Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Contribution

2953-10-01 – Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Contribution 

The Blade Dancer, though produced in some numbers and shown off in many corporate press releases, has not made its combat debut, at least, not in public announcements. If its practical performance is anything like what Sovereign claims on paper, it may change the small craft warfare environment in this war considerably, assuming they can build enough of them. 

Kel hushed Sadek’s concerns before he could voice them, then keyed his comm. “Cour-de-Lion, we have been docked some minutes. Is there some difficulty?" 

Sadek could hear the clipped-tone response easily because the human-made earpiece did not fit well into his alien ear canal. “No difficulty, Traveler. Commander Daseta is en route to the airlock.” 

“Oh. I have not yet met this Daseta.” Kel made a hoarse, chirping noise. “Captain Lemont is otherwise occupied?” 

There was no response, at least not one Sadek could hear. He winced, then cleared his throat. “Something wrong, Boss?” 

“Oh... probably not.” Kel waved one three-fingered hand. “When I last spoke to my friend Lemont, he told me he was expecting a new command. I’d assumed this was his ship, and that he’d come down to see all I’ve been able to do with his help.” 

“I don’t think people who work for Sovereign are allowed to have friends.” Elliott Deadman shook his head. “They’re cutthroats, Boss. One of their top execs is literally a pirate who thought mercenary work would make more money. Probably right about it, too.” 

“Nonsense.” Kel made a throaty sound that was his best approximation of a chuckle. “They are professionals. They do business. They would hardly earn an official contract with your government otherwise.” 

The three human members of the crew exchanged a few nervous glances. Wherever Kel had gotten this vast confidence in the above-board nature of the Confederated government and military, it would be hard to cure him of it – if they got a chance. It was entirely possible Sovereign had arrived to throw Traveler‘s crew in a brig and put their own crew in charge of Traveler to suit their own business needs. They probably wouldn’t put four civilian spacers out an airlock outright, but only because covering it up while keeping the ship would be too expensive. 

A clanking sound like someone knocking on the airlock from the other side prevented the horrified silence from growing too long. Kel excitedly jabbed at a control on his wrist, and a moment later the airlock irised open. 

Cool, slightly higher pressure air from Cour de Lion billowed out around the lone black-clad figure standing in the short umbilical walkway, causing her wispy white hair to swirl around her face and shoulders like clouds around the summit of a mountain. Undeterred, the woman stepped across the threshold, her shiny boots clicking loudly on Traveler’s deck plating. With her left hand pushing the hair out of her eyes, she raised the other in a crisp salute. To Sadek’s surprise, that hand was blood-red, and the fingers slightly too long to be human. He’d never met an Atro’me before, but he knew immediately this was one. 

“Captain Kel.” The woman succeeded in pushing the bulk of her white hair out of her face, revealing piercing yellow eyes and features that were almost human, and distressingly beautiful. “I am glad to meet you at last. I have heard so much about you and your ship.”  

Sadek couldn’t help but stare. He’d heard of Atro’me going under the knife to appear more appealing to humans, but he’d never imagined such alterations could be so successful as this.  

Next to him, Deadman made a quiet noise, as if he’d almost spoken up but thought better of it at the last moment. 

Kel, barely humanoid as he was, was unfazed. Perhaps he didn’t even realize that she wasn’t human, or perhaps he didn’t care. “I presume you are Commander Daseta? You have some advantage over me, because I have heard nothing about you.” 

“Anazj-Haare Daseta.” The woman stepped forward and lowered her saluting hand in an offered handshake to Kel. As she did, her eyes flicked over the xeno’s shoulder and momentarily met Sadek’s. There was intent in the set of those vertical-slit pupils, but he couldn’t begin to guess what it was. “Captain Lemont sends his compliments, but corporate has assigned me to handle this matter going forward.” 

“What matter?” Kel took Daseta’s hand in his clawed fingers and shook it gently. “Is there some trouble?” 

“I will explain.” Daseta gestured into Traveler. “But we need not stand and talk here. I understand this ship has a lounge?” 

“Of course.” Kel nodded, his head bobbling at the end of his long, arched neck. “This way.” 

