“Greetings, crewmembers of the United Terran Fleet Ship Warbler. It is the seventeenth day of January in the Thirtieth Year of the Republic, approximately the ninety-fourth day of the war, and twenty-first day of the Warbler’s official combat status. All crewmembers will report to the Common Area in full Shipboard Uniform in the next five minutes, where you will be briefed for the day's operations. Super Nos.”
To be honest, it was a miracle that the ship was still intact. The past two and a half weeks had been harrowing, but survivable, thanks in no small part to the addition of Aetna to the shipboard command structure. For one thing, the AI had eliminated the need for an Officer of the Night, enabling far more sleep for Kimberly and her Deck Officers. For another, he improved the efficiency of Ansibilics tremendously. He managed munitions, took inventory, and kept an ever-watchful eye on the reactor and Ansible
To be honest, it was a miracle that the ship was still intact. The past two and a half weeks had been harrowing, but survivable, thanks in no small part to the addition of Aetna to the shipboard command structure. For one thing, the AI had eliminated the need for an Officer of the Night, enabling far more sleep for Kimberly and her Deck Officers. For another, he improved the efficiency of Ansibilics tremendously. He managed munitions, took inventory, and kept an ever-watchful eye on the reactor and Ansible
They hadn’t fought any D warships since Saray, but they often saw them on long-range sensors. The D had faster-than-light communication, but it didn’t operate via same principles as their own Ansibilics. If it had, they would have been able to detect them far easier. As it was, they relied on slower-than-light passive scans to detect D ships, which terrified Kim.
Tensions among the crew though, were running high. Cecilia Abrams and Alan Kalkus were becoming insubordinate, and Ervin still hated his assignment as the Executive Officer. Deborah Chambers, however, had performed excellently as a replacement Deck Officer, stepping into the role naturally.
Ensign Jae Ali had flown under the radar as much as possible. Kimberly had been worried about him, but he hadn’t put a single toe out of line as far as she could tell. Ten Silver and Makoro Karazwaki had both stepped up as leaders, helping provide the crew with enlisted role models. At least Sadira Caspar had gotten far less rebellious since the events aboard the Hoatzin.
Sadira was, in fact, out of Medical, although she still had severe coughs at times. She seemed to have traded her hatred of Kimberly for one of Jane Steele, the Middie from Shipboard Systems. Steele and Chase Burton had become more open with their relationship in the past few weeks, which was almost definitely related to Caspar’s dislike of, well, both of them-but then, Kimberly wasn’t going to do anything to stop the two of them.
Surprisingly, the day-to-day running of the entirety of the human species was almost mundane. The initial estimates of the damage to the Warbler’s hull had been too low, and they had spent over ten days making repairs. Then it had taken another full day to recalculate the ship’s fold profile. On the upside, they had been able to salvage several functional suits of Tactical armor. The armor was immune to both kinetic and energy weapons under normal circumstances, and Jae said that with the filters closed it should even be able to keep D nanites out. Admittedly that required the user to attach an air tank, but still, it was a capability that they hadn’t previously had.
Today though, several shipboard days of travel and two folds later, they were finally about to head into action again.
“Good morning.” She said, glancing around her crew. “As you all know, as of last night we’re in a high Kynack-centric orbit. Today we’ll be executing a Hohmann Transfer to get us down to a Clarke Orbit. We’ll assess from there, but the Away Team should be prepared for operations, either in orbit or planetside. Any questions?”
Ten Silver immediately raised her hand. “Commander, who is the Away Team? I have a feeling that it’s changed a lot since the Hoatzin.”
Kim nodded. “It has. You’ll be in command, with Ensign Freeman, Ensign Prussin, and Ensign Karazwaki as backup. We’ve got various gear from the Hoatzin that you may find useful, so I'd advise that you check that out. All Away Team members are to be excused from other duties as soon as we hit the Clarke Orbit.”
Hesitantly, Cassidy Freeman spoke up. “What are the odds of us encountering Terran life?”
Kim shook her head. “Practically zero. We’re all familiar with the reputation of the Kynaki. There’s a reason that they were one of the few subspecies to survive the Imperiata War in any real way. However, I wouldn’t bet on there being survivors.”
“Then what’s even the point of an Away Team?” Alan Kalkus asked, sounding almost aggressive. “Why are we putting good lives on the line if there’s no guarantee of any payoff?”
