IronStar

by Hallman, Grant

  “Sir, from the sound of it, some of my skills just might come in pretty handy a bit later.”

  Kirrah watched as some silent but decisive signal passed between the two Marines.

  “Suits me, Addie.” Marcus blinked once and turned to Kirrah. “We must protest your illegal actions, Ma’am. But since this is a Regnum Navy vessel, we elect to stay on board as long as possible, in accordance with our duties.”

  Kirrah blinked in turn, then the light came on - he was saying ‘yes’ by saying something correct and legally defensible.

  Marcus continued, “Just one comment about your plan, ma’am, if you’ve a mind to listen to an old barracks lawyer.” At her encouraging nod, he continued. “Speaking theoretically, ma’am, if I were to try such a thing, I’d want to have really good documentation. It might make all the difference, especially if someone wanted to, you know, bend things our way at some later point. Not that I’d expect any favors,” he added, rolling his eyes.

  “Thank you, both of you,” Kirrah said gratefully. “We’ll have to put someone local down with Margaret, then. I don’t want her having to walk back twenty kay on her own, out there.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Margaret said. “You’re not putting me off my own shuttle, no way! Please, ma’am,” she added, belatedly recognizing her present helpless position. Kirrah knelt beside the handcuffed pilot, level with her eyes:

  “Margaret, I’m willing to risk my life. These are my people here, fighting for their world. But I can fly a shuttle. We don’t need you at risk too. And as Adrianne pointed out, we could all be killed five minutes in, or at any point in the entire operation. There’s simply no reason to risk your life, too.”

  “Frankly, ma’am, I’m less afraid of eating a Spitball than I am of facing Admiral Dunning again, if I lose her shuttle. I’ll stay.”

  This part, I believe I’ll actually enjoy, Kirrah thought. Documentation! What a great idea! Re-suited, she and Peetha stood out on the dark not-grass between the compromised but silent shuttle and the Regnum embassy building. A dark figure approached from the building, stopped.

  “Is that Kirrah Roehl?” it whispered.

  “Ms. Einarson. Good evening. I trust you’ve been getting good coverage of the damage these people took from the Kruss mini-nuke?”

  “Ms. Roehl, this is the biggest story I’ve ever had the privilege of covering. I am only sorry it has been at such cost to the indigs.” Kirrah revised her estimate of the reporter up a notch. “You said there was some new activity I might be interested in?”

  “Ms. Einarson, I am prepared at this time to offer you a story under a MacKenzie Bond, twenty-four hour time limit, personal risk is high. You must accept or reject this offer immediately. Either way, you must accompany me into that shuttle for at least a short ride.”

  The reporter’s eyes grew large at the mention of the centuries-old agreement between the press and the military. Under a MacKenzie Bond, a selected reporter was allowed access to highly sensitive information, in exchange for absolute military control over the reporter’s movements, and over the story’s eventual publication. Risk evaluation and time limit were the only required disclosures going in, and once given the offer, a reporter could be held incommunicado for up to a week, just for knowing about it, even if they declined. Stories obtained under a MacKenzie Bond had the reputation of making reporters very famous, or very dead, occasionally both.

  Kirrah watched the RegNet woman’s face in the darkness. She could almost read the inner arguments, see the point at which natural curiosity and professional ambition overcame caution, and some residual personal antipathy to Kirrah’s earlier hardball tactics. She watched the decision rise to the surface.

  “Damn! I accept! Thank you, Ms. Roehl! Where does it start?”

  “Right here,” Kirrah replied. Peetha produced an undersuit and standard vacuum skin. “For security reasons, you must now strip completely and change into these. Only your skin and your certified recorder go past this point.” In fact, all we need is your recorder, Kirrah thought to herself. With realistic fake imaging as easy to create as typing, a reporter’s video equipment was loaded with anti-forgery technology that made its images fully acceptable as legal evidence. At least it won’t take away another pair of hands to run the camera this way…

  “Main bus, On,” Doris said from the engineering station a few minutes later.

  “MPA, warm boot. LAN established,” Kirrah replied from the pilot’s station on the left of the flight deck. “AI active.”

