Dark Space: The Invisible War (18 page)

“You’ve all been signed up for this mission with the assumption that you already have basic flight training, so this mission should be like riding a hover cycle. The AI flight trainer will show you where all the knobs and buttons are. As for the rest—thanks to the delays in getting our novas ready and configured for training, we just have one day for these exercises—today—and there’s more than twice as many of you as I have birds for you to fly. That means you’re going to have to take turns, and we’re only going to be able to give you the basics in the time we have. For the rest of it, you’re going to have to learn the hard way—blood and tears.

“Only the pilots with the best scores are going to make the active duty roster, and the rest of you will go back to your current assignments. Any questions?”

“How do we take off?” one trainee asked.

Alara heard the commander sigh. “The auto will do that for you. Same thing for landing. Flight regs require even experienced pilots to use the autos. Any other questions?”

The room was silent.

“Good.” The commander turned to the holoscreen and waved his hand once more. A list of names appeared in place of the star map. “If your name is on this list, then you’re flying in the first run. I’ll call you down by wing pairs.”

As Commander Adari began calling out names, Alara scanned the list. She found her name there below that of Captain Adan Reese just before they were called down to the podium.

Adan elbowed her again as he stood up. “That’s us,” he said.

Alara frowned as she followed him down to the podium. When they got there, she saw from the way Commander Adari smirked at her that recognized her from the bar, but he didn’t say anything about it, he just nodded and gestured to the open door which lay to one side of the podium. Speaking to Adan, he said, “The pair of fighters parked beside the Mark II’s are yours.”

Adan nodded back. “See you in the hangar, Commander.”

*  *  *

— THE YEAR 10 AE—

Roan had to hold himself back. It would have been easy to lash out—to strike back and kill the people who had injured him—but Tova had told him to wait. Apparently the humans were fighting each other, and these particular ones were not a part of the alliance between Gors and Humans. That meant they were fair game, but Tova had also told him to stay hidden. She’d let him know when she was near and then he would do what she had asked and sabotage the ship.

Roan held back a hiss. He didn’t like all the waiting and skulking around. He would have much rather hunted them all down and killed them himself. Roan had been forced to dig through the debris from the explosion to get out. Hours later he’d found the exit, and then he’d still had to climb up more than ten floors before he could get out. All of that had left him feeling very hungry. No matter what Tova said about him staying hidden, he would need to hunt soon. The empty hole in his stomach needed to be sated.

It was that need which had Roan skulking down the corridor behind two burly humans, watching them walk blithely along, talking loudly as if they hadn’t anything to fear. Roan bared his teeth in anticipation of the kill as he listened with half an ear to the humans’ conversation. The translator he’d been given allowed Roan to understand what they were saying, but he wasn’t sure why he cared. He should just kill them and eat them now.

“. . . I’m tellin’ ya this is frekkin’ nuts. Big Brainy’s finally done it. He’s become a total stim-bake. Now we’re going into Sythian Space? What is he thinking?”

“I dunno.”

“I’ll tell ya what! He’s
not
thinking. We’re gonna to die out there.”

“Well, I dunno ‘bout that.”

“Frek, you dunno krak, do ya?”

Roan saw the pair of men disappear around the corner, their voices drifting out of hearing. His translator had faithfully reproduced what they’d said in a reasonable facsimile of his own language, and now he was left staring after them with thoughtfully narrowed eyes. The human rebels were venturing out of Dark Space. Tova had told him to wait until she arrived with reinforcements to rescue him, but now that would be impossible.

He had to tell her about the change of plans. Tova would have to catch up to him whenever these humans reached their destination. Closing his eyes, Roan concentrated on Tova in order to send her a message, but no sooner had he shut his eyes than he noticed the telltale hum of silence which accompanied superluminal space, and his eyes slowly opened once more. He couldn’t communicate with Tova while they were in SLS. It was too late. The ship had already jumped. He’d have to wait until they reverted to real space, and hope his mate was still in range.

Now Roan did hiss. He should kill them all and take command of the ship himself. That was what Tova was coming to do anyway. Why should he hold back any longer?

Roan bared his teeth and sprinted after the pair of men who’d been walking ahead of him. He rounded the corner and saw them walking up ahead, just about to reach the next bulkhead door. Roan raced soundlessly down the corridor, his breath coming in an easy rhythm, reverberating back to him inside his helmet as he rushed up behind the two men. As soon as he was within reach, he grabbed them both simultaneously—one neck in each of his large hands. His momentum knocked the men over while he barreled on to bounce off the bulkhead. Roan turned to see them struggling to their feet.

He didn’t let them get that far.

As soon as the first man looked up, Roan snapped his neck with a violent twist. His fellow screamed, but that scream was cut short as Roan lunged for his throat and ripped it out.

