Sixteen
March 2253
Next morning
Mike Crider Junior woke up slowly, blinking at the bright morning light glancing in through the blinds. His condominium apartment was on the sixteenth floor of a building only a kilometer from his Senate offices; the morning sun hit the higher floors early.
But not that early. He’d forgotten to set his alarm.
He looked down to find a slender, feminine arm across his chest. A mop of strawberry-blonde curls lay on his shoulder. He lay very still and tried to breath gently, like people do when they’re trying to hold very still, but after a moment Jean Barrett opened her sparkling green eyes and looked up.
“Morning already?”
“Yes. I should be at the office by now. My staff is probably wondering where I am.”
“Should you call in?”
“I suppose. I don’t really feel like moving, though.”
She placed a kiss on his chest. “I don’t either. At least my crew isn’t expecting me today – I should think most of them spent last night in much the same way.” She laughed once, quickly.
Years later, the four days that followed would stand out in Mike’s mind as some of the happiest in his life, an oasis of joy in the middle of the chaos of a Galactic capital at war. He spent as little time in his office as possible. At Jean Barrett’s urging, he even found time to visit Mountain View’s picturesque beaches – for only the second time in all his years in the Confederate capital.
On the morning of the fifth day, Captain Barrett departed to ascend the Mountain View Skyhook to see to her ship’s repairs.
“I expect to be back in space in two weeks,” she told Mike on that morning on her way out. “I’ll be back down the Skyhook before we leave – say, the night before we leave dock?” She leaned against Mike, her face turned up to his. “I could leave for the Skyhook in the morning.”
“I’ll buy you a steak,” Mike grinned.
She leaned up and kissed him once, hard. And then she was gone.
New Albion
It hadn’t proved hard to decipher the controls of the Grugell scout, once Sergeant Morris had located what passed for manuals on the ship – an odd set of round leaves of some sort of plastic, bound at the top – and to the guerilla’s delight, the scout had a home-on-base feature. The ship was parked now in a tiny clearing in the woods, high in the Crow Ridge Mountains.
“So,” Lieutenant Jerrold was just wrapping up a half-hour planning session around a tiny campfire, “We’ve got everything rigged right, then? The nuke is tripped by a pressure switch that is activated when the ship lands, which with any luck will be right on the Grugell base over on the other side of the ocean.”
“Aye, sir,” Sergeant Morris replied. “The Occupation troops over there are in for a ten-kiloton headache.”
“Ground burst is going to be dirty, isn’t it?” Jason MacFeeters had adopted his usual, sour expression again. “We’re the ones that have got to live on this bloody planet after this is over, you know.”
“Well, since the Grugell have already nuked Glengarry, this little device is a drop in the bucket – and unless we can kick the Grugell off this rock, I’ll remind you, there won’t be any humans living here at all.”
MacFeeters shrugged. “Aye, well, I’m just thinkin’ out loud, you know. After Glengarry I’m all for killing them.”
“Anyone see any reason to delay?”
“Best it were done quickly, sir,” Morris answered. “Before they start to wonder where the hell their ship is.”
“Very well. Go ahead and launch.”
Launching was the tricky bit. The controls had to be activated, and then Sergeant Morris had about fifteen seconds to bail out the rear hatch before the ship gained speed and height. The rear hatch would remain open through the flight, but there was no helping that.
For all that, the launch went flawlessly. The ship’s drivers began to whine, and the silver form lifted slowly from the meadow grass. A moment later, Sergeant Morris appeared in the open hatch, looking down to gauge the speed and altitude of the ship. He jumped, tucking into a roll as he landed. The others ran to where he’d hit.
“Sprained my bloody ankle,” he groused as Lieutenant Jerrold bent over him. “Over two hundred bloody para jumps with no injuries, and I sprain my bloody ankle jumping five meters from a bloody alien ship.”
“Come on,” Jerrold said, extending a hand. “Let’s get back into the trees. We should put some ground between us and the launch point.”
“Aye, sir,” Morris ground out through clenched teeth. “I can walk, if just one of the lads can lend me a shoulder.”
“Good. Let’s get moving, everyone.”
The unmanned Grugell scout ship climbed to four thousand meters before it picked up the homing signal from the landing field some fourteen thousand kilometers distant. Turning towards its base, it covered the distance in about five hours.
