For Honor We Stand (10 page)

“Let’s watch and see if he does it.”  A few moments of silence while both men watched the tactical display.  “Yep.  There he goes.  Just what I would do.  He’s going ventral, that’s under their bellies.  Inexperienced pilots tend to rely on their eyes too much and go by what they can see out the canopy, which is generally ahead of them and above them.  And, even when they do use their sensors, fighter sensors are very sensitive looking straight ahead and pretty poor in every other direction.  Fighter pilots tend to ignore what’s under their bellies so, naturally, that’s where I like to go.  You put yourself three or four thousand kills ventrally to his course, cut your drive, and let the targets zip by right over his head.  Look, you can see him going ventral right now.  The two attackers aren’t even twitching, either.  They have no idea he’s there.  Now he cuts his drive and lets them pass.  And there they go.  He lets them get far enough past that he won’t pick up too much of their drive trails.  About now.  Now, watch as he turns around—there he goes—and slips himself in right behind them.  Like that.  Then he sets his missiles for passive thermal seeking mode so that there isn’t even a missile seeker radar for the target to pick up as warning—we aren’t going to be able to detect that--and closes the range a little . . . to right . . . about . . . there and then he stops closing.  We can’t see it but I bet he just fired his missiles.  They lock in on the heat of the bad guys’ drives and fly right up their tailpipes.”

The icons representing the unidentified fighters disappeared from the display.  “And there they went.  It’s one of my favorite tactics.  The enemy doesn’t know I’m there until after he’s dead.”

“That last statement is paradoxical.”

“What?  Oh.  It is, isn’t it?  I say it all the time.  You know what I mean.  The point is that they never see it coming.  They don’t even get a chance to say ‘oh, shit’ before they die.”

After the requisite attention signal, Escort One was back on the comm.  “One-one-four this is Escort One.  Please respond.  Over.”

“One-one-four here.  Over.”  Max responded. 

“One-one-four, please be advised that Escort Two has just extended to our visitors the
warm
hospitality for which Rashid is justifiably famous.  Over.”

“I’m sure you baked them a Teller-Ulam soufflé.  You know, the one with the recipe that starts off with ‘preheat oven to ten million degrees Kelvin.’  Over.” 

“Indeed.  That is the very dish.  We have had a few opportunities to serve it in the last hour or so.  Now, one-one-four, I have new instructions for you.  Am I correct in surmising that your vessel is a horse disguised as a camel?  Over.”  The pilot probably spotted the subtle modifications to the engine nozzles, the well disguised but larger than normal bulge in the hull to accommodate the enlarged fusion reactor, and the military-grade sensor emitters, all of which—to a well-trained eye—said that the
Clover’s
performance would be decidedly more sprightly than that of a stock Piper-Grumman
Shetland
class microfreighter.

“You have keen eyes.  Over.”

“How many Gs can you sustain safely?  Over.”

“Fifteen.  Over.”  That was the rating, anyway.  Max and Brown had gone over the design and the naval upgrades and jointly decided the real number was closer to eighteen or twenty, but Escort One didn’t need to know that.  Before the Navy modified it, the little vessel could pull no more than 3.3 Gs.   

“Very good.  That will blow some sand in our adversaries’ faces.  I have new instructions for you.  It is too dangerous for you to proceed to your landing as planned.  Rather, you will rendezvous with some of our forces in space and they will see you safely to the surface.  I am transmitting a set of coordinates.  Pull your best acceleration all the way to that point.  No terminal deceleration--the vessel with which you are rendezvousing will match velocities with you.  Escort Two will clear your twelve and I will cover your six.  From their present trajectories, none of our visitors can pull enough delta V to catch you at 15 Gs.  There are several that were stealthed in orbit here and they are accelerating hard now thinking that they can catch the camel.  They will be very disappointed to see that you are a horse, especially now that by redlining their drives they have given away their positions.  They will not live very long to regret the miscalculation.  Over.”

