At this point, Waters was in a good position to advise us. I asked him, “What can we be doing? We’re all competent gunners. And pilots, for that matter.”
Personally, I wanted to get out there in a Banshee. I wanted to do something, anything. What I really wanted to do was go after one of the enemy carriers, or one of the cruisers. I guess I was swept away by the idea of five midshipmen grabbing a bunch of Banshees and implementing a daring raid on the enemy ships. I couldn’t really rationalize such a mission, but the appeal of the idea was almost overpowering.
Without waiting for a reply from Waters, I added, “I think we should man some of the Banshees—maybe engage the motherships.”
Waters sighed.
I said, “Main question is whether we’ll be needed as backup turret-gunners.”
“Let me think,” Waters said.
Then there was an enormous boom, which shook us all. It was likely the nearby crash of an enemy fighter into our hull.
Waters continued. “We have plenty of back-up gunners. The main problem is whether going out will be productive. The Banshees can hover near the Valley Forge, but that’s not what they’re designed for. If we try to hit their task force, odds are we won’t make it in, and as for making it back to the Valley Forge . . . .”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for a response.
Waters asked, “Who has charge of the midshipmen?”
“We’re a special unit,” I said. “We were placed directly under Commander Silver.”
Waters said, “Let’s see, and Silver is under Rabinowitz, and Rabinowitz is under Jefferson. Two of them are locked up, in theory at least. What are your standing orders during GQ?”
I said, “Defend the gun emplacements. Operate guns if necessary. Take all actions necessary to preserve the ship.”
Waters said, “Okay, let’s go. But let’s focus on protecting the gun emplacements, and on trying to knock out their boarding craft, if we locate any.”
I turned to the other midshipmen, and told them the plan. I added, “You’re welcome to take a Banshee out, or you can stay here.”
Nash said, “Cool, giving us two separate opportunities to die—in a Banshee, and later, on the Valley Forge. I’m in.”
Lennox said, “Me, too.”
I said, “Anyone else?”
Adler said, “Too many cooks’ll spoil the broth. I don’t want Astrid to waste valuable time watching out for me.”
I quickly said, “Sounds good,” because I didn’t want him to change his mind. Adler’s response was stated kiddingly, but he was serious in his analysis, and he was absolutely right. I was already having misgivings about more people going out. Waters and I would have been enough. But when esprit de corps kicks in, it’s difficult for people to resist, even when it’s foolhardy not to.
Nash said to Boyle, “Here’s your chance to fly with champions. A joint Navy-Marines task force.”
Boyle said, “No, I don’t think so, Nash. I’m gonna keep Adler company. Depending on how things go, we might be needed as gunners, and at very least we can help with magazines and with replacing barrels.”
Like Adler, Boyle was exercising good sense. I figured I’d give Nash and Lennox a chance to stay. I said, “Nash, maybe you want to stay here and help with the guns. You, too, Lennox.”
Lennox was aware of what was going on. I knew she was committed to going out. I also knew that she was going to wait for Nash to respond, so that she wouldn’t influence him.
But Nash breathed deeply and said, “Thanks, Astrid. I’m not changing course.”
I nodded. I turned to Lennox and said, “Lennox?”
As I expected, she said, “Still in.”
When you get down to it, there was no right or wrong course of action. I figured that staying on board offered a ninety-percent chance of survival for the next half-hour, at least. And I figured that with four of us going out in Banshees, it was likely that at least one of us wouldn’t return. We didn’t know what we were facing, and it might turn out to be an all-or-none situation. That is, there was a good chance that none of us would make it back.
Then Waters said, “Talos has programmed the Banshee weapons-systems with profiles of all known boarding craft used by the Kerleegans. We can focus on them.”
That sounded fine by me.
The four of us bid farewell to Boyle and Adler. Nash’s final words were, “Watch out for each other. And Adler, watch Boyle’s six, will you?”
Adler said, “You got it, Nash. I’ve already picked out hiding places for both of us.”
We all knew that there was nothing weaker about Boyle, but Nash was more worried about him, since he and Boyle had been friends since before the Academy.
Boyle took it in stride.
Everyone laughed at Adler’s response. It wasn’t a joyful laugh, really, but it was sincere. Overall, we were in good spirits—all things considered.
I said to Waters, “Which fighter bay?”
He said, “The port bay has the fittest ships. Also, the Banshees in the starboard bay are lacking missiles.”
Waters, Lennox, Nash, and I threaded our way toward the port fighter-bay.
14
A Dubious Plan
After about twenty steps, Waters drew me near and said, “I’m gonna contact my people and recruit four more. My guys are always looking for a rumble, and they don’t care about the odds. The way I look at it, if we add four guys, it increases the chances that you three midshipmen will all make it back.”
I came to a halt, and so did Waters.
I said, “Let’s tell Lennox and Nash that it’s just you and me. We’ll likely make it back after a little adventure.”
