by Jerry Aubin
Zax’s instinct was to shut down her crazy talk immediately. Even though he had the occasional question or doubt about being part of the Crew just like anyone else, what always won out was the knowledge his Leaderboard position put him firmly on the path to a fantastic future. This demented girl was not going to get in the way of that future—even with such an infectious smile at her disposal.
“Well,” he cemented a neutral expression on his face and chose his words with the utmost care, “this sure does explain why the Epsilon leadership dumped you on Zeta. Someone with the smarts to reach the top of the Leaderboard combined with the willingness to talk about the deep, dark secrets of Crew life is a dangerous combination.”
Kalare interpreted Zax’s comment in a positive light and her smile made the gold in her eyes sparkle like laser fire. “You sure got that right!” she said before bursting into hysterical laughter once again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nothing but a milk run.
Once the All Clear sounded, Zax and Kalare resumed their sprint and skidded to a halt inside Flight Ops exactly thirty-seven secs later. Zax’s eyes adjusted to the intentionally dim compartment, and he glanced towards the Flight Boss sitting in his command chair.
The officer wore a work cap backwards and chewed an unlit cigar. The cigar was famous throughout the Ship for a couple of reasons. First, the need to feed ten million mouths occupied nearly every hectare of the Ship’s agricultural space so the tobacco for the Boss’s supply of cigars represented an insanely rare and expensive commodity. Second, there were exactly two places on board where torching tobacco with an open flame was legal and legend was the Flight Boss had never visited either of them. For the Crew, someone who constantly gnawed an unending stream of priceless cigars and yet was never witnessed enjoying one of them properly-lit served as further proof that the officers who reached the Omega Cadre were an entirely different species.
The Boss swiveled his chair towards the hatch and acknowledged their entry. “You’re 236 secs past maximum acceptable reporting time. Before you try to spit out your lame excuse, I already know you were stuck in a breach drill on the way up here. Ten demerits for each of you for not having picked a different path. And another fifty since you appear to have kept your supplemental breathers as souvenirs instead of leaving them in the passageway where you got them. You better hope no one encounters an actual emergency before you can return them. Get to your stations and get to work. Now!”
The stridency of the Boss’s final word was likely triggered by the look of frustration which Zax shared with Kalare for a split sec. Of course, they were stupid for having forgotten to take off the breathers, but being caught in a random breach drill could just as easily have happened if they had picked a different route to Flight Ops. Harsh punishment for stuff which was entirely out of your control was just the sort of compliance tool which drove more than a few cadets to go crazy and punch an officer in the throat. The good news for kids who reacted like that was they never again had to worry about demerits and getting Culled from the Crew. The bad news was they got dumped out an airlock after a perfunctory court martial.
Zax sat down at his station and slipped its wireless subvoc unit around his neck. The thin collar automatically constricted and positioned itself in the optimal location. Two sensors sat against his throat to pick up the nerve signals which would be translated into speech, and two contacts rested against his cheekbones and made incoming communications “audible” without impeding his ability to hear what was happening around him. Most Crew working in the compartment chatted with each other directly via their Plugs, so the subvocs were provided to allow younger cadets like Zax to communicate silently as well. Dozens of private conversations were happening at any given moment around the compartment, with verbalized communication saved for those orders and responses deemed critical for everyone to hear. Zax connected to their private channel and addressed the older cadet who was tasked with training him.
“Good morning, Threat, have I missed anything?”
“Hey squib, nice entrance there,” said Cyrus. “Nothing like causing the Boss to take a timeout during General Quarters to personally ream you out in front of Flight Ops. You are such an absolute oxygen thief.”
Cyrus, a towering nineteen-year-old from Iota Cadre with arms the size of Zax’s thighs, was responsible for monitoring the threat bubble around the Ship and was therefore called “Threat” by everyone in Flight Ops. Zax, as his trainee and backup, sat next to him at a workstation which was functionally identical.
