Warpath (44 page)

The spectacle was made
worse for Hottie, who was cringing at the sight of himself
pantomiming Ashley in an oversexed way, the gathered pilots of
Samurai Squadron weren’t whistling and catcalling at the hologram,
they were doing it in his direction. Minh-Chu shut the playback down
and turned to Hottie. “Quiet,” Minh-Chu said. He didn’t have to
say it loudly or forcefully for his pilots to calm down. “So,
that’s how you got your call sign, and I get that you had twelve
shots of Hakri Slider in you when you put on your show, but now I’ve
got you leering and commenting at one of our own, while you’re
sober. There are three big reasons why we don’t do that here.
First, you make people feel like objects, like they’re only a stack
of parts. Second, you risk making a whole part of this fighter wing
uncomfortable. Third, there’s a no fraternization rule for each
department, do you know why that is? It’s because we’re all
brothers and sisters in here. You may not like some of these pilots,
they may not like you, but because we’re brothers and sisters, we
get each others backs, we are a family. I just caught you staring at
one of your sisters, and what you said would definitely get spread
around. If I get the feeling that someone in this squadron will have
a second thought about saving your ass out there because of something
you said in here, I will have to remove you. If Slick doesn’t want
you on the Triton, then you’ll have to pull duty somewhere where it
doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you until we get back to
Tamber and we can dump you off. That’s where you’re headed if you
ruin the confidence this squadron has in you.”

“You should have
heard what he said before you came in,” said Fury, an older female
pilot who Minh-Chu just drew into the Squadron from the Triton. “It’s
on Crewcast, I’m sure.”

“Do you have time to
come to Captain’s Mast tomorrow, Fury?” Minh-Chu asked. “So we
can address this pilot’s problem the right way?”

“I have watch, then
mandatory rest for the rest of the day,” Fury replied. “Just tell
me when to be there.”

“C’mon,” Hottie
said. “For looking and a bit of appreciation?”

“If you make her
uncomfortable, you make us all uncomfortable. Besides, that’s no
way to treat your sister,” Minh-Chu said mildly. “Communications
is giving a course on fraternization and appropriate dating aboard,
you’re going to be there.”

“Grounded and a
class? That’s overkill,” Hottie said.

“Those aren’t even
your punishments. I’m just grounding you because it’ll make
everyone feel better, the class is so you can learn a thing or two.
Your punishment will be decided in front of the Captain, our
Communications Officer of rank and me at Captain’s Mast.”

“So, I can’t even
compliment someone?” Hottie said.

Minh-Chu sighed. “Quick
demonstration before we get to the briefing,” he announced.
“Sticky, can you pay a respectful compliment to Fury?”

Sticky, a petite young
woman with large dark hair, turned to Fury and smiled. “You look
great today, I wish I could do that with my hair,” Sticky said.

“See, that’s not as
colourful as what you were saying,” Minh-Chu said. “But you can
pay someone that compliment anywhere, and no one will feel
uncomfortable about it. Now, grab a seat and be quiet while everyone
who will be launching when we reach normal space discusses our
mission.”

The whole room shifted
focus as they took their seats. A third of the room was occupied by
comfortable seats made for long mission analysis and briefing
sessions, the middle had the two holographic tables, and the rest of
the room was still unused.

It was refreshing to
see a full sized squadron, with twenty-one pilots including himself,
in a proper squad room. He hadn’t had as much time to know them as
he would have liked, but he could tell most of them either had a good
professional attitude, or looked up to him. He hoped he’d get as
lucky with the other squadron, the Marauders. “We will return to
normal space tomorrow at sixteen hundred hours. At that time Samurai
Squadron will launch.”

Minh-Chu brought up a
tactical display showing the mess they were going to head into.
Hundreds of thousands of massive shards of ice were strewn between
patches of gaseous clouds and other particles. “The mystery in this
section of the Iron Head nebula, called the Death Cap, is where this
ice rich asteroid field came from. The shape of the ice suggests that
it comes from something shattering, but no one on record has proven
what that was. The best guess is that the original object that this
ice belt originates from was approximately two hundred times the size
of earth, and it suffered a collision with another body travelling at
incredible speeds, a body that was mostly ice as well. The belt is
relatively calm, drifting through nebular matter in the same
direction we’ll be travelling.”

