Ep.#5 - "Rise of the Corinari" (34 page)

“Like I was saying, he’s a bright boy that one. Very perceptive… like a son to me he is.”

“As you are probably aware, the Corinari will be sending one of their aerospace groups over to fly off our decks. They should arrive in about a week.”

Marcus felt his heart sinking. He seriously doubted there would be any place for him on the deck, not with the Corinari running things in the hangar bays. He suddenly had visions of himself back on Haven, working the mining crews again, but not as a foreman. He’d be back on the grunt line for sure. He could feel his expression change as his heart saddened further at the thought of leaving. He had been stranded aboard the Aurora for some time now. He had almost died several times along the way. Oddly enough, the ship had become home to him. Despite all the times he had sworn to jump ship at the first favorable system, Marcus had become attached to the Aurora and her crew… almost like they were family.

“Of course,” Nathan continued, “we can’t have a civilian running the deck. It just wouldn’t work. The Corinari just wouldn’t listen to the orders of a civilian, I’m afraid.”

“I understand, Captain,” Marcus admitted. “I pretty much saw this coming.”

“That’s why I’ve decided to offer you an enlistment in the Earth Defense Force, with the rank of senior chief,” Nathan explained with a smile.

“Excuse me?”

“I want you to be my new ‘Chief of the Deck’,” Nathan told him.

“Did you just say you wanted to make me a senior chief?”

“Yes, I did,” Nathan responded.

Marcus laughed. “Okay, I didn’t see
that
coming!” Marcus’s frown suddenly reversed as he let out a holler. “Hot damn! Oops, I mean, thank you, Captain.” He laughed again. “Hell, I figured you were gonna toss me out an airlock or something.”

“Not quite,” Nathan said.

“Congratulations, Marcus,” Master Chief Montrose said, reaching out to shake Marcus’s hand.

“Does this mean I’m gonna be the same rank as you?” Marcus asked Master Chief Montrose.

“Not exactly,” Master Chief Montrose replied.

“No, he’s a master chief,” Nathan explained.

“So you’ll be my boss, then?”

“Only because I am also chief of the boat,” Master Chief Montrose explained, “which as I understand, does give me authority over you. However, once the Corinari Aerospace Group moves in, I suspect you will be working for them.”

“You’ll probably be working under their equivalent to our air boss,” Nathan explained.

“Hell, that’s fine by me.” Marcus laughed again, still not quite believing what had just happened. “I have to admit, Captain; I’m a bit surprised by all this. I mean, why me? There’s got to be a hundred guys down on Corinair that are more qualified.”

“I need someone that I know I can count on, Marcus. You’ve already put your life on the line on more than one occasion for this ship and her crew. And you may have to do it again real soon. I feel better knowing that you will.”

“You bet your ass, Captain, sir. Oh crap, I did it again.”

“I’ll work on his decorum, Captain,” Master Chief Montrose promised.

“Yes, of course,” Nathan smiled. “Then I take it you accept my offer?”

“Yes, sir,” Marcus agreed.

“Then congratulations, Senior Chief, uh…” Nathan paused, slightly embarrassed. “I just realized, I don’t know your surname,” Nathan said.

“It’s Taggart, sir. Marcus Taggart.”

“Then congratulations, Senior Chief Taggart,” Nathan said, extending his hand.

“Thank you, Captain,” Marcus said, “I won’t let you down.”

“I’m sure you won’t, Senior Chief.”

“I will get him some uniforms,” Master Chief Montrose said. “There should still be a few in the quartermaster’s compartment.”

“Good idea,” Nathan agreed.

“Captain,” Marcus said as he was about to leave, “just one question, if I may?”

“Of course, Senior Chief.”

“Do I get paid?” Marcus wondered.

“Technically, yes, but we’ll have to get back to Earth before you can collect any wages. For now, you just keep my deck running smoothly.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” Marcus promised, grinning from ear to ear as he left the ready room.

* * *

“You know, I shot one of those down once,” Marcus confessed, pointing at the Corinairan interceptor that was being loaded into the inboard launch tube at the front of the starboard fighter alley.

“Excuse me?” Master Chief Montrose asked.

