Tales from the Service: A Pilot’s Last Words

2952-08-21 – Tales from the Service: A Pilot’s Last Words 

There are plenty of stories from Operation HELLESPONT that are worth featuring, but the war marches on, and we cannot spend too much time on an event nearly a month past now. 

That being said, we could not pass this tale up, and will be devoting today’s entry and next week’s to it. 

Though this was hardly Livian Vega’s first brush with death, she reflected that perhaps the first time she hadn’t done it right. After all, maybe if she had, she might have had something more fitting prepared for her potential last words than an undignified squeak of terror on the squadron comms channel. 

Livian had plenty of time to consider for the next time. After the ejection booster separated from her back, she drifted free in zero-gee, watching seconds of her atmospheric reserve trickle away. There wasn’t much else to watch; the skirmish which had claimed her Puma interceptor was over before her booster had even finished its run, and the squadron had moved forward toward the objective planet far ahead. Any further fighting would be invisible to her without some serious magnification that her flight-suit helmet didn’t provide. 

Eventually, someone in one of the rescue tugs would come by and broadcast the signal that would activate her recovery transponder, and Livian would be hauled back to Frostbill for a good-natured ribbing about losing another interceptor. There was some talk in the ready room that Incarnation ships sometimes spoofed the transponder signal in order to scoop up stranded pilots, but with the action moving away and a friendly force of heavy ships coming up from behind, that didn’t seem much of a risk here. 

One of these times, the ejection system would fail, or the plasma lance that bit into her craft would catch the cockpit and cut her into two scorched pieces. She knew the risks; everyone did, and death was something she prepared for on every launch. Still, buying the plot with the last thing anyone heard from her being a terrified whimper was unacceptable. 

Among strike pilots, there was a canonical set of famous, effective last words that communicated that the doomed pilot was taking their fate with heroic aplomb, but none of these seemed to fit her situation. She had no lover or spouse to think of in her last moments, nor a relative in the service who she could pass the proverbial torch to. There was no directory of embarrassing files her compatriots would need to delete. 

Going out silently was respectable, but it was hardly memorable, and Livian wanted to be memorable enough that the squadron would tell stories about her for the rest of the war after she bought her plot. Normally, she was the queen of snappy one-liners, especially in combat, and they almost always came to her spontaneously; it would be a let-down to her compatriots if she went out in silence. 

There were referential options, of course. Nobody really remembered anymore which holo-drama first used the phrase “They came from behind-” as last words for a strike-jock but it was in enough of them that everyone knew it from somewhere. There were others in the same vein, but Livian didn’t like any of them. 

Going into this battle, she’d drilled herself on the phrase “See you on the other side” as her potential last words, but when the shot had drilled her Puma’s engine and all the indicators had gone red, the phrase had fled her mind. True, there had been precious little time before the ejection system kicked in, but there had been just enough. 

“Should have gone with something shorter.” Livian grumbled to herself. “Later, suckers? Pah, that’s terrible.” 

Normally, Livia kept a few audio dramas on her personal network for situations such as this, but this time, she preferred the silent company of the green orb which all this fighting contested. The glimmering crescent appeared in front of her for about two minutes out of every five, and when it vanished in the lower right corner of her faceplate, she knew the local star would soon rotate into view and the smart-glass panel would become almost totally opaque for two more minutes to keep its blinding light out of her eyes. Did Earth look half so pretty from space, she wondered? It hardly seemed possible that it could. 

“Looks like I’m going home.” Livian muttered. “Hey, that’s not bad...” 

The transponder emitted a bright chime that indicated that it was transmitting. Normally, this sound would recur every thirty seconds or so, but to Livian’s surprise, there was no second chime. 

“Damnation.” Livian switched on her comms transmitter. “Recovery tug, please respond. I think my transponder just shorted out.” 

Livia waited until the planet reappeared in front of her, but there was no response on any band. 

“Recovery tug, can you hear me?” Livia could hear the worry in her voice this time, and she didn’t like how it sounded. If her transponder was broken, how could anyone ever find her? The range of a suit transmitter was horribly small. 

