Tales from the Service: A Coronach for Hire

2953-09-03 – Tales from the Service: A Coronach for Hire 

Callisto Seyer shook her head and crossed her arms. “No way, boss. I’m not getting into that thing. It’s a damned deathtrap.” 

“Come on, Callisto.” Alfred Demirci held out his hands. “The techs need a test pilot and you’re the only one we’ve got who will fit.” 

Callisto cast her eyes on the egg-shaped fuselage and curving, blade-thin weapons pylons of the Coronach on landing pad number five. The company had reeled the thing in during a salvage sweep late the prior year, mostly intact, its pilot dead of apparently sudden decompression. Nine months later, though, it still hadn’t flown, except for a few fly-by-wire systems checks. They’d quickly learned that one of the ways The Incarnation had made its flagship interceptor so small and agile was doing away with physical controls and relying on a direct digital interface through the pilot’s implants. There wasn’t even a viewpanel; the pilot’s vision was purely through the craft’s outer cameras, mediated again by neural implant software. 

Demirci Defense was, as mercenary outfits went, reasonably well funded, though, and Captain Demirci could afford some of the best techs money could buy. They’d quickly rigged up a compact set of controls and a display helmet to show the pilot their surroundings and their sensor plot in one integrated view, just as a real Coronach pilot probably saw it.  

They’d tested the setup on the pad several times, and all the control elements responded, but none of the techs could squeeze inside the equipment-cramped cockpit shell sufficiently to seal it over them for a test flight. 

That, of course, left Callisto, the smallest pilot in the company. Even she wasn’t sure she’d fit, certainly not comfortably. If she did fit, no doubt the skipper would take away the roomy cockpit of her De Rochs Oberon gunship and force her to fly it into combat. 

There was some appeal to the Coronach, of course – it had the handling characteristics of a top-end Core Worlds racer, and a nose-gun that would make even the biggest gunship proud. The idea of sitting hunched over in a tiny metal egg for hours and hours just wasn’t worth the few minutes of combat superiority, though, at least not to Callisto. 

“Relieve the hull and give me another half meter to stretch out.” She scowled. “Then I’ll think about it.” 

She knew of course that this couldn’t be done. The cockpit of the Coronach was small because critical systems surrounded it on all sides. Even the armored hatch allowing the pilot to enter was run through with systems cabling and electrical conduits to the point one couldn’t even start the gravitic drive with the hatch open. 

“Just take it out for a spin. Ten minutes to get the techs some data.” Demirci pressed his hands together. “I’ll hire a dwarf or an Atro’me to fly it into combat.” 

“Ten minutes for something to go wrong?” Callisto turned away. “With no ejection system, and no way to even bail out if there’s a problem?” 

“I’ll send out the tug. Travis will be right behind you the whole time.” 

This was little comfort, of course, since the recovery tug couldn’t actually open the Coronach’s hatch to let her out if she was trapped. It would have to run her back into the hangar and let the techs pry her out, and by then she’d probably be quite dead. 

Evidently realizing that she knew the risks well enough to know the presence of the tug was not an effective safeguard, Demirci sighed. “Fine. How about money?” 

Callisto winced. In the end, that was the language which could make her suspend all her reservations. “How much?” 

“The test data for a ten minute flight is worth at least fifteen thousand credits.” Demirci hesitated. “This thing, it’s more than a prestige piece. If we can be the first to market on a functional conversion kit for these things-” 

Callisto smiled. It was only too like Alfred Demirci to be thinking of turning a short-term windfall into a long-term war profiteering racket. He was probably right; how many captured Coronachs were gathering dust at that very moment because no self-respecting human would intermesh electronics with his nervous system? 

“Fifteen thousand for the flight.” Callisto spun around, holding up two fingers. “And two percent of profit from the kits, if any. In writing, filed on the datasphere, before I so much as put my flight suit on.” 

Demirci was silent for several seconds. “If you’re getting cut in on the profits... Ten thousand for the flight. Option for more test flights at ten thousand each, safety permitting, your veto on safety grounds only.” 

Callisto stuck out her hand. “Done, boss.” She would probably regret that, but ten thousand credits for less than an hour of flight-suit time, possibly repeating, was enough to make her put up with almost any unpleasantness. “But I still ain’t taking the thing out to fight.” 

“Certainly not yet.” Demirci took Callisto’s hand. "Besides, by the time we’ve got the kinks worked out, you might even like the thing." 

