Hawk Flight (Flight of the Hawk Book 3)

by Robert Little

  Admiral Lee asked, “Cousin?” She said, “Her grandmother was a Chamberlain. She excelled in school and was sent to Elyse for her university education. She graduated, enlisted and went through OCS.”

  Admiral Lee asked, “She’s been with me for over two years, since Aditi in fact.” She said, “Admiral, she is not affiliated in any way with the Chamberlain Foundation. She was, however, raised with a very high standard of ethics and I assume she chose to work for you based on the fact that you weren’t corrupt. I know what she told her parents, but I won’t repeat it.”

  He said, “You are beginning to worry me. Why not?” She smiled, “Effusive praise for your honesty, integrity, plain-spoken manners, a trait Mayans particularly admire, and your brilliance, something most people miss.”

  He frowned, “She said that?” She quietly said, “Please don’t repeat that back to her.”

  He stood and refilled their cups, “Miss Chamberlain is it? You’ve revealed a great deal, and deliberately. Why?” She accepted the refill and said, “We’re at war, and this time we don’t think there will be a second place. I had to impress you with our abilities, plural. Chamberlain controls multiple businesses, not merely Padilla. We own two banks, and Hayakawa Services. We provide maintenance on a significant percentage of all shipping between Earth and Elyse, and we have a presence on every single world, staffed largely with veterans. Admiral, our service organization, coupled with Padilla’s engineering expertise, is capable of helping with the modifications to those elderly wrecks you call destroyers, even the capital ships. We will do it on spec, the work performed first, and we’ll worry about payment later. We’d love to be able to have a later.”

  He asked, “You think that the odds are against us?” She said, “Admiral Lee, the Bugs can be defeated; whether or not they will comes down to Congress and the Navy. So far, Navy is losing.”

  He said, “Regretfully, I have a meeting in five minutes. I would like to continue this discussion.” She rose to her feet, “Perform due diligence and if you are satisfied, please don’t hesitate to comm me. I pledge our assistance.”

  He asked, “For a price.” She frowned, “Yes, absolutely, we have a price: survival. Admiral, I won’t contact you again and I apologize for taking up your valuable time. Good luck with your war.”

  He stood in response and asked, “The Bugs? We’ll need it.” She shook her head, “Congress.” Her tone of voice was cold.

  She turned and walked out of the office. She seemed irritated.

  He commed his aide and told her, “My office. Now.”

  Chapter 47

  Rear Admiral Alexi Tretiakov, Fleet Carrier Krakow, Lubya Orbit

  He sat in his day room, reading a confidential comm from Admiral Lee, who wanted to know about Alexi’s efforts to oversee the redoing of the modifications to the Dash 4’s. The comm also included specifications for the same improvements to the Dash 6. This was to be a limited run of sixteen fighters. Admiral Lee instructed him to send one fighter down to Gorki Services, a Lubya-based maintenance company that, according to information from the public net, provided maintenance services to freight forwarders, and offered long-term contracts based on performance rather than work. The admiral didn’t offer an explanation.

  Alexi personally commed the company and spoke to the operations manager, Mr. Manuel Gorki. Alexi introduced himself and said, “Sir I wish to know if you have been contacted by the Federal Navy?” He provided a reference number.

  Mr. Gorki said, “Yes sir, ten days ago. We have acquired everything necessary to perform the work as specified. I have been instructed to await contact from you.”

  Alexi shook his head. He’d grown up on Lubya but knew precious little about the company, despite doing a search prior to the comm. it seemed to be an ordinary service company that had less than fifty employees, most of them former Navy personnel who spent their workdays either inside huge orbiting freighters or in suits working on their exteriors.

  It was one of the oldest companies in the system, predating the arrival of the Tretiakov family. It had changed names several times, but as far as he could tell, it hadn’t actually changed hands. Odd.

  Alexi flew down in the navigator’s seat, making for a nervous pilot. The company had a large warehouse in the civilian sector of the ever-expanding moon base, but it also had a smaller facility outside of the capital, New Novosibirsk.

  The pilot gently landed on a scarred platform inside a large, solid standalone structure. At a signal from a ground handler he shut down the drive and powered down the systems.

  Alexi awkwardly crawled out of the cockpit and descended the ladder. He looked around, noting that the facility was spotlessly clean. The equipment and machinery he could see was of very good quality but neither shiny new nor old.

  Alexi was pointed to an office inside the hanger and shook Mr. Gorki’s hand. He was offered a seat but instead said, “Sir, my schedule is full. Do you have the contract, and if so, do you have the required materials and equipment?”

  Mr. Gorki nodded, “Yes. As soon as we learned you were bringing down the craft, we cleared the bay and our calendar. We can begin immediately, as soon as you provide the authorization. Two days for this first craft, eight hours per each additional fighter. If desired, we can work three full shifts a day. Your call.”

