Frontier: Book One - The Space Cadets

Space Cadets

Laurence Moroney

Destiny Press
Publishing

Seattle, WA
2015

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either
the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or
deceased is unintentional.

Training 9

Part One: A Letter
F
rom
M
y
Father
13

Chapter 1. Departures
14

Chapter 2. Press 19

Chapter 3. Launch 23

Chapter 4. Orbit 29

Chapter 5. Arrival 34

Chapter 6. Quarters 38

Chapter 7. Secrets 42

Chapter 8. Mysteries 46

Chapter 9. Flight
56

Chapter 10. Korea
66

Chapter 11. Bully 71

Chapter 12. Sebastian
76

Chapter 13. Friendship
82

Chapter 14. Conflict 88

Chapter 15. Recovery 94

Chapter 16. Principal
98

Chapter 17. Higgins.

This book is dedicated to my
lovely wife, Rebecca, and my children Claudia and Christopher.
Being a part of your lives makes it all worthwhile. Thank
you!

It never failed
to give her
a thrill when she saw the moonscape rush by underneath her ship,
and the blue curve of Earth rise above it. Aisha smiled at its
beauty.

Down there, girls her age were
wondering about homecoming dances, and what dress they
’
d wear, or which boy would ask them out. She was much
happier
here
, piloting her ship, zipping at breakneck speeds
across the Moon, and getting ready to break into deep
space.

“
I think I see them,” said David,
her navigator and co-pilot, sitting in one of the wing pods to her
right. “Two-seven-zero karem one-nine-eight.”

“
Confirmed,” came the clipped
voice of Soo-Kyung, her gunner. Aisha glanced to the pod on her
left and her eyes met Soo-Kyung
’
s. The
Korean girl smiled and nodded.

Aisha always wanted a visual
confirmation. Comm lines could be hacked and voices faked.
Soo-Kyung knew this instinctively. That
’
s
what made them a great team.

“
Okay,” said Aisha. “Weapons hot.
Let
’
s check them out.”

She punched in the coordinates,
and the ship turned towards their target.

“
Visual range in five seconds,”
said David.

“
I see them,” Aisha replied. Her
heads up display started to light up with targets. Squares
projected on her canopy, wrapping tiny dots that could easily be
mistaken for stars to the naked eye.

“
That
’
s a
lot of ships,” she said, awe sneaking into her voice.

“
That
’
s a
bloody awful lot of ships,” said David.

Soo-Kyung was business as always.
“Orders?”

“
Can you confirm ship
type?”

“
They are mostly type-three
fighters. About eighty of them.”

“
What else?”

“
A single mothership.
That
’
s the target.”

“
No other fighters?”

“
A couple of type-ones, but hard
to tell with all the movement.”

The fighters were moving around
the mothership, following what looked like random patterns, making
it hard to get a radar lock.

“
Are they moving to
intercept?”

“
No, sir.”

“
David, probe the edge of their
defense shield.”

His gentle voice sounded in her
earpiece. “Yes, Sir.”

David took the ship forward
slowly, while Soo-Kyung watched the behavior of the enemy fighters.
They knew from experience that these ships could turn from defense
to offense in the blink of an eye. If they didn
’
t react, they could find themselves surrounded and
destroyed in seconds.

“
We are at the edge of previous
attack ranges,” said Soo-Kyung. “Recommend that we hold at this
position.”

“
Do it.”

The ship halted, and they floated
in space, watching the enemy.

“
Any update on ship types,
David?”

“
The best I got is maybe two or
three type-ones, the rest are definitely type-three.”

She wished she had read the spec
books more closely, but was glad David was there. “Turning radius
of type-threes?”

“
Two hundred degrees,” he
answered, almost in reflex.

“
Distance of fighters from the
mothership?”

“
Average about three hundred
clicks.”

Soo-Kyung raised
an eyebrow.
“
Are
you thinking what I
’
m thinking?
”

“
Yes,” said Aisha. “Full frontal
assault, all shields on front.”

“
If we leave our back
exposed--”

“
Hopefully they won
’
t get a chance. Maximum throttle, straight at the
mothership, direct all energy to front shields.”

“
Including lasers?”

“
Including lasers. We
’
re on bullets and torpedoes. Can
you do it?
”

She heard the smile in
Soo-Kyung
’
s voice. “Done.”

“
Good. And fire at
will.”

“
Roger.”

“
David. Punch course
in.”

“
Course, aye.”

“
Manual control to me.”

“
Roger.”

“
Here goes nothing!”

