by E A Wicklund
“It’s the free press, Aziz,” said McCray. His head began to throb as he wondered if Admiral Gaatz would still be sending attaboys after this fresh new disaster. “No one is going to stop them.”
“But this is madness. They’re making humanity’s most notorious psychopaths look like victims. Back in Madkhal, the guys in charge of this would be taken outside and shot.”
“You’re not in Madkhal any more.” Castellano shook his head. “And before you get any more dumb ideas, the streets of Elysium aren’t paved with gold, either.”
“Castellano is right,” McCray said. “Things aren’t as easy as it seems in Elysium. We have our own troubles. The civilian populace has a love/hate relationship with the military. They’re thankful we held off the Thallighari, but are still demanding we downsize significantly now that the war is over. We did cut back some, but the Admiralty resisted further reductions just in case the aliens change their minds. Since then, there’s been an undercurrent of distrust in the military’s intentions. Something like this will just feed beliefs in military overreach.”
“Protests are erupting across the McGowan Star Group,” continued the anchor. A scene of a protest appeared beside him. A throng of angry Madkhalis filled the square, pumping their fists and shouting. Some waved signs saying, ‘Death to Elysium!’ and ‘Madkhali Freedom. Out with the Oppressors!’
“Approximately one thousand people protested in Eppali Market in Callas. Two-thousand brought downtown traffic to a standstill as they marched to the capital in Jarustra. I turn now to our panel of experts and ask the question: What triggered today’s assault upon our peaceful Madkhalis? Is it merely the first step of the McGowan government to commit genocide, or a rogue operation by military officials with a racist agenda? This is what Governor Blanchard had to say.”
Governor Blanchard had been caught in the wood paneled hall of the Capitol Building, a forest of microphones thrust towards him by the press. He said, “In no way, has the McGowan government authorized any such military operation. This is a travesty that we cannot explain at this time. If it is indeed a rogue military operation, those responsible will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, believe me. No further questions, please.”
“There you have it,” said the anchor. “At best, we’re seeing a rogue operation as Governor Blanchard suggests. But does that rule out government involvement? Mr. Blanchard has been caught in lies before with his now infamous catchphrase, ‘believe me’. Is this just another deception? Here now is...”
McCray rubbed his temples and groaned. He loved his nation; he really did, but sometimes the press made that difficult. He wanted nothing less than to get back into space where things made sense.
While Castellano’s marines screamed at Schubert’s anchorman, he keyed Iris and signaled Major Candless.
“Major, please tell me that Fightin’ Franny is refueled, and we can get out of here.”
“Almost there, Skipper,” said Candless. “In about ten minutes, she’ll be ready. Why? Is everything all right?”
“I’ve been watching the news.”
Candless murmured sympathetically, “I stopped torturing myself with that twenty minutes ago. I just about puked.”
“Okay. Keep me updated. McCray out.”
His Iris lit up again, an insistent red light in the corner of his vision. This time it was Springbok, trying to contact him via whisker laser communications routed through Vickers base comms.
“McCray here.”
“Captain,” said Commander Zahn. “The sooner you can get here, the better. We’ve got company.”
McCray sat up. The tension in Zahn’s voice put him on alert. “What kind of company?”
“A Madkhali battlecruiser just emerged from hyper. It’s one of the new Nassar class. She’s headed directly for Huralon III, and she’s coming in hot at 341 gravities acceleration.”
McCray felt a shiver run down his spine. Gaatz had suggested capturing Senator Mallouk’s son might have significant repercussions. “That’s not good. No one approaches at flank speed for a social call.”
“That was my thought, too.”
“All right. We’re leaving in ten mikes. We’ll arrive in forty. Prepare the boat bay for a combat landing.”
“Copy that, sir. We’ll be ready.”
McCray dropped the call and contacted Candless once more. “Major. Finish that fueling now. We need to run.”
“But we’re almost done. What’s happening?”
“There’s a Madkhali Nassar class battlecruiser approaching the planet right now.” Springbok may have gotten away with one, taking on the light cruiser Scirocco and winning. A Nassar class battlecruiser was a whole different ball game. His ship didn’t have a chance against it.
