Twenty Seven
I was sitting in my command chair, in space.
No ship, no life support, no nothing.
Just me, in my chair, in space.
Two identical women stood behind me.
Another woman stood behind them.
Space around me was not familiar.
As I looked around I saw no planets.
There were many asteroid fields.
In the distance, two gas giants.
A movement in front of me caught my eye.
A black dot had appeared at long range.
As I watched, another dot appeared.
Then another.
Then ten, a hundred, a thousand.
Space in front of me turned black.
The three of us bolted upright in bed at the same time.
For the first time I’d gone to bed with both of the twins.
For the first time, I’d woken up with both of the twins.
I looked at them, they looked at me. I could see it in their eyes.
For the first time, all three of us had experienced the same dream at the same time.
I thumped back down onto my pillow, a very real sense of dread casting a pall over me.
“Did we-” started Amanda.
“Yes,” I broke in.
“The same dream?” asked Aleesha.
“How many behind the chair?” I asked.
“Three,” they both replied.
“Alison,” we all said together.
As if at the mention of her name, Alison poked her head around the corner.
“What just happened?” she asked. “I felt very scared all of a sudden, with no reason why.” She came in.
“All three of us just had the same dream. And you were in it with us,” I answered.
“What does it mean?” All three of them said it together.
“I don’t know. But I think all of you need to plan on going home with me in a year’s time. If anyone knows why we are having the same dream, the Keepers will. And this time I see them, they will be giving me some answers.” I meant that too.
“Why can’t we go see them now?” asked Alison.
“Outback is isolationist. For only five days each year, people can come and go from the planet. That window closed while I was in the hospital. Anyone who tried to go there now would be shot down. There are no exceptions. And they ignore all attempts to communicate. Those of us who don’t make it back in time, have to live on the Orbital, or find somewhere else.” It was the truth, just not the whole truth.
“Oh.” That did sort of sum things up.
“So what do we do?” asked Aleesha
“Shower,” said Amanda and we all laughed.
We went through our shower routine. Amanda, Aleesha and then Alison sharing it with me. I felt like something was coming to an end as I stood there alone letting the water flow over my lessening bruises. The pall of the dream was still over me and I had a strong pull to go back to bed, pull the covers over my head and stay there all day.
A ping came in to say the shuttle was approaching the station. I reluctantly left the shower, dressed and retrieved my mended shirt from the outside door of the suite, placing it in the travel sled, ready to go.
The ladies finished breakfast while I checked emails. As they were finishing, I put both guns and extras on, put the chargers in a grav sled, and we set out for the shuttle dock. The sleds followed along behind me. The four of us must have made an imposing sight striding along, because people stopped to watch us pass. At the dock, we boarded the shuttle and the pilot took us across to the shipyard.
Bob met us and showed the way to a landing bay.
“Behold, Excalibur,” said Bob, a little over-dramatic.
I stopped and looked, taking in the sleek lines, wings and guns. She was a beautiful thing to behold. Talking of which, I turned to the ladies arrayed around me.
“Thank you,” I said to all of them. “You taught me to walk. Time for me to see if I can fly on my own.”
I kissed and hugged each of them in turn.
“I’ll ping you when I’m back at the station. This might be a short test flight, might take all day, or I might get to Outback and back before I see you again. We’ll have to wait and see.”
I smiled at them, turned to Bob, nodded, and walked to the underside of the ship and began a complete walk around, using a check list Bob pulsed me. Completed, we started up the stairs.
I paused at the top, looking back to the entrance to the bay, but the ladies had left. Part of me began to feel lonely. I turned and went inside the airlock, Bob followed, and we cycled through into the living area. Bob showed me through the entire ship. Most of it was cramped, barely more than access ways for repairs. A very tight access-way led into the cargo hold below the cockpit. It was larger than I expected, but still would only take a limited amount of cargo. Part of its space was taken up by a strange looking droid and several grav sleds. There were also a half dozen other deactivated droids.
“Salvage Droid,” said Bob, pointing to the one by the sleds. “And your security droids,” he said, pointing to the others.
In the power room, there was another droid, also not active. “Repair Droid,” he said. We found another one in the engine room. And yet another in the shield generator room. ‘Room’ in each case was something of an overstatement. The machinery itself delineated functional areas, and the space between for access and repair was loosely called a room.
Back on the top deck, we went into the rear turret. There was a seat and controls for a gunner, but it was set up for computer control. It would have a great view once in space, and could swivel to cover most of the space around the ship, except for down through the ship itself. As long as a missile was coming in from above, to the sides or behind, the turret could fire at it. It was up to me as the pilot to turn the ship to make sure it could reach anything coming from below.
The living space looked comfortable, and was about the size of a standard hotel room. As well as the bed, there was a reasonable sized desk with a full communications and entertainment system. Behind the desk hung a wall sized flat screen. There was also a mini kitchen, with cooler, storage space and basic cooking and cleaning facilities. The fresher was large enough for two people to shower, and had a conventional ship toilet and wash basin. The robe contained the standard hanging, storage and cleaning facilities.
