Book Read Free

Hawk Seven (Flight of the Hawk)

Page 53

by Little, Robert


  Afterwards, we rode over to the huge canteen that served as the source of entertainment for the entire base. A group was on the stage, playing quite good jazz. As I watched the drummer, I wondered in passing if the light gravity affected his playing.

  We sat, drinking coffee or tea, and talked about our new assignments. Carolyn was so proud of us that she could hardly keep from kissing both of us. She said, “You two always get the best assignments. I would love to be there, to meet these strange beings.” I grimaced and said, “Well, in fact, we have been in communication with them, these last few months.”

  Carolyn asked, “Do you think that it was all a big mistake? What if it was simply an error?” I had asked myself the same question numerous times, but still had no answer.

  The evening passed peacefully. After two hours, Elian grew quiet, which was seriously unusual. I looked at him and realized that he was working up to The Question. Nastya looked at me and smiled blindingly, so it seemed that she knew, probably far more than I.

  Finally, Elian turned to Carolyn and said, “Carolyn, the admiral told me that he had arranged for you to come to Jupiter. It is my guess that if there is something happening on this base that he doesn’t know about, it isn’t worth knowing. He told me that if I had a brain in my head, I would propose marriage to you. He said, in fact, that if he could actually order me to propose to you, he would. Later, I talked it over with Roberto the Impetuous here, and he asked me had I told you that I love you. I said that I hadn’t, but that you knew how I felt. He seemed to be of the opinion that I had to actually tell you; that the actual declaration of love was vital. So. Carolyn Kwan, I am in love with you. I believe that I will love you until the moment I expire. Will you marry me?”

  Carolyn smiled mistily and looked at Elian, “Elian Turner, I love you with all my heart. Yes, I accept your very unusual yet perfect proposal of marriage.”

  Through all this I sat, holding Nastya’s hand, or being held by Nastya’s hand, thinking this to be a very weird proposal, yet for all that, it seemed somehow right. Nastya leaned over to whisper something in Elian’s ear. He shook his head and she gently took his hand and placed a small box in it. He opened it up and stared in surprise. It was an engagement ring, with a tiny diamond. Nastya said, “Elian, I would be honored if you would accept this from Robert and I. It belonged to my grandmother. It is small, but she wore it for over forty years, and she was happy for every single minute. It is usual for the man to purchase an engagement ring, but under the circumstances, you haven’t had all that much opportunity to get one. I have come to love the both of you very much. This ring came from mother Russia and has been in our family for several generations. I think that it would look quite lovely on Carolyn’s hand, and in my opinion, if you accept this, it will still be in our family.”

  Elian looked in wonder at the ring, and then he slowly looked over at Carolyn, whose eyes were brimming over with tears. Elian said, “Thank you, Nastya and Robert, from the bottom of my heart. It is beautiful. Carolyn, will you accept this ring as you accept me?” Carolyn nodded her head and slowly held out her left hand. Elian took the ring out of the box and awkwardly slipped it on her ring finger. Carolyn looked down at her hand, her eyes still wet with tears, and said, “Yes, Elian.” Shockingly, the ring fit.

  There were the usual hugs and kisses and manly handshakes. For a few moments, no one spoke, and then Nastya asked, “Do you have any idea when you would like to marry?” Carolyn simply turned her face to Elian. Elian looked at me, and I grinned at my suddenly brain dead brother in arms, “Well, as to that, it seems that there is a small chapel here, and Admiral Lee has reserved it in your names for tomorrow evening. He says that if he were asked, he would love to attend. I have managed to arrange for a military ceremony, with an honor guard of Marines, complete with swords. The admiral has stated that if you do not have someone to officiate, such as a chaplain, he would be honored.”

  Elian turned his head back to Carolyn, whose face was once again streaked with tears. We took that to be a ‘yes’.

  I added, looking also at Nastya, “Additionally, I was wondering if we could make it a double wedding ceremony?” Anastasia gasped. I looked at her in no little amazement. I’d just surprised the woman. First and probably the last time. She kissed me tenderly.

  Some time later, after we ordered a bottle of champagne, Carolyn said, “Oh God! I don’t have a dress uniform.” As usual, Nastya was prepared. She said, “Tomorrow, we’ll get you a uniform here. Elian, are you in the same boat?” Elian nodded his head and Nastya simply nodded. “You two meet us at the commissary at 0800.”

  We left for our quarters fairly early. I think everyone was worn out from all that emotion. I marveled at how the evening went. Elian and I were like brothers, and while I knew he was going to propose matrimony, it was a surprise, a complete surprise that he would propose to Carolyn as he had.

  The next morning the four of us picked out dress uniforms. Nastya, being a marine, would be wearing that wildly colorful Marine dress uniform, while we three would be in white. Nastya and I would stand up with them, acting as seconds for their ceremony, and then they would stand up for us.

  We stood in a small, enclosed chamber that measured our physical dimensions and within moments it popped out perfectly fitted dress uniforms, complete with removable name badges, insignia and medals and awards. Dress shoes, belts and formal headgear completed the ensemble, all of which were produced without the intercession of a single living soul.

