|
|||||||||
| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
|
Suicide Spear
|
|||||||||
|
Time was, we called these ships tin cans. But this generation, the one the new pilots come up out of, don’t understand the reference. And nothing makes you feel quite so old as having to explain ancient food storage to a bunch of twenty year olds.
Officially, these ships are called Vengeance class, but for a long time the Navy’s called them the “Tip of the Spear,” the first point in their defensive strategy; they even look like spearheads. Those of us unfortunate enough to fly them know them as suicide spears. They were originally designed as drones, until the Hack War, when every piece of remote operated military equipment changed hands roughly every 15 minutes. So they gutted the spears to hollow out a little hole for a human pilot. There have been a lot of birds nicknamed “Widowmaker” over the years, but since this isn’t an aviation history class I won’t bore you with their titles or respective failure rates. The spears are deadlier than all of them; the Navy was worried enough about the moniker that regs state to fly a spear you can’t be married, can’t have dependents. Not that I blame the designers. The spear was meant to be cutting edge tech. Nations were increasingly building mobile space stations, and sending them into far-flung corners of the known galaxies. The spears were supposed to use some of the most advanced avionics ever designed to navigate through the mapped wormholes to counter rogue or hostile stations- then had the space for all that computing power halved. But what makes them truly dangerous is the way they attack. They really are designed like spearheads- they’re meant to punch holes through the inferior armor of space stations. I really don’t understand physics well enough to understand what the hell the crap about diamond alloys and atoms arranged in cubes and triangular designs actually do, but functionally, when flown right, you could shoot a spear through the heart of a planet and come out the other side fine- that is, if you get the angles right. And if you don't, well, I at least plan on leaving a pretty smear across the broadside of a ship. The problem is those advanced systems that were meant to coordinate these finicky flight patterns were gutted, and those that stayed are buggy as all hell, and it takes a combination of skill, luck, and intuition not to kill yourself your first flight out. The spears have a first mission death rate of 70%; lifetime rate, assuming twenty years’ service, bumps it up to 90%. Of course, that would be in peacetime, and this is anything but. The aliens (and I’m using the term here for simplicity, not because I’m making an assertion or assumption) made first contact over England. Their ship landed in the mouth of the Thames, and it was an oddly calm day for wind and sea both, so naturally the Brits named them the Halcyon. Now apparently the Halcyon were operating on some old news, and still thought the Brits were the dominant power in the world, so they wanted a meeting with the Brit higher-ups. A group of them, including the Prime Minister and secretaries from the regular and shadow cabinets, entered the ship, leaving a Social Democrat in charge of the country (God save the queen). A week passed, without word from the diplomatic mission, until one of them “escaped.” He was a Box operative masquerading as an MP. He claimed the Halcyon were feigning peaceful operations, and had even greeted the mission with a decadent feast and festivities. He said the Halcyon looked as human as you and me, but that they wanted to take the Earth for themselves. There was some other stuff about thinking he’d seen his dead father, but no one really paid it much mind- he’d obviously had an ordeal, and didn’t even return to Military Intelligence for debrief, but went straight to the papers, er, the news, rather, for you young bastards. The ship fired off before the Deputy PM could figure out whether or not to attack, taking the rest of the mission with it, but within a month, seven more of the ships were operating in our solar system (and it seemed a day didn’t go by without astronomers or probes discovering a new ship patrolling the Milky Way). So our President, the US President that is, sent them a message, saying roughly, “These are not the actions of a peaceful people. We do not desire conflict. If you do not remove your ships from our planetary orbit quickly, and do not within seven rotations of our planet remove your ships to the boundaries of our solar system, we will interpret your actions as hostile, and respond accordingly.” And in that week, they doubled their presence. I remember people saying how we had a Democrat in office so it was a bluff, but good to his word we launched an offensive on the day God would have rested. The spears had never had a chance to get used in combat, but we’d been calling them the tip of the spear for a while by then, and the rest of the world, while they stood behind us, wanted us to use the weapon