Landfall: The Ship Series // Book One

by Jerry Aubin

  The already frenetic activity level in Flight Ops was dialed up even higher once everyone understood the situation. Exactly 117 secs later the last of the medics floated out of the compartment and the Flight Ops Crew were poised to lead the Ship into battle once more. Zax led off as the Flight Ops team called out their readiness in final preparation.

  “Threat is go.”

  “Flight is go.”

  “Weps is go.”

  “Nav is go.”

  “Sorry, Boss,” announced the girl in the Scan chair. “I need a few more mins. I’ve located a system that might be interesting, but it’s at the extreme edge of our scanning range. It’s fading in and out. I’m afraid if I don’t get a clean lock now, I might not be able to isolate it again later even if we came back to this same spot. It looks habitable.”

  Those last three were the magic words that captured everyone’s attention. The Ship’s Mission was to seed the universe with human colonies wherever rare Class M worlds were found, but it had not encountered a habitable planet in almost three years. Many in the Crew were stir-crazy having been too long deprived of the regular establishment of new settlements. Landfall always provided a welcome respite from their regular duties—either due to the work of settling the latest colony or (more enjoyably) from the battles with aliens which often preceded it.

  Zax turned to the command chairs in the middle of the room. It was clear the Flight Boss and Captain were communicating over a private channel. Zax recognized something in their body language that suggested the conversation, although entirely silent, was fairly heated. The Captain addressed the Crew a few secs later.

  “I understand everyone wants to get back to the white dwarf and make sure our fighters and tanker are OK, but you all realize how critical it is we Landfall soon. Scan—take whatever time you need to get me a full rundown on that system. If it indeed appears to be habitable, then we aren’t going anywhere until you and Nav have confirmed a Transit solution that will get us there from the white dwarf system. Everyone else—continue to prep for hostile activity. I’m confident our fighters have long since destroyed that alien, but we must be certain we’re ready to support them the instant our Transit is complete and we’re back in the battle.”

  Zax had almost completed his battle prep when Kalare interrupted him for a private subvoc.

  “I hope you didn’t mind me sending some extra points your way earlier.”

  For a sec Zax believed Kalare was mocking him somehow, but he glanced at her and recognized a sincere smile. This girl flummoxed him. Lacking a better reply to such an absurd statement, he said the only thing that came to mind. “Thank you.”

  “I said this earlier when we were trapped together, but I need to say it again. You’re amazing when it comes to zero-g maneuvers! How’d you get so good?”

  Zax started to reply, but Kalare barreled forwards without pause.

  “You must spend every waking moment in the zero-g training compartment. Am I right? Do you think you could spend some time with me and maybe teach me a few of your tricks? That would be awesome. Thank you! You know, that’s actually the least you can do to pay me back since I’m sitting here with your puke all over my clothes. I had no choice but to go for a swim in your lunch if I was to get close enough to wake you up and get you breathing again. What did you even eat? Oops—there’s a noodle on my shoulder!”

  Zax was mortified, but the rancid discovery didn’t rattle Kalare and she continued without missing a beat.

  “Can you believe what the Flight Boss did to Cyrus? Fifty thousand demerits! Has Cyrus been that useless the entire time you were training with him? I don’t know what I would do if the person training me was an idiot like that. Actually, yes I do. Nothing. I would do nothing. Probably the exact same thing that you’ve been doing if I can read you right. And I bet I am, ‘cause I’m very good at reading people.”

  Zax had been exhausted listening to Kalare during their earlier conversation, but the feeling was exacerbated when they communicated over the subvoc. Without the limitation of having to move her lips Kalare spewed out her crazy talk twice as fast. At least this meant he anxiously held his breath for only half the time. She finally allowed him a moment to speak.

  “Yeah—Cyrus has been a complete moron the entire time I’ve been training with him, but I’ve met worse. He’s definitely going to be Culled after the Boss hit him with so many demerits.”

