Union Class Dropship "Nelson"
Kennard System
Bryceland PDZ
October 3036
The melodious 'Stand-By' tone was abruptly shouldered aside by the harsh pulsing of the sixty second 'Alert' klaxon, an acoustic lash to the backs of the already scurrying Tech-Teams that tended, like Butler Fish around sharks, to the huge but sleek forms of a pair of Stuka aerospace fighters. Emblazoned on the upper surfaces of their broad wings, the red and gold Sunburst and Sword of House Davion proclaimed the allegiance of the spacecraft to the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns; largest and most militarily capable of the Successor States that fought almost continually over the fractured corpse of the centuries dead Star League. On the tails of the Stukas, above the "First In, Last Out" motto of Thackstones Battalion, was painted the flag-like insignia of the Third Crucis Lancers 'Mech Regiment.
Senior Aerotech Fraser bent his head down and to the right, raising his hand to press his comset tightly to his ear as he strove to make out the message coming his way from the bridge. An apparently simple task, this was made hard by the persistent whines and clangs of lifts, hoists, munitions tractors and starter carts that thronged about the Stukas. The clutter shrank the perceived size of the hanger bay but it was huge enough for the curve of the dropship’s hull to be obvious. The reflected and cross-mixing echoes from that armoured surface made for a confusing barrage on the ears. Fraser expelled a sigh of long-suffering irritation and tried to dull the cacophony by covering his left ear.
"Say again, Leftenant."
"Launch Bay Alpha, prepare for evac in thirty seconds." The calm voice of Leftenant Sarah Reece, Fighter Operations Officer for the Nelson, repeated her order.
"Roger, Leftenant." Fraser flicked the slender comset mike down from his mouth and began bawling orders to his subordinates, giving the time-honoured thumbs-up to the suited and helmeted pilots, already seated in the fighters, as they, in turn, acknowledged receipt of their down-loaded launch orders and confirmed a 'green board' on all system checks.
Within twenty seconds, the Stukas were clean of the skein of electrical cables and fuel umbilicals that had bound them to their mothership. Within thirty seconds, the deck was clear of men and equipment, the hardware having been rolled back to its accustomed niches in the hangar walls and locked down, the Techs safe behind solid pressure doors.
"Locked and clean," Fraser informed the bridge, "Free to purge".
In the bay, long, slatted vents snapped open and the thrumb of powerful vacuum pumps could be felt through the steel decks as the precious air in the hanger was sucked into the dropships emergency reserve tanks. A standard precursor to the opening of the inner airlock doors, this was a wise precaution, preventing a self-inflicted explosive decompression if the armoured slabs, that were the outer fighter bay doors, should be damaged or improperly sealed.
In the softly illuminated bridge of the dropship, Leftenant Reece sat at her accustomed launch control station, watching the LCD monitors inching towards zero, registering bar by bar the waning pressure in the fighter bay. Trying to smother her enervating impatience, she waited for the green light to tell her that the Decompression Safety Locks could be over-ridden.
Behind her, a figure ceased its prowling from station to station long enough to growl tersely, "Get those fighters out there, Sarah!"
Captain Philip McNamara rested his hand on her shoulder briefly to take the severity out of his words but it did little to relieve Reece's tension. Her thoughts raced through the control sequences her fingers twitched to punch in as soon as she got her green light and she at scratched the back of her hand reflexively.
'Great!' She thought, 'My first scramble of the tour and 'Steel Eyes' is hovering over me like Death!'
The hand patted a few times reassuringly and the growl lightened with a smile.
"Easy Leftenant, my apologies. We didn’t burn in this hard for this long to miss our intercept window but it’s not as if the SOL’s’re coming at us ... just yet”. He chuckled. “’Though that may soon change! You can't hurry physics. Launch when ready." And with that, Death's shadow moved on to haunt other stations, increasing alertness wherever he paused and betraying his own tension, to those who knew him well, only by the gravel in his voice.
At last Reece got the signal she needed and her fingers flickered over her console with a Flamenco's flourish.
"Alpha Wing, running out to gantries now." She spoke into her headset mike as she commanded the inner doors to open and the Drop Cradles prepared to move the Stukas into the locks.
