Wing Commander Action Stations Chapter Two: Difference between revisions

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CHAPTER THREE
CONFEDERATION BASE MCAULIFFE




DATE: 2634.120




"Lieutenant Richards?"


HALLIN SYSTEM INSIDE THE
Ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn snapped off a sharp salute as the lieutenant climbed out of the pilot's seat of his Hurricane space-to-surface fighter escort, the ground crew scrambling past Geoff to chock the wheels and hook in the fuel vent lines.


KILRATHI EMPIRE
Richards pulled his helmet off, his cool dark eyes scanning the young ensign's features.


CONFEDERATION DATE 2634.121
Geoff had a recollection of meeting Richards once before, back in his second year, when Richards served as a summer flight instructor for basic subsonic atmospheric flight, though he had never gone through the reported torture of spending an afternoon with Richards in the right seat. Richards had a reputation for being a washout maker, an instructor eager to give the dreaded red check mark, in any of a hundred different areas, that would forever ground the dreams of another fleggie pilot. He seemed to have aged. Wrinkles already creased back from his eyes and his hair was going gray, even though he was only twenty-six. Geoff wondered if this was part of the price of flying and sensed that it was, especially when the planes were usually far older than the pilots, and prone to catastrophic failure.


Richards stared at Geoff for several seconds before returning the salute.


"I was ordered to report to you here, sir," Geoff announced.


"A second ship's just come through the jump point!"
Vance nodded, turning away for a second to look back at the ground crew.


Hans Kruger, copilot of the smuggler ship Phantom, felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Looking nervously over at the plot board, to where the pilot and owner of the ship, Kevin Milady, was pointing, he saw the second red blip wink to life. Seconds later a third blip appeared.
"Make sure you're careful screwing on that fuel exhaust vent line, the threads on it are damn near stripped," he said, and turned to look back at Geoff. "Should have junked the whole damn thing years ago."


"Get me a readout on it!" Milady snapped.
Geoff knew enough, at least in this case, to remain silent. He had a couple of dozen hours in the twin seat variant, and the registration plate on that craft had showed the old bucket was nearly twice his age. And yet, even being close to what still was considered to be a primary strike escort craft set his pulse beating. On the rung of fighter pilots, flying a Hurrie was considered more than a few steps down from a Wildcat pure space interceptor, or even a heavy Falcon fighter-bomber. The Hurrie was a hybrid design, and like most hybrids trying to combine two functions into one, it did neither of them very well. Its original intent was to serve as a space-to-surface escort for the old Gladiator bombers and Sheridan marine landing craft. If jumped by a Wildcat equivalent, it was dead meat, and, down in atmosphere, if it ran up against something like a Hawk it was dead as well. But as such things often developed in the realm of pilots, Hurrie jocks might be disdainful of the craft, but inwardly they took a fierce pride in the knowledge that they had to be the best if they were going to survive. No one wanted assignment to a Hurricane squadron, but once chosen, few of them asked for a transfer after mastering the craft and learning to squeeze the last bit of performance out of one.


Hans punched in a data inquiry and on a side screen the silhouette of a Kilrathi Targu class frigate appeared.
Richards went up to the nose of the Hurricane and, opening up a cargo hatch, pulled out a duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. Turning to the crew chief he handed over his helmet, signed off on the craft, then after hesitating for a second he gave the plane an affectionate pat before turning back to Geoff and motioning for him to follow.


"All right, people, there's some big boys waiting up ahead," Milady cried.
"So you're the one who told Senator More off."


"Got 'em on my board," came the reply from overhead.
Geoff looked over at Vance and nodded.


Hans looked up at their topside gunner and navigator, Igor. Igor, grinning, took a small cup and spit a stream of tobacco juice into it; several of the drops splattered down to land in Hans' lap.
"You're insane, kid, just screwed your career forever."


Again he felt the rage boiling over at the humiliations Igor had been heaping on him ever since he had signed on board ship back on Gainer's World. He knew it was part of the hazing a new scrub had to endure until he had proven himself. The problem was that, on a ship like the Phantom, the hazing had a deadly edge to it. In a one on one against Igor, chances were he'd lose and the result would not just be a sound thrashing. Igor wouldn't be satisfied unless the thrashing included a clipped ear, a jagged scar across the face, a missing eye, or perhaps even a cut throat. Hans knew that playing around with a smuggler crew from the Landreich had its tougher side, but then again, there were no other alternatives.
Geoff had nothing to say. It had not even been planned. He was simply walking past the senator, heading to the refreshment table to get a drink for his parents when he overhead part of the interview. Before he had even realized it, he was talking. That had always been one of his strong suits. It seemed that when the pressure was on, he could talk his way out of damn near anything, but there were times when he talked himself straight into the hole as well, and this was one of them. And yet, if he had it all to do over again, he'd still strike the same blow. There were a lot of ways to serve the Fleet, and if need be get your ass blown off for doing it. It might not be how he had planned it, but his confrontation had hit all the major vid services and in the ensuing flap more than one of More's compatriots from the opposition party had used Geoff's accusations. Unfortunately none of those senators were around when he had been summoned to the august presence of ClCCONFEDFLT himself, Admiral Spencer "Skip" Banbridge for one royal chewing out and banishment.


Back in Confed territory he was wanted for murder. Granted, it was self-defense, but no court would ever bother to see that side of it, if he was even fortunate enough to make it to court. A lot had happened to him in his twenty-one years, none of it all that good. To escape a drunken father and life in a dreary icebound mining settlement on a godforsaken world, he had dreamed of the Academy as a way out. But at seventeen the acceptance had not come. Rather than endure another day he signed on to the next merchant ship leaving port, and for four years worked his way up through the ranks of the Sarn shipping firm, earning his copilot's license at twenty.
Chew outs from Banbridge were legendary, made even more frightening by his physical appearance. He was short, squat, built like a fireplug, with a mashed-in nose picked up when he had once been the Fleet's middleweight boxing champion. His command of vocabulary from the lower decks was legendary as well, and Geoff was given the full ten-minute treatment. The mere memory of being on the carpet was enough to make him wince. He could well imagine that the shouting could be heard in the next corridor, and the smirk on the face of one of More's aides, who was there to witness the reaming, was enraging.


Things had been looking bright. Old man Haffa Sarn had even started to consider him to be one of his extended family, that is, until he killed one of Haffa's sons in a fight over a girl. Some might have said Hans had a streak of the chivalrous in him for protecting a bar girl from a lout like Venela Sarn, but old man Sarn would never see it that way. The finer distinction of Venela pulling a blaster first to blow the girl away for her impertinent refusal would most certainly be forgotten by Haffa, who, for form's sake, had promised that Hans would be "sleeping with the asteroids."
"Anyhow, Tolwyn, do you know what the hell is going on?"


So, for reasons of health, he had hopped the first ship pulling out of Gainer's World and Phantom was in need of a copilot. They hadn't told him where they were going, and it took some time to get used to the smell. The cleanup job for the remains of the last copilot had failed to locate the random bits of tissue, brains and blood scattered around the interior of the ship, splattered there after the unfortunate soul took a direct hit from a mass driver round which penetrated the shields and forward viewport.
"Sir?"


"Say, Marilyn, what's going on with those bastards behind us?" Kevin shouted, breaking Hans out of his contemplation of just how wretched he felt at the moment.
Richards motioned for him to follow as the two headed across the tarmac. Overhead, the scorching red giant sun of McAuliffe seemed to fill half the sky. The light appeared to give everything a blood-drenched hue, which Geoff found somehow disturbing. The second sun, a small yellow dwarf, which orbited half a billion miles further out than the planet, was just beginning to rise in the east. Due to the orbital mechanics of it all, it'd be another forty years before anyone would actually see night again. Those assigned to the sprawling planet side buses of McAuliffe claimed that after six months on the planet you'd kill for the sight of a star.


Hans looked back over his shoulder and down the access passage to where Marilyn Langer, the ship's chief engineer and tail gunner squatted, hunched over her twin mass drivers. He could not help but admire the view, though if Marilyn knew he was checking her out, his fate might very well be the same as that of the last copilot.
"Why are we here, Tolwyn, do you have a clue?"


"Four of the bastards and still closing up. Damn, they must have upgraded the engines on those Cat fighters."
"I just touched down here on Johnson Island a couple of hours before you did, sir, on the transport out from Earth. I then received orders to report to you when you landed. That's all I know, other than that I'm to expect transport from here to wherever my final assignment is."


Hans continued to stare at the forward plot board.
Richards shrugged. "Well, they said orders are waiting at the flight desk, so lets go."


"The two frigates are accelerating." Hans announced. "Time to closing one minute and thirty-seven seconds."
Geoff fell in beside Richards as they took the long hike along the apron bordering the three-kilometer main landing strip. Hangars and work bays lined the strip, and parked out in front, in neat orderly lines, were hundreds of craft—Johnson Island being the main Confed Fleet surface and orbital base for the entire frontier sector bordering the inward galactic border with the Kilrathi Empire. It was, in fact, the Confederation's largest base other than Earth.