“Yeah, when we were coming out of Aitkenna, just before the Yamaro attacked,” Marcus explained. “Port Authority was trying to force us down, and we needed to get back to the ship. I had a laser cannon I took off Tug’s interceptor—had mounted it in the back of an old cargo shuttle, the one that got fried on the Yamaro’s hangar deck.”

“Really?”

“I’m not bragging or nothing. I’m pretty sure it was just a lucky shot, caught him by surprise, I suspect. He probably wasn’t expecting an old tub like that to have a gun in the back.”

“I would not be so eager to share that story with anyone, Senior Chief, considering who your new shipmates are going to be.”

“Oh yeah,” Marcus said, realizing the implications. “It’s not like the pilot died or anything. He bailed out. Saw the chute myself.”

“Just the same, I would keep it to yourself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do not call me
sir
, Marcus. I am a master chief, not an officer.”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

“You should be overseeing all of this, you know,” Master Chief Montrose told him.

“To be honest, I haven’t spent much time in the fighter alleys. Had no use for them until now.”

“Just the same, if you are going to run this deck, you had better do two things: know everything about this deck—and I mean everything—and make sure everybody on this deck knows that you are in charge.”

“You think I should find something to yell at them about?”

Montrose shook his head. “That will not be necessary, Marcus. Not yet. For now it’s enough that you’re standing here, next to the chief of the boat, watching everything. Besides, I am sure these men know what they are doing. The Corinari would not have sent us any scrubs.”

“Well, at least somebody knows what they’re doing,” Marcus said. “I feel like a complete dumbass standing here in this uniform.”

“Stroll on over there and take a look around,” the master chief urged, “like you are checking over their work.”

“What?”

“You do not have to say anything, not unless of course you see something wrong.”

“How am I going to spot something wrong? I’ve never even set foot in a launch tube.”

“I have watched you work, Marcus. You figure things out quite quickly. I am sure you will do fine. You can study up on everything later. And believe me, you will be doing a lot of studying. For now, it is important that you establish your dominance over this deck.”

“All right,” Marcus said, uncrossing his arms and taking a step forward. He stopped a moment and turned back toward the master chief. “But if you’re setting me up to look foolish, Chief of the Boat or not, I’m coming back here to kick your ass.”

Master Chief Montrose smiled. “I will be waiting patiently for your return, Senior Chief.”

Marcus strolled out of the transfer airlock from the forward end of main hangar bay into the starboard fighter alley. A team of five men were checking over the Corinairan interceptor in preparation for its test launch. Several more men were standing behind them, checking over their notes and pointing at the launch tube.

“Gentlemen,” Marcus greeted as he walked past them and turned into the launch tube.

“Senior Chief,” one of them answered back. Other than the captain and the master chief, this young man was the first Corinairan to call him by his new rank. It felt good.

As he came to the front of the interceptor, he squatted down to take a look at the nose gear. It was hooked to the catapult shuttle sticking out of the track in the launch tube’s deck.

“How does it look, Senior Chief?” the Corinairan flight tech asked. “The engineers tried to duplicate the specs you sent us for the hook.”

Marcus looked closer at the hook. “Just make sure you got tension on it before you close up for launch. The shuttle should be square up against the hook, so it can’t jump when they charge the shuttle rails.”

“Yes, Senior Chief.”

Marcus stood up and looked forward down the dimly lit launch tube. “Did anybody walk the tube?”

“Senior Chief?”

“Did anybody inspect the tube?”

“We assumed you had, Senior Chief.”

“Well of course I have,” Marcus grumbled. “But the tube should be checked before every launch. You never know what might fall off of one of these birds when it gets shot outta here at a thousand clicks an hour!”

“Should we walk it, or can we just scan it?” the flight tech asked.

“Walk it before the first shot of the shift,” Marcus explained, thinking quickly, “then scan it before each shot.”

“I will get right on it, Senior Chief,” the flight tech promised.

Marcus looked back at Master Chief Montrose standing in the airlock door, grinning from ear to ear. He looked up over his left shoulder at the cockpit. Major Prechitt looked down at him and smiled. Marcus snapped a slightly lazy salute at the Major. He returned it in similar fashion. “Have a good flight, sir.”