“Relative to what?”
asked Flex, a pilot transferred from Haven Shore who earned her name
because of her bodybuilder’s physique. “Sorry sir, but are you
saying it’s calm relative to a blender, or to a lake on a calm
day?”

“Ah, this will help,”
Minh-Chu said as he brought up another projection. A close-up
hologram of slowly churning ice shards and debris appeared, the
components of which were lazily travelling against a backdrop of
white and brown nebular matter. “The light is from a cluster of
stars half a light year away, but as you can see from this recording
taken four years ago, the ice belt is calm. This image is time
lapsed, we’re looking at it sped up forty-times, so most of it
should look stationary when you’re out there. There are billions of
objects though, so none of you will be riding alone. Gunships will
have a scanning officer, and a systems officer as well as a pilot.
Uriels will have a pilot and a sensor intercept officer. I’m not
going to have any of us smashed on our first time out. Questions?”

“I’m seeing iron
and some other minerals as minor components in the chemical
analysis,” Jinx said. “Can we expect sensor issues?”

“Only at long range,”
Minh-Chu said. “That brings me to the mission objectives. Our first
objective will be to safely extend the range of the Revenge’s
sensors. If we encounter any resistance from Order of Eden or their
allies, and we can take them out without causing great risk to each
other or the Revenge, we are to do so. If you encounter something you
can’t slag in five seconds or less, then we are to attempt to take
it on as a squadron. We are not to let any target we can take care of
near the Revenge. Heavily armoured ships out of our class are the
exception, and we’ll be told when to regroup. The good news is that
most of the asteroids are so big that our weapons won’t stir things
up.”

“So the Revenge is
going through this?” Carnie, a pilot with intentionally knotted,
long blonde hair asked. He was one of Minh-Chu’s favourite new
pilots, and was named Carnie because he was found at a carnival when
he was a baby and raised by the travellers who found him.

“That’s right, and
we don’t get to know where the Triton is. They will be cloaked. We
move through this field, and save a couple days travel going around
it,” Minh-Chu answered.

“Sorry, Sir,”
Sticky said. “But I have to ask; Why don’t we use our new
dimension drive and skip right through this?”

“We’ve recently
learned that the dimension drive doesn’t completely remove us from
our home dimension. We’re in a shadow of our dimension, where solid
objects with sufficient mass could still get in our way. At least,
that’s how it was explained to me. That is why we always emerge in
our home dimension, because we never stray too far from it, we just
skim along the top for a while, then nature gets its way and forces
us back out, closing the door behind.”

Minh-Chu looked at the
twenty pilots in front of him. He had their complete attention. “Now,
we have old intelligence that tells us that there are patrols in the
Death Cap section of the Iron Head Nebula, real Order of Eden patrols
with support. Our intelligence shows that they pass in these three
areas, and we have to go here.”

Minh-Chu said, pointing
to a space in the middle of the opposite end of the ice field, an
area two million kilometres to the left, and another four million
kilometres above. The last point he indicated, their destination, was
between the middle patrol and the one to the left of it. “Those
patrols passed through those areas every seven and a half hours, give
or take a few minutes. As far as we know, they use fast corvette
class Regent Galactic built ships that report to a larger central
battle group somewhere behind them.”

“Oh, good,” Hot
Chow said. “So if Regent Galactic built them, then they’re low on
sleep and all beat up because of their mattresses. Man, I could feel
the springs on those things.” Minh-Chu didn’t know exactly why
the pilot was called Hot Chow, but he guessed it may be because of
his thick middle.

“Right,” Minh-Chu
said. “If we run into any patrol craft, we have to make sure they
go missing, and don’t have a chance to report. Be ready to go after
propulsion and main power systems, wipe out emitters if you can’t
get a good shot at those. If we meet anything worse, we are to wait
for orders. If we are being jammed, and cannot get orders from the
Revenge, then one of you will be sent to laser link range in order to
update them on our situation while the rest of us leads the enemy
away from the Revenge.”

