Hawk Genesis: War (Flight of the Hawk)

by Robert Little

  Actually, it wasn’t a prototype, and there were four, but John didn’t think the good general needed to know that. Nor did anyone else. John’s system was probably secure, although his navy techs admitted to having learned a few new tricks, but he had no idea how many people were tapping into the general’s system, although his uncertainty was on the number, not the ‘if’.

  Jennifer and Jordan were already working with Rachel’s parents to begin their schooling. Mr. Schwartz would be the primary teacher, with Mrs. Schwartz providing a daily assignment. Both had already expressed the belief that the two girls were advanced for their ages, something John heartily agreed with, although not verbally, to anyone, and not exactly in the same sense as meant by Mr. Schwartz.

  John had grown up in a distinctly masculine environment, and he was finding it difficult to be around very healthy, exuberant and just-showered teenagers who wanted to borrow an undergarment from their older sister. Jessica found his discomfort a source of considerable amusement. John didn’t know, didn’t ask, but thought that those two evil teenagers found it amusing as well.

  John took a day off from the foot-dragging locals and accompanied James to the carrier Coral Sea, the first with that name since wet navies. As their shuttle approached the ship James laughed, “The name alone ensures that everyone asks what coral is, and how can you see it?” John laughed. It was great to be with his brother, and not getting shot at.

  James asked about General Chin and John answered, “He’s reasonably competent, there’ve been no outrageous incidents, although he seems to be sneakily going about creating unrest and dissent.” James said, “Well Captain Chamberlin, after five years of war, the good general ought to be easy to deal with.”

  John sighed, “Ought to be yes. He’s a good chess player though, very subtle. Knows when he can push, when not to.”

  The shuttle docked, and after the warning light turned green, they carefully cracked the hatch, then entered the ship, saluted the flag, shook hands with the OOD, and went straight to one of eight flight decks. John walked around the oddly beautiful Hawk. He said, “The exterior, has anyone tested it yet?” James laughed, “Not in battle, no, but John, as expensive as the coating is, it’s worth every penny, and then some. We’re told it can shrug off repeated hits of a twenty-five cm laser within ten thousand klicks, maybe fifty kilometers in dense atmosphere. Plus, it’s extremely difficult to pick up with radar.”

  James keyed the lock and a seemingly massive hatch lowered to the deck. They walked inside the passenger compartment. It held some substantial harnesses for the ten soldiers or Marines. James said, “They had to design special suits for the troops. The compensator can internally handle up to four G’s, but the ship can handle far more, thus these harnesses.”

  While they were in the small cockpit, which required four crew, John received a comm from the general, “Commissioner Chamberlin, I’ve got a crew at the site, but there’s no facilities of any kind, nothing. How are we supposed to provide support to the Navy?” John took a breath and answered, “General, did you provide my aide with a list of your requirements?” The general barked, “We just arrived, how could I provide you with anything?” John decided he’d had enough, “General, I gave you clear instructions. Since you seem to be saying you are unable to support the Navy, and since we’ve run out of time, I’ll coordinate directly with the Navy. You may return to your headquarters.” John closed the call. If he was any judge of human character, General Chin might just explode from internal pressure. John kind of hoped so. It would certainly make his job easier.

  John returned to an examination of the highly unusual craft. James said, “You’d freak if you knew how much these four cost.” John asked, “Energy weapon?” James stepped up to the pilots couch and keyed the ship alive. A moment later he said, “Come look.”

  They dropped down to the troop compartment and descended to the deck. On the spine of the ship a small oval had appeared, with a slender clear tube projecting forward. James said, “Twenty-five cm, decent power, but on these early examples, the capacitors for the weapon require ten seconds to charge. Production craft are supposed to cut that down, maybe by half.” John asked, “How is it in flight? What’s the range?” James laughed, “You want to pilot it don’t you?” John nodded, “Hell yes. It’s a flying cargo tank.” James said, “Well, it handles like a tank until it enters atmosphere, where it is more maneuverable than you would imagine. Good thing too, Most ground defenses use fifteen or twenty cm energy weapons, but I’ve seen a number of twenty-five and even larger. Maintenance won’t have the ability to repair the coating, so if it gets hit bad enough, they will have to return it to the manufacturer, assuming it survives.” J

  ohn asked, “What do you think? Like it?” James said, “I love it.” John laughed, “You better be careful what you say around Castidad, she might get jealous.” James lazily grinned, “Not happening.”

  They went to James’ cabin and commed Lt. Cdr. Komanski. As usual, he immediately agreed to provide all the support the tests would require. Mainly, they needed some ground radar and portable energy weapons. The idea would be to simulate a ground assault from orbit. The energy weapons would be powered down to about ten percent, and sensors on the craft would provide damage assessments.

  Since the navy ships had been tasked with system defense, they had all the equipment required, and within one hour sailors were moving heavy crates around and loading shuttles for the descent to the planet surface.

  James looked over at his brother and said, “Quite a change from just a couple of years ago.”