Four Grugell ground control operators were in the improvised control tower on the landing field. The incoming scout had been on their screens for several minutes with none of the normal communications.
“They don’t answer calls, and there are no incoming messages,” one of the controllers observed.
“Maybe their transmitters are damaged,” the senior controller said.
“Perhaps. They appear to be auto-homing. We should call the perimeter guards and tell them there is a damaged ship coming in.”
A moment later, six armed perimeter guards appeared on the landing field, just in time to see the damaged ship appear over the trees on its final descent. The silver form turned to face the tower and settled to the grass before the device detonated.
The landing field was on one edge of the Grugell compound, which was about six kilometers by four. The blast obliterated most of the compound, destroying all of the scouts and orbital shuttles as well as wiping the surface command structure off the face of the planet. One shuttle survived, having launched for orbit a few minutes earlier; despite some electromagnetic damage, it managed to clear the planet’s atmosphere to reach a heavy cruiser in low orbit.
The Grugell Occupation leadership on the planet had been eliminated at a stroke, and with no Occupation ship to support them, the Grugell in orbit had no way to send more troops down to the surface or support them once they were there.
The Mountain View
An addition to Admiral Gauss’ initial plan had been suggested by the Mountain View’s Fighter Group Commander, and after some discussion, the Admiral had authorized the revision to the ‘blitz’ tactic. As a part of that plan, Lieutenant Commander Andrea Crider was now carefully piloting her fighter into the attack behind a cloud of proxies and Lancer missiles.
“Hunter Flight, Hunter Flight, be advised; the first wave of proxies is under fire.” The call from the carrier confirmed what Fleet Intelligence had feared; the Grugell had adjusted their sensors to pick up small craft.
“Roger that, Hunter Base. Hunter Flight, Hunter Lead, heads up for incoming fire.”
“Lead, I’ve got six bogies launching from the cruiser.” One of the forward fighters, ‘Sleaze’ Fitzsimons, called out the contact report.
Andrea flipped on her search radar. “I’ve got them too, Lead, they aren’t missiles, small craft of some sort.”
“Heads up, people,” Lead called out. “Sleaze, talk to me.”
“Definitely not missiles, Lead. They’re under control, they’re engaging the lead proxies – whoa, there goes a Lancer.” Everyone in the flight saw the burst of the missile’s nuclear warhead. “Dammit, Base, are those things armed in flight?”
“Hound, tuck in tight,” Crider called out.
“I got your six, Angel.”
Ahead of them, the planet was growing into a blue-green disk.
“Lead, those are fighters, say again those are fighters – they’re engaging the proxies!” Sleaze’s shout almost blew off Crider’s earphones. “I’ve got another flight of six launching from that cruiser.”
“Hunter Flight, this is Hunter Base, engage those fighters, weapons are free. Say again weapons are free.”
Hunter Lead’s voice crackled in next. “OK, Flight let’s get ‘em.”
“Horse, stay with me.” Crider slammed her engine to full throttle. “Let’s get that cruiser before they can launch any more fighters.”
“Roger that.”
Crider reached down and armed her four Shrike missiles. “Horse, two fighters coming at us from ten o’clock.”
“I see them, Angel.”
Three bolts of green shot past, missing narrowly. “OK, you son of a bitch,” Crider muttered. “Horse, I’m taking the one in front. You get the one in the back.”
“Roger that!”
The Grugell fighters were long, cigar-shaped, with one of the ubiquitous Grugell drive-pods mounted on the rear of the fuselage. Crider wondered, irrelevantly, for a moment just how the odd-shaped drive pods worked. Shaking her head, she got back to the business at hand.
A flip of a switch armed the big thirty-millimeter rotary cannon on the front of her fighter. She nudged the stick right, turning the fighter slowly on its big internal gyro to line up with the oncoming Grugell. “You want to play chicken?” she snarled at the Grugell ships.
The A-66’s heads-up display gave the range of the oncoming fighters. Two thousand meters, one thousand… “Horse, break right now!”
Both Confederate fighters snapped to the right, catching the Grugell flatfooted. As the two cigar-shaped craft shot past, the agile A-66’s flashed around, coming in behind them.