As the planet crept out of view once more, and the faceplate dimmed in preparation for the direct assault of the local star, there was still no response. 

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Tales From the Service: Unease at Hausen's

2952-08-07 – Tales From the Service: Unease at Hausen's 

Less than two hours after Admiral Donnell’s ships destroyed the lone Tyrant cruiser present in Hausen’s and scattered the smaller elements of the Incarnation defenses, Ernest Espinoza started its orbital insertion maneuver. 

There wasn’t much for anyone on the bridge to do once the navcomputer was executing the deceleration routine, so several of Espinoza’s bridge crew stood and stretched their cramped limbs. Most of the observers hanging around at the rear of the over-large space had already departed by this time, except for Lieutenant Commander Namgung, who was still technically on duty, and two off-duty techs who had been huddled in excited conversation for most of the previous hour. 

Captain Coretta Fuentes stood at the center of the bridge with her arms folded behind her back, her eyes on one of the secondary status displays. “Open port and starboard bays. Charge all deployment rails.” 

Bleary-eyed Lieutenant Kanzaki, who had refused to surrender his console to the second-shift ensign, tapped out a few commands, reached up to the second level of his console and flipped a series of hardware switches. “Charging rails.” 

Coretta nodded. To power the system, a cruiser-grade star-drive had been broken up for its capacitor arrays; these would take at least a few minutes to charge. “Mister Rademaker, clear the bays.” 

“The last techs are evacuating now, Captain.” Basil Rademaker’s voice came from the speaker system; he was below, supervising Espinoza’s special deployment machinery from a command annex adjacent to the machines themselves. 

“Time to orbit?” Coretta turned to the helm station. 

The ensign at the helm glanced down at her console. “A little over six minutes.” 

Coretta turned away and beckoned to Namgung. “Commander, I apologize for taking over your duty shift. You may proceed.” 

Namgung stood and saluted. “Aye, Captain.” He looked around the bridge. “Do you want to be recalled when we are ready to deploy?” 

Coretta shook her head. “Execute whenever Donnell gives the order. I’m going below.” 

The solitude of the slow civilian-model lift left Corretta plenty of time to think. The cold ballistic course gamble had been a clever one, but it didn’t feel right to her that it was the best option left for the Incarnation to defend such a strategic outpost as Hausen’s World. The Incarnation never gambled, not when it didn’t need to – it coldly arranged favorable battles and worked to extricate itself from unfavorable ones. Even the raids at Sagittarius Gate were not so much a gamble as they were a constant pressure which succeeded at interfering with Seventh Fleet operations even if they did no damage; the damage they inflicted every so often seemed to be almost a bonus in their calculations.  

Again, she returned to the question of why the enemy force in Hausen’s had fought at all. From the looks of things, that cruiser had been a cripple anyway, its escape unlikely, but the crews of several perfectly serviceable frigates and who knew how many strike pilots had been sacrificed to give that wounded beast more hope for its final charge. That seemed almost like a sentimental decision rather than a tactical one. 

Fortunately, Coretta was only a ship captain; she needed not divine the chip-twisted thoughts of Incarnation admirals. When the lift disgorged her onto Deck Six, she was nowhere nearer solving the puzzle than when she had started. With a sigh, she headed forward to the ship’s gym, hoping she had time for a short workout before turning in. 

The problem was still bothering her when she finished changing out of her uniform into exercise attire, so Coretta connected her earpiece to the bridge. “Commander, I’ve got this feeling Nate’s not done with us yet. Are we still doing regular sensor sweeps?” 

“The escorts are.” Namgung paused, as if realizing this meant a negative answer. “I’ll have one done every ten minutes.” 

“Thank you.” Coretta cut the channel, switched her earpiece over to music, and stepped out into the gym compartment. In Espinoza’s civilian career, the space had been some sort of social hall, and it had excellent viewpanels facing forward, which now framed the blue-green orb of Hausen’s world. Coretta took a long moment to appreciate the sight. She’d never seen a planet, living or dead, from Espinoza. The last one she’d seen from any ship was Maribel, dwindling away behind Sable Diver as it started the long trek across to Sagittarius Gate. Looking down at it, she could almost feel cool grass between her toes, and feel a gentle breeze rustling her hair. 