He looked over at Kevin, who turned to gaze at him with his one good eye. Kevin grinned sardonically.
Geoff could not help but look in wide-eyed awe at the vast array of strike power lined up before him, entire squadrons of Hurricanes, Gladiators, Trident heavy bombers, and Hummer light recon and strike planes, arrayed wingtip to wingtip. And yet, on closer examination, even his unpracticed eye could see that more than one of the planes was missing an engine, or access hatches were pulled open to reveal that the guts of the plane were gone, and in some cases the plane was up on jacks and its wheels were missing.


"Think we're dead?"
Further back in the rows of planes he could see craft that should exist only in museums, even a few old Minotaurs which must be well over a hundred years old.


"It doesn't look good," Hans choked out.
"Yeah, it's a junkyard," Richards said, as if reading his thoughts. "They look real nice and neat out here, all lined up. Hell, the base commander, Admiral Nagomo, can doctor any report to claim that every one of them can make space and fight, though he might neglect to add that maybe only a quarter of them could do it at any one time, since all the others would be providing the spare parts. Yet in readiness reports waved around by your friend More and others, each and every one of these craft is listed as A-1 status for frontline service."


"When you run the frontier of the Cats, ya gotta pay," Milady announced with a smile. "Now hang on!"
"How is it upstairs?" Geoff asked.


Before Hans could even reply Milady slammed his stick forward while cutting off the hydrogen scoop fields which served the dual role of pulling in the stray hydrogen atoms to be found in deep space for fuel and at the same time providing the drag which enabled a ship to turn and maneuver as if it was inside a planet's atmosphere. With the scoops shut down the ship didn't go into a dive but simply tumbled over on its x-axis so that in an instant it was facing "backwards" to its trajectory towards the jump point. Milady slapped in full throttle, popped the scoops back open and Hans wanted to scream a protest, they were bleeding off their speed and rapidly slowing down so that they'd be a sitting duck for the fighters closing in from one direction and the frigates sealing off their escape in the other.
"Seventh Fleet is spending nearly half its time now downside, to conserve on fuel, parts, the usual wear and tear. In fact, right now, all six of the fleet carriers are docked upstairs," and as he spoke Richards pointed up towards space. "If the Cats did the big one on us right now, we'd be out of the war in the first twenty minutes. There ain't another carrier cruising between here and Earth at the moment."


The inertia-dampening system was barely adequate on the battered ship and Hans grunted, gasping for breath as he was slammed into his seat, the ship creaking and groaning in protest from the ten g stress load. Igor opened up with the topside guns, his photon blasts lighting up space. Hans had no idea what Igor was firing at, no target was visible as stitches of fire slashed back and forth in the darkness, dazzling his vision. Four points of light now erupted in front of him, bolts of light snapping back.
"I thought there'd be more going on here with the war rumors."


Hans wanted to duck as one of the streaks of light appeared to slash past the cockpit and laced into the starboard wing, a shower of sparks erupting as Phantom's shielding dissipated the energy.
Richards laughed. "War? Hell, son, we're talking police action. That means just nudge them a bit, don't get too provocative. After all, the Cats are just misunderstood, need a little counseling. Didn't you hear that news vid commentator claim that it was all but our fault, that we didn't understand the cultural differences and once we did everything would be settled?"


"Lock on with the lasers!" Kevin shouted, and Hans nervously leaned forward to peer at the heads up display. Four blips danced across the glass in front of him. Igor was pouring fire in on the one stitching their starboard wing, but Hans still couldn't see anything, just the flashing red lights and a target circle that weaved back and forth, waiting for his command to lock and fire.
The bitterness in Richards' voice was sharp edged and weary. The carriers were not even being committed to the Facin Sector. Task Force Twenty-three had sortied with a mixed match of two old battleships and their escorts and one old Ranger class carrier.


Suddenly, as if materializing out of nothingness, the four fighters popped into view. One second they were nothing but a blinking light on the heads up, and an instant later they seemed to fill space in front of him and then peeled off, two turning to starboard, the other two screaming by so close that the shielding of one of them brushed against the ship, so that it bucked and rocked. He could hear Marilyn's high-pitched yell erupt from the tail gunner's position as she opened up, her cries drowned out by Kevin's wild curses.
Geoff paused to look to the southeast and then up. The skyhook tower linking the planet's surface to the orbital base twenty thousand miles up was one of the engineering wonders of the Confederation. He felt a bit like a tourist as he slowed down for a moment to gape, looking up, the line of the tower soaring straight into the sky until it finally disappeared from view. North of the surface base were six fusion reactors, providing over a thousand gigawatts of power. Nearly all this energy went to the massive shielding systems which protected the ground base, or was wired up to the orbital base via the skyhook. It was the largest energy complex in the Confed and supposedly made Alexandria and the ground base of McAuliffe impervious to attack. No known weapon, traveling at a speed much faster than a walk, could penetrate the shields when they were activated.


"Kruger, you damn idiot! You could've dropped one, damn it! Now shoot!"
That had always been the underlying paradigm of balance between ship weight and offensive and defensive power. A heavier ship with larger reactors meant more energy for shielding and plasma weapons, the only limit being the total mass that could be contained within the jump containment fields. Physically wiring the massive reactors into the base at the top of the skyhook supposedly made the base impervious to attack…as long as the reactors held. From that fact had come the massive array of weaponry, defensive perimeters and antiterrorist security ringing the base. As Geoff took it all in he could not help but wonder if the designers of McAuliffe had become so obsessed with defense that the concept of mobility had been forgotten. He remembered old Winnie, back at the Academy, calling McAuliffe the Maginot Line of space, though as he looked at it all now he could not help but feel that this was, indeed, a fortress base that would never fall.


But nothing was in front of them. Looking down at the plot board he saw that the frigates were still closing and were now less than two thousand clicks astern. Kevin kept his hands on the throttles, pressing them up to the firewall, their momentum towards the jump point all but gone as Phantom shuddered to a stop relative to the point and then slowly started to crawl away.
Richards fell silent as they turned to head into the flight operations office, acknowledging the salute of the two marine guards posted by the entryway. Richards went up to the main desk, turned in his flight report, and took an envelope bearing the seal of the Confederation Fleet Personnel Office. A marine topkick stood in the corner of the room, silently observing them with hawk-like eyes. There was something vaguely disturbing about the way the topkick casually examined him, and Geoff found it difficult to hold his gaze. The sergeant finally stiffened slightly as if forcing himself to acknowledge that this young Academy graduate was indeed a superior officer. There was the flicker of a smile, a slight shaking of his head and the topkick walked out of the room. Richards tore open the envelope, scanned it and sighed.


"They'll be on us in ten seconds!" Hans shouted, wondering just what the hell the pilot was doing.
Geoff watched him closely. Wherever Richards was going, he was going as well, and the look of confusion on the lieutenant's face did not seem to be a very good portent of things to come. He wondered what Richards' sins were that the albatross of the most talked about ensign in the halls of Congress would be tied to him.


"Got one!"
"Let's go get a drink," Richards snapped, motioning for Geoff to fall in with him.


Hans looked up to see Igor roaring with delight, tobacco Juice dribbling down his chin to splash Hans with a fine, pungent spray. Hans saw a flash off the port side and, leaning over, he witnessed an erupting cloud of debris.
Geoff wanted to ask, but knew that Richards would tell him in his own good time. Leaving his duffel bag at headquarters, they headed for the base officer's club. Richards took a table in a far corner of the room, ordering Geoff to get a couple of beers from the bar. Geoff brought the drinks over and sat down across from him, waiting for some sort of comment while Richards sat, wrapped in silence, sipping his beer and scanning the empty room.


"Hang on!" Kevin roared and a split second later he once more flipped the ship over on its x-axis so that it was again lined up on the jump point. He dodged the ship straight down and away from their original trajectory. The two frigates swept past to either side, both ships spraying the area with lasers, mass driver rounds, and plasma energy bolts, almost all the shots intersecting where Phantom would have been if they had continued on their previous course.
"So do you want to know?" Vance finally asked.


Several of the shots still found their mark, however, and Hans felt the ship heave under the hammer blows. In an instant shielding dropped down almost to zero from the heavy impacts. Several mass driver bolts slammed clean through the starboard wing in a shower of sparks. Hans realized that if they had been a couple of more meters inboard, the rounds would have driven right through the top of the ship, puncturing the cabin and thus triggering a rapid decompression. It most likely would not have mattered to him though, he thought, since the rounds would have nailed right through his seat, thus providing him with the same death as the last copilot. He looked to his right, to where his helmet and gloves were resting. Reaching over, he grabbed the helmet and put it on, ignoring Kevin's disdainful snort.
"I figured you'd get around to it eventually."


"Damn, kid, we get punctured, better to go quick, rather than float around and wait for the Cats to play games with you," Kevin snarled.
Vance let the flicker of a smile crease his features. "It's here."


Hans had heard enough tales about what the Cats did to smugglers who dared to cross the line that he was tempted to take the helmet back off.
"Sir?"