  “FB-1, initiation. FB-2.”

  “Avionics green. Flight systems diagnostics initiated.”

  “FB-1, igniting.”

  “Confirm FB-1 ignition, looks green.”

  “FB-2, igniting.”

  “Two, green.”

  “Propellant main full, aux one and four eight-eight, aux two and three full, feed two and three, pressure green.”

  “Confirm feed two and three.”

  “FB-2, standby.”

  “FB-2, reading standby, one percent power.”

  “FB-1, on-line.”

  “Flight systems diagnostics complete, green to go. Guns?”

  “Cold and locked. Flight systems nominal, power nominal. Any time, Kirrah.” Survey Service Lieutenant Kirrah Roehl, for what would probably be the last time in her life, took control of a Regnum vessel.

  “Ms. Einarson, you may begin recording.” In the front row seat behind the open cockpit door, the reporter rose to her feet as far as the cuff around her ankle allowed, panned her camera from a view of the shackled Marines forward to inside the flight deck. Margaret Piersall was sitting cuffed and bound to one of the jump seats. Peetha stood beside her, Kruss blade ready in one hand.

  When the eye steadied on her, Kirrah spoke. “I am Kirrah shu’Roehl, Warmaster of Talam, in control of a Regnum Landing Assault Shuttle. Let the record show that the other Navy and Marine personnel are my prisoners. I am taking this action in defense of my Realm, an ally of the Regnum Draconis, against Kruss agents who have destroyed a part of our capital city with illegal weapons. As far as I know, except for confining these people, everything I am about to do is legal and within the Regnum’s published rules of engagement for this conflict.

  “Ensign Piersall. My lieutenant here has orders to kill you, if I tell her you say anything on comm that I don’t approve of. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good, let’s get this show on the road, then.” Could have used a better choice of words, Kirrah thought with an inward grin. Show, indeed. She deployed a mic-rod from the adjacent workstation to a place in front of Margaret’s lips, turned and sat at the pilot’s seat.

  “Sensor feed, external On, internal Off. Remote latch Standby, outside clear.”

  “Vertical thrusters, ignition.” A pump whined and two pairs of soft explosions marked ignition of the four belly thrusters. The sound spiraled up and they began to rise. Doris turned and pointed at the Ensign, who leaned slightly forward and spoke into the audio pickup.

  “Argosy, Shuttle One, this is Ensign Piersall, departing Roehl Two, local delivery, note-only.”

  “Shuttle One, Argosy. Got you on scan. Have a good flight. When you’re done there, we could use another drop. Captain Wallace’s freed up another five relief workers and a couple of regen tanks put together from spares. Sounds like the indies could use ‘em.” No shit, thought Kirrah, I know the first ‘indie’ I want to see in one of those tanks, too. On cue, Margaret replied:

  “One, by.” Wishing she was as practiced as the young woman behind her, or that she could trust her planet to the woman’s present loyalties, Kirrah continued:

  “Tail thrusters, ignition. Gear up.” The massive rocket motors in the shuttle’s tail came to life and began pushing them forward. Motors whirred and rumbled under them, three green lights turned yellow over Kirrah’s right knee, and were replaced by blue.

  “Gear up,” confirmed Doris. They fled into the night, climbin
g higher and faster with each passing moment. Kirrah spared a glance over her left shoulder, saw the scatter of fires in the heart of Talameths’cha receding rapidly behind them. Soon, she promised the darkness inside. Soon, we strike.

  “Shuttle One, Argosy. Say again your destination?” Hmm, we got a bit farther than I expected, oh well…

  “Argosy, Shuttle one, this is Kirrah Roehl. We are transferring supplies to a Kruss base, they’re holding hostages and this is part of the negotiations. Check the log for the last watch, I think Lieutenant Warden had someone set it up.”

  A half-minute pause, then, “Oh, right, here it… no, this was a delivery to somewhere on that river north of you, you seem to be off course or something.”

  “I guess someone forgot to update you in all the activity down here, Argosy. The Kruss demanded a change, drop directly at that city, it’s called O’dakai on your charts,” Kirrah replied.