Coretta froze. Her trained spacer’s eye had picked up movement between Espinoza and the inviting orb far below. She stepped up to the viewpanel and pressed her forehead to it, as if a meter’s difference might bring the object close enough for inspection. There was definitely a dark mote down there, in a lower and roughly perpendicular orbit to the one her ship was settling into, but she couldn’t see any detail from such a long distance. 

Once again, Corretta called in a channel to the bridge. “Mister Namgung, what’s in orbit below us right now?” 

“Not much. A few launch-scale survey craft from the escort force.” Namgung paused. “Why?” 

“Saw something out the viewpanel. It could be one of those launches. Sensors don’t show anything out there?” 

“Nothing that doesn’t have a Seventh Fleet IFF code.” 

Coretta sighed. There was no way the sensors on even a second-line ship like Espinoza could miss anything close enough to be visible to the naked eye. “Understood. Carry on.” 

The speck was gone by the time Coretta signed off the connection to Namgung, but she kept her eyes glued on the viewpanel for the entirety of her exercise routine. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Nate had one last card to play at Hausen’s World. 

If the Incarnation did indeed have additional tricks up its sleeve to foil Operation HELLESPONT, these tricks were never employed; the operation continued as planned after the defenders were driven out of the system, and the small Incarnation depot on the planet’s surface was found to be bare and devoid of garrison. 

The feeling that things went too well stuck with many of the participants who I have spoken to, and even though the enemy was able to mitigate the impact of the success of this offensive, few of those involved really believe that the attack was unexpected. It is a strange quirk of this conflict that, though the Confederated Worlds is undoubtedly winning at this stage, those fighting on the front line believe that the enemy planners are several steps ahead.  

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Tales From the Service: The Oddball Ambush

2952-08-07 – Tales From the Service: The Oddball Ambush 

Ernest Espinoza had been burning at maximum drive power toward Hausen’s World for almost four hours when the board began to light up with orange blips. The strike screen far ahead had finally encountered enemy resistance – considerable resistance at that. 

Captain Coretta Fuentes, who had just surrendered her post to her XO forty minutes before, rushed back up to the bridge as soon as word was passed. Lieutenant Commander Namgung was competent to handle the ship if anyone was, but that didn’t mean she intended to let the fate of everyone aboard be decided while she fretted in her cabin.  

The escort force had already moved ahead of Espinoza, Fernand, and Ozolina by the time Coretta arrived on the bridge, and the comms chatter indicated that Admiral Donnell was not particularly worried. The enemy force was, according to the tac-net, composed of rear-echelon frigates and strike formations – exactly the sort of units which would be expected if the enemy had no idea they were coming. 

Despite this good news, Coretta remained uneasy, hanging around the rear of the bridge while the lopsided battle far ahead played out. Being a former mining ship, Espinoza at least had plenty of spare seating on the bridge, with benches along the aft bulkhead and a few pieces of deck-mounted furniture on either side of the lift doors. A few other off-duty spacers arrived to take advantage of this and listen to the comms chatter on the bridge sound system, but they all avoided their commanding officer. Even on a temporary crew like Espinoza’s, a broad gulf separated commander from subordinates; only when their duty was complete could it be crossed. 

The strike craft engagement, the earlier and most evenly matched part of the engagement, dragged on for more than forty minutes, with a steady stream of damaged Magpie gunships limping back toward the ready hangars of the flotilla all the while. With only Sundiver among the escorts having a hangar of any significance, some of the cripples lined up instead on the wide civilian-style hangars of the three former mining ships. Coretta listened patiently as her second in command ordered medical teams to the hangar even before the first Magpie started its docking approach. Even if Espinoza couldn’t repair the gunships themselves, its crew could at least treat the wounded and keep them safe until a new gunship was ferried over from the supply ship. 