"One coming up front!" Marilyn shouted, her warning followed by a staccato burst from her guns. "Winged him, get the bastard!" A Kilrathi Vak fighter shot past them, tumbling end over end. Hans leaned forward to line up on the heads-up display, his helmet banging against the forward viewport so that he lost acquisition for a second. He saw the lock on and hit the forward lasers. Intersecting blasts of light arced out, slashing into the crippled fighter, which detonated.
"Look, it's Vance, okay? At least when we're drinking together."


Hans let out a triumphal whoop—it was so damned easy!
Geoff smiled. The gulf between cadets and officers spanned light-years. He knew that, once into the club, the barriers were relaxed a bit between ranks, at least off duty. Since graduation, though, this was the first time he had been allowed the privilege of addressing an officer by first name.


Another shudder snapped through the ship, a shower of sparks erupting from the control panel to his right. A fighter swept past them, Igor cursing wildly as he tried to track the target.
"You said it's here. What do you mean?"


"Those frigates are coming about!" Marilyn shouted.
"Just that," and Vance tossed the letter across the table.


Hans looked back at the plot board. Damn, how did they do that? Turning a ship that big using your scoop field usually took a couple of minutes, but they were already halfway through the turn and boring in. He looked over at Kevin, and for the first time saw that the boss was decidedly nervous, if not outright scared.
Geoff took a look. After the usual cryptic acronyms, whereases, and therefores of fleet speak, the letter simply said to report to the base officer's club where they would be approached with further orders.


"They must have pulled some new upgrade," Kevin mumbled. "Don't worry, we'll hit jump before they close, then we'll lose the bastards."
"Damned strange," Vance mumbled. "Damned strange. A week ago I'm a squadron leader, rumor kicking around that I'm about to move up to Lieutenant Commander and have a shot at a training wing, not a single red chit on any report, then boom, I'm told to report planetside as soon as my carrier docks. No explanation, no nothing. Typical fleet. You, when I heard I was to pick you up, I figured that since you royally pissed somebody off, I guess I did, too. But who?"


Hans looked back at the board.
"Say, isn't that old Winston Turner over there?" Geoff said, looking past Vance to the entry door.


"At current rate of closing they'll be alongside us in forty seconds."
Vance looked over his shoulder. "Sure as hell is. Damn, he scared the crap out of me my plebe year. Found out later he was all right, but he sure was tough."


"Just shut up," Kevin snarled and then looked back over his shoulder.
Turner scanned the room, picked up a drink from the bar and made straight for their table. The two stood up as he approached,


"All right, Marilyn, dump the surprise!"
"Relax, gentlemen, sit down."


"They're away!" came the almost simultaneous reply.
Geoff saw Turner glancing at Vance's orders, which were lying on the table.


Hans looked back over at Kevin, wondering what the hell they were doing.
"Sir, I suspect you're tied in with these orders," Geoff ventured.


"We just dropped a nuke mine," Kevin said quietly. "Damn, that thing cost almost as much us our entire haul."
"Why's that, Mr. Tolwyn?"


"A mine! Damn it, a civilian ship carrying one is a capital offense. Why the hell didn't you tell me?" Hans cried.
"Well, sir. They're rather cryptic and out of the ordinary. We come here, as ordered, and less than five minutes later you wander in."


"Why, you wanna quit? If so, then just get the hell off now!"
"And the connection is?"


Hans, wide-eyed, shook his head.
"Well, sir. Last I saw you was Earthside on graduation day. While I was dealing with my—" he hesitated for an instant, "—problem, I hear this report that you'd taken an early retirement along with a lot of the other professors. That struck me as strange."


"It'll save your ass, boy. Now shut up and get a lock on that light frigate."
"Why so?"


The jump point was closing in, its telltale distortion waves rippling across the plot board, but smack in the middle was the Kilrathi light frigate which must have just come through. The two fighters swept in again from either side, a stitch of mass driver rounds slashing across the top of their ship, another one puncturing the starboard wing. A flash suddenly erupted on the plot screen, and at the same instant a hellish white-blue light bathed the cockpit.
"Well, sir. I know you're good friends with Admiral Banbridge. I know you love the Fleet. I figured you to be one to stay on no matter what. Now you suddenly come walking in here, fifteen jump points away from Earth. So I guess our orders have something to do with you, sir."


"Got one!" Marilyn screamed. "He's shearing off. The other one's turning aside, the idiot fell for the dummy mine!"
Turner smiled. "Mr. Tolwyn, you always were an observant student, and yes, my being here has to do with your orders."


Hans watched the plot screen and punched in a visual magnification. The eruption of the mine was dissipating, and the Kilrathi frigate which had been their target was tumbling out of control, its entire forward section a twisted, molten wreck. Unless the Cats had good internal bulkhead design and shielding, the bastards in the stern half were most likely cooked as well. The second ship had veered wildly off course, falling for the trick of the second mine, which was nothing more than an empty casing with a trace of radioactive material inside.
"How so, sir?" Vance asked.


Three flashing red blips emerged from the second frigate and started to bore in.
"The two of you have been assigned to me."


"They've launched seekers," Hans announced, trying to contain the terror in his voice as a low-pitched tone started to squeal in his headset, the combat information board flashing with a profile of the weapon.
Turner watched their reactions. He could almost sense relief from Geoff, who had undoubtedly been stewing in his own juices during the long transit out from Earth, wondering what godforsaken outpost he'd finally wind up in. As for Richards, the reaction was different. The announcement of a transfer meant that he was most likely grounded and the young lieutenant was obviously not very happy about the prospect.


"Must've really pissed them off if they're blowing two hundred and fifty thousand credits a pop to kill us," Milady replied, almost as if pleased that the Cats were expending one of the most expensive launch weapons in a ship's arsenal.
Vance stirred uncomfortably. "Sir, in last week's issue of Fleet Proceedings I saw the notice about the shutting down of the Academy and your name was on the list of early retirements. How can we be assigned to you if you're officially on the way out?"


"Marilyn, three seekers, can you nail them?"
"I'm not quite out of the picture yet." Winston chuckled. "You'll notice my early retirement notice didn't specify a date. There's still one last assignment to be done and you two gentlemen have been nominated to give me a hand."


"On it!"
Geoff didn't know whether this was a compliment or not. After all, on the day before his encounter with Senator More he had already received his official orders posting him to Lunar orbital base five to start orientation training for the Wildcat fighter. He truly admired Turner, and would be the first to admit that the commander had done much to shape his own thinking about the fleet, its mission, and the inner sense that a crisis unlike any ever faced by the Confederation was about to unfold. Though he would never admit it to anyone, he sensed as well that there was a destiny to his life that meant that, when the time came, he would have a major part to play.


"Damn, they really want us," Kevin said, his voice suddenly filled with weariness. "Those damn things cost a bundle. Kruger, blow chaff, two-second intervals!"
That belief, however, had been sorely tested by what happened after he had crossed the bow of Senator More's political machine and fired his pathetic shot. So now I'm attached to someone on the way out. He knew that he should feel uncomfortable with that thought. After all, Turner was one of the most respected intellectuals in all of the Fleet…but he was not a fighting commander and, by heavens, fighting was what he had trained for.


Hans looked at the weapons board, fumbling till he found the chaff launch button, and punched it five times. All the time Kevin kept weaving the ship toward the jump point. Hans watched as Kevin activated the jump engine, which drained their power still further. Once inside the nexus, the engine would interlock with the displacement of the jump point and they'd be catapulted across a dozen light-years, hopefully to emerge on the other side of the frontier, though if the angle of acquisition wasn't quite right, or the engine wasn't fully engaged, there was no telling where they might wind up.
"You seem troubled, Mr. Tolwyn," Turner said softly, interrupting Geoff's musings.


"It's either shields or engines," Hans announced. "We won't make it running both."
"Well, sir, just curious, that's all," Geoff quickly replied and he motioned towards the orders which were still sitting on the table. "I mean, this is rather unusual."


Without comment, Kevin reached over and slapped the toggle shutting the shields down. Now there was only bare metal between them and whatever the Kilrathi could throw in their direction.
"All in due time, Geoff, but first a couple of questions if you don't mind."


"First two seekers plowing straight through the chaff!" Marilyn announced, her voice drowned out by the reverberation of the tail guns as they kicked in, sending out a spray of mass driver rounds in the desperate hope that one of the bolts might impact on a seeker and detonate it.
Turner looked over at Vance.


Topside, Igor was still at work, trading shots with the fighters as they swept back in, while up ahead the light frigate, still holding position by the jump point, began to fire as well. Space seemed to be an insane intersection of flashing lights, all of them crisscrossing around Phantom.
"How were things in your squadron, Mr. Richards?"


I'm a dead man, Hans realized, and to his utter amazement, rather than renew the fear, he suddenly felt a strange, distant detachment from all that was happening. The sensation was remarkable, as if time was distorting, each second dragging out to an eternity. For an instant he wondered if he was already dead, so calming was the sensation.
"Sir?"


