Lightship

by Stephan Besik

  He mixed keyboard commands and his joystick as he took the backup relay Panther out of its circular flight pattern and headed it north. He thought he could get a good shot in just a few more seconds. These guys almost certainly weren’t expecting fire from above and south of them. The tough part was getting a good shot before they fired on the Panthers they were after. His UAV was a lot slower, but they were moving northwest and he was above them on a northerly course that would close with them for a short time. If he waited too long, though, they would flash by his Panther and there would be no catching them. He couldn’t fly too far east, either, or he’d start moving away from them and back toward Anapa.

  His bird had more than enough fuel for some high-speed travel but six hundred knots was just not fast enough, His missiles traveled at Mach four, though, so his best bet was to get them targeted and away as fast as possible. He armed his AIMs. The fighters were pretty far apart, making sure that one shot wouldn’t kill them both. The range to his targets was closing slowly, and the fighters were getting closer to Charlene’s birds by the second. They’d be shooting real soon, and Char’s birds would be sitting ducks. He was already at near-point blank range for his missiles.

  The relay bird he was flying had a full wingload of AIMs- six on hardpoints because neither of the relays carried Mockingbird pods. Enzo decided on a spread of four missiles, two each for the two fighters. He wanted some in reserve in case he missed. He pulled the trigger.

  “Missiles away, sir. Two headed for the lead and two for the wingman. Wingman likely to be hit first. He’s lagging his leader by quite a bit. Flying like they expect some counter action.”

  “How long?”

  “A little more than sixteen seconds.”

  “Char, you’re going to need countermeasures and you’ll have to do some evasion. They’re almost in range and Enzo’s AIMs are sixteen seconds away.”

  Just then Raquel’s voice could be heard. “The lead’s fired missiles, Char. Two at approximately fifteen seconds at Tex’s bird. Mach four.”

  Emmett could hear Tex as he went in to action. “Countermeasures launched. Gonna try Enzo’s move. Shutting down my bird’s engine, going into a descending glide.”

  Charlene, who was flying the other bird for her team, joined in. “Countermeasures dropped, decreasing speed and turning about to cover exhaust. Ready to launch if I get a shot.”

  Emmett replied, “Go for it, people.” As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t going to second guess decisions under fire. He had good people.

  The next five seconds seemed to last forever. Missiles were closing but it wasn’t clear yet what the result would be.

  Enzo gave the next update. “Three seconds to targets, sir. No sign the AIMs have been spotted. Closing on the wingman.”

  Charlene’s move hid her UAV behind a curtain of light and heat as her countermeasures activated. She took a long turn to minimize the heat profile of her bird, presenting her ‘cold’ nose and tiny head-on profile to the enemy missiles.

  “Got the wingman, Em! The lead started evasion as soon as his wingman was gone. I don’t think my shot will get him, he’s veering off, down and away. He wasn’t expecting a shot from behind him.”

  With the countermeasures covering heat and vision, Tex’s move had gotten his Panther away. Two curtains of light and heat fairly close together had confused the Russian missiles and they no longer had locks on either of Charlene’s birds.

  “We may be home free,” said Raquel. “Confirm the hit on the second fighter. The other Russian is moving away. He’s alive but he must have been really surprised by the flank shot that took his wingman. Smart move on his part to get away.”

  Everything went quiet in the E-7s as they waited to see if the Russian came back or had any friends in the neighborhood. A couple of minutes went by without any change. Emmett took a deep breath.

  “All right. Let’s get back on course to home. How is everyone doing? Char, how’s your fuel situation?”

  “I’m okay. Didn’t burn much in the turn around. I’m going to be pretty lean, but I’ll think she’ll make it back. Tex, how are you doing?”

  “Little bitch didn’t want to restart. Took a few tries but she’s okay now. I think I’ve got a little to spare.” He hesitated. “Sorry about the language, ma’am.”

  Emmett could hear a bit of a smile in Char’s voice when she replied. “You better be, Tex. Remember who you’re flying with. And come back up to altitude. We don’t want to have blips all over somebody’s screen if we can avoid it.”

  Emmett checked in with his people. “Jaime, how it’s going down there?”

  “Smooth as silk, boss. No sightings and the water is like glass.”

  “Sounds good. Climb back up to altitude. Take it slow and easy. No reason to get anyone stirred up with a fast pass. Get joined up and above the terrain when we hit the coast.”

  “Got it, sir. Slow and easy it is.”

  “Enzo, everyone is past the relay point. You want to fly your two back? I think it’s time to collect our birds and head home.”

  “Yessir. I can handle them both. Set courses and head them back.”

  “Good job, everyone. We’re not home yet, though. Keep alert and follow the return flight plan. The sooner we get past this lake the safer we’ll be.”

  Emmett settled back in his seat and tried to relax. Even at a distance aerial combat got muscles tight and adrenaline flowing.

  He wasn’t happy about his team taking out the Russian fighter, but it had been them or his birds. Besides, in wartime you could never tell how things would go. It was unlikely, but they may have been able to follow the UAVs back and found his E-7s. That could have cost him real people.