“Because that’s what we do, Deck Officer. We’ve chosen to continue to operate as if we are a part of the United Terran Fleet, which means assuming a certain element of risk. Furthermore, the potential value of learning what the aftermath of a D attack looks like far outweighs the risks posed by landing. If there are no further questions, our next apoapsis is in thirty-five minutes, so I’d ask that you keep breakfast short. Be at your combat stations in twenty minutes. Crew dismissed.”
The Hohmann Transfer Orbit was one of the ‘simplest’ orbital maneuvers, something that had been practiced since the earliest days of Terran space faring. In the simplest of terms, it consisted of two ‘burns’, or propulsion system activations. The first burn was used to change a circular orbit into an ellipse, the second to smooth the ellipse back to a circle.
Old-time Orbiters had practiced them to conserve propellant, as they were the cheapest way to change altitude. That was no longer a major concern, but they were still viewed as ‘best practice’ for a variety of reasons. Maria had always loved the simplicity of the Hohmann though. The Warbler had used repeated apoapsis and periapsis burns back during the encounter with the Hoatzin, which had more or less the same effect, but was technically less efficient. They had used the alternative method because they had been in a Polar Orbit, and so they had had to shift the inclination, not the altitude.
“Pass me another pack of P15S, please.” Makoro Karazwaki asked, nodding in Maria’s direction.
Maria tossed Makoro the required magazine. P15S was the standard-issue plasma rifle ammunition pack, and Silver had decided that they were going to check over every pack of it on the Warbler before the landing. That was great and all, but after the thousandth canister of it, it got rather repetitive.
Ten Silver looked up from where she was checking over a PHADS, or Portable Handheld Air Defence System. Why the hell did we even have that? Maria wondered.
“Want to trade?” Silver asked.
Maria shook her head. “No, ma’am. Just out of curiosity, are we expecting to use that, and if so, why don’t we just have the Warbler sweep the airspace?”
Silver laughed. “You’ve never done this before, have you? Listen, when you watch the news, yes they’ve got dropships hovering over their ops. That’s because they’ve got half a dozen of them, each providing point-defense for the others, with dozens of operatives on the ground. It makes sense-the Marines do insertions that way too when there’s overwhelming odds on our side like PlanSec and Tactical typically get to enjoy. But we’ve just got the one ship, in case you haven’t noticed, and it’s at its most vulnerable when idling on the ground for the ten hours it might take for us to get a sweep of the area. It’s a spaceship, not a foxhole. The Warbler’ll be in orbit as much as possible.”
Maria frowned. “Then how do we do Evacs?”
“Well, we don’t do Hot Evacs under these circumstances. If there’s anything beyond small arms in play, the Warbler doesn’t leave orbit. If someone’s bleeding out, then the Commander might risk it, but even then only after she has Combat lay down some suppression for us.”
Maria nodded. “Makes sense. None of us are mission-critical, after all.” She cocked her head towards Cassidy Freeman. “We’ve even got a replacement for the Doc there.”
“I’m not a doctor.” Freeman protested from where she was cleaning flamethrower. “But yes, Deck Officer Chambers is competent to take over my position in an emergency. It still seems to be a needlessly cruel policy to leave soldiers under fire just to avoid risking the ship.”
Maria laughed. “Do the math though. Might lose four crewmembers versus might lose nineteen. For any competent commander, there’s no choice there.”
“Part of war is the trust you place in your comrades in arms, that no-one will ever be left behind.” Makoro said quietly.
Maria and Ten both laughed. “You wanna take this one?”
“Sure.” Maria put down the ammo canister, cracking her neck. “See, here’s the thing, Karazwaki. ‘No man left behind’ sounds great. It is great if you’re some sort of mythic paladin like a knight-in-shining-armor or Samurai or American or something. But you’re not. You’re enlisted in the United Terran Fleet, and at the core of that name is 'United'. You’re expendable. If you’re disloyal, an Agent will shoot you in the back. If you’re insubordinate, your Commanding Officer will find some sort of way to knock you off. If you’re incompetent, you’ll straight-up die. So yeah, in a straight tradeoff, any of us would take a shot for you. But if we’re in a position where we have to make a decision between idealism and what actually works, we’re picking the second.”
Maria felt a prickling in her neck, and turned to find Cassidy Freeman staring at her. It was a profoundly uncomfortable sensation. “Is that really what you mean?”