He looked over at Kevin and saw the pilot, staring wide-eyed as they approached the light frigate, which was barely visible beyond the explosion of light emanating from its forward batteries. The man's scared to death, Hans realized, and the recognition of the fact was fascinating. He had been in tight binds before, while working for the Sarn consortium, and funny, again when he killed Sarn's eldest son, and that same feeling had been there. Draw your weapon, step to one side to dodge the first blast, then calmly nail him between the eyes, turning everything from the neck up into a spray of pulp.
"Just that. Not the type of crap you boys have to pump into your efficiency and readiness reports. I mean underneath it all. Your gut sense, what are you seeing, how do you feel about it all?"


There was an intense awareness of all that was going on around him: Kevin, white-knuckled, driving relentlessly for the jump point; Igor cursing wildly, swinging his turret back and forth in a desperate bid to fend off the fighters; Marilyn cursing as well as she fired wildly at the incoming seekers. He looked down at the plot board, all the data now standing out so remarkably clearly. The seekers were still accelerating and would close a good ten seconds before they hit the jump. The light frigate was sending out a curtain of fire, but somehow he could sense that whoever was in charge of gunnery on board was doing one hell of a rotten job. The concentrated fire was causing the two fighters to hold back when all it would take was one more close sweep, and the first mass driver bolt to hit the pressurized cabin would cause a clean breech.
Vance chuckled softly. "You got a couple of weeks, sir?"


A shot from the frigate sheared through the portside wing, tearing off a couple of meters. Kevin dodged the next volley and then lined back up on the jump point. Without even asking for permission Hans leaned over and slammed the hydrogen scoops off. Though it immediately cut drag, it would be impossible to maneuver now.
"We might have more than that to get into the details, but give me the short form right now."


"What the hell?" Kevin roared.
"Well, sir, regarding the men and women who fly the crates, they're top notch. The Academy, and even the outer world flight schools, are turning out some damn good pilots. They're dedicated as all hell, you'd have to be dedicated just to put up with all the crap. I'd stack them against anything out there."


"Their shooting sucks and it'll give us a few more clicks of speed," Hans replied calmly.
"And the nonflight personnel?"


He looked back down at the plot board. The first seeker was leaping forward, and then simply disappeared as Marilyn's shooting detonated the missile.
"The same. You know the old saying, 'You have to be half mad to join the Fleet, and fully mad to stay with it'? Well, it's true. You've got to be mad about the Fleet to stick with it. If there's a problem, it's the fact that we lose too many good people to the merchant fleets and commercial lines. They get through their six-year enlistment, some of them have families, they have damn good training, and you can't blame them for jumping. Sure, we have a lot of the old guzzler types, who could never find a job outside of the fleet, but even they know their jobs. So on that score I think we're in good shape."


That bought us a few seconds, Hans thought, but the second and third rounds were still boring in. The second round skidded to maneuver around the expanding cloud of debris from the first seeker. To his amazement the third seeker appeared to go straight into the shower of debris, and it detonated as well. Interesting, he thought, the cats should have programmed their missile to avoid such a stupid mistake.
"What about readiness, though?"


"Ten seconds to jump point," Hans announced, eyes still focused on the board.
Vance sighed, exhaling noisily.


The detachment and distortion of time that he was experiencing seemed to stretch out even further. He found it curious that, in a perverse sort of way, he was actually enjoying himself, a complete reversal from the terror that had all but overwhelmed him when the action first started. It was something worth remembering, he thought. Once into it, there's almost a cold joy to it all. Strange that dancing at death's door appeared to be the only thing that could elicit such a feeling.
"If things should ever blow, we're going to be in the barrel."


He spared a quick glance up. The Kilrathi light frigate was turning to fire broadside, but he knew it was far too late. They shot past the frigate. They were inside the edge of the jump field, the jump engine telemetry showing that it was engaging with the distortion of the field.
"What do you mean blow?" Turner asked quietly.


Yet, even with his sense of total awareness, what now unfolded seemed to be nothing but a blur. The seeker seemed to leap forward and he realized that there must be some form of afterburner on the missile's engine to boost it through any point defense systems. The missile bored in and he heard Marilyn's cry of alarm.
"Come on, sir. The Cats, we all know what you're talking about. The damn Cats are just waiting for the chance to jump."


He could see Kevin's features shifting to a brief instant of elation with the thought that they'd hit jump. That was washed out by a flash of light astern.
"What makes you think that?"


There was a final cry from Marilyn, "Got the bas…" and then the blast enveloped her. Though she had nailed the seeker, a remarkable display of shooting given its final acceleration, it had detonated far too close to them, the explosion washing into the back of the ship. If full shields had been up, they might have gotten away with it, but now there was nothing but a thin layer of durasteel, and the fragments of the missile, driven forward by the detonation of its warhead, slammed into the stern of the ship, tearing it open as if it was made of nothing but paper. He started to turn to look…and then wished he hadn't as what was left of Marilyn sprayed up into the cockpit. The air inside the ship whooshed out through the ruptured stern, the back draft sucking the fragments of the woman through the jagged opening.
"The Varni should have taught us that," Geoff interjected. "The Cats come up to their border, there's a period of peace as the Cats figure them out, then a jump that ended the war in the first thirty days."


He looked back at Kevin but there wasn't that much to look at there. A jagged hunk of durasteel, still imbedded in the back of his seat, had decapitated him. Igor, up in the top turret, was struggling to kick himself free of the debris, the bottom half of his flight suit was frayed by the wash of fragments, shards of white bone sticking out through the orange jumpsuit, pulses of blood spraying out and freezing in the vacuum.
"That was forty years ago," Turner replied. "You'd think they might have done something before this. Hell, we didn't even have any kind of direct contact until just five years ago, and not a peep since."


Hans realized that his hands felt cold and, looking down, he saw that he had not put his gloves on. They were still in the rack to his right and, reaching over, he fumbled to put the first glove on. It felt strange. The pressurized cuffs around his wrists had sealed his suit shut. His hands were now in pure vacuum, sensation in them rapidly fading away as the moisture on his skin boiled off. It was becoming difficult to move them and he knew if he didn't act quickly they'd freeze solid.
"Just because they haven't doesn't mean they won't," Geoff continued. "Remember that rumor a couple of years back about their taking some settlement beyond the frontier before the demilitarized zone was established? Hell, if that's true, they can deduce a lot even from the standard equipment a group of colonists might have."


Before he had even clipped the first glove on he struggled with the second, forcing it over his hand. He slapped his hands down on his thighs, snapping the locks closed, and sighed with relief as the pressurized cuffs released, flooding warm air around his fingers.
Richards shook his head. "Hell there's at least a thousand or more uncharted systems between our border and the Cats, thousands more out in the other directions. There's rumors of incidents like that all the time."


Something bumped into him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Igor, without a helmet, his flight pants from the knees down a tangled fringe of fabric, blood and bone. At the same instant the jump engines kicked in and there was the gut-wrenching sense of falling through jump. He had always hated this part, but for once jump came as a blessed relief. Everything seemed to freeze for an instant, Igor hovering above him, floating up for a brief moment as the jump engines overrode the artificial gravity. Behind him he could see open space where Marilyn's position used to be, the star fields coalescing into a shimmering, deep red glow as the ship instantly leaped through the folded space of the jump field. An instant later they were through to the other side, star fields returning.
"Well, true or not, I think the Cats are gearing up for us," Geoff replied.


Igor slammed back down on the deck and then, as if he was the walking dead, came back up, his mouth open in a soundless scream, hands clawing at Hans' helmet, as if trying to pull it off. Hans did not even bother to ward off the blows, there was an almost perverse satisfaction in not even bothering to resist his old tormentor.
"Your friend Senator More might say you're paranoid," Turner said, a thin smile creasing his wrinkled features.


Igor's eyes changed color as the moisture in them boiled off, the eyeballs then freezing. Igor continued to claw, mouth open, the thin wisp of a cloud of moisture, changing instantly to floating crystals of ice, cascading out of him. The tobacco he had been chewing fell out of his mouth, a frozen mass of dirty brown. His blows weakened, his arms slowly falling to his side, hands curling up into tight balls.
"Just because he's paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get us," Vance interjected, changing tack and coming about to Geoff's support. "And if they do, we're going to get our butts kicked."


The blood in his lungs must be boiling, Hans realized, the bubbles filling his heart chambers. He knew that the stories about people exploding in vacuum were nothing but old wives' tales. Death was far more subtle, with surface moisture, the eyes, and the lining of the lungs giving up their moisture and then freezing. In a way, the victim simply suffocated, long before all the liquid inside their body was sucked out by the vacuum, leaving the corpse a shriveled mummy. Igor clutched at his throat, even as he slowly crumpled to his knees. Hans still watched him, not sure if, in a final malevolent act, he might not draw his blaster to insure company on the other side.
"Why?"


And then he did something that startled Hans. Igor seemed to smile and gave Hans a thumbs-up gesture. He wavered for several seconds, then fell to the deck. Hans looked at him in amazement. It was almost as if, at the very end, his foe had indicated that Hans was accepted, that he was part of the club.
"Sir, I saw some of your articles in Proceedings, why are you asking us?" Vance asked.


