Ep.#5 - "Rise of the Corinari" (8 page)

Nathan was amused, having never considered such a conundrum. “Well, since we have all the navigational data for the Pentaurus cluster and the surrounding systems, including Palee, I’m sure if we asked Abby she could figure it out for you. Since you’re serving on an Earth ship, I guess we should figure out your birthday based on the Earth calendar.”

“Sounds good enough,” Josh agreed as the shuttle fired its thrusters and ascended off the Aurora’s landing apron and began to drift to starboard. “Jeez, is he gonna fly this slow the whole way down?”

“Patience, Josh. I’m sure Tug won’t take off until you get there.”

“I’m just dying to get in that thing. I’ve never flown anything into FTL.”

“Neither have I,” Nathan told him.

“Really?” Josh said, somewhat surprised. “But how the…”

“We jumped here, remember?”

“Yeah, I guess you did at that,” Josh realized as he sat back in his seat, watching the planet below as it slowly moved closer to them.

* * *

After a rather lengthy clearance process, Josh was finally allowed into the heavily guarded portion of the Aitkenna spaceport that was reserved for the Corinari combat air and space operations. Although the various interceptors and tactical shuttles operated by the Corinari were significantly inferior to those used by the Ta’Akar, they were still decades ahead of what Josh had flown back in the Haven system. Nothing he had flown had been armed, except for a few side arms stored in a locker on board.

Josh had to walk all the way across the compound, asking several Corinari technicians—most of whom spoke little to no Angla—where to find Tug and his Takaran interceptor. Finally, after wandering about in frustration, he was directed to a back corner where an unmarked maintenance hangar stood. Its main door open, Josh could see the forty-year-old interceptor standing in the middle of the hangar. Tug stood next to the spacecraft in a black Corinari flight suit speaking with Marcus. The relationship between the Corinari and the Karuzari was tenuous at best. Because of this, Tug had asked Marcus to personally oversee the maintenance on his interceptor while Tug continued to represent the Karuzari at the alliance negotiations.

“Man, they sure stuck you way back in a corner, didn’t they?” Josh commented as he walked in the front of the small hangar.

“Yeah, I get the feeling the Corinari are none too fond of you Karuzari types,” Marcus commented.

“Yes, there is still a great amount of distrust and suspicion yet to be overcome,” Tug agreed.

“She all good to go, Marcus?” Josh asked. Although Marcus was a gruff old guy, he had been taking care of spacecraft for as long as Josh had known him. The man had practically raised him after his mother had died, so he was one of the few men that Josh actually trusted. Even though Marcus always rode him, Josh was glad that Marcus had also ended up marooned on the Aurora after the events back on Haven.

“Good as new,” Marcus boasted. “The Corinairans may not be as advanced as the Ta’Akar, but they sure know their way around forty-year-old technology. Those boys can fix just about anything.”

“They have had to make do with a reduced production capacity for several decades now,” Tug explained. “They have been forced to keep what they have in good repair.”

“I know how that goes,” Marcus reminded Tug. “I’m from Haven, remember?”

“Of course,” Tug remembered, having lived there off and on for the last thirty years himself, until recent events had forced them all from their homes. “There is a flight suit in the locker on the back wall,” he told Josh. “It should fit you well enough.”

“Great,” Josh exclaimed as he headed toward the back of the hangar. “I can’t wait to hit FTL for the first time.”

Marcus waited until Josh was out of earshot before speaking. “You sure you want to let him fly this thing? He’s a bit of a wild stick, you know.”

“Yes, I am well aware of his unorthodox piloting style,” Tug assured Marcus.

“Don’t know that I’d rightly call it a ‘style’,” Marcus observed.

“Well, perhaps I can smooth out some of the rough edges,” Tug said as he started up the boarding ladder.

“Save yourself some time,” Marcus sneered. “Skip the smoothing and go straight for the cutting.”

Tug smiled at Marcus’s remarks as he climbed into the rear seat of the cockpit. It had been over thirty years since he had sat in the rear seat. That had been when he trained his last wingman back in his days with the Palee militia. “I will keep that strategy in mind,” he promised as he strapped himself into his flight seat.

