Skies Over Tomorrow: Constellation (18 page)

Then in a high-pitched tone along with the warning indicator off to the side, flashing in red, a beacon yelped repeatedly. She looked to the radar. Numerous blips homing. Chiera kicked in the afterburners, and her variable fighter went super sonic. The computer called out the distances of twenty missiles, all snaking in every direction. All locked on to strike her from the sky. She flipped a switch, releasing a barrage of countermeasures in the plane's wake as it darted through the air. It was desperate to outrun the heat-seeking swarm. Explosions, numerous and thunderous. She knew then, as the computer confirmed, that the missiles mated with the countermeasures.

“You're not giving me a minute to rest, are you?” Chiera said to herself, breathing heavily under the oxygenated helmet. She looked out one side of the canopy to the other. Then punching a couple keys on the computer console, she pulled up a map that displayed the trajectory of the missiles and the vicinity from which Torres discharged them. Locking in the coordinates, she readied her weapons while dropping altitude and turning slow and loose. A blip appeared on the radar screen. She ignited the afterburners and reached Mach three in seconds, piloting an intercept course. It appeared the blip vectored an intercept course as well. Annoyed with the yammering computer, she turned off the audio and relied on the visual data of the heads-up display.

“Too fast,” she said, realizing his range was too short for missile lock. She flicked a tiny lever on the left control stick and switched to guns, and proceeded to engage Major Torres head on. It was then Chiera began to understand what the major meant by combat being a ritual of confronting and overcoming fear and fear of death. White flashes streamed the distance between the two planes. Chiera pressed her attack, swinging from side to side, dipping and rising, avoiding as much of the gunfire as she possibly could while maintaining sight of him. She felt adrenaline chill her body.

“I am not a coward,” she said through gnashed teeth. The avoidance of death was not becoming of an ace pilot who was needed to defend Morrilla. “Fly,” she said. Her lips tightened and her eyebrows merged as she lined up the major for a lock. Her right hand steadied the throttle forward, while the index finger of her left hand poised to pull the gun trigger. “Fly,” she said again, frowning at the streaks of elongated white flashes that bolted pass her. The target lock assembled on the HUD screen and blinked red. Chiera's fighter then erupted a shower of hot metal hail.

They were both locked on one another. Chiera went full throttle. The volley of lightning exchanged was relentless. The variable fighters flashed by each other. Chiera went into a hard pitch upward, engaging the air brake and stalling the plane while pulling the Sentry mode lever. The aircraft converted and turned around. The warning indicator flashed. Then the cockpit went red and blared out, and jarring hits followed, then a bright light and intense heat, then burning, smoke, and fire. The Sentry shook in gravity's grip. Chiera tried to coax a response from it; however, looking at the damage displayed on the main monitor, with eighty-nine percent of the fighter smashed, there was no way to recover.

The sky, the mountains, and the ground spun in a nauseating blur. Chiera pulled the ejection lever, but nothing happened. She cursed in a foot-stomping, fist-slamming frenzy. The canopy blew off, and air blasted into the cockpit. She pulled on the ejection handle again, and the seat still failed to respond. The Sentry plummeted, the main monitor displaying its descent trajectory and the fact that it was nine kilometers out from mountains. It flashed repeatedly: CRASH IS IMMINENT. EJECT. Seven kilometers… Five kilometers… Three point five kilometers… One point seven kilometers…

Then there was a jolt, a surge of power from beneath, and the seat shot out of the cockpit, carrying Chiera away from the burning mass of her doomed fighter. The seat fell away, and the parachute filtered out and caught her fall. She looked and saw the Sentry land and how its legs buckled under a first explosion, and then as it fell face down, how a second explosion engulfed it. Her lover, now a fiery wreckage, burned a new scar into the mountainside.

Chiera descended on a cushion of air as she prepared for the earth to receive her. On touchdown, dropping into the grassland, she went into a roll and flipped over a couple of times. She was quick to her feet, removing her helmet and dropping it to the ground, and then gaining control of the deflated parachute, she unhooked herself from it. She looked to the destruction of her fighter on the mountain. Breathing heavily, a sigh of relief escaped her lips as the jitters set in. She searched to see if the major would perform an aerial dance of victory, but there was none. Only a smoky trail lingered in the sky, and her eyes followed it to see his Sentry wavering and losing altitude. Then she smiled, standing in an akimbo stance with the grass swaying at her knees.

