by Ryk Brown
“Just remember not to maneuver too radically at higher speeds,” Dylan reminded them. “Subvert’s modifications reduced the structural limits during atmospheric operations. That’s why we had to make them forty percent slower than the race versions.”
“Screw that,” Josh declared. “I’m going to see what this thing can do!”
Loki peered out at the vast ocean speeding under him. “Don’t forget you’re a lousy swimmer.”
“Hey, Dylan!” Josh called out over comms. “These things are still aerodynamic, right?”
“Yes,” Dylan replied, uncertainty in his tone. “Why?”
“Watch this.”
Josh activated his maneuvering thrusters and jammed the power slider to maximum.
“Thrusters aren’t for use in the atmosphere,” Dylan warned.
“Fuck! Are you getting telemetry from my ship?” Josh barked as he toggled the drive selector switch on his flight control stick and then yanked the stick back hard.
The tiny fighter sped along only twenty meters above the water, leaving a wake of mist behind it. Its nose suddenly pitched up forty-five degrees, and its main drive lit up, rocketing the ship toward the sky.
Josh felt himself thrown hard into his seat as the main space-drive kicked in, nearly knocking the wind out of his lungs.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dylan exclaimed over comms.
“God…damn!” Josh was barely able to get out as he held his flight control stick back, forcing his thrusters to continue firing and bring his nose higher and higher. Feeling himself about to black out, he eased back on the space-drive’s throttle as his fighter reached full vertical.
“What are you doing?” Dylan repeated.
“I’m looping!” Josh managed to get out, despite his lack of breath.
“You can’t do that in atmo!” Dylan insisted.
Josh continued forcing his pitch-over, easing his space-drive back to zero as his ship passed the top of its arc and headed back down the other side. “I just did,” he added, his breath fully returning.
“You still have to avoid slamming into the water at the bottom of your loop,” Loki reminded him.
“Piece of cake,” Josh insisted.
“Your wings don’t provide any lift, Josh!” Dylan exclaimed.
“I know! I know!” Josh insisted. “I got this!”
“Oh my God, he’s going to kill himself,” Dylan declared.
“No, he’s not,” Marcus stated calmly.
Dylan spun around, not realizing that anyone was on the command deck with him. Behind him, sitting with his feet up on the starboard auxiliary station and eating a piece of fruit was Marcus, calm as can be.
“He’s crazy!” Dylan insisted. “He’s going to slam into the water at a thousand KPH!”
“You’re right, he’s crazy,” Marcus agreed. “But he’s also the best damned pilot I ever saw. The kid doesn’t even need instruments.”
“But he doesn’t have any experience or training in those things!”
“He doesn’t need it. He just knows.”
“That’s impossible!”
“I know it is, but it’s true, trust me,” Marcus insisted.
Dylan turned back around to look at the displays. “I can’t watch,” he said closing his eyes.
Josh held his stick back, forcing the thrusters under the nose of his fighter to continue firing at full power. His ship now in free fall, his altitude quickly fell away as he plummeted toward the topaz water below.
The tiny fighter began to buffet as the thrusters forced his nose past the slipstream of air rushing over it. The shaking became more violent as his pitch continued to change. Finally, his ship’s attitude approached level, and he released his flight control stick, allowing it to return to neutral.
As the altitude readout continued to fall, Josh switched his flight control stick back to grav-lift mode and again yanked it back hard, forcing the grav-lift emitters to go into overdrive. “I sure hope this works,” he said to himself.
Loki sped along, guiding his fighter one hundred meters above the ocean’s surface, staring out of his forward canopy as he watched Josh’s P-Seventy-Two flat-fall rapidly toward the water in the distance. He had seen his friend pull off some incredible maneuvers in a variety of ships over the years, but never had he pushed an unfamiliar vessel this hard on his first time up. “You going to pull up soon, or are you planning on becoming a submarine?” he asked, trying to seem positive as his friend plummeted toward his death.
“I’m working on it,” Josh assured him.
Loki noted the stress in his friend’s tone. “Maybe work a little harder?” he suggested, trying to remain calm. “You’re running out of altitude pretty fast, buddy.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Josh replied as he attempted to manually engage the upward translation thrusters along the bottom of his ship. “Christ, I hate safety systems!” he exclaimed as he frantically tried to bypass the very systems designed to protect him.
“Come on, Josh, pull out!” Loki insisted.
“Fuck this!” Josh exclaimed, reaching over to the breaker panel to his left and slightly behind him. He quickly found the breakers for the AI computers, and pulled them, killing the entire system.
“Are you insane?” Dylan exclaimed. “You can’t fly that thing without the AI!”
“I can’t fucking fly it with the AI!” Josh replied as he finally managed to fire the thrusters along the underside of his ship.
At full power, the thrusters struck him in the ass so hard it hurt, but he loved it. Most of the ships he had flown had considerable inertial dampeners that masked the sensations of flight. On the Lightning, they were practically nonexistent, and he felt every bump and ripple of air as it passed around his fighter’s hull.