“But don’t single Madkhali units make port calls in Elysium often? Why should we be worried?”
“Not that big and not without advance notice, and this one is approaching at max accel right after the son of a powerful Madkhali senator has been accused of piracy. I’m thinking Daddy has arrived to get his son out of jail.”
“Ouch. Got it. We’re stopping now and coming to get you.”
Minutes later, McCray, Aja, and the Cretins waited on the tarmac as Candless’s shuttle approached for a landing. McCray shook the hand of Colonel Bertram. “Thanks for the hospitality. Much appreciated.”
“My pleasure, Captain,” said Bertram. “And I’m sorry you can’t stay longer, but you’re probably better off gettin’ the hell out now. With that big Madkhali bastard coming in all fangs and claws, this base is a likely target if shooting starts.”
“You going to be all right?”
“We’ll be fine. I’m scattering Ramjacks to makeshift bases across the region. They won’t get us all in one shot if it comes to that.”
McCray nodded. He squinted as dust swirled while Fightin’ Franny touched down. “You gotta broadcast the holos we sent to you. The people need to know.”
Bertram shook his head with a scowl. “Still can’t. I don’t know what crawled up the governor’s ass, but he says it’ll cause a panic or some dumb shit like that. Legally, I have to go with what he says.”
“That’s crap,” spat McCray. “Blanchard’s got a civic duty to warn the population!”
“I know that, and to make matters worse, you can’t do anything either. I’m sorry Captain, but I am ordered to and hereby invoke Article 29. In case you don’t know, that means I am authorized in this rare case to tell a civilian, that’s you, to keep his trap shut about what he knows.”
McCray clenched his fists. “Colonel, that’s the biggest load of—”.
“You’re preachin’ to the choir, son. But don’t you worry. This ol’ dog knows a few tricks Blanchard never heard of. We’ll get the word out, somehow.”
Castellano followed the last marine on board and called from the hatch. “You coming, Vann?”
“Git yer ass out’a here,” said Bertram. “Fair stratas and all that shit.”
“Give ‘em hell, Colonel.” And McCray boarded the shuttle.
***
Fightin’ Franny pounded through the sky at 6,000 meters. The clouds above them looked like diaphanous grey foothills as they hurtled past. The marine shuttle cruised at Mach 8, rather slow and just under half her max speed, but a velocity necessary to maintain their hastily assembled cover story.
“Naristol Control, this is flight Juliett Bravo 0-0-7 checking in,” said Candless.
McCray, listening in to the shuttle’s comm traffic via his Iris, couldn’t help but smile at the ancient reference.
“0-0-7, this is Naristol Control. Copy that. Whew. You folks seem in an awful big hurry for such low altitude. You late for a date?”
“Negative Naristol. Lightning Tours does it like that. Our customers expect a wild and crazy ride.”
McCray smiled. Candless probably thought this was dead slow, but civvies thought anything above Mach 5 for a mere planetary hop was nuts.
“Just between y
ou and me,” Candless continued, “I’m hoping to make it to Corsa Buena before the tequila runs out.”
“You better hurry, 0-0-7. They go through Margies mighty fast out there. All right, maintain current speed and climb to altitude twelve-thousand. Your flight path is clear. Naristol out.”
McCray turned to Aja. “How’s things at your end?”
“All set up. One minute to go.”
“How did your folks do it?”
Aja shook her head and smiled. “You shouldn’t even know this much. It’s way above your clearance. But I want to know why Naristol thinks you’re a civilian flight..”
“Just because I’m Navy doesn’t mean I don’t have secrets or secretive means of getting things done. Anyway, what happened to quid pro quo?”
“C’mon,” Aja pressed.
McCray sighed and leaned back into his seat. He would never win a debate involving security clearances. “We can tweak the settings on the Agrawal fields and make our shape look like anything we want to radar scans. We could look like a hunting bird if we wanted.”
She looked impressed. “That’s handy.”