Callisto scowled. He was probably right about that, and she hated that he was. 

The ubiquity of the IN Coronach in battle spaces across the Coreward Frontier and Sagittarius Frontier means that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the craft have been captured in working order, both by the Confederated Navy and by its auxiliaries. Many thousands of tons of spare parts have also been acquired, enough to keep many of these craft operational for years of combat. 

This being a resource that was otherwise untapped, after Confederated analysts learned all they could from these machines, the Navy elected to sell off most of its Coronach stocks to mercenaries and Coreward Frontier militia squadrons earlier this year. The first two Confederated squadrons, one mercenary and one a local militia, to enter full service with Coronachs certified with their craft last week. Both have their machines modified with the Demirci Defense Coronach retrofit package, purchase of which the Navy is heavily subsidizing. I have heard it said that at least four other Coronach squadrons (probably all militia) are preparing to enter operations with this captured equipment, but this is not an official number. There may be more. 

[N.T.B. - I’m not sure these squadrons will ever be front line units. The Coronach is fragile for a combat unit, and the strike crew I’ve talked to would keep their Pumas and Magpies even if they had the choice, trusting in these rugged craft to keep them alive even against more maneuverable, well-armed foes.] 

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Tales from the Service: Prey on Lux Paradiso

2953-08-27 – Tales from the Service: Prey on Lux Paradiso 

Utter bedlam reigned in Jorgen Goddard’s senses for several seconds. There was the hissing roar and loamy reek of displaced soil, the red and yellow lights and screeching klaxons of suit alarms, the squishy grinding sensation of flabby circular jaws and hooked teeth against armor-plate shell, and the unholy stench of the creature’s digestive juices. 

Fortunately for him, the suit’s helmet deployed a few moments into the attack, just before the creature’s mouth closed over his head. The armor-glass panels clicked into place, muffling sound and banishing stink. Jorgen had a moment to consider his situation as the creature’s teeth clicked against his faceplate, and its gullet started trying to pull his legs off. 

Fortunately, as a loosely invertebrate creature, the burrowing slug – which, he made a note to complain about, was not among the hazards he’d been briefed about – probably relied on envelopment and suffocation to subdue its prey, and lacked the strength and stamina to actually tear him limb from limb until he was dead. In his suit, he had plenty of air, and its armored exterior would render him at least mostly resistant to whatever was in its digestive juices. 

The problem of course was that the creature was burrowing down into the loam. How far it could go, he could only speculate, but if he got free or killed it, he would have to burrow his way back up with his bare hands. That would definitely damage the suit and tax both his energy and his suit’s atmo reserves, making it rather unlikely he’d finish his mission before his ride arrived. 

The alternative, of course, was waiting to see what part of his suit failed first from being digested, in the hopes it would crawl back up to the surface soon, which wasn’t better. 

Jorgen turned his helmet and wrist lights up to maximum, then twisted around as much as he was able. The slug’s flesh was slightly translucent, and the beams highlighted pulsing organs just outside the fleshy, juice-excreting sac of its gullet. He was past the last row of teeth now, and no doubt that was where the beast would keep him, as long as it remained alive. Fortunately, he could perforate a few of those organs with his side-arm, a hardy Vasilev flechette gun, and solve that problem in a few seconds, when it was time. 

Switching off the lights again, Jorgen tried to think. There was a possibility the creature had a burrow somewhere below the surface which, even if little more than a pathway of loose soil, would provide him a low effort pathway back to the surface. Obviously it didn’t need pre-dug burrows to move through the spongy, root-laced upper soil, but if the dirt were denser lower down it could never move through that without proper digging. Perhaps if he waited until the creature came to a stop, he could make his explosive escape and work his way out from this burrow. 

Unfortunately, though, it was nearly impossible to tell which way his captor was going, and even whether it was moving at all. The creature’s stomach twisted and churned, likely trying to evenly marinate him with its digestive juices, and Jorgen had no definite purchase with which to feel whether he was moving in any clear direction. He counted to thirty, trying to gauge motion, but he was turned over, squeezed, and stretched so regularly that he made no headway. 

With a sigh, Jorgen worked his hand to the protective holster where his side-arm waited. There was no sense waiting for anything when he couldn’t detect when it arrived. He doubted he’d even know when the slug went back above ground, unless it did so in full direct sunlight. 