  “Oh, ok. Guess it’s been a pretty hectic night.”

  Kirrah allowed herself another breath.

  “Say, isn’t that the city where there was shooting earlier, ma’am?”

  “That’s affirmative, Argosy. This is just a quick drop, in and out, they’re expecting us this time. No hostilities.”

  “Good. Oh, yeah, would you tell Margaret we’re not getting internal sensor feed? Probably nothing, just a switch. It’s not like her to miss something, though…”

  “Will do, One by.” Shit! Kirrah shut off the mic pickup and turned to Doris. “Now what? We can’t show him inside pictures!”

  “Uh, ma’am,” said Ensign Piersall. “Please close the flight deck hatch… thank you.” Now out of range of the RegNet camera, she continued:

  “Lieutenant Finch, if you look in the off-line archives, you’ll see a file called ‘Happy-2’, it’s an image of the shuttle interior, empty. If you patch that into the feed from CC-2, you could activate the internal sensors and they’ll get that view instead. That way they can at least confirm our weapons status.”

  “C’mon, Marg,” Doris replied. “I was using these systems before you started school. Fake images would show up like a sore thumb in the data feed. Nice try.”

  “Uh, not that file, ma’am. It’s been, uh, modified, a little. It kinda slides into the LANstream traffic with the right frame headers, and, and everything.” Doris tapped a few more commands, looked sideways at her screen, typed some more.

  “I’ll be damned, Kirrah! This young Ensign has a very slick crack for the sensor stream! Don’t trust anything you take off this boat’s logs, ever again! Ensign Piersall, that’s a very naughty piece of code! Tell me who did it, so I can shake their hand!”

  The young woman blushed deeply, replied, “I did, ma’am. There were times when it was sort of, uh, convenient, for the shuttle to look empty.”

  The voice from far overhead interrupted, “Shuttle One, Argosy. That’s got it, thanks.”

  Doris pointed to Margaret, who replied, “One, by.”

  Doris asked, “Not to pry, but convenient for whom, Margaret?”

  “Uh, I’d rather not say, ma’am.”

  Doris shrugged and turned back to her screens. Kirrah, sitting at the controls and watching their swift progress on her heads-up display, put together the three-month voyage out from Trailway, the two mutually-telepathic Marines who had chosen to bunk down in the otherwise-empty shuttle, and the Navy’s strict regulations against fraternization within one’s chain of command. She added the odd choice of file name, then indexed her intuition’s conclusions under ‘private, FYI only, nice touch’, and added another brush stroke to the image of Margaret she was painting in her mind.

  Ten minutes later, the shuttle touched down in a plaza near Fleet-Captain Schmado’s old estate in the harbor section of the northern lobe of O’dakai. The Captain, Rash’koi and Prax’soua made a hurried exit. After a tense fifteen minutes’ absence, they returned with a woman not quite Kirrah’s age holding tightly to the hands of two young boys, one a little younger than Akaray, one a little older, both frightened and eyes wide as saucers. Captain Schmado was actually weeping with relief and happiness.

  Well, that’s one thing went right, Kirrah thought to herself, as the reunited family settled down in one of the middle rows of seats. A minute later, they were back in the air, making a very loud pass straight south over the twin cities and climbing steeply, high into the late night sky. That should be a good wakeup call for the citizens. Hey, this bird may not be as nimble as my old Manny P-11, but Gods! you’ve gotta love the power, she concluded.

  From two thousand meters above the plains south of the city, she turned back, powered the thrusters right down, and glided silently back across the capitol. On the shuttle’s external speakers, Captain Schmado’s pre-recorded voice boomed out over the thoroughly aroused inhabitants. Kirrah listened to the O’dai translation in Talamae, unconsciously selecting that language over Standard:

  “Citizens of O’dakai! Know that your King hosts devils from the sky, in secret rooms under his palace. For this sin, fire will fall suddenly from the sky on this city. All who remain here beyond dawn, will die. Flee! Flee now! Take nothing with you! You must be twenty doi’la from the city by dawn. Do not look at the sky until after judgement falls.