“Hell yes.” Silver said. “Look, I got transferred to Fleet after Tantaline. I got a couple of rounds of Morton therapy, so I don’t know the exact details, but I do know that whatever I did was supposedly ‘heroic’. Saving some officer from a D or something. I’ll tell you what though, I couldn’t care less about whatever officer. So yeah, like Maria said, any decent person would give up their life for a comrade, but only if it’s not stupid. And risking an entire ship for a few individuals is pretty damn stupid. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.”
“Not the way it should be.” Freeman said, turning back to her flamethrower.
“Maybe. But it’s the way it is.” Silver repeated.
Half an hour or so later, the Warbler had completed the transfer orbit, and Shan had apparently decided to deploy the Away Team. XO Norton was giving Ten the team’s briefing, though it was clear that he wasn’t as familiar with ground warfare as Ali had been.
“We’re dropping you by Wethan, a major city and military base. There used to be a training facility of some kind there. Your objectives are to insert, and check out the base if at all possible. If not, go to the training facility. We’re looking for their Ansible’s records, of whatever happened immediately post-Saray. The Warbler will stay in contact and guide you through the mission.”
Hortensia Silver wanted to curl her lip. What were their Rules of Engagement? Did they get maps? What if Comms went down? Were there any abort conditions? There were a million other things that Ali would have told her but that Norton couldn’t begin to understand if the manual fell on him.
“Sir, with all due respect, we’ll need more information than that.”
Ervin frowned. “We’ve provided you with everything you’ll need for a successful basic understanding of the mission. We'll supply any other information via your comms.”
“Sir, this isn’t a Drone Strike where you have complete control of the entire operation—we need more information. Precise locations of targets, rules of engagement, any comms chatter we’ve picked up from orbit, and a dozen other things.”
“We’ll be in contact from orbit, like I said. Everything you need can be relayed down. We’ll keep you updated.”
“We can’t work with that, XO. We’re not fighter pilots-we need more than just an objective and the trajectory we need to take to get there. We need specifics.”
Ervin held out his hands. “I’m sorry, but that’s all we have-at least, it’s all I know. We’ll work as closely with you as we can, but that’s all the information we have right now, Ensign.”
“With all due respect, I must inform you that you are frivolously risking the lives of your crew, Sir.”
“You are dismissed, Ensign.”
Ten wanted to hit him. “Sir, once again may I-.”
“No, Ensign, you may not. You are dismissed.” Ervin spun and stalked off, leaving Ten alone.
On one level, he was just adapting to being a level further removed from the Enlisted personnel—on another, he was just reflecting the changes that had taken place aboard the ship lately.
She shook her head to clear it. That was irrelevant-they had a mission to accomplish, even if their COs were acting irrationally. She reentered the storage room/armory where Prussin, Karazwaki, and Freeman were waiting.
“We’re definitely going in.” She said, stepping over to one of the piles of Tactical armor they had salvaged from the Hoatzin. “Everyone, suit up.” She may not have ever had any great love for Tactical, but she had to admit that their gear was amazing. Jae Ali, Mary Wentworth, and herself had been tasked with assessing it, and it was an order of magnitude above anything she had worked with in the Marines. Like a Marine’s armor it was meant to keep its wearer alive. That was pretty much where the similarity ended.
“This stuff works harder to keep you alive than anything else I’ve ever encountered.” Ten said, sliding a greave into place over her shin. “It’s got a couple of layers of defense, starting with the Aegal forcefield that should stop most kinetic weapons that get deployed against us. Also, we’re fairly sure that it’ll grant some level of protection against D nanobots.” Her greave clicked into place into place, forming an airtight seal with the boot and cuisse, the piece of armor that protected the thigh. “The armor itself is similar to Marine’s armor, but the materials are more durable, and they’re inlaid with an energy-dissipating mesh that will redistribute the energy from a laser or plasma thrower across the entire surface of the armor. It’s airtight, and we have two hours of our own air, although we can attach air tanks. This is important as we’ve already seen the effects D can have on air filters and, you know, lungs.” She let that sink in—while the entire crew felt sympathy for Sadira, and her condition had improved over the past few weeks, no-one wanted to suffer the same symptoms.
