by Doug Hoffman
“Quaff-worthy, pardner?”
“Yeah, Billy Ray. You know, worthy of quaffing: To drink a beverage, especially an intoxicating one, copiously and with hearty enjoyment.”
“I told you we should not have given them a complete OED as a wedding present. Now he's creating his own neologisms.”
“I greatly appreciate the dictionary, Beth. I find it very helpful for looking up obscure English words.”
“We did sorta have you in mind more than Bobby. Who knew he would turn into a budding philologist? In any case we are almost there, if you can leave the beer unquaffed for a few more minutes.”
“A guy tries to better himself and all he catches is grief.”
The friends rounded a corner and found themselves in a small plaza, a circular court paved with stone tiles. At the center of the plaza was a large block of polished basaltic rock. Atop the dark, four meter pedestal was a bronze statue of a man wearing a spacesuit.
“Isn't that...” Beth's voice trailed off as she stared at the statue's heroically sized features.
“Jack Sutton,” Billy Ray finished her dangling question. “It is indeed.”
“Look, there is a plaque.” Excited, Mizuki hurried to the base of the pedestal. The others followed as Mizuki read the inscription. “Here Humans and Ursines from the planet Earth first landed on the surface of Mars, voyaging here in the starship Peggy Sue.”
“Oh wow,” said Bobby, running his hand along the side of the plaque. “Where did they get the metal?”
“They must have brought it from Earth. The whole statue was probably cast on Earth, pre-bombardment.”
“I knew that Jack had told TK to erect a monument celebrating our first trip to Mars, one inscribed with the names of all the people and bears on board the ship,” Billy Ray explained. “I didn't know the monument included a statue of the Captain.”
“Yes, the names are engraved on the pedestal.” Mizuki moved to one side of the oversized plinth. “Here is your name Bobby!”
Beth joined her. “And yours, dear.”
All four joined in the search for familiar names. Mizuki found her own name on the other side, next to her mentor's, Dr. Hiroyuki Saito. Lieutenant Bear was listed by his more formal name, Pihoqahiak, which means the ever-wandering one in Inuit. Also present were Isbjørn, Bear's mate; Ludmilla Tropsha, ship's doctor and Jack Sutton's wife; Chief Zackly, and a host of other familiar names.
“I hadn't realized I married such a celebrity, or that all of you were so famous.”
“Trust me, honey bunch, we were all just passin' through.”
“I guess we're immortal,” Bobby remarked, stepping back from the monument. “I never thought my name would be on a public monument.”
“Me either, pardner. Somehow I think that Captain Jack would be a mite embarrassed by all this.”
“He does look very impressive up there. Now I miss our friends who left on the M'tak Ka'fek.”
“I'm sure we'll see them again someday, Mizuki-chan.”
“The galaxy has proven to be a very dangerous place, more than I ever dreamt when I was studying to become an astrophysicist.”
Beth nodded. “As we've all discovered, and at no small cost.”
Billy Ray put his arm around his wife's shoulders and gave her a hug. “I'm sure they are all right. The galaxy is a dangerous place, but we all know Jack Sutton is a damned hard man to kill.”
“Not to mention Ludmilla,” added Mizuki, a twinkle in her eyes. If anything, Jack Sutton's wife was tougher than he was.
“I don't know about the rest of you, but I think we should move along before any of the crew happen on this place. It would be embarrassing explainin' why our names are on a public monument in the middle of the biggest settlement on Mars.”
“Surely it's nothing to be ashamed of, dear?”
“Not shameful, just a bit awkward. After all we were just along for the ride. The real hero is that man there.”
The officers of the Peggy Sue II quietly departed the courtyard, each lost in their own thoughts. The event commemorated by the monument seemed a lifetime ago. Some of the companions listed on the monument were gone, others scattered, and several about to make another trip to the stars on board the second ship to bear the name Peggy Sue.
“Do we still have time for that beer?”
Bill Ray clapped his friend on the shoulder.
“I think that's a fine idea, Bobby.”
Neither noticed the dark figure lurking nearby, observing them from behind a planter full of poplar trees. After a short pause the observer also departed, following the officers.
