Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk)

by Little, Robert

  My captain wanted to know what he meant, so I said, “Rule of thumbs are pretty vague. We estimate that the Hawk can accelerate at three G’s with no noise at all, six G’s and over seventy thousand kilometers and they can’t get even a sniff of you. The Stone is starting to look pretty good, sir.”

  The captain said, “Lieutenant, you’re as crazy right now as you were eight hours ago, but now you’re either very lucky and crazy, or you’re, well, I don’t know what. My hat is off to you, no matter what. This ship is running faster than anything in our fleet save, possibly, for our fighters, and from what I’ve seen, it radiates far less energy than anything else we have, save perhaps for that black hole of a Hawk over there. I’ve been trying to scan that thing for thirty minutes and I barely get any readings off it. Where on earth did you find this ETech4?”

  I said, “Sir, Chief Kana found her a year ago and hid her away for a rainy day. This is a rainy day.” The captain smiled and said, “Well, this has certainly turned out better than I anticipated. You people aren’t a part of the Fleet that I’ve been in. I would love to volunteer, however.” I looked squarely at him for just a moment, then said, “Sir, there are fourteen Dresden class destroyers.” He stared at me and then a slow smile lit up his face. We had ourselves a new convert.

  Meanwhile, I pushed the power up to max and we watched in silence as the ship gently moved up to fourteen G’s. That was quite good enough for one day.

  It took us twenty-four hours to return to base. We had all those eager Hawk pilots just itching to get in the central seat, and they all got the chance. I was tired. Besides, they ganged up on me.

  We docked gently as a feather and watched our monitors as the six crawlers moved out to attach themselves to our ship. As soon as they announced that they had hold of us, I shut down our engines. That took a bit longer than with the Hawk, although the Dresden class had been designed to be able to dock inside a base, rather than rest in orbit as all the heavier and larger classes of ship.

  The engineers began collecting their instruments, meters, gauges, assorted hardware and the all-important coffee pot that they used to make light lubrication fluid. It must be a tradition that we pilots weren’t in on. We actually liked good coffee, not that boiled, brewed and percolated grak.

  The hanger doors finally sealed behind us and the hanger began to air up. I felt a great deal of satisfaction: we had given to our admiral a warship that was going to be capable of getting in very close and unleash a torrent of bad news to our new neighbors. And, we had accomplished that feat in thirteen days from the time we took over the task from our civilian contractor. Civilian for just a little longer, as it was turning out. He wasn’t very smart, or his hubris simply led him to believe that he could do anything and fleet wouldn’t know a thing. In fact, fleet contained a large number of very smart over achievers. Men and women who lived in two worlds – that of the mind and that of the hand which could hold a beer mug just as easily as a trigger, or stylus in this case.

  We lowered a large hatch on a lower level and some very tired men and women began trooping down. At the foot of that ramp stood Admiral Lee and several aides, including the lovely lieutenant who reminded me of Carolyn, save for the legs, which weren’t quite as good, as a guess.

  The admiral greeted all of us with a big smile of welcome, and surprised everyone when he hugged Chief Kana. It made me wince, just looking at it. These two men could turn the most common social courtesy into a contest, and a manly hug between two men, one of them jubilant and the other, well, Master Chief Kana, was just the thing to wake one up in the morning, listening to the rib cage creak menacingly.

  Carolyn received her own hug, albeit less, um, vigorous. Elian and I received handshakes and a beaming smile of congratulation. The captain followed us down and saluted smartly. The admiral returned it and asked, a shade carefully, “Well, how did it go?’ The captain said, “Sir, these children are very dangerous, very, very dangerous, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the enemy who ought to be worrying, not Fleet.”

  The admiral looked at him with a touch of care and asked, “Any problems during the test?” The captain laughed and said, “Nothing they couldn’t solve over a donut and cup of coffee. Sir, Lieutenant Padilla tells me that we have a bunch of these relics sitting around gathering dust. I hereby request one of them – this bunch of misfits shouldn’t have all the fun.”

  Admiral Lee looked at him again, appraisingly. “Captain, come see me tomorrow.” The captain saluted smartly again and after receiving one in return, he waved to us and trotted off toward the far distant personnel hatch.

  Admiral Lee asked for a tour of the ship. I smiled at the chief and he nodded his head with an accompanying grin. He said, “Sir, I think you are going to like what these romper room rowdies have put together.” The admiral asked, “Fourteen G’s on her first test run? Yes, I think I’m going to like this.”

  The two men walked back up the ramp, talking like they had been friends for their entire lives.

  We slept for almost an entire day, and the admiral’s aide made sure we weren’t interrupted.

  On the second day after our return, we assembled in a small auditorium, where we found a table at the back loaded up with coffee and fresh donuts, muffins and cinnamon rolls. I looked at the trays and said, “I think I’m in love.” Carolyn said, “No, you’re hungry – there is a difference, and perhaps one day you will learn what that difference actually is.” Elian said, “And, perhaps not.” We all laughed at my expense. I grinned evilly and added, “Yes, but while I’m not learning, you two will be asking your friends, should you actually have any, ‘who knows the location of Station 86, our brand new assignment?’”

