Wren and Kim arrived at the rally point to find eight ships waiting for them.
“What happened?” Wren asked.
“It’s like you always said we should trust our ships. We did and we lived. They didn’t and they died,” Hawk twelve’s pilot replied.
“The convoy escorts have engaged the remnants of the task force,” Tracker reported.
“Do they need our help?” Wren asked.
Tracker paused. “No, I don’t think so. No, wait, no, definitely not. It’s over. I don’t care who you are, you do not go head-to-head with a convoy escort if you have any brains.”
“It’s good that they’re on our side,” Wren commented.
“No, Wren, they’re not on our side. We’re on their side. There is a difference.”
“Right. Let’s go home, gang.”
Wren was the last to dock at the tender. He looked at the empty docking ports and knew that they would probably never be filled again. Unless he picked up some used ships, there would be no more to fill those holes. He could pick up smaller, less capable ships, but that made no sense to him. As difficult as it might be, he needed to find used PI ships to fill out his squadron.
He knew he should debrief his crew but he was tired. He reported to Rachel that ten of his sixteen ships had returned to the tender and six were lost. She told him to rest and she would call him if the ground battle ran into unexpected difficulties.
Wren stopped at the bridge where the tender’s captain gave him a report on damages and remarked that had all personnel not been in their space suits, he would have lost all the flight engineers and service crews. He had often wondered at Rachel’s insistence on suiting up and now he understood.
Kim was waiting for Wren when he arrived at their quarters. He instantly recognized the expression on her face. He had seen it often on the women in his family right after battle. His grandfather and great-uncle actually looked forward to it. They called it “riding the tiger” and while it might have excited them, it scared the daylights out of Wren. Kim did not give him much time to think about it. Taking advantage of the weightlessness of orbit, she launched herself across the room and wrapped herself around him. It was, as his grandfather had often explained it, the ride of his life. After passionately affirming their testament to surviving and the sanctity of life, Kim fell exhausted on the bed leaving Wren to wonder how his elders could continue to do this at their age. He knew from Greg’s journals that they had participated in this ritual until the final months of their lives. There was something to be said for maintaining physical fitness.
The ships that had returned had been rearmed by the time Wren awoke. Kim was already up and in the shower. He blew her a kiss through the shower door and she returned it in kind. He checked in with Rachel who reported that the battle on the ground was proceeding well and he should stay where he was and she would call him if she needed him.
Kim came out of the shower and jumped him again. Wren’s combat crews were all “couples” in the sense that they were socially linked. Dustin and Matilda had relationships with members of the tender’s crew. Wren wondered how many “affirmation of life” rituals would be going on right now on this ship. He stopped thinking about it to deal with matters at hand.
GENERATIONS - CHAPTER EIGHT
THE MERCENARIES HAD TAKEN every major installation they knew about on the planet except the underground facilities and had not found the command center. They knew it was still active because ground troops were being coordinated from somewhere. A week after the initial assault, the mercenaries felt that they needed to go after the underground complexes. The dome adjacent to the complex Rachel had previously visited was intact. The mercenaries had held off approaching this area due to Rachel’s concern that it was full of women and children.
The mercenary field commander, Commander Erickson, called up to Rachel after entering the large terminal area next to the flight apron where Rachel and her family had landed over half a century earlier.
“Captain, you’re not going to believe this,” Commander Erickson said. “You really need to see it for yourself.”
Rachel called Wren and Kim, Tracker and Huntress to escort her personal launch to the surface. The three ships touched down lightly and rolled to the terminal building where the mercenaries waited for them.
Commander Erickson saluted as they approached. “This way, Ma’am. Please follow me.”
Rows and rows of women and children sat on the floor or on their luggage in the terminal building. They looked up at Rachel as she entered. Rachel lifted her face shield. An excited whisper floated around the huge room. Some of the women smiled and then quickly looked away as if embarrassed. One little girl of perhaps six or seven years of age broke free from her mother and ran to Rachel wrapping herself around Rachel’s leg.
“Are you Captain Rachel?” the little girl asked hopefully.
“Yes, I am,” Rachel said stooping to look at the girl at eye level. “What is your name?”
“Harumi, Captain. Will you take us with you? Our daddies are all dead and they don’t want us here any more.”
Rachel took a deep breath. “I need to talk to your mommy.”
Harumi motioned for her mother. A woman carrying a baby came out of the crowd.
Rachel removed her helmet. She still wore her hair short in the tradition of spacers which surprised many of the women who under Swordsman tradition wore their hair long. “I am Captain Rachel Solomon Cohen. It is possible that a member of my family, someone under my command or even myself killed your husband. Do you still want to come with us?”
“Yes, ma’am. We all come with you.”
There were women and children sitting in neat rows as far as Rachel could see. There were more in the hallways. Rachel thought for a moment. She called on her husband on her comm. “Isaac, send down the med-evac ships. Prepare the hospital for a couple thousand incoming.” She shook her head before saying, “Just like the good old days.”
“Acknowledged.”
Commander Erickson said, “There are winged shuttles in the hangar. They appear to be functional. They could bring up a lot more people than the med-evac shuttles. You would need to bring down some pilots.”