  Alexi asked, “What will you be doing?” Mr. Gorki brought up a schematic, “Whoever originated this assumed the work would be performed in the field, with access to minimal technology.” Alexi smiled, “Aboard a Fleet Carrier.” The man nodded, “Yes sir. However, here in our shop we can change out the capacitor for a new version, one we’ve already modified. The work requires a new module to replace one of the power controllers – that change will measure and control any remaining noise. We plan to add the attenuator, the system your people designed to cancel out the noise. The combination ought to exceed your parameters, but we won’t know until you run it through its paces. In a pinch, once we nail down the procedures, we can do the work on the Krakow, even underway. That will of course also be your call.”

  Alexi thought he’d died and gone to heaven. This felt just like he was dealing with his own people, not money-grubbing civilians.

  Alexi spent ten minutes looking at the schematic, verified that it matched the information he’d been given and signed off on the work. Mr. Gorki said, “Sir, we’ll deliver the craft to the Krakow in approximately thirty-nine hours.”

  Alexi shook his hand, “Contact me directly, thirty minutes prior to your arrival.”

  Outside the facility a Krakow shuttle waited him.

  On the way up he did some further research. Gorki was a local company, but it was registered on Maya.

  How odd.

  Thirty-seven hours later the call came. Alexi alerted the ship’s captain and walked down and aft to the dock.

  The Dash 6 appeared, hovered into the huge chamber and gently dropped to the deck.

  A private shuttle appeared and squeezed into the adjoining bay. As soon as the bay aired up the pilot dropped down to the mildly uneven deck, the result of decades of abuse and extremes of temperature.

  The civilian succinctly described the modifications, showed them to Alexi and a lieutenant Commander in charge of fighter maintenance, requested a signature, waved and walked quickly to the shuttle.

  Ten minutes later it was gone.

  Alexi told the captain, “Wring it out. I want to know how noisy it is at max accel, at three G’s and at everything in between. Now.”

  Six hours later the Dash 6 pilot assigned to the fighter appeared in Alexi’s day room, in company with two other pilots and the Lt. Cdr.

  Alexi leaned back in his seat and asked, “Noise?” The Lt. Cdr. Shook his head, “Sir, with the sensor we’ve been using to measure our fighters, the thing was almost invisible. It is also point three two G’s faster than it was before we delivered it.”

  Alexi nodded, “Send down three more. Now. Every twenty-four hours, send down three more.”<
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  Alexi commed the shop and spoke to Mr. Gorki, “Sir, the work was performed on time and is better than promised. I’m sending you three more. Do you have additional capacitors?” Mr. Gorki said, “We have ten here, and can have the other five within two more days. If we’re changing out the capacitor we’d prefer to perform the work here in New Novosibirsk. It will go faster and we have the required test instruments, avoiding the need for speed runs on the other fighters to measure the drive under stress.”

  Alexi sent a comm to Admiral lee, included the measurements from the test flight and asked how the admiral had learned about this company. He hadn’t had a clue that such a sophisticated operation existed within fifty light years, and he’d grown up on Lubya, spending his summers working on shuttlecraft.

  He’d ascertained that that same shop had repaired the coating on the Hawks. Thinking about it, that was almost more interesting – that coating was proprietary, owned by a corporation on Earth, and astonishingly expensive. He knew of no other Navy ship that utilized it, and as far as he knew, not one single civilian craft.

  Within two weeks he had forty modified Dash 6’s and he’d developed a raid that included a Hawk 6 scout ship and his fighters. The Dash 4’s would act as escorts for the much better shielded 6’s, armed with two heavy missiles. He’d run simulations that demonstrated that as long as the craft didn’t exceed six G’s with the missiles they would be safe. For the ingress, they’d be utilizing no more than three G’s. Once within range, they’d drop the missiles and depart the area.

  One of his pilots suggested first slowing to a relative stop at nine hundred thousand, and then launching the missiles. This approach would mean his own fighters wouldn’t having to decelerate at the same time as the Bug fighters were accelerating toward them.

  His modified 6’s had measurably better acceleration than any of the various Bug fighters, so unless they ran right over a large flight of fighters they would be safe.

  He received approval for the operation, although he was only able to get two destroyers, and those only for five days. The Hawks were from the Krakow, a good thing since he couldn’t have borrowed any.

  Those Hawks had been provided with much better sensors and would assist his fighters to get in close. Hopefully.

  He spent a week performing workups and developing tactics. His biggest problem was the noise his carrier generated. Their own tests revealed that it was visible from as much as twelve million kilometers, so he planned to jump in at a distance of fourteen. This in turn meant that the small fighters would have to be extremely careful about fuel consumption. The Dash 4’s had better range but despite repeated efforts he couldn’t get their capacitor noise level down as low as those forty Dash 6’s.

  He had managed to send one Dash 4 down to Gorki, and after two days, the company had admitted that while it would be possible to improve on the work already performed, it would require the removal of most of the major components and the rebuilding of the capacitor, new controls and some additional shielding. The 4’s utilized an older design for the mag bottles and capacitors, and the Navy no longer carried them, meaning they would have to rebuild the existing system, requiring far more time than he had.

  The Krakow returned from the outer reaches of the system and he gave his crews some liberty.

