Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk)

by Little, Robert

  I arose at 0530, showered and dressed, caught a quick bite of food and managed to make the 0600 meeting with a minute to spare. The Commander hated tardiness, and didn’t even like on-time arrivals all that much. He looked at me in that way all tyrants have.

  Elian and several others were there ahead of me and the meeting began promptly on time. Elian and I, along with a small number of additional people were returning to Jupiter base immediately. Admiral Lee was chomping at the bit to begin work on some new project or projects. The man could multi task like no tomorrow.

  Our boss looked up at me and asked, “How many people do you need?” As I had no idea what we were going to be doing, I really had no idea, but I liked to play it safe. I thought quickly and said, “I believe we’ll require the services of WO Kwan and Master Chief Kana, and six others. How soon do you need the list?” He nodded his head and said, “Five minutes ago. Admiral Lee is hot to get started. Let me know before we end this please.” I said, “Yes sir.”

  The meeting consisted of reports and reports and more reports on the status of our ships and personnel. The Fleet wanted to continue to monitor the void – not everyone was convinced that we’d found all of the bug flotillas, or, worse yet, any potential pursuers. To that end, several groups of ships, centered on carriers, each with a complement of Hawks, were being sent out to sweep the entire region, looking for sign. It was an enormous amount of nothing to sweep, containing a larger volume of space than the entire area of human inhabited systems, much of which was also still unexplored.

  After the meeting, Elian and I got something to eat and brought each other up to date. I asked him about Carolyn and his face went through a marvelous number of expressions. He seemed to be falling in love, or had already, and was just now finding out about it. He was also coming down with a severe case of shakes. Carolyn was nobody to play around with, and she had already told him that she loved him. Love seemed to be in the air lately. The chief was proving to be hard to find, and Elian and I both figured we knew where he was spending his time off. War seemed to focus one’s mind and heart on those few, those very few things in life that are truly important.

  It was inexplicable to me how such an inhumane, unhuman concept as war could produce such an intensely human need to be loved.

  We had six hours before our shuttle left. We would be dead heading aboard an old destroyer that had been called forward to Lubya as a patrol ship, and was now returning to her previous assignment, probably patrolling somewhere unimportant and full of people who suddenly wanted to know the name of their elected representative and what she was doing to protect them.

  I commed the six people we selected and instructed them to contact Elian immediately. I’m no brainiac, but I can delegate like a maniac. Back at our quarters, we packed a bag and took our new civilian clothes to storage. Interestingly, one of the limited numbers of people selected to transship to Jupiter base was a senior chief, marine version, female. I hadn’t selected her, Elian hadn’t either, but there her name was. Now how could that have possibly happened?

  I commed Nastya and asked her to pick my clothes up when she was able. We talked a bit, and she surprised me with a piece of big news: she had an apartment. It seems that her family owned a small complex of ancient apartments and one had become vacant.

  She asked me to comm her as soon as I could. I tried to contact her, but her pad took my message without letting me speak to her. I told her I was thrilled to learn that we had a home of our own, told her I loved her more every minute, and then I told her I was heading to earth and would not be able to see her before I left. I feared that she might take this badly.

  Nastya reached me as Elian and I and the others sat waiting for our shuttle. She only had a few seconds to talk and didn’t waste any of them crying. She said that we had to expect things like this to happen. She also said she loved me about ten times during the short conversation. Her reaction to my sudden departure surprised me. I expected her to be emotional; instead, she was as practical as ever. What a treasure. Correction, she was emotional, but not crying-emotional, just lovingly, under control emotional. Big difference.

  We caught our shuttle and it deposited us on the elderly Yamashiro class destroyer Eglin. This ship was the last of her class to remain in service, and had been scheduled for the breakers for six months hence. The bug war canceled her pending destruction and would probably lead to her classmates return from the dead.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t make her any larger. Elian and I shared what may have been what civilians call a closet. When we later asked the chief about his bunk, he merely shrugged and said, “It’s better than the accommodations on a Hawk.”

  The Eglin broke orbit and accelerated outbound at a leisurely five G’s. The captain commed Elian and I and invited us up to the bridge. It was tiny of course, but I was impressed with her immaculate condition. There was no way you could hide her age, but the captain was justifiably proud of her condition. Elian asked countless questions about her abilities, which were minimal, compared to a bug destroyer. She carried six 30cm lasers and two forward anti fighter or anti missile missile launchers, with two more aft.

  The Fleet’s downsizing took most of the larger war craft out of service, but the smaller ones, such as this destroyer, were always going to be needed, war or no.

  The captain asked as many questions as he answered. Along with his entire crew, he was intensely curious about the bugs, and took advantage of every opportunity to learn as much as possible. This was a trait I valued, and I took the trouble to answer him as best as I could.

  That first evening we ate in the officer’s mess. This ship had a complement of one hundred sixty four officers and men, who were crammed into approximately the same living spaces as the Dresden class that originally had a crew of over forty fewer crew.

  There were ten officers on board, not counting Carolyn and Elian and I, and there were no empty spaces we could lounge around in, so we spent the seven days it took to reach Jupiter mostly in our bunks, studying material Admiral Lee had forwarded to us.