Chapter 12

—THE YEAR 10 AE—

A
dan pointed over Alara’s shoulder. “There. Go strap in. The trainer AI will get you started.”

Alara nodded, her eyes wide as she turned in a dizzy circle to find the fighter Adan was pointing at. The canopy was open and waiting for her to climb in. She started toward the nova, blinking against the glare of all the bright lights inside the hangar. There was a confusing noise of trainees scrambling to their fighters and of flight controllers calling out orders to the ground crew over the intercom. A pair of men in reflective orange and yellow jumpsuits raced by right in front of her, and she had to halt before she ran into them. Once she reached her fighter, Alara climbed up the short set of stairs which rose out of the deck to the wing. She heard her boots clanging on the metal rungs as she climbed, and she could smell the acrid fumes of reactor fuel and laser gas in the air. Alara reached the top of the ladder and stepped up onto the wing to gaze down into the open cockpit. It looked cramped; the narrow black flight chair was surrounded with blinking lights and display screens, and the surfaces were peppered with an intimidating number of switches, levers, and dials. How was she ever going to figure out what all of it was for?

She lowered herself carefully into the chair, juggling her helmet and taking care not to bump the flight stick as she swung one leg over it. She looked up to find her fighter already pointed out toward the starry blackness of space, and even though the view was slightly blurred by the fuzzy blue of the hangar’s shields, she could see countless thousands of stars twinkling at her. Here, beyond the empty void of Dark Space, the stars were brighter and more numerous, and Alara found herself marveling at them despite her reluctance to enjoy her mandatory pilot’s training.

“Hello, pilot,” a cool, commanding voice said. Alara saw a hovering holo of a man’s head and shoulders appear, projected from the holoscreen on the left side of her dash. She noticed there were three such screens—one larger one in the center, and two smaller screens to either side. “Seal your canopy, and let’s get started. Find the red button under the transparent cover near your right elbow, marked raise/lower canopy, and punch it.”

Alara turned to look and she saw the indicated button glowing brightly, highlighted by the interactive holofield. She lifted the cover and depressed the button.

Immediately, there came a
hum
of motors and the angular canopy lowered over her head. It sealed with a hiss of pressurizing air, and then a glowing green HUD (heads-up display) appeared.

The hovering head spoke once more. “Now strap in and put on your helmet while I adjust your seat.”

The chair began sliding forward automatically until the flight stick came within easy reach and fit snugly between her legs. Alara noted that with a wry grin as in her mind’s eye the stick became something else.

“I said strap in and put on your—”

“Right.” Alara hunted around for her flight restraints. Finding them, she strapped in, and then she slid on her helmet and fiddled with the seals at her neck. She felt her ears pop as her suit pressurized.

“Now fire up the reactor. The ignition is just below the central display screen.”

Alara found the button under another transparent cover and stabbed it. A rising
whir
started up, causing the nova to vibrate around her.

“You are now sitting in the cockpit of a Nova RZX-1 Starfighter, otherwise known as the Mark I. This starfighter is a good compromise between armament, shielding, and speed. It comes equipped with three red dymium laser cannons, eight hailfire missiles, and four silverstreak torpedoes, as well as homing flares for countermeasures. There is an SLS drive for interstellar flight, control surfaces for atmospheric flight, and grav lifts for vertical takeoff and hover. Your top acceleration in space is 145 KAPS, while your shields are ranked at a DR of 80. This fighter is pulse-shielded, which means it’s designed to deflect sudden intense bursts of energy, not sustained fire, so if you don’t learn to jink and juke with the best of them, you’re going to have a very short career as a pilot. Now, listen up while I go through a quick overview of your nova’s flight controls.”

Alara listened intently to the virtual instructor and watched as it highlighted the main controls, starting with the flight stick, the handle-shaped throttle slider, and the rudder pedals which she now depressed experimentally with first one foot and then the other.

“Remember, moving the flight stick left or right does not move your fighter left or right, it only rolls you in that direction. To actually make a turn, you must first roll and then pull up on the stick, or else use your left rudder pedal to redirect your thrusters and slew your ship.

“Now find the throttle control beside your left armrest. Feel free to slide it forward, all the way to your fighter’s maximum acceleration of 145 KAPS. Don’t worry, your fighter’s engines are disabled for the moment.”

The holo field highlighted a handle-shaped slider which was set into a groove running down the middle of a shiny black digital screen. The screen was alight with glowing dashes which began at negative 150 and went up to 200. In front of the slider, the display read 0 KAPS in a large, glowing green font, and beside it another number read 0 m/s.

Reaching out to move the throttle as the instructor had told her to do, Alara slid it forward until she felt resistance. The leftmost of the two glowing green numbers quickly counted up to 145 KAPS and then stopped. The slider still had some room left to go, but the glowing dashes running past that point were all red.