As Sundiver and the handful of other warships in the escort force brought the enemy frigates under fire, Coretta couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong. Things were going according to plan, and she wasn’t used to that. Nate rarely if ever played by the battle plan; even when his only available forces were a patrol squadron of long-range, lightly-armed frigates and a smattering of strike assets, he should have some sort of surprise. Perhaps Operation HELLESPONT had really caught their foes off-guard and there was no surprise this time, but how likely really was that? 

Evidently, Alexi Namgung had the same intuition at nearly the same time. “Run a full-sky active sweep.” He told the ensign at the sensor console. “There could be more of them.” 

“Aye.” The ensign from the second-shift bridge crew, Coretta realized, wasn’t a day older than nineteen T-years. Had she herself ever been that young? 

“Frigate group is scattering.” One of the other officers pointed to the tactical plot. “Donnell’s got them on the run!” 

There was a murmur of approval, nothing more; the contest between nine light frigates and a squadron built around a full-scale battlewagon could have no other outcome. Sundiver, old though it was, could easily see off the entire Incarnation force by itself, and do so without allowing the frigates to get close enough to do any real damage to itself. 

That was, Coretta realized, what was bothering her. Why hadn’t the enemy force retreated the moment they knew what they were facing? They couldn’t hope to do enough damage to justify their sacrifice, unless they knew something Donnell didn’t. 

Donnell probably had the same thought; two of his destroyers were already cutting thrust and falling back to let the the mining ships pass them. It wasn’t the rear that Corretta was worried about, though. Anything that was going to overtake them would have to do it under power, and they’d have detected the gravitic signatures of those drives long ago. A ship going dark could be placed on a ballistic intercept course more easily from a perpendicular direction, assuming the course of the target was known ahead of time, but the easiest intercept course to arrange on shorter notice would be head-on. It would also be the easiest to detect – that is, if there wasn’t a battle going on in between until the last possible instant. 

“Relieving Mr. Namgung.” Coretta jumped up and strode forward, holding up an apologetic hand to her XO. Alexi would understand. “Get me comms to Fernand and Ozolina.” 

The young ensign saluted, and a moment later gave a thumbs-up. “Channel established, Captain.” 

“Both of you listen to me.” Coretta was glad that she was senior most of the three special mining-ship captains. “Those frigates are a blind for something else. Something on a dark ballistic run right for us. We scatter outwards now and whatever it is has to light a drive to chase us.” 

“Aye.” Ozolina’s skipper said simply. “Radial thirty degree divergence.” 

“Diverting.” Fernand’s captain sounded uncertain. “What do you think it is, Fuentes?”  

“Something big enough to put a hurt on us, or they would have all run for the jump limit.” Coretta nodded at her own helmsman, who started executing their own part of the scatter maneuver. “We’ll see in a few minutes. Or we won’t, and we’ll be a couple minutes late into orbit.” 

Operation HELLESPONT’s success has gone far to relieve pressure on Sagittarius Gate, but the fortification of Hausen’s World was by no means a sure thing when it was launched. Many potential pitfalls were averted, including the one reported by Captain Fuentes in her account of the operation. I wonder if she over-emphasizes the role her own educated guess played in avoiding great harm to the former mining ships used to ferry defenses to the system, but that an attempt was made similar to the one described is not in doubt. 

The force on a dark ballistic course turned out to be a damaged Tyrant-type cruiser thrust onto this orbit despite it having nearly destroyed gravitic engines itself. Had it gone un-noticed, it could have easily torn the “oddball flotilla” to pieces, ruining HELLESPONT. 

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Tales from the Service: The Director’s Angels

2952-07-24 – Tales from the Service: The Director’s Angels

Ris Bleier struggled to restrain Captain Bermudez, while Giffards and Lund scrambled to divine the nature of the alarms from the flashing indicators and fitfully winking screens of Howard Helios Hughes’s cockpit. “Get ahold of yourself, spacer!” He tried to shake her, but despite her smaller stature, she was nearly as strong as he was; Ris was hardly young anymore, and he didn’t exactly frequent the gyms back on The Sprawl. “What is it?” 