Chapter 5
Shuttle Hanger, Olympus Shipyard
Bobby walked along side the company representative, past the rows of shuttle craft. They were trailed by four other crewmembers from the Peggy Sue II: Frank Hoenig, Pauline Palmer, Matt Jacobs, and Steve Hitch. Palmer had been crew on the old Peggy Sue before spending some time in the Navy. Now she had returned as a pilot for both the ship and its small boats. Both she and Hoenig were sub-lieutenants—what the American Navy called ensigns—both qualified to stand watch on the bridge. Jacobs and Hitch were long time crewmembers and also experienced shuttle pilots.
The ranks of shuttle craft looked impressive sitting in orderly rows within the cavernous hanger. Carved from the living Martian rock, the hanger was illuminated by light strips in the ceiling. At the far end, over a kilometer away, a thirty-five by one hundred meter opening allowed natural light to enter the space. Though it looked like it was open to the outside looks were deceiving—the hanger door was actually made from a new, transparent version of selectively permeable material. It held an Earth normal atmosphere inside, while keeping the dust laden but tenuous Martian atmosphere out.
“These two are yours, Commander Danner,” the company rep said, motioning to two dark, wedge-shaped craft sitting side by side. They were obviously military type shuttles, blunt and hulking with hull blisters that hinted at weaponry concealed within. Both craft had their forward crew doors open with stairs extending to the apron. Standing next to the shuttles were men in pressure suits. Danner's party were also wearing standard pressure suits and carrying bubble helmets under their arms, giving them the appearance of astronauts of old, walking to a launch pad. The suits were just in case one of the shuttles lost cabin pressure or had to set down on the Martian surface—Mars might one day have a breathable atmosphere, but currently there was not much difference between it and vacuum.
Bobby turned and addressed his party. “All right people, we are going to split into two teams, one for each shuttle. Palmer and Hitch take this one, Hoenig and Jacobs, take the other. The shipyard's pilots will take the shuttles out of the hanger then you will each take turns putting them through their paces. Try not to run into any planets or moons.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” the quartet of pilots responded, anxious to go flying above the Red Planet.
“Are you going to join us, Commander?” asked Lt. Palmer.
“No, Ms. Palmer. I'm going to wait for the First Officer to join me and then we are going to do some testing of our own.”
Captain's Sea Cabin, Peggy Sue II
Billy Ray was in his shipboard office, abaft the bridge and forward of the CIC. For reasons of tradition it was called the Captain's Sea Cabin. The captain of a large Navy vessel has two cabins—an in-port cabin and a sea cabin. The in-port cabin is like a suit in a hotel, often including a separate bedroom, office, and sitting room for entertaining guests or meeting with the ship's officers.
The sea cabin is a much smaller affair, located just off the bridge, containing a desk and a bunk. When not in-port, the captain of a warship often spent most of his or her time in the sea cabin, sleeping and taking meals there so as not to be far from the bridge. While the Peggy Sue II was not officially a warship, Captain Vincent often stayed in his sea cabin when the ship was in normal 3-space. In alter-space, where there was little chance of an emergency, he used the larger cabin that he shar
ed with his wife.
Though in-port, with all the activity taking place loading supplies and equipment, the Captain found his sea cabin more conducive to administrative work than his more comfortable office farther aft and one deck down. Currently he was approving payments for the Marines' new armor and weapons.
“I'd rather be in some strange star system fightin' Dark Lords than wading through this administrative crap,” he muttered to himself. Beth was off to join Bobby in putting the new interceptors through their paces and he was stuck behind a desk. And they say the life of a starship captain is so grand!
A tone sounded and the Chief's face popped up in a window on the desk's display surface. Now What? “Yes, Chief?”
“Beg yer pardon, Captain, but I has a fellow here that wants to see you.”
“Does this fellow have a name?”
“He'd rather not say, Sir. Wants it to be a surprise.”
“Very well, bring him up.”
“Aye, Sir.”
Just what I need, more distractions. But then, the Chief isn't one for fooling around. This must be important in some non-obvious way.
