Ep.#14 - "The Weak and the Innocent" (The Frontiers Saga) (29 page)

“
Negative,
” Loki replied. “
The thruster placements are designed for a different CG. They’re reprogramming the thrust controllers now to adjust the strength of the thrust due to the offset center of gravity. Give them a minute.
”

“Copy that.” Josh looked out his canopy, watching the simulated Earth circle around from left to right over and over again. “This is fun,” he commented as he continued to watch the Earth circle around him. “Good thing I don’t get motion-sickness.”

“
Okay, I think they’ve got it now. Resetting,
” Loki announced.

The wrap-around view screen reset, and again he was in simulated flight in Earth orbit, with the planet off his port side.

“
Try that left roll again,
” Loki instructed.

“Sure.” Josh touched his control stick, initiating another roll.

“
How’s the spiral?
” Loki asked.

“Not seeing it.”

“
Neither are we. Try increasing your roll rate again.
”

Josh added more thrust, causing the Earth to circle around him a bit faster. “Still not there.”

“
A little more?
”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Josh insisted as he pulled the control stick all the way left and held it for several seconds.

“
Josh!
”

The Earth began racing around his cockpit at incredible speed. “Damn! This is wild! Attempting to recover.” Josh started applying counter thrust to slow his role. The speed of his rotation decreased slightly, but the spiraling effect returned, causing the Earth to appear lower relative to his nose with each revolution. “Spiral is back!” Josh exclaimed as he continued to fight with the controls. “Damn, this feels a lot more
different
than you might expect.”

“
Josh, you’re picking up some lateral rotation as well,
” Loki warned.

“Yeah, I noticed!” Josh exclaimed, frustration beginning to sneak in. The Earth outside started passing over him, at different locations each time, as his ship’s lateral rotation increased. “I might have spoken too soon about not getting motion sickness! I think I’m gonna blow!”

“
You want me to reset?
” Loki asked.

“Not yet, I think I can get it… If I… can… just… Oh shit!”

All rotation suddenly stopped, and his ship was again in level, simulated flight, in orbit above the Earth.

“What the hell?” Josh demanded. “I told you not to reset!”

“
You said you were going to blow!
” Loki defended.

“I was kidding, Lok!”

“
Sorry. I was just thinking of the poor guys that were going to have to clean up that cockpit.
”

“I never puke, you know that.”

“
Can we get back to work, gentlemen?
” Deliza asked.

“What would you like me to do next, princess?” Josh asked.

“
What did I tell you about calling me princess?
” Deliza replied, her voice seething.

“Sorry, boss. Won’t happen again. Promise.”

“
Try pitching up and over,
” Loki suggested.

“Pitching up,” Josh announced as he pulled back on the control stick, releasing it a split second later. He waited a moment, then added additional thrust to increase his rate of change. “Feels pretty much the same, no difference here.”

“
Try the rotational thrusters,
” Loki instructed.

“You got it,” Josh replied, twisting the control stick to the right for a moment.

“
I meant after you stopped your pitch over.
”

“You didn’t say that.”

“
I didn’t think I had to. Any normal pilot would have figured that out.
”

“Well, I’m not normal,” Josh replied.

“
You got that right.
”

“I’m
better
than normal.”

“
You realize what you just said doesn’t make any sense?
”

“It wouldn’t to a normal pilot,” Josh teased.

“
Would you two stop!
” Deliza scolded. “
Honestly, you’re like an old married couple.
”

“Listen, this would go a lot faster if you just let me wing-it for a few,” Josh suggested. “You can look at the data later, right?”

“
Why not?
” Deliza agreed. “
I don’t know what ‘wing-it’ means, but by all means, feel free.
”

Josh yanked his control stick over, gave it a twist, and then pushed it forward, bringing his space drive to full power at the same time. “Wing-it. To improvise, without plan or itinerary, usually by following one’s instincts,” he said as the Falcon came out of its turn and leveled off, diving toward the simulated Earth below.