It took Jorgen almost a minute to snake the gun out of its holster and work it as far from his body as he could. The suit would prevent the blast from hurting him, but it still wouldn’t be precisely fun. It hardly mattered where he aimed it, but he used his wrist light to line it up on a cluster of important looking organs before pulling the trigger. 

The blast of the explosive discharge briefly inflated the creature’s stomach like a balloon and lit up its insides like a lightning bolt. Everything around him spasmed and thrashed violently, so he turned his wrist and fired twice more. The thrashing immediately started to grow feeble. 

After jamming the gun back into its holster, Jorgen searched with his gloved hands for one of the holes created by the flechette cluster, then, grimacing, pulled it wide with both hands and shoved his body through it. The creature’s muscles still resisted him, but he didn’t sense any concerted effort; it was dying, if not yet precisely dead. Fortunately, there was less than a meter of gelatinous, freshly shredded tissue between him and the loose, crumbly soil. As soon as his head and shoulders had reached this, he kicked the slug’s oozing side to make himself a little room to work in, and began to claw his way upward. 

The loose earth parted easily above Jorgen, but it was a challenge to make much progress without burying himself. Fortunately, he encountered thready, fungal-looking roots almost immediately. He was near the surface. Perhaps he could get out in time to still finish his mission. 

While the Lux Paradiso raid remains rather carefully shrouded in operational secrecy, the experience of Intelligence agent “Jorgen” on its surface suggests the world is not likely to become a vacation destination after this war is over. For someone prepared with multiple weapons and a state of the art military grade environment suit, he was probably in little danger, but anyone less well equipped would have certainly been killed. 

[N.T.B. - I shudder to think of what would happen if there were to be a ground campaign on this world. These creatures would circle infantry formations like dirt-swimming sharks, picking off stragglers.] 

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Tales from the Service: The Fear of Rookies

2953-08-13 – Tales from the Service: The Fear of Rookies 

Isha Nagarkar spent a few pleasurable minutes reminiscing about EVA jaunts with her father and his employees. She’d helped him pull valuable parts off hulls on the scrap-line from the age of eight until the day she’d departed for the Naval Academy. Her mother had kept an eye on them and the other employees from inside a utility runabout, ready to swoop in to grab an escaping component or a tumbling salvage worker in an instant. They were probably still at it, breaking up superannuated hulks for the few worthwhile components they contained, then sending the rest off to the smelters. 

Her suit’s HUD began winking an alert – her homing beacon had woken up and begun to broadcast, receiving a broadcast from one of Trafalgar’s recovery launches. It seemed too early still to be picked up, but perhaps the carrier’s officers had sensed disaster and launched the rescue units early in the action, so they’d be on scene sooner than normal. 

A few moments later, a flat-text message appeared on her HUD: “PICKUP ETA 01:05:15:00.” This, when she compared it to the chronometer on the other side of the display, turned out to be about ten minutes in the future. Isha sighed. Break time was almost over. Next time, she didn’t intend on having her ride shot out from under her so easily. Incarnation Coronachs were more nimble than she’d expected, but next time, she’d be ready. 

Isha turned back up her radio volume, only to find her gunners already talking. “... going to get us soon, Blackwood.” Rios was saying, frustration mixed with worry in his voice. “Calm down, take a deep breath.” 

“I’ll make it. I’ll make it.” Blackwood’s voice had gone up an octave. “Just a few minutes.” 

Isha turned on her microphone. “It’s just a bit of agoraphobia, Blackwood. You’ll be fine. The suit has a sedative dispenser, if you just-” 

Blackwood wasn’t listening, though. He started to ramble off, apparently to himself, about the various safety interlocks of his pressure-sealed flight suit, as if reminding himself that he was not dying.  

Isha, checking his suit’s status panel, assured herself that Blackwood wasn’t actually trying to meddle with the seals or the air system as he rambled on, then paid him no mind. He’d be out of commission for days after this, and it would be a miracle if he passed the psych eval to be re-certified for flight duty. The squadron would have to promote one of the reserve crew into his place, at least temporarily. 

“That recovery ship can’t get here soon enough.” Rios, evidently having muted Blackwood on his end, grumbled. 

“We’re all alive and nobody’s bleeding into his suit.” Isha reminded her colleague. “As rig losses go, it could be far worse.” 

“Aye.” Rios nearly snarled the word. “But I’d prefer to have lost a leg over Blackwood losing his mind.” 

Isha winced, and switched her radio to transmit only to Rios. “He’ll be fine after the medicos are done with him. But they’ll probably send him home.” 