system a previous administration had called “the equivalent in this generation of the atomic bomb in its time.” The spears were designed to launch from space stations, but the first series were designed and built planet-side, and as a show of good faith we'd never launched them, but to get them into the atmosphere they’d designed a kind of cannon. To keep from killing the pilots, the spear had to accelerate slowly, so the “chamber” of the cannon went for several miles underground, where electromagnets gradually sped the spear up to escape velocity. That first battle actually went rather well. It seems we caught the Halcyon with their pants down (as I’ve said, they seemed to be largely ignorant of the current state of the world, and since then the consensus is that they were operating on information off radio broadcasts from before the fifties); our loss rate was closer to 40%; this was when the spears were at their technical peak, each of them just receiving the most thorough technical going over of their service careers. By the end of another week we’d destroyed the Halcyon ships in our system, including a third wave that arrived in the interim. We had other defenses, sure, like the planetary defense grid we set up to destroy asteroids, and some of the more conventional fighter ship designs. But the spears were the only truly effective counter to the Halcyon tech. After about a decade, the war ground to a stalemate. They put a little more armor on the next wave, we’d figure out a new angle of attack, rinse and repeat. We still keep them mostly out of the system, but the Milky Way is infested. We keep an eye on encroachment on the system, but we rarely venture too far past that. At least, that used to be the plan. But where the Halcyon seem to be relentless, the war had taken its toll on humanity. It’s hard to convince anyone that a 3 in 10 chance of survival, getting crappier with every mission, is a good life decision. But the wormprobes had been mapping space, time and whatever the hell you’d call alternate space-times throughout the war. Most wormholes go nowhere useful- 99.99% of them go to alternate universes, and of the rest quite a few dump you too close to a star or a black hole (or into the center of a planet). But there’s several dozen out of the six hundred thousand known wormholes that actually do connect up and make for quick travel. The Halcyon thought they were being clever blowing up the probes on sight, but slowly, over time, that trail of destroyed probes led us back to the Halcyon home world. So we’ve got a third of our remaining strike wing on what is likely a suicide mission- which seems right up a spear pilot’s alley. We don’t think we can take the planet out, but if we can take the fight to them, make the Halcyon bleed the way we have, they might lose their taste for it. I’m the only gray hair left in the wing; a few of my contemporaries took early retirement a few years ago. I guess they’d all gone out drinking and started thinking real hard on the numbers, and when they woke up the next morning between them was a calculator with a number on it so small that it had an e in it, and they realized that it was their chance of surviving to retirement. I guess that makes me the de facto commander, even though a few of these pilots have degrees or ROTCed and technically outrank me. Our mission, basically, is to find the biggest ship or settlement in proximity to Halcyon and destroy it. The last probe, the one that had finally found Halcyon, had transmitted the location of a larger ship near the planet right before it was destroyed. That first Halcyon ship that floated on the Thames was large enough to be counted as a mobile station; this new, bigger ship was to that ship as carrier stations are to spears. Only one had ever made it to Earth space, and even then, we nuked the bastard thing the moment it got as close to us as the moon. Somebody (probably another hoity-toity Brit) had the bright idea to name them Daeva. Our wormhole spits us out close enough that Halcyon looks like our moon from Earth (though from the probe we know it’s bigger, so we must be further away than that). Almost immediately I see the Daeva that shot the probe, but it’s hardly functional, still docked and only half-built, entire decks exposed to the vacuum of space. A cluster of six moons have been connected with a skeleton of metal tubes to create a massive port for ships- big enough to send the right message. My targeting computer doesn’t spare a moment to take in the site, and immediately points out structural weaknesses, and color-codes them. The data goes out to the squadron commanders, also color-coded. There’s a pause, where the silent vacuum is all that seems to exist, before I give the closest to an order as I can: “kill it.” I’m first off the mark, not least of which because I was the first out of the wormhole. The targeting computer, acting off some weird coded voodoo using what I typed in as my preferences years ago and my actual tactical decisions and maneuvering during