by Rob Buckman
HE WHO DARES
(Book One)
By
Rob Buckman
Forewords:
Whether we like it or not, genetic engineering is a fact. Already we have cured several childhood diseases that have inflicted humanity for generations for the betterment of mankind. Soon other horrible afflictions will disappear as we grope our way through the intricate of the human gene ohm. Sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, Parkinson, Alzheimers to name just a few. Politicians and laws will change to permit all the good parts of genetic engineering to progress, but in a few years from now, the other side of this world changing science will happen. Parents who have the means will want their children cured of poor vision, or hearing, maybe to be a little taller, or with blonde hair and blue eyes, or a little more intelligent. Some might say, to justify the change, that this is a good thing, that they are helping humanity in some obscure way. How far is far enough, and how do we stop it when advanced, or super humans start living amongst us? Science has always been a double edge sword. If you want nuclear power, you have to have the bomb, if you want a laser cutter for medicine and industry you have to have laser weapons, and so on.
Sometime in the not too distant future, maybe here, or on some distant plant humans have colonized, we will be able to design a human being from the ground up, maybe even skipping the natural birth process altogether. What then, what sort of man would he or she be, a super soldier, a financial wizard, or just a mindless grunt toiling in a mine, factory or whorehouse? We have already let the genie out of the bottle, with no way to put it back in, and with enough money, power, or both, who is to say what we ask the genie for? But like the old Chinese proverb says, be careful what you ask for.
Note:
As this book is self-published, and being a poor starving, sight impaired writer, living in a freezing garrot in sunny Orange County, California. I do not have the luxury of an editor yet. That means there are a few spelling and grammar errors that got by my poor tired eyes, so please overlook any that I failed to catch. My object in writing this, and other novels, is to tell you, the reader, an interesting tale for your enjoyment, not to win any English composition prize or a spelling bee. Happy reading.
RB ([email protected])
ADMIRALTY DOC NO: 2189
Admiralty Engineering Lab: Slough. BUCKS
NAVSPEC:
RN ASSAULT SHUTTLE
TYPE: 50
BATCH:
1 and 2
Designation:
Vehicle: Armed - Personnel, Combat, Long-Range, Insertion
LOGLCOMM: NUM: 8125
Ranger Class
Contract NUM.:
AS850AS
ADMIRALTY CLEARANCE:
GEN. DISTRIBUTION
BREU.SHIP.NUM:
BSN850AS
Specifications:
Displacement: 548 tons: Dimensions: 105’ x 20’ x 40’ (nominal) Speed: (Flank) 46,500 knots (25% light speed) Speed: (Cruise) 42,000 knots - Nth. Space Capable
Power Plant/Drive: One Roll-Royce Hydrogen turbine fusion reactor, power plant; one Type 33 AG* lift Generator, one Rolls-Royce Hercules maneuvering AG over hydrogen thruster system; Type 33 Gravity Wave Propulsion system
Armaments: 2-x 2.5in. 550gw Argon Pulse Lasers, (5 Sec Recycle time) twin 2 x.75in. Turret mounted Argon 250gw. Phalanx point defense lasers. (2 Sec. Recycle time) 6 Dart Anti-ship Missiles & 4 (Mk 42 anti-ship homing torpedoes) 4 (Mk XII) Mines;
Armor/Defense: 2 in. Iridium-boron-ceramic Chopham Armor, 4 Mark V anti-missile/torpedo tubes, anti-radiation – micro-meteor shielding;
Radar Installation: Type 909T** Dart guidance radar, Type 965T** Long-Range Search radar, Type 1006 navigation radar;
On board systems: Inertia/digital navigation system with VR*** helmet, all weather, ground/space, close support and nap-of-the-earth fly by wire, ECM & ECCM electronic counter measure;
Crew: One Officer (Second Leftenant), One Helmsman (PO or CPO), One engineer (PO), One Navigator (Senior Rating). One radio/sensor Oper. (Senior Communications Rating), One weapons Specialist (Senior Rating). One Cook/Medic (Able Rating), Three Able Ratings.