  At 1900, on a balmy Saturday evening – one of the oldest base jokes – Elian and Carolyn, Nastya and I marched up to stand in front of Admiral Lee, who officiated the double wedding. The small chapel was packed, although most of the Hawk and Dresden people were on Lubya. The ceremony was, as I should have expected, unusual. The admiral talked a little about the four of us as if he were family, then he talked a little about the Fleet, and terminated his remarks by speaking about marriage. We exchanged simple vows and then walked under a double row of Marines, whose swords were raised, forming an arch. It didn’t take more than thirty minutes from beginning to end. We were now two couples.

  We adjourned to another small room where a handful of presents were opened. Nastya and I purchased two small silver frames in which we placed identical flat pics of them as they walked under the swords. They were going to spend a lot of time separated, and they wouldn’t have any space for the usual wedding gifts, thus the frames.

  Elian and Carolyn sat together, holding hands and talking to their guests as if they had been married for years. They looked so good together, so natural. At one point in the evening I said to them, “Carolyn and Elian, I grew up in a large family, but I was always alone. I was isolated by age from my brothers, who were a minimum of five years or more older, and I have always felt, well, isolated from the universe. I met Elian in flight school, and we became true brothers. He helped me scrape through the math courses, and I helped him a little with the flying part. It is my hope that we will always be as close as we have been. For my part, he makes me a much better man. In fact, he insists on it.”

  I paused to take a sip of water, then continued, “Carolyn, you are an absolute dear. You are so much smarter than I, yet you have never gotten impatient with me, you have treated me with the kind of love I never received from my own family. Nastya, well, she’s, she is...I love her. I hope that the four of us can enjoy successful careers in the fleet, retire and enjoy a joint, successful career in the private sector, and perhaps one day we’ll have lots of ‘ankle biters’, as Elian calls them, running around, making our lives worthwhile.”

  Nastya looked at me with fondness and took my hand – it had been unoccupied for a brief time. She said, “Robert, for a man who claims to be reticent, you have a remarkable ability to speak from your heart. I have no idea how your family could have been so cold and yet produce such a warm, loving man. May I propose two toasts?”

  Nastya stood, causing the rest of us to stand as well. With a drin
k in her hand, Nastya said, “Carolyn and Elian, may your marriage be as the union of hydrogen and oxygen, a bond so powerful and so precious to life.” We all raised our glasses and took a drink.

  After a short pause, Nastya raised her glass a second time. “I propose a toast to we four: may our love for each other continue for as long as we draw breath, may our two marriages produce children and grandchildren who will be as close as we are.”

  Elian and I both offered short toasts, finding it impossibly difficult to follow Nastya, and then finally Carolyn raised her glass and with a grin said, “To the Fleet!”

  We had two full days with our wives before they returned to Lubya. Life seemed suddenly empty of love after they left. Of duty, we had an over supply.

  On the morning our wives departed I passed by the battle cruiser. By now, the ship had been partially cleared of its original power sources, and our engineer was working feverishly with several Anodyne tech. reps. New equipment was steadily piling up in the hanger but we hadn’t finalized our design yet. The ship originally had ten mag bottles in each power room, for a total of twenty. The first time I read its total power output, I knew there was a serious flaw in its design. Basically, it could fire its lasers, or it could power its engines, but not both simultaneously. It needed to increase its power output as much as five times. There didn’t seem to be enough space for all the equipment we wanted to add, but the engineers had come up with a very neat solution. There was a large space just behind Bravo that could be utilized as a third power room. Its proximity meant it would be relatively easy to modify the space into what amounted to an extension of Bravo. They had already run additional Zerohn cabling from the power rooms to connect all the distribution centers throughout the ship, as well as connect Alpha and Bravo. It looked as if we could accomplish the hoped for goals of thirteen G’s acceleration while simultaneously firing all the lasers.

  Meanwhile, technicians were hard at work applying the anti energy armor to the exterior of the ship. We specified a coating of one hundred centimeters, which was more than three times as thick as the coating on the Hawks. The overall effectiveness however, would be about the same. We arrived at that figure by the simple expedient of placing a large ten meter by ten meter panel on the surface and firing a thirty five cm laser at it from a distance of one thousand kilometers. We punched large holes in the panel with thinner layers. One hundred centimeters was just enough to stop the energy from holing the panel.

  Once again, we heard loud protests at our extremely unscientific testing procedures. Engineers liked schematics, and charts with lots and lots of numbers, and formulas with unfamiliar squiggles, but pilots like ships that work. Admiral Lee observed several of the tests – we coated ten panels with different thicknesses of armor, and after observing the heavily scored – but not holed – panel, he signed off on it and told everyone to shut up and figure out how to do it.

  The task gave the civilian engineers a headache. They had to learn how to produce a coat that thick – apparently they couldn’t apply several layers, it had to be done all at once, but they did it, and now the battle cruiser was slowly disappearing underneath a shiny new coat. Actually, it wasn’t shiny at all, it was dead black, but in the figurative sense, that coat was shiny new.