“There’s a couple of smaller things, like automatically deployed antiseptic and topical painkillers if it detects a wound, and the HUD, but none of those will take as much getting used to. We’ve also acquired a couple of high-power Directed Energy Weapons, but don’t start thinking that you’re Tactical agents all of a sudden. I want there to be absolutely no theatrics down there.”
“This feels wrong.” Maria Prussin said, sliding some of her own armor into place.
“I think we’ve all had a couple of bad experiences with people in this armor.” Makoro replied.
“Not just that, but... Never mind.” Maria looked away. “Just a weird feeling I guess.”
It took another few minutes for them to don the armor-it was actually easy to put on given that none of them had ever used it before. Well, Ten had put a suit on while assessing it, but that didn't count. They had tried to touch up the armor with some of the gray paint they had aboard for Shipboard Maintenance, but it hadn’t adhered to the armor’s surface, so they left it with the same jet black coloring as when they had pulled it out of the Hoatzin’s wreckage.
“We’re using plasma and directed energy weapons down there. We’ll also be packing a flamethrower, and that rocket launcher. Nothing kinetic. Other than that, pack whatever you think you can use effectively.”
“Are you going to be using a mech today?” Freeman asked, looking towards Ten.
Ten shook her head. “No. We saw back at the Hoatzin that it’s an ineffective tool against the D, and we’ve just got one of them left now. Anyway, grab weapons, then head down to the Forward Airlock. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Combat Systems was, the easiest assignment on the ship. That didn’t mean it wasn’t stressful, but in terms of actual labor, it was theoretically easy. That was why Combat got picked on to do every possible piece of random busy-work. It was also why they still spent the majority of their time in the Weapons Control Room or in their Consoles. Typically they were running drills of some kind, but there was still significant downtime.
“Console Six to Console One. What’s our gameplan?” Sadira winced upon hearing Seth Albright’s voice on the comm—Albright was, in her opinion, an annoying little piece of work, mostly because he never shut up.
“Console One to Console Six, this is the rough plan as outlined by Fleet Regulations: Sit in Console. Do nothing.” Deck Officer Chambers replied.
“Console Three to Console One. Ma’am, with all due respect, I must object to this waiting. I am a highly-tuned and perfectly refined instrument of-.” Sadira couldn’t remember who was in Three today.
“Shut up, Console Three—you’re not a Marine.” Sadira wasn’t sure who had said that either, but she laughed anyway. It hurt her throat.
“Obvious addendum though: If anything moves outside, we kill it, and then wait for SENCOM and Bridge to give us clearance retroactively. If we're feeling generous, we don't tell them we've already done it.” Chambers said.
“Combat, this is Bridge. Cut the chatter.”
“Bridge, this is Console One. We copy. Apologies.”
Then, over the shipboard comms channel, “Bridge to all stations, stand by for decceleration.”
A few moments later, the ship lurched, the inertial compensators kicking in a moment behind the actual burn. The burn only lasted a few minutes, but it positioned the Warbler on a trajectory that would put it inside the atmosphere, allowing them to aerobrake the ship. They were in Low Kynaki Orbit at the moment, already kissing the atmosphere.
Sadira had been on Icterid-class ships before, although the Recon Corp used a different variant than the Fleet. One of the reasons they looked more or less like flat triangles was precisely so they could land planetside. It made for a strange-looking spaceship, and she had heard that it wreaked all sorts of havoc with certain maneuvers, but it made the class one of the Republic’s best for atmospheric operations.
“Bridge to all stations, brace for atmospheric entry.”
Honestly, there was little perceptible difference. Sadira had been aboard some really old ships while in the Recon Corp-ships that had originally had an American or UN flag. They didn’t operate them, but part of the duties of Corp was making sure the certain older starships that were potentially useful were usable. What people didn’t realize was that older, pre-Ansible starships were far more resilient than modern ones. That made intuitive sense--collision with a speck of dust at 0.8c was enough to wreak considerable havoc.
There was a noise from the back of the ship as the engines engaged their atmospheric mode, and the shipboard artificial gravity deactivated, letting the local gravity take over.
“Console One to Console Five, stand by to deploy drones.”
“This is Console Five, I copy. Standing by.” Sadira replied, keying for a drone to be prepped. She knew they could have the AI do it now, but she was highly uncomfortable around the thing.
She had drilled extensively on all the Warbler’s models of drones over the past few weeks. She had had far too much time to do so, after all.