At the specified coordinates, the
Clover
encountered the immense Rashidian Carrier, the RRS
Riyadh
, which had been conducting operations just outside the orbit of Rashid VI and only two AU from the
Clover’s
initial position.  About forty-five minutes after the new instructions from Escort One, twelve Rashidian SF-89 Qibli fighters appeared to escort the microfreighter the rest of the way to the Carrier.  Max had hardly set the landing skids on the Carrier’s deck before it pulled a high G two axis course change that must have raised her Chief Engineer’s blood pressure thirty or forty points.  When the gigantic vessel straightened out on its new heading, the dissonant vibrations transmitted through the deck to the soles of his Max’s feet as he and Doctor Sahin walked through the ship told Max’s exquisitely sensitive sense of warship machinery that all three mains and both auxiliary coolant circulating pumps for the carrier’s four massive fusion reactors were being redlined. 

The Rashidians assigned an earnest but selectively communicative Lieutenant Commander to escort (and keep an eye on) Max and the doctor.  The young man, about Max’s age, explained their course, rate of acceleration, and how the
Clover
would be ejected upon arrival at Rashid IV at a suitable distance.  He went on to detail how, by redlining its drive, there would be just enough time and space for the
Clover
to decelerate from the Carrier’s velocity to entry interface, how Rashidian flight controllers would clear a path for it from entry to the landing pad, and how fighter/interceptor aircraft would escort it to a safe landing.  The only thing he did not explain was why the entire Unified Rashidian Kingdom was putting forth such a profligate expenditure of men and resources dedicated to seeing that one Lieutenant Commander and one Doctor/Acting Ambassador were deposited safely on the surface of Rashid IV at the earliest possible moment.  What could be so urgent? 

At least, now that they were on a gigantic Carrier surrounded by the aggressively defensive swarm of its Combat Area Patrol fighters, there was no chance of any further attempted ambush.  Which, of course, was the point.

The ejection maneuver took place exactly as planned.  The
Clover
simply lifted off the hangar deck and nudged itself out the port side of the Carrier on maneuvering thrusters.  Even though the microfreighter had the same forward velocity as the Carrier, the larger ship was under full acceleration while the
Clover
was not.  As a result, the two vessels rapidly separated.  The Carrier’s enormous, blunt shape dwindled in only a few moments to nothing more than the brilliant pinprick of light created by its huge fusion drive, seeming to move ever so slowly against the background of fixed stars, the vastness of space reducing the carrier’s great speed and enormous bulk, as it reduces all the puny handiwork of man, to insignificance.   

Immediately after separating from the Carrier, Max programmed the
Clover’s
ID transponder, in accordance with Escort One’s instructions, to broadcast Kilo Papa Lima Charlie.  Within a minute of leaving the carrier, the microfreighter was surrounded by a veritable cloud of thirty-six Qibli fighters arrayed in a flying wedge, defying any foe to challenge them.  Max never knew whether these fighters were launched from the carrier, in which case they would have a long flight back home, or whether they were based on or near Rashid IV. 

After several minutes of hard deceleration, the
Clover
encountered the tenuous outer fringes of Rashid IV’s atmosphere.  The leading surfaces of the vessel began to heat as the ship entered the transitional regime in which space, where fusion and rocket engines propel ships silently along the elegant trajectories of Newton and Kepler, gives way to atmosphere, where air-breathing jets push aircraft with a deafening roar through buffeting gases subject to the laws of Bernoulli, Navier, and Stokes.  When the formation had descended to about 100 kilometers, the space fighters peeled away, one two-ship element at a time in quick succession, their brightly blue-white drives tracing graceful curves against the deep blue-black sky as they soared back to the infinite dark that was their natural abode.  Each element was instantly replaced by a pair of sleek AF-97 “Haboobs,” atmosphere fighters built jointly by the Rashidian Kingdom and the Romanovan Imperium (the Romanovans called it the “Gladius”).  The hand-off took place in a series of maneuvers so beautifully choreographed and so quickly and precisely executed that Max knew this particular group of space pilots had practiced this maneuver extensively with this particular group of aircraft pilots.  Either all Rashidian pilots were outstanding, or Max had just seen a crack atmosphere fighter squadron take the place of a crack space fighter squadron.  This was yet another sign of how important his and the doctor’s safety were to the Rashidians.  As an old saying of obscure origin goes, “they cared enough to send the very best.”

