Into the Black
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2012 Evan Currie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47 North
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN: 978-1-61218-234-6
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
AS HIS FIGHTER broke clear of the atmosphere, Eric Weston reached forward and flipped a series of switches to disengage the Scramjet intake and engage the pressurized oxygen flow to the twin engines. The rush of air across the fuselage had long since faded, thinning to nothing as he angled the nose down and aimed for geosync orbit. Beyond the cockpit glass, the curve of Earth was clearly visible as he casually flipped the plane over and took a moment to admire the view so far below.
Things look so much nicer from up here. So serene compared to what I’ve seen. Japan, California, Hong Kong…None of them look like the battlefields I’ve fought over, Eric Weston thought soberly as he flashed back to his first engagements during World War III. When the war broke out, his company was one of the first strike targets for the Block forces. In the few minutes’ warning the coastal defenses bought them, Weston had organized the other test pilots and got the prototypes off the ground to save them from the bombers.
Unarmed, they couldn’t do anything but watch as the enemies’ heavy weapons annihilated the facility and killed nearly everyone he considered a colleague and friend. After that, staying out of the fight wasn’t really an option for Weston.
He flipped his plane back around so he could take a long look at his destination instead of wallowing in his origins.
Hanging in the Lagrange Four point like some serene floating sentinel, his new command, the North American Confederation Ship Odyssey, stood waiting to receive him. The ship floated in front of him, placidly awaiting her captain as he sailed toward her on a fast intercept vector.
Huh, I suppose it does look like an old sailing ship. Though, as he forced himself to admit a few moments later, he probably wouldn’t have seen it if the designers hadn’t kept pointing it out.
The Odyssey’s cylindrical habitats could only be seen as the hull of a sailing vessel if one had the most liberal of imaginations. The rest, though, was easier to understand. A long keel that appeared to mark the vessel’s “bottom” was actually an enclosed flight deck, built to house shuttles and fighters. Similarly, mast-like sensor spires dotted her “top.” The rear engine compartment looked like the stern of an old frigate, and her bow was marked by long antennae that reached dozens of meters out from the ship.
“Odyssey Control to Archangel Zero One, please change your approach vector to oh-two-four-mark-three. You have been cleared for standard approach on deck two,” the voice relayed over his headset induction receiver, sounding clearer than if the person had been in the cockpit with him.
Weston acknowledged the signal and slid his fighter along the new approach path.
It didn’t take long for the cat officer to come over his radio, taking over from the Bridge Control Team.
“Archangel Zero One, I have you on approach,” the voice crackled over the radio as the signal began to suffer from the mutual interference of the counter-mass (CM) fields that surrounded both his fighter and the NACS Odyssey. “Call the ball, Captain.”
“Roger, Cat. I have the ball.”
“Confirmed. Glide path is clear. The deck is green. Come on in, the air is fine.”
Weston guided the sleek Archangel Zero One toward the Odyssey, vectoring toward her bow and aligning toward the enclosed carrier deck in the ship’s massive keel. The forward section of the deck was open to space, offering entry to the ship for fighters and shuttles at speed, while heavy side locks permitted more controlled docking. As the starry depths of space were eclipsed by the cavernous interior of the carrier deck, Weston felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand at attention. He recognized the sensation and knew that the ship’s flight crew had caught him with “the trap,” a powerful counter-gravity field that slowed the fighter down drastically without putting him through the effects of deceleration.
Minutes later, his fighter came to a stop and he regained control as he carefully steered it to one of the deck’s lifts. Once he was in one of the eight hangars built into the Odyssey’s keel, Weston powered down and checked the external atmosphere on reflex. He carefully equalized the pressure in the fighter to that of the hangar and popped the canopy, waiting as it slid back. He pulled himself clear and, with a slight tug, floated free of the cockpit.
As he drifted toward the hangar’s ceiling, Weston heard the reverberating clang of magnetic boots and looked up—or rather, down—toward the floor.
