Fermi's War

by Richard Tongue

  "I am always happy to be of service, Captain."

  "We have a personal history. I don't see any need to bring it up here..."

  "After the Second Battle of Vesta, he attempted to initiate court-martial proceedings against you, until then-Major-General Tramiel overrode that decision. Whereupon you were both promoted, and he was transferred."

  Shaking his head, Marshall replied, "How do you do that?"

  "Sir?"

  "Never mind. I know that you are both of equal rank, but you are above him in the command structure..."

  "So you would like me to monitor the situation, and to discuss any potential action regarding this officer with you before you make any final decision. I will be happy to act in this manner."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate this."

  "I am simply doing my duty, sir." He paused. "One other matter. I never really had the opportunity to thank you for promoting me out of seniority."

  "That was four months ago."

  "I know." There was a faint tinge of embarrassment on his cheeks. "Nevertheless, I am grateful."

  "I simply promoted the best officer for the job. If it means anything, I had already decided to name you as Zakharova's replacement prior to the mutiny."

  "Sir?" That had surprised him.

  "You know the ship inside and out, anticipate decisions and provide alternate options – without getting annoyed when I reject them. Those are rare characteristics; you were the obvious choice for the job."

  "If I may speak candidly, I would have expected Lieutenant Caine to have been named. She would, in my opinion, make an excellent executive officer."

  "As it happens, I agree with you, and I expect to appoint her to that role at some point." More surprise on Dietz's face. "If the fleet expands, my expectation is that you will be given a command of your own before too long, and my assignment to this ship is to last three years. Two and eight months, now, of course."

  "I had not considered that possibility."

  Marshall smiled, his mood improving, "You should start to give it serious thought, Lieutenant."

  Silently, Dietz nodded, obviously thinking, before replying, "If that is all, sir?"

  "Dismissed."

  As the door closed behind his executive officer, Marshall walked over to the viewscreen again, almost tripping over a bag on the floor with some writing scrawled on it; he kicked it under his desk and began to ponder, looking over the mission plan again. At least this time he had a crew he could mostly count on, it didn't feel quite so much as if he was going into the unknown.

  He called up the previous exploration reports from the records again, all the way back to the first European expedition. Seven different trips out here, including one which built a thousand-man station that had been made redundant with the development of FTL. In all that time, no-one had ventured further in than Miranda, a dozen moons yet untouched. He called them up, watched them rotating on his desk, one after another. Portia, Cordelia, Cressida, Desdemona, even the names sounded filled with romance. This time he was going to lead some of the landing teams himself. They'd be at Cressida in a couple of days, ready to begin surveying the first group of moons.

  The communicator beeped from the bridge, Marshall reached down and tapped a button to answer, "Yes?"

  "Ortega here, sir. I have Lieutenant Warren from Shakespeare Station for you."

  "Put him on."

  Already they were far enough away for there to be a lag, "Danny, good to hear from you. It's cold out here in Siberia."

  "Sorry for your exile, Teddy, but I'm not overriding Cunningham on this one."

  "Think nothing of it. Putting me here as liaison's a sensible enough move. Bit abrupt, though, being woken up in the middle of the night and told I was on my way to purgatory."

  "Have you checked out the fighters yet?"

  "I was just out on a test flight. Aside from some communication glitches I'm looking at – because it would be nice to be able to talk to someone else during a flight, gets a bit lonely otherwise – they're in pretty good shape. I'm going to start checking the rest of my flight on it now."

  "Raven Four and Five, I presume?"

  "Damn right."

  "Don't do anything silly, Teddy. If that frigate turns up, don't get any crazy ideas. Your job is to provide a deterrent factor."

  "Two Mark Nine Hellblazer Missiles approaching at full-bore should do that, I reckon." Before Marshall could interrupt, he continued, "I know, I know, I'll be careful. Can't have Old Mother Cunningham getting on my back."

  "Have the drinks lined up when we get back to Shakespeare."

  "If I haven't had them by the time you get here. Warren out."

  Marshall sat back in his chair, smiling, then looked at the growing pile of paperwork. If he could get it down to a week-old backlog, he could reward himself with a landing assignment. Spurred on, he set to work.

  Chapter 11

  Orlova ran her hand over the smooth side of the fighter, patting it as if it was a pet she was meeting for the first time. Esposito looked on with barely-concealed amusement, but the young pilot ignored her; despite all the advancements of two centuries of flight, she still believed that there was no replacement for actually touching your craft, looking at every joint and join, every part of the outer surface and interior, before getting in and flying it for the first time. Warren came bustling in, a couple of technicians following him.

  "Really, Lieutenant, I cannot approve your launch at this time. We still haven't finished any of the safety checks," one of the technicians said, "and our flight-worthiness certificates for these craft haven't been updated in years."

  Maintaining his pace, Warren replied, "Never mind all of that. I've looked over the maintenance schedules myself and checked out the fighters. After a hundred sorties I ought to know if a bird is ready or not. My test flight went fine."

  “You waited until my crew were off watch!”

  "She's ready," Orlova said, turning her head, "And so are we."

  "I tell you again, I can't authorize this."

