Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk)

by Little, Robert

  A female lieutenant commander, and a command pilot with quite a bit of experience, judging by her array of medals asked, “Lieutenant, what are they like? I mean, how do they fight? Is it like fighting another individual, that you can, well, learn to read? Or, what?”

  I nodded and said, “It’s not like anything I can describe. They are not terribly creative, when taken on one at a time. They’re logical to a fault. It’s almost as if they are connected mentally. They behave more like a computer – a damn good computer - than an individual. I’ve thought a lot about this, and that is the best answer I’ve been able to come up with.” Silence greeted this answer. Nastya stood by my side, and although she was above me in rank, she acted more like an aide, or, a close friend.

  I handled questions about missiles and how to best target bug fighters. I said, “Good news here; our dash 15, especially the ‘b’ version, is very effective against their fighters, unlike that p.o.s. missile we started the fight with. On the other hand, we had to hit one cruiser with almost one hundred of them to blow it up.”

  I pointed to Carolyn, who at that very moment was downloading some of her software packages to Commander Jarvis’ pad, and said, “You should direct that type of question to Etech4 Carolyn, who can provide your commander with mission data. I recommend that you pay attention to this, as it will be the only time you are safe around them.”

  Nastya finally called an end to the seemingly endless questions and we were shown to a table, where we found some snacks and non-alcoholic drinks. We sat down gratefully and accepted cups.

  While we were tackling some fresh cookies, a middle-aged marine enlisted man entered the hall. This was somewhat unusual, as it was an officer’s mess. However, he was accompanied by three high ranking officers, all of them pilots or former pilots, judging by their medals.

  I knew instantly that this visit was not going to be handled by me. I grinned at Chief Kana and he looked up from a serious contemplation of a plate of food. I wiggled my eyes and he looked in the direction indicated. He stared for a moment and then jumped up and bellowed, “Hey, jarhead, the Marines must be more seriously screwed than usual, judging by the fact that you are still in uniform.” It wasn’t actually a bellow, it was just very loud.

  I gaped, wondering if the chief had just lost his marbles, but the marine grinned from ear to ear and said, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.” It sounded like a quote, but I didn’t know the reference. The chief, however, did. They gave each other fierce bear hugs that made me wince.

  I said to Elian, “My guess? They know each other.” Elian laughed and said, “Well, if they didn’t before, they’re engaged now.” There were a few chuckles.

  The chief came over to our table towing the marine, who, as he got closer seemed to grow in size. He was a good two inches taller than I was. From a distance he didn’t appear to be especially big or tall, until he stood next to a regular sized person. He probably weighed two hundred and eighty pounds (change to kilos), and there didn’t seem to be very much fat. Well, I’m exaggerating – there probably wasn’t any fat.

  Chief Kana said, “Lieutenants, and ETech4, allow me to introduce the filthiest mouth, the poorest card player and the individual with the most number of court appearances in fleet history. This is Master Chief Kyle Lennart.”

  I smiled and reached out my hand. I knew I was going to get a crusher so I prepared, but it was still painful. I kept a straight face as I greeted him and saw that the chief was looking at my hand with a grin on his face.

  I managed not to embarrass myself, and watched as Elian shook his hand. Elian, being no dummy, had figured out what was coming, and passed the test. To Carolyn, the marine beamed and said, “Technician, if you ever become weary of working with, um, these fine officers, put in a transfer to the Netherlands. I guarantee that you will be treated, not with the respect a sailor deserves, but with all the respect due a real marine.”

  Carolyn giggled nicely and said, “Master Chief, do you imagine that anyone would treat me disrespectfully, with these three lovely men around?” I snorted and Elian said, with an admirably straight face, “I’m trying to picture this.” Carolyn asked, her eyes innocently wide, “What, Sir?” He said, “A sentence which includes the chief and the word ‘lovely’”.

  Everyone laughed. Chief Kana pulled over a chair for the marine and we all sat down. By now, there were at least forty people sitting and standing nearby.

  The two chiefs spent a moment getting themselves up to date. It turned out that the marine had served with Chief Kana at the time that the latter received a large clutch of medals, including the Medal of Honor. I made a mental note to ask our new friend about those days. As a guess, he had earned a few that time as well.

  Since we hadn’t left, the other people in the room, mostly pilots and navigators, began crowding up to introduce themselves. We stood back up and shook hands, looking into the faces of men and women who would soon be confronting the bugs.

  One of them, a female pilot with over ten years in the cockpit asked me, “Is there anything that our crews, or maintenance, or we pilots and navigators can do to better prepare?”

