This method of attachment was the preferred method of transporting smaller craft too big to fit in a container, but too small to have their own hyper drives. However, this was the first time Greg was aware of it being attempted with fully loaded shuttles. The shuttles’ massive wings with their giant folding pusher props and under slung air breathing jet engines were still attached. They had not been dismounted and stored in the cargo bays as they normally would have been for reentry. The sensors that controlled Greg’s ship’s stabilizing spin recorded the mass that had suddenly become part of the ship’s load. The shuttle was loaded over its rated maximum weight. He was confused. Something strange was going on. Not being able to figure out bothered him. Other than Earth, there were precious few places these shuttles could operate. They could land almost anywhere, but they needed long smooth surfaces to take off again. The planet he was going to had no runway.
Finishing with their own ship, the two EVA suited people who had secured the first shuttle moved to the other and attached it in like fashion. As the work progressed, Greg became more confused and more agitated. Many times he had to remind himself he was a civilian and not a military officer. He could not demand answers and expect to get them. The two shuttles, equally overloaded, were attached to the docking ports. In record time, Greg’s ship was loaded beyond its maximum capacity and, except for the documentation, was ready to depart.
Greg was glad to see Blondie and Brownie again when they popped into his command module, but their attitude was different from last time. He stole a quick glance out his view-port, but the clear skies over the East Coast told him that he could not hope for a repeat of his last delightful “delay in route” with them. There were no jokes and only the briefest of pleasantries. It was as if their previous encounter had not happened. Once the loading was finished, two more female cargo shuttle pilots gathered in the command module. They sat or floated wherever they could, exhausted, their expressions somber.
Finally, after a long silence, Greg demanded to know what was going on.
Blondie thought before answering. She chose her words carefully. “We had no choice. We need you.”
“Need me for what?”
Blondie replied, “You’re the only person who has what it will take to stop the Swordsmen.”
“This makes no sense,” Greg stammered.
Blondie looked up at Greg from her seat on the floor. “When you gave us permission to play war games you created, we played while you slept. We found out which games you like and which games were based on your own experiences. We learned a lot about you, and we liked what we learned. We first realized who you were when you told us about why you left the Force, but playing your games told us about the person inside. We contacted our friends and let them know we had found you.”
“So you found me. Then what?”
“From your games we were able to figure out where you were going and what your drop pattern was. We sent a message to Myra and told her where to find you. She checked out the planet and sent us instructions. We will move there.”
Greg blinked and took a deep breath. “How many of you are there?” He looked around at the four tired women. “How can you think that you can stop an entire religious movement?” Greg was stunned by the enormity of the goal and the calm with which Blondie had laid it out.
“There are only a few hundred of us now that we know about. We suspect that there are other small groups hidden on remote planets but we know there will be many more when the true nature of the Swordsmen and their plans for system wide domination become evident.”
“Are you expecting me to become part of the revolution, the rebellion?” he shot back.
“No, not exactly.”
Greg paused for a moment. “What then, exactly?”
“We are escaping Swordsmen persecution. We are establishing a refugee camp on your planet with the horses. Somewhere defensible, isolated, where we can live in peace our own way.”
“In what way is that?” Greg asked.
“Brownie and I are lesbians,” Blondie explained.
Brownie nodded.
Blondie continued, “My mother has tried to turn me over to the Swordsmen Inquisitors for salvation and redemption. We have seen the Swordsmen kill people they can’t convert into becoming good God-fearing, tithing Swordsmen. Every time they achieve dominance in an area, the process is the same. Those that do not want to live their lifestyle have no place in their universe. People that oppose them suddenly disappear or turn up dead from mysterious causes.”
Greg considered this before he asked them, “Why should I care? What does it matter to me?”
Brownie answered, “Because they’re looking for you. There are warrants out for you because you are the great heroic killer of dastardly godless pirates who prey on honest pilgrims. They want to turn you into a hero, parade you around and make you the head of their Space Force and commander of the anti-infidel and pirate task force.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Brownie softly replied, “Do a search of the recent news headlines. See what you find.”
The women waited quietly while Greg had the ship’s computer search recent news articles for his name. Story after story backed up what they had said. The one reporter who had speculated that the Swordsmen’ interest in Greg was less than benign had disappeared the next day on his way to work and had been found chopped up about to be processed for pet food. The stories extolled the virtues of the new Swordsmen’s way of life and how adherence to the strictures of the new doctrine would guarantee peace throughout the universe. In spite of the positive spin on the rhetoric, Greg noticed an underlying fear that if enough people did not convert to the Swordsman way of life some cataclysm would befall all humanity. There was a tension in the verbiage that stuck Greg as more frightening than the actual text of the articles.
Greg found articles offering rewards for information leading to his surrender. Any pirate who brought him in would be offered lifetime amnesty. Unfortunately, there was no mention as to whether they wanted him brought in unharmed, but the reward seemed to indicate that dead was acceptable. Since dead was certainly easier to handle than alive, Greg suspected that dead it would be.
