by Ryk Brown
“How do you control the amount of thrust that generates your lift?”
“You do not,” Tug told him. “You simply indicate with your flight control stick that you wish to go up, and the system decides how much thrust to create, and how much of it needs to be diverted to the lift systems. As your forward velocity increases, so does the aerodynamic lift generated by the ship’s lifting body design. As the aerodynamic lift increases, the amount of thrust being diverted to the vertical lift thrusters decreases. By the time you reach a minimum lifting velocity, the vertical lift thrusters have disengaged.”
“But it’s all automatic, right?” Josh asked. “I mean, you don’t have to think about all that, you just tell it to go and it goes, right?”
“True, but you really should understand how it all works.”
“Yeah, I understand. The thrusters point down, spit out some thrust to keep us in the air until we get up to speed and the lifting body does its thing. I got it.”
“Very well,” Tug conceded. “Since you already know so, put your hands on the controls.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course.”
Josh placed his right hand on the control stick along his right side and his left hand on the throttle along his left side. “Okay, I’m ready,” he announced.
Tug flipped a switch on the control stick and then hovered his hands just off the controls. “The ship is yours.”
“Thrusting forward,” Josh announced, manipulating his flight controls. The interceptor began sliding forward as it continued to slowly climb. Josh adjusted his rate of ascent until the ship stopped climbing, continuing its forward motion about thirty meters above the ground. He looked out the port side of the interceptor at the spaceport below him as they continued slowly picking up forward velocity.
“Very good,” Tug praised. “As soon as we clear the fence line, you can pitch up and accelerate until we achieve aerodynamic flight velocity.”
“Copy,” Josh reported. “Fence line coming up. Hold on to your lunch; here we go,” Josh announced as he pulled the nose up slightly and pushed the throttles forward.
The interceptor leapt forward much faster than anything Josh had ever flown, pushing him back hard in his seat. “Whoa! This thing’s got some power! Are the inertial dampeners on?”
“Easy on that throttle, Josh,” Tug warned. “She is more powerful than you realize.”
Josh looked down at his instruments. “Holy crap! We’re already doing a thousand K’s, and we’re only at ten percent forward thrust! I guess the dampeners are working. But how come I’m getting pushed back in my seat?”
“The dampeners allow some of the feeling of acceleration to get through in order to give you a better sensation of the flight. As you increase your rate of acceleration, the dampeners will also increase their power to compensate so that we are not crushed.”
“Oh yeah? Let’s see.” Josh pushed the throttles to fifty percent, getting pushed back yet again as the interceptor accelerated further. “Shit!” he yelled. “We are hauling ass! We’re already passing five thousand K’s and accelerating.”
“You might want to pitch up a little more, Josh. We do not want to run into any low-flying aircraft.”
“Right, pitching up.” Josh pulled the nose up a bit more, peeking out the side of his canopy as the blurry ground began to rapidly fall away from them. “How long does it take this thing to reach orbit?” Josh asked.
“Every world is different,” Tug explained. “Different mass, gravity, atmospheric pressure. At full power it can escape the average human-hospitable planet’s gravity in a few minutes. I have yet to calculate it for this world,” Tug admitted.
“We might as well find out,” Josh insisted as he began pushing the throttles forward.
“Josh?” Tug’s hands were ready to take control away from the young pilot, fearing that his reaction time would not be sufficient to handle the spacecraft at its top atmospheric speeds.
Josh snapped the ship into a roll to port, rolling it completely over and then stopping, exactly centered again. He then repeated the roll to starboard. “Man, she is really responsive!”
Tug relaxed, putting his hands at his sides and grasping the hand rails on either side of his seat cushion to brace himself for what was coming. “Very well, Josh. Take us up.”
Josh pulled the stick back, bringing the nose up even more, and slammed the throttles all the way forward, applying full thrust. The interceptor streaked upward with alarming acceleration, the surface of Corinair falling away behind them.
Josh watched the instruments as the velocity and altitude indicators scrolled so quickly he could barely keep track of the numbers. He looked forward out the front section of the canopy at the sky above as it quickly darkened. To his sides, he could see the planet’s horizon drop lower and lower until the blue sky above finally gave way to blackness.
“Transition,” Tug announced calmly. “Throttle back to thirty percent.”
“Throttling back,” Josh responded, not asking why. A moment later, the turbines died out and the main drive kicked in, lurching them forward again.
The instruments on his console blinked, the numbers all dropping by huge factors. “What just happened?” Josh asked.
“Your displays have changed their increments,” Tug explained. “Look at your velocity indicator. It is now reading in kilometers per second instead of per hour as they were in the atmosphere.”
“Oh, I get it.”
“They will continue to change their increments as we accelerate further.”
“So that would be the second flight system.”
“Correct. In a few moments we will have achieved orbital velocity for this world.”
“How do we know the correct velocity?” Josh wondered.
“The ship knows. On your main display, do you see the circle around the image of the planet? It represents the optimal orbital path. As your current trajectory approaches that circle, it will begin to flash. At that point you should start throttling back gradually so that you are at zero acceleration when you reach the optimal orbital path.”