Rios only grunted. Most likely he’d come to the same conclusion. 

The recovery launch arrived on scene almost a full minute ahead of schedule. Because of its angle of approach, Isha was the first to receive notice of her imminent pickup. That was far from ideal, but she didn’t complain. She could help Blackwood calm down – he was still babbling to nobody on an open channel – when he was picked up a minute or so later. 

A moving star grew in Isha’s view into a slate-gray box ablaze on all sides with light. At first, it approached worryingly fast, but it slowed down until it was about to pass her at only a few meters per second. A  web of hooked cables swung outward  on both sides of its rectangular hull. Isha used most of her suit thrusters’ remaining reaction mass to orient herself for the most comfortable pickup possible, then exhaled just as she’d been trained as the net caught her. 

Already, the launch was accelerating; Isha pulled herself along the net until she reached the airlock alcove, but waited there. “Rios, Blackwood, I’ve been picked up. See you both in a few.” 

Blackwood, fortunately, got his turn next. The gunner’s voice had petered out into a wordless, high pitched whining by this point, and he made no attempt to cooperate with his own recovery. The net caught him almost head-on, and as the launch accelerated, he twisted in it until he was hopelessly stuck. Only then did he begin to flail and thrash against it. Isha, with a groan, attached herself to one of the lifelines next to the airlock, then clambered out along the net to reach her. The recovery crew would probably prefer to leave him there until they’d made all their pickups, and she simply couldn’t allow that. 

“Blackwood. Calm down.” Isha tried to sound soothing as she approached him. “We’re in the recovery net. You’re safe.” 

His thrashing slowed somewhat. “It’s a bad dream, Nagarkar.” He whimpered. "Tell me it’s a bad dream.” 

“It isn’t.” Isha inched closer to him, trying to get within his helmet’s line of sight. “But it’s almost over. Let me help you get to the airlock.” 

Blackwood twisted feebly as if to comply, but by this time he was so tangled in the lines and so disoriented that he could hardly move. Isha hesitantly got within arm’s reach and started to uncoil him. 

While it is uncommon among lifelong spacers, agoraphobia is a real threat to the safety of Navy personnel of all stations, especially those assigned to strike operations. Normally, extensive testing to detect this tendency in all enlistees prevents any serious incidents, but in rare cases, combat stress can trigger the reaction that would not be present.  

Most likely, throwing rookies into deadly combat was an extreme stress for the individual in this account, and my quick research indicates that he was withdrawn from launch duties and reassigned to shipboard duties after recovering from this episode. 

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Tales from the Service: The Bad Luck of Rookies

2953-08-06 – Tales from the Service: The Bad Luck of Rookies 

While it is only too common military suspicion that the greenest member of any unit is usually the first to get hit, it is a lesser known but also widely belived pseudo-certainty that the missions that go wrong the most often are those described as the most routine. 

These are, statistically speaking, only artifacts of human confirmation bias, but such superstitions have plagued military service across the centuries. 

One of our recent submissions is at the critical nexus of both of these beliefs – the greenest squadron in the fleet being sent to cut their teeth on the most routine live-fire mission anyone could think of. The results – abject disaster – will be predictable to every Navy officer and rating in the fleet. Statistically speaking, this sort of surprise is uncommon. Most green units are put through several low intensity live fire missions before they are trusted with properly dangerous work. 

Unfortunately, statistics only go so far. When you spin the randomizer enough times, it’s going to come up with the improbable values once in a while. This is the story of a few strike crew who happened to be there when the improbable but widely anticipated result happened. 

Isha Nagarkar’s first combat operation was supposed to be routine. It wasn’t supposed to be the sort of op likely to result in gunship losses. Unfortunately, that hadn’t proved to be the case. 

She should have been concerned when the briefing materials had stressed the simplicity and low anticipated opposition of the mission. Most of her freshly formed squadron, was totally green, except for the officers, so command had put them on low intensity in-system patrols at Sagittarius Gate to get comfortable with their brand-new off the line Magpie 2-E gunships. 

They’d been familiarizing only a couple weeks when transfer orders had their whole outfit moved off their home orbital installation and onto Trafalgar, replacing a veteran squadron that had been in the line so long they were still using Magpie 1-Bs. The carrier was a prestigious posting for a new squadron, even though its decades-old hangar was barely large enough to operate Magpies. With that ship, they were certain to meet the enemy soon. 