  Elian looked at Carolyn and raised his eyebrows. She said, “I haven’t a clue.” As far as I knew, there was no such place, but it would take Carolyn a little while to find that out for herself, although, now that I thought about it, she might just possibly discover that there actually was such a base. It wouldn’t surprise me.

  Admiral Lee bustled in and we all came to attention. It was not a formality in this instance – we deeply respected him. He saluted back, smiled and made a beeline for the donuts.

  With a cup in hand he walked up to the front of the auditorium. Still standing he said, “OK, if we can get you loafers to focus what limited attention you have on the screen behind me?” There were some muted chuckles but of course we looked.

  He had put up a time line on it and we scanned it eagerly. He had charted out a long series of tests and more tests. The first line showed the Stone, with nine lines below her. I was impressed to discover that three of the other Dresden's’ had already been brought back up to flight status and were right now full of hundreds of men and women who were performing the same modifications that we had made. Thanks to us they now had digital blueprints to work from.

  The admiral began talking, conversationally, “As you can see, we have scheduled several more test runs with the Stone in order to finalize the hardware and software modifications. We’re probably ninety five percent of the way there right now, thanks to you men and women. By the time we fix those modifications, we’ll have three more ships ready to accept them. As I speak, our machine shops are turning out replicas of the cradles and supporting hardware for the engine rooms. We’ve ordered additional mag bottles and capacitors from our vendor and they will be shipped to us just as soon as humanly possible. This vendor, unlike the one you became acquainted with, understands the fix we are in, and is working around the clock to ensure that they aren’t the bottleneck.”

  “The actual bottle neck is the missile these ships are supposed to launch. We are still not getting the 65’s in any kind of quantity, but a fistful of warrants has prompted that particular vendor to speed things up. We know for a certainty that that company had deliberately let its schedule slip, in an effort to get a sweeter contract. Not going to happen on my watch, ladies and gentlemen, and Chief Kana.” We all chuckled.

  He t
ook a bite and then continued, “The new 15’s, however, are far enough along that we’re getting in a small shipment for analysis this coming week. There are two models, as we discussed previously. The manufacturer is sending along some techs and factory reps to help us sort things out. At the moment, I plan on using one of the Hawks, a Dash 6 and a Dash 4 for testing purposes.”

  “Meanwhile, we’ve decided that we’ll begin work on designing the mechanical components necessary to dump the 65’s and/or 67’s out of the Dresden. I liked your proposal to modify a container, but we don’t have the time. I’ll get to that later.”

  “We’ve figured out how to expel the missile from the ship and then launch it, which is of course, the reverse of what we have done in the past. The Hawk showed us the way there. You had two of them mounted on its wings, and dropped them off before its engine kicked in. We’re looking at a similar method with the Dresden. We’ll have port and starboard launchers, or rather, ejectors. They’ll be able to spit out a missile every thirty seconds, I’m told. We’ll have to see. It will mean some significant modifications to the Dresden – we’ll have to rip out her existing hardware. We plan on retaining the bow and stern launchers, however. It looks like we can stuff in about sixteen 15’s per tube, for a total of one hundred and twenty eight. This ship is going to be one of the most potent weapons of war we’ve ever fielded. It will pack an enormous punch, although it will be only one punch. We plan to work around the clock with the Stone and finalize weapon system modifications just as rapidly as possible, so as to maximize the work up of the other nine.”

  Elian asked, ‘Sir, what about the other four?” Admiral Lee said, brusquely, “We’d love to have them, but they’re too far away to be of much use to us in the here and now. As it is, many analysts think that it will be only a matter of time before the bugs discover one of our home worlds. I want to beat them to the punch. Any other possibility is simply unthinkable.”

  I raised an eyebrow and he acknowledged me. “Sir, is there an ongoing attempt to put the bugs on the defensive?” Admiral Lee grimaced, “Lieutenant, we have come to the conclusion you men and women drew – we must press the bugs and keep them on the defensive. Unfortunately, we still don’t have the resources for that. Approximately seventy percent of our war ships are tied down in planetary defensive roles. If I could, I would roll the dice, strip out all those defensive forces and attack right now. I am never going to be able to do that, and for obvious reasons. So, I have to come up with something that will convince the bugs we are dangerous. Your Hawks gave us possibly as much as a month grace, but that is now gone, and then some. I am working on something that might be effective. We’ve got about forty Hawks in various stages of modification, and as soon as we have enough, we’ll send them in. You are going to be in charge of training those new crews, so don’t get comfortable.” We grinned in appreciation, but the grin was a little thin around the edges.

  He took the last bite and continued, “In addition, we’re putting together another task force composed of heavy cruisers and, hopefully, one battle ship. That force will have two carriers along to prevent the kind of surprise the Essex apparently suffered. Oh, on that subject, we’ve recovered a data recorder from the Essex. It was - the attack - in fact an extremely well planned and coordinated assault from multiple angles of attack. The Essex never had a chance. We believe it was hit by four or five of those deadly missiles you’ve talked about. I’m sorry, once again.”