“Got it,” Josh answered.
“Once you have achieved orbit, the orbital path will turn green.”
Josh kept glancing down at the main display. Just as Tug had predicted, the line indicating their trajectory began to flash. “Throttling back,” Josh announced as he began to slowly pull the throttles back. The constant drone of the main engines slowly faded as their output was dialed back. Thirty seconds later, Josh felt the throttles come to a stop at their zero position and the orbital path on his display turned from white to green. “Orbit achieved,” he reported calmly. “Do we get to go to FTL now?”
“Patience,” Tug urged, after which he muttered something in Takaran.
“What was that?” Josh asked. Having lived on Haven for most of his young life, he had never learned the Takaran language, as their forces had abandoned the system when he was still a child.
“It is an old training adage,” Tug explained. “It means ‘crawl, walk, run’.”
“Okay,” Josh answered, not really getting the meaning. “So what do we do now?”
“The third system,” Tug said, “maneuvering. When we were in atmospheric flight, your control stick had three directions of movement available: angled front or back, twisting left or right, and angled left or right. This gave you control over pitch, yaw, and roll. Now that you are in space flight, two additional directions of movement have been enabled. Your stick can now slide forward or backward to apply forward or reverse thrust, and it can slide right or left to provide lateral thrust.”
“So it works the same as in most other spacecraft,” Josh observed, “except it’s all combined into one stick instead of two.”
“Correct.”
“What about thrusting up or down?” Josh wondered.
“The little slider on the top of the stick on the side facing aft. Slide it up or down to thrust upward or downward.”
“Slick. I like it,” Josh concluded.
“Practice reorienting the ship to different points around your coordinate sphere. For example, try pointing the ship forty-five degrees to starboard so that your attitude is directly parallel to your flight path.”
Josh twisted his control stick slightly to the right, causing the ship to rotate on its center axis to starboard. A split second later, he twisted the stick back to the left to stop his rotation. “Done,” he announced, boredom evident in his expression.
“Very good,” Tug admitted. “Now bring it one hundred and eighty degrees to port so that…”
Josh didn’t wait for Tug to finish his instructions, spinning the ship to port even more quickly than he had spun it to starboard.
“Very well,” Tug said. “I can see you are ready for something a little more challenging.” Tug began entering commands into the ship’s computer.
“Like what?” Josh asked.
“A maneuvering drill,” Tug explained.
A set of pale blue lines forming a sphere flickered to life in the space directly in front of Josh’s face. It appeared to be floating in mid-air. “Whoa, what the hell?” Josh exclaimed as he reached up and passed his left hand through the floating image.
“This is a training prompter,” Tug told him. “See the small flashing dots? When one of them appears, you point the ship toward that dot.”
“Got it. When do I start?”
“One moment.”
The sphere began to quickly expand until it went beyond the canopy and out into the vacuum around them. Once it stopped, Josh noticed that his head was now at the center of the sphere. He looked about outside the cockpit at the blue lines that now encircled his cockpit from outside. A replica of the sphere was also displayed on one of his small display screens on his forward console.
“Okay, that was impressive.”
“Prepare to begin the exercise,” Tug warned, “in three……two……one……begin.”
A red light appeared on the projected sphere outside the cockpit at a point forty-five degrees to port. Josh swung the ship’s nose over to point it at the dot which then turned green. A second later, the green dot disappeared and another red dot appeared forty-five degrees to starboard. Josh swung the nose back to starboard, again lining up with the red dot and causing it to turn green. The process repeated, the dot showing up slightly above and slightly below the ship’s horizontal plane, each time forty-five degrees from the previous dot. Josh swung the interceptor’s nose back and forth, up and down, with considerable precision. Josh and Tug rocked slightly back and forth as the interceptor swung about.
“Very good,” Tug admitted. “You are not over-maneuvering at all. Would you like me to increase the difficulty level?”
“You mean I beat level one?” Josh joked.
“Yes, you could say that.” Tug entered some more commands into the ship’s computer. “Let us expand the range of the maneuvers a bit,” Tug suggested. “I will vary the range of degrees between each maneuver as well.”
The next red dot appeared about sixty degrees from the previous dot and considerably farther off the ship’s horizontal plane than before. Josh still had no problem bringing the interceptor’s nose onto the dot, but the next dot was only thirty degrees away, and he slightly overshot the mark. However, within a few more maneuvers he was again hitting his marks with precision, having forced himself out of the previous pattern in order to treat each maneuver separately.
“Hey, this is kind of fun,” Josh exclaimed.
Tug realized that Josh was not even having to concentrate, and decided to raise the challenge once again. “Switching to adaptive mode, full range and variance.”