Thunder rumbled across the plain, and lightning flashed. Dark clouds grew overhead. Chiera turned to see the storm approaching. She picked up the gear that ejected with her, as it began to rain, and rain hard. So began the challenge of hiking back to base. However, she set out after the major, as she knew two are better than one with facing the hellish marathon home—if he survived the draw of the flight challenge.

“Stop your crying, the transmission is slipping in now.”

“You know, if both of us didn't give a damn, they would've thrown us in the brig already.”

Lieutenant Rehana Hayes looked at her co-pilot from the corner of her eye. “Relax, Vincent.”

“In case you forgot, we're scheduled to launch in twenty minutes.”

“I waited hours to make this call. I'm not leaving until after I talk with my sister.”

“I'll be sure to tell Colonel Moore that as he rips us new orifices.”

“The astral chasm won't be open for much longer, and besides, the transmission just slipped into the stream.”

“You know he hates pilots to miss a launch window,” Vincent said. “I can hear it now: ‘As officers of the Macrocosm Alliance Corps—'”

“Just give me a couple of more minutes, will you?”

“Make it quick.”

Rehana did not even bother to turn from the screen of the com-link to respond to her fellow officer. Make it quick. That was absurd. Even with the discovery of the astral chasm that hurled her and the crew of the S.S. Alto light-years across galaxies in a matter of days, and prompted advancements in space travel and communication for the Galactic Federation of Mars, sending a real-time correspondence back through the wormhole sometimes required time. With a loose grip on the casing of the monitor, her fingers rapping its sides, she focused on the obtainment of the transmission for a minute, and then looked up and scanned the observation lounge. Except for Vincent, there was no one in sight. She thought of calling her sister later, when the Alto was scheduled to send another message home, but four and a half hours had been a long time to stand and wait in line.

“Why did you have to wait so long to get in line?” Vincent said.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He checked his watch for the time before bending over to retrieve his helmet from the heavy grated floor. He stood upright and said, “We should be performing the preflight diagnostics right about now.”

“Our Guardian isn't going anywhere without us.”

“Neither will we if Moore launches another unit.”

“He won't launch another unit. We're the best scouts aboard. He wouldn't dare deny us the opportunity.”

“I'd like to see you tell him that to his face,” Vincent said, as he tossed his helmet up and down a few times.

“I'm not leaving until I talk with my sister.”

Vincent caught his helmet and tucked it between his side and left arm, and looked at his watch again. “Your tenacity is admirable,” he said, facing Rehana, “but this is neither the time nor the place for it.” The second she looked at him, he jabbed his right hand under her arm. Though she was quick to seize his wrist, his index finger found the cancel button before she could pull his hand away.

“Vincent!” She pushed him off.

“You may not care about being late for the mission, but I do,” he said and walked away.

Rehana squatted and retrieved her helmet from the base of the com-link's pedestal, letting out a deep guttural shout as she stood.

“Get over it and come on! We've got fifteen minutes!”

The two MAC officers ran from the observation lounge and stampeded through the ship. Crewmen in their way were shouted aside, and those too slow to yield found themselves shoved up against the bulkheads. Commandeering the central lift, and with smooth tongues, they persuaded its occupants to disembark the accelerated ride; they even prevented others from joining on the trip up through the insides of the Alto. When the elevator stopped, they scrambled off and resumed their mad dash. Shipmates they came across in transition from one level of a deck to another were rushed and jerked from access ladders, if not crawled over in laddered thresholds. The hurtle ended at the entry of the launch bay, where upon they saw their Guardian being prepped for departure.

They looked to Operations and saw Colonel Moore; he was not pleased. The two pilots proceeded on and boarded a personnel deployment hovercraft at the plinth of the gunsuit's station. Rehana took command of the controls and guided the PDH up along the steel gray shell of their mech.

“When was the last time you talked with your sister?” Vincent said.

The deafening noise of the launch bay in chorus with the droning of the PDH drowned him out. Of course, Rehana's attention was on getting up to the cockpit, so she paid him no attention. High above the bay floor, she glimpsed over the side of the hovercraft when it gyrated a couple times. She looked up and saw they neared the access ramp, and the craft slowed until it wavered in midair; it then docked with the extended gradient.