“Good,” the instructor said. “Notice the two numbers at the bottom of the throttle display. The first one is KAPS and it describes your acceleration, with one KAPS being approximately equal to one meter per second per second in deep space. The second number is m/s, or meters per second, and that is your ship’s current speed. You can disengage thrusters and cruise to save fuel, or you can set a target speed to have your thrusters auto-disengage by playing with the pair of gray sliders on either side of the speed display. Go ahead and try it now.”

Alara tested the sliders and found they went all the way up to 999 km/s. She blinked. “Krak that’s fast!” Alara frowned. “Why does anyone bother to fight if they could just roar around the galaxy so fast that no one can catch up? Wouldn’t that make them invincible?”

“As the Joparans say, even the fastest bird must eventually land to rest its wings—you can’t run forever—and for practical purposes, within each system most Imperial space stations and gates lie no more than 10,000 klicks from each other. These clusters of orbiting objects are known as
orbitals
.

“Given that orbitals are relatively small, not only would very high speeds be hard to reach between one gate and another, but those speeds would be pointless for getting places. And just because you’re moving fast doesn’t make you invincible. In fact, you’ll be more predictable because you can’t easily change directions, and you’ll be unable to complete an SLS jump because the safeties will knock you back to real space.”

“Safeties?”

“The safeties prevent ships from entering SLS and maintaining jumps at speeds of over 999 meters per second, because at speeds faster than that you run the risk of disintegration. Apart from that restriction, an SLS drive takes a minimum of five minutes to spool up and another five to cool down after a jump, and you can’t change your
actual
heading while the drives are spooling, or you will end up jumping somewhere other than the coordinates you specified.”

“Hmmm. No point using it to run away in the middle of a fight, then,” Alara said.

“No, but you can use it as an emergency brake. At speeds over 999 meters per second, the safeties will engage and drop you out of SLS almost immediately, and due to the nature of superluminal space, your speed will be reduced to a negligible value as you exit.”

“Interesting . . .”

 
Are you ready to continue with your tutorial now, Alara?”

She nodded.

“Good. If you move the main throttle slider into the yellow behind the stops which mark zero, that will give you negative acceleration, whereas moving it past the red stops which mark your maximum acceleration will push your fighter into overdrive. That extra boost is also referred to as your afterburners. You can either push the throttle control up past the stops for a sustained boost, or simply trigger the afterburner switch on your flight stick for a temporary increase in speed.”

Alara saw the indicated switch flash twice on the left side of the flight stick, near where her thumb would rest.

“Your afterburners use a more potent form of fuel which will run out quickly, and using them too often may damage your fighter’s reactor and drive system, so you don’t want to use them unless it’s an emergency.”

Alara nodded.

“Apart from what we’ve already covered, there’s one final flight control to learn—your grav lifts.”

“Grav lifts work in space?” Alara asked.

“Your grav lifts repel anything that is matter, with weaker and weaker force the further you are from it.”

Alara nodded thoughtfully, filing that detail away for later. The tutorial went on, and she found herself paying rapt attention. She’d been determined not to cooperate with this mission, but she was being sucked in by it, her mind greedily soaking up every detail after the idleness of the past few days. Maybe she’d judged too soon. Maybe being a pilot would be good for her.

“Your next system is the gravidar,” the simulated instructor said. “You can see the forward and rear scopes projected in two dimensions at the top corners of your HUD. The left scope is front, while the right scope is rear. The green dot in the center of each scope is you, while all other green dots are friendly, all red are enemy, all yellow are neutral or undetermined, and all white are inert. For a more detailed view of gravidar contacts, you should refer to your star map. Your main holo display—or MHD—is set by default to display the star map.”

The MHD came to life now and showed her a large 3D grid. Near the center of the grid was a green venture cruiser-shaped icon. Around them were the hazy gray edges of the Stormcloud Nebula, along with vast tracts of black, empty space which lay between the
Defiant
and the mottled red and purple ball which was Taylon. Running along the far edges of the map were three numbered axes and three flat, blue grids which connected those axes and formed the back, bottom, and left “walls” of the cube, giving the impression of peering into an open box with the top, front, and right sides removed. The axes all went up to positive 100, and grid lines increased by increments of 10, for a total of 100 visible squares on each of the three grid walls.

Alara touched the map with her finger, and saw a tiny bright blue cube highlighted with coordinates in the format T-#-#-#. Alara wondered about the letter which preceded the coordinates as the instructor AI droned on about the star map. She tuned him out to study the line of text and numbers running along the bottom of the star map. It read:

Coordinate Scale:
100 km
³
Displaying:
Orbital: 4-5-66
(Zoom 100%) |...| System: “Taylon” (S-0-6-76) | Sector: “Frontier Space” (SE-9-4-29)
Display UGC