  His people had handled the problem well, and for that he was really grateful. He was also grateful for the technology that allowed him to send machines, rather than people, in harm’s way. With all the people that had been lost in the war, the last thing he wanted to do was to send condolences to the relatives of his teammates- if he could even find them. In a few hours the mission would be over and they’d be back on board. Then he might be able to relax for a while, and maybe give some thought to Loretta back in Charleston.

  After Action

  Emmett sat in the admiral's ready room with Admiral Meyers, Captain Georgian of Truman, Truman's air group leader Captain Jenson, and Emmett's squadron leader, Commander Adams. The young lieutenant commander was a little nervous; it wasn't often he got interviewed by an admiral. Apart from the admiral, he wasn't exactly sure why he was nervous. The mission had been a complete, casualty-free success. The only losses had been a bunch of minidrones and one Panther. They still had a couple dozen of the little guys still in boxes in case they were needed again. The loss of the Panther hurt, but the squadron had two replacements in the hangar. There weren't many mission leaders who came back casualty-free after a job.

  Captain Jenson led off the meeting.

  "Commander Oakley, we've all read your report. You and your people are to be commended for a highly successful mission. We have notified the President that your objective was achieved. He expressed his gratitude and said that there would be commendations all around for the task group, the air group, and all of the members of the team."

  "Thank you, sir. We have a very good team. The technology worked well, too. The drones did their jobs. The Mockingbird minidrones were a critical resource. We might never have been sure of our target without them. My team hated to have them self-destruct, but of course there was no way to bring them home. Frankly, sir, we might not have been successful without the minidrones. The big Panthers were too high to get angles on the target that would permit successful pattern recognition. If we knew then what we know now about our opposition, we probably could have taken them down closer to our target and still had minimal losses."

  "We had some questions for you about the opposition, or rather the lack thereof. In your report you stated that the threat manager in your team reported no air traf
fic up until your drones were chased by two enemy fighters. You also reported that while there were some defensive positions around the city, it appeared that your drones were completely undetected, to the extent that there were no signs of opposition, or even potential opposition, until after the attack. Your report seemed to suggest that the SAMs might have been fired based on little more than the direction of our attack."

  "That's right, sir. We think at least the launch of the first bunch of SAMs didn’t have much to go on except that fact that they had been attacked. We observed what appeared to be conventional mobile radars and some advanced mobile SAM batteries but we think they were shooting blind and didn’t get a lock until their first launch was in the air. The drones weren't under threat until after the enemy had some sense of where the Dragonfires came from, and even then we think they had to expend a lot of weaponry to get lucky on the second launch. Of course, our manned planes were quite a distance from the actual target so my people weren’t under threat at all."

  “Yes, I recall that from our planning sessions. We're surprised that there was no air traffic at all, though. Is there any way we can confirm that?"

  Emmett was surprised by the question. "Well, we had no contacts that the drones detected and they did a number of fairly long flights over the Black Sea. I mean, the mere fact that our drones did as much flying as they did in transit and over the target without encountering any traffic at all suggests there's not much if anything in the air over southern Russia. They sent up two fighters, but that’s not much of a counterattack given the damage we did. We didn't encounter any kind of air over Bulgaria, or Greece for that matter. You might want to talk to Raquel Mendoza, who was our threat manager for this mission, if you need more details."

  Jenson replied, "Are we sure that there was so little air traffic over the RSR? We thought the drone stealthing might be good enough for them to avoid detection, but no air traffic at all was startling."

  Emmett thought for a moment. "Well, what would you expect over the U.S. now? Is anything flying over our territory? Anything other than planes from the Navy, I mean?

  Admiral Meyers answered, "There is a little light plane traffic for government business, but fuel supplies are so tight even those are restricted. We thought with the availability of oil from the fields in Kazakhstan the RSR might be able to put more planes in the air. It sounds like they can't."

  Emmett looked bleak. "Sir, I think we may have underestimated the degree of destruction wrought by our nuclear counterattack. Raquel, I mean Lieutenant Gomez, said she looked at a number of major cities in the region around Anapa and didn't see even ground traffic, let alone aircraft. Places like Sevastopol and Odessa. When we got to the target we saw military vehicles strung out along the highway from the north. We guessed that the guy we hit had brought something like a division down with him but they couldn't keep their vehicles fueled. Even if they had been short men I don't think they would have abandoned vehicles if there was a way to keep them running. There was about an armored regiment in parks in the city, but they could have been low or out of fuel as well. Since we spotted no air traffic at all before our attack, I was a bit surprised they put up two fighters. Still, that wasn’t much of a response with what we did to them. That suggests they are low on fuel or low on aircraft, or perhaps both."

  Meyers looked at his senior officers. "It sounds like they are in the same or worse condition than we are."

  No one spoke for a moment, and then Emmett addressed he admiral. "Sir, I've been thinking about this ever since we got our orders. I'm not sure this mission was worth it. Sure, we suffered no casualties and the guy would have been a high-value target prewar, but this was a risky proposition all the way. If there had been any resistance we could have lost all of my people. Even if we somehow managed to bring our E-7s back, the drones could have been lost and the munitions we used are virtually irreplaceable. As it was, we traded a drone for a fighter. A good trade under other circumstances, but right now the technology might be worth a lot more than one enemy aircraft. We probably won’t face Russian air ever again and we’re down a drone that can provide a big advantage for reconnaissance and even long distance attacks. There won't be any more Dragonfires or Mockingbirds, and there won't be any more of our planes either.