“
What the… Josh, is that you?
” Loki wondered.

“I’ve been studying Earth expressions,” Josh explained, “trying to add some color to my witty banter.”

“
You’ve got more than enough color, Josh.
”

“
What are you doing?
” Deliza wondered.

“I’m going to jump her into the atmosphere and see how she flies without lift fans. You wanna dial me up a jump to Porto Santo’s runway? About ten clicks out and a couple hundred meters up?”

“
You’re moving way to fast to jump in,
” Loki warned.

“Then make it a hundred kilometers out and a thousand meters up.”

“
Very well.
”

“Hey boss? Did your aeronautical engineers calculate new stall speeds for this thing, now that she doesn’t have lift fans and all?” Josh wondered.

“
Yes, they did. Your velocity tape should indicate them correctly. They’ve only changed marginally from what they were for a fans-out emergency landing,
” Deliza told him.

“Never really practiced that one much,” Josh admitted.

“
Are you sure you don’t want to slow down just a little?
” Loki wondered.

“Fine.” Josh twisted his stick hard to the left, pushing his nose around so that he was falling toward the planet tail first. He stopped his rotation and brought his main propulsion up to full power, waiting until his speed had reduced considerably. “Happy?”

“
Well, you’re still jumping in at about mach twenty, but…
”

“I’ll be fine,” Josh insisted as he brought his nose back around toward the planet. “It’s a simulation, remember?”

“
The whole point of a ‘simulation’ is to ‘simulate’ real world scenarios that normal pilots would encounter…
”

“Oh, here we go with the ‘normal’ again…”

“
Enough!
” Deliza interrupted impatiently. “
Jump already.
”

“
Jumping,
” Loki announced.

The canopy turned opaque as usual, which struck Josh as funny since there wasn’t actually a jump flash to block out. When it cleared a second later, his flight data display seemed all wrong. “What the hell?” Josh watched the displays as his ship descended through a simulated cloud. His attitude indicator was moving erratically, as if the ship couldn’t decide which way it wanted to point. “Uh, I think I’ve got a problem,” he announced as he fought to control his ship’s attitude. “My nose is oscillating all over the place, guys, and I’ve got like no control authority here.”

“
What do you mean?
” Loki asked.

“I mean my control inputs aren’t doing much.”

“
Are they doing anything?
”

“Yeah, just not much.”

“
You came in too fast,
” Deliza admonished.

“It never used to be too fast.”

“
The new control surfaces were made larger to give you more response in slow flight, so that you wouldn’t have to come in so fast that you’d need a five kilometer long runway to stop.
”

“Then maybe you should’ve made the control servos bigger?” Josh suggested.

“
That would have required a redesign of the wing. We didn’t want to take that kind of time.
”

“I don’t know. I’m thinkin’ it might’ve been worth it,” Josh said as he continued to fight the controls.

“
Josh, you’re dropping like a rock,
” Loki warned.

“Yeah, I noticed that. All this oscillating is probably fuckin’ up the airflow over the… Jesus! Maybe you need to add some more area to the vertical stabilizers.”

“
Maybe you should jump in with a little less speed?
” Deliza suggested.

“Yeah, I’ll try to remember that next time.”

“
You’re busting one thousand meters, Josh,
” Loki warned him.

“I’m gonna try pulling the nose up a bit and see if I can get her to climb and lose some airspeed.” Josh pulled back on the control stick, but got no response. “Nope.”

“
Nine hundred meters,
” Loki warned. “
Eight hundred… Seven hundred…
”

“Oh, this is just stupid!” Josh complained. “You know, if I can’t pitch up, I can’t even jump back to orbit, people!”

“
Five hundred…
”

“Jesus! I’m still at mach eight!”

“
Two hundred… one hundred…
”

The wrap-around display screen went dark and Josh’s flight displays froze.

Josh threw his hand up in the air. “Guess that means we’re resetting?”