“So, this is real war
action,” said Jinx. “We’re in it for real.”

“Absolutely,”
Minh-Chu said. “And I expect you to be the best you can be, because
you’re my wingman for this trip,” he said, pointing to Jinx. “The
rest of this run is pretty simple if there are no surprises. The
objective is to get a good scan of the area, finish escorting the
Revenge through this mess. We join the Revenge and Triton in wormhole
transit to the next point.”

“Why not use the
D-Drive again?” asked Hot Chow.

“It saved us five
days time travelling here, but since there is no way to curve a
course with a dimension drive, a wormhole makes more sense for these
complicated, short term jumps. If we don’t meet any resistance
after that first jump, then we’re in for a shift. Six short jumps
in one eight hour period and two passages through light particulate
clouds. That is, if plans don’t change.” There were a few groans
and rolled eyes. “Hey, it’s time we work for a living, so let’s
start prepping,” Minh-Chu said. “We start sims in ten minutes.”

The first full day of
dimension drive travel came to a close, and Jake could feel the
entire ship breathe a sigh of relief as they emerged into normal
space. Captain Valent was sitting much more firmly in his seat,
recovering from having the tumour removed was on track with Ensign
Levine’s predictions. There had been less than twenty breaks in
regulations while they were in transit, and all of them minor. The
most common complaint about the new rules was how long it took to
read them, but almost everyone was reading the summarized version, so
the rules were getting around.

“Position?” Jake
asked.

“Confirming,”
replied Ensign Ramone replied from where she sat beside Ashley at the
navigation station. “We are nine thousand kilometres from the
Triton, on their port side. We’ve arrived in the section of the
Iron Head Nebula that is called the Death Cap, exactly where we
predicted we’d emerge. The asteroid field is dead ahead.”

“I have several
emergency transponder signals and distress calls coming through,”
Liara said. “It’ll take us a moment to find out how old they
are.”

“Kadri, start
scanning,” Jake said.

“The Triton has
signalled that all systems are nominal,” Agameg said. “They are
cloaking and beginning to move on. Their course is logged into our
tactical system.”

“Helm, follow our
pre-determined path through the asteroids, make as few adjustments as
possible,” Jake ordered.

“Sticking to the
plan, moving ahead.”

“Launching fighters,”
Stephanie announced from above. “Ordering Samurai Wing to begin
their patrol.”

The main hangar began
launching four fighters and two gunships at a time from the front and
rear of the ship. They stayed together in groups of three, with a
gunship in the middle and two uriel fighters flanking it. The three
groups spread out, increasing the Revenge’s scanning range.

The Clever Dream was
the last out, and after it moved three hundred metres away from the
Revenge, it cloaked. The hangar doors closed, and the Revenge’s
combat shielding began to fortify its charge. “All right, let’s
get the best sensor readings we can,” Jake said. “Kadri, set to
maximum power active scanning, three hundred cycles per second.”

“Aye,” Kadri
replied. “Maximum power to all sensors, three hundred cycles per
second.”

Jake’s tactical
screen began populating quickly, and with extremely high detail. He
sent what he was seeing to the larger holographic projector that
filled the middle of the bridge with an expanding image of the white
and brown asteroid belt. Light from the massive distant star cluster
reflected and refracted through the ice, painting the area in hues of
white and gold. The sensors picked up more detail further out as
their signals travelled.

“We have energy
readings,” Kadri said. “There are fighters in the asteroid belt.”

“Tactical, ready
point defence and make sure our fighter screen is aware,” Jake
ordered.

“Aye,” Frost
replied. “Safeties off, point defence ready.”

“Samurai Squadron are
aware of the fighters. Scanning confirms, twenty five fighter class
ships, Tyri Raider Class, definitely Order of Eden, three generations
behind their top fighters. Ronin is looking for a go on pursuit,”
Stephanie reported.