  It was an excellent question, but I had to say, “I don’t know much about the modifications to your Dash 4’s or to the Netherlands. Although, it looked like your carrier is getting an ablative coating applied to it. I’ll put in my own two cents here, and then I would like to hear from my crew. First, you must be absolutely certain that your fighters, the missiles and your ships are not radiating energy from the propulsion systems. These beings seem to be less aware of the lower frequencies, such as infrared, and far more attuned to higher frequencies, where our mag systems radiate. When we finished with field modifications to the Hawks, they were virtual black holes, and the bugs couldn’t see us at, well, we don’t actually know how many kilometers. Thinking about it, the only times they found us were after we fired missiles. Second, you must take the attack to them. If you go on the defensive, you’ll find hundreds and hundreds of powerful fighters up your..., coming at you. Third, we believe, that is, we four believe, that the key to our success will lie with destroying the mother ships. All the others would most likely be helpless without it. Fourth, under no circumstances allow those beings to find a human occupied planet, because we believe that the bugs will promptly destroy it. We have no proof of this, but it is in keeping with their actions so far. That’s all I’ve got. Elian?”

  Elian said, “We found some success in operating first four, then later all twelve Hawks as one unit. Carolyn put together some terrific software that allows one Hawk to run all the others. At one point, we were attacked by three flights of four fighters, which had missiles by the way, and by an immense cruiser. We sent twelve missiles at the closest two fighter elements, getting six of them. We sent flight after flight of missiles at the cruiser, which shot five loads of missiles at us. Their missiles are incredibly powerful, but much slower than ours. We were able to destroy all the missiles that came our way, along with the cruiser, although that single ship was still under power and still firing at us when we finally took it out. Even then, it was a very close thing.”

  The pilot asked, quickly, so as to get her question in first, “How many missiles did the cruiser take?” Elian looked at Carolyn, who said, “Approximately ninety six. After it exploded, four missiles were still in flight and retargeted on nearby fighters.”

  There was a moment of silence as they tried to grapple with a single cruiser sized ship requiring nearly one hundred missiles to be destroyed. The female pilot thanked us.

  Another pilot asked about their formations. I looked at Elian and he took the question. “The first time we visited their little planetoid, we found an outer shell of fighters well out from the mother ship. They were relatively easy to penetrate. Inside, near to the twenty-eight megaton mother ship, we found an inner layer of destroyers. On that trip, we launched two Mark 65’s and sent them in so that they were on opposi
te sides of the ship for their attack run, and also well away from us. The bugs detected the presence of the missiles before they went to sprint mode but didn’t pin point them until then. We have never discovered whether the active jamming feature on the 65 is effective or not, which probably tells you how effective it is. They have more laser mounts on the bug ship than your entire flotilla has combined, and it was an amazing light show, I’ll tell you, watching them shoot. They got one of our missiles, but the other one got in unscathed. It didn’t seem to do much damage. On later trips, we encountered different defensive patterns, and by the time of our last mission, they were operating more like we do, with a destroyer, or rather, many destroyers outside and fighters inside. We found it impossible to get very close on the last two runs.”

  I looked at the chief and he said, “I don’t have much to say. You have to assume that a fighter will take two missiles, or two direct laser hits to knock it out. We destroyed lots of them with one shot, or missile, but lots of them took two, and you just can’t afford to let one of them in close to you, even with a Hawk.”

  Carolyn said, “You need to have a cool head in charge of your attack squadrons. Don’t panic, don’t ever assume, and it is wise to be extremely and creatively paranoid like Lt. Padilla. Stay organized, or else you’ll be picked off singly. They will pursue you for as long as they think you can be caught, and not a moment longer. We spent some time putting together an attack plan which was designed to draw out some of their fighters and pull them through a mine field, or a couple of missile boats or destroyers. I’ve given that plan to your Commander Jarvis. Oh, also, we put together another scenario in which an individual Hawk would be paired up with four or eight fighters. The Hawk can mount two 65’s, plus four 15’s on the winglets, and twelve 15’s internally, and could act as the eyes and ears of the flight, as well as its defense. In that role, you should replace the 65’s with four additional 15’s, for a total of twenty. The Hawk would be tasked with keeping the enemy out of laser range of the fighters, which can’t take the pounding the Hawk can. Finally, in order to keep them on the defensive, we had planned to have a nearly continuous assault under way, with several small groups of fighters or whatever trying to get in close enough to launch. On our last trip, we sent in seventy-two 65’s, plus the twenty-four from the Hawks. That killed the bug, but keep in mind that it had already been hit several times on a previous attack. We believe that it had been left behind as a decoy while their destroyers and as many as three hundred fighters went after the Essex. We do not believe they thought we would be able to destroy it.”

  The female pilot had stayed to listen and she said, “One hundred 65’s against one ship? My God! I didn’t know there were that many in the entire fleet.”

  Carolyn looked at her and said, “Yes, well, those missiles represented the entire inventory of 65’s that our Essex had, which was all that the system at Lubya possessed as well. We sort of took a chance. It worked, and it didn’t work.”

  We stayed for another hour. Finally, Nastya called a halt to the questioning. Everyone crowded around us again to shake our hands and clap us on the back. The chief and his marine buddy had disappeared off in a corner and were probably trading recipes or something. Chief Kana looked up and nodded his head.

  We walked in a still large group back to the bay where our transportation waited. Nastya passed a message over to my pad. I looked at it briefly and was surprised at its size.