The launch bay vibrated silently as the one hundred ton fighters drifted, apparently effortlessly, along cogged rails, into their drop positions and were temporarily entombed between two sets of doors.
"Welcome to the Twilight Zone!" Pilot Officer Leftenant Simon 'Handlebars' Hampton said dryly over the intercom to his wingman. Involuntarily he looked to his left, even though a meter thick bulkhead of steel and ceramic separated the slightly diverging launch channels, imagining the scene on the other side of the wall. There the clean lines of the Stuka would be stroboscopically revealed by the flashing amber 'Launch Warning' lights as it patiently waited to be thrown into space. In his minds eye, he pictured its pilot, Sylvia Von Porter, calmly mirroring his actions as he ran through the final list of computer moderated checks on his crafts ordnance, engines, life support systems, electronics and a host of other items of lesser importance.
Her voice a saccharine parody of wonder, 'Squirrel Cage' Von Porter replied to her superior.
"Somehow I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"
"I wanna go home!" Hampton cried in mimicry of childish petulance.
"But you are home!"
Hampton terminated their traditional, tension-reducing, pre-launch 'attitude check' with a pained groan.
Reece's serene voice came over the ship wide command frequency.
"Now hear this, attention all hands. Cutting thrust to main engines in ten seconds..."
The almost unnoticed bass rumble of Nelson's powerful drive was abruptly silenced and the waiting pilots’ felt their bodies react to the cessation of acceleration induced 'gravity'.
" ... Alpha Wing. Gantries locked. Five seconds to launch; four; three ..."
The outer doors cracked open as if in response to her words and as her countdown reached "one" the cradles lurched forward, the claw-like grabs releasing the fighters to shoot away from the vast, curving, three and a half thousand ton bulk of the Union class dropship. For three seconds they travelled straight and level to carry them to a safe distance from the Nelson. Then their engine venturies sputtered yellow as reaction mass was fed to the Stukas fusion reactors. In moments lances of blue flame sprang into life, the fighters instantly rolling to turn away from their mothership, twisting vertically, with smaller jets flickering over their wing surfaces, and streaking on overthrust along their intercept vector.
With the launch, and its attendant dangers of accident, thankfully behind him, Hampton checked his data-link monitor, absorbing the pictographic icons fed to him by the Nelson's sensors. It showed him two pairs of fighters, flagged with their type and current course, curving away from two other Union dropships, identified as Hood and Rodney, and converging with him and his wingman. Behind the dropships, now restarting their engines with launch operations completed, and at a range of several tens of millions of kilometres, the computer showed the massive, wand-like, shape of the Invader class jumpship Apollo. It was from her that the dropships had parted with such indecent haste after entering the Kennard solar system and had begun to burn sunwards at in excess of one and a half G.
Almost superimposed on the image of the Apollo on the monitor was another jumpship, this one of Merchant class, flagged as being on contract with the Kuritan Eighth Sword of Light 'Mech Regiment. Or at least that’s what the Naval Intelligence weenies reckon the Shipping Registry says Hampton snorted to himself Who knows how up to date that is!
He clicked onto the ship-to-ship frequency that tied him in to Von Porter.
"Alpha Two, check your data-link. Here come the cavalry. Marshall and Thompson are on their way with friends."
There was a brief pause and then Von Porters reply came through, having first been routed via Nelson's Command Radio Network.
"I thought we were the cavalry, Alpha One."
"Glory hound!" Hampton snorted. "Take a long look at that second jumpship at the Jump Point. She's the reason for the past couple of days of 'Hurry-up-and-wait'. The good old Eighth Sword of Light; you can always rely on them to be where they're not wanted!"
Pause.
"House Kurita, what a surprise!" Hampton heard Sylvia mutter, in a sarcastic tone that suggested that it was anything but a surprise that the Draconis Combine was behind the tense bustle that had sent them diving in-system at such body and mind taxing speed.
Hampton opened his mouth to continue his speculations, then clicked his teeth together as the Command Frequency chirped for attention.
"McNamara, Nelson." The Captains clipped tones were all that was needed to carry his displeasure. "No non-essential chatter Alpha One. Punch up your launch plot. Standby to receive Immediate Action SitRep."
