by Rodney Smith
“Kelly, would you like me to do the maneuvers in reverse or forward of what we just completed?”
“Forward back to where I started. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Kelly, I can. Would you put your hands on your knees and away from the control stick? Good, hang on.”
The ship took off and the computer matched the maneuvers Kelly had completed almost exactly as Kelly had done. He noticed that the turns were not as crisply done as he had done, but were well within the range. As the ship reached the starting point, it executed a perfect spin roll and braked to a stop.
“How did I do, Kelly?”
“You did very well, Wanda. I did notice that you did not do the turns as crisply as I had, but your response was acceptable.”
“I did not do the turns as crisply as you, because I knew the exact point in space to make the turn and purposely softened the turns so as not to discomfort you too much.”
“Thank you, Wanda, but in the future if I ask you to do something as I did, you are to do it as close to exactly as I did as possible.”
“As you wish, Kelly, you are the boss. Kelly, there is another F-53 approaching from below and behind. The IFF is turned off, but I can tell from the way it is flown that it is 1LT Shappelle.”
Kelly took over the controls, fired up his firing simulator, and did a snap spin to face directly at Angie’s approaching fighter.
“Hello, Angie, state your intentions or I’ll send a mini-seeker your way.”
“Damn, you’re quick. Thought I was going to sneak up on you.”
“Not a chance. Wanda saw you coming a long way off.”
“Who is Wanda?”
“She’s my ship mate, literally.”
“Oh, I see. Getting acquainted with your ship’s computer, are you?”
“Yes, and she’s doing pretty well. She’ll do better once she stops worrying that she might hurt me.”
“Kelly, come over here and set up in the wingman position. Let’s do some formation flying for a bit, unless you need some more solo flying.”
Kelly fired his thrusters and assumed the echelon right position, behind and to the right of Angie’s fighter.
“Now, try and keep up with me.”
Angie took off and Kelly followed, maintaining a perfect two-ship distance. They would fly closer in combat, but two-ship distance was as close as non-combat regulations allowed. Angie ran through a series of rolls, loops, climbs, and dives. She did some retro fire flips and some corkscrew rolls. She leveled out and executed a max-G burn.
Kelly thumbed off his communicator and said, “Wanda, how did you know it was LT Shappelle sneaking up on me?”
“Kelly, I have access to all the information stored in the Bolivar’s databanks. Even though to you I was only initiated yesterday, I have a memory as long as the Bolivar’s. LT Shappelle has a distinct flying style, as do you, so I recognized it.”
“Thank you, Wanda. That’s good info to have.”
Kelly flipped his communicator back to hot. “Angie, are we going to start flying anytime soon?”
“Okay, smart guy, keep up with this.”
Kelly did an outside roll away from Kelly, which caught him a little off guard, but he snap rolled to keep up with her. She executed a complicated set of rolls, loops, dives, and corkscrews. Kelly stayed right with her. She went into a tight inside loop and Kelly stayed with her. She started tightening the loop and Kelly started to feel the G-forces increase.
“Wanda, if I black out, break away from Angie’s ship for me.”
“Of course, Kelly, I would have done that anyway.”
“Thank you, Wanda.”
The loop got tighter still. Kelly stayed right with her. Angie surprised him by snap rolling away to the left and flying away at a 90-degree angle from the previous loop. Kelly recovered and quickly got back in formation with her.
“That was a good one. I’ll have to remember that one.”
“I thought you might like that one. You know, now I know who you are.”
“Oh? Who am I?”
“You're that snot-nosed junior classmen that shot my ass out of space in fighter school. You know, I took a lot of ribbing for that.”
“What can I say? You flew in front of me and I shot you.”
“How about let’s head back to the Bolivar. I think we’ve had enough of a workout for now. Follow me. Let’s see how well you land.”
Kelly followed her back to the Bolivar landing bay and the two of them executed a perfect two-ship formation landing. They taxied into their parking spots and powered down their ships. The crew chiefs came over and helped them out of their ships.