  What Zax didn’t share was his relief about Cyrus getting dumped into cryosleep. The malevolent expression he sent Zax’s way as the hatch closed had him concerned about how Cyrus might attempt to exact revenge in the meantime.

  Kalare started to unleash another of her verbal volleys but was cut off by an announcement from Scan.

  “Flight Boss—I’ve established a solid lock on that system, and I’m showing an 88% probability it’s habitable. Nav has plotted a Transit solution between the white dwarf and the new Class M system, and I’ve confirmed it’s correct.”

  “Excellent,” said the Boss. His tone was anxious when he turned to the Captain and spoke. “Ma’am—I request tactical command be returned to me, and we immediately jump back to the white dwarf system.”

  The Captain’s “Affirmative” was the last thing Zax heard before the FTL spooled up and everything faded to black.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There’s nothing out there.

  Zax awoke with a final spasm of retching. Dry heaves sucked, but avoiding a barrage of vomit was one benefit of three jumps in such quick succession.

  He turned his attention to the Threat board and was dismayed by what it revealed. There was no sign of the bandit from earlier, but there were also no signals revealing the Ship’s fighters or tanker had survived. Instead, the board identified two distinct debris fields with one in close proximity to the Ship and the other located much closer to the white dwarf.

  “Boss…” Zax fought to keep his voice even. “I have no contacts. Bandit 1 is gone. No transponders from any of our fighters. No transponder from the tanker. There’s nothing out there.”

  The Flight Boss pummeled the arm of his chair and muttered something under his breath. Then he quickly regained his composure and jumped out of his seat to issue a stream of orders.

  “Flight—I want two SAR birds in the air, one for each of those debris fields. We lost all of their ships, but let’s recover their cores and bring our pilots and WSOs home. I also want another tanker in the air ASAP. We’ve got enough fuel in storage to last for a while, but since it appears like we might have Landfall ahead of us soon, we should top up the tanks now while we have the chance.”

  Zax sought hope about the lives of Vampire and the rest of the pilots from his memories of past lessons about Flight operations. Search and Rescue craft used specialized scanning equipment to detect the emergency beacon each neural core triggered when ejected from its spacecraft. The biological matrix inside each fighter which contained the mind of the pilot and WSO was exceptionally armored and generally survived even when the rest of the craft was a total loss. Though fighters were destroyed all the time, the actual loss of a fighter crew was an infrequent event.

  The Flight Boss turned to the girl in the Scan chair. “I want you running everything possible to find any echoes of this battle. Energy signatures, blast marks, unexploded ordnance, anything that might provide a clue to help us understand what happened. We had an unknown fighter get crazy lucky and score a direct hit on Flight Ops, and now we’ve got nothing but debris in front of us. Those two facts generate far more questions than answers, and most of you have been around long enough to realize I WANT ANSWERS!”

  After this last exclamation, the Boss sat back in his chair and spun it around to gaze out the exterior panorama. He rested his head on his hand and chomped angrily on his cigar.

  The two SAR birds departed for their mission while Zax sifted through the Threat board data. There was little chance of core recovery. All of the spacecraft had been annihilated and there was no debris la
rge enough to represent a core.

  Zax was curious about what was happening with the bodies left behind by the twenty-four pilots and WSOs. Having pilots killed in action was a rare outcome, and he had a morbid curiosity about how it was handled. He pinged Kalare on a private channel.

  “Mini-Flight—what’s the chatter on the Flight channel about what’s going on in the ready room?”

  “They’re running their KIA procedures,” replied Kalare. “The capsules around the chairs have been sealed and they’ve got a guard stationed at each one. The hardlines are still in place, but they’ve got techs prepared to cut them once the SARs confirm which Crew have been lost. They’ve deployed an honor guard to the ready room for the burial ceremony and will put the capsules out an airlock within fifteen mins of any official KIA declarations.”