"Alpha One, aye Nelson." Hampton toggled his primary display, which painted up his pre-computed course across the Kennard system. At the terminal point of his intercept vector, a good way short of Kennard itself, the computer hung a small cluster of icons, shown in red with a tiny black dot that was supposed to represent the Kuritan dragon symbol, but actually looked much more like a black dot than anything else. The newly received vector markers showed that a small group of the Kuritan units had broken away from the main body and were accelerating towards the inbound Third Crucis ships.
"Eighth Sword fighters and dropships. How marvellous!" Hampton heard Sylvia murmur absently via the intercom. "Burn in at heavy G's so we're good and tired and then throw us at a dozen Shologars and two Overlords. What a wonderful life! Who'd be an aerospace pilot ...."
Hampton smiled to himself at Sylvia's soft-spoken tirade. She had a habit of talking constantly to herself during transit time and usually left her intercom open whilst doing so, allowing the other members of the flight to talk to her if they wanted. It didn't bother him and she soon quietened down when the action started; then, as the cliché runs, she let her guns do the talking and loved every perilous second of it. Manoeuvring into the thickest clot of swirling enemy fighters she could find at every opportunity is what had earned her the nickname 'Squirrel Cage'; an ancient airmans descriptive phrase for the chaotic tangled knot of speeding flying machines a pitched air battle could weave.
Still, he'd better shut her up. If McNamara was feeling stressed he knew better than to aggravate him.
"Stow it Sergeant!" He snapped with mock severity. "The Captain wants quiet."
Over in her Stuka, a couple of thousand metres to port and slightly behind Hampton's, Von Porter bit off her stream of words with a start. She’d been reprimanded before for her “persistent in-flight chattering” and it wasn’t the sort of thing a pilot wanted repetition to cause to ‘stick’ to her service record .
"Sorry sir. Alpha Two out." With a firm deliberation she made sure that the radio was definitely off-line and then her contrite expression dissolved in a small laugh at Hampton's 'all-present-and-correct-sir', Officer of the Line, impersonation. All for McNamara's benefit of course. Many times she had heard Hampton loudly proclaim in the mess hall, well away from the Captain's ears needless to say,
'"What does a former 'Mech-driver know about the finer points of Aerojock communication protocol anyway!"'
McNamara was an outstanding tactician and dropship Captain, right enough, and the Mechwarriors that the Nelson carried had every confidence in him - a legacy from his years as a Major commanding a battalion in the Third Crucis Lancers. But he never seemed able to get to grips with the way fiercely independent and individualistic Aerospace pilots thought or behaved. Comprehending that just because the Aerospace wing under his command wasn't all snap and salutes, spit and polish, didn't mean they weren't good at their job, seemed to be beyond him. To survive out here with nothing between you and vacuum but an armoured glass canopy took more than a sharply pressed uniform and a smart parade.
The triple beat of the Command Data Link signal interrupted the flow of her thoughts and she turned her attention to the Tac monitor as the computer began bringing up data for display.
It showed Baker Wing, from the Hood, moving up to take a position underneath and to starboard of Hampton. Charlie Wing, from the Rodney, flashed over the top of the resultant diamond shaped formation and, with a synchronised double snap roll, took station high, port and slightly behind - in what was expressed in airmans parlance as the 'Eight O'Clock High' position. Jets feathering over control surfaces, the new additions to the formation cut their acceleration back to the pace of the heavy Stukas and matched vectors.
They took a few seconds to patch in to the Flight Communications Net. This used very low power, narrow beam, transmissions between the three Wings to negate the risk of the enemy detecting and tapping in to their signals.
"Alpha One, Alpha One. This is Baker One. Are you receiving? Over."
Knowing that with such formal communication protocol the transmission could only have come from Leftenant Kaye 'Squiffy' Marshall, Sylvia looked over to where her slender, dart shaped, fifty ton Corsair sat.