The Warbler had two main models of drones aboard. One was optimized for combat with other drones, the other as a Kinetic Kill Vehicle. Both were designed for operation in a vacuum, which made them ineffective inside an atmosphere. They had a handful of drones that were atmospheric though, equipped with extendable wings and weapons racks. They were cautious about risking them, but circumstances like these were why they had them.
The notification didn’t come. Sadira felt the landing sequence play out beneath her. The atmospheric engines cut out as the Warbler approached the ground, gravitic repulsion taking over for the final few dozen feet. She heard the landing legs extend, and then finally, she felt the jolt of the ship coming to rest.
“Bridge to all stations, we have touched down on Kynak. Away Team, deploy. We depart in fifteen minutes."
Tensions among the crew though, were running high. Cecilia Abrams and Alan Kalkus were becoming insubordinate, and Ervin still hated his assignment as the Executive Officer. Deborah Chambers, however, had performed excellently as a replacement Deck Officer, stepping into the role naturally.
Ensign Jae Ali had flown under the radar as much as possible. Kimberly had been worried about him, but he hadn’t put a single toe out of line as far as she could tell. Ten Silver and Makoro Karazwaki had both stepped up as leaders, helping provide the crew with enlisted role models. At least Sadira Caspar had gotten far less rebellious since the events aboard the Hoatzin.
Sadira was, in fact, out of Medical, although she still had severe coughs at times. She seemed to have traded her hatred of Kimberly for one of Jane Steele, the Middie from Shipboard Systems. Steele and Chase Burton had become more open with their relationship in the past few weeks, which was almost definitely related to Caspar’s dislike of, well, both of them-but then, Kimberly wasn’t going to do anything to stop the two of them.
Surprisingly, the day-to-day running of the entirety of the human species was almost mundane. The initial estimates of the damage to the Warbler’s hull had been too low, and they had spent over ten days making repairs. Then it had taken another full day to recalculate the ship’s fold profile. On the upside, they had been able to salvage several functional suits of Tactical armor. The armor was immune to both kinetic and energy weapons under normal circumstances, and Jae said that with the filters closed it should even be able to keep D nanites out. Admittedly that required the user to attach an air tank, but still, it was a capability that they hadn’t previously had.
Today though, several shipboard days of travel and two folds later, they were finally about to head into action again.
“Good morning.” She said, glancing around her crew. “As you all know, as of last night we’re in a high Kynack-centric orbit. Today we’ll be executing a Hohmann Transfer to get us down to a Clarke Orbit. We’ll assess from there, but the Away Team should be prepared for operations, either in orbit or planetside. Any questions?”
Ten Silver immediately raised her hand. “Commander, who is the Away Team? I have a feeling that it’s changed a lot since the Hoatzin.”
Kim nodded. “It has. You’ll be in command, with Ensign Freeman, Ensign Prussin, and Ensign Karazwaki as backup. We’ve got various gear from the Hoatzin that you may find useful, so I'd advise that you check that out. All Away Team members are to be excused from other duties as soon as we hit the Clarke Orbit.”
Hesitantly, Cassidy Freeman spoke up. “What are the odds of us encountering Terran life?”
Kim shook her head. “Practically zero. We’re all familiar with the reputation of the Kynaki. There’s a reason that they were one of the few subspecies to survive the Imperiata War in any real way. However, I wouldn’t bet on there being survivors.”
“Then what’s even the point of an Away Team?” Alan Kalkus asked, sounding almost aggressive. “Why are we putting good lives on the line if there’s no guarantee of any payoff?”
“Because that’s what we do, Deck Officer. We’ve chosen to continue to operate as if we are a part of the United Terran Fleet, which means assuming a certain element of risk. Furthermore, the potential value of learning what the aftermath of a D attack looks like far outweighs the risks posed by landing. If there are no further questions, our next apoapsis is in thirty-five minutes, so I’d ask that you keep breakfast short. Be at your combat stations in twenty minutes. Crew dismissed.”
The Hohmann Transfer Orbit was one of the ‘simplest’ orbital maneuvers, something that had been practiced since the earliest days of Terran space faring. In the simplest of terms, it consisted of two ‘burns’, or propulsion system activations. The first burn was used to change a circular orbit into an ellipse, the second to smooth the ellipse back to a circle.