“It is. It works best against civilian scans. They aren’t set up to penetrate Agrawal fields. Add to it, our paddles only extend out to 500 meters. That’s the longest paddle a civilian craft is allowed. When Naristol sees our short paddles, they just assume we’re civilian. Shorter, dark paddles mean less chance of a collision. It also means the civilian craft are generally slower. When Candless lights it up, we’ll extend our paddles out to 1,500 meters, and then we’ll really get moving.”
Aja crossed her arms. “If you can do all that, why bother with the subterfuge? Why did you ask me to blind Naristol at all?”
“Good question. When we extend those paddles out, they’ll know we’re not a civilian at all. And if they bother to track us after we become something we’ve claimed we’re not…”
“And they almost certainly will track us.”
“Right. And then when they track us all the way until we disappear into a ship-shaped black hole…”
Aja finished for him. “And that happens to be Springbok in Space Black mode. So people might ask uncomfortable questions.”
“Precisely. Your job was to make sure they don’t see that.”
“I suppose that would raise an eyebrow or two. At least it’ll be exciting flying so fast.”
“Not really. Inertial balancers eliminate the sense of motion. You won’t feel a thing, at least not until we get to the combat landing.”
“What happens…” Aja suddenly stopped. “Hang on. Ten seconds now.”
“Standby, Major. Almost time to do your thing.” McCray tightened his seat strap. He’d flown with Candless a few times. The maneuvers she liked sometimes caused inertial bleed-through and that could mean a bumpy ride
“At last,” breathed Candless. “I get to have some fun.”
Aja said, “Three…two…one. We should get confirmation any moment now.”
“0-0-7, this is Naristol Control. Please come in.”
“There’s your confirmation,” grinned Aja.
“Naristol, this is 0-0-7. Go ahead,” said Candless.
“0-0-7, be advised. We’ve had a sudden fault in our tracking system. We do not, I repeat, we do not currently hold you in our system.”
“Copy that, Naristol. What does this mean? Are we okay?” Candless sounded tense, though McCray could see her in the cockpit, completely relaxed.
“Steady on, 0-0-7. You’ll be fine. When we last had you, the scope was clear. Maintain course and speed, and you’ve got no worries.”
“Okay, Naristol. Please keep me advised. I don’t like flying blind like this. 0-0-7 out.”
“Okay, Candless,” said McCray. “Do it.”
The view on the forward screen shifted radically. Candless grinned as she pitched the shuttle up violently and began a vertical climb through the atmosphere. The thick layer of clouds they passed through before slipped behind them, as if suddenly caught in a violent windstorm. They shot through a layer of high altitude clouds just as quickly and soon rocketed through the troposphere at Mach 18.
Their two DaggerSwifts were right beside her in tight formation and in full space black mode, easily keeping pace, and once again, invisible to the shuttle.
Candless pitched again and rolled, the stars of space reeling in the display. When she finished, the planet appeared on their port side, its turquoise sky streaked with clouds. Patterns of green and purple below, indications of native flora mixed in with Terran flora, swirled across the land formations.
“Okay, everyone,” said McCray, drifting down the center aisle between the marines like a steward checking his charges. “We’re about to make a combat landing aboard Springbok. It’s a bit different from a normal docking. It happens much faster. We use it to recover shuttles as quickly as possible while under fire.”
“You hear that, boys?” said Castellano. “In Elysium, they wouldn’t just leave us behind.” He looked up at McCray. “We don’t do combat landings back home. If the ship has to leave suddenly, us hardworking marines are just SOL.”
“There is a certain amount of danger,” continued McCray. “We’ll be approaching Springbok at high relative speed. We’ll enter a magnetic chute extending from the ship’s shuttle bay. This is sometimes called the Pooper Chute. It will slow us down incredibly quickly, ensuring we don’t crash into the bay and explode into little tiny pieces.”
“I feel better already,” said Palomino. “Though not about penetrating a pooper chute.”
McCray chuckled. “Trouble is we cannot use dark paddles to maneuver into the chute. You can expect to experience up to sixteen gees for about four seconds.”