Sadek’s sense of danger had not been allayed by the mercenaries only sending one officer to talk with them, and that one obviously no physical threat. Daseta was a perfect distraction in case Sovereign meant to pull tricks, because the eye was so easily drawn to her. The alterations were more than her face – Sadek knew that Atro'me had quite different skeletal structure and musculature from humans, making it impossible for their females to have the curves of a healthy human woman. Even though her uniform was not cut to accentuate it, it was obvious Daseta had gotten this, too, altered. 

Idly, Sadek wondered what the surgeons had done with her chest. Atro’me, being loosely analogous to Earth’s avians or reptilians, lacked mammary tissue, but Daseta certainly had more than pectoral muscles underneath that uniform. Was that extra weight really worth carrying around everywhere? How much of her was a natural organism? Despite being unable to keep his eyes off her for long, he shuddered. A human who’d had that much work done would disgust him, but this was not a human, and it didn’t seem right to apply the same standard. Especially if the result was so easy on the eyes. 

A minute later, Kel had led Daseta and his little crew into the lounge. There was of course plenty of seating around the central holo-projector which got most of its use hosting strategy game contests between Deadman and Powers. Sadek and Kel had tried their hand at these games a few times, but the rules had proved far too complex to pick up easily. 

Daseta gestured for the crew to be seated, and waited with her hands folded behind her back until they were all comfortable. “Now, Captain Kel. It has-” 

“Please, just Kel.” Kel interrupted. 

Daseta smiled at him, as if to conceal annoyance at the interruption. “As you please. It has come to the attention of my superiors that your people have agreed to sell strike-scale hull systems to Confederated interests. Sovereign would like to become a partner in this business venture.” 

“Partner?” Alicia Powers raised one hand. “You mean, help us move and sell Iataran hulls?” 

“You are.” Daseta shook her head, and that wispy cloud of hair once again started floating in front of her face. “Sovereign would like to be the exclusive buyer, starting immediately with what you have in the hold right now.” 

“Exclusive buyer?” Kel made a strange noise in his throat. “You wish to be the distributor?” 

“No, of course not.” Daseta tossed her head. “We wouldn’t sell a single one.” She gestured to the projector in the floor. “May I?” 

Kel released the device to her control with a tap on his wrist. Daseta extended the screen on her wristcuff and flicked a symbol toward the projector. It came to life, displaying a familiar spacecraft schematic. 

“This is the Confederated Navy Puma.” Daseta gestured to the hologram. “Fast, powerful, agile. A proven design. Sovereign and other mercenaries can’t get them, not even for war purposes.” Daseta flicked the screen again, and a slightly smaller, sleeker craft replaced the Puma. “We buy cometing platforms like the Savitri Cutlass, but they just don’t have the same performance.” 

Another flick on her wrist screen exploded the craft on the display into a thousand component parts. “We have a license to build most of these parts. Why shouldn’t we put them together into a new package?” The components started coming back together in a new configuration. A few new ones, highlighted in bright green, appeared, and a few vanished into haze at the edge of the display. “The moment Captain Lamont sent his report about this ship up the chain, our engineers started working out what we could do with something like it.” 

The parts came together into a flattened ellipsoid shape, and a translucent shell surrounded them. The diagram was without labels, of course, but Sadek could tell just by looking at it that this was something highly unorthodox. Strike craft just didn’t look like that.  

“We call it the Blade Dancer.” Daseta smiled. “And with your help, it will give Sovereign a strike rig that will make the Puma obsolete.” 

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Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Secretive Friends

2953-09-24 – Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Secretive Friends 

As Traveler eased closer to the other ship on maneuvering thrusters only, Sadek Sherburn watched uneasily from his station on the command deck. Obviously, the craft’s control scheme was optimized for Kel’s use, but there had been enough space on the aft bulkhead for a small second console and crash-pad chair. It had been months since that set-up had been rigged, but still Sadek hadn’t quite gotten over his agoraphobia doing duty shifts under that great bubble of transparency. 

