It was almost the full porky, with the exception of tomatoes.

  I really didn’t like them.

  Twenty Five

  "Attention to orders!" bellowed Jane.

  From breakfast, the team and I, minus the other dropship potentials, and shifted into uniforms, had gone to a conference room somewhere in Admiral country.

  Everyone in the room, including now the Admiral himself, General Smith, CAG Lacey, and all of 266 squadron, braced at attention.

  The wall in front of us lit up with a bridge scene. I was surprised for a moment when I saw Jane sitting on that other bridge, as well as standing at attention here in the room.

  The Imperator was standing, and behind him I could see Fleet Captains George Murdock and Miriam Young.

  "Pilot Officer Ecclestone," barked Jane, and I flinched. "Front and center."

  I moved, in spite of being poleaxed at being called out. I braced back at attention, now in front of everyone, and facing the Imperator.

  "Pilot Officer Ecclestone," he said. "For outstanding flying yesterday, and the cool use of resources under pressure while on the ground, you are promoted to Flight Officer. Congratulations."

  A pulse came in with an updated insignia file for the suit, and my uniform changed to show a thick bar instead of the thin one.

  "Thank you, Sir."

  "Stand easy," said Jane, and everyone assumed parade ground rest, legs apart, and hands behind their backs.

  "You look surprised Dreamwalker," went on the Imperator.

  Being able to see him properly for the first time, I was surprised to see how young he was, regardless of the beard covering most of his lower face.

  "Yes sir."

  "I told you this would happen if you joined up, if you remember. Pilot Officer is an entry level rank, not meant to be stayed in for very long. In one day you proved it wasn’t your level of competence. I know this is only day three of your new life, but making ace on your first combat launch was enough to earn you the promotion. What you did with team one also guaranteed it. When respective governments get their act together for medals, your name will be on one as well. That was damned well done yesterday. You stepped up when we needed you to, and I reward it."

  "Yes sir."

  "Relax. The official part is done now." He looked at Rockmonster. "Your turn will come young lady. The only thing standing in your way is the pesky learning to be an officer part which Dreamwalker had already done, and some more combat launches." He looked at the other rookies. "Same goes for the rest of you. Keep it up."

  He waited for nods, and returned them, before looking back at me.

  "What's the best thing about being able to see again?"

  "Being able to pee standing up."

  He lost it, as did most of the men. The women seemed bemused. But I knew the men got it. Finally, the laughing stopped.

  "You can thank me for that," said George.

  "How so?" the Imperator asked him.

  "The Alpha team had the honour of beta testing the very first belt suit. Only hours in, it annoyed me I had to shift back to a belt in order to pee. I mean the zip was invented who knows how many centuries ago, and here we get a suit which doesn't have one. But that wasn’t the main concern. When I thought about ground combat, and missions lasting days, the whole idea of having to shift into your underwear under battlefield conditions, and getting killed while relieving yourself, was just intolerable. So I sent mine back with very terse instructions on improvements needed."

  "I take it they still didn't get it right?"

  "How did you know?"

  "I assumed that was when you started suit programming."

  "Actually no, but it wasn’t long after. But some of the improvements, like auto-creation of appropriate orifice holes in the suit, were my doing. The whole thought of throwing up unexpectedly and nowhere for it to go but down inside horrified me."

  I could see it did everyone.

  "Thank you sir," I said to George. "I appreciate everything about the suit, as it made a huge difference to my life when my aunt was able to get me a civilian model. But being able to see properly, and stand after so long sitting down, that is pure heaven."

  "Glad to hear it. I'm still working on improving your sight issues."

  "Thank you again sir. May I be so bold as to ask if you can schedule a time when we can talk about them?"

  "Done. I'll be in touch."

  "Thanks again."

  "Oh," said the Imperator, "I'm sorry your aunt Susan wasn't able to join us for your promotion, but we're all in separate Ralnor systems, and right now, she's in combat. We all will be again shortly. So I'll break this up now, and let you all get back to work." He looked at the CO. "Admiral, tell your crew they did a damned fine job yesterday, and keep up the good work."

  "Aye sir."

  He saluted, followed rapidly by the rest of us, and the wall appeared again.

  "Dismissed," barked Jane.

  Twenty Six

  "What the hell did you do? Sir."

  266 was back in the simulator, as were all the squadrons as we found out being the last to enter. The main combat arena was a total furball with pilots coming and going. By which I mean joining the fight, and being destroyed.

  Vulture had just taken me out so easily, I felt like a day one cadet. And he'd done it when I’d thought he couldn’t possibly fire on me. But it hadn't been a missile.

  Instead of replying, he pulled us all out of the simulator. Heads poked up as fast as mine did, and we saw him exit his completely and head for the mess room. We all followed.

  We found him sitting there waiting for us with a grin on his face. He waved us to seats.

  "Did I see Dreamwalker get creamed just now?" asked Rockmonster, grinning.

  "You did," said Vulture, "but not because of anything he did or didn’t do. He was simply the last of ten."

  "I smell a rat," someone said, and I was horrified to find it was me.

  He laughed.