Unfortunately, Cyrus was also Aleron’s mentor and loved tormenting Zax even more than the younger boy did. It was amazing how moronic bullies managed to somehow find each other across the age groups and thereby reinforce each other’s behavior. Cyrus relished communicating with Zax on their private channel since it provided numerous opportunities for unwitnessed verbal abuse.
After Cyrus generated his daily ration of harassment, he switched to his second favorite topic when afforded the privacy of a silent chat—complaints about the Flight Boss. “Nothing happening here. The Boss calls General Quarters whenever we prep for refueling even though every white dwarf star system is just as barren as this one. Paranoid old bugger. What a colossal waste of time. Nothing but a milk run.”
Cyrus’ complaint verbalized the obvious about how most of the Crew in Flight Ops were fighting off boredom. Throughout Zax’s time working in the compartment, the Ship had traversed an interstellar desert devoid of habitable planets. No habitable planets meant no aliens inhabiting those planets or preparing them for habitation. No aliens meant no encounters for the Ship and no encounters meant no battles. No battles meant no excitement and far too many routine operations like refueling missions. It was just another boring “milk run” for an elite group who craved regular adrenalin hits from defending the Ship.
“Flight—what is the status of my refueling bird?”
Zax shifted his attention to the Flight workstation when the Boss called out the request for information. “Astounding. Absolutely astounding,” he muttered. Kalare had slid into the Flight trainee seat, and Zax worried about what her position at that particular workstation meant for his Leaderboard ranking.
Like everything else on board the Ship, the roles in Flight Ops were governed by a clear hierarchy and the only trainee role with higher standing than Threat was Flight. In fact, Flight was widely seen as the most prestigious job for anyone in Zeta or Epsilon. It wasn’t always held by the number one cadet on the Leaderboard, but it was definitely occupied by someone near the top. Since Kalare was in that seat, it was distinctly possible she had a higher ranking than Zax.
“Blaze has the tanker in position and she just deployed the harvester,” said the Crew member next to Kalare.
Zax examined his threat board and verified this for himself. The Captain had stationed the Ship one million klicks from the white dwarf at the center of the planetless system. The tanker, designated “Blaze” on his screen based on the call sign of the pilot driving it, had halved that distance and released its harvester. The harvester, a highly specialized drone, rocketed towards the miniature star.
“You cadets who are new to Flight Ops should take a moment to appreciate the irony of what you are about to witness,” announced the Flight Boss. “White dwarfs, stars which are quickly approaching death, provide the energy source necessary to fuel the life of the Ship. The harvester is going to do a single close orbit to gather and compress enough of the degenerate gas being emitted to pack ten billion kilograms of the stuff inside one cubic meter of volume. This degenerate matter represents the beating heart of all human space exploration. Our ability to compress so much mass with such a huge amount of usable energy into such impossibly small storage is what makes everything the Ship does possible.”
“I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to listen to him make this exact same speech,” complained Cyrus to Zax over their private channel. “Listen here, I have it memorized—Irony...white dw
arfs...fuel...beating heart...blah, blah, blah...”
Zax wanted to laugh, but refused to give Cyrus the satisfaction and instead focused on his workstation.
“Threat—set a forty-eight min countdown so we can know when the harvester is full up and we can get back on our way,” ordered the Flight Boss. “Scan and Nav—I need you two to identify and plot our next Transit. I know the Captain would be mighty appreciative if you could finally get us out of this dead zone and find a halfway decent planet where we can drop our next colony. Everybody else—I need you alert and on top of your game. I know you’re aching for some excitement, but keeping the Ship safe during operations like this one is your entire mission in life right now and I want you acting like it!”
“Alert?” mocked Cyrus silently once again. “Five thousand years’ worth of Ship’s logs show we’ve never once encountered hostiles around a white dwarf and for some incomprehensible reason he thinks he can motivate us into thinking today is going to be the day that changes? Good luck with that!”
CHAPTER FIVE
It’s coming right at us.
The refueling countdown ticked down and approached its halfway point. Zax was halfheartedly reviewing a mind-numbing training manual he had long since memorized when Cyrus called out.