“Power surge of some kind in the system.” Giffards seemed to think that the question was for her. “Can’t pin it down.” 

“They’ll kill us!” Bermudez got one arm free of Ris’s grasp and lashed out toward the controls, but she wasn’t close enough to touch anything. “We’ve got to run!” 

“Reactor readings are normal.” Art Lund hurriedly stood from the copilot’s chair to make room for Rahat Kuriega, who slid into the seat immediately, and helped get hold of Bermudez. “Let’s get her out of here, Boss.” 

Ris nodded and the pair manhandled Bermudez down the corridor toward the lounge. Though still breathing heavily, she slumped against Ris and allowed herself to be carried most of the way, limp and unresisting, eyes open but unfocused. They dropped her into one of the thickly padded chairs, and Ris stood guard over her while Lund went to fetch a cup of cool water from the food-fab.  

“Whatever it was, it’s settling down now.” Giffards’s voice filtered down from the sound system. “Damned dodgy conduit repairs, probably. We’re running a full system sweep.” 

“What about the thermal source?” Ris shuddered, remembering how close they were to a vast derelict more than likely full of alien dead. 

“Fading fast.” Kuriega made an uncertain sound in the back of his throat. “Whatever was there isn’t anymore. No sign of it.” 

“That thing’s hull is a metal forest.” Giffards broke in. “It could be some sort of hull-walking drone that scuttled off when we had that power surge, and we’d never find it again.” 

“External hull drones for repair makes sense, with hulls as thick as this.” Kuriega’s voice grew distant, as if he were imagining how such a device would be constructed. “Fairly autonomous, I’d guess. Maybe enough internal power to live a few weeks after the ship dies.” 

“No.” This whispered denial, Ris realized after a moment, was spoken by Bermudez. When he looked back at her, he saw that she had closed her eyes and lowered her head. “It’s a trap. We need to leave.” 

“A trap?” Ris bent down to look at Bermudez. She had been unhelpful the entire journey, so he wasn’t going to blindly accept her advice now, even if her words made the hairs on his neck stand on end. “For us? How do you know?” 

Bermudez shrugged, but did not respond, not even to raise her head. Lund returned with the water, and Ris left her to return to the cockpit, a frown settling into his face. Had she done more snooping with his agent’s information than was healthy before delivering it? If so, why had she seemed so pessimistic about their chances of finding anything? Or perhaps this was something she recognized from her past adventures? 

When he returned to the cockpit, Ris found the alarms silent and the displays once again working normally. Giffards turned around to give her boss an apologetic shrug. “No accounting for the quality of ships like this, I guess. Damned terrible timing.” 

“Bermudez thinks this is a trap.” Ris shook his head. “She wouldn’t say why.” 

“Reachers setting traps?” Kuriega tapped his chin with his fingers. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen them do anything like that. It doesn’t seem like them.” 

“No, it doesn’t.” Ris nodded. He’d re-read several of the most recent Reacher encounter reports in the hours it had taken to approach the derelict so it was fresh in his mind; nothing in human experience painted the Reachers as the sort to set snares for other sapients. “Are we clear to proceed?” 

“Around to the hull breach?” Giffards shook her head. “I don’t see why not. But if we’re at risk of another surge, I’m going to take us out to a healthy distance.” 

“Agreed.” Ris waved his hand. “See what we can get with the floodlight and the telescopes from a klick or two.” 

Giffards pulled back on the controls, and the shiny, fluted metal hull swept out of view. When it reappeared, it was already noticeably further away; they were viewing the Reacher derelict almost directly aft-on. From that vantage, they could see the full extent of the spines and protrusions jutting outward from the hull; they seemed longer and spindlier, seen against the smallest cross-section of the ship itself. 