  Laughing, Warren strode past his fellow pilots and slapped his hand on the airlock release, pausing briefly in the hatch to reply, "You don't need to authorize a thing, old boy. I'm in command now, remember? Have your bright boys keep an eye on our flight readings to evaluate the test flights, and have a shuttle standing by just in case."

  The technician placed an arm in front of the lieutenant, "Why now? In seventy-two hours we'll have everything checked out and ready to go."

  "Be a good chap, contact the approaching frigate and tell them to delay their arrival, will you?" He sighed, then continued, "Look, time's a commodity we have in bloody short supply right now. We follow your schedule, we've only got a couple of days to get everything else ready. That's not much time to build a flight. Five days isn't much better."

  "I don't mind risking it," Orlova added.

  "Nor do I," said Esposito, halfway to her own fighter.

  Warren pressed his point home, "These beasts were thrown together in about five minutes, but the one thing I can say about them is that they were reliable. You could use them and abuse them and they will still keep on ticking." He moved the technician's arm and scrambled in, saying, "As we will now demonstrate."

  Orlova stepped into her fighter, sliding carefully into the pilot's couch, grimacing as some of the padding dug into her; she briefly wondered what giant had been the last one to sit in the launch couch. Her worn key slid home, and the contours of the couch molded to fit her slight form, and the controls arranged themselves to her customary positions. There was still something brushing against her right foot, and she reached down to see a small silver disc with Cyrillic writing around the edge.

  Evidently the last pilot, whoever he or she was, had a lucky totem that he had failed to take with him before leaving for the last time. She slid it gently into a nook on the control station, making sure it had no room to slide, and placed on a headset.

  "Raven Four, ready for
launch," she said.

  "Roger that, Raven Four, stand by. Take a peek at the flight plan while you are waiting; Five's got a little problem with her afterburner."

  Warren had put together quite an ambitious flight plan; all three of them would engage in some involved squadron maneuvers flying around the station, then a speed run to give the engines a proper workout, out to a cluster of targets to give their missiles a test. Orlova settled herself down to wait, taking the time to get the feel of the controls, working brief mental shortcuts. While the controls were in her usual presets, every console was still subtly different enough that it took a little time to get used to them.

  "Raven Five, ready."

  "Raven Leader to Ravens. Launch when ready."

  With a smile, Orlova activated the launch elevator, the sound of alert sirens fading away as the doors closed and the atmosphere was vented. She was slightly concerned at the condition of the mechanism – by the looks of it, maintenance had not been a high priority, and she quickly tapped a note for the post-flight briefing. With an unceremonious lurch, the fighter was dropped out of the station, slowly spinning away. Disabling her automatic controls, she stabilized the fighter herself with minuscule taps on the thrusters, rocking slightly back and thought.

  "Fuziyawa here." The voice was of the annoying technician from earlier. "Report malfunction with control systems."

  "No malfunction. I just wanted to get the feel of her myself. Out."

  Before the line closed, she could have sworn that she heard a sigh from the other end. Tapping the automatic controls back on for the fine corrections, she engaged the pre-arranged flight plan, preparing to take over if she had even half a reason. Not that simply sitting in the fighter was a boon – she glanced down to the wings she'd attached to her tunic earlier – but actually flying the ship herself had an appeal. Since joining the fleet, she'd barely logged enough flight time to keep her rating at its top level, and that was only going to get worse unless she could fix it.

  Touching a control, she activated the viewers and immediately reveled in the feeling of being in space; aside from the couch and the control panel, it was as if she was floating gently next to a pair of similar fighters, though she noted an impressive stylized drawing of a fire-breathing lizard on the front of the lead fighter – evidently Warren hadn't waited to customize his craft, and she admired his handiwork.

  A voice began to count down the seconds till the engines fired, and she braced herself for the shock. At zero, there was a brief blast of acceleration, then the fighter pivoted, then another, and finally a third, putting the fighters on a spiraling course around the station that allowed her to get a good look at it for the first time.

  Shakespeare Station's age was even more obvious now than when looking at the inside. The interior of the station, to some extent, had been modernized, but the outside still showed all the typical over-engineering of the period. The space were the ionic tugs were attached was still obvious, hooked out around the ring.

  Five years or more this station had drifted through the solar system from its construction site in L5 out all the way to its meeting with Titania, destined to spend the rest of its existence hovering over the desolate moon. Her eye glanced over the assemblage of bolted on modules, strewn in a seemingly-random way along the station's central core, all with their own purpose that by now was probably long forgotten, equipment hopelessly old or never installed at all.

  "Raven Leader to Ravens. Stand by for full burn."

  Ten seconds later, the engine fired again, sending Orlova slamming back into her couch. The simulated target dodged around on a random trajectory, performing just as it would if it were the real thing, and then settled into a direct course to allow the engine to be put through its paces. All the warning lights stayed dark, everything was working perfectly. The navigational computer blinked, sending a stream of data running down the heads-up display; the course as programmed was taking them close to the Raifuku Maru at its parking station. There didn't seem anything particularly wrong with wanting to show off on the first flight, though it occurred to her a second later that Warren was actually hedging his bets, keeping his fighters as close as possible to rescue in case something went wrong.