Old-time Orbiters had practiced them to conserve propellant, as they were the cheapest way to change altitude. That was no longer a major concern, but they were still viewed as ‘best practice’ for a variety of reasons. Maria had always loved the simplicity of the Hohmann though. The Warbler had used repeated apoapsis and periapsis burns back during the encounter with the Hoatzin, which had more or less the same effect, but was technically less efficient. They had used the alternative method because they had been in a Polar Orbit, and so they had had to shift the inclination, not the altitude.
“Pass me another pack of P15S, please.” Makoro Karazwaki asked, nodding in Maria’s direction.
Maria tossed Makoro the required magazine. P15S was the standard-issue plasma rifle ammunition pack, and Silver had decided that they were going to check over every pack of it on the Warbler before the landing. That was great and all, but after the thousandth canister of it, it got rather repetitive.
Ten Silver looked up from where she was checking over a PHADS, or Portable Handheld Air Defence System. Why the hell did we even have that? Maria wondered.
“Want to trade?” Silver asked.
Maria shook her head. “No, ma’am. Just out of curiosity, are we expecting to use that, and if so, why don’t we just have the Warbler sweep the airspace?”
Silver laughed. “You’ve never done this before, have you? Listen, when you watch the news, yes they’ve got dropships hovering over their ops. That’s because they’ve got half a dozen of them, each providing point-defense for the others, with dozens of operatives on the ground. It makes sense-the Marines do insertions that way too when there’s overwhelming odds on our side like PlanSec and Tactical typically get to enjoy. But we’ve just got the one ship, in case you haven’t noticed, and it’s at its most vulnerable when idling on the ground for the ten hours it might take for us to get a sweep of the area. It’s a spaceship, not a foxhole. The Warbler’ll be in orbit as much as possible.”
Maria frowned. “Then how do we do Evacs?”
“Well, we don’t do Hot Evacs under these circumstances. If there’s anything beyond small arms in play, the Warbler doesn’t leave orbit. If someone’s bleeding out, then the Commander might risk it, but even then only after she has Combat lay down some suppression for us.”
Maria nodded. “Makes sense. None of us are mission-critical, after all.” She cocked her head towards Cassidy Freeman. “We’ve even got a replacement for the Doc there.”
“I’m not a doctor.” Freeman protested from where she was cleaning flamethrower. “But yes, Deck Officer Chambers is competent to take over my position in an emergency. It still seems to be a needlessly cruel policy to leave soldiers under fire just to avoid risking the ship.”
Maria laughed. “Do the math though. Might lose four crewmembers versus might lose nineteen. For any competent commander, there’s no choice there.”
“Part of war is the trust you place in your comrades in arms, that no-one will ever be left behind.” Makoro said quietly.
Maria and Ten both laughed. “You wanna take this one?”
“Sure.” Maria put down the ammo canister, cracking her neck. “See, here’s the thing, Karazwaki. ‘No man left behind’ sounds great. It is great if you’re some sort of mythic paladin like a knight-in-shining-armor or Samurai or American or something. But you’re not. You’re enlisted in the United Terran Fleet, and at the core of that name is 'United'. You’re expendable. If you’re disloyal, an Agent will shoot you in the back. If you’re insubordinate, your Commanding Officer will find some sort of way to knock you off. If you’re incompetent, you’ll straight-up die. So yeah, in a straight tradeoff, any of us would take a shot for you. But if we’re in a position where we have to make a decision between idealism and what actually works, we’re picking the second.”
Maria felt a prickling in her neck, and turned to find Cassidy Freeman staring at her. It was a profoundly uncomfortable sensation. “Is that really what you mean?”
“Hell yes.” Silver said. “Look, I got transferred to Fleet after Tantaline. I got a couple of rounds of Morton therapy, so I don’t know the exact details, but I do know that whatever I did was supposedly ‘heroic’. Saving some officer from a D or something. I’ll tell you what though, I couldn’t care less about whatever officer. So yeah, like Maria said, any decent person would give up their life for a comrade, but only if it’s not stupid. And risking an entire ship for a few individuals is pretty damn stupid. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is.”
“Not the way it should be.” Freeman said, turning back to her flamethrower.
“Maybe. But it’s the way it is.” Silver repeated.
Half an hour or so later, the Warbler had completed the transfer orbit, and Shan had apparently decided to deploy the Away Team. XO Norton was giving Ten the team’s briefing, though it was clear that he wasn’t as familiar with ground warfare as Ali had been.
