“The kids will learn, just give them some time, sir.”
“Let’s hope we get that time.”
She climbed off the wing, and hand signaled for the ground crew to clear. The tiny tow tractor hooked on to the nose wheel and started to pull him up to the launch ramp. The ship in front of him, a Sabre, slashed out through the airlock, kicking on full afterburners as it cleared the side of the Tarawa. The pilot looked good, perhaps showing off by wanting to peel a little paint, but it revealed a certain cockiness that was healthy.
He revved his engines up and ran through the final check on his instruments, everything running in the green. Jason felt the nudge of the catapult arm hooking into his nose wheel. He looked down at the launch chief and gave the thumbs-up. The launch chief returned the thumbs-up, saluted, then crouched down low, point forward. The catapult slammed him back into the seat. He felt the slight shudder of clearing the airlock force field and then he was in space, kicking on afterburners and pulling straight up. A full combat launch was a kick that he loved almost as much as the flying, far more exciting than the leisurely stand down launch which was nothing more than a ship gliding out under its own power at a couple of meters a second.
It was a glorious morning. Three hundred million clicks off his port bow was the boiling red giant of the Oberan System, the sun filling a good ten degrees of the heavens. As he pulled through his looping turn he saw the Caldargar globular cluster hanging in space like a handful of diamonds and around him were his charges, circling the Tarawa fifty kilometers out, scattered across space in every direction.
“All right people, Blue Leader to Blue, Red, and Green squadrons. Time for the chicks to come to the rooster. Set your nav system on me and form up in standard V by squadrons.”
The drill began. He knew it was bad form to yell at a pilot over the comm link for everyone to hear, but within the first hour he felt as if he would explode. If this was what the Academies and Officer flight training schools were calling combat-ready pilots, then the Confederation was in a hell of a fix.
Several of the fighter pilots had a pretty good hang of keeping formation and could follow him through the basic stuff of Immelmanns, wing overs, afterburner skid turns, and diamond breaks against rear attacks. A young pilot named Chamberlain, with the call sign of Round Top, and another sporting the call sign Mongol seemed to have a natural flair. Tolwyn, who was using the call sign “Lone Wolf,” appeared to have the knack as well. But the others left him shaking his head with despair. One of them broke to port and dropped while all the others broke to starboard and climbed, because she had been flying upside down relative to the rest of the squadron, and as a result almost killed herself and two others.
Three hours into the practice, Jason took Mongol and Chamberlain with him, broke out on afterburners to ten thousand clicks and then came around to simulate an attack run. One attempt at this convinced him to hold off on such maneuvers for several days: all hell broke loose and three ships came within meters of colliding.
As for Tolwyn, Jason couldn’t get a read. He sensed there might be a hell of a pilot in the young man, but there was a defiance evident in following through on the basic maneuvers. He knew the type, the pilot who wanted to fly the way Maniac or some of the other lone gun hotshots fought.
“All right people,” Jason finally announced. “Starlight, detail off four of your pilots for continued patrol. We should be hooking up with the transport ships on the far side of this star within the next hour. Chamberlain, you have combat air patrol; close in on Tarawa, keep a circle two hundred clicks out. The rest of you in sequence start your combat landing approaches and make them sharp. I’ll go in first.”
Lining up on the Tarawa he called in for landing permission and then alerted the flight deck officer to prepare for a full wing landing. He could imagine the mad scramble down there as they prepared to take in forty-two craft at thirty-second intervals. One screw-up, which he fully expected would happen, and it could delay return of all ships for hours.
Ignoring the sight-seeing tour he had indulged in the last time, Jason lined up on the narrow flight approach and came in smartly, giving a last burst of reverse thruster just forward of the Tarawa’s bow, drifting in sharply and skidding to a stop a dozen meters shy of the safety net.
Sparks led the ground crew up at the run, hooking on the electric tow cart which pulled him off the flight ramp. Looking into his rear mirror he saw the next fighter come in hard, sliding down the deck and stopping with its nose just touching the net. Not too bad, he was forced to admit, still embarrassed about his own landing of yesterday.
Canopy up, he climbed out of the fighter.
“Prep her up for another run,” Jason shouted, and he jumped off the ladder, trotting down the length of the deck to join the launch and recovery officer. He felt a cold shudder when he saw O’Brian standing in the control room. He had to remind himself that this was where a captain should be during launch and recovery though he would have preferred him back on the main bridge.
The last of the fighters came in and then the Sabres lined up, Doomsday coming in first for a perfect touchdown.
The third bomber was somewhat shaky, slamming into the safety net, causing the next bomber in line to drop out of its approach for a go-around. The deck crew struggled to free the Sabre, causing yet more delay and another wave off of the bomber, whose pilot called in that his starboard engine was overheating, forcing him to shut the engine down.
“Green three,” Jason said, patching in on the landing officer’s comm line. “Do you wish to declare an emergency?”
“Negative on that Blue Leader.”
“Who is this?”
“Rodriquez, sir.”
“Landing that baby’s hard enough on this small ship, bring her in slow and easy, non combat. We’re canceling the combat landings till you’re aboard.”
“Copy that Blue Leader, no problem.”
Green three circled in, and Jason watched him on the holo screen. The ship was dropping low, the red dot of the laser guide beam now a dozen meters above the ship. Jason kept his mouth shut. Only one person was supposed to talk at a time like this and that was the landing officer.
“Bring her up son, bring her up. This is not a combat landing son, so don’t push it.”
Jason watched, tensing. The kid was trying to show off, to prove himself in front of the old man.
“Abort, abort,” Jason snapped, breaking in on the landing officer.
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it. I’ve…”
The Sabre started to pull up hard, and then yo-yoed back down. Jason watched, horrified when he saw the ship start to yaw, Rodriquez slamming in power at the last second of panic when he finally decided to abort, forgetting that one engine was already shut down.
The Sabre pivoted, the nose of the ship slamming against the side of the airlock port, sheering off just in front of the cockpit.
The deck safety officer standing behind Jason slammed down on the crash alarm, the klaxon roaring to life, the fire retardant nozzles in the bay ceiling kicking on, spraying down on the deck. The ship spun down the flightline, the emergency safety nets detonating out from the deck floor like a spider web, ground crews diving towards the emergency safety bunkers.
Jason held his breath. If the fuel storage pods should rupture, the deck would be swept by an inferno. The ship came to a rest and within seconds a crash cart was alongside, spraying out a curtain of foam. Jason watched the safety and rescue crews with open admiration. While everyone else was running, it was their job to rush into the thick of it. Ignoring procedures, he pulled open the door from the control room and started to run down the flight deck, nearly losing his footing on the slippery foam. The safety crew was up on the ship and in the confusion of spray and smoke he saw a bright flicker of flame from inside the cockpit and then he heard the screaming. Sickened, he stood riveted, knowing there was nothing he could do.