Hans looked back at the plot board. There was no pursuit and space around where he had emerged was empty. He keyed up the nav screen and sighed with relief to see that they had successfully made their jump back into the demilitarized zone dividing the Kilrathi Empire and the outer reaches of the frontier. He popped the hydrogen scoops open. Fuel was at absolute zero. It'd be a couple of days at the speed Phantom was running at to pull in enough stray hydrogen atoms to fire the engines up. It was the frustrating equation of space flight. There was fuel aplenty in deep space. Have a big enough scoop field and you could not only maneuver but could always pull in more and yet more fuel. The faster you were going the more you got. But when you needed it the most, when you were down to bone dry, you might drift for days, weeks, even months before you had pulled in enough to pulse the engines up to a speed where you could gather in energy quickly. He knew that if the Cats pulled a hot pursuit it'd be over in another minute…but they never came through.
"Indulge me. I've been locked away in the Academy for years. I send you young men and women out, but I rarely hear what's going on afterwards, other than what I see in reports."


He chuckled softly. They must have seen the seeker blow, the blast engulfing the ship, and assumed that it had been a direct hit. Since you only got so many hops out of a jump engine before a very expensive overhaul, the frigate captain must have assumed it was a write-off and not worth the effort of going through to check. Heaven help that Cat, Hans realized, when someone finally checked the high-speed film and saw that Phantom had hit the jump point still intact. Well, more or less intact. He could only hope that they didn't get around to that for awhile.
"Sir, it's the same old story. There's only six carriers for this entire sector, nine in the entire fleet. The appropriation of five years back under the old administration, right after we first ran into the Cats, called for a building program of eight more carriers. We only got two, one of them the new Concordia. The others were shut down and abandoned in Lunar orbit.


Hans stood up and realized that his knees felt slightly weak. The moment of hyperawareness was drifting away and he wanted to reach out, to embrace it and wrap it into his soul. Never had he felt so alive, so clear in his thoughts, as he had in those final seconds. He knew now that, like a lotus addict, he'd willingly seek the moment out, again and again, no matter what the risk. He knew as well that something inside of himself had changed forever. He had glimpsed it when he killed the Sarn, a calm detachment, but that moment had been so brief, and the fear of what the Sarn family would do to him so strong, that he had never really taken the time to fully embrace and analyze what had happened. A line of challenge had been crossed, and the crossing had been remarkably easy. Hans realized that Kevin, whom he had secretly admired even as he feared him, never had that sense of control. He could see that in the pilot's eyes in those last seconds. He looked back over at the corpse. The blood that had been pulsing out of his severed jugular had stopped, the sticky liquid evaporating in the vacuum.
"The carriers we do have, other than Concordia, were launched before I was even born. They're antiques, held together with spit and duct tape. Even though Soryu is listed as being on-line, the truth is she's nothing more than a floating stockpile for spare parts, which get stripped out to keep the other five like her going. The fleet spends nearly sixty percent of its time docked right upstairs to save on engine time," and as he spoke he pointed up to where the fleet was now docked at Alexandria.


He looked around the ship and weaved his way through the flame-scorched rubble to the stern access hatch. An inflatable collar might be able to seal that off, he thought. He'd have to go outside, look for punctures and fill them with plasti-seal. Fortunately the blow had taken them directly astern. There was no way Phantom could go into an atmosphere, but at least the forward cockpit, with its precious control systems, had escaped damage.
"That's only the carriers," Turner said. "We've still got the battlewagons and heavy cruisers."


He looked back around the cabin. Burial would be easy enough, just drag them to the ruptured stern and out they go. They wouldn't be the first consigned to the eternity of darkness. And besides, he was no longer considering a one fiftieth share of the profit from the illegal shipment of Kilrathi durasteel down in the hull. This was, after all, a salvage job he reasoned, and by the rules of admiralty courts half the salvage was his, the other half divided between the government and the original owners. He chuckled. Hell no, this wasn't a salvage job. The captain and owner was dead—long live the new owner of the Phantom.
Vance snorted with disdain. "And that's another thing, sir. When are they going to realize the next war will be a carrier war? Those brass-hatted jerks at the top just don't seem to get it."
 
As if realizing he had warmed perhaps a bit too much to his subject, Vance fell silent.
 
"Well, at least one brass hat I know might object to being called a jerk, but go on," Winston said with a wry smile.
 
"It's those battleship admirals, sir. They keep thumping their chests and saying that in a fleet to fleet action it's the big boys who will decide it."
 
"No carrier-launched craft has ever downed a battlewagon," Turner interjected, "you have to admit that. And remember, even Banbridge flew his flag on a battlewagon, not a carrier."
 
"What about those reports we got from the Varni?" Richards interjected.
 
"Which reports, Mr. Richards?"
 
Richards stumbled for a second and anxiously looked away. The official evaluation reports of the brief war between the Cats and the Varni were still classified. Some of the stuff was still triple A. Vance now found himself in a bind. How could he admit that he had cracked a couple of the fleet access codes and actually managed to get into some single A secured files?
 
"Don't worry, Mr. Richards," Turner finally said. "You might not have realized it, but more than one eager fighter jock has fooled around with security codes to try to find out information they shouldn't have. I remember you as always having an interest in that area. In fact, when you graduated. Speedwell over in Confed Intel was interested in getting you. He even talked to me about it."
 
Richards seemed to shudder at the mere mention of the idea.
 
"I'm a pilot, sir, not cypher. Sure it's a hobby of mine, and I still fool around with it, but flying's my game."
 
"What best serves the fleet, Mr. Richards?"
 
"The best thing I can do for the fleet is fly Hurricanes. Are you telling me this new job with you is intel?"
 
Turner smiled. "Later, son. Don't worry, you'll still get some flying in, but the details can wait. You were complaining about fleet doctrine and the Varni reports."
 
"It's just that—" and he hesitated. "It's just that there's a rumor that the Varni claim to have darn near destroyed a Kilrathi heavy cruiser with an all-out fighter attack. They said they should have nailed it, but the strike commander was killed and the coordinated attack to break down the phase shielding fell apart."
 
Turner nodded while reaching into his pocket and pulling out his pipe. Filling it up, he set it alight.
 
"The bigger the ship the more energy generating systems it contains," Turner said, as if delivering a well-worn lecture in class, "and from the energy systems they get more power for phase shielding. The only thing that limits the size of the ship is the area that the jump engine generators can encompass. That argues against this whole notion that fighter-size craft will ever be able to take out a battlewagon. They just don't carry enough punch, while a fifty-thousand-ton battlewagon can generate enough energy to power its shields and have enough left over so that its guns could annihilate a thousand fighters without getting a scratch. Sure, a couple of hundred of them hitting one single point might do that, but the heavy antispacecraft guns of a capital ship would rip them to shreds."
 
"Sir, you were part of the Panama system war games twelve years back, weren't you?" Geoff interjected.
 
"So?"
 
"Well, sir. That's where they did a simulation of a new type of weapon, small enough to be carried on a carrier-launched bomber, that can break through phase shielding. The three carriers wiped out all ten battlewagons on the Red team."
 
"I was there merely as an observer from the Academy," Turner replied while looking at the ceiling and blowing a smoke ring, "and I'm surprised, Mr. Tolwyn, to hear that you, like your companion, Mr. Richards, have also indulged in a little code breaking since that report is classified. And yes, the carriers did nail the battlewagons, at least until the umpires declared the strike null and void. According to official records, Red Fleet won that war game since the Blue admiral threw away his scouting capacity by wasting his carriers."
 
"And according to you?"
 
"I was just there as a fleet historian, I just recorded the results."
 
"But you were converted, weren't you, sir?" Geoff pressed.
 
"Let's just say I sat up and took notice. But that was speculation on a weapon that as far as we know doesn't exist. I think it's safe to say that our tech people have been fooling around with the idea of a weapon that can punch through phased shielding to nail a capital ship. I think it's safe to say they might have even developed some primitive models, but the counter is to simply increase the frequency of polarity shift to trick the warhead into thinking it's penetrated the shield, so that it blows before it's all the way through. That type of info isn't even really classified. The only way to break a shield is to hammer it so damn hard that it soaks off all the energy from the generators. And hammering means big ships with damn big guns which means battlewagons, not popgun fighters."
 
"And do you believe that?" Vance asked.
 
"Let's just say it's still doctrine at the Academy." He lowered his head and sighed. "Well, what was the Academy. Now, if some evidence came up to the contrary, we might see things differently."
 
"I just wonder if it's doctrine in the Kilrathi training schools," Richards said with a sigh.
 
"Well, Mr. Richards, maybe that's what you signed on for."
 
"Sir?"
 
"Let's just say I think you're going to find the next couple of months to be rather interesting."
 
"In what way sir?"
 
"Can you pilot a Wasp?"
 
Richards chuckled. "I bet even young Mr. Tolwyn, here, can do that."
 
Geoff bristled. "I was first in my class in subsonic, sonic, and transatmosphere training," he snapped. "I think I can handle an antique jump-capable craft like a Wasp."
 