  The admiral wrapped up his presentation and then surprised us once again. He brought in all of his aides, all, that is, who were on the base. The admiral seemed to like throwing all his best people together to see what they could come up with. They sat down with us and when everyone was comfortable the admiral said, “OK, first on our agenda is the Hawk formation. My most current report is that we’ll have ten or twelve here on base within one week. The others will dribble in, with all of them scheduled to be on base within three weeks. As some of you might guess, I’ve suddenly got Hawk experts coming out my, um, coffee cup. I’ve let my aides give them the time of day, but nothing more. In my opinion, the only Hawk experts in existence are sitting in this room, eating my donuts.”

  We laughed at this. Admiral Lee said, “Lieutenants Turner and Padilla, you are hereby appointed as commanders of this detachment. It will be your task to ensure that the crews meet your standards, ditto for the Hawks. I’ve attempted to put the fear of God into the various bases where the modifications were performed, but I’m expecting the worst, so be forewarned.” I asked, “Sir, have you a departure date?”

  The admiral looked at me and asked, “Do you want me to give you one? Will you work any less hard if I don’t give you one?” I thought about his two questions and replied, “Sir, no, and no, respectively, sir.” He nodded his head and returned to the discussion.

  “Now, when you can give me a firm date for their deployment, I will plan accordingly. Don’t give me a date unless you can meet it. As God is my witness, I’ll transfer you to Station 86 so fast your head will spin.” I stared at him and heard some muted laughter, coming significantly enough, from Carolyn.

  The admiral grinned – apparently he was a mind reader - and said, “Mind your own business, lieutenant, or I’ll promote you.” We all laughed again.

  We spent the rest of the morning firming up schedules. I knew next to nothing about the facilities available here on base for the kind of work ups we were going to require. The admiral seemed to think I was competent enough to find out on my own, and I preferred it that way. In fact, I treasured it.

  That afternoon after lunch, Elian and I returned to our squadron room. Once settled comfortably, with coffee in hand, we smiled at each other and in unison said, “Carolyn we need you.” She came running into the squad room, with a questioning look on her face. Elian said, “You have a task. We need to know about training facilities on this base, and nearby as well, if there are any facilities near by. You know the changes we made to our Hawks, the equipment, power sources and so on. We’ll need to know what is on hand, on the off chance the new Hawks show up as baby chicks. We need to know about training areas, how to go about requisitioning them, and we need to know other things that we don’t know we need yet. You need to get us all that information as well. You have ten minutes.”

  She grinned and said, “That will give me nine minutes to polish my nails, sir.” Elian said, in a serious voice, “It takes you nine minutes to polish your fingernails? Shocking! Thanks Carolyn. As soon as you get some information, please pass it on to us?” She smiled and trotted back out.

  Elian sat back and said, “Roberto, do you get the idea that the admiral expects a lot from us?” I nodded my head and said, “What does that tell us about the state of readiness of Fleet?” He said, “Of fleet personnel, in particular.” I thought for a moment, and said, “Have you seen our ships? Elian, I don’t care. I don’t give a Damn. If he needs something, I’ll give it, I’ll do it, or I’ll get it done.” Elian said, “As long as we have Carolyn, we have a chance not to disappoint him.”

  I said, “I notice you said ‘not disappoint him’ instead of, saying something else.” Elian said, “I’ll give my life for Fleet, but I’ll give it two or three times for Admiral Lee.”

  I laughed and nodded my head. “You’re only getting paid for the one, is that why you said, ‘give’?” Elian nodded somberly and said, “If I’m giving three lives, you ought to give seven or so.” I grinned and asked, “Seven?” He nodded again, “Yes, I’m worth more than twice what you are, so you have to give more.” I said, “Sure thing. After that first life, the admiral can have everything else, except for this fine sandwich here.”

  About the time we finished our current cups of coffee, Carolyn commed us with a message that said in part, “Hey, you two loafers, here is the information you requested.”

  We projected it onto the bulkhead with my new toy and looked at it thoughtfully. Elian began dragging and dropping pieces of information around and after a bit I u
nderstood what he was after. It was obvious that we wouldn’t have access to all the bases’ resources, at least simultaneously, so he was juggling things around so that we would have four Hawks at a time going through a sequence of tests and exercises. It looked to be a pragmatic approach to getting as many as forty crews and their Hawks into shape in the least amount of time with the least amount of what were probably inadequate resources.

  We assumed without even talking about it that the Hawks would be in poor to terrible condition upon arrival, so our first sequence involved a quick appraisal of their status. We would pick the four ships that would require the least work and start with them, so that we could get them out of the hangers and into space ASAP. Further testing and tweaking would be necessary in order to certify them as being bug worthy. The next four ships would then follow, and so on.

  While we were working on the craft, we would simultaneously run the crews through simulators so that they would know what to expect from the bugs, and from their own Hawks, timing it so that the crew would link up with the ship when both were ready.