“Howdy there, Commande…whoops, I mean Captain!” the cheerful voice echoed through the hangar as its originator jumped up, did a neat little flip, and floated up to where Weston was just planting his own pair of Magboots on the metal deck plating.
Stephen “Stephanos” Michaels was Weston’s wingman in the Archangel Flight Group, or had been until Weston officially accepted command of the Odyssey. During the war, Weston, Stephanos, and a small handful of others were among the only people qualified on the specialized Archangel fighters, among the only air superiority fighters that could stand up to the new Block frontline fighter aircraft. After three years of leading the Archangels, and the end of the war, Weston had accepted the promotion with the hopes of a place to start over, somewhere that wasn’t filled with memories. At that point, Stephanos was Weston’s choice to succeed him, taking his place as the flight leader of the Archangels.
Stephanos had not changed much since their younger days. Just over six feet, with a decidedly nonregulation haircut, he had an affable quality that hung off him like a comfortable set of clothes, something that served him well in the after-hours clubs he was known to frequent. Weston knew that he had been waiting for years to take over the Angels, and Stephanos seemed pretty happy about it today.
“Hey, Steph.” Weston popped his helmet as he greeted his friend. “How are you and the others fitting in?”
Stephanos managed a humble sort of shrug that would have looked ridiculous on most anyone else, but just seemed to make him look like some good ol’ boy straight off the farm. “Nothing to complain about.”
Weston laughed. “Right. What that means is you’ve got complaints, but no one gives a damn.”
Stephanos chuckled in turn as the two old friends walked side by side to the far end of the hangar, chatting about the ship and the mission, and finally entered one of the small doors that led them to the ship’s internal lift. Inside the capsule-like pod that served to ferry the Odyssey’s crew, Weston signaled the lift to head for the ship’s command center in the forward habitat cylinder.
Weston waited, glancing at his young friend, noting his occasional nervous fidgeting. He figured that his wingman had earned the right to be nervous by now, though. They had flown alongside each other since the inception of the Archangels, eight years previously, and through some of the most vicious air battles in the history of humankind.
All that set aside, Weston could hardly fault the man when he himself was on the verge of shaking. The Odyssey was the first ship constructed that made use of the new transition drive system that was supposed to allow faster-than-light travel, and his rather public position as the flight leader of the Archangels had put him on the short list to captain her.
The pod glided to a stop in the center of the forward habitation cylinder, and Weston felt gravity return as the pod slowly matched the cylinder’s rotation before the hatch whirred open and allowed them to leave.
“Urk.” Weston staggered as he stepped off, a wave of nausea sweeping over him as his body adjusted to the cylinder’s rotation.
“It’ll pass. First time you’re on one of these things it takes your inner ear a while to adjust to the motion,” Stephanos commented as his arm snaked out to steady Weston.
“I know.” Weston straightened himself, fighting off another wave of sickness, and started down the hallway. “Not my first time on the ship, Steph. Was up here maybe a dozen times during the pre-commissioning—damn thing hit me every time.”
The pair made their way through the halls toward the Odyssey’s command center, a large room with curving floors and ceilings. It was already bustling with activity as two full-maintenance details crowded the room, checking the circuitry for the nth time as they analyzed every system on the ship prior to her maiden voyage. A tall black man wearing a commander’s uniform approached them on the bridge. Wide across the shoulders and taller than Steph by at least four inches, the commander caused the metal plates of the deck to reverberate under his feet, leaving Weston to think of an oncoming giant and wonder for a brief moment if he’d packed his sling.
“Commander Michaels.” He bowed his head politely toward Stephanos before turning his attention to Weston. “Welcome aboard the Odyssey, Captain. I’m Commander Jason Roberts, your first officer.”
“Commander.” Weston returned the gesture while glancing around the room.
“Excuse me, Captain? I don’t mean to question you, but would you prefer to change now?”