“I’ve got you,” Crider breathed, watching the Grugell fighter grow in her sighting recticle. “Fox-Three, Fox-Three!” She stabbed her forefinger down on the trigger on her stick, and a burst of thirty-millimeter shells blasted the enemy fighter into wreckage.
“Angel, two more on your six,” Horse called out. “Fox Three for a kill!” Crider snapped her head around to see a puff of flame and flying wreckage; Horse had turned around on his fighter and scored with his cannon.
Flashes of green flame shot past her canopy, and one glanced off the side of the A-66.
“DAMAGE TO PORT SIDE MANUEVERING THRUSTER,” the on-board computer announced in a flat, metallic voice.
“Crap.” A glance at the global radar told her that two Grugell fighters were hanging on her ‘six,’ less than a kilometer out. And behind them:
“Fox-Three, Fox-Three!” The new voice was “Sleaze” Fitzsimons, and as she called out, one of the Grugell fighters shed a cloud of wreckage from one side and spun out of control. The other yanked hard left and pulled away, abandoning the three-to-one engagement.
“Thanks, Sleaze. Where’s Lead?”
“Lost him in the furball. They’ve got to be forty-fifty fighters out there.”
“Great.” Crider tested her stick; the A-66 reacted sluggishly. The gyro would do for mild maneuvering, but combat required using the thrusters. “Hunter Base, this is Hunter Two, get me a fresh bird ready, I am RTB with damage.”
“Roger that, Hunter Two, we’ll have a bird prepped.”
“Hunter Lead, this is Hunter Two,” she called next.
There was no reply.
“Goose, this is Angel, talk to me, over,” she called.
No answer.
“Hunter Flight, this is Hunter Two, call in, by the numbers.”
“Three.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
“Nine.”
There had been ten fighters launched. Time to go, Crider told herself.
“Hunter Flight, this is Two, everyone, break off and RTB, acknowledge.” The four remaining fighters acknowledged, and the flight turned back towards the carrier under full drive, ducking through the cloud of proxies and turning north out of the ecliptic.
Behind them, the cloud of proxies managed to conceal two of the Lancers, which went into hunt-and-kill mode just inside the orbit of Fortune’s moon. Both of them locked on the giant Occupation ship. One was destroyed in a crossing spray of anti-proton fire from two Grugell cruisers, but the other flew straight and true, impacting sixty meters forward of the giant support ship’s port drive pod and bursting into sun-bright nuclear flame. The Occupation ship tilted, began a slow spin to the right, and fell away towards Fortune’s atmosphere, where a fiery death awaited it.
Six minutes after Lieutenant Commander Crider landed her damaged fighter in the Mountain View’s Hangar Deck, she burst into the carrier’s Combat Information Center. Admiral Gauss was there, looking over the playback of the proxies’ broadcasts.
“Commander,” he acknowledged her warily; the hangar deck had called ahead to report that the pilot had engaged the duty Flight Controller in a shouting match over search-and-rescue.
“Sir.” She came to attention, saluted. “Sir, we’ve got five birds out there. Request permission to begin search-and-rescue.”
“Negative. There are Grugell fighters all over the damn place in there, not to mention four cruisers. I’m ordering the Task Group the hell out of here.”
Lieutenant Commander Crider’s face flushed with anger. “Admiral Gauss, sir, we’ve got five birds still out there – they may be damaged and waiting for search and rescue! We can’t just…”
Gauss roared across the CIC. “You think I don’t know that?” He slammed his hand down on the tank display with a sound like a cannon shot. “Goddamn it, you think I don’t know? Might I remind you, Commander, that this carrier is the only capital ship we have left, and we might want to hang onto it a little longer?”
“Sir, that’s my flight out there! We can’t just leave them!”
Gauss’ voice lowered, and when he spoke next it was in a quiet and dangerous tone. “We can and we will, Commander. Goddamn it, you were told when you put that uniform on that it might be a dangerous job – if you’re having second thoughts about that, then I suggest you turn in your wings right the hell now.”
Andrea looked at the deck, her face brick red, and her posture eloquently revealing her struggle to contain herself.
“Commander, I don’t do this lightly. But it’s a dangerous business. The time we spend looking for five fighters that are probably blown to hell might cost us the carrier. I’m not taking that chance.”