A close support, ground-attack specialist, Marshall had learned the hard way that disciplined radio procedure was of paramount importance in co-ordinating strafing runs; shooting up your own ground forces was not the best way to win friends and influence people! And she never failed to follow the book when it came to communications, even on routine patrols. It was in sharp contrast to Von Porter's more lackadaisical style and had been the cause of more than one heated argument between them. Sylvia ruefully admitted to herself that, more often than not, those arguments were her fault, for, no matter how she tried to resist, she just couldn't help baiting Marshall.
Fortunately, Hampton had more self-control.
"Baker One, Baker One. This is Alpha One. Glad you could join us. Over."
"We just happened to be going your way, Alpha One, and thought you might appreciate the company. Over."
"Roger that, Baker One. Over and out."
Sylvia grimaced. All those 'Over's' and 'Over and out's' drove her crazy. Once you'd tied in to the circuit, you knew who you were talking to and could manage a conversation quite well enough without cluttering it up with unnecessary cues. And in a dogfight there just wasn't time for it, things just happened too quickly.
Next on the net came the throaty voice of Leftenant Priscilla 'Ginger' Thompson, the good humoured, red haired, pilot of the N30 Centurion that led Charlie Wing.
"Alpha One. Charlie One checking in. How do you fat boys stand going this slowly? I can feel my jets coking up as we speak!"
Sylvia smiled at the jibe. The Centurion, and the Sparrowhawk formatted with it, were almost twice as fast as her Stuka but were less than a third the size.
"Good afternoon, Charlie One. We may be slow but its us you'll be hiding behind when the action starts. So be nice or we'll leave you to it!"
"No fair, Alpha One. You're the air-to-air boys, that's your job. Give me a nice safe bombing run against a forest of Triple-A any day. I'll leave all that flashy dog-fighting to you and Squirrel Cage if you don't mind."
"Not today, Ginger. You'll have to earn your pay honestly instead of cargo hauling high explosives. You're a fighter pilot, not a truck driver!"
Hampton was referring to the strange fact that it tended to be the smaller, faster aerospace designs that made the best bombers rather than, as common sense might dictate, the heavy craft. The powerful thrust to weight ratio of fighters like the Sparrowhawk meant that they could be loaded up with prodigious bomb loads and still retain a measure of speed and agility.
"OK troops, listen up. You’ll be pleased to know that our primary task for today is not to play tag with the Eighth Sword’s dropships. They’re just holding station and, going by what comms we’ve had from Lindon’s so far, they’ve already laid their eggs and are now providing air support for their ground forces. What we’ve got to do is disrupt that air support so that Lindon’s can re-deploy and dig in until our boys get there to help out. Those Sholagars are loaded up to the Nines with bombs so, at current vectors, we should intercept before they make orbit. Two to one odds would be bad news if they weren’t in bomber configuration but we’ve got a heavy edge just now so let’s make the most of it. I’ve heard ground-pounders are allergic to high-explosive and shrapnel so they’ll be real happy to see us if we make sure none gets dropped on them today!"
Hampton paused to let anyone who wanted to to have their say. The anticipated silence meant that everyone knew what was expected and were waiting for him to finish up.
"However, as you can see, Lindon’s uninvited guests have thrown up a fighter screen to prevent our interfering. That means we’ll have to deal with them first and quickly or we’ll be taking on the bombers after they’ve made their attack runs and they’ll be fast and agile again. After our long burn inbound, we’ve got a lot of energy that we don’t want to lose yet, so we’ll be making loose turns at very high speed and we can’t afford to make too many of them. Baker and Charlie Wings, engage with your wingmen and concentrate your fire on single targets as you pass through their formation. To protect your rear, Alpha Wing will follow behind and finish what you started. Don’t worry too much about their manoeuvrability; they need to try and stop us so they have to come at us reasonably straight otherwise we’ll just blast on through.
We won’t make intercept for a little while yet so lie back and enjoy the view. Just don’t go to sleep ... that means you Ginger! Snakes are slippery, especially Eighth Sword Snakes, so watch your Tac and don’t lets get surprised."
Hampton was rewarded by an exaggerated yawn from Charlie One. He suppressed a smile as a tiny flutter of reaction mass over the Centurions starboard wing tipped it into a slow, lazy clockwise roll, as if the ship, rather than its pilot, had dozed off in boredom at the ‘sedate’ pace.
.