"Well, the two of you can argue about who sits in the pilot's seat, because that's what we're using for starters."
 
"Sir, you've given us precious little," Richards said. "A Wasp is nothing but an old beat-up personnel transport. It's got one gun in case you run into some pirates, but that's just to give you something to hang on to while they rip you up. Just where are we going?"
 
"Oh, I did forget one technical point for you two," Turner announced.
 
"And that is, sir?" Vance replied warily.
 
"This little job is strictly voluntary. Voluntary and very, very classified."
 
"And our alternatives?" Richards asked.
 
"Well, son, the two of you have mouths too damn big for your own good. Mr. Tolwyn's affliction in this area is obvious and now rather infamous. Mr. Richards, you seem to have made one complaint too many to your ship's exec regarding lack of spare parts. That last one about him suffering from—what was it now?—cranial-fundamental insertion syndrome was just priceless, but also unwise. So if you turn this slot down, I think you've got a desk to ride here on McAuliffe, while Mr. Tolwyn, your assignment is so far out into the frontier at some one-man outpost that they haven't even named the damn place yet."
 
"Some choice," Richards replied. "Count me in."
 
Geoff nodded and said nothing.
 
"One minor detail that I'm required to explain to you. The classification level to this little job is rather high. Don't worry, you've both been cleared already by a rather, how shall I say, powerful friend up at the top. But you both better learn to keep your mouths shut."
 
Turner's easygoing professorial manner suddenly disappeared as he spoke, to be replaced with an ice-cold edge that Geoff found so out of character as to almost be frightening.
 
"That means forever, gentlemen. You keep your ideas and thoughts inside this little circle of ours and that is it. If you ever get back, no one will ever know, not for the rest of your careers. Do I make myself clear on that, gentlemen?"
 
"Yes, sir," both of them chorused.
 
"Because if you screw up while on this mission, if there's one loose word from either of you—" he paused, almost embarrassed at the melodramatic words he was about to use but which he knew were absolutely necessary, "—you will be terminated."
 
The two were silent.
 
"Do we understand each other and what I've just said?"
 
"Yes, sir."
 
Turner smiled and, motioning for the two to follow, he tossed a tip on the table and headed for the door.

Revision as of 05:02, 26 August 2021

Text

CONFEDERATION BASE MCAULIFFE


DATE: 2634.120


"Lieutenant Richards?"

Ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn snapped off a sharp salute as the lieutenant climbed out of the pilot's seat of his Hurricane space-to-surface fighter escort, the ground crew scrambling past Geoff to chock the wheels and hook in the fuel vent lines.

Richards pulled his helmet off, his cool dark eyes scanning the young ensign's features.

Geoff had a recollection of meeting Richards once before, back in his second year, when Richards served as a summer flight instructor for basic subsonic atmospheric flight, though he had never gone through the reported torture of spending an afternoon with Richards in the right seat. Richards had a reputation for being a washout maker, an instructor eager to give the dreaded red check mark, in any of a hundred different areas, that would forever ground the dreams of another fleggie pilot. He seemed to have aged. Wrinkles already creased back from his eyes and his hair was going gray, even though he was only twenty-six. Geoff wondered if this was part of the price of flying and sensed that it was, especially when the planes were usually far older than the pilots, and prone to catastrophic failure.

Richards stared at Geoff for several seconds before returning the salute.

"I was ordered to report to you here, sir," Geoff announced.

Vance nodded, turning away for a second to look back at the ground crew.

"Make sure you're careful screwing on that fuel exhaust vent line, the threads on it are damn near stripped," he said, and turned to look back at Geoff. "Should have junked the whole damn thing years ago."

Geoff knew enough, at least in this case, to remain silent. He had a couple of dozen hours in the twin seat variant, and the registration plate on that craft had showed the old bucket was nearly twice his age. And yet, even being close to what still was considered to be a primary strike escort craft set his pulse beating. On the rung of fighter pilots, flying a Hurrie was considered more than a few steps down from a Wildcat pure space interceptor, or even a heavy Falcon fighter-bomber. The Hurrie was a hybrid design, and like most hybrids trying to combine two functions into one, it did neither of them very well. Its original intent was to serve as a space-to-surface escort for the old Gladiator bombers and Sheridan marine landing craft. If jumped by a Wildcat equivalent, it was dead meat, and, down in atmosphere, if it ran up against something like a Hawk it was dead as well. But as such things often developed in the realm of pilots, Hurrie jocks might be disdainful of the craft, but inwardly they took a fierce pride in the knowledge that they had to be the best if they were going to survive. No one wanted assignment to a Hurricane squadron, but once chosen, few of them asked for a transfer after mastering the craft and learning to squeeze the last bit of performance out of one.

Richards went up to the nose of the Hurricane and, opening up a cargo hatch, pulled out a duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. Turning to the crew chief he handed over his helmet, signed off on the craft, then after hesitating for a second he gave the plane an affectionate pat before turning back to Geoff and motioning for him to follow.

"So you're the one who told Senator More off."

Geoff looked over at Vance and nodded.

"You're insane, kid, just screwed your career forever."

Geoff had nothing to say. It had not even been planned. He was simply walking past the senator, heading to the refreshment table to get a drink for his parents when he overhead part of the interview. Before he had even realized it, he was talking. That had always been one of his strong suits. It seemed that when the pressure was on, he could talk his way out of damn near anything, but there were times when he talked himself straight into the hole as well, and this was one of them. And yet, if he had it all to do over again, he'd still strike the same blow. There were a lot of ways to serve the Fleet, and if need be get your ass blown off for doing it. It might not be how he had planned it, but his confrontation had hit all the major vid services and in the ensuing flap more than one of More's compatriots from the opposition party had used Geoff's accusations. Unfortunately none of those senators were around when he had been summoned to the august presence of ClCCONFEDFLT himself, Admiral Spencer "Skip" Banbridge for one royal chewing out and banishment.

Chew outs from Banbridge were legendary, made even more frightening by his physical appearance. He was short, squat, built like a fireplug, with a mashed-in nose picked up when he had once been the Fleet's middleweight boxing champion. His command of vocabulary from the lower decks was legendary as well, and Geoff was given the full ten-minute treatment. The mere memory of being on the carpet was enough to make him wince. He could well imagine that the shouting could be heard in the next corridor, and the smirk on the face of one of More's aides, who was there to witness the reaming, was enraging.

"Anyhow, Tolwyn, do you know what the hell is going on?"

"Sir?"

Richards motioned for him to follow as the two headed across the tarmac. Overhead, the scorching red giant sun of McAuliffe seemed to fill half the sky. The light appeared to give everything a blood-drenched hue, which Geoff found somehow disturbing. The second sun, a small yellow dwarf, which orbited half a billion miles further out than the planet, was just beginning to rise in the east. Due to the orbital mechanics of it all, it'd be another forty years before anyone would actually see night again. Those assigned to the sprawling planet side buses of McAuliffe claimed that after six months on the planet you'd kill for the sight of a star.

"Why are we here, Tolwyn, do you have a clue?"

"I just touched down here on Johnson Island a couple of hours before you did, sir, on the transport out from Earth. I then received orders to report to you when you landed. That's all I know, other than that I'm to expect transport from here to wherever my final assignment is."

Richards shrugged. "Well, they said orders are waiting at the flight desk, so lets go."

Geoff fell in beside Richards as they took the long hike along the apron bordering the three-kilometer main landing strip. Hangars and work bays lined the strip, and parked out in front, in neat orderly lines, were hundreds of craft—Johnson Island being the main Confed Fleet surface and orbital base for the entire frontier sector bordering the inward galactic border with the Kilrathi Empire. It was, in fact, the Confederation's largest base other than Earth.

Geoff could not help but look in wide-eyed awe at the vast array of strike power lined up before him, entire squadrons of Hurricanes, Gladiators, Trident heavy bombers, and Hummer light recon and strike planes, arrayed wingtip to wingtip. And yet, on closer examination, even his unpracticed eye could see that more than one of the planes was missing an engine, or access hatches were pulled open to reveal that the guts of the plane were gone, and in some cases the plane was up on jacks and its wheels were missing.

Further back in the rows of planes he could see craft that should exist only in museums, even a few old Minotaurs which must be well over a hundred years old.

"Yeah, it's a junkyard," Richards said, as if reading his thoughts. "They look real nice and neat out here, all lined up. Hell, the base commander, Admiral Nagomo, can doctor any report to claim that every one of them can make space and fight, though he might neglect to add that maybe only a quarter of them could do it at any one time, since all the others would be providing the spare parts. Yet in readiness reports waved around by your friend More and others, each and every one of these craft is listed as A-1 status for frontline service."

"How is it upstairs?" Geoff asked.

"Seventh Fleet is spending nearly half its time now downside, to conserve on fuel, parts, the usual wear and tear. In fact, right now, all six of the fleet carriers are docked upstairs," and as he spoke Richards pointed up towards space. "If the Cats did the big one on us right now, we'd be out of the war in the first twenty minutes. There ain't another carrier cruising between here and Earth at the moment."

