Chapter 1
Surprised? You could say that. You could also say that water is wet with about as much chance of being wrong. Of course we were surprised!
The planet below was still on the dusty and dry side even after a century of terraforming efforts. While there were green belts around rivers that hadn’t flowed on this planet for millennia before the interference of man and even slowly spreading forests in areas where the terraforming work was most advanced, the most common biome on the planet was still a mix of desert and savannah.
It may not be the prettiest planet around, but it was home to the New Circe Research & Development Complex, which made it important enough to rate a full planetary garrison including substantial orbital assets to protect the place from pirates, raiders, and other enemies of the Terran Hegemony in Exile… especially raiders from the People’s Democratic Republic Of The Rim. Which was coreward from the Terran Hegemony in Exile, was neither democratic nor a republic being ruled by a caste-based cabal of autocrats who ruled the enslaved populace with the simple credo ‘we can always make it worse for you’.
Well, that may have been uncharitable, but Junior Flight Lieutenant Carlos Johanssen wasn’t particularly interested in charity towards the Hegemony’s enemies, despite his Catholic upbringing. To him, there were two sorts of enemies, those still alive, and those who had been rendered permanently unable to harm his beloved home.
Granted there hadn’t been any raid on New Circe in his lifetime, and he’d spent his entire career so far here on the planet of his birth, but the sentiment was one that was quite strong in the Terran Hegemony in Exile, to the quiet despair of the priests, ministers, rabbis, gurus, and whatever else any of the various religions that made up the colorful fabric of society called their spiritual leaders.
And so Carlos sat in the cockpit of his Sparrowhawk IV monitoring his displays while the nimble little aerospace fighter coasted along in orbit, the squadron he was part of formed up around a single Artemis System Defense Boat, a 1,300 ton aerodyne dropship bristling with advanced weaponry and generously layered with armor that could keep up with the small, swift little fighter if it had to.
Not that the Artemis and his Sparrowhawk IVs were the only orbital defenses. At this point in his orbital patrol Carlos could see reflected sunlight glinting off of the ominous bulk of a Warden Light Fleet Anchorage which was the true keystone of the defenses, serving as the home base for DesRon 29, whose 12 Johnston-class Destroyers served as a quite potent deterrent to precisely the sort of threats the Hegemony worried about in this fairly quiet backwater region of their holdings, well away from the Fortress Worlds along the border with the Rim.
Carlos glanced at his displays, which showed that HWS Gillespie and HWS Guerriere were currently docked to the Warden, the rest of the squadron being elsewhere in the system. He knew that the annual major unit wargames were coming up, and was looking forward to them. A little excitement to spice up life here on the quiet frontier. Last year he’d been assigned to the Red Team, and that had gotten very exciting indeed. He’d actually notionally crippled Gillespie with an Alamo attack before he’d been taken down.
They were 10 orbits into their 12 orbit rotation before they’d head back down to Fort Wilson for debriefing and heading off duty for another day. Six hours in orbit, 6 hours prepping for patrol and debriefing afterwards, then 12 hours off duty. It was a good rotation, as far as Carlos was concerned.
He checked by rote, his squadron leader was where he was supposed to be, his wingman was where she was supposed to be, the Artemis was where she was supposed to be. No alarms, no alerts. Dickson, his CO, was a bit of a stickler to proper procedure while on duty, which precluded the sort of chatter that some COs permitted while on patrol. Instead the only sounds on the squadron circuits were terse, professional reports. Luckily, the salty old bastard was equally willing to let his ‘boys and girls’ let off all the steam they wanted while off duty, and arranged plenty of squadron BBQs and the like to make sure they were welded together not simply as a unit, but as a sort of ersatz family.
Carlos always figured he was learning quite a bit from his CO, who’d served most of his career out on the front lines before being rotated back here to this garrison assignment.
There was a click on the comm, and Dickson’s clipped voice crackled slightly “Waypoint in 1 minute at my mark… mark.”