“
I’m going to take you up to two thousand meters at three hundred meters per second,
” Loki announced. “
I’ll put you about five hundred kilometers out from Porto Santo, on a really long final… Give you some time to get used to the controls.
”

“Thanks,” Josh replied.

“
It’s okay, Josh,
” Deliza assured him. “
That’s what the simulator is for.
”

“I…don’t…like…crashing,” he replied emphatically. “Not even in a simulator.”

“
See what I mean?
” Loki said. “
Not normal.
”

“
Guys…?
”

* * *

Captain Roselle walked into the Jar-Benakh’s Command and Control Center and made his way to the middle of the compartment. He looked around at all the unmanned stations. At least he had a helmsman, and a navigator, alt
hough he had no idea if they knew what they were doing. Thus far, all they had managed to do was turn the ship around and get her on course for Kohara, which wasn’t difficult since they were still technically inside the Tau Ceti system. In addition, they were traveling slowly, which meant that they had plenty of time to react if something went wrong.

Luckily, so far, nothing had.

He also had a communications officer on loan from the Aurora, as well as a Tannan man who seemed pretty good at operating the Jung ship’s sensors.

Still, there were an awful lot of empty chairs.

“Captain,” Commander Ellison said as he stepped up to his commanding officer’s side.

“Is it just me, or does this bridge seem unnecessarily large?”

“Well, technically it’s not a ‘bridge’, sir. All of the ships systems can be controlled from here, not just the usual things you’d find on a bridge. Apparently all the Jung warships are like this. They like to have one central point of control.”

“Well, I suppose it made it easier for the Ghatazhak to seize control and all.”

“It was hardly…
easy
,” the Ghatazhak guard at the entrance corrected.

Captain Roselle and Commander Ellison both turned and looked at the guard.

“Didn’t your DI tell you it’s not polite to eavesdrop on a conversation?” Roselle wondered. He turned back around. “I suppose not.”

“Lieutenant Commander Kamenetskiy reported a few minutes ago that both shields and weapons are back online.”

“That was fast,” Captain Roselle replied.

“As he explained it, when Nash jumped his ship, the section of the Jar-Benakh he took with him contained one of the main power relays. Apparently, their entire power distribution grid runs between the secondary and tertiary hulls, entering each section inward. The interruption caused a cascade failure that knocked all the reactors offline within seconds.”

“Seems like a crappy design,” Roselle commented.

“For normal conditions, probably not. The Lieutenant Commander believes the energy from Scout Three’s jump fields somehow entered the Jar-Benakh’s power grid when it sliced through her hull, causing the overload. He also believes it’s what caused Scout Three to break up when she came out of the jump.”

“Seems like knowledge someone could use, doesn’t it?” Roselle observed. “Make sure that gets added to the next jump comm-drone run back to the Karuzara.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell Cheng good work.”

“I did.”

Captain Roselle looked around the room again. “From now on, let’s just call this place ‘command’, shall we? Command and control center is a fucking mouthful, and C-C-C just sounds like you’re stuttering.”

“We could call it ‘3C’?”

Roselle looked at his XO in disapproval.

“Triple C?”

“I like ‘Command’.”

“‘Command’ it is,” the XO agreed.

* * *

Gerard came out of the small rustic building at the front of the resort and headed across the clearing toward Naralena, his eyes darting about, looking for any signs of being watched.

“Did you get us a room?” Naralena asked as he approached.

“Yes. We were lucky. I was able to secure a small cabin on the edge of the resort. That should make it easy to slip away before daybreak without being noticed. Come.”

She took his hand and stood, her feet and legs tired from their long, arduous hike over the pass. They strolled casually across the compound, holding hands to appear as just another couple on a typical Koharan wilderness vacation. They made their way down the path and between the randomly placed cabins, each of them tucked away behind clumps of trees and flowering bushes. Although the grounds were obviously well maintained, they were done in such a way as to appear naturally occurring. The overall affect blended nicely with the wild surroundings just beyond the resort’s unfenced perimeter.