It was the perfect place to watch the docking procedure, of course; he could see along Traveler’s gracefully curving flank to the projection housing the airlock and docking machinery, and got a perfect view of how much larger that other ship was. Its sharp prow extended into the darkness far forward of Traveler’s curved nose, and the swell of its engine section didn’t begin until far aft of the aftmost antenna of Kel’s vessel. 

At least it was obviously a human-made vessel. For his first months aboard, that was a rarity; almost the moment they’d had a full crew, Kel had taken his ship deep into what was, theoretically, the un-surveyed Sagittarius Frontier. There, after some wrangling, they had taken aboard a cargo of translucent alien-tech strike hulls, built the same way as Traveler itself. The hope had been to ferry to Sagittarius Gate to sell them, but it hadn’t been that simple. Nothing profitable, in Sadek’s experience, ever was. 

A ship unknown to the computer had appeared out of the black in the outskirts of an anonymous star system, weapons hot and comms open. After a private conversation with its skipper, Kel had cheerily brought Traveler in to dock, apparently fearing nothing. 

The shock of docking reverberated through the ship. A moment later, Kel took his claw-like hands off the controls and activated the intercom. “Please report to port airlock.” He released the control with a double-jointed flourish and turned to Sadek. “I was not expecting my friends so far out from the Gate. But it is a good time to introduce you.” 

Just as Kel rose from his chair, innumerable lights on that great grim bulk they’d just docked to came to life. Sadek blinked, un-comprehending for a long moment. Those lights illuminated an eerily familiar insignia, a crown of gold set with black stars. Where had he seen it before? 

Unlike most vessels built by humans which used vertical lifts and stair-shafts to connect the decks, Traveler employed a revolving, diagonal chair-lift descending the aft dorsal midline. Kel took the first chair, and Sadek stared at the insignia a moment longer while the second one appeared for him. It meant trouble, he was certain. Almost everything about this ship did. 

Sadek rode the chair-lift down three decks, then got off and backtracked forward to the corridor that would take him to the airlock. Kel was already there when he arrived, along with the rest of the crew – the engineer Alicia Powers and the young tech Elliott Deadman. Deadman looked as if he had just rolled out of bed to answer the summons, and that was probably what had happened; he and Powers had long ago chosen to alter their sleep cycles so one technical spacer was awake at all times and one was on duty two shifts out of three. 

Kel rubbed his three-fingered hands together. “Friends. Shipmates. I ask you to be on your best behavior. The commander of the vessel that has come to meet us here tells me their masters have a business proposal for us from those who have done me kindness before. One that could not wait until we returned to the Gate.” 

“Who are they?” Alicia Powers had, of course, heard Kel refer to the obligations he’d satisfied before taking on the crew. Evidently sworn to secrecy, he’d not revealed much about this to anyone, not even Sadek, except to hint that the favor had been related to how well equipped his ship was, in its human-tech configuration.  

“We have docked with the vessel of war Cour-de-Lion.” Kel bowed his bulbous-eyed head briefly, as if in respect to the name, though it certainly meant nothing to him, being not even an Anglo-Terran word. 

Deadman, barely paying attention, suddenly stiffened. “You can’t be serious.” 

Sadek turned to the young man. “Is there a problem?” 

“The only ship I know by that name is Sovereign Security’s new light carrier.” 

Sadek winced. That was why that insignia had been so familiar. He turned to Kel. “So that’s how you got such a favorable deal when you got to the Gate with a crippled ship. You fell in with Sovereign.”  

“Why yes. They asked me very nicely not to publish this fact, of course. I have done so.” Kel turned his huge, milky eyes on every member of his crew. “I trust you will do also.” 

Sadek gritted his teeth. How could he begin to explain how much trouble that name meant, to one so alien to Reach customs? Sovereign Security Solutions was the largest and most notorious band of theoretically-legal hired guns in the Reach. They were on the right side in the War, but only because it was a rare chance to get big money contracts from the Confederated Navy. They were loyal to nothing but the bottom line, and were notorious for double-dealing. Here they were now, at the mercy of mercenaries who had none. 