  We boarded the shuttle and departed for our temporary base. On the short flight back, I peeked at the message. It began with a short, personal voice message. “Robert, I’ve spent a little time to give you a brief history of my life, up to my meeting you. I hope that it serves to give you a sense of who I am. It is my hope, also, that I can get to know you better. If you feel the same way, please respond at your earliest convenience. I know that your time will be occupied getting ready to depart for earth, but hope that you will find enough time to reply.”

  I was more than a little happy to listen to her voice tell me this. I was also stunned that a woman of such obvious intelligence and grace would find anything good in me.

  Elian left me alone for a bit but just before we docked on the moon he turned to me and asked, quite seriously, “So, when are you two getting married?” I stared at him in consternation, as that thought was more or less drifting around in my own mind. I

  Answered him just as seriously, “Elian, she is almost too good to be true. I have no idea why she wants to get to know me better, but I certainly want to get to know her.”

  Elian paused for a moment, then said, “Robert, she’s the one for you. Don’t screw this up. We’ve got just a few days before we leave, and who knows how long it will be before you could see her again. Do it now.” I looked at him and said, “Yes, I thought more or less the same thing. I’m going to do it.”

  Elian said, rather sharply, “Didn’t you hear me? I said, do it now. I meant, you idjit, answer her right now, not an hour from now, or tomorrow.”

  I stared at him in surprise, but after thinking about what he said, I answered, “Yes sir, Mr. hot shot pilot, sir.” He grinned but he was also pointing imperiously at my pad.

  I did as told, and composed a brief reply to her message. In it I told her that I hadn’t had time yet to read all of it, but that I definitely wanted to get to know her. For me, ‘getting to know you’ meant that I was thinking in terms of a permanent relationship, of marriage. I got the sense that she felt the same.

  Our return to moon base was much different than my departure. We were met by an aide to our temporary boss, an unknown number of levels upstream. He told us she requested our presence. We followed him quite a long distance to her office and were ushered in immediately. It was by now well past midnight, base time, but she was up, in uniform and sitting at her desk.

  We saluted and were offered seats. Once settled she said, “I’ve gotten an urgent request from the admiral of the Netherlands group to give them as much of your time as possible. They were very impressed by your appearance this evening, by the way. I see that your group is to depart for Earth in approximately, um, seventy-eight hours. I am going to turn over the task of your preparations for departure to someone else so that you four, and several others of your choice, can assist them in getting ready for their own departure. Is there anything I can do to assist you?” I said, “Sir, It took me nearly two hours to reach the Netherlands, using the base shuttle service. Since time is so short, it would save some if we could...” She interrupted me, saying, “Already taken care of, lieutenant. You’ll have a shuttle standing by for the duration of your stay here. Anything else?”

  I looked at my crew and turned back to her, “No sir, I think that covers everything.” She said, “Fine. Would you please keep me in the loop on the information you’re passing on to the Netherlands group? It might be helpful.” I answered in the affirmative and we were dismissed. As we walked down the passageway I said quietly, “Damn.” Elian heard and said, “Yeah, me too. What happened? Just a few days ago I was an anonymous JG, now I’m...I have no idea. But, damn.”

  At 0700 next morning, we assembled at the base shuttle dock, along with all of our pilots and navigators. As Elian said, “In for a penny, in for a pound. They need help, and we’re it.”

  It seemed that the testing of their stealth systems was about to take place. It would have been better if we could use a Hawk, but they were getting a much deserved deep cycle maintenance prior to their departure for Earth, so that was out.

  We spent the entire day participating in workups with all ninety-four Dash 4’s. My first reaction at seeing their performance was dismay, but the chief reminded me that these pilots had all been assembled from various locations and thrown, almost literally, on the Netherlands as she left the mothball fleet. Under the circumstances, their ragged performance made sense, although it did nothing for my mood.

  We watched them make runs past some more asteroids and large rock. At my request, they made at least one
run at max acceleration, so we could determine how the craft would perform. That proved to be fortunate, because we discovered that about twenty percent of the Dash 4’s suffered a system shut down. The drifting fighters were taken under tow back to the Netherlands. Close inspection revealed that the new mag bottles could output more energy than the system was capable of handling. Carolyn and the chief looked at a schematic, identified the problem area and came up with a fix. It took a mere thirty minutes to change out the module for a better one, and we soon had the fighter back out.

  Its subsequent runs demonstrated that our fix, while not optimum, was good enough. We cycled as many fighters as possible through the carrier, and were able to refit twenty of them. The others would have to wait until they could obtain more modules from moon base.

  Commander Jarvis was not one to wait. He commed his admiral who commed moon base, and one hour later it dispatched a destroyer with the needed replacement parts. Apparently, a mere shuttle wouldn’t have been quick enough.

  We worked the twenty fighters on gunnery exercises, testing Carolyn’s targeting software on them. It offered a small but definite improvement over the standard system, so we upgraded all their systems, putting in a simple fail-safe that would return the fighter to its original software in case of need.