  It took less than twelve hours for the Navy to land four complete acquisition and targeting systems and twelve energy weapons platforms. Within four more hours, all the systems were powered up and communicating with each other. The target acquisition systems could detect enemy craft using three different modes, and were able to hand off targets to multiple weapons systems. They formed a diamond pattern, with over two hundred kilometers on a side.

  It was obvious that the leave John had managed to get extended so that James could stay on Maya, had been cut short by the admiral, who ordered him to become certified on the Hawk and oversee its transfer up to orbit, where it docked on the equally new carrier. Now, today, James was piloting one of the four craft, with John along as an observer. Commander Komanski ran the operation as if it were a wartime maneuver, so his men were getting trained at the same time the four assault craft were getting tested.

  Once the commander was advised that his equipment was operational. James and the other three Hawks were ejected from the carrier and accelerated to a higher orbit where they began running tests, ensuring that the extremely expensive craft hadn’t been dinged on the voyage to Grenoble.

  After four orbits they began their run. James said, “We don’t actually have a book to go by, so we’re going to be developing procedures. John nodded, “In other words, you don’t know what you’re doing.” James laughed, allowing the other three members of the crew to join in.

  He announced to all four crews, “First run will be to enter atmosphere over the target and circle down to land. If we can land all four craft, remain on the ground for two minutes, and regain orbit, we’ll call it a success. Any craft that gets hit by five or more energy hits will be considered killed, will immediately broadcast it’s status so that the ground stations can concentrate on the other ships, and will simply ascend back up to orbit, there to await further instructions.” There were no questions.

  Two of the Hawks were hit five or more times, one on the way down, the other on the ascent. The ground crews reported that the ships were virtually invisible to their radar, and it was their backup infrared systems that did the damage, and even then it was only after their hulls dissipated friction heat as they dropped into denser air that allowed them to lock on.

  They regrouped in space and made a second run, this time using their gravity drives to slow their descent. That approach enabled the ground stations primary se
nsors to get better locks on the Hawks, but only one craft was ‘lost’. James and John both assumed that was simply an anomaly. However, three more runs netted the same results. The ground crews relayed their sensor readings to the carrier and they called it a day. Shuttles provided overnight housing for the ground crews, who didn’t complain about being on a planet surface for what was probably the first time in a great while.

  On the Coral Sea, John and James went over the sensor readings and made a startling discovery. While they four craft descended, the separation between the Hawks varied widely. At some points one or another of the ships would become virtually impossible to target, even though the ground equipment knew the ship was there. They took their readings to the captain of the Coral Sea, who had some seriously good computers on board. It took just thirty minutes to conclude that at just over one kilometers separation their drive fields just overlapped enough to confuse the ground stations. They believed that at higher settings, the separation would have to be increased.

  The next day, they practiced holding that separation and dropped down with as close to a one kilometer separation as possible. Only one ship got even one hit, and that was due to it straying out of the target range.

  They ran seven other tests, including several where the Hawks dropped out of range of the ground systems. This was of course an effective technique, as the Hawks could then make their approach runs at extremely low altitudes, but precluded using their mutual drive signatures to defeat enemy targeting systems. On the other hand, it didn’t teach them anything about making a contested assault.

  Their final runs were designed to test the Hawk’s energy weapon and targeting equipment. It wasn’t terrible, but neither were the results very good. The Coral Sea determined that the problem lay somewhere in the Hawk’s software. Unfortunately they’d run out of time. They’d brought along one company tech crew, and while shuttles returned the energy and targeting equipment to the ship, the techs dove into the several million lines of code, looking for a bug. As it turned out, there were numerous problems, making it problematic that the energy weapon would be effective prior to the arrival at Python of the Coral Sea. Under the circumstances, that wasn’t a deal breaker.

  John and James calmly shook hands and John shuttled down to Orleans while the Coral Sea boosted out of orbit with its escorts and his brother.

  John took a trip out to one of the manufacturing facilities. It seemed as if they’d finally taken his repeated and dire warnings to heart. They actually were working around the clock. They had settled on a final design that wasn’t as good as they wanted, but was one they could actually build. The plant that built shuttle engines was going to take a longer time to resurrect – seemingly moments after taking charge General Chin had ordered it not only shuttered, he’d removed some of the equipment. Thanks to a direct order from John and the assistance of his Marines, the missing tooling was now back on site, but it would take possibly a week to bring the facility back to life. Meanwhile, John’s courier to Maya would hopefully produce a load of engines that would allow the plant to begin work. If not, they would lose three or more weeks.

  John and Jessica were finding that their relationship was settling into a sweet spot. She spent her days in a variety of ways. Marine dependents were trickling in and Jessica worked hard at helping them find furniture and appliances for their quarters. They now had seven families residing in the building, and along with her two sisters, Mr. Schwartz had enough children to be fully occupied in the education of the dependent children. Their evenings were spent in long walks around the city, where they visited bistros or coffeeless coffee shops, listened to live music and got generally ignored, generally deliberately.