  "Indeed. I received an upgrade the techs wanted me to try out. It worked like a charm. Anyone want to guess?"

  He looked around expectantly. Several of the Excalibur pilot's eyes lit up.

  "They fixed strafe?" asked Hawk.

  "They did."

  All the senior pilots made some sort of noise, including several wolf whistles. The rest of us looked confused.

  "Fleet Captain Young came up with an innovation some weeks ago, whereby all ships cut their engines, and used their maneuverability to turn so all ships could fire at once, regardless of where they were, and without changing their direction. She called it Strafe. Anyone get the downside?"

  He was looking towards us juniors.

  "Turning your engines off?" I guessed.

  "Yes. Took too long to do the whole operation, and placed a huge strain on the engines they didn’t need. If you already had engine issues, it would be enough to cripple you, at the worst possible time. It was acknowledged as a brilliant innovation, but the Imperator sent it to the techs for work."

  "What did they do?" asked Watershed, who I’d finally figured out was Rockmonster's wingman, and thus my flight's fourth.

  "Inserted a cutout into the main thrust, so we can stop thrusting forward at the press of a button. The button will be added to the speed shifter. Press, no thrust, and you can change your direction to fire anywhere you like. Press again and the thrust comes on again, and you thrust which ever direction you were pointed when you pressed the button."

  "Can't be that simple," said Hawk.

  "It's not. But given the test I just did, I've ordered all our birds, and our backups to be modified immediately. We'll just have to hope we don’t go into combat before they're ready. The problems are these. While the thrust is off, you go dead straight, making you a sitting duck. And if you don’t return to the same heading before starting the thrust again, there's a wicked turn depending on how much of a change in heading you end up with. When I took out Dreamwalker, I almost lost my breakfast, and it's been a long time since that happened, but I've never made a turn so sudden before."

  "So it's very like doing a one eighty, only faster?"

  Watershed looked like it was his birthday.

  "Heaps faster, and the inertial systems are not up to some of the turns possible."

  "Yee-hah," came from behind me.

  Vulture ignored him. Falcon punched him on the arm, and he shut up. Being able to see it was still making my mind boggle.

  "We're going back into the simulator now, which have had to be updated and rebooted. We're not joining the other squadrons. We're getting the same open combat as before, but it's all AI driven, and the AI will be flying trees. Do not fire at each other. We need to master this fast, against the best we can imitate for the enemy. We'll start as if we all got separated. When enough of you have either mastered the strafe to survive, or decided on not using it, we'll change to pairs and then flights."

  He looked around at all of us. And pointed to the door.

  Back in the simulator, I found a big black dot on the slider handle, which was presumably part of the software patch, given as the hardware would need physical changes, and I assumed there were no parts made yet.

  "Launching," said Orion.

  I found myself on the edge of a whole mess of trees, with the white dots of the rest of the squadron appearing all around the edges, and the only thing going for me was the trees were not pointing at me.

  Speed slider to normal cruise, and I fired into the tree in front of me, as I started flashing past others. Press, turn to the one on the left, fire, press, and there was a wicked lurch as my direction changed abruptly. It was so bad, I almost collided with a tree, and several white dots went out so the same thing had likely happened to others.

  Get a grip!

  Shoot, select target, press, turn, shoot, turn, shoot, press. I started to get the hang of it. When I tried three in a row, pulses splashed off the shield covering the reverse of the direction I was actually going. Not a kill, but a wake-up call. I needed to be more aware to make this work. But was limited to normal sight here in the simulator.

  I mixed it up, using missiles as I normally did, and starting to try torpedoes. When I ran out, I kept on going, missing a lot of the time, but getting the hang of it.

  The trick was, as Falcon had said, not flying straight for long enough to be a duck. Every time I did, I received hits, but I slowly became better at using it.

  Along the way, I became aware Falcon was on my wing, and while following me was obviously much more difficult than before, he was actually picking ships off my arse by using strafe to fire at anything behind us. I started integrating his flying into my own, making sure I didn’t strafe while he was, and he was pointing the way we were going when I did.

  The kills mounted. Rockmonster and Watershed formed up behind us, and we quickly lost them. Hawk and his wing tried joining us, and we lost them too. And finally I bit off more than I could chew, and found myself looking up out of the now open simulator. I sat there just breathing heavily, until Vulture appeared above me, and waved me out.

  He raised eyebrows at me. I was too tired to do anything except give him a thumbs up. I followed him back to the mess, where he ordered food and soft drink. I was amazed to find it was lunch time already. The rest straggled in over the next ten minutes.

  For a while there was only the sound of eating, and the occasional slurp.

  "I got killed five times," announced Rockmonster. "Who did worse?"

  Everyone looked at everyone, and four of the other juniors raised their hands.

  "Who was killed more than once?" asked Falcon, and everyone except he, Vulture, and I raised their hands.

  All eyes looked at me.

  "Once. Vulture decided to have lunch as soon as I was killed."

  All eyes looked at Falcon.

  "Nope, I pulled the plug when my wingman bought it."

  Eyes turned to Vulture.

  "I figured everyone was going to flake out from fatigue when Dreamwalker bought it, so I let you all go for as long as you could."