Personal carrying capacity: 20 Marines, 1 Officer or Senior NCO with light assault equipment and transport.
NOTE: Eighteen of the type 50 Ranger Class C AS850AS Assault Shuttles remain in service at this time. All remaining units will be replaced by Type 60 in the near future. (date unknown) * AG (Anti-gravity) ** Tachyon VR*** (Virtual Reality)
PROLOGUE:
The teeth-rattling blast wave vibrated through the ship's hull, tossing the shuttle around like a leaf in a storm. Lights and monitors flickered before going dark, plunging the crew into heart stopping darkness until the emergency light came on. A moment later everyone heard the grinding screech of rending metal as angular momentum tore something off the ship.
"Oh shit! There goes the main array." The communication rating shouted over the bedlam of alarm noise as his long-range comm unit went dead.
The main control panel flickering back to life like a Christmas tree gone mad, warning lights flashing red as the main screen came back on, alarm buzzers adding to the din. The shaking and bucking continued as another missile penetrated the ECM and ECCM envelope and exploded near the hull. At least the flares and chaff worked well enough to confuse the incoming missiles and keep them from impacting on the hull itself.
"Helm - maintain evasive maneuvering!" Ensign Mike Gray wheezed, trying to drag something akin to oxygen into his burning lungs.
Choking, eye-burning smoke from smoldering electrical circuits filled the flight deck, overloading the air recycler. To make matters worse, the automatic fire extinguishers ignited, threatening to drown them in fire suppression foam.
The tiny moronic brain of the ECM & ECCM pods did their work, sending out radar ghosts and false signals or offsetting the shuttles EM signature by several degrees, randomizing it so the enemy fire control couldn't find a pattern. As old and outdated as the units were, they still protected them like some electronic guardian angel, but it couldn't fool them all completely. Sometimes a little is enough, as the electronic countermeasures forced the missile warheads to detonate a few thousand yards short of the hull. Thankfully, they didn’t have a capital ship on their tail as there was no way they could escape the blizzard of torpedo and missiles, something larger than the two destroyers on their tail could put out.
"I think we are through the worst of it, sir, but it won't be long before their air defense starts pounding on us!" Operation tech Clarence Reilly called out.
Mike Gray heard the note of panic in the man's voice, making it sound ragged, almost squeaky. He tried to think of something to say to calm the man, and himself for that matter. Something, anything that sounded convincing.
"Acknowledged - helm, get us into the dark side of the moon, and down low as quick as you can." He couldn't think of anything else except to get them out of the line of fire before they took another, maybe lethal hit this time.
To him, his voice sounded like a growl, harsh, unforgiving, and hardly human. He saw the helmsman hunch his massive shoulders as if expecting a blow as he jockeyed the shuttlecraft towards the distant daylight terminator and the dubious safety of the earth like moon’s dark side. In atmosphere, at least they'd have a chance, in space none. He shivered at the thought of that dark, airless void around them. The animal center at the base of Mike Gray's brain screamed at him to get out of here, to cut and run. Get as far away from the incoming death as quickly as possible, yet he didn't. Something other than fear gripped him, something that prevented him giving the order everyone wanted to hear.
“What
the hell am I doing here?” He muttered to himself under his breath. He sure as hell wasn't ready for this.
His uniform was soaked with sweat, mouth dry and coppery with fear. He was nothing but a lowly Ensign and just qualified to bring coffee to senior officer without spilling it, not that this was the first time he’d been at the center of a shit storm. In this case, he definitely wasn't qualified to sit in the command chair of a ship under fire, nor decide the fate of twenty odd men and women, and yet people were shooting at him, again. Why did this keep happening to him? He shook his head in exasperation, chasing the ghosts of the past back into a dark corner of his mind and concentrated on the task before him. If any local air defense, if any, was slow off the mark they might have a chance, but like they say, hope springs eternal.