“Thank you.” Rachel gave the necessary commands explaining the situation to her entire group. She requested that Wren’s squadron cover the evacuation from space. There was no reason to assume that this one would go any better than some of the others she had participated in. The Swordsmen were not likely to let their women go without a fight. The mercenaries would cover the evacuation from the air, but high support was needed to escort the shuttles once they left the atmosphere.
“Wren, do you have any pilots you can spare? I have winged shuttles that we would like to use to transport the evacuees.”
Matilda and Dustin quickly volunteered. They were already on the ground so they could get the shuttles airborne quickly. Wren, Tracker, Kim and Huntress did not need them for guard duty.
Rachel closed the door to the first shuttle’s flight deck and strapped herself in. “Elizabeth, I haven’t piloted one of these in a very long time. Walk me through the start-up procedures.”
“Rachel, I do not have information on that model in my data storage. It appears to be similar to one I do have, but I would not recommend trying it based on what I know,” Elizabeth replied.
“Captain, I have it,” Huntress said. “If you would like I can get the shuttles airborne and Elizabeth can navigate from there.”
“Huntress, it’s all you,” Rachel said. “Wait until I get the all clear before we start the engines.”
“Yes, before we can start the engines, we need to check the reactors,” Huntress replied. “Underneath the display, there are four push-button switches. Push them so they light up. That turns on the instrumentation so we can determine the ship’s status.”
Rachel pushed the four buttons.
“Point your helmet camera at the display. See the flashing boxes in the upper left ha
nd corner?”
“Yes.”
“Press each box once firmly. Only once each and no longer than thirty seconds.”
Rachel did as instructed and waited. Nothing happened.
“Try it without your gloves.”
Rachel took off her gloves and tried again. The display sprang to life with readouts on all the ship’s systems.
“One system at a time. Press the window in the upper right corner of the display once.”
Rachel pressed the window and the display shifted to one she recognized. “Reactor status is stable,” Rachel said.
“Let’s heat them up, shall we?” Huntress said.
Rachel rested her fingers on the reactor power indicators and slid her fingers up the display. The reactors responded as expected. As the reactors heated, the piezoelectric crystal shells around the reactors began to generate the power that would be needed to get the ungainly craft off the ground.
“Captain, let’s check our water supply,” Huntress instructed.
Rachel toggled the display to the water tanks.
“Enough to get you up and maybe get the ship back, but not enough for more than that,” Huntress said.
“Maybe by the time the ship returns, Commander Erickson will have found a source of water,” Rachel said.
“The whole fleet could use a refill,” Huntress suggested.
“Good point,” Rachel said.
“Toggle through the system displays one at a time,” Huntress instructed.
Rachel finished her pre-flight checks and waited. She felt the familiar thud as the loading door closed. She had not been in one of these shuttles since she had lived on Homestead, but there are some things one does not forget. A mercenary wearing a space suit stood in front of the ship as the hangar doors opened and the air rushed out. Another mercenary stood in line with each wing tip. They held flags with which to guide her out to the flight apron. They motioned for Rachel to move out.
“Press the four icons at the top of your display at the same time,” Huntress instructed.
The four pusher propellers slid out of their shrouds on the trailing edge of the wings and began to spin.
“Ease up on the power and release the brakes.”
The ungainly monster began to move out of the hangar. The four pusher props clawed at the thin atmosphere as they inched the shuttle toward the runway. The shuttle cleared the hangar without incident and Rachel turned to taxi out. At Homestead, the shuttles took off from the water and did not taxi more than the distance from the dock to open water. The drive to the runway felt like it took forever leaving the shuttle vulnerable to a ground attack. Mercenary aircraft overhead spooked her more than once as they flew by.
Rachel reached the end of the runway and Elizabeth said, “Captain, you are clear for takeoff. See you shortly.”
“Lock your brakes and light the jets,” Huntress instructed. “Once the jets get to full power, release the brakes and run the props to full. The runway is long enough that you should have no trouble getting off the ground. Take your time. Wait for the ship to tell you when it’s ready to lift. You’re on your own for a while. You’ll know when to pull up.”
The reactors split the water into its component elements and shot them into to the jets’ combustion chambers. The jets quickly came up to speed and Rachel released the brakes. Lightly loaded compared to its normal cargo, the shuttle lurched forward. The combined power of the pusher propellers and the wing mounted jets threw the shuttle down the runway. When Rachel felt she could hold it down no longer, she pitched the nose up and the monster took to the air. When she felt the thump of the landing gear doors close she knew the hardest part was over. She heard a cheer from the back and knew what she had done was right.
Rachel’s personal launch took off right behind her with as many people as it could carry.
“Captain, maintain your current heading for fifteen minutes and then bank ten degrees left,” Elizabeth said. “Maintain your current rate of climb. The launch will overtake you after you make the course correction. Follow it home. Well done, Captain.”
The launch overtook the shuttle and Huntress called up from the surface, “Captain, the jets are close to flame-out due to the lack of atmosphere. Retract the props.”