The cockpit was our last stop. I sat down in the pilot’s seat and adjusted it to fit me, including the harness. Bob had pulled out a jump seat partly behind me. He indicated the control console in front of me.
Flowing around the pilot seat was a console allowing all ships functions to be positioned where the pilot wanted them. All up it was the size of a large corner workstation. The walls on all three sides were view screens, which doubled as both windows and displays. There was no real visual line between where the control surface ended and the view screens began, although there had to be.
Bob indicated a prominent button. I pressed it and the ship came to life. The view screens came on, showing their default settings. The ship computer pulsed me its interface system, and I pulsed back my overlays and preferences. I started with the HUD, arranging it the way I wanted it around all three screens. I moved on to the console, moving things to where I wanted them. Then I started going through the ship menus one at a time, checking everything, testing everything, bringing up systems and making sure they worked as they should. Bob sat beside me patiently.
When I’d finally finished with the menus, I brought up a simulation system and took the ship for a simulated test flight. I was delighted with it. And said so to Bob. He smiled.
“One last thing,” he said. “AI online”.
“AI is online. What is my designation?” A pleasant sounding female voice came from the general direction of the console.
“Your name is Jane,” I said.
“Thank you. How do I address you?”
“You call me Jonathon or Jon.”
>
“Welcome to Excalibur, Jonathon.”
Jane pulsed me yet another interface. I took the time to go through it, and reviewed all its settings. I turned on the options for Jane to control all droids on board directly. The interface options were extensive. When I was finished, I turned to Bob with a happy smile on my face.
“Well my boy, what do you think?” he asked.
“I think I’m going to be very happy with her,” I replied.
“Ready to take formal delivery?”
“Yes, subject to a successful test flight of course,” I responded.
He chuckled. “Of course. Would you like lunch before your flight?” he asked.
I thought about it for a minute. I agreed with him and he led the way out. At the bottom of the stairs, I called the two travel sleds over and guided them up the stairs and into the living area, where I locked them down until I was ready to unpack things. Then I left the ship and code locked it shut.
We enjoyed a light meal in Bob’s office, and completed the ‘paperwork’. I deeded the five Gladiator’s over to him formally in payment. We shook hands as I left his office. I walked back to the landing bay feeling quite strange, as if everything was about to change. I stopped and took another look at my ship from the ground, then walked up the stairs to the airlock, and cycled through. I went straight into the cockpit and strapped myself in. I brought all ships systems online.
“Excalibur to Shipyard, ready for test flight.”
“Shipyard to Excalibur, standby.” I could see the stairs disappearing out of the landing bay door. The indicator showing air levels outside diminishing to nothing and the outer door started to open. I gave the ship enough lift to hover above the ground and raised the landing struts. Slowly, I turned her to face out the exit doorway.
“Shipyard to Excalibur, you are cleared for exit and test flight. Good luck.”
I double checked the distance between the ends of the wings and the walls on each side. There was not a lot a room. I gave her a minimal amount of forward motion and slowly the ship slid out of the bay and into open space. Once clear, I pushed the speed up and put some distance between me and the Shipyard.
Once well away, I pushed the thrust lever all the way forward and the ship leapt forward. I made some changes to the inertial dampers so that I could almost not notice the acceleration, but leaving enough feeling so I could feel the ship. Feeling was necessary for good control. She went to top speed very quickly and it was well past that of a normal fighter top speed - about a third higher than the Gladiator. I was impressed. I brought the thrust back down to nothing, and let the ship come to a stop. I set the shields up to full, and the safeties for when she was landed and where I wanted shields to come on and off automatically when landing or taking off, so as not to damage landing bays. The power indicators showed more than double that of a normal fighter. I set the turret to a primary mode of missile defense and a secondary mode of protecting the ship from any attacker in the rear.
I brought up the weapon systems. There were two buttons on the top of the joystick. The right one I assigned to the torpedo launcher, the left one to the missile launcher. I assigned missile selection to a side button, and checked the load in the launcher. It showed fifty missiles, twenty were Friend or Foe and the other thirty were Image Recognition’s. Likewise, the reload had the same. I selected FF. If I needed to get missiles off in a hurry, I wanted something not needing a lock before going out.
Next I brought up the gun selector. I assigned quick select options for all six guns, for four guns and for two guns, the latter two in case I wanted to reduce hitting power for some reason. I also set up quick select options for all the guns firing at once, or all the guns firing one at a time in sequence. The first would give me maximum firepower at one pull of the trigger, with a delay between firings. The second would give me a faster rate of fire, with no delays, but less damage potential. All firing together was good for ships with full shielding, while the Gatling gun effect of the second option would be good for missiles coming towards me, or for a ship I found difficult to hit.
