by Ron Collins
But UG brass saw things differently, and now he was a Number Two, and Deuce “By-The-Book” Jarboe was Number One.
And he was not just any Number Two. He was Jarboe’s Number Two.
“Dropping out of superluminal,” the controller said. “Thirty seconds until launch window.”
The power came up.
The automatic environmental controller circulated air, and the XB-25’s preflight shimmy went away as the trim rockets kicked in. The door in the launch bay rolled open. Moments later they were flying, Jarboe a little above Nimchura’s ten o’clock.
The transport they were assigned to escort was to their three o’clock.
The press nicknamed the stealthy TK transports “bumpers” when they were first announced because, they said, if you were in the target ship, you wouldn’t know you were under attack until you heard a huge bump on the ass end of your fuselage. Training corporals called them “bump-n-grinds,” to account for the sound their diamond-tipped drills made as they bored through the target’s hull. The marines who rode them had a different viewpoint—they called the TKs “suicide tubes,” because once all the bumping and grinding was over, someone had to run the hell out of the tube first.
Fliers, of course, had their own lingo.
From the distance of space, a bumper looked like a mosquito drilling for blood.
“I have our skeeter at three o’clock,” Nimchura said on their channel.
“Roger that, Yuletide,” Deuce replied. “We’re right here with you, Bumper Three.”
“Roger that, Red Squad One. Good to have you along.”
They headed toward Einstein’s signature. If the jump had worked well, they would have a few moments before the ship caught wind of them.
Nimchura tucked in closer to Jarboe to give the skeeter and its two hundred lives a bit more room. Rockets burned, and the craft wheeled through space. The Firebrand’s threat analyzer registered calm all around as he and Jarboe looped protectively around the transport.
Then, suddenly, Einstein entered his field of view.
An instant later, crimson and blue laser fire spewed from its rearward guns.
Shit.
Intelligence said those weapons were locked down under a top-secret code, and that U3 wouldn’t be able to activate them for maybe as long as a year. So much for goddamned intelligence. Again.
“Split right and under,” Jarboe said in his usual monotone. “I’m going topside.”
“Copy it, One.”
The skeeter did its preprogrammed roll, and their scissors movement worked to confuse the laser’s automated targeting code. Nimchura and Jarboe wound up together on the transport’s opposite side.
The lock-on warning blared in Nimchura’s ear.
He punched the joystick to tweak the system’s preprogrammed evasive maneuver, turning it into a series of rolls and a crisp dive that wasn’t in any of the evasion scenarios they had trained on. The maneuver disengaged the warning, but he had to pull up short to avoid colliding with the skeeter.
A cold beam of blue energy flashed past them both.
“You okay, Yules?” Jarboe said.
“Still breathing.”
“Let’s keep it that way, okay? You’re going to get someone hurt if you keep improvising like that.”
Nimchura grinned. “Jealousy will get you everywhere, Number One.”
Einstein’s flank loomed ahead as they went into their approach, the transport flying below and behind.
Nimchura targeted a launcher near the landing zone and squeezed off a series of rockets that killed Einstein’s external laser ring, but didn’t breach the reinforced hull. Jarboe took out a second ring, but plasma flashed from Einstein’s fore-panel guns to burn away one of the skeeter’s side boosters.
The transport rolled off the approach.
“We’ve got a runaway, Deuce.”
“Copy that.” The radio was silent for a moment. “Bumper Three, do you have a status?”
“We’ve lost starboard power and have limited attitude control. Working to restore. No estimate on timing.”
“Get on top, Yules,” Jarboe said. “I’ll guide their right.”
Nimchura grumbled.
This was a mistake—Bumper Three was damaged, and would never make the landing site. Instead of staying on the derelict transport, their protocol said they should peel off and support another run.
“Please confirm that order, sir,” he said.
“I’m not leaving these guys alone,” Jarboe replied. “I want you on top of this skeeter. Full defensive configuration.”
“That’s crazy—”
“I gave you an order, Number Two.” Jarboe’s voice was clipped but still in his lowest tone. “I expect it to be followed, thank you.”
Jarboe dropped velocity and peeled off.
Nimchura gritted his teeth and fought the rock in his stomach as he stayed with the damaged transport, turning gently to stay above it, and from this angle was able to see Jarboe fiddling with his system.
Einstein loosed a salvo of long-range missiles toward their transport that Nimchura picked off one by one.
It took a moment to see what Jarboe was doing, but Nimchura shook his head when it became obvious. Deuce was taking the riskier and far more dangerous path of latching his own Firebrand onto the skeeter to serve in place of the damaged engine system. He wanted Yuletide to provide solo cover.
When he was ready, Jarboe drove his Firebrand alongside Bumper Three’s side and matched its velocity. Then he tucked his nose cone against the transport and its burnt-out booster. Once the connection was made, Jarboe jammed the engines of his skimmer on full and brought the ship back to a course for their original landing target.
“You got a new right side, Bumper Three. Let’s make it happen,” Jarboe said calmly.
“Copy. Thanks from Bumper Three.”
