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jeriendhal“I am not sanguine, Lord Ru Ofanius. We’re talking about the same people who brought the Bloody Plagues down on us during the closing days of the Dominion War, out of nothing more than spite knocking them off their marble pedestals. We lost fifty percent of our population from that, a blow that we’re only now recovering from some five hundred years later. Do we really dare take the chance?”
“We take chances all the time, Captain,” Hazel spoke up. “We took a chance trusting the humans who sparked the Rebellion in the first place. Rufus took one hell of a chance just getting the Council of Farm Lords to believe all the information we just gave you. We can take a chance on this, and if we’re wrong we won’t be any worse off than before.”
“We’ll see, Lt. Swiftfoot. Forgive me, milord. I have to attend to undocking and our acceleration to superluminal.” Captain Sharpfang stood up and Rufus and Hazel took their cue and stepped out, heading back to the officer’s quarters.
“Her I like,” Hazel said as they walked along. “She reminds me of the captain of my old ship.”
“The one that let you off with a medical discharge?” Rufus asked. When she nodded, he ventured to add, “I’ll guess that your ship’s security officer wasn’t happy about that.”
She growled softly. “It was his job to watch over things I suppose. That still didn’t mean I had to like the bastard. He as much told me that I was a hazard to myself and anyone else who got within ten kilometers of me when I was flying.” Hazel sighed. “It didn’t help that he was right.”
Rufus patted her on the shoulder with his left arm. “Well, let’s see if we can finally prove him wrong.”
* * *
Two weeks later they were well clear of Vulpine space, having taken a roundabout route that slid the Falcon Claw along the Ardactavian border and towards the region of uncontrolled space just above Geoffrey’s Crescent that acted as a buffer zone between the Hive and GSA territory. It was designed to mask their origins from Vulpine Prime, making them appear to be just another rag tag mercenary outfit, making their living escorting ships in the pirate infested outer territories.
Rufus had spent most of that time pouring through the flight manuals for his Brawler and practicing in the carrier’s small simulation chamber. It wasn’t a true “six degrees of freedom” unit, lacking any form acceleration or zero-G simulation, but it was enough for him to familiarize him with the craft’s control and instrumentation layout, and do some practice combat with computer generated bots. After a fortnight he was confident enough to request a check ride from one of the Falcon Claw’s other resident Brawler pilots, a laconic male in his forties who usually just went by his call sign “Flamer.”
“All right, Rufus,” Flamer said to him in the WSO seat, as their craft sat in its cradle, facing the carrier’s mass accelerators. “We’ll keep it simple this first jaunt. Run through the usual Prove I’ve Read the Manual checks on the controls and then we’ll go through the Basic Combat Maneuvering set to show you know which way the nose goes when you pull on the stick. Now power us up.”
“Powering up my craft,” Rufus replied, flipping the switches corresponding to the main power generators, backup generator, and the final emergency batteries. “Board is green,” he reported.
“I see green,” Flamer confirmed, marking off a check on his datapad. He then ran Rufus through the rest of checklist without undue haste but without letting his student have time to wrack his brain for the answers either. Fortunately Rufus had done his homework well and in a few minutes the fat fighter was ready for launch.
“Launch Control this is White Knight, my craft is ready for launch,” Rufus said once Flamer had checked off everything that could possibly be checked without actually flying the fighter.
“White Knight, this is Falcon Control. Launch count commencing,” a voice from the CiC returned. The Brawler's HUD started ticking down a five count. At two seconds Rufus let his muscles deliberately relax, just before the mass accelerator grabbed their craft and hurled it forward and away from the ship. One moment they were surrounded by cold metal and the next they were in the inky blackness of space, the stars bright in the sky, the white band of the Milky Way in front of them.
“Nominal launch,” Rufus reported. He took a deep breath, wondering why he felt the sudden urge to weep at the beauty in front of him. Holy Den Mother bless us all, I have missed this.
“Confirm, nominal launch,” Flamer agreed. “All right, let's do a 180 degree rotation on your Z axis so we can turn about and do a visual lock on the Falcon Claw.”
“Turning 180,” Rufus confirmed, pulling himself back to the present. He nudged the control stick and their Brawler rotated to the port, turning on its center of mass towards the carrier.
“You need to correct, Pilot. Nose is down zed ten degrees,” Flamer said sharply.
“What?” Rufus double-checked the HUD, confirming Flamer's pronouncement. He hadn't even been bothering to look at it, depending as all Vulpine pilots did on their natural to maintain awareness of their relative position in space by mere instinct. He twitched the joystick back, raising the nose. Too far, for it nudged itself above the plane of their travel, instead of leveling out as he'd intended.
“Pilot, what do you think you're doing?” Flamer demanded. “Level out and complete your maneuver!”
“I'm trying,” Rufus growled. He pushed the nose down, over correcting again. In his frustration he brought the nose back up too fast, sending their fighter tumbling backwards nose over tail. The stars spun wildly in front of the cockpit and for one fatal moment he tried to focus on them instead of attempting to correct his previous mistake.
He felt his stomach clench up in a way all too familiar from his uncounted number of drinking and drug binges from his previous days, and then suddenly his helmet was filled with putrid brown chunks as his vomited up his breakfast. He involuntarily swallowed back, choking as vomit filled his nose and jammed the life support fans in his spacesuit.
“I have the spacecraft!” Flamer shouted, as Rufus tried desperately to yank his helmet off as his vision began to turn black...
TBC
