by Ryk Brown
The force of the Super Eagle’s Corinairan-built engine pushed Josh back in his seat with far more force than he was generally accustomed to. “Damn!”
“What is it?” Deliza asked, her voice coming over the comms from her monitoring station in the Black Lab on Karuzara.
“You weren’t kidding when you said the dampeners would only partially compensate,” Josh replied in a strained voice.
“Too much?” Deliza wondered, her voice sounding genuinely concerned. “We might be able to allocate additional power from the weapons systems when they are not armed…”
“No, it’s okay,” Josh interrupted. “I just wasn’t expecting it to be that much, is all.” He eased his throttles back as he brought his nose back down, settling into level flight. “Damned thing climbs like a rocket, that’s for sure,” he said, this time without the additional effort. “I was only vertical for five seconds, and I’m at five-five already. That means vertically this thing can get to space in what, three minutes?”
“About that,” Deliza confirmed, “but more likely you’d be on a forty-five-degree climb, not straight up. Far more energy efficient since you’d still have to pitch over and accelerate in order to attain…”
“Ya, ya, ya.” Josh pulled his throttle back to zero thrust, allowing his airspeed to drop off as he added upward pitch to maintain level flight. “I’m going to jump down to five hundred meters at minimum cruise speed.”
“Why?” Deliza wondered.
“That’s not in the flight plan,” Loki chimed in.
“Hey, we’re supposed to be testing the jump systems on this flight, right?”
“Yes, but…”
“Then why waste time flying down to five hundred meters when we can jump down to five hundred meters?”
“Because until the jump system has been fully tested, it’s safer to…”
“It was safe enough for me to jump from orbit down into the atmosphere, wasn’t it?” Josh said as the Super Eagle began to buffet slightly. “Selecting a jump to five hundred meters altitude on a forty-five down,” he announced as he pitched his nose down. “Auto-jump is armed. Activating.” Josh took his fingers off the flight control stick, allowing the Super Eagle’s automated flight control systems to take over, keeping the ship on a perfect course as the jump drive quickly made the calculations to put the ship exactly where Josh had indicated. Only two seconds after he had activated the auto-jump system, his canopy turned opaque for a split second to protect his eyes from the jump flash. In that second, his ship dove from an altitude of five and a half kilometers, at a forty-five-degree angle, down to an altitude of half a kilometer—automatically—all without the assistance of a copilot behind him managing the calculations. Two spins of a knob, two touches of a button, and a little movement of his throttle and his flight control stick afterward, and Josh was now several kilometers further along his course and five thousand meters lower…and it had taken him all of five seconds to get from the thought to the result.
“Damn,” Josh exclaimed as his fighter leveled off again and the G-forces subsided. “This thing is sweet.” He dialed up another jump. “Let’s try single-click, on-demand jumps, shall we?”
“Josh…” Loki began, in his usual cautionary tone.
“Ease up,” Josh interrupted. “Just let me play a bit, then we’ll get to your flight plan, I promise.” He tapped his navigation map display a few kilometers ahead of his current position, placing a target icon. He then executed a snap turn to his left, changing his ship’s course by forty-five degrees to port. A press of the jump trigger button on his flight control stick, and his canopy cycled opaque and then clear again. He glanced at his map, noting that the target icon had moved to the right side of his display. “This is so cool.” He executed another snap turn, this time changing course ninety degrees back to starboard. Another touch of the jump button, and the targeting icon was directly in front of him again, but only a few hundred meters away. “Guns, guns, guns,” he said with a smile. “That would be a kill, boys and girls.”
“Are you done yet?” Loki asked impatiently.
“Nope.” Josh pulled his flight control stick back, bringing the Super Eagle’s nose straight-up vertical once more. As his airspeed quickly fell away, he dialed in a jump distance of three kilometers, then tapped his jump button. Another cycle of the canopy to opaque and back to clear, and he was three and a half kilometers above the Atlantic. With his power at only enough thrust to maintain minimum cruise speed in level flight, his airspeed quickly fell away, as did his rate of climb. Just before he came to a stop, he tapped the jump button again, jumping another three kilometers toward space. As his canopy turned clear again, he glanced at his flight displays. He was seven kilometers up, and his speed had fallen to zero. His ship seemed to hover in mid-air for a moment, its nose pointed straight up. He felt the Super Eagle begin to slide backwards, its energy no longer sufficient to counteract the Earth’s gravity. With considerable finesse, he manipulated his flight controls to keep his ship pointed straight up as the fighter slid straight down, back toward the vast ocean below. Five KPH…ten, then twenty. Finally, while still falling tail first, he tapped the jump button again, jumping the Super Eagle, tail-first, down to three thousand meters above the planet. He pitched back over, bringing his ship into another forty-five-degree dive, and executed one last jump. As his canopy cleared again, he leveled off, added enough power to maintain level flight, and glanced at his navigation map once more. “Guns, guns, guns,” he said again, a grin stretched from ear to ear.
“Are you done showing off?” Loki asked.
“For now,” Josh replied. “Screw the Falcons,” he added. “I wanna fly Super Eagles.”