Obviously, Sadek Sherburn did not keep the confidence of his employer, at least not forever. Sovereign’s interest in the dealings of Traveler and its crew are no longer a secret. Mr. Sherburn sent in an additional account to explain that yes, he and his mates had something to do with Sovereign’s new in-house-designed strike interceptor, a radical, translucent-hulled design they call the Blade Dancer, built mainly with licensed Savitri components. The Blade Dancer is supposedly as maneuverable as an Incarnation Coronach in the void despite being several times heavier (much of this weight being long-haul mission optimization features), and it incorporates an advanced metalens laser system for its main armament that theoretically can fire at almost any angle without the need for a turret. 

Within days of the public reveal, we had datasphere queries about the relationship of this craft to Kel’s people and their strange method of constructing starships. Evidently, those who knew Sadek’s contact information sent him similar queries. 

The events of this account are some months old by now. Sadek would probably not have dared to send this in closer to the actual events. 

 

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Tales from the Service: A Coronach for a Spin

2953-09-17 – Tales from the Service: A Coronach for a Spin 

The landing locks released with a shuddering clunk, and in Callisto Seyer's vision-helmet, the landing pad began to fall away. There was no sensation of motion at all; the gravitics on the sleek, almost alien Coronach were tuned precisely. In most strike rigs Callisto had flown, there was a brief sensation of motion with dust-off, quickly dampened by the computer. 

“Clear of the deck.” Callisto gently nudged the controls to one side, and the hangar outside her began swinging past. Noramlly there was an autopilot routine to line a strike craft up with Star Coracle’s high-gee launch tube, but the autopilot in the Coronach was the stock one, barely reconfigured, and it offered very little automation. From what Callisto had been told, routines like this were things the intended cybernetic pilot was supposed to code into their implants rather than their craft’s systems, making various tweaks to optimize their experience that would carry over from rig to rig. 

Fortunately, manual launches were no problem, even in the most ungainly strike craft. The funnel-shaped launch system entrance was well marked with colorful markers that helped her center the direction indicator on all axes, and a gentle nudge with the maneuvering thrusters edged her forward until the first of the magnetic coils was all around her. The techs had tested that the system wouldn’t destroy the Coronach, of course, but it was designed for such launches. The delicate wing-like blades on either side of the craft were nonferrous to minimize stresses put on them, and the inertial isolation system would prevent anything – pilot included – from getting torqued beyond its intended spec. 

“I’m in the slot.” Callisto took her hands off the controls and idled the gravitic drive. “Lock the breach.” 

“Copy, Zenith. Launch in thirty.” 

Callisto could just turn her head enough that the screens in the helmet showed her the great armored hatch of the launch tube sealing behind her. A moment later, the air was pumped out of the tube. This took a while; because there was no hurry to launch, the ship was pumping the air into tanks for later re-use rather than simply opening the outer hatch and venting it into space. 

“Five seconds.” The launch controller announced. “Four. Three. Two. Coils powering up...” 

There was once again no sensation of motion, even though the brightly painted interior of the launch tube blurred and vanished into blackness. No lights on the rudimentary status HUD the techs had rigged up so much as flickered out of green as Callisto was hurled outward into the void at several hundred meters per second. After waiting a three-count, she brought up power on the gravitic drive and brought the craft into a wide, graceful turn. It responded intuitively to the controls, even though these were a haphazard affair. 

“Everything feels fine out here but my back.” Callisto put the craft on a great, gentle orbit around the company mothership to find the recovery tug, which was supposed to be waiting for her. “Where’s the tug?” 

“A few clicks dead ahead of Coracle.” Alfred Demirci, not the normal ops controller, responded. “Can’t you pick up his transponder?” 

Callisto cast about her heads-up display for a few seconds, until she spotted the blue rectangle labeled NURSEMAID. She noticed other symbols, too – the large blue circle at the center of the carrier, and the distance-faded ellipses indicating the transponders of local merchant traffic. “I have him now. Visuals and situation display being overlaid is going to take some getting used to.” 

Less than a minute later, Callisto was engaging reverse thrust to match velocities with the recovery tug. Normally, this too was an autopilot routine, but again, there was nothing in the Coronach’s computer for it. The boxy craft came into visual range, and she had to admit it was better to be sitting inside the Incarnation interceptor than to be watching it approach from an unarmed utility vessel. Coronachs had a nasty reputation, especially among patchily-equipped mercenary units. Demirci Defense was better prepared than most, perhaps, but Gallagher was probably getting a good opportunity to visualize his worst nightmare. 