"I thought there'd be more going on here with the war rumors."

Richards laughed. "War? Hell, son, we're talking police action. That means just nudge them a bit, don't get too provocative. After all, the Cats are just misunderstood, need a little counseling. Didn't you hear that news vid commentator claim that it was all but our fault, that we didn't understand the cultural differences and once we did everything would be settled?"

The bitterness in Richards' voice was sharp edged and weary. The carriers were not even being committed to the Facin Sector. Task Force Twenty-three had sortied with a mixed match of two old battleships and their escorts and one old Ranger class carrier.

Geoff paused to look to the southeast and then up. The skyhook tower linking the planet's surface to the orbital base twenty thousand miles up was one of the engineering wonders of the Confederation. He felt a bit like a tourist as he slowed down for a moment to gape, looking up, the line of the tower soaring straight into the sky until it finally disappeared from view. North of the surface base were six fusion reactors, providing over a thousand gigawatts of power. Nearly all this energy went to the massive shielding systems which protected the ground base, or was wired up to the orbital base via the skyhook. It was the largest energy complex in the Confed and supposedly made Alexandria and the ground base of McAuliffe impervious to attack. No known weapon, traveling at a speed much faster than a walk, could penetrate the shields when they were activated.

That had always been the underlying paradigm of balance between ship weight and offensive and defensive power. A heavier ship with larger reactors meant more energy for shielding and plasma weapons, the only limit being the total mass that could be contained within the jump containment fields. Physically wiring the massive reactors into the base at the top of the skyhook supposedly made the base impervious to attack…as long as the reactors held. From that fact had come the massive array of weaponry, defensive perimeters and antiterrorist security ringing the base. As Geoff took it all in he could not help but wonder if the designers of McAuliffe had become so obsessed with defense that the concept of mobility had been forgotten. He remembered old Winnie, back at the Academy, calling McAuliffe the Maginot Line of space, though as he looked at it all now he could not help but feel that this was, indeed, a fortress base that would never fall.

Richards fell silent as they turned to head into the flight operations office, acknowledging the salute of the two marine guards posted by the entryway. Richards went up to the main desk, turned in his flight report, and took an envelope bearing the seal of the Confederation Fleet Personnel Office. A marine topkick stood in the corner of the room, silently observing them with hawk-like eyes. There was something vaguely disturbing about the way the topkick casually examined him, and Geoff found it difficult to hold his gaze. The sergeant finally stiffened slightly as if forcing himself to acknowledge that this young Academy graduate was indeed a superior officer. There was the flicker of a smile, a slight shaking of his head and the topkick walked out of the room. Richards tore open the envelope, scanned it and sighed.

Geoff watched him closely. Wherever Richards was going, he was going as well, and the look of confusion on the lieutenant's face did not seem to be a very good portent of things to come. He wondered what Richards' sins were that the albatross of the most talked about ensign in the halls of Congress would be tied to him.

"Let's go get a drink," Richards snapped, motioning for Geoff to fall in with him.

Geoff wanted to ask, but knew that Richards would tell him in his own good time. Leaving his duffel bag at headquarters, they headed for the base officer's club. Richards took a table in a far corner of the room, ordering Geoff to get a couple of beers from the bar. Geoff brought the drinks over and sat down across from him, waiting for some sort of comment while Richards sat, wrapped in silence, sipping his beer and scanning the empty room.

"So do you want to know?" Vance finally asked.

"I figured you'd get around to it eventually."

Vance let the flicker of a smile crease his features. "It's here."

"Sir?"

"Look, it's Vance, okay? At least when we're drinking together."

Geoff smiled. The gulf between cadets and officers spanned light-years. He knew that, once into the club, the barriers were relaxed a bit between ranks, at least off duty. Since graduation, though, this was the first time he had been allowed the privilege of addressing an officer by first name.

"You said it's here. What do you mean?"

"Just that," and Vance tossed the letter across the table.

Geoff took a look. After the usual cryptic acronyms, whereases, and therefores of fleet speak, the letter simply said to report to the base officer's club where they would be approached with further orders.

"Damned strange," Vance mumbled. "Damned strange. A week ago I'm a squadron leader, rumor kicking around that I'm about to move up to Lieutenant Commander and have a shot at a training wing, not a single red chit on any report, then boom, I'm told to report planetside as soon as my carrier docks. No explanation, no nothing. Typical fleet. You, when I heard I was to pick you up, I figured that since you royally pissed somebody off, I guess I did, too. But who?"

"Say, isn't that old Winston Turner over there?" Geoff said, looking past Vance to the entry door.

Vance looked over his shoulder. "Sure as hell is. Damn, he scared the crap out of me my plebe year. Found out later he was all right, but he sure was tough."

Turner scanned the room, picked up a drink from the bar and made straight for their table. The two stood up as he approached,

"Relax, gentlemen, sit down."

Geoff saw Turner glancing at Vance's orders, which were lying on the table.

"Sir, I suspect you're tied in with these orders," Geoff ventured.

"Why's that, Mr. Tolwyn?"

"Well, sir. They're rather cryptic and out of the ordinary. We come here, as ordered, and less than five minutes later you wander in."

"And the connection is?"

"Well, sir. Last I saw you was Earthside on graduation day. While I was dealing with my—" he hesitated for an instant, "—problem, I hear this report that you'd taken an early retirement along with a lot of the other professors. That struck me as strange."

"Why so?"

"Well, sir. I know you're good friends with Admiral Banbridge. I know you love the Fleet. I figured you to be one to stay on no matter what. Now you suddenly come walking in here, fifteen jump points away from Earth. So I guess our orders have something to do with you, sir."

Turner smiled. "Mr. Tolwyn, you always were an observant student, and yes, my being here has to do with your orders."

"How so, sir?" Vance asked.

"The two of you have been assigned to me."

Turner watched their reactions. He could almost sense relief from Geoff, who had undoubtedly been stewing in his own juices during the long transit out from Earth, wondering what godforsaken outpost he'd finally wind up in. As for Richards, the reaction was different. The announcement of a transfer meant that he was most likely grounded and the young lieutenant was obviously not very happy about the prospect.

Vance stirred uncomfortably. "Sir, in last week's issue of Fleet Proceedings I saw the notice about the shutting down of the Academy and your name was on the list of early retirements. How can we be assigned to you if you're officially on the way out?"

"I'm not quite out of the picture yet." Winston chuckled. "You'll notice my early retirement notice didn't specify a date. There's still one last assignment to be done and you two gentlemen have been nominated to give me a hand."

Geoff didn't know whether this was a compliment or not. After all, on the day before his encounter with Senator More he had already received his official orders posting him to Lunar orbital base five to start orientation training for the Wildcat fighter. He truly admired Turner, and would be the first to admit that the commander had done much to shape his own thinking about the fleet, its mission, and the inner sense that a crisis unlike any ever faced by the Confederation was about to unfold. Though he would never admit it to anyone, he sensed as well that there was a destiny to his life that meant that, when the time came, he would have a major part to play.

That belief, however, had been sorely tested by what happened after he had crossed the bow of Senator More's political machine and fired his pathetic shot. So now I'm attached to someone on the way out. He knew that he should feel uncomfortable with that thought. After all, Turner was one of the most respected intellectuals in all of the Fleet…but he was not a fighting commander and, by heavens, fighting was what he had trained for.

"You seem troubled, Mr. Tolwyn," Turner said softly, interrupting Geoff's musings.

"Well, sir, just curious, that's all," Geoff quickly replied and he motioned towards the orders which were still sitting on the table. "I mean, this is rather unusual."

"All in due time, Geoff, but first a couple of questions if you don't mind."

Turner looked over at Vance.

"How were things in your squadron, Mr. Richards?"

"Sir?"

"Just that. Not the type of crap you boys have to pump into your efficiency and readiness reports. I mean underneath it all. Your gut sense, what are you seeing, how do you feel about it all?"

Vance chuckled softly. "You got a couple of weeks, sir?"

"We might have more than that to get into the details, but give me the short form right now."

"Well, sir, regarding the men and women who fly the crates, they're top notch. The Academy, and even the outer world flight schools, are turning out some damn good pilots. They're dedicated as all hell, you'd have to be dedicated just to put up with all the crap. I'd stack them against anything out there."

"And the nonflight personnel?"

"The same. You know the old saying, 'You have to be half mad to join the Fleet, and fully mad to stay with it'? Well, it's true. You've got to be mad about the Fleet to stick with it. If there's a problem, it's the fact that we lose too many good people to the merchant fleets and commercial lines. They get through their six-year enlistment, some of them have families, they have damn good training, and you can't blame them for jumping. Sure, we have a lot of the old guzzler types, who could never find a job outside of the fleet, but even they know their jobs. So on that score I think we're in good shape."

"What about readiness, though?"

Vance sighed, exhaling noisily.

"If things should ever blow, we're going to be in the barrel."

"What do you mean blow?" Turner asked quietly.

"Come on, sir. The Cats, we all know what you're talking about. The damn Cats are just waiting for the chance to jump."

