Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk)

by Robert Little

  James stood to leave the office, but asked, “Do you think she’ll give you anything useful?” John said, “Right now, she’s the most dangerous weapon I have.” James grinned again, “I thought I was.” John said, “Only in social situations. Now, if you would be so kind as to get your flabby self out of my office, and get to work?” James laughed, “Don’t you mean, ‘return to work?’” John snorted and ordered, “On your way out tell the Marine on the other side of that hatch to shoot you.”

  Having his brother back, and healthy was very good for his morale.

  Seventeen hours later Lt. Kilpatrick turned in her interim report. It turned out to be detailed, logical, highly useful, and even easy to understand. John sighed in pleasure.

  He called his CAG’s together for a marathon planning session, at which his brand new orderly quietly sat behind him and took notes. John was smart, and knew he was smart, but she was scary. After six hours they decided that the rebels would use one of two approaches to sneak a nuclear weapon into earth’s system: bring it in outside of the transportation corridors using the tried-and-true ballistic approach to get deep inside the system; or, using one of the corridors, sneak it in hidden inside a civilian freighter. There was no consensus, and logically, there couldn’t be, so they had to guard against both possibilities.

  Since Jupiter’s huge military presence was a prime target, John added two carriers to the fighters he was stationing on Ganymede. Mitsubishi squawked loudly when it learned that the navy was going to utilize the base prior to its completion, but the ongoing public outcry made it impossible for even very large ‘contributions’ to sway even one politician to attempt to block the deployment.

  They decided to station two carriers per corridor, placing them roughly one-half of the distance in from the periphery. Shuttles would transport inspection teams to the ships, where they would board and inspect. His fighters would stand well back and monitor. He allowed his CAG’s to fine tune their procedures, and share their results.

  That is, they would just as soon as Fleet Admiral Khan provided the shuttles and inspectors.

  Despite the present inability to inspect all the shipping, each carrier owned two shuttles, and John put his most experienced Marines on them to act as interim inspectors. He used Lt. Kilpatrick to develop a description of the most likely characteristics of the freighter the rebels would use. Those included a ship that was neither a stranger to earth nor a regular, it would probably be older than average, and smaller; it would not be owned by a major corporation or a national government; and it would probably accompany other, legitimate, freighters.

  Freighter crews were rarely all from the same planet, they tended to be fairly stable, older, and frequently, retirees from the navy or its equivalent, working on a second pension. Probably. Possibly. Statistically. Maybe: he was getting to hate those words. He was also finding he almost longed for combat. Here, innocent people could die even if he did everything right. Unfortunately, even if he did have the statistically required one point five billion fighters, he could still fail.

  John placed the Adams in the corridor he felt would offer the greatest reward to the rebels, the one that brought traffic into Jupiter from outsystem.

  He had one other carrier just outside the corridor that he ensured made frequent use of its drive system and made lots of unencrypted calls to the freighters. The Adams tried to emulate a hole. The noisy carrier soothed the public need, the other soothed John’s paranoia.

  He stationed the Adams one million kilometers outside of Jupiter orbit. In terms of the solar system, that was practically on top of the planet. Eris orbited about fourteen and one half billion kilometers from earth, and was itself located on the inner edge of the Kuiper belt, an immense region of space populated with over a trillion comets. Outside of this belt was a far larger expanse called the Oort Cloud, whose outer edge marked the boundary between the Sol system and everything else. This cloud orbited and surrounded the sun at a distance of up to one hundred thousand times the distance from the sun to earth. Freighters normally jumped once they passed the orbits of the gas giants.

  John put out three flights of four fighters, the maximum number he felt his crews could sustain for the estimated three month assignment. His Etechs cobbled up a sniffer and they were going make extremely close fly-bys to see if a weapon could be detected from one or two kilometers distance. Mitsubishi had kindly assembled a ‘device’ that emitted approximately the same level of radiation as the Thorium weapons earth was arming itself with. He cajoled a freighter captain to hide it in a hold, but didn’t tell his people which freighter. They didn’t detect it.

  Space is jammed with varying amounts of lethal radiation. During periods of solar flares, an unprotected sailor could receive a fatal dose within just a few moments. The trick was to build a detector that would only look for U-233, U-235 and Pu-239, plus Th-228 or Th-230, which is what the federal fleet was using to construct its weapons. The rebels had used U-235 in the weapons so far deployed.

  John sent a priority message to Admiral Khan, requesting help in developing sensors. His request was promptly forwarded to naval headquarters on earth. It seems he was not the first person to think of the idea, although he was the first naval officer.

  Two weeks after his request, a courier scorched into Jupiter orbit, using the planet to help brake the badly stressed drive of the tiny craft. It pulled up next to the Adams and a cheerful pilot radioed that he had one passenger with two very round eyes, plus one heavy crate. It had been a very fast run, and the pilot may have been showing off. He had orders to remain with the Adams and return the engineer back to earth as soon as they tested the device.