  Meanwhile, Elian and I became captains of the last two Dresdens to go through the modification procedures. These two had also been given a layer of our new cheap ablative material, applied over the original expensive layer of ablative armor. We now had a full load out of the brand new Mark 67 missile. These missiles were the first off the production line, and we were studying their specifications intensely. We would possibly be able to control them in real time, although there would be a steadily growing lag as the missiles accelerated towards their target. I said ‘possibly’ as the ship-based controls were not actually in the ship just yet.

  We met our execs for the first time when we came aboard for the first time. Mine turned out to be an attractive lieutenant with more seniority in grade than I, but with not only a complete lack of attitude, she seemed delighted to be my exec. After shaking hands I asked her, “Can I fob off anything that smacks of detail?” She grinned and said, “I heard that about you.” I asked her, “Heard what?” She said, “Heard that you were extremely direct, and that you loved your crews and hated bugs.”

  I shook my head and replied, “I don’t hate them, at least not any more. I’ll try to kill them if they even look cross eyed at me – well, they don’t have two eyes, but you know. But, I don’t hate them.”

  As to the missiles, we were told that scientists believed that it was technically feasible to communicate over immense distances via controlled gravity pulses, but that was years away, or not ever. Now, we had to figure out how best to utilize the real time feature of the 67, without actually having much of the equipment. Another work around.

  We took over one simulator and ran test after test. We came to the conclusion that there was as much art as science in using the 67. Elian had a natural knack for this and I ended up concentrating on other issues. I wanted to be able to dock the Hawks directly on the hull of the Dresdens, whose names were Lee and Grant, interestingly. Someone had a sense of humor.

  Docking the Hawks directly on the hull of the destroyer would greatly ease the operation of the Hawks over long ranges, as demonstrated by the bugs. One day, we would have stealthy carriers that could carry stealthy Hawk Juniors, but for now, we had diddly squat in the way of new technology, not much more of the old crap.

  We were working out how to attach the Hawks to our ships, as well as how to get their crews on and off, how to power them from the Dresden, and other issues, all of which seemed resistant to solution in the time available to us. We were running out of time and I needed a way to run our Hawks for long periods without killing their crews or running their tanks dry.

  At pretty much the last minute Elian acquired for us a Fast Fleet Cargo ship. The man had no shame, he wheedled and pleaded with the admiral’s aide, who had already ordered it, and was just having a bit of fun with him.

  The admiral took it off whatever highly important mission it had been on, and turned it over to us. We would use it to carry reactor mass – water - for the Hawks, and in fact our crews were putting together a quick harness that would allow us to fuel them under way. On balance we gained a lot, although our task force would be limited to the acceleration of the FFC, which was ten G’s, which was ten G’s better than nothing, what we’d be doing by running our tanks dry.

  Elian developed the idea of running a couple of Hawks remotely from the FFC, I suggested that if we could parasite three Hawks to each of the Dresdens we could rest half the crews at a time. This would be workable, if not easy.

  As the time approached, Elian and I began exercising our crews and our forty-year-old brand new destroyers. We concentrated on the simulators as much as possible so as to pack as much learning into the limited time available.

  We developed some tactics designed to utilize the strengths of the Hawks and Dresdens. Although we were a very small force in terms of tonnage, we packed a considerable punch. Each Dresden held a total of one hundred twenty capital missiles and eight smaller tubes, each with sixteen missiles, utilizing a combination of the 15g and 15h variants which could be queued up according to needs. We held off mounting capital missiles on the Hawks, but we carried some on the FFC that would be available if necessary.

  We asked Master Chief Kana where he wanted to serve, on a Hawk, or on a Dresden, and he kindly offered to take over the senior enlisted slot on Elian’s ship, the Lee. I took the trouble of looking up the records of the two men our ships were named after, and was struck by their story. Lee was an American Civil War general who left the Union in the mid nineteenth century when it splintered after the election of a controversial president, and led the smaller and poorly armed Confederate army for nearly the entire duration of the war. He routinely defeated much larger and better-armed Union forces, and excelled in a battle of m
aneuver. Grant, on the other hand, was brought in to command the Army of the Potomac, the principal Union force, and methodically transformed the nature of warfare.

  He utilized the principal strength of the Union, which was its manufacturing ability and much larger population base. Once he made contact with his enemy, he maintained it like a dog with a rat in its mouth. Both Generals were superb, but Grant was the winner at the end. Interestingly, Elian received the Lee and I the Grant. The admiral smiled broadly when he informed us of the appointment. I reflected that to date we had been operating more like an inexperienced General Lee and the bugs like a Grant.

  About this time our ambassador to the alien fleet arrived at Jupiter base. He was actually a he in this case, which fact we learned through the medium of a message from the admiral. We were ordered to make ourselves available to meet with him, should he so desire. Our linguist never showed up. Best laid plans and all that. It seemed that our ambassador was to hold down both positions.

  We now had a full complement of personnel on board the two Dresdens, including twenty marines, and space was at a premium. These ships had been designed from the outset to be able to work as independent commands, and the designers had installed an extra stateroom that would be turned over to our visiting dignitary. Perhaps ‘stateroom’ was gilding the lily a bit – it was a three by four meter cubicle.

 

‹ Prev