The next adjustment was for the angle of fire for each gun. I set the guns to all fire at once, and pulled the trigger. Six pulses of red launched forth at equal spaces apart, and continued off into the distance. That wasn’t what I wanted. At best, aimed at fighters, only two or three would hit at any time. I adjusted each of them so that they all were aimed at a spot two hundred meters in front of the ship. I pressed the trigger and six red pulses appeared to become one pulse two hundred meters ahead and then separated off into the distance. In effect, I was setting the guns up for maximum hitting potential at a short range. Further out, some might hit, even if my aim was off. But I was banking on being a reasonable shot at close range. At longer ranges, I’d be pumping out missiles. Missiles cost credits to use, where guns were effectively free, but for the moment, credits were less important than staying alive. The other thing I hoped to demonstrate if forced to it was that I was going to pack a wallop for anyone who came close.
Having set up everything, I put the ship through its paces, turning, rolling, looping, and for a while, just enjoyed the sensations of flying.
The last thing to test was the jump drive. If I was going to do that, I may as well go somewhere. But first, I needed to send some messages. I headed back to the Shipyard, and pinged Bob that I was happy with the ship and was going to test the jump drive. If all went well, I’d head to Outback. I needed to prove I could get there, before risking taking Wanderer and a cargo there. He responded with a ‘good luck’. I next headed for Sydney station. As I did a slow fly by, I pinged the General’s aide that I was off to Outback on a test flight. I also pinged the same to Amanda. I got an acknowledgement back from the General’s aide, and another ‘good luck’ from Amanda.
With the decision to go, and knowing my luck so far, I took the precaution of setting my suit into full space suit mode, had it plug into the seats air supply and double checked that the seat air supply was full, and being fed by life support. It all checked out.
With that I brought up the nav map, selected the jump point into Nexus 618 so it was targeted in the HUD, brought her round on course and pushed her speed to maximum.
“Jane, can you trigger the jump please?” I asked.
“Affirmative”.
As the jump point approached rapidly, I felt excited about finally being free to come and go as I wanted to.
Without slackening speed, we jumped.
Twenty Eight
It was the speed that saved me.
I knew immediately I was in big trouble. I sped past a double line of ships, all pointing toward the jump point, and within seconds, behind me.
In those seconds, as I flashed past each, it fired its guns at me, missing, and fired its first missile at me. By the time I’d passed the last ships in line, I already had a dozen missiles coming after me, and a dozen more just being launched. The rear turret opened up, even before I was aware they were there.
“Shit a brick, you have got to be kidding me!” I yelled.
“Order not understood,” said Jane.
“Keep the missiles off me,” I yelled.
I had seconds to think. Were they ‘stupid’, ‘STUPID’ or ‘Thank you for being so stupid’?” I had to act on one of them. I chose.
I held the thrust at full, gaining space away from the ships themselves, which for now, were a lesser threat. Lesser in that they couldn’t actually catch me to shoot at me directly. That left their missiles, which were a major immediate threat.
In the seconds I’d taken to think, the turret had taken out most of the first launch and was now working on the second. The third was still out of range. I waited to see what the lead missile would do. I could take a couple of hits if need be. I couldn’t take many of them at once, even with my stronger shields.
A first one sailed past the turret, and instead of hitting me in the rear, it flew along my right side. As it came alongside the cockpit, it tu
rned. I pushed the stick to the left, and the missile slammed into my right side shield. A few seconds later, I repeated this on the left side.
“YES!” I yelled. “Thank you for being so stupid!” The missiles were IR’s targeting the cockpit. No imagination in this bunch at all.
I checked distances to the nearest ships. I had time. Missiles coming up on my right again, I swerved left as hard as I could and held the turn. The missiles tried to come with me and overshot.
The thing about turning in circles, is that two main factors define how tight you can turn. The first is the maneuvering thrusters. The more maneuverable you are, the better your turn. The second was speed. The faster you are going, the wider is your turn. So for missiles, being faster and less maneuverable, their turning circle was not as tight as mine.
I’d learnt this one from a very old computer game. Fly the fastest, tightest circle you could and let everything try to intercept you. In the meantime, you took advantage of what progressively crossed your sights.
The turret continued to pick off missiles at a fast rate. Now that I didn't have ships immediately behind me, I started pumping out FF missiles as fast as I could, while taking pot shots at missiles coming past my nose. Some got through - that couldn’t be helped - and I kept one eye on my shields. The ships were nearly up to me now and no longer bunched, but strung out in a loose line by pilot reaction, or lack of it, and individual speed. They were still launching missiles.
I came half way around the next turn and lined up with the lead ship. This time I was playing ‘chicken’. I waited as the range came down. Head to head, I gave him four torpedoes and he exploded. I shot up and over the debris, lined up the second ship and gave it a full salvo from my front guns. It went red all down the middle of the ship and just stopped dead. I threw the ship around it, and lined up the third. Guns not ready, I gave it four torpedoes as well. One missed.
Hero at Large (The Hunter Legacy Book 1) Page 17