  Chapter 42

  Four weeks after the Coral Sea departed for Python, a courier brought word that the Hawks had easily penetrated the system ground defenses, dropping forty heavily armed Marines on their first run. While their portable systems fended off incoming missiles, three more descents netted them additional troops plus four small defensive energy systems that within moments took over the task of destroying incoming missiles. The Hawks then proceeded to attack nearby weapons or weapons targeting installations. Within two days four hundred fighters were able to drop through the huge hole in the system defensive network the Hawks had created. John grinned from ear to ear – Mr. Padilla was bound to get more orders, and James had written the first chapter in the development of strategies for the Hawk Ground Assault Vehicle. John laughed quietly: the pronunciation of the acronym sounded like a sneeze.

  It was now well known that the Federal Commissioner was working behind the scenes to jump start a Grenobian shuttle factory. John was making almost daily trips to other cities and even towns, meeting with mayors, city councils, business leaders and educators. He still had six unused warrants, but his problem was deciding where and how to use them. He spent several enjoyable evenings discussing them with the Schwartz family, Jessica and her sisters, and Karl, who, despite being a “ground pounder”, possessed an alarming ability to see what was important in a forest of unimportant or less important facts. When Jessica asked him about that, he calmly said, “Five years of war tends to strip one down to his most basic components, whether evil or saintly.” Jessica looked at him and with a trace of a smile said, “Or both.”

  John awarded a small warrant to a remote town that had been severely affected by the war. It needed a great deal of help, but mostly, its nearly six hundred school-aged children badly needed better equipment and facilities. John personally flew to the town, and brought with him a contractor who he knew to be honest – the man had worked on John’s headquarters. He also brought several educators from local universities and large secondary and primary school systems. He convened a roundtable discussion and within four hours they’d arrived at a solution that made the local town happy. Very happy.

  Two of the remaining warrants went to two other towns that had been struggling. One supplied an energy system to power the town, whose primitive wind turbine had become increasingly erratic; and one refurbished a food processing plant and purchased a large greenhouse in a complex where new plant species were being introduced and propagated before getting planted in the frequently still infertile soil.

  John received a message from the admiral. He was dying, and had just a few months to live. He told John that he would stay on the job for as long as possible. He wanted to see the war through to a conclusion, and put his imprint on the peace. He warned John that the wolves were gathering and urged him to speed up the process of reconstruction.

  John recorded a broadcast that went out to the entire planet. In it he talked about the few projects they had managed to fund, and discussed his hopes that the people of Grenoble would focus on the effort to create a prosperous home for humanity.

  He also announced that within two months, Grenoble would begin testing a prototype of its first commercial shuttle in six years. He said that war had consumed hundreds upon hundreds of freighters, bulk carriers, passenger ships and thousands of the ubiquitous shuttles that moved freight between orbit and the ground. Now that peace was imminent, it was time to resume world building.

  In a carefully worded warning, he explained that once a final peace treaty was signed, jurisdiction of Grenoble would transfer from the military to the civilian government. He stated that he wanted to ensure that when that happened, Grenoble would be fully involved in the election of a new congress, and he made a call to convene a constitutional convention in Orleans within one month. He did not specify a date or location, he left that to Grenobians to decide, hoping it would spur them to take greater responsibility for the process and the outcome.

  A week later he returned to Poms, the small town that he’d awarded the education warrant to. He brought along Jessica and company, hoping that the townspeople would overlook the girls’ federal background and focus on their admittedly large amount of charms. He also hoped that this trip would get the two girls off his back – they were climbing the wall
s after several months of being cooped up in one building, save for a handful of trips, accompanied by a number of ‘admittedly interesting’ and usually very masculine Marines.

  They landed in a large open expanse of hardy grass, and were met by a small delegation of two teachers and a number of children, a few of which were more or less the proper age and maturity, as well as being male and cute. John hadn’t thought of that.

  John introduced Jessica, Jennifer and Jordan, along with Rachel, both her parents and one reasonably large Marine named Karl, who was making a small amount of progress with Rachel, as well as overseeing the hoped-for total lack of progress on the part of the locals as regards the two golden haired teenagers in the group.

  The two educators then introduced themselves and the children. John paid particular attention to three tall boys who came last in the intros. They were not paying any attention to John. Jessica leaned up to whisper in John’s right ear, “Goodness, farming seems to have produced a bumper crop of young men.” John muttered, “What do I do? I can hardly shoot the bastards just moments after greeting them.” She giggled, “Honey, why do you assume you’ll need to do anything? Boys will be boys, but I guarantee you they won’t…” John interrupted her “Don’t finish that sentence. Please.” She squeezed his hand, smiling happily at the three somewhat gawky young men, who were smiling happily at John’s sisters-in-law, who seemed to be utterly unaware of the intent looks. John muttered, to nobody in particular, “Suddenly, they don’t care about politics.”