Unfortunately, the thrusters were not enough. Josh quickly switched back to space-mode and pulled back on his stick again, bringing his fighter into a tail-first free fall. The aerodynamic properties of his ship’s nose no longer helping it pierce the atmosphere, his ship buffeted violently, and it was all he could do to keep her falling tail first.
Again, Josh powered up the space-drive, quickly jamming the throttle all the way forward, unconcerned with the G-forces that were about to hit him.
His main drive lit up once again, pushing him deeply into his seat. Again, the air was forced from his lungs. An enormous weight now lay upon his chest and face, pressing down upon him with what felt like the weight of all the oceans of Rakuen. Before his vision faded, he managed to see one last thing…his altimeter stopped decreasing.
Loki watched in horror as his friend’s fighter disappeared in a cloud of water and steam, just before it struck the surface. Then, his horror turned to amazement as Josh’s P-Seventy-Two rocketed out of the cloud, streaking toward the blue sky above. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed. “You did it!”
Dylan’s eyes popped open in disbelief. “He did?” He turned to look at the display, noting that Josh’s ship was already passing ten thousand meters and accelerating far faster than a P-Seventy-Two was designed to safely travel in the atmosphere. “Oh my God, he’s insane!”
“He sure as hell is,” Marcus agreed, rising from his seat. “I’m going to get another piece of fruit. You want one?”
“Josh! Are you okay?” Loki called over comms.
Josh struggled to both open his eyes and to take a breath. How he had managed to fight off unconsciousness, he did not know, but his left hand had managed to hold onto the throttle, which he began retarding. As the acceleration eased, his breath returned, and his vision began to clear. A glance at his flight dynamics display told him he had blown way past his five-thousand-meter ceiling and was headed for the edge of space. He eased the throttle back more, allowing his speed to fall and his rate of climb to diminish, his breath becoming easier by the second.
> “Josh!” Loki called again. “Do you copy?”
“Of course, I copy,” Josh replied as he managed to get his nose level and his ship under control. “Like I said…a piece of cake.”
“I was afraid you’d blacked out from the G-forces,” Loki replied.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Josh said, finally feeling himself again.
“Maybe we’d better head in,” Loki suggested. “Maybe do a few laps around the harbor or something.”
Josh rolled his ship over into an inverted position, looking at the string of tiny islands far below. “I’ve got a better idea,” he told his friend. “Let’s have a race through that island chain down there.”
“Lead the way,” Loki agreed, laughing.
* * *
Robert Nash opened his apartment door, finding Nathan standing on the other side. “Should I start packing?”
“What?” Nathan asked.
“Every time you show up at my door, my assignment gets changed,” Robert commented as he stepped aside to let his guest in.
“Can’t a friend just stop by to say hello?” Nathan wondered as he entered.
“Not when that friend is Nathan Scott.”
“How are you doing?”
“Never better,” Robert replied, returning to his kitchen.
“What are you cooking?”
“Kimba,” Robert replied. “It’s a sort of fish from the northern seas of Rakuen. Expensive but worth it. They live on both the land and in the water. It’s the closest thing you’ll find to red meat on Rakuen. Cook it right, and you’d swear you were eating beef.”
“Smells good. How long are you in town?” Nathan asked.
“A few more days. It’s my group’s down week. But you already knew that.”
Nathan smiled. “You’re just like your sister. I can’t get anything past either of you.”
“So where am I going next?” Robert inquired as he carefully carved up his kimba. “Hopefully a nice, cushy desk job here on Rakuen.”
“Then you like it here?”
“I grew up in a beach town, so this place feels as close to home as any, although the surfing does suck. I’ve never seen such calm oceans in my life.”
“Are you saying you’re ready to retire from space duty?”
“Ready enough, I suppose. I’d miss it, to be sure, but I’m not getting any younger.”
“How old are you?” Nathan wondered.
“Chronologically, I’m about sixty-three. Biologically, I’m in my forties, although sometimes I feel like I’m eighty. Especially in the mornings.”
“No doubt the result of all the injuries you’ve sustained over the years.”
“More like the crappy racks on the Orochi,” Robert laughed.
“Well, the racks on the XKs are not too bad.”
“XKs?”
“Twelve cargo ships that were donated to the cause by SilTek. We’re turning them into multi-role, long-range jump ships.”
“Armaments?”
“Point-defenses, dorsal and ventral plasma cannon turrets, jump missiles; they even carry a pair of snub-fighters called Lightnings.”
“What’s their mission?”
“To begin with, we’re going to use them to try to recruit more member worlds.”
“I’d heard rumors that you were planning on growing this alliance. Are you sure you want to do that?” Robert wondered.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“A lot of work. A lot of responsibility.”
“I’m not going to do it all by myself,” Nathan pointed out.
“How big?”
“It depends on how many worlds we sign on.”
“I meant the XKs,” Robert corrected.