"Get us down under their sensors." He coughed again, his throat burning. "We'll be safe there." About as safe as diving nude into a school of razor fish was his afterthought.
"Aye-aye, Sir." The helmsman shouted above the shriek of atmosphere rushing by the hull as the assault ship plunged wildly into denser air.
With their damaged shield the hull started to glow, first red, then white hot, shedding ablative shielding as they went, heat adding to their misery. Mike just hoped and prayed that this mad plunge into the atmosphere was enough to save them…
CHAPTER ONE: HMS Marchwood (Royal Naval Shore Station)
‘The study of warfare in all its forms is the responsibility of all. Every war ever fought by man should be examined, analyzed, and pondered upon. For, it is in the understanding of these conflicts that we learn the truth about ourselves. If we examine the so called Second World War, the last question we should ask is why Hitler went to war and what he hoped to gain. Before that, we should ask what circumstances lead him to a position of power where he could lead Germany down that terrible path of destruction. Each question begs another question rather than an answer and as we progress backwards, they enlightening us further. What root causes, such as social and economic conditions existed before Hitler came to power? Step by step we gradually find the first question to ask. And that is, why do we fight, why do we permit governments of various forms to lead us into the insanity of war?’
Mike Gray woke with cold sweat beading the fading tan on his forehead as the memories of Professor Canning interminable virtual lecture slowly fading into the background sounds of the bus. For a terrible moment he thought he was still trapped there forever in the virtual lecture hall, unable to escape an eternity of the Professor’s dry monotone voice, while the blackness of space and the haunting stars beckoning him with their siren song.
The bus lurched to a halt and for a moment the cold, wet air invaded the damp, stuffy interior as the front and rear doors opened. Mike wiped his hand across the steamed up window and peered through the blurred circle to see who was getting off. More to the question, why? The last view he had before the bleak wintry light faded, was bare, snow covered fields and lonely forsaken farmhouses. The countryside beyond the pool of illumination streaming from the bus windows remained invisible. No welcoming lights of some farmhouse or village, just fat flakes of wet snow drifting slowly past his vision to settle on the head and shoulders of the departing passengers. The doors hissed shut as the lonely couple lifted their burden of shopping bags and slowly vanished into the swirling snow to some unknown and unseen destination. The bus moved on, its headlights cutting a gleaming white tunnel through the winter darkness. Here and there, the headlights picked out a bare tree in stark relief, leafless branches reaching down with skeletal finger as if grasping for the bus like some starving alien monster clawing for a meal. The last town or village he’d seen was Tottenham, and for a moment, he wondered if he was on the right bus. The warmth and motion of the slowly moving double decker omnibus soon lulled him back to the twilight zone between asleep and consciousness and he was back in the lecture hall.
How many times had he wished he could have dozed then, but Avalon’s ionized, oxygen rich air kept them all awake as he and his classmates suffered through that and other lectures. For three long years, the hard seat numbed his rear end while the Professor numbed his mind as they waited for what seemed like an eternity for his eighteenth birthday. More often than not, he wished he were back in the forest and jungles, exploring, prospecting, or just lazing the day away fishing in some quite mountain stream as he’d done for so many years. And yet, each night as he lay in his sleeping bag looking up, the gleaming stars in the heavens beckoned him with their siren song, calling him back to their welcoming embrace. In the end, his eighteenth birthday finally arrived, and like his older friends, he too followed them to college and pass through the right-of-passage to manhood and full citizenship. From that moment on it seemed that all their studies related to warfare in one form or another. From the basic combat training in weapons and unarmed combat, to advance classes with various implements of war, such as tanks, manned battle suits aircraft and starships. At nineteen, he went on to the War College, and here the emphasis was on the philosophy of government in all its subtle forms. From family and tribal socialism to communism, and capitalism, and in one way or another, they studied all the ‘izums’, learning the supposed benefits and pitfall of each. Someone touching him on the shoulder brought Mike back to the present with a jerk. He looked around to find an old lady in the seat behind poking him with a bony finger.