In his hustle to board the mech, Vincent lost his balance, and was quick to grasp hold of the ramp's railing. He looked back to Rehana with a tense smile; she shook her head. He knew to be careful and take his time when boarding the Guardian, as something as little as a slip could have sent him plummeting to his death. Vincent pulled forward into the cockpit while Rehana set the automatic descent for the PDH. She then stepped from it, onto the boarding ramp, and drew herself into the reconnaissance unit.

Once inside and seated, and after both she and Vincent strapped themselves in and the flight controls and consoles repositioned to within their reach, Rehana flipped a switch. The ramp retracted, and the PDH floated back down to the bay floor and off to its hutch, as the armament of the gunsuit closed down and sealed the pilots in its torso.

“Starting up reactor,” said Vincent.

Rehana activated the cockpit's actual environs display, in which the surface panels of its semi-spherical interior faded to a view of the Guardian's environment. The AED granted the pilots with a wide 180 degree frontal viewpoint in any given direction beyond the confines of the gunsuit, and permitted the effortless operation of the mech with its simulator-like interface. “Opening grip ducts for drop. Give me an inventory, Vincent.”

“Coming right up,” he said, punching keys on the console to his right.

Rehana reached for a monitor above her and twisted its main dial. The screen clicked on and displayed a view of the staff in the control tower. “Operations, Recon Guardian Alpha Omega Nine ready for drop,” she said. “Awaiting claw.”

“You're late Lieutenant Hayes, Lieutenant Craver,” the operator said.

“We know, Chrystine. Just get us underway.”

“Standby.”

From her station, Chrystine manipulated one of several dozen massive robotic arms on a suspended grid system of the launch bay, and positioned it above the recon unit. “Lowering claw,” she said.

Rehana flipped a switch on a monitor lower to her right and watched the external view of two shafts sliding into cylindrical openings in the back of the Guardian. One hole was between the right thruster and a mounted missile pod, and the other was situated between the left thruster and the main radar-sensor unit. All the while, Vincent continued with the preflight checks of the gunsuit's systems.

“Contracting grip ducts,” said Rehana.

“Lock confirmed,” Chrystine said. “Buckle up.”

“Vincent where's that inventory?”

“Got it right—whoa! Take it easy, Chrystine.”

“I would not be rushing if you two were on time.”

“We're here now, so relax,” Rehana said. “Vincent, inventory.”

“Okay, we have with us today: three Inquirer One probes, twelve Astral missiles, an ALF Tech RLF EX27B generator, and 100 subspace transmitters.”

The gunsuit jolted, and then stopped moving.

Rehana looked to the com-link and said, “Chrystine, why are we just hanging here?”

“You've missed your launch window. You'll have to wait until Zeta Squad's deployment is complete.”

Rehana lowered her brows with a distorted gesture of her lips. “Understood,” she said and flicked the first of six channel switches below the monitor. A screen saver with the Federation emblem on a blue background replaced the operator's image. Rehana then made a face at the video display terminal, wishing for the colonel to see it—just so he would know what she really thought of him.

“So, how does the new rectum feel?” Vincent said.

“Shut up.”

The gunsuit, or Guardian as Federation pilots called it, hung in midair above its station as Chrystine completed the launch sequence of the eleven heavily armed Guardians of Zeta Squadron. Vincent timed the unit's deployment, looking at his watch for each send-off. It took twenty-five minutes. In that amount of time, he knew the Alto could have deployed half of its thirteen squads of fighters and defenders.

The com-link beeped above Rehana's head, and she turned up its first channel switch.

Chrystine appeared; she tried to hide the smirk on her face. “The colonel said, ‘Next time, don't be late.'”

“Just move us into position, marionette,” Rehana said and flicked back down the switch assigned to Operations, ridding the VDT of the bay operator once again. “Vincent, we're ready?”

“Yeah, green lights across the board,” he said, as the claw zipped the recon unit across the extensive span of the bay to the launch area at the opposite end of their mech's post. The robotic arm, with the Guardian in its grip, loomed over a string of ejection chambers when it slowed and positioned the reconnaissance team over the fifth cell in the line, at which point, the hexagonal doors of the cavity parted and retracted into the floor. The claw then lowered the Guardian into the hole, and secondary latches within the compartment tethered the gunsuit. The grip ducts loosened and released the shafts, and allowed the claw to withdraw from the cell as it closed up. Gravity quickly fell to zero. “Guardian's hot; primary thrusters on standby.”