  “king Oka’sse especially, you are ordered to flee your palace immediately! If anyone sees the small sky-devils, kill them. Only then will you be safe.”

  “That last bit was inspired,” said Doris. The old fart has the choice of following your orders, or standing there on ground zero! Nice touch!”

  “Don’t thank me,” Kirrah replied, feeding power to the thrusters to regain altitude for another pass. “Thank Captain Schmado, it was his idea. As Angela used to say, there’s nothing like a good cultural knowledge base to promote trust and understanding.

  “I think he expected his family was already dead in retribution for his defeat on the river, which tells you something about how this government operates. Ok, that’s three. One more pass, then we’re out of here.”

  The shuttle turned back south over the harbor, glided across the city one final time, speakers blaring. Kirrah allowed their glide to float down to only two hundred meters at the south end of their passage. Then she poured on the thrust, and as their speed accelerated toward Mach One, lifted the shuttle’s nose into an ever-steepening climb that gradually stood the sleek, powerful craft on its tail. Fusion rockets thundering violet-white fire, they bored a hole straight up into the starry sky. Behind them, a fully alarmed populace watched and trembled. By twos, then tens, then hundreds, they began to move.

  Chapter 46 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-nine): Velocity

  “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.” - The Book of Psalms, 139:9-11; King James Translation, original circa 800 BC, Terra.

  Definitely not a powered glider, Kirrah thought with a savage, primal joy, as the eighty-tonne bird passed Mach Two in vertical flight at eighteen thousand meters’ altitude. Thirty seconds later, at Mach Three and forty-one thousand meters, the sky to the east was turning a faint rose color. The stars above were becoming the hard, bright points of light Kirrah had known most of her life. She rolled the craft slightly to give a better view out the portside windows. The rose color continued to brighten and spread across the eastern horizon. Their speed mounted steadily as they climbed, faster and faster, straight into the zenith.

  In another hundred seconds, the center of the eastern brightness went pearly white, and as the nine citizens of the planet watched in astonished wonder, the shuttle burst into bright sunlight. Even Peetha’s gasp of astonishment was clearly audible on the flight deck. Not bad, Kirrah congratulated herself. Three minutes at two gees loading, a hundred eighty kilometers up and climbing at almost two kilometers per second. Wonder what she’d do on full power?

  “Kirrah made the
sun rise,” Peetha breathed, her awestruck whisper barely audible.

  Whoops, let’s not overdo the special effects… “No, Peetha. Kirrah made the shuttle go up. God made the sun rise. I just got us a better view.”

  In another half minute, the approaching dawn line was visible to the east as an arc of bright colors on the ground. A minute later, the arc became a visible crescent, and soon the human eye and mind made the transition from being above the ground, to being near a planet.

  The comm chimed. “Shuttle One, Argosy. Bobby’s right, Marg, you are a cowboy!”

  At a nod from Doris, Ensign Piersall responded, “Hey, reaction mass is just lying there on the ground all thawed and ready to pump in, why not have a little fun! Look, Ms. Roehl asked for a little show for a cuppla VIP’s we’ve got on board. Thought we’d give ‘em a tour of the system. We should be latching up in about an hour, ok?”

  “You have yourself a good time, Margaret. Standing by for remote latch.”

  Kirrah allowed herself a deeper breath, powered the rockets smoothly down to half a gee. Now for the scary part…

  “Ok, Doris, let’s bring the drive collar online.”

  “Way ahead of you, ‘Warmaster’. Higgs cycle at thirty percent already. Autopilot got a good fix on that palace, I bet we’re locked within half a meter. Forty percent Higgs. FB two coming on-line. Who’s gonna do the honors?”

  “I thought I’d let Peetha do the actual launch. But I want to get a good, stable trajectory for thirty seconds or so. Honestly I wasn’t sure we’d get this far, kiddo. It was a stroke of luck we got the call to pick up those tanks. Otherwise as soon as we broke sky, there’d be questions I don’t want to answer.” Plus we’d never have made it this far unchallenged, without Margaret’s help, Kirrah added mentally, unwilling to risk breaking their fragile cooperation by voicing it just yet.