“I think this is your stop young man.” The old woman's eyes twinkled with some secret knowledge, a slight smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Mike stood and thanked her, careful not to hit his head on the roof.
The old woman in her faded winter coat sat and watched as the tall young man move to the back of the bus and the stairwell. The hard lined of her aged face softening for a moment, a sad smile played at the corner of her mouth, remembering other handsome, bright-eyed young men in the uniforms from long ago. A bright star of a tear gathered in the corner of her eyes as she remembered the Wednesday night dances at the local church hall in Tottenham, of warm hands and even warmer lips in the darkness. Of whispered promises, and words of love. She let out a soft wistfully sigh for days gone by and looked out the window for one last glimpse of the handsome stranger, smiling slightly as she wondered what young girl would listen to his whispered promises and words of love.
How the old woman knew this was his stop Mike wasn’t sure, but going downstairs, he saw the conductor nod to him, and shouldering his duffel bag he hunched his shoulders against the coming chill. The conductor hit the door release and he stepped out into the cold forbidding darkness. Wet snow immediate settled on his bare head, dusting his short-cropped sandy hair, and the shoulders of his overcoat. He stood there shivering, glumly watching the bright yellow, double decker bus rumbled off down the road and vanish into the darkness. Across the road a dimly lit bus stop, he could see a sign that said ‘Marchwood’. That meant he was here, wherever here was. Through the falling snow, he could see a small village, the light from snow haloed street lamps picked out the almost ghostly outline of a small houses and what he took to be shops on each side of the narrow road, now all shuttered and dark. A naval vehicle should have picked him up at the mag rail station in Southampton, but after waiting for over an hour in the freezing cold he’d taken the bus, at least it was warm. Up to this moment, he’d managed to hold his emotions together, but gradually a feeling of loneliness began to penetrate his defenses, something he wasn’t use to. He clamped down on the feeling and let out a snort of disgust, more at himself for feeling this way, and shouldering his bag, he started down the lane on silent footsteps, hoping he was going in the right direction. The soft scrunchy snow deadened all sound and he wondered for a moment if the bus conductor was playing a joke on him.
On face value, there was nothing to indicate this was the way to a naval base, or anywhere else for that matter. Just a narrow country lane, poorly lit and badly maintained, attested to by the number of snow-filled potholes he kept stumbling into. Around him, the dense thicket of leaf
less trees and bush prevented him from seeing anything of the surrounding countryside, but he supposed it was the same as he had seen from the top of the bus. Bare, snow covered fields stretching away on each side with the occasional light from some lonely farmhouse piercing the gloom for a brief moment. Pools of warmth in an otherwise cold alien landscape. Just then, a gust of salty wind, smelling of fish, seaweed and tar blew wet snow down his collar, adding to his misery. His thinly insulated shoes had long since given up the job of protecting his feet. Now they were just dead lumps at the ends of his legs that kept finding things to trip over, or ice covered potholes full of freezing water to step in to. Rounding a sharp bend in the lane, he saw the gleam of a dim yellow light through the falling snow and headed towards it like a moth to a flame, wishing for the thousandth time he were back on Avalon. At least there, he’d be warm. Much to his surprise, the poor excuse for a streetlight illuminated a turn off that ran fifty yards to a rusty, chain-link gateway, and a painted brick guard shack. A sign over the gate said ‘HMS Marchwood’, and from its new condition, it spoke volumes how recently, and of the speed the Royal Navy had re-commissioned this old base. Somewhat heartened he picked up his steps, and at least tried to look like a Navel cadet instead of some poor beggar looking for a handout. Walking through the pedestrian gate, he knocked on the steamed up window, seeing a misty figure inside move towards him. The sliding glass window opened a crack and warm steamy air flowed over his face, full of the rich smell of coffee, food and stim smoke.