As Max was explaining to the doctor what was going on and why he was so impressed, the comm panel called for attention with two beeps.  Twenty seconds later, the business-like yet studiously relaxed voice of a Rashidian pilot came into the cabin.  “Union Microfreighter Golf Papa Golf Charlie seven-two-one-one-four this is the Tabi’a Commander, my call sign is Yarmouk Three, please acknowledge.  Over.”

“Yarmouk three, this is one-one-four.  We read you.  Over.”

“One-one-four, does your database include the communication protocols from the
Equilateral
exercises held last year?  Over.”

Max checked.  All the materials from the joint Union/Rashid/Romanova exercises held ten months previously were in the database. 

“Yarmouk Three, this is one-one-four.  Affirmative.  We have a complete set of documentation for the ex, including the Oscar Hotel and the Romeo Oscar Echo.  Over.”  Meaning, the Operational Handbook and the Rules of Engagement. 

“Excellent, one-one-four.  Then please implement Formation Comm Protocol Bravo with you as the pigeon.  You are assigned new call sign ‘Sadeek One.’”  Max saw the doctor smile broadly at that.  He made a mental note to ask what ‘Sadeek’ meant.  “If we are not successful in establishing communications in two minutes, return to this frequency and the current encryption.  Over.”

“Roger that.  Formation Comm Protocol Bravo, I’m the pigeon, new call sign Sadeek One, and if we are not talking in two minutes, come back here using the same encrypt.  Changing frequencies now.  Over and out.”

Max called up the protocol and started punching in the frequencies.  He also loaded the applicable encryption scheme, known as
Casablanca
,
into the
Clover’s
ENDEC, or ENcrypter/DECrypter, better known as the “Blue Box,” even though as long as anyone could remember, they were all painted reddish orange.

While he was doing this, Max asked, “What does ‘sadeek’ mean?”

“It is a felicitous choice of appellations.  It means ‘friend.’” 

“Sounds good to me.”  Pause.  “Or, maybe not.  ‘Speak, friend, and enter.’”  He gave a brief, apprehensive, chuckle.

“What is ‘speak, friend, and enter’?”

“An inscription over a doorway in one of my favorite books when I was younger.”

“What was on the other side of the door?”

Max thought for a moment, wondering how to summarize something like twenty pages of a complex and classic work of English Literature.  He did his best.  “A long, dark journey, full of wonder and deadly peril.  But, a journey that had to be made.”

“Let that not be an omen.”

“Amen.  That author wrote about omens a lot.  But, now that I think of it, I don’t think he believed in them.  All right.  I’ve got everything set up.”  He keyed for transmission.  “Yarmouk Four this is Sadeek one.  Do you read?  Over.” 

The response was immediate.  “This is Yarmouk Four reading you five by five Sadeek one.  I have new instructions for you.”  At that point, the other pilot described a series of maneuvers, altitude changes, and a new landing point in such densely woven aerospace jargon that, excluding article adjectives and the occasional adverb, the doctor was certain he understood only one word in twenty.  When Max had repeated the instructions back to Yarmouk four in equally impenetrable language and followed the fighter squadron through a change in course and altitude, he turned to his companion.  “Let me guess.  You didn’t get any of that.”

“Scarcely a word.  You might as well have been speaking Pfelungian.  I can’t imagine why you would have to guess.  You conducted a conversation for minutes on end consisting of nothing but incomprehensible pilot argot, which I have long suspected pilots specifically evolved as a coded language so that members of your elite club of drive and rudder men can speak without being understood by the uninitiated and, further, as a kind of secret club handshake so that you can recognize one another.  It should entail no guesswork at all to conclude that I, an ignorant cretin who merely speaks a dozen and a half languages or so and who possesses a veritable plethora of university degrees in five or six different fields, would be unable to comprehend a word of the proceedings.” 

“That’s ‘drive and
thruster
man.’  Thruster.”

“See what I mean?  You people have your own language, constructed with incomprehensibility and exclusion as an objective and you have the undisguised temerity to wonder that you are not understood.  You might as well build a fire and marvel that it generates heat, light, and smoke.”