Weston startled, looked down at his well-worn flight suit and the helmet cradled under one arm, and grinned. “Don’t much look like the captain of the fleet’s pride and joy, now, do I? Well, let’s transfer the command codes now; I’ll come back in full dress whites for the camera ops in an hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
Roberts moved over to the captain’s command seat and thumbed a print scanner, motioning Weston to do the same. After Weston’s thumb had been scanned, twin lights lit up and the computer voice broke in.
“Command transfer initiated. Please confirm identities and desire to initiate transfer protocol.”
“Identify Commander Roberts, Jason, NACS Odyssey. Transfer all command access rights to Captain Eric Weston.”
“Confirmed. Captain Weston, please identify and confirm.”
“Identify Captain Weston, Eric, NACS Odyssey. Confirm access transfer.”
“All command access rights have been transferred. Welcome aboard, Captain.”
Weston removed his thumb from the scanner and glanced over at Stephanos, who by now looked like he was about to float away—rotational gravity be damned.
“Well, Commander, the Angels are yours.” Weston waited for a moment, permitting Stephanos his time in the sun, then continued. “I’ll be expecting a full report on the squadron—weapons, flight status, and roster—by tomorrow.”
Steph’s smile dropped several degrees, probably at the thought of the paperwork he had just inherited. Weston started to smirk in response, until he, too, remembered the increased paperwork awaiting his attention.
Recovering, Steph saluted with a smile and, turning on his heel, strode off to his new duties.
“I’ll be in my quarters preparing for the ceremony, Commander,” Weston said, before he, too, turned to leave.
He headed down two decks to the officers’ quarters, finally finding his room after a couple wrong turns. He stripped out of his flight suit, peeling the liner off his skin, and tossed it into a hamper built into the wall. A few minutes later, he was in the shower, washing the last remnants of his fighter suit off his body and hair.
After an all-too-short shower, Weston dried off and checked his closet. He found that all his things had preceded him to the ship and were all perfectly laid out.
I guess there are some perks to command, after all.
He pulled his dress whites out and laid them on his bed. Forty-five minutes after he had entered his quarters, an entirely new man emerged and headed back to Odyssey Command.
The shuttle rolled to a stop and shuddered as the huge pylons stabilized the delta-shaped craft in the zero-g of the hangar deck. A few minutes passed as the craft was secured. The lift readied as her passengers floated over to it, dropped onto the steel plate, and activated their Magboots. Loud reverberations echoed through the air as they all locked into place on the lift, waiting for it to drop.
Machinery hummed and the lift dropped down until it came into contact with the flight deck of the big mother ship, and the passengers found themselves staring at a pair of armed sentries. Lt. Sean Bermont, former member of the Canadian Joint Task Force 2, was the first to step forward, handing his identification to the Marine sentry.
“Lieutenant Bermont, to join ship’s company,” he said, passing the sheet with his orders to the Marine.
The sentry glanced down at it, but his eyes weren’t looking at the formal orders and ID; instead, they moved farther down to the lieutenant’s dog tags.
The information came up, along with a countersigned security voucher from the ship’s computer, and the Marine signed off on the arrival. “Very good, sir. Lift to the habitation decks is twenty meters behind you, and you should check in with the XO as soon as you settle in.”
Bermont nodded and turned on his heel—as well as he could in zero-g—and moved toward the lift.
Behind him, he could hear the next man handing over his ID to the Marine.
Weston left his quarters, dreading the press conference. When Commander Roberts met him at the entry to Command, Weston acknowledged him and everyone around the bridge before addressing his new XO.
“Commander, I think we should finish up the publicity ceremonies as quickly as possible. We do have a mission to begin,” Weston said, wanting to get his new command underway. Although he had to play to the press, he didn’t have to like it.
“Yes, sir. I’ll contact the admiral, and we’ll set up the public transfer.”
Weston walked around the command chair, lowering himself slowly into it.