“Let’s see those chops you’re always talking about, Yules.”
“Roger that, Deuce. And here I used to think you were risk averse.”
“I’m a mission man, remember?”
Nimchura nodded, but didn’t have time to reply.
He set program to run full-cycle patrol loops, essentially a continuous, corkscrewing outside barrel roll around the escorted craft that kept the transport on his bottom side the entire time. His threat monitors registered a new stream of combatants launching from Einstein’s holds. How good would they be? U3 pilots may be free-range good, but he doubted that they would have had much time in the seat of the odd little Z-pad skimmercraft they were pressing into service as fighters.
Bursts of radio chatter flew between Jarboe and Bumper Three as they exchanged the complex array of navigation and power commands it took to keep the skeeter on the proper path.
In the back of his mind it registered that two of the five transports had been destroyed prior to engaging. As they drew near, a third took a missile right down the gut and disintegrated into space debris.
Nimchura fired into the spread of Einstein’s Z-pads coming at him, making them sheer off to avoid damage. He broke left once to come around and defend the bumper’s progress, then again to clean up a straggler. Both maneuvers drew fire, but he ran a clipper corkscrew after the first blast, and then a switchback on the second that put him into position to get rid of that fighter.
It broke his goddamned heart to kill a Z-pad like that, though. They were beautiful little machines.
He burned another of Einstein’s missile launchers near their bumper’s landing zone to give the skeeter a free path.
“Nice run, Yules,” Jarboe called to him as they settled in.
“Nothing to it,” Nimchura replied—and he knew that was true. He could fly circles around these guys right now, but the fine adjustments he watched Jarboe turning as he guided the transport were the real thing of beauty. He would have to sit and watch the replay when they got home. The fact that Jarboe was making it up as he went, that there was no protocol or process for using a Firebrand t
o guide a skeeter, made Nimchura’s blood run cold. He could look in the mirror as well as the next guy, and the fact was that Nimchura hadn’t expected Jarboe to have that kind of flying in him.
They approached the site.
Nimchura rolled off to cover the backside while he waited for Jarboe.
“I’ll give you a final burn, Bumper Three,” Jarboe said, “then I have to roll out.”
“Copy. Thanks for the ride.”
The Firebrand’s engines burned nuclear orange.
“Get out of there, Number One,” Nimchura said, when he saw how close they were to the landing zone.
If something went wrong here, his wing leader would be a dead man.
He could be hung up and unable to disengage, or he could disengage too late and any one of a number of other problems could come about from that point forward.
Inertia rolled the transport right again.
Just before it made firm contact with Einstein Jarboe gave the skeeter a final blast of his engines, then peeled away. The Firebrand turned and twisted, but still it impacted Einstein’s hull, and the left side of Jarboe’s skimmer crumbled. “Uhhh,” his grunt came over the channel.
Nimchura looped over Einstein to see his wing leader was spinning out of control, headed into deep space.
Without conscious thought, Nimchura gave chase.
“What is your condition, Deuce?”
“I’m fine. I think. Just a little bruised. The machine is dead, though. No power. And I’m on reserve O2.”
“On my way.”
He hit the right-side boosters and rotated toward Jarboe’s flight path.
The landing tether would have to do. It was probably a one-shot deal, though, because if he missed, it would take several minutes to retrieve the tether. Since his wing lead was on reserve O2, those minutes could be the difference between saving his life and turning the derelict skimmer into a coffin.
“Hold on, Deuce. I’m going to try my luck fishing.”
“You’re more good than lucky, Yules. Make it happen.”
Matching velocity vectors, Nimchura launched his tether.
The attachment grabbed the derelict Firebrand’s back cowling, and Nimchura slowed to bring the skimmer into control. It took several tense moments to temper the inertia of Jarboe’s machine, but finally Nimchura was pulling his wing leader along like a trailer.
“Nice shot, Yules.”
He turned on a slow burn to keep the Firebrand from becoming a total slingshot.
“Control,” Nimchura spoke on the mainline frequency. “This is Red Squad Two. I’ve got a buddy tagging along behind me. Suggest you prepare the docking bay for a bit of a rocky entrance.”
“Copy. Will have fire crews standing by,” the controller replied.
Ten minutes later the docking bay loomed ahead.
Nimchura slowed to let the derelict Firebrand contact the back of his own craft. It was a hard impact, and at first he thought both fighters had been smashed, and then he worried Jarboe was going to slip off and crash into his left-side thruster. The connection held, though, and they flew tail-to-nose. Nimchura hit the retrieval motor, and winched Jarboe’s craft up as snug to him as he could. He reversed the throttle to bring them to a slow, controlled approach to the launch bay.
It was a strange configuration to make work. He was pulling an inertial trailer wedged in tight, which meant as long as he made no sweeping movements, everything stayed steady, but as soon as he toggled the controls, Jarboe’s Firebrand slid in unpredictable ways.
Nimchura made it work, though.
Half on systems, half by the seat of his pants.
“Nice flying,” Jarboe said.
“I picked the idea up from a pretty good flier I know,” he replied.