“We’re dropping you by Wethan, a major city and military base. There used to be a training facility of some kind there. Your objectives are to insert, and check out the base if at all possible. If not, go to the training facility. We’re looking for their Ansible’s records, of whatever happened immediately post-Saray. The Warbler will stay in contact and guide you through the mission.”
Hortensia Silver wanted to curl her lip. What were their Rules of Engagement? Did they get maps? What if Comms went down? Were there any abort conditions? There were a million other things that Ali would have told her but that Norton couldn’t begin to understand if the manual fell on him.
“Sir, with all due respect, we’ll need more information than that.”
Ervin frowned. “We’ve provided you with everything you’ll need for a successful basic understanding of the mission. We'll supply any other information via your comms.”
“Sir, this isn’t a Drone Strike where you have complete control of the entire operation—we need more information. Precise locations of targets, rules of engagement, any comms chatter we’ve picked up from orbit, and a dozen other things.”
“We’ll be in contact from orbit, like I said. Everything you need can be relayed down. We’ll keep you updated.”
“We can’t work with that, XO. We’re not fighter pilots-we need more than just an objective and the trajectory we need to take to get there. We need specifics.”
Ervin held out his hands. “I’m sorry, but that’s all we have-at least, it’s all I know. We’ll work as closely with you as we can, but that’s all the information we have right now, Ensign.”
“With all due respect, I must inform you that you are frivolously risking the lives of your crew, Sir.”
“You are dismissed, Ensign.”
Ten wanted to hit him. “Sir, once again may I-.”
“No, Ensign, you may not. You are dismissed.” Ervin spun and stalked off, leaving Ten alone.
On one level, he was just adapting to being a level further removed from the Enlisted personnel—on another, he was just reflecting the changes that had taken place aboard the ship lately.
She shook her head to clear it. That was irrelevant-they had a mission to accomplish, even if their COs were acting irrationally. She reentered the storage room/armory where Prussin, Karazwaki, and Freeman were waiting.
“We’re definitely going in.” She said, stepping over to one of the piles of Tactical armor they had salvaged from the Hoatzin. “Everyone, suit up.” She may not have ever had any great love for Tactical, but she had to admit that their gear was amazing. Jae Ali, Mary Wentworth, and herself had been tasked with assessing it, and it was an order of magnitude above anything she had worked with in the Marines. Like a Marine’s armor it was meant to keep its wearer alive. That was pretty much where the similarity ended.
“This stuff works harder to keep you alive than anything else I’ve ever encountered.” Ten said, sliding a greave into place over her shin. “It’s got a couple of layers of defense, starting with the Aegal forcefield that should stop most kinetic weapons that get deployed against us. Also, we’re fairly sure that it’ll grant some level of protection against D nanobots.” Her greave clicked into place into place, forming an airtight seal with the boot and cuisse, the piece of armor that protected the thigh. “The armor itself is similar to Marine’s armor, but the materials are more durable, and they’re inlaid with an energy-dissipating mesh that will redistribute the energy from a laser or plasma thrower across the entire surface of the armor. It’s airtight, and we have two hours of our own air, although we can attach air tanks. This is important as we’ve already seen the effects D can have on air filters and, you know, lungs.” She let that sink in—while the entire crew felt sympathy for Sadira, and her condition had improved over the past few weeks, no-one wanted to suffer the same symptoms.
“There’s a couple of smaller things, like automatically deployed antiseptic and topical painkillers if it detects a wound, and the HUD, but none of those will take as much getting used to. We’ve also acquired a couple of high-power Directed Energy Weapons, but don’t start thinking that you’re Tactical agents all of a sudden. I want there to be absolutely no theatrics down there.”
“This feels wrong.” Maria Prussin said, sliding some of her own armor into place.
“I think we’ve all had a couple of bad experiences with people in this armor.” Makoro replied.
“Not just that, but... Never mind.” Maria looked away. “Just a weird feeling I guess.”
It took another few minutes for them to don the armor-it was actually easy to put on given that none of them had ever used it before. Well, Ten had put a suit on while assessing it, but that didn't count. They had tried to touch up the armor with some of the gray paint they had aboard for Shipboard Maintenance, but it hadn’t adhered to the armor’s surface, so they left it with the same jet black coloring as when they had pulled it out of the Hoatzin’s wreckage.