  While there he was able to spend an evening with his recently married daughter. She served on the Fleet Carrier Netherlands, a newly revived ship that had been assigned the task of protecting Lubya rather than assaults on the Bugs. The ship was very old and Fleet had decided it would not stand a chance against Bug fighters.

  Her name was Nastya Padilla, and improbably, she had met and fallen in love with a pilot from the doomed Essex. His name was Robert and after he and his navigator lost their Dash 6 in one of the opening engagements, they found four Hawk 7’s in the hold, destined for the mothball fleet on Lubya. He and his navigator developed the original plans that led to the rejuvenation of the craft and they’d gone on multiple missions to the Void, where four of the five Bug fleets had congregated in one immense gathering, the largest concentration of warships in known history.

  Alexi had heard about the small team, and then heard from his daughter about the pilot. He’d met them on a visit to New Novosibirsk, had liked what he saw and gave her permission to marry, despite the fact that the clearly inexperienced young man hadn’t yet asked his daughter. He’d essentially told them that war was uncertain, best to act while one could.

  That very evening they had a quick civil service, hoping to later hold a military ceremony with their friends, and shortly thereafter, he was gone, heading off to Base Jupiter.

  Nastya was a relatively tall woman, slender and very athletic. She had followed her father and two brothers into the military, although one of the two was not in the Navy, and one younger sister was currently in the Academy.

  She was a full lieutenant in the Marines, and was apparently two years ahead of her new husband, who when they married had still been a Lieutenant Junior Grade. However, Alexi thought that status was due for a change. He’d almost singlehandedly taken the fight to the Bugs and had managed to inflict serious damages over a series of attacks. On one, his own carrier had been destroyed while the four Hawk craft had been attacking the Bugs. They’d finally destroyed one of the immense mother ships, one that had been seriously damaged on two previous attacks, but upon their return to the carrier, found only debris.

  The Hawk was a tiny craft and was suddenly a very, very long way from anywhere. Their principal problem was fuel for the fusion bottles, most of which had already been consumed during the long operation. They charted a course for the nearest solar system and arrived on fumes. They orbited a planet and one of the craft, the only one with any fuel left, dropped down to the surface, filled up from a river, lifted back up and transferred enough water to allow the others to drop down. They then left the system and jumped into Lubya orbit. On their return they were put into the hospital – they’d gone two weeks on almost no food, something the tiny Hawks had never been designed to carry.

  Although it was considered a very big victory, the loss of the Essex was a serious blow to the shrunken Federal Navy.

  While she was with Alexi, he received a back channel comm from Admiral Lee, requesting that she be given some TDA to Base Jupiter. The request specifically included the Etech that had served on the now famous Hawk. In the comm, the admiral baldly said that he wished to officiate at a double military wedding, where Anastasia and Robert would repeat their vows while his navigator, Elian Turner would wed the former ETech, now Warrant Officer Carolyn Kwan.

  Alexi happily approved the request, and told Nastya, “I understand that the ETech4...Kwan is her name? I understand that she serves on the Netherlands, is that not so?” Nastya looked at her father and smiled, “Yes father, WO Kwan does. Why do you ask?” He smiled, “I have been led to believe that she has the feelings for the other man on the Hawk, Lieutenant Turner?”

  Nastya narrowed her eyes and said, “Yes, that is correct.” This time around she failed to ask him why he brought up the issue. He said, “I have just received a comm from Admiral Lee. I understand that your husband and his navigator are now working with him on developing a new ship, is that not so?” She was now clearly suspicious, “Yes sir, that is correct.”

  He nodded and made a show of looking at the message, “He says here that...yes, he has some free time in...five days? About. He thinks he might wish to officiate at a double wedding.” He looked at his daughter, whose eyes grew almost round, “Oh! Really? Admiral Lee? Elian finally figured out that he wants to marry her?”

  She leaped to her feet and hugged her father, “Oh, does Carolyn know?” He kissed her on both cheeks, “It is for you to tell her. While you are doing that, I shall arrange for transportation.” She laughed, “Oh, sometimes it is wonderful to have an admiral for a father.” He frowned, “Sometimes?” She laughed again, “Yes, you have managed to terrify every single man I ever looked twi
ce at.”

  He asked, “Was that the case with Lieutenant Padilla? He did not appear so...terrified.” She laughed again, “Oh, you have no idea. He told me he almost fainted for fear you’d whip him.” Alexi smiled, “I considered that very approach. However, I relented once I looked at you. My daughter, in that moment you looked so wonderfully happy that I couldn’t banish the poor man to Aditi, and of course, my Admiral’s whip was in the shop for maintenance. There was nothing to do but accept his proposal to take you off my hands.”

  She went from laughter to tears and hugged him, “Oh father, thank you so much. I can never repay you, never.”

  He kissed her cheeks again and softly said, “Grandchildren would be nice.”

  The mission got scrubbed at virtually the last minute. Something was in the works.

  Chapter 48

  Master Chief Elliot Kana, DE/M Grant