fruit, and the ability to fix pretty much any machine known to man.
By the time she reached the end of the step-down, she knew why her colleagues were retching. Her head, her ears, and her stomach all felt like they were being pulled in a different direction. It was like being drunk. Actually, it was like being drunk while riding a gravity sled on Sapphire’s famed Bacchanal Island. More to the point, it was like bring drunk, while riding a gravity sled at Bacchanal Island, during an earthquake… after swallowing fourteen live giganto-worms.
She didn’t puke, but she did stumble as she tried to cross the deck, but someone caught her. “The Artificial Gravity fields are fluctuating,” explained Technician Warwick Fangboner, a tall Republicker with carroty hair, an angular chin, and gangly limbs who never had a chance with her.
“I figured,” she answered. “And thanks.”
From the two ships, about forty technicians and engineers gathered in the open space of an empty docking port. It finally hit Scout who was missing. She had known people on Kate.