missions past assigns me the central structure, a power plant in the core operating a series of electromagnets that, along with the infrastructure, keep the six moons from breaking apart. There are three main tendrils connecting the largest moons to this hub, which means at least three clean passes, unless I want to delegate- and I hate delegating. The Halcyon have been careless, and it shows. We make two-thirds of the distance before they get weapons online and start firing; I guess they’ve gotten complacent, being so far from the front line, but these men with me, even the rooks, have been mentally preparing for this moment for months. I talked to command about getting us a nuke, but the physicists couldn’t guarantee that wormhole travel wouldn’t set it off, and also couldn’t guarantee that if that happened it wouldn’t seriously crippled spacetime. So it’s the first time we’ve put spears up against a Daeva (or half of one, as the case may be). It’s got a cannon battery on its bow looks like whiskers on some kind of horribly elongated feline/caterpillar crossbreed, and the closer we get to the damn thing the more certain I am that those cannons are as big as the one that first shot the spears into space. The first two fire off, and two pilots die in fire; their ships explode, as their destruct sequences auto-trigger, to make sure the ships don’t fall into enemy hands. I have my fingers over the screen, and a fighter from every squad diverts to join the one attacking the Daeva; it’s odd how seamlessly the carnage orchestrates, how effortlessly the ships move from relatively safe missions to a likely death. I want to break formation, chase after the Daeva myself; but that would sow confusion, and undermine the commander of that section- and I don’t know anymore about taking down a Daeva than any of them. But realizing all of this, knowing it, is not the same as wanting it or even accepting it, and I smash my hand down on the screen, and the spear lurches a little as it gives me speed it shouldn’t have to give. There’s about a minute to impact. I’m aimed for the widest tendril, the one supplying power and stability to the largest moon, because if something goes sideways it’ll be the most use to the ones left behind. I power down comms and the tactical oversight computer, so the spear can focus on punching a clean hole through that cord (it’s the little things like that that are usually the difference between a short and medium range career). A small message pops up on my screen to tell me that the tube is twice as wide as the spear, at a minimum, and that, oh yeah, it’s full of electricity- a lot of electricity. But ballistics should take care of the former and the latter, well, I can only hope that my shielding is up for it, because there aren’t really any alternatives. The spear hits the tube and it distorts, bends, like human flesh around the force of a gunshot, then, in a splash of beautiful sparks, tears like paper, and the tear ripples through as suddenly my entire spear is bathed in electricity- and then I’m free out the other side. I’m about to give a loud whoop when suddenly everything dies, all my systems, and the ship yaws. I’m floating free, and the spear spins to face the planet, and I know my only hope in hell is that a full reboot kicks things back on, so I power down manually. Halcyon the planet is blue and green. Some people take that Halcyon shit too seriously, as if the name hadn’t been plucked from the ether or some mythology textbook. Some even believe that the Halcyon homeworld is Heaven, and that these are dead people we’re fighting. I don’t buy it; I can’t see a “Heavenly” reward being to make war on your descendants (besides which I think it’s more likely we’d discovered Narnia). But I say a little prayer to the god of engineering and whore-mongering and cold boot. There’s a pause, and it’s so quiet that for an instant I wonder if the hull seal burst and I’m slowly being enveloped by the nothing of space, and then my screen flashes on and the engine purrs (like a kitten kicked in the throat- but at this point, any purr is better than nothing). I kiss the screen I punched not two minutes ago, and the ship rights itself. It remembers our plan of attack, and starts to circle for another pass. The largest moon has already shifted, and has the Daeva pincered between it and another moon, so I decide to go for the smallest tether rather than set the Daeva loose severing the middle. Spear’s a little more sluggish on this pass, but the ballistics computer thinks it’ll still push through the second tendril. It isn’t until the moment before impact that I notice on the screen that I’m glowing, that there’s still electric charge all over the ship, and I wonder if that’ll make up more than the dampers can handle. And I get my answer immediately, as a spark leaps out of my console at my chest. It’s enough to melt the plastic suit into my skin, but it doesn’t stop my heart, so I don't swear too loudly (at least, not now). Then I see it from the corner of my eye, one