Carlos checked his navigation display down by his knee. Soon they would be on their 11th orbit and that much closer to going off duty. He dutifully scanned his instruments, then the radar displays, then cycled to the repeater display from the orbital scanning network, before making a simple Mark 1 Mod 0 Eyeball search through the crystal-clear transparency of his armored cockpit.
That sequence took up the entire minute. “Waypoint reached” intoned Bitchin’ Betty, the cockpit voice alert system. Carlos swore that the computer sounded just like one of his teachers in grade school when said teacher was annoyed with him. But he was quite certain that Mrs Rokowski had never done voice recordings for the military, in this life or any other, considering how firmly pacifistic she was.
He swallowed a chuckle at the familiar thought as he began another sweep. Navigation display, instrument cluster, warning light cluster, up to the HUD and outside visual sweep, long-range radar display, short range LIDAR display, EWAR display, Datalink status display, back up to the HUD for another outside sweep, switch central display mode to repeater from the OSN, long range status display, orbital status display, switch back to local, back to the HUD for the last time for an outside sweep. It was routine, and in some ways routines could be dangerous to get into, but by the same token it was a comprehensive routine that covered all of the sensors and systems needed to detect and localize potential threats. Sure he did this very process around 360 times every patrol. Sure it was boring and almost rote since he’d never in 5 years seen a single damn thing outside of schedule exercises. But his trainers had been adamant about the importance of vigilance, Dickson was a stickler for vigilance, and Carlos was not about to let any of them down by failing to be vigilant.
He didn’t like surprises. He’d been told over and over again that getting surprised was usually the first step toward getting himself killed, and he was quite fond of living. So he kept up his vigilance.
Which was why on his next sweep when his display showed a thermal Kearny-Fuchida emergence pulse where no such pulse had any business whatsoever occurring, being far too far from anything that could be used as a pirate point by even the most insane pirate, he was, in fact, rather surprised.
“Emergence pulse, bearing 28 nadir 12, one five two kilometers.” he snapped out.
And everything changed.
Surprised? You could say that. You could also say that water is wet with about as much chance of being wrong. Of course we were surprised!
The planet below was still on the dusty and dry side even after a century of terraforming efforts. While there were green belts around rivers that hadn’t flowed on this planet for millennia before the interference of man and even slowly spreading forests in areas where the terraforming work was most advanced, the most common biome on the planet was still a mix of desert and savannah.
It may not be the prettiest planet around, but it was home to the New Circe Research & Development Complex, which made it important enough to rate a full planetary garrison including substantial orbital assets to protect the place from pirates, raiders, and other enemies of the Terran Hegemony in Exile… especially raiders from the People’s Democratic Republic Of The Rim. Which was coreward from the Terran Hegemony in Exile, was neither democratic nor a republic being ruled by a caste-based cabal of autocrats who ruled the enslaved populace with the simple credo ‘we can always make it worse for you’.
Well, that may have been uncharitable, but Junior Flight Lieutenant Carlos Johanssen wasn’t particularly interested in charity towards the Hegemony’s enemies, despite his Catholic upbringing. To him, there were two sorts of enemies, those still alive, and those who had been rendered permanently unable to harm his beloved home.
Granted there hadn’t been any raid on New Circe in his lifetime, and he’d spent his entire career so far here on the planet of his birth, but the sentiment was one that was quite strong in the Terran Hegemony in Exile, to the quiet despair of the priests, ministers, rabbis, gurus, and whatever else any of the various religions that made up the colorful fabric of society called their spiritual leaders.
And so Carlos sat in the cockpit of his Sparrowhawk IV monitoring his displays while the nimble little aerospace fighter coasted along in orbit, the squadron he was part of formed up around a single Artemis System Defense Boat, a 1,300 ton aerodyne dropship bristling with advanced weaponry and generously layered with armor that could keep up with the small, swift little fighter if it had to.