Greg’s reply was measured, calm and cold. “They will not take me.”
“That’s good, because rumors leaking out of the Swordsmen Military report they want to set you up in a battle you can’t win as an exercise to prove their superiority,” Brownie said.
“How so?”
“If they can kill you in battle, they can demonstrate that they are powerful. Rumors leaking out of the Swordsman military indicate if they find you, no one will ship out with you.”
“I’m not going back to the Force. I am not going back to killing people. I’m not going back to serving the will of somebody else because of the power they wield. No, I will not serve in their Force. I will not serve in anyone’s Force. Those days are over!” He slammed his fist into the console.
Brownie recoiled at the force of Greg’s words. She and Blondie shot a quick glance that each other fearful that they had misjudged him.
Brownie said, “Myra seems to think otherwise.”
“And what does Myra think?” Greg fired back.
“Myra thinks you’ll be a strong asset to our Force under her command and you’ll be proud to serve with us protecting our home planet.”
Brownie paused to see if she should continue. She almost withered under his glare, but gathered her strength. “Why does she think this? Because you love your horses. All those animals you dropped down on that planet, you care about them. You know you do. You care about them more than most people care about people. You care about those horses and those cows. Even the stupid buffalo. Myra feels you will want to defend them. We want you to defend them. We need you to defend them and in doing so you will defend us. Not because you’re defending us but because you are defending something you love.” By the time she finished speaking, Brownie had wound her emotions so tigh
t she was orating like an old time tent revival preacher.
Greg was taken aback by the intensity with which she spoke. “You’re probably right.”
The tall dark haired woman who had been sitting in the corner quietly watching the proceedings said, “Ladies and gentlemen it’s time for us to go. Captain, sir, if you will please check your sensors, you will see that a small customs ship is headed in our direction. It has roughly an hour to missile range. It is armed. Could you please plot the solution for us to depart with our ships attached to yours that will get us safely to your planet?”
Greg asked, “Do I have a choice?”
She solemnly met his gaze and said, “No, sir. You haven’t had a choice since you met Myra on your planet. Neither of you have had a choice from the moment you didn’t kill her, and she didn’t kill you. From now on none of us have a choice. We need to do what we need to do or die trying because we will die or be killed if we don’t.”
“Command Mode!” Greg said.
“Aye Sir!” the disembodied voice with a Scottish accent responded from behind the console.
“Plot a departure solution for as soon as practical.”
“Aye, Sir.”
A moment passed. The voice said, “Sir, in order to safely depart this location the engines on the shuttle craft must be linked under my control.”
“Can this be done?” Greg asked.
“I need permission and pass codes for each ship. Until we are ready to make the jump to hyper drive it will be necessary for each control area to be fully staffed.”
“Ladies, please return to your ships. Establish comm links,” Greg ordered.
The four women raced out of Greg’s flight deck to their own ships. Once there, the links were established and control of the shuttles’ engines transferred to Greg’s computer.
Greg’s ship’s guidance system had developed a complex solution involving gradual increases in acceleration to minimize the stress on the ties that held the ships together. It also required that the four shuttle pilots monitor their craft from their own cockpits while their engines worked in concert with the big ship’s engines. The shuttles were capable of limited direct electronic communication between their systems and the big cargo ship’s, but not enough for the task at hand. At the end of the acceleration under standard drive the four pilots would return to Greg’s flight deck and proceed under hyper drive.
After briefing the women and transferring the data to the shuttles’ navigation computers, everyone settled into their assigned places for the long trip away from Earth. Greg could see the exhaust plume from the customs craft as it headed in his direction and regretted that he would be leaving as a fugitive. He wondered if he could ever return to Earth and decided that living out his days peacefully among his animals and these four women on a remote outpost might not be such a bad idea.
The shuttle pilots reported completing their checklists and their readiness to go. Greg had already started gently firing the small servo rockets which rotated the assembled vessels to the proper heading. With bare minutes to spare before the customs ship reached missile range, Greg and the shuttle pilots started their engines. They gently applied thrust in response to the computer’s acceleration solution and hoped it would be enough. Greg knew there would be one point where they would be in range of the customs ship’s missiles, but the oblique firing solution should be too much for the relatively unsophisticated missiles the customs service used.
Exactly at the moment the text books said he should fire, the customs pilot fired a volley of four missiles less than ten seconds apart. The pilot had been well trained, but had little experience. Unfortunately for the customs pilot, but fortunately for Greg, the text book did not include actions, which, because they were against regulations, could mean the difference between success and failure. The customs pilot probably did not realize he could have pushed his antiquated engines past their nominal limits and overtaken Greg’s fleeing craft.
