by Laer Carroll
"You'll be pilot, Em. Scout is pretty automated and I'll be backstopping you, so feel at ease. That blank panel is the FTL controls. Airports do not like mysterious aircraft to pop out of hyperspace in their area."
"Ma--Jane, are you sure? I can fly a sailplane but not an aircraft."
"Like I said, Scout and I will be backstopping you. You cannot make a mistake. Scout will do the right thing and tell you what you did wrong. Boeing spent a lot of time on making this craft easy and safe to fly, especially in high tension situations."
Jane turned her head to see how the two men were doing. Both had adjusted their vear headsets and were gazing at a mirror of the control board in front of the two pilots.
The spaceship's pilots' controls were similar to those of automobiles rather than those of aircraft, with the addition of controls specific to aerospace vehicles. The design had a grim purpose; if the pilot was killed in space combat untrained passengers might be able to control the vehicle.
Jane had Emily lift the Scout onto its floater field then advance two hundred feet nearer the nearest runway of Colorado Springs Airport. As Emily was doing that, very cautiously but without hesitations, Jane contacted the airport traffic control system. She identified herself and her craft and asked if her earlier-filed travel plan was still approved.
"Scout Aerospace Vehicle 3 that is affirmative. Be advised on that runway we have a Gulfstream G760 taxiing to launch point. Wait ten, wait ten."
"Roger, Colorado Springs Air Traffic Control. Waiting ten."
She turned her head toward Emily and partly back toward the two men.
"When you take your pilot training you'll find that much of the learning is communication protocols, both civilian and military. It's absolutely essential to coordinate your vehicle with all the other vehicles in air and space. Events can happen very fast at modern aerospace speeds, including colliding with others. And avoiding being a target in combat situations."
Soon a midsize private aircraft, the Gulfstream mentioned by ATC, passed by on the runway in front of them. It was moving rapidly already and accelerating to takeoff speed. Jane reported to ATC that she had seen the vehicle.
"Scout Aerospace Vehicle, you are correct. You are now free to advance to the runway and begin your roll up to liftoff."
"Understood, Colorado Springs. We are beginning our run. Thank you."
Jane said to Emily, "Pilot, move onto the runway and turn to follow the Gulfstream. The autopilot will take it from there."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
As soon as Scout's robot pilot took over Jane said, "Our craft will mimic an ordinary aircraft until we reach the limits of the control area. We could go straight up; we don't have wings. But that means we'd have to help our robot pilot keep an eye on our radar and on the air in front of and to the sides of us. Too much danger of a collision. Those can happen very quickly even with the robot's help."
Scout climbed quickly to 100,000 feet, flying directly west and lofting easily over the Rocky Mountains. This was three times higher than the levels where commercial aircraft flew and two times higher than most high-performance military craft. The outside air pressure was one percent that of sea level and the air temperature was around sixty degrees below zero.
In this regime Scout could safely travel at several thousand miles per hour. Jane had Emily held it down to a leisurely 3000 miles per hour, so it took only 20 minutes to reach the San Francisco Bay area. There in Palo Alto, California, is where Natalie's daughter Naomi was going to school at Stanford University.
During that time Jane chatted with Grant's two friends, getting to know a little about them and setting them at ease in her presence. She kept it casual, which also let them enjoy the view on the several view screens inside Scout. At that height the sky was black and only blue near the horizon. The Earth's curvature was obvious.
One could see almost 400 miles to the horizon, so everyone could see the Pacific rolling toward them halfway through the flight. Jane shut up for a time. It was an awe-inspiring sight for the three cadets. It even impressed her though it was no longer new.
Maybe that was part of how the ever-young survived the passing of the centuries and millennia.
Five minutes out Jane guided Emily to slow the Scout and bring it down to regular heights and speeds. She contacted traffic control of Palo Alto Airport, the closest civilian airport to Stanford University. She also called Naomi on the girl's cell phone.
"Hey, Chickadee. We're coming down at the airport. How're you doing?"