  He was working on another project, a ship that was as large as a battle cruiser but with fewer crew than the Eglin. It seemed that there was a one-off of a proposed class of ships that had been languishing for years for want of money. Now, there was a lot of money, and the admiral was hoping that we could make it over into a killer of bug killers. The specs looked to be a combination of good and very, very not so good. As an example of the latter, its engines were capable of what we considered a leisurely or even laggardly acceleration.

  We finally docked at Jupiter base and it was with a sense of relief that we shook everyone’s hand, saluted the flag and left the ship.

  Jupiter Base was much changed from our last visit. This time we were expected. As we were trundled through the endless corridors toward the BOQ - bachelor officer quarters - we saw signs of new life everywhere we looked. In addition to its preeminent position as the headquarters of our navy, this base was the site of a very large squadron of destroyers who were vigorously patrolling the outer reaches of the Sol system.

  We dumped our duffel's and went in search of the admiral, who, experience had taught us would either be at his desk or at someone else’ desk, in either case breathing fire. Elian and I had seen examples of his motivational speeches, as he liked to call them, and we both vowed to never receive one. He never yelled, well, rarely anyway, but he had this alarming habit of asking perfectly logical questions which frequently led to someone getting sacked.

  The good admiral was not in, but his assistant was, and she told us that he wanted to see us immediately. She called for a ‘scooter’ and instructed us to take it to his present location. Neither of us knew what a scooter was, but figured it was some form of transportation.

  It was indeed transportation. It consisted of a small conveyance, one human driver and two small seats at the rear. It scooted us rapidly and with little comfort to a distant hanger. In this day of smart chips, it would be logi
cal to assume that the scooter could drive itself, but the base was now jammed full of newly-arrived personnel and they all seemed to require transportation, thus the shockingly old conveyance had been pulled out of mothballs, or whatever, and returned to duty. Elian looked around the passenger seating area for a manufacturers tag, saying, “This is an antique! It may actually be older than the base.” I chuckled, thinking that it was preferable to walking.

  We arrived at the expected hanger entrance and after checking our uniforms for any sign of a too hasty trip we went through the personnel hatch. Inside, we saw a relatively large craft taking up most of the interior of the hanger. It looked very strange to me, but as I looked, I began picking out familiar features, including what appeared to be lots of laser mounts. Judging by the number and size of the lasers, the ship would require lots of power, a subject near and dear to my heart.

  We walked to a ladder and trotted up to a hatch. The ship was active, so we saluted the flag and requested permission to enter. There was an armed guard on duty, and she was clearly alert.

  The OOD, officer on duty, took a peek at what was probably a short list of personnel who were permitted to enter, and gave us permission to come aboard. She assigned a guard to take us to the admiral, who was in the engine room. Elian said as we walked down a passageway, “The admiral has a way of drawing everyone’s attention to the important things in life, such as, for example, keeping one’s head in its proper place.” I laughed, as I had been thinking that the people we had already met were far more alert and attentive than they had been the first time we arrived.

  The guard led us to within a few feet of the entrance to the engine room, turned and trotted off. Elian chuckled at the rapid departure, and we entered. Inside, we discovered what appeared to be the rear end of our boss, sticking up in the air from the undersides of a console. We looked at each other with big grins, but kept very quiet.

  The admiral heard the hatch open and scrambled up from the floor. He returned our salutes and asked with a suspicious twinkle in his eye, “Did you two salute my ass?” We had both thought about doing just that, and he saw our eyes flicker. Elian jumped to an almost caricature of attention and shouted, “Sir, no sir! We never salute asses, sir!”

  The admiral laughed and reached out his hand to shake ours. He said, “Well, in fact you have saluted a lot of asses in your short careers. I’m trying to change that, but God, there are a lot of them. Don’t repeat that, please, I have enough enemies already. By the way, you two take more chances with your Fleet superiors than you ever do with the bugs. If ever I saw two officers in need of protection, it’s you two!” I took his hand with a grin and said, “Sir, yes sir.”

  The admiral pointed down to the console and asked, “Does either of you have the necessary agility to crawl under there and reset that Damn thing? I swear, whoever designed this ship is going to get his ass fried if I have anything to say about it.” He spoke with a little heat, but he was smiling, so it was just possible some engineer would survive to live another day.

  Elian and I looked at each other and we both grinned at the same time. We turned to face each other and waved one hand in the air. On the third wave we spread our fingers out. Elian looked at the configuration of my fingers and said, “OK, paper wins. That means you have to crawl under that console.” I laughed and got down on my hands and knees. It took a moment to find a red cover. I opened it and pressed the contact patch.

  By the time I got back up to my feet, the admiral was leaning over another console, muttering under his breath. This was a most unusual admiral. He input a command and impatiently pressed another contact patch. After a wait of perhaps thirty seconds he smiled triumphantly and pointed imperiously at the nether regions of the console I had just extricated myself from. I got back down and reset the contact, powering the console back up.