“Thank you, Senior Chief,” Major Prechitt responded.

Marcus headed out of the launch tube back into the fighter alley. As he did so, two junior flight techs went charging down the tube with bright handheld lights, scanning the deck as they moved forward. He couldn’t help but smile.

“
Bridge, starboard launch
,” the voice sounded over the Major’s helmet comms. “
Bridge, go,
” Naralena’s voice answered.

Major Prechitt checked his instruments one more time. The Aurora had already fed him its current course, speed, and location so that he could sync his navigation computers. The launch tube door had swung upward behind him and sealed him into the first chamber of the tube. The door in front of him had already closed, and the air in the tube beyond it had already been sucked out by the powerful vacuum pumps. Two seconds before launch, that door would drop into the floor. Immediately afterward, he would be shot out of the forward end of the tube, the catapult accelerating him another fifty meters per second above whatever speed the Aurora was traveling at the time of launch.

“
Bridge, starboard launch
.
Requesting clearance for one shot
.”

“
Starboard launch, you are cleared for one shot
.”

“
Talon One, launch. You are cleared for forward launch
.”

“Talon One copies. Ready to launch.” Major Prechitt placed his hands on the grab rails on either side of his cockpit walls, just below the lip where the canopy locked into the body of his interceptor. Even though his inertial dampeners would reduce the force of acceleration to tolerable levels, it was best to hold on to something during the shot so that his hands wouldn’t flail about and slam into something by accident. During his launch, all his flight systems would be controlled by the auto-flight system until he was clear of the ship. At that point, he would be free to take control or continue on auto-flight for the first leg of his flight plan.

“
Launching Talon One, cat three, in three…
”

The interceptor’s main engines began to spin up in preparation to fire once the ship was clear of the launch tube.

“
…two…
”

The door in front of the interceptor dropped into the deck in less than a second. The major could almost hear the air rushing past his canopy as it left the space around him, rushing forward down the launch tube and out the open end into the vacuum of space.

“
…one…
”

Major Prechitt tightened his grip on the hand holds and tensed up his body, pushing himself back into his flight seat.

“
…launch
.”

The major grunted as the interceptor lurched forward, being sent hurtling down the launch tube by the force of the electromagnetic catapult system. The dim lights in the launch tube streaked past him, blurring into an almost solid amber line as he rolled down the tube. As he approached the exit, he could feel the gravity lessening around him as the adjustable gravity plating in the deck eased up to let go of the small spacecraft as it exited the long tunnel and shot out into space ahead of the Aurora.

Still a few hundred meters behind the bow of the ship, the gray colored starboard side of the Aurora streaked past the major as he coasted quickly out past the bow of the Aurora. Setup for the first test launch of a Corinairan interceptor adapted to launch from the Aurora’s launch tubes had taken nearly a month to prepare for. The shot itself had taken two seconds.

“Wow!” the major exclaimed. “Aurora, Talon One, airborne!”

Nathan watched the main view screen as the small interceptor accelerated out past them. The ship was pulling away so fast that it was almost gone from view when it fired its main engines and began its turn to starboard.

“Copy that, Talon One,” Naralena answered. “Congratulations, Major.”

“
Aurora, Talon One. I am going to circle around you a few times just to test her out before I come back in for another launch cycle
.”

Naralena looked to Nathan for approval.

“Tell him to feel free to indulge himself,” Nathan said, a smile on his face. He remembered the first time he had launched from the flight deck of the Reliant during his training. Although he had flown in orbit many times before that, the feeling of flying out in open space, free from the gravity of a nearby body, was an amazing experience.

“Talon One, Aurora. Captain says ‘indulge yourself.’”

* * *

Tug had timed his arrival down to the perfect moment. His calculations had given him enough time to come in behind Deikon and use its gravity to slingshot him around and inward toward Ancot with only the slightest burn of his engines. It was extremely doubtful that anyone would have spotted his thermal signature. After his burn had completed, he shut down all systems and allowed his ship to grow cold in the icy depths of space in order to reduce his thermal signature even further. The portable environmental and life support systems within his suit would sustain him during the hours it would take to coast across the vast distance between the super-massive gas giant, Deikon, and the rocky, inhabited planet, Ancot.