As they got to work, Red said, “Maybe this session will be quick. We’ve war-gamed this a dozen times.”
“You’d be surprised,” Burden said dryly. “The imminence of real action has a way of focusing the mind.”
Pirius Blue was watching his younger self curiously. “How are you feeling? You haven’t flown a combat mission before.”
Red said, irritated, “Yes, I’m the rookie; thanks for reminding me.”
“That may help,” Blue said awkwardly. “I mean it. There’s no substitute for going through it for real. When you lead crews into a situation where they’re likely to buy it, it frightens you — the responsibility — and that gets mixed up with your own personal fear. You can’t help it. It’s stomach- churning. But experience is one thing; the residual shock is another. You never quite recover. You have enough on your plate today. It may be better that you’re fresh.”
Red said, “I’m not frightened of dying. I’m not even frightened of the responsibility for other people’s lives.”
“But you’re frightened of screwing up,” said Burden.
“Yes,” Red admitted.
“Don’t worry,” Blue said. “We’re at your side.” He sat stiff in his chair, and he couldn’t meet Red’s eyes.
Red knew this was the closest Blue could bring himself to pledging loyalty to his own younger, less experienced, overpromoted self. It would have to do, he thought.
Red pulled a data desk toward him. “Let’s get on with it,” he said gruffly. “First, the launch sequence. We will go in two waves…
The next morning, as he began his day, Enduring Hope immediately knew something was up.
He made his usual inspection walk through the bomb dump, a hangar that had been modified as a store for the point black holes. And he walked into the big main hangar, where fifteen heavily engineered, thoroughly worn-out greenships were being treated with tender loving care by his technicians. Everywhere he went, he sensed a heightening of activity, and of tension. For one thing there were more flight crew around than usual, working with the ground crew on the ships they would fly. But there was more to this atmosphere than that. He’d been through this before, back on the other side of the magnetar incident that had cut his life in two, when he had flown his one and only combat mission.
Everybody understood the need for security. Generally you had no idea until a day or so before the launch of a mission exactly what your target was to be. This mission had been no different — save only for the novel bits of technology they all had to become used to. As always, there had been much speculation. The advantages of the new superfast processors and the formidable black-hole cannon were obvious. But nobody could figure out what the grav shield, difficult and temperamental, was actually for. Nor could anybody come up with a convincing target. It was sure to be something big, though — big and therefore exceptionally dangerous. But all this was scuttlebutt.
This morning, though, it was clear that things had changed: from somewhere in the higher echelons, it was being said, orders had arrived to proceed. Right now Pirius Red was probably briefing the senior staff, and everybody else was supposed to be in the dark. But it was astonishing how these things got out, how people picked up on almost imperceptible cues, if it really mattered to them — and this was an issue of life or death.
Hope knew his duty, anyhow. He was going to make sure each of these dinged-up greenships was ready to do whatever its crew demanded of it, if he had to crawl into the guts of every one of them himself. He went to work with a will.
In the middle of the morning, Virtual images of Pirius Red appeared around the hangar, summoning the flight crews to a general briefing in one of the big conference rooms. The crews gathered in little knots, talking quietly, and began to drift out of the hangar.
It’s real, Hope thought; it really is happening. He felt an odd pull. It wasn’t so long since he had been flight crew himself.
He walked quickly around the hangar. Work was going well. In fact, he told himself, if he hung around watching over his technicians’ shoulders, he would get in the way. He could be spared for a couple of hours.
So, as the last crews walked down the short corridor to Officer Country, Hope followed them.
Torec was on security duty at the door of the conference room. Hope found his way blocked by her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“The briefing.” Through the open door Hope glimpsed the thirty-odd flight crew milling, finding seats. They all seemed to be here, both primary crews and reserves. On a dais at the front sat the two editions of Pirius, Burden, Commissary Nilis, and others. As the officers prepared their briefing material, Virtual images flickered tantalizingly over their heads.
“Flight crew only,” Torec said. “I can’t let you in.”
“Come on, Torec,” he whispered. “I used to fly, remember?”
“I don’t know why you want to be here.”
Neither did Hope, quite. He looked into the room. “Because it’s history.”
“Yes,” she said. “There is that. Okay.” She lifted her arm. “But if anybody spots you I’ll say you slugged me.”
He grinned his thanks and hurried into the room.
The atmosphere in there was even stranger than out in the hangars. The tension in the air was like ozone. All the flight crew seemed to be talking at once, and the air was full of noise. But the talk was meaningless, just banter, ways to drain off stress. Hope spotted pilot Jees, who sat a little apart, as always, like a half-silvered statue; with no apparent nerves, she watched the platform and waited for the show to start.
Hope found space at the back, between two burly navigators. Of course everybody in this audience knew who he was, but they had all worked with him on their ships and seemed to accept him.
Pirius Red stood up on the platform. He raised his arms for silence, but he needn’t have; the hubbub died away instantly. Pirius looked out over the crews, a complex expression on his face. “You know why we’re here.” He spoke without amplification, and his voice, gruff with tension, was precise, determined. “Operation Prime Radiant is on.” There was a rumble of appreciation at that; one or two stamped their feet. “I know it’s still not much more than a name for most of you, but that’s about to change.
“I’ve already had briefings with the flight commanders, and representative specialists — pilots, navigators, engineers — and we’ve put it all together, as best we can. Commissary Nilis here will give you an overview of the objectives and strategy, and then Blue, Burden, and I will go through the operation in more detail. At the end of this briefing you’ll be given copies of the draft Operation Order by the adjutant. After that we’ll split for briefings in your specialist groups. We have more detailed Virtuals of the mission profile, including sims if you’ve the time to sit through them.
“At every stage I want you to answer back. What we’re going to attempt is something nobody’s done before. So if you spot a screwup waiting to happen, or can see a better way to do things, say so. At the end of the day the adjutant and I will pull all that feedback into a fresh draft of the Op Order, and we’ll hold another update session in here. Is that clear?”
There was no reply. He paced, as if suddenly uncertain, and gazed out at them; the crews watched him silently.
Pirius said, “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do tomorrow, in a sentence. We’re going to strike a blow at the Xeelee from which they cannot recover. And I’ll tell you something else. Tomorrow is our best chance, but it’s not the only chance. If you screw up tomorrow, you’ll go back out there as soon as we can patch up the ships, and patch you up, and do it again. And you’ll keep on going out until the job is done. So if you don’t want to go back, do it right first time.” He glared at them, as if daring them to defy him. Then, to silence, he sat down.