The Captain went back to his invoices and cargo manifests. A few minutes later a knock came at the door. He looked up.
“Come.”
The door slid open and a large, dark man stepped inside. He was dressed in deep charcoal gray, his shaven head gleamed like polished mahogany, a full black beard almost reached his chest.
Billy Ray looked at the man and then, hesitantly, said, “JT?”
A dazzling white smile lit up the dark man's face. “Right the first time, cowboy.”
Billy Ray came around the desk and the two men clasp hands. The newcomer stood almost as tall as the Captain and had wider shoulders. In fact, he was built like a tight end from the old NFL.
“What's with the shaved noggin and beard? I almost didn't recognize you. Hell, you look like Richie Havens.”
“Uh-huh. If I had even a tenth the talent that man had I'd be getting rich playing nightclubs all over the solar system. No man, I've been travilin' incognito.”
“Come on, sit down. Damn it's good to see you. You just sort of disappeared while we were gone on our last voyage. When we got back you were nowhere to be found.”
JT, suddenly somber, looked down at his hands. “Yeah, there's a long story behind that.”
Billy Ray leaned back in his chair and raised his eyebrows questioningly.
JT sighed.
“OK, but remember you asked for it. For a while after the war with the Dark Lords went cold I did like you did—I signed on to spend some time helping the Navy come up to speed on interstellar travel. Unfortunately, my relationship with Gretchen got in the way.”
“Really? I thought things between you two were good.”
“For a while they were, but there are no secrets on a military base, particularly one dug out of rock on the farside of the Moon. Word that we were seeing each other started to affect those around us. Our relationship became strained, strained enough that I resigned my commission.”
“It got that bad?”
“Everyone in the service either wanted to suck up to me in an attempt to suck up to the Admiral, or wanted me cashiered for being the Admiral’s boy toy. Either way, my career was seen as a joke—I was a tool or a fool. Even after I resigned the snickering in the ranks was still there. I guess it eventually became too much for Gretchen and we broke up.”
“I'm sorry to hear that, JT. I wondered why she didn't say anything about you when I last saw her.”
JT waved a hand dismissively. “Water under the bridge. We were never in-love-forever serious like you and Beth, we just liked each other and enjoyed each other's company. In any case I signed on to do a delivery run to Triton, but that was about as exciting as herding goats. Eventually I ended up working with a bunch of asteroid miners, prospecting for metal between Mars and Jupiter. That was when I shaved my head and grew the beard.
“Asteroid miners are a pretty rough bunch but they don't ask a lot of questions about who you are and where you been. It was interesting at first but it wasn't long before I realized that we were making just enough off our finds to keep looking for more—there was no big payday in sight.
“So one night, when we were resupplying at Ceres, I took all my credits and got into a poker game. I hit a hot streak and made enough to buy passage back to Mars on a packet ship. That got me here and I've been living off my pension funds ever since. Then I saw you and the others at the Captain Jack statue. A little snooping around and here I am, knocking at your door.”
“So yer tellin' me you need a job?”
“Yeah, Billy Ray, I need a job. Hell, what I really need is to get out of the fuckin' solar system. My life has petty much been circling the drain since I got off the M'tak Ka'fek.”
Bill Ray looked at the pleading in his friend's eyes. JT, James Leotis Taylor, was a former Green Beret, a trained astronomer, and a crewmate since the first voyage of the Peggy Sue. They had fought side by side on a number of occasions and had been friends for many years. To have him here, almost begging for a job, was both painful and embarrassing.
“We're going to look for the T'aafhal out in the Pleiades. Probably gonna take a year or so. No guarantee we'll make it back.”
“Sounds fine to me, I just want to be somewhere other than here.”
Billy Ray thought for half a minute before speaking again. “I could use someone to do master-at-arms duty—training and shipboard security stuff. Plus I'd wager that Mizuki wouldn't mind some help in the astronomy section.”
A smile was already spreading across JT's face.
“We have also been reunited with Chief Morgan and his snake eating cohorts. You might wanna work with them a bit, just in case we need some special operator mojo. I can bring you on board at your previous rank, that alright with you, Mr. Taylor?”