Greg’s response was also right out of the textbook, the textbook of tactics one was not supposed to use on Space Force ships. He released a jet of irradiated cooling water from his reactor core into the path of the missiles as they approached the detonation range. The heat and radiation from the water confused the missiles’ tracking computers, and they dutifully detonated thinking they had found their target. The detonations were hidden from Greg’s view by the hot cone of his emissions, but his sensors faithfully reported their occurrence.
The customs ship only carried four missiles, and the pilot had expended them all in his one attempt to prevent Greg and company from escaping. Greg’s ship accelerated rapidly and the distance between the ships increased beyond missile range within moments after the explosion of the last missile. With their speed continually increasing, the distance between the two ships continued to widen.
The escape route took the assembled ships perpendicular to the plane of the solar System’s planetary rotation. Having thus evaded the customs ship, it was unlikely there would be other ships in position to pursue them. Space Force ships tended to stay in the planetary plane where most of the traffic clustered. Only ships jumping out of the system used the space above and below the planetary plane. Once having realized he was being chased, Greg reverted to his pirate-hunting mind set and plotted a course roughly thirty degrees to the one he would be expected to follow if he were returning directly to his small planet. Instead of plotting a straight line to his destination, he plotted a gently curving arc. They would spend longer in transit, but since he was in no hurry to return to Earth, he was in no hurry to end his journey.
After the run up in standard drive was complete, the shuttle pilots returned to the cargo ship’s flight deck. They strapped themselves into their compartments, and Greg initiated the jump into hyper drive. Transition to hyper drive is an unpleasant experience at best. Given the delicate nature of his cargo, Greg took his time in the transition and it was not as painful as it could have been. Once the jump was completed, they were free to move around the cabin. Though he was busy controlling the ship as it jumped into hyper drive, Greg had time to think about what he been told. When the four women regrouped in the command module, Greg asked Blondie about their being lesbians and the three days they had spent together.
For the first time in a long time, someone smiled warmly in his presence.
“You were a sweetheart, and we both like you. We like men, but we don’t love men. We love each other. We enjoyed the time we spent together as much as you did. If things go as we hope we’ll all have more time to spend together.”
Brownie added, “We love each other more than we love anything except flying.”
The tall dark woman said, “These two will fly anything from a hang glider to an interstellar transport. Greg, you’re a wonderful guy. I think we can all get along, but we prefer each other.” She reacted to the hurt in his eyes and said, “That’s not to say there’s no place for you. We’re happy that you’re in our lives. We want you to be happy that we’re in yours. It won’t be traditional. The traditional ended back on Earth. Nothing will be the way it was as long as the Swordsmen are in power.” She looked around the room, and said, “Enough chatter, we have a long ride. I’ve missed too many meals in the last few days.”
“We brought food.” The fourth member of the group, a tiny black woman who up to this point had not spoken, said, “Do I get to cook now?” Her face lit up.
Everybody laughed, and the tall dark woman said, “Yes, now you can cook.” She smiled and said, “Would you ladies help bring the fixin’s from my ship?” She turned to Greg and said, “Dinner in an hour.”
They trooped out and returned carrying cases of food stuffs and headed for the kitchen. For the next hour Greg tended to the business of running the ship. Periodically, delightful aromas drifted his way. If this was what being a fugitive was like, he could learn to adapt! The time before dinner was spent verifying the jump into hyper drive had been made as planned and they were headed where they
intended to be headed. Since their path was a curve and not a straight line, the navigation was more complex than normal.
As it turned out, Samantha King, the small black lady who had sat in the corner, was a wonderful cook. Of course, it helped that the ladies had carried aboard his ship ingredients for recipes he never would have attempted on his own.
With romantic ballads Sinatra had recorded generations earlier softly serenading them in the background, dinner conversation was mostly about food. They talked about the meals they ate as kids. They talked about foods they liked to prepare. They talked about comfort foods, and they talked about favorite seasonings. After dinner was over and the dishes dealt with, they settled in the flight deck which was the only room that had enough seats for all of them other than the galley. While the ship was designed to handle passengers, it was not designed to be a luxury liner, and it was short on amenities one would have liked on a long voyage. One of those amenities was adequate seating space.
The tall dark woman, who introduced herself during dinner as Katherine Carlisle, draped herself over the chair that would have been occupied by the flight engineer on a unionized ship and said, “Greg, we have a long ride. We can either hang out and get on each other’s nerves or we could do something intellectually stimulating.” Blondie and Brownie shot glances at each other.
“We will likely do some of that, but I had something more intellectually stimulating in mind.”
The small black woman, Samantha, who preferred to be called Sam, asked, “And what might that be?”
“Greg is a brilliant tactician. Some of his battles against the pirates are studied in military schools. We have him to ourselves for the next few months. Why not have him teach us tactics and strategy because we will have to help defend the planet and we need to understand why he does what he does, and why he doesn’t do what he doesn’t do.” They looked at him expectantly.
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 3