Rachel retracted the props as the jets, starved for air, quit. The rocket engines, fueled by the same elemental water as the jets, roared into life and pushed the ungainly craft built by committee into orbit. As the shuttle settled into a trajectory that would intersect the Queen Elizabeth’s orbit, Rachel was oblivious to the chaos on the ground.
One of the fleeing women had passed Commander Erickson a map showing the camouflaged entrances to the Swordsman command complex. He was therefore not surprised when troops poured out to the flight apron and gun positions opened up. Apparently, until Rachel left with the first load of women and children, the Swordsmen had not believed that anyone would take them. Commander Erickson’s aircraft went after the gun positions while his mobile armor mowed the ground troops down like wheat in the field.
Sitting on the ground, there was little the two PI ships could do to aid their colleagues, but they could raise their topside laser pod and use it to attack the gun positions as they opened fire and revealed themselves. Tracker and Huntress destroyed a dozen gun positions in the opening minutes of the conflict. They targeted individual artillery shells detonating them before they could hit anything.
From his position in an armored personnel carrier, Commander Erickson ordered his smallest mobile artillery units into the underground complex. Once below the surface, the small vehicles and their human operators would be unreachable by radio. The robots that plowed through the barriers to the complex had been designed for this purpose. Nuclear powered tracked vehicles, they had large pointed plows mounted on the front that pushed debris out of the way, broke through doors and since the plow was also the reactor’s heat sink, burned through anything flammable that its laser or its cannon did not clear. A soldier followed each vehicle controlling it and the twin machine guns mounted right behind the plow. The only thing that could stop it was a set of narrow stairs.
Commander Erickson scanned the map with his helmet camera and distributed it to his squad leaders. They picked entrances and assaulted the complex.
Matilda’s shuttle was the next one ready to go. Huntress guided Matilda’s shuttle to the runway. Matilda left with artillery shells exploding around her. One of her props sheered off half way down the runway when it was hit by an anti-aircraft gun making the takeoff difficult, but she wrestled the beast into the air, to orbit and safety. That shuttle would not be returning for a second load.
Dustin, more familiar with the shuttles than the others, did not wait to reach the runway to take off. He poured full power to the engines as soon as he was clear the hangar and was airborne before he reached the edge of the fight apron.
Huntress and Tracker followed Dustin into the air and continued their assault on the gun emplacements as they flew. They joined the rest of the squadron on patrol over the battle site. Commander Erickson requested the med-evac ships to wait until he had secured more of the airport. One of the circling med-evac pilots spotted movement at the base of a mountain not far from the battle site. A column of mechanized armor drove out of the mountain headed in their direction.
“Heat seekers at twenty paces?” Huntress quipped.
“From the four and eight positions,” Wren agreed. “Lasers set to kill.”
Wren told the rest of his squadron to hold their places. Tracker and Huntress would be the only ships going in since the mercenary aircraft were busy at the main battle site.
Streaking in from behind the mountain, the two warships laid the column to waste. The machines that had not been hit left the narrow road to maneuver around their immobile comrades. Some fell off the cliff beside the road. The two ships spun back around to “plug the hole” and lobbed a volley of missiles against the opening where the enemy appeared. Rock slides sealed the entr
ance.
A convoy escort appeared overhead and dropped one of the few remaining ground penetrating bombs on the mountain from which the enemy armored vehicles had come. The gratifying sound of secondary explosions showed exactly how powerful a weapon that was.
Wren and Kim monitored the mountain where the column had originated under the assumption that there would be more access points to whatever lay underneath. An opening appeared on the side opposite where the armored column had appeared. Troop transports rolled out the opening to the road beyond. Wren and Kim waited until it appeared as if all those that were coming had left the mountain base and attacked the convoy with their lasers. The lasers shredded trucks and personnel alike. Individual soldiers fled their vehicles into the gullies and ravines surrounding the mountain hoping for some sort of cover from the airborne assault. Wren and Kim did not chase them, but they knew the mercenaries would.
The convoy lay burning when yet another opening appeared in the mountain. Wren put two heat seekers into the hole and sealed it. One vehicle escaped and Kim stopped it. When the mountain exhibited no more activity by nightfall, Wren and Kim returned to their orbiting patrol stations.
As darkness fell, Commander Erickson gave the all-clear and the evacuation continued through the night. By the morning all the women and children who wanted to go had been evacuated. The battle underground continued. The map the woman had passed to Commander Erickson had shown a tunnel from the complex where they were fighting to another complex underneath an adjacent mountain. Based on what the mercenaries were finding in the complex they were in, Commander Erickson believed that the complex under the adjacent mountain was the real headquarters and control center. Getting to it would take some doing and would wait until morning. His troops were exhausted and in no condition to mount a fresh assault.
GENERATIONS - CHAPTER NINE
ISAAC AND THE MEDICAL STAFF greeted Rachel when she arrived at the Queen Elizabeth. He gave her a quick hug as she passed through the air lock. “We’re hearing encouraging news from the ground,” Isaac said. “Wren and Kim are an amazing team. What shape are your passengers in?”
Solomon Family Warriors II Page 150