Not that the Artemis and his Sparrowhawk IVs were the only orbital defenses. At this point in his orbital patrol Carlos could see reflected sunlight glinting off of the ominous bulk of a Warden Light Fleet Anchorage which was the true keystone of the defenses, serving as the home base for DesRon 29, whose 12 Johnston-class Destroyers served as a quite potent deterrent to precisely the sort of threats the Hegemony worried about in this fairly quiet backwater region of their holdings, well away from the Fortress Worlds along the border with the Rim.
Carlos glanced at his displays, which showed that HWS Gillespie and HWS Guerriere were currently docked to the Warden, the rest of the squadron being elsewhere in the system. He knew that the annual major unit wargames were coming up, and was looking forward to them. A little excitement to spice up life here on the quiet frontier. Last year he’d been assigned to the Red Team, and that had gotten very exciting indeed. He’d actually notionally crippled Gillespie with an Alamo attack before he’d been taken down.
They were 10 orbits into their 12 orbit rotation before they’d head back down to Fort Wilson for debriefing and heading off duty for another day. Six hours in orbit, 6 hours prepping for patrol and debriefing afterwards, then 12 hours off duty. It was a good rotation, as far as Carlos was concerned.
He checked by rote, his squadron leader was where he was supposed to be, his wingman was where she was supposed to be, the Artemis was where she was supposed to be. No alarms, no alerts. Dickson, his CO, was a bit of a stickler to proper procedure while on duty, which precluded the sort of chatter that some COs permitted while on patrol. Instead the only sounds on the squadron circuits were terse, professional reports. Luckily, the salty old bastard was equally willing to let his ‘boys and girls’ let off all the steam they wanted while off duty, and arranged plenty of squadron BBQs and the like to make sure they were welded together not simply as a unit, but as a sort of ersatz family.
Carlos always figured he was learning quite a bit from his CO, who’d served most of his career out on the front lines before being rotated back here to this garrison assignment.
There was a click on the comm, and Dickson’s clipped voice crackled slightly “Waypoint in 1 minute at my mark… mark.”
Carlos checked his navigation display down by his knee. Soon they would be on their 11th orbit and that much closer to going off duty. He dutifully scanned his instruments, then the radar displays, then cycled to the repeater display from the orbital scanning network, before making a simple Mark 1 Mod 0 Eyeball search through the crystal-clear transparency of his armored cockpit.
That sequence took up the entire minute. “Waypoint reached” intoned Bitchin’ Betty, the cockpit voice alert system. Carlos swore that the computer sounded just like one of his teachers in grade school when said teacher was annoyed with him. But he was quite certain that Mrs Rokowski had never done voice recordings for the military, in this life or any other, considering how firmly pacifistic she was.
He swallowed a chuckle at the familiar thought as he began another sweep. Navigation display, instrument cluster, warning light cluster, up to the HUD and outside visual sweep, long-range radar display, short range LIDAR display, EWAR display, Datalink status display, back up to the HUD for another outside sweep, switch central display mode to repeater from the OSN, long range status display, orbital status display, switch back to local, back to the HUD for the last time for an outside sweep. It was routine, and in some ways routines could be dangerous to get into, but by the same token it was a comprehensive routine that covered all of the sensors and systems needed to detect and localize potential threats. Sure he did this very process around 360 times every patrol. Sure it was boring and almost rote since he’d never in 5 years seen a single damn thing outside of schedule exercises. But his trainers had been adamant about the importance of vigilance, Dickson was a stickler for vigilance, and Carlos was not about to let any of them down by failing to be vigilant.
He didn’t like surprises. He’d been told over and over again that getting surprised was usually the first step toward getting himself killed, and he was quite fond of living. So he kept up his vigilance.
Which was why on his next sweep when his display showed a thermal Kearny-Fuchida emergence pulse where no such pulse had any business whatsoever occurring, being far too far from anything that could be used as a pirate point by even the most insane pirate, he was, in fact, rather surprised.
“Emergence pulse, bearing 28 nadir 12, one five two kilometers.” he snapped out.
And everything changed.
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