As they limped into the landing bay he hit the thrusters hard enough to bring them to zero-v. The bay doors slid shut and engulfed them in a moment of total darkness. Their relatively stable landing was almost anticlimatic.
“I owe you one, Yuletide,” Jarboe said over the radio.
The words settled over him.
Jarboe had been about as interesting as a block of wood when they first met. He had that certain detachment from reality that seemed to cling to people who came from certain backgrounds. But Jarboe had a particular air about him that stuck in Nimchura’s craw even more than the average rich kid. Nimchura was right when he called Jarboe a mission man. That’s what he was. He was a guy who did the job, a guy who put the job first before anything else, and his job today had been to save the transport—and so that’s what he had done.
And the fact is that the guy could fly.
Really goddamned fly.
“No problem, Number One. I think we’re about even.”
Then the lights snapped on, and the artificial gravity system took hold again. The sound of air filling the lock was like frying bacon.
Nimchura popped his cowling, and his crewmates scampered across the bay floor as he crawled out of the cockpit. Behind him, Jarboe slid to the ground and came around to the front, pounding Nimchura on the back as soon as his feet hit the floor.
“Guess we got the skeeter in there, eh, Deuce?” Nimchura said with a grin that he couldn’t stop.
“That we did, my friend.”
They were so caught up in themselves that they didn’t notice the grim mood of the crew until a voice came over the loudspeaker.
“All teams prepare for immediate Star Drive jump.”
“What the hell?” Jarboe said.
But Nimchura understood.
He had seen bumpers and skimmers disintegrating into balls of orange and red fire. The flush-faced glaze of the ground crew’s eyes told him everything he needed to know. Bumper Three had made it in, but none of the other skeeters had landed.
A single team of rangers would seriously screw things up for U3 on Einstein, but they wouldn’t win the day. The mission was another failure.
Now they were bugging the hell out.
Counterpunch
CHAPTER 23
U3 Ship Icarus
Eta Cassiopeia Arrival: Standard Day 8 (ECA 8)
Local Ship Time: 1600 Hours
While the argument was winding down, Casmir’s comm buzzed.
He toggled the note onto his active sleeve and watched as the words scrolled past.
Einstein missed its scheduled jump.
It was from Deidra, who Martinez had assigned a role in navigation, but had been working down in communication and security as part of the crew monitoring Einstein’s jump. She shouldn’t really have been the one to code the message, but Casmir wasn’t going to argue about that right now.
The sentence made him deflate.
Einstein being late was nothing but bad news.
For a moment, he considered giving the whole room the brief as he heard it, but as the news settled over him Casmir didn’t feel capable of handling the news in the same room with people he was supposed to be leading.
“Forgive me,” he said, looking up to the commission before him. “But I need to take this.”
He went into a separate room to receive the rest of the news, what little there was. While the Star Drive solved the problem of physical transport at superluminal speed, communication still worked in accordance with good old relativity. If Einstein was out of the system, there was no way to communicate with the crew. All they had was what they knew from their end.
“Einstein’s return jump didn’t happen,” Deidra said when Casmir contacted her. “The launch was perfect, and we’re rechecked the return calibrations to ensure the multidimensional course codes were right.”
“And?”
“They’re the same set we’ve been using before. We don’t think we’re going to find anything wrong there. Everyone seems to think we should assume the worst.”
“The worst,” Casmir said. “Yes.”
But what was the worst? An accident? An attack?
A simple problem with the science of the Star Drive?
Which was worse?
Was it worse to lose the ship to a simple accident, or have it damaged somehow and not be able to return? Did it matter? Yes, he thought. The latter could be UG retaliation, and that could mean a lot of things he didn’t want to contemplate.
He sighed.
The worst case was this:
If the UG had taken back an Excelsior spacecraft, they would almost certainly be able to use the navigation systems and their calibrations to backtrack, and that meant the UG would know exactly where they were. He closed his eyes and flashed on an image of Atropos and the islands that lay scattered across her equator.
“Yes,” he said to Deidra. “We can always assume the worst.”
He broke conversation and touched Gregor’s personal channel.
“I need you now,” he said in the tone of voice that said it was important.
“Where are you?”
“Session Room Four. Leave the rest of the team to make the final decisions on where to land. Yvonne can shake any trees that need shaking. Bring Martinez, though. We will probably need to discuss navigation.”
“On my way.”
When he rung off, Casmir sat there, alone. Contemplating the perfect silence of the room’s insulated walls.
He laid his staff across his knee, rolling it up and down his quad with his fingertips. They were so close. So close to being free of the UG. So close to having their own system.
With a final sigh, he activated the room’s projector system and called up the same image of Atropos that hung in the larger conference center.
As the holo hung above the table, rotating gently, Casmir began plotting out what he was sure they would soon call a rescue mission, but which he was afraid might well set them on a course toward full-scale galactic war.
CHAPTER 24
U3 Ship Icarus
Post Eta Cassiopeia Arrival: Standard Day 8 (ECA 8)
Local Ship Time: 1630 Hours
They needed to understand what had actually happened.