“Boss—something just appeared on my board.”
“Elaborate, please.”
Zax inspected the threat board. The inbound bogey flew a course which would take it within the Ship’s minimum stand-off perimeter in 287 secs. As Cyrus relayed this same information to the Flight Boss, the Combat Air Patrol fighter on duty, pilot call sign Vampire, changed heading. Vampire vectored onto an intercept course which would allow him to first identify and then engage the unidentified craft if it proved to be hostile. Since roughly 99.99999% of aliens the Ship encountered were hostile, this was more a question of when than if.
“Flight—status on Vampire?” asked the Boss as he rose.
“Vampire is fifteen thousand klicks from visual,” replied Flight. “I can have the Alert Two birds out the door in ninety-five secs if you want some additional friendlies out there.”
“Excellent. Launch—you have my go for ten more birds as soon as they’re hot.” The Flight Boss turned to face the massive panorama window on the interior bulkhead and chewed his cigar even more vigorously.
Zax shifted his attention to the panorama. Its three hundred square meters of translucent titanium provided a view into the Ship’s primary flight hangar. What made the panorama different from an ordinary window was its data overlay that displayed whatever information the Flight Boss wanted in his view. At that moment, it showed the ready status for ten additional fighters shift to green when Flight initiated their countdown for launch.
Zax’s pulse quickened as he envisioned himself piloting one of those ten craft. A job as a trainee in Flight Ops was the pinnacle of success for someone like Zax, who was only fifteen, but it wasn’t the desired end point for any cadet. Everyone who took a training slot in that compartment did so with one goal in mind—earning a chair in the pilot room. There was not any single career path for someone who dreamed of being an Omega and perhaps even Captain, but what was absolutely common among all of the permutations was time spent either on stick as a fighter pilot or in the backseat as her Weapons System Officer.
Zax lacked the security clearance to know where the pilot room was located and had never even seen pictures of it. This didn’t prevent him from imagining himself sitting there during a launch, however, and he obsessed about all of the unknown details. What would it feel like to jump into that chair with its top-secret, highly customized neural connections and transfer his consciousness over a hardwire into one of those amazing spacecraft? Would his mind work any differently while it inhabited the neural network of the fighter while the empty shell of his body remained back in the Ship’s ready room? With his physical body left behind, would he still somehow feel the power of the ElectroMagnetic Aircraft Launch System as it hurtled his craft from zero to three hundred kilometers per sec?
His focus on the pilots and WSOs was even more intense than usual because Vampire was in the air. Zax had always wanted to ask Sayer why he chose that particular call sign but had not yet found the right opportunity to do so. Sayer’s body was now somewhere deep inside the Ship while his mind was thousands of kilometers away about to engage an alien craft. The fact they had been together just a few mins ago only served to increase Zax’s amazement.
The thwomp of the first EMALS shot broke Zax’s reverie and the noise was followed in quick succession by nine more just like it. His eyes focused back on the view of the flight deck just as the fighter piloted by the Commander, Air Group shot off the deck. Due to its special role, the Flight Ops compartment was unique on the Ship and had two of the massive panoramas—one opposite the other. Zax turned his head 180 degrees and caught a final blur of the CAG’s fighter, pilot call sign Daedalus, as it streaked into the void. He returned his attention to the threat board just as the Flight Boss addressed him.
“Mini-Threat—what’s the status of that bogey?”
Even though Zax was not responsible for the threat board, the whole purpose of having trainees in the room was to expose them to their future roles in real-world situations. The Flight Boss frequently used the natural pauses during engagements to work the various “Minis” into the flow of activity.
“Bogey 1 still on same bearing, sir, and will intersect Vampire in seven thousand klicks.” Zax paused. “Belay my last, sir. Aspect change on Bogey 1 along with a high energy discharge targeted at Vampire. Bogey 1 appears to be hostile, sir. Redesignate as Bandit 1.”