The Carrier Fighter Wing Commander was waiting for them.
“Lieutenants, that was some pretty good flying out there. How long have you two been flying together?”
Angie looked a little sheepish and said, “Uh, that was the first time we’ve flown together, sir.”
“It was? Then that was pretty amazing that you two flew that well out there. Good job, keep it up.” The commander turned and walked away from two very amazed lieutenants.
As the shock wore off Angie said, “Come on, let’s eat. I’m starved. Snap rolls and tight loops make me hungry.”
Kelly walked with her to the dining facility, where the two filled their trays and wolfed down a major lunch. Other pilots stared and made sure to keep their hands away from the hungry pilots’ mouths. As they finished up, CPT Willis, their flight leader, came over and sat down with them.
“Are you two about through? You’re scaring the other pilots.”
“Almost, ma’am. Don’t worry, we won’t lick the plates.”
CPT Willis laughed at that and said, “I can see you two are going to be a piece of work. Just don’t get too cocky. There are scores of other pilots that would just love to burst your bubbles. It won’t be long before they find out about the CFW commander’s comments and they’ll be gunning for you. Watch out.”
Kelly and Angie looked at each other. Kelly said, “You’ve already heard what the CFW said?”
“Oh, yes, the word got back to us very quickly. The CFW called the Squadron Commander and he called me. I came to find you. I was a little worried when I saw you two eating. I made sure as I came up not to startle you or to get between you and your food. If you’re done, let’s go to the briefing room for your debriefing.”
The two got up, carried their trays to the re-processor, and followed CPT Willis to the briefing room.
LTC Matthews and the squadron exec were waiting.
“Well, here are our star pilots now,” began the CO, “Come in and sit down, please.”
The two cast each other sidelong glances, wondered what they were being set up for, and sat down.
“You two really impressed the CFW. What did you two do out there?”
Angie spoke first. “Sir, we were just practicing formation flying. We were pushing the envelope, but I don’t think we did anything all that spectacular.”
Kelly spoke up. “Sir, we were pushing it pretty hard, but we were well within the safety limits of the ships. You can review the flight tapes if you need confirmation.”
“Relax, you two. This is not a dressing down. You aren’t in trouble. The CFW just wanted us to know that you two flew like you had been flying together for years. When he found out you two had just been paired up he wanted to let me know that, whatever I was doing to train my folks, I should keep it up.”
Broad smiles flashed onto their faces.
“You had us worried, sir,” said Angie. “We thought we were in hack.”
“No, you aren’t in trouble. We want to review your flight logs and the Bolivar sensor logs to see exactly what the CFW saw that was so impressive.”
They called up the flight and Bolivar logs on the holographic briefing table. It showed the flight of the two fighters as Angie attempted to shake Kelly from his wingman position. Kelly was amazed at Angie’s flying ability and she by Kelly’s ability to stay up with
her. He never got further than three ship’s width’s away from her the entire flight. LTC Samuels and CPT Willis also appeared to be impressed.
“I can see why the CFW was so excited. That was some pretty fancy flying. Were you two doing that on purpose or were you just screwing around?”
Angie spoke up. “Sir, I challenged Kelly to stay in formation with me. Then I proceeded to try as hard as I could to shake him off. He stayed with me through all the maneuvers.”
“All right, you two are dismissed. Tomorrow, CPT Willis, I want you to concentrate on four ship formation flying.”
Angie and Kelly headed off to change out of their flight suits and get cleaned up.
CPT Willis turned to LTC Matthews and asked, “Do you have any idea why the CFW would be so interested in those two, sir?”
“No, Captain, but I’m sure we will find out soon enough.”
* * * * *
A jet-black hole in space was watching and listening 100,000 kilometers in-spiral from the fleet’s position. The K’Rang scout ship D’Rella was monitoring the Fleet activity, its sensors in full receive mode.