“You pass a visual inspection, Zenith.” Gallagher reported. “Let’s get on with this test. I hear they’ve even got a target for you to blast if you feel up to it.” 

“Let’s see how this goes, Nursemaid.” Callisto brought up the mission parameters on her HUD, which had been filled with all the steps of the test flight. The first was an agility test, operating both the thrusters and the gravitic drive in combat-style maneuvers. That might almost be fun – as long as nothing went wrong. “I’m not sure I trust this thing yet.” 

“Don’t blame you.” Gallagher chuckled nervously. “Let’s get this over with.” 

Callisto sighed, tried to stretch her back only to find the hard wall of the upper housing prevented it, then signaled to ops that she was ready to start the test routine. Her ten minutes couldn’t be over soon enough. 

Callisto also attached part of her after-action report on the subjective handling characteristics of the modified Coronach to her account. Her report indicates that the bad cockpit ergonomics of the initial package would have made pilot endurance a serious problem. Maneuvering response to the hand-held controls was excellent, though possibly a bit too sensitive, as even adjusting oneself in the cockpit often caused a control input to be detected. 

According to her, there were only three flights with the initial version of the retrofit, after which the Coronach was pulled apart and re-modified with a new version much resembling the production version. The maneuvering responsiveness was toned down a bit, and the automation (mentioned in the account as a problem) was improved by adding extra computing power to the helmet system to take the place of the intended cybernetics. 

Most importantly, the new package freed up most of the space lost in the initial version by using a much smaller and more specialized control processing system, and attaching it to the upper cowling rather than to the floor of the pilot’s compartment. 

I’m still not sure flying a retrofitted Coronach would be a comfortable experience – Callisto suggests the ergonomics are still a problem even now – but at least it’s good enough that pilots can be in that cockpit for several hours at a time without physical distress. 

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Tales from the Service: A Coronach in Trials

2953-09-10 – Tales from the Service: A Coronach in Trials 

As the main test pilot for the Demirci Defense retrofit system, Callisto Seyer reported many amusing stories about the various iterations of the package that the company went through over the months it took to produce the final product. These, though often embarrassing for someone and funny, required significant technical knowledge to understand, so I am not going to publish them to the main text feed. I will post some of the more interesting ones on our network’s main datasphere hub, especially those which came with pictures or diagrams (there were several of these). 

I suspect that this account was given to us as a slantwise advertisement for the retrofit package as much as for any other reason. I approve of clever marketing along these lines, but I should note that neither Nojus nor myself nor any other Cosmic Background employee, nor the company at large, has received any money for publishing this account. It is interesting enough to permit Demirci its free advertising. 

Callisto Seyer emerged from the pilots’ locker room wearing her usual skin-tight silver flight suit, to find her boss waiting in the ready room. Normally, she was wearing a reaction harness and other equipment over the body-hugging pressure suit, but none of that would fit inside the Coronach, so she had left it all in her locker. 

Alfred Demirci’s eyes absently roved up and down Callisto’s body, a slight smile tugging at his lips. She was not used to being sized up that way, being short, slight, and pinched compared to the bombshell curves and glittering smile of Yvette Gladstone, the squadron’s executive officer. For this flight, though, Callisto was going out alone. She was in nobody’s shadow now, and she rather hated how good it felt to have that attention on her. 

Demirci shook his head and looked up toward the status board, where only one status wireframe appeared. The Coronach’s ovoid body and long, blade-like wings looked strange up there, where normally six or seven blocky Navy-surplus gunships and interceptors appeared. “The techs are ready for you.” He held up a data slate. “I’d send this with you, but-” 

“Even if I could fit it in that cockpit, I’d never be able to read it with the display helmet on.” Callisto shrugged. “It’s only a test flight. You can walk me through the checklist once I’m out in the black.” She didn’t add, if she got that far; the techs’ work retrofitting the Coronach for a normal pilot was so haphazard that it was very possible she’d never get the thing off the pad. 