Waters said, “That’s not a bad idea. But no. First, staying here isn’t going to be a Rocky Mountain Jamboree. And going out isn’t a death sentence. Both situations are a little dicey. So we let each person follow his or her heart.”
I said, “Okay, no change in plan.”
Waters tapped his headset and looked at me for my approval of him contacting his people.
I said, “Go ahead.”
So, Waters contacted the other Marines. He left three in their positions, and he brought in the four others, who were only too happy to leave their assignments and go out with us.
Waters, Nash, Lennox, and I continued to move toward the fighter bay. The other four Marines were to meet us there. As we neared the bay, I told Waters again I didn’t like the idea of so many Marines coming with us.
He said he felt the same way, but this was war, and a lot of things happen in war that you wished didn’t have to. There wasn’t much else he could say. The decisions had already been made.
I said, “Amen.” But I made a mental note to avoid this type of situation in the future, if possible. And if I lived that long.
The four of us reached the fighter bay, and then the four other Marines arrived. Most of the Marines on the Valley Forge were men in their late twenties and early thirties, and some of them had been Marines for more than a decade. They had seen it all, and what they didn’t know about fighting probably wasn’t worth knowing.
The racket of the battle didn’t lessen. There was a continuing rapid bam-bam-bam from our gun emplacements, the sharp clatter of debris hitting the fuselage, and the pounding detonations of rockets on the Valley Forge’s hull.
Even though I was doubtful about the idea of eight of us taking part in what might turn out to be a fool’s errand, I was glad that Nash was along. He had seemed jittery before, and I wanted to keep an eye on him. And I think he seemed calmer, knowing I was around.
As for me, I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was similar to the way I felt before a shooting match at the Academy, where I was a member of the intercollegiate shooting-team. It wasn’t fear. It was an awareness that I needed to do my job, and that I couldn’t afford to let my comrades down.
I had an unusual awareness of every part of my being. I was prepared to die, but at the same time I was confid
ent that I would survive.
15
Mabel’s Dream
There were two fighter-bays within the Valley Forge, with eight fighters in each bay. All of the Banshees had names painted on their sides—not pilot names, but nicknames for the particular Banshees. Most of the names weren’t super-catchy, but they presumably had meaning for the guys who named them. These included Hellfire, Stupid Cupid, and Quickdraw.
All of the fighters had some appropriate image painted by the name. Some of the artwork was beautiful, and some of it was pathetic—as in all things, I suppose. I chose Mabel’s Dream, and the accompanying image was that of a teddy bear. During the First World War, pilots sometimes affixed a teddy bear to a strut as a good-luck charm, so I figured that was the explanation.
I climbed onto a wing, and I heard Waters say, “Mabel’s Dream is usually my bird.”
I said, “Thought yours was Lady Be Good.”
Waters was now standing a few feet away. He said, “She started being mean, so I ended our relationship. Go ahead and take Mabel’s Dream. She’s a good one.”
I started to object, but Waters had already turned his back and was headed to a different Banshee.
I settled into the cockpit, and I strapped myself in. I tried to relax. It was then that I received a lesson on what Waters was all about. I knew he was married, but that was about all I knew of his life outside the Marines. Granted, I hadn’t seen him at all after he left the Academy, but even so, I was surprised at how thin my knowledge of him was proving to be.
His cockpit had no fewer than four photographs of his wife, and what I assumed were his kids. I knew the woman was his wife, because one of the photographs was a wedding picture showing her and Waters. The kids were young, more like babies, and from their clothing, I figured they were both girls.
They all looked supremely happy. Waters looked like an ordinary guy, except with hair much shorter than most. His wife was gorgeous.
I thought of my fiancé, Joseph, and I hoped that someday he and I would be in photographs like these, and that they wouldn’t be taped onto a bulkhead in a starship or onto the control panel of a Banshee, but instead would be in frames in a home somewhere.
Anyway, I suppose I didn’t know much about Waters’s life—his history, so to speak. But I knew what kind of a man he was—honest, forthright, trustworthy, courageous, helpful, caring. And besides, the cold facts that we think we know about others are often misleading, or downright false.
I was about to lower the canopy, when the sounds of battle tapered off to nothing. From that point on, all I heard were a few isolated sounds that were hard to place. I didn’t know why that happened, but it struck me as ominous. The enemy might have silenced most of our guns. Or maybe they had terminated their missile attack to allow them to board us.
Talos opened the outer bay-door, leaving a forcefield in place to keep the bay compressed.
I kept listening, and still heard almost nothing. I waited till the last moment to lower my canopy.
One by one, we released our magnets, engaged the repulsors, and drifted through the ship-permeable forcefield. Soon all eight of us were in space, still near the Valley Forge. We didn’t light our engines. We were relying on our reaction-control thrusters, which used compressed gas for maneuvering.
Outside, it was obvious that there was a major lull in the action. There were a half-dozen enemy fighters swirling around, and occasionally a missile would race in toward the Valley Forge from the distance. It was easier to see things on the Banshee’s monitors than when looking through the canopy, because it was so dark out.