Soon had turned out to be a little less than a month into operating from Trafalgar. There had been several readiness alerts before that, hours and hours of nervous waiting or fitful dozing in the ready-room waiting to be scrambled. When the real thing came, though, it was a simple hit and run raid on a small listening post in a nameless, planet-less star system a few dozen ly from Sagittarius Gate. 

Such outposts, unmanned or manned by only a handful of spacers, were, at least according to the briefing, rarely well defended; there was no point in investing valuable point defense batteries, big guns, targeting systems, squadrons, and all the personnel to crew them into such posts which could never be reinforced or relieved in time. Stealth and rapidity of deployment was the main shield of the enemy’s forward listening posts; for every one Seventh Fleet detected and extirpated, two or three went undetected, quietly monitoring star drive activity in the area and even deploying star-drive equipped scout drones to monitor activity in Sagittarius Gate itself. 

Unfortunately, this one had been somewhat better defended than usual. Point defense lasers had flashed out as soon as the squadron was committed to its first strafing run, and a half-dozen Coronach interceptors had appeared out of nowhere as they circled around for another pass, two of their number already damaged. 

A full squadron of  twelve new Magpies, even with the greenest of crews, would have normally been able to fend off such a weak counterattack relatively easily, but almost the moment the turret railguns had begun buzzing, one of the damaged Magpies had exploded, when the Coronachs were still not close enough to use their plasma lances. 

Isha never heard their other attacker identified. Its second shot cripped another Magpie, and its third had torn the guts out of hers. There had been a shriek of tearing metal, then a flash, and then the gunship had ejected its three crew. Rather than exploding, it tumbled powerless, its shattered innards glowing cherry red. Isha had a good view of it for several minutes before it dwindled into the darkness. 

The battle moved past the trio rather quickly, leaving them in silence. Their flight suit radios had the range to talk to each other, and enough of both computing power and thruster reaction mass to keep them from drifting apart, but beyond that, all they could do was leave their beacons on and hope one of the rescue cutters from Trafalgar would be along to get them shortly. They’d all heard the veterans muttering about Incarnation ships also knowing how to follow these beacons to pick up stranded pilots, but hopefully there wasn’t much chance of that in a battle for such a remote outpost. 

Theoretically, every strike crewman was tested for agoraphobia. Isha, who’d spent her young adulthood before the war in and out of an EVA suit working for her father’s shipbreaking firm, was not particularly unnerved by the cold black in all directions, but Blackwood, her portside gunner, was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and his increasingly frantic tone over the comms circuit were beginning to grate on Isha’s nerves, and on the nerves of the starboard gunner, Rios. 

“Are you sure we’ve got two days of air?” Blackwood’s voice quavered. “I've only got one spare atmo cartridge. Aren’t I supposed to have two?” 

“Blackwood, the new suits use a larger cartridge. Each one is good for 24 hours.” Rios’s low bass carried a warning tone. “So you have one in the slot, and one spare in your ejection harness.” 

“But what if one of them is bad? Sometimes they aren’t-” 

“Then you still have at least one full day. And if we’re going to be picked up, it’ll be a lot sooner than that.” Isha sighed, though after disengaging her pickup, trying to remember that not everyone had been a spacer before joining the service. “Just relax and enjoy the view. You’ll never see the stars better, unless we lose another ship.” 

 The big black was, in its own way, beautiful. Isha still remembered what it had been like to go out with her father that first time, at only six years old, to drift to the end of their tether and stargaze. The starfield had lost some of its wonder for her since then, but none of its primeval beauty. Every moment, her eyes seemed to pick out a colorful cluster or a haze of nebula she hadn’t seen before, fading in dimmer and dimmer ranks back into the vast distances of the Sagittarius Arm. 

“What if we aren’t picked up?” 

“Then all that hyperventilating you’re doing is going to ensure you’re the first one of us to suffocate.”  

Rios’s observation, though technically true, was rather unkind, and he probably knew that when he said it. Blackwood’s voice went up an octave, and he started rambling on about how unreasonable it was to expect pilots to just sit and wait to be picked up, and how the Navy really should have a better solution for the crew of destroyed strike rigs that didn’t leave so much to chance. 

What exactly the engineers could do to make someone like Blackstone comfortable with ejecting from a stricken craft, was not explained. Isha didn’t bother to speculate, since it was clear her compatriot wasn’t actually thinking, he was just whining. With a sigh, she used a puff of her suit thrusters to rotate herself a little bit to see a new swath of stars, and then turned down the radio volume. 

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