  "I need a sleep," said Rockmonster. "That was the most intense thing I've ever done."

  "Anyone want to not use strafe?"

  Silence.

  "Good. Go get a couple of hours rack time, and come back ready for another session. We need to figure out how to stay together as flights now."

  The relief for getting a break was obvious on everyone's faces. People started moving towards the travel stations. I waited.

  "I had an idea on flights," I said to Falcon.

  "What?"

  "I don’t know how you stayed with me, but I suspect the issue is knowing when the lead is strafing. I was trying to do my strafing at a time when you were not, so it gave you the chance to cover me better, but make sure I didn’t lose you by going off at some random direction you couldn’t anticipate. I think that’s the issue of flights. Unable to anticipate well enough."

  "I figured out what you were doing. And I agree. I had to stop thinking about everything but what you were doing as soon as I saw you begin to strafe. I nearly lost you a few times when you thrust off a different vector, which is much harder to do than simply following an abrupt turn. You're probably right the second pair can't follow you precisely enough. What's your idea?"

  "We need a HUD indicator. The moment the lead presses the button, the rest of the flight get a light, and they know they can strafe at the same time. Another light as each does so, so the lead knows when everyone is strafing, and the lights go out as soon as the button is pressed again. The lead needs to try not to change course until the flight is back to normal, or stays strafed until the other three are not, and then chooses a direction to thrust."

  "I can see us all ending up thrusting different directions after. How do we keep us together?"

  "How long do you think the maximum is before being clobbered becomes certain?"

  "Four seconds? Five at the most? Depends on how thick the enemy is."

  "We could put a three second time limit on strafing, with lead having four. Takes a second to react, three seconds to turn, fire, and turn back, then all come out of strafe together."

  "How do we make that happen?"

  "You don’t," said Jane, through room coms. "The ship AI's do. We can even put you back on course in the last second, so you don’t all shoot off in different directions."

  "That might work," said Falcon. "Going to be disconcerting losing control for the realign, but we can get used to that."

  "While you get some kip," said Jane, "I'll do some simulations."

  "Sounds like a plan," I said.

  Falcon clapped me on the shoulder, and we both left the mess.

  Twenty Seven

  "All pilots to your ships. This is not a drill."

  I’d gone to sleep in my full suit again, and so merely had to roll off my bed and run. I’d had but two hours, and was still half asleep because the second rem cycle had been interrupted.

  "You'll want to see this," said Jane in my ear.

  A hollo popped up in front of me, and stayed with me as I charged into the waiting travel car.

  It was a bridge feed. In front of Orion was what looked like two standard plant fleets, mainly cruiser and destroyer size. I say looked like, because Orion's front guns and torpedoes were mowing them down two or three at a time.

  "We're approaching a jump point," Jane went on. "These fleets jumped in just ahead of us. CO wants all pilots ready in the tubes in case there's a battleship fleet coming."

  I couldn’t respond, being too spellbound watching the forward firepower in action. I requested a ship status, and could see only the front rank of turrets were in position, the rest still rising out of their cruise positions within the main hull.

  The doors opened, and I followed my arrow to my bird, which was of course one of our backups. As I strapped in, I noticed the actual button on the speed slider, positioned to be barely touchable by the middle finger as it curled around the handle. A slight pressure would activate the strafe.

  When systems were up, I’d checked all my settings were active, and found the new strafe indicators for the flight were there, waited until I was in the tube, and checked in as ready to launch.

  "Anyone who feels the need," said Eagle, "can get a stim from your medical monitor. Let's be alert people."

  Orion's guns continued to fire, without any targets now, but I could see large debris vanishing in front of us as the ship continued towards it. The sight alone had me on high alert already. I didn't need stims.

  "This is the captain. We're about to jump out assuming nothing jumps in first. For the moment we're assuming this was a backup fleet to hold the system we were at yesterday, so their main force there could move on. Prepare for launch in case we find other fleets on the other side."

  I frowned.

  "Shouldn’t we be," I started saying, but the ship jumped before I could finish the thought.

  Orion staggered.

  The view outside vanished suddenly.

  "What the fuck was that?" I heard someone say.

  "We hit something," I said.

  "Something big," added Eagle. "All ships prepare for manual launch."

  The view came back again, this time showing us stopped, and a huge mass of debris floating in front of us. It started moving, and I figured Orion was rotating to give us a safe exit vector.

  "Belay that," said the Admiral. "Normal launch on my order. We just collided with a fleet jumping out. From the debris, it was mainly battleships. There are more fleets here, but we have a minute to get some shielding back. Orion is damaged, but not severely. For now, form up into squadrons, and await orders."

  The view stopped rotating.

  "Launch."

  We launched. My full sight switched on, and the sight was breathtaking. The entire area was one big debris field in all directions except directly behind Orion, where the debris was vanishing into the jump point. We had just enough clear space to launch safely.

  Heading away from us was what looked like a number of hundreds of fighters, which were heading towards another fleet in the distance, but as I watched, Orion's forward point defenses were rapidly destroying the rearward ships.

 

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