Rehana lowered the clear visor of her helmet. She gripped the controls and moved them around, searching for the familiar feel of the Guardian, and then she said, “Firing stabilizers. Release the clamps.”

Vincent pulled a lever, and the secondary claws let go their hold as various auxiliary thrusters kept the gunsuit centered in the ejection cell.

“On my mark,” Rehana said.

Vincent rested a hand on a second release lever.

“Do it.”

The moment Vincent pulled down on the handle, it opened doors at the bottom of the launch chamber. The rapid decompression of the cell sucked the Guardian from the Alto, out into the expanse of space. The opening left in the ship's hull closed up the second Alpha Omega Nine was underway.

“Let's get our bearing,” said Rehana, maintaining her control of the Guardian. The twin, rectangular nozzles of the primary thrusters in its back emitted a warm, rosy exhaust, thrusting the gunsuit forward along the underside of the galaxy class cruiser. “Hey, will you turn off that vicinity beacon?”

Vincent stopped the buzzing, as he said, “We're clearing the Alto.”

Once from underneath the shelter of the ship, they met up with Zeta Squad. Five units drifted off to the Alto's starboard while the remaining six were deployed to its port. The recon team moved on to point position, and making their way through the cosmos, slipped into solitude.

“Right on course,” said Vincent; he and Rehana settled back for the journey. On his left console's main monitor, the navigational system displayed a delineation of the course they were following, which led to their mission target, an asteroid belt. It hindered the Alto from exploring the uncharted star system the astral chasm funneled it and its crew into.

“I'm going to push us up a little,” said Rehana.

“Sure, but when we reach the asteroids, try not to run into one, okay?” Vincent looked down at his comrade and smiled, and said, “I'll reset vicinity beacon in any case. Ninety-two meters?”

“That sounds fine,” she said and depressed the hyper-boost button on the left flight control; and with the dilation of the nozzle vanes, ion particles of xenon with a hint of pink bloomed from the primary thrusters, and propelled the recon unit onward.

The pilots sat on a forty-five degree angle of each other that positioned Vincent such that his feet rested behind and slightly above Rehana's shoulders. Despite the semi roundness of the cockpit, it was compact due to the design of the Guardian. It was in essence a manned probe with minimal room, arms and protection, and required two officers to aviate and handle its equipment of sensors, probes, and cameras. Nevertheless, what it lacked in size and firepower as a lightweight mech, it made up in agility and speed.

As the Macrocosm Alliance Corps deemed the expenditure of equipping gunsuits with biostasis technology impractical, the lack of such apparatus—invented for the prevention of time's effects on the human body with travel across normal space—reduced a mech's payload capacity and provided it with spare weight and room. This afforded powerful, cutting edge engines to be equipped, as the primary thrusters. Where auxiliary boosters were solid fuel based, the main rockets were a conventional liquid fuel-electrostatic ion hybrid, a standard for Guardians, as they produced such high effective exhaust velocities and thrust; gunsuits could compass up to incredible—almost unbelievable—distances of kilometers in a matter of minutes in normal space. This capability was hyper-boost.

As a result, while no where near the speed of light, the hybrid thrusters made it possible for Guardians to zoom across stretches of stars and operate very wide ranges from a ship, or fleet. However pilots, particularly recon teams, never exceeded a fraction of one astronomical unit, as a matter of caution. There was always the logistic of returning to ship that had to be considered, and it was never a good situation to breakdown in the middle of space—which was possible. Still, to cover the remoteness of space expeditiously, speed was essential.

Realizing the distances that were routine in day-to-day deployments, pilots developed an unofficial lingo with speaking simply some astronomical distances. The expressions, unique measures from specific origins on Earth, described certain large number values for which there were no specific, single words: myriad, for ten thousand; lakh, for one hundred thousand; and crore, for ten million. The succinct jargon, with which kilometer was implicit, made pilots misers of seconds, especially when in dire straights; and suggested how fast life moved in the expanse of space.