“Yes, sir.” The pilot spun on her hell and walked out of the compartment. Gauss watched her go, and then turned to the Mountain View’s Flight Group Commander.
“Captain – I want her promoted to full Commander and given command of V-66.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. That girl has guts, and she’s willing to face me down to protect her people. She’s just the kind of commander we need.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Under their feet, the carrier’s drive rumbled under maximum acceleration. Within three minutes, the Task Group had jumped into subspace, bound for Tarbos.
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
“Talk to me, Goose.”
Anyone hear how Necron’s surgery went?
Nobody tells me anything.
I’ve dropped my number here a couple times but sadly I don’t even get late night calls with heavy breathing.
Those were the days before *69 and caller ID.
I shall email you. My apologies. Been busy with stuff over here.
I’m going to be out of the loop for theee or four days too.
Last ten days or so have been hectic with work, galavanting all over the NW from Boise to Bend to post falls today.
The. A surgery of my own tomorrow that’s going to put me down for a while.
Once o sober up from the pain killers I’ll be bored out of my mind.
Probably even listening to music links.
Crotch explosions!
Calling it now: Captain Barrett dies in battle.
Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!
Too late.
I’ll take that bet. One moderately-priced bottle of rum?
You read the book already? 😀
It’s the only proven way to get into Valhalla/Stovokor/Jannah.
Not until after the Barrett/Crider child is born to become the leader of the free universe.
Nah, both lines come to an abrupt end.
Someone strangled the blue bird of happiness.
We should start a plot point guessing game. Will they be:
1. Murdered by Grugell bombardment?
2. Crushed under the boot of international communism?
3. Live happily ever after, sans a few limbs here and there?
@RJ – 4. Dysentery.
@Kinnath – That bird only ever made me depressed.
Mistook him for a Yellow bird.
Was it sitting on the windowsill?
Or high in a banana tree?
Thank you Animal
Yes! I am enjoying this story. I have to get back to work now.
About 8:00 last night, I had a woman and a 6 year old boy knock on my door.
Their car was overheated on the main road, so I went to look.
It was an old raggedy Civic and in total there were three women, a baby, the boy, and a 6 year old girl.
I helped them push it off the road and made them wait for it to cool off before I added any antifreeze.
My wife brought them cold water and Capri suns while we waited.
I added the antifreeze and told her to start it, but the battery was dead.
Went back to my house and got the battery charger and her car fired right up.
She said they only had a couple miles to go, hope they made it.
It did bring back memories of being poor and having cars held together with duct tape and J-B weld.
Been there, having to drive with the heater running in the summer to help keep the engine cooler for juuuuuust a little longer. Hope they made it home.
It was a bad feeling once in winter, when my truck was running a little hot, I turned on the heater and the air coming out was cold.
Luckily I got pulled over before any damage was done.
Ended up replacing the radiator.
I was about to ask how much a radiator costs.
Then I realized it’d be easier to get the right one from a junkyard.
I think it was about $100 at Auto Zone.
That one lasted a few years until the fan hub bolts sheared off and punched a hole in it.
I replaced it with a $300 Mishimoto aluminum one.
I was there once myself. Thank you for helping strangers.
Seconded.
When I was poor I hadn’t yet heard of JB Weld.
I made a fan shroud in the woods for my 72 GMC suburban out of a big Costco lettuce box I had in the back once.
Ran that sucker for another three years until the transmission took a crap.
“Should bearing rollers be falling out of this joint?”
I never scrimped on bearings or brakes.
Wheels had to stay attached to the vehicle and they had to be able to stop rolling when I wanted them.
Everything other than lights got a pass until I could afford it. And I only bought one kind/vintage of GM product so I had spare parts. The number of pieces from a 74 Pontiac that would fit my 68-72 GM light trucks would be surprising for a Ford guy.
I occasionally have nightmares about the cars we had at the beginning of our marriage.
We went through a series of disposable cars — so old and decrepit that they barely ran and couldn’t be repaired when they died.
The biggest stretch of belief here isn’t that there are aliens, but the govt is led by libertarians and is competent.
Just treat it as Science Fantasy. Most Science Fiction is anyway.
Think of westward expansion.
Government got smaller for a time as populations were sparce and the concerns became life and death vs minutia of micromanaging.
Did Jethrow shoot ol Jed?