"What makes you think that?"

"The Varni should have taught us that," Geoff interjected. "The Cats come up to their border, there's a period of peace as the Cats figure them out, then a jump that ended the war in the first thirty days."

"That was forty years ago," Turner replied. "You'd think they might have done something before this. Hell, we didn't even have any kind of direct contact until just five years ago, and not a peep since."

"Just because they haven't doesn't mean they won't," Geoff continued. "Remember that rumor a couple of years back about their taking some settlement beyond the frontier before the demilitarized zone was established? Hell, if that's true, they can deduce a lot even from the standard equipment a group of colonists might have."

Richards shook his head. "Hell there's at least a thousand or more uncharted systems between our border and the Cats, thousands more out in the other directions. There's rumors of incidents like that all the time."

"Well, true or not, I think the Cats are gearing up for us," Geoff replied.

"Your friend Senator More might say you're paranoid," Turner said, a thin smile creasing his wrinkled features.

"Just because he's paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get us," Vance interjected, changing tack and coming about to Geoff's support. "And if they do, we're going to get our butts kicked."

"Why?"

"Sir, I saw some of your articles in Proceedings, why are you asking us?" Vance asked.

"Indulge me. I've been locked away in the Academy for years. I send you young men and women out, but I rarely hear what's going on afterwards, other than what I see in reports."

"Sir, it's the same old story. There's only six carriers for this entire sector, nine in the entire fleet. The appropriation of five years back under the old administration, right after we first ran into the Cats, called for a building program of eight more carriers. We only got two, one of them the new Concordia. The others were shut down and abandoned in Lunar orbit.

"The carriers we do have, other than Concordia, were launched before I was even born. They're antiques, held together with spit and duct tape. Even though Soryu is listed as being on-line, the truth is she's nothing more than a floating stockpile for spare parts, which get stripped out to keep the other five like her going. The fleet spends nearly sixty percent of its time docked right upstairs to save on engine time," and as he spoke he pointed up to where the fleet was now docked at Alexandria.

"That's only the carriers," Turner said. "We've still got the battlewagons and heavy cruisers."

Vance snorted with disdain. "And that's another thing, sir. When are they going to realize the next war will be a carrier war? Those brass-hatted jerks at the top just don't seem to get it."

As if realizing he had warmed perhaps a bit too much to his subject, Vance fell silent.

"Well, at least one brass hat I know might object to being called a jerk, but go on," Winston said with a wry smile.

"It's those battleship admirals, sir. They keep thumping their chests and saying that in a fleet to fleet action it's the big boys who will decide it."

"No carrier-launched craft has ever downed a battlewagon," Turner interjected, "you have to admit that. And remember, even Banbridge flew his flag on a battlewagon, not a carrier."

"What about those reports we got from the Varni?" Richards interjected.

"Which reports, Mr. Richards?"

Richards stumbled for a second and anxiously looked away. The official evaluation reports of the brief war between the Cats and the Varni were still classified. Some of the stuff was still triple A. Vance now found himself in a bind. How could he admit that he had cracked a couple of the fleet access codes and actually managed to get into some single A secured files?

"Don't worry, Mr. Richards," Turner finally said. "You might not have realized it, but more than one eager fighter jock has fooled around with security codes to try to find out information they shouldn't have. I remember you as always having an interest in that area. In fact, when you graduated. Speedwell over in Confed Intel was interested in getting you. He even talked to me about it."

Richards seemed to shudder at the mere mention of the idea.

"I'm a pilot, sir, not cypher. Sure it's a hobby of mine, and I still fool around with it, but flying's my game."

"What best serves the fleet, Mr. Richards?"

"The best thing I can do for the fleet is fly Hurricanes. Are you telling me this new job with you is intel?"

Turner smiled. "Later, son. Don't worry, you'll still get some flying in, but the details can wait. You were complaining about fleet doctrine and the Varni reports."

"It's just that—" and he hesitated. "It's just that there's a rumor that the Varni claim to have darn near destroyed a Kilrathi heavy cruiser with an all-out fighter attack. They said they should have nailed it, but the strike commander was killed and the coordinated attack to break down the phase shielding fell apart."

Turner nodded while reaching into his pocket and pulling out his pipe. Filling it up, he set it alight.

"The bigger the ship the more energy generating systems it contains," Turner said, as if delivering a well-worn lecture in class, "and from the energy systems they get more power for phase shielding. The only thing that limits the size of the ship is the area that the jump engine generators can encompass. That argues against this whole notion that fighter-size craft will ever be able to take out a battlewagon. They just don't carry enough punch, while a fifty-thousand-ton battlewagon can generate enough energy to power its shields and have enough left over so that its guns could annihilate a thousand fighters without getting a scratch. Sure, a couple of hundred of them hitting one single point might do that, but the heavy antispacecraft guns of a capital ship would rip them to shreds."

"Sir, you were part of the Panama system war games twelve years back, weren't you?" Geoff interjected.

"So?"

"Well, sir. That's where they did a simulation of a new type of weapon, small enough to be carried on a carrier-launched bomber, that can break through phase shielding. The three carriers wiped out all ten battlewagons on the Red team."

"I was there merely as an observer from the Academy," Turner replied while looking at the ceiling and blowing a smoke ring, "and I'm surprised, Mr. Tolwyn, to hear that you, like your companion, Mr. Richards, have also indulged in a little code breaking since that report is classified. And yes, the carriers did nail the battlewagons, at least until the umpires declared the strike null and void. According to official records, Red Fleet won that war game since the Blue admiral threw away his scouting capacity by wasting his carriers."

"And according to you?"

"I was just there as a fleet historian, I just recorded the results."

"But you were converted, weren't you, sir?" Geoff pressed.

"Let's just say I sat up and took notice. But that was speculation on a weapon that as far as we know doesn't exist. I think it's safe to say that our tech people have been fooling around with the idea of a weapon that can punch through phased shielding to nail a capital ship. I think it's safe to say they might have even developed some primitive models, but the counter is to simply increase the frequency of polarity shift to trick the warhead into thinking it's penetrated the shield, so that it blows before it's all the way through. That type of info isn't even really classified. The only way to break a shield is to hammer it so damn hard that it soaks off all the energy from the generators. And hammering means big ships with damn big guns which means battlewagons, not popgun fighters."

"And do you believe that?" Vance asked.

"Let's just say it's still doctrine at the Academy." He lowered his head and sighed. "Well, what was the Academy. Now, if some evidence came up to the contrary, we might see things differently."

"I just wonder if it's doctrine in the Kilrathi training schools," Richards said with a sigh.

"Well, Mr. Richards, maybe that's what you signed on for."

"Sir?"

"Let's just say I think you're going to find the next couple of months to be rather interesting."

"In what way sir?"

"Can you pilot a Wasp?"

Richards chuckled. "I bet even young Mr. Tolwyn, here, can do that."

Geoff bristled. "I was first in my class in subsonic, sonic, and transatmosphere training," he snapped. "I think I can handle an antique jump-capable craft like a Wasp."

"Well, the two of you can argue about who sits in the pilot's seat, because that's what we're using for starters."

"Sir, you've given us precious little," Richards said. "A Wasp is nothing but an old beat-up personnel transport. It's got one gun in case you run into some pirates, but that's just to give you something to hang on to while they rip you up. Just where are we going?"

"Oh, I did forget one technical point for you two," Turner announced.

"And that is, sir?" Vance replied warily.

"This little job is strictly voluntary. Voluntary and very, very classified."

"And our alternatives?" Richards asked.

"Well, son, the two of you have mouths too damn big for your own good. Mr. Tolwyn's affliction in this area is obvious and now rather infamous. Mr. Richards, you seem to have made one complaint too many to your ship's exec regarding lack of spare parts. That last one about him suffering from—what was it now?—cranial-fundamental insertion syndrome was just priceless, but also unwise. So if you turn this slot down, I think you've got a desk to ride here on McAuliffe, while Mr. Tolwyn, your assignment is so far out into the frontier at some one-man outpost that they haven't even named the damn place yet."

"Some choice," Richards replied. "Count me in."

Geoff nodded and said nothing.

"One minor detail that I'm required to explain to you. The classification level to this little job is rather high. Don't worry, you've both been cleared already by a rather, how shall I say, powerful friend up at the top. But you both better learn to keep your mouths shut."

Turner's easygoing professorial manner suddenly disappeared as he spoke, to be replaced with an ice-cold edge that Geoff found so out of character as to almost be frightening.

"That means forever, gentlemen. You keep your ideas and thoughts inside this little circle of ours and that is it. If you ever get back, no one will ever know, not for the rest of your careers. Do I make myself clear on that, gentlemen?"

"Yes, sir," both of them chorused.

"Because if you screw up while on this mission, if there's one loose word from either of you—" he paused, almost embarrassed at the melodramatic words he was about to use but which he knew were absolutely necessary, "—you will be terminated."

The two were silent.

"Do we understand each other and what I've just said?"

"Yes, sir."

Turner smiled and, motioning for the two to follow, he tossed a tip on the table and headed for the door.