“Right.” Demirci nodded. “Take it slow out there. We’ve no idea what the tolerances-” 

“Boss, remember how many credits you had to promise to get me to agree to even get in that thing?” Callisto stepped toward him, crossing her arms. “I won’t break your damned toy.” 

“Another reminder wouldn’t hurt.” Demirci sighed. “This could make us both rich, Seyer.” 

“But it can only make one of us dead.” Callisto arched one eyebrow. “Is Gallagher ready?” 

Eric Gallagher, the main pilot for the company’s recovery tug, was supposed to go out with Callisto. His rig launched from the service hangar farther aft, which was somewhat roomier but didn’t have the forward hangar’s rapid combat deployment system. 

“He launched a couple minutes ago, reporting a green board. He’ll be on station before you’re sealed up in the Coronach.” 

“Good.” This was of course no strong guarantee of Callisto’s safety; the recovery tug didn’t have the right ports to interface with the Coronach if it were in distress, nor did the Coronach have any sort of airlock with which she could disembark and join Gallagher in the tug’s crew cabin. The only way to exit the Coronach was to have the techs unbolt the cockpit cover panel to let her out. If something really bad happened, it would be a question of whether her reserve oxygen supply lasted longer than it took Gallagher to grapple her and tow her back to the pressurized hangar. Naturally, there wasn’t room for a large atmo cartridge, nor would she have the elbow room to swap the small cartridge in her suit for another. 

There being no need for a proper briefing, Demirci led Callisto through the low tunnel terminating in the armored blast doors that opened onto the main hangar deck. As these opened in front of them, Callsito saw the Coronach gleaming black like some exotic predatory insect on its pad. Its lines were beautiful, in a sinister sort of way. Knowing she’d be flying it in a few minutes didn’t help. If that chitinous hunter was going to devour anyone today, she was on the menu. 

The techs clustered around the Coronach already had the dorsal paneling open where Callisto would have to climb into the cramped cockpit space, and a rather sorry-looking metal gantry arched between the forward-swept wing sections meant that neither she nor they would need to climb its smooth hull. At the approach of the pilot and the company commander, several of the techs backed away, and others began unhooking the various leads and hoses which connected the craft to its pad. 

Callisto nudged her employer’s arm. “I want that money transferred as soon as I’m off the deck.” 

Demirci shrugged. “I paid the ten thousand while you were still putting on your flight suit.” He looked nervous, though that was probably concern for his valuable captured strike rig than for a far-more-replaceable pilot. “So I guess it’s too late to back out.” 

“It was too late to back out a long time ago, boss.” Callisto chuckled as she walked forward and up the short set of gantry stairs. 

It took very little time to go through the pre-launch procedure, because there wasn’t any defined pre-launch procedure for a Coronach. The techs made a few final readings, then helped Callisto into the awkward position she would have to remain in for the duration of the flight. It was a lying down position, a bit like the posture one would take riding one of those fast, agile street hoverbikes. Her legs barely fit around the squarish computer unit in the middle of the space, which had been covered with a thin pad. 

As soon as Callisto was in position, one of the techs lowered the display helmet onto her head. At first, this blinded her, but when it finished its startup procedure she found that it showed her the view forward, as if her eyes were in the front of the Coronach. Turning her head, she saw that the display in front of her eyes showed her outside the craft in every direction she could look. With a thumbs-up gesture, she indicated the system was working. 

The tech patted her on the back, then she felt the pad on the inside of the dorsal hatch press into her shoulder blades, pushing her whole body down. The craft shuddered as the cockpit latches clicked shut. Blindly, Callsito’s hands felt for the controls. She found them all within reach, barely. A few taps brought up the heads-up display, showing the tiny launch’s various system status indicators. 

“Finalizing datalink.” A strangely accented computer voice whispered into Callisto’s ears. “Connected to tactical comm-net.” 

“Can you hear me, Zenith?” This was, obviously, Callsito’s flight call-sign. 

“Affirmative, Ops.” Callisto turned her head to verify that the techs and their gantry were well clear. “Bringing up the gravitics. Wish me luck.” 

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