“We’re using plasma and directed energy weapons down there. We’ll also be packing a flamethrower, and that rocket launcher. Nothing kinetic. Other than that, pack whatever you think you can use effectively.”
“Are you going to be using a mech today?” Freeman asked, looking towards Ten.
Ten shook her head. “No. We saw back at the Hoatzin that it’s an ineffective tool against the D, and we’ve just got one of them left now. Anyway, grab weapons, then head down to the Forward Airlock. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Combat Systems was, the easiest assignment on the ship. That didn’t mean it wasn’t stressful, but in terms of actual labor, it was theoretically easy. That was why Combat got picked on to do every possible piece of random busy-work. It was also why they still spent the majority of their time in the Weapons Control Room or in their Consoles. Typically they were running drills of some kind, but there was still significant downtime.
“Console Six to Console One. What’s our gameplan?” Sadira winced upon hearing Seth Albright’s voice on the comm—Albright was, in her opinion, an annoying little piece of work, mostly because he never shut up.
“Console One to Console Six, this is the rough plan as outlined by Fleet Regulations: Sit in Console. Do nothing.” Deck Officer Chambers replied.
“Console Three to Console One. Ma’am, with all due respect, I must object to this waiting. I am a highly-tuned and perfectly refined instrument of-.” Sadira couldn’t remember who was in Three today.
“Shut up, Console Three—you’re not a Marine.” Sadira wasn’t sure who had said that either, but she laughed anyway. It hurt her throat.
“Obvious addendum though: If anything moves outside, we kill it, and then wait for SENCOM and Bridge to give us clearance retroactively. If we're feeling generous, we don't tell them we've already done it.” Chambers said.
“Combat, this is Bridge. Cut the chatter.”
“Bridge, this is Console One. We copy. Apologies.”
Then, over the shipboard comms channel, “Bridge to all stations, stand by for decceleration.”
A few moments later, the ship lurched, the inertial compensators kicking in a moment behind the actual burn. The burn only lasted a few minutes, but it positioned the Warbler on a trajectory that would put it inside the atmosphere, allowing them to aerobrake the ship. They were in Low Kynaki Orbit at the moment, already kissing the atmosphere.
Sadira had been on Icterid-class ships before, although the Recon Corp used a different variant than the Fleet. One of the reasons they looked more or less like flat triangles was precisely so they could land planetside. It made for a strange-looking spaceship, and she had heard that it wreaked all sorts of havoc with certain maneuvers, but it made the class one of the Republic’s best for atmospheric operations.
“Bridge to all stations, brace for atmospheric entry.”
Honestly, there was little perceptible difference. Sadira had been aboard some really old ships while in the Recon Corp-ships that had originally had an American or UN flag. They didn’t operate them, but part of the duties of Corp was making sure the certain older starships that were potentially useful were usable. What people didn’t realize was that older, pre-Ansible starships were far more resilient than modern ones. That made intuitive sense--collision with a speck of dust at 0.8c was enough to wreak considerable havoc.
There was a noise from the back of the ship as the engines engaged their atmospheric mode, and the shipboard artificial gravity deactivated, letting the local gravity take over.
“Console One to Console Five, stand by to deploy drones.”
“This is Console Five, I copy. Standing by.” Sadira replied, keying for a drone to be prepped. She knew they could have the AI do it now, but she was highly uncomfortable around the thing.
She had drilled extensively on all the Warbler’s models of drones over the past few weeks. She had had far too much time to do so, after all.
The Warbler had two main models of drones aboard. One was optimized for combat with other drones, the other as a Kinetic Kill Vehicle. Both were designed for operation in a vacuum, which made them ineffective inside an atmosphere. They had a handful of drones that were atmospheric though, equipped with extendable wings and weapons racks. They were cautious about risking them, but circumstances like these were why they had them.
The notification didn’t come. Sadira felt the landing sequence play out beneath her. The atmospheric engines cut out as the Warbler approached the ground, gravitic repulsion taking over for the final few dozen feet. She heard the landing legs extend, and then finally, she felt the jolt of the ship coming to rest.
“Bridge to all stations, we have touched down on Kynak. Away Team, deploy. We depart in fifteen minutes."
See below for some relatively big news for Warbler, as well as editorial and housekeeping notes.