Soon, the damage swum into view for the first time in some hours. Viewed with the naked eye, the gash in the ship’s belly was all the grimmer, and there was no doubt that the bent streamers trailing from this rent were torn pieces of the interior, the once-functional parts of this Reacher ship. Ris could only shudder as he imagined the soft-bodied Reachers themselves bursting like blisters when they were sucked out into the void. How many of these rare sapients had perished? What had happened to cause such devastation? 

“Still no activity.” Giffards took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Going alongside.” 

“Look there!” Kuriega pointed ahead. “Did you see it?” 

Ris tried to follow the gesture, but saw nothing. “What did you see?” 

“Something moving among the spines.” Kuriega leaned forward. “Small and shiny.” 

“Another drone?” Giffards gestured to Kuriega’s console. “Can you get it on the ‘scope?” 

Kuriega bent to his work, and Giffards cut Hughes’s drive to make his task easier. 

Ris, though he hadn’t seen anything, was beginning to wonder if there was something to Bermudez’s trap theory. A band of pirates hide dozens of strike-craft among those hull spines – and Hughes was, aside from a small laser point-defense turret on the dorsal hull, unarmed. Who was setting the trap, though? And who was their intended prey? Surely it wasn’t a little private-chartered runabout, but what would happen to them if the theoretical ambushers thought themselves discovered? 

“There’s another one.” Giffards’s pointed finger dragged Ris out of his thoughts just in time for him to see something bright disappear into the thickest tangle of spines. Whatever it was, it was quick, and it certainly wasn’t attached to the hull. “Free flying. There goes your hull drone theory, Mr. Kuriega.” 

“Strike craft analogues?” Giffards shook her head. “We’ve never seen the Reachers use anything that small.” 

“Someone must have beat us here.” Ris lowered his voice, though there was no way of being overheard by whoever was flying that small craft. “Someone who is trying to keep a low profile.” 

“Bermudez managed to sell the coordinates twice after all!” Giffards scowled. “There’s no telling what those scavengers have-” 

“Not scavengers, I think.” Ris turned away. “But she knows something.” 

Bermudez hadn’t moved in the time Ris was forward; the cup of water sat on the chair-arm next to her hand, untouched, and Lund was sitting opposite her, glancing nervously up at the cabinet where the first-aid supplies were kept.  

“She’s scared, Art, not hurt.” Ris took a chair and pulled it close to Bermudez. “Scared of whoever beat us to this wreck. Which means she knows something.” 

“Pirates? Syndicate scavengers?” Lund shook his head. “I’ve seen her dossier. She’s not tangled with any of them, at least, not that left a trail.” 

“No. I think this is something in our department.” Ris stared hard at the spacer. “Xenos of some kind she’s run into out here.” 

Lund nodded. “Kyaroh, maybe? They’d be happy to pounce on a wreck like this.” 

Ris shook his head. “No. Bermudez, you should have told us.” 

Lund leaned forward. “What is it, Boss?” 

Bermudez looked up, her dark eyes wide. “They’re here. Angels. We can’t-” 

Once again, the lights went out, but this time, they stayed out, and not even the emergency lighting strips came on. In the dead silence that followed, Ris could distinctly hear the thump of something latching onto Howard Helios Hughes’s hull. 

What relations there are between the Reachers and the Angels is unclear, but it seems likely that these two sojourner peoples in the Reach have some dealings with each other, as they have with us. 

Ris’s account is the first hard evidence of their interaction; not only were Angels the first responders to a wrecked Reacher ship, but they were clearly guarding it from scavengers of all outside species. 

Nobody onboard Hughes that day has given a clear account of what happened when they were boarded by at least one (possibly more than one) Angel, but they were permitted to go home in peace. Certainly, the Angels were not likely to explain their business to these intruders, but Ris’s after-action report does indicate obliquely that the Angels assured him that there were no living Reachers aboard the derelict, and that only few perished when it was damaged. Whether other Reachers rescued them, or the Angels did themselves, we may never know. 

Ris’s report theorizes that the Angels were using the Reacher derelict as a honeypot trap for something or someone they hoped to ensnare, but what exactly their prey was, even he could not guess. 

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