"I'm ten minutes out according to the Flyt car I'm in. Thanks for the text earlier saying you'd left Colorado."
"It'll be like the last time. Go to the private jet part of the terminal."
"Will do, Aunt Jane. Bye."
"Bye."
Emily looked over at Jane.
"Are you really her aunt?"
"By adoption. Informal adoption. To me it's as real as if it was by birth. Maybe realer. We chose the relationship.
"Now I'd better take over the landing. It's trickier than takeoffs."
Once down to taxiing speeds Jane let Emily take over guiding the Scout while she talked to the airport people. They had assigned her a berth and she told Emily how to get to it.
Once down Jane said, "You can put her in stand-down mode. That's the button there for it. Then you can come out and stretch your legs and meet my niece."
Meeting "my niece" included meeting her boyfriend, a Latino who seemed to be a jock from his physique. Grant and Wilson also joined in the round of shaking hands and introducing themselves.
Back on the spaceship Jane again had Emily take over control of Scout, take her out over the Pacific up and to a height of 60,000 feet, then curve into a southerly direction.
Once on course to the Los Angeles area Jane contacted Vandenberg Air Base some 350 miles down the coast, about three-fourths of the way to LA.
"Vandenberg Traffic Control, this Scout Test Vehicle 3, Colonel Jane Kuznetsov commanding. Do you have our flight plan to LA cued up?"
"Scout, we do indeed. Come ahead. You are dialed in as Safe to our missile defense system."
"Vandenberg, Scout. Thank you. You have a great Thanksgiving now."
"Scout, Vandenberg, same to ya'll."
"Ya'll. Damn. Been a while since I heard a Texan talk. Now I'm homesick for Laughlin and training."
She heard chuckles and the Vandenberg audio channel went silent.
At 2000 miles per hour it took only five minutes to near Burbank Air Port but, as usual, more than a half hour to touchdown. Then it took another quarter hour to float off the runway to the hangar area where the Scout found a resting place in a secure hangar.
A sky blue stretch limousine was waiting for the six passengers in the parking area for the private aircraft. As Jane and her entourage approached it the driver got out to open its doors and trunk. From the front passenger door came Phil. Jane ran to meet him and climb his tall body to kiss him enthusiastically.
That greeting done Jane introduced everyone around. Phil already knew siblings Grant and Naomi, being friends with their stepmother Natalie and their father Robert. He shook hands with Grant and hugged Naomi.
In the limo Jane called up her parents and spoke to them over a Scope video connection. Then Grant and Naomi did the same to their parents.
The limo dropped off the three cadets and two students at Natalie's house, not without Jane receiving hugs from Natalie and her husband and Squirt, the nickname Jane had given the younger of their two sons, Ethan.
From there the limo took Jane and Phil to her parent's house and dropped them off with Jane's luggage.
After more hugs the four of them retired to the kitchen where Malena and Alex had been setting up a Thanksgiving feast for the four of them and Natalie and her family and the two guest cadets. Natalie and company would arrive in a couple of hours with more food and help from Natalie and Naomi to finish arrangements.
After a brief conversation Jane left to change to tee-shirt, jeans,
and running shoes while Phil borrowed Alex's office to try contacting the youngest of his three children, all of whom lived on the East coast. He'd already had long Scope sessions with the two oldest.
It wasn't long before Natalie and her family arrived to begin helping with dinner preparations.
<>
The sky had only remnants of the day seen through the trees around the Kuznetsov house when everyone retired to the poolside in the backyard of the house. The younger guests, clad in their choices from the many bathing suits Jane's parents kept for guests, plunged into the pool. The six older adults settled into lawn loungers arranged in a semicircle which let them see each other and the swimmers.
Jane climbed into Phil's chair. It was just wide enough for her to cuddle into his arms.
The conversation remained personal for a time, then Jane spoke.
"I find it amusing--bemusing?--that after dinner all the females chipped in to help the first pass of clean up while the men did something else."