  Virtually every courier driver John had ever talked to thought he or she was the world’s greatest cowboy. John didn’t say, but he did think that courier drivers were cowboys who didn’t particularly want to get shot at.

  It took three hours to jury rig attachment points for the sensor, which had its own power source. James piloted the fighter, with the very nervous civilian engineer riding in the navigator’s couch.

  The sensor worked, and even identified the general location within the freighter, and the “type” of radiation.

  James returned to the Adams, and one hour later the engineer was put back aboard the courier.

  James said, “Admiral Khan seems to have a bug up his ass.” John said, “That’s, ‘a bug up his ass sir’.” James grinned.

  One short week later, John received five more, and this time they came already configured with the correct attachment points.

  The Adams crews began making flybys of all the traffic in the Jupiter corridor. It was actually quite difficult, as the freighter’s drives created huge gravity wells that could destroy a fragile fighter if it strayed too close to the drive node. As a result, his pilot would order the ship to shut down its drive while the fighter made several slow passes.

  As soon as John established a working procedure, he sent a crew to instruct the other carriers. Sensors were arriving almost daily, which was a good thing, as they were apparently hand made, and susceptible to breakdowns.

  Everything connected with the mission was kept as black as possible, but it was inevitable that freighter crews were going to talk about the strange requests made by unseen naval fighters.

  John assumed that it wouldn’t take very long for a rebel spy to figure out what the federals were doing. He therefore tried to anticipate the next step, although since he didn’t really know exactly what the current step was, that would be difficult.

  John had originally been assured by Admiral Grigorivich that earth would be able to assume responsibility for its own security within a maximum of ninety days, freeing his Second Fleet to resume combat operations. John’s experience with similar promises led him to believe the war would be long over before that happened.

  Because of the threat, every commercial freighter had to be inspected, even if only via a sensor pass. Additionally, defenses around military bases needed
to be beefed up, and the ability to monitor all traffic within the system had to be greatly upgraded.

  His new assignment was a distraction, but not an enjoyable one: John found he was becoming severely bored with the tedium. James laughed at him, “Cold rock, cold rock, cold rock, oops.” John’s brief spate of a good mood was already a memory. He said, “Triplets. Female.” James stared in over-the-top consternation, and pointed at John, “Sixteen-year old boys.” John grumbled, “Good comeback. Bastard. Although, God help the boys who come sniffing around my house.” James grinned, “Why? You afraid of a teenaged boy?” John finally smiled faintly, “No, afraid for teenage boys. Consider: Jordan did a better job of interrogating me that day we showed up unannounced on their doorstep, than most trained cops. I think Jessica may have been right – she’s the dim one in that family.” James nodded, “She married you, so…yeah.”

  John reflexively stood up, “Where are the Marines when you need them?” James grinned, “Trying to get into the female enlisted dorms?” John finally laughed, “Thank God I’m not a ship captain – instead of devoting my time to, um, subduing rebel worlds, I’d be sitting at Captain’s Mast all day, every day, handling cases of black eyes and pinched butts.” James nodded his head energetically, “They are a very determined bunch, I’ll say that for them.”

  Unbeknownst to James, John had paged the Marine sentry who stood guard outside the hatch. A very large and clearly fit Marine walked up to John and came to attention, “Sir?” James looked up as John asked, “Sergeant, are you presently armed?” The Marine stiffened and said, “Sir, yes sir!” James howled with laughter. Sergeant Mischkovic struggled not to smile – he worked out in the gym with Captain Chamberlin, and had routinely managed to ensure that any and all bruises were John’s.

  Over a period of three weeks the process of inspecting freighters ramped up to the point that one hundred percent of shipping – not just freighters – that passed through the four corridors was getting at least a sensor check. Admiral Khan may not have been a warrior, but he was proving to be seriously organized, and never once failed to provide Second Fleet with the resources it needed. According to John, he was the historic Second World War General Eisenhaeur to Admiral Grigorivich’s Patton, or perhaps a better comparison would be of the American Civil War’s McClelland to Grant or Sherman. Unfortunately for John, he couldn’t find anyone on the ship who remotely understood the references, or even worse in his estimation, cared.

  Now that they’d plugged up one of the two logical entry points for injecting a nuclear device into the system, John spent five minutes with Lt. Kilpatrick – the maximum amount of time he could take without throwing something at the officer – and turned her loose on the other means of entry: ballistic.

  Within three hours she reappeared in his cabin with an outline, including color-coded charts, formulae, statistics and recommendations.

  At his reluctant request, she sat and without having to look at her notes, gave him a rundown of the various possibilities. Her first choice, by a big margin, consisted of a courier vessel or its equivalent. The ship could jump into earth or Jupiter orbit, accelerate for a few hours and eject a missile, which would drift into close proximity of, say the construction site on Ganymede, or Moon base Prime on the far side of the earth’s satellite, before igniting its chemical or gravity drive for a short sprint to the surface, where it would probably be able to collapse at least part of the underground installation. In the case of Moon Base Prime, only a small portion of the base was even hardened.