  Amazingly efficient, thought Zax, but using the chair capsules as coffins added a whole new dimension to the job of being a pilot. While civilians had nothing to look forward to after death beyond their bodies being recycled like any other depleted resource, tradition long held that dead Crew were given an honor guard and space burial. Some Ship resource officer way back in history must have decided it would be great to conserve consumable mass by using the pilots’ chairs as their coffins when they were killed in action. The bodies would already be encased in the capsules and the chairs were so highly customized they couldn’t be reused anyways. You already had to be crazy to want to be a pilot, but it seemed downright cruel to be forced to climb into your own coffin every day as part of the job.

  Zax pushed aside his grim notions and focused on the Threat board. One of the SAR craft had reached the closest debris field, and Zax expected it would soon relay the news no cores had been found and all Crew were lost. Flight finally spoke a few mins later.

  “Flight Boss—we’ve recovered one core. It’s Vampire’s. The core’s in rough shape, but SAR thinks the Crew can be extracted. They aren’t finding any other beacons.”

  The Boss stood. “At least that’s one small piece of good news after the rest of this mess. Flight—inform the ready room that everyone in the fighters except the two are KIA. I want the SAR bird with the recovered core back in the barn, and I want to speak with Vampire and his WSO the moment we get them downloaded into their bodies. Hopefully they were in the battle long enough to have something useful to share.”

  The Captain spoke. “Boss—it will be great to hear from your fighter crew, but I also want us to collect whatever other evidence we can to understand how those ships were destroyed. Let’s put together investigative teams and spend a couple of days in system to examine the wreckage.”

  “Absolutely,” said the Flight Boss. He turned his attention to the rest of the compartment. “I want to remind all of you that Alpha confirmed it was not a human fighter behind all of this. I better not learn about any of you spreading rumors otherwise. Our lack of Landfall for such a long period of time has been stressful enough. We can’t have people obsessing about non-existent humans. Is that perfectly clear?”

  The Boss’s tone left zero room for disagreement. He didn’t continue until after he glared at each Crew member and received silent acknowledgment from everyone in the compartment.

  “We’re coming up on a shift change, and when your relief arrives, I want you to get back to your racks and get some rest. The potential Class M that Scan found means it’s about to get busy around here. Some of you haven’t been in Flight Ops long enough to have experienced Landfall, but if that rock is habitable then we’ll be running a lot of scouting missions for a few weeks and that will have us all working double shifts.”

  The Boss finished. “Things were rough in here today, but I’m proud of how you all handled yourselves. Some of you were pretty close to death a short time ago, and yet you’ve bounced up and stayed in the game. I’m particularly proud of the two cadets who managed to think quickly and save some lives. Good work, Mini-Flight and Threat.”

  Zax wasn’t keen to have all eyes on him again, but he appreciated the recognition and nodded at the Flight Boss to acknowledge his kind words. What he appreciated even more was the news there wouldn’t be any more FTL jumps right away and he would soon be off duty.

  CHAPTER TEN

  That doesn’t make sense!

  After 480 mins of solid rack time, the craziness of the previous day felt like it had happened to someone else. Zax jumped out of his bunk, showered, and headed to the mess hall. He filled his tray with a big breakfast and sat down by himself as usual to watch the morning newsvid. The prospect of a peaceful and relaxing start to the day filled Zax with a sense of tranquility.

  “Good morning, Zax. Why are you sitting here all by yourself? I’m going to join you. Is that ok? Of course it’s ok. What a day yesterday was! Is every day in Flight Ops as crazy as that one? That would be great. Though, on second thought, we got hit with an alien projectile which caused an explosive decompression that left all of us unconscious without any air. Maybe that wouldn’t be great. Well, what I was just thinking was—”

  “Could you please shut up for a min—I want to watch the newsvid!”

  More frustration seeped into his voice than Zax intended, but Kalare seemed oblivious to his tone and turned her attention to one of the mess hall displays. Zax did the same and was shocked to discover his own face on its screen. The newsvid led off with a story about yesterday’s battle and a vidcap from one of the monitoring cameras in Flight Ops. The announcer introduced the story while video rolled of the Flight Boss clapping in admiration of Zax and Kalare.