JT straightened up in his chair. “All right? Captain that's more than generous.”
“Then welcome aboard, Lieutenant. You can see Chief Zackly for quarters assignment.”
The newly commissioned Lt. Taylor stood and saluted his new commanding officer. “Thank you, Sir.”
Billy Ray returned the salute. “Dismissed, Mr. Taylor.”
Shuttle Hanger, Olympus Shipyard
Beth and Bobby had just completed doing preflight inspections for two aircraft sitting on the hangar ramp. Smaller and sleeker than the landing shuttles, these had a predatory, almost sinister look to them. Jet black, eighteen meters long with a wingspan of fourteen meters, they were about the size of a 21st century fighter jet. But these were no jets.
They possessed no gaping air intakes, no protruding jet exhausts with afterburners spewing fire. These fighter/interceptors were propelled by gravitonic repulsors which drew power from small, muon catalyzed fusion reactors. Like their antiquated earthbound ancestors they did have a way to boost performance when needed during a dogfight—the standard power generators were augmented by antimatter reactors that could triple their acceleration. For short bursts they could accelerate at over two hundred standard gravities.
Inertial compensators enveloping the cockpits kept their pilots from being turned into goo when performing maneuvers no craft dependent on aerodynamics could hope to match. The gracefully tapering wings, with thick roots blending into the craft's body proper, almost gave the fighters the appearance of flying wings. Not dictated by aerodynamic need, the wings were mainly to house weapons: dual 15mm multi-barreled railguns in the wing roots; gravatonically powered interceptor missiles with antimatter warheads, stored in internal weapons bays; dual plasma cannon in the wing tips, their design stolen from captured Dark Lord ships and enhanced with T'aafhal technology; and last but not least, a rail cannon that ran nearly the entire length of the craft along its centerline, capable of hurling a five kilo slug at 7,000 m/s, delivering nearly the same kinetic energy as a 16 inch AP round from a WWII battleship. And those were just the offensive weapons.
For
defense there were dorsal and ventral X-ray laser blisters, giving full coverage for incoming projectiles. To counter EM radiation and plasma weapons there were shields that used disruptive gravitational gradients to deflect and refract offensive fire. Add to that the extreme maneuverability of the fighters and there was nothing like them anywhere in the Orion Arm, at least as far as the engineers who created them knew.
Dubbed Kestrels by their designers, they were prototypes of weapons intended for sale to the Navy. Designed for use in system defense and to support planetary invasions, they could operate both in space and in an atmosphere. Through the good offices of TK Parker the first two operational Kestrels were being deployed aboard the Peggy Sue II. Docking sites for the two small fighters were designed into the larger ship's hull, allowing them to be serviced from below when mated with the mother-ship. There was also access from below for the pilot to enter the cockpit. It was through these bottom hatches that Beth and Bobby boarded their new play things.
“Olympus Control, Kestrel One, radio check, over.” Beth called the Port while powering up her fighter.
“Kestrel One, Olympus Control, we read you five-by-five.”
“Kestrel Two, Kestrel One, are you ready Bobby?”
“Roger that, Kestrel One. All systems go and ready to launch.”
“Olympus Control, Kestrel One. Flight of two small craft ready for departure from south shuttle area, out bound for southern Tharsis region for operational test flight.”
“Roger, Kestrel One. You are cleared for immediate departure. Contact Olympus Approach on your return.”
“We have clearance, Kestrel Two, try to keep up.”
During her taunting transmission, Beth's Kestrel rose from the apron, retracting its landing gear. An instant later it lept forward and disappeared through the hanger opening.
So that's how this is going to go, Bobby thought with a grin. He gave his fighter its head and followed Beth into the Martian sky.
* * * * *
The two fighters were soon locked in mock combat, swirling and turning like birds of prey on a mating flight. They arched upward, climbing above the thin traces of atmosphere that clung to the heights of Olympus Mons, their paths scribing a double helix in the sky. From there they dove, constantly maneuvering for advantage, constantly trying to get on each other's six—their opponent's tail.