“What?” Josh asked. The dots began coming at more random locations, on all points around him. Above, below, fore and aft, they even began coming more frequently, forcing him to maneuver faster. “Okay, okay… I got this,” Josh proclaimed, swinging the interceptor’s nose about wildly as he chased the red dots flashing all around him. Soon, the red dots were no longer turning green before the next red dot appeared, as Josh was no longer getting his nose on target before the next target came into view in its place. “All right, all right!” Josh declared. The sphere outside his cockpit disappeared in an instant as Tug discontinued the drill. Josh breathed out a sigh of relief. “That was insane!” He adjusted the attitude of his ship so that his nose was again pointed along his flight path, and his ship was level in relation to the planet’s surface below.
“But very good practice,” Tug added. “You did quite well for you first time. There is another exercise I would like you to try.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“This time, the red dots will be coming at you, as if they are objects in space that you are flying toward. Your goal is to maneuver the ship up or down, and side to side, in order to avoid colliding with the dots as you pass them.”
Josh adjusted himself in his seat and slid his right thumb onto the vertical thrust slider on his control stick in preparation for the next drill. “Sounds easy enough.”
“Prepare to begin the exercise,” Tug warned again, “in three……two……one……begin.”
A red dot appeared in space a distance ahead of them. It rapidly grew in size, giving the appearance that it was coming directly toward them. Josh pushed the vertical thrust slider upward for a split second, then immediately slid it downward to counter the upward thrust and stop the ship’s upward movement in relation to its original flight path. The red dot began to stretch out slightly as it appeared to pass under them. Just as soon as the first dot passed by, another dot appeared in their path. Doing the opposite, Josh slid the ship downward slightly, allowing the dot to pass above them. The drill repeated several times. Josh moved the ship up, down, left, and right in order to avoid colliding with the dots as they passed.
Josh quickly became bored. “Is this the beginner’s level, or what?”
“Very well,” Tug answered, adjusting the parameters of the exercise.
This time, the dots came in groups, forcing Josh to maneuver the ship in certain directions in order to avoid being struck by any of the dots as they passed. Again, his maneuvers became more aggressive as he instructed the interceptor to slide around at his whim. With each few waves that were successfully avoided, the following waves began to come in faster. Josh became quiet as he concentrated on keeping the ship out of the path of the onrushing clusters of red dots. As the waves of dots came faster and faster, alerts started sounding, indicating that a few of the dots had made contact with the interceptor’s outer edges. Just as Josh was about to give up, the waves went back to single dots coming more slowly.
“Now,” Tug began, “as you maneuver the ship to avoid colliding with the dots, try to keep your nose pointed toward the dots as they pass.”
“Got it,” Josh answered, recollecting himself.
“As soon as the dots pass, swing the nose back to forward in order to track the next oncoming dot.”
“Understood.” Josh slid the interceptor slightly to starboard while keeping his nose pointed at the dot as it passed to port. As soon as it passed, he swung the nose back around to face forward, but barely had enough time to slide the ship back to port in order to avoid the next dot. Over the next few passes, he continued to have the same problem.
“Keep your head on a swivel,” Tug advised him. “Do not restrict your visual tracking to your forward quarter. If your ship is tracking a dot to starboard, keep glancing to your left along your flight path in order to locate the next dot before you swing around. You can then maneuver the ship out of the dot’s path before you even swing your nose back around to track it.”
“Got it,” Josh answered. Most of Josh’s flying in the past had been straight forward, with the nose of his ship usually pointed in the direction he was flying. The automated flight systems maintained such attitude orientations automatically. Now he was being asked to fly sideways, upside down, backward—it would take some time to g
et used to the new technique.
Tug watched as Josh struggled with the maneuvers, fighting the urge to call out every mistake the young pilot was making. However, Josh was quickly figuring it out for himself. Within a few minutes, he was beginning to get the hang of it, and was slipping the ship in between the dots, spinning about one way or another in order to track them with his nose. If this had been target practice, Tug was pretty sure Josh would have scored highly.
After about ten minutes of practice, the dots disappeared. “That should be enough for now,” Tug told him.
“That was a lot of maneuvering,” Josh admitted. “And I thought scooping up debris from the rings was tricky. I hope I didn’t burn up all our maneuvering propellant.”
“Doubtful,” Tug assured him. “The maneuvering engines in this ship are extremely efficient. We have not even used one percent of their capacity.”
“Wow,” Josh exclaimed. “Are the mains that efficient as well?”
“Indeed they are,” Tug told him. “This ship was designed as a deep-space interceptor. Back in its day, it was taken on long patrols between star systems. We would use the FTL drive to quickly get out into the patrol corridors, then dart around at half-light as we scanned for red-shifted FTL trails.”
“What are those?” Josh wondered.
“You cannot see something that is traveling toward you at speeds faster than light, as they would arrive before their own light reached you. You would only see them for a millisecond as they passed you by. Instead, we would search for their visual trails as they traveled away from us. Their light would be red-shifted since they were traveling away from us, and the rate of shift would tell us if they were at FTL speeds.”
“So then you would chase them down and attack?”
“No. It is quite impossible to target a ship traveling at FTL speeds,” Tug told him. “But this ship is still faster than most larger spacecraft, so we could get ahead of them and warn of their impending arrival, thus providing time to prepare a defense.”
“Then why is this called an ‘interceptor’?” Josh asked.