  “The Ship encountered an alien spacecraft yesterday in the middle of a refueling operation. This was a surprise since the Ship doesn’t typically encounter aliens around white dwarf stars, but our fine Crew was prepared as always and Flight Ops immediately dispatched a squadron of fighters. Unfortunately, before they were able to interdict the craft, it managed to launch a small projectile. Even though the Flight Boss attempted to evade the projectile with an emergency FTL evasion, it scored a once-in-a-million direct hit on the exterior panorama of Flight Ops which caused an explosive decompression in that critical compartment.”

  The video switched to highlights from Zax and Kalare’s efforts to patch the panorama. It was accompanied by audio of the Flight Boss’s short speech from the day before where he praised the two of them. Once the footage was over, the announcer returned with a more somber expression on his face.

  “Thanks to the heroic efforts of the two Zetas, the Crew restored Flight Ops to operational readiness within mins. Even so, the second Transit of the FTL evasion was delayed so long that by the time the Ship returned to the white dwarf, the mothership for the alien fighter had returned and deployed an overwhelming force which destroyed the tanker and all eleven fighters. We lost a total of twenty-four brave Crew.”

  The screen switched to video of an honor guard saluting the flag-draped capsules. A three-volley salute fired while the airlock door closed and the capsules were vented into space. The announcer returned with a graphic behind him which showed a clock counting down from ninety-seven mins.

  “The Captain has decided it’s time to continue the search for our next Landfall and the FTL countdown clock is running. All Crew and civilians should prepare for a Transit later this morning. Meanwhile, in other news from around the Ship—”

  “That story doesn’t make sense!” exclaimed Kalare over the announcer’s segue. “You heard the Captain yesterday. She said it was going to take a couple days for us to do a full investigation and figure out what happened. A small alien fighter we’ve never seen before fires off one projectile and scores a direct hit on Flight Ops. We leave the system for a few mins and come back to find twelve of our spacecraft destroyed?”

  Kalare emphasized the last sentence by pounding her fist on the table. People nearby gawked, but she was oblivious to the attention she attracted as she continued. “There weren’t twenty-four dead, remember? Two of those Crew members survived! I heard them announce they recovered
the core from Vampire’s fighter and watched the Flight Boss head out to the ready room to talk to him and his WSO! And now, less than ten hours later, it appears the investigation has been wrapped up, we’ve got an extra two dead Crew, and we’re just going to pop out of the system like nothing ever happened!”

  Zax’s lungs screamed for oxygen. His breathlessness came not from following along intently to Kalare’s monologue, but rather from the emotions which flooded him when the newsvid announced the Crew from all eleven fighters had been declared dead—including Vampire. Sayer couldn’t really be considered a friend, but he was one of the few people Zax admired and had positive interactions with. Losing the closest thing to a friendship he had ever experienced threatened to overwhelm him. Zax needed a few mins to process the loss and deal with the unfamiliar emotions, but this girl had invaded his morning routine and now spouted crazy talk about mythical conspiracies—comments which, given their public nature, might ultimately reflect poorly on him. He took a deep breath and lashed out.

  “Just wait a min! I have no idea what you’re trying to suggest, but I’m really not interested in hearing about it. That projectile was a random hit—they happen. There are thousands of external panoramas and I’m sure given enough time absolutely all of them will end up getting hit at least once—whether by an alien or some piece of space rock. Random chance is just that—random!

  “As for Vampire and his WSO,” Zax continued, “the SAR pilot said the core was beat up pretty bad and she thought the crew could be extracted. Apparently, she was wrong. You didn’t see the threat board. I did. I’m not the least bit surprised everyone was lost. There was barely any debris out there big enough to be a core, much less a functional one. The Captain has learned whatever she wanted to know about the incident. She wants to jump now rather than wait for investigators to filter through a bunch of space junk to tell us what we already know—it was just another random encounter with another random alien who started shooting at us. That is the story of this Ship for the last 5,000 years!”