* * *
“He’s got a good point, though,” Cameron said, as she picked at her salad.
Vladimir said nothing, only shoveled another fork full of food into his mouth and watched Nathan with an expectant look on his face.
“Sure, he’s got a point,” Jessica chimed in, “he’s just a year too late with it, that’s all.”
Vladimir looked at Jessica, then back at Nathan. “You have nothing to say?” he wondered, still chewing.
Nathan shrugged. “They are both correct. However, it doesn’t really matter. Even if we stopped all offensive actions and took a purely defensive posture from this day forward, the Jung would still come at us with whatever forces they deemed necessary. The only reason that Earth is still alive today is because the Jung haven’t yet figured out how many ships they need to send, in order to finish the job…and that’s only because of the communications delay inherent with traditional FTL communications. They simply don’t have adequate information…yet.”
“Eventually, they will,” Jessica said.
“Did it ever occur to anyone that a cease-fire might be a good thing?” Cameron wondered.
“It would be nothing more than a stalling tactic,” Nathan insisted.
“During which time the Jung would rally their forces,” Jessica added. “Probably stack them up at various locations, all within a few days FTL of us.”
“Exactly,” Nathan agreed. “And when the time is right, they’ll attack with enough force to destroy us…or at the very least, send us running back to the Pentaurus cluster, with our tails between our legs.”
“The stalling tactic can work in our favor as well,” Vladimir pointed out, speaking in between bites. “We can build more ships, create better weapons, train more people…”
“We can never match the Jung’s industrial capacity,” Nathan told him. “That’s how wars are won, you know. By factories and farms. That’s why we must continue to destroy their ships and their factories.”
“But what if you’re wrong?” Cameron said, reaffirming her point. “What if we could coexist peacefully with the Jung?”
“It will never happen,” Jessica insisted.
“How can you say that?”
“Just look at the facts, Cam,” Jessica replied. “We have the jump drive.
We have superior energy weapons, and shields. What we don’t have is the infrastructure to build what we need…to take advantage of our technological edge. That’s exactly what Dumar is trying to do with this lull that he’s created by clearing the Jung from the twenty light year sphere around Sol. We’ve got a year, two at the most, until the Jung figure all of this out for themselves, move their ships into position, and take us out. Every ship we destroy is one less ship that can attack us. Every system we liberate is one less industrial base to support the Jung, and possibly one more that can support us. Because of the liberation of Tau Ceti, we could have eight more jump frigates added to our fleet in just two years’ time. Probably less, given that we have Takaran fabrication technology.”
“A war is what you shall have to fight,” Nathan muttered to himself.
The others at his dining table stopped and looked at him.
“Something Dubnyk once said to me.” Nathan took a drink from his glass. “Seems he was right.”
Vladimir shoveled a spoon full of potatoes into his mouth as he spoke. “Why do you keep going back to see that old man?”
“Because our captain is a history geek,” Jessica teased, “and that old fart is a walking, talking museum exhibit, straight out of the twenty-fourth century.”
“Seriously, Nathan,” Cameron pressed, “why do you keep going back to see him?”
“I don’t know,” Nathan admitted. “Jessica’s probably right. I suppose I find him a curiosity.”
“You just feel responsible for him,” Vladimir snorted as he chewed.
“A little of that too, I suppose,” Nathan admitted. “He’s got an unusual knack for seeing the big picture…and I mean really big. It must have something to do with him having seen humanity from two vastly different points in time. His perspective is unique. No one has ever lived through such horrific events, and then lived long enough to see the outcome a thousand years afterward. How can one not wonder what he thinks?”
“I thought we were talking about Galiardi?” Vladimir said as he raised his glass to wash down his food. “How did we end up on Dubnyk?”
“Galiardi, on the other hand… Him I do not find interesting,” Nathan said.
“Then you don’t agree with him?” Cameron confirmed.
“No, I do agree with him,” Nathan replied. “I do think we are provoking the Jung to come at us with even more force. I just think they would still do so, whether we provoked them or not. That being the case, I don’t see any reason not to continue our offensive.”
“Then why not take it all the way?” Cameron suggested. “Why not just attack the Jung homeworld?”
“Because we don’t know where it is,” Jessica reminded her.
“I was speaking hypothetically.”
“And I was being sarcastic.”
“If we knew where the Jung homeworld was located, I would not be opposed to attacking it, directly,” Nathan admitted.
Again, the room fell silent.
“It’s not like they don’t have it coming,” Jessica mumbled as she took another bite of her meal.
“An ‘eye for an eye’ is not always the right answer,” Cameron said.
“Maybe not, but it would be fair.”
“It’s not about right and wrong,” Nathan said, “nor is it about fair and unfair. It’s about survival, plain and simple.”
“That’s right,” Jessica agreed, “and the Jung think they have a greater right to survive than we do.”
“Don’t we all?” Vladimir said as he scooped up another fork full of food. He noticed the silence, and looked up. “Well, don’t we?”
“He’s right,” Nathan agreed. “It’s part of our nature…to survive.”
“Then why do you all look so surprised?” Vladimir wondered.