"We," said Phil, "sat up the seats. Robert checked the pool to make sure it was clean of leaves and such. Alex--"
"Hush. I didn't mean the guys did nothing. I just meant that we all instinctively chose chores based on gender. Even though all of us women are modern and professional. I'm a starship commander, for Pete's sake. You can't get more modern than that!"
Naomi heard the last of Jane's comments. After splashing with the others she'd bundled a towel around her shoulders and one around her waist and was pulling up another chair.
"According my course-- For those of you who don't know, I'm in my last year and taking a xenobiology course. It compares the three so-called Cousin Species, humans, Cats, and Lizards.
"Anyway," she said as she sat, "all three of us are mammals of one sort or another and display similar instinctive natures. One of them is to organize into herds with the males in a circle around the females and children and elders. The behavior is not set. We can override it and often do nowadays. But it's a tendency that we follow without thinking unless some factor disturbs it."
She crossed one leg over another and applied a third smaller towel to drying her hair. The leg was shapely and she was a pretty girl and Jane noticed that Phil was appreciating that fact. That didn't bother Jane. It just showed that her man was healthy, a fact she intended to exploit when she and he got to his home that night.
"That's our girl!" said Natalie while Robert grinned at his wife and daughter.
Naomi said, "Jane, could I ask you something?"
She looked around at everyone. "If I'm not butting in?"
Malena said, "Butt away. It's not like we've got an agenda."
"Thanks, Ms. Kuznetsov." She paused.
"Most of what we're learning is from the Galactic Encyclopedia, the combined one from the two Cat cities and from the Sentinels of the Human Confederation. We were warned at the beginning of the class that no one was certain if it was accurate. That it might be a subtle propaganda piece. And even if not it's more a general survey of Local Space--"
She looked around at everyone. "That is the section of our galaxy's spiral arm in which the thirteen very advanced species live and the hundred or so less-advanced ones.
"So it leaves out a lot of details. So I wanted to ask you, Aunt Jane, do you think it's reliable?"
Jane shifted into a slightly more comfortable fit with Phil.
"I do, though like many I'm staying alert to gotchas."
She surveyed the group. None seemed bored with the direction of the conversation.
"So far everything we've done to double-check the Encyclopedia has checked out. For instance, it's not been widely publicized, though it's not classified, but we've sent a whole herd of faster-than-light exploration drones to Alpha Centauri.
"That's a nearby system of three stars. One of the drones is a sort of boss drone. Every few weeks it combines all the findings into one report and sends it to Earth via hypercom. Then the Encyclopedia Institute sorts it into a comprehensive report and publishes it as an addendum to the Encyclopedia. Everything so far checks out."
Naomi said, "Good. About another thing?"
She looked around again and was told to go on. She asked if the Cats and Lizards were really as human-like as they seemed in interviews.
Jane, who knew a lot of aliens personally, said, "Pretty much. That's one of the reasons why the three species are called the COUSIN species. They may have some mysterious common ancestor or were genetically shaped by the propagator of that ancestor.
"Another fact to keep in mind is that the Cats and Lizards who come here acknowledge that humans are billions to their thousands. So they've genetically modified themselves to live comfortably in human environments. And adopted a good deal of human culture.
"Remember, except for the very young, all the Cats and Lizards have lived centuries or even millennia. They're used to changing to suit changing conditions."
<>
In the middle of the next year Jane was promoted to Brigadier General. This was welcome but came with a cost. Generals were supposed to command large groups of people, typically 5000 for a brigadier in the Air Force. They were not allowed to command a single spaceship even if it was as big as an aircraft carrier, with many thousands of crew members. They were supposed to command groups of ships, maybe stationed on the Air Force equivalent of an aircraft carrier.
Jane could get out of most requirements if some tactic was used to hide the fact that she was being given special consideration. In her case she was the nominal commander of the Special Studies Group of the Space Force, a weasel-worded title for design, tactics, and strategy of space-based weapons. There were 300+ scientists, engineers, technicians, and office staff under her.