Marcus turned around to see Josh coming toward him wearing a baggy black Corinari flight suit and carrying a flight helmet. “I do believe the previous owner of that suit stood a bit taller than you,” he teased. “Probably had more meat on him as well.”

“What are you talking about?” Josh said. “It fits fine. A little loose, maybe.”

“As long as it seals up properly it will serve its purpose,” Tug assured him.

Josh bounded up the boarding ladder, noticing that Tug had taken the back seat in the cockpit as he crested the top of the ladder. “I’m sitting first seat?” he asked, stunned.

“If you are to fly this ship, that is the seat to do it from.”

“Oh hell yes,” Josh stated excitedly.

“I will get us airborne first,” Tug warned. “For now, you become acclimated to the controls and the flight displays.”

“No problem.”

Tug looked to Marcus as he handed Tug his flight helmet. “How are you getting back to the ship?”

“I’ll be catching a ride up with the captain later,” he told him.

“Very well,” Tug said, extending his hand. “Thank you for looking after my ship, my friend. It was greatly appreciated.”

Marcus took Tug’s hand, shaking it for the first time since they had met in the galley over a week ago. “You’re welcome,” Tug answered, feeling guilty that he had called him a terrorist during that first meeting. “Just don’t let junior crash it.”

“I will make certain he does not,” Tug promised as he donned his helmet and sealed it against the collar of his flight suit.

Marcus picked up Josh’s helmet from beside the front seat and plopped it down over Josh’s head, sealing it up as well. “Do what the old guy tells you, kid,” he instructed. “I have a feeling he knows a bit more about flying than you do.”

“No worries, Pops,” Josh promised as he examined the displays on the console in front of him.

Marcus climbed down off the boarding ladder, released its brakes, and rolled it back away from the wedge-shaped spacecraft. After a second, the interceptor’s two reactor plants lit up and hummed to life, her engines turning over moments later. He eyeballed the floor of the hangar around the small ship, checking for any obstacles. When he was satisfied it was clear, he gave a thumbs up signal to Tug.

The interceptor’s engines began to increase their pitch slightly and the warning lights on her underside began to flash, telling anyone who might be around that the spacecraft was now under her own power and was about to roll out of the hangar.

Marcus grabbed the ear muffs that were hanging around his neck and put them on to protect his ears from the sound of the spacecraft’s engines as their pitch and volume continued to increase. He looked up at the cockpit of the interceptor as it began to roll slowly forward, the canopies automatically lowering as they left the hangar. Josh looked over at Marcus, a monstrous grin stretching from ear to ear. Marcus noticed that Tug had already closed his helmet visor and Josh had not, so Marcus gestured wildly at Josh to lower his own visor as well. Josh, oblivious to the true meaning of Marcus’s gestures simply waved back at him. Marcus repeated the gesture and finally Josh got the hint and closed his own visor.

Marcus watched the interceptor roll out onto the tarmac as it headed out to the nearest launch point, the canopies finally coming down and locking into position as it rolled away.

“Dumb kid,” Marcus mumbled to himself as he turned and headed for the washroom.

Tug increased the thrust levels on the main turbines used while operating in the atmosphere, causing the interceptor to lift slowly off the ground. “While unloaded, this ship can take-off vertically using only five percent thrust,” he told Josh. “Fully loaded with maximum weapons and fuel, she needs at least twenty-five percent to get off the ground.”

“Got it,” Josh answered over the comms built into their flight helmets.

“The ships that you have flown all used separate engines for lift and forward propulsion, did they not?”

“Yeah, the harvester did. The shuttle had a separate engine for everything,” Josh commented.

“This ship has four basic flight systems,” Tug explained. “There is a single turbine system used for atmospheric flight. As the body is a flying wing, once at speed it generates its own lift. You will find it a bit different than flying a ship that uses powered lift systems to maintain altitude.”

“You use the same engine for lift as you do for forward thrust?”

“Yes. The turbine has a series of thrust ports along either side of the ship. Each thrust port is gimbaled and can move twenty degrees in all directions from its vertical centerline. It makes the ship quite maneuverable at speeds that are insufficient to provide adequate aerodynamic lift.”

“How do you control the amount of thrust that generates your lift?”