“Maybe because it’s the first thing you’ve said without your mouth full of food,” Jessica laughed.
CHAPTER THREE
“Captain on the bridge!” announced the guard at the ready room hatch as Cameron passed by him.
“Report,” she barked as she made her way to the center of the Celestia’s bridge.
“Twelve contacts jumped in thirty seconds ago,” Ensign Kono reported from the sensor station. “Appeared two million kilometers out.”
“All departments report general quarters,” Luis reported from the tactical station.
“Targets ID as combat jumpers,” Ensign Kono added.
Cameron turned to look at her tactical officer. “I thought we only had eight CJs left?”
“Last I heard,” Luis replied, “and I show them all still at Porto Santo. Nothing on the arrival schedules, either, sir.”
“I’m getting Corinairan IDs and codes coming in now, Captain,” Ensign Souza announced. “Their ID codes are valid. Receiving transmission. They were sent by the Corinari. Their flight leader is requesting clearance into Porto Santo, to deliver his ships and crews to Ghatazhak Command.”
“Why weren’t they on the delivery schedule?” Cameron wondered.
“I can ask, but at their current range it will take at least twenty minutes to get a response,” Ensign Souza explained.
“Stand by on that,” Cameron ordered. “Mister Hunt, take us out of orbit. Plot an intercept course and jump out to meet them. Arrival distance of one thousand kilometers.”
“Leaving orbit, aye,” Mister Hunt answered from the helm.
“Plotting intercept jump,” the ship’s navigator added.
“Shall I stand down from general quarters?” Luis asked.
“Negative,” Cameron replied. “They’re probably friendlies, but better to err on the side of caution, Lieutenant.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Leaving orbit,” the helmsman reported.
“Intercept jump plotted and ready,” the navigator added.
“Very well, Mister Sperry,” Cameron said. “Let’s go out and say hello.”
“Jumping in three……two……one……”
The Celestia’s bridge lit up for a split second as the ship jumped from high Earth orbit to the inbound flight of combat jump shuttles, some two hundred million kilometers away.
“Jump complete,” Mister Sperry reported.
Cameron tapped the control panel on the right of her command chair, changing the magnification settings on the spherical main view screen that enveloped the forward half of the bridge itself. Before them were twelve Corinairan utility shuttles, all of them modified into combat jump shuttles.
“I have the lead ship, Lieutenant Aday, on comms, Captain,” Ensign Souza reported from the Celestia’s communications station.
Cameron tapped her comms control. “Lieutenant Aday, this is Captain Taylor of the Celestia. Your flight was not on the arrival schedule.”
“Apologies, Captain,” the lieutenant replied over the loudspeaker. “That’s why we jumped in from a distance. We were dispatched in secret by the prime minister, at the request of Captain Navarro of the Avendahl. He wanted to replace the combat jumpers lost during the liberation of Tau Ceti, but did not want it to be public knowledge that Corinair was still sharing resources with Alliance forces in Sol. Something about keeping the ‘Nobles of Takara’ in the dark about our force strength.”
“I understand,” Cameron replied. “I take it things are still a bit tense, then?”
“Yes, sir. Just a bit. The nobles haven’t taken any overt actions as of yet. However, they don’t really have the firepower to take on the Avendahl. Word is they aren’t looking to stir up any trouble outside of their own system, but not everyone is convinced that’s the case. I have orders from Captain Navarro for the transfer of my ships and crew over to Commander Telles of the Ghatazhak. I’m transmitting them now.”
Cameron turned to look at Ensign Souza, who nodded his head to confirm receipt. “Ensign Kono?” Cameron said, looking to her sensor operator.
“I show standard armaments for combat jumpers. Crew of three, loaded with supplies. Looks to be spare parts, mostly. Four of the jumpers
are carrying additional passengers. Ground crews, most likely. No side arms.”
“All their weapons and shields are powered down,” Luis added.
“Very well.” Cameron keyed her mic again. “Lieutenant. You’re cleared to Porto Santo, via a jump to high Earth orbit. We’ll transmit approach frequencies and jump waypoints. You may follow us to Earth.”
“Thank you, sir. Aday, out.”
“Comms, dispatch a jump comm buoy and notify Alliance Command and Ghatazhak Command,” Cameron directed.
“But, you’ll ruin the surprise,” Luis joked.
“If I know Commander Telles, he doesn’t care much for surprises,” Cameron replied.
* * *
“We simply do not have the resources to continue liberating additional worlds,” Admiral Dumar argued. “We are down to only four hundred troops, and the number of ships that can deliver them has also been greatly diminished.”
“Did you not just receive an additional twelve combat jump shuttles?” the Coporan representative reminded the admiral.
“Yes, and although they are formidable ships, each of them can only carry five Ghatazhak soldiers. Even if we used all twenty ships now at our disposal, that would only put one hundred men on the ground.”
“But you also have utility shuttles, and cargo shuttles, and…what did you call them? Boxers?”
“Boxcars,” the Admiral corrected. “Utility shuttles can normally only carry ten fully outfitted Ghatazhak. Cargo shuttles, fifty.”