“Shadow Warrior K’Tella, the human fleet is conducting training drills only. I detect no indications of any preparations for movement against the Empire.”
Slightly bristling at his technician’s presumption, the Shadow Warrior shot back, “Shadow Technician M’Drek, our mission is to collect. Let us leave analysis to those better able to make such judgments. Remember, we only see a small piece of the total picture. Concentrate on making sure that we collect all that there is to collect. The Imperial Analysis Cabal will draw its own conclusions from our data.”
Recoiling from the rebuke, his ears flat on his head, the technician responded, “I understand, Shadow Warrior. Forgive my impertinence. I will double my efforts to gather as much data as I can. We are gaining valuable information on their new interceptor ships. They turn tighter and fly faster than our best ships. I will emphasize collection on these ships. I detect no new capabilities in their escort class ships. Their capital ships appear to have some new weaponry, but they have not conducted any gunnery exercises that I have been able to detect.”
“Shadow Technician, we are coming up on our communications window. Prepare all you have collected in this period for transmission.”
The technician spooled up all his data, encrypted it, compressed it and prepared to transmit. At the push of a button, a turret on the top of the ship rose and rotated an antenna to face in-spiral, to an awaiting relay satellite just over the frontier. As the timer counted down, he watched the compression indicator light go from orange to pale red to bright red. As it reached bright red the light blinked.
“Shadow Warrior, the data is ready to transmit on your order.”
“Send it.”
The technician pushed the button next to the compression indicator light. A green light came on. As the data streamed out the light grew dimmer and dimmer until it blinked and went out.
“Shadow Warrior, the data has been sent and acknowledged.”
“Continue our monitoring mission. I will rest now.”
Shadow Technician M’Drek turned back to his scopes and gauges and concentrated on his mission.
* * * * *
CPT Willis pulled Angie and Kelly out of the breakfast line before they’d had a chance to pick up a tray. “Come with me,” was all she said. Kelly wondered what trouble they had gotten into now.
The two followed her down the passageway and to the upper decks near flag country. LTC Matthews met them in the hallway and the four of them proceeded past the Marine guard at the entry to the flag office spaces. LTC Matthews knocked on a door. The door was opened by the CFW.
“Come in, all of you.”
They proceeded into a dimly lit, large room, with a double height ceiling. As Kelly’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the CFW, two Fleet Commanders, a Fighter Force captain that Kelly didn’t recognize, General Bugarov, and Admiral Haddock-Halloway. He looked over to Angie and got a “What have we gotten ourselves into now?” look.
Admiral Haddock-Halloway said, “Now that we are all here, please be seated. CFW, would you begin?”
“Thank you, sir. As you all know, the Bolivar has been here close to the frontier for a week now, conducting fighter training and fleet formation drills. About four days ago, the frigate Tenacious picked up an echo on its sensors. At least, that is what they thought at first. After a day monitoring this echo, they noticed some inconsistencies. Echoes normally maintain a constant bearing and distance from the ship that detects them. This echo, however, shifted around. It was subtle and took all day to sort it out, but the Tenacious thinks we have a K’Rang Shadow Scout ship monitoring our fleet operations from our side of the frontier. It’s about 100,000 km away and in-spiral of us. Admiral?”
Admiral Haddock-Halloway stood up and moved over to the tank. The tank was a large holographic projector used for fleet battle management and took up most of the room. The room lights dimmed further and a representation of the space around the fleet appeared in mid-room. The admiral stood within the projection.
“The fleet is arrayed here in the center. The echo is represented by this green dot. The frontier is in-spiral of us and is represented by these two curtain-like bands. The red band is their side of the frontier. The blue one is ours. As you can see, the distance from us to the echo is greater than the distance of the echo to the frontier. We could not turn the fleet or launch fighters and catch them before they could cross the frontier on maximum burn. We are going to need to be pretty slick to catch these guys. We are going to have to find a way to trick them. That will not be easy, because their ship is just one big sensor pod.”