“You do not,” Tug told him. “You simply indicate with your flight control stick that you wish to go up, and the system decides how much thrust to create, and how much of it needs to be diverted to the lift systems. As your forward velocity increases, so does the aerodynamic lift generated by the ship’s lifting body design. As the aerodynamic lift increases, the amount of thrust being diverted to the vertical lift thrusters decreases. By the time you reach a minimum lifting velocity, the vertical lift thrusters have disengaged.”

“But it’s all automatic, right?” Josh asked. “I mean, you don’t have to think about all that, you just tell it to go and it goes, right?”

“True, but you really should understand how it all works.”

“Yeah, I understand. The thrusters point down, spit out some thrust to keep us in the air until we get up to speed and the lifting body does its thing. I got it.”

“Very well,” Tug conceded. “Since you already know so, put your hands on the controls.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course.”

Josh placed his right hand on the control stick along his right side and his left hand on the throttle along his left side. “Okay, I’m ready,” he announced.

Tug flipped a switch on the control stick and then hovered his hands just off the controls. “The ship is yours.”

“Thrusting forward,” Josh announced, manipulating his flight controls. The interceptor began sliding forward as it continued to slowly climb. Josh adjusted his rate of ascent until the ship stopped climbing, continuing its forward motion about thirty meters above the ground. He looked out the port side of the interceptor at the spaceport below him as they continued slowly picking up forward velocity.

“Very good,” Tug praised. “As soon as we clear the fence line, you can pitch up and accelerate until we achieve aerodynamic flight velocity.”

“Copy,” Josh reported. “Fence line coming up. Hold on to your lunch; here we go,” Josh announced as he pulled the nose up slightly and pushed the throttles forward.

The interceptor leapt forward much faster than anything Josh had ever flown, pushing him back hard in his seat. “Whoa! This thing’s got some power! Are the inertial dampeners on?”

“Easy on that throttle, Josh,” Tug warned. “She is more powerful than you realize.”

Josh looked down at his instruments. “Holy crap! We’re already doing a thousand K’s, and we’re only at ten percent forward thrust! I guess the dampeners are working. But how come I’m getting pushed back in my seat?”

“The dampeners allow some of the feeling of acceleration to get through in order to give you a better sensation of the flight. As you increase your rate of acceleration, the dampeners will also increase their power to compensate so that we are not crushed.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s see.” Josh pushed the throttles to fifty percent, getting pushed back yet again as the interceptor accelerated further. “Shit!” he yelled. “We are hauling ass! We’re already passing five thousand K’s and accelerating.”

“You might want to pitch up a little more, Josh. We do not want to run into any low-flying aircraft.”

“Right, pitching up.” Josh pulled the nose up a bit more, peeking out the side of his canopy as the blurry ground began to rapidly fall away from them. “How long does it take this thing to reach orbit?” Josh asked.

“Every world is different,” Tug explained. “Different mass, gravity, atmospheric pressure. At full power it can escape the average human-hospitable planet’s gravity in a few minutes. I have yet to calculate it for this world,” Tug admitted.

“We might as well find out,” Josh insisted as he began pushing the throttles forward.

“Josh?” Tug’s hands were ready to take control away from the young pilot, fearing that his reaction time would not be sufficient to handle the spacecraft at its top atmospheric speeds.

Josh snapped the ship into a roll to port, rolling it completely over and then stopping, exactly centered again. He then repeated the roll to starboard. “Man, she is really responsive!”

Tug relaxed, putting his hands at his sides and grasping the hand rails on either side of his seat cushion to brace himself for what was coming. “Very well, Josh. Take us up.”

Josh pulled the stick back, bringing the nose up even more, and slammed the throttles all the way forward, applying full thrust. The interceptor streaked upward with alarming acceleration, the surface of Corinair falling away behind them.

Josh watched the instruments as the velocity and altitude indicators scrolled so quickly he could barely keep track of the numbers. He looked forward out the front section of the canopy at the sky above as it quickly darkened. To his sides, he could see the planet’s horizon drop lower and lower until the blue sky above finally gave way to blackness.

“Transition,” Tug announced calmly. “Throttle back to thirty percent.”