  “For all we know this guy just made a big mistake and the men he had with him might have been critical to bringing order and maybe even civilization back to the RSR. Frankly, sir, I think our people and our hardware are too valuable now to be running payback missions on the other side of the world."

  He looked down at his shoes. "I know I'm speaking out of turn, but maybe if a few more people had spoken up in the old days we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now."

  "Son, we had our orders," admonished the admiral. "The President is commander-in-chief, and we do what the President wants."

  "I know, sir. Maybe this one was in a gray area. I just hope in the future the Navy can spend its resources helping to fix things, rather than blow up more stuff."

  The admiral nodded. "I understand, son. When we talk to the President we'll tell him we'd like more time helping to put things back together." The admiral sat for a minute. "All right, Commander. Convey my compliments to your people. You're excused.”

  He turned to Commander Adams. "You too, Harvey. I'm sure there will be a unit citation awarded shortly."

  Emmett and Harvey Adams stood quickly and saluted. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." They both headed for the door.

  Captain Jenson looked at the admiral. "Sir, I thought the President was a woman."

  The admiral looked bleak. "Apparently she died shortly after we left port. Radiation poisoning. They couldn't keep her going any longer. It's taken a while to figure out who was going to take over for her. I heard there was a bit of a fight between her successor as Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader. Some senator won. I don't know much about this guy; the majority leader in the Senate prewar died in the attack. I'm not even sure the new President was in Congress prewar. I guess we'll find out more when we brief the new man on the mission. We're trying to get time on his schedule now. Obviously he's a pretty busy guy."

  Coming Home

  As soon as Truman reached port and he had some free time Emmett called Loretta. It had taken a number of phone calls to get through to her. The cell service wasn't working reliably and he had never gotten through to her phone. He managed to get the central number for the port authority, though, and it turned out the operator had a new hard copy directory that had Loretta listed at one of the Navy numbers in port administration.

  Emmett could feel the warmth in Loretta's voice when she realized who was calling.

  "I'm so glad you're back," she said. "How did everything go? Did you see any action? Wait. How long are you going to be in port?"

  He laughed. "Okay, important question first. I don't know exactly how long we'll be here but I'm pretty sure it will be a while. Everything went fine. We did see action but I don't think I can share much about the mission, at least not any time soon. Now I have a question for you. When can I see you?"

  "My evenings are free. Things have changed some, though. Housing is tight and I just got a couple of roommates. If we want time alone, it will take a little work."

  "A little work never hurt anybody. I might even be able to stand a little deferred gratification. How about we start tonight?"

  He could hear the smile in Loretta's voice. "Patient, are we? I’ll think I’ll have to do something about that.” She laughed. “Sounds like a plan. We start tonight."

  Lightship

  A Man with an Idea

  Kevin Lee had a hard time believing what he’d found at first. He was leafing through some hard copy industry mags in the library when he came across some notes on recent advances.

  He was stalling on the work he was supposed to be doing for his doctoral dissertation. The topic he had chosen was boring, even though it would be an advance beyond current thought in his field of study. Kev
in was not happy; the topic would get him a doctorate but other than that he thought it was a complete loser. Dropping the topic would make his advisor (who thought his topic was ‘phenomenal’) really angry. He would probably have to find a new advisor and start all over again. He was stuck.

  Then he ran across the articles and suddenly his mind started churning. It wasn’t a field he was really familiar with but he was a solid hands-on engineer. Given a little time and commitment he felt he could pull together pretty much any kind of hardware, at any size. It might be a little arrogant, but it was pretty close to the truth.

  He did some checking on the materials advances. The new solar sheeting was lightweight, very efficient at converting sunlight to electricity, and flexible enough to roll onto a decent sized cylinder. The sheets couldn’t survive a right angle bend but were fine with a fairly small curve. The stuff would greatly reduce the weight of a solar power-generating installation. With power radiating out of the sun at nearly 1.4 kilowatts per square meter, a lot less weight and more efficiency could go a long way toward powering a spaceship.

  He did a little exploration into various forms of electric rocket motors. The best options seemed to be systems that turned a fuel into a plasma, causing a relatively small mass of fuel to be expelled at very high speeds. Where a rocket propelled itself with a large mass of low-energy fuel, a plasma drive accelerated a small amount of fuel to very high speeds. The result was a substantial amount of momentum to propel the ship, using less fuel. That saved on weight (less fuel required) and, in theory, the ability to achieve very high speeds due to nearly constant acceleration.

  It was the constant acceleration part that was interesting. A plasma engine didn’t have to be enormously powerful. The engine could just push a little bit, all the time. In space, no friction meant that a constant push resulted in constant acceleration. If a ship was constantly accelerating, it would end up going pretty fast in a relatively short period of time.