“The CFW and I have wrestled with this problem for a couple of days now. He came to me yesterday and told me the last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. As you all know, we have very strict orders dealing with any engagements with the K’Rang. We have to have a significant tactical or numerical advantage to take on the K’Rang. We think we have that.”
“We are going to try and draw the Shadow Ship further into our space. To do this, we are going to move the fleet further out-spiral and conduct gunnery exercises. This will undoubtedly cause the scout ship to follow us. We are going to leave two fighters behind for the scout ship to pass by. These two ships will become the hammer. A four-ship flight will drop off behind the fleet, hide and become the anvil. Once we have the Scout between our two fighter groups, we will spring the trap.”
“Lieutenants Shappelle and Blake, you two will be the hammer.”
Angie and Kelly exchanged matching stunned looks.
“When we move the fleet forward, we will parallel this asteroid belt, shown here in brown. The K’Rang will most likely assume we are going to use the asteroids as gunnery targets. We will drop you two off to hide in the asteroid field. We think we can do it in such a way that even the most sensitive sensors on the scout won’t detect. I’m calling a fleet captains' conference. The captains’ skiffs from all the fleets’ ships will converge on the flagship. After a reasonable amount of time all the skiffs will return to their ships. LTs Shappelle and Blake will accompany the Tenacious’ skiff back to the frigate. You will magnetically attach your fighters to the exterior of the Tenacious. The Tenacious will move closer to the asteroid field, allowing its shields to move some of the bigger rocks. You will detach yourself and hide in amongst the rocks. We have analyzed them and found a large amount of iron, nickel, and lodestone in them. Your fighters will blend right in.”
“The fleet will keep moving off. At an appropriate distance, CPT Chang here, from the 34th Fighter Squadron, will move and hide his flight in the asteroid belt. He will employ a similar technique with the Transcendent. Our expectation is that the scout ship will follow behind the fleet at about the same distance it is now. It will move forward cautiously. Our estimate is that it will take about five to ten hours to pass your location, LTs Shappelle and Blake. Once the scout has moved to
200,000 km from the border, we move. Lieutenants, your mission will be to drive the scout toward the fleet and CPT Chang’s waiting flight. While you six are chasing the scout around, we are going to FTL the frigates Tenacious and Transcendent into space between the frontier and him, locking him in.”
“CPT Chang, 1LT Shappelle, and 2LT Blake, your orders are to capture the scout, if possible. We want you to chase these guys around space until they figure out they can’t get away and give up. Just keep them from turning back toward the frontier. We want to study this ship. Of course, there is the strong chance that they won’t surrender. If that is the case, you will request authorization to fire on and destroy the scout.”
“LTs Shappelle and Blake, when you two did your pas de deux yesterday, the CFW found the lead and wing man combination we were looking for. We needed a pair that could keep up with a K’Rang Scout ship and not get separated. If they can split you up, they can take you out one at a time, but if you stick together they have to keep running. That’s what we want. We want them to keep running thinking they can find a way to get away. We will execute this operation in ten hours. Any questions? LTs Shappelle and Blake, you deploy first. Report to your squadron ready room.”
Angie asked, “Sir, is it all right if we go get breakfast first? We were brought here before we made it through the chow line.”
“I think that would be okay, but speak to no one of this. LTC Matthews and CPT Willis, you haven’t had breakfast yet either, I presume. Why don’t you join them?”
“Aye aye, sir,” said the squadron commander. “Come on, you three.”
* * * * *
“Shadow Warrior, there is an increase of activity in the human fleet. The fighters have all landed and small craft from each ship have converged on the carrier. I believe they are preparing for some new activity, possibly departure or gunnery drill. There is an asteroid field along their current trajectory that could be used as targets.”
“Shadow Technician, continue to monitor their activity. Inform me of any further changes in their actions.”