Based on Zax’s call, the threat board changed the label on the icon that represented the inbound spacecraft to Bandit 1 and also changed the icon’s color from yellow to red. Simultaneously, the background tint on all terminals along with the two panorama overlays exhibited the same color shift. These changes made it clear to everyone the Ship had moved from Condition 3 to Condition 2 and was under attack.
With a calm urgency in his voice that contrasted against the crazed chomping of his cigar, the Flight Boss delivered his next set of orders. “Flight—tell all fighters they are now weapons free and should engage and destroy Bandit 1. Weps—spool up all Ship defensive weapons and let the stations know they are weapons free on the inbound Bandit in the highly unlikely event it manages to evade eleven of our finest. Threat—I want your board up on both panoramas—top left quadrant. Flight—does Vampire have a signature on that craft yet? I want to know what the hell we are dealing with.”
“Vampire reports his computer shows unknown signature for the Bandit.” Flight hesitated for a moment and then continued. “He’s had eyes on it, sir, and says it looks human.”
All activity in Flight Ops screeched to a halt. The stillness was replaced with pandemonium once everyone recovered from their initial shock and started to speak at once.
“Human—what does he mean, human?”
“How could there be another human ship out here?”
“Call off the alert and stop fighting—we need to speak with them!”
“All of you—shut up! The next person who talks out of turn is going out the airlock!” The Flight Boss’s order silenced the chaos and he turned to Flight. “Get imagery of the Bandit from Vampire and then send it over to me. I’ll check if Alpha agrees with Vampire’s identification. I assume everyone agrees Alpha will recognize a human spacecraft if somehow we’ve magically run across one.”
The Flight Ops Crew pretended to return to work, but everyone snuck repeated glances at the Boss while he reviewed the imagery. Zax pinged Cyrus.
“Threat—I’m confused. Who’s Alpha?”
“Are you going to ask for lessons on wiping your butt, next? Why did they have to stick me with such a brain-dead trainee? Alpha is the root node of the Ship’s artificial intelligence system. The AI we deal with all the time is smart, but Alpha is a billion times smarter. Only the Omegas can intera
ct with it. I suppose they don’t want the rest of us slaggers to figure out that’s where all of their alleged intelligence and leadership ability actually comes from.”
The Flight Boss spoke before Zax could get out his additional questions.
“Alpha confirms the Bandit is not human but instead is of unknown origin. Is that perfectly clear to everyone?” The Boss momentarily held the gaze of every individual in the compartment to reinforce his statement. He grimaced when he spoke again. “That means it’s something we’ve never encountered before, and that changes things. Flight—I want another twenty birds out the door and forty more on Alert Five. Weps—get the Shipbusters spun up along with all of our close-in defenses. If this guy is a scout he might call home to mama and she could show up pissed any sec. Comms—give me the Bridge on visual.”
Three secs later the Captain appeared front and center and gazed down at Flight Ops from both of the massive panoramas. The scar across her throat, the origin of which Zax had heard at least six crazy yet feasible stories about, was distinct upon her fair skin. She returned the Flight Boss’s salute and asked, “What’s going on, Boss?”
“Captain—we’ve got an inbound bandit coming in hot, and it just fired an energy weapon at one of our birds. We’ve determined the craft is not anything we’ve seen before. Due to the unknown nature of the threat, I recommend we set Condition 1.”
“Affirmative.” On her word, the Condition 1 klaxon sounded. A stunningly lifelike holopresence of the Captain in her command chair materialized next to the Flight Boss and her giant image disappeared from the panoramas. Zax assumed there was another cadet like him training on the Bridge who now saw a similar hologram of the Flight Boss in that compartment.
Zax had never been present in Flight Ops during Condition 1 and was thrilled to finally witness it. The status was set whenever there was a particularly risky battle situation and meant complete tactical command of the Ship was transferred to the Flight Boss. The side-by-side holograms along with their Plug interfaces allowed the Boss and the Captain to be fully present in both of the Ship’s critical nerve centers simultaneously.