  John hadn’t considered using a courier vessel. He thanked her and immediately forwarded her report to the admiral. Immediately means, it took over eleven hours for the message to reach the admiral’s location, presently on the far side of the system from Jupiter.

  John spoke to Captain Ahmidiyeh, asking him to scoop up the very next courier vessel that showed.

  Next afternoon, John went down to one of the Adams flight decks and spent an intense fifteen minutes looking with James and two Etechs at a large version of a courier. Courier vessels were the very definition of minimalist; basically a small gravity drive and an enclosed pilot’s compartment. Some few were larger and could accommodate one or two very limber passengers, and it was one of those types that they were looking at. Courier vessels were the prime means of communicating within solar systems, or when a package or one or two individuals had to get somewhere in the shortest possible time.

  There was no practical way to fit an over nine hundred kilo light missile inside a courier; a heavy missile weighed more than two thousand kilos, which is why fighters were only able to carry two of them. Heavy fighters had slightly larger drive systems, and carried their missiles in four racks, two to a side in a modified cruciate shape.

  John didn’t see how a missile could even be attached to the exterior of the craft; however, the more junior of the two etechs pointed out that if the craft was lifted off the deck, a missile could be mounted underneath. James crawled underneath the craft and found two attachment points, designed to mount light sources, something the craft normally didn’t require. James jumped back up and said, “The mounting points are integral to the skeleton, and I bet we’d find they are either strong enough, or could be modified. It could be done.”

  John asked, “What’s the acceleration on this class?” The Etech consulted a pad and said, “Sir, up to eleven G’s.” John looked at James, “In other words, a very religious pilot could jump into earth orbit, say, fifteen million kilometers in front of the planet, accelerate for maybe on hour, dump the missile, accelerate back the way it came for two hours and jump out. Total, three hours, not nearly enough time for a fighter to reach it unless it happened to be sitting right where the pilot entered the system. So, next question, we need to find out if a light missile could be modified to ignite when it got within, say, fifty thousand klicks of the moon. Next, we need to figure out if Moon Prime has the ability to defend itself against missiles. All the missile has to do is burn long enough to align itself with the moon, and then make a final course correction just before going boom.”

  He commed Lt. Kilpatrick, succinctly gave her the problem and turned her loose. She had zero experience with missiles, combat systems, targeting systems or social skills, but she knew how to find the data she didn’t know, and she was turning out to be the smartest person on the ship. One of her degrees was in communications, the second was in computer networking. John thought that she’d probably earned that one on her lunch hour. The third was in programming. She was not a specialist in any language, but she knew her way through all the major programs used by the navy. It was somewhat unusual for someone to be proficient in both software and hardware, but she was an omnivore – she wanted to know everything.

  Earlier in the day James commented, not unkindly, that the only real friend she had was her terminal. John had replied, “No, you’re her friend now, and that’s an order. The fucking Marines refused to shoot your flabby ass, so this is my backup plan.”

  James looked at his brother, “You’re joking, but I think you’re serious too.” John sighed, “She drives me absolutely nuts, but I think she just doesn’t know how to relate to human beings, and I think it’s worth the effort to…well, I think she’s worth the effort. Jessica could probably sit down with her and trade recipes or something, but I have no idea how to get through, other than to challenge her.” James said, also seriously, “All right, I’ll try. In fact, I’ve got a problem with heavy fighter positioning sensors.”

  John asked, “You do? Care to explain?” James shook his head, “No, nothing bad. Kind of the opposite. I think there’s a way we could reprogram the sensors to send information as well as receive it. For example, let’s say during a battle, one gets damaged, and loses it’s IFF…” John nodded, “Yeah, I see the possibilities. Not today, though.”

  The type of courier vessel they commandeered for a couple of hours had been in service with few modifications for several decades, meaning the rebels had exam
ples to play with.

  Within two hours Lt. Kilpatrick was back in John’s office. She got right to the point, “I could easily modify a light missile to perform as described. It would require the addition of a small module and a sensor suite, and according to the schematic for the Mod IV missile, which is what the rebels are still using, there is sufficient space to add the two small hardware packages. It would be relatively easy to design and construct an adapter to fit the much larger fissile warhead to the body of the missile.” John barely noticed the lack of a greeting, ‘sir’ or even a smile, concentrating instead on the fact that what had been a theory was now demonstrably possible.

  He thanked her and asked her to send him the documentation. She stood and said, “It is already in your queue.”

  John wrote up a brief cover letter, attached the file on the courier, and Lt. Kilpatrick’s data. The courier vessel was still in the Adams, and he requested that the vessel hitch a ride on the next fast federal ship and head directly to Admiral Grigorivich. He sent an encrypted message with the data to Admiral Khan, along with his recommendations, which did not include his belief that one point five billion fighters might be almost enough.