Was it justified? If not hang him.
No one has time or concern about the color of the neighbors railing or how tall his grass is when the Indians may be on a raiding party.
🤔
Now I’m envisioning a war between rival HOAs whether the larger development should have beige or cream trim.
A true dystopian fiction story UCS.
Then the HOA fines you for bullet holes caused by the other HOA.
“Those are unapproved blood stains.”
UnCiv – that was basically Snow Crash.
Unless that turns out to be a satire and I hadn’t learned that before, I’m baffled that someone made a joke concept into a serious work.
I had the same thought as ES, I know a lot of people loved that book, but it was boring to me.
It had some interesting concepts.
I couldn’t get into it, but I did finish it.
Same.
I thought Diamond Age was much better.
I don’t remember who said it, but the rule for hard sci-fi is that you get one counterfactual technology, plus FTL travel for free.
So competent government it is.
Government usually constrains technology.
If you have competent government go you get two technologies.
Do you?
I assume we are measuring competence on a libertarian scale, otherwise you would be judging it by how many laws it passed or dollars it stole and redistributed.
Paperwork files to get my new pew added to my unconstitutional permission slip.
Now I wait for it to be processed and the updated paperwork to be mailed to me.
😣
I could drive 2 minutes and impulse buy a cart of handguns and wear them all back to work.
Neener neener.
Completing your Keanu Cosplay?
I didn’t say anything about buying a suit.
😛
I assumed you already owned a trenchcoat and sunglasses.
It seems the WordPress “Missed Schedule” problem which has been plaguing us has struck the links.
WordPress should be fed to piranhas.
“Wapner comes on at 5.”
Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time…
It’s a line from the movie “Rainman”. He throws an autistic fit if he can’t watch Wapner.
/begins to throw an autistic fit
I saw rain man all of once, decades ago.
I only remember the spilled toothpick box.
“K-Mart sucks.”
Definitely.
Needs more tick tock
A woman is recovering at home in good spirits after suffering a traumatic right-arm amputation in an alligator attack on the Silver River. Her family credits a quick-thinking boater with saving her life.
The attack occurred Saturday afternoon while the victim and a group of swimmers were in the springs. According to the family, the woman attempted to push the alligator away with a paddle, but the alligator grabbed her by the arm and pulled her underwater.
Fuck no.
Yikes. That’s, what, 700 pounds of dinosaur?
Probably more like 400 pounds.
How many football fields is that?
For some reason, I’m reminded of this lot
Egghead experts agree
Amid growing frustration with both major political parties, voters are open to some big changes.
A new poll, commissioned by supporters of election reforms and shared with NPR, shows there is significant support for upending winner-take-all U.S. House elections and single-member congressional districts and instead moving toward proportional representation, a system that elects multiple representatives in a single district in rough proportion to a party’s vote share.
Earlier this summer, about 500 democracy and legal experts sent a letter to Congress urging members to consider proportional representation as a solution to the redistricting brinksmanship set off by President Trump last year.
“There should be little doubt that the single-member district system is failing to deliver fair and representative outcomes,” they wrote. “We urge Congress to adopt a proportional system of representation, solving the gerrymandering problem at its source.”
According to the poll conducted by the advocacy group Fix Our House and liberal think tank New America, half of 1,000 respondents said they support proportional representation, with nearly a quarter opposed. A third of those who participated said they were not sure whether they supported it or not.
I will reserve judgement until I see the exact wording of the survey questions.
How would proportional representation do anything to reduce the established power of the two-party system? Enquiring minds, etc, etc.
Who cares. The people want radical change. They have the polls to prove it.
Drutman told NPR the new poll numbers mark a starting point for what could be a national conversation about how to break out of the country’s two-party system.
“People are dissatisfied,” he said. “People are frustrated. People don’t have a language for how to talk about alternatives because they haven’t really heard all that much about the alternatives, because we haven’t had a national conversation about the alternatives yet. So, there’s a lot of room to have that conversation.”
The cure we have been searching for. No more do-nothing Congress.
Instead of flapping their gums about nonsense like “proportional representation” why not just cut to the chase and ban the GOP. That is certainly the end goal.
…reads on…
lol No way!
“It can’t be stuck if it’s liquid.” – last thing the stubborn bolt hears.