by J. F. Holmes
“Russki Bitch,” muttered Cahr, and a hand smacked him hard across the back of his head, knocking him down to the deck. “OW! What the hell!”
The man who had smacked him was Poison Six, the assault team commander. Sergeant Major Rob Knight had a grizzled face, one that had seen far too many kids like this die in his years in His Majesty’s Light Infantry, most of them from stupid orders and lack of training. He wasn’t going to let that happen to any of his subordinates on this ship, if he could help it.
“That Russki Bitch, as you put it, will be the only person that gets your bloody stupid ass out alive when the shit hits the fan. In return, you, Recruit Cahr, will do whatever she says, you will learn everything there is to know about this boat, and you will do whatever she bloody tells you. And if, in the future, you hope to have sex with ANY woman, you should get out of the habit of using the word ‘bitch’.”
A petulant look came across the teenager’s face. “I didn’t join this outfit to be a grease monkey. I joined to fight!”
Knight sighed. “Ah, to be so young and full of piss and vinegar and testosterone. Don’t worry; you’ll get your fill of fighting.” He took an ancient 35mm camera he had slung around his neck and snapped Cahr’s picture, capturing the frustrated look on the recruit’s face. “A hobby of mine. Now get back to work. Or I’ll have Bjorn Stenger train you.”
Cahr’s attitude immediately changed, and he glanced over his shoulder to where the American was running diagnostics on the Combat Hard Suit hanging in an alcove. Stenger, who’d been listening to the entire conversation, glanced back at him and grinned a nasty grin that only reached one side of his face. The other had a cruel scar running from his jaw to his scalp.
“Listen here,” said Knight, “Every single one of us is cross trained on as many skills as we can get. You’ll start here in ship maintenance. Once Pilot Zlatcov has decided you have the basics down, you’ll switch over to weapons maintenance under Guns. Meanwhile, you’ll also be training daily on room clearing, and every other day on EVA outside the ship. When you find time, you’ll see Sergeant Atkinson and learn how to breach an airlock without ripping the atmosphere out of the hull. Maybe, if you have time, you’ll get some sleep.”
When he started to protest, Knight looked the younger man in the eye. “You can always quit, you know. Next port of call, you can walk off the ship. Just let me know.”
Cahr thought about it and then shook his head. “No, I’ll stay. I just thought it was going to be jumping right into combat. I’ve done basic training with the Jamesport Militia.”
“Yeah, well, there’s that, and then there’s this. There are only six of us in each team, if we’re not short, which we usually are, plus the demo guys. So when Knife team is securing the hull and we’re stacking outside an airlock to do a hot entry, when there may be a dozen bloody Foreign Legion bastards in there, or a squad of corporate security goons, I need to know that you’re up to snuff. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” was the answer, but Knight knew he didn’t. He wouldn’t get it until the first shot was fired.
Zlatcov’s head popped out of the access way and she said, “Good, now go get me a can of hyperlink grease!”
“What the hell is hyperlink grease?” asked the bewildered Cahr.
“Didn’t you hear what your team leader just told you? Don’t question me, you stupid babushka. Just go get me some. Ask Commander Lynch in Engineering.”
The recruit sighed and swung his way out through the hatch. Once he was out of earshot, Knight looked over at the pilot. “Nadija, you are an evil, evil woman. Hyperlink grease? Really? In my day, in the Infantry, they would send us to find soft spots on the hull. Lynch is going to eat him alive.”
Cahr made his way downward toward the aft end of the ship. As he went, the queasy feeling of distortion generated by the nullSpace engines increased to the point where his head began to swim a little. He palmed open the lock on the closed Engine Room hatch, and stepped in, almost colliding with a big man wearing coveralls and grease. Sweat glistened off his bald head, making Lt. Commander Lynch look like some kind of demon in the electric glow of the slowly rotating engines.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?” yelled Lynch over the whine of the fusion turbines. One of them threw of a shower of sparks that the big man completely ignored.
“ENSIGN ZLATCOV SENT ME TO GET SOME HYPERLINK GREASE!” he yelled back.