Aisha punched the program, and she
felt the craft lurch as they accelerated forward. She continued its
burn, getting faster and faster as they approached the enemy
ships.

“
Ships turning to
intercept.”

“
Acknowledged.”

She saw the enemy ships swarming
to intercept. Suddenly their random patterns stopped, and they
turned, almost as one, bearing down on her. They opened fire, but
the forward shields held.

“
Intercept in five seconds,” said
Soo-Kyung. Aisha marveled at her ability to stay calm, and it
seemed the more stressful the situation, the calmer she
was.

And just like that they flew
through the squadrons of enemy fighters, on a course straight for
the mothership.

“
They
’
re
turning to intercept.”

Time seemed to slow down in her
mind. The mothership approached weapons range at a painful crawl.
The enemy fighters, now behind her, were slowly turning to follow
them, with a clear shot at Aisha
’
s tail.
She
’
d turned off their lasers, directing
their energy to the shields, so they
’
d
need to be close for ballistic weapons to be effective.

It was going to be tight. Once the
enemy fighters had turned around, the back of Aisha
’
s fighter was exposed. The lead ones had almost
turned, and were ready to open fire.

But then Soo-Kyung had her target
locked and opened up with everything she had on the mothership.
Direct hits, but the ship stayed intact.

A hit on their right wing made the
ship lurch.

“
Now would be a good time,
Soo-Kyung.”

Aisha looked to her left, seeing
her friends
’
face deep in concentration.
Another torpedo launched, hitting a module to the rear of the
mothership's bridge. A small explosion was followed by several
large ones, but before the ship was destroyed, Aisha
’
s ship was hit again. This time right in the
engines.

Aisha felt her ship lurch. Red
lights all over her console. The reactor had taken a direct hit. It
was about to go critical. Her heart was beating hard. She reached
for the eject buttons, hesitating long enough to see the mothership
go up in a ball of flame.

The moment
’
s hesitation was enough. She felt the ship lurch as
the reactor gave out. Her mind slowed as the white flash enveloped
them. She had enough time to realize, with resignation, that she
was dead. Both co-pilots too.

The simulator door opened, and
Captain Simms
’
craggy face looked in at
her.

“
You
’
re
dead
. All of you. Again,” he said. Disapproval in his voice.
“I thought you guys were better than that.”

A Letter From My Father

My Dearest Aisha:

I don
’
t
even know how to begin writing this letter. I look at you now,
sleeping in your crib, so small and so helpless, and I wish I could
be there with you when you take your first steps. I wish I could
see it when you get on the bus for your first day of school. I wish
I could hold you when you come home crying for the first time,
realizing that the world is a bigger and badder place than you
could have ever imagined.

But I won
’
t be. The disease that is tearing through my body
will take me away from you soon. And I
’
m
so very sorry. But, so that I won
’
t be a
distant and mysterious memory, I
’
m writing
you this letter.

For you have a destiny. A bright
and wonderful destiny…

The transport plane
was older and more rickety than she would have
expected for one headed to the spaceport. Aisha peered out the
window of the plane intently, waiting for her first glimpse of the
great cable veering skyward from Kiritimati into the depths of
space.

It even had the old-school seats
facing each other across a small table. A man sat there, and he was
watching her closely.

“
It
’
s
nothing really special,” he said. “You don
’
t really see anything. It
’
s
only interesting when a launch happens.”

“
How often?” she asked, knowing
the answer already. She always knew the answer already, but she
asked anyway.

“
It depends,” he said, looking at
his watch. “We build the shuttle onsite and then launch it.
It
’
s not worth bringing it back to Earth,
where it would burn up in the atmosphere, so it
’
s designed to be launched once, and then disassembled
into various different things to be used up there.”

He pointed at the sky.

“
I’
m
going up tomorrow,” she said.

He nodded, smiling. “I figured. We
get a lot of kids your age coming through here, heading for the
Academy.”

He smiled and went back to reading
the news from his tablet. He hadn
’
t said
anything about her color. Mother had insisted on telling everyone
within earshot that Aisha was the first African-American to go to
the Academy. And not only was she African-American, she was a
girl
.

Aisha groaned
inwardly. She wished mother would just
stop
. It had been a couple of hours
since they had left Hawaii. The plane flew south to the tiny atoll
that Aisha couldn
’
t take her eyes off of. Upon arrival, they would take the
short trip out to the bottom of the cable, and the fleet of ships
imaginatively called
Terminus.
That would be the last stop before she launched
into orbit, leaving Earth behind.