of the newer pilots piercing too close to my flight path, and then it gets infinitely worse as the Daeva manages a lucky shot that takes out that spear’s engines, and puts it on a collision course with me. At this speed I’m basically a shell on a trajectory, and I can’t really do a damned thing but watch as it comes at me- though that doesn’t keep me from firing thrusters. The ship’s sensors realize it a moment before impact, and the interior of the spear goes red and in the ship's monotone gets out, “incoming imp” before the other spear smashes into me. I’m lucky, in that the spear bounces off our hull- another foot down and I’d be a shish kebab. As my spear pulls around, I check the pilot’s vitals, even look at the interior camera; shot grabbed him at such a velocity he smashed his brains out on the display. Ship diagnostics say the engine’s beyond fried, so I stroke a few more keys and it autodestructs. My ship is spilling something warm that burns on contact with my leg; either that or I’m bleeding, but I don’t think I want to know which, since there’s fuck all I can do about whichever it is. Several of the remaining ships have stabilized, and are floating in formation, as if they’re standing at attention, and I suddenly feel self-conscious. “Go. I’ll finish it, and be right behind you.” The ships that can peel off, enter formation for the wormhole; I don’t watch them go. A full two thirds of the ships stay, and I flick my fingers over the touch screen, and sure enough, vitals are scrubbed on all of them- the suicide spear claiming its intended. I know command can do it remotely, but I enter the code to send them all back to home base, where pilot remains can be vacuumed out to make room for the next set of poor bastards. Three spear engines are FUBAR; I try a manual hail, but they’re comm silent and I have to assume the worst, set their destruct timers. I set the engine to full impulse, and around me the destructing ships create a galaxy of metal and fire. That damned Daeva’s finally pried itself free from the two moons pinching it; looks like there’s enough wear on its hull, and I know a few of those spears are limping back to the hole- they’ll never make it without time. I shouldn’t chance it, mission over the men, but goddamn I’ve never been good at combat calculus. The targeting computer sputters; mapping a course through the Daeva then through the last cord is taxing, but it gives me a bearing. Meantime, the Daeva seems to understand we’re the last ones standing, and all of its remaining batteries train on me. It gets off a couple of good shots along my hull, and I know I take at least a little burn damage, but at this point I’m not too worried about that. On its side the cannons still aren’t installed, and those that are aren’t functional- probably thanks to the moon sandwich, so it tries to swing around, but it’s an elephant trying to pirouette, and even with a half-crippled engine I could fly circles around it. As soon as the computer and that itching survival instinct at the back of my brain agree, I punch the throttle hard- I don’t care at this point if I have fuel enough to get anywhere because I honestly don’t expect to survive. The other spears did enough damage to the Daeva that it’s power core is all but exposed, and it seems to run on a contained fusion-type reactor. I glance off the shielding, just enough to crack it, and blue flame immediately smashes through, grasping at my spear as I pass. But the glance was too much, and I’m spinning. The ship and I have been through this enough times we work together- and don’t even bother with the spin, just make sure the spear is still pointed where it’s going, and mercifully it hits the tendril about a third off from center- but it tears away in our wake. Then everything is blue fire and I'm sure I'm in hell until I remember it's just the Daeva's core depleting itself, then the flames recede back into its burnt out husk. And there’s a moment there where I can’t help but stare at the planet below, and think I must be dead and this must be heaven, because there’s no way I pulled that out. Then reality comes back, and I tell the computer to turn us back around and head for the wormhole. But the computer’s silent, and then shuts down. I turn off all the power, and try for another cold boot. Nothing happens. I’m floating dead in space, just enough velocity left to listlessly drift away from the wreckage orbiting Halcyon. I have a day’s ration of food and water, and I know I’m dead already. How’d that old song go? Suicide is painless? I don’t suppose starvation will be. Of course, I could always refuse to drink my own urine, and just die of dehydration instead, though I don’t know if that would solve anything. Of course, I’ve been a spear pilot long enough to know better than to think this ended any better, and I’ve got a flask beneath my seat. Should be just enough whisky to drift away to Margaritaville (I know, it should be tequila, but I refuse to have the last thing I taste be cactus piss in my liquor). |
|||||||||