Lynch paused for a second and seemed to think. Then he shouted, “GO SEE THE CAPTAIN! ON THE BRIDGE! HE HAS IT LOCKED IN HIS CABIN! REALLY EXPENSIVE STUFF!” Then he turned and smacked as hard as he could on one of the sparking machines with a hammer. The whine died to a low hum and he quickly disappeared around the corner, yelling for another one of his men.
OK, well, he told me to, thought Cahr. He slowly made his way along the main corridor, maneuvering around various crew, and stopped outside the ladder that lead to the bridge. Climbing up through the open hatchway, he stood facing the back of the Captain’s chair and stared in amazement at the display screens, trying to take it all in. He failed to notice Chief Sparks, who was giving a report to Captain Meric. The XO did see him, though, and pointed, not saying anything. Chief Sparks’ eyes followed his finger to see what he was gesturing to. Her face turned red and she seemed to swell like she was about to explode.
“Excuse me, Sir,” she said, and walked calmly over to Cahr. Meric watched her go, an amused smile on his face. She grabbed the Recruit by the ear and pulled him down to her eye level. “What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Doing. On. The. BRIDGE!” she whispered vehemently to him.
The young spacer was at a loss for words, and his ear hurt, but he managed to stutter out, “P-P-Pilot Zlatcov sent me to get hyperlink grease.”
“Orion’s Balls, you IDIOT! There is no such thing as hyperlink grease, you dolt! She sent you to the BRIDGE?” She twisted his ear a little harder, making him squirm.
“N-n-no, Chief! I swear! Commander Lynch told me the Captain had it!”
“Move your ass down the ladder right effing now before I move it myself! Tell Zlatcov I will deal with her later. NOW!”
Cahr almost fell headlong down the ladder in his haste to get off the bridge and away from the Hell Pixie. He hurried back to the Poison’s access way and was greeted by a chorus of laughter from the entire Poison Assault Team. Word travelled fast on a small ship.
“Very fucking funny, assholes,” he muttered under his breath, then had to admit, it was pretty funny.
Chapter 6
“Level the wings, more power!” blurted Lt. Commander McHale from the back seat of the aging F-8C Firehawk. The old girl was a combat trainer that he’d been able to salvage from a scrap heap back on Volairus Two, where the planet’s dry heat and zero humidity made it an ideal bone yard for fighters, tankers, any vehicle that could go trans-atmospheric. Lexington had spent many a dry spell there between taking prizes, getting gas money from scrap metal and used parts. He’d been able to piece her together over the months and boring periods of blasting through nullSpace, and the project was one of the only things he had to keep him sane on the long runs or working watch on, watch off. Flying the ship, arguing with Engineering about maintenance and trying to keep safe during raids was taxing enough to make any normal man crazy. Restoring a fighter that he had flown all through Queen Deborah’s War brought back some nostalgia and kept the crew busy.
McHale fought the urge to take over the controls as Midshipman Schmetzer attempted to dodge random targets thrown up by the fighter’s computer. Each one that sparked blue on her shields could have been a burst of plasma that burned through and flamed the fighter. One of the most seasoned combat vets this side of The Rift, McHale didn't walk around getting his ego stuck in bulkheads or having pissing contests over who could pull more Gs, like many of his now expired classmates. That wasn't his style. He was the kind of person that was born to fly; cool and calculating in the cockpit, flying came natural to him, and amongst the stars is where he belonged. He rarely tal
ked about going up against the French Republic Aerocorps pilots. With eighty one confirmed kills and more hours on the starter button than Zlatcov or O’Neill had total time put together, Alex was the Senior Pilot on Lexington. He loved to teach, and being the standardization instructor pilot on the ship, he kept Jenny and Nadija sharp as razors in respect to their machines, and even volunteered to teach the FNG pilot. Now, he was starting to regret it as his stomach heaved. Another holographic target slipped past on the Heads Up Display.
“Come on, Bats,” using her call sign, “it's not friggin rocket science!” She was all over the place, hands nervous on the controls. “Feel where the ship is moving, look outside, gauge your turns, cross check your instrument panel, read the HUD as you look through it, watch out for the meteorites and don't fixate on the enemy.”