Or, actually, under Colonel Marguerite LeClerc. This let Jane do whatever she wanted without actually commanding the Group. LeClerc's parents had immigrated to the US when she was five. She had early been attracted to mathematics and later to physics, graduating from the Air Force Academy with honors in both fields. Tall, thin, a marathon runner and award-winning tennis player in the Academy, she still lead off each morning with a four mile run even in the coldest weather.
It wasn't cold in mid-August. Jane and the colonel had just returned from a walk to the nearest cafeteria for lunch. They were in Jane's office, a large corner office with windows that looked east and south toward the airport. LeClerc's office was next door, just as large, and had a southern view. They were discussing the relative merits of the current crop of laser and missile weaponry.
Jane's phone rang and she picked it up. This triggered a hologram above her desk. It showed her boss, General Willoughby, in her office.
"Jane, any reason why you can't come over here for a little chat?"
"None, Ma'am. Could I bring Colonel LeClerc?"
"Of course. See you in fifteen?"
"We'll be there."
"Good."
The hologram disappeared.
Jane stood, pulled on her dark blue beret, straightened her blue uniform with open-throated light blue shirt, and walked around her desk. LeClerc did the same.
It was low 80s with dry air under a cloudless blue sky on the two-block walk to the building in which their boss had her office. They took an elevator up to the top floor of the ten-floor office building.
As soon as they entered the reception area in front of their boss's office the Master Sergeant at the reception desk said, "Go right on in. She's expecting you."
They entered, removed their berets in one coordinated move that ended with the tops clamped under one arm. With the other arm they executed picture-perfect salutes, also perfectly coordinated. The general, already standing, returned their courtesies and sat. She said, "Sit. Relax. I won't keep you long."
She contemplated them for a moment, then spoke.
"Do you two practice that? I almost never see such precision."
The two women looked at each other, then back at their boss.
"No, Ma'am." It was the first time
Jane had even realized that she and LeClerc were so coordinated.
Willoughby said, "Well, it's unusual. LeClerc, how's your son doing?"
"My husband is taking him to the doctor even as we speak to take the cast off. I swear, I'm going to take those skis away."
The boss smiled. "Seems I've heard that before. Now, to give you two a quick heads up. Jane, the Jupiter Exploration Expedition has finally been given funding and a go-ahead. You'll be in charge of the squadron. As you'll probably recall, there's already a preliminary mission and staffing and equipment plan. I'll want you to oversee its implementation and accompany it as commander.
"LeClerc, that means that you're going to be the official head of the Studies Group. I've put your name forward for a promotion and think you've got a good shot at it. Just don't go buying your silver stars just yet, nothing's certain. But you've got the time in grade and God knows your performance evals are through the roof."
Jane made a note to go to cyborg mode and hack the Defense Department and other databases and ensure LeClerc's promotion to general. She didn't like to do it but IF there was ever a war to defend Earth from interstellar predators Earth would need the absolute best people to fight the war. And LeClerc was certainly that.
They spent another fifteen minutes or so to discuss matters and were sent on their way.
<>
It was another year before the Jupiter Exploration Task Force could get on its way. It was comprised of a headquarters ship with 250 personnel, a supplies ship with 150 personnel, and three big scout ships with 34 personnel each.
HQ Ship was about the size of a twenty-story office building and had a triangular structure not unlike the famous Flatiron Building of New York City. Supplies Ship was shaped like a blimp but with a flat bottom and top. Each Super Scout had dart shapes for streamlining in case they had to go fast inside atmospheres.
On July 14th, a Wednesday, at 9:00 am in Colorado Springs, Jane gave the command to begin the voyage. She did this from the Admiral's Room adjoining the control room of USSS New York. She spoke on her military vear's voice channel set to speak privately to Colonel Tom "Tomcat" Shelton, nicknamed after a fighter jet he'd flown many years back. Their words became famous years later.