“Oh. A little smaller than the Orochi. Crew of eight to twelve.”
“How do they handle?”
“Like a pig, according to Josh, but we’re working on that,” Nathan assured him.
“Not like the Orochi handle much better,” Robert commented as he placed one of his kimba steaks into the frying pan. “You want one?”
“No thanks, I just ate.”
“Then, you want me to command one of these XKs?”
“You, Gil, and Kainan, to start.”
“Kainan’s a good choice. Sharp guy. Gil might be a problem, though.”
“Why?” Nathan wondered. “I mean, he can be gruff, but that’s just his style.”
“He was all set to retire when we roped him into the Cobra caper. Had himself a nice, little sailboat on one of Kohara’s lakes and a girlfriend with a house near the marina. He’s been talking about retiring here on Rakuen and spending his days exploring all her island chains.”
“You think he’d turn the assignment down?” Nathan asked.
“I’m not sure. Just have a plan B before you speak with him.”
“Thanks, I will,” Nathan promised. “How long until the next class of Orochi crews is ready?”
“The current class will graduate in about a month.”
“So if I pull a few COs from your ranks, the impact will be negligible?”
“I don’t think it will be a significant problem,” Robert assured him. “The Orochi are pretty much patrol ships now…right?”
“Hopefully.”
Robert studied Nathan for a moment. “What about the Dusahn?”
“They are contained for the moment.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
“Haven has been their only excursion outside the cluster thus far,” Nathan assured him. “We have made it clear that any attacks on us or our allies will not be tolerated.”
“That’s why you want to get everyone to join the alliance,” Robert surmised.
“At least everyone within reasonable strike range of the Dusahn.”
“You’re talking about dozens of systems,” Robert stated, “quite possibly more than a hundred.”
“One hundred and twenty-seven that we know of,” Nathan corrected.
“With twelve ships? That’s going to take a while.”
“We’ll start with the Pentaurus sector,” Nathan told him. “With the Aurora in the Darvano system, the Dusahn don’t dare venture far.”
“Don’t underestimate them,” Robert urged.
“Then I can count on you to command the next XK?”
“How soon?”
“About a month.”
“I’ll be there,” Robert promised, scooping his finished kimba steak from the pan. “You know, you’ll have to deal with the Dusahn sooner or later.”
“I have a plan.”
“Yeah, Jess told me.”
“I didn’t say it was a good plan,” Nathan admitted.
* * *
“I’ve been looking for you,” Nathan greeted as he entered the Aurora’s intelligence compartment.
“Welcome back,” Cameron replied, her attention still on the view screens along the wall. “How’s the Voss?”
“Port jump-missile launch system is working, as are both plasma turrets,” Nathan replied. “What are we looking at?”
“Looks like some kind of warship,” Jessica commented, coming to stand next to Nathan after entering the compartment behind him.
“It is,” Lieutenant Commander Shinoda confirmed. “Seven ships, total; five others just like this one.” He raised his remote and changed images, showing an entirely different ship. “The other six are not a major threat. Underpowered, poorly shielded. Lots of guns but not powerful ones. But this one is a different story.”
“I don’t recognize the designs,” Jessica said. “Where’d they come from?”
“We don’t know,” the lieutenant commander admitted. “We’re working on it.”
“Where they came from is not the issue,” Cameron stated.
“Where did you detect them?” Nathan asked, realizing where she was headed.
“In orbit over Takara,” Cameron replied.
“That can’t be good,” Jessica commented.
“They arrived yesterday, a few hours after you left,” Cameron told them.
“This morning’s recon pass showed that Takaran service crawlers are all over them. They’ve also moved one of their repair platforms alongside one of them, indicating that they intend to do some refit or upgrade to at least one of them,” the lieutenant commander added.
“So the Dusahn have been ship shopping.”
“Even if they upgrade them with all of the Dusahn’s latest shields and weapons, which would take several months, they’d still be no match for our fleet.”
“But they would be a significant deterrent,” Nathan pointed out.
“They’d also restore the Dusahn as a respectable threat in the eyes of neighboring systems,” Cameron added.
“Kind of helps our cause, don’t you think?” Jessica decided.
“Yes and no,” Nathan replied. “Before these ships arrived, we had them completely outgunned. But now?”
“They’re still outgunned,” Jessica insisted.
“But by quite a lesser degree,” Nathan argued. “Do we have any idea of their jump range?” he asked his intelligence officer.
“Not yet,” Lieutenant Commander Shinoda replied. “We haven’t been able to get a recon drone close enough to get detailed interior scans, so we couldn’t even guess at the moment.”
“The longest jump range we’ve seen, other than our own, is about fifty light years,” Cameron stated. “So we should assume they have at least that much single-jump range.”
“It’s that larger one that worries me,” Nathan said as he read the details along the side of the image. “She’s practically a battleship. If they put multiple jump drives in her, even at fifty light years, that would make them able to reach the Rogen system in just over a day; Orswella in just over two.”