The dual engine Firehawk screamed through a heavy deposit of hydrogen, dust particles warping over the surface of the wings of the craft, leaving a concentrated contrail of purple ether and ionized gasses behind them. Alex snapped a couple pictures of a huge gas cloud about 80km away; it was truly beautiful and one of the reasons he loved space. They soared in silence through a cloud surrounding one of the transiting comets; tiny pine cone sized crystals of frozen aluminum and ethylene flew past them so close you could reach out and touch them.
“See, there you go, straight and level,” he said from the back seat.
“Yeah…too easy,” Bats…belched over her headset.
“You going to make it, rookie, or are you going to yack all over my baby?”
Bats shook her head a little bit and sucked in a deep breath from her pure oxygen line to ease her queasiness. “Yeah, I’m good, Sir, milk was a bad choice. I’m lactose intolerant,” she said sarcastically over the Intercom System.
They were cruising at about two kilometers per second, pretty quick for a thirty year old fighter. The right engine was humming a little louder than normal and running about a hundred degrees hotter than it should. McHale was in the back seat fiddling with some diagnostic pages on the fighter's computer screens. Puzzled, he pulled a couple circuit breaker buttons and scribbled some numbers down on his knee board. Amanda, “Bats” as the crew called her, was gleefully flying between ice clusters like an ADHD child bouncing from couch to couch cracked out on caffeine.
“Fun isn't?” he said looking at her face in the display with a smirk.
“Hell yeah!” she answered, doing a barrel roll, flying dangerously close to a large ice cluster.
“Easy now, don't get too close to those; they usually have fragments adrift in the shadows. If you hit one, we're dead.”
“Uhhh roger that,” she said awkwardly and moved in a little closer to the ice cluster, cranking up the speed and completely ignoring his warning.
“Midshipman Schmetzer, I am not kidding, we're flying over at a dozen KPS. If we hit one, we'll be boiling pink fucking mist. You'd be lucky if you could see it coming at you.”
She slowed down and turned away from the gigantic floating ice chunks, back toward the ship. Abruptly a single long, high tone came on over their headsets
“DAMN that's loud!” Bats said, looking down at her radio panel, trying to turn down the cockpit audio warning.
“Engine over temp…well…balls. Doesn’t look like Michelle wants to play today, she’s being a little bitchy. Okay, Bats, make a course adjustment and let's head back to the house. How are you going to deal with the engine running hot?” It was a great problem for her to solve, not too serious. Yet.
“I got this,” she said, and before McHale could say anything, she told the AI, “Drop shield power and take some strain off that engine.” Not a second after the ship complied with her order, a high pitched beeping alarm went off.
“Collision Alert!” The fighter’s AI was indicating they were about to hit something. Alex's head popped up instantly; he scooted up in his seat, putting his hands on the stick and feet on the pedals.
“I have the cont—” he started to say, but before he could get the command out, an asteroid about the size of a basketball nailed the starboard side wing and ripped the thruster clean off. The computer started going off again, beeping loudly. The master warning light and a few “oh shit” lights lit up on the screen readout. Alex's HUD flashed big bright red letters across his visor stating “FLIGHT CONTROL FAILURE”. A continuous *WOOP*WOOP*WOOP*WOOP* filled their headphones.
“Talk to me, Michelle! Tell me what we’ve got!” yelled McHale to the ship as he fought to control their spin. In the front of the cockpit, Midshipman Schmetzer tried to brace herself as she threw up onto the cockpit window. The remains of her breakfast were pulled sideways across the plastisteel.
The AI started reading off in a warm, silky female voice. “Damage to starboard thrusters. Damage to starboard wing structural integrity. Fuel leak, starboard main tank.”
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” muttered McHale under his breath as he fought the controls. The vernea gas taken off of the starboard engine was bleeding into space, which could cause the port engine to flame out if it continued over a long period of time.
“Fuck! What the fuck was that!” Amanda shouted from the front seat.
“You not paying attention, oh and almost killing us. The lesson is over, I have the controls,” answered the instructor in a cool voice. He twisted the stick to put in a counter roll of the starboard wingtip thruster that was now spewing gases everywhere. Flipping a couple switches, he isolated the venting wreck of the thruster, so they weren’t cast adrift, and chopped the throttle. The stick was barely responding; it was moving, but none of the control jets fired off when he yanked and banked to the left and right.