“Sixteen gees,” spluttered Aziz. “Won’t that kill us?”
“If it was sustained, yes, but you are in crash couches designed to keep you alive for just such a landing. For just four seconds, it’ll simply be uncomfortable.”
“No, pulling out fingernails is uncomfortable,” said Aziz. “Ramming yourself into pooper chute and dying is the worst ever. You Navy guys are nuts!”
McCray looked around at the other marines in the shuttle and noticed their wide-eyed expressions. He realized then how comfortable life was in a counter-gravity civilization. Even its most hardened warriors, experienced with vessels traveling at tens of thousands of kilometers per second, rarely experienced more than one Earth-normal gee.
“You’ll all be fine,” said McCray, pausing to secure Aziz in the gooey impact gel of his crash couch. “All of you are in outstanding physical shape. At worst, you might break a nail.”
Fifteen minutes later, the boat bay doors of Springbok’s blunt fantail opened at the last moment. Fightin’ Franny, securely nestled in the pooper chute, braked from six-hundred meters per second, relative to Springbok, to zero in just 4.17 seconds. Magnetic fields gently set the marine shuttle down on its landing skids.
McCray rose from his crash couch a little sore, but feeling invigorated. It had been a long time since his last combat landing as an assault shuttle pilot. The adrenaline rush reminded him of the highs he once knew as a young lieutenant. He still had the physical modifications of all Navy pilots that mitigated high-gee maneuvers. To him, the landing was like a cliff-diver hitting the water, tough, but thrilling. He practically bounced out of the shuttle doors as they opened, pleased to be back aboard ship and in familiar territory.
The Chief of the Boat Bay blew the ship’s whistle into the ship-wide announcement system in the centuries’ old naval tradition. He followed the whistle with, “Springbok, arriving.” Also in naval tradition, the captain’s arrival was announced with the ship’s name, not the captain’s name, as though ship and captain were the same entity.
Looking behind him, McCray watched the powerful bulk of Matuczak staggering down the shuttle’s gangplank, wobbling slightly as he stepped. He felt sorry for the man who lacked his own high-gee body mods. Matuczak probably felt like he’d just exper
ienced a high-speed slider wreck. Reaching the deck, the big man turned to the side and projectile vomited. Aziz followed him, crawling on hands and knees. “Only break a nail, my ass!” he muttered.
More of the Cretins stumbled out looking like they’d run a marathon, some staining the deck as they heaved, others looking like they’d been thrown out a fourth-story window, though that might’ve been less violent than the combat landing.
Aja walked beside him looking a little green at the gills, but generally okay. She watched the marines too, looking sympathetic. “Was that really necessary? Couldn’t we have just docked normally? Naristol was blind after all.”
McCray turned and walked fast towards the hatch. He needed to get to the bridge soonest. “There are other ships in orbit too. They could’ve been watching and saw the open boat bay. Besides, there’s that Nassar class coming in fast. The closer she gets the better chance she can detect us, even if we’re Space Black. And if she does, I have little doubt she will fire immediately. We won’t stand a chance.”
Aja nodded. “Makes sense. Then our best defense is running for it.”
“Precisely. We’ve got to get to New Chicago and quick. Something is seriously going wrong here. Colonel Bertram knows exactly what happened at Arcoplex. Madkhali mercenaries landed on Elysium soil. That’s little different than a declaration of war.” McCray ran his fingers through his hair, trying to think through all the possible permutations of the insane situation. “Yet Bertram gets handed a gag order by the governor. Why? And do you think it’s coincidence that Madkhali ground forces make an attack on a government facility merely one day before a capital ship arrives unannounced?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Aja.
“Me neither. And Blanchard has to know what Bertram knows, but the fecking Governor stands out there talking crap about rogue military operations. What in hell is going wrong with the government?”
Aja’s eyes narrowed. “All this tells me there’s a shitstorm coming.”
McCray opened the hatch. “That’s right, and if it arrives with a Nassar class battlewagon involved, I want to be gone.”