  We stood idly by as the admiral worked on an as yet unknown problem with the circuitry. After two minutes, the console I had reset came to life and lights began flashing on its display. The admiral grinned and said, “The day comes I can’t find and fix a problem some shit-for-brains idiot of an engineer failed to fix, I hang up my hat.”

  He turned, picked up the aforementioned hat, jammed it back on his head and said over his shoulder as he headed for the entrance hatch, “Come.” We looked at each other, and Elian said, “Sir, with respect, you are the first admiral I’ve known who likes to get down on his knees.” The admiral laughed and said, “And, you’ve known how many admirals?” Elian said, “Sir, point taken, sir.”

  By now we were practically rushing down a ladder to the next-lower deck. We followed along behind and turned right through an open hatch, the entrance to a galley. The admiral went over to a coffee server and poured himself a cup. He tossed us both cups and hesitated, then with a grin, pulled out a sugar dispenser that he ostentatiously placed on the counter. I asked, “Sir, you have some seriously good sources of information.” Admiral Lee grinned and pointed to a box of doughnuts. We poured ourselves a cup and hustled to catch back up with the admiral, who was already opening a hatch into another space, which turned out to be a wardroom.

  He sat down with his coffee and doughnut and took a bite while we pulled out the chairs he indicated. You didn’t sit with an admiral unless he gave you the permission, which never, but never happened in the peacetime Fleet. As a guess, not so much now.

  He munched contentedly for a minute then looked over at us and asked, “What do you two delinquents want to do with your careers?” We looked at each other and I waved at Elian, saying, “You win.” He said, “Well, first sir, we’d like to have one. A career, that is. The exception would be if we were put into some staff weenie slot. That would be, um, less than optimal.”

  The admiral grinned at us and said, “You two would be an absolute disaster in a staff position. No, what I mean is, right now we have a breather. We won that little war handily, in large part due to you two. But, I think those bugs were being chased by a very nasty bully, and by God we had better get ready for him, ‘cause he’ll wax our sorry asses if we haven’t. So, you two have an opportunity, right now, to make some decisions that can either ruin what is a promising beginning, or, perhaps, find yourselves in positions of responsibility where you can make a difference. What do you want?”

  We hadn’t discussed this at any great length, mostly because we hadn’t had much time for speculation. I spoke up for the first time, “Sir, can you give us some advice? We both love the Fleet, but there seems to be two of ‘em, the one you and men like Admirals Tretiakov and Chin belong to, and, um, that other Fleet. We don’t want to serve in that one, we want to serve in this one.”

  I answered him honestly, but truth to tell, that little piece of honesty would cause most superiors to not wait for the court martial, they’d have me shot and thrown out the nearest lock, then court martial me and my dog.

  The admiral nodded his head, a little sadly, and said, “I have a command opening up, that you two would be perfect for, but it would be dangerous, and it would mean a long separation from your family, and um, almost family, in your case.” He was looking at Elian and once again I was amazed at how much this man knew about us. Elian said, “We understand that the needs of the service take precedence over, um, personal needs. Where do we sign up?” The admiral said, “I was hoping you would say that. Well, I knew you would, but I had to ask. This tub we’re sitting in is a right bastard, and I would love to give her over to you two, but there is no way in hell I could hand two shiny new lieutenants a battle cruiser. On that note, however, you have managed to convert my head engineer into a believer, and he is already hard at work trying to figure out how to stuff an ungodly number of mag bottles inside the thing. I am looking forward to going for a shake down cruise in a couple of months, but meanwhile, I have a problem, and I have you two, and right now, at least, you two aren’t the problem and may be the solution. So, here is what I would like to do. I want to send you miscreants out of town for a while. What I’m loo
king for is a way to open up some communications with that fifth flotilla. Those beings are running from something, and we need to know what. So, I want you to take two Dresdens and say, twelve Hawks out and see what we can do to open up a dialogue. I’m getting a linguist, on loan from Oxford University. I’d like you to spend a little time with her before heading out, but not too much, we don’t know how much time we have, and we can’t screw around with this, there’s too much at stake. I know how you two work, but I have to assign a Dresden to each of you. You’ll figure how to work it out I’m sure. We’re putting an unarmed shuttle on board each of ‘em, and I’m going to let you keep Master Chief Kana – he seems to have taken a liking to you two, something about having more fun in the last six months than in the last twenty years. I’ve already talked to him, and he’s willing, even though he could have any assignment he wanted. Go figure. Anyway, what do you say?”

  We didn’t even have to look at each other, although we did of course. “Yes sir, we accept the assignment. Do you have any idea where WO Kwan will be assigned?”

  Admiral Lee grinned and said, “You two had better marry toot suite, and that’s a suggestion, not an order, although if I thought it would work, I’d by God order it. To answer your question, she’s going to be in Lubya for the foreseeable future. She’s getting assigned to Admiral Tretiakov’s staff, at his request, so she’ll be close to Lieutenant Padilla, um, the marine version. If you accept my extremely wise suggestion, I’ll ask the admiral if he could give W.O. Kwan a little leave. She could be here in, say, ten days. That would give you two enough time to marry here on Jupiter base. I’d love to attend, by the way. What do you say?”