“Damn, I really don't need this shit right now,” he muttered. “Okay, Amanda, listen to me please, do your controls work?”
The aircraft leveled out, then pitched up and down. “Yeahhhh…” She grimaced as she moved the controls, but the ship slowly responded, slightly slowing their spin.
“Awesome, you're going to have to fly us home, I don't have control from the back seat. I have faith in you, you can do this, and we’ve practiced it a hundred times. Just don't kill us,” Alex spoke in a calmer, more collected and gentler voice to Bats, who was in the middle of trying not to freak out in the front seat. She her hands were white knuckled around the controls, trying to counter the 3G spin they were in.
“What!? You want me to do it!?” A note of panic crept into her voice.
“Bats, I need to you pulled it together, take the controls and level us out; mine are not working and I don't wanna eject into the Verse twenty-five hundred klicks from the ship.” He spoke with a little more inflection in his voice. The fighter still continued to spin violently, pushing deeper into the Oort Cloud, closing distance toward a higher volume asteroid field.
“BATS, Snap out of it!” He reach into his helmet bag, pulled out a No. 1 Missile Head screw driver. “AMANDA!” He barked over the intercom. He strained forward against the spin and smacked her on the back of the helmet with the handle grip of the screwdriver, as hard as he could.
“HEY! Get your shit together and get control of this fucking aircraft!” Alex was yelling at this point.
She grabbed the controls and struggled to return the fighter to wings level. They wobbled at little bit but she was finally able to get it under partial control.
“There you go…more pedal, a little more…okay a lot more! Woah…haha!” McHale felt his anger drop down to normal and let himself smile a bit. The ship finally came to a very slow left roll. Once they had stopped violently spinning, they were able to bring it to manageable levels.
“FIREHAWK, THIS IS LEX. YOUR TELEMETRY SHOWS YOU OUT OF CONTROL, OVER.”
“Lex, this is Ghostrider. Inflight emergency, bringing it in, prep hangar for emergency landing.”
“DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE?” crackled Asote’s accented voice over the radio.
“Negative, Lex.” O’Neill and Zlatcov would never let either of them live it down if the Assault shutt
les had to be launched to bring them in.
Flipping off his radio, he turned his attention back to Bats. “See, there you go, I told you can do it. Okay, now aim us back to Lady Lex. Nice and slow like, you’re doing fine.”
He watched their speed drop closer to zero, relative to the bigger ship, which had matched vectors so they didn’t have to maneuver, but they were still coming in hot. “Drop your speed. DROP YOUR SPEED.”
“Okay, I’m trying!” She snapped back. The Midshipman aimed for the flight deck, but was coming in on approach all cockeyed.
“More right pedal!”
One thousand feet.
“More pedal!”
Five hundred feet. Still moving at a closing rate of over a hundred kilometers per hour.
“There you go, Okay, good now, reverse thrusters…Cut the power…cut the power…! Cut it!” The nose of the fighter yawed just enough to the right and slowed to landing speed as they crunched down on the hangar bay surface, grinding to a halt ten feet from the wall. Both of the other pilots and most of the assault shuttle boarding teams stood by in EVA suits. Even through the cumbersome gear, McHale could tell that they were all laughing hysterically.
“You forgot the gear kid…” the instructor said, completely exasperated from the flight. He shut the engines down and opened up the canopy once the Hangar Chief gave the signal, indicating equalized outside pressure.
Bats sat in the front seat of the cockpit with her head in a slump, vomit smeared on the inside of her visor. She cracked the helmet and a disgusting stench emanated from her sweaty face. “We made it,” she said sheepishly, wiping her mouth with her suit glove. “And it's in my hair…great.”
“You did a good job keeping us in one piece on the way in, that was your first real emergency, and you hung in there. Congratulations, you passed your first check ride.” McHale placed a pair of silver student wings on the dashboard of the front seat. “When you're done scrubbing the amateur out of your helmet, grab the schematic for the vernea thruster system and come teach me how it works. Then you’re going to have to rebuild that engine.” He gave her a pat on the shoulder and walked over to the Pilot ready room, where Zlatcov was relaxing with her feet up, reading over schematics, smoking a cigar.