All of the Valley Forge’s exterior lights were off, and all ports, even the bridge’s viewing port, were blocked. A few missiles contacted the ship, and the detonations provided a momentary bright light, but other than that, the Valley Forge looked completely black and was virtually invisible.
The general idea was that, in our Banshees, we would be mobile turrets. We would hang near the Valley Forge, and engage targets of our choice.
In theory, we were each on our own, which was fine by me. Maintaining a formation would have been impossible, and useless. None of us were really in a good position to take on any formal responsibilities to watch over each other, though I’m sure that most of us viewed ourselves as being responsible, in some way, for all of the others. I definitely tried to keep an eye on Nash and Lennox, especially on Nash. Lennox was actually a cool pilot, very smart, always alert, and she could take care of herself.
We set our sensors so that they were scanning mainly for the enemy boarding ships. This was good, since the break in the action was probably to allow the Kerleegans to attempt to board the Valley Forge.
There were several types of ships that the Kerleegans used when boarding one of our vessels. The worst, and most hated, form of boarding ship was one with effective boring tools that could create man-sized openings in the hull of a ship, usually causing decompression of significant portions. These boarding ships then shifted the boring tools away from the opening and released as many as a hundred enemy soldiers into the ship being attacked. A lot of us called those particular enemy ships Orphan Makers, or sometimes Grim Grinders. Those names never impressed me. Besides that, I didn’t like giving nicknames to enemy equipment. It seemed like something the enemy would want us to do.
16
Outside the Valley Forge
As much as we disliked having our ships boarded, though, if I had to choose between boarding another ship and defending against boarders, I would rather be the defender. Repelling boarders is always less dangerous than being a member of the boarding party. If you’re repelling boarders, you—in theory—know every nook and cranny of your ship. You can set up ambushes. You can plant extra weapons all over the ship. You can open trapdoors.
So, there are a number of effective measures that can be employed against boarders, but most of them have problems. Namely, certain solutions are equally effective against your friends and the enemy. You can’t discharge directional anti-personnel mines, for instance, if your own people are in the line of fire of the mines.
The boarding of a ship, in which the boarders face resistance, is normally a chaotic undertaking, with aspects that are unpredictable and unique to the given boarding. The process is highly violent, and it involves unbridled ferocity on the parts of both the boarders and those repelling them.
And bloody? Yes, indeed, it might be the bloodiest aspect of space battle.
And regardless of which side might be favored, one of the principal goals of boarding an enemy ship is to strike terror into the hearts and souls of the defenders. The boarders are entering the enemy’s home. And when they are beaten back, the boarders still have demonstrated to their enemies that they are not safe, even in their most inviolable places of refuge.
The other side of this coin is that a boarding normally takes place under extraordinary circumstances, which are often beyond the control of the personnel of the boarded ship. And once boarded, a ship’s crew has no place to which retreat is possible. If necessary, they will fight to the last man, and on top of that they will usually, as a last resort, implement a self-destruct process, obliterating their own ship, even if that means killing their personnel who are alive at the time. Naturally, this is not always possible, but it can represent an effective way of taking your enemy with you when you leave the battle.
A footnote to this is that if you are part of a boarding party, and your side loses the fight, and you have the misfortune to be captured, you are likely to meet an extended and very painful end. The prevailing crew often takes matters into their own hands, and their leaders look the other way. This isn’t the practice of our Navy. After all, most boarding parties are made up of ordinary soldiers or sailors, who have no say on anything, and who are following orders.
All eight of our Banshees were now outside of the Valley Forge. We had our scanners operating, and for a short time I saw nothing. Then I was picking up readings of enemy boarding craft af
fixed to the Valley Forge. We all had good communications with the other Banshee pilots, and with Talos.
I said, “Waters, do you see what I see?”
And Waters said, “It looks like four enemy boarding craft have attached themselves in single file along the bottom of the Valley Forge.”
I said, “Right. Seems like this pause in the main attack is to allow the boarding. Did they knock out our ventral turrets? Why didn’t we see the enemy craft on approach?”
Waters said, “Yes, I’m sure our ventrals are gone. We didn’t see the boarding craft on approach, for the same reason we don’t see them now.”
I looked at my monitors again. They no longer showed the boarding ships.
Waters said, “Their stealth equipment is constantly adjusting for our changing sensor-frequencies. They’re leaving us alone, because they don’t want to give themselves away.”
I said, “Waters, let’s you, me, Lennox, and Nash drift down the starboard side, so that each one of us has an enemy boarding ship directly in front of us. We each launch our missiles, all six of them. We get out of the way, and four more Banshees take our places and do the same thing. We all get back to the fighter bay pronto. Thoughts?”
Waters said, “Let’s do it.” Then he added, “Everyone, if you’re going to miss the targets, make sure you don’t hit the Valley Forge in the process.”
We implemented the plan. We were able to get into the desired array quickly. There were four of us on a lower level. Fifty feet above each of us was another Banshee.
Astrid's War Page 5