  The freighter had evidently seeded the targets; half a dozen images were beginning to focus on her sensors as they grew close enough to detect them, and the engines fired again to slow the fighters enough to give them a decent shot. Naturally, under normal circumstances, targets would not simply be hovering still in space, countermeasures off, waiting for someone to attack them, but given that the missile racks on these fighters hadn't been used in anger for eight years, Orlova felt on balance that a nice easy test was for the best.

  "Raven Leader. Firing missile number one."

  There was a brief burst of light from the lead fighter, a small dart racing rapidly out of sight. The heads-up display tracked it, and with the touch of a button, a tactical hologram of local space appeared, just in time for Orlova to see a small, satisfactory explosion at the far end of the track. Now it was her turn, and she quickly flicked on the targeting controls, waiting the brief second for the green light to come one.

  "Raven Four to all. Firing missile now."

  A slight shudder reverberated through the fighter, and she saw a pinpoint of light speeding away from her fighter, curving gently towards its target. An irrepressible smile danced across her face as she saw the missile hit home, saw the target wink out on the sensor display. Looking across at Esposito's fighter, she waited for the call from her friend.

  "Raven Five. Something's wrong with my missile launchers, targeting computer is out of alignment. Estimate five minutes to repair."

  After a few seconds, "Raven Leader calling. Fine, Raven Five, you can do your tests last. Launching missile number two."

  Another burst of light, and then a series of alarms started to sound throughout the fighter, the hologram initiating a series of alert tracks. She started flicking switches, narrowing down the problem, and then spotted the missile trajectory, burning nowhere near the assigned target.

  "Raven Four to Raven Leader," she began.

  "Raven Leader. I see it. I've got a rogue missile. Auto-destruct has failed. All ships stand-by electronic warfare packages."

  The trio of fighters were the nearest targets other than the four remaining drone targets, and the flight leader's fears seemed logical enough for Orlova that she frantically began to type in commands, feeding information on the missile design specifications into the computer. She disabled the system infiltration package, focusing the computers on other means of defense – if the parent craft had failed to knock out the missile, she didn't consider hers had much chance – and waited for the missile to stop its dance. For a few seconds it seemed likely that the missile would instead exhaust its fuel, failing to acquire a target at all, but the hope soon died as its trajectory settled on a course that left no room for doubt – the Raifuku Maru.

  "Raven Leader to Raifuku Maru," Orlova heard over her headset. "Rogue missile is heading your way. Activate e-war package."

  "Negative, Raven Leader. Our craft has no such equipment. Beginning evacuation procedures."

  A thought flashed through Orlova's mind, and she yelled, "Belay that! Any launched pods would simply be a target."

  "Raven Leader here. I agree."

  "Then what do you suggest we do?"

  Ignoring the chatter, Orlova started to run a sequence into her targeting computer. Without a word, she entered in a new course change, hit the override button three times to convince the computer that she did indeed want initiate the firing sequence, then felt the force of the engine through her back in her chair again. The targeting computer started resolving plots, courses arcing across the screen.

  "Raven Leader to Raven Four! What the hell are you doing?" The anguished voice of Warren echoed through her ears.

  "I'm taking down that missile with my remaining missile."

  "That won't work. My missile is
at full acceleration, it can't catch up in time."

  "It can if it uses my fighter as its first stage. Missile firing in twenty-one seconds."

  "Don't do it!" Panic leapt across space from the Raifuku Maru. "If it goes wrong we'll have two missiles hitting us."

  Orlova smiled, and replied, "I have no intention of getting it wrong. Firing in five seconds."

  Another voice, much too late, came through from the station, "This is Lieutenant Tokubai. Abort. Abort. That's a direct order!"

  Her fighter was burning fuel at a prodigious rate, ramping up the acceleration as much as she dared; every muscle was aching from the heavy pull, and she felt as if she was on the brink of passing out, but desperately held on with everything she had, waiting for the missile to fire. The rattle of a missile launch came as her engines cut back, thrusters vectoring her onto a course that would – eventually – get her back to Shakespeare Station, though she had condemned herself to nine and a half hours of cruising back.

  The tracks of the two missiles slowly began to converge, her missile's safety systems overridden, accelerating far past norms in a bid to eat up the distance between the two targets. A slight variation in thrust, a microsecond's error, and a disaster would beckon; Orlova's hand hovered over the missile detonation button.

  It was almost anti-climactic when the two lights winked out at the same time, with only twelve seconds remaining before impact. Letting out a breath she didn't realize she had been holding, she checked the course tracks one last time, making sure everything was safe. The sound of cheering came over her headset.

  "Raifuku Maru to Raven Four. Incredibly fine shooting!" She could hardly hear the communications technician over the background noise from the bridge. "Everyone over here owes you their lives."

  "Raven Leader to Raven Four. Damn good show."

  "Raven Five to Raven Four. First round's on me when you get back. Need any assistance?"

  "Raven Four to all. I'm just glad it worked. I'll see you back at the station – probably just in time for dinner. I presume we're skipping the rest of the missile testing today?"